bigbangbigbang: A Mighty Roar (3/4)
Penny was woken by the sound of creaking.
At first she couldn't place it, and wondered briefly if it was the sound of her bones mending together, her body slowly emerging back to life; and this was absurd, of course; if she were broken she would be screaming. But her lips were fused by soreness and sleep, and the only other sound was the jungle moving quietly around her.
Moving. She was moving. How?
She felt heavy all over. With immense effort she tried to sit up but her vision immediately turned grey, she saw spots of light and had to squeeze her eyes shut until they faded. After a bit things seemed a little clearer, she felt air touch her cheeks, a still breeze and the glowing warmth of evening sunlight on the back of her neck. She blinked and stared at her feet. She was wearing cheap lace-ups, knock off Converse sneakers with a black and white chequer pattern. When she'd bought them she remembered thinking that they were probably too young for a doctor of mathematics to be strolling around campus in, but equally she didn't give two cents for what anyone thought of her fashion sense so had worn them anyway.
It took several seconds of gazing at those double-knotted laces before it hit her what it was she was really seeing. And then she had to clap a hand over her mouth to stop herself from crying out.
Her sneakers were forty feet above ground, dangling in mid-air.
The car was sitting, the whole car and Penny in it, creaking and swaying, in the branches of a tree.
Oh god oh god oh my god. She gulped in air, feeling her throat constrict. But the air was too thick, she couldn't take it in-the jungle, the tyrannosaur, it had roared and sucked out all the oxygen, left her to suffocate in the mangled wreckage of a stupid electric car.
A moth fluttered past her face. Penny tried to swat it away and knocked her fingers against her nose. It stung, and it brought her back enough that she realized that yes, she was breathing, and no, she wasn't falling. As carefully as she could, she twisted her head around. If she couldn't move she could at least get her bearings. She concentrated on the noises, what she could hear aside from the creaking. Birds, check. Distant hooting, a low thump. Frogs, maybe, and...something else? But what? Her ears throbbed. It even hurt to think.
She took a breath. Best stick to what she could see, which was the car. It was mostly upright ("Thank you," she murmured), the windscreen cracked but still in place, the hood crushed and bent in on itself. The wing mirror, the one nearest to Penny, was jammed upward; she could see her face, and she stared at it for several long moments. Blood had dried to her forehead and there was a star shaped bruise across her cheekbone. When she reached up to touch it she felt no pain. Only a strange numbness. She blinked and tore her eyes away.
The floor beneath the dash was full of gaping holes, and of course, the passenger side door was missing. She didn't need to look to know that. She'd seen it fall, fall or ripped or shattered with the kick of a leg; she didn't know which, and she didn't care. The hows didn't matter nearly so much as the fact that he, that he was-
There. That noise again. The leaves. No, something below, in the leaves.
Long shadows made it hard to see clearly, but she narrowed her eyes, stared unblinking through the gap beneath her shoes, and there it was, not a shadow. There.
Penny braced her arms against the seat, felt the car tremble around her. She called out, "Sheldon!" And again, "Sheldon!"
The noise stopped.
"Penny?"
Relief hit her like a wave, muting her voice so all she could do was to choke out a very weak, and very grateful, "Yes."
"You're in a tree."
"Tell me about it."
A pause. "I just did?"
She wished she could see his face because right at that moment the likelihood of her first slapping then kissing it were frighteningly high. She must have knocked her head something bad.
There was more movement, a muttering she couldn't properly hear, and then he stepped into a weak patch of light and she saw him fully. One sleeve of his shirt was ripped off at the elbow and he was splattered copiously with mud, but apart from that he looked more or less upright and okay. Sheldon was standing very still and she could make out his features, the long stare he was giving her as he stretched his neck to take in the precarious height that separated them. "Penny," he said sternly. "You have to come down."
It was then that he moved, hobbled, really, and she said, "You're hurt..."
"No." He looked away, winced. "Well, maybe. Yes."
Penny swore under her breath, shifted her weight. Immediately the creaking upped in volume and the gap beneath her feet began to sway. "Ah, fuck." This was going to get a whole lot worse before it got any better, even if she never moved a muscle again for the rest of her days. "Step away, Sheldon," she called out. "Can you do that for me?"
No answer. When she risked looking again he had disappeared from view. Great. Well, she'd just have to trust that he'd heard her.
For near her whole life she'd prided herself on having quick reflexes. Growing up she'd never failed in running every hot-heeled boy to the ground from tree to paddock gate to boundary's end. But the worst part was starting. Always the worst, always the hardest. She blinked at the sky, took a breath, and began to count. An easy count, backwards from ten. At six she released her grip on the seat. At two she raised her heels, ready to kick them against the dashboard, her hands extended as far as she could reach, within inches of branches that were safe and strong and untouched by metal. Just a kick. That's all she needed.
At zero, Penny moved.
In the back of her mind she could feel a vibration, building quickly, a sound that might have been a tree falling, a car crashing, a voice yelling in her ear to hurry up, Penny, Penny, Penny, hurry-and she slid and slipped and felt something catching at her shirt and her hair, and then her feet were level, her hands touching sticky mud. He was clutching her arms, pulling at her; in a daze she turned and planted her palms to his chest, curled her fingers in the damp neck of his undershirt; and together they fell in a mess of limbs as the body of the car came crashing to ground.
Silence.
"Um," she said. "Sheldon?"
A beat, then a voice sounded at her shoulder. "Ow."
Penny began to laugh. She turned gently, rose to her knees and looked him over. He appeared to be mostly intact. "Can you stand?"
He lay on his back, gazing up at her. "Would it be at all inconvenient if we...tested that hypothesis later? Preferably when you've stopped laughing at me."
"I'll take that as a yes."
She stood and held out a hand. Sheldon looked at it blankly for a second, then, grumbling under his breath, he grabbed hold of her and hauled himself to his feet. Almost immediately his legs began to buckle.
"Whoa there." She caught him quickly and peered down at his leg. It was difficult to see beneath the canopy and in the fading light, but she could just make out a gash in the fabric, pale skin showing, and blood. "Okay. Remember that no-yes-maybe you gave me about not being hurt? I think we need to revise that."
He answered with a single nod. His cheeks were pale. When she loosened her grip on him he wavered a bit but remained standing. Penny swiped a hand across her forehead. They needed to get out of here.
"This is not a wise place to be," he said, mirroring her thoughts.
She bit her lip and stepped back. The sunlight was rapidly disappearing on them; her bearings were all wrong, here with the vines and man-sized leaves and creatures all around. In the distance something thudded, sending vibrations through the soft ground and making her whole body tense up.
"It's still out there," she said.
"I know." Sheldon frowned at her. "I-what are you doing?"
Penny was staring up, high, to the thick branches, the dark cover. "You're not going to like this one bit."
"No, I don't think I am."
Well, at least they were on the same wavelength. She didn't stop to wonder how long that would last.
"Think that leg of yours can stand a little fire?" she asked.
He tipped his head to one side, and she really did want to smile then. Not from teasing, not from sarcasm. Just thanks. "I'm not giving my leg a choice, Dr. Malcolm."
So they began to climb. Awkwardly, slowly, a task interspersed with mutterings and curses. Penny dropped back to make sure he got up in one piece, and at several points along the way she saw the color drain from his face and his knuckles whiten as he clutched a branch and murmured something that didn't quite reach her ears. She let him be, tensed enough to spring forward and prop him up if it looked like he might fall and take them both down again.
At last she said, "Stop. This is far enough."
"I can see the road."
Sheldon leaned back against the tree trunk. He was breathing hard.
"What?" Penny pulled herself up with a grunt. She didn't have to look down to know that they were awfully high. Please, let this be safe, she thought. And dear god please don't let King Kong come chew us down.
"The road."
She narrowed her eyes. She couldn't see anything but leaves.
"I guess I'll just have to believe you."
"No." He wasn't hearing her, or couldn't. "No, look where I'm looking. It's there. It's-"
He broke off, coughing hard, and when he had recovered somewhat he smacked his lips together and she heard the breath catch in his throat. She put a hand to his forehead, felt cool skin. "Hey, calm down. It's not going to kill us to rest a bit." She thought for a moment. "You're from Texas, right?"
This made him pause. "Yes."
Penny wasn't much of a singer-sure, she could belt out some half-decent country songs after a few bourbons, and she sure as hell wasn't one to waste any real effort on a guy by crooning him a pretty verse-but she ignored personal history and took in a breath. "The stars at night, are big and bright..." When she paused to grin and poke him on the arm, his only reaction was to stare at her like she'd sprouted a pair of antlers. "Come on, Sheldon, don't leave me hanging here."
It was mostly a stop-start effort, off-key and about as harmonious as a juice blender, but it helped them forget what was out there, and for Penny, that was as good a thing to hold onto as any strange lullaby.
-
At exactly 9.13 pm Barry Kripke stood up from his chair, raised a mug in the vague direction of the room and said, "Coffee run."
Normally something like this would hardly raise an eyebrow from Wolowitz, and as expected he was true to form, hunched over the map with Bernadette's voice in the walkie-talkie at his ear. But it wasn't the engineer who stopped him. Kripke was almost to the door when Amy said, "Wait up, I'll give you a hand."
He said nothing. They walked out together. He nodded at her as she made small talk about the benefits of caffeine, and at the end of the corridor he made a sudden turn left. "Sorry," he mumbled, "nature calls. Hey, get me a decaf would you? No cream. Thanks." And he stepped into the men's bathroom and stood before the sink, waiting for the sound of her footsteps to continue on. After a moment they did. He tried not to imagine whatever look of quiet suspicion was currently making its way to her face. There just wasn't time.
This was it. He had one night to get through and then he was out of here. He looked at his watch. One night, eight or so hours to sit quietly and pray to all hell that the traps he'd installed would tick off in the right order. So far they had. It was all in the program. Wolowitz might run the hardware, but it was Kripke's code, Kripke's system, and nobody could come near him in the hundreds of invisible ways he could manipulate it. The real magic was doing so unnoticed.
One night. Kripke turned on the tap and rubbed soap into his hands, watching it lather. The drier wasn't working. Of course it wasn't. Things falling apart, he thought. Little things. They all added up.
He stayed in the bathroom for another seven minutes, watching the seconds tick around on his watch, until he heard footsteps passing again, and then he opened the door, walked on quick feet to catch up to Amy. She'd put in too much sweetener, but at least the mug was hot in his hands. They returned to the control room, whereupon Kripke slid into his chair, low before the monitor so he was able to hide his face. He sipped at the drink without tasting it.
-
Maybe he slept. Maybe, but if he did it wasn't any sleep he'd experienced before. In his mind he was already giving it a type, a catalogue number: half-sleep mixed with broken consciousness and an eerie feeling of being far away, looking down at his closed eyes and bloodied clothes. Have to be supernaturally high to do that, since they were dozens of feet above the ground. And that's where Sheldon's floating diagnosis came undone, because he knew full well what was happening. He was stuck in the branches of a tree, watching one brachiosaurus as it followed another past the line of the jungle. Stuck, with a sleeping Penny leaning against him. And perhaps he was more afraid of that disturbance-the one that would mean waking her up rather than the one that might rouse a distant herd, despite the almost painful need he felt in wanting to see the animals up close. After all, they were, in their hiding, at the perfect height.
Her breathing came softly; he found he could time it, and did so with particular concentration, because as much as this sort of proximity was unfamiliar to him, it was also strangely comforting. Beyond this, though, he still had no exact understanding, nothing quite formed yet for her...except that she was slight and warm and very, very still. He wished his own body could follow her lead. If nothing else, it might help in slowing his thoughts to a more manageable pace. Sheldon rested his head against a knot in the bark, and continued to stare into the dim light until his eyes grew heavy, and he wondered how much, if any of this, his mind would choose to remember.
-
"How's the head?"
"You mean the hand," said Leonard.
Leslie shrugged. "Same thing."
He glanced across the room to where Wheaton was sitting alone, rolling a bottle of water from palm to palm. Leonard bent his wrist, glancing down at the knuckles. He could count in single digits the number of times he'd hit another man. In fact, up until all of five hours ago, that digit had been a big, round zero. It felt...he didn't know how it felt. Physically, very little. The pain was almost all in his head, in the fact that he was sitting here, they were all sitting here, doing nothing.
No. It wasn't nothing. It was waiting. Waiting while the tyrannosaur punched holes in fences, when all they could do was to watch and wonder. When they'd finally driven into the lights of the main building, close to midnight and after hours of calling out three names into the dark without any answer, Leonard had taken one step into the control room and crashed his already bloodied hand across Wil Wheaton's jaw. It had floored them both, and he'd let Leslie pull him away and sit him down without any resistance. He was furious, bubbling inside. He'd wanted to drop against her side and sleep.
He heard the crack of a soda can being opened, turned his head to see Leslie taking a long drink. She dropped the can into his lap and stood up. Leonard had to grab at it awkwardly before he had diet cola all over his pants. "Well, I'm not apologizing," he said, looking up at her.
She snorted with amusement. "He's a smug bastard. It was bound to happen. Might as well be the pacifist doing the honors."
A wave of recollection passed through him, deeply familiar and persistent, taking on the form of a hard-wired memory: nights in a student bar, a girl with curly hair and a crooked smile, a girl who leaned by his side, a pool cue in hand and smart quip at every ball he failed to land. This girl. Except she wasn't a girl any more, and he sure as hell wasn't that kid looking to get the good grades and a string of letters after his name. Accolades had come easily back then. Sex hadn't.
"You sound like someone I used to know," he said.
For a moment he thought she was going to say something, agree, shoot the words back, but then Howard's voice came across the room. "Got it!"
Wheaton sat up quickly, tossing the water aside. "Power?"
"Yep. Well, ignoring the parts where Rex played shredder with the fence...but yep."
Leonard stood. His head spun, which he ignored. Mostly. He felt Leslie's hand on his arm.
"Where are they?" she asked, beating him to the question.
"Uh..." Howard made a face. "That I can't say. This thing takes time. Tracking's still not back. We'll get there, but-"
"Okay, fine, if it's eyes only then I'm going." Leslie began to gather up things from the table. She ignored Wheaton, took three steps towards the door before glancing back at Leonard. "How about you make yourself useful for once, Hofstadter," she said, throwing him the same look he recognized from many years ago, calling him out on a challenge even as the final ball hit the corner pocket. "Unless you really want to just stand there gaping."
-
"Do you think I should go, too?"
Bernadette's voice registered in his ear about three seconds before his brain deciphered the words, at which point Howard turned quickly and stuck both hands on her shoulders. "No!" he snapped. He wasn't aware of the volume; he had no control over it. He loosened his grip. "No, you're not going out there. Just...no."
She put a hand to his hair, brushed the thick bangs from his brow. Her voice was gentle. "Then I won't," she said.
"It's the not knowing," said Howard after a bit. He laughed shortly, tilted his head against her touch. They'd been married two years, and it already felt like a lifetime passed. "That's the killer. 'Cause then all you're left with is wondering."
-
For twenty minutes he sat there, tapping away at a line of code, hitting letters and deleting them at equal intervals. He watched Bernadette and Amy crowd around Howard, their voices soft undulations he couldn't make out. And he watched Wheaton watching them. It was almost too easy.
"Hey, Wolowitz, you're gonna need the sub-frames restored before getting anywhere with that map." Kripke stood up, and without looking he leaned back and pressed three keys in sequence. There was a beep. The screen went blank.
He wandered over. "Hello, Houston? Anyone there?"
"I heard." Howard glanced at him. "What d'you need?"
"I don't need anything. I'm keeping you informed, is all. Anyway, just a heads up. I'm going to the data lab. Might need to take one of the Jeeps."
This made Wheaton look up. His dark eyes were fuzzy, unfocused.
"That's fine," he said.
Kripke didn't bother to mention that he hadn't exactly been waiting for anyone's permission. But it helped the cause, so he took it.
-
In a dark corner of the jungle, far from where any map could pick him out even if it had all the power it could ever need, Raj was hiding.
He was hiding for the simple reason that he had exhausted his basic ability to run. So running had turned into hiding, which had duly turned into dropping like a bag of rocks from fatigue. And now something was humming in his ear. He slapped a hand against his neck until the noise stopped. When he pulled his fingers away they were streaked with blood, the mosquito a smear of yellow on his thumb.
Blood on his neck. He wondered where else-since last night had been kind of a blur-and was about four seconds into patting down his body when it occurred to him that if he were injured he wouldn't have to look for it because he'd be thinking of nothing else. And if he were dead, well...he'd not be thinking at all.
Last night. He hadn't known what it was until he'd fallen against the door, crashed thorough and sunk blindly to his knees, but he could see now that he was in an outbuilding, no more than a hut, pre-fabricated, the sort of thing used to store wheelbarrows and garden spades.
Another mosquito droned by. He rested his head back against the wall, and said, "Damn it." It was all he could manage. He was a polite man, and even alone he rarely swore.
There were no garden spades in here, of course. It was empty. But it had four walls, a roof, and a door that locked, so Raj sat behind that lock, and waited. What exactly he was waiting for was maybe a mystery. He didn't care, he told himself he was okay. This last was a theme he'd been stuck on for several hours now, because the alternative made his stomach turn and his throat constrict. It made him want to stare down at his chest and find a great gash of blood.
He deserved something. He'd run away. He'd left Leonard, and Sheldon, and lovely, sarcastic Penny Malcolm with her blonde hair in a braid, and he'd run away to save himself. And now it was morning and he was still hiding, waiting for...what? Someone to come get him? Yes, because that was going to happen, so he should really hide here some more because lawyers always wear personal GPS devices sewn into their belts.
Rajesh, you were never good at sarcasm. Now pull yourself together. He heard his mother's voice, clipped and spoken with a frown. She was usually right.
"Okay...okay, let's do this." Very slowly, he hauled himself up, listening. Instead of the voice were new sounds, the soft chatter of birds, the scuff of his loafers on the cement floor. Through a small window he could see that the light was very faint, and he realized it must only just be dawn. But it was enough.
He opened the door.
-
"Ugh."
Penny uncurled her fingers. Whatever it was she'd slapped to death was smeared right across her palm. She smelt a strong odour, musty, like dung, and there was a pink mark near her wrist where it had managed to bite.
"That insect did absolutely nothing to deserve your killing it." Sheldon was peering over her shoulder, frowning. "If you'd wanted it to move, you only needed to blow a very slight puff of air onto its-"
"And what do I blow to get you to stop trailing two inches at my damn heels?" she snapped back, before clamping her mouth shut. "Sorry, I meant-sorry." She pulled away and continued walking, ignoring the warmth that was spreading across her face. Luckily he seemed perfectly oblivious, simply giving her a shrug and that trademark look of disinterest. Penny wiped her hands on her jeans. She didn't know what she was saying sorry for. Apologies meant delays, and they had little time for either.
It had been properly light now for about thirty minutes, and nearly all of those had been spent pushing through scrub and mud in an attempt to get to the road. The second she'd woken and seen the mist rising from the canopy, she had pushed Sheldon out from his own slumber and into an awkward downward climb back to the jungle floor. Remarkable, she thought, how easy it was to sketch out a simple navigation from a position so high up that you were almost kissing the clouds, but once on two feet again, everything was suddenly darker, more imposing, more chaotic. Chaos. That was a joke. She was supposed to teach the damn stuff, not wander blindly through it.
And whatever Sheldon had done to his leg wasn't helping their cause either. Before leaving the tree she'd unthreaded the scarf she was using as a belt and wrapped him a sort-of bandage in fetching coral pink, but it was still something else she was putting off dealing with.
She pushed past an enormous fern, nine feet high, the leaves fanning out above her head so feather soft and green that the light streaming through was almost glowing. High above came a shriek, the sound of branches bending and cracking. Something leapt to the ground nearby and scooted past in a shadowy blur, too fast to see. She paused, shuddering, and glanced back.
"Not monkeys?"
Sheldon looked up. He shook his head.
She bit her lip, wondering, not for the first time, if it might be a better idea to just squeeze their eyes shut and run and far and fast as they could.
"See that?"
He was pointing to one of the ferns, where the thick, spongy middle had been slashed open. Penny nodded.
"Looks like Rex came through here last night." Sheldon's nose wrinkled. "Marking his merry way, too, by the smell of it."
"Nice." She started a few steps but realized he was still crouched down, examining the claw marks with fascination. "Look, Sheldon, can we maybe ease up with the field notes? We need to keep-"
The noise came from the left. Penny spun, heart pounding, watching as the foliage twisted, the dark shape of something moving towards them. She was all bent and ready to run back and grab Sheldon by his collar like a dog when suddenly the leaves parted, and a new face swung into view.
"Oh god," she said. "Oh, my-"
Before she could form another word she had her arms wrapped around him. When she drew back he was blushing, and he stood very still, arms hanging limply by his side. She wondered if her hug had shocked him into silence. She stepped back to give him space, shaking her head in astonishment.
"I'm sorry." Raj smiled weakly. "Did I scare you?"
-
She led him past the main entrance, but rather than turning for the garage they walked down a dirt track that ran a short distance away from the building and ended at a high fence. This fence was not painted to blend into the foliage, but a bright orange, vivid against the green. Leonard held a hand out, feeling the electric hum.
"Be grateful for that," said Leslie.
"You want to tell me why we're here?"
But she didn't answer, instead stopping by a gap where the leaves were sparser to lean forward, her eyes locked at a point past the bars. He stood at her side and followed her gaze. It was hard to make out, just dense, dark shapes. A tangle of vines, thin and twisted branches, mottled brown bark catching the weak points of light that managed to break through. He saw a knot in the wood, the color strangely bright, and-
The knot blinked.
Leslie took a step back. "Just needed to do a quick head count." Her voice was brusque, jolting him back to the moment. Leonard let out a breath, not realizing he'd been holding it. He saw the pebbled skin, the long, fine snout. It stood there, silent and eerily still. His stomach turned. Everything about it, everything, felt wrong. She caught his eye and smiled very slightly. "That's why we're here."
"God," he murmured. His heart was thumping. "How many are there?"
"Five adults."
"Just adults?"
"We don't integrate the juveniles." She turned away and began walking back down the track. Leonard looked back past the bars one last time before jogging after her. The raptor's eye had gone. Barely a sound and gone. He felt his skin crawl. He didn't ask her why.
The large doors to the garage were made of a translucent material, a hard plastic with a small entrance built into one side. Leslie punched a code into the keypad, there was a click and they stepped through. He saw only one vehicle parked there, the same gas-powered Jeep they'd rolled in on last night. Dried mud coated the wheels and hood. He bent down and brushed at the headlights until they were clear, leaving his fingers stained red with clay, but when he looked to Leslie she was staring with a frown at the empty space beside them. She took out her walkie-talkie.
"Howard, who took the other Jeep?"
Leonard straightened. He couldn't hear the answering voice. He tried to catch Leslie's eye but she was turned away, head down, listening. There were a few short exchanges between her and Howard and then she switched it off.
"Come on," she said, yanking his passenger door open.
He slid in as she turned the key. The engine rumbled loudly in the cavernous space. They waited as the doors lifted. "What's going on, Leslie?"
"Oh, nothing. I'm surrounded by dumbasses, is all." She sighed and pulled her seatbelt across, then spun the wheel. Leonard clicked his own seatbelt into place, letting silence take over as they drove away.
-
Once the first words left Raj's mouth he found that he simply couldn't stop. The shyness from childhood, the one that had never quite left him as an adult, it felt alien to him now, ridiculous almost. He knew what it was, of course. It was relief. Relief, and enough of it to overshadow the needling jab of guilt he was trying very hard not to blurt out all over the place as he walked along. On one side was Sheldon, shuffling a little through the sticky, mud-crusted ground with a limp he was obviously trying to hide; and on the other was Penny, a hand at his elbow and concern fixed in her eyes as she listened to him talk.
He supposed it helped twofold: it was a distraction and deterrent. Though what they could possibly hope to achieve between the three of them if something tried to attack right now was not a thought Raj particularly wanted to dwell upon. No, best stick to mindless chatter.
"I suppose I'm just not meant for the outdoors," he said. "Give me a nice, air-conditioned office, a high-rise view of the Valley, soy-latte within easy reach. That's my wilderness of choice."
Penny scoffed quietly. "Well, aren't you just the urbanite."
It was a fairly surreal exchange to be making between two tired and knocked about individuals who had just spent the night hiding from a dinosaur. He was pretty sure he wasn't alone in thinking this, and was only confirmed by Sheldon emerging from a long break of silence to raise a hand to the trees, and say, "There."
Raj ducked his head to look; he saw clear space, and then, before he could say anything, they were stepping from sodden ground to gravel. They had found the road.
Sheldon immediately stopped walking, bending a little to catch his breath. Penny had a look of triumph written all over her face as she stepped out behind him. Sheldon, though, was frowning.
"Well, now what?" he asked. "Turn one way and hope for the best? It's still jungle, which means all of nowhere to me."
But something had clicked in Raj's head. He recognised the bend to the right, the tumble of rocks.
"I know where we are," he said, "I know-"
He never finished. Penny was staring at him, waiting for him to continue. No. She wasn't staring. She was screaming his name. He felt something hot at his lower back, pressure, not pain, as the road tilted and his face smacked against gravel. He saw the thin, flashing image of a tail, a sinewy body, five foot long, brown stripes on rust-colored skin. He tried to speak, to scream back at her, at Sheldon-Run, goddamnit, run!
And then there were jaws, thick, piercing hot, clamping around his leg and dragging him away.
-
"Oh shit," said Howard.
Amy turned. "What?"
"Shit, shit, that is not good." He grabbed at the walkie-talkie. "Leslie!"
On screen, tiny dots were flicking back on. They had been watching the tracking system reboot itself. But it was taken a whole lot longer than Howard had predicted. Which really wasn't so much of a good thing with animals on the prowl. And they could do no more than sit and watch.
After a moment Leslie Winkle's voice appeared. "Here." She sounded like she was in a wind tunnel.
Howard was staring hard at the map.
"So, you remember how I said the fences were live again? Well, I might need to clarify that."
"Jesus, Wolowitz. Clarify how?"
"The building perimeter's not yet back. And, uh. That includes the adjacent enclosure." He ran a hand over his mouth. "Leslie. The raptors."
-
So fast. It had all happened so fast. No more than ten, fifteen seconds could have possibly passed from the three of them stepping onto the road to the raptor flying from the undergrowth.
Raj was gone. And Sheldon-Sheldon was gaping at her, his skin drained of color, his whole body shaking from top to toe. All he seemed to be able to do was stare at her, wait for her to act. But her mind was blank. She didn't know how to respond.
A branch snapped. It was coming back; in her periphery she saw a flash of skin, a claw-but she couldn't move. She couldn't move. Nothing was happening. Overwhelmed, stuck, lost, her body had fused to the ground.
It was the roar that did it. "Son of a bitch," she said, and she felt her voice catch, saliva bubbling over her tongue, and that was it, that was all she needed for her limbs to be pumping, her brain firing again.
Penny kicked her heels hard into the gravel. She grabbed Sheldon's hand.
They ran.
-
Wheaton stared at the bank of monitors. He was looking at CCTV footage of the guardhouse outside the main entrance, at a door ripped off its hinges. He saw a pair of legs, a pool of black seeping out onto the ground. He recognized the figure but for some reason it took him a whole lot of effort to pull the name. These were casual employees who he barely exchanged two words a week with, guys who could handle a weapon but didn't know shit about what was out there beyond the fences.
How? he thought numbly. Except the thought didn't finish, because his mind stopped right there and wouldn't give him any answers. Like names he couldn't remember. Asking how, screaming it through a crackling walkie-talkie, it would achieve nothing. But it was all he wanted to do. He felt smothered, as if the whole effort of pulling a reaction was too quick, too easy.
No, easier to stare because it hurt the most.
The image on the monitor flickered a little where he had paused it. He ran a hand over his face, tore the lid off a bottle of water and chugged it down until the cold hurt his throat. He continued to cycle through the footage, jumping back two, three hours and more. He needed to see where it began.
-
I'm stuck in chaos, thought Sheldon. Stuck, with no end in sight.
He was all too aware that adrenaline and superheated fear was driving him to melodrama, but stopping it was as pointless as trying to extract his hand from Penny's iron grip. And because he was pretty sure his leg actually was on fire, and if they didn't slow down soon he was either going to tear off his own pants or fall unconscious into a tangle of vines; either way, a guaranteed undignified end. Then the ants could have him, nibble at his carcass and leave him picked clean. Detritus for the dinosaurs.
Besides, he was man's representation, wasn't he? Okay, so maybe not him specifically, but someone had to take the fall.
Philosophy, Sheldon decided, was not so much a distraction as a means of seriously diluting his grip on reality. Penny was going to have a whole lot more to drag in her wake if that happened.
He wondered if it might be an idea to voice this, fair warning and all before he closed his eyes for good. Something to be remembered by.
"Penny..." he croaked. But she was like a bullet train, head down, eyes narrowed, vision a tunnel focus before her, and she didn't hear him. "Penny, please, can we-I think I'm going to-oh dear."
He felt his knees give way just as she whipped around. Her eyes flew over his. They heard a roar. "Damn it," she hissed, and her arms came around to snap tight against his shoulders, so instead of falling he sort of folded down slowly. He could hear her breathing hard, could see sweat blooming in dark patches across her shirt. Sheldon blinked. Grey spots danced beneath his eyelids. The roar came again, closing in on them, getting louder. Here it comes, he thought.
"I'm sorry," he murmured. He really was. It felt strange, saying it out loud.
But all Penny said was, "Thank you." As quickly as the words left her mouth, Sheldon realized they weren't for him; she was staring over his shoulder, to where they'd been running. Before he could speak she was standing up, letting him go. And then she began to yell.
It wasn't a roar. He was assigning the wrong things together. What he was hearing was the sound of an engine.
-
Leonard pulled the first-aid kit onto the back seat of the Jeep. He yanked opened the lid, took one look at Sheldon's leg, and said, "Please tell me you've got morphine in here."
"Second tray," said Leslie. Her foot was hovering over the gas pedal; she could feel her calf shaking from the effort of holding it still. It was dark in this corner of jungle, so she flicked the headlights on. A tiny shape scuttled away, bright green and slender. They needed to be away from here, she thought, working her fingers in a tight grip on the wheel. And soon. She glanced again into the mirror. "Quicker would be better, Hofstadter."
"You know, it wouldn't hurt to maybe think about throwing some organization into your supplies," he grumbled. "It's like a junk yard for bandages here."
"Raj," said Sheldon, as Leonard tapped at the syringe. "He was trying to say sorry. About running away. Leaving you." His eyes turned to the window. "I think it's going to rain again..."
"Shh, buddy."
"It was so fast, we couldn't-ow!" Sheldon winced as the needle went in. He knitted his brows. "Could you stick me a little rougher there?"
"Nope."
Leslie sighed and turned the wheel. As she did she glanced to the seat beside her, to where Penny was sitting, one hand resting against her forehead, her eyes half closed. "That true?" she asked softly.
Penny was still for a long moment. When she blinked a tear cut through the dirt on her cheek. She nodded.
-
Fat drops hit the windscreen. Kripke switched on the wipers, swearing beneath his breath as they squeaked and smeared the red dust that had been stuck to the glass into messy streaks. Obviously no one had bothered to clean the cars in a while. Or seal this road. He wasn't a patient driver at the best of times, and this network of potholed tracks was about as pleasant to navigate as the clogged arteries snaking out of Los Angeles during a holiday weekend. He made a left turn too fast and was rewarded with the back wheels hitting a rock and sending the Jeep into a sideways skid. It took a long fight with the gearstick and clutch before Kripke had things under control again. His heart thumped. Somewhere in the distance he heard the tyrannosaur bellow, the low crack of a tree falling, but it was far away, fading quickly. At least, he thought it was the tyrannosaur; they all sounded the same, all behaved the same. Even the ones that did nothing but stretch their long necks and chew leaves all day. They all had that same cold stare.
Jesus, but he hated this island.
He hadn't always been this cynical. There was a time when Kripke had thought himself rather idealistic and honor-bound in the work he was doing. His first conversation with Wheaton was to be told that he could go far, wildly far-but only if he wanted it. The guy was smart; he knew Kripke was one censure away from being kicked out Caltech's doors for good.
If someone, anyone, were to pull him up right now and ask for the truth or his life, he would tell them that he wasn't exactly embracing the idea that money and money alone was responsible for his actions. He was impressionable and weak back then, and as much as he wanted to think otherwise, that simply hadn't changed. The truth? Fuck the truth. He could never say it. Just as he could never really say no screwing the guts out of the same company that could have given him everything.
Strange, or not, how some things work out.
Now the wipers were doing a permanent singsong squeak that made him want to bang his forehead against the dash. He took a deep breath and looked down to the passenger seat. The case was there, next to his backpack, still sealed up tight. It contained genetic material for a dozen species of dinosaur, worth, well-he didn't know. A lot. And here he was, casually carting this insanely precious cargo down a half-finished dirt track. Several yards of duct tape were wrapped around the case; tape that he had grabbed off a shelf in the garage at the last minute, because the thought that it might spring open in the time it was going to take him to make a move across the island was making his insides turn into knots.
He came out of a bend and immediately touched the brakes. Ahead was a junction, splitting left and right. Where a sign should have been there was a bare metal pole. Of course. Of course there was no fucking sign. What else should he have possibly expected? The trees stretched high across the road, blocking out the light and most of the rain. Kripke leaned forward, eyes narrowed, chin resting on the wheel, and was about to put his foot back on the gas when something caught his eye. He reached into the back for a flashlight and shone it through the windscreen.
"What the hell...?"
At the base of the pole, turned on its side in the damp grass, was a shoe.
-
"Where'd he go?"
Amy looked up to see Wheaton standing back from his chair, his eyes fixed to the other side of the room. He had obviously been running a hand through his hair and now it was sticking up a little. She followed his gaze.
"Kripke?" She frowned. "He went to the data lab. He asked you, remember?"
"And you just let him?"
"No." Amy spoke patiently, slowly. "You did." She reached for one of the internal phones, where they had direct lines set up to the accommodation building and the labs. Her fingers closed around the handset, the dialtone buzzing faintly in her ear. "You want me to try and get him?"
Wheaton didn't reply. He pressed his lips together and looked at her briefly, as if she were hardly there.
Amy saw that the monitors were still running the old CCTV footage on a loop. She left the phone, and was about to stand up herself and go over when he said, "Dr. Rostenkowski, where are the guns?"
Bernadette stared at Howard and Amy. She turned carefully to Wheaton. "You didn't want to keep any here. You said the idea was wrong, that it went against everything-"
There was a sharp crash as Wheaton's hand flew out and knocked the water bottle to the floor. It rolled against his foot and he kicked it away, turning quickly, his shoulders hunched. A heavy silence fell around them, and then Amy put a hand to the desk and stood, wincing slightly as the wheels of her chair squeaked. She kept her eyes on him, at the sudden flush at the back of his neck.
Wheaton turned. "Well. Damn you if you think I really meant that," he said.
He straightened, brushing his palms against his jeans. He took a step to retrieve the water bottle from the floor and placed it back on the desk. Then he walked out without another word.
Nobody moved. Finally Howard spoke.
"He... he can't go out there on his own. I mean, is that what I just saw?"
Now Bernadette was nodding at her husband's words, blue eyes bright behind the frames of her glasses. They were both waiting for Amy to respond, as if she knew their boss better than anyone. Amy wanted to tell them they were wrong, that the anger in his eyes, it was something new, and she didn't understand it. Her throat felt dry. How could she know what he was-how he might-
"He's not," she said.
Amy walked to the door, and then she was running.
-
There was something almost strange about the lobby as they walked inside. Maybe it was the silence. It was a bright, well-lit room, glass-walled and minimally decorated, but even with the clouded sky the whole area seemed to be glowing of its own accord.
Leonard set the first-aid kit down by his feet, and turned to help Sheldon sit on one of the leather couches that lined the side of the room. He stood up, wincing as his muscles ached in protest, and rubbed his arms.
"What's up with the air conditioning?" he asked Leslie. "It's like a meat locker in here."
She gave him an odd look. "Really? That's what you want us to go work on-the ambient temperature?"
He opened his mouth to shoot back a reply but closed it just as quickly, knowing whatever he said would simply be bait for another snark-filled exchange, and as much as he was sort of warming to the idea, now really wasn't a good time. So he focused instead on getting Sheldon comfortable-or at least, focused on stopping Sheldon from picking apart the bandage that was wrapped around his thigh. No surprises there. To say his friend had little capacity for dealing with injury or illness was an understatement of sigh-inducing proportions.
"How're you doing?" Leonard asked this with more than a little hesitation, but Sheldon only shrugged. His eyes met Leonard's briefly and then dipped to the floor.
The sound of footsteps made him turn. Leslie's gaze took in the two of them, one hand at her hip. She was frowning.
"What?"
"Not sure we should be getting too comfortable here," she said. "I'd feel a whole lot better in the control room."
Sheldon looked up. "Would any of you people be greatly offended if I were to take a small nap?" he asked, blinking slowly. "I hate to cause offence. It's such a terrible divider..."
"Then you should go," said Leonard to Leslie. "Both of you. I'll stay with him."
Leslie looked unhappy at this. "I don't know."
Now Penny had joined them. She was zipping up a pack and pulling it over one shoulder. The two women eyed him carefully. "Look," said Leonard, "sometimes he gets like this. Scattered. Stubborn."
"I've noticed," said Penny.
He caught the expression on her face a second before it disappeared. The look she was giving Sheldon, who of course remained oblivious. A sort of familiarity that seemed strange until one realized what they had been through. Leonard didn't particularly want to know, or pry, but the part of him that knew Sheldon and cared about him, it did wonder, just a little. Knowing Sheldon as he did, something more than resilience had kept them alive.
Leslie, meanwhile, had taken a long drink and was now giving Leonard a sideways look. "Fine. Don't go anywhere," she said, and she and Penny stepped through an internal door, and into the building proper.
For a moment he considered calling her back, saying sorry (for what, he didn't know; but he was Leonard Hofstadter, there was usually something), that this was a bad idea, they shouldn't split up, even if her curt non-goodbye had meant to convince them that it was only for a while. And he even got as far as taking a step toward the door when a groan made its way up from the couch. He looked around. Sheldon was tapping his fingertips together, spider-like, staring at a point somewhere past Leonard.
"It picked us up," he said.
Leonard frowned. "I'm sorry?"
"Picked us up. Threw us into a tree." Sheldon stopped tapping and dropped his hands to his lap. Outside the sun shone brightly, a break in between the rain. Leonard watched him, unsure of what to say. He knew it wasn't anger in his friend's voice, only tiredness, and it smacked of betrayal. "Some things should stay extinct."
continued in part four