by elfin
elfin@burble.com
characters aren't mine - I'm just playing
thanks loads to Tomy, my ever-suffering beta reader
Better than seeing the cavalry landing on the sandy shore, was hearing Billy’s voice in the cool of the Marines’ Air Rescue helicopter.
Alan hadn’t expected to ever see him again. The image of him being terrorised by the pterodactyls, picked at, shredded - Alan had painfully assumed - had plagued the palaeontologist for the last few hours.
Then at least he’d had to think about survival, if not for himself then for Eric and his parents. But as they’d emerged onto the beach and their rescuers had met them, thoughts of Billy had almost overwhelmed him.
‘Please tell me you were saving Eric, not trying to prove yourself to me,’ Alan prayed as he crouched down next to the cot, smiling broadly.
“Hey.” Billy’s smile was like sunshine.
Once again, Alan’s mind played over the images of the attack in his mind, after which he’d believed this man gone from him forever.
“Hey…. I rescued your hat.” Billy’s rough voice was more beautiful a sound than the noise of the troopers setting up a perimeter on the beach outside.
Reaching out slowly, Alan deliberately brushed his fingers over Billy’s cold ones, taking the battered hat from his weak grasp. He smiled his thanks. Billy knew anyway.
Alan could never have seen the hat again and been happy as long as his brilliant graduate student had been returned to him. For a moment, he couldn’t find words. It was the single, most incredible moment of his life.
“I’m sorry.” It was so easy to say now. “I shouldn’t have said that, I didn’t mean it. I was angry and…”
“…scared. And you…” he coughed once, lungs still expunging the water he’d choked down trying to escape the pterodactyls, “…had every right. I shouldn’t have taken those eggs.”
Alan let out a soft breath, feeling almost euphoric. What did all this matter now? They were alive! By some Goddamned miracle, they’d made it. Not quite off the island, but at least to the very edge to be surrounded by the army with guns and helicopters and tanks.
“You saved our lives,” he told Billy simply. “Mine, theirs, Eric’s…. I dragged you out here and then yelled at you for trying to rescue the dig. I thought I’d lost you, and the last thing I’d said was to insult you.”
Billy tried to move his broken right arm. Immediately, Alan reached over and covered his hand, holding him still. “How bad is it?” he asked quietly.
“Broken bones, internal bleeding. Nothing fatal. I’ll be… back at the dig in no time.”
“I’ll keep the fossils warm for you.”
Billy smiled, stroking his fingers over the underside of Alan’s. Finally, he could stop worrying. Finally, he could stop wondering whether or not they’d make it off the island alive.
He still wasn’t sure what had happened. As the pterodactyls had played with him, he’d tried to yell at Alan to run, to get away. After that, he didn’t remember anything before waking in the helicopter.
Hours had passed in which he’d worried that the group had been divided and conquered by the killers stalking them. And then excitement and voices, and his prayers had been answered. Somehow, Alan had brought the others through it. They’d had the best guide, afterall.
“Sir, we have to leave.”
Alan looked up at the soldier standing in the hatch of the helicopter. “I want to stay with him.”
The soldier paused, but he shrugged and nodded. “You’d better strap yourself in.”
Alan sat up on the fold-down seat behind him and pulled the belt across his lap as the hatch was slammed shut and the engines started up.
He smiled over at Billy. “We’ll soon be home,” he reassured. “Get some rest.”
Billy closed his eyes, the nightmare was over. There would be time to get on with life, time to tell Alan exactly how he felt about him and to share everything that went with those feelings.
Outside the helicopter, Billy’s would-be killers soared with the rescue choppers, out to find their own new lives.
fin
