Club Isla Nublar Beach Resort

Jurassic Park? Yeah, I'll tell you about Jurassic Park, I used to work there, only back then they called it Isla Nublar Beach so it wouldn't attract attention or scare off the locals. InGen leased it from the government and was looking for skilled laborers to build a new resort complex they had invested in. They needed the place up and running, fast, before anyone could find out what they were doing, shut it down, or steal their industrial secrets. Not as if it was a novel idea. Hammond knew what he was doing. He tried to out trump Disney World by ripping off everything they had come to learn though years of hard work, trial and error and experience. Skimmed off what he needed and dumped the rest. Usually at the expense of common sense and safety. My name's Newt, Newt Huffman, but my buddies just call me Huffy for short. Mainly cause I have a tendency to lose my temper if someone rubs me the wrong way. I'm an independent contractor which is just a fancy way of saying I'll work for just about anyone, doing just about anything, if the money is good enough. Oilrigs in Qatar, crab boats in Alaska, I even did the cruise ship scene for a while. That was mainly just to meet the ladies. A lot of rich wives who make it a point to cheat on their cheating husbands at least once a year. Sometimes I'd do 'em two at a time, until one day some old bat's daughter was discovered passed out in my cabin. Got kicked off the boat for that. Luckily the crew protects its own so there were no charges filed, but I still got shit-canned for it. Left high and dry in Cozumel with little more than my last paycheck, an expired phone card and a back pack full of dirty laundry. That's when I heard about InGen. I fell in with a bunch of Filipinos on furlough between assignments when my buddy Bascos said they were looking for anyone who spoke English and knew how to run a backhoe over in San Jose. I figured I had nothing to lose. It was either that or stay in Mexico and work on a dive boat. But I had enough of boats. I just wanted a real job, with no freaking tourists to deal with. I wanted to get back in a real crew with real men, making real money. I set out for Costa Rica the next day. The brochure said Isla Nublar Beach Resort. I guess they didn't want anyone to know it was actually going to be a wild animal sanctuary. Beach Resort sounds more believable, more legitimate, more reliable, a place where the paychecks actually clear, and the village has electricity and hot running water. When I arrived at the terminal in Puntarenas, the place was full of guys from all around the world. I even saw a few faces I knew. Mainly Filipinos (who spoke both English and Spanish plus their own dialect Tagalog,) Indians, Thai, and of course Mexicans, Canadians and Czechoslovakians. I guess I should have been a little suspicious when they made us sign a non disclosure agreement, yet they had no concern what so ever about the standard regiment of vaccinations, inoculations, shots, pills or even the most basic of physical examinations. Not even a freaking piss test. I guess they didn't want the insurance companies getting involved. It seemed like it was just "get 'em on the island, put a shovel in their hands and keep quiet". As soon as they had enough passengers for the first trip, they herded us on a ferry and we set off for the island. I don't think they wanted us to have a good look at the place right away cause they timed it so we arrived there at night. The only visible lights on the island were a few dots on the hillside and the halogen floods on the dock. A foreman took charge of showing us to our quarters. About a dozen rows of trailers all lined up with a make shift gravel road between them. They were actually pretty comfortable. Brand spanking new, each one with electricity, running hot water, wide screen TV, computer, and a fully stocked bar. And an InGen label on everything. Looked like they spared no expense for these babies. They even had an espresso machine. Nice. The one thing that bothered me though was the windows. They had all been wired shut with hastily welded rebar. Well, the first few weeks went rather smoothly. Digging trenches mostly. Seems like every time we turned around a trench would collapse somewhere from rain or a land slide. It was me and my team's job to go and muck it out. That lasted for months. We kept joking that anymore trenches and the entire island would be divided up into a dozen separate islands. Some of the other guys were busy putting up a fence. Not just any fence. A fifty-foot high electrified fence with a three-foot wide concrete base. We didn't know what it was for, but someone said they would be bringing in exotic animals from Africa or something, like Bush Gardens in Florida. Then the main complex started going up, almost overnight it seemed. Every time I woke up in the morning, there would be a new building or maintenance shed standing in the compound. They must have been trying to accomplish as much as possible before the rain season started. In that case most of the work was called off and we'd be sent back to San Jose to wait it out. Even InGen didn't want to risk losing a million dollar earthmover in the mud. Down time is the worst for guys like me. Sit around spending all the money you had just saved. Getting drunk at eleven in the morning, gambling away your wages. Getting in fights, breaking hearts. I tried not to get too chummy with any of the guys. No sense making friends with someone who's just going to move on the next day, get fired, or even injured and carted away "quietly". Brian Smrz was the only guy I really liked or even trusted. He was in the motor pool and just loved his job. God damned if he couldn't drive, fly, pilot, navigate or race just about anything on wheels, wings, or with an engine on it. I once saw him rescue a trapped lineman by driving his jeep nearly straight up a 70 degree incline hillside. He strapped a set of chains on the tires, popped the hood, took off the air filter, got behind the wheel and gunned that son of a bitch for all she was worth. He was in freaking 4th gear by the time he reached the summit. Cut the guy loose, put him in the Jeep, and coasted down as lazily as a Norwegian ski instructor on a bunny slope. Damn, what a driver. I actually admired him. If there ever was any trouble on the island, he's the guy I'd want near by. Rain season finally stopped. A lot of guys couldn't take it and had bugged out already. The ones that stayed went back to work. Turns out not all the workers had waited for the rain to stop. A lot of the buildings that were half completed when we left were now being finished up, fitted and wired. New plants, landscaping and paving could be seen at every turn, a lot of strange looking plants and trees still in their burlap bags. My trailer didn't look any worse for wear, but a couple of the others had been washed away. A few were half buried. Apparently since we lost about a third of our crew, InGen didn't even bother to fix them. Work continued as usual, digging trenches, stringing lines, paving roads. It became obvious after a while this place was shaping up to be like no "beach resort" that I had ever seen before. The place was fortified to the hilt, electric fences, thirty-foot deep trenches, security cameras everywhere. And you couldn't go anywhere without some kind of ID pass or security card. The only problem is none of it ever seemed to work quite right. Brian used to get upset cause his card never opened any of the doors it was supposed to, while mine opened every door? One night we got drunk and decided to go snooping around in the main building. My card (which we dubbed the skeleton key) opened every door. We went inside and began checking out the pharmacy. I was looking for some valium, but everything we saw had a weird name on it. Nothing I would take, not even if I was still nineteen. Then we made our way into the computer room. I'm no expert but even I could tell these were industrial strength super computers. Rows of them, each about the size of a refrigerator and water cooled. Brian said they were Crays. I didn't know the difference between a Cray and a laptop but these were like nothing I had never seen before. More like environmental control systems than computers. We didn't dare touch anything. In fact we decided to get the hell out of there. With my luck, the card would probably decide to not work, trapping us inside the moment we tried to leave. The months rolled by as time usually does when your mind is occupied and your hands keep busy. Finally our contracts neared completion. All of the main buildings were up, the plumbing and electrical installed. Most of the touch up work involved paint and trim, landscaping, and going back to repair what hadn't been done right in the first place. There was a lot of that. Leaky roofs, faulty wiring, with so many different contractors and sub contractors, and nobody being told exactly what the final project was supposed to be, no one knew what anybody else was doing. One team would come in and install security cameras and air conditioners, but the electricians had already signed off on the project and were gone when the time came to actually install the fuse boxes. We were constantly throwing switches to machines that weren't even hooked up yet. Or someone had come along and removed it to install at another location without telling anyone. Or someone would order the wrong equipment, and instead of incurring the cost of sending it back, they would just dump it in a pile behind a shed somewhere. Sloppy. As the days wound down I was wondering when I'd get my final paycheck. Eighteen months and I had made close to a hundred thousand dollars. Half of it had already been blown on booze, gambling and hookers. I figured I'd make my way back to the states for a while and maybe find a gig as a bar tender during spring break somewhere. Then Brian came over to my trailer and said they needed some guys to stay on who were good with guns and help transport livestock near the east docks. I had nothing better to do, and I sure knew my way around guns so I signed up with the handlers and figured it would be a cushy job. Stand around and watch some vet jab a hypo in a Rhino's butt and if it tried to gourd anyone just shoot it. They threw me in a lot with a bunch of other guys who looked like they had been trained literally the day before. Half of them spoke no English, the other half spoke no Spanish. It sometimes took two or three foremen just to communicate with the entire crew. A lot of the guys weren't much older than kids. They must have hired anyone they could find from the mainland, as long as they could squeeze a trigger. Some guy named Muldoon showed us how to operate our weapons. Some were fitted with a type of electric cattle prod, some were explosive tipped, and some were just plain old-fashioned shotguns. Each fitted with a Mag-light and stamped with an InGen Logo. Even the uniforms were mismatched. Some of us had Kevlar vests and knee pads, some had elbow pads and utility belts. Some had neither. We would generally swap out equipment with each other until we felt "safe", or safe enough. Muldoon was always pissed off. He kept complaining to Hammond about the lack of equipment, lack of training, lack of proper procedures, documentation, preparation. Hammond never seemed to care though. In fact we never even saw the guy and were beginning to think he didn't even exist. Like he was just someone they invented so they could have someone to place blame on. As long as everything got done as fast as possible, no one cared. And money was no object. One of the first transports we handled was an Ostrich or Emu or some such thing. I had never seen anything like it, about eight feet tall with a long sharp bill. It apparently had "stabbed" several of the crew on the boat trip over because no one had told them that the bird had an instinctive aversion to the color Yellow. It would have been nice to know that since all the deck hands wore bright yellow raincoats. They finally figured that one out and switched their jackets for navy blue InGen coveralls. It wasn't until our third week into the job when Brian came to my trailer for our usual late night poker game and said the word "Dinosaur". I thought he was joking at first until I noticed he wasn't wearing his usual mischievous grin. In fact he grabbed the first bottle of Vodka within arm's reach, took 3 huge pulls off of it, wiped his mouth and said "fucking dinosaurs"! A long silence hung in the air. "What the hell are you talking about Brian, there's no such thing as dinosaurs, 'cept maybe one of those fish they caught in Madagascar... " I had never seen Brian look so pale. I removed the Vodka bottle from his hand and took a swig. Before we knew it we were both in Brian's Jeep headed for the East dock. When we got there a crew of handlers was unloading an enormous steel box with something alive inside. We could tell there was something in it by the way it rocked back and forth. Bursts of steam shot out through the air holes. A trickle of fluid leaked out the back end. Whatever was inside was so scared it was pissing. They set the crate down on a forklift and drove it away, Muldoon shouting and waving his arms the whole time. Once the forklift was out of sight, he removed a flask from his vest pocket and took a drink from it. I asked Brian what the hell was that. He didn't know, but he told me the resort was set up to be some kind of exhibit for genetically engineered dinosaurs. So that's what the fences and the trenches were for. That explained the computers and security systems. Brian asked me if I still wanted to work there. I told him there was no way I would quit now. Not until I saw one of those things up close. A few days later one of the guys came over and told me to report to the Raptor pit. He said they were bringing in the first specimen that night and Muldoon wanted every last man available, sober, and fit for duty. I grabbed my gear as fast as I could and called Brian on the phone. Before he could answer I heard his Jeep pull up outside. I grabbed my gun, took one last swig of Vodka, went outside and jumped in the Jeep. Brian hit the gas and we were off. We didn't talk. When we arrived at the Raptor pen it looked like every available hand was milling around waiting for something to do. Flood lights, spot lights, a back up diesel generator, and everyone armed to the teeth. Muldoon had some sort of homemade bastardization of a shotgun, fitted with a taser, laser sight and a grenade launcher. That's when I realized some serious shit was about to happen. About a half an hour later Muldoon finally got the call over his walkie-talkie that the cage was about to arrive. He ordered everyone to take their positions. The only thing is, with so little training, not everyone knew exactly what their positions were. Everyone kept standing around trying to peek over each other's shoulder to get a better look at the cage. Even the Vets weren't sure who was in charge. Finally a couple of the Mexican landscapers had to help guide the forklift into position and line it up on its guide rails. Then Muldoon had to give the order for the pushing team to step in there and push. As soon as they touched the cage, what ever was inside went nuts. Spit and snot came flying out like it was just daring anyone to come near it. The cage rocked back and forth and scared the shit out of half the men. Muldoon got so pissed off I though he'd shoot himself. He had to order the team to get back in there, and even had to tell them when to push. Then they just stood there. Muldoon rolled his eyes and told them to step away. Then he called his buddy Jophery over and told him to raise the gate. And that's when all hell broke loose. Jophery opened the gate alright, the only problem is the cage lock had never been properly tested cause they were in such a hurry to bring in the first specimen. Someone had wired the lock backwards so that when it indicated "locked" the damned thing was actually "unlocked". We didn't know, Muldoon didn't know, but apparently what ever was in that damn cage sure as hell knew. The first chance it got it rammed the door. That sent the entire cage backwards 3 feet. Jophery fell off the top and landed half inside the thing. By the time Muldoon ran over to pull him out of there, Jophery had been nearly bitten in half. His entire torso lifted 6 feet off the ground and was slowly being jerked into the cage. Muldoon grabbed him around the shoulders and pulled with all his might all the while shouting "work her back", "work her back", only everybody was so surprised and stupefied, they all just stood there with their mouths hanging open wondering what to do. "Work her back". A few of the guys panicked, stuck their tasers in the air holes and started tasing like crazy not even realizing they were actually working her forward. It's a miracle they didn't tase each other. After about a dozen tases it only seemed to piss the thing off even more. Jophery's body was being whipped around like a limp rag doll, his Kevlar vest was the only thing preventing the rest of his body from being sucked through the crack even further. Finally Muldoon gave the order to just shoot her. Five shots, six shots, someone screwed up and shot a gas grenade in the damn thing and nearly blinded everyone within a twenty-foot radius. Finally when the smoke cleared the Raptor was dead. Jophery was still alive but he lost a leg. He was lucky cause it turns out it was the saliva that nearly killed him. Luckily there was a stockpile of antidote at the clinic. Well, at least that's one damn thing that went right. Needless to say I quit the next day. I'd seen industrial accidents before but nothing like that. Brian said he was going to stay on. He just couldn't go back to life as a civi' after all he'd been through. He said he'd rather die in the thick of things, than rot in comfort in a retirement home in Florida. I didn't say goodbye, hug my friend, or even shake his hand. One morning I just left. Guys like us understand. You don't call your best friend years later and try to reminisce about the past. The words run out real fast and you realize you really don't have much in common anymore and wind up talking about the weather. Depressing. Best to just cut and run. To be honest, I'm going to miss it. It wasn't the dinosaurs that scared me it was the stupid humans, irresponsible, lazy, even vindictive, guys like Hammond, Malcolm and especially Nedry, the son of bitch. Good thing the bugs got a hold of him before I did. The way I figure it, he got off easy. Anyway, for the last year I've been working in a bar on Duval street in Key West. I swore I'd never go back to dealing with tourists but after I blew the last of my cash chasing bikinis up and down Smather's beach, I got stuck here. Hey, a guy's got to eat. One day I got a post card from Costa Rica. It said they were looking for a few good men to work at a new resort at a place called Isla Sorna and something about a "Site B". It wasn't signed but I knew who sent it. The only thing I need to know is how much do they pay, and, where do I sign up? Club Isla Nublar Beach Resort, (a Jurassic Park prequel) 8/19/07 by Jeff Martin [email protected] www.geocities.com/jurassic.jeff