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InGen University p13
By CeratosPit
“What do you mean you lost her?” Imhotep asked seemingly nobody. Around a hundred miles away, the Therizinosaurus resPonded with a cacophony of strange noises unheard for millions of years. “Let me explain something to you, buddy.” Imhotep explained. “I did not send like a hundred of you guys so that you could let that pea-brained, two-legged, two-story crocodile muddle this up on his own. No, I sent all of you because IT’S ONE FREAKIN’ GIRL WITH A FREAKIN’ BRACELET ON HER FREAKIN’ WRIST!” Therizinosaurus made apologetic but positive sounds. Imhotep rubbed his weary brow. “Have you at least expanded my army of the undead onto an unsusPecting populace?” Therizinosaurus made his ‘yes’ signal. “Well that’s a start, I guess. Listen. I don’t know if this is just your style and you like to keep me in susPense or what, but I need that manacle in like eleven and a half hours. Can you handle that?” Therizinosaurus resPonded. “I’m sorry could you repeat that? Hello? You’re breaking up.” Therizinosaurs repeated himself. Imhotep walked around the museum and got closer to a window. “Yeah. Can you hear me now? Good!”
Professor Junkee walked into Imhotep’s makeshift throne-room. Dr. Harding and Burke stood guard and let him pass. Junkee was now clad in a tunic of servitude and had the phrase ‘I Love Egypt’ tattooed across his chest. He carried for his master a trey of the cafeteria’s finest cuisine. All in all, being the right hand slave of an ancient evil wasn’t nearly as bad as he was expecting. “Oh, Master!? I’ve brought you your din-din!”
“Yeah, that’s my human slave.” Imhotep told Therizinosaurus. “Alright. Catch you later.” He then turned his attention to his human slave. “Hey that smells delish, Junk-man. Listen, thanks again for teaching me to sPeak this kooky language of yours.”
“No problem at all, master! Why I’m sure that that part of my brain will grow back eventually!”
“I need a table.”
“Right away!” Junkee bent over on his elbows and knees.
“I said table, not footstool!”
“Ah, of course! A thousand apologies!” Junkee raised himself onto his hands and feet. “So, how goes this manacle finding business?”
“Tables don’t talk.” Imhotep reminded junke with his mouth full.
“Right, sorry.”
Back in Mexico, Therizinosaurus called the attention of all the dinosaurs and pterosaurs under his command from the back of the remaining Triceratops. Then he cried to the hundreds of recently human minions, including Sarah and Ray. He scanned the horizon for any sign that would indicate his quarry’s position. A loud “BOOM” from behind caught his attention. It was a mushroom cloud looming over a distant gas station in the west. Bingo. With the three elongated claws of his right hand, he pointed west and his gruesome horde made their way after the van. Perhaps it’s strangest members were the staggering, headless body of a brachiosaur and the disembodied neck and head of that same brachiosaur being air-lifted by six pterodactyls.
A mile and a half away, the party in the van were making there way towards the desert at well past the sPeed limit. “Nick, how much farther do you think you can drive before we run out of gas?” Alan asked.
“At this sPeed, I’d say we have a good half hour before we’ll need to refill.” Nick answered. “And with that gallon jug of gas Juanito gave us before he became a zombie matchstick, I’d say another ten minutes.”
“Pardon me for asking,” Elle begged, “but if we’re low on gas, why are we heading to the wide open desert where we stick out like a gay, black Jew at a Klan meeting of all places?”
“I’d rather we run out in a barren wasteland than a zombie nation, Mandy.” Nick answered.
Amanda then questioned. “What difference does it make?”
“Mandy, this really ain’t the time for existential ‘life is pointless’ quandaries.” Nick told her. “If you’d rather we left you behind to become a zombie--”
“I wasn’t being existential.” Amanda asked. “I was asking a simple question. Juanito said that we have to evade that mummy guy’s forces until morning so that he won’t become immortal. What then?”
“Good point.” Ian noted. “I, ah, suppose we wait until somebody destroys him and things get back to normal.”
“Like who?” she asked. “This guy’s supposedly only been alive for a few hours, and already he’s sPread some kind of zombie epidemic that might have the whole continent infected by tomorrow night. Is the government even doing anything about this?”
“Hey that’s a good question.” Elle said. “Nick, turn on the radio.”
Nick complied. Luckily, the subject was being covered by a sPanish corresPondent. “--And then, el presidente de los Estados Unidos said, quote, ‘You expect me to bomb my own country because there’s a bunch of zombies on the loose? Come on, this has got to be the most ridiculous April fool’s joke ever!’ This is Marty Guttierez saying, we’re all doomed. Buenas noches!”
“I don’t believe this!” Elle exclaimed. “Nobody’s doing anything about this? It’s the end of the world as we know it and no one’s lifting a finger!?”
“Groovy.” Amanda sarcastically said. “Impotent won’t be immortal, but everyone else on Earth’ll be his zombie slave so it won’t matter much. Except us, I’m betting he’ll just catch us and torture us to death for royally screwing him.”
Alan took a look at Elle. She was acting so bravely about this. Now it was his turn. “Then we’ll have to stop him.”
All eyes were on Alan. “Right.” Roland said, trying not to laugh. “Maybe he’ll have a weakness against paintballs or something.”
“You think I don’t know how ludicrous that sounds?” Alan elaborated. “But really, there’s a mummy in my museum who plans to turn mankind into living corpses with or without a magical bracelet. I think we’ve gotten past the point of unbelievable.” He could see that everybody in the van was still having a hard time buying what he said. He had trouble himself. “Ian. Look, statistics-wise, you’re the smartest one here. Do we stand a snowball’s chance in hell of pulling off something like that?”
Ian’s thought process was set into motion. He took in a deep breath and did the calculations in his mind. “Ah, ok. Factoring in our chances of avoiding Imhotep’s forces until dawn, finding our way back to the museum unnoticed, figuring out his weakness, applying it and any unknown obstacles we might face along the way…I’d give us a…1 out of 2,748+.”
“Then let’s pray that that’s all we need.” Alan hoped aloud.
“Hey, are we on a fault line?” Nick wondered. Everybody else felt it too. At first he thought that the road was just getting bumpy, but he clearly saw that that it wasn’t. Then he glimpsed into the rear view mirror.
A great number of human and dinosaur zombies were slowly but surely approaching the sPeedy Van Owen Van. Within minutes they would have been overtaken, but Nick was no fool! Ok, yes he was, but he was a damn lucky fool, for a quarter mile ahead of them was a tunnel penetrating a small mountain range. If they could but follow the road and enter said tunnel, they would gain considerable distance over the larger dinosaurs unable to pass. At it’s top sPeed of 130mph, the Van Owen Van would make it in scarcely half a minute.
“Those dinosaurs will never be able to pass, to pass through the tunnel!” Ian claimed.
“It’s not the dinosaurs I’m worried about.” Alan forboded. “Look.” He pointed to a small cloud of pterosaurs advancing for the van. “They’ll be able to fly in right after us!”
“Maybe not.” Roland said, formulating an idea. He opened the sunroof much to everybody’s protest, but assured them that he knew what he was doing. As the van drove nearer and nearer to the mountain face through which the tunnel was built, he took careful aim with his paintball gun. His father had always taught him to wait for and recognize the precise moment to squeeze a trigger. Now was that moment. With a mighty shot, he launched a paintball with astonishing accuracy at a small boulder sitting atop the mountain. And with great pride he watched as it cascaded downward, knocking other rocks and boulders out of place. Soon, they would bury the entrance of the tunnel, but at the sPeed Roland calculated they were going, not before the van went in first.
Yet Roland’s joy was short-lived. For barely a second had passed since he fired that paintball when a hideous pteranodon clutched him by the shoulders! With a cry of anguish, Roland grabbed the roof with his left hand while he fired paintballs at his aerial assailent. Each one missed or scathed the creature. Elle, Ian and Amanda grabbed Roland’s legs. Alan turned to Nick and pleaded “Stop the van!”
“No!” Roland protested at the top of his lungs. He could feel the creature’s claws piercing his skin and what this would mean shortly. “It’s too late for me, but not for you! Stop the mummy!” And then, tossing his paintball gun into the van, he let go of the roof.
Now with Roland gone, Alan, Elle, Ian, Amanda and Nick were but five college kids on a mission to save the world. The latter did not really even think about this, however. His mind occupied the soul task of reaching the cave entrance before the rockslide did. And with nary a second to sPare, he did. One of the first small boulders dented the van’s roof as they drove in, but that was nothing. “And the $10,000 question is: Who da Man!?”
Nobody answered. Instead, Amanda just asked another question. “Won’t the pterodactyls reach the other side of this tunnel when we do?”
Nick sighed. “You guys just love to bring Ol’ Nicky down, don’t ya? Well chuck it, I‘m celebrating my little victory.” And with that, he opened a can of beer.
“Jesus, Nick, our friend just died!” Elle scorned her driver.
“No he didn’t!” Nick replied. “He’s just a zombie! You heard Juanito, once we kick Improvist’s ass, everything’ll go back to normal! And I dunno about you crybabies, but I got every intention of atomic wedgieing the jerk who ruined my sPring break and killed a bunch of people I knew!”
“Hey, ah, back to Amanda’s question…” Ian flipped over. “What, what do we do when, ah, the ptero-pterosaurs find us? You saw those things.”
“So we’ll just chill here in the tunnel until they leave.” Nick said, slowing down and stopping.
“They’re not gonna leave.” Elle reminded him. “Remember? They’re hell bent on getting this bracelet. Either they find us through the other side or wait for their big friends to push the rockslide out of the way. We’ve still gotta come up with a plan and we don‘t have long.”
Ian, naturally came up with the first one. He noted the tinted windows. “Do they…do they actually know we’re in here or do they just follow the van?”
“Of course they know we’re in here.” Alan answered. “They didn’t travel from the museum to Cancun because somebody gave them directions. They must have some kind of extrasensory lock on the bracelet.”
“Then why haven’t they gotten it yet?” Ian pondered. “I mean there’s now thousands of them, we--we were all surrounded by them at some point but unless they didn’t all have lock onto the bracelet at all times, ah, Elle would be short one arm.”
“So, how did they know where to find us?” Elle asked.
“Juanito said that, um, Imhotep controlled the zombies, but I-I think he merely gave them telepathic commands. Mummy lore says that-that they superior mental abilities. If anybody’s locked onto the bracelet, he is. And he’s just telling his minions what to do from time to time.”
Amanda sPoke. “So whose to say Imhotep isn’t reading our minds now too? I mean, we’re all right next to this thing.”
“Maybe he’s napping.” Ian suggested. “Or maybe his far reaching mental powers can’t penetrate the hundreds of feet of rock we’re under. My, my point is, if he was controlling them right now, you can bet that he’d have the Triceratops bulldoze the rockslide away within seconds and come after us.”
“So do you have a plan, or what?” Nick asked.
“Oh, I-I have a plan.” Ian admitted. “But you’re not gonna like it.”
Two minutes later, the many smaller pterosaurs flying over the mountain range searching for any avenue of escape the van might have taken saw the vehicle blast out of a tunnel exit that was hidden from a bird’s
Eye view. And a second later, they saw it drive off of the road, over the edge of a cliff and fall into a deep gorge.
At their top sPeed, they dove after the van and grabbed it everywhere that they could. But the van had a recent wax job and proved to be a difficult grip. Still they surrounded it and grabbed hold wherever they could, for they must not have let the bracelet be destroyed! Finally, one of the smarter Dimorphodons pecked a hole thought the window and looked inside. There was no one. The van was empty but for a cinder block on the accelerator and jug of gasoline.
Even when the van crashed into the Earth below and exPloded in a massive fireball which took out all the little pterosaurs, the Dimorphodon still didn’t understand what had happened. Of course, he was too busy blowing up at the time.
Out of the tunnel’s exit hopped the five friends on five pogo sticks which Ian had conveniently packed. It was no van ride, but it would take them west faster then by foot. Nick Van Owen lagged on behind, crying to himself. “First my beach house! Now my van! I’m gonna kill that mummy!”
2 B Continued...
6/10/2004 7:22:29 PM
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