***
The homeless camp was less than half-mile from the lake. Henry had already asked himself if the lake beast was the same monster that had terrorized the camp. He was afraid it was. Either way, moving those people was a good idea, especially if there was something prowling the lake area.
But the camp people weren’t the only ones in the line of danger. It depended on how far afield the creature could roam from its lair. Rim Village and the park’s main campground were two miles from the caldera. Not that far. Most of the people, over two-hundred, who worked in the park lived in the Rim Village dormitories. Good Lord. Henry prayed the mysterious predator stayed near the water. Only what they discovered at the camp and time would tell.
Henry, George, Matthew Kiley and another ranger, Peter Gillian, arrived a short while later at the camp. It was early but the place was alive with activity. Henry could hear someone crying.
A rag-tag collection of children spotted them and came running.
“We need to talk to Mrs. Jane Morrison,” Henry told the children. A small boy dressed in oversized clothes stepped forward. Henry noticed that though his clothes were threadbare, they were clean. A baseball was clutched in one grimy hand. A baseball cap sat cockeyed on his head.
“That’s my mom. I’m Stevie Morrison. She’s in our tent with Nikki and Mona, my sisters. I’ll show ya.”
“All right, son,” Henry said. “You lead, we’ll follow.”
“A monster ate my dad,” the kid blurted out so matter-of-factly he could have been reciting baseball scores.
Henry glanced sideways at George. The man’s face was stone.
They followed the boy to a tarp-covered tent tucked between other tents; some small, some larger. Some appeared to be homemade and some were store bought. The one they found themselves in front of was made of different sized taped patches, old canvas peeking through. All different colored tape. Must leak when it rained.
Henry had driven past the camp many times since they’d set up weeks ago, but, though he’d meant to, he hadn’t had the time to stop. There were many campers scattered throughout the park. Maybe the camp reminded him too much of the homeless back in the streets and empty lots of New York. Like a rampant disease, homelessness had spread over the last few decades until it had even encroached into the park. At least a camp ground was better than living in a cardboard box on the sidewalks of New York.
George Redcrow apparently had visited the camp many times. People waved at him as they strode by. The Morrison boy seemed to know and trust him.
Standing before the tent, Henry caught, out of the corner of his eye, George handing the boy and his friends packages of Twinkies taken from a brown paper bag, and he smiled. Soft-hearted George. He should have had kids of his own. He had a way with them.
The boy scooted through the entrance flap and into the tent.
There was no place to knock, so Henry called out, “Mrs. Morrison, can we speak to you about your missing husband and his friend?”
From inside a woman’s voice, between coughs, responded, “Come on in.”
Inside it was gloomy. The green canvas filtered the sunlight into a greenish twilight and the space smelled of mud and damp. Henry hadn’t ever seen anything like it. There was a folding table with a couple of rickety chairs surrounding it, covered with the basic necessities needed for tent life: boxes of cereal, cans of evaporated milk, paper cups and plates, lanterns and paper towels. Stacked to the right of the food were scuffed and lidded Tupperware bowls full of heaven-knew-what. Bundles of clothes and stacks of canned goods were piled around the sides of the tent. The wooden poles propping up the center had nails in them from which hung jackets, sweaters, and more lanterns. There were sleeping bags rolled up and stacked in a corner with blankets and pillows on top. The tent’s floor was a layer of scuffed plastic.
Henry and George exchanged somber looks. Henry had seen poverty before, but there, in the middle of the forest beauty, it was somehow worse than the usual dilapidated town shacks.
“About time someone came out.” The woman was seated at the table. She had long drab hair pulled into a ponytail; wore faded blue jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. Possessing plain features and wet eyes full of misery, she cradled a child in her lap whose face was pressed against her chest. Another skinny blond-headed girl, about ten years old or so, in an oversized black sweatshirt, hid behind them. In the darkened tent, the girl’s eyes reminded Henry of a deer’s glimpsed at the forest edge at night from his porch. The boy, Stevie, plunked down in a lawn chair to their right.
“Mrs. Morrison,” Henry spoke, “I’m Chief Park Ranger Henry Shore and these are three of my men, Ranger Redcrow, Ranger Kiley and Ranger Gillian.” Gillian hung back at the entrance, aware how cramped the inside was. “We’re here to see if there’s anything we can do to help find your husband. Do you think there’s something suspicious with his disappearance; maybe a crime’s been committed?”
“Well, could be there’s been a crime committed,” she retorted hotly. “But I’m afraid you’re going to have a hard time arresting the perpetrator. My Nikki here,” she patted the girl in her arms on the head, “says it was some king of monster as tall as the trees. Something similar to a…dinosaur. She’s an expert on them, loves them. Used to love them anyway. She says it ate her daddy, my husband, as well as our friend, Gregory.” Her voice was chilling.
As the woman talked, it occurred to Henry she was educated. It was the way she met his eyes and phrased her thoughts. Her looks and circumstances were deceiving. Henry wondered what her story was.
“Can the child speak to us?” Henry stepped forward and bent down on one knee so he was at the same level as the girl.
“You can try. She wouldn’t say much yesterday after it happened. It really scared her, but she’s doing better now. Nikki, sweetie?” The woman hugged the child gently. “Can you speak to the ranger here? He won’t hurt you.” As if other men in uniform in other places might have. Perhaps, they’d been pushed on from one place to another by uniforms. No one wanted homeless people squatting in their manicured towns.
The child mumbled something, but she didn’t come out of hiding.
The woman fought off another coughing fit, then cajoled, “Nikki, please, for Momma. It’s important. What you have to say to this gentleman might help someone else.”
“Okay, Momma,” a tiny voice whispered, and the child turned to look at them. She wasn’t pretty. Her hair wasn’t shiny. Yet there was something so knowing, so resigned, in her melancholy eyes Henry knew she’d left childhood long behind.
He offered a friendly smile, but the child refused to return it. “Your name’s Nikki, right?” He laid a hand on her shoulder in a fatherly gesture. She nodded. “Nikki, I know this is hard for you. For your mom, sister and brother, too. But we need your help. You saw something yesterday evening out in the woods, when you followed after your dad. What was it?”
“I saw a…monster,” the girl stuttered. She bent her head upwards to an impossibly steep angle and pointed straight up. “Bigger than this tent, bigger than a mountain. It made lots of noise in the woods while we were trying to eat supper, growling and stuff. So Daddy and Mr. Black went to see what it was. I wanted to see, too, so I followed ’em. Even though Daddy told me not to. I’m not a ’fraidy cat like my brother thinks,” she huffed proudly before her eyes turned fearful. “But the monster scared me real bad.” Clutching her mother tightly, shaking her head, the words stopped.
“Nikki,” Henry encouraged, “what happened then?”
“The monster came and ate my daddy and Mr. Black. Picked them up like raggedy-dolls. Daddy was screaming…and…and…I ran away fast as I could. I’m so scared, Momma, I’m so scared it’s going to come and get me, too. I want to leave. Leave now. Momma. Please?” She was reduced to whimpering, as she retreated into a safer place, her eyes going empty. Reliving her father’s death had been too much for her.
“Nikki?” Henry was anxious to get the answers to
a few last questions.
“That’s enough,” her mother interrupted firmly, drawing the child deeper into her arms. “She didn’t see anything else, Ranger. Didn’t see where the monster went, can’t describe it any better than she has. She’s only a child. She raced back here, terrified it was going to come after her next. There, you know everything she does. Now leave her alone. She’s sick with it all and hasn’t slept a wink since.”
Henry straightened up, frowning. His thoughts touched on his granddaughter, Phoebe, and he didn’t have the heart to interrogate the child any more.
In a lower voice he asked, “Mrs. Morrison, does Nikki ever invent stories? I mean, is she an overly imaginative child?”
Anger glittered in the woman’s eyes. “What you mean is, does Nikki lie? Did she make up this monster?”
“Sometimes children make up stories. They don’t think of them as lies.” Henry attempted to soften his meaning. It didn’t work.
“No, Nikki doesn’t make up stories and she doesn’t lie.” The woman released a sigh. “She’s an honest child. If she says something happened, it happened. And she’s a smart child. She’s seen pictures of dinosaurs in books and on TV and she knows what they look like. So if she swears some kind of dinosaur-monster ate her daddy, that’s probably pretty close to the truth, no matter how outrageous it sounds.” Leveling eyes at him, she went on, “My husband and Greg aren’t coming back. They’re both dead. There’s a bunch of the men out looking for them now, but they won’t find anything, except maybe left behind pieces. It’s a waste of time. So, Chief Ranger, listen to me. You’d be better off trying to find some way to track and kill that thing, than looking for two dead men.”
She lowered her mouth into her hand and coughed. Stared at the blood with dull eyes and wiped it on her sleeve. The little girl was crying again, muffled sobs of anguish.
Sympathy for the woman’s plight stabbed Henry. He didn’t know what to say in reply to her advice. He saw the pain she and her daughter were in, and that she wasn’t well. Her husband was missing. Conceivably dead. Being homeless was bad enough but being a sick homeless widow with three kids was even worse. He pitied her and her children.
The thing was, Henry believed the child. He’d seen the creature. He would have liked the girl to show them where it had happened, but thought better of it. Obviously, the child wasn’t in any condition to go anywhere, or show anyone anything.
They were on their own.
“That’s all we need from you and the girl, Ma’am, for now. If I think of anything else, I’ll be back and you can tell me then. Thank you for your help. Thank you, too, Nikki.” He reached out and patted the small head.
The woman remained silent in response, rocking her child in her arms protectively, her eyes closed, as the men exited the tent.
On the way out, Henry had caught George slipping a wad of money to the woman. “For you and the young ones. Go see a doctor for that cough, too,” he’d told her, “and have him send me the bill.”
Henry felt bad. He didn’t have any extra money on him to give. He and Ann lived close to the bone these days, but they had a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. With luck Ann’s newspaper story would raise money for the camp people. He’d have to be sure to ask her about its progress when he got home. Later he’d ask George what else he could do to help the camp’s residents. There had to be something.
“Let’s scout behind here in the woods,” Henry ordered, once he and his men were outside. “If something as big as what Nikki says the creature was has rampaged through here, we’re sure to see signs of it easily enough.” He still couldn’t admit out loud to the others that what they were searching for was really a monster. The word itself made him cringe. His men respected him and he didn’t want to risk losing that.
Morrison’s boy trailed them outside. “I can show you the direction my dad and the other man went last night, if you want me to. I saw them go this way.” His finger gestured to their left.
“Lead on, son,” George said. The boy took the Indian ranger’s hand and led the men past the tents towards the woods and Crater Lake.
“That way, through there.” The boy stopped at the fringe of the forest, refusing to go any further. “Walk straight between those two trees and keep going, then all you have to do is follow the path of smashed trees and stuff. Can’t miss it.”
George thanked him and the boy trotted back to camp, baseball clutched in a dirty hand, arm swinging.
“So, what are we waiting for?” Henry stormed into the bush, the others behind him.
The men worked their way through the sparse woods in the direction the boy had indicated. They saw a great swath of damaged, torn aside trees and trampled down foliage before them as if a giant scythe had cut through the woods.
“Good god,” George exclaimed. “Looks like something pretty big crashed through here. Look at this, will you?”
Henry’s expression was glum as they followed the obvious route. George was walking carefully along the path of destruction, examining the ground when he knelt down. “Look at this,” he whispered over his shoulder as the others caught up with him. Twisting his upper body, George held a hand up. It was covered in dark crimson.
Henry’s voice was soft. “Blood.”
“And lots of it.”
“You’re right. Blood’s all over around here.” Ranger Kiley bent down and picked up a piece of a bloodied shirt.
Henry inspected the nearby area, trying not to let his panic show. It was one thing to imagine that thing swimming around in the lake, playing tag with and attacking boats. People could stay off the water and remain safe. But it was another thing altogether to accept it was actually foraging out into the park hunting for human hors d'oeuvres.
Stalking through the bushes, past Redcrow, Kiley and Gillian, Henry prayed he wouldn’t find a dead body; that what he feared the most wouldn’t come to pass.
What he found was just as bad. A large chunk of chewed-up flesh, gnawed by flies, lay on the ground in front of him. He pushed at it with his shoe. The flies scattered in a hundred directions before they re-landed. Henry backed away.
Ranger Gillian hunkered above the grisly find, studying it, hand over his mouth, a sickened expression on his face. He uncovered his mouth long enough to ask, “Animal or human?” He was a bookish man, with a weak stomach. A fairly new recruit, he’d only been a park ranger for two years.
“I’m afraid it’s human.” In his years as a cop Henry had seen plenty of human remains in various stages of decomposition. He’d recognize a human body part anywhere.
George agreed. He was staring at the carcass, too, with thoughtful eyes. As a hunter and ex-marine, dead flesh didn’t bother him. It was what had done this that did. “Whatever tore this guy up had god awful big teeth,” he concluded. “See these grooves in the flesh. We’re talking one heck of a carnivore.”
Kiley had nothing to say. He lifted his hat and wiped off his sweating face with the handkerchief he kept in his pocket. Kiley had been a ranger for longer than Henry had, but he’d never seen anything like what he was seeing now. And Henry could tell it upset him.
“Over there.” Henry pointed a couple of feet beyond their discovery. “There’s another piece of him, or his friend. Appears to be a leg.”
Kiley and Gillain both looked sick.
The rangers didn’t stay much longer, didn’t follow the trail as far as they could have. It wouldn’t have served any purpose. Henry would have bet a month’s pay that it ended somewhere on the edge of the lake, probably in Cleetwood Cove. He didn’t need to check that out, he was sure of it. And so was George.
“Let’s get busy, men,” Henry said. “I’m going to rope off this area as a crime scene. I don’t want anyone else stumbling upon these remains. While I do that, Kiley, go back to the car and radio headquarters to send someone out here to tag and bag these body parts for forensics and the coroner in Medford. Leave a message for the Superintendent of what we’ve found. Te
ll him I have to talk to him. Real soon.”
Kiley left.
George volunteered to scout a little more around the area for other remains and Henry let him. But he didn’t find anything else. The remainder of the two men had vanished. Not even another shoe was located.
Henry stooped down, and drawing out a hunting knife from his duty-belt, he cut away a section of the cloth covering what was left of the human leg; dropped the scrap and the piece of bloodied shirt in a plastic bag supplied by Gillian.
“Show these to Mrs. Morrison, Gillian, and see if she recognizes either one as something her husband or his friend might have been wearing.” Henry met the other man’s eyes. “Break the news to her gently, would you? Don’t frighten them more than they already are. If these are Morrison or Black’s remains, give her my condolences and tell her I’ll be talking to her soon. Also alert the people in the camp we’re going to move them out to another location. Today. Tell them to start packing it up. I’ll be sending more rangers out with vehicles to help relocate them. I want them out of here by nightfall. Take them to the outskirts of the Last Creek Campground and resettle them there. I don’t care if the other campers bellyache about it. I’ll take the heat. I want the camp residents where I can keep an eye on them, protect them, if need be. Then hustle back to headquarters. I’ll meet you there later to give you further instructions.”
Gillain nodded, and tramped briskly back the way they’d come as if he couldn’t wait to escape the scene.
Henry wrapped yellow plastic warning tape around the nearby trees, connecting them in a closed uneven shape.
When George returned, Henry was looking out through the trees with a frown on his face. “I’m going to recommend to the Park Service we close the park for a while. All of it. Until we know exactly what we’re facing.”
“Not just the lake?”
“Yep, all of it.”
“Sounds like a brilliant idea to me,” George replied. “I support the decision. But they’re going to fight it. Sorrelson will go ballistic. He doesn’t even want you to close the lake area. It’s high visitor season, remember?”
“Then I’ll go over his head. People are missing and dead. We don’t have a choice.” Henry examined the woods around them, his mind working. The forest was quiet, not a bird chirping or a rustle of animal noise. Not normal. Not at all. He stared at the blood on the grass. Well, if Sorrelson needed an undeniable reason to close the park, he had it now. Henry had little doubt the two missing men were dead. Body parts don’t lie.
In silence George and Henry returned to headquarters. Henry unable to stop thinking about Jane Morrison and those kids in that awful tent village and the other homeless in their leaky makeshift abodes. Not only was it chilly at night, but patched plastic wouldn’t keep out a chipmunk, much less a monster.
He didn’t know what he was going to tell his wife. They lived in the park, so did their daughter and granddaughter, and he wasn’t sure any of them were safe. His house was five miles away from the lake; before five miles had sounded fairly safe. Not any longer. And Laura and Phoebe were closer than that. If he were smart, he’d convince them to move into town. Today.
He’d never forgive himself if something happened to them.
As soon as he was able, he telephoned Ann at work and explained what was going on. As always, she drug the entire story out of him before he was ready to give it. He’d wanted to do it face to face, but it was tough keeping secrets from her. While on the phone, he strongly suggested she round up their daughter and granddaughter and move into town.
“Zeke has a large, empty house and I’m sure he’d let you all stay for a while,” Henry wheedled. “At least I’d know everyone was safe.”
Ann would have nothing to do with his plan. “Where you are is where I’m going to be.” She was firm. “And no way am I leaving all this excitement. What a story.”
Nothing he said changed her mind. But, if things got worse, he’d have to even if he had to tie her up and personally deposit her at Zeke’s. She wasn’t taking the threat serious enough. He recalled he hadn’t at first, either, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it until later. He was on duty.
At headquarters he called the off-duty rangers and asked them to report in by nine o’clock. After he got off the phone, he brooded over which two he could afford to lose. There were only six rangers he could pick from. Not George. His job was his life. Not Kiley, he’d been a ranger longer than any of the others. Gillian had three kids. Problem was, the others were good rangers, too. He couldn’t afford to lose them, especially now. So, he wasn’t going to lay off any of them, no matter what Sorrelson said.
He had to close the lake area. The entire park and knew he’d answer to Sorrelson and the Park Board about it later. Right now it’d take every ranger he had to do the evacuation. They couldn’t risk people being anywhere in the vicinity of the lake after what he’d seen that morning.
Those decisions made, he finished at headquarters and drove over to the lodge to meet Justin for breakfast. His wristwatch said it was a tad after nine. Unbelievable it was still so early and so much had already happened.
Justin was sitting at the usual table sipping coffee and eating eggs when Henry slipped into the chair across from him.
“You’re late. What’s going on?” Justin leaned towards him as Henry sat down.
“I’m going to shut down the park.”
“I thought so. I saw the activity at park headquarters on my way over.” Justin’s eyes were somber behind his spectacles. “It struck again, didn’t it? This time on land?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” In between ordering coffee (he decided he couldn’t stomach breakfast yet after what he’d seen) he updated Justin. “This has changed everything. Quickly. I’m afraid the creature has developed a taste for human flesh.”
“It never actually crossed my mind on the lake the other night,” Justin said, “it was seeking us–human beings–to eat. I think it is and we have to stop it. If it’s as clever as I suspect, we’ll need to capture or, as much as I hate the thought being a scientist and all, kill it.”
“I’m glad you agree because that’s what I believe should be done, too. Because if it’s preying on people, that destroys any awe, concern or pity I might have had for it.” Henry kept seeing Jane Morrison’s face and those ragamuffin kids, fatherless now; kept seeing those hunks of bloody flesh among the leaves. “If I could protect it,” he muttered, “I’d shut down the whole park forever, but that won’t guarantee the creature wouldn’t escape and go on further killing sprees, butchering more people somewhere else.”
“And if it craves human flesh, nothing could keep it inside the park if it can’t get what it wants here.”
“So the question is: How do we find it, contain it, or, if it turns out to be necessary, how do we kill it?”
“I don’t know,” Justin responded. “I’ve never had to catch, contain or kill a renegade leviathan before. To be truthful, I’ve never been much of a hunter.”
“I’ve hunted my share, but never anything this large. No dinosaurs, for sure.”
“Perhaps we’d better find an expert hunter because something tells me we’re going to need one before this is over.”
“You have a good point there.” Henry played with his spoon, stirring his coffee slowly. “I’ll begin looking for somebody who has experience hunting large animals. Don’t know anyone off hand, but I’ll put out feelers.”
“Oh, by the way, I’ve rented one of the cabins in Rim Village for the rest of the summer.”
“With all that’s going on, you want to remain in the park?” Henry eyed him over his cup, but wasn’t surprised. The young man had more than one reason to stick close.
“Well, I wanted to spend time at the dig and, now, help you with the beast in the lake. Also,” the scientist went on softly, “I want to be close to Laura. Sir, I’m crazy about your daughter. I’ve never felt this way about anyone. Ever.”
“I thought
so.” Henry grinned for the first time in days, but behind it he was worried. “I would sure feel better if she and Phoebe were out of the park right now, though. It isn’t safe. But the girl’s independent like her mother. I know she won’t leave unless I drag her out, especially now with you here,” Henry predicted, his hand gathering the empty sugar packets up.
“Being her father, you know her better than I. But I’ll do my best to convince her to move out of the park until we know it’s safe. Honest I will.”
“Thanks. But you don’t know my daughter, do you? She’ll swear she can take care of herself. Just like my wife. Those kind of women don’t believe in monsters unless they actually see them. And they won’t run from something they don’t believe in.”
“Well, if they stick around here long enough, they’ll see it, and believe it.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Henry watched a gaggle of park visitors pay their tab. After today the visitors would be gone. He’d miss them. Never thought he’d feel that way, but he did. Never know what you had until it was gone.
“And you, Justin, you sure you want to stay here after what happened to those men? This isn’t fun and games any more. We’re in real danger. If you weren’t such an authority on dinosaurs and their habits, I’d send you packing, as well.”
“I know. But I’m staying. I’m frightened, but ambitious. To study and hunt a real dinosaur is an adventure of a lifetime. Something I can tell my grandkids about. Not to mention, get photographs of, write scientific articles on, and become famous for.”
“If you live through it,” Henry retorted cynically. “I have to get back to headquarters and meet up with my rangers. There’s so much to do, moving the homeless camp and closing down the park.”
“Oh, there’s one more thing,” Justin added after Henry had requested the breakfast bill. “My colleagues from John Day have arrived. They’re at the dig site now, going crazy over the dinosaur bones. The group leader is Dr. Harris. He appears capable, his credentials are impeccable, but I know him, and, let me tell you, he’s a fanatic. I couldn’t get him to shut up or get out of the dirt for a second. We’re going to have trouble with him. If he’s that crazy about our dead specimens, heaven knows how he’ll react to a live one.”
Henry grunted. “So they’re not going to listen when we tell them, for their own safety, they have to go?”
“No, they’re not going to listen. Harris believes this fossil bed could be the scientific discovery of all time. The group is settling in near the fossil wall. Last time I looked there were ten scientists, three tents and a couple of RVs. More coming. The word’s gone out.”
“Damn,” Henry swore as he slapped down some money on the table for his coffee. “Now I got them to worry about, as well, until I can chase them away.”
“Good luck with that. Dr. Harris has high-up, influential friends. If he wants to stay, he’ll stay.”
“We’ll see.” Henry shrugged. “Right now I got to go. Catch you later.” Brushing by the young man, he strode out the door.
He was going to have to talk to Sorrelson about the paleontologists, among other things. They couldn’t be allowed to stay, especially so near to the lake. They’d be the creature’s next meal–and there was no way they’d be able to cover up that story. Missing homeless were one thing, but missing or partially eaten high-up muckety-muck scientists were another.
Rushing to headquarters, Henry knew he had no authority over the John Day scientists. They could ask permission to stay from the Park Service and get it. But he was still going to try to run them off. It was too risky, them being on the lake’s rim. The body count was too high already.
When he arrived at his office, Kiley informed him Sorrelson hadn’t been reachable, his phone turned off; his secretary wasn’t sure exactly where he was, but eventually, she’d promised, he’d be in touch.
Gillian reported Mrs. Morrison took the bad news about being relocated in stride, and the camp was on the move.
Henry and his men got to work, preparing to shut down the park.
Dinosaur Lake Page 21