| Jurassic Babies By Tanith |
| Disclaimers – I own no-one except myself and a friend. I don’t want to cause offence to Arnold Vosloo and Oded Fehr as this is just fiction and in this neither man is married, so as to cause no problems for their families. I hope Rhonda and Sylvia understand. This is the 2nd story in the Jurassic Park Series. This story is rated PG-13 ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ |
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| Denise was busy doing some housework when the phone rang. “Hi Denise, it’s only me.” “Sue! Well this is a surprise, how are you and where are you?” “I’m still at the park. I thought I’d give you a ring. How’s things? How’s Arnold?” she asked. “Things are Ok. I’m still seeing him. He’s fine. People want to know what’s happened to Oded. They can’t make out where he is. How is he anyway?” “He’s alright. That’s one of the reasons I phoned, to be honest. Can you come over here, I need to see you, it’s important.” “Well, I could but I don’t want to go back to the park. You know that.” said Denise. “I’ll meet you at the hotel we stayed in. I just need you here.” She started to cry and Denise assured her that she would be over within a week. She still had the compensation money and could get a flight in the next few days. She was on her own now. Her husband had found out about Arnold and had left her taking the kids with him. It would take a long time to get over that. It had been 6 months since the horror of the park and she wasn’t thrilled about going anywhere near that place. But Sue needed her; she was the only one who could go. No—one else knew about the place or about what happened there. She’d go and see what was wrong. Maybe she could get to see Arnold while she was there. Sue booked Denise a room at the hotel. Somehow she had to get her to go to the park. There were problems with Oded and Sue couldn’t cope alone. Denise was the only lifeline with the outside world. Denise had rung and said she would arrive in two days time. That would be alright. She went to the airport to meet her at gate 1. They hugged each other and went to the hotel. “What’s going on Sue? You sounded really upset on the phone.” “Not here later. We’ll have something to eat and have a drink first. Then we’ll go for a walk on the beach. There is a small cove there where I go when I want to be on my own, when I am here. A quiet cove, I might add.” Denise laughed and while they ate they caught up on old times, the WWF, her friends, etc. It was about 6pm by the time they got to the beach; Sue threw a few pebbles into the water while Denise sat on the sand near her. “Come on Sue what’s wrong. It’s Oded isn’t it? It must be, you haven’t mentioned him since I got here. Is he alright?” “Oh Denise, no he’s not. I’d better start at the beginning. As you know we went back to the park about a month after you left to go to the UK. “ At first it was great. We got involved in some of the tests. You know, how they used the DNA and the progression to the eggs and finally the baby dinosaurs. There have been about 50 babies born in the last few months, including the sort we killed, the T Rex and Velociraptor.” “Mortimer promised never to breed those again. How could he?” “It’s not that simple, when you retrieve the DNA and go through the processes, you have to wait till the dinosaurs are born before you know what they are. As yet there is no way of finding out the DNA before you have an established dinosaur. Once they are born, you match their DNA with other DNA you use and find the same one. If you find one that’s different, you have to let it grow. There was nothing left of the T Rex or the raptor. It’s trial and error. Anyway they are only babies at the moment and under strict conditions. They can’t get out this time.” “How can they be sure, the others weren’t supposed to get out,” said Denise. “Now they have a back up generator and one to back that up if all else fails. There’s been a lot of improvements.” “I should hope so,” said Denise. “I never want to go through that again. Anyway, so what’s happened to Oded?” “I’m coming to that. Oded got on really well with the tests etc, He picked it up in no time; he’s very good at that sort of thing. Anyway Mortimer said he could do some of his own experiments. He started on them eight weeks ago. No—one interfered with him. That is till about 3 weeks ago. When Mortimer happened to read some of his notes. He showed them to me and it seemed that Oded was doing something he shouldn’t. He was mixing DNA. After a massive argument he let us see what he was doing. The bottom line was, he found a way to interbreed the dinosaurs. Develop a new species. He was taking two different lots of DNA and mixing them together to get new sorts of dinosaurs. Trouble is, we don’t know what DNA he mixed so no—one knows which animals they are crossed with.” “Why don’t you just ask him? Surely he knows,” said Denise. “We can’t. Do you remember Arnold saying he wondered if the dinosaurs had any diseases that we might not know about, that had been dormant along with the animals?” “Yes I remember, he was quite worried about it.” “Well, Mortimer had found four new diseases which no—one had seen before. He isolated them and at the moment is looking to see if he can find a cure for them. He gave them names but I can’t remember what they were, they’re too long. The DNA to those dinosaurs were locked in the lab with the diseases. Not to be used till the cures could or might be found. “I said we didn’t know what ones Oded used, we know one of them, it was a Triceratops. Two of the diseases came from that one alone. He had gone into the lab and taken some DNA. Now Mortimer wanted the new breeds destroyed. One thing he didn’t want was interbreeding unless it was by nature itself. Anyway he said he was going to destroy them before they hatched and Oded wouldn’t have it. They had another row, things got broken. Then he took the eggs and left. That was nine days ago. We can’t find him. Mortimer is convinced he will be back soon because he can’t take the eggs off the island. No—one knows the dinosaurs exist. But I have a gut feeling he is in trouble, somewhere on the island. I’ve got to find him, what if he’s caught the disease and is lying somewhere ill. I need you to help me. It’s a big island outside the park. That’s why I asked you over.” “Sue, I’m not going back to that place, I refuse. Apart from that, surely if he starts feeling ill he’ll go back to the park. He’s not that stupid.” “Look you haven’t got to go into the park, just to the island. I can’t do it alone and although one other person is going to help. I need you. They will me me on the island tomorrow. They’ve hired a helicopter to bring them in. Please come with me.” “Ok but I am not going inside that park for anyone. I’ve still not got over what happened that day and it could happen again. I just don’t want to be there when it does.” They went back to the hotel and packed food, drink, a change of clothes, medical stuff and the general things you would need in a place like that. Any real problems and Sue could easily find her way back to the park. She had a map of the island and the trails should not be that hard to find. They didn’t go back to the island in Mortimer’s helicopter because at the moment she didn’t want him to know she was looking for Oded. A local fisherman took them across in his boat. As Denise stepped off the boat she shivered. She hated the place and was beginning to wish she could go back on the boat. They put their stuff by the hut on the jetty and looked at the map to see where they went first. As they sat there a voice from the doorway of the hut startled them. “What’s kept you two, I’ve been here ages.” “Arnold!” exclaimed Denise. “What on earth are you doing here?” She ran into his arms and was so pleased to see him. “Sorry Denise, I had to come. Sue phoned me and told me about Oded. I’M really only here because of him.” “Oh thanks a lot,” said Denise. “And I thought you’d be pleased to see me.” “I am, you know what I mean,” he laughed. It had been two days since they had got to the island and had walked about 10 miles and found nothing. “I’m so tired,” said Denise. “It’s only been 10 miles but it seems like a 100.” “You never told me it was all hills and jungle. I’ve got scratches on my scratches. I itch and I need a bath. In fact I’m totally fed up and wish 1’d never come!” “It’s the same for all of us,” said Arnold. “Look there’s a clearing up there, we’ll stay there tonight and get some rest ok?” Denise was asleep within 10 minutes of lying down. Sue went to speak to Arnold. “I’m worried Arnold, we should have found something by now but there is nothing. No sign of him at all. I thought it would be easy but I never realized just how big this place was.” “Look we’ve been around nearly half the island, if we don’t find him soon, we’ll have to go back. Those clouds up there don’t mean showers. Those are bad storm clouds; we could be in for trouble. I’ve a friend who lives on these sort of islands and torrential rain causes landslides, swollen rivers all sorts. And they have been known to last for days. If it starts we can’t afford to stay.” “I know Arnold, you two go back if you want to, I’m going to carry on looking for him, I have to.” “Ok, I’ll help you but I think Denise needs to go back. She hates it here, every little sound she jumps and I care about her too much to have to worry about her as well.” “You won’t get rid of me that easily,” said Denise who had woken up. “Where you are Arnold, I am.” “Lets all get some sleep and see what happens tomorrow,” said Sue. Within an hour, Arnold and Denise were asleep, Sue got some stuff together and decided to go off on her own and look for Oded. They wouldn’t know where she had gone till they woke up in the morning. It was getting really dark now and was getting dodgy as she couldn’t see where she was properly. She only had a small torch. She had gone about two miles and in the distance she thought she could see a light. As she got closer, she could see it was a campfire. Sue stood a little way off, just in case it wasn’t anyone she knew. Oded was sitting by the fire, with what looked like a cup of coffee in his hand. As she moved closer, he grabbed his rifle; he thought it was a wild animal or something else. “Hello Oded, how ya doing?” “My God, Sue, how did you find me?” He hugged her tight and they sat down by the fire. “Why did you do it, Oded?” asked Sue. “Leave, interbreed them, argue with Mortimer and where are the eggs?” “I found the research easy to understand. I thought I’d experiment myself, but I went too far. I’ve created something that I have no idea if it will survive, how big it will be, nothing about it. Mainly because we know so little about the dinosaur anyway. I found that much out at the park. I wanted to make a name for myself, be bigger than Mortimer. I wanted it animals exist. And I’ve got a dozen eggs that are nearly ready to hatch, I can’t destroy them because it goes against everything I believe in.” “Oh Oded you idiot!” said Sue. “Don’t you realize what you’ve done. I don’t mean the interbreeding but the risk you put yourself in.” “I didn’t really,” replied Oded. “Oded, Mortimer found four diseases from the dinosaurs. He doesn’t know what they are, let alone the cures for them. Those DNA you used were the infected ones. They came from three dinosaurs, only one they know of, the Triceratops. You could have picked it up!” “Well I feel fine at the moment, no problems at all.” “Look lets go back to the park, we can put the eggs in isolation, see what happens. We can persuade Mortimer to leave them alone but never do it again. You can’t stay here forever.” “I don’t know if I can trust him. But I’ll never do it again. These few days, I have thought about what I did and I know it was wrong. I’m sorry if you were worried.” “That’s ok, we’ll go back in the morning,” she said as it was raining. “Oh my God!” she said suddenly. “Arnold and Denise!” Oded asked what she meant, she told him everything and how she had got them to help her find him. She couldn’t have coped alone. He suggested they went and got them and brought them back to where he was. The rain and wind were getting bad now. “We’ll go and find them and take the short way back to the park. We have no choice with this rain,” said Oded. “What short way, I thought we were miles away and I can’t see Denise going in there again.” “She won’t know, we’ll go in the back way, the way I left. There is a security house there. It’s only used occasionally. We’ll be alright there for a while, at least till the rain stops. Then we’ll go and see Mortimer. Again, Sue, I’m sorry you’ve gone to all this trouble for my stupidity.” “Come on, get your stuff and the eggs,” she said taking his hand. Within two hours they were all back at the park. Denise and Arnold were soaked even more than the others. Luckily there was hot water, electric everything they needed at the house. After baths and something to eat, they sat down in the small lounge. Sue and Denise went to get tea and coffee. “What do they use this for?” asked Arnold. “It was originally built for Mortimer’s wife but she had left him before he could show it to her. Mortimer comes here sometimes for a break from routine.” “Look, I know Sue was worried about you but me and Denise are leaving tomorrow. I don’t feel comfortable here and Denise hates it. We’re going to spend some time alone at the hotel. That’s if you don’t mind and that everything is ok between you and Sue?” “Things will be alright, Arnold. I was just being egotistical and thought I could play God. I’ll, sort it out with Mortimer. But I do need some advise. I think I’m falling in love with Sue but we are so different in many ways.” “Does that matter Oded, I know she’s been in love with you since the mummy. Denise told me once that Sue had told her that if she could never have you to spend the rest of her life with then she’d quite willingly spend it on her own. Love doesn’t last forever, grab it while you can.” “Thanks Arnold, I might just do that.” Oded made a phone call to Mortimer and after an hour of talking, he came back into the lounge. “I think I’ve sorted out things with him. Sue and I will see him tomorrow. He is going to arrange for you two to go back to the mainland if that is what you want. We’d like you to see what we’re doing here before you go.” “I don’t think so Oded,” said Denise. “I came to help Sue and as Arnold is here, we’d like to spend some time alone. Maybe one day I can face a dinosaur again but not yet.” They all said their goodbyes the next day and Sue thanked Denise for coming. “I’m glad I did, I’ll carry on thinking you planned it this way so me and Arnold could be together. But I’m sorry we’re not going to stay. You take care and look after yourself.” “I will and thanks.” “Sue, I’ll see you around sometime and look after Oded, I think things will work out for you two.” Sue looked surprised and Arnold just winked and got into the helicopter. After they had gone, Oded and Sue went to see Mortimer. “Oded, look, I’m not going to go into what’s happened these last few weeks. I’ll except what you have done this time. You’re right; we can’t just destroy the eggs. I’M getting just as curious as you. But if for any reason they are mutant or anything else, then we’ll have to rethink the situation. But never, ever get involved in this sort of work again. We are strictly reviving the few dinosaurs we have. There could be too many problems with interbreeding. We haven’t even seen this in the wild with them yet, probably never will as they are all male OK?” “I’ve learned my lesson, I’m sorry. But the eggs will have to be put I an incubator right away. They have been out in the open too long. By the calculations I have made, they could hatch in the next 48 hours. By the way, what were these diseases you found?” “Well there are four so far. Three we haven’t identified yet. The fourth is a form of bubonic plague. We are working on a cure for that one at the moment. The others are causing problems because we don’t know how they react in people. They could be dangerous or no more than a common cold.” “Has anyone showed any symptoms yet?” asked Sue. “Not yet, we’ve tried to be pretty careful with it. We’re not even sure what the symptoms are, we can only guess.” Within 36 hours, 7 of the eggs had hatched. Four of the babies looked like the Brachiosaurus and three looked like T Rex’s. They did some tests on them and found out that the strain had made the decision as to what dinosaur it was to be. A fact they had never considered. It gave way to some answers and a lot more questions, like why? By the time the week was up, they had 7 brachiosaurus and 5 T Rexs. “In a way I’m glad it didn’t work. At least now I am,” said Oded. “Are you alright Sue, you look a bit pale?” “I’m not sure, I think I’m getting a cold, probably from that rain last week. I’ll be alright. I’m going to go and lay down for a while if you don’t need me for anything.” “No, that’s fine, it’s getting late anyway. I’ll see you back at the house later.” Mortimer had agreed that they could move into the house, which he built. It would be better than staying in the lab assistant’s quarters. After all they were guests in one way and not official technicians. “Oded, I know it’s late but could you help me on some of these tests. One is a form of TB and the other has all the same things as the common flu bug. These can be cured quite easily I think. But this last one, I can’t make it out.” They went to the lab and Mortimer showed Oded the slides. He wasn’t on the sofa. He found she had a high temperature and a rash. “What do we do now?” asked Oded. “Well we’ll keep her here, isolate her. No we can’t, we’ll need the labs for tests. Ok take her to the labs and make a room up next to the main lab. It’ll mean you’ll have to stay as well. You’ve been in contact with her and the T Rex. We have to keep it in check as much as we can, we can’t risk an epidemic.” “That means you too. You have had the same contact as us.” He reluctantly agreed. They made her comfortable in the lab and Mortimer gave strict instructions that nobody but nobody was allowed in. If anyone else showed any signs of flu, rashes anything, he wanted to know immediately. Mortimer went and examined Sue. When he came out. “She has a temperature of 105 and has a rash over 60% of her body.” “I’m going to sit with her,” said Oded. “It’s my fault, I bred the damn things.” “You can’t, I need you. At the moment you have no symptoms, I can’t risk you getting it. I’ll, stay and look after her. I’m going to make it worse; I want you working in the lab there, behind that glass away from me too. I am more likely to catch it.” “But I don’t know what to do, I’m not a chemist,” said Oded. “I know but I can take you through it step by step. The other people can work on it from out there but I need you here to help me. Don’t worry hopefully we will find a cure when we find out what it is.” For five days they worked as many hours as they could, taking it in turns to sleep. They found out what it was or at best what it was close to. German Measles. But the normal Rubella injection wouldn’t work. But at least they were on the right track, hopefully. Mortimer was busy at the microscope when the door to the other lab opened. As he turned to tell Oded to stay there, he saw him standing in the doorway. “Mortimer, I’ve a temperature of 102, a rash. I’ve had it since yesterday. I think I may have it.” He didn’t say anything else; he just collapsed in the doorway. Mortimer had no choice, he called one of the other lab assistants and told them the score and asked for two volunteers to come and work with him. Knowing the risks to find a cure. When they came in, they helped him move Oded in with Sue. She had gone into a coma and given the calculations of the lab animals he found that he only had about 24 hours to find a cure. One of the assistants, Gary asked to stay with Oded and Sue while the other, Mike helped out with Mortimer. Suddenly Mike said he thought he had found something. He had been fiddling to pass the time, to just have a break from the normal tests. He had mixed all the diseases together and got a result that looked like Malaria, but Malaria doesn’t cause rashes and coma. “Could it be that simple?” he asked. “I don’t know but we have nothing to lose. In 18 hours she could be dead, Oded too. We have to try.” Luckily they had inoculations and serums for nearly everything. They gave the injection to Sue and Oded. They hoped it would work. Within 3 hours Sue started to come round and although still very ill, it seemed to be working. Through some silly mucking around Mike had discovered the cure by accident. They could have missed it. Mortimer had never thought of mixing them together to get a result. Alone they were deadly, together they seemed curable. By the time 2 days were up, Sue and Oded were feeling lots better. The rash had gone, temperatures were down, another 48 hours and they could get up. Mortimer had ordered everyone to have a course of malaria injections, just in case. Within a week they were up and around and they had to decide what to do about the dinosaurs. Mortimer had bought one of the islands near the park and had been putting in security fencing right the way round the whole island. “Oded, Sue, I’ve decided that the T Rexs and the raptors are being moved to the other island and any other meat eaters. We’ll not only keep them in separate enclosures but on different islands. We’ll also do tests on all the species and find out exactly what they carry. If we can be inoculated then maybe they can.” “How are you going to move them? The size and danger?” asked Oded. “We have to knock them out first and take a chance. I’ve hired a Chinook helicopter, which we will fly over with them underneath. Park keepers, security everything that we have. The other island has, except the labs. We can start tomorrow.” The Chinook arrived first thing in the morning. Altogether they had 7 T REX and 4 raptors. They estimated that it would take all day to move them. They used the same dosage of drug that they would use on an elephant on the raptors and double that on the T Rex. It seemed to work. The island was divided into two, the bigger section for the T Rex. Animals would be sent in daily to feed them. As far as they know, the animals were male, they designed it that way. To mix DNA generally, they used frog and toad DNA to fill in the sequence gaps and they can be both male and female. So there could be females. They would have to keep a check on them. If this was true they would have to be killed in the end. No—one knew how quick they bred in the wild. “Oded I’d like you to go over and supervise for a few weeks on the new park.” “I’m sorry, Mortimer,” said Oded. “I’m not going over there. I said I’d work with you if I had no contact with those two dinosaurs. I won’t work near them.” “But you bred some of them. It is no time to be a hypocrite.” “I’M not. Those were babies, not 25ft, 10 ton killing machines. I’ve had a run in with these things remember, I will not go there. If that means I have to leave altogether, I will.” “No, I don’t want that. Ok you win, what do you want to do?” “I’d like to work with some more with the Brachiosaurus and a few of the other, more gentle species. I’m sure Sue would too.” Sue and Oded had been working with these animals for about a month now. They were lovely, very gentle and they had got to know the two of them quite well. To the point that they would allow them to sit close to them while they ate. One of them, the smaller one of the two, had been gathering bracken and grass together and had been making what looked like a nest. “That’s impossible,” said Sue. “They are supposed to be all males.” “Maybe the males make the nests. It happens. We’ll keep an eye on them and see what they do next.” After about a week, when they went to see them, the smaller one seemed to be trying to get them to go with it to where the nest was. When they got there, they saw 10 eggs in a cluster in the middle of the nest. “My God Sue, it is a female. Somehow nature has intervened and both sexes are in the park. I’ll phone Mortimer on the mobile and tell him to come down here.” It was about -4 an hour before Mortimer arrived at the enclosure. “I hope this is important Oded. I was in the middle of an important meeting.” “I think it is. When you created these creatures, you made special instructions that only males were to be in the park. Well you got it wrong.” “What do you mean? There are only male dinosaurs. I made sure of that because we didn’t know how they bred and at what rate.” “Come and look,” said Sue. They showed him the nest and the eggs. “Somehow nature has itself provided females so that the species will continue.” “It’s incredible. We’ll have to watch them day and night to see how they react and if they take the same time to hatch in the wild as they do in the labs,” said Mortimer. “We’ll keep a record of what happens, the eggs, the parents, the lot,” said Oded. “What if the parents get jealous of us being near the nest or the babies?” “We’ll just have to be careful that’s all,” replied Oded. About two weeks later the eggs began to hatch. Sue let Mortimer know and he came down. “How are the parents now that the eggs have hatched. Are they nervous of you being near them. You know, are they more protective?” “Well they are alright with us so far. They seem to have adopted us as foster parents for the babies. They leave them with us and go and eat. Then they come back and take over.” Mortimer went to have a look at the babies. Suddenly Oded shouted at him to stay where he was. The male one was eying him very carefully, obviously not wanting him anywhere near the babies. But he took no notice and without warning the male just lifted one of its enormous feet and brought it down on top of Mortimer. Sue screamed and maybe realizing what it had done, nudged the body with its nose, away from the nest. It was obvious that he was dead, Oded and Sue stayed sitting close to going near the nest again, they watched the dinosaurs. The male called the female with a series of whistle type noises. She came over, smelt the body and then went to the nest. She picked up one of the babies in her mouth and started to walk towards Sue and Oded and put it down in their laps. She did this with all 10 babies then joined her mate to eat some foliage from a nearby tree. “She obviously thought he was a threat to her young and us. He was protecting us all. It looks like we are here to look after them.” So there they sat, in the sunshine, nursing 10 baby Brachiosaurus babies, while their parents, 4O ft high, went for a meal. No—one would believe it. It seemed like there was no—one else in the world except them and loads of dinosaurs. Perhaps that is how it should be. They made a pact never to leave Jurassic Park. They would probably marry and have children of their own one-day. But at the moment, they were quite happy being foster parents for a dinosaur. |