The Jeep tires rolled across soft earth.
Thorne brought the car to a stop.
Silence.
They peered out the windows, trying to see where they were. But it was so dark, it was hard to see anything. They seemed to be at the bottom of a deep gully, a canopy of trees overhead.
“Alluvial contours,” Levine said. “We must be in a streambed.”
As his eyes adjusted, Thorne saw he was right. The raptors were running down the center of the streambed, which was lined with big boulders on both sides. But the bed itself was sandy, and it was wide enough for the car to pass through. He followed them.
“You have any idea where we are?” Levine said, staring at the raptors.
“No,” Thorne said.
The car drove forward. The streambed widened, opening out into a flat basin. The boulders disappeared; there were trees on both sides of the river. Patches of moonlight appeared here and there. It was easier to see.
But the raptors were gone. He stopped the car, rolled down the window, and listened. He could hear them hissing and growling. The sound seemed to be coming from off to the left.
Thorne put the car in gear, and left the streambed, moving off among ferns and occasional pine trees. Levine said, “Do you suppose the boy survived that hill?”
“I don’t know,” Thorne said. “I can’t imagine.”
He drove forward slowly. They came to a break in the trees, and saw a clearing where the ferns had been trampled flat. Beyond the clearing, they saw the banks of the river, moonlight glinting on the water. Somehow they had returned to the river.
But it was the clearing itself that held their attention. Within the broad open space, they saw the huge pale skeletons of several apatosaurs. The giant rib cages, arcs of pale bone, shone in the silver light. The dark hulk of a partially eaten carcass lay on its side in the center, clouds of flies buzzing above it in the night.
“What is this place?” Thorne said. “It looks like a graveyard.”
“Yes,” Levine said. “But it’s not.”
The raptors were all clustered to one side, fighting over the remains of Eddie’s carcass. At the opposite side of the clearing they saw three low mud mounds; the walls were broken in many places. Within the nests they saw crushed fragments of eggshells. There was the strong stench of decay.
Levine leaned forward, staring. “This is the raptor nest,” he said.
In the darkness of the trailer, Malcolm sat up, wincing. He grabbed the radio. “You found it? The nest?”
The radio crackled. Levine said, “Yes. I think so.”
“Describe it,” Malcolm said.
Levine spoke quietly, reporting features, estimating dimensions. To Levine, the velociraptor nest appeared slovenly, uncared for, ill-made. He was surprised, because dinosaur nests usually conveyed an unmistakable sense of order. Levine had seen it time and again, in fossil sites from Montana to Mongolia. The eggs in the nest were arranged in neat concentric circles. Often there were more than thirty eggs in a single nest, suggesting that many females cooperated to share a single mud mound. Numerous adult fossils would be found nearby, indicating that the dinosaurs cared communally for the eggs. At a few excavations, it was even possible to get a sense of the spatial arrangement, with the nests in the center, the adults moving carefully around the outside, so as not to disturb the incubating eggs. In this rigid structure, the dinosaurs were reminiscent of their descendants the birds, which also displayed precise courtship, mating, and nest-building patterns.
But the velociraptors behaved differently. There was a disorderly, chaotic feeling to the scene before him: ill-formed nests; quarreling adults; very few young and juvenile animals; the eggshells crushed; the broken mounds stepped on. Around the mounds, Levine now saw scattered small bones which he presumed were the remains of newborns. He saw no living infants anywhere in the clearing. There were three juveniles, but these younger animals were forced to fend for themselves, and they already showed many scars on their bodies. The youngsters looked thin, undernourished. Poking around the periphery of the carcass, they were cautious, backing away whenever one of the adults snapped at them.
“And what about the apatosaurs?” Malcolm asked. “What about the carcasses?”
Levine counted four, all together. In various stages of decomposition.
“You have to tell Sarah,” Malcolm said.
But Levine was wondering about something else: he was wondering how these big carcasses had gotten here in the first place. They hadn’t died here by accident, surely all animals would have avoided this nest. They couldn’t have been lured here, and they were too large to carry. So how did they get here? Something was tickling the back of his mind, some obvious thought that he wasn’t—
“They brought Arby,” Malcolm said.
“Yes,” Levine said. “They did.”
He stared at the nest, trying to figure it out. Then Thorne nudged him. “There’s the cage,” he said, pointing. At the far side of the clearing, lying on the ground, partially hidden behind fronds, Levine saw the glint of aluminum struts. But he couldn’t see Arby.
“Way over there,” Levine said.
The raptors were ignoring the cage, still fighting over Eddie’s carcass. Thorne brought out a Lindstradt rifle, snapped open the cartridge pack. He saw six darts. “Not enough,” he said, and snapped it shut. There were at least ten raptors in the clearing.
Levine rummaged in the back seat, found his knapsack, which had fallen to the floor. He unzipped it, came out with a small silver cylinder the size of a large soft-drink bottle. It had a skull and crossbones stenciled on it. Beneath, lettering read: caution toxic metacholine (mivacurium).
“What’s that?” Thorne said.
“Something they cooked up in Los Alamos,” Levine said. “It’s a nonlethal area neutralizer. Releases a short-acting cholinesterase aerosol. Paralyzes all life forms for up to three minutes. It’ll knock all the raptors out.”
“But what about the boy?” Thorne said. “You can’t use that. You’ll paralyze him.”
Levine pointed. “If we throw the canister to the right of the cage, the gas’ll blow away from him, toward the raptors.”
“Or it may not,” Thorne said. “And he may be badly injured.”
Levine nodded. He put the cylinder back in the knapsack, then sat, facing forward, staring at the raptors. “So,” Levine said. “What do we do now?”
Thorne looked over at the aluminum cage, partially blocked by ferns. Then he saw something that made him sit up: the cage moved slightly, the bars shifting in the moonlight.
“Did you see that?” Levine said.
Thorne said, “I’m going to get that kid out of there.”
“But how?” Levine said.
“The old-fashioned way,” Thorne said.
He climbed out of the car.
* * *
Sarah accelerated, racing the motorcycle up the mud banks of the river. The raptor was just ahead, cutting diagonally toward them, heading for the water.
“Go!” Kelly shouted. “Go!”
The raptor saw them and changed course, angling farther ahead. It was trying to get distance on them but they were moving faster on the open banks. They came abreast of the animal, flanking it, and then Sarah left the banks, heading back onto the grassy plain. The raptor moved right, deeper into the plain. Away from the river.
“You did it!” Kelly shouted.
Sarah maintained her speed, moving slowly closer to the raptor. It seemed to have given up on the river, and now had no plan. It was just running up the plain. And they were steadily, inexorably gaining. Kelly was excited. She tried to wipe the mud off her rifle, preparing to shoot again.
“Damn!” Sarah shouted.
“What?”
“Look!”
Kelly leaned forward, stared past Sarah’s shoulder. Directly ahead, she saw the herd of apatosaurs. They were only fifty yards from the first of the enormous animals, which bellowed and wheeled in sud
den fear. Their bodies were green-gray in the moonlight.
The raptor streaked directly toward the herd.