Chupacabra

by Smith, Roland

  Grace

  She read over the email a couple of times, thinking she should say more, but there wasn’t time. With the attached video it would take several minutes to send.

  If Noah comes while it’s uploading …

  She hit the SEND button.

  To avoid staring at the file’s painfully slow progress, she double clicked the surveillance folder. It was divided into geographical subfolders. South America … North America … Africa … She clicked on North America. The screen filled with dozens of video thumbnails, some of which were blank, as if the cameras had been shut down for the night. She clicked on the Mountain Lion Holding camera. The thumbnail enlarged, showing three of the tawny-colored cats sleeping on an elevated platform. There were controls beneath the video. She played with them and found she could zoom in and out, move up and down, and pan left and right. There was even an audio button. She turned the volume up, but the cats were silent.

  She switched to the Mansion cameras and clicked on a thumbnail called Grace Bedroom. To her relief it was too dark to make out any details even when she zoomed in on the bed where she was supposed to be sleeping. She turned up the volume to maximum and was able to pick up ambient room noise. If someone were talking, Noah would be able to hear it loud and clear. It was good to know, but she had a strong premonition that she would never be setting foot in that bedroom again.

  She quickly checked through the cameras on the mansion’s first and second floors, relieved to see no one was there.

  She checked on the email to Marty. Frustratingly, it was only about halfway through being sent. She turned her attention back to the surveillance videos and discovered a folder called Archived Videos. She opened it and found a subfolder with her name on it.

  If she’d had any doubts that her grandfather was watching her every move, they were gone now. He had video of her from the moment she’d stepped out of the helicopter days earlier to when she climbed into bed that evening, and everything in between.

  But not everything after. He doesn’t have me sneaking into the secret passage, or climbing up the elevator shaft.

  There were videos of her playing with the panda cubs; feeding the hatchlings; shoveling elephant poop with the elephant keepers; walking around the Ark with her shadows, Butch and Yvonne; and hours of video of her in her room with that ridiculous, blissful smile on her face, which she had to admit looked relatively genuine, and nothing like Grace O’Hara….

  Or Grace Wolfe, or whoever I really am. All I know is that the smiling girl in the video is not really me.

  Watching herself, she couldn’t help but feel a certain amount of pride in how she’d been able to pull this off. Prior to falling into the Congo with Marty and discovering who she really was, she would have never tried such a deceit.

  The email program finally made the swishing noise indicating the email had been sent. She trashed the email and scanned the computer for other files she might want to send. That’s when she saw a folder marked Luther.

  It can’t be …

  She opened the folder and clicked on the video clip, which was time-stamped for that very day. Grace had known Luther Smyth most of her life, and the gangly skinhead paying his money at the entrance to the Ark could not possibly be him. Luther would never shave his oddly colored hair. It was like his own personal national flag.

  He’s a country unto himself with a population of one.

  As she watched the kid make a beeline for the nearest concession stand, totally ignoring the animals along the way … she started to change her mind. Where he was going, and how he was moving, was very Luther Smyth–like. The video of him at the concession stand was much clearer. She slowed down the video and her heart leaped up into her throat. She had watched Luther consume junk food a thousand times. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but the skinhead boy eating the double cheeseburger in two gigantic bites could only be one person. Luther Smyth IV.

  And Noah Blackwood knows he’s here.

  It looked like Noah had videoed every step and bite of food Luther had taken from the moment he came through the gate. She fast-forwarded through the video, pausing when Luther was near other people, and scanning the faces around him. She didn’t see Marty, but she knew he had to be in the Ark, too. Luther and Marty were inseparable.

  The cameras followed Luther into the Amazon River exhibit, where he swallowed a hot dog while he watched a gigantic anaconda swallow a rabbit. If she’d had any lingering doubt that it was Luther, the doubt was gone now. None of the other peds watching the snake had the stomach to eat.

  Luther fished his cell phone out of his sock with his hot dog– less hand, put it to his ear, smiled, then looked at something above his head. The smile was replaced by a look of alarm, then terror. He was talking, but there was no audio in the exhibit.

  He has to be talking to Marty. Where is he? What’s Marty telling him?

  Whatever it was had scared Luther. His eyes went wide and it looked like he was going to faint as he slipped the phone back into his sock. A second later he bolted out of the exhibit, causing a minor riot as he pushed his way through the startled snake watchers. The cameras followed him outside, where a burly security guard was waiting. Luther tried to get around him, but the guard was faster than he looked. He grabbed him around the waist and pulled him down. A glowering Butch McCall came into view. He jerked Luther to his feet, then he and the guard marched him down the path away from the crowd.

  Butch had a short conversation with the guard. The guard shrugged and walked away, leaving them alone.

  Grace glanced at the time stamp. This had all happened as Noah was walking her back to the mansion, which explained the strange exchange she’d overheard with Butch and Noah in the keeper area.

  Luther was yelling at Butch, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying. Butch looked like a grizzly bear contemplating homicide. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a syringe, wrapped his arm around Luther’s skinny neck, and plunged the needle into Luther’s arm. Luther went limp almost immediately. Grace’s eyes flew open in shock as an elevator popped out of the ground from nowhere. Butch threw Luther over his shoulder and stepped inside. A few seconds later the door opened again. Butch dumped Luther into the back of a golf cart and drove down the same corridor she’d been in with Noah that afternoon. He stopped outside a door marked 222, set Luther on the floor inside, then left, locking the door behind him.

  The video ended. She stared at the blank screen for a full minute, trying to calm herself and piece together what was going on.

  Marty was in the Ark. She was convinced of that now. And he had somehow eluded Ark security. Noah’s night sweep had nothing to do with homeless people or pests. Although a lot of people consider Marty a pest of the first order.

  The sweep was all about Marty. So was the sudden trip to Paris. Noah wanted her and the hatchlings out of there. He didn’t want her, or the dinosaurs, anywhere near Marty, or anyone else from Cryptos Island.

  She rewound the video to the place where Luther got the cell phone call and played it back, pausing it when he looked up and grinned. She couldn’t see what he was looking at, but she knew what it was.

  The dragonspy. Which means Marty has seen what I just saw.

  She hoped he had called Wolfe, or the police, but knowing Marty, she doubted he had called anyone. The boy she once believed was her twin brother wasn’t big on asking for help even when he needed it.

  She reached into her pack, opened a cleverly concealed pocket inside, and pulled out the dragonspy Luther had flown to her aboard the Coelacanth. She hadn’t even looked at it since she had arrived at the Ark. Without light, the solar batteries had gone dead, and without a Gizmo, there was no way to fly it, but as soon as it charged up they would be able to track her. They would know where she was. She laid the little bot on the desk beneath the light, wondering how long it would take for it to come to life. While she waited for it to charge, she began searching through the live video feeds for Noah Blackwood and Butch McCall.<
br />
  If I’m going to help Marty and Luther out of the Ark, I need to know where Noah and Butch are and what they’re doing. I need to know if Luther is still in Lab 222. I need to know where Marty is. I need to get off the third floor. I need to …

  She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths, having learned that panic destroys all hope of useful thought.

  Marty’s and Luther’s lives are at risk. My life is at risk, or it will be soon. The one thing I need to do right now, above all else, is to think. No more mistakes.

  When Grace opened her eyes, the panic was gone, but the sense of urgency was still there. She thought about her reasons for coming to the Ark. The first reason had been to stop Butch McCall from killing Laurel Lee.

  Mission accomplished.

  As far as she knew, Laurel and everyone else who had been aboard the Coelacanth were alive and well.

  Her second reason for coming to the Ark was to find out about her mother, Rose Blackwood.

  Mission definitely not accomplished.

  She’d discovered virtually nothing about her mother. She stared at Noah’s computer screen and realized the answers might be in one of the thousands of files on his hard drive. But there wasn’t time to look.

  She selected several folders and dragged them into another email to Marty.

  Subject: This is not from Noah Blackwood #2

  From: nbPhd@ark.org

  To: marty@ewolfe.com

  Marty,

  Again DO NOT REPLY to this. Attached are a bunch of files from NB’s computer. I have no idea what they are because I don’t have time to look at them right now. I just saw a video of Luther’s abduction. I assume you’re in the Ark someplace as well and I hope you haven’t been taken, too. Luther is in Lab 222. It’s on the second level beneath the Ark. I’ll be heading that way soon to see what I can do about getting him out. Blackwood is looking for you. You need to get out of the Ark as quickly as you can. Don’t worry about Luther. I’ll find him. LEAVE THE ARK NOW!

  Grace

  She hit the SEND button. While she waited for the files to load, she continued her video search for Noah Blackwood and Butch McCall. There were hundreds of cameras, but the thumbnail feature made it easy to scan for people because of Noah’s rule of emptying the Ark at night. It was likely that anyone she saw would be in on Luther’s abduction and the search for Marty. At least she hoped they were still searching for Marty and hadn’t caught him. Better yet, she hoped he had already left the Ark and was miles away, although she knew this was highly unlikely. He would never leave the Ark without Luther.

  She clicked the thumbnail for Lab 251. The hatchlings were asleep, as was Yvonne on a cot not ten feet away from the snoring, farting duo. She was about to move on to another thumbnail when Yvonne started to stir and opened her eyes. A moment later, Noah Blackwood came into view. Grace turned up the audio.

  “Sorry to wake you,” Noah said, not looking at all sorry.

  Yvonne sat up. “No problem. What’s up?”

  “Marty O’Hara and Luther Smyth are here.”

  “Where?”

  “We’re not exactly sure. I think Marty’s up top. Luther is in the ductwork.”

  Yvonne looked up at the ceiling and frowned. Grace smiled.

  “We’ve locked the Ark down,” Noah continued. “So there’s no place for them to go. The problem is that Luther is taking out our surveillance cameras one by one.”

  That explained why some of the cameras weren’t working. Grace almost cheered. It was so Luther. She could just picture him pulling himself along, wreaking havoc for what Butch did to him.

  “We need to flush him out,” Yvonne said.

  “We’ll get to that in a minute.” Noah looked over at the hatchlings, seemingly unaffected by the terrible odor Grace knew was there. “How are they doing?”

  “I did a complete blood panel this morning and everything appeared to be normal.”

  “Since they are the only two in existence, we have nothing to compare ‘normal’ to,” Noah pointed out. “Normal unto themselves, then,” Yvonne said. “There have been no changes since they arrived. Their appetites are good. They are alert when they are awake and almost comatose when they are asleep. Their behavior is consistent and predictable.”

  “Can they be trained?”

  “Any animal with a food drive like theirs can be trained. But at this point they’re food stupid. When they’re hungry, which is basically any time their eyes are open, a starvation panic mode sets in. We may want to separate them to see if the competition is contributing to the panic. I suspect it is. I can’t start any training until we get rid of their codependence and imprinting on each other. I think —”

  “I understand the theory,” Noah said impatiently, cutting her off.

  Grace had spent a good deal of time in her grandfather’s library reading about developmental behavior in animals, and she could not have disagreed more with Yvonne. The hatchlings were only a few weeks old.

  In spite of their size, they’re just babies, Grace thought. Yvonne wasn’t in the Mokélé-mbembé nest in the Congo. She didn’t see the dead mother with the vultures feeding on her. It was more of a lair than a nest … a secret nursery carved in the jungle thousands of years before and occupied by generations of Mokélé-mbembé. From the layers of bones covering the lair, it was obvious that Mokélémbembé carried its kills back to the nest to be eaten. The hatchlings were not separated at feeding time.

  “You’re the trainer,” Noah continued. “And we will have a perfect opportunity tomorrow to begin the separation.”

  “Another lab?” Yvonne asked.

  “Another country,” Noah answered. “I’m flying them to Paris in the morning. After tonight, I have a feeling that our current location is going to become too hot for our sleeping friends here. Which brings me to the real purpose of my visit. I need your help getting Luther out of the ventilation system before he completely blinds us.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Noah glanced over at the hatchlings. “How long will they be asleep?”

  “Unless they’re disturbed, several hours. Maybe a little longer this time of night.”

  “It shouldn’t take that long,” Noah said. “I want you to put CH-9 in the ventilation system and get that kid out of there.”

  “I have limited control over Nine. I can’t guarantee Luther’s safety.”

  “I’m not concerned about what happens to Luther Smyth,” Noah said angrily. “If he dies, he dies. As soon as he’s taken care of, we’ll send CH-9 after Marty O’Hara.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Yvonne said with a smile. “I’ll just grab my gea — ”

  The camera went dead.

  Luther! Grace thought, staring at the abruptly blank screen. Bad timing! She could just imagine him crouched inside the Ark’s underground ventilation system, gleefully yanking out cables and cords. But Noah’s last words terrified her. What kind of weapon was CH-9?

  Grace got out of the surveillance program and quickly scanned the desktop. She found the folder marked CH-9, clicked it open, and stifled a scream. A video of a snarling, vicious animal appeared on the screen. It was lunging at the camera with its long white fangs snapping. Its fierce malevolent eyes glowed like red-hot coals. She fumbled with the track pad, and after several attempts managed to shut the video down. The terrible image was replaced with several folders marked Chupacabra.

  She’d heard the name before, but couldn’t remember where.

  She opened Noah’s search engine and typed in the name. Hundreds of links appeared. She clicked on the top one.

  The Chupacabra or Chupacabras (Spanish pronunciation: [t∫upa′kaβra], from chupar, “to suck,” and cabra, “goat,” literally “goat sucker”) is a legendary cryptid rumored to inhabit parts of the Americas. It is associated more recently with sightings of an allegedly unknown animal in Puerto Rico (where these sightings were first reported), Mexico, and the United States, especially in the latter’s Latin Ameri
can communities. The name comes from the animal’s reported habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, particularly goats.

  Physical descriptions of the creature vary. Eyewitness sightings have been claimed as early as 1995 in Puerto Rico, and have since been reported as far north as Maine and as far south as Chile, even being spotted outside the Americas in countries like Russia and the Philippines. It is supposedly a heavy creature, the size of a small bear, with a row of spines reaching from the neck to the base of the tail.

  Sightings of the Chupacabra have been disregarded as uncorroborated or lacking evidence, with most reports in northern Mexico and the southern United States being verified as canids afflicted by mange. Biologists and wildlife management officials view the chupacabra as a contemporary legend.

  The description triggered Grace’s memory: She had first heard about the chupacabra in the same conversation she’d overheard between Wolfe and Laurel Lee back on Cryptos Island. Wolfe had told Laurel that he suspected Blackwood was not only fattening up animals for his private collection, he was genetically engineering animals to put on exhibit….

  “I wouldn’t put it past him to make a chupacabra in his lab, let it go for a while to build the myth, then recapture it and put it on display in one of his Arks … ,” Wolfe had said.

  Wolfe had also expressed concern that Blackwood was going to clone Mokélé-mbembé so he could have them on display in all of his Arks.

  The chupacabra is no longer a legend, Grace realized with a shudder. Noah Blackwood has made one. Or maybe more than one …

  She opened a couple of the chupacabra files. It looked like CH-9 was the ninth version of the beast.