Jurassic Park^TM III Novelization by Scott Ciencin Read Free Book Online

left behind. But it floats.” Alan searched the canyon. “All we need to do is find a way down. Then we could follow the river out to the ocean.”
    Eric opened his mouth to speak.
    Alan cut him off with a gesture. “We’ll keep looking for your parents along the way. With any luck, the Costa Rican Coast Guard will pick us all up.”
    “Then we go home?” Eric asked.
    Alan nodded. “Then we go home.”
    Suddenly, a familiar ringing sounded nearby. Eric instantly recognized the distinct and annoying melody.
    “That sounds like my dad’s phone!” Eric said. He rushed off to follow the sound. Alan tried to slow him down, but Eric was too fast for him.
    “Wait!” Alan called. “How do you know?”
    Eric sang to the electronic jingle. “Kirby Paint and Tile Plus—in Westgate!” The ringing grew louder. “Dad?
DAD?”
    In an instant, Eric was no longer a wild boy, focused every waking moment on survival. Suddenly, he was the kid from Enid, Oklahoma, again—and he was desperate for his parents to take him home and keep him safe. Reaching them was all that mattered.
    Eric raced ahead. The phone stopped ringing, but he heard other sounds now. Human voices. People calling his name.
    “Mom! Dad!” Eric yelled.
    He burst into a meadow and saw them shouting, “Eric!”
    As he ran to meet them, he read their features—disbelief, joy, terror, relief, love. Every emotion seemed to be there in his parents’ faces. It had been so long since he’d seen human emotions, it felt wonderful!
    The only thing standing between Eric and his parents now was one of InGen’s giant dinosaur fences. Eric ran up to it, his fingers curling around the metal bars. He looked up and saw that it could not be climbed over. There was a line of rusty spikes on the top.
    Paul and Amanda hugged their son through the fence.
    Amanda managed a kiss, too.
    “Sweetheart,” she said, almost out of breath. “You’re okay. You’re okay!”
    Eric’s dad squared his shoulders proudly. “Never had a doubt. Never did. Us Kirby men, we stick around, huh?”
    “We do,” Eric said.
    Eric’s mom licked her shirttail and tried to rub his face clean through the fence. Eric used to hate it when she did that. Now he didn’t even think of pulling away. He just smiled and let her scrub.
    “Honey,” Paul said, touching Amanda’s shoulder, “there’s not enough spit in the world for that.”
    Amanda laughed. It sounded to Eric as if it had been the first time she’d laughed in months.
    Billy caught up with the Kirbys at the same time Alan reached Eric.
    Alan looked unhappily at the fence standing between them. “We need to find a gap.”
    Everyone walked along the fence, looking for an opening.
    Eric stayed close to his parents.
    “So, sport,” his dad asked, “how did you know we were so close?”
    “I heard your phone ring,” Eric said. “That stupid jingle from the store.”
    “My phone?” his dad asked. His forehead creased and he frowned in confusion. He searched his pockets and backpack as the others watched.
    “Where is it?” Amanda asked.
    “I don’t know,” Paul said. “I didn’t think I had it with me.”
    “When did you use it last?” Amanda asked.
    Paul shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
    “Think,” Amanda said. Her brief calm was fading.
    Paul shook his head. “The plane. I got a call on the plane, put the phone in my coat pocket, and—”
    Paul’s gentle expression changed, tensing with an awful realization.
    “What?” Amanda demanded. “WHAT?”
    “I loaned it to Nash,” Paul said quietly. “He must have had it on him when he . . .”
    Eric looked to his parents, Billy, and Alan. They all appeared horror-struck.
    “I don’t understand,” Eric said. “Who’s Nash?”
    The ringing came again, accompanied by heavy footfalls. Something
big
was coming.
    “When the plane was attacked,” Alan said. “Nash was—”
    Eric heard a growl and the sound of a small tree falling. He saw a huge dinosaur appear on