Randolph shouted commands into his walkie-talkie while the chopper hovered above, kicking up great swirls of dust. Zaidee waited until no one was looking at her, then slid into the driver’s seat of the jeep and turned the key in the ignition. The jeep started. In a second, she had it in gear. Randolph turned and saw her. “Hey!” he yelled.
“Party on!” Zaidee shouted. She floored the accelerator, making the jeep’s wheels spin and tear into the ground. A few of the men ran to stop her, but the wheels gripped, and the jeep shot forward onto the dirt road, heading fast down the hill. Zaidee kept the gear in second. She wanted power with speed.
Below, in the grid, Loch and Sarah had stopped. There seemed to be no point in going forward or in turning back. The frogmen and Randolph’s crew were bearing down on them through the grid and along the shore path. The men in the skiff closed from downstream.
“I’m sorry, fellah,” Loch told Wee Beastie. The creature had heard the sounds of the strange men and had begun to tremble.
“Can’t we do anything?” Sarah cried out.
“I don’t think so,” Loch said sadly.
Suddenly, there was a screech of brakes on the left bank and a cloud of dust as a vehicle skidded to a stop.
“Move it!” Zaidee yelled.
Loch, Sarah-even Wee Beastie-turned, surprised by Zaidee’s sudden arrival at the wheel of the jeep. “Way to go!” Loch shouted. They pushed their way through the rushing water to the cement slab that lined the bank. Sarah climbed onto a set of rungs, clutching the creature around his neck. Loch, struggling to keep his footing in the strong current, lifted Wee Beastie as high as he could, but it wasn’t enough. Zaidee jumped out of the jeep, ran to the edge, and reached to grab one of Wee Beastie’s fins.
The men running down the path were nearly upon them. The second jeep, with Randolph, was coming fast down the hill road.
Then, with one last effort from all of them, Wee Beastie was out of the grid. The three of them lifted him into the back of the jeep. Loch jumped behind the wheel and threw the jeep into gear while Sarah and Zaidee held on to the creature. Three of Randolph’s men came running from the grid path and tried to grab onto the jeep as it moved forward. Wee Beastie snapped his head back, then lunged forward, letting his awesome cluster of teeth snap out at them. The men screamed, pulling their arms away fast before they could be bitten off. The jeep gained speed, shooting forward through the last treacherous curves of the hillside before racing out onto the paved south road.
The pursuit jeep with Randolph had fallen behind, but the enormous helicopter swooped down quickly as though from nowhere, its shadow falling on them like that of a great, brown wasp.
10
The helicopter stayed low, practically on top of the speeding jeep as it hit an open stretch of the road. A gruff voice on the helicopter’s speakers blared down at them to stop. Finally, the road snaked under a cover of tall pines and birch.
“We’ll be lucky if we make it as far as the trailer,” Loch said. “Then we’ll be cornered.”
“The lake!” Zaidee cried out. “We’ve got to at least get him into the lake!”
The creature made its noises loud and clear. CLICK CLICK …
CLACK CLICK CLACK …
“What’s with him?” Sarah asked.
“He makes those noises whenever he thinks we’re going to leave him,” Zaidee explained. “He always wants to stay with us.”
CLICK CLACK …
By the time the pursuit jeep made the turn into the Perkins camp, Randolph had already radioed the helicopter to set down in the field near the duck pond. Six armed men were already marching toward the jeep parked at the edge of the lake. Loch, Sarah, and Zaidee stood next to it waiting for them.
“Hey,” Loch yelled at the men, “you’re trespassing!”
“Where is it?” Randolph demanded, striding up to check out the jeep.
“I told you it was only an otter,” Zaidee said, ticked off. “A mutant ninja otter.”
“We put it back in the lake,” Loch said.
“Search the grounds,” Randolph ordered his men. Half of the men spread out over the dock and lakefront, the other half moved to check the grounds and duck pond. Randolph singled Sarah out. “We know what it is. What did you do with it?”
“Where’s my father?” Sarah asked.
“He’s on his way,” Randolph said. He turned away from them, moving quickly to the trailer.
“Hey,” Loch yelled, “keep out of there!”
Randolph ignored him, drew his gun, and went into the trailer. By the time Loch went in after him, Randolph was already past the pile of junk on the living-room floor and moving down the narrow and dark back hallway. He saw a closed door and reached out for the knob.
“Hey, don’t open that,” Loch shouted. “That’s my room!”
Randolph opened the door fast.
“EEEEEEEEE!” Randolph screamed as the head of the hideous cryptid, its mouth gaping, came flying at him. He saw the faces of another dozen snarling monsters and began shooting. He had gotten off all six shots before he realized he had blasted half of Loch’s cryptozoo collection.
Loch threw up his hands in disgust. “You’re a geek!” he yelled at Randolph. “A grade-A, U.S. prime geek!”
Loch came out of the trailer as Dr. Sam and Cavenger pulled up in the Volvo. Dr. Sam had heard the gunshots. “What happened?”
Loch shrugged as he sat down on the trailer steps. “Randolph just assassinated my bedroom.”
Sunlight reflected from the back of Cavenger’s balding head as he strolled away from all the shouting and accusations. His small, deep-set eyes stared out toward the lake while Dr. Sam conducted the interrogation. Loch, Zaidee, and Sarah stuck to their story that they had been at the grid feeding an otter and hadn’t wanted Randolph and his men to shoot it.
“That was no otter,” Randolph kept repeating.
“It doesn’t matter,” Cavenger said finally. “Whatever it was, we’ll net it on tomorrow’s sweep.” He turned to Dr. Sam. “Let’s go. We have a lot of work to finish at the base.”
Cavenger put Sarah in the back of the Volvo and got into the front passenger seat. Dr. Sam got behind the wheel and started the engine. He rolled down the window for a parting shot at Randolph. “You stay off my property.”
“Your property?” Cavenger laughed. “I pay the rents around here.”
As usual, Dr. Sam said nothing. He just drove off.
Randolph and his men left right after Dr. Sam and Cavenger, leaving Loch and Zaidee alone at the camp. Zaidee walked out and sat on the rinky-dink dock at the spot where they had put Wee Beastie back into the lake. There was no sign of the creature anywhere. She started to cry. Loch walked over to her and sat down.
“Don’t, Zaidee,” Loch said. “We’re not going to give up.”
“They’re going to catch Wee Beastie tomorrow,” Zaidee said. “They’re going to kill him.”
“No,” Loch said. “There’s got to be something we can do. We have to think of something …”
“Wee Beastie could still be right out there,” Zaidee said. “Maybe he didn’t swim very far.”
“He’ll be okay,” Loch said. “I’m sure he’s finding his mother.”
He hadn’t meant to say the word “mother.” It was a word they both tried to use as little as possible.
“They’ll trap them all tomorrow,” Zaidee wept. “Wee Beastie will be harpooned or shot or caught in those big metal nets and die.”
Loch stood and looked out past the shallows to the dark edge of the deep water. By now the shadows of the pines were thrust far out onto the lake as the sun began to drop behind the mountains. “You’re right,” he told Zaidee. “Wee Beastie could still be hanging around. I have to look for him.”
Zaidee stopped crying. “Are you going out in the boat?”
“No,” Loch said. He turned and climbed the slope to the U-Haul.