Chapter Five: Gollum Makes A Guest Appearance In The Form Of Eva
~~~
The jeep stopped along a stretch of road. The campers curiously followed Dave and Roxie into the jungle. Eva could smell it before they reached their destination— ammonia and rotten eggs. They came to a stop a dozen feet away from a large pile of dinosaur dung. Eva's nose wrinkled in disgust, and she opted to breathe through her mouth.
Roxie turned to Kenji and Darius, quickly singling them out. Smirking, she gave each boy a large shovel. "Enjoy cleaning this up, boys." Eva scrunched her face, her eyes watering, and she accidentally made eye contact with Kenji, and by precaution, took a step backwards.
Roxie turned to Eva and the others. "We're going to the genetics labs."
They migrated to the back of the truck bed without Darius and Kenji, and took their seats as Roxie and Dave climbed in the front. A moment later, they were continuing down the road.
Eva felt bad for Darius, sure, but seeing Kenji holding a shovel and staring at a pile of dung, tasted like sweet, sweet revenge to her.
"Ugh, I'm still dropping followers?" Eva turned her head to look at Brooklynn, who was hanging over the back end of the truck and staring at her phone with discontent. "'When are we gonna see cool stuff?' Chill, dude, I just got here."
"So, what's your next video?" Sammy asked. "Ooh, maybe there's baby dino eggs in the lab. Everyone loves a baby video," She suggested with a smile.
"Whatever it is, it'll be cool," Brooklynn said with determination.
From next to Eva, Ben started humming as he lathered his hands and arms with hand sanitizer. He only stopped when he caught Yasmina's eyes—the girl staring him down in just as much curious wonder as Eva.
"Sanitizer," he said, looking between them. "Who knows what kind of creepy dino goo is at that lab?" Ben picked up his bottle and lifted his leg, drizzling the sanitizer down it. "Gotta be ready for anything." He set down the bottle and began rubbing the liquid into his skin. "The world is a grab-bag of gross, and we're all just along for the moist, sticky roller coaster ride called life."
Yasmina blinked twice before picking up Ben's bottle of hand sanitizer and pouring some in her hand. She held it out, offering to Eva, who shook her head. Yasmina shrugged and set down the bottle.
"I've never gotten sick, so I trust my immune system to protect me," Eva shrugged.
"One of these days, you're gonna regret that statement," Ben replied.
~~~
"What's good Brooklanders?! Today, I'm coming to you from one of Jurassic World's coolest remote genetics labs!" Brooklynn had her phone up and recording, leading their small group into the modernized building.
They headed down a long corridor before stopping in front of two glass doors. Through the doors was a brightly lit room filled with workers in lab coats. There were about four different egg incubators with a dozen eggs each. A small robotic hand rotated the eggs whilst they bathed in a heat lamp. One of the walls was lined with square storage units that held chunks of amber with insects inside each one. One corner of the room had a set of monitors displaying some type of DNA. Everything looked quite expensive.
Eva kept her hands close to herself as she entered the room. If she were to break anything, hell, she may as well just not return home.
"It's so shiny in here!" Sammy exclaimed.
"This is a rare window into the park's inner workings," Roxie said. "Not just anyone can come here, you know."
"Yep, this is where the magic happens," Dave agreed. He turned his attention to an asian man with dark hair and a bitter face. "Doc Wu-Wu! Guess who's ready to have a blastocyst from the pastocyst? The mitosis with the mosisis! We're ready for some chromosomes, my bro-mosome. Wu, there it is!" Dr. Wu hurried away from him. "I can do more."
"Please don't," Roxie begged.
Eva turned to the others, who had spread through the lab. Brooklynn was videoing some woman as she worked, Sammy was playing with a chunk of amber, and Yaz and Ben were overlooking one of the egg incubators. Eva zoned in on a large eyeball sitting in a petri dish.
Fuck, she wanted to touch it, but her higher powers would not let her act on her impulse thoughts.
She noticed a few feet away, Brooklynn had begun to video Dr. Wu as he talked about the process of creating dinosaurs.
Sammy came up behind Eva, gasping. "Woah, eyeball! Ooh!" She ran up to the monitors on the wall, "Dr. Wu, what's that?"
"Tree frog DNA. Unfortunately, I—"
Sammy gasped again as a cart of bones was wheeled past them. "What's that?"
"Siberian mammoth remains extracted for—"
Sammy ran over to a window, pressing herself against it. "Ooh, what's down that hall?"
Eva bit her tongue, slowly backing away from Sammy.
Dr. Wu approached her, "My private office. It's restricted."
Eva gave one last curious glance to him before heading over to an egg incubator. One of the eggs began to rattle.
Dave called the others over, "Guys, come look! I think one of these eggs is about to hatch."
The other campers gathered around, watching as the egg developed a crack that ran around the top.
"That's not possible," Dr. Wu said. "That ankylosaurus has only been incubating for ten weeks."
The dinosaur pushed the bottom of the shell out, revealing a slimy tail.
"Ohhh! Oh, ew, ew, ew!" Ben cried. He jumped when a bit of the goop from the egg landed on his arm. "Ew, get it off me! Get it off me!"
Glistening blue-green emerged from the egg. The top of the shell still covered its head, and it rolled off the table and into Ben's hands. Ben removed the shell, revealing the cutest baby dinosaur Eva had ever seen. Seriously, her view for favorite dinosaur was being rivaled by this baby ankylosaurus.
"Cool! One of its head bumps is bigger than the other!" Brooklynn zoomed in on the baby dinosaur.
"Asymmetry? In my lab?" Dr. Wu approached them.
"She's fucking adorable!" Eva muttered in her Gollum voice.
"She's so... tiny."
"But she won't stay tiny for long, right?" Roxie asked Dr. Wu.
"That's the idea. All the dinosaurs go through an accelerated growth cycle. They're supposed to incubate for thirteen weeks with no noticeable defects, but apparently this one slipped through."
"Is it really a defect if she's fucking adorable?" Eva asked. She glanced up from the ankylosaurus to see Dr. Wu staring at her. "S-sir." Eva lowered her head.
Dr. Wu didn't respond. Instead, he turned away and focused on something else. Eva turned her attention back to the ankylosaurus. Ben happily guided her around the incubator, eyes never leaving her side. She rolled around on her back, trilling excitedly.
Eventually, Sammy moved to Eva's right, watching Ben and the ankylosaurus, too.
"Well, that's it, Ben," Roxie chuckled. "Looks like you live here now."
"Who knew you had it in you?" Eva laughed as Ben picked up the dinosaur again.
"Time for you all to leave." Dr. Wu appeared behind Eva, shoving Brooklynn into her. Eva caught her arm and kept her from falling. "Clearly, this group has no respect for my lab."
Ben held up the baby dinosaur, "But what about Bumpy?"
Dr. Wu took Bumpy from Ben's hands, "The asset will soon be released into a herd of ankylosauruses. Then she'll be their problem, just like you'll cease to be my problem when you leave."
"All right, bup-bup-bup-bup-bup. Hit the road!" Dave steered Ben towards the doors. "We are not wanted here."
Eva followed the others for the door. Ben stood back, eyes locked on Bumpy. Eva awkwardly put her arm on his shoulder, sighing. Ben nodded and slowly peeled away. They walked in silence back to the jeep.
Eva took a seat beside Ben and across from Yasmina. Ben curled into himself, refusing to speak, but then again, the car was rather quiet as Roxie started the jeep and took them back into the jungle. Brooklynn was back to mindlessly scrolling on her phone.
Eva caught Yasmina's gaze, and she wiggled her eyebrows. Yasmina snorted, looking away from her with a mocking eye roll.
The jeep rolled up on Kenji and Darius, who were gasping for breath. Eva narrowed her eyes, looking at the shovels laying on the ground in front of them. Behind them, the dung pile looked nearly the same size as it was before their trip to the genetics lab.
"Why are you two so out of breath?" Roxie questioned.
"Just doing the job we're told," Darius smiled, walking closer to the jeep. "How was the field trip?"
"Oh, well, um, you know, Ben fell in love with a dinosaur, and Super Star here got us booted from the lab," Yasmina relayed.
Brooklynn looked away from her phone, "That is not what happened—"
Sammy cut her off, "How'd poop patrol go?"
"Awesome," Kenji smirked. "You all should have seen how I owned—"
"This valuable experience!" Darius cut him off, glaring. Eva quirked an eyebrow. "Um, learned a lot about ourselves, and, uh... yep!"
Roxie sniffed, "Oh, well then, hit the showers! And maybe stay in there for a while?"
"Use soap," Ben added as Roxie pulled the jeep around. "Lots of soap!"
They left the boys behind.
~~~
That night, in the middle of a thrilling game of Cards Against Humanity amongst the girls, Kenji burst through the girls dorm room. Eva chucked the closest thing to her, which happened to be her stuffed blue dragon, Luca, straight at his head.
"We could have been naked, dumbass," She hollered. "What do you want?"
Kenji caught the dragon and gave it a look over before tossing it back. "Roxie set up the campfire on the patio. Darius is gonna tell dinosaur stories."
Sammy set down her cards top down, excitedly. "Ooh! I wanna join!"
"Sure, why not?" Eva said as she did the same with her cards, hauling herself to her feet. She set Luca back on her bed, and followed Kenji out the door. Brooklynn was close behind her as they filed into the lounge and out to the patio.
Sammy, Brooklynn and Kenji took a seat on the bench across from Darius. Ben glanced between Kenji and Eva before taking a seat on his other side. Eva shrugged, and took an empty bench all to herself.
The night had cooled the air immensely, but the warmth from the flickering flames put Eva at ease. She pulled her Rutherford hoodie closer around her body.
Darius cleared his throat, then flipped up his hood. "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..."
Eva breathed into her hands to keep warm. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Ben snuggling into Kenji's side.
"So much screaming..."
"How much screaming?" Ben asked.
"Shh," Kenji shushed him. "He's getting to the good part."
"The T. Rex stalked closer," Darius continued. He opened his arms to mimic his story, "Her jaws opened wide—"
A flash went off; everyone turned to Brookylnn. "For the vlog," she said in a duh tone. "Keep telling your little story."
Darius flicked his hood back up. "The T. Rex sta—"
"Dang!"
Eva groaned, her head rolling back.
"Out of space," Brooklynn complained. "Wait, I'm sorry, hold on. I just don't wanna delete my selfie on Everest, you know?"
"This is why you use the Cloud," Eva pointed out.
"Maybe I should start over," Darius suggested.
"No!" Ben shouted. "In fact, you can just stop."
"Dude, chill, he's not even telling the story right now," Kenji said to Ben, the latter of which was clinging to Kenji's side. Eva smiled at the small interaction from the other side of Ben. "And how is your grip this strong?!"
"So the T. Rex stalked closer—"
"Shouldn't we call Yasmina over?" Sammy asked, peering across the patio at Yasmina, who was standing by herself by the railing, holding some type of sketchbook. Eva didn't even realize she hadn't joined the group for the story. "I bet she'd love this story."
Eva sighed and laid down on the bench she had to herself. Darius followed suit on his bench, although he fell rather unceremoniously with a thunk.
"Maybe she wants to be by herself," Brooklynn suggested.
"I don't understand."
"You know how sometimes people just wanna be left alone?" Kenji said, glaring down at Ben, who was still grasping his arm.
Sammy laughed, "Kenji, you're hilarious. I think she's just shy and doesn't know how to make camp friends."
"Right..."
A loud crack of thunder boomed in the sky, bringing a torrential downpour. Eva quickly flicked up her hood, settling back into the bench as she continued to get soaked with rain. She smiled, her face covered by her hoodie as she listened to the other campers fleeing for the door inside.
"Well, that was a waste of time," Brooklynn shouted from further away.
Darius scoffed, "Thanks, Brooklynn."
"Hey," Eva said, not bothering to move. "I liked the story."
She could almost hear his smile, "Thanks! Are you coming inside?"
She shook her head, then realized he probably couldn't see her. "Nah, I love the rain."
"Okay. Want me to get you before curfew?"
"Sure..." she said unsure.
There was no response, but Eva heard him stand and walk away, leaving her alone in the rain.