Canals

by Everett Powers

  Buddy was fat and lazy. Despite the laziness he was gainfully employed because he loved to eat, especially fast-food. He really didn’t care where they ate, he loved it all: Taco Bell, KFC, Quizno’s, Subway, Burger King, Mickey D’s, Pizza Hut, In-N-Out, Domino’s, Del Taco. He once had a dream he had a Sonic Drive-In credit card with a five hundred dollar limit. That was as close to a wet-dream as Buddy ever wanted to get.

  He’d let Randy talk him into joining the police cadets after high school, but regretted every minute of it. Unlike Randy, who did the cadet thing as often as they let him, sometimes even going out on his own without an assignment, dressed in his uniform, Buddy only did the cadets when Randy insisted. But when the summer was over, it would be adiós police cadets; he’d had enough.

  Buddy worked at the Frito-Lay plant in Empire, operating the machine that dumped carloads of potatoes into another machine that scrubbed and peeled them. His parents insisted he had to get a job or go to college, and he’d had enough of school.

  Both boys still lived with their parents.

  They ate their food in Buddy’s car, and, just as Buddy had hoped, Randy was too wound up to finish his food; he got most of Randy’s burger and fries.

  Randy insisted they drive to their canal as soon as Buddy finished eating, even though it still light outside. “We gotta get set up, man. Some idiot might try to go running down our canal. We can’t let that happen on our watch,” Randy was slurping from a forty-four ounce Coke.

  “You watch too many cop movies, Rand,” Buddy replied, pulling into heavy

  McHenry Avenue traffic.

  Buddy found their canal and parked close so they wouldn’t have far to carry the stuff the cops gave them. Despite what he said earlier, Buddy had to admit this was the most interesting thing he’d ever done as a cadet. He was even a little excited.

  The detective at the meeting had acted serious when he said the assignment could be dangerous and that they were to stay as far away from the canal as possible. Yeah right. Whatever. Buddy tuned the cop out until he heard they would get to use some of that cool yellow police tape, like he saw on TV, and a couple of new battery-powered lights. If cops were giving cadets stuff to use, new stuff, it had to be an important assignment.

  Randy jumped out of the car and chased after someone on the sidewalk in front of their canal, yelling and waving his arms. Buddy opened his trunk, sat on the curb and waited until Randy was done doing his yap-dog thing. No way he was going to carry all this stuff by himself.

  “Hell with this. Who do they think we are, bunch of stooges?”

  Jim Waterman and Fred Reese were in a little community patrol pickup, driving to their assigned canal.

  Jim was mad, but that was nothing new. He was mad at the government, federal, state, and local, all of the time, the Oakland Raiders’ organization most of the time, and his wife, Barbara, whenever he could find solid enough grounds. He had to tread lightly there, Barbara had ways of getting even.

  A sour man, it had been a happy day at the local ups warehouse when he retired at fifty-five. Management had given him long routes to give his co-workers as little contact with him as possible. He had more customer complaints than anyone. Ever. No one complained that he ran late or gave them the wrong package, he just pissed people off.

  “They think we’re going to sit on our asses all night, watching a canal? What, they afraid someone’s going to steal it?” Jim groused.

  Fred Reese couldn’t believe his bad luck. Of all the people they could assign him to work with that night, they had to give him old sourpuss Waterman. Having trained Jim, what little training was needed for this “job,” he had sworn he would sweep floors and swab toilets at McDonalds before spending another hour with the man.

  A retired high school English teacher, Fred did the community police volunteer thing to keep busy and give him something different to do once in a while, have some new faces to look at. His wife, Gladys, was driving him crazy, whining about trips her friends were taking but she wasn’t. He told her to go without him. He didn’t care. He sure as hell wasn’t going to shell out three grand to stay on a big boat for two weeks, watching Gladys stuff her face. And she insisted he drive her everywhere even though she had a license. He was going nuts.

  Gladys’s closest friend had just left for a week in Jamaica; Fred knew she’d be on him all night so he decided he’d rather spend the time sitting across the street from Jim Waterman.

  “You know that’s not what they said, Jim. They said people were getting killed by the canals and they need us to keep them away, that’s all. I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second! I read someone’s tearing up police cars and killing cops. They didn’t say anything about that at the meeting, did they?” He jabbed a bony, conspiratorial finger at Fred. “They know things they’re not telling us.”

  Fred had read the same thing in the paper and had to admit it troubled him as well.

  “Ah, I’m sure they wouldn’t send us out here if it was dangerous. We’re not even armed. They just want us to warn folks off, that’s all.”

  “Bullshit, that’s what I say.”

  “There’s no need to swear, Jim.”

  “Bunch of stooges, that’s what they think we are.”

  Jim growled and grumbled the rest of the way to the canal. Despite all the bluster, Fred knew Jim would stay as long as he did, if for no other reason than to give him grief all night.

  They parked, strung the police tape across the canal entrances and set up their lights, and sat across the street from each other. Jim finally shut up, having run out of things to complain about. Fred lit a cigarette and thought about his last fishing trip, when he’d caught a ten-pounder.

  “I thought I smelled that stink on you,” Jim said. “How anyone with your education can smoke is—”

  “Give it a rest, Jim. You’ll wear yourself out before ten.”

  Fred puffed and remembered, and tried to block out Jim’s noise.

  “Hey!” he heard Jim shout. “Get away from the canal!”

  Fred looked up and watched a pair of joggers leave the sidewalk, pass under the yellow tape, and start down the canal bank. Jim was on his feet, hands cupped over his mouth, hollering, “I say you can’t run on the canal bank and the police say you can’t run on the canal bank. Don’t you read the papers? You want to get yourself killed? Now get your asses back here!”

  One of the joggers flipped him off.

  Jim jumped up and down and yelled, “Hey! Get back here!”

  Fred laughed. This gig might turn out to be something after all.

  Pastor Keith Lewis was excited. A boyhood dream was coming true: he was having an old-fashioned tent revival. Dragged to one as a boy, while visiting cousins in Georgia, it had changed his life and set him on the course he now followed. The black preacher had mesmerized him, working every inch of the stage that night; praying, jumping, crying, shouting, pleading... whipping the audience into a Holy Spirit frenzy and leaving them weeping and exhausted.

  Now — tonight! — he would be the preacher who would change lives in a big white tent, the rock-and-roll arena of religion.

  In attendance that night would be members of his own fold and their guests. He’d been pressing his congregation hard the past few months to bring friends and family who didn’t attend their church. He wanted new faces in the crowd tonight, vile sinners to save, heathen to convert. His congregation appreciated his style of preaching and paid him well, but the routine had become stale, flat. A loud rowdy revival was just the thing he needed to get his spiritual blood pumping again.

  The big tent stood in the field behind his church, ready to be filled with the Holy Spirit and five hundred souls searching for salvation. He was counting on it, had gone to the extra expense of having a baptismal font dug and lined so anyone who felt like having their sins washed away could do so.

  The choir had learned several old-time gospel hymns and would sin
g them on cue from the back of the tent. Normally they sang in front of the congregation, but Pastor Keith didn’t want anyone looking at the choir tonight, smiling or winking at loved ones. He wanted all eyes on him. It was his night.

  A three-by-twenty-by-twenty-foot stage had been built, with donated lumber. While three feet seemed dangerously high, he didn’t want the folks in back to miss a thing. He was going to light up the stage.

  He’d scripted and choreographed his sermon. He knew where he’d stand when he railed against the sins of greed and lust, where he’d be when he called out for the speaking in tongues, and how he’d prostrate himself on the stage while asking the good Lord to forgive him of his transgressions. He hadn’t planned when he’d leap off the stage, but had a good idea when he thought it would feel right.

  Then, after he’d whipped the congregation into a spiritual frenzy, he’ll call for the children to join him on stage, then give them candles and pray for them. The parents will eat it up and get all teary-eyed; a good time to circulate the collection plates. Kids were the real money-makers in religion. Parents always dug deep for the kids.

  The revival was set to start after dark, later than his usual evening service. The tent would be lit only from the inside, so people driving by would see it glow, as if lit by the Holy Spirit itself.

  Everyone in the community would remember his revival and would talk about it for years.

  Although it was still dusk, carloads of families, excited for a new experience, pulled into the parking lot. The occupants spilled out and flowed toward the lit-up tent.

  Pastor Keith wasn’t there to greet them. He was in the field north of the tent, out of sight, pacing, working up his revival mo-jo, a coffee-pot worth of caffeine in his system. Lost in thought, thinking about a particular move, he stepped on a rock the size of his fist. His leg shot up and he spun around, pinwheeling his arms to regain his balance, which he did, averting a face-first tumble in the dirt. He pictured his new black suit covered with dust and dirt, and in anger — righteous anger, of course — he picked the rock up and threw it into Lateral No. 7, which ran through the back of the church’s property, thirty yards from the revival tent. He heard the rock splash and returned to his pacing.

  Chapter 16

  Robert Stackwell drew back the blinds and looked out across downtown Modesto. From his vantage point on the tenth floor of the DoubleTree Inn, he could see all the way to

  D Street, where factories and granaries still operated in eighty-year-old buildings. He stared, not thinking, numbed by a full day of sitting on his ass, twenty ounces of prime rib, and a bottle of California merlot. If Robert had been an average-sized man that much fat and alcohol would have knocked him out for the evening, but he tipped the scales at three-seventy and it took a lot more than a bottle of wine and a pound-plus of medium-rare beef to put him down.

  He’d come from his home in Sacramento, ninety miles north, to Modesto to attend a seminar on accounting, arriving early that morning. He’d registered, put the fee on a company credit card, and drained four cups of complimentary coffee before the speaker was introduced. He then spent eight hours watching an uninteresting PowerPoint presentation on Innovative Accounting Strategies For The New Tax Year. He didn’t see anything innovative; just old crap repackaged to look new. He had four more hours of the same to look forward to tomorrow.

  A large gas bubble worked its way up through his intestines, gurgling and rumbling until it finally found his mouth and freed itself. And, now that there was a little more room in his gut, he thought he might get another bottle of wine. Why not order a movie while he was at it? He’d checked the listings at noon and found one that looked promising; something about hidden cameras in dorm rooms. He watched titty movies when he traveled alone because he could: hotels were discrete with their billing, showing a charge for a movie but not the title.

  He thought, as he looked out his window, that Modesto wasn’t such a bad place to visit now that the downtown was fixed up. The new theatre across from the DoubleTree looked great, though Robert couldn’t imagine sitting for another two or three hours after having sat all day. Hidden in the pile of handouts he received when he registered that morning was a map showing locations of new restaurants. He would’ve liked to try one or two, but that would mean walking several blocks and Robert didn’t like exercise. It tired him out.

  Something caught his eye on the top level of the parking garage across from his room: a man and a woman, staring at something off to his right, their upturned faces colored golden by the setting sun. In fact, they almost looked as if they were staring at the sun itself. Curious, he looked to his right, searching for anything of interest, something exciting going on he might have missed. He saw nothing.

  Having nothing better to do, he watched them for several minutes. There was something different about them, something not quite right. He rubbed his eyes and squinted. Their eyes didn’t look right. Instead of looking like dark pinholes, as they should have from that distance, they sparkled, almost as if they were a source of light themselves.

  He grunted and muttered “Damnest thing.” More gas found its way out of his cavernous gut, this time exiting through the back, and he thought, now that there was even more room in his intestines, he might also get something to eat with the wine.

  He rang up room service and ordered a bottle of zinfandel, a roast beef sandwich with home fries, and a peach pie. He sat on the edge of the bed and checked the movie listings again: Sorority Co-eds: Hidden Cameras II didn’t start for thirty minutes. Plenty of time.

  He changed into sweats and signed for the wine and food when it came. Glancing out the window again, he looked for the strange man and woman. The sun had disappeared behind the hotel and they were gone. He belched, poured a glass of wine and started in on his sandwich, waiting for the titty show to start.

  After leaving the police station, Lawless and Jensen drove around Modesto, think-talking once in a while, but were mostly quiet. Jensen drove Lawless’s car; couldn’t remember where hers was.

  After an hour and a half of going nowhere, they found themselves standing on the footbridge in Elk Park.

  (“What do you really think of Baskel’s plan, the choppers and geeks and geezers and all?”)

  (“I think it’s the best they can do.”)

  (“Will it be enough?”)

  (“No. I don’t think any conventional weapon will kill it. Maybe if they nuked Stanislaus County they might get it, but anything short of that will fail.”)

  (“How do you know that?”)

  (“I’m not sure how I know, I just know. Whatever’s happening to me is like dèjá-vu, except I don’t think I’ve been here or had these experiences before. It’s more like they’re things I once knew and am just now remembering. Is the same thing happening to you?”)

  (“No, it’s different for me. I feel my focus, my world, narrowing. None of this ...”)

  She waved her arms at the power station and houses across the canal.

  (“... matters to me anymore. I’m losing interest in my stuff at home and work, my goals. Everything boils down to you: I can’t seem to see or think about anything but you. But it’s not like puppy love or infatuation, it’s something else.”)

  She looked away, frustrated.

  (“I’m having trouble putting it into words.”)

  (“It’ll come to you. Whatever’s happening to us will come.”)

  (“When?”)

  (“Soon. We need it to come soon.”)

  After a few moments pause, something came to her, something she once knew but just now remembered.

  (“I can help you to remember, to see.”)

  She took his hand and they returned to the car.

  The creature needed to be alone. She could not be distracted by the gnashing of hungry mouths, mouths that would be fed soon enough anyway.

  She was changing.

  Enzymes activated transfer molecules that made copies of DNA strands, towed them to the cell membran
e and passed them through to the interstitial fluid. The DNA strands locked onto receptor sites of specific proteins kept in constant circulation for this very purpose. The proteins activated: an alarm instantly went off in the creature’s system.

  The message traveled like lightening through her nervous system to her organs and glands. Dormant cells were activated and began dividing, thousands turning into millions and then into billions, making new proteins, forming new tissue, growing new limbs, at a pace no scientist on Earth would believe possible. Tremendous stores of energy were tapped into, for ten thousand years of evolution was about to occur in three hours.

  Three sets of leg buds appeared on the creature’s torso, sprouting and lengthening. Joints formed. Her hide thickened to allow her to remain out of the water longer. She could never completely break her ties to water, but she could lengthen her time away from it, increase her range on land and the prey she could take.

  She evolved in the quiet darkness of a remote canal, lying like a lead weight on the cement bottom. Her body temperature rose to dangerous levels as her metabolism increased ten-fold. When she woke three hours later, she would be ravenous and would have to feed immediately, even devouring her young should she have been foolish enough to undergo her metamorphosis near the lair. She would feed on anything, even the lower life forms.

  When her hunger is temporarily satisfied, she will take her young out and show them how to feed on the weak prey that were in such great abundance on this planet.

  Detective Baskel stretched out on a cot, hoping to catch an hour of sleep before night fell and the action started. The cot was set up in the back of a storage room, the only quiet spot in the busy police station. He set the alarm on his watch for eight.