Eric heard his parents sigh. Then they threw their arms around him.
Taking a deep breath, he returned their hug.
He never wanted to let them go.
A few feet away from Eric’s reunion with his parents, Alan took a look around. They were in a single room with giant windows designed to look into the canyon beyond.
Looks like an observatory of some sort, thought Alan, but to observe what?
He tried looking out one of the windows, but a thick fog obscured his view.
He saw Billy approach him.
“Udesky?” Alan asked. “Where is he?”
“Raptors got him,” Billy said, shaking his head. “They set a trap. Can you believe it? They wounded him. Tried to get us to help. We almost did, and then they sprang at us. We ran, went up the trees, but Udesky didn’t make it.”
Alan listened grimly. “We’ll get out of this. We just need to keep moving.”
Alan started for the center of the room, where a staircase spiraled downward.
“Hold on,” Billy said, grabbing his mentor’s arm. “I want to tell you that I’m so sorry. I could have gotten you killed. I know that. It was stupid.”
Alan just stared at his student.
A few feet away, Paul, Amanda, and Eric heard the strain in Billy’s voice and turned to listen.
“Please, just yell at me. Call me an idiot. I know I screwed up,” continued Billy.
Alan’s gaze narrowed. He had no idea what his student was talking about—and he had a feeling he didn’t want to know.
Lowering his head, Billy said in a conspiratorial whisper, “What did you do with them?”
“With what?” asked Alan. “Billy, what are you talking about?”
Billy finally seemed to realize that Alan wasn’t following. He didn’t know. He hadn’t looked in the camera bag!
“In my bag,” Billy said.
Alan opened Billy’s camera bag to find a pair of raptor eggs! Both were intact. He’d been carrying them all this time.
“I just thought if we got a raptor egg back to the mainland, we could study it in a controlled environment,” Billy quickly explained.
Alan stared at his assistant, unable to accept what Billy had done. Those raptors had stalked him relentlessly for one reason—they’d wanted their eggs!
Billy spoke even more quickly. “Plus it would be easy to get money. Enough to fund the digging for ten years. More. Whatever it took.”
Disgusted, Alan shook his head.
“I did it with the best of intentions,” Billy pleaded.
“Some of the worst things imaginable have been done with the best of intentions,” Alan said. “You rushed in with no thought of the consequences, to yourself or anyone else.”
Billy stared speechlessly, stung by the force of Alan’s anger.
“You’re no better than the people who built this place,” concluded Alan. Then he turned away, leaving Billy to consider his words.
CHAPTER 10
ALAN STOOD NEAR THE STAIRS at the center of the room, still stunned by what he had just learned.
Paul approached him. “What do you think this place is?”
“Some kind of observatory,” answered Alan. “It looks over the canyon.”
Eric nodded. “We saw a boat at the bottom. Just downriver. We can get off the island.”
“Come on,” Alan said. He headed down the spiral staircase, leaving Billy with his guilt. Paul and the others fell in line after Alan. Eventually, Billy followed—at a distance.
The rusty stairs stopped on a lower level below the observation room. Above and around them, the fog was thick; yet below them, the view was clear enough for Alan to make out the river and the barge he and Eric had spotted earlier from the canyon ridge.
Alan held Billy’s camera bag over the edge, ready to drop it into the canyon. But Paul stopped him, hand raised.
“Can I offer a suggestion?” Paul asked. “Keep the eggs with you. At least until we get off the island.”
Eric shook his head. “But then the raptors might keep following us, looking for the eggs!”
Paul smiled. “And maybe they’ll follow us anyway, just for taking them. I’ve been working in sales my whole life, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that if you’ve got something the other fella wants, you don’t give it up. Those things may want us dead, but they want those eggs more. That’s the only advantage we’ve got.”
Alan looked at him closely. Paul Kirby was more than a panicked father. More than a bumbling liar. There was something about this man, something he hadn’t seen before.
Alan removed his pack and put the camera case back inside. Shouldering the pack, he led the way down the ramp to the landing, where a set of rusty stairs continued down the canyon wall.
Alan had taken only a few steps down when the crumbling staircase broke away! Paul grabbed Alan’s arm and pulled him up as the staircase fell. It clanged against the canyon wall, then crashed far below.
“You okay?” Paul asked.
Alan nodded shakily and looked toward their only alternative now, a fragile-looking catwalk that extended out from the landing where they stood.
“How about this way?” proposed Alan. “There’s probably another stairway on the other side.”
“Do you think it goes all the way across?” Eric asked. The fog was so thick around them, they couldn’t even see where the catwalk ended.
“One way to find out,” Alan said. He had not fully recovered from his near fall, but he knew the only way to get over it was to push on. Even so, his stomach turned at being up so high.
Alan started across the catwalk, with Amanda close behind. Under their combined weight, the catwalk groaned unsteadily. Alan glanced back at Amanda, who had frozen with fear.
“We’d better do this one at a time,” Alan said.
Amanda nodded quickly and stepped off the catwalk.
Alan carefully moved forward. The thick fog closed in behind him, cutting off his view of the group—and their view of him.
All they could rely on was the slow creaking sound of the catwalk as he moved across it.
After a few minutes, Alan stopped. He’d reached a lateral support beam that provided a small landing where he could catch his breath.
Out of the dead silence, he heard an uncertain voice from the fog. “Dr. Grant?”
It was Paul. He sounded nervous, as if he wasn’t sure he’d get an answer.
“It’s okay! Come on over,” Alan called. “One at a time.”
At the far side of the catwalk, Amanda stepped forward gingerly. She turned back to Eric.
“Eric, it’s okay,” she said. “Mommy’s got to leave you for just a minute, but you’ll be right behind. . . .”
“Mom, I’ve survived alone on this island for eight weeks,” Eric said flatly. “I think I can handle the next two minutes without you.”
Paul and Amanda exchanged a look. Their “baby” was no longer a baby.
Eric shot his mother a smile. She nodded and moved ahead, into the mist.
They were all in this together now, that was for sure.
While he waited for the others to reach the landing, Alan tried to get a sense of where he was and what purpose this place may have served. High arched walls of steel mesh were braced by support beams. It looked as if they were all inside a vast cage. But what was the cage designed to hold?
The catwalk creaked loudly as someone approached through the dense fog. Amanda appeared.
“That was fun,” she said, gasping and rolling her eyes.
“Wasn’t it, though?” Alan said.
She turned and called, “Okay! Come on, Eric!”
Alan moved across the lateral support to make room for the others. When his hand touched the railing, he sent a white, hardened substance dropping into the mist. Looking up, he noticed a large strut covered with the same substance.
“Oh, no,” Alan whispered. He suddenly had a very good idea of what the white substance was�
��and what this place had been designed to hold.
“What is it?” Amanda asked.
“This place,” Alan said. “It’s a birdcage.”
Amanda’s eyes widened with fear. “For what?”
“Something else InGen didn’t put on the list,” Alan said.
Then they both heard Eric’s cries.
“We’re not alone!” Eric yelled, trying to warn the others.
He backed up slowly on the catwalk as a looming shape emerged from the fog. A full-grown Pteranodon approached. It was over seven feet tall and walked upright on clawed feet. The reptile’s forty-five-foot wings were folded batlike at its sides.
The cone-shaped orange-and-black-striped crest jutting from the back of the gray-winged reptile’s skull clearly marked it as a Pteranodon, but according to paleontologists, Pteranodons weren’t supposed to have wingspans this large. This creature was a genetically engineered giant!
The way its weight made the bridge shift and sway also made Eric think that it was a lot heavier than the fifty to eighty pounds a Pteranodon was supposed to weigh. That meant it could be stronger than the Pteranodons who sailed the sky 65 million years ago, during the Age of Dinosaurs—stronger and capable of practically anything. A true Pteranodon couldn’t lift a boy his size. But this creature . . .
The Pteranodon fixed Eric with a terrifying stare.
It was far from the first time over the past eight weeks that Eric had looked into such dark, hungry eyes.
You wanna eat me? an angry Eric challenged silently. Then catch me!
He turned and dashed back along the teetering catwalk. The Pteranodon spread its wings and glided directly toward him.
Eric ran toward his father and Billy. But just before Eric reached them, the Pteranodon swooped out of the fog and snatched him off the catwalk. He gasped, then screamed as he was carried into the air.
This was one game of tag he’d just lost.
Eric was carried by the Pteranodon deep into the canyon. They swooped over an isolated outcropping of rocks.
Then, with a sudden cry, the Pteranodon let Eric fall into the mist below!
CHAPTER 11
WITH A JARRING THUMP, Eric landed in what looked like a large bowl of mud and branches the size of a giant satellite dish. Something crackled and crunched beneath him. He looked down and saw that he was sitting on a pile of dinosaur bones, picked clean.
Then a human skull rolled into his lap.
Horrified, Eric was about to scream when he heard a sharp cry above him.
Caahhhhhrrr!
Eric looked up to see six Pteranodon hatchlings closing in on him with their sharp-edged beaks.
Eric knew he’d just become this Pteranodon family’s version of fast food—a snack picked up for the kiddies. A human Happy Meal!
But Eric wasn’t about to give up. He’d learned the hard way how to make the most out of the least bit around him.
Taking the human skull in one hand and a heavy dinosaur thighbone in the other, Eric brandished his makeshift weapons as the hungry hatchlings chittered and screeched and came at him.
Paul reached the canyon wall, turned a corner, and ran along a second enclosed catwalk leading deeper into the canyon.
Amanda and Alan came pounding down the catwalk, trying to keep up.
“Where is he?” Amanda shouted to Paul. “Can you see him?”
Paul turned and shouted back. “I’m trying! That thing took him down this way!”
Alan heard a sound far above. He looked up to see Billy leaning out one of the huge observation deck windows. He felt a sudden chill as he guessed what Billy was about to do.
“Billy, wait!” Alan yelled.
His assistant looked back. “It’s okay. I know the consequences.”
Alan watched helplessly as Billy leaped from the ledge—and plunged into the canyon below. Billy fell past Alan and the Kirbys, plummeting like a stone toward certain death.
Then a colorful wing suddenly unfurled above him—it was the Dino-Soar parasail he’d retrieved from Eric and Ben’s crash site!
Billy caught an updraft and started to rise.
With a look of fierce determination, Billy swooped dangerously close to the canyon wall, then headed in the direction in which Eric had been taken.
Eric was covered in sweat. The adrenaline that had kept him going this long was beginning to fade.
Swinging the bone like a sword and using the skull as a shield, Eric smacked the beak of a hatchling that had almost gotten close enough to bite his arm. Only a minute ago, that wouldn’t have happened. He was getting tired. Running out of juice.
The hatchlings seemed to sense his weariness. They redoubled their attack, forcing Eric to one side of the nest. He risked a glance over the edge and saw only a huge drop.
No way out, he thought.
A blur of motion came from the sky. Eric tensed, worried that the hatchling’s mother was returning.
Chancing a look up, he cried out with joy at the sight of Billy swooping overhead, using the parasail chute to fly. But Billy was too high to reach him!
“Eric! Hold on!” called Billy.
Eric hefted the skull and bone as the hatchlings moved closer—and attacked again!
Paul rounded a corner and finally caught sight of Eric in the nest, a hundred feet away. His son was fighting the hatchlings.
“Hang on, Eric!” Paul shouted. He doubted his son could hear him.
The catwalk led to a rocky area near Eric. But just ahead, there was a break where a section had fallen out. It was a jump of at least twelve feet. Paul didn’t know if he could make it.
Paul heard Amanda and Alan coming up behind him and ignored their calls. He cast aside his fear, steeling himself for the jump.
He drew a deep breath.
And hesitated.
His hesitation cost him. Suddenly, a second Pteranodon crash-landed on the catwalk’s enclosure above them, right next to a gaping hole in the mesh. The catwalk groaned with the extra weight.
The Pteranodon jammed its head through the hole, snapping at them.
Alan, Paul, and Amanda turned to head the other way. The Pteranodon lifted into the air and came down in front of them, lunging through another hole in the mesh, blocking their escape.
All along the cliff face, the metal catwalk supports groaned with the strain. Joints creaked, and sections of the catwalk began to sway.
Eric kicked and swung at the hatchlings. He wouldn’t be able to fight them off much longer!
With a whoosh, Billy finally swooped down.
Eric dropped the skull and bone and jumped as high as he could. He reached Billy’s boot and grabbed on with both hands. Blinding pain shot through his arms and shoulders as he was violently yanked upward, but he wouldn’t let go.
The winding river and the canyon walls blurred as Billy and Eric sailed away from the nest.
Suddenly, the giant mother Pteranodon spotted them. It raced forward and tore a piece out of the parasail with its beak.
Eric and Billy began to drop!
Alan warily eyed the Pteranodon that had landed on top of the catwalk. It snapped at them through the hole in the enclosure, unfurled its great wings, and stamped on the roof.
Alan gripped the rail to steady himself as the catwalk swayed and bounced. Amanda and Paul did the same.
The mesh above suddenly gave way and the Pteranodon slammed through and landed on the catwalk. Alan and the Kirbys were trapped inside the enclosed catwalk with the enraged Pteranodon!
The reptile came lurching their way, flailing its leathery wings and screeching in anger. Alan and the Kirbys ran for their lives along the creaking catwalk. The group rounded a corner, only to find a broken section of catwalk had fallen away into the river.
They were trapped inside the steel enclosure with nowhere to run!
As if it sensed their fear, the Pteranodon advanced. The catwalk groaned and tilted alarmingly.
Suddenly, their section of the catwalk detached from
the wall and flipped over. Alan and the Kirbys fell and were caught by the mesh that had been the ceiling only moments before.
Cahhhrrrr!
The Pteranodon held on to what was now the underside of the catwalk. It flapped its wings wildly as it changed its grip on the swaying structure; then it inched toward Alan, Paul, and Amanda like a hungry spider.
Eric and Billy sailed low over the river as the Pteranodon circled them.
“Let go!” Billy yelled to Eric. “It’s the only way.”
Eric looked down at the choppy water and released his grip. With a great splash, he dropped into the cold river.
Surfacing quickly, he swam frantically toward shore, knowing he was far from safe. He remembered that Pteranodons hunted low over the water, snatching their prey from the surface.
Fearfully glancing over his shoulder, Eric didn’t see any Pteranodons coming for him. But he did catch sight of Billy. He was trying to rise high into the air again, but the parasail’s rigging was too badly damaged.
In horror, Eric watched as his rescuer flew right into the canyon wall!
Billy’s harness became caught on a rock spire above him. Now he was trapped, hanging with-out any cover, right in the middle of Pteranodon territory!
Up on the catwalk, Alan, Paul, and Amanda watched in terror as the Pteranodon moved toward them. With an agonizing screech of metal, the far end of the catwalk gave way. It detached from the canyon wall and swung downward!
In a tangle of arms, legs, and wings, they were all sent plummeting off the metal frame toward the river below. They quickly became untangled and the Pteranodon took flight as the humans plunged into the water.
Alan hit the water so hard the wind was knocked out of him. It took him nearly a minute to struggle to the surface, where he took in great gulps of air and spotted Amanda and Paul surfacing nearby.
The current dragged all three downstream.
From the shore, Eric watched as Billy frantically attempted to unhook the harness. Two Pteranodons landed near Billy and eyed him with delight—and hunger.
Cut it, Eric thought. You’ve got to find something sharp and cut it!
Cries from downstream drew Eric’s attention. Several yards away from where the mesh of the aviary met the river, Eric saw his parents emerge from the water and race toward him. Eric allowed his mother to take him into her arms while his father pointed ahead.
Jurassic Park<sup>TM</sup> III Novelization Page 5
