ix. the t-rex

THE CLOUDY SKY WAS SOON REPLACED WITH A DARK NIGHT SKY AS THE JEEPS CONTINUED DOWN THE TRACK. Rain beat down on the roof of the car, soothing Robyn's mood. Robyn had calmed down slightly from Jimmy's confrontation thanks to Ian's jokes and Alan's confused responses.

In the front jeep, the three adults could see Tim and Lex play fighting in the back seat. Robyn chuckled at the sight, thinking about her future.

"Do you have any kids?" Alan asked Ian, curiously.

"Me? Hell yeah. Three. I love kids," Ian spoke so fondly of his children, warming Robyn's heart. Ian unscrewed the top of his flask and took a swig of it. "Anything at all can and does happen. Same with wives, for that matter."

"You're married?" Alan questioned after declining the flask that Ian offered.

Ian sighed. He offered the flask to the backseat for Robyn. Robyn thanked him quietly and took the metal bottle and took a quick swig from it before placing it back. "Occasionally. I'm always on the lookout for a future ex-Mrs. Malcolm," Ian twisted his neck to wink at Robyn. The blonde smiled, a blush fanning over her face. Ian laughed at Alan's expression. "Would Dr Morris, uh, be interested in such an offer?"

Robyn snorted, falling back in her chair with a laugh. Both cars suddenly jerk to a stop and the screen turned black. "Hey, what'd I touch?" Alan exclaimed, raising his hands.

"Uh, uh, you didn't touch anything. We stopped," Ian observed, looking out of his window. Robyn followed his gaze to see they had stopped outside the T-Rex confinement. Alan reached for the radio and tested it but with no results. Alan opened his door and rushed over to the other car. "Hey, uh, are you feeling better?"

She sighed as she leant forward, her cheek resting against the side of the driver's seat headrest to look at Ian. "Yeah, I'll live, I suppose. I guess when we leave here, I'll have to kick Jimmy out of my digging team."

Ian chuckled, rolling his head back on his headrest to look at Robyn. "Well, if you ever, uh, need a replacement, I'll happily join for you."

Robyn smiled. "Sure, a chaotician with a bunch of palaeontologists, that will go down wonderfully."

"Hey!" Ian placed a hand over his heart, faux offended. "You dated a, uh, a chaotician before. If you liked him at the start, then you'll like me."

She rolled her eyes. "Just because I like you doesn't mean my team will, does it?"

Ian grinned, twisting his body to face the blonde fully. "Ah, so you like me then?"

Before the either could continue, Alan ran back to their car and hopped into the driver's seat. "Their radio's out too. Gennaro said to stay put."

"The kids okay?" Robyn asked, looking over at the jeep in front of her.

"I didn't ask. Why wouldn't they be?"

"Kids get scared, Alan," Ian responded, worried about the kids in the car.

"What's scary? It's just a little hiccup in the power," The older man shrugged.

"I'm not scared," Ian defended himself.

Alan looked at the younger man with a furrowed brow. "I didn't say you were scared."

"I know," Ian was defensive as he sat straighter in his seat. Robyn snorted at the interaction.

Robyn unbuckled her belt and slid over to the car door. "I'm just going to check up on the kids. Make sure they're ok," she informed, flinging open the door and running towards the front jeep. Ian watched her open the backseat door and leaned in with a smile on her face as she spoke to her two young friends.

"Can I, uh, ask a question?" Ian asked the older man next to him.

"Sure, shoot," Alan nodded.

Ian cleared his throat, licking his lips as he watched Robyn play fight with Tim and Lex in the back seat. "Why does everyone, uh, hate Jimmy? You know, before their fight back there."

Alan sighed, watching the blonde woman too with a heavy heart. Alan could tell that Ian cared about Robyn deeply, even though the two had only met the day before. "I've known Robyn for 7 years now, ever since she started university. I was hers and Jimmy's part-time professor. Robyn was always top of her class, but Jimmy was you know, the slacker. He didn't care about the subject, his family paid his way into the school and he just weaved his way through assignments. Then he met Robyn, and her being the nice and intelligent woman she is, he latched onto her because he knew she would help him out. And she did for a short while because she likes to please people, you've probably guessed that by now," Alan chuckled, causing Ian to follow and nod his head. "But it wasn't a long term thing and when she told Jimmy that, he was angry. Then this one day, Robyn was sent to hospital from a bad car accident. She woke up with short-term memory loss. She couldn't remember what happened to her in the last couple of weeks. I don't know exactly what happened between the time she woke up and got out of the hospital but when she got out, she spent every night helping Jimmy with his studies. Once she told me that she was his tutor when I knew she wasn't before the incident," Alan sighed heavily, his head falling down to look at his lap. "I just knew that Jimmy took advantage of her. I told Ellie, so she hates Jimmy for the same reason as me. But John's reasoning is beyond me. I guess he's just a picky man with high standards."

Ian was speechless. He watched the blonde laugh joyfully with the two children. She didn't know what Jimmy did and it disgusted him. Jimmy used her and he got away with it.

Robyn ran back to the second car and slid back to her spot in the backseat, her form dripping wet from the rain. "Are the kids okay?"

Robyn breathed out a smile. "Yeah, they'll be okay. They were a little shook up but we played for a bit to calm them down."

Ian nodded with a small smile, unable to forget about Alan's story. The three adults turned their attention towards the front vehicles just in time to see Gennaro and Jimmy rushing out of the car, leaving the two children behind.

"Now where do you think they're going?" Alan commented, watching as the two men ran away.

"When you've gotta go, you gotta go," Ian mumbled, watching Gennaro ran towards the bathroom. Jimmy ran towards their car, damping Robyn's mood incredibly. "God, what does he want?" Ian muttered. Jimmy pulled the back door open and grabbed Robyn's forearm. "Hey, hey, hey, what are doing?!" Ian asked, holding his hand out to the backseat to protect Robyn.

"We gotta go," Jimmy hissed out. Robyn ripped her arm out of Jimmy's grip once again.

"Go away, James," Robyn spat.

The brunet scoffed, looking over the roof of the car. "No, Robyn, we've got to go. Get out," he quietly ordered. However, he was cut short as they heard a loud clanging from outside. All four adults turned their heads to see the no-longer electrified fences being destroyed and a monstrous T-Rex slowly escaping its confinement.

"Oh god," Robyn whispered. She wasn't sure if she was in awe at the giant or terrified for her life but she couldn't breathe let alone move.

"I hate being right all the time," Ian spoke to himself, staring at the T-Rex as it let out an all-mighty roar.

Robyn jumped in her seat at the deafening sound, snapping out of her trance. "You left the kids," She spoke quietly. "You fucking left the kids," She spat out angrily, whacking Jimmy's arm.

"Keep absolutely still," Alan spoke, mainly to Jimmy who tried desperately to get in the jeep. "Its vision is based on movement," Jimmy stood still, one leg in the jeep the other on the wet ground outside. Then, from the other car, a torchlight shone through the back window, catching everyone's attention - including the dinosaur.

"Oh, shit," Robyn whispered. "Turn it off. Turn it off," It was like a mantra, hoping that somehow the message would get to Lex and Tim. The T-Rex slowly stormed over to the other car. The light began to flicker as if one of the kids was trying desperately to turn the torch off.

After a tense moment of silence, the T-Rex's head crashes down, slamming the plexiglass roof of the car down onto the kids. The plexiglass holds, however, it is the only thing protecting the kids from the beast's teeth. Robyn could hear the kids terrified screams as the dinosaur slammed its head on their car. They were alone.

A second slam to the car sends the vehicle flipping over, the T-Rex biting at the bottom of the car, trying to bite her way through the car to the kids. The giant wasn't stupid - she knew that her next meal was in the vehicle and she was hungry. The more weight the dino put on the car, the further it sank into the wet mud. The kids were trapped in the crushing car and Robyn wasn't just going to sit here and watch.

She crawled to the back of the car and searched in the medical box. "Is there a flare in there, Robyn?" Alan tried to remain calm but his voice had urgency. Robyn grabbed the two flare sticks in the box and handed them to Alan. He gets out of the car in the pouring rain after he lit the flare. "Hey!" Alan called to the dinosaur. The T-Rex turns to him, emitting an earsplitting roar. The older scientist slowly waves the flare back and forth, the dinosaur following the movement of the flare. Alan flings the flare off to the side and freezes in place, waiting until the giant runs after it.

Ian lights the second flare inside the car, his hand on the door handle. Robyn grabs his shoulder. "No, what are you doing?"

"Helping," Ian bravely spoke, he rushed out of the car, waving the flare above his head. Instead of throwing the flare, he made the dinosaur follow after him. Robyn anxiously watched in the backseat as the T-Rex continued stomping after him even after Ian threw the flare. Robyn pushed Jimmy out of the way, sprinting over to the first car to help Alan save Lex and Tim. Over her shoulder, she saw Ian run towards the toilet hut. He fell to the floor when the dinosaur knocked the hut down to the floor, leaving behind a trembling Gennaro sat on the toilet seat. Without hesitation, the T-Rex snapped her jaws down over Gennaro's figure, clamping her teeth into his flesh, killing him instantly.

There was no time to cry or to scream or to react. She needed to focus on helping the kids, however, the scream coming from the second car did catch her attention. She whipped her head around to see Jimmy screaming at the scene he just witnessed. Robyn couldn't shout at him to stop but she also couldn't run up and physically stop him either.

The T-Rex stomped up to the petrified brunet and didn't think twice to chomp down on his whimpering body. Robyn sobbed quietly, her hand covering her mouth to silence her cries.

"Robyn, I'm stuck! The seat's got my feet," Tim struggled, his voice drenched in fear.

Robyn choked back her tears, a hiccup leaving her mouth before she bent down fully to help pry Tim's feet out of the car. "It's ok, sweetie. I'll get you out, ok?" Tim painfully nodded, a groan leaving his mouth. "Don't you worry, honey. You're ok."

Before Time had any chance of escaping, Lex was out and screaming. Robyn whipped her to see the T-Rex standing right before the two. Alan was quick to cover Lex's mouth. "Don't move. It can't see us if we don't move," he whispered to Lex. The dino lowered it's head down to them and breathed out, blowing Alan's hat off of his head. Its large head nudged the edge of the car, causing it to spin around on its top. Robyn stepped away from the car as Alan and Lex followed the movements of the car, the three hid behind the car, their head poking out slowly to see the T-Rex knocking the car towards the edge.

Lex wrapped her arms around Alan's shoulders as he grabbed a sturdy wire hanging over the edge. Robyn's leg got caught in another stray wire, causing her to trip over the winding wire around her ankle. With a yelp, her other feet slipped over the edge of the cliff of the T-Rex confinement, her body toppling over the edge. The wire tightened around her ankle, securing her to the metal so she couldn't fall to her death at the bottom of the cliff. Her head bashed against the concrete wall causing the blonde to see dark splodges to scatter over her vision.

The last thing she remembered was hearing Lex scream out to her. Then she passed out, dangling over the edge of the confinement.

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