Camp Cretaceous, Volume Two

by Steve Behling

  Jurassic World Franchise © 2021 Universal City Studios LLC and Amblin Entertainment, Inc. Series © 2021 DreamWorks Animation LLC. All Rights Reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019, and in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  rhcbooks.com

  ISBN 9780525643906 (hardcover) — ebook ISBN 9780525643920

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Copyright

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Epilogue

  Insert

  Poster

  “Run!”

  Darius sprinted through the jungle, not even bothering to push the branches and leaves out of his way. Hot on his heels were Yasmina, Sammy, Brooklynn, and Kenji. They had come to Camp Cretaceous for a once-in-a-lifetime experience, to camp amongst the dinosaurs of Jurassic World.

  And they got that.

  But they got more.

  A lot more.

  Right now, they were getting chased by an angry Parasaurolophus. The normally peaceful herbivores were not above chasing away creatures they perceived to be threats.

  “Is the Parasaurolophus still there?” Brooklynn said, not bothering to look behind her.

  Suddenly, a deafening roar filled the kids’ ears as a towering T. rex emerged from the trees. In a flash of terrible physical power, it attacked the Parasaurolophus!

  “Not anymore!” Kenji screamed, answering Brooklynn’s question.

  The kids ducked behind a fallen tree. Darius could hear the chomping sounds of the T. rex and slowly peeked over the top of the log. The apex predator dragged the Parasaurolophus back into the trees, eager to dig in.

  “Why are there so many dinosaurs around?” Kenji asked, finally catching his breath.

  “It’s either your boyish charm,” Brooklynn replied, still panting, “or the fact that all the fences on the island are down.”

  “We just need to eat and rest,” Sammy said. “I can’t keep running like this.”

  Darius looked at Sammy and the rest of his companions. They had been on the run for days it seemed, or had it been weeks? This trip to Camp Cretaceous had meant the world to Darius—it was a thing he had dreamed of for years, something he had hoped that he could share with his father. But his father had passed away, and the dream trip to Jurassic World had turned into a nightmare.

  Looking back to the jungle, Darius saw something poking out from the lush greenery. A smile broke across his face as he pointed at a barely visible sign that said Main Street.

  “There’s bound to be a way to call for help on Main Street,” Darius said. “And food and everything else. Come on!”

  * * *

  “What happened here?” Kenji asked.

  “Uh…I’m thinking…dinosaurs?” Yasmina replied.

  The kids were standing in the middle of Main Street, Jurassic World. Before everything had gone haywire and the dinosaurs had broken free, Main Street was the hub of human activity at the Park. Normally packed full of people browsing through gift shops, eating at restaurants, and watching presentations on all the Park’s different dinosaurs, Main Street was now a ghost town.

  “Okay,” Darius said. “Let’s start looking for a way to communicate with the mainland. There’s gotta be a phone or something here…right?”

  The group nodded and split up, searching a gift shop. Not only had the downtown area been abandoned when the dinosaurs escaped, but it looked as if the dinosaurs had ravaged Main Street, too. There were claw marks all over the buildings, and many of the storefronts had been smashed in.

  Darius’s first stop was the lost-and-found bin at the gift shop. He figured that someone must have lost a cellphone in all the commotion. But digging through, all he found was a pair of sunglasses, a hat, and then more sunglasses.

  “Really?” Darius said, incredulous. “No one lost their cellphone?”

  Yasmina held up a landline phone, showing it to Darius. “Well, whatever phones are here aren’t working. The power’s out. There’s not even walkie-talkies.”

  Everyone was searching the shop, hoping to find something that might help them communicate with someone, anyone off island who could rescue them. The closest they came was a portable camera that Brooklynn found, which she figured she could use to document their escape for her online followers.

  “Oooh!” Sammy shouted, and Darius whipped his head around to see her looking at a copy of The Insider’s Guide to Jurassic World. “EDB.”

  “What’s an EDB?” Yasmina asked.

  “Emergency Distress Beacon!” Sammy said, reading from the book. “After the first park went down, Mr. Masrani installed one on Main Street. It’s battery powered and can send an SOS signal one hundred and fifty miles in all directions!”

  “Everybody spread out,” Darius said excitedly. “We’ve got a way to communicate with the outside world, and it’s located somewhere here on Main Street! We find this thing, and we can go home.”

  * * *

  Of course, finding the beacon was easier said than done. Darius had been awake half the night working on the problem, trying to figure out where the beacon could possibly be. All he had to show for it was a horrible nightmare about Ben.

  Ben was the sixth camper who had been a part of their Jurassic World experience. But while they were in a monorail en route to the docks, in hopes of catching the last departing ferry, Ben was attacked by Pteranodons and fell into the jungle below.

  Darius had no idea if Ben was alive or…He didn’t even want to think about the alternative. Ben had been a huge germaphobe and scared of pretty much everything. The idea that he might have survived the fall or the jungle was—Darius shook his head to get the thought out. He and his friends had to concentrate on the now and surviving…and finding that beacon!

  In the morning, Yasmina suggested that Darius do something fun to take his mind off the beacon search. Maybe that would help him think of a place to look.

  Naturally, Darius’s idea of fun was to take an educational dinosaur walk, so that’s just what he and Yasmina did.

  “Learning new d
inosaur facts! Woo!” Darius said, pumping a fist in the air. He ran ahead to a plaque on the “Take a Walk with Dinos” tour and started to read. “Check it out! Sauropods can eat up to twelve hundred pounds of food per day! Obviously their necks helped them cover both elevated and lower grazing levels, but still, that’s insane!”

  Darius raced ahead to the next plaque, which was all about how creatures use camouflage and how some dinosaurs had developed color patterns that allowed them to blend in with their environment.

  Suddenly, Darius stopped reading and looked over at Yasmina. “I know where the beacon is!” he shouted.

  * * *

  “Why are we back at the gift shop?” Kenji asked. “We already looked here.”

  “We looked, but we didn’t look,” Darius said.

  “Well, that clears it up,” Brooklynn said sarcastically.

  “We never saw the beacon because it’s camouflaged!” Darius explained.

  Behind the gift shop, there was a grove of palm trees. Darius stopped and stared, then turned his head and locked eyes with Yasmina. She approached one of the trees and knocked on its trunk. A hollow, metallic CLANG sounded.

  “Ever hear a tree do that?” Yasmina said, raising an eyebrow.

  The kids instantly understood what was going on and ran over to the “trees.” They opened them up, and inside one, they found a hidden panel. Sammy popped it open and found a fire hose.

  “There’s stuff inside!” Sammy said.

  They kept opening panels on fake palm trees, but other than the one with the fire hose, they all seemed to be empty. No emergency beacon.

  Darius turned to the spot where the next grove of “palm trees” should be, only to discover that they had been uprooted by something and dragged off.

  Then a terrible ROAR echoed down Main Street.

  “We have a problem,” Darius said.

  * * *

  “A T. rex lair!” Darius said in a hushed whisper.

  He and the other kids followed the roar through Main Street. They scrambled atop the roof of a maintenance shed, peering over a jungle wall that overlooked some of the Jurassic World paddocks—specifically, Paddock 9. Darius knew that Paddock 9 had housed the T. rex before everything went totally wrong on the island.

  And from the looks of it, the T. rex was making it her home once more. The dinosaur had been dragging the fake palm trees into the lair, along with real trees, rocks, and whatever else she could find, making herself a giant, mound-like nest.

  “They found fossilized nests,” Darius said excitedly, “but the T. rex never did this when the Park was open. We’re witnessing new behavior! This is great!”

  As soon as the words had escaped his lips, Darius could feel all eyes on him.

  “This is terrible!” he said, correcting himself. “She’s built her lair right on top of Main Street.”

  “And it’s about to get worse,” Brooklynn said. She pointed at the pile of fake trees.

  Darius squinted and saw a panel open on one of the fake trees. Inside was a blinking red light.

  “Well…we found the beacon,” Yasmina said.

  “How are you supposed to get to the beacon now?” Kenji asked, crouching down behind the wall.

  “Don’t you mean ‘we’?” Darius said.

  “No, because I want to live, and living does not involve me walking into a T. rex lair!” Kenji said, then he got quiet. “I just wanted twenty-four hours where we didn’t have to think about dinosaurs, or being left behind, or being eaten, or…Ben.”

  Kenji felt the fanny pack around his waist. It was Ben’s fanny pack.

  “It was nice while it lasted,” Sammy said.

  “Hey, we can’t give up now,” Darius said, trying to rally his troops. “I know it seems hopeless, but there’s always an answer. We just have to get out of our own heads to see it!”

  * * *

  It wasn’t long before the kids headed back into the gift shop on Main Street. They raided the shelves for all the toy walkie-talkies they could find. Sure, the sets weren’t as powerful as the real thing. But for the plan Darius had in mind, they would work perfectly.

  Yasmina and Brooklynn were posted atop the enclosure, keeping track of the T. rex’s movements. As the mighty dinosaur lumbered away from the nest, Yasmina said, “Heading your way, Sammy,” into her walkie-talkie.

  Sammy crouched in the branches of a nearby tree as she watched the T. rex thunder past. “The coast is clear!” she said over the radio.

  That was Darius and Kenji’s cue to sneak into Paddock 9. It wasn’t easy, and the two had to half climb, half crawl to get where they needed to go.

  “I hate this, I hate this,” Kenji repeated.

  “There!” Darius said, pointing at the flashing emergency distress beacon. Kenji crawled over to the fake palm tree and tried to yank the device free.

  But it wouldn’t move.

  “The T. rex must’ve damaged the housing,” Kenji said. “I can’t get it out!”

  “We don’t need to get it out,” Darius said quietly. “We just need to activate it.”

  The plate covering the beacon was smooth, and Darius needed something to pop it open. Looking around, Kenji saw a large dinosaur tooth in the T. rex’s nest, grabbed it, and handed it to Darius.

  Darius managed to work the tooth into the seam and had nearly pried open the panel….

  * * *

  Sammy was still perched in the tree when she saw the T. rex approach. The dinosaur picked a branch off the tree from just beneath where she was sitting. The branch was positively dwarfed by the massive dinosaur, and the whole tree trembled as the T. rex pulled it free. As Sammy prayed for the massive carnivore not to notice her, she wondered why the dinosaur considered it important for her nest.

  Before she could think about it anymore, the T. rex turned and started back toward Paddock 9.

  “Rexy’s heading back to her lair! Y’all need to get out of there! Darius! Kenji!” Sammy said urgently.

  But there was no response.

  Yasmina heard the message over her walkie-talkie and sent another message to Darius and Kenji. “Mayday! Mayday! Guys!”

  If the guys weren’t answering their walkie-talkie, then Yasmina and Brooklynn were going to have to find a way to stall the T. rex until Darius and Kenji could complete their task. But how were they going to accomplish that, exactly?

  Yasmina turned toward Brooklynn, but the other girl was already gone.

  * * *

  Brooklynn ran across Main Street, carrying a video camera in her hands. She stopped right by the Visitors Center, then pressed PLAY.

  * * *

  The T. rex could hear the laughing voice. It was coming from somewhere in the distance, away from its nest. It lumbered away, snarling, in search of the sounds and maybe a fresh meal.

  * * *

  In Paddock 9, Darius had just succeeded in opening the beacon. There was a switch, and Darius flipped it. The light that had been blinking red was now blinking yellow. And a small display on the beacon showed the words signal sent.

  Darius could hear the roar of the distracted T. rex and smiled.

  “Now we just have to find a place to hole up until help arrives.”

  Darius scampered down the tree from his lookout as Sammy smiled hopefully. “Good news?” she said.

  Darius shook his head. “The Pteranodons are nesting on the Eastern Mountains. So that’s out,” he said gravely.

  Sammy frowned and pulled out a red crayon and a Jurassic World kids’ place mat from the tote bag she had taken from the gift shop. The map was covered in a sea of red X marks. Sammy took the crayon and scrawled another big X on the Eastern Mountains.

  “We can’t stay on Main Street, because dinosaurs,” Brooklynn said. “The mountains, grasslands, and jungle are out, because dinosaurs.”

&n
bsp; “And Kenji’s penthouse is out, because he’s bad at math!” Yasmina said with a disbelieving shake of her head.

  “Hey, I didn’t think my dad was serious about changing the locks if I failed algebra!” Kenji protested. “That is not my fault.”

  “That’s actually completely your fault,” Yasmina shot back.

  “We can’t give up yet,” Sammy said. “We set off the emergency beacon. We just need to find somewhere safe to hole up until rescue arrives.”

  “Where?” Yasmina wondered. “It’s been days. We’re out of options.”

  Darius leaned in, staring at the map. “There’s one place we haven’t tried,” Darius said slowly. “But I’m not sure you’re gonna like it.”

  * * *

  “Are you serious?” Kenji said, stunned. “Didn’t we specifically run away from here?”

  The kids had trekked back through the jungle, all the way to Camp Cretaceous. When they were forced to leave the site before, the place looked like a train—or a herd of dinosaurs—had smashed through it. But on their return, it looked even worse. None of the bunks or common rooms of the tree house were left intact. Everything seemed to have been smashed or fallen out of the trees. Rope ladders were gnawed on, and the ground was covered in dinosaur tracks and broken junk.