I had great hopes about the electronic door locks, but with the windows smashed in like that, I no longer felt optimistic about the situation.
I'd heard a few shots and human screams, both while on the staircase, and even now outside the booth. Although worrisome, better than the silence of death.
The broken windows all had pointy shards poking up, spotted with dinosaur blood. Not wanting to add to the blood, I tried the door handle.
Nope, still locked. I had to go through the window frame.
I looked around for something to clear the glass shards away, such as a paint knife, but I only found the busted Nintendo...and the gold cartridge.
Following Bryan's advice, I used The Adventures of Link to scrape and hack shards of glass out of the window frame. Honestly, more entertaining than actually playing it.
Kind of awkward, that, had to sort of jump up and do a basketball move with it.
I climbed up on the sill, hanging from the frame as I peered in.
Never got a good look inside the control center before. Being a curious dinosaur, I once asked Hammond about it, and despite Henry Wu's protests, he actually showed me blueprints of the room, and some snapshots he took of the place. I probably would have recognized Mr. Nedry at some point, but I heard he was absent during picture taking, maybe because he'd been meeting with guys who wanted to undermine Hammond's company and steal a bunch of company secrets and dinosaur embryos...or maybe he was out getting tacos.
Anyway, fascinating place. It interested me as much as those Viewmaster slides of Hoover Dam (which, incidentally, I could never figure out how to see in three dimensions). Rows of computers and desks, all set up for running every zone of the park. They had weather monitoring stations, security stations with a whole bank of cameras, and power of course. I think the huge genetics computers got kept downstairs in the lab. The back windows presented a lovely view of the island outside. Oh, and I loved the map of the island. I'd have to, I don't know, take it with me or find a copy somewhere whenever I had the luxury of touring the park.
I searched for signs of my friends.
A rifle lay on the floor, smoking, spent casings scattered all over the carpet. On the desk lay Cassie's left shoe.
No dead human bodies. I breathed a sigh of relief.
The speckly Felicity, star marked Clouseau and streaky tailed Hastings paced the floor, all craning their necks upwards. Apparently someone had removed a ceiling panel and climbed inside, pounding sounds and shaking ceiling tiles indicating where the large humans may have gone.
Felicity and Hastings jumped up on desks, knocking coffee mugs and monitors and paperwork to the floor. A tower crashed down, followed by a shattering snowglobe and a cup full of noisy writing instruments.
Felicity crouched, winding up like a spring. To my astonishment, she cleared enough height to bash her nose through a ceiling panel. Her claws hooked on the frame.
She snarled, snapping at something with her teeth.
A little girl's scream.
"Cassie!" I pulled myself up and jumped through the window frame.
Still infuriated about the whole floor buffer incident, Clouseau growled, leaping at me with claws extended.
I avoided getting disemboweled, but her body thudded against me and I flew backwards into a desk. A monitor fell forward onto a keyboard, its tower banging loudly on the floor a second later.
Someone's family pictures fell off a desk, the glass shattering. They seemed like nice people: a woman, three children and a Shiba Inu.
I struck Clouseau in the face with a keyboard, then, as the tower's weight brought the monitor down, smacked her with that too. It probably would have knocked her out cold if it had been a bulky CRT, but no, just one of those new flat models. Still stunned her for a moment.
I glanced over her shoulder. Felicity had changed location, sniffing and craning her neck toward a different section of ceiling tiles.
She jumped up again, this time not even using a desk. We Velociraptors should definitely start our own basketball team.
What? No, I don't mean a basketball team named after Velociraptors, I mean, a basketball team composed of raptors. There's a difference.
Felicity's nose burst through the tiles. Her teeth snapped. Another scream, this time Lex's voice.
I rushed to help, but Clouseau rammed her body into me. I banged against a swivel chair, which toppled and upset a trash can, discarded half full Mountain Dew spilling out on the floor. Something chipped and broke off a desk. A whole collection of dinosaur toys tumbled onto the carpeting.
"Wow! Neat!"
My enemy bit me when I picked up a plastic Ankylosaurus. I told myself focus, you can play with that, and the Dinosaucers toy, when the humans are safe.
I kicked Clouseau in the head, right across the star marking, jumped onto her back. Again, kinda kinky, but we won't go into that. Let's just say I probably would have enjoyed it more if she didn't look like Freddy Krueger.
Lex screamed again. Felicity had collided with a ceiling tile directly beneath the girl. I could tell by the way the tile resisted instead of flying all the way up.
A boot shot out from the dark, smashing Felicity in the face. She chomped the leather in anger.
She didn't stay up there long. Guess she didn't bite down hard enough to grab the boot or something. Down she fell to the floor.
The ceiling tile collapsed. Lex dropped from the compartment with a scream.
A rough hand grabbed her by the scruff of the neck. Didn't get to see what happened after that, as Clouseau and Hastings chose that moment to gang up on me, smashing me into the carpet. Hastings flashed her claws, preparing to disembowel, Clouseau leaning over with her teeth bared to rip into my jugular.
"Weirdo!" (Okay, so I paraphrase the naming noise other raptors use to describe me). A supple, and rather shapely green body sprang from the window above me, crashing into Hastings. They hit a desk.
Although relatively sturdy, the impact caused the wood and aluminum object to lift off its supports, causing a tidal wave of unpleasantly crunching debris: Older style glass and tube monitors shattered, the shells of hard drives cracked and broke off, brittle mice snapped apart, a football guy bobblehead became decapitated, a giant cup of soda, diluted with melted ice, spilled out all over the floor, a stapler, pens, pencils, stacks of paper, a printer, toy dancing hula girl and a power supply. Quite a mess on the carpet.
Zelda and Hastings growled and fought each other.
Although worried for my girlfriend, I knew the humans had worse problems. Getting up, I rushed to help Lex, but by then she had already disappeared inside the ceiling somewhere.
Felicity sniffed and turned her head, peering with interest at dimples appearing in the bottom part of an aluminum air duct.
She jumped up, banged her head into the metal. I suppressed a laugh, probably would have grabbed some popcorn and watched the idiot try to break through, but that's when Clouseau slashed me in the leg.
Zelda stood on top of Hastings, and had been stomping her semiconscious when she noticed what had happened. "Weirdo!"
"It's Albert, honey! Albert!" I frowned at my bleeding leg, jumped back when Clouseau came in with another slashing attack. I jumped out of the way, forcefully shoving a swivel chair into her. She clawed at me, but I kept pushing the chair until she ended up trapped beneath a desk.
Bang! Felicity struck the vent again.
She made a snarling sound that translated as "Rats!" or "Foiled again!" then a "Follow me" noise as she climbed up on a desk and sprung through a window.
Hastings shrugged my girlfriend off her body, giving her an insulting "Poop dinosaur's mating partner" sound. She hopped up on a table, following Hastings into the hallway.
Clouseau, likewise, insulted me, abandoning the fight.
Alone with me in the control room, Zelda attempted dinosaur first aid by licking my wounds, but I shook my head. "We should go."
The other raptors trailed the banging sounds in the vents, and their noses. Although I'd seen blueprints of the area, I'd forgotten the precise layout of the air system, so I unfortunately had to do the same thing.
It seemed like nonsense for the humans to go back downstairs...
Bang, thud, bang. Clouseau, Felicity and Hastings rushed to the staircase, still watching the ventilation system. Nonsense it is, I thought.
Clank. The humans opened a panel on the ceiling, way above those scary skeletons in the main lobby.
I thought, surely they wouldn't do something dumb like climbing down that thing and running out the front door, right?
Especially with all those Proceratosauruses down below?
Umm...
Since they hadn't finished permanently fixing the bones in place, the T-Rex skeleton and the Brachiosaur still had scaffolding set up around them. Conveniently enough for a tall adult human, those scaffolds stood within reach of the vent. Grant planted one boot down on the boards, then another.
Felicity made a grunting noise that meant "Seriously?"
Clouseau answered with a "Dumb-dumbs" sound, rushing down the staircase.
A considerable gap lay between the stairs and the nearest skeleton, but I'd seen Felicity do her `Air Jordan' move a few minutes ago, so I crept up after her, just in case.
Once firmly standing on a scaffold, Grant helped Tim down, then Lex. They climbed to a different spot, to allow for the others.
I glanced down at the lobby. No sign of Willie and the other Proceratosauruses. That bothered me, because I didn't know what kind of darts they'd been shot with. Did Bryan and Cynthia move them all, or were they awake and lurking somewhere below, ready to strike?
Oblivious to the danger, Ellie hopped down on a wooden plank, gesturing frantically to Cassie, still within the ceiling vent. "C'mon!" she mouthed, spreading her arms.
The girl hesitantly jumped. The woman caught her, but her footing became unsteady, the board wobbling beneath them. Wide eyed, she righted herself, catching her breath.
Cassie had lost her other shoe somewhere along the line. She climbed the scaffolding in her socks.
Felicity eyed the humans hungrily, edging into a pouncing stance.
"And here we go."
My presence on the stairs did not go unnoticed. Clouseau rushed up behind me with a growl. Hastings, a few steps lower on the staircase, whirled around to face me. Then Moriarty, now fully recovered from being clobbered, came running up to join them.
Grant climbed onto the Brachiosaurus skeleton, followed by his companions. It did seem like quite a distance for our enemies to jump. Maybe they could escape from this unscathed...maybe.
"Yaaaah!" Cynthia had somehow fitted one of the Proceratosauruses with a dogcatcher's catch pole. Unfortunately, the Great Dane sized dinosaur proved to be more muscular. For a moment, everyone, raptors and humans alike, stopped to watch as it dragged her across the floor, like a water-skier who had lost their skis.
Incidentally, she had a good slide going with all those cleaning chemicals.
Hastings clawed me in the face. Clouseau leapt and tackled me into a wall. I tumbled backwards down the stairs with her on top of me.
I threw her on her back. She threw me on my back. We hit a landing.
To my absolute shock, Clouseau licked me, her growly noises essentially stating, "I never noticed until now, but you're a pretty hot dinosaur."
Yeah, I don't get it, either. I guess she liked things rough.
"I'm taken, Scarface!" I gasped, pushing her off.
Moriarty just so happened to reach the landing while all of this was taking place, and he didn't like it one bit. His snarling noise, implied "There's only room for one male in this pack." He snapped his teeth at my throat.
I rolled out of the way, but he caught some surface skin in the process.
Zelda rushed down to aid me, but then yelped as Hastings' claws raked across her chest. I jump kicked her foe in the head.
I glanced over the railing a second. Ellie and Cassie had reached the tail of the Brachiosaur skeleton, Lex near the head. Grant and Tim now traversed the bony midsection. The groaning sounds and breaking bolts indicated these skeletons hasn't been built to withstand such weight. Still holding, though.
"Oooh coo coo coo!" that Strange Brew ditty again, no doubt piped by a Proceratosaurus.
I didn't see any below me, but that didn't mean they weren't there. "Uh-oh."
Felicity climbed up on the railing, lean muscles winding up for a super jump. I lunged for her, but Clouseau cut me off, throwing me down the stairs again.
There she was, licking me again.
"What, is rattlesnake head not making you happy enough?"
She purred.
Honestly, the scars were my fault, and she didn't look that bad overall. "Look, you're not...the ugliest dinosaur in the whole world, but I already have a girlfriend."
A second later, Zelda got between us, growling, "Mine!"
The two of them fought.
Wow. I thought the appeal of cat fights was just a human thing.
Anyway, I didn't get to enjoy that too awfully long. Felicity had already landed on the middle section of the giant skeleton. I stared in dismay as the bone sculpture cracked in half from the weight, the two sections twirling like strange tightrope acrobats.
Two Proceratosauruses darted out from hiding, licking their lips as they watched from below.
Grant and the others stayed on the skeleton, but Tim rolled off and landed on the floor.
The Proceratosauruses ran toward him, slipped on cleaning chemical and fell on their faces. Tim hurriedly backed away, but I noticed Willie creeping out of the shadows behind him.
Moriarty caught me looking, spotted the boy, and hurried down the steps.
I pounced on him, but Hastings stabbed me in the tail with her claws. Agonizing, having those wounds reopened.
As I scuffled with her, Moriarty descended further.
Presently, Clouseau had my girlfriend pinned to the stairs. "You ran over my face with that broomy thing! It hurt very much!"
"I didn't know it was going to do that!" Zelda growled back. "It was Awwgrrrts idea!"
"You should not have listened to Weirdo!"
"He is not weirdo! He is Awwwgrrrt and he is mine!"
Aww! She tried to say my name!
"If Poopoo dinosaur told you to run over my face, you can have him!"
"Yeah? Why were you licking him just now?"
Clouseau suddenly looked embarrassed.
What was I doing? Trying to keep Hastings' teeth from sinking into me. I kept shoving her back and throwing her into the staircase railing.
Honestly, some of her attacks seemed a little...flirty. I wondered if she might also be repressing some feelings about me. "Sweetie, are you really trying to kill me, or are these love nips?"
She roared in my face.
"That's not exactly an—"
Pop! Pop pop pop!
I glanced down and saw Bryan, now armed with a rifle. I don't know who he was trying to shoot, or if he knew the difference between me, my girlfriend, and my enemies, but some tranquilizer darts came flying pretty close.
Also, he'd tried to help Tim by shooting a few darts at the Proceratosauruses in his direction. He couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, but it at least gave the boy some space.
A mashed potato and chocolate covered Proceratosaurus popped out from behind a bench to attack him.
Bryan abruptly stopped to club the dinosaur with the stock of his weapon. He yelped, disappearing below the staircase somewhere.
I don't know if the darts spooked Clouseau, or if she'd become a little self conscious about her feelings for me, and her conversation with Zelda, but for some reason she bolted back up the stairs.
Hastings closed her teeth around my shoulder, but then she gave me this weird look, and didn't bite down as hard as I thought she should have.
Following her eyes, I came to the suspicion that she might possibly be trying to keep me detained, so her pack leader could go after my friends.
Still, kinda flattering that she tried seduction instead of just killing me.
I forcefully rolled her on her back. To my surprise, she just relaxed beneath me, making sounds to the effect of, "Well, I guess I'm okay with that."
I left her go, and we just awkwardly stared at each other.
Zelda, in the meantime, had already tackled Moriarty to the staircase landing.
The snake patterned raptor growled about her being an idiot for being with me, how she betrayed the pack, Zelda responding with a brilliant `Forget you!'
Well, that's the basic gist of the conversation. Without things like vocabulary and sentence structure, a short burst of noises pretty much got their points across.
I imagine their dialog would have continued in greater detail, had the Brachiosaurus skeleton not chosen that moment to shatter into roughly a hundred pieces.
I flinched, watching the blonde woman drop to the floor, using her body to shield Cassie from a shower of bones.
Lex hit the floor nearby, getting struck by an assortment of small skeleton pieces.
Chunks of the skeleton smashed down on Willie's two Proceratosaurus friends, knocking them out cold.
Willie backed away, watching the falling debris with alarm.
Zelda continued arguing with Moriarty, basically stating `Weirdo is ten times the male raptor you are, you got all these females, but you're just one raptor' and `Who are you to tell me who I can and cannot date?' And he was like, `I'm the Alpha Male here, and what I say goes.'
Hastings, in the meantime, stood at the railing, watching the skeleton falling apart.
For a moment, she glanced my way, giving me a snort that meant, "You know all that flirty stuff? I didn't mean any of it."
"Sure you didn't!"
Being a touch smarter than the rest of her pack, Hastings noted how the humans had deposited themselves safely on the floor, making themselves easy prey. She quickly pushed past me, racing down the steps, around Zelda and Moriarty.
Before she reached the landing, I jumped on her, knocking her head into the railing.
She seemed unconscious. Or...maybe just content to have me on her back. Not sure, but she had her eyes closed.
Meanwhile, the middle section of the Brachiosaur broke free of the tether, crashing down around Tim. I winced and looked away.
Fearing him already dead, I ran down the next flight, hoping to at least save the others.
The moment I set foot on the lobby floor, I slipped on a giant puddle of floor buffer fluid, slipped and fell on my butt. I grabbed hold of a cardboard box, but the dampened box came apart, and out rolled hundreds of fake fossilized dinosaur eggs.
When I finally got to my feet again, a shower of bones came crashing down on Felicity's head. Dead or just unconscious, I didn't know which.
To my surprise and delight, I found Tim completely alive and well, just kinda imprisoned within the fallen rib cage, like some character in a He-Man cartoon.
Grant helped him out of there, stealthily leading Tim, Lex and Cassie toward the exit, Ellie bringing up the rear.
And Willie? She groaned beneath an immense bone, unable to free herself.
"Yaaaaaah!" Here came Cynthia again, still clutching the catch pole, this time coming from the opposite direction.
We all stopped to stare again. That Proceratosaurus seemed tireless.
Incidentally, tremendous grip.
Off the two went in the direction of the kitchen.
Hastings emerged from behind a wall of plastic sheeting. She must have slipped around back while I'd been rushing to help my friends. Clouseau crept out from behind the big rock supporting the T-Rex skeleton.
Cassie yelped. Felicity, apparently recovered from her concussion, had emerged from the pile of bones. Nobody noticed until she snuck past the blonde and nipped the little girl in the back, dragging her away.
Ellie spun around, but the second she moved, Moriarty came charging at her, teeth and claws bared threateningly. He slipped on cleaning chemicals for a second, but didn't lose his footing.
"Cassie! No!" I grabbed a random bone and sprinted after the child.
A weird bone. They'd strung it together with wires. Perfect for twirling.
I had a fair distance to cover, and despite Felicity's injuries, she had no difficulty dragging Cassie through that building at great speed. I think Cassie's traction-less socks may have aided somewhat in her abduction.
I pushed myself to run faster, but didn't feel confident about catching her before she shredded my little friend to pieces.
I whirled the bones around like nunchaku.
A Proceratosaurus jumped off a planter to attack me, but I cracked it across the head with the bone. The dinosaur growled and slunk away.
Hammond never gave me a real set of the weapons, but after watching them being used by cartoon characters, and Bruce Lee, I built pairs of my own with various craft materials, drum sticks from a musical experiment, string, rope, rib bones from a meal..although not an expert, I learned how to not strike myself in the face, and how to use one like a bolo.
"Cassie! Duck!"
Once she obliged the best she could (with dinosaur teeth in her back), I flicked the bone weapon at her attacker.
The bone nunchucks whipped through the air, striking Felicity in the head. She winced in pain, momentarily releasing her grip on the girl.
As I ran to snatch Cassie out of harm's way, the girl casually picked up the bones, cracking Felicity across the face with the dangling free end. My jaw dropped when she rammed the handle into our enemy's teeth on the rebound.
I rushed up to her. "That was awesome! On my back, Kung Fu kid!"
"You volunteered!" she squealed, jumping on.
I dashed away with Felicity snapping angrily at my tail. "She bit you," I said to the girl. "You all right?"
"Yeah, she just tore my clothes." Her shirt did look raggedy. "Did you find dad?"
"I think he's safe. This guy named Bryan took him outside."
She frowned. "I just saw Bryan a couple minutes ago. I hope you're right about dad being safe."
I put more distance between us and Felicity. When I hit the puddle, I braced myself like a skier and let the slickness and momentum carry me forward. Cassie whooped like it were an amusement park ride.
"How'd you learn to do nunchaku?"
"My dad had a pair in his den, and I had a few bored moments...also, I watched you."
"Awww!"
Zelda darted up beside me with Tim on her back. "Awroarbwaurr."
I grinned. I loved how she'd been practicing my name. "Close enough."
When I glanced around, I didn't see the other humans, Just Tim. "Where's your friends?"
"Hiding. Shit!"
Thoom boom boom!
The entire front end of the lobby darkened as a huge scaly shape loomed into view.
Rexy.
I and Zelda skidded to a halt, rapidly backpedaled.
And slipped on the cleaning chemicals.
We toppled, the children falling into the puddle, soaking their shirts and pants. It would take weeks to rid ourselves of the smell. That is, if we all got out of this alive.
Smash! Crunch! Bang! Down came half of the glass and metal front entrance.
Upon seeing me, Rexy furrowed her eyebrow ridges, making that "Not you again!" noise.
She roared, the message being "Now you're going to get it!"
Rexy charged straight for me, her gigantic, toothy mouth opening to chomp my head off.
Ummm...remember all those bowling balls?
...And the pipes?
...And the cleaning chemicals?
Her massive feet lost traction.
She slipped forward, did a faceplant into the tile floor.
Although a T-Rex has itty bitty little arms, the massive legs, neck and tail make up for it. Even now, those big muscles shifted, lifting all that muscular tonnage up from the ground.
"Auroarrgh!" In my peripheral, I noticed Zelda nodding to my left.
She quickly dashed beneath the staircase, Tim ducking his head to avoid hitting his head on the steps. I followed her in.
Felicity, only a few feet behind me, let out an agonized shriek. Rexy's teeth had chomped down on her tail.
Rexy did the crocodile thing, flinging the speckly female back and forth, slamming her against the floor to make her easier to consume, but then she slipped on cleaning chemicals and stepped on a bowling ball.
Rexy tried to right herself...on more bowling balls. And a couple pipes.
Rexy spread her legs, trying to stay upright. The giant tail sort of helped, but she hadn't practiced for this kind of thing. For a minute there, I thought she was going to do the splits.
Crash! Her colossal body thundered down, right on top of Felicity.
Since the dazed, semiconscious Proceratosauruses lay near her mouth anyway, Rexy opened her mouth and casually snacked on them.
She tried to push over the bone that pinned Willie down, and eat her too, but having arms too short to reach that far, and just her nose to move the bone around, she only ended up freeing the one eyed dinosaur.
Willie shrieked and scurried away, full speed.
Rexy tried to push herself up again, slipped on bowling balls and pipes.
She rolled on her side, wiggling into a better position.
Felicity, gasping for air, hurriedly crawled away from there.
Terrified of the overweight behemoth, she got up and ran, slipped on cleaning chemicals, skied a foot and fell on her speckly hindquarters.
Dazed, Rexy groaned, staggering to her giant feet.
She stepped back, looking around the lobby and making grunts to the effect of, "Nice place!"
So...all this time, we had a perfectly good T-Rex skeleton on display, and it had never had any humans or Velociraptors swinging on it, so it remained more or less stationary.
Unfortunately, all of Rexy's crashing and banging around like a bull in a China shop could, in fact, be measured on the Richter Scale.
The first couple times, the skeleton had wobbled. But now, as Rexy stomped around, staring at everything, and trying to avoid bowling balls, the whole thing broke apart, bones crashing down around her feet.
Have you ever heard a T-Rex scream in terror? It's an unforgettable experience.
The moment she noticed the skull, her eyes bulged, and she let one out.
She tried to run...on a bunch of pipes and bowling balls, crashing down on her rear end.
Ellie, Lex and Grant hid behind a boulder. Grant hissed to the children, waving them over.
Tim dismounted and ran to him. Cassie shifted on my back, preparing to join them, but I stopped her, pointing to a green shape creeping around the other side of the rock.
Hastings. The raptor gave me a nasty smile.
Grant waved to Cassie, but I gestured "No!" making frantic pointing motions toward the green shape.
The man didn't get it. He just nodded, like, "Yes, this way."
When Ellie tapped his shoulder and whispered, his facial color lightened a few degrees as his pupils darted sideways. They all rushed toward me.
Hastings let out an agonized shriek.
I trembled as Rexy snapped her teeth through my fellow raptor's body, gulping her down. "Oh my God!"
Zelda gave me a consoling nuzzle.
"You're right. No raptor deserves that."
The T-Rex gave me a grunt that said "What you going to do about it, weenie?"
My girlfriend growled and crouched like she intended to attack, but I just shook my head. "Baby, we don't have a chance."
She reluctantly bowed her head.
Felicity fled in terror, cowering in a corner beneath the staircase.
"That was my female!" Moriarty shrieked to the giant monster dinosaur.
"What are you going to do about it, tiny?" Rexy answered. I'm paraphrasing, of course.
Clouseau rushed around the giant's other side. Well, more like skated, you know, due to the slippery floor. "Those were my friends! Die, you big meanie!"
She jumped up, slashing Rexy's big stomach with her comparatively tiny disemboweling claw.
It didn't work so well, so she ended up sinking her teeth into a massive fold of flesh.
"Horsey!" Moriarty yelled. "Don't!"
Too late. Rexy lunged...
...and slipped on bowling balls.
Rexy's legs crossed awkwardly, reminding me of one of those giant robots in Star Wars after someone wrapped cables around its legs.
Her body again hit the tile floor with a thunderous boom, trapping both raptors underneath.
While all of this happened, Grant ushered Tim, Cassie, Lex and the woman toward the front entrance, making great effort to avoid the giant reptile, hiding behind objects, that kind of thing.
Cassie, fascinated by the fighting dinosaurs, lagged behind the rest. And then, when Grant urged her to run, her slippery socks lost traction on the wet floor, and she did a faceplant.
I rushed to her, and with the help of Zelda, got her up on my back.
You can't keep a massive, building sized dinosaur down for very long. Rexy pushed up off the floor, regained her footing.
Although probably weakened from lack of air and several cracked ribs, Moriarty kept on fighting the large lizard. You know, I think if it had been Zelda in that giant's stomach, I would have done the same thing.
Now Mickey came rushing out of the dining room. "You leave my mate alone!"
Already I could tell this was going to get ugly, and if Rexy stepped on the bowling balls the wrong way, she might slip and fall directly on top of me.
We all made a mad hustle out the building's shattered front end and down the staircase.
Seconds later, a park Jeep came zooming up to meet us, with Mr. Hammond at the wheel. It seemed Grant had found some communications devices and made the arrangement in advance.
I often saw Hammond in a white suit, but now he wore a Hawaiian shirt, and looked a bit wind swept and disheveled.
Oh, you know how I found that book in the back of the tour vehicle earlier? Hammond had the author guy sitting in the back. He looked pretty torn up, bandaged arm in a sling. Not sure what happened to him. Unfortunately, not a convenient time for Q and A.
Lex, Tim and the woman jumped in the Jeep.
Grant hurried to the passenger door. "Mr. Hammond, I've decided not to endorse your park."
"After careful consideration," Hammond replied. "So have I."
"Ummm..." I stammered. "So where does that leave me?"
The old man gave me an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry, Albert. I can't take you with me...Or your friend. (Nice going, by the way, I was getting worried about your socialization)." Hammond winced at the sound of raptor shrieks. "But if it's any consolation, I do have a `summer home' of sorts to the south of here." He dug in the pocket of his khakis. "You can stay there. It's quite comfortable. I spared no expense."
I stared as a set of keys landed on the pavement in front of me. "I can stay at your place? Really?"
"You think I'm going to stay here and die?"
"Oh." I picked them up.
Grant waved urgently to my little friend. "C'mon, Cass. We need to go."
Cassie didn't move. "Where's daddy?"
Hammond glanced back and frowned. "They were just behind me..."
"Yaaaaah!"
All of us stared as Cynthia got dragged, screaming, across the front drive by the same Proceratosaurus in the catcher's leash.
Lex turned around in her seat and pointed. "There! That must be him!"
Another Jeep shot up the front drive, this one driven by Bryan. Not sure how he got from under the staircase to the Jeep, but a lot of other stuff had been going on at the time. Maybe he used the underground subway car.
Cassie's dad popped open the passenger side, waving her in.
"Daddy!" the little girl turned to me and smiled. "Thanks for helping him, and letting me ride your back. You've been a very good dinosaur."
"And you've been a very good human."
She glanced at my girlfriend. "Are you going to marry her?"
Heat rushed to my face. I briefly wondered if she could see me blushing. "Perhaps."
Cassie gave me a hug. My girlfriend she rubbed on the head like a dog. Giving me one last sad look, the little girl ran to her father in the Jeep.
Zelda nuzzled me as she watched the girl, making a noise like "You think we'll have one of those one day?" The sound could mean a pet human, or a baby raptor.
I shrugged. "Anything's possible."
The humans wasted no time vacating the premises. You could practically hear the sonic boom as they sped off for the hills.
Rexy roared, deafening and scary. Another deafening crash.
Zelda gave me an anxious nod toward the scene of destruction behind us.
I looked back into the lobby. No sign of other raptors, just Rexy, groaning and lying flat on the floor. Were they in her stomach, or pinned underneath?
No way to lift her enormous girth enough to check. If still alive, Moriarty would probably just try to claw out my intestines anyway.
"Uh...I think we should go before she gets up again."
My girlfriend uttered a grunt that meant "Good idea."
We fled down the hillside together, casting anxious glances backwards, hoping Rexy wasn't following, or hungry for a snack.
No hope of seeing Cassie, Hammond, or any of my other human friends again. From now it would just be me, Zelda, and an island full of dinosaurs.
I jingled the keys to Hammond's summer house. Guess it wasn't all bad.