by Roland Smith
She moved around the cube to the next section, which was an exercise area. Treadmill, elliptical machine, stair stepper, recumbent bicycle, weights, punching bag … every kind of apparatus imaginable, which was why her grandfather was in such good shape for a man in his fifties — although she didn’t know exactly how old he was.
What lay around the next corner shocked her. Instead of curtains, the windows were covered by a solid green screen. In front of it was a junkyard minus the junkyard dog. There was a snowmobile, a dirt-encrusted four-wheeler, the cockpit of a small airplane, camping gear, and so many other things it was difficult for her to find her way through the incredible clutter.
She stopped next to a small pitched tent. Outside the opening were the ashes of an old campfire with pots and pans and cooking utensils scattered around it. She opened the flap and looked inside. There was an air mattress, an old sleeping bag, and a backpack. She opened the pack and found it was stuffed with newspapers. She wondered if all the junk was mementos from past expeditions. But even if they were, why would they be stored in such a haphazard way? Noah Blackwood was very precise in everything that he did. It was unthinkable that he could live with this kind of chaos on his private floor.
Why?
She moved on to his office to try to find the answer.
• • •
Marty was trying to find answers, too, and not having much luck. His thinking was that if he found a staff member wandering around the Ark, he might be able to follow them underground with the dragonspy and find Luther. But there was no one to follow. The Ark was like an eerie ghost ship drifting in a sea of fog.
“I’m getting a little creeped out,” Dylan said.
“Me too,” Marty admitted. “Maybe we should call Wolfe.”
“In DC?”
“He won’t be able to help us from there, but he may know how to get ahold of Ted or someone else who can.” He flew the dragonspy back to the Dumpster and parked it under a light so it could recharge, then switched to the Gizmo’s phone function. “Weird, I’m not getting a signal.”
Dylan fished his phone out of his pocket and looked at it. “Me neither.”
“I’ll switch to satellite.” Marty hit the icon. “Uh-oh.”
“Dead?”
Marty enabled the tracking icon to make sure. No Satellite Signal … flashed across the screen. “As a doornail,” he said. “I guess the dragonspy doesn’t depend on sat signals to fly. You didn’t happen to see any pay phones when you were wandering around, did you?”
“What’s a pay phone?”
“Funny. So we’re on our own … again.”
“Just the way you and Luther like it,” Dylan said. “Think about all the great scenes in your next graphic novel.”
“Yeah,” Marty said. “Like this scene: two guys squatting next to a Dumpster at night with fog swirling around them, debating about their next step and with no idea of what it’s going to be.”
Dylan grinned. “Point well taken. I guess we should do something, even if it’s stupid.”
“Exactly! Let’s head over to where Butch snatched Luther and see if we can figure out how to call that elevator back up.”
Marty parked the dragonspy in the Gizmo. They grabbed their packs and headed toward South America, staying in the shadows away from the lights.
“There are three cameras up ahead where the path forks,” Marty explained as they walked. “Two on the right, one on the left. There are also spotlights at the fork and smaller lights embedded in the rails along both paths. We’ll have to go around the spotlights, but we might be able to sneak past the cameras covering the path to the right because seven of the rail lights are out. The cameras aren’t infrared. They won’t be able to pick us up if we stay in the center of the path. I hope. There aren’t any lights where Butch went down the rabbit hole, so we should be safe there unless —”
“Wait a second!” Dylan interrupted. “How do you know so much about the lights and the cameras?”
“The dragonspy.”
“It counts cameras and lights?”
“No, I counted the cameras and lights, or more accurately, I’ve memorized them. I have an eidetic memory.”
“Huh?”
“Perfect recall, photographic memory.”
“That’s awesome.”
Marty shrugged. “It is and it isn’t. What I see stays in my brain forever. Twenty years from now, providing we live through the night, I’ll remember the lights and cameras and fog and this conversation in perfect brain-clogging detail.” He pointed to his head. “I’m afraid that someday the tank’s going to explode with too much useless information.”
“But it’s kind of handy tonight,” Dylan said.
“I guess,” Marty admitted. “We better head overland until we’re past the spotlights. But watch out for the hot wires. They really hurt.”
“Huh?”
Marty explained how Noah managed to keep the animals in without barriers as he led the way. He hadn’t been into this area of the Ark before, but he had a pretty good idea of where the hot wires would be from his previous painful experience. As he picked his way through the bushes, whispering hot-wire warnings to Dylan, he thought about Luther. He was kicking himself for not listening to Dylan. He should have called for help when they still had reception. The cell and satellite signals being out at the same time could only mean one thing: Noah Blackwood knew he was there and had jammed the signals so he couldn’t call for help.
“Wire,” he whispered, pointing his flashlight app so Dylan could see it.
“Where are all the security guards?” Dylan asked, carefully stepping over the wire.
“I was wondering that myself. I think Blackwood got rid of them just like Butch got rid of the security guy who helped him nab Luther.”
“That could work to our advantage,” Dylan said. “Two against two.”
“Hopefully two against three,” Marty said. “Hopefully Luther’s okay.”
• • •
Noah and Butch were back with Paul Ivy in the surveillance room. The hamburgers were gone and Paul was frantic. His world was being shut down one screen at a time.
“There goes another one!” Paul shouted. “A third of the cameras are already down. If he keeps this up, we’ll be totally blind in less than an hour.”
Noah scanned the remaining camera feeds. There were a few cameras left on every level, but coverage was very spotty. “Are the cameras working in 251?”
Paul hit a button on his console and a close-up of the hatchlings appeared on the central monitor. The young dinosaurs were wrapped around each other, sleeping.
“Pan back,” Noah said.
Paul toggled a switch and a panoramic view of the makeshift nursery appeared on the screen. Yvonne was lying on a cot twenty feet away from the hatchlings and looked to be as sound asleep as they were.
Noah was pleased. The newest member of his very small inner circle was turning out to be a very dedicated and loyal employee. He had spoken to her earlier from the mansion, knowing that she had been awake for thirty-six hours straight. He had suggested that she get some sleep because he needed her alert for something he had in mind for later that night.
“She’s a team player,” Noah said.
“By sleeping,” Butch said resentfully.
“That’s exactly what I told her to do,” Noah said, suppressing a smile. He liked it when his lieutenants were jealous of each other. The competition for his approval kept them in line. “She could have gone up to the keeper level to sleep,” Noah continued. “Which would have been a lot more comfortable for her, and it certainly would have smelled better. But instead she chose to sleep near her charges regardless of the discomfort. Impressive.”
Butch frowned.
Paul shrugged.
The central monitor went blank.
“What am I going to do when all the cameras are out?” Paul whined.
“How about some exercise?” Butch said.
“Shut up,
Butch.”
“Both of you shut up,” Noah said. “Is there a way to figure out where Smyth is by the cameras he’s taking out?”
Paul shook his head. “I already thought of that. It’s a spaghetti pile of cables and wires up there. Twenty years’ worth. The only thing we can hope for is that he pops out on top before he yanks all of the camera connections.”
“What do you mean by ‘pops out on top’?” Butch asked.
“The surface. Air vents. If we didn’t have them, we’d suffocate. There are three of them, and as far as I know they aren’t locked.”
“I don’t want Luther on the surface,” Noah said. “I want him contained down here.”
“What about the cameras?” Paul whined again.
“Forget about them. Where are the surface vents?”
Reluctantly, Paul brought up a schematic of the Ark on the central monitor and pointed them out.
“If I recall,” Noah said, “the vents are latched from the inside. There is no lock on the outside.”
Paul nodded.
Noah looked at Butch. “Get up top and secure the vents. After you’re done, I want you to find Marty. He’s up on top someplace. We need to get him in hand.”
Butch nodded.
Noah turned to Paul. “I want you to continue monitoring the cameras that still work. If you see anything remotely suspicious, let me and Butch know immediately on the two-way radio. I’ve jammed the cell and satellite signals.”
“What do you mean by ‘anything remotely suspicious’?” Paul asked.
Noah tried to control his anger. Could Paul possibly be this dense? “For instance, Paul,” he answered slowly and deliberately, “if the cameras stop going out, I want to know because it probably means that Luther has found a way out of the vents. Right now our best hope is to catch him inside them, where he’s vulnerable. We can’t afford to have him running around seeing things he’s not supposed to see. While Butch is up top, I’m going to conduct a room-by-room search below, paying particular attention to suspicious noises like a boy crawling through our ductwork. If I hear something, I will call you. You will look at the schematic and tell me where Luther is going so we can head him off and catch him. Does that clear it up for you, Paul?”
Paul gulped, then nodded. “I’ll stay right here at my desk until I hear from you.”
“Good idea,” Noah said.
Grace sat down behind Noah’s massive wooden desk. She didn’t know what kind of wood it was, but it was beautiful.
And knowing him, she thought, expensive.
It was also impeccably neat. The only things on the polished surface were a phone, a computer monitor, a track pad, and a slim keyboard. She hit the computer’s on button, thinking that the computer would be password protected. But to her surprise the screen came to life with dozens of files, folders, and icons. She scanned their titles, then moved the cursor to a large icon marked COLLECTION. She clicked it, expecting something to appear on the screen. Instead, the lights above the desk started to dim and the black cube began to glow. She stood and approached the glass. By the time she reached it, the cube was fully illuminated. And what Grace saw was both beautiful and horrible. She was suddenly reminded of a conversation between Wolfe and Laurel Lee back on Cryptos Island. It seemed like a lifetime ago but had really only been a few weeks. She remembered every word of the exchange:
“Noah Blackwood is a collector,” Wolfe had told Laurel Lee. “His parks are nothing more than holding areas so he can make money off the animals before he harvests them.”
At the time, Grace thought Wolfe was exaggerating. Looking at what lay beyond the smoky glass, she knew she had been wrong. She was standing face-to-face with her grandfather’s sick harvest. She circled the cube with revulsion and a certain amount of fascination. It was filled with dozens of extinct and endangered animals — all of them beautifully preserved, all of them extremely dead. She paused in front of the Tasmanian wolf, or thylacine, which she had overheard Wolfe telling Laurel Lee about. The species had been extinct for more than seventy years. She was staring at the last one that had ever drawn breath. In the diorama next to it was a Caspian tiger pouncing on an ibex.
Sickened by what she’d already seen yet unable to look away, she quickened her pace around the cube, but the display of the giant panda stopped her cold. Something bothered her about it, and it wasn’t that it had been harvested in its prime. There was something strange about how the taxidermist had posed the panda. It was looking down at its chest, holding its paws up as if …
“Oh no!” Grace gasped.
As if the panda is holding a cub up to nurse it.
There were three panda cubs, two males and one female, at the Ark. Grace had wondered what would happen to the “extra” male. Now she knew. The odd male would be harvested and added to Noah Blackwood’s twisted collection.
She hurried back around to Noah’s desk and clicked the COLLECTION icon. The lights came back on in the office and the cube went dark.
Out of sight, out of mind, she thought, then realized this wasn’t true. There are things that, once seen, cannot be unseen. Noah Blackwood’s collection was one of these. Grace promised herself that the baby boy panda would not be added to Noah’s black cube. But before figuring out how to accomplish that, she needed to find out what else was on his computer.
She opened the Wildlife First folder, then a subfolder with the current date. Inside was a video called Kaikoura Canyon (Final). The Kaikoura Canyon off the coast of New Zealand was where they had captured the giant squid. She started fast-forwarding through the video, slowing it down when she saw something she wanted to take a closer look at or hear. The gist of the show was about evil pirates trying to hijack his research ship, with Noah Blackwood seemingly repelling them all by himself. There was no video, or mention, of Wolfe’s Coelacanth being attacked, or even of it being in the same area as Noah’s beleaguered ship. At the end of the episode, a tearful Noah Blackwood dedicated the show to two crew members who supposedly died during the pirate attack.
The show was entertaining, dramatic, and a complete lie. The video made it look like the pirate attack had lasted for hours. The real attack on Noah’s ship had lasted less than five minutes, then the pirates broke off and attacked the Coelacanth. While the Coelacanth was fighting off the pirates, Noah sent divers down through the Moon Pool with bombs to blow up the ship.
Thinking the video was over, Grace was about to close it out when Noah Blackwood appeared on the screen in torn and filthy clothes looking like death warmed over. The camera zoomed in for a close-up of his haggard face. He spoke in a raspy, weak voice….
“I’m recording this from somewhere deep in the Congo, and it very well may be the last time you see me …”
He gave the camera his trademark grin tinged with a little sadness and regret.
“… but don’t despair. I’ve had a good run, and I’ve managed to save some animals along the way, for which I’m grateful. I came out here to rescue a dear colleague and I may have killed myself in the attempt, but looking back on my life I have no regrets — except one: that I won’t be alive to see the impact of this, my greatest discovery ever … ”
The camera moved jerkily to his right. A close-up of the two Mokélé-mbembé hatchlings appeared.
“Dinosaurs exist!”
The camera returned to Noah’s feverish face.
“Two of them, anyway. The last of their breed. I will try to get them to safety, but if I can’t, the last thing I do before I die will be to let them go …”
The scene switched to a close-up of a now well-groomed and healthy-looking Noah Blackwood.
“To quote Mark Twain, the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. But what has not been exaggerated are the dinosaur hatchlings I showed you while I was lost in the Congo. I managed to get my friend and the hatchlings to safety. Right now, for security reasons, we are keeping the hatchlings at an undisclosed location. They are thriving, but they need a little more ti
me to adjust to their new circumstances. I will have more information for you on next week’s show. Until then … Wildlife First!”
The camera panned back. Noah was sitting on a log near a small tent with a beautiful lake behind him.
Grace had seen the tent and the log before. On the other side of the cube. The green screen covering the windows was used to project backgrounds like the placid lake, or the hideous jungles of the Congo. Noah wasn’t in the Congo when he told his millions of viewers about the baby dinosaurs. He was right around the corner from his king-sized bed!
Probably admiring his collection of dead animals between takes, Grace thought, disgusted.
She was about to close the folder when she noticed another video marked Outtakes. She fast-forwarded through the video clips….
Noah jumping over a rail on his ship to save someone and landing on an inflated pad instead of splashing into a cold sea … Noah unwrapping and chomping down on an Ark cheeseburger and drinking a soda with ice in the “Congolese jungle” … Noah standing with “the pirates” that attacked him and the Coelacanth, laughing at something one of the pirates was telling him …
He should change the name of his show to Wild Lies First!
Grace felt her lips curl into a smile, but this time it was genuine and it didn’t hurt. The outtake file was about the same size as the final file. She selected Outtakes and changed its title, typing in Kaikoura Canyon (Final); then she selected Kaikoura Canyon (Final) and typed in Outtakes.
If it works, the next Wildlife First episode might turn out to be Wildlife Last!
Her smile broadened and she considered hitting the SEND button right then, but thought better of it. If Noah discovered it had been sent early, he’d still have time to pull it before it aired. There was a risk that he would take one last look before sending it, but she had a backup plan in case he did. She opened Noah’s email account.
Subject: This is not from Noah Blackwood
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Marty,
You’ll find the attached very interesting, and so will Wolfe. I’m at the Seattle Ark, but we may be leaving for Paris tomorrow with the hatchlings. I have a lot to tell you, but I’m not sure when I’ll get another chance to contact you. NB keeps a very close eye on me. I’m using his computer to send this to you so DO NOT EMAIL ME BACK. As soon as this uploads I’ll delete this email from his server so he won’t know I’ve contacted you. Don’t worry about me. I’m safe. I miss you and Wolfe and Laurel Lee and everyone.