Michael Crichton - The Lost World

Arby said, "It's becoming a cube."

Thorne pushed the big glass-walled refrigerator in front of the door. The raptor slammed against the metal, rattling the cans inside.

"Where are the guns?" Levine said.

"Sarah has three in her car."

"Great." At the windows, some of the bars were now so deeply dented that they broke the glass. Along the right-hand wall, the wood was splintering, tearing open big gaps.

"We have to get out of here," Levine shouted at Kelly. "We have to find a way!" He ran to the rear of the store, to the bathrooms. But a moment later he returned. "They're back there, too!"

It was happening fast, all around them.

On the screen, she now saw a rotatlng cube, turning in space. Kelly didn't know how to stop it.

"Come on, Kel," Arby said, peering at her through swollen eyes. "You can do it. Concentrate. Come on."

Everyone in the room was shouting. Kelly stared at the cube on the screen, feeling hopeless and lost. She didn't know what she was doing any more. She didn't know why she was there. She didn't know what the point of anything was. Why wasn't Sarah here?

Standing beside her, Arby said, "Come on. Do the icons one at a time, Kel. You can do it. Come on. Stay with it. Focus."

But she couldn't focus. She couldn't click on the icons, they were rotating too fast on the screen. There must be parallel processors to handle all the graphics. She just stared at it. She found herself thinking of all sorts of things - thoughts that just came unbidden into her mind.

The cord under the desk.

Hard-wired.

Lots of graphics.

Sarah talking to her in the trailer.

"Come on, Kel. You have to do this now. Find a way out."

In the trailer, Sarah said: Most of what people tell you will be wrong"

It's important, Kel," Arby said. He was trembling as he stood beside her. She knew he concentrated on computers as a way to block things out. As a way to -

The wall splintered wide, an eight-inch plank cracking inward, and a raptor stuck his head through, snarling, snapping his jaws.

She kept thinking of the cord under the desk. The cord under the desk. Her legs had kicked the cord under the desk.

The cord under the desk.

Arby said, "It's important."

And then it hit her.

"No," she said to him, "It's not important," And she dropped off the seat, crawling down under the desk to look.

"What are you doing?" Arby screamed.

But already Kelly had her answer. She saw the cable from the computer going down into the floor, through a neat hole. She saw a seam in the wood. Her fingers scrabbled at the floor, pulling at it. And suddenly the panel came away in her hands. She looked down. Darkness.

Yes.

There was a crawlspace. No, more. A tunnel.

She shouted, "Here!"

The refrigerator fell forward. The raptors crashed through the front door. From the sides, other animals tore through the walls, knocking over the display cases. The raptors sprang into the room, snarling and ducking. They found the bundle of Arby's wet clothes and snapped at them, ripping them apart in fury.

They moved quickly, hunting.

But the people were gone.

Kelly was in the lead, holding a flashlight. They moved, single file, along damp concrete walls. They were in a tunnel four feet square, with flat metal racks of cables along the left side. Water and gas pipes ran near the ceiling. The tunnel smelled moldy. She heard the squeak of rats.

They came to a Y-junction. She looked both ways. To the right was a long straight passageway, going into darkness. It probably led to the laboratory, she thought. To the left was a much shorter section of tunnel, with stairs at the end.

She went left.

She crawled up through a narrow concrete shaft, and pushed open a wooden trapdoor at the top. She found herself in a small utility building, surrounded by cables and rusted pipes. Sunlight streamed in through broken windows. The others climbed up beside her.

She looked out the window, and saw Sarah Harding driving down the hill toward them.

Harding drove the Explorer along the edge of the river. Kelly was sitting beside her in the front seat. They saw a wooden sign for the boathouse up ahead.

"So it was the graphics that gave you the clue, Kelly?" Harding said, admiringly.

Kelly nodded. "I just suddenly realized, it didn't matter what was actually on the screen. What mattered was there was a lot of data being manipulated, millions of pixels spinning there, and that meant there had to be a cable. And if there was a cable there must be a space for it. And enough space that workmen could repair it, all of that."

"So you looked under the desk."

"Yes," she said.

"That's very good," Harding said. "I think these people owe you their lives."

"Not really," Kelly said, with a little shrug.

Sarah shot her a look. "All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don't you take it away from yourself."

The road was muddy alongside the river, and heavily overgrown with plants. They heard the distant cries of the dinosaurs, somewhere behind them. Harding maneuvered around a fallen tree, and then they saw the boathouse ahead.

"Uh-oh," Levine said. "I have a bad feeling."

From the outside, the building was in ruins, and heavily overgrown with vines. The roof had caved in in several places. No one spoke as Harding pulled the Explorer up in front of a pair of broad double doors scaled with a rusted padlock. They climbed out of the car and walked forward in inkle-deep mud.

"You really think there's a boat in there?" Arby said doubtfully.

Malcolm leaned on Harding, while Thorne threw his weight against the door. Rotten timbers creaked, then splintered. The padlock fell to the ground. Harding said, "Here, hold him," and Put Malcolm's arm over Thorne's shoulder. Then she kicked a hole in the door wide enough to crawl through. Immediately she went inside, into darkness. Kelly hurried in after her.

"What do you see?" Levine said, pulling planks away to widen the hole. A furry spider scurried up the boards, jumping away.

"There's a boat here, all right," Harding said. "And it looks okay."

Levine pushed his head through the hole.

"I'll be damned," he said. "We just might get out of here, after all."

Lewis Dodgson fell.

Tumbling through the air he dropped from the month of the tyrannosaur, and landed hard on an earthen slope. The breath was knocked out of him, his head slammed down, and he was dizzy for a moment. He opened his eyes, and saw a sloping bank of dried mud. He smelled a sour odor of decay. And then he heard a sound that chilled him: it was a high-pitched squeaking.

He got up on one elbow, and saw he was in the tyrannosaur nest. The sloping mound of dried mud was all around him. Now there were three infants here, including one with a piece of aluminum wrapped around its leg. The infants were squeaking with excitement as they toddled to-ward him.

Dodgson scrambled to his feet, unsure of what to do. The other adult tyrannosaur was on the far side of the nest, purring and snorting. The one that had brought him was standing over him.

Dodgson watched the babies moving toward him, with their downy necks and their sharp little jaws. And then he turned to run. In an instant, the big adult brought his head down, knocking Dodgson over. Then the tyrannosaur raised its head again, and waited. Watching.

What the hell is going on? Dodgson thought. Cautiously, he got to his feet again. And again, he was knocked down. The infants squeaked and came closer. He saw that their bodies were covered in bits of flesh and excrement. He could smell them. He got up on all fours, and began crawling away.

Something grabbed his leg, holding him. He looked back and saw that his leg was in the jaws of the tyrannosaur. The big animal held it gently for a moment. Then it bit down decisively. The bones snapped and crunched.