"You mean you're going outside?" Levine said.
"Yes."
Levine frowned. Another pause.
Crouched over Arby, Sarah said, "Where are the lights, guys?"
"Just a minute," Thorne said to her. He leaned close to Levine. "Okay?"
"Okay," Levine said, taking a breath.
Thorne went to the front door, opened it, and stepped out into darkness. Levine closed the door behind him. Thorne heard a click as the door locked.
He immediately turned, and rapped softly. Levine opened the door a few inches, peering out.
"For Christ's sake," Thorne whispered. "Don't lock it!"
"But I just thought - "
"Don't lock the damn door!"
"Okay, okay. I'm sorry."
"For Christ's sake," Thorne said.
He closed the door again, and turned to face the night.
Around him, the worker village was silent. He heard only the steady drone of cicadas in the darkness. It seemed almost too quiet, he thought. But perhaps it was just the contrast from the snarling raptors. Thorne stood with his back to the door for a long time, staring out at the clearing. He saw nothing.
Finally he walked over to the jeep, opened the side door, and fumbled in the dark for the radio. Ills hand touched it; it had slid under the passenger seat. He pulled it out and carried it back to the store, knocked on the door.
Levine opened it, said "It's not lock - "
"Here." Thorne handed him the radio, closed the door again.
Again, he paused, watching. Around him, the compound was silent. The moon was full. The air was still.
He moved forward and peered closely at the gas pumps. The handle of the nearest one was rusted, and draped with spiderwebs. He pulled the nozzle up, and flicked the latch. Nothing happened. He squeezed the nozzle handle. No liquid came out. He tapped the glass window on the pump that showed the number of gallons, and the glass fell out in his hand. Inside, a spider scurried across the metal numerals.
There was no gas.
They had to find gas, or they'd never get to the helicopter. He frowned at the pumps, thinking. They were simple, the kind of very reliable pumps you found at a remote construction site. And that made sense, because after all, this was an island.
He paused.
This was an island. That meant everything came in by plane, or boat. Most times, probably by boat. Small boats, where supplies were offloaded by hand. Which meant…
He bent over, examining the base of the pump in the moonlight. just as he thought, there were no buried gas tanks. He saw a thick black PVC pipe running at an angle just tinder the ground. He could see the direction the pipe was going - around the side of the store.
Thorne followed it, moving cautiously in the moonlight. He paused for a moment to listen, then moved on.
He came around to the side and saw just what he expected to see: fifty-gallon metal drums, ranged along the side wall. There were three of them, connected by a series of black hoses, That made sense. All the gasoline on the island would have had to come here in drums.
He tapped the drums softly with a knuckle. They were hollow. He lifted one, hoping to hear the slosh of liquid at the bottom. They needed only a gallon or two -
Nothing.
The drums were empty.
But surely, he thought, there must be more than three drums. He did a quick calculation in his head. A lab this large would have had a half-dozen support vehicles, maybe more. Even if they were fuel-efficient, they'd burn thirty or forty gallons a week. To be safe, the company would have stored at least two months' supply, perhaps six months' supply.
That meant ten to thirty drums. And steel drums were heavy, so they probably stored them close by. Probably just a few yards…
He turned slowly, looking. The moonlight was bright, and he could see well.
Beyond the store, there was an open space, and then clumps of tall rhododendron bushes which bad overgrown the path leading to the tennis court. Above the bushes, the chain-link fence was laced with creeping vines. To the left was the first of the worker cottages. He could see only the dark roof. To the right of the court, nearer the store, there was thick foliage, although he saw a gap -
A path.
He moved forward, leaving the store behind. Approaching the dark gap in the bushes he saw a vertical line, and realized it was the edge of an open wooden door. There was a shed, back in the foliage. The other door was closed. As he came closer, he saw a rusted metal sign, with flaking red lettering. The letters were black in the moonlight.
PRECAUCION
NON FUMARE
INFLAMMABLE
He paused, listening. He heard the raptors snarling in the distance, but they seemed far away, back up on the hill. For some reason they still had not approached the village.
Thorne waited, heart pounding, staring forward at the dark entrance to the shed. At last he decided it wasn't going to get any easier. They needed gas. He moved forward.
The path to the shed was wet from the night's rain, but the shed was dry inside, His eyes adjusted. It was a small place, perhaps twelve by twelve. In the dim light he saw a dozen rusted drums, standing on end. Three or four more, on their sides. Thorne touched them all quickly, one after another. They were light: empty.
Every one, empty.
Feeling defeated, Thorne moved back toward the entrance to the shed. He paused for a moment, staring out at the moonlit night. And then, as he waited, he heard the unmistakable sound of breathing.
Inside the store, Levine moved from window to window, trying to follow Thorne's progress. His body was jumpy with tension. What was Thorne doing? He had gone so far from the store. It was very unwise. Levine kept glancing at the front door, wishing he could lock it. He felt so unsafe with the door unlocked.
Now Thorne had gone off into the bushes, disappearing entirely from view. And he had been gone a long time. At least a minute or two.
Levine stared out the window, and bit his lip. He heard the distant snarl of the raptors, and realized that they had remained up at the entrance to the laboratory. They hadn't followed the vehicles down, even now. Why not? he wondered. The question was welcome in his mind. Calming, almost soothing. A question to answer. Why had the raptors stayed up at the laboratory?
All kinds of explanations occurred to him. The raptors had an atavistic fear of the laboratory, the place of their birth. They remembered the cages and didn't want to be captured again. But he suspected the most likely explanation was also the simplest - that the area around the laboratory was some other animal's territory, it was scent-marked and demarcated and defended, and the raptors were reluctant to enter it. Even the tyrannosaur, he remembered now, had gone through the territory quickly, without stopping.
But whose territory?
Levine stared out the window impatiently, as he waited.
"What about the lights?" Sarah called, from across the room. "I need light here."
"In a minute" Levine said.
At the entrance to the shed, Thorne stood silently, listening.
He heard Soft, snorting exhalations, like a quiet horse. A large animal, waiting. The sound was coming from somewhere to his right. Thorne looked over, slowly.
He saw nothing at all. Moonlight shone brightly over the worker village. He saw the store, the gas pumps, the dark shape of the Jeep. Looking to his right, he saw an open space, and clijmps of rhododendron bushes. The tennis court beyond.
Nothing else.
He stared, listening hard.
The soft snorting continued. Hardly louder than a faint breeze. But there was no breeze: the trees and bushes were not moving.
Or were they?
Thorne had the sense that something was wrong. Something right before his eyes, something that he could see but couldn't see. With the effort of staring, he began to think his eyes were playing tricks on him. He thought he detected a slight movement in the bushes to the Tight. The pattern of the leaves seemed to shift in the moonlight. Shift, and stabilize again.