Jurassic Park Read Free

little Olympus point-and-shoot. She took several snapshots of the injury, shifting her light for a better view. It really did look like bites, she thought. Then the kid groaned, and she put her camera aside and bent toward him. His lips moved, his tongue thick.
        "Raptor," he said. "Lo sa raptor . . . "
        At those words, Manuel froze, stepped back in horror.
        "What does it mean?" Bobbie said.
        Manuel shook his head. "I do not know, doctor. 'Lo sa raptor'-no es español "
        "No?" It sounded to her like Spanish. "Then please continue to wash him."
        "No, doctor." He wrinkled his nose. "Bad smell." And he crossed himself.
        Bobbie looked again at the slippery foam streaked across the wound. She touched it, rubbing it between her fingers. It seemed almost like saliva. . . .
        The injured boy's lips moved. "Raptor," he whispered.
        In a tone of horror, Manuel said, "It bit him."
        "What bit him?"
        "Raptor."
        "What's a raptor?"
        "It means hupia."
        Bobbie frowned. The Costa Ricans were not especially superstitious, but she had heard the hupia mentioned in the village before. They were said to be night ghosts, faceless vampires who kidnapped small children. According to the belief, the hupia had once lived in the mountains of Costa Rica, but now inhabited the islands offshore.
        Manuel was backing away, murmuring and crossing himself. "It is not normal, this smell," he said. "It is the hupia."
        Bobbie was about to order him back to work when the injured youth opened his eyes and sat straight up on the table. Manuel shrieked in terror. The injured boy moaned and twisted his head, looking left and right with wide staring eyes, and then he explosively vomited blood. He went immediately into convulsions, his body vibrating, and Bobbie grabbed for him but he shuddered off the table onto the concrete floor. He vomited again. There was blood everywhere. Ed opened the door, saying, "What the hell's happening?" and when he saw the blood he turned away, his hand to his mouth. Bobbie was grabbing for a stick to put in the boy's clenched jaws, but even as she did it she knew it was hopeless, and with a final spastic jerk he relaxed and lay still.
        She bent to perform mouth-to-mouth, but Manuel grabbed her shoulder fiercely, pulling her back. "No," he said. "The hupia will cross over."
        "Manuel, for God's sake-"
        "No." He stared at her fiercely. "No. You do not understand these things."
        Bobbie looked at the body on the ground and realized that it didn't matter; there was no possibility of resuscitating him. Manuel called for the men, who came back into the room and took the body away. Ed appeared, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, muttering, "I'm sure you did all you could," and then she watched as the men took the body away, back to the helicopter, and it lifted thunderously up into the sky.
        "It is better," Manuel said.
        Bobbie was thinking about the boy's hands. They had been covered with cuts and bruises, in the characteristic pattern of defense wounds. She was quite sure he had not died in a construction accident; he had been attacked, and he had held up his bands against his attacker. "Where is this island they've come from?" she asked.
        "In the ocean. Perhaps a hundred, hundred and twenty miles offshore," "Pretty far for a resort," she said.
        Manuel watched the helicopter. "I hope they never come back."
        Well, she thought, at least she had pictures. But when she turned back to the table, she saw that her camera was gone.

    The rain finally stopped later that night. Alone in the bedroom behind the clinic, Bobbie thumbed through her tattered paperback Spanish dictionary. The boy had said "raptor," and, despite Manuel's protests, she suspected it was a Spanish word. Sure enough, she found it in her dictionary. It meant "ravisher" or "abductor."
        That gave her