“Certainly,” James said, nodding to the hostess who busied to the bar.
“No, no more drinks!” The suited man barked.
“Yes more drinks,” Reece protested.
“No, no more drinks. You can barely stand as it is”
“Truth. Only reason I can stand is because the drinkss, and this here bag, my crutch, my prop,” Reece said, patting one of the suitcases. “Where for art thou Benjamins. To be or not to be…”
“What? You’re not even making sense,” the suited man growled.
“Will we be doing any gambling tonight, sir?” James asked.
“I do have money,” Reece said, straightening up and feigning sobriety, his eyes opening unnaturally wide, his chins gathering as he cocked his head back and hiccupped. “I have all the money, like Scrooge McDuck.”
“I’m sure, sir. Does table two suit?”
“Looks good to me, green like grass,” Reece said, nodding, “but I needs you to help me count my money, for what’s left.”
“It’s my pleasure to offer you ten thousand dollars on the house, and should you require, we’ll deduct anything more from your account. You’re in safe hands, sir.”
“Not a tab, I need you to count my money. I want t-to do big gamble.”
Reece bent down, unzipped one of the suitcases in a swift motion and wads of hundred dollar bills spilled across the carpet.
“Holy hell!” A voice peeped in James’ earpiece from the control room. “He’s got it all in cash! The pay-out from that Jurassic incident. That’s fifty mil. I’m routing security your way. People are already starting to notice. Damnit, he’s gonna start a riot.”
By the time the voice in his ear had finished the sentence, Reece had unzipped the additional two suitcases his friend had been wheeling. The trio were now standing ankle deep in hundred dollar bills, bound into ten-thousand dollar wads. People on the adjacent tables had stopped gambling and were staring on, mouths agape. James could hear combat boots clopping across the marble floor as security guards raced in from both sides of the mall. Suddenly, camera flashes began strobing. People were also filming or hastily typing away on their phones, likely uploading or streaming the incident to social media. James looked between the sea of ten thousands dollar bundles and Reece, desperately trying to find his words, but his mind seemed inside out and upside down.
“’s forty-eight million, I think,” Reece said, surveying the fortune at their feet. He burped. “Can I do’s betting, please?”
“What the frick, mate?” Tim said, grabbing Reece’s arm harshly, then looking at the growing crowds and releasing him. “Well brilliant, Dr obvious. Way to stay covert.”
Security guards in riot helmets surrounded the three men and the money as crowds of excitable people swarmed in from both sides of the mall, holding up phones to get a better view. News must have been spreading fast as people were running between the tables and slots either side of the walkway, eager to see what fifty million dollars looked like in the flesh. James could see screens on the wall in the distance, which were beaming live GNN newsfeeds of his own stupefied face and the sea of cash. It was like something from a heist movie, just without the criminals or the guns, or the heist. It was a heist in reverse. The Jurassic guy had brought a damn vault’s worth of money into the casino. Stuff like this didn’t happen in real life.
“Ladies love boobie luck,” the bachelorettes behind James cheered, making Reece grin and giggle like a high-schooler. He swigged from his bottle of tequila then punched the air and yelled ‘boobie luck!’ drink spilling from the bottleneck, causing the gathering crowds to roar applause.
“That’s more money than’s been gambled at once in the history of Vegas,” the man in James’ earpiece croaked. “I can’t authorize something this big. Give me five, I’ll call up the ladder, Jesus. I’m sending people to verify and count the money. Hold the fort. Man, you’re all over the news. Holy, it’s already trending, hashtag JurassicVegas, MonsterRoulette, RockstarReece. This is the biggest thing to happen since… since… I dunno, the Sinatra years, maybe. You can’t buy publicity like this. They’ll definitely go for it. He’s brought in the damn mother lode. Okay, okay, Stoklasa’ll be on the mike ‘till I get back. Just gimme five.”
By the time the money was counted and verified, and the authorisation to allow Reece a red or black bet for the entire fortune had been approved, the casino was packed to the rafters with clamouring onlookers. People were standing on tables, chairs and perched on slot machines. There were even those cheap little camera quadcopters you could buy from almost any gift shop along the Strip buzzing through the air. It was total pandemonium. James suspected half the phones in Vegas were pointed at them. The GNN broadcast of the incident was now playing on every screen in the building as far as he could see. A helicopter shot of the streets outside showed crowds so voluminous, the traffic on the Strip had ground to a dead stop. The whole world was either trying to get to the Bellagio or watching.
Almost thirty minutes later, Reece’s nearly forty-eight million dollars had been karted out back and sent down to the vault, and Reece had been given a solid gold Bellagio chip to represent the fortune. Tim was sitting on a seat beside Reece at the roulette table, looking sickly pale. Silence filtered through the crowd as a croupier placed three mahogany boxes on the green felt in front of Reece. She opened them like a jeweller revealing priceless diamond rings. Excited squeaks erupted from pockets within the onlookers. Inside each box was a single white roulette ball, nestled in a black velvet recess. They looked like pearls in oysters. Reece chugged another swig of whiskey, trying to dull the invasive battering ram of warning that was trying to smash its way into his mind.
“Take your pick, sir,” the croupier said, waving a well-manicured hand over the balls.
“Balls,” Reece said simply. He slugged some more whiskey. It took a few attempts, but he managed to pluck up one of the many balls floating before him.
“Whenever you’re ready, sir?” The croupier said.
“Always bet on black,” Reece said, a child-like grin spreading across his face.
The crowd went ballistic and began chanting ‘black, black, black…’ The scrolling text on the screens across the casino read, ‘Reece Hunter Bets on Black.’ Phones across the casino began bleeping and blipping madly as their social media feeds went wild. But, perhaps for the first time in the lives of many people in that room, their attention wasn’t on their screens, it was fixed firmly on Reece.
Reece took three long swigs from his bottle, then placed the golden coin in the middle of the black diamond on the felted roulette table. He then dropped the white ball into the croupier’s hand. Despite the copious amounts of alcohol in his system, he was starting to feel unsettlingly sober, and his heart was doing jumping jacks in his chest, valves and arteries flapping and flailing like they were confused or had forgotten their purpose.
“You don’t have to do this,” Tim said. “There’s still time to back out. Even if you win it’s only double. You wanna risk all that on a coin flip, fifty million on a fifty-fifty?”
The croupier held her hand poised on the roulette wheel, ready for Reece to make his decision. A deafening silence, quieter than an exploding star in the vacuum of space seemed to fill the Bellagio. Reece nodded at the croupier, who span the wheel. There was a click louder than a gunshot as she placed the ball in a wooden channel above the spinning wheel.
Tim snatched a drink from his selection of pink drinks and downed it as the croupier span the ball counter to the spin of the wheel. He quickly polished off two more pink drinks as the ball whizzed round and round in circles.
“Black, black, black,” the crowds began muttering in a growing whisper as the ball slowed. “Black, black, black…”
Reece clenched his fists and bit his knuckle. The slowing ball dropped and hit the first bumper with a deafening crack. For a few seconds it darted like arcing electricity, a complete blur as it skipped between bumpers and the red and black slot
s. Time slowed as Reece watched the bouncing ball dance above the spinning kaleidoscope of red and black, interspliced with flashes of green. His stomach lurched and it was all he could do to stop himself being sick. He swallowed hard and gulped more tequila. It didn’t help. The ball was slowing and judgement was coming. What had he done!
With agonising persistence the ball made its final few skips between the red and black slots and Reece looked away, his stomach clenching so tight it felt like he was about to herniate. He rested his head on the cushioning surrounding the table and said a quick prayer. He needed the money to help Mr Yamamoto fund the rescue mission to save Becca. It had to work, the gamble simply had to work. Suddenly a cheer went up that was so loud all of Vegas shook like it was being hit by an earthquake. The chandeliers and the table were vibrating as the crowds jumped and screamed. Tim grabbed Reece and hugged him so hard he thought he might pop.
“Always bet on black, baby!” Tim yelled in his ear. “You are one crazy dude!”
Reece turned and saw the little white ball sitting in the black twenty slot. The pit boss was standing behind the table, aghast, mouth open, shaking his head.
“Again,” Reece called. He necked the remaining half bottle of whiskey and jumped onto the table, his vision blurring. “Who wan’s to goes again?” He yelled. “Black again. All times bet on black! I wanna bet all on twenny black!”
The roar that followed was so loud it would have registered on the Richter scale, on the other side of the United States, two thousand miles away. Tim was mouthing agitatedly, but Reece couldn’t hear. Pieces of plaster were actually raining from the ceiling. The pit boss held a finger to his ear then shrugged and nodded at the croupier, who moved Reece’s gold coin from the black diamond to the twenty black square.
She held the ball over the roulette wheel once more. Her three floating faces looked up at Reece for confirmation and he nodded. Impossibly, the riotous cheer shaking the casino hit a crescendo of such magnitude, they’d have been able to hear it in the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy. Once more she sent the ball on its way, in the opposite direction to the spinning wheel.
“You idiot!” Tim was yelling. “You’re gonna lose it all. That’s a three and a half billion dollar bet! The odds are impossible. You’re never gonna wiiiiiiiiiiiinnnn...”
Strangely, Tim’s voice slowed to an elongated moan and the whole world tipped sideways. As it was toppling, Reece wondered why the casino was falling over. He saw the table rise above him as blackness flooded in from all sides and the roar of the crowds fizzled to silence.
“B… Becca…” he mumbled.
Polar B.E.A.R. Project
A n excruciating racket more nauseating than ten trillion marauding elephants honking through megaphones stampeded through Reece’s skull and blinding white light slashed at his eyeballs. He leaned forwards and wretched, but nothing came up. The action merely released agonising shockwaves through his body and skull. He sat hunched over, moaning. A pair of hands appeared, one holding a water bottle and the other presenting a white pill.
“For the pain,” a voice said. “You puked most of the alcohol before we took off, lucky for you, not so lucky for the poor sod who has to clean the lift at the Bellagio. Drink water, you need to rehydrate. It’s gonna be a busy few days. There’s lots to get through, my little swan,” the man added with a chuckle. “Not so majestic now are we?”
“Swan?” Reece said, snatching the pill, a vague memory of playing basketball with Tim surfacing. “Need. Quick.”
In desperation, to dull the pain making every molecule in his body explode over and over again, he necked the pill without the water, but his mouth was so parched he began choking as it stuck and fizzed at the back of his throat. He reached out for the water bottle, which Tim pressed into his hand. He tore off the lid and drank like a man possessed, the cool liquid spilling across his cheeks, down his neck and across his chest. Gasping, he looked down in surprise, realizing he was only wearing boxer shorts.
“Did I lose a bet?” He asked, wiping his mouth, the veins inside his temples unleashing a series of pounding thumps. “Why’m I… uhhh… so sick. Why am I half naked?”
“Oh, that. You insisted on taking off your clothes to shed weight. You were convinced the helicopter would be too heavy to take off otherwise. You were adamant about it. You stripped down whilst yelling ‘evac, evac!’”
“Why would we need to shed weight, there’s just us and the pilot?” Reece said, covering his chest with his hands and squinting out of the windows at a vast body of choppy water racing below.
“I did try and tell you, but you weren’t having any of it. I even had to pretend I’d taken off my clothes, and that these were magic clothes that only you could see. It was the only way to get you on-board.”
“Aagghhhh, really?” Reece said, pushing the headset on his ears back a touch and massaging his temples. “I’m sorry, man. What happened? I can’t really remem… struggling to… uhhhh… so sick…”
“You really wanna know?”
“It can’t be that bad. Is it? Worse than redecorating that elevator?”
Tim laughed knowingly and fished his phone from his jacket pocket. He tapped at the screen and handed the device to Reece.
“Just hit play,” he said. “See for yourself. Quite the showman. More tricks than a dancing dog.”
Reece looked down on a YouTube thumbnail of himself doing a one-handed handstand on a roulette table, surrounded by crowds of ecstatic looking people. The title of the video read ‘Jurassic Hero Donates Historic 3.5 Billion Dollar Vegas Mega-Win to the Polar B.E.A.R. Project.’
With a pained sigh, Reece hit play and felt his cheeks burn as he watched himself gyrating and twerking to the screaming, cheering crowds. He then lifted his t-shirt over his head and danced in circles, waving a hand over his head like he was spinning a lasso whilst yelling ‘Let’s dance like swans, baby!’ A memory of the Baller Suite at the Bellagio Casino crashed into his mind like an out of control eighteen-wheeler. He suddenly remembered Tim had come to Vegas to tell him that Becca was alive, that Nori was planning a rescue mission, but was out of money. He vaguely remembered he’d been gambling his fortune to help fund the expedition.
“Becca!” Reece said, his trembling hand letting the phone slip, memories returning. “Becca, she’s alive, you said she’s alive, at the Bellagio, you sai…”
“Relax, relax,” Tim said, pushing Reece back into his seat. “She’s safe. She’s in the starcom bunker on Jurassic Earth, with supplies to last a year, probably more. We managed to get a message through. She knows we’re coming. She’s comfortable and safe. We’ll get her back, I promise.”
“Faaaaa, thank you,” Reece said, lying his head back and expelling a belting emotional sigh. “If anyone could’ve survived that explosion, it’s Becca. Man, she’s made of the stuff whole planets are made of, galaxies even. Atta girl,” he breathed. “Taking those bites. You know she fought a lion bare handed once?”
“And more recently a cephalopod. She’s one hell of a pilot too. Her impressive résumé is why we chose her to be the primary tour guide on Jurassic Earth, and it’s why we’re going back to get her. The world needs her in it. She’s one of the best of us.”
“Tell me about it. What about the money, the funding? I think I was gambling… ugghh…” Reece paused as acidic evil rose in his throat. He swallowed it down. “Oh, the pain… that money was meant to help pay for the… the equipment and… and… I dunno…bits and stuff. The title on the video said I gave it all to the Polar BEAR Project. Really?”
“You wanna ask for it back?” Tim said, raising an eyebrow. “It’s not the most winning headline. Jurassic Hero who donated, in a miracle win of such epic proportions it’s still blowing my mind by the way,” he said, making a motion like his head had just exploded as he relived the astonishing moment the roulette ball dropped into the twenty black slot for the second time in a row, “that the man who donated three and a half BILLION DOLLARS to the Better
Earth Arctic Restoration Project, the mission to refreeze the Arctic and save the planet from global warming, asks for a refund.”
“NO! What, I mean, no, what did I… Owch, my head. It all hurts, everywhere at once. I’m such an idiot. What have I...”
“It’s okay, everything’s in hand. The mission’s funded. People like Mr Yamamoto don’t leave their fate solely in the hands of financial institutions and governments. I tried to tell you on the roof at the Bellagio when you were… we’ll, making this happen,” Tim said, gesturing to Reece’s state of semi nakedness. “There’s spare clothes under your seat if you’re getting parky.”
“Parky?”
“Parky, yeah, cold. Anyway, it’s fine, we have everything in place. We’ve been planning a mission to liberate the stargo-jet from Area 51 for months, ever since it was confiscated. Everything’s ready to go. It would’ve been better if you hadn’t publicly exposed me coming to get you to the world, but it shouldn’t affect things too badly, hopefully. Nori actually thinks it’s pretty hilarious. He’s been watching your Vegas videos with delight, says they’re the funniest videos he’s seen in forever. You’re one of the most quickly viewed viral videos in YouTube history, fella. Over a billion hits in under twenty-four hours. Congratulations, my little swan, you’re a superstar.”
“Did I really give it all away?” Reece groaned, cupping his head. “All the money?”
“You did,” Tim said, laughing loudly at Reece’s pained expression. “Every last cent. On the positive side, you’re a global hero, you’re helping save the planet and you still have a tab for over a million dollars with the Bellagio. I’m sure it’ll last you and Becca for the foreseeable. Most people would take that as a win.”
“I don’t think I can stomach seeing Vegas ever again,” Reece moaned, resting his pounding head on the headrest and closing his eyes. “It makes my head hurt just thinking about it. My legs, arms, stomach and feet too, even my teeth. It all hurts. Even my ear bones. There’s so much pain. If I don’t see Vegas ever again it’ll be the best thing that ever happened.”
Jurassic Earth Trilogy Box Set Page 28
