by Paul Zindel
Loch looked back, reading the surface of the water. “No,” he said, “they’re running deep now. The bullets won’t get them. I’m sure Wee Beastie’s okay.”
Loch glanced to the south shore at a point where the paved road weaved for a stretch close to the lake. If only Dr. Sam had heard their radio plea, if only they would catch a glimpse of the Volvo speeding along the road toward the end of the lake and the grid.
BAM!
The shooting started again as The Revelation and the PT boat turned about quickly and took up pursuit. The rest of the fleet floundered, struggling to turn and re-form.
Zaidee was the first to see the little, black, shining body skimming again through the wake of their skiff.
“Wee Beastie!” she shouted happily.
The Revelation was gaining on them, the PT boat pacing itself easily off its port.
Loch saw the grid and its cement control bunker in the distance. He searched the ridge for any glimpse of his father. There was no one.
“The plesiosaurs are surfacing!” Zaidee cried out.
Loch looked back to see the water rupture as the creatures’ dark, scaly backs began to emerge from the lake. Their speed slowed and the handful of smaller beasts began to panic, skimming to the surface at the edges of the adults like frightened fish. Only one huge head began to rise from the herd, the tremendous bony mass and snout of the Rogue. The Rogue slowed, dropping back like a patriarch whose instincts are clear.
“What is the Rogue doing?” Zaidee asked.
Loch, understanding what was happening, answered sadly. “Protecting his family.”
The Revelation closed the distance between itself and the Rogue. Cavenger and his team were in place at the bow, the harpooner manning the huge gun. The Rogue lifted his head higher, showing more of his neck and letting the yacht come within striking distance.
“Oh, God, please don’t …” Sarah said aloud, as if magic would carry her words to her father. As much as she feared the beasts, she didn’t want to see them destroyed like this.
BOOM.
The first harpoon exploded from the gun and entered the Rogue’s neck so deeply its shiny, metal tip burst from the scales beneath his jaw. Blood spurted out of the wound, rushing down into the water of the lake as the creature snapped his neck back and forth, trying to break free.
BOOM.
Another harpoon tore into the Rogue’s shoulder, this one setting deep. Its explosive head detonated, blasting loose a vast slab of the creature’s flesh and muscle.
The PT boat began to circle the beast, its crew firing and refiring rifles, pumping bullets into his body. Sarah put her hands to her ears to try to block out the terrible, terrible noise of the shooting and the tortured roars of the beast. The Rogue kept trying to turn his head as if to see whether his herd was safe.
“The creatures are passing us,” Zaidee yelled as the clear springs of the shallows replaced the darker peat water.
She watched the huge blackness of the beasts rush by beneath them to halt at the mouth of the grid. What might have been Beast and two of the other larger plesiosaurs surfaced in front of the boat, forcing Loch to cut the motor and shift into neutral.
“They’re going to eat us!” Sarah screamed, flashes of what had happened to Erdon stabbing back into her mind.
“They could have done that already,” Loch said, ready at the wheel for anything.
With the skiff stopped, the herd had strangely quieted, the creatures sinking to the bottom. Only Wee Beastie stayed off the boat’s stern, clicking at them, motioning with his snout toward the slaughter of the Rogue, as if there were something they could do.
“What’s going on?” Zaidee asked, confused.
They looked back at The Revelation. Perhaps in a last desperate attempt to escape, the Rogue had sounded in the deep water. The harpoons were holding, their lines drawn taut as the yacht began to list from the great weight and strength of the beast.
Cavenger pushed his way to the railing and stared down into the black and bloodied water. Emilio, with a belt of grenades, appeared at his side.
“Kill it!” Cavenger screamed at him. “Kill it now!”
Emilio took a grenade, pulled its pin, and hurled it down into the water. Seconds later, there was the great sickening thud of an underwater blast and a great fountain of blood and water erupted from the surface of the lake. Still the harpoon lines were taut, pulling the boat down.
“Throw another grenade!” Cavenger ordered.
Emilio had time only to draw the pin out before the Rogue suddenly shot up out of the water like a huge submarine surfacing from a great depth. His body angled across the bow, then came crashing down and ripped away a section of the hull. He slashed forward with his fins as the men with guns on the PT blasted him mercilessly. One of the better marksmen hit the beast’s left eye, bursting it.
The impact of the Rogue’s attack caused Emilio to drop the live grenade on the deck. Cavenger saw the grenade fall, then watched helplessly as it rolled back, past the crew, and dropped into the maze of cables and wires of the sonar power base.
“It’s going to blow!” Emilio shouted, diving over the side.
Cavenger’s first, completely absurd, impulse was to berate Emilio, to scold and blame him for not following orders precisely. The harpoon team pushed by him, heading for the railing. The rest of the crew ran for the stern. In these last, futile seconds, Cavenger had no one left to order, no one to command. He was standing alone when the Rogue’s head snapped toward him. The mouth opened and the huge vise of teeth slowly closed on Cavenger’s head. In a paroxysm of death, the creature jerked back his neck, lifting Cavenger into the burning sun of a tremendous explosion.
Sarah screamed and threw up her hands to cover her face as a second, greater blast swallowed The Revelation in an immense ball of fire. As the storm of smoke and flames rose up into the sky, Loch went to Sarah and put his arm around her.
“I’m sorry,” Loch said gently. “I’m very sorry.”
The fireball turned into streaks of black and raining embers as the remnants of the hull began to slide beneath the surface of the lake. When Sarah lowered her hands from her eyes, her entire body shuddered and she burst into tears. “He was my father … my father,” she cried. “I know he didn’t always do the right thing—he needed so much to prove to everyone he was right. …”
“I guess being right isn’t enough,” Loch said, looking up to the desolate ridge. “I don’t think it was enough for any of us.”
Zaidee rushed to Sarah, flung her arms around her, and began to cry too.
CLICK CLICK …
They heard the sounds, and saw Wee Beastie’s head peer over the stern at them. He looked at them for only a moment, then swam slowly down to the herd.
Lake Alban was silent. A few of the crew from The Revelation had survived the great, ripping blast and had managed to swim to the PT. The crews of the fleet stood quietly on their decks, all guns pointed toward the skiff with the beasts beneath it.
Loch was the first to hear the sounds from below. “They’re making their music,” he said.
“Why?” Sarah asked.
The water around the skiff began to stir, then churn. It moved in increasingly greater swirls and turmoil until the heads and bodies of the beasts began to rise all about them. The beasts surfaced in a great circle, their heads and necks lifting high above the boat.
Loch, Sarah, and Zaidee stood together, looking up at the leviathans. The sound they made now was like that of a thousand cellos, a series of low, haunting notes that slid upward into an increasingly profound and complicated harmony. The music of the plesiosaurs was penetrating, vibrating the air in a way that could be felt on the skin and in the heart. Their singing transcended words and even thoughts, as Loch felt a warmth start in his brain, then move down his spine and flood his entire body. He knew from the look in Zaidee’s and Sarah’s eyes that they were feeling it, too.
To a man, the men with guns lowered their weapons as the sounds
swept over them.
Loch didn’t know how he knew, but suddenly he was certain his father was on the ridge. He looked to the cement control bunker. Zaidee’s eyes followed his. They saw Dr. Sam looking down at them.
“Will Dad open the grid?” Zaidee asked.
“Yes,” Loch said.
Dr. Sam waved to them. He knew what had to be done, and he unlocked the door of the bunker. Inside, he punched the code into the controls. In seconds the hydraulics of the grid came alive. Still singing, the beasts slowly sank beneath the surface of the lake as the grid parted its massive gates. There was a tremendous surge of water as the river was restored to its full depth, and the beasts slowly swam into the rush of water flowing toward Lake Champlain—toward their home.
CLICK CLICK.
Only Wee Beastie surfaced. He remained off the stern of the skiff, his eyes glowing at them.
“He wants to stay with us,” Zaidee cried out.
“I think he does,” Loch said, “but he knows he can’t.”
Wee Beastie lifted his snout and shook it at them. Zaidee rushed forward to pet him. She looked closely into the creature’s eyes and knew her brother was right.
“Good-bye, Wee Beastie,” Zaidee cried out. “Good-bye!”
The light in Wee Beastie’s eyes slowly faded. He shook his snout again, turned, and dug his fins hard and deep toward the open grid to follow the song of the plesiosaurs.
Dr. Sam waved to his kids from the knoll.
“We’re a family again, aren’t we?” Zaidee asked Loch as she waved back.
“You bet we are,” Loch said, holding Sarah close to him. A wide grin broke out across his face as he lifted his hand into the air. “We’re a family.”
A preview of what’s next in
if you dare…
1
The Sighting
The stones and the nightmare were waiting for Jackson Cawley as the landrover raced toward the storm. Thick, twisted trunks of oak trees lined the road, their branches reaching high across like fingers of hands straining to pray.
There had already been warnings that nothing would go smoothly on this journey. Jackson’s charter flight from New York had landed in London during heavy rains and violent turbulence. The Heathrow terminal was mobbed with spring break travelers, and it was past six by the time Jackson had made it through Customs and linked up with Sergeant Tillman, his ride to Salisbury.
Tillman found Jackson to be a good-looking fifteen-year-old with shaggy brown hair and intense green eyes who did nothing but ask questions: Will I be staying near Stonehenge? Are there mounds filled with ancient human bones? Did high priests perform blood sacrifices?
The stocky sergeant smiled. “I’m no expert on Stonehenge. There will be guides there who can tell you the whole history when you take a tour,” he said, carrying the boy’s canvas suitcase to the landrover. He opened the door on the passenger side. Jackson got in, took his suitcase, and swung it behind him to the backseat. As Sergeant Tillman slid into the driver’s seat, Jackson noticed he was wearing a gun. “Are you on special assignment?” Jackson asked.
“Yes,” Tillman said.
“Did you ever have to shoot anyone?”
Sergeant Tillman smiled. “Not lately.” He started the landrover and drove out the airport exit. After several miles he reached the M3, and followed it for a good distance until turning onto A303 west.
It took a spectacular thunderbolt to halt Jackson’s questions, which had begun to center around the land-rover’s two-way radio. The last of the shattered sunset slid down beneath the rim of dark, huge clouds mushroomed at the horizon. A strong wind rattled and shook the branches of green willows along a stream.
CLICK CLICK
Jackson heard the sounds. “What’s going on?” he asked.
The sounds came faster, more furious.
“Hailstones,” Tillman said.
Jackson had never been in a hailstorm. He watched the front of the landrover crust up with the falling ice pellets. They fell harder still, and in a few moments the road was a chalky white. The ice melted quickly.
For a long stretch the roadway cut through a forest choked by thickets and twisting, thick vines. The headlights picked up red-and-white TANK CROSSING signs and a series of wooden stakes in the earth.
“What are those?” Jackson asked.
“Markers for the military territories,” the sergeant explained. “Restricted areas.”
BAM
There was another crash of thunder as a crop duster biplane fled the sky and nightfall to land in a field. Here the shoulders of the road began to lift into eerie mounds, blocking the view of the countryside and making the road appear to drop into a long, open grave. Several miles later, beyond a hog farm and a sign for a gravel operation, the road rose onto a ridge with a breathtaking expanse of Salisbury Plain in front of them.
“I can take a slight detour up onto A344 if you want a closer look at Stonehenge,” Sergeant Tillman said. “There’s a good view of it from there.”
“Great.”
Tillman took a small northwestward road, then doubled back beyond a thatch-roofed farmhouse. He pointed. “Dead ahead.”
Jackson strained forward against his seat belt to see through the fogging windshield. There was another flash of lightning, and his heart crawled up into his throat when he saw the circle of massive stones. Stonehenge stood like a ring of giant sentinels.
Closer, a thunderhead burst over the landrover. Suddenly Jackson could barely see the great stones between the sweeps of the worn, thumping wipers. There were no lights, no cars or tourists in the parking lot.
“Where is everybody ?” Jackson asked.
“Stonehenge closes at five,” Sergeant Tillman said, his foot staying heavy on the accelerator.
“Closes?” That was like being back in the States and finding out that Mount Rushmore closes or that Niagara Falls gets turned off.
The stones became framed by a sturdy chain-link fence that ran along the edge of the road. The rain was a deluge now, blurring everything. Jackson hoped for a bolt of lightning, a sharp wide crackle on the horizon, so he could see close up this monumental temple of the wind.
The flash of lightning came, and in that moment Jackson saw the true enormousness of the stones. But there was something else. Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed a figure moving swiftly from the shadows of the stone circle and heading for the roadside fence.
Jackson wiped the window and strained to see through the night and the rain. Three lightning flashes hit one after the other like a tremendous sky strobe. It was then he could see that it was a young man in a plaid shirt with a ponytail running toward the landrover. The lightning made the man’s movements unreal, as though he were a flickering image on a movie screen. The man kept coming.
In the next flash of lightning Jackson saw the young man’s face twisting into a scream, his hands desperately reaching out toward the speeding landrover. Jackson’s first thought was that someone was playing a joke. He was used to all sorts of scams and insanity on the streets of Manhattan—but then, behind the terrified man, he saw a shadowy form coming fast, like a jungle animal closing on its prey.
Another explosion of blue-white lightning.
Jackson saw the shadow crash into the young man, hurtling his body against the fence with such force, the hair of his ponytail burst loose to fan out like snakes on the weave of metal. The dark thing was behind the man, twisting his neck terribly, crushing the young man’s face into the wire fence as the landrover flew past.
Jackson found his voice. “Stop!”
“What?” Sergeant Tillman was momentarily startled, his eyes fixed on the wet roadway ahead. “What’s going on?” he asked, his tone quickly military again.
“Somebody’s being attacked!” Jackson cried out, twisting in his seat to indicate behind them. “Some guy’s being attacked by an animal!”
“Hold on.”
Sergeant Tillman braked hard. With a single motion he spun th
e landrover around and crashed his foot back down on the accelerator. The tires burned rubber and finally gripped, and the landrover raced back toward the stones.
“Where?” the sergeant asked.
“There,” Jackson said, pointing across the hood.
The sergeant slid the landrover to a halt on the grass-and-clay shoulder of the road. “Wait here,” he ordered as he leaped out of the car with his gun drawn and ran to the fence. Jackson knew Tillman would be trained to act in emergencies, but he hadn’t expected him to believe his report of an attack so quickly. Jackson jumped out of the landrover after the sergeant. The stark, raw smell of the storm socked into his nose and lungs.
“It was here,” Jackson shouted against the wind, running his hand along the wire mesh as it glowed in the landrover’s headlights. He looked down expecting to see the young man’s body crumpled into the mud. Lightning flashed, followed by a growl of thunder.
There was no body of a young man.
No animal.
Nothing but the huge, towering stones bearing silent witness to the night.
The sergeant clipped his gun back into its holster. “Come on,” he said, putting his arm around Jackson’s wet shoulder and starting him back toward the landrover. “Your aunt is waiting for us.”
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About the Author
PAUL ZINDEL (1936-2003) wrote more than 40 novels, including The Pigman, one of the best-selling young adult books of all time, and Pardon Me, You’re Stepping on My Eyeball! His Broadway play, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds,won the Pulitzer Prize and was produced as a film directed by Paul Newman.
Mr. Zindel taught high school chemistry for ten years before turning to writing full-time. His work as an author brought him to exotic destinations around the world, from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to the monkey forests of Indonesia. Drawing from those experiences, he created The Zone Unknown series—packed full of horror, humor, adventure and bravery—with reluctant readers in mind. It includes six titles: Loch, The Doom Stone, Raptor, Rats, Reef of Death, and Night of the Bat.