Dinosaur Lake

by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

  ***

  And it did.

  Justin, Greer, and Henry were inspecting what remained of Rim Village, as they waited for the submersible to arrive; jumpy every moment about the monster returning, when one of the other rangers down the street came jogging up.

  There were bodies under the ruins.

  The men, even Justin with his sore ribs, helped dig them out.

  “Who do you think they were?” Justin stared at the corpses, his face a shade off color.

  The three bodies were laid out in a row besides the demolished building, a Mexican restaurant that had served the best burritos in the park. Ann had sent Henry himself many nights for their carry-out because they’d used real cheese and the freshest lettuce and tomatoes.

  “I don’t know.” Henry’s eyes slid over the bloody bodies as one of the rangers covered them. The dead faces were dirty and mangled. They could have been under the monster’s feet, they were that bad.

  Greer was almost his old calm-faced self. A clean set of clothes, a blue shirt and blue jeans; not his usual suit, his hair neatly combed, but unsprayed. The man was loosening up, except for the notebook in his hand as he jotted things down. But there was a different look in his eyes now, a humble one, and he hadn’t pulled out his fancy gold watch once.

  “There was an apartment behind the restaurant,” Henry filled in the blanks. “I guess these were three who hadn’t left yet. Maybe were laying low.” It didn’t make him feel any better knowing the victims had stayed for whatever reason, and now were dead for it. He should have been firmer, more efficient, in his evacuation policy. Yet, a lesson had been learned and he’d ordered his men to clear everyone in a twenty miles radius surrounding the lake out of the park, cabin by cabin, door by door; no more excuses accepted.

  “We’ll need to track down their families.” Greer had turned his gaze away from the covered lumps on the ground.

  Patterson walked up. “More bad news. They’ve found two more bodies a couple of buildings down. Dead as cardboard, and just about as flat. The monster did a job on them, too.” Henry noted that Patterson had stopped calling the monster Godzilla since he’d seen it in action.

  Greer frowned slightly, his face fighting to stay emotionless.

  “Damn,” Henry swore. He didn’t want to see, but he did anyway. The bodies resembled the others. Hardly recognizable as human. “Let’s pray there aren’t any more like these.”

  Overhead gulls were singing to each other beneath a gray sky. To Henry it looked and smelled like rain again.

  “Well,” Greer commented standing beside him. “We keep looking.”

  They spent half the day in the debris searching and raking through the wreckage. They continued to find bodies. Henry despaired. There were too many of them. Why had they all stayed? Why hadn’t he known they were hiding and gotten them to leave? His guilt bit at him.

  Fear churned in the air around them. Someone jerked or jumped every time there was a strange noise; eyes probed the woods and peeked around building corners before the person followed. Henry put two rangers on guard duty. If they saw or heard anything that could be the creature coming, they were to alert the rest of them immediately and they’d all bug out. But they had to get the dead out first if they could.

  At mid-day, Henry in his dusty uniform, Justin and Greer, sat down under a shady tree and ate the hamburgers and fries one of the men had brought them from town for lunch. The search was taking longer than they’d planned. They’d uncovered more dead.

  It was overcast, warm, yet the rain hadn’t materialized. Henry was glad of that. His men were having a bad enough day without getting soaked to boot.

  Justin and Greer, who’d hit it off from the start, were scheming on how to find and kill the beast, but Henry was scrutinizing Rim Village. So much devastation in so little time. A bomb might have been dropped. The absent owners of the demolished stores and shops would be upset when they discovered their buildings were gone. He knew many of the businessmen; known how hard they’d scrimped, saved, to have their shops. How loved some of the crushed cabins and cottages had been by their owners. The owners who were still alive, that is.

  Greer and he discussed if the absent businessmen should be told their places were gone.

  “We could let them know.” Henry had eaten as much of his hamburger as he could, but couldn’t finish it. In his mind, he kept seeing the corpses on the ground. “Don’t know what good it’d do. Anyway, it’s too dangerous to allow them to reenter the park to assess damages.”

  “They deserve to be informed,” Justin joined the conversation as he wrapped up what food he had left. He, too, hadn’t eaten much. No one had. Half of it was left for the garbage can.

  “You’re right.” Another unwanted duty to perform.

  “I say we don’t tell them quite yet,” Greer counseled. “They’d swamp the park, wanting to see, rebuild, demanding to be told what happened here. It’s not safe. Better to keep them out until the creature is taken care of.”

  So that’s how it ended. Henry would report the destruction to Superintendent Sorrelson sometime that day, he had to, but Sorrelson was as far as the news was going for now.

  They finished at Rim Village and packed it in for the day. Henry growing more nervous every minute. Where was the monster and why hadn’t it shown itself all day? What was it up to now? When would it strike again? He had no answers.

  He sent his men to safety and invited Greer and Justin over for supper, telling Greer he’d pick him up at the lodge at six, before the daylight went; after he and Justin checked in on Ann and Laura again. They were still using Greer’s car.

  Jim Francis had called Greer earlier saying he’d be bringing down the new submersible the following day. He’d said he couldn’t wait to go after the evil creature.

  Not Henry. He wasn’t eager to face the thing on its own turf. He knew it had to be done, but sure wasn’t looking forward to it. Francis might believe the Big Rover was safer than the Deep Rover, but Henry couldn’t forget what had happened to Lassen, and he’d believed in the safety of the submersible as well.

  The men split and went their separate ways. The creature hadn’t been sighted and, for some reason, that made Henry more anxious than he could say. He kept rehearing what Greer had whispered the night before: There are people and towns out there.

  Henry kept expecting to hear about a monster attacking a heavily populated area any second. It gave him a sick sense of urgency that wouldn’t be quieted.

  Perhaps that was one of the reasons, after they left Greer and before they went into town that Henry spoke to Justin about watching over Ann if something were to happen to him. Somewhere deep in his mind, though he didn’t want to admit it, he was preparing in case he didn’t survive the underwater caves.

  He told Justin where the camcorder was that Ann had been looking for and he made Justin promise to get it to her. Ann had risked her life looking for it in the first place and Henry could understand why. That video or pictures from the video of the creature, later when it was over, would fetch quite a sum of money. Not only would it save the Klamath Falls Journal, and Ann’s job, but it’d help her, moneywise, if something happened to him. He worried about her. If he were dead she wouldn’t be allowed to stay in the cabin; there was only a small life insurance policy through his job and they had little savings. The reality of living middleclass these days.

  Justin had looked at him oddly when he’d talked about such things, but he’d agreed to do as asked. “Anything for you and Ann,” he’d promised. “Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do.”

  As they drove through the park towards the exit, Justin remarked on the growing mist everywhere. “I imagine the lake’s completely covered in it. Bet, if we drive down there right now, we couldn’t even see Phantom Ship or Wizard Island. It’s eerie. Gives me the creeps.”

  “Worst I’ve ever seen it. And this early in the day,” Henry commented. “The mist will get worse as evening and lower temperatures come in.�
� The fog had curled up around their car, an invisible entity that made them feel as if they were driving through a cloud. They couldn’t see the road. Could hardly see the trees looming above them. Just a strip of asphalt winding ahead of their headlights.

  “I haven’t had time in the last few days to take any readings, so it’s more of a general observation, but temperatures under the lake must still be rising.” Justin looked out over the swirling cloud. “And the rock below the caldera might still be shifting from the earthquakes. That means more lava coming up to the surface and heating the water. This mist is the result.”

  “If it keeps up,” Henry snorted. “When we reopen the park, we’ll have to advertise the lake as the amazing boiling lake. Cook your eggs in it for lunch! Hang your coffee thermos over the edge of your boat’s side, and keep it warm. Jump in the water and take a hot bath!”

  Justin chuckled.

  So did Henry. It felt good after all the terror and sadness of the last two days.

  Talking about hot baths reminded Henry of the homeless camp. He wondered how they were doing in town where they’d been relocated. If George were alive he would have known, would have cared enough to seek them out and make sure they were all right. Henry made a mental note to ask Ann to check up on them in the next couple of days. It might help take her mind off George’s death, helping those he used to help.

  Leaving the park, after a particularly long silence, Henry slid his eyes across to his passenger and smiled. In the front seat, against the foggy window, Justin had fallen asleep.

  Henry didn’t have the heart to wake him though they had so much more to discuss about Justin’s recent fact-finding trip. But, Henry thought tiredly, it could wait until later. Let the young man get a small nap. He seemed to need it.

  His foot pushed harder on the accelerator pedal. As the afternoon’s shadows slipped in around him with the mist, he was aware they weren’t alone. It was out there somewhere in the lake or the woods, and Henry felt like a painted target rumbling along in his borrowed car.