The five campers board the sparking and crackling end of the monorail as it begins its journey around the island. They head to the front car where the pterodactyl took Ben and sit down in the seats solemnly. "Back on the monorail again," Kenji sighs. "Monorail, what-what," he adds, lacklusterly.
"I can't believe this thing's still running," Sammy chuckles. "Pterodactyls, almost crashing, who knows what else, and it's still running."
"Slower than usual, though," Yasmina mumbles.
"Guess these things were meant to be hardy," Darius shrugs.
Brooklynn looks at the sky and Yasmina's foot. "I wonder if this monorail has any medical supplies."
"Basic first aid kit," Kenji says. "I'll try to find it."
Sammy kneels down and takes a look at Yasmina's ankle. "It's definitely sprained. Very swollen. You really shouldn't have been walking for as long as you did."
"It's my ankle or my life," Yasmina huffs. "Running from dinosaurs requires running."
"But now it will take longer to heal and slow you down," Sammy sighs. "It hurts you in the long run."
"Pun intended!" Kenji snickers as he returns with a first aid kit. "Let's see… what would we need?"
"Well, first off, no weight," Sammy says. "There's been enough damage. Second, we need RICE."
"Food would be nice," Kenji says, as his stomach growls. "But I don't see how rice would help."
"RICE," Yasmina hisses. "Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. It's how you deal with a sprain."
"Well, the first thing we can do is keep you off your feet," Sammy says. "As much as possible," she adds as Yasmina glares at her. "Second, we need something cold. My family always keeps a cold pack in our first aid kit… aha!" The Texan pulls out a cold pack. "I don't know what we could use for compression, but you could lie down on the floor and elevate your ankle."
Brooklynn and Kenji help Yasmina get down off the chair and onto the floor—despite her protests—and Sammy takes her injured ankle into her lap. The farm girl removes the athletes sneaker and sock as gently as possible. Yasmina doesn't make a sound, but shuts her eyes tight and crosses her arms. She was determined to stay as stoic as possible.
Sammy mutters to herself, trying to remember what to do, before deciding on a course of action. She takes out the bandages and begins to wrap Yasmina's foot. The group is silent as they watch. Other than clenching her teeth, the athletic girl is completely silent.
"It's like Sammy's mummifying you," Kenji breaks the silence. The group breaks out in chuckles, and even Yasmina smiles.
"It doesn't help that her arms are crossed," Darius adds.
"Would you prefer this?" Yasmina asks, sticking her arms straight up into the air without opening her eyes.
"Arise from the dead!" Kenji says, waving his arms mystically over the injured teen. "Awaken!"
"Raar," Yasmina says half-heartedly, but she was chuckling as well.
"Braaaiins!" Brooklynn groans, laughing.
"That's a zombie!" Kenji protests.
"What do mummies say?" Darius asks.
"What do mummies say?" Kenji plants his hands on his hip and frowns.
"I think they kinda just groan," Sammy inputs.
"I don't think they'd be able to talk at all," Brooklynn says. "They removed all the internal organs, including the lungs, because they decomposed first. So mummies wouldn't be able to take in air and make a sound."
"Are we seriously trying to have a scientific discussion about mummies?" Yasmina asks. "They'll never happen."
"Just like zombies," Sammy nods.
"Zombies might be real!" Kenji exclaims.
"Let me explain why they cannot happen," Brooklynn rolls her eyes, and launches into a lengthy explanation. The two argued over the existence of zombies with Darius siding with Brooklynn and Yasmina occasionally adding a tidbit of information or an opinion. Sammy finished wrapping Yasmina's ankle and applied the cold pack she found. Then she sits back and watches the argument.
After covering zombies, mummies, vampires and werewolves, the campers gave up convincing Kenji that they were not real and decided that he was just trolling them out of boredom. The sun had begun to set at that point, and the teens realized how tired they were.
"I wanna fall asleep, but I don't wanna possibly miss Ben," Sammy says, her eyelids drooping.
Kenji lets out a large yawn and stretches. "The last time we slept was two nights ago. And the past two days we've been running and using our brains and muscles nonstop."
Darius closes his eyes and yawns. "We so need sleep, but we also need to stay alert. Especially after the last time we were on the monorail."
"I can stay awake and keep watch," Yasmina suggests.
"You don't have to do that," Sammy says.
"It's… it's fine. I… I have insomnia, anyway," Yasmina brushes it off.
Brooklynn barks out a laugh. "So, do you have insomnia after a hard run, because exercise helps with my insomnia. And I'm feeling pretty tired after being chased by dinosaurs for two days in a row."
"Fine, I might be a bit tired," Yasmina rolls her eyes. "But all of us are tired, and if we all close our eyes, they might never open up again."
"Fair enough," Darius cuts in before anyone could argue with her. "If you think you won't be able to sleep, fine. I'll stay up with you, too."
"All right, if I'm going to be keeping an eye out for Ben, I want to be sitting in the seat," Yasmina says, trying to get up.
"No, let us help you," Sammy insists. "Let's keep you from putting weight on your ankle as much as possible on this island."
Yasmina relents without a fight. Kenji and Sammy help her onto the chair before realizing the monorail chairs weren't the best sleeping option. Kenji looks around, then kicks the chair in front of his injured friend.
"What are you doing?" Darius asks.
"Trying to break the top off," Kenji grunts, trying to bend the plastic top down. He attempts to use his whole weight and almost topples over onto Yasmina and Sammy. "Man, I wish Bumpy was here. She would be quite useful right now."
"Let's put some more weight into it," Sammy says, moving to help him. Brooklynn and Darius help Yasmina move to another chair while the other two teens work to break the chair. The plastic was very tough, and it took a couple minutes of Kenji putting his whole weight on the top and Sammy pulling from behind to crack it. Before they knew it, the back of the chair had toppled onto the farmgirl—with Mister VIP following suit.
"Yeah, that totally worked," Brooklynn says sarcastically as Kenji helps Sammy up.
"Well, if we had something to put between the two chairs, it could act as a bed," Sammy says, rubbing the back of her head where she hit it.
Kenji retrieves a slightly bent up piece of metal from the roof. "Think this'll work?"
"It would only fit along both chairs," Darius points out.
Kenji looks at Sammy, who rolls her eyes. "Fine, but only if I do the kicking."
The two switch positions and get to work. Darius attempts to help Sammy, and the three get the work done, albeit they got the same results as last time.
"That was very graceful," Brooklynn and Yasmina say at the same time.
"I didn't see either of you helping out," Darius says teasingly.
"Handicapped," Yasmina points to her ankle.
"Oh, now you agree to stay off your ankle," Kenji rolls his eyes as he places the metal sheet over the four chairs. Once again, the teens helped their injured comrade play musical chair beds. "Enjoy it. It was made with blood, sweat and tears," Kenji states.
"I only saw sweat and tears," Yasmina retorts as she slides to the side closer to the open window.
"What, from him?" Sammy asks as she lays down next to her.
"No, sweat from you. Tears from Mr. Rich Boy," the athlete snickers.
"First off, it's Mister VIP. Second, you're welcome," Kenji huffs.
After shifting around, the girls settle on Yasmina sitting up a bit with her legs lying diagonally. Sammy curls up and has the track runners injured foot rest on her hip to be elevated a bit. Darius sits down in the chair on the other side and looks out the window, poking the little fragments of glass still hanging on. Brooklynn sits down next to him, curls up on the chair, and leans her head on Darius. Kenji decides to pass out on the floor, dramatically making a statement about how tired he was. "Drama queen," was the only thing Brooklynn said to his statement.
The teens stayed quiet for about five minutes. Sammy had already dozed off slightly when Brooklynn breaks the silence with a small whisper. She attempts to keep her voice low enough that only Darius could hear. "If I was home, I would play my sleep playlist to try to calm my nerves and go to sleep."
"Have trouble sleeping?" Darius whispers back.
"Just falling asleep," Brooklynn says softly. "I can't convince myself that I'm alone in my room."
Darius chuckles. "What songs are on your list?"
"Mostly background music from Youtube videos," Brooklynn murmurs.
"Of course," Darius snickers softly.
"Hey, a lot of it's calming," the pink haired girl defends herself.
"You'll have to lend me that list when we get back," Kenji whispers, not even opening his eyes. "I can never get a straight answer for what Youtubers use as background music."
"Why do you want them?" Brooklynn asks.
"I always wanted to listen to the music used for tutorial videos," Kenji says. "Then I'd listen to it doing homework. I'd feel like I was making a Youtube video and maybe I'd actually understand how to do algebra and stuff because I'd be trying to explain it to the Internet. Logic."
Brooklynn and Darius smother their giggles.
"Welcome to Kenji's class of algebra," Kenji says, imitating a 1940's news report. "I have absolutely no idea what I am doing, but I hope you will find my lack of understanding comforting."
Brooklynn and Darius snort with smothered laughter. "A lot of what I use comes from Alan Walker," Brooklynn explains. "He's a DJ."
"Does he wear the marshmallow with a dead smiley face on it?" Darius asks.
It's Kenji's turn to smother his giggles. "You really are a nerd, bruh."
By the time the sun hung low in the sky, Ben had cried himself dry. As Bumpy snorts in her sleep and makes a few content grunts, the injured camper stares off into the distance. All his depressing and miserable thoughts had finished their loop, and he laid there numbly. No panic about being on an island full of dinosaurs; he had already been panicking the entire time and was done. No hatred to the campers or even towards the grown ups who left; he had already been down that road. No questions wondering what to do; he didn't think there was a point. No thoughts about his family, either; he had already gone down memory lane. As the sun set, he was just hollow.
Bumpy wakes up and nudges Ben, bringing him back to reality. "He-ey," Ben says, his voice cracking due to his parched mouth. He rubs his tongue around his mouth and realizes that he needs water. "I'll die of dehydration," Ben says hollowly to Bumpy.
The little ankylosaurus groans and gently bumps his head with hers.
Thinking for a second, Ben frowns and hits the ground with his left fist. "Dehydration? I faced pterodactyls while climbing on top of a train, climbed stairs while being chased by a carnotaurus, paddled away from a mosasaurus, stood up to the others for Bumpy, and I'm just going to let myself die of dehydration? No way!"
Bumpy backs up a step, never having seen Ben get angry.
"I have two options, Bumpy," Ben says determinedly. "I could stay the old Ben, scared and afraid of the world, or be the new Ben, who will take chances and harden to survive."
Bumpy bellows her support.
"I've lived my whole life under a rock," Ben continues. "I lived in constant fear. Now, if I want to live in this life-threatening place, I will have to come out from under that rock, and stop fearing every little thing. I'll have to work for my life out here. It's kill or be killed. If I'm going to go out, I might as well go out with a bang! Not some slow, agonizing death from dehydration! I won't go out that way!"
Bumpy bleats and stamps around him.
Ben chuckles. "Man, that sounds a lot like what Kenji or Yaz would say."
Bumpy runs off as Ben begins to think. "All right, if I sound like Kenji and Yaz, what would they do if they were in my position?"
After contemplating that thought for a second, Ben shakes his head, ruling out what Kenji would do. "That might be a fatal mistake. All right, what would Yaz, hardcore style girl, and Darius, Mister dino expert, do?
"Hmm… Darius would use the dinosaur's instincts to tell me where to go. They would obviously know where to find water…"
Bumpy returns and coos, nudging Ben's forehead and leaving a wet mark. Ben lifts his head. "You found water?"
The ankylosaurus chirps happily.
"All right, step one, find a water source," Ben says. "Done. Step two, getting there… Yaz style."
Ben tries to lift his torso with his arms, but his right arm refuses to bear weight, no matter how hard he tries to muscle through the pain. Rethinking his style, he leans on his left arm and tries to get his legs up underneath him. After excruciating attempts, he succeeds in pulling his legs underneath him. His efforts to stand up on all four was a failure, though.
He sighs. "All right, Yaz style. Not effective just yet." Ben looks around, panting, and spots a metal sheet from the monorail. His best guess was that it was ripped off during the pterodactyl attack. Bumpy gallops in front of him, playfully running in circles around her injured friend. The blond boy stops struggling and takes a look at Bumpy's footprint. With his right hand, he painfully reaches out and touches the print. She had grown a bit more since the last day. "Doctor Wu wasn't kidding when he said accelerated growth," he mutters to himself.
An idea pops into his head, and he painfully drags himself over to the metal sheet. Laying himself across the sheet, he sighs with accomplishment. His dino companion comes bounding up to him. "Bumpy, can you drag me to your water source?"
Bumpy turns around, gives Ben just enough time to grab a hold of her tail, and begins her somewhat clumsy canter. Ben grits his teeth as he hangs on, riding the pain better than he does riding the metal sheet. He almost loses it a couple times, and scrapes his nose and chin along the dirt, but he refuses to let go of the little ankylosaurus.
Finally, Bumpy arrives at a stream. Ben doesn't let go in time and slides into the stream. He spits out water and quirks an eyebrow at Bumpy, who doesn't see the difference between him being in or next to the stream.
Ignoring how obviously unsanitized the stream was, Ben scoops up water and drinks from his hand, relieved of his thirst. Sighing, he rolls over onto his back—slightly accustomed to the pain—and closes his eyes. "Step two, getting to water. Done."
Ben rests, feeling pride in himself for overcoming his injuries and finding water. Or… using Bumpy to find water. "I might just survive this nightmare," he thinks to himself proudly. "The new Ben, at least."
As the monorail clunkily zooms along, the campers fall asleep, one by one. Sammy fell off to sleep first, snoring very lightly. Kenji went out like a light, snoring very loudly. He was splayed out across the floor with his mouth hanging open. Darius and Yasmina agreed that it was quite comical. Brooklynn began to sing a song from her playlist softly in an attempt to fall asleep. Her singing had two different effects on the watch teens: Yasmina pondered where she had heard that particular song, and Darius marvelled at Brooklynn's singing ability. Eventually, Yasmina assumed that it was from a tutorial video, and Darius was lulled to sleep by the pink-haired girls sweet voice.
Within thirty minutes, Yasmina was the only one awake. She wasn't mad at Darius. The poor kid had been running just as much as her, but with the added pressure of being the leader. Plus, this was the first time in two days that she could consider "alone time." The introvert sighs with relief, shifts her leg position on Sammy, and continues to scan the tracks ahead for the rail change. Alone with her thoughts and Kenji's snoring as background sound, she processes the past two days' events; thinking through everything she has done and seen. Contemplated their options and chances of survival. She finds her thoughts wandering to Ben. She had been so sure that he hadn't survived the fall. But they had survived… and Ben was a lot more hardy than they had given him credit for. The blonde panicker had surprised all of them when he showed bravery on the monorail. Unfortunately, his big, courageous moment might have been his undoing. Yasmina's hope was that—if he was alive—the experience hadn't pushed him further under the rock that he lived under.
The trees passed by slowly as the monorail chugged on. The moon slowly made it's trip through the obsidian sky, a beacon of light among the small stars freckling the endless heavens. Distant cries and bleats of dinosaurs softly penetrated the athlete's ears, carried along by the soft, cool wind. The island looked so peaceful and scenic at night; masking the treacherous dangers that awaited those who stepped foot on it. Oh, how she wished she had her sketchbook to capture the beauty of what she saw. It would be one of the few times she could sit back and enjoy being on the island.
The rhythmic hum of the engine and the various night creatures' sounds mix with her lack of sleep and Yasmina begins to nod off. Several times she finds her head drooping and quickly snaps it back up, trying to stay alert. Too tired to think straight, she makes the mistake of resting her head on her shoulder and begins to doze off.
Suddenly, the monorail begins to bump around—shaking the campers—before coming to a quick halt. Darius and Brooklynn are thrown forward into the chairs in front of them rudely. Kenji is thrown around and sits up straight with a butter knife mysteriously appearing in his hands, only to be thrown back as the monorail comes to a screeching halt. The bumpy ride moves Sammy and Yasmina to the end of the metal sheet not supported by the chairs, causing the sheet to dump them on the floor. The injured athlete's precarious sleeping position next to the glassless window and the shaking was a fatal combination as the bumpy halt sends her torso over the edge of the monorail. Had Sammy not had the quick reflexes and grabbed her legs, Yasmina would've gone over the edge with little warning.
Freezing for a second, the athlete takes a moment before scrambling to get back up to safety. "Thanks," she winces as Kenji picks the metal sheet up off of the Texan.
"I'm sorry, did I hurt your ankle?" Sammy asks, trying to calm her racing heart.
"No, no, don't apologize for saving my life," Yasmina reprimands her.
"Oh, yeah, you're totally an insomniac," Kenji remarks with a sneer.
Yasmina rolls her eyes.
"You should've woken one of us up if you were too tired," Brooklynn says, gently touching her left eyebrow where the edge of the chair smacked into it, wincing.
"Fine, I don't have a problem falling asleep," Yasmina grumbles. "I just want to put it off for a while; my sleep paralysis won't be fun to deal with after this ordeal."
"Sleep paralysis?" Darius asks, using his sleeve to soak up the blood from his new wound. The bridge of his nose had slammed a little too hard into the edge of the chair and broke the skin.
"A state where your mind is wide awake but you can't move at all," Yasmina explains. "If my sleep schedule has been messed up, and/or I'm under extreme stress, I tend to wake up with sleep paralysis. Often I have hallucinations, too. On an island full of dinosaurs, I'd hate to hallucinate and not know if there's something for real or not."
"That's terrible!" Sammy says.
"Where'd you get the butter knife?" Yasmina asks, changing the subjects. Kenji merely shrugs, making a grunt to demonstrate his confusion.
"Why'd we stop?" Brooklynn asks, ripping a part of her jacket sleeve off with great difficulty for Darius to use.
"I don't know," Darius winces. "Let's take a look at the controls."
The campers walk into the front car and look around. "No power, perfect!" Kenji exclaims, kicking the controls. He then hops on the other foot, wincing.
"Must've finally died," Darius says, tiredly.
"What do we do now?" Sammy asks.
"Look for Ben like we planned," Yasmina says from the ground outside the front car, motioning to the tracks with her head. They had barely passed the place where the two tracks met.
"If this trail that we're on leads to the south dock, then we're heading back to the main park," Darius says. "So Ben would be down that path."
"Since this mono-fail has stopped working, how are we going to get to Ben?" Kenji asks.
"Could we walk along the tracks?" Brooklynn asks. "Search for wreckage on the ground."
"Yeah, cause it's really easy to see shattered glass on the jungle floor," Yasmina says sarcastically.
"And it's really easy to walk for all of us," Sammy says, joining in on the sarcasm.
"We could walk along the tracks, but I'm not sure about you, Yaz," Darius says.
"She could swim across the tracks," Kenji says. The others stare at him. "You could turn into a salmon!" Kenji exclaims. "Flippity floppity across those tracks!" He lays down and starts to imitate a flopping salmon.
"You look like you're having a seizure," Brooklynn says.
"All right, maybe you could roll across the tracks," Kenji suggests as he leaves the car, lays down on the track and starts rolling across it. "Come on, team! Let's roll!"
"Did you suggest that just to make a pun?" Sammy calls out.
"Maybe," Kenji starts laughing at his own joke.
"I think the best solution would be to have someone support you while you hop along," Darius says, rolling his eyes at Mr. VIP's antics.
"Anything that doesn't involve becoming a salmon," Yasmina says as Sammy and Brooklynn help her to her feet. Sammy then holds up her left leg while the athlete holds onto her shoulder. Brooklynn comes around to her right side and supports her as she hops along on her right leg. The five campers begin to make their way across the monorail tracks—some walking, some using a weird, hoping gait, and some trying to be a salmon.
"The monorail goes very, very fast," Yasmina points out. "We might be a mile away from Ben."
"And how are we going to get down from the tracks, anyway?" Brooklynn asks.
"Uh, y'all? If we're gonna play twenty questions, how about why is the monorail flickering?" Sammy asks, looking back. The teens look back as the monorail's power comes back on and the vehicle begins to move again.
"Please, have you seen my son?" Mrs. Bowman asks the Costa Rican worker who had been cursed out by Roxie. "He was on the island."
Roxie and Dave look at each other with clenched teeth. Dave was about to bite his nails. "We can't tell her!" Roxie hisses.
"What are we going to do then?!" Dave whisper yells back. "We can't just tell her that her son's perfectly fine!"
"How are we supposed to break this to her?!" Roxie grabs her head.
"If you want, you can blame it on me," Dave offers quietly. "Say it was my stupid idea to leave them."
"But it was my idea," Roxie whispers, not liking her decision, but not wanting Dave to take the fall either.
"Yeah, but it sounds like something stupid I would do," Dave points out. "Look, we need to tell her something."
Roxie sighs. "It was my decision, and I take the blame. I'm the head counselor, I headed the Camp. It was my fault. And I will explain that to her. I just wish there was a way to undo my decision."
"Let's go tell her before someone else delivers the news to her," Dave says, sighing. "Let's rip the bandaid off!"
"Please," Mrs. Bowman pleads with the worker. "He's gotta be here somewhere! He's thirteen years old, about five foot, one. He was one of the first Camp Cretaceous campers. He's gotta be here! Please!"
As she mentions where her son was from, the worker grimaces.
"What? Please," Mrs. Bowman notices his hesitation. "Oh, God, please no! Jesus, no! Don't say it! Where are Mr. Huchra and Miss Gianfortoni?"
Roxie and Dave approach her. "Mrs. Bowman," Roxie starts.
"Where's Darius?" Mrs. Bowman asks, a dim glint of hope in her eyes.
Roxie opens her mouth, and closes it; wringing her hands.
"Is he… dead?" Brandon asks, trying to stay strong for his mother.
"Now, I think Darius is still alive," Dave says, speaking up for Roxie. "But… still on the island."
"The ferries had to leave," Roxie says. "We wanted to head back and look for them, but the evacuators wouldn't let us go. They're still on the island. They didn't make it to the ferries in time."
Mrs. Bowman covers her mouth and sobs. Her older son wraps his arms around her and rests his cheek on her shoulder as she sobs. The camp counselors could see tears trickling down his cheeks.
"They?" a high pitched voice cracks behind the counselors. Dave and Roxie turn around. The voice belonged to a young six year old with a striking resemblance to Sammy. "Where's Sammy?" she asks with a Texan twang.
Roxie and Dave look around the crowd that had gathered: a crowd of heartbroken families. The entire Guitierrez family had arrived, Brooklynn's parents and older brother stood off to the side, Yasmina's parents had come up behind Darius's mother, and Ben's mother and father stood next to Sammy's family.
The expressions of heartbreak and utter despair broke the counselors hearts.