The hallway hadn't been cleaned in awhile. A lot of dust, trash and papers on the floor. Obviously, what I did to the floor did not add to its cleanliness.

No clue about the species of insect, I kinda thought they resembled grasshoppers. Still, not great to have a swarm of such things that large, and powerful enough to break glass. I rushed back into the control room.

The power station always hummed like that TARDIS spaceship thing from Doctor Who, but now, with all those giant buzzing insects, it sounded a lot weirder.

Heffalump seemed oblivious. "¿Tienes alguna comida? Tengo hambre."

I shook my head. "Lo siento, no hay comida...A menos que te gusten los insectos."

He only shuddered.

"Are the bathrooms working?" Cynthia asked.

"I...dunno. There's something out there that made me pee on the floor."

"Oh great," she groaned.

"I know! There's a huge swarm of them, and they broke a window!"

"I was referring to mopping up the mess." She did a double take. "Wait, what's this about a swarm?"

Cynthia got up, rushing out to investigate.

By then, the swarm had broken free.

Worse, you know how Heffalump knocked the power station door off its hinges?...We had another nice big hole at the end of the hallway. The things could fly right out.

For a moment, Cynthia just gaped, open mouthed. "Jiminy Christmas! Can you imagine what havoc those things will cause if they get out?"

"What? They're just big bugs, right? They're not spiders...I don't think they're mosquitoes...Probably won't hurt people..."

"True, not directly. But to me, they look like giant assed grasshoppers, Albert. I'm pretty sure they're locusts. I don't think the world's ready for that kind of ecological damage. Drop them on one farm, and pow, famine city."

I let out a low growl, twirling a push broom like a bo stick. "Then we won't let that happen."

I spun the broom, fan-like, smashing down every insect in my path. Admittedly, not enough of them, quite a few escaped my weapon's reach. I snapped my teeth at a couple here and there, but they zoomed high, darted low, escaped out the door hole.

"Cynthia, a little—"

The moment I spoke, in she came with a fire extinguisher, blasting everything in sight. The bugs became torpid, disoriented. I smashed them with the broom portion until it became unscrewed and fell off, twirled the handle and bashed every other one close to me.

Webby hopped up, ramming a few insects with her head, nipped one in half with her beak. I gave a thumb's up, doing a fancy stick kata through the swarm.

Cassie darted between us with a cigarette lighter and a can of air freshener. Foom! went a tongue of fire.

"Always ask an adult, honey!" Cynthia snatched the implements out of her hands, blow torching a forth of the insects. "My brother went to the hospital one time because the fire jumped back into the can."

She slipped on my urine. "Albert, when these bugs are all gone, I'm gonna kill you!"

Heffalump shrugged. "¿Por qué estás molesto? No importa donde orines."

Cynthia ignored him.

Cassie grabbed a discarded post from an aluminum shelf, swinging it around like a baseball bat. Heffalump popped in, goring bugs with his horns, sucked them in with his trunk, throwing them into walls or stomping them. His pincers snapped them in half, big chitinous legs crunching those that got too close.

A green shape came padding in from the power station. "Aaaurghwurrght!"

My eyes bugged out in surprise. "Zelda?"

Sure enough, my wife had somehow found her way to the place, and she now snapped and clawed at bugs, covering her section of the floor with a squishy mess.

"Zelda! How on earth did you get here?"

Cynthia also addressed my wife in raptorese. "I was about to ask you the same thing."

I love my wife, but she's not very eloquent at times. I got a very vague explanation—something about an underground tunnel beside Hammond's house that led beneath the ocean? And it had carvings on the walls? Something about a gold condor shaped airplane? We didn't have time for a whole conversation anyway, the bugs were escaping.

Cynthia tried to get her to clarify, because she didn't understand either, but we didn't get much out of her.

She hurriedly wrapped the end of a shelf post in dot matrix printer paper, set it on fire, and shoved it up under a smoke detector. Alarms shrieked, the fire sprayers went off, dousing us and everything else.

The showering lowered the bugs to our level...well, enough for us to swing at them like piñatas, bite, claw and smash them.

We stomped on the pile of dead insects. No more bugs in the hallway.

"Well," I sighed. "That's most of them."

"Hope they don't breed."

I hurried outside to see if maybe I could catch the other insects before they decimated crops and stuff.

The exterior of our building...non-descript. Brutalist. Not intended to be a tourist destination. Didn't even have paved roads. But they'd cleared a vehicle path. I glanced around, but saw no sign of the insects.

I did, however, notice the shadows of flapping wings.

"You got any more of those large bugs?"

I looked all around, but didn't see the owner of the voice.

"Up here."

A Pterodactyl sat on the roof of the building, waving her wing hello.

"Oh. There's more inside if you want them."

"Could you bring them out here? I don't like buildings. I get claustrophobic."

"I'll see what I can do...did any of those bugs get away?"

The Pterodactyl licked her lips. "I hope so! They're way tastier than all those geese we've been eating!"

We located a supply cart, wheeling mounds of the things out to our winged acquaintance.

"When did you make friends with Willie?" Zelda asked me in raptorese. "I smelled your scent on her friends, but you haven't killed and eaten them. It made me hesitate to do anything with them."

"Long story, baby. Long story."

"If you have many long stories like that, I fear you may go hungry. What kind of dinosaurs will you have to eat?"

"It'll be okay. The humans can always make me a big fish pizza or something. Wait, you didn't—"

"I thought about it, but no."

A motor rumbled in the distance. Couldn't see much, other than a cloud of dust. I approached the Pterodactyl, currently stuffing her face. "Hey, would you mind doing a fly-over and seeing what that dust cloud is?"

She only shrugged, speaking with her mouth full of insect parts. "It's just one of those moving box things with the wheels. A brown guy in a white shirt inside. Breathes in those smelly stick things."

"Those types of people are called African Americans. He's in an automobile...Smoking a cigarette."

"Well aren't you a fancy pants!"

I called to Cynthia. "Hey! I think Mr. Arnold's found us!"

"Thank God!"

We watched with breathless anticipation as the dust cloud got bigger and bigger, until we could make out the shape of a Jeep, with its stripy red and green wraparound.

"¿Que es eso?" Heffalump said from the doorway.

I explained our human friend.

"No creo que me guste. Me iré ahora."

With that, he padded off into the jungle.

"Heffalump! Wait!" I called, but, alas, he wasn't having it.

"Hablaré contigo cuando lla bata blanca se acabe."

We didn't see him for awhile. Oddly appropriate, like his fictional counterpart, and Snuffeupagus, we had an...elusive creature that everybody else would think imaginary.

Guess it might have been for the best. Don't know what Mister Arnold would say about an unauthorized mutant.

The Jeep rolled up to the building. Sure enough, the man himself sat in the driver's seat.

He parked, got out, stared flabbergasted at the mound of oversized dead insects. "What in the holy fudge happened here?"

Cynthia scooted a bug carcass into the pile with her foot. "Long story, sir. The Pterodactyls are taking care of it."

The Pterodactyl squawked when he approached the pile of bugs, which meant `Mine!'

He peered through the widened doorway. "Everything okay in there? I heard the fire alarm."

Cynthia debriefed him on our recent adventures.

"Wait, what? So there are...mutants running loose on this island?"

"Hefty's okay. He's a friend. The Allosaurus thing is probably lying dead in a cavern somewhere. The only thing we gotta worry about are those alligator things...and maybe a few of these bugs...Can you take us back to Hammond's place?"

"Just a sec..."

It seemed Mister Arnold knew a few things about the facility, or places like it, for he found an instrument panel near the Star Trek door, entered a code, and filled the room on the other side with fire.

When we peeked through the broken windows, we found the blackened remains of roughly fifty or more of those insects. We all kinda breathed a sigh of relief.

Well, except the Pterodactyl that waddled in. "Mmmm! That smells good! Can I have some?"

I stared. "Didn't you get enough to eat outside?"

The winged creature patted its bloated stomach. "C'mon, they're toasted! At least one, please!"

"`Betcha can't eat just one,'" I quipped. "Wait, I thought you were claustrophobic."

"No, that's my sister, Fade-Wing. She's weird...I know, `All Pterodactyls look the same...!'"

Mister Arnold shook his head the moment I made the suggestion. "Look, for starters, there's a containment issue. We don't know what the flip is in there, or what we'll let out once that door opens."

"Umm...Are you...saying something actually survived all those flamethrowers?"

"No, but it's not like we put flamethrowers in every room."

"Ah. I get it now."

"My other concern is what will happen if we give this dinosaur free reign inside the building, and what they'll accidentally let out."

"Yeah," Cynthia added. "Or what if we're shoveling fried prehistoric locusts out of that hallway, only to have our friend accidentally toast us like a pizza?"

"The Pterodactyl would have to type in a security code for that to happen, Miss Yu."

"What if they're like Albert, and they figure it out?"

Mister Arnold glanced at the Pterodactyl and shivered. "All the more reason to leave the damn hallway alone...Anyway, looks like she'll explode if she eats any more."

Cynthia cleared her throat. "We done here? Or you got something else?"

The man frowned at the puddle I'd left on the floor. "Clean that up, and we'll go."

Not everything had a handy keypad. Mister Arnold and Cynthia located a janitor's closet and forced the door (Yes, I know I'd swung around a broom earlier, but that had been left out by someone). They filled a bucket with suds and hot water, handed me a mop.

"Now can we go?"

I cleared my throat. "Actually, Zelda and I would like to hang out here for awhile. You know, so we can visit our friend, and relax a bit..."

The man only sighed and shook his head. "I'll have to say `No' on that. I'd only intended us to have this little expedition to expand our food supplies. I didn't expect you to go on a Magical Mystery Tour. This little vacation/honeymoon is officially over. We really need to go back to business."

"I'm a dinosaur! I don't even have a job! Why do I have to go with you?"

"You just mopped up reason number one why you're leaving. Secondly, you're company property, your wife is company property..." He pointed to Webby. "And your baby is company property. Also, you're our secret weapon. You know how to negotiate with other dinosaurs, so we don't get our asses ripped apart. Finally, little miss Muldoon needs to go home to her mom and dad before something happens and she comes back missing an eye or leg or something worse."

Cynthia patted me on the back. "Don't worry, you can play with your mutant friend later."

"You...sure?"

"As long as I'm still your chaperone."

I reluctantly climbed into the Jeep. Dirt and leaves clung to the windshield, the interior thick with the lingering scents of cigarettes, animal feed, and the lunchbox aroma of rotten bananas. I sat in a back seat cluttered with discarded food packaging, soda cans, random tools, mud cakes work boots, a pick, dirty coffee mugs, and two kinds of shovels.

When Zelda joined me, she didn't seat herself as much as squat on the seat. It seemed like such a natural egg warming pose that I had to grin and put an arm around her, licking her face.

Webby jumped up and nuzzled between us.

Cassie smirked when she saw all this cuteness, but she clearly had other things on her mind. I could kinda tell because she slammed the door when she got in.

The moment Cynthia got in the passenger seat, Mister Arnold, frowning, ripped a Hustler photo air freshener off the rearview, shoving it into the glove compartment.

Cassie punched the driver's seat when Mister Arnold started the engine. "I don't wanna go home! I'm not a baby! I'm tough! I'm a dinosaur rider!"

Chuckling, the man shifted into reverse, leaning over the seat as he turned the wheel. "That you are, Cassie! That you are! But you want to see if Daddy's doing all right, don't you?"

She sighed, but didn't verbally answer. "Will I ever be able to come back?"

Mister Arnold shifted to drive, expertly manipulating the stick through the number tree. "That'll be up to the folks."

After a moment's silence, Cassie leaned over my wife, looking me in the eye. "You'll write to me, won't you? You can write, right?"

"You bet! Just need someone to droop the letters in a mailbox..." I cleared my throat in an ever-so-meaningful fashion.

"It's the least I can do." Mister Arnold steered us down a winding dirt road. "Might have to (ahem) take a magic marker to stuff from time to time, you know, proprietary secrets, but we'll keep the good stuff for you, and always let you know how Albert's doing."

Palm branches slapped the windows as we crested an incline. "This is still a lot to swallow, Miss Yu...I mean, why would we just throw our rejects down a hole? Generally if there's a mistake, they incinerate the creature."

"I dunno, maybe the incinerator was busted?"

"Tell him about Doctor Who," I prompted.

Cynthia groaned.

Mister Arnold gave the steering wheel a sharp turn to steer us around a tree. "You talking about that show with the chick in the loincloth?"

"Uh...maybe? Did she hang out in a blue phone booth?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah. That's the one. What's your point?"

"Remember how Davros dumped all those defective experiments into that cave, to, like, protect his base or something?"

"Uh...Not sure what you're talking about. I only caught it on PBS like one time. A guy with a scarf, a robot dog thing, and the chick in the loincloth."

"Did you see the Daleks?" I did my best impression of one going `Exterminate.'

"Oh yeah. That. Kinda fell asleep when they wandered around in a quarry for ten minutes."

"Okay, so my original point is that your guys have been dumping mutants down into the caves, to protect the place."

"Mutants I have not seen. Honestly, that's a shi..." He suddenly remembered Cassie in the back seat. "Crappy way to protect an installation. We have alarm systems for that."

"The place doesn't seem that well protected to me."

"Yeah? Well, how are these alleged `mutants' helping matters?"

See what I'm talking about? Snuffeupagus.

He had our boat tied at a nearby dock. A warehouse and a couple trucks indicated that they used to come in there a lot to do deliveries, but the general state of neglect, and the fact it hadn't more trucks told me of a semi recent abandonment (no pun intended).

We returned home in Hammond's yacht.

Once in the house, we didn't say much to each other, we all felt pretty exhausted. We just ate and watched DVD's. Uncle Buck, Sixteen Candles, Biodome. I wanted to watch The Prisoner, but Hammond only had it on VHS and nobody knew how to fix it. I did, however, get to watch The Rock with Sean Connery. We dozed, awoke at nightfall, dozed again.

The next morning, we all helped Mister Arnold load food supplies from the Visitor Center into a Jeep and ship it to Hammond's house (The Jeep came from that garage place I mentioned earlier. Mister Arnold knew a few things about automotive repair). They stored some cold meat for raptors in another building, and we got that moved, too. He left the Brontosaurus meat where I'd left it, though.

Mister Arnold got out the Satphone, called for a helicopter. Once he terminated the connection, he clapped his hands. "Great news! The chopper's on its way, weather's fine, he should be here in two hours."

Cassie crossed her arms in defiance, her face pouty. "I don't wanna go. I wanna stay here with Albert and Webby and Zelda and see Heffalump again."

Mister Arnold knelt in front of her. "C'mon, Cassie! We talked about this! Your daddy's in the hospital! Don't you want to go see him?"

She swallowed. "I...guess." A tone of sad disappointment. A tear rolled down her cheek. "But who's going to watch Albert?"

"Miss Yu is going to stay here with the dinosaurs. She's gotten pretty good at...dinosaur sitting." He stood up. "We ought to go out to the landing pad to make sure we don't miss our ride."

"Can I at least...ride Albert to the landing pad?"

Mister Arnold glanced at me, but I just shrugged. He sighed and rubbed his face. "...All right. As long as there's no funny stuff, I'll drive slow and you can ride him beside the Jeep."

He drove about 30 MPH, 45 when I got a little jaunty and added some pep to my step. Zelda took over when I got winded. We alternated between carrying Webby and letting her run beside us. Buttface got some needed exercise too.

Probably just as well that he did drive slow. He pulled a `Chinese fire drill' a mile in, to show Cynthia how to drive a stick, and it took time for her to figure it out.

At last we reached the helicopter pad. A mite bit early, but what an impressive place to wait! A big mountain with a majestic waterfall running down the side. For several minutes, we just admired the scenery.

Beautiful tropical flowers around the place. I attempted to make a lei for Zelda, but couldn't get the stems to hold together. She still appreciated the effort.

A blue-white Agusta A-109 helicopter descended through the mountain mist. Only saw a few people inside: The pilot, copilot, a couple army guys. The Agusta landed and Mister Arnold had a brief talk with them.

Incidentally, I can kinda see why Mister Arnold and people on TV shows always duck their heads when nearing a helicopter. Nobody wants to test their height against the height of the deadly whirling propellers.

He gave Cassie a frantic wave.

Tears streamed down the little girl's face as she looked at me. "I'm gonna miss you, Albert. You're the best killer flesh eating dinosaur I've ever met."

I sniffed. "Thank you."

"I hope you and your wife have many babies together. Send me pictures, okay?"

"Uh, sure. As soon as I figure out how to use a camera."

She hugged me, then growled `I love you' to Zelda and hugged her. "Can I take Webby with me?"

I glanced at Zelda and frowned. "Uh...She's already heartbroken because I gave away our two other babies...Otherwise I would say it was okay. Probably shouldn't be carrying `company property' around like that anyway, right?"

Cassie sighed and wiped her eyes, giving the little Parasaurolophus a tearful kiss on the head. She gave Buttface and Cynthia a hug too.

The cried into Cynthia's stomach for awhile (couldn't quite reach her chest). Mister Arnold kept waving to her, rubbing his face, muttering to the pilot.

"Don't worry, I'll take good care of your friends (not like I'll have anything else to do for the next couple months!)"

"Are you going to say goodbye to Mister Arnold?"

Cynthia wiped her eyes. "Dude, he's my boss. He ain't gonna go away. We'll probably be in touch on the Satphone like every day."

Cassie snickered. "Can I have a Satphone?"

"Dunno, ask your dad. I don't have any extra ones handy, and I'm miles away from a pay phone. Kinda need to keep what I got."

The little girl at last let go, giving us slow waves goodbye as she climbed aboard the chopper...and from the windows when the chopper took off.

I smiled and gave my best `We'll be fine' wave back...but I cried a little myself when I could no longer see the girl's face from the window.

Okay. So...spent the next couple weeks with Cynthia. Our scaly relatives dropped by, but it was cool, no drama, got to play with the babies. Webby's relatives came to check on her too.

During this time, Zelda showed me and Cynthia the secret tunnel she'd used to reach the other island.

You see, at the back of the kitchen, Hammond's got a stairwell, leading into the room with all the chest freezers and wine racks. The door at the back end leads into a cavern. I'd asked Mister Arnold about it before, but he'd only shrugged and said, "I dunno. The man's an eccentric and he likes his storage."

Well, Zelda decided to take a little hike down there. Turns out it goes on for miles, and it gets pretty freaking weird the deeper you travel.

Speaking of things everybody would find imaginary...I think I'll skip over the portion of this story involving the strange notebook we'd found. Suffice to say, there's some truth to it, and we uncovered a lot of stuff I can't explain. We actually found the place that used to house the gold condor shaped airplane, apparently built by ancient astronauts...and there's a buried flying saucer containing the dried remains of alien reptile people.

...Also, the `ghost' I saw earlier...actually a hologram of some sort. We found a computer.

By the way, Araceli and her brother: Very helpful throughout all this.

Anyway, you probably don't want to hear about all that. It's a little confusing, unrelated to dinosaurs or Jurassic Park, and probably best kept for a sequel/spinoff type thing, so I'll skip ahead a few days, to where we're all hanging out on the beach.

A beautiful night, full moon shining down over the ocean, balmy breezes wafting in. Behind us we had a range of picturesque orange-charcoal cliffs of metamorphic rock. Cynthia had a Coleman lantern set up, and a fire (mostly for her—she said cooking a `big assed meal' for me and my wife would be too much work, so we had ours raw).

Araceli's brother Matthew left us a Dungeons and Dragons manual and dice, so I and Heffalump played the game with rocks and sand as our campaign board, kept track of numbers and stuff with a notebook and a pen.

Speaking of spinoff stories...any interest in one about a heroic Chasmosaurus hybrid conquistador who rescues a beautiful Chasmosaurus princess and a magical dinosaur land from an army of Orc wizards?...No? Oh well.

We'd actually been at the game for a couple hours. The sun had been up when we'd gotten everything situated, and Matthew had given us a demo of how to play.

I got Zelda and Webby involved in the story too. Not sure they understood all the imaginary stuff, but they were good actors.

Cynthia...I don't think she actually believed what she saw...A bunch of dinosaurs playing a human nerd game. She just frowned and stared at us.

"Guys," she groaned. "Is there any way we can save Princess...Lupe tomorrow, when we can actually read our little booklets without a flashlight? I like to save batteries."

"I actually have excellent night vision." I rolled the 20 sided die. "Also, es de noche en Dinodale, y los Orcos han emboscado a Sir Snuffalumpus en su campamento..."

"Ugh!" Cynthia grunted. "Are you freaking kidding me? Plus, there's a fog rolling in—What the?"

"A fog! What a great idea!" I flipped through the manual. "Una niebla acaba de llegar al campamento. Sir Snuffalumpus ve formas oscuras en movimiento en los arbustos, pero noo puede decir qué formas son arbustos y cuáles son los mortales orcos de pelaje blanco."

"Lanzo misiles mágicos."

"No puedes. Eres un paladin."

"Tengo una bolsa de misiles mágicos."

"Oh. Right."

That's when I noticed it had become harder to read the stat sheet. "Uh...Cynthia?"

"Guys..."

I hopped to my feet. "What?"

Heffalump trumpeted.

Cynthia pointed to a spot out on the ocean. "Look."

A few miles from the coast, a barge sailed out of the fog, loaded with equipment, trailers, a weird green mobile home, a Jeep and people.

"Something tells me this island's about to get crowded."