Loch (The Zone Unkown)

by Paul Zindel

  “New rules,” Dr. Sam announced.

  “Here it comes.” Zaidee rolled her eyes.

  “Neither of you is to go out on the lake,” Dr. Sam started. “I don’t want you using our bass boat at the dock. Leave the Jet Ski in the U-Haul. If you want to fish, it’s got to be from the shore. You can play catch, video games, and board games.” Then he added, “I don’t want either of you down at the main base when Cavenger hauls in the equipment for the next sweep.”

  “Okay,” Loch and Zaidee said together, like they had rehearsed it.

  “And it wouldn’t hurt if you did a little schoolwork, either,” Dr. Sam said, grabbing the Volvo keys.

  “We did a lot of math last week,” Loch said.

  “Then help Zaidee with her spelling,” Dr. Sam suggested. “Work on her vocabulary.”

  “We’ve done a lot of vocabulary,” Loch insisted.

  Dr. Sam stepped over the junk on the floor. Loch looked at the mess and thought of Erdon’s mom, who had always kept his room neat and the house half wrapped in plastic. “Did Cavenger call Erdon’s family yet?”

  “No,” Dr. Sam admitted, taking a last sip of his morning coffee.

  “That really sucks,” Loch said.

  “They’ll know by tonight.”

  Zaidee gave her father a hug. “Daddy, how can you stand working for a man who’s got three balls and the heart of a vulture?” She enjoyed shocking her father from time to time.

  Dr. Sam choked on his coffee. “Zaidee, where did you hear that expression?”

  “What expression?” Zaidee smiled, then looked at her brother.

  Dr. Sam frowned at Loch, but Zaidee took her father’s hand. “Don’t worry, Daddy. We’ll behave.”

  Cavenger cashed in every government chip he had, calling politicians in half of New England. Larger craft were coming overland from the Coast Guard base in Groton, Connecticut. Woods Hole had agreed to send a couple of men specially trained in the handling of large ocean mammals. Metal netting was bought in Providence.

  No one knew how many of the creatures there were. The first, smaller one was believed to be a female and, for purposes of the hunt, had been named Beast. The second, the one that had killed Erdon and was seen to survive the catamaran explosion, was designated the Rogue. Dr. Sam warned Cavenger there might be still more of the creatures in the lake. He explained his theory that the creatures had come from the 435-square-mile water basin that was Lake Champlain, that they had followed a spring salmon run up the deep river to Lake Alban, and that they had been trapped when the salmon grid went in. The only other possible point of origin for creatures their size would have been a journey starting from Lake George, which fed Lake Champlain. Dr. Sam’s father had often taken him fishing on Lake George when he was a kid. He knew there were tremendously deep coves and bays that were as desolate and unfathomed as when Samuel de Champlain had first mapped the area in 1603. There was even the remote possibility that somewhere in Lake Champlain a sizable group of these creatures could be living in a highly developed social order.

  “The one thing certain,” Dr. Sam told Cavenger, “is that from the bite marks on the cat, and from what I saw of their jaw structure, they’re a species of highly evolved plesiosaur, water beasts thought to have been extinct for over ten million years.” He couldn’t resist adding, “Cap’n, this ain’t no sturgeon.”

  Sarah woke in her room on the yacht, got out of bed, and staggered to look in the bathroom mirror. There were a few scratches on the left side of her face. A bump above her left eye had started to go down.

  Not too bad, she thought, but she felt like she’d been run over by a juggernaut.

  The morning light blasted in through the portholes of her cabin, and with it stirred all of what she had repressed about the attack. The memory of Erdon’s red blood raining down onto her began to intrude, but she decided to think of something she could deal with. That was a trick of surviving she’d learned a long time ago. Keep the unpleasant parts of life away, always replace them with thoughts of things you want to remember. This morning she thought of Loch’s deep-green eyes as he had skimmed toward her in the raft.

  Loch waited until Dr. Sam had left for the base before he called Sarah. Cavenger had always let Sarah have her own private cellular phone. Loch remembered their first silly date, in London when they were eight years old. Dr. Sam had brought Loch with him to London for meetings with Cavenger. Sarah had a crush on Loch and had wanted to go out for an ice cream soda. Cavenger thought it would be fun to have Sarah take his chauffeured white stretch limo. She had her personal phone that afternoon, and ever since.

  “What?” Sarah answered.

  “Hi,” Loch said. “Did I wake you up?”

  Sarah was glad to hear his voice, in spite of her pounding headache. “No.” She rubbed her head trying to get blood up to her brain.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Rotten. How about you?”

  “I’m okay,” Loch said. “I was just wondering if you had wheels and wanted to hang out later.”

  Sarah climbed back under the covers with the phone. “Loch,” she said, “I need a day off. I haven’t felt this whacked out since we were in that truck crash in Guatemala.”

  “The truck only fell on its side,” Loch reminded her.

  “To me that’s a crash.”

  Loch could hear she was really drained. “All right,” he said. “I’ll check on you later, okay?”

  “Thanks,” she said. Then she remembered something. “Loch?”

  “Yep?”

  “Thanks for—”

  “Hey, no problem,” Loch said.

  By noon there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Loch and Zaidee decided to cast spinner and spoon lures off the old dock near the trailer. Nothing decent was biting. The only action they saw was from small sunfish who were furious the lures were sputtering through their underwater mud beds.

  “My arm hurts,” Zaidee complained, trying to find a new grip on her rod.

  “Mine too,” Loch admitted. He looked toward the deep water. “We know there’s got to be some great salmon or trout out there.”

  Neither of them could help eyeing their bass boat tied up at the dock. It drifted back and forth in half circles, knocking gently against the rubber tires lining the pilings.

  “We could take the boat out and stay in the shallows,” Zaidee said. “We’d be safe—the water’s really clear there.”

  “Let’s not, and say we did,” Loch suggested, his long shaggy hair covering his brow now. Zaidee switched to a heavier spinner, casting it as far out as she could. No matter how she tried, it always fell short of the black water where the shallows gave way and the bottom fell sharply into the great trench of the lake.

  “We could just stay along the shoreline,” Zaidee said. “There are shallows all the way up to the salmon grid. Imagine the size of the fish up there. Fish always hang out at a dam.”

  “We told Dad we wouldn’t,” Loch said.

  “We’ll be safe,” Zaidee insisted. “If one of the creatures did come out of deep water, we’d be able to see it in plenty of time and hit the shore.”

  Loch thought that over a moment and decided it really wasn’t a bad idea. “I’ll tell you what,” Loch said. “First, I’ll ride up to the grid by myself. If it looks really safe, I’ll come back and get you.”

  “No way,” Zaidee said. “If you left me here, maybe one of those creatures would come out of the water and eat me in the trailer.”

  “Plesiosaurs don’t go on land.”

  “Well, then, I might take a nap and sleepwalk into the lake—”

  “Let’s just forget the whole thing,” Loch said, ticked off. He changed from a spinner to a popper, tossing it far out. He made a half dozen more casts. There wasn’t a decent fish in sight, and it was a really beautiful day. The deep water was plenty far from shore. There really wasn’t any way anything could strike out at them without their seeing it coming. He made a few more casts with Zaidee just tappin
g her foot, watching him.

  “All right.” He broke down. “Let’s skip the fishing. We can at least take a boat ride in the shallows.”

  They both laughed, and raced up to the trailer to grab gear for the boat.

  “You pack pretzels and sandwiches,” Loch said. “I’ll ice the cooler.”

  Zaidee threw the refrigerator door open, pulled out some roast beef, ham, and cheese, tossed them onto white bread, and put them in the picnic basket. She left the pretzels in case Dr. Sam wanted some with a beer when he got home that night. Besides, she liked the Wheat Thins and Mallomars better.

  “I’ll wait for you in the boat,” she called to Loch. She grabbed the picnic basket in one hand, the laptop in the other, and went out the door.

  “Be right down,” Loch yelled.

  Zaidee was sitting in the bow seat and was on the second screen of Crashers by the time Loch boarded with the cooler and scuba gear.

  Zaidee’s jaw dropped. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “I probably won’t use it,” Loch said, slapping the air tank. “But maybe I’ll want to get a closer look at something.”

  “That’s not the problem. Something might want to get a closer look at you!”

  “Lighten up,” Loch said, starting the motor on the first pull. He threw it into forward gear, and the churning propeller thrust them quickly away from the dock. He turned long before the deep water, brought the boat in close to shore, and held it steady. The sky was clear. Even the deepest water of the lake had given way to an intense, spectacular blue.

  There were more logs in the water than usual. Loch knew they must have drifted over from the north side of the lake after the storm had swollen the log pond at the old mill. He kept his head high as the boat rushed across the water. One thing he knew they didn’t need was to hit a log and bend the prop.

  Loch had always thrilled to moving fast across a lake on a perfect day. On the brink of the open water, his mind would flood with thoughts, so many at the same time that he felt part of a vast kaleidoscope. He would think of poems and music. Sometimes he’d just remember his mother and what it had been like when they were all a family. Lately, during the last few months, he had begun to think most about feeling lonely, and what he was going to do with his life. All the problems and questions lurking in his mind and heart would tumble toward answers in the hugeness of a lake.

  The outboard churned out a good-sized wake, a trail of bubbles and waves fanning out and violating the calmness of the water for a great distance behind them. He guided the boat along, taking note of half-sunken trees and patches of lake grass that he knew might hold big fish. There were stretches of tall pines that threw their branches out over the water to make the great cooling shadows largemouth bass liked on hot afternoons. He glimpsed sudden, whirling circles where the sound of the outboard interrupted pickerel basking in the sun. Over all were the mountains rimming the lake, looming tall like protective, watchful giants.

  Zaidee went on high alert when Loch cut the speed and shifted into neutral near the salmon grid. He put on his scuba mask and hung his head over the side of the boat as it drifted toward shore.

  “What are you looking for, fingers?” Zaidee asked.

  Loch put his hands in the water and began paddling. Slowly, easily, he guided the flat-bottomed boat in closer to the shore where the first beast had been trapped and broken through the net. In the clear shallows he could see the scrapings on the bottom of the lake where the creature had struggled. There were fragments from the ripped rope net wedged between small rocks, shreds waving, pointing toward the shore as though there were some sort of undertow.

  Loch lifted his head out of the water to get his bearings on the salmon grid. Its great aluminum-and-steel structures were a hundred yards farther along the shore.

  “I want to wait on land,” Zaidee said.

  “That’s a good idea,” Loch said. He got the boat into a position off a weed bed and goosed the throttle. The boat hurtled forward, lifting its bow and nuzzling up onto the shore. Zaidee jumped off and secured the anchor line around a tree.

  “Want to eat now?” she asked.

  “Later,” Loch said. He wanted to check out the scrapings close up.

  “Okay. You lug the cooler.”

  She grabbed the picnic basket and laptop and made her way to a large, flat rock overlooking the grid and inlet. She started to play Crashers as her brother set the cooler down and began to put on his scuba gear.

  “Hey,” Zaidee said, “I’m getting interference on the screen again.”

  “Two thick black lines?”

  “Just one thin one, right through the middle.”

  “Maybe it’s that,” Loch said, pointing to what looked like a cement bunker at the near side of the grid.

  “Crashers was working fine until we got here.”

  “There’s probably a lot of electrical stuff around.”

  Zaidee watched her brother walking like a frog in his big fins. “Loch, if you hear me scream, it means there’s something you don’t want to meet heading your way.”

  “Gotcha!”

  Loch spit in his mask to defog it and did a final check on the oxygen flow from his air tank. He put on a weight belt, then backed slowly into the water. When he was waist deep, he let himself fall backward and went under.

  The water was cold and crystal clear near the shore. With a single kick of his flippers he launched himself forward toward the scrapings on the gravel bottom. Loch had long ago worked out an underwater swimming stroke he’d never seen other divers use. He’d thrust out both arms together, then cup his palms and pull them back like a two-handed racket return in tennis. He’d combine each stroke with a single kick of his long, powerful legs. He knew it was unorthodox, but it gave him the speed and endurance he wanted—so much so, he had grown to feel as much at home underwater as on land.

  The main disturbance of bottom stones began about forty feet from the shore. Loch glided over the markings, keeping one eye on the dark wall of peat water that lay a hundred feet farther out. Even some of the larger stones had been upset by the thrashing of the beast’s body, but at the same spot he noticed something he hadn’t seen when he had peered down from the bass boat. There was a second set of scrapings near the first set, less deep, less violent. They led at an angle toward the shore. More shreds of rope net lined these scrapings, in motion like small, brown eels being washed by a current.

  Loch propelled himself along the path of the second markings. At first he thought that they might be from the beast’s immense neck, that in its struggle to escape it had dragged its neck along the bottom. But the scuffs were too long and too far for that. The thought that they might have been caused by another smaller creature crossed his mind as he felt the pull of the current. At first it was a gentle force from behind him, water pushing him toward the shore. He looked ahead to see a darkness beneath a large rock ledge. By the time he was close enough to see it was the entrance to a narrow cave, it was too late. He was caught in the undertow. He tried to fight its pull, turned to throw his cupped hands against the current and kick with his full power. Still, he lost ground. The current grew stronger, banged his air tank against the bottom stones, rushed him faster, rougher.

  He grabbed out for a rock, but the flux pulled at his legs. His weight belt scraped at his stomach, and the rock rolled loose. Finally, he lost complete control and was swept into the narrow dark hole.

  He couldn’t see as his body was whirled and tumbled, the air tank banging against the unseen sides. Faster he went, the water picking up speed until he was on a rough, dangerous water slide, dropping at a very great angle. He fought to keep his mask on, to maintain his bite on the breathing tube while using his arms to protect his head.

  It seemed to him he had traveled the length of a football field beneath the earth before he glimpsed light again. The tunnel was larger now, and the relentless banging against the rock sides all but stopped. When he lifted his head above the surface of the ru
shing water he realized he was moving through a cavern. Sunlight shot down from a hole in the side of a natural crystal dome, a structure the likes of which he’d seen only once before, when his father had taken him and Zaidee on a hunt for minerals in New Mexico.

  “Hey!” He tried calling as he was swept along the sheer edges of the underground river.

  His shouts were greeted by shrieks from a swarm of bats spiraling upward toward the top of the dome. He was swept out of the chamber, and then into another blackness, the water falling faster still. In the next lighted chamber he glimpsed the earth above and saw that it had eroded. What was left of the cave’s ceiling was lined with glistening red-and-white stalactites. Exposed tree roots climbed down the sides like thick, curling serpents. Then the water flowed out of the cavern and into a less exotic landscape, that of the Vermont mountainsides. Now Loch relaxed, believing he would survive. The waterway was narrow but as fast, strong, and deep as a trout stream.

  He heard a low, chilling noise as he struggled to reach the reeds and shore bushes. It was a roaring he had heard on other expeditions. He grabbed at a birch root protruding from the steep bank, spit out his mouthpiece, and unhooked the tank and weight belt. But the root gave way. He saw the brink coming, saw the great height. Quickly, he was washed over the edge and began to plummet down.

  He had fallen too long and too far to keep his eyes open. He felt the crash into the pool below and the crush of bubbles as if he had been thrust beneath the surface of a violent Jacuzzi. He held his breath for a very, very long time. Then, as if he had been wiped out by an ocean wave, the tumult subsided. His head bobbed to the surface, and he found himself in a shimmering, clear pool beneath the waterfall.

  5

  THE CALLING

  Loch swam to the edge of the pool, exhausted. He managed to drag himself up onto a large slab of granite and tug off his fins. He had swallowed a lot of water, and it took him a while to catch his breath. He knew Zaidee would be looking for him.