Dr. Alan Grant's Arc

Chapter 5 of 11

The copier slid another inch and stopped against the glass. Grant stepped back and looked at the barricade the way a man looks at a bridge he has to cross. Two desks. One copier. Three chairs stacked on top. The doors behind it were glass in an aluminum frame. He could see the dark grass outside and the shape of the tree line past it. Something was moving in the trees. Not fast. Testing. "This won't hold," Grant said. "Not for a real push. The frame will give before the glass does." Malcolm shifted his weight on the cane and did not argue. Grant turned and walked back down the hall. Ellie met him at the mouth of the lobby with the boy behind her. Grant kept his voice low. He said the barricade was a stall. He said they needed a room with one door and no windows, and they needed it before the raptors came back. Ellie nodded once. She said there was a control room off the rotunda. Steel door. Keypad lock. She had the code. Grant told her to take the children now. He told Malcolm to go with them and to keep the boy's hand in his. Malcolm looked at the leg, then at the boy, and took the boy's hand. They moved. Grant stayed at the mouth of the hall and watched the east doors and counted. He got to nineteen. The first raptor hit the glass at a full run. The frame jumped in the wall and the top chair fell off the stack. A second shape came in behind the first and struck the door lower down, at the lock plate, where the scratches already were. The aluminum bent. Grant saw the narrow snout push through the gap and the eye behind it fix on him. He turned and ran. He shouted Ellie's name once. He heard the copier go over behind him. He rounded the rotunda and saw the steel door standing open and Ellie in it and the girl's face at her hip. Grant went through. Malcolm shoved the door. The bolt threw. Something heavy hit the other side and the steel rang and held. Grant put his back against the wall and slid down it to the floor. The girl was crying without sound. The puppy was in her arms again. Ellie was already at a console, hitting keys, watching a screen come up. She said the phones were dead and the main power was on a timer. She said the timer ran out in forty minutes. Grant looked at the steel door. He looked at the vent in the ceiling above it. He started counting again.