Jurassic Dead (8 page)

15.

Aboard Oil Tanker Hammond-1, En route to Chile

Veronica watched Xander usher the last of his personnel out of the lab area, leaving only himself, Veronica, and the unconscious Marcus, and the unconscious
T. rex
, which Xander had shot full of enough sedatives to kill a herd of elephants. He walked over to Veronica, who had so far done little more for Marcus than to don latex gloves and clean the blood off his wrist and arm with antiseptic wipes.

“Blood sample?” Xander squinted his eyes at Marcus' handless arm and looked away quickly, scanning the shadows against the hull as if to make certain no one else remained.

Veronica looked down at the syringe she hadn't used yet. “One track mind. Just hang on.” She made a couple of more swipes with the antiseptic and then tossed the blood-soaked wipe on the deck.

“We're in a hurry, here! In case you haven't noticed, Rex Van Winkle over there just woke up after a sixty-five million year slumber and bit this man, and we kind of need to know how it affected him.”

“It doesn't take a genius to see how it
affected
him. He's missing his left fucking hand! He could bleed to death or die of infection if you don't allow me to get to work on him.”

Veronica's indignant response was surprisingly genuine. She didn't know crap about medicine, but she did know one thing, Xander was a grade A asshole. The only thing he cared about was his own agenda. She started to flash on her ex-lover's untimely death at the hands of this arrogant...
stop it, you'll blow your cover.
The M.D.s she'd been around did have pretty big egos, though, so she figured her little outburst probably put her in character—a doctor who wouldn’t take any shit and would always put the interests of her patients first. Still, she would need to take it down a notch or risk being kicked off the ship when they got to Chile, before she learned where DeKirk was.

Xander's voice helped to bring her back to the moment. “Now that you mention it that wound does look like it could be infected,” he said, gazing with intent curiosity at the jagged aperture where Marcus's hand should be. The skin nearest the bite had a sickly pallor about it. Veronica held up the arm so that he could get a better look, and then quickly brought it down again. As she watched, a partially clotted blood globule dumped out of his wrist, despite the tourniquet, and splashed apart on the deck, causing her to flinch and Xander to back up a step. He made the same expression one might have if they discovered maggots on leftover food when they opened the trashcan. He acted the same way, too, wanting only to close the lid on it.

“Okay, leave me with one good sample and then you can take him to the infirmary. I'll test the dinosaur myself.”

Veronica hadn't even considered that she would be asked to draw blood from the extinct reptile. Or
extant
, as the case may be. Whatever. The fact that Xander would rather deal with that smelly, knocked-out beast
by himself
, knowing that there was no such thing as an expert in Tyrannosaur anesthesiology and that it could awaken at any moment, was telling. Veronica gazed down at Marcus' face. Eyes still shut. Still breathing shallowly.

“Okay. I'll need you to get me two men and a stretcher to get him up to the infirmary.”

Xander picked up his radio and snarled into it. “Peterson? Get a stretcher and two men into the cargo lab, ASAP. Two men only!” They heard a clipped reply of “Yes, sir.”

Xander gave Veronica a what-are-you-waiting-for look. She picked up the syringe and Xander trotted back over to the
T. rex
. Veronica had never taken blood before, but she'd had it done to her enough. Taking a deep breath and gritting her teeth, she waited until she was sure Xander wasn't about to look her way and then jammed the needle hard into Marcus' good arm, her best guess at fitting into a vein. She winced while she looked at his face to see if he felt it. No reaction. She pulled the plunger back, watching the syringe turn dark red as it filled with the paleontologist's blood, and then withdrew the needle.

“I've got it!” she called to Xander, who stood near the base of the
T. rex's
tail with a hypodermic of his own, only his was substantially longer and thicker. He held the hypo up to the light and then jogged over to meet Veronica. He handed her the syringe filled with the Tyrannosaur's blood, which had sort of a brownish hue to it with small particles floating around. It reminded Veronica of looking into a backed up toilet.

“Get both of these blood samples to the lab—actually scratch that. Leave me the samples, I’ll analyze them myself. You just go straight to the infirmary and get ready for your patient.” Without waiting for her reply, he turned and strode back toward the
T. rex
.

“Okay.” Then, under her breath, “
Yes, sir, right away Sir Asshole, Sir
!”

Then her brain pulsed with the idea that she could take this guy out right here—walk up behind him, put him in a choke hold, and rake his miserable throat across that monster's huge teeth. Then just leave and let everybody connect the dots.
T. rex
ate Marcus' hand.
T. rex
tried to eat Xander's head.
Or—she could slam the T. rex hypo into Xander’s neck and inject one monster with another monster’s blood.

She opened her medical bag, withdrew a multi-tool, and opened its three-inch folding knife. She hid it up the sleeve of her sweater and began walking toward Xander, who was now facing away from her, punching keys on a laptop.

She concentrated on silencing her footfalls. As she closed to within ten feet, she let the knife slip down into her hand.
It's just you and me, now, you sick sonofa—

She saw the Skype window pop up on the screen just in time and spun around on a heel as Melvin DeKirk's face filled the monitor window.
Can’t let him see me, who knows how much he knows or how good his intel is about who’s after him?

She slid the knife back up her sleeve and walked toward the medical bag.

“Are you still here?” she heard Xander heckling. “Get to the lab now, Doctor!”

Veronica reached the bag, scooped it up, and then headed for the ladder exit at the end of the cargo hold. “On my way,” she called out, trotting off.

#

Xander turned and watched her legs—shapely even through the layers she wore—disappear up the ladder, before turning around to resume his video chat with DeKirk. His boss sat in front of a wall that was plain white, save for the painting that Xander knew to be an original Picasso.

“So,” DeKirk began, “how's my prize? Let me get a look at him. Or is it a her?” He laughed as if that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. Xander's expression remained dire.

“We haven't been able to sex it yet.” Xander turned the laptop around so that DeKirk could see the
T. rex
, now unconscious and strapped to the platform.

“Why not? Surely it's thawed by now? I'd like to know exactly what we're dealing with, here, Xander—male, female, hermaphrodite?” At length he added, “Wow! That is
fantastic
! Walk over to it for me, would you? Give it some scale. I could be looking at a toy model for all I know.”

Xander moved to the
T. rex
and stood in front of it, wearing a there-are-you-happy-now expression.

“My
God
! Simply astounding! Only question…why does it have a fucking harness around its jaws?”

Xander walked back to the laptop and sat down in front of it. “Um… just to help keep it secure.”

“Xander. I’m going to need you to elaborate upon your answer.”

Xander rubbed an eye before continuing.
No point holding back, he’s going to find out.
“If I look a little funny it's because…fuck it. I just witnessed a
T. rex
wake up and attack everything in sight.”

There was a moment of confused silence followed by DeKirk starting to laugh in fits and starts until he guffawed heartily. “Oh, Xander my boy. That's priceless.”

Xander waited for him to get the last few cackles out of his system before continuing.

“I'm not kidding.” He leaned in close to the screen. “It
came to life
when it was just barely thawed! It would be thrashing around and destroying this ship right now if we hadn’t thought fast and sedated the hell out of it.”

DeKirk's expression darkened. “It doesn't look very alive. Do Tyrannosaurs sleep on their sides?” He chuckled at his own joke.

“He doesn’t look it because I emptied the ship's medicine cabinet into it,
Melvin
. Knocked it out with a collection of sedatives that would be the envy of Michael Jackson's doctor.”

DeKirk was speechless for a lengthy pause. “You're serious? Because let me tell you, Xander, if this is some kind of practical joke—”

“Here. Look.” He turned the laptop around so that Marcus' inert form was visible in the background.

“Who's that?”

“That's your former paleontologist.”

“Marcus? What happened, he have a heart attack after we fired him?”

“That
T. rex
chomped off his hand when it woke up, because he happened to be standing right at the mouth admiring the thing like some kind of obsessed fan boy. He passed out from shock and loss of blood. Got men coming with a stretcher to haul him to the infirmary.”

“Oh.” DeKirk let out a chuckle. “Well, at least he won't be able to claim worker's comp, since we fired him before it happened.”

“Will you get serious for a second?”

“Whenever you're ready to get serious, so will I. A
T. rex
pulled out of a frozen lake, undisturbed for millions of years, woke up, and bit a guy's hand off? Really?”

Xander picked up the laptop and walked it over to Marcus. He knelt down with the machine and pointed the webcam at Marcus's blood-caked stump.

The tone of DeKirk's voice changed to a sort of raspy monotone with a certain intensity about it. “Xander, listen to me. If what you say is true...” He broke off in thought for a few seconds, then resumed. “You have to get the captain, tell him to turn the ship around.”

“What? We’re going to Chile, remember? To drop off Marcus and his punk kid who sabotaged the drill site.”

DeKirk shook his head strenuously. “Change of plans. No, this is…beyond incredible! We have to study this development. Top priority, it changes everything.” He sat back and Xander could tell the little wheels in his brain were spinning like crazy, deviously calculating, having gone from disbelief to acceptance, now to making plans to capitalize on something far more significant. DeKirk was a man who didn’t get his billions from luck, but from the ability to adapt
fast
to his surroundings and changing events.

“I've taken blood samples of both the dinosaur and its human victim. I’ll analyze the samples myself and after the tests are run—”

“No, Xander. A frozen
T. rex
, revived after millions of years on ice? To get the answer of how that’s possible, you’re going to need more than the facilities you have at hand.”

“You’re probably right. Especially since there’s one more little fact you’re not aware of. Not only did it revive itself, somehow, but it doesn't even have a heart.”

DeKirk blinked, and his face floated closer to the camera. “Say again?”

“Before he lost his hand, Marcus—well, I was really the one who noticed it, but he corroborated it—saw that the
T. rex
had a gaping chest wound and is completely missing its heart. No heart. It's not there. One of the lungs is gone, too.”

“Oh great, so he
was
working after all. Why’d you let him in here?”

Xander looked away from the webcam for a second before responding. “I made it clear to him that he was no longer in an official capacity. He just walked up to the
T. rex
in the middle of the crowd of workers. By the time I noticed him, he had his head up to the wound, talking about the missing heart.”

“I thought you said it was you who first noticed the missing heart?”

Xander forced himself to bite back an acerbic reply. He took a deep breath. “What difference does it even make right now?”

“Since I'm not actually there, I'm relying on you to tell me what happened. It's important that I can trust your account.”

“I still don't see how—”

“You know what I think, Xander? I think Marcus is the one who noticed the missing heart, and that you just tried to pass it off like you discovered it first. I know Marcus. He's a damned good paleontologist. I know we thought we didn’t need him anymore, but now with this development, I have to reconsider. He knows more about dinosaur anatomy than anyone, especially you. So stop lying to me, Xander. Because if I can't trust you...”

Duly chastened, Xander dropped his head a little, eyes downcast. “Okay. I apologize.” Xander threw his hands up. “Can we just move on please? I guess we could use Marcus
—if he lives through this!
”