by Hunter Shea
Campos felt like he hadn’t slept in weeks. The harsh glare of the sun stabbed his eyes and hammered the inside of his skull.
One of the pair turned to him. His name was Dr. Greene but he didn’t look like a doctor. He had a Cary Grant air about him, tall with dark hair and a vibe of always being the calm within the storm. “And you haven’t had any calls or sightings since daybreak?”
“No, nothing. I have my guys out patrolling every street, looking in every crevice they can find.”
He was going to have to call the night and graveyard shifts in a few hours. They’d been dead on their feet and in need of a few hours’ rest. He hoped they got enough to get them through the night. These fucking things were like vampires, descending on the town at night and fleeing from the sun to some secret hiding place.
“It’s best if you closed all of the beaches. We’ll be happy to write up the warning. We could say the bacteria levels in the water are too high for safe swimming.” This from the younger of the two, a redhead who made a pantsuit look pretty damn sexy. Campos struggled to remember her name.
He rubbed at his temple and said, “That’ll work for the sound waters, Dr. . . . Ling, but not the Atlantic side.”
“We could use the hypodermic-needle scare,” Dr. Greene suggested.
“Wouldn’t it seem suspicious to have two warnings at the same time?”
Dr. Greene gazed into the distance. “We’re not concerned about suspicion, Sergeant. For now, we need to keep people away from the beaches. We have a team at the East Hampton hospital now, quarantining the victims. Suspicion will be high and rumors will fly, especially in a close-knit community like this. We can deal with that later. Have everyone debriefed before they go out so they take the proper precautions. I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”
Greene held out his hand and Campos reluctantly shook it. The two doctors walked to their sedan and pulled out of the lot.
He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and called Adelle. She answered on the first ring.
“Adelle, I need you to pack a couple of bags, get in the car and drive to your sister’s house.”
She laughed, thinking he was joking. “I don’t think I’m going to drive all the way to Cape May today. I just put a load of laundry in and we have dinner with Linda and George tonight.”
Campos breathed heavily into the phone, wanting to yell but knowing that wouldn’t make things any easier. “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. Honey, I love you, and I need you to do exactly what I said.”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence. “Dennis, what’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure. But I can’t do anything effectively if I don’t know you’re safe. You need to be off the island before it gets dark.”
Dalton had been asleep for only a couple of hours when Meredith knocked on the door. “Are you decent?”
He had to lift the covers and look to be sure. When she had offered a bed to crash in, he had been too exhausted to protest. He didn’t even remember how he had gotten in the room.
“It depends on how you define decent,” he replied. His throat felt as dry as the sand at Coopers Beach.
She came in wearing a formfitting, black jogging suit and carrying a glass of orange juice. “I would have brought you breakfast in bed but that costs extra. Plus, it’s a pain in the ass to balance a tray with this damn crutch.” She smiled and sat on the edge of the bed. Her smile snuck right inside him, planting the seed of an ache to take her in his arms. He’d thought about getting this close to her many times, but never in the manner in which it actually happened. Reconciling his fantasy with their reality was difficult first thing in the morning when dreams and desires were just seconds from feeling as real as the warmth of the sun.
He took the glass and downed the juice like it was a shot at the bar.
“Jesus, I was thirsty. Did you sleep?” he said, pushing himself up. His uniform was draped over a rocking chair by the window. Did I do that? he thought. No, he wasn’t that neat. He wondered what Meredith saw while he snored.
“I got my catnap in. I’ve told you, I don’t sleep much. Besides, some very interesting things have been happening while you dreamt about bikini babes at car washes.”
He was about to defend his dreaming honor when she slapped his leg and snorted. It was a very unladylike laugh, which made it all the more endearing.
Dalton heard the low murmur of a television coming from downstairs. “I bet the news is buzzing right now.”
“That’s the interesting part,” she said. “There isn’t a thing on the tube or the radio about last night. Not even the local news is covering it.”
“How is that even possible? Those guys are up our asses when we pull someone over for speeding.”
“If you ask me, someone’s come in and put the lid on everything. But there is one little tidbit of news every station is hooked on. All of the beaches on eastern Long Island are closed because of, get this, high levels of bacteria in the water.”
Dalton shifted and said, “I’ll feel more comfortable if I have some clothes on. Do you mind closing your eyes for a second?”
“And here I thought all this time you wanted me to see you in your birthday suit.” She closed her eyes and put her hand over them.
He jumped out of the bed and slipped into his pants and shirt. “Not before we’ve at least had dinner. You can open your eyes now.” She pulled her hand away, fishing in her pocket for her phone. “Closing the beaches isn’t abnormal. Happens all the time. This is New York, the sludge capital of the United States. Well, other than Philly. I guess that’s why it’s a perfect excuse.”
Meredith said, “Exactly. And no one is questioning why they’re closing the sound and the ocean at the same time. I don’t remember that ever happening. Check this out.”
He took her phone. It was open to her Twitter account. She’d pulled up everything under the Montauk hashtag. The screen was loaded with short bursts of people talking about the odd events of last night. They covered everything from the animal attacks to Officer Henderson’s disappearance, people in protective suits collecting dead animals and some kind of lockdown at the hospital.
“It’s the same with Facebook,” she said.
Dalton scrolled through the sometimes-frightening messages. “You can’t stop social media. Just ask Egypt.” He opened some photo links to see pictures of mauled cats and dogs. “You said you think you know where these animals are coming from.”
“I’m not the one who originally came up with the idea, but I’ve looked into it a lot and it makes sense,” she said.
She pulled herself up with the aid of her crutch and started to make the bed. Dalton grabbed the sheets on the other side and helped. As she tucked everything in, she said, “You ever hear of Plum Island?”
He did his best to mimic her bed-making skills, knowing he was failing miserably. “No. Sounds like a place you land on in Candy Land. I play that game all the time with my niece.”
“I’ll forgive you that. You’re not from around here, so there’s no reason you’d know. Hell, I bet a good number of island lifers don’t even know it’s there. Read this.” She typed onto her phone’s screen and gave it back to him, this time with the Wikipedia entry on the island. It was pretty sparse and only took a minute to read through.
“Okay, it’s an island where the government studies animal diseases. You think these things live on Plum Island? That wouldn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. Anyone working there would have seen and reported them a long time ago.”
Meredith plumped up the pillows and placed them on the bed.
“They don’t live there,” she said. “They’re made there.”
Meredith stared at him expectantly. His thumb swiped over the screen. He took a long time to read through the several web pages he’d searched. “Well, this place definitely has the conspiracy guys jumping. It says they think that Lyme disease and the West Nile virus both escaped from there on the back of bugs or
workers who weren’t decontaminated properly. I admit, that’s some pretty serious shit if it’s true and it’s crazy to think they got away with it without even a slap on the wrist. But it seems a little farfetched that no one’s caught on to them. This is major stuff, Meredith.”
She took a deep, calming breath. He’d come this far. She didn’t want to lose him now. But things weren’t going to get easier to digest. The little three-mile-long island wasn’t even listed on most maps. Since it had been purchased by the government in the ’50s to house their animal disease research labs, it was as if they had wished it away—the great and powerful Oz hidden behind a curtain of secrecy. “I know. Look, I don’t believe everything I read on both sides of the issue, but there’s enough smoke there to know there’s a fire burning.”
Dalton paced around the room, handing her phone back. The doubt in his face suddenly changed and he sat down in the rocker, resting his elbows on his knees. “Those people on the beach, Margie Salvatore,” he mumbled. He sat straight. His eyes looked panicked. “Dammit, Anita. I have to call the hospital.”
Meredith thought of Anita. She was one of the sweetest women she’d ever met. When Meredith had gotten in her accident, Anita was one of the first people to come see her in the hospital. Over the next grueling fourteen months, she had baked Meredith more brownies and cookies than she could eat in two lifetimes.
She had forgotten that Anita had been bitten, right in front of Dalton. Her heart sank as Dalton dialed his own phone, his jaw tightening as he listened to the hospital rep deliver what appeared to be very grim news.
CHAPTER 20
It was surreal seeing the beach devoid of sunbathers and swimming kids on a hot summer day. Instead, the sand was dotted with dark-clothed men and women, all of them searching the last known location of Officer Norm Henderson.
Jake Winn went back to the spot where whatever had dragged his friend had broken through the brush and first entered the beach. The trail was as deep and fresh as if it had just happened moments ago. What looked like hoofprints from some kind of large pig tapered along the edges of the heavily indented drag mark.
I know some pig didn’t take him. Not even the biggest son of a bitch wild boar from Africa. So what the hell are these prints doing here?
Bits of semi-dried plaster sprinkled a few of the more defined prints. Casts had been made hours earlier. Winn wondered who on God’s green earth they would call in to look at them. Last he heard, Anita Banks was in the hospital. What they needed was someone with more brains than hair follicles to tell them how it was possible that some giant pig snatched a full-grown man, outrunning the most fit kid on the force in the process. That was a mystery for Stephen Fucking King.
He wasn’t close to giving up on Norm. But the more he looked at what was left behind, the less sense his brain could make of it all. And that only made him angrier.
You need to rest, gain some perspective, the rational part of his mind cried out amidst the jumble of scenarios and frantic questions.
That wasn’t going to happen.
He spied a pile of white and gray feathers rippling in the wind. A seagull lay in a bloody heap, its lower half missing. In its place was a pool of congealed, black goo. What the hell happened to you?
The back of his neck felt like someone had taken a hot poker to it. He rubbed it with his hand, feeling the heat of a whopper of a sunburn. Walking back toward the shoreline, his face was pelted with cold, salty spray. It felt good. If no one else had been around, he’d have considered walking right into the ocean, clothes and all. The frigid jolt might spark something in his mind. At the least, it would chase any exhaustion off.
A gaggle of indiscernible voices was carried to him on the Atlantic breeze. He turned to his right and saw a group of searchers running to someone standing by a dune, waving his arms. Winn bolted.
He pushed through the crowd of a dozen or so people to see what the commotion was about. A volunteer fireman, Mark something, pointed at a spot by his feet. “It has to be his,” he said to no one and everyone.
Winn knelt down, careful not to obliterate any nearby prints.
A shredded section of a blue shirt lay against the hot sand. A badge was still pinned to the scrap. Small indentations pockmarked the badge, as if someone had hammered a chisel into it—or something with powerful jaws had gnawed on it. The bottom edge of the badge was crusted with blood, already dried from the unimpeded sun.
Jake read the badge and felt his chest tighten.
“It’s Henderson’s,” he said. “Everyone back the hell up. I want to preserve whatever I can. If anyone contaminates the scene, you’ll answer to me.”
Everyone cautiously took several steps back. Winn knew his eyes were on fire. The heat from his sunburned skin couldn’t compare to the inferno that had been stoked in his belly.
He spotted a smudged hoofprint going up and away from the cloth and badge. Looking back at one of the county cops, he said, “You watch over this. I’m going to see where this leads.”
His hand strayed to the butt of his gun. As he tracked his prey, he hoped to Jesus it was dumb enough to stick around and cross his path.
Dalton paled as someone at the hospital talked. He muttered a quick thank-you and shoved the phone in his pocket.
“She’s dead.”
“That’s not possible,” Meredith said. “You said she was bitten on the arm. Even if it had rabies, she’d be okay.”
“They said not to come to the hospital. Her body was put in quarantine. They asked me not to tell anyone else for now. What the hell does that mean?”
Meredith limped down the hall. She grabbed her keys off her dresser and rummaged through her night table drawer for her battered little address book. Dalton stood in the doorway with a distant look in his eyes.
Flipping through the red book’s pages, she said, “You want to get to the bottom of this before we’re locked out?”
“Locked out? By who?”
Meredith rolled her eyes. “I keep forgetting you’re a rookie. If they’ve quarantined the hospital and closed the beaches, the higher-ups are aware of what’s going on. This town is going to be crawling with feds by tonight. We’ll be reduced to traffic control. This is where I grew up. I joined the force to protect my town, my friends and family. I’m not going to let someone sweep this under the rug.”
Dalton breathed heavily, as if he were working himself up to her challenge.
He shocked her by saying, “I killed her.” His lips were pulled back hard against his teeth and his eyes closed to tiny slits.
“No, you didn’t. Whatever that thing is out there killed her.”
Punching the wall, he hissed, “I had the damn thing dead to rights. I couldn’t pull the trigger. If I’d shot it, she would never have been bitten. It’s completely my fault.”
Meredith didn’t know him well enough to judge how he’d react to any words of reassurance. Guilt could swallow a person whole, especially a guy like Dalton. It was pointless to try and convince him that he wasn’t the reason Anita had died. That would have to come over time, if ever. For now, the best thing she could do was give him a purpose to funnel his emotions.
“You want to find the fuckers that started this?” she asked.
He stopped clenching his fists, staring at her with a glimmer of hope. “Right now, that’s all I want.”
“Good.” She tapped a number into her phone. “I have an ex who works for Homeland Security. They run Plum Island now. He also captains the ferry from Orient Point to the island. I’m calling in every favor he owes me to get us out there.”
Dominic Nathan and Bobby Gilligan had been thick as thieves since preschool. Both towheaded boys of short stature but larger-than-life dispositions, they were throwbacks to another era. Now at the ripe old age often, they avoided staying indoors to play video games. Why waste time shooting things when adventure was just outside your door every day? Together, they’d explored every swamp, creek, rocky bluff, empty lot and abandoned hou
se in the three-mile area around their neighborhood.
Bobby had left his parents arguing in the kitchen, walking into Dom’s house, where his friend’s mother laid out a plate of pancakes and bacon for him. The two boys made quick work of breakfast, anxious to be outside. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Bobby wore only his swim trunks and a sleeveless Captain America T-shirt. Dom was just as ready for the water, only his shirt sported Batman. The differences in opinion over comic book greatness—Bobby was a Marvel man, Dom DC to his core—was their only point of contention, one they’d stopped arguing about a long time ago. Neither was going to convince the other to come to the dark side.
Dom’s mother dutifully took them to the comic book shop every two weeks, a weatherworn storefront lit by forty-watt bulbs and smelling of decades of mildew, but bursting with the colorful pages of comics spanning over five decades. They were the only patrons under the age of thirty-five, more proof that they were born too late.
“Can we go to the comic book store today?” Dom asked his mom as she rinsed the dishes before placing them in the dishwasher.
“I was just going to ask you if you wanted me to take you two this morning. Your dad left twenty dollars so you can stock up.”
Bobby looked over at Dom, puzzled. On a good day, they might have ten bucks between them, and that was money socked away from allowance. Dom’s father never laid out so much cash for them. Something had to be up.
“Is it your birthday or something?” Bobby asked, dreaming of the Avengers, Fantastic Four and Deadpool.
Dom shrugged his shoulders, equally bewildered.
His mother solved the mystery. “The beaches have been closed off today. We thought it would be a good idea if you stayed inside. If you want, you can even rent a movie on demand.”
The boys felt the wind go out of their sails. Getting a bunch of comics was great, but not at the expense of being trapped in the house. The only place to properly read a new comic book was either out by the big rock behind the Kelleher house or backed up against a sand dune at the beach. Anyplace else lessened the magic.
