Loch and Zaidee looked to the east corridor of the lake once the search fleet had passed. Finally, they saw a lone boat cutting through the water toward them. As it neared, they saw Sarah waving to them from behind the wheel of an old fishing skiff.
“See,” Loch told Zaidee, “she comes through.”
“I still don’t trust her,” Zaidee said through her teeth. “Besides, it’s just a dumpy old fishing boat.”
“I think you should stay at the camp,” Loch said.
“No way.” Zaidee made a face.
“Zaidee,” Loch said, “it really would be safer.”
“Look,” Zaidee said. “You can depend on me. I’m not going to let you risk your life with some daddy’s little girl with no guts. She won’t be there for you when you need her. She doesn’t even like fish.”
“You’ll have nightmares.”
“Wee Beastie needs me!” Zaidee stamped her foot.
Sarah threw the boat into neutral as she neared the dock. She let the momentum and wind glide the boat in. Loch grabbed the front tie rope while Zaidee jumped aboard.
“The boat’s not very fast,” Sarah apologized, “but at least it’s bigger than your boat.”
Loch recognized the skiff as he boarded and pushed off. “It was in the first day’s search.”
“Right. They dropped it out when they got the PT,” Sarah said. “I had to take this or a twenty-seven-foot Seasprite with a leak.”
Loch swung around into the open cabin and took over the wheel. He shifted into reverse. The dual propellers churned the water behind them, drawing the boat backward and away from the dock. At the edge of the black water, he shifted into forward and brought the boat around and headed across the lake.
“Where are we going?” Sarah asked.
“The logging camp.”
“Why?”
Loch knew he had to warn them. “I found the caretaker’s head last night,” he said. “You don’t want to know about that, but something’s spilling the logs out of the pond there.”
“You found Jesse Sanderson’s head?” Zaidee said, her eyes wide. “Oh, puke.”
“I’ll give you the grisly details later. How fast does this baby go?” Loch asked.
“You saw me,” Sarah said.
Loch threw the throttle full open. The motor roared, settling the rear of the skiff deeper into the water. It threw out an enormous wake and lifted the bow above the horizon line.
“It’s doing ten, maybe twelve knots,” Loch called over the noise. “That’s not too bad.”
“Glad you like it,” Sarah said. She moved closer to him, putting her arm around his waist.
Zaidee gagged. “Oh, that’s cute.”
“How would you know what’s cute?” Sarah asked.
Zaidee stuck her tongue out and sat on the side bench. She started checking out the equipment on board. There was a coil of old rope, rusted trolling gear, and a half dozen tar-covered life vests in a center storage chest. She rummaged through the life vests, picked out the cleanest one, and put it on, tying the strings in front into neat bows. She moved forward to get a better look at the electronic equipment. There was a gaping hole in the center where the sonar equipment had been pulled out, but an old tuner protruded from the right of the control panel.
“At least they left the radio,” Zaidee said.
Loch stayed on a course straight across the lake. He wanted to spend as little time as possible traveling in the deepest water, and at ten knots he figured no creature would have the time or the inclination to take a bead on them. If there was one thing he really believed about the beasts, it was that they wouldn’t attack unless they thought someone was going to harm them.
“Careful in the shallows,” Sarah said as the boat approached the north shore.
“Right,” Loch said, circling wide to the left, then straightening the skiff out to run parallel along the deep-water line.
The three of them looked in awe at the huge wall of thick, tall pines that rose from the rocks of the north shore. The late-morning sun wasn’t high enough yet in the sky to light the mammoth trees of the north bank. Farther up the shallows disappeared altogether, blending into a great blackness of water. From here the massive scars the logging mill had inflicted on the mountains could be glimpsed on the highest ridges.
Sarah pointed, shouting above the din of the motor: “There’s the mill.”
Zaidee was on her feet now, watching the approach to the boathouse with its long wooden dock. The mill itself was a long rectangle of corrugated tin, with an entire wall of windows overlooking the lake. It was cantilevered on jutting supports that thrust the building high out over the water. An elevated sluice emerged from one end of the building like the tracks of a roller coaster.
Zaidee felt a chill. “Jeez, it looks spooky.”
“If Wee Beastie’s anywhere, it’s around here,” Loch said.
At the base of the mill was the holding pond, its surface covered with enormous, moldering logs left over from when the mill had closed.
Loch took the boat in closer, checking the levee between the log pond and the lake. “That’s where all the logs have been drifting out from,” Loch said, pointing to a break in the levee. He shifted the boat into neutral, letting it glide toward the dock. Sarah took the wheel as Loch ran out on the bow and jumped onto the dock with the front tie rope. A second later Sarah jumped onto the dock and secured the rear tie.
“You stay with the boat,” Loch told Zaidee.
“I don’t want to,” Zaidee complained.
“Just until Sarah and I check something out,” Loch said. He reached over and smoothed Zaidee’s hair, which, thanks to the wind, was standing up like the bristles of a brush. She looked at him pleadingly. “But you can depend on me. You need me. …”
“We’ll be right back,” Loch told her. “I promise.”
Zaidee watched her brother and Sarah head down the dock toward the boathouse. “Five minutes!” she called after him. “Please find Wee Beastie!” Then she remembered the skiff’s radio. She’d play with that awhile.
“It’s a nice little boathouse,” Sarah said, looking up at the picture window on the second floor. “It’s like the dwarfs’ cottage in ‘Snow White,’ she added. “My mom made Dad buy a new place in Switzerland. She hangs out there full-time now. It’s got the same kind of boathouse, but with six boat slips underneath and a couple of heavy-duty racing boats. You’ve got to come over.”
“Sometime when your father’s not there,” Loch said, checking the water on both sides of the dock.
“Exactly,” Sarah said.
Closer, they saw the door to the boathouse had been left open. It swung gently in the breeze.
“Hello! Anybody here?” Loch called out. He knew Jesse wouldn’t be showing up, but maybe he had some kind of family or friends.
Walking inside the boathouse, Loch and Sarah saw a small outboard and a canoe bobbing in their slips. “Anybody here?” Loch called again, his voice reverberating between the water and the second floor.
“Nobody’s here,” Sarah said.
They started up the steps to the living quarters. At the top of the stairs they heard a TV playing. Loch knocked on the door. There was no answer.
“This place is deserted,” Loch said, reaching out turning the doorknob. The door was unlocked and they went in.
“Who’d go out on the lake and leave their TV on?” Sarah asked. “Unless you think the caretaker got it right here, of course.”
“No,” Loch said.
Sarah sat in the armchair in front of the TV. She grabbed the remote and started flipping through the channels. Loch went to the picture window to check on Zaidee. He had a clear view of her with a pair of earphones on her head in the boat at the end of the dock. She saw him and gave a big wave.
It was then that Loch noticed the motion of the water in front of the boathouse. It was as if a wave were forming, a slow surging of water heading into the open boat slips below. Loch shut the TV off.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Sarah asked.
Loch put a finger to his lips. “Shhhhhh,” he whispered. “Something’s here.”
The small boathouse began to vibrate, and the blood drained from Sarah’s face. She had felt that motion before on the catamaran with Erdon. …
In black-rubber dive suits and scuba gear, Dr. Sam and Randolph climbed down the stern ladder to the rear swim platform of the yacht. Randolph steadied himself and motioned a crew member to pass down a speargun armed with an explosive head. He asked Dr. Sam to hold the speargun while he finished adjusting his equipment.
“Make sure Emilio signals us if anything comes back on the sonar,” Randolph called up to the deck.
Cavenger’s head peered down at him from the top railing. “You’re wasting time. Get in the water and fix the damn thing!”
Randolph put his mask and mouthpiece in place and rolled off the platform into the water. When he surfaced, Dr. Sam carefully placed the speargun in his hands. He waited until Randolph was good and clear, then put his own mask and mouthpiece in place. He turned on the dive lamp mounted on his back, then followed Randolph into the murky water.
Below the surface, Dr. Sam kicked his flippers to trail Randolph down the side of the hull. The powerful arc light bounced off the chalk-white paint of the ship’s hull, giving them a visibility of nearly twenty feet. Clusters of peat particles rushed at his mask, and the aerator in his mouth turned his breathing into a pronounced wheezing. He felt unsure, all systems of his body on alert as if he were diving in shark waters.
Randolph reached the propeller first. Dr. Sam swam to his side, grasping the propeller-shaft cowling so he could hold the light steady. The edges of the prop were chipped, but this was nothing that would have stopped the ship. Randolph put the safety binding on the speargun, leaving both hands free. He moved his fingers to the base of the prop and signaled Dr. Sam to bring the light around. He set a grip plier onto a thick rod that looked like a large hairpin. The rod slid right out.
“Cotter pin’s sheared,” Randolph said, his voice distorted, bubbling through the water to Dr. Sam’s ears.
Dr. Sam nodded that he understood, took a new pin from his waist kit, and handed it to Randolph. It slid in easily, and Randolph used the pliers to bend the ends of the pin and lock it into place.
“That’s it,” Randolph said.
Suddenly, both men became aware of a movement to the port side of the ship’s underbelly. At first Dr. Sam thought it was some type of parallax effect from the arc light reflecting off their air tanks.
“Let’s get out of here,” Dr. Sam said, giving a thumbs-up signal.
Randolph signaled him to wait. He unclipped the speargun and swam in the direction of the movement. There was another movement, this one to the starboard, followed by a glimpse of a small black body hurtling itself into the light field, then disappearing.
Dr. Sam signaled Randolph again that he was going up. He had started away from the center beam when he heard a high-pitched cry like that of a small land animal or seabird. Randolph began backing toward Dr. Sam, as two more small creatures darted in and out at the edge of the light beam. The only frame of reference Dr. Sam had for such animal behavior was on the few occasions he had swum with very young seals and penguins.
“Come on,” Dr. Sam said.
“Wait,” Randolph insisted.
Another of the little creatures came fast by Randolph, then scooted quickly to disappear out into the blackness again. Randolph got a good look at it this time and knew it was smaller than the creature that had been with the kids when he and his men had chased them in the grid. It was younger, maybe only days old. His mind began to spin with the possibilities of how Cavenger would reward him if he could bring the carcass of one up to The Revelation.
“By God, I’ll go up without you,” Dr. Sam threatened, reaching out to Randolph’s shoulder to turn him.
“No,” Randolph said.
If there was one thought creeping into Dr. Sam’s head, it was the realization that there was a family of plesiosaurs in the lake, maybe as many as eight or ten, including the young ones.
The creatures’ cries grew more piercing, excited now. Randolph shook off Dr. Sam’s hand and raised his speargun.
“No,” Dr. Sam yelled, the air of his shout bursting out to block the view beyond his mask. When the bubbles cleared he saw a few of the creatures flying at them, each on a slightly different trajectory like atomic particles in a cloud chamber.
Randolph let loose the spear.
The spear sped forward beyond the light before it struck something. The explosion from its tip was small, a slight shock wave of sound and light.
Dr. Sam thought about hitting Randolph, about putting his arm around his neck and physically dragging him up to the surface.
The cries stopped.
Randolph smiled at Dr. Sam. Then he signaled that he was swimming forward under the hull to retrieve the specimen. Randolph got only a few yards before the cries returned, this time in a rush that was earsplitting. There was only a moment to be aware of the painful, angry sounds, before five of the small creatures flew straight at Randolph. They hurtled themselves at him like missiles, their cartilage-rimmed mouths opening to reveal the gums of their jaws and their oversized, needlelike teeth. Like a school of piranha they struck Randolph’s body, first tearing away dozens of small pieces of his rubber suit and then, finally, his flesh.
Dr. Sam started to swim toward Randolph to drag him away from the creatures. But the wounds were too deep now. Blood streamed out into the water as if from punctures in a large, struggling doll. Finally, as the creatures pulled their attacker down, deeper, away from the light, one of Randolph’s arms was bitten free of his body.
The last Dr. Sam saw of Randolph was the halo of creatures surrounding his head like a scarlet wreath as they plunged him into darkness.
The vibrations from beneath the boathouse grew stronger. Sarah froze in the armchair, looking to Loch to see what their next move would be. They heard Zaidee calling to them from the end of the dock.
From the picture window Loch saw her still wearing the radio earphones in the boat. She was waving at him. “Hey! Something’s happened on The Revelation! I can hear what they’re radioing,” she shouted.
Loch wanted to cry out to Zaidee, to warn her—but he didn’t dare make a sound. Somehow he felt the creatures would know she meant them no harm.
“Dad’s quit!” Zaidee shouted happily. “Cavenger wants him off the boat immediately. I think a helicopter’s lifting him back to the base. …”
Zaidee’s voice suddenly cracked and she went silent. Loch watched her lift her hand and point toward the boat slips beneath him. She was seeing something he couldn’t. All at once Sarah’s and Loch’s eyes opened in terror as the monstrous head of the Rogue lifted into view, filling the frame of the window. The massive yellow eyes of the beast fixed upon them behind the glass.
Sarah screamed as the shadow fell over her.
“Don’t move!” Loch told her, but she was out of control. She leaped up from the chair. Her hand reached out, and she grabbed a heavy ashtray from the table.
“No!” Loch shouted, rushing toward her—but it was too late.
Sarah hurled the ashtray toward the Rogue.
CRASH.
The picture window exploded. The Rogue shook his head, startled by the attack. He let out a loud, shrieking blast from his nostrils, slime splattering across the living room as he thrust his head forward.
The head and neck of a second beast, its snout thinner, coarser, ripped up through the center of the floor, blocking the door through which they had entered. Loch spotted another door, one off the kitchen. He grabbed Sarah’s hand.
“Go!” Loch yelled, pushing Sarah ahead of him.
In a moment they were out the door, running up the stairs of a breezeway. They burst through yet another door into a huge, empty warehouse with high, vaulted ceilings of corrugated tin.
“Where are we?” Sarah cried out, her heart pounding in her chest.
Loch looked at the cluster of machinery and huge blades at the far end of the building. “I think it’s the cutting room,” he said.
CRASH. The entire building shook.
Loch remembered the building was cantilevered out over the lake. “The creatures are hitting the supports.”
There was another, stronger impact near the breezeway, this time with the sound of metal twisting, beams cracking.
“Come on,” Loch yelled, grabbing Sarah’s hand and running for the far end of the building. Daylight streamed in through the cracks of what looked like a barn door past the huge sawing machinery. They swung the doors open, only to see a narrow walkway onto the elevated log sluice.
CRASH. The entire building trembled, began to dip downward, shattering the wall of windows. The only way out was onto the sluice.
“I hate heights!” Sarah shouted to Loch as he led her out and along the rickety gully. On both sides of the sluice was a fifty-foot drop.
There was another shock to the building, and a wall of logs on the mountain began to waken.
Loch looked back as the sound of the low, frightening rumble began to grow. There was a rush of water onto the sluice, and one by one logs dropped into the flow. The first log hurtled toward them.
“We’re going to have to jump into the log pond,” Loch said.
“I’m not jumping anywhere,” Sarah yelled.
“Get ready!” Loch warned, holding her hand firmly.
“I’m not jumping.”
“Yes, you are!”
Loch leaped, taking Sarah with him. They dropped down, down into the slim wedge of open water at the rim of the log pond, and surfaced quickly. For a moment they thought they were safe, but there came a rumbling noise from above.
“Oh, my God!” Sarah cried, as they looked up to see the sluice breaking and a log hurtling down at them. It fell with all the speed and force of a huge battering ram. Loch grabbed Sarah, set his feet against a pylon, and pushed them both away. The falling log crashed into the water next to them, a single untrimmed branch tearing across Loch’s shoulder like a whip.
“You’re bleeding,” Sarah gasped as they pulled themselves up onto the nearest floating log.
“It’s nothing,” Loch said, standing. Beyond the levee of the log pond, he saw, Zaidee was at the wheel of the skiff.
“Come on!” Zaidee yelled.
Loch waved to Zaidee and helped Sarah to her feet.
“Where are the monsters?” Sarah called to Zaidee across the landscape of logs.
“They were heading for you!” Zaidee yelled back.
Sarah’s eyes dropped. She saw the logs at the edge of the pond begin rising and falling.
“Let’s go,” Loch said, leaping forward onto the next log in the jam.
WHOOSH. A large plesiosaur rose out of the water behind Sarah. Its neck pulled back, its mouth opened wide. Sarah leaped toward Loch.
“Keep moving!” Loch ordered Sarah, pushing her on to the next log. By the time the creature lunged, they were running on top of the logs for all they were worth. Its teeth snapped at air; then it slid back beneath the surface.
“Hurry!” Zaidee screamed to them, nudging the bow of the skiff against the bank.
Suddenly, the log beneath Sarah started to lift up into the air. She fell across it and hung on as it balanced crazily on the massive head of a beast. The beast’s left front flipper crashed out of the water, slapping on top of another log to give it leverage. Loch ran straight for the creature as it raised its snout and thrust its lower bed of teeth forward. The rotting log with Sarah on it began to slide off the beast’s head. Loch tore off a branch and smashed it against the creature’s fin. The beast snapped at Loch, its teeth locking on the branch, cracking it into specks. The sudden motion set the creature off balance, and its fin slipped from the log. As the beast’s own weight pulled it back under, Loch grabbed Sarah and ran forward with her across the final stretch of logs to the bank of the levee and the awaiting boat.
Zaidee was ready at the controls.
“I take it all back,” Zaidee told Sarah as she helped her onto the boat. “You do have guts.”
“Thanks,” Sarah said, collapsing into the boat. “You have guts, too.”