JURASSIC PARK III
16 – Courtesy of the U.S. Navy and Marines Pt 2
Thunder. Distant thunder. Not again. Billy painfully strained his eyes open to see a dark cloud looming overhead, its strong wind rushing over his body. No. That wasn't thunder. The dark cloud became larger and more defined. It was a helicopter. Muffled voices filled his throbbing ears. He had been found. They had been found. Billy rolled his head over in the sand just enough to gaze at the hybrid to his left. She was starting to wake up from the noise, too.
Pet watched the helicopter prepare to land several feet from her and Billy's position through thin slits of her eyelids. She tried to lift her head but it was currently being torn open by a skull splitting headache. The blurry forms of two uniformed men carrying rifles emerged from the aircraft became clearer the closer they got.
Owen looked at the passengers. "Stay in here." He grabbed a medical bag laying on the floor of the helicopter and rushed to follow his team commander and Gonzales.
The co-pilot was heard reporting over the radio. "This is Sea Shadow, we have located two survivors. One is a Caucasian male and the other a female. Awaiting status."
Simon choked out a gasp in disbelief. There she was, laying in the dirt and barely moving. She was visibly injured as her bronze skin was littered with bruises, scrapes and gashes. Ignoring the order he had been given by the soldier, he stepped out of the helicopter. Chris tried to stop him but was knocked back down into his seat by Muldoon also getting out of the aircraft.
Simon ordered, "This is now a matter of strict confidentiality!" Muldoon stayed right behind him, hoping to quell whatever situation he could before it escalated to dangerous levels should Pet panic. Chris gave up trying to stop them, but instead of following he remained on the aircraft as directed.
Coleman checked the pulse of the badly injured male. "I've got a pulse. This one is still alive!" He gave a thumbs up to the pilots and looked to Owen. "What about the woman?"
But Owen couldn't stop staring at the disfigurement of the other. What was wrong with her feet? She was starting to move. Before he could kneel down to check on her, she was trying to get to her feet and get away. "Take it easy, ma'am. We're not here to hurt you."
Pet saw his rifle slung over his shoulder and his pistol holstered at his thigh. No. She wasn't about to let these bastards take her away. She saw an armed man next to Billy and weakly lunged at him, swiping her injured clawed hand at him. No way was she about to let anyone take Billy from her.
"Hey, whoa watch it, lady!" Coleman bellowed.
She felt her friend's trembling hand curl itself around her wrist protectively as though reassuring her he wasn't about to give up on her, either. "Don't hurt her," he begged in an urgent voice.
Pet tried to hiss a screech in warning, but her voice was too hoarse to even make a sound shy of a raspy whisper. Owen speaking to her snapped her attention back on him. "Easy, now. It's okay. You're okay."
Her raptor eyes caught the movement of another person approaching the soldiers and looked over a kneeling Hispanic's man shoulder to focus on the slightly blurry form coming up behind him. Once the suited person was close enough for her to see who it was, her heart stopped. Her mind stopped. She even stopped breathing for a moment. He found her. Masrani finally realized where she was and had called in some serious manpower to hunt her down and kill her.
For the first time ever, she felt helpless. She just thought she had felt helpless in the past when being hunted. Before, there was always someplace to go, someplace to hide. Now, there wasn't. She was surrounded by armed men with a second helicopter arriving to the scene above the first one.
Billy saw him, too, and tightened his grip on the woman's wrist. "No, no you can't take her!" He started to struggle against the two soldiers at his right, doing their best to restrain him.
Gonzales wasn't sure where to place his hands to hold the fretful man down due to the number of scrapes and gashes, some bandaged some not, along his upper torso. "It's okay, sir. We're not going to hurt anyone." Though the same couldn't be said for himself. The Hispanic man nervously studied the menacing clawed feet of the woman.
Pet's eyes began to fill with tears of emotional turmoil as time felt as though coming to a standstill. It took her a moment to realize she was trying to scream, but couldn't. The only way she knew she was attempting a scream was because of the pain shredding the back of her throat. Pet wanted to run, but couldn't. She couldn't leave Billy alone with these bastards. He didn't leave her when he had the chance.
That's when she saw another face; a face she so greatly welcomed. Robert. He had come all the way to the island to save her, again; to bring her back home. But, why was he with Masrani? It could only mean one thing….he was there to help.
Muldoon pushed past Owen and dropped to his knees beside his Pet. She flung her arms around his neck and choked a sob, her eyes still locked on the billionaire's. Muldoon caressed the hybrid's head and held her feverish body against his. "Shh, shh, it's okay. It's finally going to be okay." He looked at Owen, and gave a single nod. The Navy soldier understood and backed away.
Muldoon continued to comfort the ill hybrid, feeling her body shake against him in hysterical cries. He kept trying to calm her and watched as Coleman and Gonzales performed emergency first aid to Billy. Muldoon knew exactly how the junior scientist felt. It was going to be a long road to recovery, both physically and psychologically for the younger man.
Pet started to relax in the safe, comforting embrace of her life long best friend and guardian. She tried to talk. "Alan," and brought her eyes up to meet calm grey ones. "Where's Alan?"
Muldoon shook his head. "They haven't found him yet."
"The Aviary. He-" but her parched mouth made it difficult to talk. "He was in the aviary."
Muldoon was barely able to hear the words and nodded. He called over his shoulder to Coleman. "Check the aviary." Pet's arms around his neck loosened as one fell limply at his side. This made the man panic and he studied the unmoving hybrid. She was just unconscious. She had finally succumbed to the physical exhaustion brought on by her illness, physical injuries and whatever else she had been made to endure since the plane crash.
Coleman stated. "Let's get the survivors loaded up. Get the male on the first chopper and the female on the second. Grady, you're escorting the female. Gonzales, you're with me."
Owen nodded. "Yes, sir."
A stretcher was taken out of the helicopter and laid out for Billy. He strained to look around him the best he could for Grant's salvaged hat. Seeing it a few inches beside him, he took hold of it protectively.
Coleman questioned the billionaire behind him. "Which helicopter are you accompanying, Mr. Masrani?"
Simon hastily answered, "I stay with the girl." He couldn't get over it. There she was. There she was. After all this time, he had finally found her. "I'm not letting her out of my sight."
Once Billy was safely secured to the stretcher, he was hoisted up by Coleman and Gonzales and carried inside the helicopter where Chris still anxiously waited. Once the first helicopter was safely out of range of the second one hovering nearby, the second one landed where the first had previously been. Just as how Billy had been placed on a stretcher, Pet's unconscious form was also and she too flown off the island.
"Veronica!" Grant anxiously paced around while the Kirbys sat to themselves, not too far away. He kept calling out to the hybrid, knowing, just knowing she had to be around there somewhere. "Veronica!" He was beginning to feel a little bit more of his hopes dwindle to ashes. He hung his head low and shuffled through the sand. It was time to get moving. They had been waiting around in the area long enough. "Mr. Kirby?"
Paul obliged and collected his family, them joining the senior scientist.
The four of them pressed on through the jungle as the morning sun was becoming brighter. Well, at least bright enough to pierce the veils of fog lingering around the forest floor. A low, repetitive rumble sounded in the distance. At first, there was concern it was the low sounding footsteps of the Spinosaur. Closer listening revealed otherwise.
"You hear that?"
Eric heard it, too, and got excited. "It's the ocean!"
He took off running towards the source of the sound, his parents and the scientist following behind. Suddenly, their path was block by a screeching male raptor. The other two males joined the first, their talons armed at the ready as they bore their jaws of sharp teeth.
Grant remembered a similar situation like this before, being surrounded by angry raptors, and knew there wouldn't be a T-Rex to storm onto the scene this time. Or would there? Oh, please not the Spinosaur.
The man drew the family of three closer to him. "They want the eggs. Otherwise, we'd be dead already."
Squawking from a fourth raptor sounded over a hill, it being the alpha male. Squawking from a fifth revealed the alpha female, her animalistic eyes set on Grant.
She could smell the eggs in the vicinity of the trapped pack and identified the forward most male figure of them as the alpha male; the strange one's mate. She hissed a screech. This time, the strange one wouldn't be there to save him or the others and her own pack needed to feed. What better way to reward them for their helping her track down the eggs than to let them feed on the egg thieves? They all seemed fairly well off for good eating. Well, other than the hatchling trying to hide behind the lesser female.
Grant began to take a knee, recognizing the raptors' behavior. "Everybody get down. She's challenging us." He carefully slid the backpack off his shoulders, eyes staying on the female slowly closing in on them. She was nearly dangerously close to Amanda and hissing in warning. "She thinks you stole the eggs."
Paul crept up behind Amanda, quietly stating, "Get behind me." But the female raptor's blood freezing hiss of a screech sent him recoiling.
She began to sniff of Amanda, the woman wanting to scream and run at the same time. But she knew doing so would not result in the best of endings for her. She continued to stay her ground, petrified in place. A sharp shriek of a squawk made Amanda come to terms with what needed to be done.
She softly stated with a hint of a growl, "Give me the eggs."
Grant already had the camera bag withdrawn from his backpack and the bag open. He drew back the lid of it, causing a male raptor to rear up and bark out. The other males joined it in barking out. They were calling for more. How many more were in the area? Grant would rather not find out and withdrew the eggs from the concealment of the bag. Then he saw it, the Velociraptor resonating chamber Billy had created using the rapid proto-typer. An idea ran through his head.
Grant passed off the eggs to Amanda with shaking hands and reached into the bag for the item of interest. He began thinking of the sounds Pet would make, him trying to mimic a growl.
The raptors perked up in surprise. The strange one's mate was sounding an awfully a lot like her. The pack's alpha male was growling at them and it was making them a bit uneasy. They began squawking and shrieking amongst themselves. Should they attack?
Paul cut in. "No, no...Call for help."
Grant did. One of the male raptors was about to attack, but the female stopped him with a strict hiss of a shriek. Nothing was getting attacked until the eggs were safe. A low, distant rumbling somewhere over the trees grew louder. What did the egg stealer call for? So far, this pack had been unpredictable and rather intelligent in their ways, making the female raptor not want to chance anything. She chirped to the other three males to run, leaving just her and her mate behind. She leaned down and tenderly collected one of the eggs in her toothed jaws, the male doing the same. She gave the strange alpha male a deep eyed stare and sprinted off, the male behind her.
Grant and the Kirbys listened to the familiar sound come ever closer. Paul got to his feet. "That's a helicopter!" He led the charge through the forest and to the coast, where a suited man stood.
Chris Bell saw the people and smiled to himself. He raised a bullhorn and called out to them. "Dr. Grant? Dr. Alan Grant?"
Oh, the memories that brought back. The four people ran towards him, all simultaneously shouting, "That's a very bad idea!"
But they were soon taken back by the unexpected show of military force making landfall. Three specialized vehicles erupted from the waves and onto the sandy beach as helicopters circled the shore. Eric was wildly impressed. "You have to thank her now. She sent the Navy and the Marines!"
Grant almost laughed out in relief. "God bless you, Ellie."
Chris approached the group, smiling at the people. "Excellent! So glad you and your companions are still alive! There were doubts, but hey! You pulled through!" A helicopter touched down off to the side of where the gathering of people were, Chris gesturing to it. "Come on! Get on." He assisted Eric onboard and when seeing the scientist, pointed off to the side where a gurney was. "Dr. Grant, is this man with you?"
Grant could barely hear what was being said. "What?" But followed the outstretched arm's aim to see Billy. He was alive! The crazy son of a bitch was alive! If he was alive, that meant Pet was too.
Billy, feelings tons better now he was on some good pain killers, smiled. "You made it." Grant could hug his protégé right then. "I rescued your hat."
The senior scientist looked up to see his treasured item and wasn't sure what to say. He accepted it and nodded, unable to stop the powerful smile uplifting his features. "Well, that's the important thing." He glanced around the helicopter. "Where's Veronica?"
Billy's smile faded a bit. "They took her."
"What? Who took her?"
"The military...That Masrani guy was with them. Mr. Muldoon was with them, too."
Chris called out to the scientist. "Can I get you to sit here and buckle up, sir?"
He'd go up there, but not to sit down. He wanted to have a word with the suited man. "Was there a woman with him?" The look that passed over the other man's face wasn't what Grant wanted to see. "Where is she?" Chris felt uneasy answering the question as he had been ordered by Mr. Masrani to not discuss anything pertaining to the woman's recovery to anyone not cleared by him first. Chris gulped. Flashes of impatience and anger filled Grant's eyes. "Where is Veronica? And what has Masrani done to her?"
"Uh..." Chris was beginning to feel a little hot under the collar. "All survivors recovered are to be taken to safety for medical treatment. As far as his personal involvement with any of the survivors, I suggest you take that up with him."
"Oh, I plan on it," Grant stated in warning.
