Jurassic Park: A Novel (28 page)

“Jesus Christ,” he said again.

“Bad language,” Lex said, wagging her finger at him.

Tim heard the sound of a door opening, and he swung his head away from the tyrannosaur—the night-vision goggles streaked laterally—in time to see Ed Regis stepping out through the open door, ducking his head in the rain.

“Hey,” Lex said, “where are you going?”

Ed Regis just turned and ran in the opposite direction from the tyrannosaur, disappearing into the woods. The door to the Land Cruiser hung open; the paneling was getting wet.

“He left!” Lex said. “Where did he go? He left us alone!”

“Shut the door,” Tim said, but she had started to scream, “He left us! He left us!”

“Tim, what’s going on?” It was Dr. Grant, on the radio. “Tim?”

Tim leaned forward and tried to shut the door. From the backseat, he couldn’t reach the handle. He looked back at the tyrannosaur
as lightning flashed again, momentarily silhouetting the huge black shape against the white-flaring sky.

“Tim, what’s happening?”

“He left us, he left us!”

Tim blinked to recover his vision. When he looked again, the tyrannosaur was standing there, exactly as before, motionless and huge. Rain dripped from its jaws. The forelimb gripped the fence.…

And then Tim realized: the tyrannosaur was holding on to the fence!

The fence wasn’t electrified any more!

“Lex,
close the door!
”

The radio crackled. “Tim!”

“I’m here, Dr. Grant.”

“What’s going on?”

“Regis ran away,” Tim said.

“He
what
?”

“He ran away. I think he saw that the fence isn’t electrified,” Tim said.

“The fence isn’t electrified?” Malcolm said, over the radio. “Did he say the fence isn’t electrified?”

“Lex,” Tim said,
“close the door.”
But Lex was screaming, “He left us, he left us!” in a steady, monotonous wail, and there was nothing for Tim to do but climb out of the back door, into the slashing rain, and shut the door for her. Thunder rumbled, and the lightning flashed again. Tim looked up and saw the tyrannosaur crashing down the cyclone fence with a giant hind limb.

“Timmy!”

He jumped back in and slammed the door, the sound lost in the thunderclap.

The radio: “Tim! Are you there?”

He grabbed the radio. “I’m here.” He turned to Lex. “Lock the doors. Get in the middle of the car. And
shut up.
”

Outside, the tyrannosaur rolled its head and took an awkward step forward. The claws of its feet had caught in the grid of the flattened fence. Lex saw the animal finally, and became silent, still. She watched with wide eyes.

Radio crackle. “Tim.”

“Yes, Dr. Grant.”

“Stay in the car. Stay down. Be quiet. Don’t move, and don’t make noise.”

“Okay.”

“You should be all right. I don’t think it can open the car.”

“Okay.”

“Just stay quiet, so you don’t arouse its attention any more than necessary.”

“Okay.” Tim clicked the radio off. “You hear that, Lex?”

His sister nodded, silently. She never took her eyes off the dinosaur. The tyrannosaur roared. In the glare of lightning, they saw it pull free of the fence and take a bounding step forward.

Now it was standing between the two cars. Tim couldn’t see Dr. Grant’s car any more, because the huge body blocked his view. The rain ran in rivulets down the pebbled skin of the muscular hind legs. He couldn’t see the animal’s head, which was high above the roofline.

The tyrannosaur moved around the side of their car. It went to the very spot where Tim had gotten out of the car. Where Ed Regis had gotten out of the car. The animal paused there. The big head ducked down, toward the mud.

Tim looked back at Dr. Grant and Dr. Malcolm in the rear car. Their faces were tense as they stared forward through the windshield.

The huge head raised back up, jaws open, and then stopped by the side windows. In the glare of lightning, they saw the beady, expressionless reptile eye moving in the socket.

It was looking in the car.

His sister’s breath came in ragged, frightened gasps. He reached out and squeezed her arm, hoping she would stay quiet. The dinosaur continued to stare for a long time through the side window. Perhaps the dinosaur couldn’t really see them, he thought. Finally the head lifted up, out of view again.

“Timmy …” Lex whispered.

“It’s okay,” Tim whispered. “I don’t think it saw us.”

He was looking back toward Dr. Grant when a jolting impact rocked the Land Cruiser and shattered the windshield in a spiderweb as the tyrannosaur’s head crashed against the hood of the Land Cruiser. Tim was knocked flat on the seat. The night-vision goggles slid off his forehead.

He got back up quickly, blinking in the darkness, his mouth warm with blood.

“Lex?”

He couldn’t see his sister anywhere.

The tyrannosaur stood near the front of the Land Cruiser, its chest moving as it breathed, the forelimbs making clawing movements in the air.

“Lex!” Tim whispered. Then he heard her groan. She was lying somewhere on the floor under the front seat.

Then the huge head came down, entirely blocking the shattered windshield. The tyrannosaur banged again on the front hood of the Land Cruiser. Tim grabbed the seat as the car rocked on its wheels. The tyrannosaur banged down twice more, denting the metal.

Then it moved around the side of the car. The big raised tail blocked his view out of all the side windows. At the back, the animal snorted, a deep rumbling growl that blended with the thunder. It sank its jaws into the spare tire mounted on the back of the Land Cruiser and, in a single head shake, tore it away. The rear of the car lifted into the air for a moment; then it thumped down with a muddy splash.

“Tim!” Dr. Grant said. “Tim, are you there?”

Tim grabbed the radio. “We’re okay,” he said. There was a shrill metallic scrape as claws raked the roof of the car. Tim’s heart was pounding in his chest. He couldn’t see anything out of the windows on the right side except pebbled leathery flesh. The tyrannosaur was leaning against the car, which rocked back and forth with each breath, the springs and metal creaking loudly.

Lex groaned again. Tim put down the radio, and started to crawl over into the front seat. The tyrannosaur roared and the metal roof dented downward. Tim felt a sharp pain in his head and tumbled to the floor, onto the transmission hump. He found himself lying alongside Lex, and he was shocked to see that the whole side of her head was covered in blood. She looked unconscious.

There was another jolting impact, and pieces of glass fell all around him. Tim felt rain. He looked up and saw that the front windshield had broken out. There was just a jagged rim of glass and, beyond, the big head of the dinosaur.

Looking down at him.

Tim felt a sudden chill and then the head rushed forward toward him, the jaws open. There was the squeal of metal against teeth,
and he felt the hot stinking breath of the animal and a thick tongue stuck into the car through the windshield opening. The tongue slapped wetly around inside the car—he felt the hot lather of dinosaur saliva—and the tyrannosaur roared—a deafening sound inside the car—

The head pulled away abruptly.

Tim scrambled up, avoiding the dent in the roof. There was still room to sit on the front seat by the passenger door. The tyrannosaur stood in the rain near the front fender. It seemed confused by what had happened to it. Blood dripped freely from its jaws.

The tyrannosaur looked at Tim, cocking its head to stare with one big eye. The head moved close to the car, sideways, and peered in. Blood spattered on the dented hood of the Land Cruiser, mixing with the rain.

It can’t get to me, Tim thought. It’s too big.

Then the head pulled away, and in the flare of lightning he saw the hind leg lift up. And the world tilted crazily as the Land Cruiser slammed over on its side, the windows splatting in the mud. He saw Lex fall helplessly against the side window, and he fell down beside her, banging his head. Tim felt dizzy. Then the tyrannosaur’s jaws clamped onto the window frame, and the whole Land Cruiser was lifted up into the air, and shaken.

“Timmy!” Lex shrieked, so near to his ear that it hurt. She was suddenly awake, and he grabbed her as the tyrannosaur crashed the car down again. Tim felt a stabbing pain in his side, and his sister fell on top of him. The car went up again, tilting crazily. Lex shouted
“Timmy!”
and he saw the door give way beneath her, and she fell out of the car into the mud, but Tim couldn’t answer, because in the next instant everything swung crazily—he saw the trunks of the palm trees sliding downward past him—moving sideways through the air—he glimpsed the ground very far below—the hot roar of the tyrannosaur—the blazing eye—the tops of the palm trees—

And then, with a metallic scraping shriek, the car fell from the tyrannosaur’s jaws, a sickening fall, and Tim’s stomach heaved in the moment before the world became totally black, and silent.

In the other car, Malcolm gasped. “Jesus! What happened to the car?”

Grant blinked his eyes as the lightning faded.

The other car was gone.

Grant couldn’t believe it. He peered forward, trying to see through the rain-streaked windshield. The dinosaur’s body was so large, it was probably just blocking—

No. In another flash of lightning, he saw clearly: the car was gone.

“What happened?” Malcolm said.

“I don’t know.”

Faintly, over the rain, Grant heard the sound of the little girl screaming. The dinosaur was standing in darkness on the road up ahead, but they could see well enough to know that it was bending over now, sniffing the ground.

Or eating something on the ground.

“Can you see?” Malcolm said, squinting.

“Not much, no,” Grant said. The rain pounded on the roof of the car. He listened for the little girl, but he didn’t hear her any more. The two men sat in the car, listening.

“Was it the girl?” Malcolm said, finally. “It sounded like the girl.”

“It did, yes.”

“Was it?”

“I don’t know,” Grant said. He felt a seeping fatigue overtake him. Blurred through the rainy windshield, the dinosaur was coming toward their car. Slow, ominous strides, coming right toward them.

Malcolm said, “You know, at times like this one feels, well, perhaps extinct animals
should
be left extinct. Don’t you have that feeling now?”

“Yes,” Grant said. He was feeling his heart pounding.

“Umm. Do you, ah, have any suggestions about what we do now?”

“I can’t think of a thing,” Grant said.

Malcolm twisted the handle, kicked open the door, and ran. But even as he did, Grant could see he was too late, the tyrannosaur too close. There was another crack of lightning, and in that instant of glaring white light, Grant watched in horror as the tyrannosaur roared, and leapt forward.

Grant was not clear about exactly what happened next. Malcolm was running, his feet splashing in the mud. The tyrannosaur
bounded alongside him and ducked its massive head, and Malcolm was tossed into the air like a small doll.

By then Grant was out of the car, too, feeling the cold rain slashing his face and body. The tyrannosaur had turned its back to him, the huge tail swinging through the air. Grant was tensing to run for the woods when suddenly the tyrannosaur spun back to face him, and roared.

Grant froze.

He was standing beside the passenger door of the Land Cruiser, drenched in rain. He was completely exposed, the tyrannosaur no more than eight feet away. The big animal roared again. At so close a range the sound was terrifyingly loud. Grant felt himself shaking with cold and fright. He pressed his trembling hands against the metal of the door panel to steady them.

The tyrannosaur roared once more, but it did not attack. It cocked its head, and looked with first one eye, then the other, at the Land Cruiser. And it did nothing.

It just stood there.

What was going on?

The powerful jaws opened and closed. The tyrannosaur bellowed angrily, and then the big hind leg came up and crashed down on the roof of the car; the claws slid off with a metal screech, barely missing Grant as he stood there, still unmoving.

The foot splashed in the mud. The head ducked down in a slow arc, and the animal inspected the car, snorting. It peered into the front windshield. Then, moving toward the rear, it banged the passenger door shut, and moved right toward Grant as he stood there. Grant was dizzy with fear, his heart pounding inside his chest. With the animal so close, he could smell the rotten flesh in the mouth, the sweetish blood-smell, the sickening stench of the carnivore.…

He tensed his body, awaiting the inevitable.

The big head slid past him, toward the rear of the car. Grant blinked.

What had happened?

Was it possible the tyrannosaur hadn’t seen him? It seemed as if it hadn’t. But how could that be? Grant looked back to see the animal sniffing the rear-mounted tire. It nudged the tire with its snout, and then the head swung back. Again it approached Grant.

This time the animal stopped, the black flaring nostrils just inches away. Grant felt the animal’s startling hot breath on his face. But
the tyrannosaur wasn’t sniffing like a dog. It was just breathing, and if anything it seemed puzzled.

No, the tyrannosaur couldn’t see him. Not if he stood motionless. And in a detached academic corner of his mind he found an explanation for that, a reason why—

The jaws opened before him, the massive head raised up. Grant squeezed his fists together, and bit his lip, trying desperately to remain motionless, to make no sound.

The tyrannosaur bellowed in the night air.

But by now Grant was beginning to understand. The animal couldn’t see him, but it suspected he was there, somewhere, and was trying with its bellowing to frighten Grant into some revealing movement. So long as he stood his ground, Grant realized, he was invisible.

In a final gesture of frustration, the big hind leg lifted up and kicked the Land Cruiser over, and Grant felt searing pain and the surprising sensation of his own body flying through the air. It seemed to be happening very slowly, and he had plenty of time to feel the world turn colder, and watch the ground rush up to strike him in the face.