Free Jurassic Dead by David Sakmyster, Rick Chesler

shut her mouth. He continued. “The guys down there are already suspicious, I'm sure. It wouldn't take much,” he threatened, but then softened his tone. “Just…listen, please. Even if you’re not a real doctor, I’m sensing your heart is in the right place, and what’s more…we might be on the same side.”
    “And what side is that?”
    Alex shrugged. “Not that Xander guy’s, and not Melvin DeKirk’s. If that’s a safe bet, then I’m willing to help you, and my guess is that right about now, the way things are going, you’re going to need all the help you can get.”
    Veronica sighed heavily, staring back at his eyes, gauging his sincerity. “You win. You’re right, you’re going to have to help me, or we’re both in deep shit.”

 
    13.
     
    Aboard Oil Tanker Hammond-1, En route to Chile
    The last thing Marcus wanted to do was stand in the same area of the ship as Xander Dyson, but the allure of the dinosaur was too strong. A flesh-and-bones T. rex ! If he wasn't seeing it for himself right now with his own eyes, he’d never accept it. After a career full of teasing glimpses of this mighty prehistoric beast, in books, in computer simulations, and movies of course, or if he was lucky in actual bones or teeth—now he had the chance to see a whole one close-up and in the flesh. He pushed his way past a couple of drilling technicians gawking at the dead beast from another era.
    The air was still frigid, and his breath spooled out in clouds. He walked up to the wheeled, stainless steel platform that the once mighty beast was strapped to so that it wouldn't slide off due to the ship's motion and be damaged. It was about forty feet long and twenty wide. The dinosaur's long hind legs nearly protruded over the edge of the platform, one of its sharp, black toenails curling over the side. Marcus stood in front of the creature's chest, near the two upper arms that appeared almost comically small in proportion to the body of the mega-beast. He was drawn to this part of the body that was most heavily damaged. There were gouges, cuts, and bullet holes riddling the rest of its flesh, its sides and back, legs and torso, but this area… At first, he thought it might be from the drilling operation to exhume it, but then he doubted that notion. When he bent his knees so that he could peer up into the gaping wound, it was clear that, although it looked okay externally, the body wasn't whole. He stood up straight and addressed a worker standing next to him.
    “Did our crew do this?”
    The man shook his head emphatically. “No, sir, it was there already. We were as careful as a doctor pulling out a splinter with a pair of tweezers.”
    “Not our doctor, though,” another member of the crew joked.
    Someone cleared his throat. Xander came over, appearing as if he’d been lurking in the shadows, waiting. At first, Marcus was afraid he was going to ask him to leave in front of all these people, but instead he said, “I’ve been assured that this is the precise state in which the animal was brought up. Not too bad for fifty million years, right, boys?”
    A chorus of affirmations went up from the crew around them. When it died down, Marcus spoke.
    “Sixty-five,” Marcus corrected with some satisfaction, “and did you happen to notice the obvious?”
    “What’s that?”
    “It's missing the heart?” He bent down again to look back into the body. “And most of one of the lungs.”
    He stuck his head farther into the ragged cavity, wishing he had a flashlight. The smell inside was beyond awful but surprisingly, he recognized it while forcing himself not to retch. Xander would like that way too much. One time in a college chemistry lab, Marcus was looking for supplies and came across a bottle of a chemical called putrescence, and sniffed its contents out of curiosity. It was a lab-quality perfect distillation of the exact organic compound produced by decaying flesh. This was that smell, he was absolutely certain of