Procompsognathids, Ellie thought, wishing that Grant were here to see them. This was the animal they had seen in the fax, back in Montana. The little dark green procompsognathids scurried to the other side of the road, then squatted on their hind legs to look at the car, chattering briefly, before hurrying onward into the night.
"Odd," Harding said. "Wonder where they're off to? Compys don't usually move at night, you know. They climb up in a tree and wait for daylight."
"Then why are they out now?" Ellie said.
"I can't imagine. You know compys are scavengers, like buzzards. They're attracted to a dying animal, and they have tremendously sensitive smell. They can smell a dying animal for miles."
"Then they're going to a dying animal?"
"Dying, or already dead."
"Should we follow them?" Ellie said.
"I'd be curious," Harding said. "Yes, why not? Let's go see where they're going.
He turned the car around, and headed back toward the compys.
Tim
Tim Murphy lay in the Land Cruiser, his cheek pressed against the car door handle. He drifted slowly back to consciousness. He wanted only to sleep. He shifted his position, and felt the pain in his cheekbone where it lay against the metal door. His whole body ached. His arms and his legs and most of all his head-there was a terrible pounding pain in his head. All the pain made him want to go back to sleep.
He pushed himself up on one elbow, opened his eyes, and retched, vomiting all over his shirt. He tasted sour bile and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His head throbbed; he felt dizzy and seasick, as if the world were moving, as if he were rocking back and forth on a boat.
Tim groaned, and rolled onto his back, turning away from the puddle of vomit. The pain in his head made him breathe in short, shallow gasps. And he still felt sick, as if everything were moving. He opened his eyes and looked around, trying to get his bearings.
He was inside the Land Cruiser. But the car must have flipped over on its side, because he was lying on his back against the passenger door, looking up at the steering wheel and beyond, at the branches of a tree, moving in the wind. The rain had nearly stopped, but water drops still fell on him through the broken front windshield.
He stared curiously at the fragments of glass. He couldn't remember how the windshield had broken. He couldn't remember anything except that they had been parked on the road and he had been talking to Dr. Grant when the tyrannosaur came toward them. That was the last thing he remembered.
He felt sick again, and closed his eyes until the nausea passed. He was aware of a rhythmic creaking sound, like the rigging of a boat. Dizzy and sick to his stomach, he really felt as if the whole car were moving beneath him. But when he opened his eyes again, he saw it was true-the Land Cruiser was moving, lying on its side, swaying back and forth.
The whole car was moving.
Tentatively, Tim rose to his feet. Standing on the passenger door, he peered over the dashboard, looking out through the shattered windshield. At first he saw only dense foliage, moving in the wind. But here and there he could see gaps, and beyond the foliage, the ground was-
The ground was twenty feet below him.
He stared uncomprehendingly. The Land Cruiser was lying on its side in the branches of a large tree, twenty feet above the ground, swaying back and forth in the wind.
"Oh shit," he said. What was he going to do? He stood on his tiptoes and peered out, trying to see better, grabbing the steering wheel for support. The wheel spun free in his hand, and with a loud crack the Land Cruiser shifted position, dropping a few feet in the branches of the tree. He looked down through the shattered glass of the passenger-door window at the ground below.
"Oh shit. Oh shit." He kept repeating it. "Oh shit. Oh shit."
Another loud crack-the Land Cruiser jolted down another foot.
He had to get out of here.
He looked down at his feet. He was standing on the door handle. He crouched back down on his bands and knees to look at the handle. He couldn't see very well in the dark, but he could tell that the door was dented outward so the handle couldn't turn. He'd never get the door open. He tried to roll the window down, but the window was stuck, too. Then he thought of the back door. Maybe he could open that. He leaned over the front seat, and the Land Cruiser lurched with the shift in weight.
Carefully, Tim reached back and twisted the handle on the rear door.
It was stuck, too.
How was he going to get out?
He heard a snorting sound and looked down. A dark shape passed below him. It wasn't the tyrannosaur. This shape was tubby and it made a kind of snuffling as it waddled along. The tail flopped back and forth, and Tim could see the long spikes.
It was the stegosaur, apparently recovered from its illness. Tim wondered where the other people were: Gennaro and Sattler and the vet. He had last seen them near the stegosaur. How long ago was that? He looked at his watch, but the face was cracked; he couldn't see the numbers. He took the watch off and tossed it aside.
The stegosaur snuffled and moved on. Now the only sound was the wind in the trees, and the creaking of the Land Cruiser as it shifted back and forth.
He had to get out of here.
Tim grabbed the handle, tried to force it, but it was stuck solid. It wouldn't move at all. Then he realized what was wrong: the rear door was locked! Tim pulled up the pin and twisted the handle. The rear door swung open, downward-and came to rest against the branch a few feet below.
The opening was narrow, but Tim thought he could wriggle through it. Holding his breath, he crawled slowly back into the rear seat. The Land Cruiser creaked, but held its position. Gripping the doorposts on both sides, Tim slowly lowered himself down, through the narrow angled opening of the door. Soon he was lying flat on his stomach on the slanted door, his legs sticking out of the car. He kicked in the air-his feet touched something solid-a branch-and he rested his weight on it.
As soon as he did, the branch bent down and the door swung wider, spilling him out of the Land Cruiser, and he fell-leaves scratching his face-his body bouncing from branch to branch-a jolt-searing pain, bright light in his head-
He slammed to a stop, the wind knocked from him. Tim lay doubled over a large branch, his stomach burning pain.
Tim heard another crack and looked up at the Land Cruiser, a big dark shape five feet above him.
Another crack. The car shifted.
Tim forced himself to move, to climb down. He used to like to climb trees. He was a good tree-climber. And this was a good tree to climb, the branches spaced close together, almost like a staircase. . . .
Crackkkk . . .
The car was definitely moving.
Tim scrambled downward, slipping over the wet branches, feeling sticky sap on his hands, hurrying. He had not descended more than a few feet when the Land Cruiser creaked a final time, and then slowly, very slowly, nosed over. Tim could see the big green grille and the front headlights swinging down at him, and then the Land Cruiser fell free, gaining momentum as it rushed toward him, slamming against the branch where Tim had just been-
And it stopped.
His face just inches from the dented grille, bent inward like an evil mouth, headlamps for eyes. Oil dripped on Tim's face.
He was still twelve feet above the ground. He reached down, found another branch, and moved down. Above, he saw the branch bending under the weight of the Land Cruiser, and then it cracked, and the Land Cruiser came rushing down toward him and he knew he could never escape it, he could never get down fast enough, so Tim just let go.
He fell the rest of the way.
Tumbling, banging, feeling pain in every part of his body, hearing the Land Cruiser smashing down through the branches after him like a pursuing animal, and then Tim's shoulder hit the soft ground, and he rolled as hard as he could, and pressed his body against the trunk of the tree as the Land Cruiser tumbled down with a loud metallic crash and a sudden hot burst of electrical sparks that stung his skin and sputtered and sizzled on the wet ground around him.
Slowly, Tim got to his feet. In the darkness he heard the snuffling, and saw the stegosaur coming back, apparently attracted by the crash of the Land Cruiser. The dinosaur moved dumbly, the low head thrust forward, and the big cartilaginous plates running in two rows along the bump of the back. It behaved like an overgrown tortoise. Stupid like that. And slow.
Tim picked up a rock and threw it. "Get away!"
The rock tbunked dully off the plates. The stegosaur kept coming. "Go on! Co!"
He threw another rock, and hit the stegosaur in the head. The animal grunted, turned slowly away, and shuffled off in the direction it had come.
Tim leaned against the crumpled Land Cruiser and looked around in the darkness. He had to get back to the others, but he didn't want to get lost. He knew he was somewhere in the park, probably not far from the main road. If he could only get his hearings. He couldn't see much in the dark, but-
Then he remembered the goggles.
He climbed through the shattered front windshield into the Land Cruiser and found the night-vision goggles, and the radio. The radio was broken and silent, so he left it behind. But the goggles still worked. He flicked them on, saw the reassuringly familiar phosphorescent green image.
Wearing the goggles, he saw the battered fence off to his left, and walked toward it. The fence was twelve feet high, but the tyrannosaur had flattened it easily. Tim hurried across it, moved through an area of dense foliage, and came out onto the main road.