Well, this is it. One note: open up media player and listen to The Doors - The End while reading. :P

Epilogue: War Stories

It was a clear, cold morning. The storm had blown itself out and the sun had risen and now everything was calm.

I sat on the bow of the ship, dangling my wounded legs over the front. The sea was lazy, and rose and fell all round me without much effort. Straight ahead, the forbidding black cliffs of Isla Sorna thrust up from the ocean. Above it hung a monstrous cloud bank, black smoke from the fires that were still burning. It darkened the sky for miles around.

The boat was called the Sweet And Full Of Grace. Some sense of humour. It was a rusting old heap with white paint peeling from every surface. I remembered the boat from when we first came to the island, remembered sitting in the very place I was sitting now. It had been in perfect repair then, but months floating on the ocean had not been kind to it. It seemed like a life ago.

Somehow, last night, I had dragged myself through the heaving ocean to where our stolen boat was moored and hauled myself aboard. I had suffered no major wounds, nothing at least that couldn't be treated with the first aid kit that was stowed in the cabin.

I had stayed up all night, watching the island burn. Dearing's gunshots still echoed across the bay for hours, until they finally faded away into total silence.

For one entire day I seemed paralysed aboard that boat. What could I do now? Go back to the mainland? Normal life? Not after what I had been through on the island. Dearing's face and voice still haunted me – the old, the real Dearing, the Dearing long gone, the funny Dearing who made jokes and messed about.

Finally, as night fell on that day in the boat, the island still burning, I managed to get the old engine running and after a short while working out how to drive the thing, began to pilot the boat in a vaguely easterly direction. I figured if I kept going east, I would get to the mainland eventually.

It was an uneventful journey. The radio on the boat had long since broken, and I was alone, and retreated into my own private hell, my own private horrors, my own private war.

I hit land eventually. I sold the boat and with the money I was able to make a start on building a new life. For a while I couldn't take it, because everything I saw made me think of what had happened, everything I heard reminded me, and Dearing stared back at me from every face. I was sick with humanity and I was sick with myself. When I lay awake at night, the screams of those who died while I stood by and did nothing echoed in my ears and mixed with Dearing's litany.

Post-traumatic stress syndrom, the doctor said. You been in any wars, Long? He chuckled.

I felt like I could never go back.

But hey, life goes on. I still don't think I've ever fully come to terms. I still think about it sometimes, wonder whether I deserved to die on that island too. Perhaps I did. You can form your own opinion on that one.

So here I am. I live in isolation. I have a few close friends, and it's still pretty much life as normal. I still play videogames, and I still watch some films. I just can't watch Vietnam movies anymore. They bring up too many memories, too many ghosts. I can't forget, and I doubt I can ever really accept.

I hope that in writing this, I can somehow soothe my mind and maybe lay all those ghosts to rest. Judge me, if you want. But I've already judged myself.

How much of it really happened? How much was my imagination? How much wasn't real? Did Dearing go that insane or was it just me? Did Dearing ever really exist beyond that day when the raptors got him? Perhaps he died there at the researcher's camp. After all, there wasn't any difference between fantasy and reality after that. No difference at all.

I think Dearing got to Vietnam before I did. He was the first now, I see that. The first to realise what we were turning into. The first to realise what had to be done. I just followed in his footsteps. In his position, I think I would have done the same.

And Hannigan? I don't think he ever really had any idea what was going on. He had brought us out there to settle some ancient score or vanquish some mental demon. How old was he? Maybe fifty? Old enough, just about, to have been in 'nam thirty-odd years ago.

Corporate espionage? Embryos? I doubt it. For a time, Ingen had controlled nature, controlled everything - and just maybe he was trying to work out how they'd done it.

Dearing was right about one thing though. I did want it – all of it.

I picture him prowling those jungles still, slipping from shadow to shadow, one with the forest. I know it's ridiculous.

Still out there, Dearing?

I like to think so.