“Maybe something like…this?” Yasmina said. She grabbed the map and red crayon from Sammy and flipped the paper over. She sketched away for a few seconds, then held up a hastily drawn picture of a tree house.
“It’s great!” Darius said. “Oh, but we definitely need a lookout tower.”
“And an awesome girls’ bunk,” Brooklynn said. “The boys can have whatever.”
“A place for storing food so the dinos don’t get it!” Sammy added.
“Tire swings!” Kenji shouted. “Maybe a fire pole?”
For the first time in a while, Yasmina smiled.
* * *
“I thought you might want this,” Sammy said. She walked over to Darius and handed a notebook to him. Darius had seen it at the medical supply shed. “For writing down all the new dinosaur behavior. And I found…this.”
Sammy held out her hand and opened it, revealing a necklace with a Raptor’s tooth hanging from it.
The necklace that Darius’s dad had given to him. The one he thought had been lost forever in the carnage of Camp Cretaceous.
Sammy had found it while cleaning up the camp.
Darius’s eyes filled with tears as he put the necklace back on, then hugged Sammy.
“Looks like we need some more vines!” Yasmina called out.
“On it!” Brooklynn said, and she hustled out of camp to track some down.
As she wandered into the jungle, she grabbed vines hanging from a tree. After a while, she heard a humming sound—the same humming sound she’d heard before.
“It’s back,” she said to herself.
She pushed ahead into the jungle, following the humming sound. As she shoved tree branches out of her way, Brooklynn was stunned at the sight she found.
Right in front of her was a small square patch of wildflowers.
Frozen wildflowers.
Astonished, Brooklynn reached down and touched one of the frozen flower petals. It broke off and fell to the ground.
* * *
“Ahhh!” Kenji screamed. “Does this water ever get warm?!”
He was standing in the makeshift shower the kids had cobbled together, which was inside the makeshift tree house the kids had also cobbled together. The shower door came from a demolished 6x4, and a water jug was rigged above to dispense water.
Except the water came from the river, which was still cold.
It had been several weeks since Brooklynn had found the frozen flowers, and the group had resurrected Camp Cretaceous. Sort of. The tree house was essentially a big platform sitting in a tree, with a roof over it. There were sheets nailed up to give the campers some privacy while they slept.
Yasmina had just finished her morning exercises when she stepped around a sleepy Brooklynn, who moaned, “Five more minutes.” Sliding down a bamboo pole like a firefighter, Yasmina landed on the ground. The splint she wore on her left ankle was really helping. For the first time in weeks, her ankle didn’t hurt!
She approached a tree that had multiple hash marks carved into the bark. Picking up a fossilized Pteranodon claw, Yasmina made another hash mark, keeping track of the days they’d been awaiting rescue.
Darius was sitting with his nose buried in the notebook Sammy had given him, writing away. That’s when an empty water jug flew past his face, bouncing along the ground.
“No más agua!” Kenji called out from the shower. “Little help!”
“I got ya, Kenj,” Darius said, and picked up the jug, heading to the river.
“If you keep doing that for him, he’ll never learn to do it himself,” Yasmina half joked.
Darius was about to dip the jug into the river when he noticed a slight problem.
“Uh, guys?” he said as his friends approached the riverbed.
“Where’d all the water go?” Sammy asked.
Sure enough, there was almost no water running in the riverbed. There was only a trickle.
“Shhhh!” Brooklynn said, shushing everyone. “I hear that hum again! The river must have been drowning it out before. If I can follow that sound, I bet I can find that—”
“ ‘Frozen patch of flowers’!” the other kids said in unison.
“Oh, I’ve…mentioned it, huh?” Brooklynn said sheepishly.
“A few hundred times,” Kenji offered.
Brooklynn crossed her arms defensively. “Sorry for wanting to get to the bottom of all the weirdness on this island!” she said.
Sammy raised her hand. “If you’re going to look for the noise, I’ll come too! It’ll be fun to have an adventure for a fun reason—and not a ‘fleeing dinosaurs and facing imminent death’ reason.”
“I’ll go if Sammy is!” Yasmina said, her voice full of enthusiasm. “I’ve been going stir-crazy. Me and my ankle are ready for some adventure.”
Clapping her hands, Sammy said, “It’s a Camp Cretaceous girl adventure!”
Darius smiled. “And while you do that, Kenji and I will go figure out why the river stopped!”
“Sorry, Kenji do what now?” Kenji asked.
The two groups prepared for their adventures, mostly by picking out their makeshift weapons.
Yasmina called the spear, which was awesome. That left Kenji with the butter knife.
That was less awesome.
Darius and Kenji had been walking through the jungle for a while, trying to trace the source of the water problem. Something caught Darius’s eye, and he ran ahead.
“Dinosaurs sometimes compete over geothermal vents to use as incubation chambers for their eggs!” Darius said excitedly. “See?” he added, pointing at a dirt mound with moist, warm steam rising from it.
“Dirt and steam may be never-ending sources of wonder for you, but my standards are a little higher,” Kenji said.
“I feel bad for you,” Darius said, shaking his head. “You can’t see what makes this place so amazing.”
“I have seen it all,” Kenji said. “All of it. Like a gazillion times. How do you think Jurassic Spa powers its sauna? ‘Our geothermal pumps transfer heat from the ground directly to our steam room.’ Tour for my eleventh birthday.”
Then to show just how well he knew Jurassic World, Kenji pushed a fern that was growing out of a tree side, revealing a hidden speaker.
“Just there to hide speakers,” Kenji said. “Sorry bro, but I am way over Isla Nublar.”
Darius sighed and kept pushing ahead through some plants. The boys soon arrived at a sheer rock wall. Darius noticed a trickle of water cascading down the rocks.
“It’s a waterfall,” he said. “Or should be. You know what this means—who’s up for some rock climbing?”
“I think this is the place!” Brooklynn said, holding her hand up. The other girls ran ahead to catch up to their friend.
“I don’t see any frozen flowers,” Yasmina said quietly.
“But there are a bunch of regular flowers,” Sammy said, pointing to a small patch colorful wildflowers. “So we’re halfway there!”
“I thought for sure—” Brooklynn started, but she was interrupted by a loud WHIRRING sound that came from the flowers! They swayed along with the whirring noise.
“The hum!” Sammy said, surprised.
Brooklynn leaned down, sticking her head above the flowers. “It’s…super-cold air. And the ground’s…vibrating!”
As Sammy and Yasmina leaned in, Brooklynn carefully parted the flowers, revealing a metal vent in the jungle floor.
“I told you!” Brooklynn shouted. “It was here the whole time! Who put it here? What’s powering it? This place just keeps getting weirder and weirder.”
“YazYazYaz!” Sammy interjected. “This is just like that episode where Esther follows that graffiti trail.” Turning to Brooklynn, she added, “Sorry. Yaz and I were talking before about this show we love called—”
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“Esther Stone: High School PI, episode 23—when she exposed the cryptocurrency ring,” Brooklynn said without missing a beat.
“No. Way!” Sammy said, smiling. “You watch Esther Stone?”
“Do I watch Esther Stone? I’ve seen every episode like eighty times!” Brooklynn said.
“Then what are we waiting for?” Sammy said, putting her arms around Yasmina and Brooklynn. “It’s time to investigate—”
“A Stone-cold mystery!” Yasmina and Brooklynn shouted together.
“Spread out! See if you can feel any more vibrations,” Brooklynn said.
The girls fanned out across the area, then Yasmina suddenly stopped. “I hear something,” she said.
Looking off in the distance, the girls could hear a faint hum. They followed the sound.
* * *
“That was…so great,” Darius said, out of breath.
They had just climbed the cliff and collapsed on their backs, exhausted.
“Yeah,” Kenji agreed sarcastically, panting. “Who needs…actual enjoyment…when you have…that?”
After a brief rest, the boys resumed their journey, walking along the riverbed. They came to a large tree that was lying across the width of the river, with leaves and rocks packed beneath like a makeshift dam.
“Okay,” Darius said. “So all we have to do is move that tree and we should be good to go!”
Kenji gave Darius a look that said “That sounds a lot like work, and Kenji don’t do work.”
The boys maneuvered around the tree and got a good grip. First they tried to push the tree. Then they pulled it. Lifting was next. But nothing they did moved the tree even an inch.
“Huh. Thought that’d be easier,” Darius said.
All at once, the ground began to shake. Darius and Kenji exchanged looks as two Stegosauruses emerged from the jungle! They were fighting, bellowing, and thrashing their tails at one another.
The boys scrambled around the fallen tree as a Stegosaurus tail swung past, smashing into the tree, sending splinters flying everywhere.
Darius saw a small trickle of water spilling around the broken edge of the tree.
“I know how to fix our water problem!” Darius said, smiling.
“What?” Kenji said, terrified. “No, no, Darius, don’t—”
But it was too late. Darius was running toward the tree. He stopped right in front of it and flailed his arms. “Hey! Over here!” he called.
Kenji sprinted for Darius as the Stegosauruses continued to fight. They didn’t even seem to notice Darius. But they certainly noticed when Kenji whistled. Immediately, the Stegosauruses looked up, braying…and charged right at the boys.
Darius and Kenji stood their ground, waiting…waiting…waiting for just the right moment to run. As soon as they moved, a Stegosaurus followed, its tail smashing through the fallen tree. Water surged through the broken dam.
“We got it!” Darius said proudly.
“Great!” Kenji said, pointing at the still-charging Stegosaurus. “Now how do we get rid of it?”
* * *
The girls had been following the humming sound for a while when they pushed through a stand of trees. The humming grew louder until they traced it to the source—a remote genetics lab.
“Dr. Wu’s lab,” Sammy said. “Do ya think…?”
“Mantah Corp, Indominus rex, the hum…it all connects here,” Brooklynn said. “Dr. Wu was up to something big, something secret. And that something must be located right in his private office!”
The trio wasted no time in entering the genetics lab, but when they got inside Dr. Wu’s office, they were shocked to find…nothing. The room had been completely stripped. There were no computers, no papers, no lab equipment, no nothing. Just an empty room.
“Oh, come on!” Brooklynn said, frustrated.
Yasmina flipped a light switch, but nothing happened. “If there’s no power, how are those cold-air vents running?” she asked.
“And who took everything?” Sammy wondered.
“Something’s gotta be here,” Brooklynn said. “It’s gotta be!”
Brooklynn turned around, running from the room and down a hallway. Sammy and Yasmina followed. None of them noticed that the front door of the genetics lab was still open…or that a snout was slowly entering….
* * *
The boys were springing through the jungle and emerged onto a grassy plain. The Stegosaurus was still right behind them, gaining ground.
Just as it was about to strike, WHAM! From out of nowhere, the other Stegosaurus slammed right into it, and the two dinosaurs resumed their fight back in the jungle.
“Okay, that was—” Darius started, only to turn his head and see an enormous, hungry Ceratosaurus right ahead!
There they stood, Kenji clutching his butter knife, feeling exceptionally lame. They waited for the Ceratosaurus to make a move, but instead, it just stood there. Until it…walked away?
Darius tilted his head as he watched the Ceratosaurus move toward a large body of water. He had been so concerned with the Stegosauruses that he hadn’t even noticed it! The Ceratosaurus reached the water, then bent over, taking a long drink.
And the Ceratosaurus wasn’t the only one. Surrounding the water were Stegosauruses, Brachiosauruses, Ankylosauruses, and Parasaurolophuses, all drinking side by side in peace.
“A watering hole!” Darius exclaimed. “Dr. Grant theorized they could become neutral ground for predators and prey under the right conditions. Now, without any fences or people around…Kenji, we might be the first people to ever see something like this!”
As Darius continued to watch, he heard sniffling coming from Kenji’s direction. He looked over and saw his friend was actually crying!
“It’s just so…majestic!” Kenji said, and Darius patted his friend on the shoulder.
“I wish Dr. Grant were here,” Darius said. “He’d write the most amazing article about this.”
“You don’t need that guy,” Kenji said. “You got your nerd book.”
Darius smiled and took out his notebook. “This? Nah, I’m just messing around.”
“If this really is something no one has ever seen, I bet you could make that doctor dork mad jealous that you saw it and he didn’t,” Kenji said.
“Wanna stay a little longer?” Darius asked.
“Why not?” Kenji said and nestled against a nearby tree. Darius sat down next to him, staring at his notebook. He proceeded to write field guide on the cover.
* * *
The girls had made their way into the main room of the genetics lab, and Brooklynn caught sight of something familiar—a framed picture on a desk.
“Eddie!” she said. “Of course!”
“Who?” Sammy asked, looking at the picture of some goofy, grinning guy standing next to an unhappy Dr. Wu.
“The van-stealing birthday weirdo,” Brooklynn said. “Remember?”
They had met Eddie weeks ago when they first stumbled upon the genetics lab. At first, they thought Eddie might help them escape the island. But Eddie was only interested in saving himself. Unfortunately, the murderous Indominus rex had other ideas.
“He mentioned something about ‘the other guys,’ ” Brooklynn continued. “And that no one knew what was ‘really going on here.’ Could he have also been working for Mantah Corp?”
They searched the room but still turned up nothing.
Except for a loud growl. Yasmina and Brooklynn ducked behind Eddie’s desk and peered around the side of it. The source of the growl was a blue Baryonyx stalking into the main lab!
The dinosaur entered the lab, and the girls knew they were going to have to make their move. But before they could do anything, Brooklynn clutched Sammy’s and Yasmina’s arms. Taped to the underside of the desk was a plain manila envelope with E-750 writt
en on it. As quietly as she could, Brooklynn took it off.
“E seven fifty? I know that number,” Brooklynn whispered. “It was on Wu’s computer!”
“We gotta move, now!” Yasmina said.
The shuffled away, moving to the next desk over. The Baryonyx sniffed and kept looking.
Then Yasmina darted for a nearby incubator. Brooklynn was next, but she tripped over a metal desk chair, falling. The envelope flew from her hand, papers and a key card spilling out onto the floor.
The Baryonyx took notice and was coming for them.
Brooklynn tried to gather the contents of the envelope, but Sammy pulled her away.
Yasmina shoved the incubator into the path of the Baryonyx, who swatted the machine aside with terrifying ease.
The girls had just managed to exit the main lab when they flung the door closed, right on the Baryonyx’s snout.
They took a deep breath, only to feel a jolt of fear as another Baryonyx poked its head from a different door.
Brooklynn had no idea how long they had been running. They left the genetics lab and didn’t look back, and she was almost certain that the Baryonyxes would catch them.
But…they didn’t!
At last, they slowed down, looking around the underbrush, listening for signs of the dinosaurs…and heard nothing. They had made it! It was a moment for rejoicing, but Yasmina noticed that Brooklynn wasn’t smiling.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“It’s just, I was so close to finding…something,” Brooklynn said. “But I dropped the envelope.”
“You mean…this?” Sammy said, pulling out the papers and key card that had spilled out of the envelope.
“Sammy! You grabbed it?” Brooklynn said, beaming.
“Of course!” Sammy said. “How else are we gonna solve our—”
Camp Cretaceous, Volume Two Page 3
