Chupacabra

by Roland Smith

Dylan listened as Marty explained what he had seen. He had wondered where all the holding areas, service roads, and zookeepers were.

  “We should call the police,” Dylan said.

  Marty laughed. “What a joke. They aren’t going to take our word over Noah Blackwood’s. We’d just be tipping our hand. He’ll move Grace out of here. Who knows what he’d do to Luther. He’s certainly not going to let him blab about being kidnapped.”

  “Wolfe?” Dylan asked.

  “He’s on his way to DC.”

  “We should call Ted, then.”

  “I already tried. His tag doesn’t even show up on the Gizmo.”

  “What do you want to do?” Dylan asked, but he already knew the answer.

  Marty flew the dragonspy from the spot where Luther went underground back to the restroom. On the way he counted eight cameras. It wouldn’t take Butch and Blackwood long to review the surveillance video and figure out where he was hiding. Even if they missed him on the video, security would find him during their sweep.

  Dylan had talked to the ticket woman about Ark security. He had learned that the park had only one entrance and one exit. When the Ark first opened years earlier, they tried to keep track of how many people entered and exited, but they could never reconcile the numbers. Now security did a sweep through the park at closing with cameras, and on foot, to find stragglers. Dylan had found a good place to hide next to the Antarctica concession stand. Marty needed to find a good hiding place, too, and the restroom wasn’t it.

  He flew the dragonspy around to the back of the building. There were no cameras he could see. A row of narrow windows ran across the back of the stalls. He climbed onto a toilet and found, to his relief, that the window opened.

  • • •

  There were four tiers of video surveillance at the Ark. The first was for the zookeepers located on Level One. It was called AnimalCam, or AC for short. Each keeper had a station where he or she could monitor every move the animals under their care made. Noah Blackwood did not believe in having zoo-keepers wander around the grounds or the exhibits when visitors were there. He felt that the human presence took away from the natural beauty of the animals people came to see. The keepers arrived at the Ark early in the morning. All cleaning had to be finished and the animals let back into their exhibits an hour before the gate opened in order to let the animals settle in. Feeding was done with automatic feeders throughout the day. The feeders were in different places in each exhibit and programed randomly so the animals never knew where, or when, the food would appear. This kept the animals active and gave the visitors a decent chance of seeing them in the large exhibits.

  The second surveillance tier was for human surveillance, known as PEDS. It was also located on Level One. The six people watching the monitors were responsible for observing zoo visitors as well as staff members.

  The third surveillance tier was located on Level Four. It was called PI. Noah Blackwood and Butch McCall were the only ones who knew it existed. The surveillance room was twice as big as PEDS, but only one person sat in front of the wall of high-definition monitors. His name was Paul Ivy. As far as Butch knew, Paul hadn’t been out of his surveillance room since the Ark was built. He had a small apartment connected to the surveillance room and lived on food lowered down from the concession stands on dumbwaiters. Paul weighed at least five hundred pounds, although it was difficult to tell because he never got out of the wheeled office chair he scooted around in.

  It was Paul who had identified Luther Smyth. He used the same facial recognition software used by casinos around the world to track and identify cheaters. Paul had nothing better to do than run the software on random visitors coming through the gate. Over the years he had caught several people wanted by the police, but instead of turning them in, Noah Blackwood had hired them to do his bidding, threatening them with exposure if they balked.

  Blackwood had given Paul the names and photos of everyone on Cryptos Island and aboard the Coelacanth and told him to keep an eye out for them. Paul had zoomed in on the boy with the newly shaved head and had gotten a positive identification. People could change their outward appearance, but they could not change the bone structure of their face. The software Paul used could see through all disguises.

  Butch walked into PI’s dim domain and grimaced. It didn’t smell much better than Lab 251 with the farting dinosaurs.

  “Did you find Marty O’Hara?” Butch asked.

  “Of course,” Paul said. He scooted over to a control board and hit some buttons. The video showed a kid wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses coming through the gate. Paul zoomed in on his face.

  “Yeah, that’s him,” Butch said. “Where is he?”

  Paul hit another button that followed Marty through the Ark in fast motion, ending with Marty hurrying into a restroom.

  “That’s it?”

  “He hasn’t left the restroom.” Paul looked at the time stamp at the bottom of the frame. “He’s been in there for twenty-nine minutes. I told Dr. Blackwood that we should put cameras inside the —”

  “Get ahold of Blackwood!” Butch shouted as he ran out of the room. “Tell him I’m on my way and to shut the area down.”

  • • •

  Noah Blackwood did not need to be gotten ahold of. He had watched the entire exchange from the fourth surveillance tier located on his snakewood desk on the top floor of the mansion. He switched off the cameras around the restroom and told foot security to stay clear of the area. No one questioned him. He often asked for a section of the Ark to be closed down so he could wander among his animals alone and unobserved. If a staff member made the mistake of violating his solitary walks, they were summarily fired.

  Noah watched Butch sprinting up the path toward the rest-room. As always, he was amazed at how quickly the big man moved.

  The grace and speed of a major predator.

  No one had come out of the restroom since Butch had left PI. And Paul had reviewed every face coming through the gate before and after Marty and Luther. None of them were associated with Travis Wolfe.

  The question is, what do I do with them now that I’ve captured them?

  He doubted Wolfe knew the boys were there. His spies had told him that Wolfe was on his way to Washington, DC, in a military jet. Noah had people waiting to follow him and find out what he was doing there. If the boys disappeared, the first place Wolfe’s crew would look would be the Ark. The police would have to have probable cause to get a search warrant, and Paul would erase any video with the boys in it. The woman taking the tickets could be a problem. She might not remember Marty, but Luther was unforgettable. Luckily, the woman had a past that she would prefer to keep to herself. She had broken out of a low-security prison farm with five years still left on her sentence.

  Be a shame if she had to go back to the farm.

  Noah smiled. He started moving the pieces on his mental chessboard.

  They won’t be looking for a skinhead, they’ll be looking for a boy with flaming red hair. Judging from the scabs, Luther shaved his head just this afternoon. Something will have to be done about Grace, though. I don’t want her here with Marty and Luther so close. It might be time to jump on the jet and tour the other Arks. Perhaps take her to …

  Noah’s chess match was interrupted by Butch reaching the restroom. He watched him run inside without breaking stride. A few seconds later, he came back out. Alone. Butch glanced up at the camera, shook his head, then hurried around to the back of the restroom, out of camera view. He returned a couple of minutes later … alone.

  Noah swore, then hit Butch’s number.

  “He climbed out through one of the windows,” Butch said.

  “Where’d he go from there?”

  “He crawled off into the bushes, from what I can tell. I called Paul. The brat hasn’t shown up on any of the videos since he went into the can. Paul’s going to keep scanning for him.”

  “Marty has figured out where the cameras are,” Noah said flatly.


  “I don’t even know where all the cameras are,” Butch said. “He’s just stupid lucky. I’ll find him. He’s probably holed up in some —”

  “No.” Noah cut him off.

  “What are you talking about? I’ll talk to security and —”

  “Great idea, Butch,” Noah said sarcastically. “Let’s call security and have them help us kidnap a child. Use your head. The Ark closes in fifteen minutes. Go down to the front gate and make sure he doesn’t leave. Once we’re in night lockdown, there’s no way out. We’ll look for him at our leisure when everyone is gone. I’ll jam the cell and satellite signals. Use the two-way. We’re going dark.”

  Noah hung up and watched Butch stomp down the path toward the entrance. Marty O’Hara was lucky, but he was also smart. If he knew about the cameras, then he knew they were coming after him. Marty was well aware of Butch’s tracking ability. He would not stay holed up. He’d move when it got dark.

  But does he know we’ve taken Luther?

  Noah assumed that he did.

  “You’ll be off the grid soon, Marty,” Noah whispered. “Trapped inside the Ark like all my other animals.”

  Marty was lying on his belly near a crash of rhinoceroses. He had learned they were called a crash of rhinos from watching an episode of Noah Blackwood’s Wildlife First. There were three of them. He was close enough to see the bristly tufts of hair on their ears, the toenails on their three toes, their black eyelashes, and the mud caked on their enormous horns. The biggest of the armored beasts snorted, pawed the ground with his foot, then dug a deep furrow in the mud with his sharp horn.

  I’m definitely not crossing that line.

  Marty wasn’t scooting backward, either, having learned from Wildlife First that rhinoceroses were nearsighted and sensed movement before they saw what was in front of them.

  It could have been worse. I could have ended up in the middle of a pride of lions rather than a crash of rhinos.

  The rhinos were definitely eyeballing him, but he didn’t think they knew what he was. He had crawled from the back of the restroom through thorny bushes, across wet and dry moats, and under electric wires. He was covered from head to toe in bruises, scratches, and slimy muck.

  The biggest rhino plowed another furrow in the ground, snorted, then swung around in a huff and trotted off with the other two rhinos following. Marty breathed a sigh of relief but stayed where he was. It would be dark soon, and he’d be able to move around without having to worry about the cameras. Belly and face to the ground, he called Dylan.

  “Hello?” Dylan whispered.

  “Where are you?”

  “In a Dumpster behind the concession stand. I had a better place, but the security guards started to do their sweep and I had to move. Where are you?”

  “Don’t ask,” Marty said.

  “Any word from Luther?”

  “No. Butch gave him some kind of shot that knocked him out cold. We won’t be hearing from him. We have to find him.”

  “I overheard a couple of the concession workers talking about that.”

  “About Luther?” Marty asked a little too loudly. The big rhino turned around and faced him.

  “No,” Dylan said. “About how the Ark operates. The concession people are obviously low on the food chain, pun intended, but even Noah Blackwood can’t stop staff from seeing what’s going on here and talking to each other about it. One of the guys was a new hire. The other guy had been here for a while, hoping to become a zookeeper one day….”

  The boss rhino took a couple of steps toward Marty and scraped his horn along the ground like he was sharpening it. Marty glanced behind himself, wondering how long it would take for him to reach the moat and dive in.

  “After they dumped a load of garbage on me,” Dylan continued, “they hung around outside talking. The guy that’s been here for a while said there are at least three levels beneath the Ark. The first level is for the keepers and operations staff. The second and third levels are for the research staff. He didn’t know how many more levels there might be, or what might be on them. Nothing is above ground. All staff comes and goes through the front gate. The food and supplies for the animals are trucked in during the night and loaded onto freight elevators outside the perimeter. In the morning, the supplies are distributed on some huge underground conveyor belt….”

  The rhino charged. Marty wanted to get up and run for his life, but he knew better than to move. Noah Blackwood had said that most rhino charges were bluffs.

  Most, he thought.

  The rhino put on the brakes and snorted, close enough for Marty to see strings of snot come out of his nose.

  “Are you listening?” Dylan asked.

  Marty didn’t answer.

  “What was that noise?”

  Marty didn’t answer. The rhino turned around and peed in a waterfall-like gush, a biological phenomenon Blackwood had not covered on his television show.

  “Are you there?”

  “I’m here,” Marty whispered, watching the rhino trot away again. “I just got boogered and peed on by a rhinoceros.”

  Dylan laughed. “Right.”

  “It wasn’t funny,” Marty said. “And I’m not kidding. But back to what you were saying. I lost track after ‘conveyor belt.’ ”

  “Everything is delivered from outside the perimeter at night. Blackwood has the place pretty much to himself after the Ark closes. No one’s allowed inside unless you have his express permission. If you’re caught arriving early or leaving late without his permission, you’re fired.”

  “How does he manage that when he’s not here?” Marty asked, keeping his eye on the rhino, who appeared to have forgotten all about him.

  “That’s the other weird thing I overheard. The old worker told the new guy that Noah Blackwood was always here.”

  “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Marty said quietly. “Blackwood was definitely off the coast of New Zealand and in the Congo, which is a long way from Seattle.”

  “I’m just telling you what he said. What do you want to do?”

  “I’ll come and get you after it gets dark.”

  “So you just want me to stay here in the Dumpster,” Dylan said.

  “I guess.”

  “You know, when I woke up this morning, I didn’t think I’d end the day in a Dumpster.”

  “I didn’t think I’d end my day getting peed on by a rhino, either.”

  Marty ended the call, hoping the rhino didn’t come back for seconds.

  • • •

  Grace walked into the bathroom and closed the door. She rubbed her jaw, shocked at how badly it ached from wearing a fake smile all day. The bathroom was the only place she could be herself. She pulled the Moleskine out of the tank and jotted down some more smiley words about her …

  … wonderful grandfather who took time out of his busy day to give me a fascinating and informative tour of his magnificent Ark, which he sacrificed so much to create …

  Blah … blah … blah …

  When she finished, she slipped the journal back into the tank, careful to note the exact position, then left the bathroom with the painful smile back on her face. She decided to head down to dinner a little early in order to give herself time to do some more exploring. Her bedroom was on the second floor along with seven other bedrooms — all beautifully decorated, and all completely unused. She wandered into a couple of rooms and looked around with an expression of … wonder and happiness at how lucky I am to live in such a posh mansion. … But her real reason for the side tour was to solve a mystery that had bothered her since the day she had arrived.

  From the outside, the mansion was clearly three stories tall, but inside there were only two stories, with no access to a third floor. She had asked her grandfather about this, and he told her that the third story was a facade, which he intended to finish sometime in the future. This of course was a lie.

  Who would build an entire floor without any access to it? How would you even build a
n upper floor without a way to get up there?

  Grace opened a closet in one of the guest rooms, turned on the light, and smiled with delight as if she were marveling at its size and imagining it filled with expensive clothes for her to wear. What she was really doing was looking for a secret entrance to the floor above. She didn’t find one. She closed the door and wandered down the long hallway to the next bedroom.

  The room was much like all of the others — beautifully decorated and completely unused, which brought up the other mystery she was trying to solve.

  Where does Noah Blackwood sleep?

  She had been into every room in the mansion, upstairs and down, and not one of them belonged to Noah Blackwood, unless he had no clothes except the ones he was wearing and he didn’t use a toothbrush.

  Grace pulled a chair over to the window.

  She climbed up on it and looked outside. The sun had gone down and fog was rolling in from Puget Sound. She looked at her ridiculously luxurious wristwatch.

  Time for dinner.

  Time to get out of the rhino poop, Marty thought.

  He crawled backward through the muck, keeping a watchful eye on the silhouettes of the three rhinos until his ankle hit an electrified wire. The jolt through his wet pants was enough to lift him off the ground. He screamed, which was a huge mistake, but he couldn’t help himself.

  The rhinos charged.

  He scrambled to his feet, stepped backward, slipped, and stumbled over a log, ending up on his back in the bottom of a moat, in two feet of slimy water. He looked up. The rhinos stared down at him, snorting, which he felt certain was how rhinos laughed when they saw something funny. He crawled out on the other side of the moat and found a place to dump his pack and unload his pockets to check his stuff for water damage. To his relief, the Gizmo appeared to be undamaged. The same could not be said for the Moleskines. They had swollen to twice their normal size.

  Grace will kill me if Butch doesn’t beat her to it.

  He stripped out of his clothes, wrung them out, then draped them over bushes to dry out a little. He looked at his watch. He didn’t know how long it would take the security guards to do their sweep, but he wanted to give them plenty of time to get it over with. Shivering, he started to check tag locations on the Gizmo.