Devon was behind them, kneeling on the speeding inner tube, waving his arm like a cowpoke busting a maverick.
Jess went to wave back when she saw the silurid break the surface just behind Devon. The creature’s back was burnt and charred.
The silurid torpedoed across the water, homing in for the kill.
***
Sean crawled out from beneath the golf cart. Pain stabbed up and down his left arm. He looked down and saw a red blotch on the sleeve of his parka just below the elbow. He moved his arm and heard the splintered bone scrape the lining.
He got to his feet and started down the path. He picked up his pace to a slow trot, holding his injured arm.
Less than a mile away was the steep grade that led up to the road. He had read somewhere how marathon runners could tune out the pain by focusing their minds purely on the finish line. They would be oblivious to everything around them, the competition, even the cheering fans. That was the only way they could win.
Sean focused on the road and broke into a run.
***
“Can’t this thing going any faster?” Jess yelled.
“The throttle’s all the way down. It’s the inner tube. It’s creating too much drag,” Professor Stone said.
Devon was slaloming across the wake of the boat to escape the silurid.
The hellish fish sounded then burst out of the water.
Devon skipped the inner tube back across the churning water, narrowly averting the silurid plunging down.
Jess knew it was only a matter of time before Devon’s luck ran out.
She saw Devon waving his arm. He was yelling something.
“I can’t hear you,” Jess hollered over the deafening roar of the boat’s engine.
Devon yelled back, and this time, she was able to make out what he was saying.
“He wants us to whip him,” Jess yelled to the professor.
“He wants us to what?”
“Devon needs to go faster. Make a hard left turn.”
Professor Stone cranked the steering wheel. The boat banked to the portside, throwing Jess off balance. Her hip slammed up against the gunwale. She grabbed the lip of the Fiberglas with one hand and was able to stop from being thrown overboard.
She looked back at Devon and saw him break free from the boat’s wake. He was gaining speed. The inner tube skimmed over the flat water like a hydrofoil. Devon desperately held on for the ride of his life. The inner tube was almost perpendicular to the Pumpkin Eater’s starboard side.
Jess watched the silurid straining to keep up with Devon. Unable to catch its prey on the surface, the predator submerged for a surprise attack.
“We can’t keep this up forever. We need to get him off the lake,” Professor Stone yelled back.
“Then you better head—” but she never finished when she saw the silurid break the surface just a hundred feet in front of the boat.
How in God’s name could it have traveled that fast?
And then she realized it was the other silurid.
The armored hellion charged, its ridged back displacing the water like the Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea set on ramming them like Jules Verne’s submarine did the clipper ship.
“Turn, turn!” Jess yelled.
“I see it,” Professor Stone shouted. He tacked the boat in one direction then swung it around to avoid colliding with the silurid.
“My God, they’ve actually set a trap for us,” Jess said.
“There’s only one thing we can do,” Professor Stone said.
“What’s that?”
“Get rid of the inner tube.”
Jess knew there was no other way and cut the rope.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Jake Walsh sat in the cab of his truck. He had parked near the landslide and was drinking coffee, listening to the radio.
He watched two of his men walk over to the bulldozers left at the base of the mudslide. The job was taking longer than he had anticipated. Every time they cleared off a section of road, the damn hill gave way and covered it up again.
“And so, after an around the clock vigilance, the levee has finally been shored up. Folks in Madison are breathing a little easier this morning. The threat of flooding has been temporarily erased from their minds, at least for now. In Washington, the scandal continues—” Jake turned off the radio.
His six-man crew was huddled together at the side of the road. What now? Jake’s patience was running thin. Probably gawking at some roadkill.
He stormed out of the truck.
“Hey, what the hell’s going on? This mud isn’t going to clear itself.”
His men ignored him.
Jake burst between two of his men to see what was so damn important.
“Donny, what’s going on here?” Jake asked when he saw his foreman knelt beside a body lying in the mud.
“It’s a boy. Arm’s pretty busted up. Must have gotten lost in the storm,” Donny said, looking up at Jake.
“Is he alive?”
“He’s still breathing.”
“Let’s get him into my truck, and I’ll run him over to Madison General.”
“Hey, he moved,” someone blurted.
“He’s opening his eyes,” Donny said.
“You got to…help us,” the boy muttered.
“Don’t worry, kid. You’re safe now. We’re going to get you to a hospital,” Donny said, putting his hand on the boy’s forehead.
Jake grabbed the boy under the armpits while Donny held onto the boy’s legs and they carried him over to the truck.
“The catfish—” the boy mumbled.
“What did he say?” Jake asked.
“You…have to…catch them,” the boy mumbled then drifted off.
“He’s delirious. Must have been fishing and fell in the lake,” Donny said.
“Yeah. Make sure the guys get some work done while I’m gone,” Jake said.
They put the boy in the cab and buckled him up.
“Hope he’s okay,” Donny said, shutting the passenger door.
The kid looked terrible. Jake wasn’t a religious man, but he was praying just the same for the boy to make it.
He thought to hell with the speed limit and raced down the road toward Madison.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Devon’s arms felt like they were going to drop off. Every time he took a hard hit on the water, he could feel his grip slipping. He looked to his left and saw one of the silurid gaining. To his right, the other silurid was doing the same. If this continued, they would have him for sure.
He looked at Jess in the speeding boat ahead and saw her yelling at the professor behind the wheel.
The boat suddenly changed direction.
Devon shook the spray from his eyes.
That’s when he realized that Professor Stone was steering directly for the shore.
The boat sped toward the beach.
Jess stood at the stern. A knife glistened in her hand.
And then he knew. It was the only way if they were to survive.
The bow of the boat was twenty feet from running up on the beach when Professor Stone banked the Pumpkin Eater, and Jess cut the towrope. The prop shot up a rooster tail as the boat headed back onto the lake.
The inner tube suddenly became unstable, impossible to control. Devon skimmed across the water at over thirty-five miles an hour straight for land. The beach was sandy, but beyond were jagged rocks and boulders with briars of stinging nettles and mesquite.
Devon tucked his head down and closed his eyes.
He tried his best to hold on when the inner tube left the water and skimmed over the beach.
The inner tube struck a rock and burst. Devon went flying. It was though he was catapulting out of a windshield during a head-on collision. He landed on his right shoulder and tumbled over some rocks, all the while executing a series of somersaults before crashing into the thistle brush.
***
Jess cried when Devon was flun
g into the bushes.
“Maybe now we can outrun them!” Professor Stone said.
“And then what?” Jess said.
Suddenly, a silurid surfaced just ahead of the bow.
The professor made a sharp turn. He kept his eyes glued on the great fish and gave the boat more power.
He never saw the other fish coming until it struck. Meaty chunks of burnt flesh dangled off its flank. It slammed up against the Pumpkin Eater, almost capsizing the speedboat.
And then the silurid off the bow swam up on the other side of the boat and rammed the hull. It was like being in a Volkswagen bug wedged between two transit buses barreling down the freeway.
“We can’t take much more of this,” Professor Stone yelled, losing control of the boat.
“Professor! Look out!” Jess yelled.
The speedboat was racing straight for the barricaded diversion tunnel.
Professor Stone and Jess ducked. The Pumpkin Eater plowed through the plywood wall and shot into the tunnel. The propeller dragged on the concrete bottom in the shallows as the water rushed in. The outboard drive ripped from the transom.
The boat continued to bash its way into the tunnel, the Fiberglas hull scraping the concaved concrete walls.
The professor braced himself behind the steering wheel.
Concrete reinforcing steel bars protruded out of the walls into the tunnel like lethal spikes constructed in a sadistic torturer’s chamber. The rebar jabbed through the sides of the boat, slicing the hull.
Jess was thrown against the base of the rear seat. Jasper’s box tumbled over and the contents spilled out flying everywhere. She readied herself for the inevitable. She thought of Devon; of the love they would never share; of their family they would never have.
The boat hit the concrete wall one last time and stopped.
Impaled by scores of rebar—leaning on one wall—the boat stood on its stern with the bottom of the hull facing back from where they had come. Jess held on and looked down.
A cascading waterfall spilled out of the diversion tunnel down the 100-foot chute forming a rushing river that flowed through the canyon, disappearing around a bend hidden by a stand of pine trees.
The boat teetered on the edge.
“Are you all right?” the professor asked. He was still in his seat, only staring up at the ceiling.
“I think so,” Jess replied, clinging to the engine cover.
A hellish cry boomed from the other end of the diversion tunnel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
As Devon was crawling out of the brush, he saw the Pumpkin Eater crash into the diversion tunnel. His face, hands, and legs were badly scraped up from the stinging nettles. He pulled a thorn from his cheek and one out of the palm of his right hand. Trickles of blood oozed from the numerous wounds on his body. His wetsuit was torn along his left side.
He got to his feet and ran over to the deflated inner tube. He quickly coiled up the severed towrope, picked up the inner tube, and ran over to an access ladder mounted on the cement wall of the diversion tunnel. Using one hand, he climbed up the ladder to the top.
Devon was now standing on the flat concrete expansion that was nearly the size of a football field. It would have been the flooring for the generators, pumps, and equipment that was to have controlled the dam’s floodgate if the tower had been built. Rebar protruded out of the rough cement like sprouting saplings.
He sprinted over the concrete, leaving bloody footprints behind.
***
Jess peered around the gunwale of the boat and saw a silurid slithering into the tunnel—so enormous that it filled the passage—blocking out the sunlight behind it. The rebar ripped into the fish’s flank as it waddled toward the boat.
“They’re coming into the tunnel,” Jess said.
Professor Stone slipped down from the driver’s seat. He searched around and found Jasper’s shotgun. He spotted something that had fallen out of Jasper’s box. He picked it up. It was another block of RDX.
By now, the silurid was halfway into the tunnel.
“Here. You better have this,” Stone said, handing Jess the shotgun.
She took the gun, cocked the weapon, and aimed it over the gunwale.
The silurid was almost to the boat when Jess fired a barrage of pellets, erupting a gaping wound over the creature’s right eye. The gargantuan fish recoiled with pain, opened its cavernous mouth, and spewed golden spheres out onto the fast flowing water.
Jess stared in horror as they floated toward the spillway.
“Professor, it’s releasing its eggs!”
“That must be Zeus. He’s the mouthbreeder. He incubates the young in his mouth and guards them until they are ready to hatch. Whatever we do, we can’t let them get past us!”
The professor grabbed the gaff that had been in the storage compartment and snared the first egg before it drifted by. He shook it off into the boat. The impaled embryo quivered and became still. He gaffed another then another.
“There’s too many of them,” Professor Stone said, swinging the gaff.
Jess fired the shotgun and splattered two egg sacs against the cement wall.
She cocked the shotgun and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. The gun was empty.
“I’m out of shells,” she yelled.
Jess turned to the professor and saw that he had a block of RDX in one hand and the detonator in his other hand. He had strung a short piece of wire between the two.
“I’m sorry, Jess. There’s is no other way,” he said, his hand poised on the detonator.
Suddenly, a black object appeared behind Stone.
“Professor, wait!” Jess yelled, pointing at the deflated inner tube dangling down by the ski rope outside the edge of the tunnel.
“Hey! Can you hear me down there?” a voice shouted from above.
Jess stepped around the professor, leaned out, and looked up.
Twenty feet above her head was Devon, peering down over the rim.
“Devon, thank God you’re all right!”
“Grab the inner tube and I’ll pull you up!”
“Do as he says,” Professor Stone said.
Jess caught the inner tube, slipped it over her head, and brought it down around her waist.
“Okay, I’m ready!” she yelled up to Devon.
The silurid head-butted the hull of the Pumpkin Eater, shoving the boat so that it hung precariously close to the edge of the spillway. The black engine cover rose off the engine block, nearly taking Professor Stone with it, plummeting to the racing waters below.
Jess swung out on the rope.
“Professor, wait, we can still get you out,” she pleaded.
“You know I can’t do that,” he replied.
“Please, don’t.”
“Just do me a favor. When you see Vernon, give him a message for me.”
“What?” Jess said as Devon started to hoist her up.
“Tell him that a dandelion may look like a flower, but it’s still just a damn weed.”
Professor Stone hefted the gaff and hooked another egg sac from the water and tossed it on the boat engine’s steaming manifold.
The embryo sizzled on the hot metal.
He picked up Jasper’s box, held it over his head, and threw it down on another egg sack drifting near the boat.
***
Devon yanked on the rope until he was able to grab Jess’s hand and pulled her up. He had anchored the towrope to a spike of rebar.
“We’ve got to get away from here,” Jess said, stepping out of the inner tube.
“What about the professor?”
“He’s going to blow the tunnel.”
They took off running.
***
Professor Stone turned the toggle switch on the detonator the same moment Zeus nudged the Pumpkin Eater out over the edge of the spillway.
***
A thunderous explosion rumbled beneath Devon and Jess like an earthquake forceful enough to knock the needl
e clear off the Richter scale. A ball of fire burst from the diversion tunnel.
Devon could feel the heat on his back. He shielded Jess and dove on the ground. A thick cloud of smoke swept over them.
“Are you hurt?” Devon asked, sitting up to examine her.
“No, not really,” she replied.
They glanced up and saw the underbelly of a helicopter hovering above them in the smoke.
“Looks like Sean got help. Good for him,” Devon said, crouching with Jess while the whirlybird made its landing.
A woman and two men climbed out, one carrying a large camera on his shoulder.
“Oh, I don’t believe it. News reporters?” Devon said with disgust.
“Devon, we can’t tell them about this.”
“You’re right. Not till we sort this all out. You stall them. I’m going to check the spillway,” Devon said.
“The professor couldn’t have possibly survived the blast.”
“I know, but I still have to look.”
“Go. I’ll hold them off,” Jess said.
They converged on her like a feverish pack of hounds cornering a defenseless fox.
The news reporter shoved the microphone in Jess’s face as she stood.
“Do you mind?” Jess said and pushed the microphone away.
“Hold on, Victoria. I’m not ready,” said the man carrying the recorder attached by a cord to the microphone in Victoria’s hand.
“Hurry up, Bernie. We don’t have all day,” Victoria snapped. “Name.”
“What?” Jess asked.
“What is your name?”
“Jess Murdock.” Jess wanted to slap the rude woman.
“Murdock. By any chance, are you related to a Vernon Murdock?” Victoria asked.
“He’s my brother. Why?” Jess wondered how she could possibly know Vernon. She glanced over at Devon standing by the concrete rubble next to a wide fissure caused by the blast. He was leaning forward with his hands on his knees, peering over the edge.
“We know about his experiment,” Victoria said.
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“We’ve seen the tape.”
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