Okay...sooo... I'm not very strong with numbers, travel times and time zone differences. So whatever boo boos the number smart people find, please let me know so I can fix it immediately. I hate inaccuracies in my stories and try my best to not screw stuff up. I even brought in another very close friend to help me with a part of this chapter and later chapters like it. That doesn't mean it's perfect. Nothing is ever really truly perfect. Just...less screwed up...
JURASSIC PARK III
9 - Alive and Well
Eric stared mesmerized at the man he had just rescued and brought back to the safety of his hideout. "You're Alan Grant." The man nodded, staring just as awe struck at the boy but for different reasons. This kid was still alive. "What are you doing here?"
How could he put this without making his parents sound like kidnapping, lying low life- "Your parents...Invited me along." Grant broke out into another coughing fit and waited for it to pass before continuing. "There was a woman with me...Did you see her?"
It took a moment for Eric to recall there being someone accompanying the renowned scientist. "For a moment."
"I need to find her." The man tried to stand, but fell back down to where he had been sitting.
Eric frowned. He knew it was dangerous going out there and wasn't sure what else to use as a means of defense should they encounter another pack of dinosaurs. Or one rather large one with a fin. "Stay here. I'll try to find her." He picked up his crudely crafted, grass camouflage cover and got up to go outside.
Grant mustered everything he could to join the boy. Like hell he was just going to sit there. She was his responsibility and not just because they were romantically involved. Years ago, he promised John Hammond he would watch out for her as long as she was a resident of his dig site. That and well, the idea of what her legal guardian would do to him if he returned without her was a great bother to him. Something about the way the ex-game warden said 'You better come back with her alive and well, or don't bother coming back at all,' made the senior scientist not want to try the real meaning behind those words. Robert Muldoon was a respectable person, but Grant had no desire to encounter the wrathful side of him.
The two people crawled out of the wrecked fuel tanker and were on their way crossing the water sodden crate bridge when Grant heard a woman's voice call out, "Alan!"
"Nica," he whispered to himself and almost knocked over Eric when leaping to the last crate to reach land. He ran towards the voice just as she became visible beyond the tree line. "Nica!"
Pet's knees almost gave way when seeing the man and she ran to him, knocking the air out of his lungs on impact. She tightly embraced him in the hug, crying into his shoulder in relief. "I thought something had happened to you! Are you alright?" She backed away from the man, without letting him go, to give him a visual examination.
"Yeah, yeah I'm fine. Are you?" Grant saw a scratch on the woman's face as well as a bit of a scrape on her left shoulder. "What happened?"
"I fell." She coughed and tightly held one of her sides. "Lesson learned, never run when you can barely see where you're going. Good thing that root broke my fall."
Sarcasm. She always had to be so sarcastic. Whatever. She was alive and well and that was all that mattered. Eric spoke up. "Uh, guys...we need to get back to the shelter before we're found by something."
Pet, leaning against Grant for support, wheezed in question. "Is this Eric?"
The senior scientist nodded. "Yes, it is."
"I'll be damned." Pet strode around Grant, Eric able to get his first good head to toe look over of the woman.
He appeared as though he had just seen a T-Rex or a Spino. His eyes widened in horror and the color washed from his face. He had seen plenty of raptors since his being on the island and knew what they were capable of. And yet, here was a woman? with raptor claws? No, raptor feet! Her eyes...
"What..." Eric took a step back in recoil, Pet stopping. "What are you?"
Pet sighed only to start coughing again. Grant took a gentle hold of the woman's upper arm to guide her to the fuel truck. "I'll explain inside."
While Grant and Pet explained her being to Eric, the boy opened up a large can of baked beans and started dividing it into bowls. Well, what bowls he could. He only had two. "Uh, sorry to interrupt but there's only two bowls..." Eric then looked to his selection of silverware. "And one spoon and two forks." He held up one of them. "One and a half forks, away."
"I don't care," Grant sighed out. "You and Veronica can have the bowls. I don't mind eating out of the can."
"Oh, okay then." Eric dropped the spoon into the can and handed it to the much older man, him taking one of the bowls and handing it to the odd woman. Before he could hand her the decent fork, she was tipping up the bowl and eating it that way. "That works, I guess."
Grant continued to explain things to Eric, but the ache of hunger and the satisfaction of food halted him. Neither he or Pet said much of anything while getting every last bean and flavor of from their respective dish and can.
Eric had been considerate to his guests and chose to give them a more generous helping of the beans. Because of, he had finished his share first. Afterwards, he started going through a box. He knew there had to be one somewhere, but where was it. Not in that box...Not there or...Ah hah! The last candy bar.
He took a smaller box from a shelf and walked around where the two people sat, finishing up their meal. Eric sat down and shifted his eyes between the two people, finally settling his gaze on Grant. "I read both of your books. I liked the first one more." He took a bite out of the candy bar. "Before you were on the island. You liked dinosaurs back then."
The scientist looked to Pet, sitting at his feet, and sighed. Was this kid really wanting to discuss this now? "Back then, they hadn't tried to eat me yet."
Pet snickered and patted the man on his booted foot. Grant tossed the spoon back into the bean can and looked around for a place to set it down. All around were shelves and stacks of items ranging from boxes, vials, cords, lamps and who knew what else.
Eric watched the man study the stuff. "When InGen cleared out, they left a lot of stuff behind."
Grant briefly looked to the unsuspecting hybrid and then back up to Eric. "Any weapons?" After spending as much time as he had with Pet and her gun happy pals, he felt a lot more confident in his ability to fire a gun.
The boy shook his head. "No, and I just used the last of the gas grenades."
"And I appreciate that."
Pet tossed her plastic bowl aside, swallowing the last bite of beans. "Who needs a weapon? I think I can handle myself fairly efficiently."
"Even if against four raptors?" Pet was quiet. Grant reached over to a vial, curious of its murky contents.
"Be careful with that. T-Rex. It scares the smaller ones away, but that attracts the really big one with the fin."
Um, what? What this what he thought it was? "This is T-Rex...pee?" Eric nodded a bit. "How'd you get it?"
"You don't want to know."
Grant blinked in disbelief at the kid, Pet look mildly disgusted. "Wait a minute, wait a minute...Tyrannosaurs, bucks especially...they..." Eric shrugged and nodded. "Like, all over the place and you..." The hybrid buried her face in her hands. "Bad mental image...bad mental image. I bet you attracted the Spinosaur for a couple days after that."
"It did. It kept following me. It took a lot of soap and finally a degreaser to get the smell off me."
Grant was mortified. Okay, change of subject.
Daylight became darker with night time on the horizon. Billy sat a bit uncomfortably on the tree limb he had been perched on and wiped at his eyes. Two of his best friends were somewhere down there and hopefully not dead. A grim reminder of a worst-case scenario lie just beneath the tree branches he and the Kirbys occupied in the form of a since dead Udesky. His lifeless body hadn't been touched since one of the raptors broke his neck.
Billy had underestimated the level of intelligence the raptors had. He had heard plenty of stories from his mentor, Pet and Muldoon but thought it all an exaggeration. Such was not the case. A clever trap had been laid and it almost worked. And then, on top of having the ability to lay out such a trap, the raptors even knew how to break necks. Oh yeah, he definitely underestimated them.
He sat there, deeply regretting the stupid ass move he pulled earlier. Though regretful of losing his camera bag, a part of him was thankful it was gone. He could almost visualize it laying in the tall grass of the field, probably trampled on by the stampedes of dinosaurs. Good riddance. He'd just have to find another way to help make money.
Nine long hours had gruelingly passed by for Simon. He knew he should have tried to at least get some sleep but his anxious mind refused to let him. During his night of restlessness, he at least remembered to call Dr. Jacobs in his Palo Alto, California lab. Simon let it be known that he would be flying out of India at eight AM and arriving to the United States in a little over fifteen hours afterwards to find the hybrid, and that the geneticist should get whatever he needed for I-10HY's viral out treatment.
The back passenger door to a black luxury sedan was opened, allowing the billionaire to exit. Simon stepped out onto the tarmac where his private Gulfstream G450 waited with its professionally dressed pilots and two lovely stewardesses standing nearby.
Morning sunrays broke through the tree leaves and into Billy's eyes. He wasn't even aware he had fallen asleep. Being mindful of how he navigated the tree branch, he sat up and stiffened out a yarn. When he glanced over his shoulder, he found Paul and Amanda sleeping soundly in what looked to be a rather uncomfortable position. Her back was going to be hurting later and his backside was, no doubt, going to be numb.
Billy then thought back on where the body of Udesky had been, only to find it gone. At one point in the night, it had been taken and probably by the raptors. But they weren't scavengers. They were pack hunters, preferring their prey to be alive. What took the body, then? He wanted to notify the others. Should he? It was still a bit too early. Best to let them rest. No telling what that day had in store for them and he knew it best everyone be fully rested. So, he sat there, eyes scanning the forest underbrush for any movement of the raptors and or scavenger dinosaur.
A steady, high pitched beeping of a wrist watch echoed the interior of the fuel truck's tank. Pet went to reach for the source of the sound, disbelieving it was already seven AM. At least the islands shared the same time as Montana. She barked in protest to the pain biting at her every muscle and joint the more she tried to move. She felt like absolute crap. Her head felt like it was about to split open, there was a throbbing in her ears, swallowing felt like she was swallowing acid and her muscles felt knotted and cramped up.
Her barking a whimper in pain stirred Grant from his sleeping. His groggy eyes tried to focus on the woman, nuzzled up next to him with her head on his chest, and quietly questioned her. "Nica? Are you alright?"
The hybrid tried to talk, but a cough escaped her instead of words. After the spasm, she tried to sit up only to give up and lay back down against the man. "I don't know." She'd felt this before. Oh no. She wanted to cry.
"Why, was is it?"
She couldn't tell him. He already had enough on his mind and didn't need this to add on to it. No, she was over reacting. That was all. This only felt like her illness flaring up. So much had happened the day before and it had settled in during sleep.
"Just everything from yesterday. The plane crash, getting thrown around by a Spino... You know that fall didn't exactly feel too great...Then there's the running around, inhaling all that damn tear gas and let's not forget my falling and crashing into a tree root large enough to have its own zip code." Again, Pet tried to sit up except this time with Grant's assistance.
Everything spun around and her head ached a lot more. She felt sick to her stomach. It was just the old beans. That's all. She wasn't sick. It wasn't her illness. She was over reacting. Pet just sat there, head resting in her knees bent to her chest. She was whimpering and not even aware of doing so.
Eric was waking up, now, and looking to the two people. He could see something was wrong. "Dr. Grant? Veronica? Is something wrong?"
Grant opened his mouth to answer, Pet cutting him off. "No. I'm a little sore from everything yesterday. I'll be fine. I just need a minute to shake this off."
Knowing something was truly wrong with the hybrid, Grant reached over to feel of the woman's face. She was abnormally hot. He then felt of her arms and body. She was hot all over and with fever. "Veronica, you're sick."
"No!" Pet barked out in growl. "I'm fine!" She looked to her very good friend with tear glossed eyes. "I'll be fine." She reached for her backpack pushed off to the side next to a shelf and opened it up for a bottle of water. "We should get going, soon, and try to find the others."
A spark of excitement lit up Eric's face. Would he really be able to see his parents again? A smile upturned his chapped lips and dirt smudged cheeks.
