“How are we going to get it to her?”
“I don’t know. Maybe push it out the door?”
“I don’t want them to step on it,” Sarah said.
“Who cares?” Malcolm said.
The tyrannosaur at the window made a series of soft grunts, followed by a long, menacing growl. It was the big female.
“Sarah—”
But she was already standing up, facing the tyrannosaur. She immediately began to speak, her voice soft, soothing. “It’s okay. . . . It’s all right now. . . . The baby is fine. . . . I’m just going to loosen these straps here. . . . You can watch me. . . .”
The head outside the window was so huge it filled the entire glass frame. Sarah saw the powerful muscles of the neck ripple beneath the skin. The jaws moved slightly. Her hands trembled as she undid the straps.
“That’s right. . . . Your baby is fine. . . . See, it’s just fine. . . .”
Crouched below at her feet, Malcolm whispered, “What are you doing?”
She did not change her soft, soothing tone. “I know it sounds crazy. . . . But it works with lions . . . sometimes. . . . There we are. . . . Your baby is free. . . .”
Sarah unwrapped the blanket, and took away the oxygen mask, all the while speaking calmly. “Now . . . all I have to do . . .” She lifted the baby up in her hands. “ . . . is get it to you. . . .”
Suddenly, the female’s head swung back, and smashed side-on into the glass, which shattered into a white spiderweb with a harsh crack. Sarah couldn’t see through it, but she saw a shadow move and then the second impact broke the glass free. Sarah dropped the baby on the tray and jumped back as the head crashed through, and pushed several feet into the trailer. Streams of blood ran down the adult’s snout, from the shards of glass. But after the initial violence it stopped, and became delicate in its movements. It sniffed the baby, starting at the head, moving slowly down the body. It sniffed the cast, too, and licked it briefly with its tongue. Finally, it rested its lower jaw lightly on the baby’s chest. It stayed that way for a long time, not moving. Only the eyes blinked slowly, staring at Sarah.
Malcolm, lying on the floor, saw blood dripping over the edge of the counter. He started to get up, but she pushed his head back down with her hand. She whispered, “Ssssh.”
“What’s happening?”
“It’s feeling the heartbeat.”
The tyrannosaur grunted, opened its mouth, and gently gripped the infant between its jaws. Then it moved slowly back, out through the broken glass, carrying the baby outside.
It set the baby on the ground, below their vision. It bent over, the head disappearing from view.
Malcolm whispered, “Did it wake up? Is the baby awake?”
“Ssssh!”
There was a repetitive slurping sound, coming from outside the trailer. It was interspersed with soft, guttural growls. Malcolm saw Sarah leaning forward, trying to see out the window. He whispered, “What’s happening?”
“She’s licking him. And pushing him with her snout.”
“And?”
“That’s all. She just keeps doing it.”
“What about the baby?”
“Nothing. It keeps rolling over, like it’s dead. How much morphine did we give him, the last time?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “How should I know?”
Malcolm remained on the floor, listening to the slurping and the growling. And finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he heard a soft high-pitched squeak.
“He’s waking up! Ian! The baby’s waking up!”
Malcolm crawled up on his knees, and looked out the window in time to see the adult carrying the baby in its jaws, walking away toward the perimeter of the clearing.
“What’s it doing?”
“I guess, taking it back.”
The second adult came into view, following the first. Malcolm and Sarah watched the two tyrannosaurs move away from the trailer, across the clearing.
Malcolm’s shoulders dropped. “That was close,” he said.
“Yes. That was close.” She sighed, and wiped blood from her forearm.
In the high hide, Thorne pressed the radio button. “Ian! Are you there? Ian!”
Kelly said, “Maybe they turned the radio off.”
A light rain began to fall, pattering on the metal roof of the shed. Levine was staring through his night-vision glasses toward the cliff. Lightning flashed, and Thorne said, “Can you see what the animals are doing?”
“I can,” Eddie said. “It looks . . . it looks like they’re going away.”
They all began to cheer.
Only Levine remained silent, watching through the glasses. Thorne turned to him. “Is that right, Richard? Is everything okay?”
“Actually, I think not,” Levine said. “I’m afraid we have made a serious error.”
Malcolm watched the retreating tyrannosaurs through the shattered glass window. Beside him, Sarah said nothing. She never took her eyes off the animals.
Rain started to fall; water dripped from the shards of glass. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and lightning cracked harshly down, illuminating the giant animals as they moved away.
At the nearest of the big trees, the adults stopped, and placed the baby on the ground.
“Why are they doing that?” Sarah said. “They should be going back to the nest.”
“I don’t know, maybe they’re—”
“Maybe the baby is dead,” she said.
But no, in the next flash of lightning they could see the baby moving. It was still alive. They could hear its high-pitched squeaking as one of the adults took the baby in its jaws, and gently placed it in a fork among the high branches of a tree.
“Oh no,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “This is wrong, Ian. This is all wrong.”
The female tyrannosaur remained with the baby for some moments, moving it, positioning it. Then the female turned, opened its jaws, and roared.
The male tyrannosaur roared in response.
And then both animals charged the trailer at full speed, racing across the clearing toward them.
“Oh, my God,” Sarah said.
“Brace yourself, Sarah!” Malcolm shouted. “It’s going to be bad!”
The impact was stunning, knocking them sideways through the air. Sarah screamed as she tumbled away. Malcolm hit his head and fell to the floor, seeing stars. Beneath him, the trailer rocked on its suspension, with a metallic scream. The tyrannosaurs roared, and slammed into it again.
He heard her shouting, “Ian! Ian!” and then the trailer crashed over onto its side. Malcolm turned away; glassware and lab equipment smashed all around him. When he looked up, everything was cockeyed. Directly above him was the broken window the tyrannosaur had smashed. Rain dripped through onto Malcolm’s face. Lightning flashed, and then he saw a big head peering down at him and snarling. He heard the harsh scratching of the tyrannosaurs’ claws on the metal side of the trailer, then the face disappeared. A moment later, he heard them bellowing as they pushed the trailer through the dirt.
He called “Sarah!” and he saw her, somewhere behind him, just as the world spun crazily again, and the trailer was upended with a crash. Now the trailer was lying on its roof; Malcolm started crawling along the ceiling, trying to reach Sarah. He looked up at the lab equipment, locked down on the lab benches, above his head. Liquid dripped onto him from a dozen sources. Something stung his shoulder. He heard a hiss, and realized it must be acid.
Somewhere in the darkness ahead, Sarah was groaning. Lightning flashed again, and Malcolm saw her, lying crumpled near the accordion junction that connected the two trailers. That junction was twisted almost shut, which must mean that the second trailer was still upright. It was crazy. Everything was crazy.
Outside, the tyrannosaurs roared, and he heard a muffled explosion. They were biting the tires. He thought: Too bad they don’t bite into the battery cable. That’d give them a real surprise.
Suddenly, the tyrannosa
urs slammed into the trailer again, knocking it laterally along the clearing. As soon as it stopped, they slammed again. The trailer lurched sideways.
By then he had reached Sarah. She threw her arms around him. “Ian,” she said. The whole left half of her face was dark. When the lightning flashed, he saw it was covered in blood.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said. With the back of her hand, she wiped blood out of her eye. “Can you see what it is?”
In another lightning flash, he saw the glint of a large chunk of glass, embedded near her hairline. He pulled it out, and pressed his hand against the sudden gush of blood. They were in the kitchen; he reached up toward the stove, and pulled down a dishtowel. He held it against her head, and watched the cloth darken.
“Does it hurt?”
“It’s okay.”
“I think it’s not too bad,” he said. Outside, the tyrannosaurs roared in the night.
“What are they doing?” she said. Her voice was dull.
The tyrannosaurs slammed into the trailer again. With this impact, the trailer seemed to move a lot more than before, sliding sideways—and down.
Sliding down.
“They’re pushing us,” he said.
“Where, Ian?”
“To the edge of the clearing.” The tyrannosaurs slammed again, and the trailer moved farther. “They’re pushing us over the cliff.” The cliff was five hundred feet of sheer rock, straight down to the valley below.
They’d never survive the fall.
She held the dishtowel with her own hand, pushing his hand away. “Do something.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said.
He moved away from her, bracing for the next impact. He didn’t know what to do. He had no idea what to do. The trailer was upside down, and everything was crazy. His shoulder burned and he could smell the acid eating his shirt. Or maybe it was his flesh. It burned a lot. The whole trailer was dark, all the power was out, there was glass everywhere, and he—
All the power was out.
Malcolm started to get to his feet, but the next impact flung him sideways, and he fell hard, slamming his head against the refrigerator. The door swung open and cartons of cold milk, glass bottles, crashed down on him. But there was no light from the refrigerator.
Because all the power was out.
Lying on his back, Malcolm looked out the window and saw the big foot of a tyrannosaur standing in the grass. Lightning flashed as the foot raised to kick, and immediately the trailer moved again, sliding easily now, metal screeching, and then tilting downward.
“Oh, shit,” he said.
“Ian . . .”
But it was too late, the whole trailer was groaning and creaking in metallic protest, and then Malcolm saw the far end sink down, as the trailer slid over the cliff. It started slowly, and then gathered speed, the ceiling they were lying on falling away, everything falling, Sarah falling, clutching at him as she went, and the tyrannosaurs bellowing in triumph.
We’re going over the cliff, he thought.
Not knowing what else to do, he grabbed the refrigerator door, hanging on tightly. The door was cold, and slippery with moisture. The trailer tilted and fell, the metal creaking loudly. Malcolm felt his hands sliding off the white enamel, sliding . . . sliding. . . . And then he lost his grip and fell free, dropping helplessly straight down toward the far end of the trailer. He saw the driver’s seat rushing up to him, but before he got there he struck something in the darkness, felt a moment of searing pain, and bent double.
And slowly, gently, everything around him went black.
Rain drummed on the roof of the shed, and poured in a continuous sheet down the sides. Levine wiped the lenses of his glasses, then lifted them again to his eyes. He stared at the cliffs in the darkness.
Arby said, “What is it? What happened?”
“I can’t tell,” Levine said. It was hard to see anything in this downpour. Moments before, they had watched in horror as the two tyrannosaurs pushed the trailer toward the cliff. The large animals had done it with ease: Levine guessed the tyrannosaurs had a combined mass of twenty tons, and the trailer only weighed about two tons. Once they had turned it over, it slid easily over the wet grass as they pushed it with their underbellies, and kicked it with their powerful leg muscles.
“Why are they doing that?” Thorne said to Levine, standing beside him.
“I suspect,” he said, “that we have changed the perceived territory.”
“How’s that again?”
“You have to remember what we’re dealing with,” Levine said. “Tyrannosaurs may show complex behavior, but most of it is instinctual. It’s unthinking behavior, wired in. And territoriality is part of that instinct. The tyrannosaurs mark territory, they defend territory. It’s not thinking behavior—they don’t have very large brains—but they do it from instinct. All instinctive behavior has triggers, releasers for the behavior. And I’m afraid that, by moving the baby, we redefined their territory to include the clearing where the baby was found. So now they’re going to defend their territory, by driving out the trailers.”
Then lightning flashed, and they all saw it in the same horrifying moment. The first trailer had gone over the cliff. It was hanging upside down in space, still connected by the accordion connector to the second trailer in the clearing above.
“That connector won’t hold!” Eddie shouted. “Not long!”
In the glare of lightning, they saw the tyrannosaurs up in the clearing. Methodically, they were now pushing the second trailer toward the cliff.
Thorne turned to Eddie. “I’m going!” he said.
“I’ll come with you!” Eddie said.
“No! Stay with the kids!”
“But you need—”
“Stay with the kids! We can’t leave them alone!”
“But Levine can—”
“No, you stay!” Thorne said. He was already climbing down the scaffolding, slippery in drenching rain, toward the Explorer below. He saw Kelly and Arby looking down at him. He jumped in the car, clicked on the ignition. He was already thinking of the distance to the clearing. It was three miles, maybe more. Even driving fast, it would take him seven or eight minutes to get there.
And by then it would be too late. He’d never make it in time.
But he had to try.
Sarah Harding heard a rhythmic creaking, and opened her eyes.
Everything was dark; she was disoriented. Then lightning flashed, and she stared straight down toward the valley, five hundred feet below. The view swung gently, back and forth.
She was looking through the windshield of the trailer, hanging down the side of the cliff. They were not falling any more. But they were hanging precariously in space.
She herself was lying across the driver’s seat, which had broken free of its mounting, and shattered a control panel in the wall; loose wires hung out, panel indicators flickered.
She was having trouble seeing, from the blood in her left eye. She pulled out the tail of her shirt, and ripped two strips of cloth. She folded one to make a compress, and pressed it against the gash on her forehead. Then she tied the second strip around her head, to hold the compress down. The pain was intense for a moment; she gritted her teeth until it faded.
From somewhere above her, she felt a thumping vibration. She turned, and looked straight up. She saw the whole length of the trailer, suspended vertically. Malcolm was ten feet above her, bent over a lab table, not moving.
“Ian,” she said.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t move.
The trailer shuddered again, creaking under a dull impact. And then Harding realized what was happening. The first trailer was dangling straight down the cliff face, swinging freely in space. But it was still connected to the second trailer, up on the clearing. The first trailer now hung from the accordion connector. And the tyrannosaurs, up above, were now pushing the second trailer off the cliff.
“Ian,” she said. “Ian.”
From the handle, she managed to grab the refrigerator door, putting her fingers through a wire shelf. She tested it, it held, and she gave it her full weight. She raised her leg, until she got her shoe into the refrigerator itself. Then she swung her body still higher, until she was standing up and could reach the handle to the oven.
It was like mountain climbing through a damn kitchen, she thought.
Soon she was alongside Malcolm. Lightning flashed again, and she saw his battered face. He groaned. She crawled over to him, trying to see how badly he was hurt.
“Ian,” she said.
His eyes were closed. “Sorry.”
“Never mind.”
“I got you into this.”
“Ian. Can you move? Are you okay?”
He groaned. “My leg.”
“Ian. We have to do something.”
From the clearing above them, she heard the tyrannosaurs roaring. It seemed to her that they had been roaring her whole life. The trailer lurched and swung; her legs slid out of the refrigerator and she was hanging free in space from the oven door. The far end of the trailer was some twenty feet below.
The oven handle wouldn’t hold her weight, she knew. Not for long.
Harding swung her legs, kicking wildly, finally touched something solid. She felt with her feet, then stepped down. Looking back, she saw she was standing on the side of the stainless-steel sink. She moved her foot and the faucet turned on, soaking her feet.
The tyrannosaurs roared, pounding hard. The trailer moved farther out into space, swinging.
“Ian. There’s not much time. We have to do something.”
He raised his head, stared at her with blank eyes. Lightning flashed again. His lips moved. “Power,” he said.
The Lost World Page 30