Eddie parked his Explorer, turning it around to face back the way they had come. Thorne maneuvered the trailers alongside the car, and cut the engine. He climbed out into the still, hot morning air. Malcolm got out and stood with him. Here in the center of the island, it was completely silent, except for the buzz of insects.
Eddie came over, slapping himself. "Great place, huh? No shortage of mosquitoes. You want to go get the son of a bitch now?" Eddie unclipped a receiver from his belt, and cupped his hand over the display, trying to see it in the sunlight. "Still right over there." He pointed to the main building. "What do you say?"
"Let's go get him," Thorne said.
The three men turned, climbed into the Explorer, and, leaving the trailers behind, drove in hot sunlight toward the giant, ruined building.
Trailer
Inside the trailer, the sound of the car engine faded away, and there-was silence. The dashboard glowed, the GPS map remained visible on the monitor; the flashing X marking their position. A small window in the monitor, titled "Active Systems," indicated the battery charge, photovoltaic efficiency, and usage over the past twelve hours. The electronic readouts all glowed bright green.
In the living section, where the kitchen and beds were located, the recirculating water supply in the sink gurgled softly. Then there was a thumping sound, coming from the upper storage compartment, located near the ceiling. The thumping was repeated, and then there was silence.
After a moment, a credit card appeared through the crack of the compartment door. The card slid upward, lifting the panel latch, unhooking it. The door swung open, and a white bundle of padding fell Out, landing with a dull thud on the floor. The padding unrolled, and Arby Benton groaned, stretching his small body.
"If I don't pee, I'm going to scream," he said, and he hurried on shaky legs into the tiny bathroom.
He sighed in relief. It had been Kelly's idea for them to go, but she left it to Arby to figure out the details. And he had figured everything out perfectly, he thought - at least, almost everything. Arby had correctly anticipated it would be freezing cold in the cargo plane, and that they would have to bundle up; he'd stuffed their compartments with every blanket and sheet in the trailer. He'd anticipated they would be there at least twelve hours, and he put aside some cookies and bottles of water. In fact, he'd anticipated everything except the fact that, at the last minute, Eddie Carr would go through the trailer and latch all the storage compartments from the outside. Locking them in, so that, for the next twelve hours, he wouldn't be able to go to the bathroom. For twelve hours!
He sighed again, his body relaxing. A steady stream of urine still flowed into the basin. No wonder! Agony! And he'd still be locked in there, he thought, if he hadn't finally figured out -
Behind him, he heard muffled shouts. He flushed the toilet and went back, crouching down by the storage compartment beneath the bed. He quickly unlatched it; another padded bundle unrolled, and Kelly appeared beside him.
"Hey, Kel," he said proudly. "We made it!"
"I have to go," she said, dashing. She pulled the door shut behind her.
Arby said, "We did it! We're here!"
"Just a minute, Arb. Okay?"
For the first time, he looked out the window of the trailer. All around them was a grassy clearing, and beyond that, the ferns and high trees of the jungle. And high above the tops of the trees, he saw the curving black rock of the volcanic rim.
So this was Isla Sorna, all right.
All right!
Kelly came out of the bathroom. "Ohhh. I thought I was going to die!" She looked at him, gave him high five. "By the way, how'd you get your door unlatched?"
"Credit card," he said.
She frowned. "You have a credit card?"
"My parents gave it to me, for emergencies," he said. "And I figured this was an emergency." He tried to make a joke out of it, to treat it lightly. Arby knew Kelly was sensitive about anything to do with money. She was always making comments about his clothes and things like that. Arid how he always had money for a taxi or a Coke at Larson's Deli after school, or whatever. Once he said to her that he didn't think money was so important, and she said, "Why would you?" in a funny voice. Arid ever since then he had tried to avoid the subject.
Arby wasn't always clear about the right thing to do around people. Everyone treated him so weird, anyway. Because he was younger, of course. And because he was black. Arid because he was what the other kids called a brainer. He found himself engaged in a constant effort to be accepted, to blend in. Except he couldn't. He wasn't white, he wasn't big, he wasn't good at sports, and he wasn't dumb. Most of his classes at school were so boring Arby could hardly stay awake in them. His teachers sometimes got annoyed with him, but what could he do? School was like a video played at super-slow speed. You could glance at it once an hour and not miss anything. And when he was around the other kids, how could he be expected to show interest in TV shows like "Melrose Place," or the San Francisco 49ers, or the Shaq's new commercial. He couldn't. That stuff wasn't important.
But Arby had long ago discovered it was unpopular to say so. It was better to keep your mouth shut. Because nobody understood him, except Kelly. She seemed to know what he was talking about, most of the time.
And Dr. Levine. At least the school had an advanced-placement track, which was moderately interesting to Arby. Not very interesting, of course, but better than the other classes. And when Dr. Levine had decided to teach the class, Arby had found himself excited by school for the first time in his life. In fact -
"So this is Isla Sorna, huh?" Kelly said, looking out the window at the jungle.
"Yeah," Arby said. "I guess so."
"You know, when they stopped the car earlier," Kelly said, "could you hear what they were talking about?"
"Not really. All the padding."
"Me neither," Kelly said. "But they seemed pretty worked up about something."
"Yeah, they did."
"It sounded like they were talking about dinosaurs, Kelly said. "Did you hear anything like that?"
Arby laughed, shaking his head. "No, Kel," he said.
"Because I thought they did."
"Come on, Kel."
"I thought Thorne said 'triceratops."'
"Kel," he said. "Dinosaurs have been extinct for sixty-five million years.
"I know that…"
He pointed out the window. "You see any dinosaurs out there?"
Kelly didn't answer. She went to the other side of the trailer, and looked out the opposite window. She saw Thorne, Malcolm, and Eddie disappearing into the main building.
"They're going to be pretty annoyed when they find us," Arby said. "How do you think we should tell them?"
"We can let it be a surprise.
"They'll be mad," he said.
"So? What can they do about it?" Kelly said.
"Maybe they'll send us back."
"How? They can't."
"Yeah. I guess." Arby shrugged casually, but he was more troubled by this line of thought than he wanted to admit. This was all Kelly's idea. Arby had never liked to break the rules, or to get into any kind of trouble. Whenever he had even had a mild reprimand from a teacher, he would get flushed and sweaty. And for the last twelve hours, he had been thinking about how Thorne and the others would react.
"Look," Kelly said. "The thing is, we're here to help find our friend Dr. Levine, that's all. We've helped Dr. Thorne already."
"Yes
"And we'll be able to help them again."
"Maybe…"
"They need our help."
"Maybe," Arby said. He didn't feel convinced.
Kelly said, "I wonder what they have to eat here." She opened the refrigerator. "You hungry?"
"Starving," Arby said, suddenly aware that he was.
'So what do you want?"
"What is there?" He sat on the padded gray couch and stretched, as he watched Kelly poke through the refrigerator.