THE BIG GAME, ZACH MITCHELL, JURASSIC WORLD

twelve.

twelve.
mackenzie brenner
present time

A man banged on the backdoor, causing all of us to jump. It opened and revealed one of the guards. "You have to get out of here," He breathed heavily, his hair matted down to his forehead with sweat. "Hurry, they're comi—"

The sight of a clearly angry raptor appeared behind him, sinking it's teeth into his leg. The man screamed out in pain as he was dragged out and onto the ground.

Zach, Gray, and I all mimicked his scream. The truck jerked forward as Claire stomped down on the pedal, and the sudden surge made me fall back down and onto my seat.

I felt a sinking feeling forming in my stomach as wooziness took over my vision. I shook my head a couple of times to attempt to clear it, but it didn't work.

We were all still screaming our heads off when Claire's panicked voice spoke, "Everything's okay, kids! Just, hold hands! Close your eyes!"

Hold hands? I wanted to ask in disbelief. There are real life dinosaurs on the loose, and one of them is chasing us!

"Holy crap!" Gray exclaimed in a mix of excitement and fear. The kid gripped the bars near him as he struggled to see out of the gaping doors. "The raptors chasing us!"

"Good job, captain obvious," Zach said through gritted teeth.

I squeezed my eyes shut so I didn't have to watch the thing approaching. My hair was whipping my face due to the wind coming in, and I kept my mouth shut.

Suddenly, I felt a familiar hand take mine, our fingers interlocking. My right eye peeked open and I saw that it was Zach. He didn't look back at me, but I could tell he knew I was staring.

That was besides the point, though—we were still being chased, possibly to our deaths. Holding hands with an extremely attractive douchebag was the last thing on my mind.

I held his hand like it was the only thing keeping me sane, then, and he squeezed mine right back. This couldn't have been real life.

"It's Owen!" Gray exclaimed next. "He's gonna save us, he's gonna—"

Then, a raptor came out of the trees a few feet beside him.

"He's gonna die!" Gray screamed.

"He's not going to die, idiot!" Zach shouted angrily.

"He's going to die!" Gray sobbed then. I finally gave up trying to keep my eyes closed so that I could look at him. "Owen! No!"

Just so it's not too alarming, Owen didn't and wasn't going to die, because as soon as the raptor came closer, Owen stood up while controlling his four-wheeler thing and kicked the dinosaur off to the side. It tumbled in the dirt.

"We've got to get out of here," I said, hoping and praying that we'd get as far away from this as possible.

"Don't you think Claire is trying?" Zach asked.

"I don't know what to think, Zach, I feel like, like I'm fucking dreaming or something and this is all just a bad nightmare," I started to freak out and I knew that I sounded over dramatic. "I just want to wake up and forget everything."

He looked at me and opened his mouth to say something, but then closed it again. His fingers loosened around mine to the point where we were barely holding hands.

"But what about me and Zach?" Gray asked, joining the conversation.

"What about you two?" I asked.

"If this is just a dream, that means you'd never meet us, and we'd probably never know each other," Gray started rambling and he was still crying from the raptor chasing us. His bottom lip trembled.

I went to say something but felt a pinch on my arm. I winced, "Ow—Zach, what the hell was that for? That hurt."

Zach looked at my arm then back at me with a shrug. "I just wanted to show you that you being here with us, with me right now is real, and as real as it'll ever get."

With him? Was that actually a nice thing?

"You didn't have to pinch me," I muttered, instead of asking the questions I was thinking.

Owen came towards us and then said, "I'm gonna lead you all into the park and," He looked down at our barely-holding-hands. "Aw, Zach. Cute."

"Claire made us—never mind, just shut up," He muttered.

We got into the park ten minutes later, the raptors falling off of our trail with the help of Owen. Claire held open the back doors for us while we all jumped out.

She looked like a mess, yet she was still running around in those heels.

I have to ask what brand those are, I made a mental note to myself.

"Owen and I are going into the lab to finalize something," She started to ramble nervously, and if that didn't give away a bad vibe, I don't know what else did. "You kids just have to stay hidden. Don't go out until we get back, okay? We'll find you. Stay somewhere on Main Street."

"We want to come with you," Gray whined.

"No we don't," I said quickly. I'd much rather hide somewhere than go to the lab to do who-knows-what.

"We shouldn't split up," Owen added on to Gray's comment. "What if while we're gone, the raptors find them?"

"Well what if we're in the lab and something goes wrong?" Claire asked.

"This is all just a stupid plan," Zach rolled his eyes. "Look, I don't want to go with you guys either. How about, you two take Gray since you'll protect him better anyway, and me and Mackenzie go hide like you said. Sound good?"

"We don't have time to debate," Owen said, then ran a hand through his hair. "Okay, Zach, whatever you just said, we're rolling with it. Gray come with us, you two hide on Main Street." He looked at Claire and then nodded off towards the direction they were planning to go. "We gotta move."

"I'm going to the lab!" Gray cheered as the adults led him off.

We watched them walk away for a second.

Zach offered his hand to me, and when I didn't exactly take it, he huffed. "Do you want to die, Kenzie? We have to go."

I took his hand reluctantly. Of course I didn't want to die.

"That's what I thought," He nodded and then took us down to Main Street.