Bently McQuinn Saves Literature

Bently awoke the next morning to sunlight and odd noises. He saw Lucy giving him the "Be quiet!" hand signal, so he slowly sat up and turned around.

Coming towards them slowly was a pack of huge dinosaurs. Bently couldn't recognize them, but they looked like Brachiosaurus or something like that. He hoped they were plant-eaters, and that they weren't coming over to stomp on them.

Grant started climbing down the tree, and everyone else followed suit. The dinosaurs kept coming, and they kept climbing down. When they reached the bottom, the dinosaurs had reached them, and seemed to Bently to be looking for them.

"Brachiosaur," Grant whispered. "If we're quiet, we might get away unseen."

And so they began creeping away, one by one, following Grant. When he thought they were a good distance away, Bently checked over his shoulder. The Brachiosaur hadn't followed them.

They continued to move through the forest until around noon when they stopped to break. They hadn't seen any more dinosaurs today, and for that, Bently was thankful. He wrote in some food, and then he started to clean off Gryffindor's Sword. It was coated with dry, black, Velociraptor blood. He felt a bit ashamed that he hadn't done this sooner.

"So, how are we going to take out Carlisle?" Bently asked King, who had offered him a sandwich. Bently accepted it and started eating.

"I'm not quite sure," said King. "It depends on what the situation looks like when we find him. If there are a few dinosaurs around, and depending on which ones are there, we might be able to fight them and you could kill him with the sword. But if there are a lot, we'll have to resort to some sort of writing."

"How big of a writing project?" Bently asked.

"That'll be up to you. Although, since you learned from Lyra, you've gotten much better. I have confidence in you, and that's saying a lot," King added before getting back up. "Come on, time to move on."

"Dr. Grant, where do you think he is?" Meggie asked as they set off again.

"Well, it would make sense if he was near the center of the exhibit. It's far away from the roads, and there are less trees, so not only could he see people coming, but he could gather the most dinosaurs there."

"So that's where we're headed?"

"Yes."

-

They walked for the entire day. Bently was very sore afterwards, just about as sore as after his first day of riding while in Middle Earth. But they had finally found Carlisle.

They climbed another tree to sleep in and spy from while the last of the light faded. There were a lot of dinosaurs out there.

'I'm going to have to write something,' Bently thought as he gazed into the twilight (no pun intended). 'And whatever it is, it's going to have to be the best damn thing I've ever written.'

Bently wrote, and wrote, and wrote. He wrote until he couldn't see anymore, and then he was forced to try and sleep. But he couldn't. He had ideas running through his hand, and despite the darkness, he took note of them on another sheet of the notebook. They were running dangerously low on paper. 'We'll need to get more in whatever book we go to next,' he thought as he drifted off to sleep.

Bently awoke the next morning as the sun came up, nervous. He snatched up the notebook and began trying to decipher his notes from last night. They were nearly impossible to read, but he eventually began to work again on his piece that he hoped would kill Carlisle.

By the time everyone was up, Bently was almost finished. He just needed those last few sentences, and it would be perfect. He had read it over so many times he was confident now that when Meggie read it, everything would go back to normal and they could move on. But Grant had other plans.

"They've mostly cleared off," he said, pointing out across the plains. Indeed, there were far fewer dinosaurs, and they could see a person whom they assumed was Carlisle atop a large pile of logs, but it all made Bently very uncomfortable.

"What if it's a trap? What if he's found out we're here?"

"Well, there's no other way we're going to find out unless we check, is there?"

And before he could write a decent last few sentences, Bently was forced down the tree. He hung back behind everyone else as they carefully made their way to the edge of the forest to talk to Meggie.

"Look, I think this is a trap, and that it's going to go badly," he told her in a low voice as they reached the last few trees. "I'm not quite done with it, but these few paragraphs should end everything if I'm right." He showed her what he had been working on.

Meggie nodded slowly. "Alright, I'm sure I'd be able to read it."

"Great. Just thought I'd let you know."

They walked into the strong sunlight, and Bently immediately felt uneasy. He tucked away the notebook and set his hand on the hilt of Gryffindor's Sword. The rubies were cold under his sweaty hand.

"See? They've got—"

But a thunderous roar cut Grant off. Over the hill, they saw a huge dinosaur with very long teeth; Tyrannosaurus Rex. And running towards them was a pack of ten to fifteen Velociraptors.

"Shit," King swore, and they started running back towards the trees. Bently drew his sword, fully intending to fight, but when he saw that Carlisle was riding on top of the T-rex and that they were running after the raptors towards them, Bently ran too.

"Climb!" Grant yelled as he started scrambling up the nearest tree. Lucy joined him, and King and Meggie got into another one.

"Bently, hurry up!" Lucy screamed. "They're almost here!"

Bently shoved the sword back in its sheath and began climbing a tree just as the raptors reached the forest. They snapped at his heels as he climbed, jumping after him. He finally stopped on a branch well out of reach of the raptors. Panting, he drew out the notebook and pen, reading down the page and trying to clear his mind all at once.

"This is the end for you, Bently McQuinn!"

Carlisle's voice rang above the dinosaur sounds as Bently found those last sentences and penned them as fast as he could. Looking up, he saw the T-rex and vampire weren't all that far away.

"Meggie, it's finished!" Bently called out, looking around for her. She was in the tree next to his, but it was a long jump between the trees.

"Give it to me!" she cried out, trying to get as close to Bently's tree as she could without falling herself.

"I can't jump that far!" Bently yelled back, also shifting closer towards Meggie.

"Then throw it!"

Bently considered this, and decided it was indeed the only way. "Alright, here it comes!" he yelled as the enemy closed in. With all his strength, Bently flung the closed notebook like a Frisbee towards Meggie.

At first, it looked like she was going to catch it. Her arms were outstretched, and the notebook was almost in her fingertips, but then she fumbled and the notebook bounced off her hands and fell to the raptors bellow. Bently's heart dropped as a raptor jumped up from bellow and caught the notebook in its mouth, shredding it instantly.

"NO!" Bently yelled, furious with anything and everything.

"Bently, I'm sorry!" Meggie wailed, and he could see tears sliding down her face.

"Dammit Meggie, can't you catch a freaking—"

"Look out!" King yelled. Meggie jumped back just in time as the T-rex's mouth went for the branch Meggie had been standing on moments ago. As the T-rex bit down with a crunching noise and Meggie started screaming, Bently drew out the sword once more. This was their last hope, and Carlisle was in his direct line of fire.

"AHH!" Bently yelled as he held the sword over his head and took a running leap from the branch to the T-rex's head where Carlisle was standing. For a moment, Carlisle was looking pleased, but when he saw Bently flying through the air at him, his face fell. Bently brought the sword down on the top of the vampire's head with all his might, and Carlisle exploded into a shower of blue sparks.

Bently was about to whoop in joy when the T-rex abruptly stood up, free of Carlisle's power. Bently lost all his balance and fell, sliding down most of the dinosaur's back before falling off at about its back leg. He his the ground hard, and there was a sick cracking noise. He had defiantly broken something.

The T-rex lumbered off, luckily not stepping on Bently, and he heard whisking sounds as the raptors left too. But when he tried to stand, pain shot all up his back, and he couldn't feel his legs. He was paralyzed.

Panicked, Bently didn't know what to do. The first thing he thought of was the stones they had used in Dark Materials to signal each other, but when he went to pat down his pockets, not only was it extremely painful to the point he almost cried, but there wasn't anything in them.

"Help!" he started shouting, and he heard rustling sounds and voices as everyone approached him.

"Bently, get up!" said King, and he was the first one Bently could see.

"I can't! I can't feel my legs!" Bently cried.

"Oh my goodness," he heard Meggie sob, and then Lucy was bending over him, opening up her little bottle of magic potion.

"Open up, Bently," she said, and he did so. She let one drop of the red potion fall into his mouth, and Bently felt a warm sensation spread rapidly through his body, focusing on the place where his back was broken. Presently, the pain started to ebb away, and he could move his legs again. He finally sat up, to his and everyone else's relief.

"I'm so, so sorry Bently," apologized Meggie, tears still in her eyes. "I thought I was going to catch it, but then I lost balance, and…"

Bently sighed heavily. He was mad, but there wasn't any point in it. "It's alright Meggie, we got the job done anyways. We'll just have to find a new one in whatever book we're going to next. Where are we going next, anyways? Hopefully no where with too much adventure, I'm done with that crap."

"Phantom of the Opera," Meggie replied, wiping her cheeks and pulling the book out shakily. "But I'm not sure if we'll be able to get in, the text has changed."

King frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Well," Meggie said, opening the book, "I'm pretty sure you all know the main character's name is Christine, right?"

"Right," said King. He looked like he didn't like where this might be going any more than Bently did.

"Well, everywhere where Christine's name should be, it says Bella."

"Great," Bently groaned sarcastically. "We get to deal with the real whack-job next."

"This is really serious, Bently," Meggie pleaded. "If they're getting powerful enough to change the actual words, then it's only a matter of time before the entire book is messed up and people stop reading it."

"Then let's go," he said, standing shakily with a little help from Lucy. He felt like someone had put the Jelly Legs Jinx on him.

"Alright, but I'm not sure this will work…" Meggie said before clearing her throat and reading.

"You'd better go, Dr. Grant, unless you want to come with us," Lucy informed him. Grant tipped his hat to them and walked away.

"He stood for ten minutes listening to the gas flaring in the silence of the empty room; lover though he was, he did not even think of stealing a ribbon that would have given him the perfume of the woman he loved. He went out, not knowing what he was doing nor where he was going. At a given moment in his wayward progress, an icy draft struck him in the face. He found himself at the bottom of a staircase, down which, behind him, a procession of workmen were carrying a sort of stretcher, covered with a white sheet."

And once again, the forest and plain of Jurassic Park faded away, and they were falling through darkness and into The Phantom of the Opera.