WARNING (edited):
Romance will be clean if there's romance. I would like to keep things as realistic as I possible can (dinosaurs and theatrics aside) so there will be discussions of realistic things. (Bathroom talk, feminine functions, etc.)
Because they're teens in a modern day world, there will be discussions of real problems teens face. (Politics aside) Later on there will be themes or discussions of depression, suicide, eating disorders, self-hatred, and other heavy topics. If this is particularly triggering for you, please skip over those chapters. I will give a warning when I post those chapters.
Now that that is done, please enjoy!
"We thought it'd be fun… We thought we'd be safe… But we didn't realize the horror waiting for us on the island. Claws, teeth, screaming… so much screaming. Despite all the hardships, we'll keep fighting. That's the promise we make every day we get. We will survive. We will get home. Because no matter what happens, no matter what this place throws at us next, none of us are in this alone…"
The five remaining teens run into the sunlight, heading for the docks. For freedom from this wretched island of nightmares. They didn't notice the height of the sun in the bright blue sky, nor did they realize how long they had spent fighting Toro…
Darius arrives at the docks, laughing in joy. His laughter fades as he stops and looks around. The ferries were gone. No one was there. The nightmare was not over, but merely beginning.
"They're gone. They're all gone," Darius says, the exhaustion and disappointment audible in his voice.
The other four survivors come up behind him, disappointed as well. "They'll be back for us, right?" Sammy asks, supporting Yasmina.
Darius takes a deep breath in and turns to his group. "Of course, they will. And until then, we've got each other. Right, Mr. VIP?"
Kenji puts his arm around Darius's shoulders. "Absolutely, Dino-nerd."
Brooklynn knocks Kenji's arm off Darius's shoulders when she jumps between them. "Hey, don't forget Superstar."
"Barf," Yasmina smiles, leaning on Sammy's shoulder.
The teens stare at the sunset for a few minutes, thinking about their next move. They were so focused on getting to the ferries; they never thought about what to do if they didn't make it. "Well, what do we do now?" Sammy asks, looking at Darius. Although he was the youngest, his leadership abilities and talent at thinking under pressure had made all the older teens look to him for a solution.
Darius purses his lips in thought. "The ferries aren't coming back any time soon. They're full of injured, scared tourists, and their first priority would be to get them to safety. They wouldn't come back for six teens at least until they've dropped off the others. Even then, they wouldn't be equipped for extraction."
"So what if we stayed here?" Brooklynn asks. "Out in the open where a helicopter could find us. Then there wouldn't be the problem of locating us and trying to extract us in the middle of a jungle."
Darius shakes his head. "Too risky. We'd be out in the open and exposed. The biggest and scariest dinos hang around the outskirts of the island. That's what Eric Kriby said. He was a thirteen year old tourist who survived eight weeks on Isla Sorna. We need to find shelter and food and weapons to protect ourselves while we wait."
"I still think the docks would be our best bet," Brooklynn states. "If we could find a secure building, we could stay in a spot where they would be able to find us and get to us easily. An open space would be better, too. More room to signal for help."
"Bigger dinos are around here," Darius shakes his head. "The center of the island would be better. There's open space there, too. We could set up a shelter and wait for the sound of a helicopter."
"We should head to my father's condos," Kenji says enthusiastically. "I know the code to get in. There's food there, and it's a good place to live. Maybe there's even a working phone there we could call for help from."
"You're sure you know the code?" Brooklynn frowns. "Because the last time you said you knew your way around the park—"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah!" Kenji waves her off, irritatedly. "I got us stuck in the vents and had a fight with Toro. Could you not remind me of all my failures for one minute! Especially since you haven't contributed any ideas!"
"Hey! It's not my fault I didn't know the biggest dinos live around the docks!" Brooklynn snorts.
"Really? You didn't unbox Jack Kirby or whoever it was in one of your videos?!" Kenji retorts.
"This is my first experience on Jurassic Island!" Brooklynn shouts. "And it currently sucks!"
"Well at least we can agree on one thing!" Kenji shouts back.
"It's funny how all our teamwork unravels at the slightest disagreement," Yasmina remarks to Darius.
"Ooh! I know!" Sammy says, interrupting the bickering teens. "How about we hang around the park? It's more in the center of the island, and it's an open space. Plus, there's gotta be abandoned food there, and we could find a place to sleep. It probably wouldn't be as comfy as Kenji's condos, but we probably have a better chance of being picked up there. I guarantee that would be the first place they look for survivors."
"How can we even be sure they'd come?" Brooklynn sighs, asking the one depressing question that was in the back of their minds. Everyone immediately quieted down. "I mean, for all they know, we're dead, too. It's not like surviving here's a walk in the park with dinosaurs around every corner. And even their security couldn't take care of the Indominus. If highly trained adults can't take care of a dino, how could we?"
"But we have survived," Sammy says, clenching her fists.
"They don't know that!" Brooklynn protests, her voice cracking with emotion. "We're as good as dead to them! What are six teens going to accomplish that adults couldn't? And the longer we're on here, the slimmer our chances of survival. They've probably already added our names to the list of casualties and sent our family's care packages. Why would they send help for us?"
"They can't just leave us here," Kenji argues. "No way! Some of us are too important!"
"Oh, yeah, way to rub in your wealth in a time like this," Yasmina huffs.
"I'm serious!" Kenji insists. "My father would totally pay for a search and rescue, and would even pay bail if he had to do it illegally! If he… cared about me… But I'm not the only one! Brooklynn, you're a superstar on the Internet with… how many followers?"
"27 million," Sammy helpfully inputs.
"You've gotta have followers desperate to find you," Kenji says. "I bet they'd sign a petition or something. And Yaz, you're like a famous teen athlete, right?"
"I wouldn't say famous, but I got my fans," Yasmina rolls her eyes.
"People would be looking for you," Kenji reasons. "And Mantah Corp sent you here, Sammy. They've gotta do something for you, right?"
"I mean, it's not like they owe us anything…" Sammy looks at the ground, scuffing the ground with her shoe.
"But they've got enough resources that they could come to your rescue!" Kenji exclaims. "It's not like we're nobodies here! Most of us got here because of a high profile! People would be looking for us!"
"But they have to think we're alive to come," Brooklynn states.
"Roxie and Dave wouldn't give up on us," Sammy says. "We got into two near death experiences in 48 hours and lived to tell the tale. It was an annoyance for them before, but now it might be our saving grace. They have to know that we'd escape by the skin of our teeth, right?"
"And we got the resources to survive between us," Darius argues. "I know dinosaurs, Sammy knows herds, Kenji knows the island, Brooklynn knows… things. I don't even know how many things. And Yaz knows athletics. Ben knows caution…"
"He's gone," Brooklynn says sadly.
"They don't know that," Darius says. "They don't know that we're still alive, but what are the chances that we were still alive after the raptor pen? Or the dino drive? We defied odds before. Roxie and Dave would be the only ones to know what we can do, and I'm sure they would argue for a search party. If they get together with our parents, somebody's gonna listen. No more talk of what-if-we-don't-get-off-the-island. It might not seem like it, but Kenji's right. We have more odds stacked for us than we think. Let's find a safe place to go and hide and wait."
"I know one place we're guaranteed to be found," Yasmina says quietly. The others look at her. "Doctor Wu's lab."
"The lab? That's your best solution?" Kenji frowns, dubious.
"It's the one place we can guarantee people would search," Yasmina says dryly.
"Why would they search the lab?" Brooklynn asks. "If anything, that would be the last place with all the hatching dinosaurs. And everyone evacuated it as quickly as possible!"
"They couldn't have evacuated everything out of the lab in time," Yasmina reasons. "And there's many reasons to come to the lab. First, I bet the Indominus wasn't legal. Doctor Wu would have to cover up his tracks and erase any memory or file of that dino. Second, it's probably illegal, and anyone trying to try Wu would have to come here for more evidence. Third, it's full of dino DNA and information. Mantah Corp wants in on Jurassic World's secrets, and would certainly come to scavenge whatever they can find. Evil people won't leave possible power alone, no matter what just happened on the island," she adds grimly.
The group falls silent. Yasmina had a very good point, but it was a hard one to swallow. "After what these dinosaurs have done, do you really think that they would try to recreate more dinosaurs?" Sammy asks, not wanting to believe people were that evil and stupid.
"How did the first park fare?" Yasmina asks harshly. "They didn't do so well, and yet, Jurassic World was still opened. Power-driven individuals are very forgetful of history."
After a moment of silence to digest the discussion, Darius speaks up. "Okay, Kenji, where's the condo closest to the main park?"
Kenji pulls out a map of the park from Ben's fanny pack and lays it on the dock. The group kneels down and takes a look. "The closest one overlooks the forest and the main visitors center."
"All right, now, where's the closest lab to that?" Darius asks.
"It's over here," Kenji says, pointing to another spot on the map. "It's not too far from the condo. This one's Doctor Wu's main lab. I got a tour of it years ago. He's got a secret room in there somewhere, I'm sure. I wasn't the most well-behaved kid back then."
"Back then?" Sammy snickers.
"Well, that makes three of us snoopers," Brooklynn shrugs. "What are you thinking, Darius?"
"I think we alternate between staying in the condo and the lab," Darius says. "The condo would be a nice place to sleep, and probably has working appliances. The lab probably has medical supplies that we can use to help Yaz. And there's food vendors we can raid in the main park."
"The control center is close by!" Kenji exclaims. "We could totally raid that place. Weapons, dino trackers, who knows what they left behind!"
"All right, does that sound like a plan?" Darius asks. The group nods. "What's wrong, Sammy?" the team leader asks, noticing her crestfallen face.
"I wish Ben was still with us," Sammy whispers sadly.
"He would've known what to do," Yasmina says. "And he's the reason we're still alive. He shouldn't have been the one to go."
"Hey, maybe he's still alive," Kenji states. "We survived the fall with barely any injury, who's to say he survived and laying somewhere out there injured?"
"He fell from higher up than us," Brooklynn frowns sadly.
"It's still a possibility, right?" Kenji says. "Come on, if there was even a slim chance that you survived that, wouldn't you want everyone else to come for you?"
"If there's a chance that Ben's alive, we have to find him," Darius says determinedly.
"How would we be able to find him?" Brooklynn asks. "There's so much track around the island, where would he be? We'd have to follow the monorail track to find where he landed, and that could take days."
While the group was pondering solutions, a distorted voice broke them out of their thoughts. Running down the path to the main park, they came across the monorail still running. "W-welc-come to J-Jurass-sic World. Firr… h-heading n-north, the m-main park!" the monorail said with a distorted voice. It was running slower than usual, and half of the back was torn off.
The teens look at each other, getting an idea.
Deep in the jungles of Isla Nublar, a particular Ankylosaurus is lumbering around, bellowing softly. She stomps around in the mud, making small indents around the unconscious boy. Waddling over to his face, she starts to lick him.
The rough tongue on his face causes Ben to stir from his long slumber. His fingers and face twitches and he slowly opens his eyes. Immediately, the boy closes them, blinded by the light of the afternoon sun.
A happy bellow is emitted way too close to his face. Immediately his eyes pop open and he yelps. To his relief, it was merely Bumpy licking his face. Ben groans in gratefulness and pain. "Bumpy, stop it."
The little dinosaur immediately starts bellowing and jumping around in joy. Ben chuckles. "Good to see you, too, Bumpy."
Bumpy coos and bumps Ben's right arm with her head. He winces and shifts his head to look at it. Long gashes still slightly oozing lined his arm. He gasps and closes his eyes, trying to breathe calmly through his nose. He was very squeamish, and the fact that it was his own arm made it worse. Somehow, though, he was able to keep the content of his stomach down. He probably didn't have much, anyway.
Steeling himself, he turns and looks at his left arm. Other than splatters of mud, it was completely fine. He twitches his left fingers, then his hand, and then his arm. No broken bones or pain. Ben sighs, thankful that at least one arm works.
Bumpy bellows and nudges Ben's right arm again. "Ow, Bumpy," Ben hisses. "Stop it!"
Bumpy whimpers and backs up. Ben sighs, feeling bad for snapping. "I'm sorry, Bumpy. Just be careful, I'm not doing so well."
The Ankylosaurus shakes her head.
Ben reaches over with his left arm and feels his right side. He winces as he brushes long gashes. "How did this happen?" he wonders.
He slowly begins to remember. The monorail. The pterodactyls. Falling off the monorail. After Darius couldn't hold on and he fell, the pterodactyl swooped down and tried to snatch him up. The dinosaur clawed and scratched at him with his long talons before dropping him in the jungle a couple yards away from the monorail. Although the pterodactyl left long, most likely infected wounds, it had broken his fall.
Ben drops his head back and groans, placing his left arm over his eyes. Deciding to get up, he moves his left arm up and tries to lift himself up. The first attempt was aborted; his torso was in too much pain. The second attempt was a little better, but he couldn't get more than three inches off the ground. The third attempt, Ben muscles through the pain and uses his right arm to push himself up. He gets about half a foot off the ground before yelping and falling back down.
Feeling his lower body, Ben realizes that his pelvis was broken. Or at least bruised. He whimpers, and grabs onto Bumpy. She pulls him over so that he's laying on his stomach. He tries to sit up that way, but it's not at all better.
"Man, if Yaz's ankle felt half this bad, she's really hardcore," Ben groans. He gasps. Yaz! The others! The ferries!
"Oh no, it's the afternoon! Who knows how long I've been out!" Ben wails in his mind. "The ferries are most certainly gone, as are the other campers! They left me! They left me!"
With the realization that the group—no, his friends, no matter what he said on the monorail to Sammy—had left him on the nightmarish island, Ben drops his face onto the dirt ground and cries. He cries salty tears of pain and betrayal. The only people he had truly begun to open up to—the people he had risked his life and faced his fears to save—hadn't even given him the consideration. They had continued on and left him for the dead to save their own hides!
"Why would they leave me?" Ben wonders as he sobs. "Are they so focused on their own lives that they didn't even care to come back for me? Sammy… was Yaz and Brooklynn right not to trust her? Darius… he wouldn't… would he? Yaz, she risked her own life for Sammy and Darius… was she really that annoyed with me that she wouldn't care to come back? Why would they leave me for the dead?!"
As his sobs subside, another thought enters Ben's head. "Why aren't I dead? That pterodactyl should've eaten me. That fall should've killed me. Why wouldn't they just leave? I can't even believe that I'm alive for Pete's sake! I'm as good as dead to them, and for good reason!"
Ben lifts his head to look at Bumpy; his tears and dirt causing a muddy art piece on his face. "I want to go home," he whimpers, knowing fully well that she would never answer or understand. "I want to go home."
An injured, young boy who couldn't even sit up? How was he supposed to survive long enough to wait for help? He could barely stay alive one day, and the only reason he lived was because he had others making the decisions and taking chances. Had it been up to him, he would've curled up in a corner and never made it even close to the ferry. Or more likely be eaten by a dinosaur long before the ferries were being boarded. If he couldn't live on his own for one day while able to run, how would he survive with a broken pelvis, a baby dinosaur and his fears?!
"I wish I was dead," Ben whispers, too dried up to cry. Bumpy bellows and nudges his face gently. Ben limply puts his left arm over her back as she curls up next to him. He cuddles the dinosaur as best he can in his weak state, wishing that his sorrow would just end.
Back on the mainland of Costa Rica, the ferries carrying the wounded and scared survivors arrived at the docks. Trained medics and EMPs rushed to meet the bleeding and bruised passengers. The park's first responders had done their best to patch up those on the boat, but most of the responders had been killed off on the island, so they were stretched thin.
Among the park's staff helping the guests off the boat were Roxie and Dave. Having survived with no injuries—Dave's stubbed toe didn't count—and given up on convincing the captain to turn the ferries around, they had resigned to patching up guests and calming frightened children. Roxie focused more on assisting the majorly understaffed medics while Dave focused on calming the young scared children, particularly the newly orphaned children. Both were very helpful to the traumatized passengers.
After the last passengers left the ferries, Roxie sighs. "I had hoped that the kids were still on board and we somehow didn't see them."
"Maybe they're on the other ferry," Dave suggests as they enter the warehouse set up for the wounded.
"I hope so," Roxie sighs. "Let's find them."
The two weave their way through the patients being treated and comforted, calling out for the campers and describing them to anyone who was willing to listen. No one had seen them. The two camp counselors meet back up outside the warehouse, frustrated and depressed.
"They have to be here somewhere!" Roxie says.
"Rox," Dave sighs. "Face it, we've looked everywhere. They're still on the island."
"We have to find Ms. Dearing," Roxie says determinedly. "Or Mr. Masrani. Someone with authority around here and get a search party out for them!"
"Rox," Dave says quietly. "Park staff trained to deal with dinos on a regular basis couldn't survive. Maybe… maybe a search party is futile."
"Don't you ever say that again, David Huchra!" Roxie turns around quickly and scolds him. "The ACUs were sent out into the line of fire. The kids weren't purposefully putting themselves in between dinos and guests. Second, no matter how hard we tried, they were determined to get themselves into life threatening situations. Somehow, they always got out. I know they're alive, David. But they won't be if we don't get to them quickly."
"You're right," Dave nods. "Problem is, no one else will believe us."
"We just have to ask the right people," Roxie says, curling her hands into fists. The two camp counselors ask around and try to find high profile park workers, but it seemed that everyone had gone missing. To their horror, they found out that Mr. Masrani had died in a helicopter crash.
Every person of high authority turned them down, scoffing at the idea that six inexperienced teens could have lived a day on the island. Others solemnly told them that there was no way the kids were alive. A search party would be futile. More than once, Dave had to restrain Roxie. "Those kids are still alive!" Roxie shouts, making a bit of a scene as Dave pulled her back from a sympathetic worker.
"Ma'am, I'm sorry," the worker said with a strong Spanish accent. He had taken a step back, not entirely sure why he was on the receiving end of this tantrum. "The possibility is very slim. And if they are still alive, there has been an issue that no one may go to the island. It is strictly forbidden now due to this accident. If we were to bypass the new order, a search party would take a while to organize, and we don't have anyone to volunteer for it."
"Well, you tell whoever gave this order that I don't care what the f*** they said—"
Dave puts his hand over Roxie's mouth and struggles to restrain her. "What she means is, the kids had at least two near-death experiences during the three days before the accident. They seemed to be determined to get themselves in danger, but were equally as determined to get themselves out. When they worked together, they were somehow able to pull themselves out of sticky situations without our help. They could totally still be alive and kickin' dino butt!"
"I will tell my superior that," the worker nods. "Only with substitutes for your choice words."
"Look, all we ask is that we find help for the kids," Dave pleads with the man.
"I am sorry," the man shakes his head. "I am just a worker here. I have no way of organizing a search party, nor the authority to do so."
Roxie rubs her eyes and sighs. "How are we supposed to find them?"
"Um… how are we supposed to tell their families?" Dave asks nervously.
"We don't," Roxie says. "Not yet, anyway. We need to at least try to get them back. Their parents entrusted them with us, and we failed them. We failed all of them. And we might be the only ones who know that they're still alive. We can't give up on them. We need to send out a search party immediately and give their families hope."
"I don't think we have time for any of that," Dave says, staring at the warehouse.
"What do you mean?" Roxie asks, planting her hands on her hips.
"That's Darius's family," Dave says, pointing at a mother and an older son asking the social worker if they had seen her son.
Roxie and Dave look at each other, wincing.