I Used To Like Dinosaurs

Chapter One: Isla Sorna

     "Ready?" Ben yelled over his shoulder at the twelve year old sitting there, a big grin on his face. "Ready!" Eric called back. "Go!" he shouted at the Costa Ricans driving the motorboat, which their parasail was attached to. In response, the captain gunned the engine, and the boat shot forward. Eric couldn't wipe the grin off his face as he and Ben rose in the air, but he closed his mouth after sea spray, thrown up by the wake of the boat, landed on his tongue. He held up his mom's video camera, hoping to catch a glimpse of a dinosaur. "See anything yet?", he asked Ben. "No, not yet!" Ben said excitedly.

        Soon though, the boat disappeared from view, hidden by a fog bank. The sky darkened. Suddenly the tether jerked- one, two, three times. Eric looked down. The boat came out of the clouds, but the crew was gone, and a large red puddle coated the deck. "What happened?" Eric cried, feeling his throat constrict with fear. "Where are they? Where did they go?" "I don't know!" said Ben, sounding just as scared. Then Eric saw the large rock outcropping  sticking up out of the choppy gray ocean. "We're going to crash!"

         He started fumbling with the ropes, trying to free himself. "Stop it!", said Ben. "Let go of the ropes!" Eric was panicking, but let go of the harness. "But we're going to crash!" Ben started messing with the ropes, managing to free himself and Eric only seconds before the boat ran aground. The parasail floated off on the wind, Ben and Eric along with it. Ben steered them toward the island. Green trees flew by under their feet. The wind whipping past his face made Eric's eyes water and stung his nose. Below him, Ben was murmuring reassuring words, but Eric wasn't sure if he was talking to himself or to him. "It's okay I'm okay we're okay it's going to be okay its fine its fine it's fine it's okay......" Over and over again, like it was some kind of mantra that would keep them safe.

          Eric looked down at the Island and repressed a shudder. He had read all of Dr. Alan Grant's book about Jurassic Park. He'd also read the one by that preachy guy who'd kept on about chaos. What was his name? Ian Malcolm, that was it. He remembered the vivid descriptions of the Velociraptors and the T.rex. He imagined the illustrations of the velociraptors hooked killing claw and shivered. He looked down at the forest below. There probably were raptors down there, he realized. The thought made him hold on to Ben a little tighter. "Eric? Eric?" It took him a moment before he realized that Ben was calling his name.

           "I'm going to try and set down in that clearing over there, okay? Stay calm." Eric craned his neck and looked ahead. He saw the clearing Ben was talking about. He thought it looked pretty small. The parasail banked in that direction and started to sink.

             Then they dropped suddenly, and the top of the sail became tangled in a large tree. Eric found himself and Ben hanging two or three feet off the ground, hopelessly tangled in the strings of the parachute. They were gently swinging side to side. "I'm gonna use my pocketknife to cut you down, okay?", Ben said. Eric nodded mutely, too scared to speak. After Eric dropped to the ground, he noticed something. "Hey, the video camera's still on!" He reached out and pushed a button. Immediately the blinking red light by the lens stopped.  Ben handed him the knife and Eric started cutting the strings of the parasail away. Ben was way more tangled than he had been.

            Out of the corner of his eye, Eric noticed a flash of movement. He looked, but nothing was over there but a fern, swaying in the breeze. That must have been it. Then he heard a weird trilling sound over to his left. He slowly turned his head. There was a small dinosaur standing on a moss covered log. It was lime green, and about a foot tall and two feet long, including its tail. It was shaped sort of like a tiny raptor, minus the giant claw on its foot. He almost turned away, thinking it harmless, but something about it made him stop.

              He took another look at it, and remembered where he'd seen it before. Dr. Grant's book. What was it called? Oh, yeah. Procompsognathus. (AN: seriously! I looked it up and everything.) They were called compys for short. He tried to recall what else the book said about them. The dank, musty, humid air of the jungle was making it hard to think. He thought he remembered something about compys being pack hunters. Oh, now he remembered. Grant had described them as more of a swarm. Where there was one, there was probably about a million more of them lying in wait. The book had called them land piranhas. He froze.

             Ben noticed his hesitation. "What's going on? Get me down from this stupid tree!", he yelled. "Stop yelling!", Eric hissed. "You'll attract the rest of them!" Ben stopped struggling. "The rest of what?" Suddenly, the same weird trilling sound echoed from the branches of the tree above them. The two of them both looked up at the same time. Above them, dozens of the creatures were pouring down out of the trees branches, directly onto Ben.

             He yelled and thrashed, but he was too well cocooned in string to escape. Eric moved toward him, intending to cut him down the rest of the way, but Ben looked at him and managed to choke out, "Run. Turn around and don't look back. Run."  One of the compys noticed Eric and opened its mouth to trill again. Eric grabbed the closest thing to him - a rock about the same size and weight of a baseball - and he threw it as hard as he could. He struck the thing in the head, and it crumpled. Unconscious or dead, he didn't know, and he didn't stick around to find out. He hoped it was the latter.

             He ran. He probably managed to trip over half the roots, sticks, and vines in the stupid, godforsaken jungle, but he ran. He didn't stop running until the last of Ben's agonized screams faded behind him. He stopped and leaned on a moss covered tree trunk to catch his breath. He was lost - stranded - on a dinosaur  infested island. Don't panic, he told himself. That wouldn't help anything. He tried to think. First, he was going to need shelter. He wandered for a while, until he managed to find a water truck which had somehow been turned on its side. He climbed into a hatch in its side, and cried himself to sleep.

( AN: If anyone ever reads this. . . . comments? *Smiles hopefully*)