“I regret the death of the young photographer, but anyone who leaks any information about the incident will no longer be employed by this company,” Cavenger said that night, moving for as much containment at the base as possible. “Within three or four days we’ll be properly equipped to capture one of the beasts. Bonus incentives will be posted so each of you will enthusiastically complete your work on this expedition.” Those who hadn’t known Cavenger well realized by the end of the meeting that his physical frailty masked-from the unsuspecting-his complete ruthlessness.
Loch couldn’t sleep that night. He lay awake with images of the monster crashing up from the water, its massive jaws and teeth hurtling down upon the catamaran. The ultimate moment of horror, Erdon being torn to pieces, played over and over in his mind. Loch couldn’t think of a death more horrible. No one deserved to die like that. No one.
“Noooo … nooooo …” Zaidee cried out in her sleep.
Zaidee had made sounds when she dreamed for as long as Loch could remember. The year before, when their mother had died, Zaidee had gone through a sleepwalking phase. He would hear a noise and wake up to see Zaidee standing at his doorway, uttering strange words, as though speaking in tongues, not knowing where she was. Dr. Sam had told him never to wake her in the middle of a sleepwalk, just to put his arm around her and guide her back to her bed.
Loch got up in the dark, made his way past the clutter of cryptids, and went to Zaidee’s room. He knelt down by her sleeping bag. When she cried out again, he shook her.
“Hey, it’s a dream,” Loch said, “a dream.”
Zaidee flung her eyes open and stared at her brother. “I wasn’t having a dream,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “I was having a nightmare … the worst nightmare in the world with a lot of bats landing on my face … and they were all trying to drink out of my mouth … and do other horrible things …”
“That wasn’t nice of them, was it?” Loch said softly. He put his hand gently on her forehead. He remembered his mother used to do that when Zaidee had had a bad dream. “Zaidee,” he said gently, “you saw what happened to Erdon. Maybe you want to sit up and talk about it. Sometimes it’s better to talk about things. …”
Zaidee pulled the blanket up to her shoulders and turned over. “Lots of sauce on that pizza … a lot of sauce …” she muttered, and was asleep again.
At breakfast, Dr. Sam gave each of his kids a hug. His only way to deal with what had happened on the lake was to push the images down deep, to bury them until he had time to deal with the tremendous rush of guilt he had felt over the attack on the lake. He had tried to raise Loch and Zaidee to be brave and not afraid of life, but he had never meant to put either of them in danger. He had lost his wife. If he lost Loch or Zaidee, he knew it would be more than he could survive.
“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,
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.
