It’s a curious fact that some places on the map don’t exist. Especially islands. Perhaps the most famous one of all is Atlantis. But instances existed until the 20th century, ready made for movie plots.
The movie begins with the finding of an after action report dated late 1944. The surviving page from the archives read:
The Higgins boat ground onto the vegetation at first light. Sergeant Cole waved his twelve Marines into the surf. Mission: to recover the Canadian bush pilot who had vanished two days earlier over an island that should’t be there. A request was made to Roosevelt because the Marines could get there first.
The island was wrong. The vegetation was from the wrong latitude. No birds. No insects. Only heat and the smell of something ancient. It gave him the creeps.
They found the wreck first—twisted aluminum but no body from which bootprints ran. The bush pilot had got away. The squad had not gone far when they found him. Pierre was alive, pressed into the cleft of giant tree, uninjured but eyes were wide with alarm. “Run,” he shouted, “run!”
Cole was about to ask why when a roar came from the ridge. A tyrannosaur crashed through the trees, hide like cracked leather, teeth the length of bayonets. The BAR opened up in slow fire but the ball ammo vanished into the nightmare, absorbed by the giant bulk. Private Ruiz put another clip into the BAR but fell back toward the beach.
As they retreated they could hear other saurians flanking through the undergrowth. Pierre ran as though a man possessed. “They’re going to cut us off!”
But by some instinct the sailors had unloaded cargo: an M45 Quadmount, four .50-caliber Brownings already charged. The gunner swung the mount as the dinosaurs broke cover. The four barrels fired as one.
Cole had never seen it in action. It sounded like an infernal machine, not a mere gun. Fifty-caliber slugs walked up the dinosaur’s chest and into its skull. Hide, muscle, and bone came apart in a red mist. The tyrannosaur took two more steps, then dropped twenty yards from the waterline and did not get up. The other saurians ran.
Hayes stared at the carnage as the boats made ready to cast off. Cole lit a cigarette with shaking hands. “Load the Quad. We’re leaving.” The flat bottomed boat pulled away. Inland, something else screamed. No one looked back.
“Tell the general this island must never be marked on a map.”