Dr. Alan Grant's Arc

Chapter 7 of 11

The scrape at the vent came again. Grant stood under the ceiling and counted the screws in the cover. Four. The cover was thin sheet metal. The duct behind it was wider than a raptor's shoulders. He had measured raptor shoulders in a lab in Montana from a cast, and he knew what would fit through that hole. He told Ellie he needed something to block it. She looked around the control room. Steel desk. Rolling chairs. A tall filing cabinet against the far wall. She pointed at the cabinet. Grant shook his head. Too tall to lift onto the desk, and the vent was above the desk, near the ceiling. Malcolm watched from the floor and said the cabinet would tip before it seated. He was right. Grant climbed onto the desk and put his ear to the vent cover. He heard breathing. Not fast. Patient. The raptor was in the duct already, working its way toward the cover from the far end. He heard a claw tap the metal, testing. Then a second tap farther down. Two of them. He got down and told Ellie the plan. They would empty the filing cabinet, lay it on its back on the desk, and shove the open end against the vent. The drawers would jam the duct from the inside once he pushed them out. Ellie did not argue. She pulled drawers and dumped paper on the floor. The girl held the puppy tight against her chest and stepped back against the wall. The boy helped Grant tip the cabinet. They got it onto the desk. Grant climbed up beside it. He unscrewed the vent cover with a coin from his pocket. The cover came free. He looked into the duct and saw a narrow snout and one alert eye ten feet in. The raptor lunged. Grant shoved the open cabinet mouth against the vent and drove a drawer forward into the duct with both hands. The drawer wedged. The raptor hit the drawer and the whole cabinet jumped. Grant drove a second drawer in behind the first. Then a third. The cabinet held. He climbed down. His hands were shaking. Ellie pushed the desk hard against the wall to pin the cabinet in place. Malcolm let his head rest on the floor. The girl was crying without sound. The boy stared at the ceiling. Something scraped the drawers from inside the duct, then stopped. The raptor was thinking. Grant sat on the floor and listened. The scraping at the steel door had stopped too. He did not take that as good news. He had told the children this was an adventure. He looked at the console. The battery light was steady. The door was locked. The vent was plugged. Then he heard it, far off through the wall of the visitor center, a low sound that was not a raptor. A heavier step. Something bigger had come to the building.