Jurassic Park - Crichton Michael - Страница 49

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She looked around in surprise and said, "Where's Dr. Grant?"

"I don't know."

"Well, he was here before."

"He was? When?"

"Before," Lex said. "I saw him when I was in the pipe."

"Where'd he go?"

"How am I supposed to know?" Lex said, wrinkling her nose. She began to shout: "Hellooo. Hell-oooo! Dr. Grant? Dr. Grant!"

Tim was uneasy at the noise she was making-it might bring back the tyrannosaur-but a moment later he heard an answering shout. It was coming from the right, over toward the Land Cruiser that Tim had left a few minutes before. With his goggles, Tim saw with relief that Dr. Grant was walking toward them, He had a big tear in his shirt at the shoulder, but otherwise he looked okay.

"Thank God," he said. "I've been looking for you."

Shivering, Ed Regis got to his feet, and wiped the cold mud off his face and hands. He had spent a very had half hour, wedged among big boulders on the slope of a hill below the road. He knew it wasn't much of a hiding place, but he was panicked and he wasn't thinking clearly. He had lain in this muddy cold place and he had tried to get hold of himself, but he kept seeing that dinosaur in his mind. That dinosaur coming toward him. Toward the car.

Ed Regis didn't remember exactly what had happened after that. He remembered that Lex had said something but he hadn't stopped, he couldn't stop, he had just kept running and running. Beyond the road he had lost his footing and tumbled down the hill and come to rest by some boulders, and it had seemed to him that he could crawl in among the boulders, and hide, there was enough room, so that was what he had done. Gasping and terrified, thinking of nothing except to get away from the tyrannosaur. And, finally, when he was wedged in there like a rat between the boulders, he had calmed down a little, and he had been overcome with horror and shame because he'd abandoned those kids, he had just run away, he had just saved himself. He knew he should go back up to the road, he should try to rescue them, because he had always imagined himself as brave and cool under pressure, but whenever he tried to get control of himself, to make himself go back up there-somehow he just couldn't. He started to feel panicky, and he had trouble breathing, and he didn't move.

He told himself it was hopeless, anyway. If the kids were still up there on the road they could never survive, and certainly there was nothing Ed Regis could do for them, and he might as well stay where he was. No one was going to know what had happened except him. And there was nothing he could do. Nothing he could have done. And so Regis had remained among the boulders for half an hour, fighting off panic, carefully not thinking about whether the kids had died, or about what Hammond would have to say when he found out.

What finally made him move was the peculiar sensation he noticed in his mouth. The side of his mouth felt funny, kind of numb and tingling, and he wondered if he had hurt it during the fall. Regis touched his face and felt swollen flesh on the side of his mouth. It was funny, but it didn't hurt at all. Then he realized the swollen flesh was a leech growing fat as it sucked his lips. It was practically in his mouth. Shivering with nausea, Regis pulled the leech away, feeling it tear from the flesh of his lips, feeling the gush of warm blood in his mouth. He spat, and flung it with disgust into the forest. He saw another leech on his forearm, and pulled it off, leaving a dark bloody streak behind. Jesus, he was probably covered with them. That fall down the hillside. These jungle hills were full of leeches. So were the dark rocky crevices. What did the workmen say? The leeches crawled up your underwear. They liked dark warm places. They liked to crawl right up your-

"Hellooo!"

He stopped. It was a voice, carried by the wind.

"Helloo! Dr. Grant!"

Jesus, that was the little girl.

Ed Regis listened to the tone of her voice. She didn't sound frightened, or in pain. She was just calling in her insistent way. And it slowly dawned on him that something else must have happened, that the tyrannosaur must have gone away-or at least hadn't attacked-and that the other people might still be alive. Grant and Malcolm. Everybody might be alive. An the realization made him pull himself together in an instant, the way you got sober in an instant when the cops pulled you over, and he felt better, because now he knew what he had to do. And as he crawled out from the boulders he was already formulating the next step, already figuring out what he would say, how to handle things from this point.

Regis wiped the cold mud off his face and hands, the evidence that he had been hiding. He wasn't embarrassed that he had been hiding, but now he had to take charge. He scrambled back up toward the road, but when he emerged from the foliage he had a moment of disorientation. He didn't see the cars at all. He was somehow at the bottom of the hill. The Land Cruisers must be at the top.

He started walking up the hill, back toward the Land Cruisers. It was very quiet. His feet splashed in the muddy puddles. He couldn't bear the little girl any more. Why had she stopped calling? As he walked, he began to think that maybe something had happened to her. In that case, he shouldn't walk back there. Maybe the tyrannosaur was still hanging around. Here he was, already at the bottom of the hill. That much closer to home.

And it was so quiet. Spooky, it was so quiet.

Ed Regis turned around, and started walking back toward the camp.

Alan Grant ran his hands over her limbs, squeezing the arms and legs briefly. She didn't seem to have any pain. It was amazing: aside from a cut on her head, she was fine. "I told you I was," she said.

"Well, I had to check."

The boy was not quite so fortunate. Tim's nose was swollen and painful; Grant suspected it was broken. His right shoulder was badly bruised and swollen. But his legs seemed to be all right. Both kids could walk. That was the important thing.

Grant himself was all right except for a claw abrasion down his right chest, where the tyrannosaur had kicked him. It burned with every breath, but it didn't seem to be serious, and it didn't limit his movement.

He wondered if he had been knocked unconscious, because he had only dim recollections of events immediately preceding the moment he had sat up, groaning, in the woods ten yards from the Land Cruiser. At first his chest had been bleeding, so he had stuck leaves on the wound, and after a while it clotted. Then he had started walking around, looking for Malcolm and the kids. Grant couldn't believe he was still alive, and as scattered images began to come back to him, he tried to make sense of them. The tyrannosaur should have killed them all easily. Why hadn't it?

"I'm hungry," Lex said.

"Me, too," Grant said. "We've got to get ourselves back to civilization. And we've got to tell them about the ship."

"We're the only ones who know?" Tim said.

"Yes. We've got to get back and tell them."

"Then let's walk down the road toward the hotel," Tim said, pointing down the hill. "That way we'll meet them when they come for us."

Grant considered that. And he kept thinking about one thing: the dark shape that had crossed between the Land Cruisers even before the attack started. What animal had that been? He could think of only one possibility-the little tyrannosaur.

"I don't think so, Tim. The road has high fences on both sides," Grant said. "If one of the tyrannosaurs is farther down on the road, we'll he trapped."

"Then should we wait here?" Tim said.

"Yes," Grant said. "Let's just wait here until someone comes."

"I'm hungry," Lex said.

"I hope it won't be very long," Grant said.

"I don't want to stay here," Lex said.

Then, from the bottom of the hill, they heard the sound of a man coughing.

"Stay here," Grant said. He ran forward, to look down the hill.

"Stay here," Tim said, and he ran forward after him.

Lex followed her brother. "Don't leave me, don't leave me here, you guys-"

Grant clapped his band over her mouth. She struggled to protest. He shook his head, and pointed over the hill, for her to look.

At the bottom of the hill, Grant saw Ed Regis, standing rigid, unmoving. The forest around them had become deadly silent. The steady background drone of cicadas and frogs had ceased abruptly. There was only the faint rustle of leaves, and the whine of the wind,

Lex started to speak, but Grant pulled her against the trunk of the nearest tree, ducking down among the heavy gnarled roots at the base. Tim came in right after them. Grant put his hands to his lips, signaling them to be quiet, and then he slowly looked around the tree.

The road below was dark, and as the branches of the big trees moved in the wind, the moonlight filtering through made a dappled, shifting pattern. Ed Regis was gone. It took Grant a moment to locate him. The publicist was pressed up against the trunk of a big tree, hugging it. Regis wasn't moving at all.

The forest remained silent.

Lex tugged impatiently at Grant's shirt; she wanted to know what was happening. Then, from somewhere very near, they heard a soft snorting exhalation, hardly louder than the wind. Lex heard it, too, because she stopped struggling.

The sound floated toward them again, soft as a sigh. Grant thought it was almost like the breathing of a horse.

Grant looked at Regis, and saw the moving shadows cast by the moonlight on the trunk of the tree. And then Grant realized there was another shadow, superimposed on the others, but not moving: a strong curved neck, and a square head.

The exhalation came again.

Tim leaned forward cautiously, to look. Lex did, too.

They heard a crack as a branch broke, and into the path stepped a tyrannosaur. It was the juvenile: about eight feet tall, and it moved with the clumsy gait of a young animal, almost like a puppy. The juvenile tyrannosaur shuffled down the path, stopping with every step to sniff the air before moving on. It passed the tree where Regis was hiding, and gave no indication that it had seen him. Grant saw Regis's body relax slightly. Regis turned his head, trying to watch the tyrannosaur on the far side of the tree.

The tyrannosaur was now out of view down the road. Regis started to relax, releasing his grip on the tree. But the jungle remained silent. Regis remained close to the tree trunk for another half a minute. Then the sounds of the forest returned: the first tentative croak of a tree frog, the buzz of one cicada, and then the full chorus. Regis stepped away from the tree, shaking his shoulders, releasing the tension. He walked into the middle of the road, looking in the direction of the departed tyrannosaur.

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