by David Lewman
The boys cautiously approached the vehicle. Zach peered through the shattered windshield. No one was inside. The driver’s seat was ripped, its white stuffing stained with blood. Zach backed away, realizing what had probably clawed the driver out of the vehicle.
“Who did it?” Gray asked. “The white one?”
Zach took his brother’s arm. “We shouldn’t stay here.”
As he backed away, Zach stumbled. He looked down and realized it was a staircase leading up to a vine-covered building that was being slowly swallowed up by the earth.
Though the boys didn’t know it, the building was the visitors’ center built for the original Jurassic Park in 1993. Long abandoned, it had been reclaimed by the jungle.
The brothers pushed through the front door. As they walked in, something cracked under Zach’s foot. He kicked aside a broken bone. A collapsed T. rex skeleton lay on the ground, covered by vines and vegetation.
“Aunt Claire will probably send people out looking for us,” Zach said. “We can wait here.”
“It’ll find us here,” Gray argued.
“No, it won’t. Stop it.” Zach picked up one of the T. rex bones and wrapped it in an old piece of canvas. He pointed to Gray’s fanny pack. “You have matches in there?”
Gray dug through his fanny pack and pulled out a book of matches. He handed them to Zach, who lit the makeshift torch. By its light, Zach noticed a door marked “Vehicle Garage.”
“C’mon,” he said, leading the way through the door.
They pushed through a tangle of vines hanging down through the collapsed roof. Sunshine lit up the decayed garage. It had an old Jurassic Park vehicle in it.
“A 1992 Jeep Wrangler Sahara, beige,” Gray said.
Zach popped the hood and looked at the engine. “You remember all that stuff from when Dad fixed up Grandpa’s Malibu?”
Gray nodded.
They went back outside to the crashed Jurassic World vehicle, salvaged the battery, the spark plugs, and a can of gasoline attached to the back. They worked fast, on edge, listening for the slightest rustle of leaves. Zach heard the roar of a dinosaur in the distance.
“You think it’s out there?” he asked.
Gray looked horrified.
“I mean, I know for sure that thing is definitely not out there,” Zach said. “Totally safe.” He handed his brother the car battery. “Here. Take this. You’re stronger than me.”
Gray smiled. They lugged the car parts back into the garage and started working on the old Jeep.
Chapter Sixteen
In a small cove on Isla Nublar, a private military transport boat cut through the water, approaching the beach. Armored tactical vehicles rolled off the boat’s ramp. Men in polo shirts and sunglasses unloaded black cases marked “InGen.”
Hoskins walked with an InGen contractor. “Did Masrani give you the green light yet?” the contractor asked.
“He will,” Hoskins said confidently.
High above the cove, Barry stood atop a cliff, watching the InGen contractors. He spoke into his two-way radio. “Owen, we have a situation here.” He heard nothing but static. “Owen, where are you?”
At that moment, Owen was making his way through thick jungle, pushing branches aside.
“I think we’re going in circles,” Claire said. “Shouldn’t we draw up some kind of a search grid?”
Owen ignored her.
Claire moved ahead, scanning the trees, trying to figure out whether they’d been in this part of the jungle before. Behind her, Owen knelt down. He’d found something on the ground.
“You know, I underestimated you,” Claire admitted. “Judged you. I’ve been treating you like some kind of Neanderthal, but there’s obviously a lot more to you.”
She turned around and saw that Owen was still kneeling, but now his hands were full of dinosaur manure. “What are you doing?”
He rubbed the manure all over his arms. “I know you’re used to watching your assets behind glass, but we’re on their turf now and even the smell of rosebuds and sunshine is going to attract a predator.”
She stood there staring at him. She couldn’t believe he was rubbing dinosaur manure all over himself!
“You’re next,” he said, motioning to her. “Come on.”
Claire shook her head vigorously. “No, I’m not. I don’t smell, okay?”
Owen pulled her down and rubbed manure onto her legs.
“Get your hands off me!” Claire hissed.
He kept right on applying the manure. “Consider for one second I might know a little more about something than you do,” he said. “Now just hold still.”
She brushed him away, plunged her hands into the pile of manure, and slathered it on herself. Owen watched, surprised. She paused. “Did I miss a spot?”
He pointed to her neck. She applied manure to her neck and her face.
“Whoa,” Owen said.
“What?”
“I didn’t mean…you didn’t have to put it on your face.”
She glared at him. He tossed her a bandanna. She marched defiantly into the jungle, wiping dinosaur manure off her face.
Owen allowed himself a tiny smile as he followed her. “I’m just saying you overdid it a little.”
In the control room, Lowery studied the park map on a screen. “Look at that. She’s headed straight for the resort.”
“Why would she come here?” Masrani asked.
“She can sense thermal radiation,” Vivian explained. “Our emergency measures just put every warm body in one place.”
Hoskins entered, holding his badge up for the security guard to see. “Hoskins, InGen,” he announced.
“I know who you are,” Masrani said impatiently.
“Then you know why I’m here,” Hoskins said, walking in like he owned the place. “My team has spent two years working on an application that could hunt and kill that creature.”
Masrani narrowed his eyes, giving Hoskins a hard glare. “Your program was meant to test their intelligence.”
Hoskins nodded. “And we discovered something in the process. They can follow orders. The solution to this crisis is right in your hands.”
A muscle twitched in Masrani’s jaw. “Let me be as clear as I can,” he said slowly. “No Velociraptors are to be set loose on this island.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Hoskins said. “You’ve got twenty thousand people trying to get off this island. There aren’t enough boats. That thing is a killing machine, and it won’t stop—”
“And further,” Masrani said, walking to within a foot of Hoskins, “I intend to personally look into your project to determine its viability within the moral principles of this company.”
Hoskins eyed Masrani with clenched teeth. “Okay, so what’s your next move, boss?”
On the control center’s helipad, ACU troopers bolted a heavy turret gun into the cabin of Jurassic One. The lead trooper gave a thumbs-up, and other troopers loaded into the helicopter.
Vivian hurried across the roof alongside Masrani, who wore a tan flight suit and carried a helmet under his arm. “Sir,” she said, “I just can’t seem to reach your flight instructor.”
“Never mind,” Masrani said. “He’s probably caught up in the evacuation.”
“And you’re sure there’s no one else who can fly a helicopter?”
Relishing the adventure, Masrani answered, “We don’t need anyone else.”
He strapped on his helmet and climbed into the cockpit. A gunner threaded bullets into the heavy gun.
Masrani took the controls and gave Vivian a confident thumbs-up as the helicopter rose into the air, wobbling a little.
Vivian watched, took a deep breath and then exhaled, clearly worried.
Chapter Seventeen
In the garage attached to the old Jurassic Park visitors’ center, Zach finished connecting a cable to the battery. Gray sat in the driver’s seat, peering over the wheel.
“Okay,” Zach called. “Turn it ov
er!”
Gray turned the key. The Jeep chugged, coughed…and started!
“Ha-ha!” Zach cried triumphantly. “It works!”
Zach gave his brother a manly hug and got behind the wheel.
“But you failed your driver’s test,” Gray said, sliding over into the passenger seat.
“Only the driving part,” Zach said.
As they made their way through the jungle, Claire and Owen heard the Jeep’s motor revving in the distance. “You hear that?” Owen said.
They ran toward the sound. When they reached the old garage, the Jeep was gone, but they saw fresh oil on the concrete. Leaning his rifle against the wall, Owen picked up Zach’s hoodie, left behind.
“This one of theirs?”
Claire nodded, thrilled to see the jacket. It meant her nephews were still alive.
“That road’ll take them straight to the resort. We have to get back,” Owen said, checking out the other Jurassic Park Jeep. “How did they get one of these running?”
THOMMMP! Dust crumbled from the ceiling. Owen grabbed Claire and pulled her behind the old Jeep.
THOMMMP! THOMMMP! Through the broken ceiling, they saw it.
The Indominus.
As they held their breath behind the Jeep, the beast pushed its head into the garage, sniffing. Owen wished his rifle weren’t across the room, leaning against the wall. Disliking the smell of dinosaur manure, the Indominus slowly pulled its head out. Claire exhaled, relieved.
CRASH! The decaying ceiling collapsed onto the Jeep. Claire and Owen crawled through the door into the visitors’ center, Owen grabbing his rifle as he went.
SMASH! The Indominus threw the old Jeep into the wall behind them, barely missing them.
They ran through the lobby of the visitors’ center. Behind them, they could hear the Indominus roaring as it wrecked the garage, searching for its prey.
Claire and Owen ran outside, tearing through a field of ferns. They jumped over a fallen tree and slid down an embankment. Then they lay still in the mud, listening, their eyes wide with fear. The thundering footsteps of the Indominus came closer and closer.
Silence.
Then…WHACK! The Indominus rammed into the fallen tree, sending it flying down the embankment straight toward Owen and Claire. They ducked as the tree crashed into a pair of trees and stuck there, missing their heads by inches.
The Indominus peered over the edge of the embankment, growling. Don’t come down here. Please don’t come down here, Claire thought desperately.
FRRRR! A helicopter buzzed overhead. The Indominus looked up, narrowed its eyes, and raced away.
Still shaking, Claire and Owen cautiously climbed the embankment and looked into the distance. The Indominus was barely visible, quickly disappearing into the jungle.
“Call ACU,” Owen said. “Tell them to send everything they’ve got.”
Lowery was watching the view from the helicopter’s camera in the control room when his phone rang. He saw it was Claire. “Where have you been?” he barked.
“We found her,” Claire whispered through the phone. “South of the Gyrosphere Valley, between the park and the aviary. Hurry—she’s moving fast.”
“Wait,” Lowery said, “are you following the dinosaur?”
“Yes,” Claire answered. “Get ACU out here. Real guns this time.”
“ACU’s airborne,” Lowery said. “They’ve commandeered the helicopter. Jurassic One is armed and dangerous.”
Inside the helicopter, Masrani concentrated on his flying. Behind him, two ACU troopers scanned the jungle with infrared binoculars.
Vivian’s voice came over a speaker. “We have eyes on the target, south of the aviary. Proceed and engage.”
Masrani’s face lit up. He was enjoying the adventure. “Look alive, boys!”
Owen and Claire emerged from the dense jungle onto a rocky cliff overlooking the Pteranodon Aviary, a colossal domed cage of steel and polycarbonate glass. Jurassic One flew right over their heads, hunting the Indominus.
The gunner inside the helicopter spotted something close to the aviary. “Ten o’clock,” he said, indicating its position. “By the birdcage.” The Indominus was at the base of the aviary, near where it met the mountain it was built into.
The Indominus was staring through the glass.
Chapter Eighteen
Getting his turret gun ready to shoot, the gunner waved to Masrani. “Swing it around. A little lower.”
Remembering his training, Masrani worked the controls, lowering the helicopter to give the gunner a clear shot.
“Nicely done,” the gunner said. “Hold her steady.”
Below them, the Indominus peered through the milky glass of the aviary at a Pteranodon and three Dimorphodons pecking at the skeleton of a tuna. Then she heard the chopper and craned her neck toward the sound.
She camouflaged against the jungle floor.
But the gunner had been warned about the Indominus’s ability to camouflage. He removed the thermal scope. Then he fired the turret gun, jerking back from the recoil.
BOOM! A tree trunk near the Indominus splintered in half. She roared at the chopper. Then she turned toward the base of the aviary to avoid the gunfire. To shelter herself, she ripped through the glass and metal, and crashed through the dome.
Meanwhile, in the control room, Lowery saw a red outline flash around the aviary on the master map of the park. A breach. He brought up a security camera feed from the aviary and zoomed in on the Indominus. “Oh, no. No, no, no, no!”
Hoskins watched over his shoulder. “Looks like the fox got into the henhouse.”
In the aviary, the Indominus roared at four Pteranodons on the ground. They hopped backward, spreading their wings aggressively. The Indominus sniffed and backed off, uninterested. She looked up, seeing the chopper’s shadow on the frosted glass roof.
The Indominus turned back toward the Pteranodons and roared again, herding them out the hole in the broken dome. They stumbled back through the opening and took flight.
In the helicopter, the gunner saw the flying reptiles screeching right toward them. “Bring it up! Up!”
Masrani pulled the helicopter up and away from the Pteranodons.
But not fast enough.
WHACK! A Pteranodon hit the helicopter’s spinning blade. And then another. The chopper jolted and spun. Jurassic One crashed through the roof of the aviary. Leaving a gaping hole in the ceiling, the helicopter plummeted to the ground and crumpled like tinfoil. Before it hit, the Indominus ducked out of the broken hole at the base of the dome.
On the cliff, Claire covered her mouth in horror as smoke billowed out of the aviary. “Simon…oh, god…”
The employees in the control room reacted to the disaster. No one could possibly have survived that crash. Her voice breaking, Vivian said, “We have a breach in the aviary.”
Lowery zoomed in his remote camera on the aviary and saw Pteranodons and Dimorphodons flying out of the hole in the roof.
The massive flock of flying reptiles streamed out of the aviary through the smoke, disoriented and furious.
Owen and Claire watched the sky fill with reptiles. “Get under the trees!” Owen shouted. “Move!”
They scrambled for cover, diving under the jungle trees. They looked up as the reptiles flew overhead, their shadows flicking on the ground. “They’re heading toward the resort,” Owen said.
In their Jurassic Park Jeep, Zach and Gray smashed through an old rusted gate and screeched onto a main access road. “We made it!” Zach said. “We’re safe now!”
But Gray looked up and saw eight massive Pteranodons flying above them. His mouth dropped open.
Two Jurassic World rangers stood guard at a security gate in the fortified wall protecting the resort from the rest of the island. One of them spotted the old Jurassic Park Jeep zoom up the road toward them. “That’s a first,” he said, never having seen one of the old Jeeps moving.
Zach and Gray screeched to a stop in front
of the wall. “Open it!” they screamed, pointing to the sky. “Open the gate!”
The rangers looked up. They saw a triangular formation of dozens of flying reptiles.
Claire and Owen emerged from the jungle and ran toward the aviary’s employee parking lot. Her phone rang. “Hello?”
It was Zara. She was racing down the stairs of the visitors’ center. “Claire! We spotted the boys on a surveillance camera feed! They’re approaching the West Gate! I’m headed there now!”
“Don’t let them out of your sight,” Claire said, relieved. “I’m on my way.”
Owen jumped onto a Jurassic World all-terrain vehicle. “Get on.”
Claire climbed on the ATV behind him. They sped off toward the resort.
Chapter Nineteen
Main Street was packed with angry, frustrated guests trying to entertain their children until the rides reopened. A new announcement came over the loudspeakers: “Ladies and gentlemen, due to a containment anomaly, all guests must take shelter immediately.”
A father tried to reassure his three kids. “Anomaly? What kind of dinosaur is that? Sounds exciting, huh?”
But then he looked up. The sky was full of Pteranodons and Dimorphodons. And they were flying straight toward the resort. Fast.
The winged reptiles circled over the resort like vultures, eyeing the panicking tourists below. The lead Pteranodon dove toward Main Street. The others followed.
Tourists ran for cover as the reptiles knocked over food carts and shade umbrellas with their long, leathery wings. In the petting zoo, a Pteranodon tried to carry off a baby Triceratops, but it proved too heavy.
Alarms blared and warnings flashed throughout the control room. The screens showed fleeing tourists and destructive flying reptiles. Lowery and Vivian watched the disaster in horror. Behind them, Hoskins stared at the monitors, his eyes wide. Suddenly he rushed out of the room.