Dr. Alan Grant's Arc

Chapter 9 of 11

Grant kept his eyes on the monitor. The tyrannosaur moved out of frame, and the pavement in front of the glass doors sat empty. Somewhere on that pavement the raptors were deciding. He needed to know when the lobby was clear, because the lobby was the only way to the exit, and the exit was the only way to get the children off the island. The single working camera showed him the front walk. It did not show him the lobby. "We need another angle," Grant said. Ellie was crouched by Malcolm, folding a jacket under his leg. She looked up. "The tour feed," the boy said from his chair. He was already reaching across the console. He typed with two fingers and brought up a menu. One line read LOBBY GREETER. He selected it. The monitor went black, then filled with a wide shot of the lobby floor. Grant leaned in. The camera was mounted inside the mouth of a life-size triceratops model near the front desk. The angle looked out between the horns. Grant could see the front doors, the reception counter, the corridor mouth that led toward the control room, and the stretch of tile between. A raptor stood in the middle of the tile. It was not moving. Its head was turned toward the glass doors, low, listening. A second raptor crossed behind it and disappeared down the corridor toward them. Grant felt the boy stiffen next to him. "They're inside," Ellie said. Then the glass at the front doors shook. The standing raptor bolted for the corridor, following the first. A shape passed the doors outside, huge, and the whole facade shuddered as the tyrannosaur's flank struck the frame. The doors did not break. The tyrannosaur kept moving. On the tour camera, Grant watched both raptors vanish into the corridor after their only cover. Away from the front. Toward the control room. Grant stepped back from the screen. He had his answer. The lobby was empty. The path to the front doors was open for as long as the tyrannosaur stayed on the walk outside, which was not long. But the raptors were now in the hallway between the control room and that path. He could see the exit. He could not reach it. "They came inside," he said. He kept his voice level for the girl, who was watching him with the puppy pressed to her chest. He had wanted the lobby cleared and it had cleared. The raptors had cleared it by walking past this door. Grant looked at the steel between them and the corridor and listened. A claw scraped the tile on the other side. Then a second. The animals he had spent his career defending in print were standing six feet from the children, and the only way out ran straight through them.