by Paul Zindel
“It’s okay, boy … okay,” Loch said, his words muffled and carried out in an exhale of bubbles that rose across the face of his mask. He stroked the creature’s head, trying to turn it from the churning water. Loch signaled Sarah away, back toward the dead mackerel that lay on the bottom of the pool. He followed her. The creature watched them. Loch put the fish in Sarah’s hands and had her hold it out toward Wee Beastie. Finally, the creature stopped its crying. Slowly it turned from the falls and swam toward them. It stopped a few feet away, staring at Sarah and the fish. Loch took Sarah’s hands and opened them so the mackerel floated slowly downward. Before it touched the bottom of the pool, Wee Beastie reared its head back, then snapped forward, flashing its astounding mouthful of teeth. Sarah screamed beneath the water, backing away fast as Wee Beastie lurched again and again until only a few remaining scales from the mackerel settled like snowflakes.
It took several dives with more fish before Loch and Sarah surfaced with Wee Beastie at their sides.
“Wee Beastie!” Zaidee cried out, dropping down on the ledge. The creature lifted his head for her to pet him, and she rolled the huge striped bass into the water for him. His teeth flew at it, shredding and eating it in seconds. “Isn’t he cute?” she asked Sarah.
Sarah looked at Zaidee like she was out of her mind. “If I ever saw cute, this is it.”
“We have visitors,” Zaidee told Loch, tossing Wee Beastie another fish.
“Where?” Loch asked.
“Listen,” Zaidee told him, pointing up toward the ridge. “I was also able to tune them in on the CB. Sounds like they’re zeroing in on something.”
Loch and Sarah pulled themselves out of the water and yanked off their fins. Loch had figured Cavenger would eventually get men to check out the lakeshore just as he had done, but he hadn’t thought it would be this soon. They could hear the voices floating down to them from the lake. Men’s voices. The sound of boat motors. Splashing. “You guys keep feeding Wee Beastie,” Loch instructed, dumping the fish into a pile on the rock. “I’ll check it out.”
Loch ran across the spillway from the pond and onto the path next to the grid. He started up toward the bunker, his bare feet digging into the mixture of small stones and clay. The sounds and voices of the men grew louder as he climbed. At the top of the ridge he saw them. The converted PT boat was anchored offshore above the area where Loch had seen the bottom scrapings. Two of the smaller fleet boats idled close by, with John Randolph and Cavenger’s dive master shouting instructions to a half dozen motley frogmen who were diving, searching the area. There were shouts from other men on the shore where pines and thick brush blocked Loch’s view. He knew they had found the set of smaller scrapings and the underground spillway.
Loch raced back down the hill as fast as he could.
“What’s going on?” Sarah wanted to know when she saw him coming.
“Your father’s got Randolph with divers,” Loch said, working to catch his breath. “They’ve closed in on the trail. We’ve got to get Wee Beastie out of here.”
Zaidee and Loch looked at Sarah to see if she was with them. “All right,” Sarah said, “what should we do?”
“Get him into the jeep,” Loch said.
“No,” Zaidee cried. She pointed down the hill. “Look!”
A trail of dust was rising from the curving, narrow dirt road. Another company jeep with more of Cavenger’s men in it was heading up. Loch looked toward the grid, then to the pool. The creature’s head was out of the water. It was making cheerful sounds out of the breathing holes on its snout and staring at the rest of the big pile of squid and fish. Loch grabbed a bluefish and held it out to the creature. “Come on, fellah, you’ve got to come with us.” Loch moved around the edge of the pond to the spillway. Wee Beastie followed Loch, swimming along the rim of the pool. Loch tossed him the fish.
“The spillway is too shallow for him,” Loch shouted. “We have to help.”
Loch jumped into the pool next to Wee Beastie, as the creature snapped up the last morsels of the largest bluefish. Loch tried bracing his legs against the side of the pool to lift Wee Beastie into the flow of the spillway, but the creature was too slippery and heavy. Zaidee and Sarah rushed to get a grip, carefully sliding their arms under Wee Beastie’s two front fins. Wee Beastie didn’t seem to mind. He kept making cheerful noises and looking longingly over his shoulder at the pile of fish as they eased him up. Finally, he was out of the pool and into the shallow spillway.
A cry came from the top of the waterfall. They looked up to see the first frogman being washed over the falls and plunging downward. Two more terrified-looking divers were swept over after him.
Loch was out of the pool now. He pushed Wee Beastie along the wash, while Sarah and Zaidee continued to help glide him along by his fins. In another few feet the spillway was deeper and steeper, and they were able to move the creature faster.
“Let go,” Loch ordered Zaidee. “Delay them!”
Zaidee understood and turned away as the water rushed over her ankles. She headed back to the jeep, while Sarah and Loch slid quickly with the creature into the shin-deep top waters of the grid.
The frogmen surfaced in the pool. Zaidee knew it would take them a few moments to get their bearings. Finally, when they looked to the shore, all they could see was a small girl with short bobbed hair sitting in the back of a company jeep. She had her feet up and crossed, and was munching from a box of Fruity Pebbles.
“Hi.” Zaidee waved to them. “Nice day for a swim.”
The frogmen swam to the edge of the pool and pulled themselves out onto the granite ledge. They saw the pile of wet snorkel equipment thrown into the back of the jeep. “Who’s out here with you?” one of the frogmen demanded to know.
“A couple of friends. We’re having a picnic.” Zaidee smiled. “They’re in the woods looking for firewood. Would you like some Fruity Pebbles?”
They noticed the pile of squid and fish on the rock. “What’s that?”
“Oh, you know,” Zaidee said, “we always say, what’s a picnic without roast fish!”
Randolph’s voice came roaring from the top of the ridge. He was running down from the bunker, clutching a walkie-talkie and pointing downstream. “Get them!”
The divers turned and spotted Loch and Sarah splashing their way down the grid with a strange black creature. In a second, the frogmen were after them.
The water on the second level of the grid was knee-deep, sufficient for Wee Beastie to propel himself along beside them like a seal. Loch kept urging him on. “Don’t worry, fellah, we’re going to make it. Just hang in there. You’ll be okay.”
But the end of the grid steps looked too far away.
Sarah looked over her shoulder as she pushed ahead. “They’re coming!” she yelled. Loch turned and saw the frogmen already in the top of the grid. More men were racing down from the bunker to join Randolph. Loch could only think that if somehow Sarah and he could get Wee Beastie to the last grid step, he would make it over the last obstacle and escape into the deep, swift stream to Lake Champlain.
The frogmen were gaining on them.
“I’m getting exhausted!” Sarah yelled when the water grew still deeper near the end of the fourth step. Here a steel barrier forced the powerful surge of water to cascade down to the next step, a drop of several feet. Wee Beastie couldn’t make it over alone. The creature tried to turn from the barrier, to go back toward the pursuers, but Loch and Sarah got behind him again and started to lift him. With a great fluttering of his front fins, finally Wee Beastie went splashing over into the next grid step.
“What is that?” Sarah called as she and Loch dropped down to the lower grid. A rippling of white water lay directly ahead.
“Artificial rapids,” Loch called back.
“They look real enough to me!” Sarah gasped as the current pulled her along.
“Look!” Loch yelled, pointing ahead. Beyond the end of the last grid, coming up the stream, was a skiff car
rying a crew of armed men. Cavenger must have had a second team searching downstream, and Randolph had ordered it into position with his walkie-talkie.
They were trapped; men were closing from upstream and down.
Back at the waterfall, Zaidee continued to relax in the backseat of the jeep, eating her Fruity Pebbles. Randolph was yelling at her, asking her about the black creature, what it was, what her brother and Sarah were doing with it.
“It’s an otter,” Zaidee told him, “a big old mutant otter.” The more Randolph yelled at her, the more she kept her attention on two things: the sight of her buddies trapped in the grid and the keys hanging in the jeep’s ignition. The second company jeep made it up the hill and screeched to a halt next to Randolph. Four burly men in fatigues leaped out to join in the chase. It was getting very unfair, Zaidee felt. Then the huge military helicopter lifted over the ridge with a roar. As far as Zaidee was concerned, that was downright mean. That was overkill.
Randolph shouted commands into his walkie-talkie while the chopper hovered above, kicking up great swirls of dust. Zaidee waited until no one was looking at her, then slid into the driver’s seat of the jeep and turned the key in the ignition. The jeep started. In a second, she had it in gear. Randolph turned and saw her. “Hey!” he yelled.
“Party on!” Zaidee shouted. She floored the accelerator, making the jeep’s wheels spin and tear into the ground. A few of the men ran to stop her, but the wheels gripped, and the jeep shot forward onto the dirt road, heading fast down the hill. Zaidee kept the gear in second. She wanted power with speed.
Below, in the grid, Loch and Sarah had stopped. There seemed to be no point in going forward or in turning back. The frogmen and Randolph’s crew were bearing down on them through the grid and along the shore path. The men in the skiff closed from downstream.
“I’m sorry, fellah,” Loch told Wee Beastie. The creature had heard the sounds of the strange men and had begun to tremble.
“Can’t we do anything?” Sarah cried out.
“I don’t think so,” Loch said sadly.
Suddenly, there was a screech of brakes on the left bank and a cloud of dust as a vehicle skidded to a stop.
“Move it!” Zaidee yelled.
Loch, Sarah-even Wee Beastie-turned, surprised by Zaidee’s sudden arrival at the wheel of the jeep. “Way to go!” Loch shouted. They pushed their way through the rushing water to the cement slab that lined the bank. Sarah climbed onto a set of rungs, clutching the creature around his neck. Loch, struggling to keep his footing in the strong current, lifted Wee Beastie as high as he could, but it wasn’t enough. Zaidee jumped out of the jeep, ran to the edge, and reached to grab one of Wee Beastie’s fins.
The men running down the path were nearly upon them. The second jeep, with Randolph, was coming fast down the hill road.
Then, with one last effort from all of them, Wee Beastie was out of the grid. The three of them lifted him into the back of the jeep. Loch jumped behind the wheel and threw the jeep into gear while Sarah and Zaidee held on to the creature. Three of Randolph’s men came running from the grid path and tried to grab onto the jeep as it moved forward. Wee Beastie snapped his head back, then lunged forward, letting his awesome cluster of teeth snap out at them. The men screamed, pulling their arms away fast before they could be bitten off. The jeep gained speed, shooting forward through the last treacherous curves of the hillside before racing out onto the paved south road.
The pursuit jeep with Randolph had fallen behind, but the enormous helicopter swooped down quickly as though from nowhere, its shadow falling on them like that of a great, brown wasp.
10
SUNDOWN
The helicopter stayed low, practically on top of the speeding jeep as it hit an open stretch of the road. A gruff voice on the helicopter’s speakers blared down at them to stop. Finally, the road snaked under a cover of tall pines and birch.
“We’ll be lucky if we make it as far as the trailer,” Loch said. “Then we’ll be cornered.”
“The lake!” Zaidee cried out. “We’ve got to at least get him into the lake!”
The creature made its noises loud and clear. CLICK CLICK …
CLACK CLICK CLACK …
“What’s with him?” Sarah asked.
“He makes those noises whenever he thinks we’re going to leave him,” Zaidee explained. “He always wants to stay with us.”
CLICK CLACK …
By the time the pursuit jeep made the turn into the Perkins camp, Randolph had already radioed the helicopter to set down in the field near the duck pond. Six armed men were already marching toward the jeep parked at the edge of the lake. Loch, Sarah, and Zaidee stood next to it waiting for them.
“Hey,” Loch yelled at the men, “you’re trespassing!”
“Where is it?” Randolph demanded, striding up to check out the jeep.
“I told you it was only an otter,” Zaidee said, ticked off. “A mutant ninja otter.”
“We put it back in the lake,” Loch said.
“Search the grounds,” Randolph ordered his men. Half of the men spread out over the dock and lakefront, the other half moved to check the grounds and duck pond. Randolph singled Sarah out. “We know what it is. What did you do with it?”
“Where’s my father?” Sarah asked.
“He’s on his way,” Randolph said. He turned away from them, moving quickly to the trailer.
“Hey,” Loch yelled, “keep out of there!”
Randolph ignored him, drew his gun, and went into the trailer. By the time Loch went in after him, Randolph was already past the pile of junk on the living-room floor and moving down the narrow and dark back hallway. He saw a closed door and reached out for the knob.
“Hey, don’t open that,” Loch shouted. “That’s my room!”
Randolph opened the door fast.
“EEEEEEEEE!” Randolph screamed as the head of the hideous cryptid, its mouth gaping, came flying at him. He saw the faces of another dozen snarling monsters and began shooting. He had gotten off all six shots before he realized he had blasted half of Loch’s cryptozoo collection.
Loch threw up his hands in disgust. “You’re a geek!” he yelled at Randolph. “A grade-A, U.S. prime geek!”
Loch came out of the trailer as Dr. Sam and Cavenger pulled up in the Volvo. Dr. Sam had heard the gunshots. “What happened?”
Loch shrugged as he sat down on the trailer steps. “Randolph just assassinated my bedroom.”
Sunlight reflected from the back of Cavenger’s balding head as he strolled away from all the shouting and accusations. His small, deep-set eyes stared out toward the lake while Dr. Sam conducted the interrogation. Loch, Zaidee, and Sarah stuck to their story that they had been at the grid feeding an otter and hadn’t wanted Randolph and his men to shoot it.
“That was no otter,” Randolph kept repeating.
“It doesn’t matter,” Cavenger said finally. “Whatever it was, we’ll net it on tomorrow’s sweep.” He turned to Dr. Sam. “Let’s go. We have a lot of work to finish at the base.”
Cavenger put Sarah in the back of the Volvo and got into the front passenger seat. Dr. Sam got behind the wheel and started the engine. He rolled down the window for a parting shot at Randolph. “You stay off my property.”
“Your property?” Cavenger laughed. “I pay the rents around here.”
As usual, Dr. Sam said nothing. He just drove off.
Randolph and his men left right after Dr. Sam and Cavenger, leaving Loch and Zaidee alone at the camp. Zaidee walked out and sat on the rinky-dink dock at the spot where they had put Wee Beastie back into the lake. There was no sign of the creature anywhere. She started to cry. Loch walked over to her and sat down.
“Don’t, Zaidee,” Loch said. “We’re not going to give up.”
“They’re going to catch Wee Beastie tomorrow,” Zaidee said. “They’re going to kill him.”
“No,” Loch said. “There’s got to be something we can do. We have to t
hink of something …”
“Wee Beastie could still be right out there,” Zaidee said. “Maybe he didn’t swim very far.”
“He’ll be okay,” Loch said. “I’m sure he’s finding his mother.”
He hadn’t meant to say the word “mother.” It was a word they both tried to use as little as possible.
“They’ll trap them all tomorrow,” Zaidee wept. “Wee Beastie will be harpooned or shot or caught in those big metal nets and die.”
Loch stood and looked out past the shallows to the dark edge of the deep water. By now the shadows of the pines were thrust far out onto the lake as the sun began to drop behind the mountains. “You’re right,” he told Zaidee. “Wee Beastie could still be hanging around. I have to look for him.”
Zaidee stopped crying. “Are you going out in the boat?”
“No,” Loch said. He turned and climbed the slope to the U-Haul.
Zaidee ran after him. “I want to go with you,” she said.
“You can’t,” Loch said. “If I meet one of the big ones, we’ll … have problems.”
“Don’t go,” Zaidee pleaded. “The sun’s going down. It’s too dangerous.”
“I’ll be okay.” Loch opened the combination lock and threw open the heavy metal door of the truck. He jumped up inside and lifted the canvas cover from the Jet Ski. He moved the ski out onto the truck elevator platform and lowered it to the ground. Zaidee helped him push it to the lake.
“I’ve got to get something,” Zaidee said, heading up to the trailer while Loch fueled the Jet Ski from the boat’s reserve tank. By now the shadows from the mountains themselves began to march on the lake. Only the sky was afire with the stark reds and yellows of sunset.
Zaidee ran back down as Loch started the Jet Ski. “Here,” she said, thrusting the laptop at him. “This will let you know if he’s around.” Her voice dropped. “If anything’s around.”
“Great,” Loch said. He flipped the laptop open, turned it on, and strapped it onto the seat behind him. He’d have to twist around to look at it, but it was better than nothing.
