Dr. Alan Grant's Arc

Chapter 2 of 11

Grant pushed the children into the ferns at the tree line and stopped. The flare had done its work and its damage. Something out there had answered it, and now Grant did not know where the answer was. The service road lay open behind them. The trees stood thick ahead. Between the two, a raptor was moving, and Grant could not hear it over his own breathing. He crouched and looked at the children. The boy's mouth hung open. The girl held something inside her jacket, one hand cupped under a small shape. A puppy. Grant had not seen her pick it up. It must have come from the wrecked jeep, or from a staff bungalow they had passed. The puppy squirmed. It made a thin sound, high and wet, the kind of sound a raptor's ear would catch a quarter mile off. "Give it here," Grant whispered. The girl shook her head. He did not have time to argue. He unzipped his own jacket and held it open. She slid the puppy inside against his shirt. The warmth stopped its crying at once. Grant zipped the jacket to his throat and felt the small heart drum against his ribs. He needed to know where the raptor was before he moved the children one more step. He looked up. The tropical canopy climbed above him in layers, broad fronds stacked on slim trunks, the highest crown maybe forty feet up. From the road he could see nothing. From up there he could see the grass move. He pointed at the boy and mouthed, stay. He pointed at the girl and mouthed the same. Then he set his boot on the lowest scar in the trunk and climbed. The bark tore his palms. Halfway up he stopped and made himself still and looked. The service road ran gray through the green. Fifty yards north, the ferns bent in a line against the wind, then bent again across the wind. Something was walking there, low, patient, quartering the ground where the flare had fallen. Grant watched until the line of bent ferns turned east, away from the children, away from the visitor center. Away from the path he needed. He counted to thirty. The ferns kept bending east. He climbed down. He put one hand on the boy's shoulder and one on the girl's and pointed west through the trunks, along a line the raptor was not walking. The puppy shifted against his chest and stayed quiet. Grant took the first step off the road and into the trees. The ground was soft and gave no sound. Behind him the service road emptied. Ahead, through a break in the fronds, the roof of the visitor center caught the last of the sun, and Grant started walking the children toward it.