by Hunter Shea
“Hold on,” he said, giving the rod an upward tug.
He had a good one. As the fish fought back, he thought, This might feed us for three days.
“Are you on the boat? Jesus, Dan, do you know how dangerous it is to go out when you’ve been drinking? Have you lost your mind?”
There were many things he wanted to say. Instead, he ground his teeth and pulled in a couple more feet of line. Jamie would have to wait. He came out here to get away from her. Why the hell did she have to nag him from ship to shore?
His forearms strained against the tug of the fish. This couldn’t be a flounder. They didn’t put up a fight like this. Had to be a bluefish. Some of those bastards were strong and ornery.
“Dan. Answer me, Dan.”
The reel clicked, slow and steady. Dan planted his foot against the side of the boat. He dipped the rod, gave the line some slack, which the fish greedily took up. He pulled, feeling the full weight of it.
“Oh, I’ve got you now,” he hissed.
Jamie continued with her diatribe. Dan didn’t pay her any mind. He just kept turning the reel, tic-tic-tic, despite the considerable weight at the other end. He shifted in his seat, nudging the phone off its perch and flipping it into the bucket on top of the fluke. Now that made him smile.
“Come on, you know you’re beat,” he grunted.
The line jerked, zigging and zagging from left to right.
Must be close to the surface now.
The water rippled. Dan brought in another foot of line. Sweat trickled down the sides of his face. Adrenaline flooded the hangover from his system. This could be one of the biggest catches he ever made in the sound.
“Dan, are you listening to me?” Jamie’s voice echoed in the bucket.
“That’s right, you bitch!” Dan shouted, to the fish, not his wife, though he knew she’d never believe that.
With one last tug, the fish, a bluefish, its cold flesh sparkling in the moonlight, broke the surface in a spray of boiling foam. Dan stood, maneuvering so he could bring it over the side. It hung in midair, its mouth impaled by the hook, struggling to break free.
“You gotta be at least twenty pounds. Wait’ll I show Gus and Ernie.”
The fish was going to wreak havoc on his boat. He might have to give it a whack with the lead-filled baton he kept on board. Keeping the dangling fish within the confines of the boat, he bent his knees and reached down for the baton. He’d bought it at a garage sale of a cop’s widow. It had seen its share of fish heads ever since. He often wondered what other kinds of heads it had bludgeoned in its history.
“Sorry to have to do this,” he said.
As he went to deliver a stunning, if not killing, blow, the boat rocked to the side. Dan stumbled, trying to retain his balance.
The water exploded as if something launched from a canon below. It sailed onto the boat, a dark, writhing shape, snarling like a rabid animal. Dan screamed, falling back into the hard plastic seat.
When he looked at its face, he felt an immediate pain in his chest, radiating down his left arm.
The animal sank its large, pointed teeth into the bluefish, popping it like a water balloon filled with entrails.
It hunched on all fours. Its massive head jerked from side to side, spraying fish guts everywhere. Dan stared in horror, each breath a struggle through the heaviness in his chest. It had the body of a dog or a wolf, even, but its head looked like something out of the mythology class he took in college. That face, that horrid, physically impossible face, was a cross between a large bird, like an eagle, and a pig. Its snout was long but ended in a rounded wet nose dark as charcoal. Tiny feathers intermingled with fur around the collar of its neck. Its body was as round and solid as a wine barrel. Its small, round eyes glowed a hazy blue, like a husky.
Those eyes fixed on Dan’s.
“Dan, what’s all that noise? What’s going on?”
He desperately wanted to answer her, but his arms had locked up. The grotesque animal peered down at the phone. It sniffed the air. Its lips curled back, revealing purple gums. It thrust its elongated muzzle into the bucket, clamping down on the plastic phone. It shattered into small shards under the weight of the creature’s jaws.
Dan’s eyes went wide as a jolt of fire ripped through his chest. His heart fluttered out of rhythm, a deaf drummer in a black parade. The pain was excruciating. When it subsided, he looked on with mute horror as the animal bit into his knee, tearing the cap free with a twitch of its demonic head.
For some reason, he couldn’t feel his legs at all. Not even when it went for his other knee, hobbling him in seconds. Was it shock? Or had his nervous system already shut down, part of a domino drop of total system failure?
Dan prayed his heart would stop before the beast came at him again.
CHAPTER 13
Dalton and Anita’s conversation was interrupted by a red-eyed Sergeant Campos. The Sullivan house was a crawling, buzzing hive of activity. When an officer was down, everyone was on duty.
“Anita, we just got a call that’s close by. Something about a dogfight,” Campos said. “I’ll send you over with one of my officers.”
Dalton volunteered to go. He needed to do something to take his mind off Henderson’s face just before he was dragged away. That and his dire need to find out what the hell was going on in his adopted town.
“You’ve already given your statement?” Campos asked.
“Many times over.”
Campos ran a beefy hand over his face and grunted. “It’s only four blocks away. Come right back when you’re done. You’re not finished here.”
He nodded, motioning with his head for Anita to follow him out to his car. He got the address from dispatch. Apparently, someone’s German shepherd was going at it viciously with a stray.
As they drove to the house, Dalton asked, “You think there’s any chance it’s the same animal that took Henderson?”
She stared out the window, her hands gripping her tranquilizer rifle. “I honestly don’t know.”
They both heard the desperate growls, yelps and yips as he pulled into the driveway of the gold-and-black-trimmed Tudor house. An anxious woman, her hair in rollers, poked her head out of the front window. “They’re in the yard!” she shouted, pointing. “Please, save my Bruce!”
Like every neighborhood he’d been in so far, the lights were on in every house. No one was getting any sleep tonight. Whatever had invaded Montauk brought an ugly tide of fear that was steadily sweeping from one end of the town to the other.
“Just stay inside and close the window,” Dalton said, drawing his gun and taking the lead. “Do you have a back light?”
“I do.”
“If you can do it from inside, please turn it on.”
She ducked back into the house and pulled the windows down.
Bruce sounded like he was in the fight of his life. Deep, guttural growls, high-pitched shrieks and what could only be described as a canine battle cry rang across the neighborhood. Everything he heard screamed that it was going to be an ugly sight.
“Anita, if they charge us, I want you to run back to my car and get inside fast.”
A dull, yellow glow trickled into the alley between the two houses. It wasn’t the best light, but it was better than trying to get a handle on things with a flashlight.
“Gray, if there’s a chance I can sedate it—”
“Forget that. If it’s not a dog, you can look at it all you want when it’s dead. I just watched one drag a two-hundred-fifty-pound man like he was a doll.”
Anita pulled in a deep breath, then nodded. “Okay, you’re right.” Looking down, she crouched, found a water valve, gave it a twist and handed a hose to him. “Best way to break up a dogfight without getting yourself bitten. That should separate them. Once you’ve done that, we might have a chance of saving the shepherd.”
Dalton gripped his Glock 17 with one hand and hose nozzle with the other. The image would be comical if the escalating events
weren’t so grave.
The cacophony in the yard had been reduced to strangled grunts. It sounded like the animals were gnawing on each other.
“Stay behind me,” he said, charging the last few feet, his fingers clamped down on the hose trigger.
A steady stream of water rocketed at a pair of twisting bodies. The German shepherd had turned crimson. The creature that had the dog’s neck in its mouth loosened its jaws to glare at the intruder.
Dalton met the beast’s malevolent gaze and felt his insides flush cold.
Without turning, he said as forcefully as he could, “Anita, run like fucking hell now!”
Officer Jake Winn pulled up to the split-level ranch house on Exton Street seconds before the paramedics. It was another “all hands on deck” night but he couldn’t get his head around the news of Henderson’s abduction and disappearance. He’d known the man for years, had thrown up alongside him in the middle of his wedding reception. They’d shared more beers and bullshit stories about hunting, both game and girls, in their younger years than he could count.
And now Norm was gone. Taken in the night by who-the-hell-knew-what.
He’d been on his way to the house where it happened when the emergency call came in about a girl suffering some sort of seizure. Normally, it wouldn’t be a matter for the PD, but the girl had told her parents earlier that she’d been attacked by a dog.
All animal attacks and sightings were being treated as top priorities.
So, as much as he wanted to be with everyone else looking for Norm, he knew his place was here, helping out an innocent girl.
“Glad to see they brought the A-team,” he said to the paramedics, Jack Brand and Jerry Santana. They’d worked this beat as long as he and Norman had.
“You hear about Norm?” Jerry said, casting his eyes heavenward as if he was offering a silent prayer for his safe return.
Winn rang the bell and gave the door a couple of hard knocks for good measure. “Yeah. I’m heading over after this call.”
“Do you think he was really attacked by an animal?” Jack asked. “I mean, Norm’s a pretty big guy.”
Jake narrowed his eyes. “If he was, I wouldn’t put odds on it seeing another dawn. Norm’s one strong son of a bitch.”
The door swung open. A harried, terrified Mary James led them inside and upstairs without so much as a word. They ran after her. Winn felt the severity of the situation in his chest before he even made it to the girl’s room. It was too quiet. We’re too late, he thought as they jogged down the carpeted hallway.
As soon as he saw the girl on the bed, her father kneeling alongside it, pressing a wet washcloth to her forehead, he stepped aside so Jack and Jerry could do their thing.
“What in holy hell?” he whispered.
The girl lay on the bed dressed only in a thin nightshirt. The covers were pulled back and lay in a crumpled ball on the floor. She wasn’t seizing, which was a good thing. But her leg. It didn’t even look like it belonged on a human being.
Her right leg was swollen to the point of bursting. In fact, her skin had split in more places than he could count, each wound weeping a foul, green pus. The entire leg had turned a ghastly shade of purple. Dark blue lines etched across her skin like twisting winter tree branches. The blue spider veins ran all the way to her throat. A yellow froth bubbled from the corners of her mouth. Heavy drops of perspiration ran down her body. The smell boiling out of the room made him step back.
She was still breathing, but by the look in her glazed eyes, she had checked out. When the pain was too much, the brain had a foolproof way of escaping the worst of it.
“Mr. and Mrs. James, I need you to come outside with me. The paramedics are the best we have. They’ll take good care of her.”
Jerry flashed him a look that told him all he needed to know. This was not going to end well.
Richard James reluctantly staggered away from the bed as Jack cut the girl’s nightshirt open with a pair of scissors. Winn had met Richard at a couple of fund-raisers over the years. He was an average man with an above-average propensity for charity. The kind of guy you could take half your classes with in high school and never know his name or be able to pick him out of a lineup of two. Winn felt bad for recalling his checks better than his face.
He needed to get some basic information out of them fast. By the looks of things, Jerry and Jack would have her loaded in the ambulance in minutes, racing to the hospital.
“I know this is very hard right now, but I need to ask you a few important questions.”
Mary James gripped her husband’s hand. “Yes, we understand.” She turned to look at her daughter. Winn spoke to keep her eyes from lingering too long. Some things were best left unseen. The girl’s body looked like it had been infected by gangrene. Jack checked her blood pressure. His lips pulled back in a tight grimace.
“What’s your daughter’s name?” Winn asked.
Mary turned at the sound of his voice. He didn’t think she’d blinked since the moment she’d opened the door. “Kelly.”
“Kelly,” Richard added. The man looked as if his wife was the only thing keeping him upright.
“You said she told you she was attacked by a dog. Did she say when and where?”
“She—she’d snuck out to a party to see her boyfriend two nights ago. When she came home, it was late. We were asleep upstairs. Kelly said a dog came after her but only managed to scratch her ankle. It hardly even bled. I thought she had come down with a stomach virus. She ran a temp the next day. She didn’t mention her ankle. Not until earlier tonight. She was so afraid. She kept hoping it would get better on its own.”
Fat tears sprang from her eyes, rolling down her cheeks.
“It wasn’t this bad even an hour ago,” Richard said, picking up the narrative so she didn’t have to. “Her ankle was a little bruised, but we were more concerned about her temperature. We gave her some Tylenol and put some ice packs around her. When she started her seizure, everything changed in an instant.”
Winn heard Jack say, “She’s at one-oh-four point three. We have to get her out now.”
“Did she describe the dog to you?” he asked, feeling time slip through his fingers.
They both shook their heads. “She said it was too dark to see, but it looked big. The scratch hurt more than it should have, and only got worse.”
Winn flinched when Kelly James suddenly screamed bloody murder. Jerry and Jack had lifted her onto the stretcher. Their touch seemed to set her off. Mary and Richard ran to her, each grasping a hand, shoving the paramedics aside.
Kelly continued to wail, her back arching. Winn stared at her leg. The rotten flesh undulated in rhythm with the pulse at her neck. Jerry and Jack tried to maneuver the stretcher so they could get her out of the room.
“No-no-no-no-noooooooooo!” Kelly shouted. “Oh God, I’m on fire!”
“Mr. and Mrs. James, please step aside so the paramedics can get her in the ambulance.”
Either they didn’t hear him through their daughter’s cries or had resolved not to let her go. He was about to go into the bedroom and ease them away when the unthinkable happened.
CHAPTER 14
The synapses to Dalton’s brain snapped and misfired. His eyes took in the carnage with the cold precision of a camera lens. What he saw and how he comprehended the unfathomable image had become as difficult as advanced calculus.
Anita, in blatant disregard of his command to get back to the car, sidled next to him. She seemed equally perplexed.
The creature, seeing it had something new to toy with, took a fatal bite from the German shepherd’s throat. It was a merciful end.
“Gray, I don’t know what the hell that thing is,” Anita croaked.
If she didn’t know, Dalton had no chance of figuring it out himself. It looked like a lot of things, yet like nothing at all. Had it been bathed in direct light, its shadow would have suggested a dog, though one on a very large scale. It stood on four thick legs, each le
g sprouting a paw the size of a wrestler’s hand. Each paw had considerable claws, some retracted, like a cat’s. Their savage effectiveness was etched all over the poor dog. It was covered in fur, but the coat looked diseased, frayed, coarse and wiry. The fur was a mix of colors, but the flesh that was exposed between the crumbling patches of fur was an otherworldly turquoise. It had no tail. The face was unmistakably that of a goat, with a long tuft of blood-soaked hair under its chin. Yet the muzzle was distended like a dog’s, ending in a slight, downward curve, like an eagle’s beak.
“It’s a whole damn petting zoo wrapped into one animal,” Dalton said, pointing his Glock at the unidentifiable beast.
It growled at them, its shoulders tensing, hind legs coiling.
A woman’s voice split the tension. “Oh my God! Bruce!”
Dalton turned to his left, taking his eyes off the monstrosity for a split second. The dog’s owner had opened the back door. She stood frozen in her nightgown, her shivering hands covering her mouth.
“Ma’am, I need you to get back in the house and lock the door.”
The creature slowly turned its deformed head toward the woman. A long, blue-tinted tongue lolled from its mouth, dripping saliva onto the dog’s carcass.
She sobbed and shook, but couldn’t move her legs. Her grief and horror rooted her to the spot. Even when the creature took a step in her direction, lifting its blood-soaked front paw over her mangled Bruce, she remained locked in place.
“Shoot it, Gray,” Anita said.
The gun felt as if its weight had quadrupled. Dalton flexed his fingers around the hard, plastic-encased steel. He’d never fired his gun outside the firing range before. Just the presence of a drawn firearm was an effective deterrent. Many cops went their whole careers without ever discharging their weapon. People knew the power and deadly consequences of a gun.
This animal did not.
“Please get back in your house now!” Dalton shouted, trying to get the creature’s attention back on him. It worked. The woman blinked her eyes rapidly, as if emerging from an interrupted sleepwalk. Out of his periphery, he watched her take an unsteady step backward, slipping into the doorway. He heard the door latch close.