Chapter 9
“We’ve had reporters from as far away as St. Louis nosing around the paper, pressing to get the real story of why the park’s been closed down and locked up tight in the middle of tourist season. Seems some of them don’t buy that prediction of a major earthquake excuse you’re giving out, not with all the other juicier rumors flying around,” Ann told Henry days later as they sat on the porch swing.
He’d been off duty less than an hour and was still in uniform. Supper was simmering in the kitchen and bread baked in the oven. Ann had come home early from work with the urge to bake, which she often did when she was worried about something.
She’d stayed away from the park and their home for three days at his insistence, but as the days had gone by and the lake creature hadn’t made any more appearances, she’d slowly begun sneaking back in to pick up more clothes, clean the house, or to make supper for him. The next thing Henry knew she was spending the night. She’d glacially informed him that morning she wasn’t going back to Zeke’s anymore. This was her home and this was where she planned to stay. Said she didn’t believe the creature was a threat to them this far away from the lake. And she wanted to follow the story of the century up close because she suspected, sooner or later, the lake creature would be sighted again somewhere.
Henry, missing her, unsure she wasn’t right about the distance being a deterrent, and lulled into a false sense of security because the creature hadn’t been seen since the park had been emptied, was perhaps too easily persuaded. It was hard to believe in monsters when the normalcy of daily life intruded.
“Rumors have gotten that far, huh?” Henry shifted on the swing. Disquieted and restless all day, his sixth sense for trouble was simmering beneath his calm. Things were way too quiet.
Under the circumstances his apprehension wasn’t a surprise. Dr. Harris, the head paleontologist in residence at the paleontological dig, had been dynamiting the underside of the rim. Henry could hear the ruckus even down here. It made him nervous. Shaking the hell out of the area surrounding the caldera, he was afraid it’d lure the creature from its watery lair.
He was shocked when he first learned Harris was using dynamite to dislodge the under layer of earth beneath the fossils. Justin had explained it was done all the time. Experts laid the explosives in selected places so the bones wouldn’t be damaged. Paleontologists sometimes had to remove excess rock, or overburden, as it was called, from around the buried fossils and there was enough overburden in this case to warrant blasting. The scientists were anxious to get to the concentrated fossils. It still made too much noise.
“I think James Bradley is the one leaking information,” Ann told him. “He’s the brother of that woman who vanished with her family last week somewhere around the lake. He’s been asking questions everywhere. Making trouble. He was on vacation with them, but was sightseeing elsewhere the day they all vanished. They were supposed to meet him for supper that last night at the lodge, but they never showed. He’s been looking for them ever since.”
“George brought me up to speed on that situation. Bradley was in to see him, too, when he filed the missing persons’ report. Asked about these monster stories going around in the park. He swore he’d blow the whistle. Go on television, go to all the big newspapers if he had to. He’s staying in Klamath Falls, won’t go home, he swears, until he’s found his sister and her family. Just what we need. It’s been hard enough evacuating the park and keeping the curious out, especially since those scientists swarmed in and started their excavating and blabbing.”
Ann was looking at him. “They come into town all the time to eat at the restaurants and buy supplies. And the word is spreading like wildfire they’re probably unearthing the most significant dinosaur fossil bed ever found and what they’re going to exhume will rock the world. Everyone in town is talking about it. Justin mentioned they’re considering a press conference to let the world know of the find–in town, of course, because you won’t let the press into the park.”
Henry almost made another comment about that’s where she should be–in town–but they’d been arguing about it for days and she’d worn him out on the subject. She reminded him every time she was a reporter and there was no way she was running out on the greatest story ever to hit Klamath Falls. Heaven help me, Henry thought, gazing at her, she wants to see the monster. She wants to take pictures of the damn thing.
She was like a child looking for buried treasure and she wasn’t about to give up her dream of being a famous reporter, either.
Excluding the missing vacationers (and there was no proof they’d actually disappeared in the park…maybe they’d gone into town and something had happened there), there’d been no further trouble since they’d moved the homeless camp. No attacks. No sightings. Henry would have preferred to get everyone out of the park, no exceptions, but the homeless had nowhere to go. The investigation into the missing camp men hadn’t uncovered anything new, except the mauled torso had been Morrison’s and the leg, Black’s. Jane Morrison identified both the shirt and the trouser material as having belonged to the missing men.
The coroner had reported an unknown large animal, a mountain lion or a bear, had killed and partially eaten the men. The pathologists were still debating that one. They were not going to admit that the teeth and claw marks had been made by something they’d never seen before. Medical men didn’t acknowledge the unexplained, particularly if it would scare the locals.
And the dig scientists hadn’t heard or seen anything out of the ordinary since their arrival, or so they’d assured Henry. When he’d gone out there that first day to warn them they could be in jeopardy and might consider, for safety purposes, to vacate the area for a while, they’d hid their skeptical smiles behind excitement over what they’d already exposed: bones never before seen by any scientist and certainly of an unknown hybrid species of Plesiosaur or mutant Kronosaurus…or even a totally new breed of dinosaur never heard of. They’d raved on and on about what it could be.
Justin had pegged Harris right. He was a fanatic. He lived and breathed dinosaur, wallowed in the prehistoric past like a pig in warm mud. He and the others with him had no interest or time for fanciful stories about skulking, live prehistoric predators that only a child would believe in. They were men of science. Dried prehistoric bones were all they knew.
In the beginning Henry tried to force them from the area, but Harris made a few phone calls and somehow got permission to stay. Henry hated it when his decisions were superseded, but didn’t have the power to kick them out. Sorrelson had been upset enough over having to close the park; he’d ranted and raged and even now was working behind Henry’s back to get it reopened. No one believed in the existence of the monster.
Only he and Justin had seen the creature that night, and lived, anyway. Only they knew it was dangerous. Even Ann wasn’t taking the monster seriously, or she’d be hiding in Zeke’s house in town, as far away from the lake as she could get.
There were also times when Henry questioned his own sanity for remaining in the park, except staying was his job. He could have asked for a transfer, but he loved Crater Lake. It was his home. And he’d never walked away from his duty before and wasn’t about to now.
Yet it was more than duty that kept him there. The creature was a killer, and he had to protect the people left in the park. But along with Justin, he feared sooner or later, if the creature wanted food badly enough, it would again leave the water.
It was enough the park and the concessions and campgrounds within were closed; the tours canceled. The boats were tied up at the dock. This didn’t make the people who worked and lived in the park happy. Most of them had moved into town. Henry hadn’t the final authority to force everyone to leave, and some, in the dorms and the houses, hadn’t, but he’d warned those who’d stayed behind that something was prowling the area and killing people. As if they’d listen.
The lake itself was different. Henry allowed no one around the water or to be on th
eir boats at night at the dock…might as well ring the dinner bell for the beast. Of course, there were those hard-headed types who disobeyed that order, as well, for one reason or another. So he made his rangers check the boats each evening and chase off anyone they found.
The park was emptier than Henry had ever seen it. No visitors, no campers besides the homeless, which he was thinking of moving out of the park soon as it could be arranged; no giggling hikers or bird watchers. The souvenir shops and restaurants, except for one in the lodge, were closed down. It was depressing.
At first Laura had taken the baby and moved into Zeke’s place. Henry had told her the truth about the predator in the lake. He wasn’t sure she believed him.
Henry suspected Laura hadn’t gone to Zeke’s the night before, either. It was hard for her to drive back and forth every day to see Justin. The two had to be together. Love. Any other time, he’d have been overjoyed she’d found someone as decent as Justin, but it made him nervous to have her and his granddaughter in the park. Just more for him to worry about, that’s all. But his daughter, as his wife, was a headstrong woman and did what she wanted. She kept sneaking back in and he couldn’t babysit her and Ann every moment of the day.
Four days now and not a glimpse of the monster. Where the hell was it hiding? What was it eating? Henry worried about the answers as he sat on the porch with his wife and watched the sun go down.
“I’ve scheduled another meeting tomorrow morning at headquarters,” he said. “So we can plan what to do next.” Rangers had been scouring the area around the lake for days searching for signs of the renegade carnivore. So far nothing.
“Sorrelson, still off playing golf, called me today. He’s furious I closed the park, but, so far away, he can’t do much about it. Yet, anyway.”
“You’ll be in deep water when he gets back,” Ann quipped.
“I know. But I’ll face that problem when it comes. I’m responsible for people’s lives and I’ll fight him on reopening it, if he forces my hand. I’ll threaten to go to the press. That’ll shut him up quick enough.”
“It probably would. Even if you wouldn’t do it.”
“I might. If I have to. Meanwhile Justin’s been studying up on different dinosaur species’ known habits. The information is pretty sketchy though. We don’t know if this thing is related to a known species of any kind or a completely new one. No one’s really seen the creature up close and survived to give us a detailed description and it was too dark to see much when Justin and I ran into it. Right now, we’ll only guessing what it might be. Besides, known or unknown genus, not much is known about how a live dinosaur behaves. Only theories.”
“Can I be at the meeting?”
“Can I keep you away?”
“No.”
“Then you can be there,” he replied begrudgingly. “Just keep a low profile.”
“You mean lurk in the rear of the room and pretend I stumbled in by accident?”
“Very funny.”
Henry heard a car and glanced up. Justin, Laura and Phoebe had pulled into the driveway.
“Company,” Henry announced, forgetting about their difficulties. He could only be scared so many hours a day and at that moment he was tired of it.
“Ann, we have to convince Laura and the baby to go back to Zeke’s. She shouldn’t be staying here so much. I’m not sure it’s safe. We need to talk to her again.” The car door slammed and the three walked up.
“After supper, honey. I’ve missed them. The lake is so far away and no one’s seen hide or hair of the dragon in a long time. It can’t hurt to let the kids visit for a bit, can it?” she pleaded.
She’d begun calling the creature a dragon. Henry wasn’t amused. Beneath it all, no matter what he’d said, she still didn’t believe it existed. Like a lot of people.
Seeing the baby’s smiling face, he surrendered. Ann was right, it couldn’t hurt to let them stay for supper. They were a long ways from the lake.
They greeted their guests with plastered smiles on their faces.
“Hello, you three. Just in time for stew. There’s plenty. Can I talk you into staying?” Ann opened her arms to a giggling Phoebe and the child climbed into them.
“Mom, you know I love your stew.” Laura stole a glance at him, knowing how he felt about her being in the park. When he nodded in resignation, she accepted, “Sure, we’ll stay for supper. You got homemade bread to go with it, too?”
“What do you think?” Ann hugged Phoebe tightly.
Phoebe held her arms out to him as he sat on the porch swing. He took the child and cuddled her as the swing gently swayed back and forth. Phoebe loved the swing.
The women went into the house to dish out supper and Justin plopped down on the top step of the porch below Henry and Phoebe.
“Justin, I thought you were going to talk to Laura about her staying at Zeke’s? She and the baby are in danger here, you know that.”
“I tried. Honestly.” Justin silently crossed his heart. “No go. I keep sending her back to town but she keeps coming back. You’re right; she is one mule-headed woman.”
“You don’t have to tell me about these Shore women,” Henry groused, resting his chin on top of his granddaughter’s silky head. Phoebe was already asleep in his lap.
“But I’ll keep trying to get her back to Zeke’s, Henry, I promise, after supper.”
“Thanks.”
“I was down by the lake today getting readings,” the young man said quietly so he wouldn’t wake Phoebe. “It seems as if your public excuse for closing down the park might turn out to be prophetic. My readings jive with what I’ve been told by John Day’s. There is another earthquake coming. A big one, I’m afraid.”
Henry contemplated the growing twilight around his home. He didn’t have to respond to Justin’s announcement. Both men knew it complicated things immensely.
“And,” Justin tacked on, “I thought you’d like to know there’re a couple of reporters camping on the west side of the lake. Hiding out. Waiting to get a look at our monster, I imagine. Get photos.”
Henry ceased swinging. “Reporters?”
“Yep.” Justin tilted his head to avoid the glare of the fading sun. “I’d bet ten bucks they are. They were taking videos of the lake and the surrounding area, jotting down notes, acting goofy. All the signs. They’re reporters.”
“How many were there?”
“Three. Could be more, but three were all I saw.”
“Trouble.” Henry released a deep breath. “Now it starts. I wonder how many more reporters and monster hunters will be slipping in if these get away with it? Waiting for the creature to show itself and if they’re real lucky getting photographs of the thing gobbling down a person or two.”
“Yeah, if they’re not careful, it could be them. How did they find out?”
“Well, first there was Ann’s newspaper story. Then I reckon they talked to the brother of that woman and her family who went missing around the lake or maybe to someone in the homeless camp. The scientists at the dig go into town all the time, too. And they talk. Rumors of the creature in the lake are everywhere, Ann says. Someone must have listened.”
“Don’t they realize, under the circumstances,” Justin said, “they’re at risk? Camping so close to the water. What happens if–”
“If it craves a midnight nibble and comes ashore?” Henry shook his head. They both knew what would happen. The sun was descending and night was coming. “I’d better take a hike down there right now before it gets dark, supper can wait, and escort them out of the park.” Henry stood up with Phoebe sleeping in his arms. He carried her inside, and headed for his jeep.
Justin fell in behind. “I’m coming, too.”
Henry shrugged. “Sure, I could use the back-up. Come on.”
“I need to let Laura know I’m going.”
“I already did,” Henry explained as they got in his jeep. “Ann promised they’d save us stew. We shouldn’t be gone long. I don’t want to be
anywhere near that lake after it gets dark.”
He peered at the sky. “Two hours, possibly three before total nightfall.” More than enough time to locate the trespassers and kick their butts out of the park.
Justin described where he’d seen the campers.
“I know the place,” Henry admitted.
They drove back roads down to Cleetwood Cove, parked the jeep, and hiked the rest of the way. They heard the journalists long before they spied their camouflaged tents, tucked away behind some rocks, which blended in so well with the surroundings they couldn’t easily be seen from the rim of the caldera.
Two men and a woman were sitting and chatting before a campfire, eating supper from tin cans.
They looked up as Henry and Justin approached.
“Oh, oh,” the woman said, wiping her hands on her blue jeans. “The law’s found us.”
She was tall with sharp features, questioning eyes and a tough expression. Her dark hair was tied back in a ponytail. To Henry, she looked like a big city reporter. She didn’t seem upset over their arrival. Smiling at them, and afterwards, reading their intent, her face went sullen and determined.
One of the men looked to be in his mid-thirties with curly hair and a broad face. He wore dress slacks and tucked-in white shirt. An expensive state-of-the-art Minolta camera with a zoom lens hung around his neck. They’d certainly come prepared, Henry thought.
The other man was young, had long hair, a bandana rakishly tied around his head, and a gold loop earring. Dressed in black, he was a modern day pirate. Probably a cub reporter, or a photographer, learning from the pros how to sneak in where they weren’t supposed to be, break the law, get the story, win the prize.
Be something’s supper.
“You folks aren’t supposed to be here,” Henry led off. “The park’s officially closed.” He stood there watching the three come to their feet, guilty looks spreading over their faces. The game was up. They’d been caught.
“Because of the coming earthquake, huh? Really worried about it, aren’t you?” The woman’s tone was sarcastic. “We heard it was something else entirely you’re worried about.”
Henry didn’t rise to the bait. “What are you three doing out here?”
“We’re reporters. I’m Selby Merriweather. This is David Gates and Earl Laurence.” She put out a hand for Henry to shake.
He shook their hands one at a time. He couldn’t treat them as criminals. They were doing their jobs, as he was. Being married to a newspaper woman had taught him that much. “What newspaper you with?”
The younger man replied, “The National Inquirer.”
Henry couldn’t help himself from laughing. Ann was forever making jokes about the Inquirer. She and Zeke called it the biggest trash rag in the country, although both would have killed for a fraction of its circulation.
That laugh broke the ice. The three reporters invited Henry and Justin to have a cup of coffee. Discuss their unwanted eviction. See if they could talk him out of it.
Henry’s eyes scanned the lake in the late afternoon light. It seemed strange not to see a boat on it; to see them, empty, moored silently at the dock in a line. To hear no human voices or laughter echoing along the caldera. The night mist was drifting in and settling across the water, the land and the trees.
He shivered. The lake was noiseless and serene at the moment; no sign of any dragons anywhere. There was time. The sun was bright yet in the skies, illuminating everything. The birds were singing and the breezes were cooling.
“Sure, we’ll have a cup of coffee, and then you three will have to pack up and move on out of here. Before dark.” Half the reason he accepted their offer was out of curiosity, half for his wife. Ann would be interested to know what they were up to…what they’d learned. What kind of a husband would he be if he didn’t help Ann protect her biggest story ever?
“You know why we’re here, don’t you?” the woman asked once Henry and Justin had settled down cross-legged on the ground across from them. They were handed cups of steaming liquid. Some of that fancy expensive coffee Ann liked so much.
“The fossils up on the rim, I’d guess.” Henry smiled broadly, playing their game.
“No.” The woman shook her head. “Oh, that’s a good story, too. We’ve already sent it in to our editor. Headline’s gonna run something like: NEW DEADLY SPECIES OF DINOSAURS FOUND BURIED ALIVE. No, it’s the other story here that we’re digging for.” She grinned, the coffee cup poised in her hands as her arresting blue-colored eyes met Justin’s. They glowed with an inner light. With flashy crimson nail polish on lily white hands, the woman made sure Justin saw there was no ring. She was flirting with the paleontologist.
“What other story?” Justin pretended not to notice and Henry was relieved to see he wasn’t returning the young woman’s attentions.
“Oh, you know…the monster in your lake here.”
Henry could have lied, but couldn’t bring himself to do that anymore, especially under the circumstances. This woman sensed, knew, something was in the lake, but they needed to understand how perilous the situation was. Sooner or later the creature would emerge and strike again. Only a matter of time.
Could be the truth would scare them off, save their lives, which was more important than keeping the lie alive. “It’s true, everything you’ve heard,” Henry confessed. “There is some sort of unidentified creature in the lake here.” But he didn’t say anything more. His loyalty to Ann and all. “That’s why you’re in danger. It’s aggressive.”
“I told you it wasn’t the earthquake,” the girl exclaimed to the older man. Her eyes lit up, and she moved closer to Henry. “Is it a dinosaur-like creature similar to the one in Loch Ness? A real monster?”
“We’re not sure what it is. It’s a wild marine animal, that’s all, trying to survive.” Just a half lie.
“The rumors are it’s predatory and very large. That true, ranger?” the younger man questioned, standing up.
“Yes to both.”
“Anyone seen it?”
Henry cocked his head at Justin who was staring at the placid lake with uneasy eyes. “We’ve seen it.”
The girl whipped out a notebook and a pen. “Where? When? Can you describe it? When would be the best time for us to catch a glimpse of it?”
Henry shrugged eloquently, remembering his promise to Ann. “I’m not at liberty to go into that. And you three aren’t sticking around to get a look at it. The evacuation is to protect people. You have to go. Now. As I said…you’re in extreme danger.”
The girl frowned, but her excitement didn’t abate. She was going to be a hard sell.
“The park, especially the lake area, is closed to visitors. By being here you’re breaking the law. I could fine you, and the fines can be stiff.” Henry paused to stress what he was going to say next, aware that, finally, he’d seen doubt in their eyes. “And I’m going to ask you not to release the story yet. Or, at least, don’t pinpoint which lake the creature is in. I can’t make you, but I’m asking you. For the safety of all the curious who’ll come looking for it if you do. They’ll sneak into the park just as you’ve done trying to see it, and maybe end up missing or hurt for their trouble. No matter what you think, it’s not like Nessie. It’s nothing to mess with. So take my advice and clear out. While you still have the chance. It likes the night, but it’s been known to show itself in the late daylight hours.” He wanted to add so badly, And it’s big, has lots of sharp teeth, is quick as the devil, and it’s already killed many times. You won’t know it’s coming until it’s got you. Most frightening, it seems to be highly intelligent. But knew if he did they’d never leave. He’d recognized that obsessive gleam in the woman’s eyes.
Her face a shade whiter, she started to say something, but stopped.
“So you see, it’d be foolishness to stay out here tonight. Making yourself a target.” Henry finished his coffee and rose to his feet as the three reporters stared at him. Justin stood up beside him.
> He’d shook them up. He could tell. Good. Maybe they’d go and stay gone.
“If this creature’s so menacing, what is the Park Service doing about it?” The woman was on her feet, too.
The crickets and frogs were singing, accompanying the coming night. The sunlight appeared dustier, the mist heavier; its tendrils creeping around the humans’ shoes like cats slinking along the ground. The sound of the water lapping at the rocks lulled.
“We’re working on it. That’s why we emptied the park. We haven’t exactly decided how to handle the situation. Yet. But we will. We know what we’re doing,” Henry said, though he wasn’t sure of that at all. He’d been fretting over what should be done with their unwanted leviathan since the deaths at the homeless camp. In the end, though, he feared it would be out of his hands. There were a lot of other people involved now.
“So we see,” the older man articulated with a touch of irony. Henry couldn’t tell if he’d convinced him they were in jeopardy if they remained, but the man jumped at every noise.
“It’s been nice meeting you.” Henry flashed him his sternest official look. “But I’m insisting you pack up and leave the park before it gets dark.”
“Okay, Chief Ranger, we’re going. For now we got what we needed here.” The man, who acted as if he were in charge, raised an eyebrow at his silent comrades. His shoulders had fallen in stoic acceptance. He turned to his companions, “We’ll regroup someplace safer, in town, at that Cafe we ate at last night? Rethink this assignment. I’ll call Hodge. We’ll interview some of the people who’ve left the park to flesh out the story. There’s no guarantee, even if we camp out here for weeks that we’d see the creature anyway. Might as well leave.”
He directed his next comment to Henry. “Thank you for coming all the way down here to warn us. I appreciate it. We’ll pack up now and go. Won’t take long.”
“By nightfall,” Henry repeated one last time. “Don’t make me come back here again. I’ll have to cite you for sure.”
Henry and Justin walked away. Henry could hear the three arguing behind him. They’d better come to an agreement quickly and get packing. Another hour and night would fall.
“You think they’ll really leave?” Justin asked from behind as they hiked up the trail towards the jeep.
“They’d better. I shook them up a little. Did you see the look on that young guy’s face? He was scared, all right.” Henry snickered. “We could have waited and escorted them to the gate, but I’m treating them like adults and trusting them. Now I hope to god they behave like adults and leave. Mistrustful as most reporters are, they probably think we’ll be hiding in the bushes watching them until they do depart.”
Justin’s eyes flicked behind him at the three reporters, the woman smiled and waved, and then he hurried to catch up with Henry.
“I hope you’re right about that and they don’t slink back in somewhere else along the lake as soon as they think it’s safe.”
“Naw, I don’t think they will. Not tonight, anyway. If they’re smart, they’ll want to discuss the situation before they do anything rash. They must realize there’s a good reason we came all the way out here to chase them off. Or, at least, that’s what I’m counting on.
“Now what they do tomorrow,” Henry grinned, “that’s another matter.”
“You know, there’s going to be more like them,” Justin told him as they got into the jeep. “You can’t stop the flood of publicity seekers with only a handful of rangers. The town’s seething with gossip about the thing in the lake and the wall of bones. People can’t resist paranormal mysteries and there’s good money in lake monsters. They’ll all be trying to get pictures of the American Loch Ness Monster.”
“Appropriate name for it, I guess. But Nessie hasn’t killed anyone, that’s ever been reported anyway. Not like this creature. And I know there’ll be more gawkers. I’ll handle them as they come.” He started the vehicle, but instead of going home, he maneuvered it along the narrow drive that wound its way along the top of the rim, and parked.
“I have to make another stop,” he disclosed, getting out of the jeep.
“The dig, right?”
“You got it.” He knew Justin had been there every day unearthing, packaging and tagging the fossil imprints for transport, but that the young man hadn’t tempted fate by staying past dusk. He’d been there so much, and with Laura in the evenings, Henry had hardly seen him since their breakfast four days earlier, though, they’d talked by phone several times. “I have some bones to pick with Harris.”
Justin’s lips curved up a moment at Henry’s pun.
“And, you want to warn them one more time about taking precautions, even if they don’t believe in the lake creature?”
“Yeah, but fat good it’ll do. As you pointed out, Justin, there’s money in them bones. But they’ve been dynamiting too much. Dr. Harris promised it’d only last a day or two. Well, it’s been three.”
“Harris won’t listen. He’s dynamiting because he needs to, so he can uncover more fossils, quicker. He doesn’t believe in our monster. He thinks we invented it to scare them away and keep this paleontological discovery to ourselves.”
“What an idiot,” growled Henry.
“Yes, but a brilliant, well-connected idiot.”
They hiked down the rim’s trail and entered a village of tents and RVs. Some of the scientists and their assistants were staying below at the lodge, but about a third were camping out around the excavation site so they could be close to and protect the place.
Henry spotted Dr. Harris. He was relaxing in a lawn chair in front of his RV, chatting with a couple of colleagues. A bottle of root beer balanced in one hand, a dog-eared notebook in the other. The man looked perplexed. His face was sunburned around his beard, across his high forehead and the bald spot on top of his head.
Henry also recognized Dr. Daniel Alonso, and Tony Bracco, Dr. Harris’s assistants, from an earlier visit, but had no idea who the older gray-haired woman in the khaki top, shorts and wide-brimmed straw hat was. The woman stalked off as Henry and Justin arrived.
Dr. Harris shaded his eyes with a hand, smiling as they stood above him. He remembered him from his previous visits.
Working the dig together Justin had become friendly with Harris. After all, they were both respected paleontologists. There were only forty or so of them in the world in Justin and Harris’s league, and most of them knew each other. Just like Justin, Dr. Harris had been all over the planet. China, Canada, England. Wherever they uncovered buried dinosaur fossils. But unlike Justin, who was amiably humble, Henry had found Harris to be an arrogant stuffed peacock.
“What’s she mad about?” Henry inquired, indicating the retreating woman with a jab of his thumb.
“The new procedures.” Dr. Harris closed the notebook in his lap. “The guards I’ve posted since your last visit and other safety precautions. She doesn’t feel they’re necessary and resents the intrusion into her privacy.”
Dr. Harris’ colleagues stood up after acknowledging their arrival and wandered away.
Dr. Harris motioned for him and Justin to have a seat beside him. They did.
“Better safe than dead, I always say.” Henry stretched out his legs and took note of how low the sun was getting. He removed his hat and placed it in his lap.
“Well, in part I agree with you, and in respect for your concern, and for the well-being of my associates here, I’m insisting all but a few–to guard the dig, you understand–spend the nights at the lodge below, to be safe. They can work the dig during the day, but at twilight, I want them to leave. I was just getting ready to scoot them all out of here for the night.”
The lodge wasn’t much safer than the rim, but Henry let that slide. Surprised at the change of strategy, he inquired, “Has something happened?”
Justin listened, his expression troubled.
“Well, not exactly.” Harris reneged on his denial when his eyes locked with the ranger’s. “All right. Ye
s, something has. Nothing truly horrific, though. We’ve been hearing some mighty peculiar noises coming in off the lake at night. That’s all. As you said, better safe than sorry.”
“Noises, huh? Care to elaborate?”
“Oh, you’re probably thinking it’s that mysterious monster of yours,” Dr. Harris’ tone was somehow unsure, and without half the sarcasm that had been there days before. He made a reticent gesture with the hand holding the root beer.
“I’m sure it was just some normal park critter. Unhappy, perhaps, or in pain. But it’s spooked some of my people, so I’m being cautious. A rabid bear or a rogue cougar could wreak untold damage on our expedition here.”
Henry glowered at the man. He still believed he and Justin had invented (for whatever reason) the lake creature. “You could stop dynamiting.” Henry snorted. “Maybe that’d shut up the lake creature. Could be it doesn’t like that noise.”
Justin hid his grin behind a hand.
“We have to break up the rock. It’s the only way to get the fossils out.” Dr. Harris raised his other hand, palm towards Henry. “But after tomorrow, no more dynamiting. We’ll be finished for a while.”
“Good,” Henry said. Tomorrow was better than next week, and not worth pulling rank over, but was it soon enough? He almost said something else to Harris, then thought better of it. The man was insufferable. He’d do what he wanted anyway. By the time Henry had permission to shut the dynamiting down it’d be tomorrow.
“What about the strange animal noises? Can you tell me anything more about them?”
Harris complied. “They began last night and continued on and off until early this morning. The best way I can describe them, they were a sort of a roaring sound. Maddeningly persistent and exceptionally loud. Amplified, no doubt, by the caldera’s echoes. They were unusually unnatural sounds altogether. Quite extraordinary, in fact. I’ve never heard anything like them.” His voice lowered, “It almost makes me believe in that lake monster of yours.” He laughed.
Henry and Justin didn’t.
“Of course, no offense to what you and Maltin here thought you saw in the lake last week. I’m not saying you’re lying, Ranger Shore. I respect you and my fellow paleontologist. I’m merely saying that you couldn’t have seen what you claim to have seen. It was the night and the fog inciting your imaginations. Who can hold credence that there’s a live prehistoric creature paddling around in the water below us? Preposterous. Not that I’m saying I wouldn’t love to see a real dinosaur myself. Don’t get me wrong. What an astounding opportunity it would be. What a treasure. A live, breathing dinosaur!” Harris’s eyes shone like any zealot’s and gave Henry a dark glimpse into the man’s mind.
At that moment he had a sinking feeling.
Harris was the type who’d want to capture the damn thing, cage it, probe and prod it. Run tests and try to clone it. Exactly what Henry would have wanted to do before he’d had the run in with it, and had seen those men’s bloody body parts in the woods. Now Henry was sure such an anachronistic bloodthirsty creature couldn’t coexist with them in their world. It’d be like trapping a malignant virus in a test tube and putting it on display, one if ever released could kill countless people. The risk wasn’t worth it.
“Yeah, and wouldn’t it be an astounding opportunity if the creature turned out to be a deadly predator dinosaur with uncanny intelligence that loved to hunt, kill and gobble up human beings and was extremely good at it? How would you fight such a creature?” Henry couldn’t help but pose the scenario, to see how Harris would respond.
“Fight it?” Dr. Harris’s voice shook. “If there truly was a live dinosaur in the lake, Ranger Shore, we couldn’t hurt it. We’d have to capture it. Study it. It would be incredible to have a breathing one in captivity! Think of all the things we could learn.”
Henry turned his head, rolling his eyes at the heavens. That’d be all they’d need, someone with political pull wanting to save the creature. Bag it alive. Put it in a cage somewhere on display like a cuddly panda bear. But then, Harris hadn’t seen it or its handiwork. He’d sing a different tune if he ever came face to fang with it.
Dr. Harris’ look of shock relaxed into a sly smile. “You almost had me going again, Ranger. No, it’s impossible. There are no live dinosaurs. They died off millions of years ago. It must be some other large animal making the ruckus and the lake’s caldera, like I said, is distorting its cries. That’s what it is.”
He avoided Henry’s gaze and Henry wondered what, exactly, the doctor wasn’t admitting. That even he was afraid?
“And Justin,” Harris spoke to his associate, “if you did see something out on the lake that night, well, surely it’s all a grand hoax, a joke you’ve been subjected to, a humorous gag or something that some prankster is giggling over at this very moment. A live dinosaur, please!”
Henry was getting angry, but Justin sent him a smile, as if to say, don’t worry about what he says, we know the truth. Let it lie.
Harris looked at the tents and the people bustling back and forth from the plots they were sectioning out of the earth. The wall of fossils, once fifteen feet tall in some places, was crumbling, being eaten away by digging tools. There were hunks of dirt, and white plaster bundles of packaged fossils ready for shipping, littering the ground.
“Someone,” Harris was saying, eyes blazing, “perhaps, may even be trying to make us leave. As if we would abandon such a monumental paleontological find because we were frightened of monster rumors. Ha! This discovery is far too important. Nothing would make me pack this camp up and leave now, I promise you. Come here.” Harris abruptly jumped out of his chair and headed for the fossil wall.
Henry and Justin followed.
The site didn’t look the same as when Henry had first seen it. Cordoned off, it was dug up like a terraced farm around and through the hill that contained the fossils. There were fresh strips of dirt and rock stretching away in every direction. People knelt in the earth scraping gently around objects dirt-embedded and scooping bits and pieces of fossilized stone into crate boxes resting on the ground besides them.
Dr. Harris stood above his workers and directed his attention to Henry. “We’ll gently chisel the ground away in pieces around the more delicate artifacts and ship the whole chunk back to John Day’s, or to another University, for further examination and cataloging. There’s already interest in this find all over the country. Ten universities have contacted us and offered support and financial backing for a part of the haul. I’ve never seen such interest before. These fossils are going to set the scientific world on its ear.” The scientist’s expression was jubilant.
A few of the workers waved as Dr. Harris ambled by with his guests, but most of them were too intent on beating the going light and didn’t look up. There was a tangible enthusiasm among the workers, but Henry also sensed anxiety. Some of the diggers glanced too often at the setting sun, their lips drawn tight. The light was receding.
Their skittishness reminded Henry night was coming quickly; that he and Justin should return to the cabin. Ann and Laura would be worrying, and the thought of supper made his stomach growl.
Any other time Henry would have been overjoyed at Harris’s personal tour of an active paleontological site and to see the scientists digging out the precious fossils with their own hands, but his mind was on other things.
It seemed strange he should fear the night. Something he’d always been so fond of, especially in the park, with its velvet calmness. The darkness brought out the night animals, brought rest to the land, and renewed the forest for another day. In the years since he’d come to live there, he’d grown to love taking night walks close by his cabin. Yet, shading his eyes at the falling sun, he was intensely aware of the ominous silence that had fallen over everything. Wasn’t normal. Not a bird was squawking or a squirrel chattering. The rising wind was heavy with unspoken threats.
Dr. Harris, still lecturing, paused in front of a sea of lumpy white bundles laid out on the gro
und around his feet.
“The fossils we’ve found so far have been wrapped in cheesecloth and strips of burlap dipped in plaster, in preparation for shipping to their destinations,” he explained, his tone full of reverence, as he spread his hands in the air above them. “From what we’ve dug out so far I believe we’ve only touched the surface. No saying what we’ll discover on the lower levels.”
To Henry the white bundles looked like Christmas presents or huge smooth white rocks. The dynamiting had uncovered many treasures.
Harris scrutinized the wall honeycombed with fantastic impressions. “There’s an entire dinosaur in there. I feel it. The skull, too, I pray, and that’s extremely rare. The world-wide Dinosaur Society, as well as every scientific journal in the world, will want an account. They’ll be fighting to get the story.”
Dr. Harris knelt down and dusted the last bits of dirt off a very large and well-preserved fossil which hadn’t been packed for travel yet.
“My associates are certain we’ve unearthed an entirely new genus of dinosaur, Ranger Shore. Some of these bones are similar, but not quite like, the species of Nothosaur, which was a group of predatory marine reptiles that flourished in late Triassic times. More like a mutant Nothosaur; one we didn’t know existed. Perhaps, the highest evolution of another branch of the species. An advanced creature that roamed the earth for only a brief span of time before the end of the dinosaurs came. That’s why we’ve never heard of them.”
He tapped the piece beneath his hand. “This specimen is from one of those missing links. In its day it was possibly a voracious predator…over forty feet in length, had a rear fin and clawed feet.”
“Could it, also,” Justin broke in, “have been more intelligent than its predecessors?”
“Intelligent? A Nothosaur offshoot? I doubt it. Theory goes none of the Nothosaur family was very bright.” His face broke into a grin as he looked at the wall. “Most dinosaurs had tiny brains, you know that, Dr. Maltin. We’ve talked about it many times over the years.”
Justin said nothing, but his frown showed skepticism.
Harris went on, not noticing Justin’s reaction. “This whole section here is a concentrated graveyard of dinosaur parts. Some I recognize but many I don’t. Complete skeletons might be hidden within it. We’ve found shell fragments and fossilized eggs.” His feverish eyes gloated over the scenery and the freshly retrieved fossils and wrapped parcels. He wiped the sweat off his bald spot with one hand and sighed aloud with pleasure. “And if we exhume baby bones, too, that would be a monumental find.”
“Herds of these beasts must have roamed this area eons ago,” Justin interjected, “to have left such a huge fossil graveyard. I’m thinking a flash flood, an earthquake or a mud slide caught and killed them all at once and left their carcasses imprisoned here along the crater’s rim.”
“Herds?” Dr. Harris gave him a disdainful look. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those heretics who believe all that herd nonsense? Have I taught you nothing over the years? There’s no evidence to substantiate that hypothesis. I’ve never accepted it.”
“Yes, I recall us discussing it,” Justin said, “but the new research supports the theory that most dinosaurs ran in herds; were very social animals, and possessed a higher level of intelligence than previously believed. They were warm-blooded and nurtured their young, as most mammals.”
“Interesting hypotheses,” snapped Harris, “though I’m not sure I’d go so far as to carve them in stone. There are as many schools of thought on the matter of what the dinosaurs were really like as there are scientists. You’re aware of that, Dr. Maltin. All we do know is that these dinosaurs died here. Some great catastrophic event trapped them in this hill for all time. I would accept it’d been an earthquake, or, as the Alvarez theory proposes, a huge meteor, or asteroid that hit the planet. Maybe this mass extermination occurred at the precise time the meteor fell. The impact changed the atmosphere, blanketing the earth in debris and dust and killed these creatures, as well as the other dinosaurs and most of the earth’s plant life. Eventually, without their food source, the rest of the plant-eaters died off, and later, the carnivores, because their food sources were also gone. The plummeting temperatures underneath the umbrella of dust did the rest.”
Dr. Harris then seemed to think of something else. “Dr. Maltin, don’t tell me you believe your monster down in the lake might be an offshoot of one of these?” He pointed down at the fossils around them. “A mutant species of Nothosaur? But alive?”
Henry thought Harris was mocking the younger man. Justin didn’t seem to get it.
“Exactly! Yes. But I disagree that the thing in the lake might be of the same species as these. It could be something entirely different. Something completely new.”
“Surely you’re not serious?”
“I am! You still don’t believe we saw what we saw, do you?”
“Do I look crazy as well?” Harris shook his head.
The two men glared at each other. Henry hadn’t seen Justin angry before, but he was now.
“You’ve got a right to what you believe but so do I.” Justin smoothed things over, his irritation dissolving as he inspected the lengthening shadows dogging their feet. “But I know what I saw. Experienced. I know there’s something in the lake.”
Dr. Harris just shook his head. “Been working too hard, Maltin. You need a rest.”
“Well, thanks for the guided tour Dr. Harris.” Henry wrapped up their visit. “But I strongly suggest you get everyone down to the lodge, if that’s what you’ve decided, and it’s time Justin and I get home for supper; my wife’s been keeping it warm for us. It’ll be dark real quick.” Henry glanced down at the lake, his eyes scanning the water. They were too close.
“Don’t you worry, Ranger, we can take care of ourselves. We’re not cub scouts out here, you know.”
“Goodnight, Dr. Harris,” Henry said. Good luck.
Justin nodded his farewell, his eyes, too, on the lake.
In the blue twilight, they moved at a brisk pace along the trail towards the jeep.
Justin scurried after Henry, running to keep up. He barely made it into the seat before Henry shoved the car into drive and took off in a cloud of dust.
Henry’s expression was grim. He didn’t like leaving those people behind. He could have stayed and escorted them down to the lodge, but that would have been admitting he didn’t trust them and Dr. Harris was offended enough the way it was. Henry couldn’t babysit everyone. It was getting dark.
A revolver and a rifle was what Henry had with him and he didn’t think that would stop the beast if it decided to show itself. He’d put a request in for heavier artillery, but he didn’t know if he’d get it or not. Sorrelson didn’t believe in the monster, either.
Halfway down the dirt road leading to the lodge they heard the screams in the distance, but it was hard to tell where they were coming from.
Henry slammed on the brakes. “Did you hear that?”
“Yes,” Justin’s voice was watery thin.
“Let’s pray it isn’t our hungry friend. We’re not ready for him, yet. All I have on me is a pistol and a rifle.”
They waited for more screams, so they could pinpoint the origin. The minutes ticked away as the light faded. Someone was shouting and then came the bellowing roar of something hideously inhuman–and from the roar’s magnitude, something extremely large.
The unnerving call chilled the blood in Henry’s veins, momentarily incapacitating him with terror. The experience didn’t feel real, he kept waiting for the sounds to subside, so he could forget them. If they continued he’d have to do something and he didn’t know what. His hands were sweating on the steering wheel.
The beast bellowed again.
“It’s down by the lake.” Justin swiveled in his seat to look behind them.
“The reporters,” Henry mouthed in a flat tone. “My God, it’s after the reporters.”
Another shriek from the monster. Another hum
an cry.
Someone desperately needed help.
Henry wrenched the wheel, spinning the car around, and backtracked to where they’d last seen the reporters. Taking short cuts, he forced the jeep over rough terrain, threading the vehicle through trees and rocks; barely making it through a couple of tight places.
He drove as close as he could to the commotion, and when the jeep came to two boulders it couldn’t squeeze through, he yanked out the keys, grabbed his rifle from the rear seat and handed Justin his pistol.
“Know how to use one of these?”
“Sure. I think. Just aim and pull the trigger?”
“That’ll do. Take the safety off first, though.”
Cursing the fading light and the trail that was practically gone, Henry hoofed the rest of the way on foot, with Justin reluctantly trailing behind him. The evening had cooled and the mist rising from the warmer water, a gray steam, made it difficult to see ahead even twenty feet.
He loped through the woods, along the lake’s edge and toward the human cries, aware Justin, younger or not, was having a hard time keeping up.
“Using these weapons will be as useless as using sticks,” Justin yelled breathlessly, “against a mad bear!”
“It’s better than nothing,” Henry yelled back, as he brushed aside the whipping limbs. The forest had become gloomy with barely a trace of residual light. Shadows were everywhere…ghosts waiting to ambush them.
“I hope you’re a good shot!” Justin shouted.
“Expert.”
“Then aim for the head or an eye if you can.”
“I’ll try.”
The tents were smashed flat and wreckage littered the ground around them. There were no humans anywhere.
“They didn’t leave quick enough, did they?” Justin breathed, short-winded from their run.
“No, I guess they didn’t.” Guilt hit him. “I should have handcuffed the three of them and taken them out.”
“You didn’t know the beast would strike so soon, Henry. It isn’t your fault.”
Along the caldera’s rim where the incline to the water wasn’t too steep, they heard a woman’s screams.
Henry sprinted towards them. Justin hadn’t abandoned him. He was panting along behind.
The woman was howling now.
Henry tripped over something. He looked down. By its shape and size, it was a video camcorder. Banged up, but still in one piece. They’d been trying to film the creature instead of running for their lives. Stupid. Stupid.
Henry kept moving.
Then it was there, hulking above them in the shadows. The only thing that saved them, Henry realized later, was its back was to them. It was busy.
“Damn, it has to be fifty feet tall,” Justin croaked, most likely too shocked to be afraid yet as his eyes traveled up the creature’s height.
Henry didn’t understand why Justin was speaking in a hoarse whisper. The monster was making so much noise; it’d never hear them, even if they’d been screeching at each other.
“Where’s the woman?”
“Over there, hiding behind those boulders. See.” Henry tapped Justin’s head some to the right with his free hand until Justin’s eyes focused on her. The woman, a frenzied shadow, was dodging between the rocks trying to escape.
What was left of the faint light allowed them to see the creature in silhouette only because of its size. But that was enough. With its short, but powerful arms, it was picking up boulders and throwing them out into the water, or knocking them aside as if they were made of paper-mache, working its way to the woman.
Dr. Harris is so wrong, Henry thought. The creature was anything but dim-witted, or slow. It moved like quicksilver for its size on strong legs. Its steps quaked the earth. Its strong-necked head tilted downward, its tail balanced on the ground to support its bulk. An eerie low-throated growling erupted from its massive chest. Its head was large for its body, and the neck wasn’t nearly as long as Henry would have figured, yet its movements were graceful. The eyes, in the dark twilight, were beady hunks of obsidian glass.
Henry had never seen anything like the beast in any movie or book. Justin was correct, it must be a more highly evolved strain of one of the known species, or some completely new one. Where in the world had it come from?
Henry gulped, his throat so dry it’d closed up. It was as if he’d been transported into one of those dinosaur horror movies he’d loved to watch as a kid. But this was real. That titan beast snarling ahead of them, chasing that poor woman, would kill and devour her if it could.
Henry and Justin chased the creature. It moved so fast.
“Where are the other reporters?” Henry growled aloud. A memory flickered behind his eyes: a mauled and half eaten body out in the woods beyond the homeless camp. A leg.
“Dead. The creature probably killed them,” Justin hissed between roars.” I can’t imagine them deserting her if they were alive.”
“I can’t either.” But Henry knew men did funny things when they were scared. They might be dead or they might be hiding somewhere. For their sakes, he hoped they were hiding or running.
The woman was screaming again. The creature had her trapped between the rocks, in a corner below a steep cliff she couldn’t climb.
“Come on, Justin, if we’re going to save her we’ve got to draw its attention away from her.”
“How?”
“We’ll edge closer and shoot it. Might not hurt it much, but maybe it’ll distract it enough for her to get away.”
“Shoot it? You’ve got to be kidding!”
“Does it sound like I’m kidding?”
“It’ll come after us.”
“Yep.”
Justin grumbled something under his breath, as they scuttled in closer. Henry knew he was frightened, his body was shaking as if it were twenty below. But he wasn’t a coward, he wasn’t running away. He lifted the pistol and pulled the trigger.
Henry raised the rifle and also fired at the beast. Even in the dark, the monster was so huge it was hard to miss. The bullets bounced off as if they were made of rubber. Must be covered in plate-like scales or its hide was so thick the bullets couldn’t penetrate, Henry thought, as he fired again and again.
Just as he’d feared, to fight the creature they’d have to have something with a lot more firepower.
“Good god! The bullets don’t faze it.” Justin screamed, as the monster swung its bulk around and roared down at them.
Rearing up on its hind quarters, the last of the day’s light glinted off narrow, reptilian yellow eyes and glowed off bared, jagged teeth. The head was bigger than a man. A monstrous fin followed the curve of its back. Its arms tapered to webbed claws. As it swiped at them with one, Henry could hear the wind whistle from the power of the stroke. It drove them backwards.
Justin’s teeth were clattering like castanets. Henry could hear him making the strangest whimpering sounds in between shots.
Yet instead of coming after them, the creature swiveled around to its cornered quarry and went in for the kill.
“I’ll be damned,” Henry gasped. “It’s too smart to be drawn away from a sure thing.”
“Aim for the head!” Justin yelped. “The eyes. Stop it!”
Henry kept firing, but the beast cleverly hid its face, protecting its eyes from its attackers, and the bullets continued to bounce off. Nothing deterred the creature from getting to the woman.
“I have to get closer!” Henry shouted.
He yanked Justin along with him, hunching over as he ran, holding the rifle up high. “I just have two shots left, so we’ll have to get around to the other side, if we’re going to save her I have to make both shots count. It’s got to have an Achilles’ heel somewhere.”
He had extra ammunition on him, but he didn’t believe he’d have the time to reload the rifle before the creature would have the woman. He got positioned and got off his last two shots. He missed the eyes, it was moving too much. The creature was untouched.
Henry bent down, and with trembling fingers reloaded his rifle as quickly as he could.
It wasn’t quick enough.
The monster scooped up the woman reporter.
It was over in seconds. One moment the woman was there in the beast’s claws, and the next she was gone. Her final scream haunted the air.
Justin doubled over and retched.
Reloaded, and angry beyond reason, Henry scrambled in closer and, while the thing was busy, he got off as many shots to its head as he could. The bullets were like throwing pebbles. The creature was too swift for him. Henry found himself cursing at the thing, shaking his fist, an insane rage gripping him strong enough that it overrode the fear. He continued firing at the leathery skin until most of his bullets were gone. Useless, as well.
Justin, cognizant of their sudden danger now the woman was gone, had to drag him away while the monster was occupied, which wasn’t for long.
The beast’s head swung about and glittering eyes fixed on them, really seeing them for the first time. More food.
Facing them, it roared, its jaws yawning wide to reveal blood-stained teeth. That snapped Henry out of his defiant, senseless rage. Justin no longer had to pull at him to get him to leave.
“We got to get the hell out of here!” Justin yelled. “Now!”
They ran toward where they’d left the jeep, slipping in the dark over tree limbs and rocks.
It was a good thing Henry knew the area as well as he did or they wouldn’t have gotten away at all.
They were almost at the vehicle when they heard the brute crashing behind them. Still hungry. Hell, we’re not going to be its dessert.
“It’s right behind us!” Justin yelled as Henry leaped into the jeep. The tires threw rocks as they raced off. Henry deliberated over switching the headlights on, and then did. The monster knew they were there. Its eyes must be keenly adapted to the darkness. No use trying to hide. Speed was the only advantage they’d have.
That brute could move.
Henry hadn’t used his police academy Emergency-and-Evasive Driving experience for years but hadn’t forgotten any of it. It returned easily, second nature. He drove the jeep harder than he’d ever done, dodging trees and boulders, spinning its wheels on the narrow pathway and ramming the accelerator to the floor.
An expert driver, he was familiar with the terrain, the trail; the woods. His car had great traction. Still, the monster was breathing down their necks. The route wasn’t always clear and fragments of limbs and rocks rocketed everywhere as they hit them.
The jeep bucked like a wild horse, crashing through brush and sliding along the rocky path. Justin was holding on for dear life, praying. Out loud.
“I think we gave it the slip,” Justin exhaled a while later with relief. Except for their heavy breathing, the crunch of the rolling tires on the ground, and the racing of the engine, there were no other sounds.
The snarling and booming footfalls behind them had ceased a ways back.
But Henry didn’t stop. He didn’t drive as crazily as before, but he didn’t slow down much, either. It was too quiet.
He didn’t trust the damn thing. It was up to something.
They raced through the night. All Henry could think about was getting Ann, Laura and Phoebe safely out of the park and away from the monster. He’d been a fool to think the creature would stay forever in or around the lake…a fool to allow his family to return.
No telling where the monster would go now. It traveled as easily on land as it did in the water. Now Henry knew that for certain. He’d seen it. Could no longer deny it.
“I can’t believe we got away,” Justin breathed, slumped against the inside of the door. “Can’t believe we’re safe. In one piece. Alive. Sheesh, that was close. That poor woman.”
“Yes.” Henry felt so awful, he couldn’t say anything more.
They heard a bellowing roar and looked up. The monster was looming above them in the night, ahead of them…right in the middle of the road. Waiting.
It bent down, claws reaching. Bloodied saliva churned in a yawning mouth full of wicked looking incisors and dripped down in its drool. A powerful stench of carnage hung about it.
Henry had a split second to evade the mouth. He wrenched the wheel savagely to the left and hurtled the jeep into the blackness of the nocturnal woods–into the unknown that could have been a tiny gully, or a steep cliff of rocks or an endless plummet into a chasm of empty air.
But any death would have been better than the monster’s fangs and claws.
The jeep disappeared into the darkness amidst a screeching ruckus of twisting metal and breaking tree limbs. It flew through the air and before it rolled, Henry shouted at Justin, “Jump!”
Henry’s body rolled down the steep hillside and landed in a bed of branches and leaves, enough to soften his fall. His fingers reached up and touched scratches that burned along his face. His shirt and pants were ripped, but he was fairly sure he hadn’t broken anything; there was no howling pain anywhere in his bruised body. Just a general aching.
As he sat up, rubbing his side where something sharp had poked him, he heard Justin’s moaning. Dizzy-headed, Henry crawled past the upside-down jeep toward the scientist. The jeep’s tires spun in the silence.
“You okay?” Henry’s voice was hushed. He didn’t hear the monster anywhere, but wasn’t taking any chances. It’d already proven smarter than they’d ever imagined. So much for Dr. Harris’s dumb-dinosaur theory.
“Breathing,” Justin answered. “I hit a tree coming down. I’m going to have a hell of a head bump and something inside my chest hurts. But, otherwise, I think I’m okay. And,” he chuckled, relieving the tension, “imagine that? My glasses are still on my face, unbroken. You?”
“I’m going to be as sore as hell, scratched up like a cat post, but I’m in one piece, too.”
“We’re lucky. Someone’s watching over us.
“Where is it?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” Henry whispered. “We went a good distance before we crashed. We left our nemesis up there somewhere.” He waved a hand upwards in the darkness and prayed to god the beast wasn’t looking for them. Without a car they wouldn’t have a chance in hell to get away.
It was cold in the deep woods. A faint moon was rising to their left and provided just the tiniest bit of light to see by. Better than nothing. Henry had no idea where they were.
“That was close,” Justin groaned. “I thought I was dinosaur chow. I still hear those poor woman’s screams echoing in my head and my heart’s still doing a rain dance.”
Henry struggled to his feet and carefully helped Justin to his. The boy could hardly stand.
“I had a cell phone in the car but there’s no way I’m going to find it now,” he said. “Darn thing rarely worked out here anyway, so no big loss. So we have to get to a telephone, and warn Ann and Laura to get out of the park, if we can’t get them out ourselves. Alert those scientists at the dig. Ranger Headquarters is the closest telephone I can think of. I also had a flashlight in the jeep, darn it. We’re going to have to hoof it in the dark. As silently as we can.”
“We couldn’t have used a flashlight anyway, Henry. Too risky. It’d be like sending out a beacon on us. We don’t know where that bastard is.”
“You got a good point there.” Henry was standing beside Justin and reached out to steady him. “We need to be in stealth mode. No lights. No noise.” He was listening to the woods. Shivering. “And my rifle bounced out somewhere on the flight down the hillside, too. It’s gone. We’re defenseless.”
“As much good as it did us anyway. It didn’t seem to affect the creature at all. Just made it madder.” Justin swayed in the chilly air. Henry wondered if he was in shock or hurt worse than he was letting on. “I still have the pistol you gave me. Here.” Justin handed him the gun and Henry slid it into the empty holster around his waist.
“Thanks. Are you really all right?”
“Sure,” Justin sighed, “I
’m fine. Just a tad shaky, that’s all. Let’s go.”
They climbed in the direction they believed they’d come from. Feeling with their hands…using trees as railings…cursing the darkness. Wishing the moon would rise quicker and give more light.
They located a road and trudged in what Henry thought was the right direction for headquarters. Every step treading on eggshells because they weren’t sure where the monster was, if it’d come after them again, or if it was rampaging at that moment where their loved ones were.
Panicked human cries shattered the night about a half hour later. They stopped to listen, trying to tell where the shouts were coming from.
“It’s your friends at the dig,” Henry declared with a horrible certainty. “They stayed too long.”
“When it couldn’t get us, it went after them.”
“I have to see if I can help, it’s my job, Justin, but I can send you in the right direction to get you to park headquarters. You tell them where I am and that I need reinforcements pronto. Tell them to bring the biggest guns we have. Can you do that for me?”
Not a hint of fear, not a word of excuse. The young man didn’t hesitate. “I can.”
“By the noise, if the dig is that way,” Henry turned to his right, “then headquarters is that way.” He pointed in another direction.
“On second thought, no,” Justin blurted out. “I’m coming with you. I know them and I want to help. If I know Harris they’ll have some sort of weapons we can use.”
Henry didn’t have to think about it. There wasn’t time. “Okay. Let’s go.”
As exhausted and battered as they were they broke into a scrambling run, fighting through the trees in the direction of the shouting…and gunshots. It wasn’t hard to locate the site.
Human cries mingled with the monster’s roars as it thundered through the woods, its jaws snapping. And they heard other awful sounds long before they arrived.
They burst into what had once been a paleontological dig, but the only way they could tell that now was by the crushed tents and knocked-over shadowy RVs around them in the spreading moonlight. There were no lights. The scientists were gone, most likely scurrying or hiding for their lives–if they’d been lucky.
A steely stench of fresh blood clung to the place, it reeked of it, and Henry feared there’d be bodies or partial bodies strewn in the wreckage when daylight broke. The creature hadn’t stopped to feast on its kills, perhaps still chasing some unlucky scientist or expecting to return later and finish its smorgasbord. It, too, was gone.
Henry and Justin stood in the middle of the destruction, until they heard the cries deeper in the woods and followed them. There were survivors and Henry was relieved; then appalled as he and Justin thrashed through the dark trees, the bedlam forever seeming somewhere just ahead of them, to their right, or to their left. Always somewhere else.
The human wails rose to a crescendo and dwindled into the night air. There was nothing the two men could do to save any of them. Henry felt helpless. It was a feeling he wasn’t used to.
They found no one.
In time silence came.
Justin halted Henry’s movement by restraining him. “It isn’t going to do any good, us crashing through the woods like this in the dark. We’re not going to find them. They’ve all scattered. They’re hiding, dead, or trying to get to the lodge. We’ll never find them in the dark without shouting. That’s not such a hot idea. We don’t know if the monster’s moved on or not. Let’s pray most of them escaped. And we need to get to headquarters, don’t we?”
“We do,” Henry agreed. “We have to get out of these woods and alert everyone to what’s happened. I need to call Ann. We have to get to the lodge.”
He had a terrifying image of the monster approaching the lodge or his cabin and tearing the roof off the buildings to get to the people huddled inside. He could barely dwell on it because it sickened him beyond words.
“Feels like we’ve been running for hours,” Justin moaned. “To me everything looks the same out here. I sure hope you know where we are, Mr. Ranger, cause I’m lost.”
The moon, higher in the sky, was brighter now as Henry peered around. “I think I do. Follow me.”
“Okay. Lead on. I’m behind you.”
They began walking, looking for a pathway or the road, each apprehensive the monster would show up again, hot on their trail.
It didn’t. The night remained empty.
It was Justin who first spotted the headlights in the distance on their left. They ran, yelling and waving their hands like madmen, forgetting their fear.
In minutes they’d flagged down a park service jeep with one of Henry’s rangers in it and he drove them to headquarters. The ranger, Peter Thompson, said he’d heard screams on the night air from below while on normal rounds and came up to investigate. Taking a chance, he checked the paleontological dig, knowing people were there; had driven through the shambles, finding no one. He was on his way to report what he’d found when they’d flagged him down.
After Henry explained what had happened, the ranger stared strangely at him, but kept his mouth shut. Henry was his boss, and the man knew he wasn’t a liar or a storyteller. Thompson had been briefed about the creature in the lake as all the rangers had been. Evidently, like a lot of others, he hadn’t put much stock in the story, couldn’t swallow the whole thing yet.
Boy, is he going to be surprised, Henry thought.
Thompson drove them to headquarters. Henry was amazed to discover it was only ten o’clock. It felt as if they’d been running in the woods half the night.
He didn’t have to worry about being believed any longer, either, because the surviving dig scientists had trickled in with their accounts. Dr. Alonso and Tony Bracco were missing, presumed dead as well as many others. Dr. Harris was among the survivors and sat in a corner, mumbling and talking to himself, his head bowed. Henry walked over. The man gaped up at him when he was spoken to, answered questions, but was clearly in shock. That insane glint in his eyes was stronger than ever though. Oops, that’s got to mean trouble, somehow, sometime. Henry finished talking to the man, offered his sympathy for his lost colleagues, and walked away.
He borrowed a car so he and Justin could drive to the cabin.
Against Ann and Laura’s protests, he and Justin bundled the women out of the park immediately, taking them to Zeke’s. They were given orders this time to stay away until it was safe again, whenever that’d be. Henry refused to listen to Ann’s pleas about her duty to get the story for the newspaper. He told her about the woman reporter and her fate, sparing no details. She shut up after that and went along quietly.
Afterwards he and Justin returned to headquarters so he could fill out reports from what was left of Dr. Harris’ people.
He put in a call to Sorrelson, who’d finally returned from vacation, brought him up to speed on what had been happening, and laid down the law.
“I’m evacuating all the remaining scientists,” he firmly informed him, “people left at the lodge and anywhere else in the park. No one but me, my rangers and Justin are to remain in the park. No exceptions. Somehow we’ll find a place in town for the homeless. Relocate them as well. It’s too dangerous for any of them to stay here. Not now.
“And I’m establishing an ICS at Headquarters. We’re going to assemble a team of specialists who’ll help us track down this monster. We need professional help. I’m requesting the Forest Service send us the right people to deal with the situation.” And he left no doubt in his boss’s mind what he’d meant by the right people. People who could rid the park of the creature.
Sorrelson was angry, still disbelieving, but Henry didn’t give him a choice to object.
“If this thing really exists…and if it’s actually a living, breathing dinosaur…you can’t hurt it,” Sorrelson tried to dictate. “Dr. Harris has already put in calls to his influential political friends guaranteeing protection of the creature. He says it’s a national monument. The eight
h wonder of the world. Hell, he wants the park sectioned off as an off-limits protected game preserve to house the beast. Shut it down to the public. String eighty-foot electrical fences or something to keep it in–like that movie Jurassic Park, I suppose. As long as that thing’s alive.”
“That’s not feasible,” Henry snarled back. “The creature has already killed at least eleven people that we know of. That changes everything. It’s proven it not only can come out of the lake to hunt, but can navigate the land as easily as water. Worst of all, it’s highly intelligent. It can think. Scheme. It’s diabolical. It’ll never stay in the park if we take away its favorite food source, which is human, no matter how high you string a fence. It’ll go hunting for them wherever it has to. I’m not even sure it wouldn’t find a way to get through the barriers and run amok into the nearby towns if it gets hungry enough.
“Sorrelson, I’ve seen it in action. Believe me, as much as I hate to say it, it needs to be disposed of–put down–for the safety of humanity. It’s too damn clever.” Henry didn’t utter a word about his other fear: If there was one creature living in the caldera, were there more?
“We could capture it and let someone else worry about it,” his boss stated.
He would have loved to see Sorrelson on that expedition. But the Superintendent was not only his superior the man had no sense of humor whatsoever, so it was a thought not spoken.
“You mean like King Kong?” Henry scoffed. “And you recall what happened in that little tale, don’t you?”
“That was a movie, Henry. Fiction.”
“Well, this monster, whatever it is, isn’t fiction. Good luck to any fool who tries to catch it. You haven’t seen it. I wouldn’t like to be the one lowering the net on its head, not with all those teeth, let me tell you. I think we just need to find a way to kill it.”
“We don’t want it hurt,” Sorrelson reiterated sternly, “remember that.”
“Sorry, sir, but too many people have died. I’ll do what I have to do. Whichever way that falls. People’s safety is more important than that creature.”
Then he hung up and put in the call that would begin the creation of his ICS Team.
Dinosaur Lake Page 23
