Jurassic Park: A Novel (29 page)

“Oh damn,” Harding said. “Will you look at that.”

They were sitting in Harding’s gasoline-powered Jeep, staring forward past the
flick flick
of the windshield wipers. In the yellow flare of the headlamps, a big fallen tree blocked the road.

“Must have been the lightning,” Gennaro said. “Hell of a tree.”

“We can’t get past it,” Harding said. “I better tell Arnold in control.” He picked up the radio and twisted the channel dial. “Hello, John. Are you there, John?”

There was nothing but steady hissing static. “I don’t understand,” he said. “The radio lines seem to be down.”

“It must be the storm,” Gennaro said.

“I suppose,” Harding said.

“Try the Land Cruisers,” Ellie said.

Harding opened the other channels, but there was no answer.

“Nothing,” he said. “They’re probably back to camp by now, and outside the range of our little set. In any case, I don’t think we should stay here. It’ll be hours before Maintenance gets a crew out here to move that tree.”

He turned the radio off, and put the Jeep into reverse.

“What’re you going to do?” Ellie said.

“Go back to the turnout, and get onto the maintenance road. Fortunately there’s a second road system,” Harding explained. “We have one road for visitors, and a second road for animal handlers and feed trucks and so on. We’ll drive back on that maintenance road. It’s a little longer. And not so scenic. But you may find it interesting. If the rain lets up, we’ll get a glimpse of some of the animals at night. We should be back in thirty, forty minutes,” Harding said. “If I don’t get lost.”

He turned the Jeep around in the night, and headed south again.

Lightning flashed, and every monitor in the control room went black. Arnold sat forward, his body rigid and tense. Jesus, not now. Not now. That was all he needed—to have everything go out now in the storm. All the main power circuits were surge-protected, of course, but Arnold wasn’t sure about the modems Nedry was using for his data transmission. Most people didn’t know it was possible to blow an entire system through a modem—the lightning pulse climbed back into the computer through the telephone line, and—bang!—no more motherboard. No more RAM. No more file server. No more computer.

The screens flickered. And then, one by one, they came back on.

Arnold sighed, and collapsed back in his chair.

He wondered again where Nedry had gone. Five minutes ago, he’d sent guards to search the building for him. The fat bastard was probably in the bathroom reading a comic book. But the guards hadn’t come back, and they hadn’t called in.

Five minutes. If Nedry was in the building, they should have found him by now.

“Somebody took the damned Jeep,” Muldoon said as he came back in the room. “Have you talked to the Land Cruisers yet?”

“Can’t raise them on the radio,” Arnold said, “I have to use this, because the main board is down. It’s weak, but it ought to work. I’ve tried on all six channels. I know they have radios in the cars, but they’re not answering.”

“That’s not good,” Muldoon said.

“If you want to go out there, take one of the maintenance vehicles.”

“I would,” Muldoon said, “but they’re all in the east garage, more than a mile from here. Where’s Harding?”

“I assume he’s on his way back.”

“Then he’ll pick up the people in the Land Cruisers on his way.”

“I assume so.”

“Anybody tell Hammond the kids aren’t back yet?”

“Hell no,” Arnold said. “I don’t want that son of a bitch running around here, screaming at me. Everything’s all right, for the moment. The Land Cruisers are just stuck in the rain. They can sit a while, until Harding brings them back. Or until we find Nedry, and make that little bastard turn the systems back on.”

“You can’t get them back on?” Muldoon said.

Arnold shook his head. “I’ve been trying. But Nedry’s done something to the system. I can’t figure out what, but if I have to go into the code itself, that’ll take hours. We need Nedry. We’ve got to find the son of a bitch right away.”

The sign said
ELECTRIFIED FENCE
10,000 VOLTS DO NOT TOUCH
, but Nedry opened it with his bare hand, and unlocked the gate, swinging it wide. He went back to the Jeep, drove through the gate, and then walked back to close it behind him.

Now he was inside the park itself, no more than a mile from the east dock. He stepped on the accelerator and hunched forward over the steering wheel, peering through the rain-slashed windshield as
he drove the Jeep down the narrow road. He was driving fast—too fast—but he had to keep to his timetable. He was surrounded on all sides by black jungle, but soon he should be able to see the beach and the ocean off to his left.

This damned storm, he thought. It might screw up everything. Because if Dodgson’s boat wasn’t waiting for him at the east dock when Nedry got there, the whole plan would be ruined. Nedry couldn’t wait very long, or he would be missed back at the control room. The whole idea behind the plan was that he could drive to the east dock, drop off the embryos, and be back in a few minutes, before anyone noticed. It was a good plan, a clever plan. Nedry’d worked on it carefully, refining every detail. This plan was going to make him a million and a half dollars, one point five meg. That was ten years of income in a single tax-free shot, and it was going to change his life. Nedry’d been damned careful, even to the point of making Dodgson meet him in the San Francisco Airport at the last minute with an excuse about wanting to see the money. Actually, Nedry wanted to record his conversation with Dodgson, and mention him by name on the tape. Just so that Dodgson wouldn’t forget he owed the rest of the money, Nedry was including a copy of the tape with the embryos. In short, Nedry had thought of everything.

Except this damned storm.

Something dashed across the road, a white flash in his headlights. It looked like a large rat. It scurried into the underbrush, dragging a fat tail. Possum. Amazing that a possum could survive here. You’d think the dinosaurs would get an animal like that.

Where was the damned dock?

He was driving fast, and he’d already been gone five minutes. He should have reached the east dock by now. Had he taken a wrong turn? He didn’t think so. He hadn’t seen any forks in the road at all.

Then where was the dock?

It was a shock when he came around a corner and saw that the road terminated in a gray concrete barrier, six feet tall and streaked dark with rain. He slammed on the brakes, and the Jeep fishtailed, losing traction in an end-to-end spin, and for a horrified moment he thought he was going to smash into the barrier—he knew he was going to smash—and he spun the wheel frantically, and the Jeep slid to a stop, the headlamps just a foot from the concrete wall.

He paused there, listening to the rhythmic flick of the wipers. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He looked back down the road. He’d obviously taken a wrong turn somewhere. He could retrace his steps, but that would take too long.

He’d better try and find out where the hell he was.

He got out of the Jeep, feeling heavy raindrops spatter his head. It was a real tropical storm, raining so hard that it hurt. He glanced at his watch, pushing the button to illuminate the digital dial. Six minutes gone. Where the hell was he? He walked around the concrete barrier and on the other side, along with the rain, he heard the sound of gurgling water. Could it be the ocean? Nedry hurried forward, his eyes adjusting to the darkness as he went. Dense jungle on all sides. Raindrops slapping on the leaves.

The gurgling sound became louder, drawing him forward, and suddenly he came out of the foliage and felt his feet sink into soft earth and saw the dark currents of the river. The river! He was at the jungle river!

Damn, he thought. At the river
where?
The river ran for miles through the island. He looked at his watch again. Seven minutes gone. “You have a problem, Dennis,” he said aloud.

As if in reply, there was a soft hooting cry of an owl in the forest.

Nedry hardly noticed; he was worrying about his plan. The plain fact was that time had run out. There wasn’t a choice any more. He had to abandon his original plan. All he could do was go back to the control room, restore the computer, and somehow try to contact Dodgson, to set up the drop at the east dock for the following night. Nedry would have to scramble to make that work, but he thought he could pull it off. The computer automatically logged all calls; after Nedry got through to Dodgson, he’d have to go back into the computer and erase the record of the call. But one thing was sure—he couldn’t stay out in the park any longer, or his absence would be noticed.

Nedry started back, heading toward the glow of the car’s headlights. He was drenched and miserable. He heard the soft hooting cry once more, and this time he paused. That hadn’t really sounded like an owl. And it seemed to be close by, in the jungle somewhere off to his right.

As he listened, he heard a crashing sound in the underbrush. Then silence. He waited, and heard it again. It sounded distinctly like something big, moving slowly through the jungle toward him.

Something big. Something near. A big dinosaur.

Get out of here.

Nedry began to run. He made a lot of noise as he ran, but even so he could hear the animal crashing through the foliage. And hooting.

It was coming closer.

Stumbling over tree roots in the darkness, clawing his way past dripping branches, he saw the Jeep ahead, and the lights shining around the vertical wall of the barrier made him feel better. In a moment he’d be in the car and then he’d get the hell out of here. He scrambled around the barrier and then he froze.

The animal was already there.

But it wasn’t close. The dinosaur stood forty feet away, at the edge of the illumination from the headlamps. Nedry hadn’t taken the tour, so he hadn’t seen the different types of dinosaurs, but this one was strange-looking. The ten-foot-tall body was yellow with black spots, and along the head ran a pair of red V-shaped crests. The dinosaur didn’t move, but again gave its soft hooting cry.

Nedry waited to see if it would attack. It didn’t. Perhaps the headlights from the Jeep frightened it, forcing it to keep its distance, like a fire.

The dinosaur stared at him and then snapped its head in a single swift motion. Nedry felt something smack wetly against his chest. He looked down and saw a dripping glob of foam on his rain-soaked shirt. He touched it curiously, not comprehending.…

It was spit.

The dinosaur had spit on him.

It was creepy, he thought. He looked back at the dinosaur and saw the head snap again, and immediately felt another wet smack against his neck, just above the shirt collar. He wiped it away with his hand.

Jesus, it was disgusting. But the skin of his neck was already starting to tingle and burn. And his hand was tingling, too. It was almost like he had been touched with acid.

Nedry opened the car door, glancing back at the dinosaur to make sure it wasn’t going to attack, and felt a sudden, excruciating pain in his eyes, stabbing like spikes into the back of his skull, and he squeezed his eyes shut and gasped with the intensity of it and threw up his hands to cover his eyes and felt the slippery foam trickling down both sides of his nose.

Spit.

The dinosaur had spit in his eyes.

Even as he realized it, the pain overwhelmed him, and he dropped to his knees, disoriented, wheezing. He collapsed onto his side, his cheek pressed to the wet ground, his breath coming in thin whistles through the constant, ever-screaming pain that caused flashing spots of light to appear behind his tightly shut eyelids.

The earth shook beneath him and Nedry knew the dinosaur was moving, he could hear its soft hooting cry, and despite the pain he forced his eyes open and still he saw nothing but flashing spots against black. Slowly the realization came to him.

He was blind.

The hooting was louder as Nedry scrambled to his feet and staggered back against the side panel of the car, as a wave of nausea and dizziness swept over him. The dinosaur was close now, he could
feel
it coming close, he was dimly aware of its snorting breath.

But he couldn’t see.

He couldn’t see anything, and his terror was extreme.

He stretched out his hands, waving them wildly in the air to ward off the attack he knew was coming.

And then there was a new, searing pain, like a fiery knife in his belly, and Nedry stumbled, reaching blindly down to touch the ragged edge of his shirt, and then a thick, slippery mass that was surprisingly warm, and with horror he suddenly knew he was holding his own intestines in his hands. The dinosaur had torn him open. His guts had fallen out.

Nedry fell to the ground and landed on something scaly and cold, it was the animal’s foot, and then there was new pain on both sides of his head. The pain grew worse, and as he was lifted to his feet he knew the dinosaur had his head in its jaws, and the horror of that realization was followed by a final wish, that it would all be ended soon.

“More coffee?” Hammond asked politely.

“No, thank you,” Henry Wu said, leaning back in his chair. “I couldn’t eat anything more.” They were sitting in the dining room of Hammond’s bungalow, in a secluded corner of the park not far from the labs. Wu had to admit that the bungalow Hammond had built for himself was elegant, with sparse, almost Japanese lines. And the dinner had been excellent, considering the dining room wasn’t fully staffed yet.

But there was something about Hammond that Wu found troubling. The old man was different in some way … subtly different. All during dinner, Wu had tried to decide what it was. In part, a tendency to ramble, to repeat himself, to retell old stories. In part, it was an emotional liability, flaring anger one moment, maudlin sentimentality the next. But all that could be understood as a natural concomitant of age. John Hammond was, after all, almost seventy-seven.