by Ike Hamill
Robby ran his finger along the metal railing, leaving a trail through the dew. With the exception of Sariah, all the trained scientists were down at the Outpost. That was an oversight. They didn’t have anyone to study the water that Carrie and the others had brought back from the north. Between them, Mike and Robby knew just enough to decide that the water seemed perfectly normal, even though it obviously wasn’t. The test equipment was geared toward a simple set of possible contaminants. Whatever had altered the water simply didn’t show up on those tests.
Crossing the lawn below, Robby recognized the person by his gait. Brad was on his way. Robby headed for the stairs, hoping to cut him off before Brad ruined himself trying to climb up to the third floor.
He caught Brad on the first landing.
“I’ll save you the trip,” Robby said. “It’s a long way to the top.”
“Thank you,” Brad said. He turned around and started to descend. “After yesterday, I’m afraid that I need a break from climbing. Somehow, riding in the car for hours is just as bad as hiking.”
Robby nodded. He followed Brad outside to where there was a bench at the side of the building.
“This reminds me of the bench behind your garage in Portland,” Brad said.
“Judy’s bench,” Robby said.
Brad nodded.
They sat down. The metal bench was still wet with dew. Robby trailed his fingers through it and then looked at the moisture on his fingers.
“How did it go last night?” Robby asked. “Did you find the mysterious dogs?”
“Yeah. We did. Still don’t know precisely how mysterious they are. Jackson thinks that the mother is mostly tame because she only drew a little blood when she bit him.”
Robby chuckled.
“Jackson thinks they can fly and Corinna thinks they can’t. They’re under close observation at Jackson’s compound right now. The mother has been reunited with her puppies and she was adjusting quickly when I left. Food and water helped to gain her trust pretty quickly.”
“Good,” Robby said.
“Any thoughts about the mysterious contaminant?”
Robby narrowed his eyes and rested his elbows on his knees.
“I’m still thinking. I would like to run some more experiments. I’m going to head over to Mike and Sariah’s after breakfast and see if I can enlist their help. There might be people who are more qualified, but everyone is sensitive to keeping the information somewhat private for the moment. You know how panic spreads around here.”
“Efficiently and perhaps appropriately?” Brad asked.
Robby laughed.
“It would be silly for us to ignore strange events. I think a certain amount of panic is completely warranted,” Brad said.
“Fair enough—you’re right. We should set a tight deadline on researching this whole thing and then announce to everyone what we’ve found. It’s not fair to keep people in the dark. Some are going to want to move away, and that’s their right.”
“And maybe not a bad course of action, but where would they move to?”
Robby shrugged.
Brad leaned back with a sigh.
“You’d think that eventually we would take the hint,” Brad said.
“Sorry?”
Brad shook his head. “Sometimes it seems obvious that mammals don’t belong on this planet anymore. We don’t thrive here and the world keeps trying to toss us off of its back.”
“Huh. I was almost thinking the opposite. The animals of the world suffered a great setback, sure, but life has been relatively easy since then. Resources are abundant. We don’t really lack for anything and keeping ourselves nourished only takes a small fraction of our effort. Compared to most of the history of the world, we have it easy. People need a certain amount of struggle in order to be happy. Maybe this whole mystery is simply something we’ve unconsciously constructed in order to challenge ourselves.”
“Wow,” Brad said. “That might be the weirdest thing you’ve ever said, and you’ve come out with some really bizarre things in the past. Wow.”
Robby chuckled again.
“Didn’t you say something about breakfast?”
Robby nodded. “Can you make it upstairs?”
“You have eggs?”
“Yup.”
“Then, yes.”
Once Brad warmed to the task, he wasn’t that slow climbing the stairs. Robby followed behind, ignoring Brad’s suggestion that he go around. They had plenty of resources, but doctors weren’t in abundance. At the top of the stairs, Robby gave Brad the cane and finally moved past so he could hold open the door.
In the borrowed apartment, Jim was already at work in the kitchen. He was making more noise and mess than food. Robby went to help him
“We should move up here,” Janelle said. “They get milk and eggs without having to drive far away.”
“At one point, we kept chickens,” Romie said. “They were more trouble than they were worth, if you ask me.”
“It was just bad luck,” Brad said. “Flu, or whatever.”
“Trouble,” Romie said.
“I remember the chickens,” Jim said. “They lived in the top of the garage on Sand Lane.”
“Because they made so much noise,” Romie said. “They’re supposed to crow in the morning, but they would start about three and then keep going until noon.”
She had nothing but bad things to say about the chickens, but she was the first one to take a big helping of scrambled eggs from the platter that Robby set in the middle of the table. Robby smiled.
Brad buttered his toast. “Maybe Janelle has a point. This bread smells fantastic.”
“We’re not moving again,” Romie said.
With everything on the table, Robby sat. Romie was finishing the last of her foul-smelling coffee and switched to water. Brad and Robby drank tea. The kids both had milk with their breakfast. For several minutes, there were no sounds except chewing and the silverware against plates. At home, they always ate dinner together, but breakfast was a solo activity. Everyone had a different schedule in the morning. Robby glanced around the table and thought that they should all sit down together for breakfast again once Lisa and Ashley were back. It would be a nice way to start the day.
“What’s your experiment?” Brad asked Robby.
“I want to bring one of their samples to water’s triple point. Maybe that will give us some insight into why it’s behaving irregularly.”
“What’s a triple point?” Janelle asked.
“That’s the temperature and pressure where water exists in all three phases—liquid, gas, and ice.”
“Water is always liquid,” Jim said.
“Yeah, well, technically,” Robby said, “but you get what I mean.”
Janelle glanced at her brother and then seemed to decide to ignore him. “How can it be all three at once?” she asked.
“Well,” Robby said, thinking. “You know that if you heat up water, it will boil, right? You can also make it boil by reducing the pressure. If you put a pot of water in a vacuum at room temperature, it will evaporate, or boil, just because there’s not enough pressure to keep it as a liquid.”
Brad pointed at Janelle with his toast. “That’s why water up here boils at a slightly lower temperature than at our house. There’s less pressure at a higher elevation.”
“I know that,” Janelle said. Brad made a face, sneering affectionately at her. She mimicked the gesture.
“Back to your question,” Robby said. “Below a certain temperature, you get ice, unless you increase the pressure enough to turn it back into water. There’s a spot, a certain temperature and pressure, where water could be any of the three—solid, liquid, or vapor. You can watch the water skin over with ice, and boil, and then condense back into liquid as it tries to find equilibrium.”
“And what’s the point of all that?” Romie asked.
“I’m looking for information,” Robby said, “and I really don’t know what to expect. Test
ing the triple point is a decent way to verify the purity of a substance. All of our other tests say that the water isn’t tainted.”
“So you’re on a fishing trip?” Romie asked.
Robby shrugged and nodded.
“Dad, you hate fishing,” Jim said.
Everyone paused and turned to him. Romie shook her head. Janelle laughed.
“What?” Jim asked.
“That’s not what she means by ‘fishing trip,’” Janelle said.
“And he doesn’t hate fishing, he hates boats,” Brad said.
“Still,” Jim said.
Janelle rolled her eyes.
Chapter 32: Ashley
Ashley had brought along some rope. It wasn’t enough to really make a difference, but it would have to do. She threaded it between the logs and then shifted her weight to keep going.
“Should we lift it out of the water at the next set of rocks?” Lisa asked. “Will that help?”
“I think I can manage,” Ashley said. “I think the reason the raft keeps trying to break up is because the vines get so fragile when they’re soaked through.”
“They were quick and easy to work with,” Lisa said, nodding. “We should have known that they wouldn’t be durable.”
Tim grunted. “It’s not going to matter for long.” He cast his line off the back of the raft again.
Ashley sighed.
“Please, don’t open that can of worms again,” Lisa said.
Ashley kept her mouth shut this time. She had argued with Tim for hours over which part of the satellite imagery they were on. There was evidence pointing to both theories—Ashley could admit that—but there was one bend that couldn’t be explained with Tim’s notion of their location. Eventually, Lisa had made them stop. Her point was that it didn’t matter. Either way, they were going downriver and they would eventually meet a big, open stretch. When they met that stretch, they could decide who was right and who was wrong.
That was assuming, of course, that they could successfully get to that stretch. Before the open area, when the river widened into a huge lake, the line of water seemed to disappear entirely on the imagery. The only reasonable explanation was that their waterway narrowed into a line so small that it was invisible on the pictures. Assuming that was true, the river likely came to a tight canyon and that would mean powerful rapids.
Tim thought they would get to the canyon that same day. Ashley was pretty sure that it would take several more days of travel before they reached it. Lisa told them both to shut up and wait.
Ashley fed the rope around the log on the end and pulled it tight. The logs drew together and the raft immediately felt more stable. She tied the end in a knot that she could still untie if the rope swelled. Moving to the side of the raft first, she dangled her legs over the edge in the cool water. Even in purple shade, the sun was beginning to feel hot.
“Hey!” Tim said.
They heard the click as Tim fought the fishing reel. Ashley glanced toward the rear of the raft, tenting her hand over her eyes to shield them from the purple glow above. She assumed that he had just snagged the line again. It was a giant pain whenever he snagged. They would either lose another hook, or they would have to keep the raft steady with poles while he worked the hook free.
“This is something,” he said. “Something is on the line.”
“Ashley,” Lisa said. “Feet up.”
Ashley barely heard Lisa. She was too focused on Tim’s pole. As he pulled back, the pole was practically bent in half. It wasn’t a steady pull though. Whatever he had hooked on, it was tugging and then letting up. The tip also jogged from side to side.
“Ashley! Feet up!” Lisa shouted. She was moving toward Tim. Ashley saw a knife flash in Lisa’s hand.
“What?” Ashley asked.
Something bumped against the side of Ashley’s foot. It wasn’t like she had brushed a rock or a submerged log, the bump had come from upstream. Whatever had touched her foot, it was moving faster with the current than the raft was.
Penny barked.
“Lookout, Tim,” Lisa said. She reached around Tim, leaning toward his fishing pole with her knife extended.
“No! What are you doing?”
Everything dawned on Ashley at once. She jerked her feet up from the water and they weren’t the only things that breached the surface. Following her feet, leaping up from the depths, a green and gray monster flew. Ashley rolled onto her back, pulling her feet into her chest. The fish snapped its jaws three quick times before it hit the deck. As soon as it landed, the thing flopped and squirted back into the river.
“Tim! Let me cut it,” Lisa said.
“Why?” he shouted.
He pulled the rod to his left and Lisa anticipated the move. Her blade was already there, ready to clip the line. When she did, she and Tim both collapsed backwards. Penny barked again.
“Shh!” Ashley said.
Lisa shushed the dog at the same time.
“What’s wrong with you?” Tim asked. “That thing could have…”
Lisa pressed her finger to her lips and Tim finally got the message. He silenced himself and then raised his shoulders in an unspoken question.
Lisa held out a finger to tell him to hold on for a minute.
Ashley looked back to the river on her side of the raft, where her feet had been. She saw a ripple in the surface and it took a moment for her to see beyond the illusion. It wasn’t the surface of rippling water, it was the dappled back of an enormous fish. The thing was perfectly camouflaged to blend in with the surface of the dark water.
The fishing pole was limp in Tim’s hand. The tip hung just above the surface of the water. Ashley turned to warn the others of the giant fish. Before the words could leave her mouth, another fish breached. It leapt from the water and clamped flashing teeth down on the end of Tim’s pole.
Chapter 33: Brad
Brad slid down from the seat of Mike’s truck. Before he shut the door, he reached in and took the keys from the ignition, dropping them in the cup holder. Satisfied, now that the thing quit beeping at him, he shut the door carefully. They had learned the night before that the mother dog didn’t like loud noises.
The walkway up to the door was lined with flowers. Amy Lynne and Jackson had collected bulbs from everywhere to plant in their yard. Jackson still kept the display maintained, probably hoping for a reunion at some point in the future. Brad remembered a bird that he had seen on TV one time. The males would create elaborate displays in the hopes of luring in a mate. Jackson had already gotten his mate, but she had left him. They had been together too long and seen too much to stay together—that was Jackson’s version of it. Brad wondered if there was more to the story. Perhaps there was something that Jackson was trying to atone for with his meticulous work on the flowerbed.
He tapped his fingernail on the kitchen window before he let himself in.
Jackson was sitting at a small table. Corinna was curled up on the bench of the breakfast nook on the far side of the room.
When he saw Brad come in, Jackson waved him over.
“What am I looking at?” Brad asked. The monitor in front of Jackson showed the corner of an empty room.
“She moved the whole whelping box from his corner. It’s almost like she knew where the camera was pointed,” Jackson said, giving Brad a strange smile. “You can just see her leg here, and this is the shadow of her. She hasn’t moved in a while. I think she’s taking a break from nursing.”
“Where’s her food?”
“All the way over there,” Jackson said, pointing at the other side of the screen. “She moved that too. The pups and the food are on opposite sides. I believe she has been doing her business in the other corner that we can’t see. I’m telling you, she is crafty about staying out of sight.”
“So, nothing unusual yet?”
“She has barely moved. Hard to say.”
“Huh.”
Brad pulled out a chair so he could sit too. On the screen, the shad
ow of the dog shifted. She might have heard the scrape of his chair, or even felt it through the floor.
“And how are the puppies?” Brad asked.
“Six look fine. One looks a little dopey. I think that maybe it didn’t do so well in the trip. Corinna wanted to go get Dr. Matthew, but I told her that we would have to wait to talk to you first.”
“Good. You’re right. I don’t think we should bring in anyone else until we know what’s going on. If there’s any chance that there’s something contagious happening here, we have to limit exposure.”
Jackson nodded.
“Will she bite you again if you go in there?” Brad asked.
“Probably. We usually give the dogs a few days to get used to the smell of us. Plus, after a while, they realize that we’re the ones bringing food. I don’t think I’ll go in there until…”
“We don’t have time, Jackson. If there’s something strange about that animal, we have to know sooner rather than later. We need to provoke her again and see what happens.”
“I have the suit. Merle found one of those dog training suits on one of his trips. We thought that if we ever ran into a rabid dog or wolf, we might need it. I’m afraid it would scare her though. Probably take twice as long to tame her if we scare her now.”
“Get the suit.”
Jackson was covered from head to toe in a padded tan material. His face had a metal cage of thin bars protecting him from her teeth. Brad opened the door to let him in and then quickly closed it again.
When Brad sat down in front of the monitor, Corinna stirred and then crossed the room.
“What’s going on?”
“We’re trying to see what happens when the mother dog feels threatened.”
The first thing that Jackson did was move the camera. He put it in a different location so it pointed at the whelping box.
“Don’t do that,” Corinna said. “After the stress of last night, that dog needs her rest.”
“We need to know.”
“Hey!” Corinna yelled. “Jackson! Get out of there. Leave her alone.”
“Corinna, please,” Brad said.