CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE MAIN STREET MALEVOLENCE
When all the gritty attitude and bad posture was torn away, Zach was an older brother, hovering closely over Gray's shoulder. Four sets of heavily breathing lungs echoed in the underground shed, the tiny solar-powered lights flickering above us.
'Ladies and Gentlemen, due to a containment anomaly, all guests must take shelter immediately.'
'What the hell is going on?' Zach asks us.
'Ladies and Gentlemen, due to a containment anomaly, all guests must take shelter immediately.'
'The dimorphodons,' I reply, looking up at the cracks in the ceiling for any dust fall or rumbling from movement above. 'They'll be headed to the resort.'
I look across to Alex, wiping down my sleeves. 'They must've called an emergency evacuation along the main street for the Indominus.'
A look of realised terror dances over his eyes. 'All the warm bodies in one place,' he says.
I nod. Gray's upper lip quivered as he listened to the repetitive announcement. 'Where do we go?' he asks.
'The control room,' I say.
I hunch myself against the cool material of my jacket against my burning shoulder blades, leading the way with shaky legs, pining for the safety and strange tranquility of the control room rather than finding Owen and Claire. I was afraid, too. Incredibly afraid of what had happened to me, and worse, what was happening above this concrete corridor filled with the sounds scuffing boots and sneakers.
But, unlike this morning, nobody was standing at the door awaiting to be shown some ID from my behalf. No blue light was seeping out from the crack underneath the door. The glass was completely blacked out.
I hurried up the steps, frantically pounding on the surface. 'No, no, no, no, no...'
The glass rattled under my palm. 'Hello!' I call. 'Somebody!'
There was no response. The soundproof made it impossible to tell if footsteps were approaching or trailing by. 'This is Laura Hoskins! I have Claire Dearing's nephews!'
'Laura,' Alex coaxes.
'DAMMIT!' I yell into the surface, bringing down a hard, balled fist bundled with the last several hours, watching as it quivered across the glass.
I couldn't imagine the state of the room behind this door, or if everyone was huddled under their desks and locked cupboards. I didn't know what the protocol was for multiple containment anomalies. There couldn't possibly be a protocol because it was a reality that Claire would never allow under her watch. It was the kind of thing that didn't happen here. Jurassic World was safe. People couldn't face harm here. People came here for joy. People lived here. I lived here. Owen lived here. It was a safe place.
'Laura,' Alex repeats. All three boys, buried under layers of sweat, grime and specks of blood, looked to me for an answer.
And I didn't have one to give them.
The very thing I had never considered up until now slowly began to shift inside of me. Like I was being removed from the driver's seat, grabbed my the collar and dragged towards the back seat without resistance, watching whilst something else climbed over for the wheel in order to keep me cruising. It opened the glovebox, reaching for a manual I didn't know was stuffed in there. It flicked the pages open, and there were maps and words I knew, but didn't know if I could read.
Survival instinct, printed in bold at the top.
The dimly lit corridor ahead of us loomed, flickering and buzzing. 'We're gonna have to go through the Main Street to get to the innovation centre,' I tell them.
'You mean, go out there?' Zach gasps. 'No way, Laura. No. We could be killed.'
The mass of screaming was starting to seep through the walls, dripping down the walls and pooling around our ankles. It painted all kinds of images in my mind.
'It's the only other way in.'
Zach's eyes widen. 'No way,' he says again.
'She's right,' Alex says. He's nodding, contemplating with a gentle concern. 'We can't stay down here and risk being locked in with any further evacuation protocols.'
Zach is quiet for what feels like forever, Gray clutching onto his arm is silence, until he nods too.
'How do we even get there from here?' he asks me.
I move past them, walking in quick steps down the hallway for an emergency exit of some sort. The screams and commotion growing louder and louder strung me along to a marked-door up a small flight of stairs, the noise bleeding through the cracks.
I look at the Mitchell boys. What scared me maybe more than all three of their expressions combined was how much they depended on me to get through this. Even though I hadn't a clue, because I'd never been here before.
But I had to try.
'I don't know- I don't know how bad it is out there so, just run. Don't look around. Don't focus on anything. Run. Okay?' I say shakily. They nod at vigorously, and my heart breaks, knowing what I'm about to do might put pictures in their head to last a lifetime, never to be erased, even with time.
I look to Alex, determined not to let the boys out of his sight. 'Its probably gonna be 200 or so yards from this door,' I tell him.
He nodded again, licking his lips nervously. 'Easy.'
My hand was rigid over the handle, unable to turn it. I didn't know if I could. Once it was opened, we had to go through with it. And we'd come so far already. Too far to be stood between safety and a door.
'Ready?' I ask Alex.
'Do it,' he replies.
I swung open the door, white sunlight and scorching heat engulfing over us, so bright it filled every corner of my eyes before it settled.
It was a gut wrenching sea of people, smashing into bodies and walls, diving out of sight through shop front windows. Shards of glass, cotton stuffing, torn paper, shattered china and spilled beverages under the soles of so many open toed shoes. Everything was blurred. Nothing but colour and noise. Dozens of pteranodons, dimorphodons and pterodactyls swooping and picking at the very sight, some of them successfully nabbing ahold of a guest by the scruff of their shirt or a watch clad arm. Dresses and hats and faces pressed into sunglasses all melded into each other. To our right, a man lay against the concrete wall, screaming in agony at the blood pouring out of a slash in his left calf, saturating the ground beneath him. I felt myself immediately grabbing Gray, illogically hoping he couldn't see anything in front of us. Desperately hoping that it would fleet his mind the moment we were out of this.
'Over there!' I yell at them with a harsh point, letting the boys sprint in front of us. 'Run!'
The steps to the Innovation Centre gleamed in sunlight like golden bricks ahead of us. We were so close. So close to safety after this terrible day where danger was being stacked on top of us before we'd had a chance to outrun the last of it.
'BOYS!' piercing voice shrieks out through the commotion.
Zara Young was shuffling quickly towards us in stilettos and a grey blazer, waving her phone around frantically. 'Laura!'
Zach rolls his eyes, grabbing his brother's shoulder. 'Come on!' he yells back at us. We kept running against the forces of the main crowd, limbs shoving and poking and pulling us back.
Beside me, I felt Alex grasping onto the base of my jacket for something to hold onto.
I tore it away from the fabric, intertwining my shaking fingers with his. I gripped it until my knuckles were presumably white, and we kept running. Pushing people aside. Shielding the boys.
Zara was still flustering for our attention. 'Stop running!' she demands, pacing herself in her giant shoes. Surely by now she would have gathered where we were running towards, but there was no time to consider it.
A shadow slipped overhead of us. A giant pterodactyl was swooping in at a scarily fast incline, it's scaled wing just inches from brushing Zach's head, snapping it's jaws.
Zach came to a halt, pulling his brother back with him. 'Wait!' he yells.
Zara, now in front us all, sleek hair sprawled across her face, scoffs in hysteria. 'Well, don't just stand there! Wha—!'
A pteranodon latches itself onto Zara's shoulders with an unshakeable grasp, whisking her off the ground at light speed into the airborne crowd of pteranodons above our heads. The phone in her hand whirled to the ground, shattering on impact.
'ZARA!' I scream.
Zara's body soared into the air, flung lifelessly between three pteranodons, her bloodcurdling screams filling the sky. Her blazer flapped in the wind, necklace glintering around her neck as she cried out with everything in her. I couldn't un-see it. Couldn't dare to divert my gaze. It was branding itself into my brain.
She was still alive.
I look to Alex, both of us pushed closely together from the size of the crowd. 'Get the boys inside!' I tell him. 'Find Claire. Tell Owen to get back to the compound.'
Terror stabbed at his expression, eyes widening. 'It's too dangerous over that way!'
'I have to help her!'
'Laura!'
But I was already abruptly letting go of his hand, pointing at the steps. 'Go!' I yell, breaking off into a straining sprint.
'Laura!' I hear him call.
Zara was still in the sky, tossed around like Delta's stitched up rag ball. I was thundering past the crowd now, swiftly slipping through the cracks of activity. Slamming into people and shoving them aside, arms pumping as I ran faster to fight the pain spreading in my back with the more sweat that crept in. Her body was eventually let go between the grasp of talons, plummeting into the mosasaur lagoon with a shattering bang, water rocketing into the sky.
The animals dipped their beaks downwards, soaring down and beginning their search for her amongst the water. I knew these things. They would nab and bite quickly to suffice the hunger in their stomach, only intensified the longer than were kept from a meal. I felt the image of crimson trailing out of Zara's body under the water stick to me like a bloodstain itself. If she had even survived that fall anyway.
I look for the best possible gap in the electric fence to dive into the lagoon. There was a space in the second row big enough for my nimble frame.
My left foot had just slid through the gap when surface began to ripple, a patch of dark blue plummeting towards the surface and smashing through the blue topped with small specks of foam, stretching as far as it could into the sky. It was huge. Absolutely ginormous. Water dripping down from its fins and scales and beady amber eyes. Onlookers behind me had found a brief pocket of time to observe, filling their silence with screams. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen it for myself in person.
Our mosasaurus.
Eighty eight teeth these things were supposed to have. Eighty eight filed, yellow stained teeth closing in on the thing that had ahold of Zara with a tremendous clamp. The sound rattled amongst the other animals, fleeing the creature falling back into the lagoon. It smacked back down with a horribly deep plummet, water enveloping it and surging its way towards me in choppy waves. My hands clamp stiffly over my mouth, a gasp of terror echoing underneath them.
'Laura!'
Something was forcibly, desperately tugging me away from the fence. Someone. Alex. Hair flat and dripping with sweat like he was in the jungle. The boys were right behind him. There was a new scratch above his right eyebrow glimmering with blood. People were still screaming, glass was still shattering.
'Zara,' I'm saying to him, quivering tormentedly.
'We have to get indoors,' he replies shakily, calmly. 'Can you do that?'
I didn't know if I said anything in response, but I had nodded all the same. He was clasping my hand again, the warmth almost searing into my palm.
'Get inside!' he was yelling to the boys, shoving them ahead of us.
Hand in hand, we were sprinting around the corner of the street for the nearest building. I watched as someone slammed the door of a kiosk shop closed, children peaking out from gaps in shattered windows as they watched the very things they'd come to visit circle them as prey.
In my peripheral, a ball of emerald was rapidly hurdling towards us. 'LOOK OUT!' I scream, grabbing Alex's arm as I threw us down onto the concrete. We fell with a winding thud, my chin scraping against the ground. The piercing sound of shattering glass rang in my ears, a abstract shard of something slicing past my left cheek. I was picking myself up before I'd even welcomed a new breath.
Zach and Gray sat breathlessly from a lifeless pterodactyl that rolled down onto the ground, it's beak pointing inches away from Gray's face.
'Boys!' I was stumbling towards them, holding my stinging cheek, the scratch on my back practically howling for it to be attended to with proper care.
Gray was scrambling to his feet in a sprint, engulfing me in a death grip embrace. I hug him back, tightly, patting his matted hair with reassurance. Alex and Zach were standing over the body of the animal in alarm.
'They're dropping dead!' Zach shrieks.
Above us, more balls of emerald and maroon were dropping lifelessly from the sky. The animals would cry out, and plummet, and roll across the street. It felt wrong for it to bring me relief.
'They're tranquillising them,' I yell back over the noise. 'But we still need to get indoors!'
'IMAX theatre,' Alex urges. 'Go!'
But the boys didn't run with Alex and I. They were both silently still, watching something. A ludicrous idea given the eruption of death-defying activity surrounding them.
'Boys!' I call.
'Is that...?'
'What?!' I'm pleading to Zach.
The teenager was glaring across to somebody in the crowd.
I scan the street for something I'd never thought I'd ever see. Something that, amongst these thousands of people in a horrific accident involving dozens of our animals eyeing them off like a Sunday roast, was the most abnormal, terrifying circumstance of them all.
Claire Dearing. Kissing Owen Grady.
They lips were pressed against one another among the crowds of people still running through the main street to their safety. A much different Claire, with wavy hair, smeared makeup, and a ripped, unraveled suit dress covered in mud, eventually parted herself from Owen, the two of them gazing at each other whimsically. Whatever had happened, it must have been bad. Like, life threateningly bad.
Before anything could be said, the redhead begun to remember where she was, glancing at her surroundings, attention zoning in like a magnet the second she saw Zach and Gray with eyes as wide as I'd ever seen them. Her face completely crumpled with relief, shoulders relaxing, tears filling her eyes. 'ZACH!' she calls. 'GRAY!'
She sprints towards the boys, hair sticking to the sweat on her cheeks, wiping her sobs shakily with the backs of her hand. She grabs Gray's head between her fingers.
'My god! Thank God! Thank God!' she blubbers, cradling Gray's confused, mildly appalled face. 'What happened? What is this? Are you okay?'
The boys didn't say anything back to that. I couldn't say I blamed them. 'Where did you go?!' she cries. 'Why didn't you come back?! I was so worried about you!'
Was she being serious? I couldn't tell. I didn't know if I should. Grief and survival did strange things to the human brain. Unfiltered thoughts, sifting for what was most important.
'Who's that?' interrupts Zach. Claire turned to face the way she came, sniffling and panting. Owen stood behind her, carrying a tranquilizer gun, smiling with thinly pursed lips. 'We work together,' she tells him.
Owen nods at us all. 'We gotta go,' he warns.
Claire turned to the boys, wrapping her arms around their shoulders, ushering them forward. "C'mon! C'mon!l she fusses.
I was running towards Owen. Feeling my legs scurrying towards the safety of someone who cared for me like they did when I was a girl. The weight of today had rolled out like a carpet in front of me, letting me jump onto him with saddened, confused, overwhelmed relief. He dropped the tranquilizer still slung around him and enveloped me into an embrace, muscular figure crushing my windpipe and shielding out everything around us. In the smallest moment that passed fast enough to know if it had ever happened, I wished he would never let go. I had needed him today. More than anything else.
'Jesus, would it kill you to carry a monitor with you every once in a while?' I hiss into his ear. He snickers, peeling away from me.
'Are you okay?' he asks concerningly.
I wasn't. I nodded. His worried eyes were flickering over the flushed bruises on my face and fresh cuts on my cheeks and chin, and I was so relieved to see him that I hadn't paid any attention to how badly my back had burned with his hug. The pain had tingled in my kneecaps for carrying the weight of it, tears prickling in the corner of my eyes.
lWe gotta get back to those raptors,' I say breathlessly, exhaling the comment I had been desperately holding in for him for hours. 'It's him. My Uncle. He had this whole Ingen set up with him, and all his people. I have no idea what they were planning, but it didn't sound good, and they needed to get rid of us to be able to do it.' I suck in another breath. 'And I don't think Masrani was behind the inspections we've been having.'
He was nodding, a part of him already seeing this coming; already knowing his steps before he took them, tranquilliser gripped in his hands as he lead the way. Alex was beside me now, still out of breath from our fall. 'We won't know now anyway,' Owen says.
I scrunch my face together in confusion. Owen seemed to realise that he'd been too vague, a little bout of sadness crossing over his face. 'Masrani was killed in a chopper accident at the Aviary,' he tells me.
I felt a hand going up to my mouth again, stifling a gasp. If I was holding onto a cliff face of certainty that Nublar would be able to see today through unscathed, another finger had just fallen free.
Owen nodded sadly. 'Crashed a whole straight through the glass so these things could fly out.'
He looked back up at the sky, growing lesser and lesser with creatures, but still dangerous none the less. 'We gotta get out of here," he urges to us both. 'C'mon.'
All six of us slip down a side street beside the visual theatre, hurrying down a path and slipping out of an emergency gate, the sound of screaming ringing in my ears. Claire was beside me struggling to hear the conversation she was having on the phone. I thought of Zara. I saw the wings and blazer and thrashing water. I imagine the Aviary shattered, up in plumes of dark smoke and raging fire, a chopper wreck lying on the charred grass below. The screaming and running rose in my chest again.
'What do you mean use the raptors?!' Claire yelled into the phone, cupping it closely to her ear.
Owen and I snap our heads towards her. I felt my stomach drop. It was plummeting harder than any fall I'd had today, hurting in places that I didn't think could be touched after everything today.
A cargo helicopter roared over the resort, gliding past the top of the Innovation Centre. Ingen branded.
Victor Hoskins had ahold of our raptors.
'Son of a bitch!' Owen curses to the sky.
'You shouldn't say bitch,' corrects Gray.
The massive gate behind us was creaking to life, the sound of something trying to push it open. Everyone around us began running faster, kicking and screaming.
'Take the kids,' Owen warns me. 'Get them someplace safe.'
I grab Zach and Gray by the shoulders, Alex on my heels. 'Go, go, go!'
Hundreds of terrified guests barricaded themselves through the gate, a giant pteranodon hovering low over the crowd. Owen had launched himself into the drivers side of an empty Mercedes behind us, the boys already scrambling inside after him like a magnet. I climb inside, Owen reversing away from the crowd before I'd even shut the door. The boys were screaming from behind the seat.
'GO, DRIVE!'
'YOU GOT THIS! YOU GOT THIS!'
'GO OWEN!'
He swerves the car into an alleyway without a moment's hesitation, milliseconds from being trampled by the crowds of screaming people holding onto hats and handbags. All of us collapse back in relief, squashed together in the back seat. I unravelled my hand from Alex's arm, running it through my tangled hair as I gasp for my breath. Humidity was steaming the windows of my lungs, not doing a thing to relief any of the pain. The crowds of people kept thundering past in despair.
'This does not feel safe!' says Zach.
'Can we stay with you?!' Gray asks hopelessly.
Claire turns to face him with a stern expression, eyeliner pooling under her eyes. 'I am never leaving you for as long as-'
'No no no, him!' say her nephews in unison, Gray latching a tiny hand onto Owen's strong shoulder.
Claire, stunned, makes eye contact with Owen from the passenger side. Zach and Gray look at her with a sense of awkwardness. 'Yeah, definitely him,' Gray mumbles. 'And uh, Laura and Alex, too.'