Sarah drove the jeep off the main base, pulled onto the south lake road, and shoved the stick shift into high gear. She was traveling at a good clip when she spotted Loch and Zaidee walking toward her on the shoulder of the road. She waited until she was close, then braked the jeep hard, screeching it to a stop next to them.
“What’s up?” Sarah asked, peering over the top of her favorite sunglasses.
“First stop is North Alburg,” Loch said, grabbing the roll bar and swinging himself onto the seat next to her. “The Grand Union.”
Zaidee spotted the double Gs on the thick silver rims of Sarah’s glasses. “Nice shades,” Zaidee remarked, as she got into the back.
“Thanks.” Sarah threw the jeep back into gear and picked up speed along the south road until the fork to North Alburg. There she turned left and headed straight over Snake Mountain.
“Can I drive?” Zaidee asked, the fringe of her bob rippling in the breeze.
Sarah rolled her eyes at Loch. “Is she kidding?”
“I know how to drive,” Zaidee said, insulted. “My dad lets me drive the Volvo all the time.”
“In circles around the trailer,” Loch kidded.
“It’s still driving,” Zaidee said. She spotted a canvas pocket behind the front seat and lifted its flap. “Hey, you’ve got a CB radio.”
“All the company jeeps have them,” Sarah said.
“Great.” Zaidee perked up. “I could use a little entertainment.” She took the CB out, pulled up its telescopic antenna, and flipped the power switch. There was a lot of static as she turned the tuner knob. Finally, the voices of a couple of truckers came in loud and clear. “Hello,” Zaidee said into the mike, pressing the broadcast button. “Hello. This is The Big Z, The Big Z … ”
Nobody answered.
In twenty minutes they were over the mountain and in the small town of North Alburg. Sarah slowed the jeep as they traveled down the main street past a black-and-white-shuttered church with a high steeple, a post office that doubled as a newsstand, and a Mobil gas station. At the very end of the street were the huge glass windows of the Grand Union supermarket. Sarah turned the jeep left into the front lot and parked.
“What are you getting?” Sarah asked.
“You’ll see,” Loch said, getting out.
“You’re both acting very strange, is all I can say,” Sarah told Loch. “Very strange.”
Sarah followed Loch and Zaidee inside. Loch grabbed an empty grocery cart and pushed it toward the back of the store. He stopped at the fish department. A man in a white smock was busy stocking an iced counter.
“You’re the manager?” Loch asked.
“That’s me.” The man smiled.
“I called this morning from Lake Alban, about buying fish,” Loch said. “Remember?”
Sarah thought she was hearing things. “You’re getting fish?”
“Yes, fish.” Zaidee emphasized “fish.”
“Like I told you,” the manager said to Loch, “our new delivery comes in tonight, so you can have a good break on what’s left.”
If there was one thing Loch knew, it was all the different kinds of freshwater and saltwater fish. “Give me three of the sea bass,” he told the manager as he moved along the counter with its neat display of fish laid out on the ice bed. The manager tore off a big piece of waxed paper, laid it on the scale, and started piling the fish on it.
“I guess we can use a half dozen fluke and mackerel, right?” Loch asked Zaidee.
“Sure,” Zaidee agreed.
“What do you want so much fish for?” Sarah asked, looking really confused.
“Didn’t you ever wake up in the morning and get a yen for something?” Zaidee asked, savoring the grimace on Sarah’s face.
“Give us a couple of bluefish and a half dozen salmon,” Loch told the manager. “And you might as well throw in a few squid.”
Zaidee spotted a monkfish at the end of the counter. “We definitely need this!” she said, picking up the fish and rushing it to the scale.
“That is so ugly,” Sarah said.
Zaidee relished the expression on Sarah’s face. “Oh, and we need that big one,” Zaidee cried, seeing a really large striped bass. She whisked it up with her two hands and sailed it right by Sarah’s face.
“Nasty!” Sarah yelled. “Get it away!”
Zaidee placed the fish on the scale as Loch thrust his hand into his pocket to check exactly how much money they’d been able to scrape together from their allowances. “How much so far?” Loch asked the manager.
“What do you say to forty bucks for everything?” the manager asked.
“Great,” Loch agreed.
“I don’t want those disgusting things stinking up the jeep,” Sarah complained.
“No problem,” the manager told her. He double-wrapped the fish, stuck them in a large black plastic bag with a scoop of ice, and stapled a price ticket to the top of the bag.
“Thanks,” Loch said, as he lifted it into the shopping cart and started up the aisle to the checkout counter. Zaidee spotted a box of Fruity Pebbles and added it to the cart.
Sarah waited until they were outside in the parking lot before she let it all out. “What’s with the fish?”
“We need to show you,” Loch said, swinging the bag into the back of the jeep. “Let me drive, okay?”
Sarah tossed him the keys.
“I can handle a stick shift.” Zaidee spoke up.
“Forget it,” Sarah said.
Zaidee climbed in next to the fish. She sulked, then opened the box of Fruity Pebbles as they pulled out of the lot and headed out of town. On the way back over Snake Mountain, Zaidee wanted to go on record. “My brother needs to show you something,” she clarified for Sarah. “I don’t.”
“Show me what?” Sarah pressed.
“We found something we don’t want your father to know about,” Loch said. “You’ve got to promise not to tell him. Not for a while anyway.”
“Just tell me,” Sarah demanded. “I can’t listen this slowly!”
“Promise you won’t tell your father!” Zaidee insisted.
“I promise. What is it?”
“You’ll see,” Loch said.
“Eeeeeeh!” Sarah screamed. “You’re both driving me nuts.”
When they reached the Lake Alban fork, Loch turned right on the south road. A few miles up, Zaidee spotted the sign they were looking for: FISH CONSERVATION PROJECT. The tires spun up a cloud of dust as Loch turned the jeep hard onto the dirt road and began the steep climb to the top.
“The grid’s up here,” he said.
“The shocks on this thing aren’t great, you know,” Sarah warned, holding on to her sunglasses as the jeep hit bump after bump. “What’s with this grid, anyway?”
“My dad says it acts like a dam, but it’s not,” Loch explained, as the road snaked by the main stream, which flowed down from the lake. “It’s like a long series of steps, which lets the water run down them. It kills the logging operations, but lets the salmon come up from Champlain.”
They drove around a final curve and saw the control bunker at the very top of the ridge. There was no sign of the Volvo. Loch had counted on his father having finished his early-morning inspection of the controls.
“This is awesome,” Sarah said as Loch pulled the jeep in close to the hillside and stopped beside the waterfall. He turned off the engine, got out, and lugged the bag of fish to the edge of the pool.
“Get your fins on,” Loch told Sarah.
“Me too,” Zaidee said, grabbing her snorkling equipment.
“No, Zaidee,” Loch said. “It’ll be better if it’s just Sarah and me down there for a while. Then it’ll be your turn.”
Zaidee’s eyes opened wide. “That’s discrimination.”
“Trust me,” Loch said. He didn’t want to take the chance of confusing the creature by having too many of them in the water at the same time.
Zaidee kicked the back of the front seat of the jeep and stuffed another handful of Fruity Pebbles in her mouth. “Five minutes,” she said. “That’s all I’m waiting.”
Sarah took her sunglasses off and stuck them in the glove compartment. Zaidee grunted and tried the CB again. She flipped through the frequencies as Loch and Sarah stripped to their bathing suits.
Loch reached into the bag of fish and started to lift out one of the big fish.
“Better take a little one first,” Zaidee suggested. “Like an appetizer.”
“You’re right,” Loch said, exchanging the big bass for a mackerel. He held the mackerel by the tail, lay down on the slab of granite at the edge of the pool, and dangled the fish below the surface of the water.
“Feeding otters, is that what this is all about?” Sarah asked, struggling to get her fins on. “You found a family of otters, right?”
Loch didn’t answer. He let go of the fish and let it drift down toward the deep, clear bottom of the pool.
“Follow me,” Loch said. He slid into the water, put his mask on, and dove for the bottom. Sarah put her mask on and went after him.
Zaidee immediately took Sarah’s sunglasses out of the glove compartment and tried them on. She checked herself in the rearview mirror.
Not bad, she had to admit.
Zaidee got out of the jeep and lifted the huge striped bass out of the fish bag. She struggled to hold it as she walked around the edge of the pool. “Wee Beastie,” she called. “Look what Zaidee’s got for you.”
It was in the deep end of the pool that Loch first heard the anguished cries. Today among the rocks and clusters of water plants there was no haunting, unearthly music. The sounds now were frantic, stabbing. Sarah pointed to her ears, signaling that she, too, could hear them. Loch swam deeper toward the shadowy forest of water plants, but the sounds seemed to be coming from his right. He and Sarah turned and saw Wee Beastie in the turmoil where the waterfall plunged into the pool. The creature was shrieking, oblivious of them, thrusting itself upward over and over again into the onslaught of falling water.
Sarah’s eyes opened wide in shock. She felt as if she were back in the nightmare of the lake again. What little air was left in her lungs burst from her and she kicked swiftly for the surface. Loch followed her up, and they threw themselves out of the water and onto the slab of rock.
Sarah gasped, ripping off her mask and spitting out water. “That’s what you wanted to show me!” She started screaming at Loch. “That!”
“He got washed down here from the lake,” Loch said.
“You made me go into the water with that monstrosity?” Sarah shouted, feeling her body start to shake. “How could you?”
“He’s not a monster!” Zaidee said, outraged. She set the big bass down. “We swam and played with him all day yesterday. He’s a lot nicer and smarter than some people we know.”
Loch went to put his arm around Sarah, but she shook him off. “You know what that is going to grow up into as well as I do.”
“We didn’t know you were going to freak out,” Zaidee said, taking off Sarah’s sunglasses and tossing them back into the glove compartment.
“Sarah,” Loch said, “he’s a fantastic creature-”
“Look, I don’t know about you, but I can still feel Erdon’s blood on my arms,” Sarah said, heading for the jeep.
Loch grabbed her arm, stopping her. “You can’t tell your father or he’ll kill him.”
“It looks like it’s doing a good job of killing itself,” Sarah said.
“Wait,” Loch said.
Sarah reached the jeep and pounded its right fender three times with her fist. Loch let her blow off steam.
“What’s the matter with Wee Beastie?” Zaidee wanted to know.
“He’s freaking out,” Loch said.
“Wee Beastie?” Sarah cried out in disbelief. “You’ve named it like it’s your pet dog?”
“What’s he doing?” Zaidee asked.
“He’s crying, making those really terrible sounds like when you take a kitten away from its mother,” Loch said. “It looks like he’s trying to swim back up the waterfall, like he’s trying to get back to his mother-”
“And the rest of the flesh-eating monsters,” Sarah finished his sentence.
“He’s not like that,” Loch said, going to Sarah. “I guess we should have told you, but you wouldn’t have even gone in then.” Sarah let him put his arm around her. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s too late for that,” Sarah said.
“Can’t you just trust me?” Loch asked. Sarah looked down from his stare, moved away, and pounded the fender again. “Trust me,” he repeated. “Let’s go back down.”
“I don’t want to,” she said.
“For crying out loud, don’t beg her.” Zaidee spoke up.
“Sarah,” Loch said, reaching out for her hand. “I’m going to need your help.” He led her back to the edge of the pool and handed her her mask. She made a face but took it. Loch put his mask on and slid into the water. Finally, Sarah lowered herself into the water next to him. Loch kicked up his feet, diving for the bottom with Sarah behind him. This time they swam straight for the creature, its cries cutting through the rumble of the falling water. Loch reached Wee Beastie first. He stretched out his hand and touched it. Sarah hung back as it turned to look at them.
“It’s okay, boy … okay,” Loch said, his words muffled and carried out in an exhale of bubbles that rose across the face of his mask. He stroked the creature’s head, trying to turn it from the churning water. Loch signaled Sarah away, back toward the dead mackerel that lay on the bottom of the pool. He followed her. The creature watched them. Loch put the fish in Sarah’s hands and had her hold it out toward Wee Beastie. Finally, the creature stopped its crying. Slowly it turned from the falls and swam toward them. It stopped a few feet away, staring at Sarah and the fish. Loch took Sarah’s hands and opened them so the mackerel floated slowly downward. Before it touched the bottom of the pool, Wee Beastie reared its head back, then snapped forward, flashing its astounding mouthful of teeth. Sarah screamed beneath the water, backing away fast as Wee Beastie lurched again and again until only a few remaining scales from the mackerel settled like snowflakes.
It took several dives with more fish before Loch and Sarah surfaced with Wee Beastie at their sides.
“Wee Beastie!” Zaidee cried out, dropping down on the ledge. The creature lifted his head for her to pet him, and she rolled the huge striped bass into the water for him. His teeth flew at it, shredding and eating it in seconds. “Isn’t he cute?” she asked Sarah.
Sarah looked at Zaidee like she was out of her mind. “If I ever saw cute, this is it.”
“We have visitors,” Zaidee told Loch, tossing Wee Beastie another fish.
“Where?” Loch asked.
“Listen,” Zaidee told him, pointing up toward the ridge. “I was also able to tune them in on the CB. Sounds like they’re zeroing in on something.”
Loch and Sarah pulled themselves out of the water and yanked off their fins. Loch had figured Cavenger would eventually get men to check out the lakeshore just as he had done, but he hadn’t thought it would be this soon. They could hear the voices floating down to them from the lake. Men’s voices. The sound of boat motors. Splashing. “You guys keep feeding Wee Beastie,” Loch instructed, dumping the fish into a pile on the rock. “I’ll check it out.”
Loch ran across the spillway from the pond and onto the path next to the grid. He started up toward the bunker, his bare feet digging into the mixture of small stones and clay. The sounds and voices of the men grew louder as he climbed. At the top of the ridge he saw them. The converted PT boat was anchored offshore above the area where Loch had seen the bottom scrapings. Two of the smaller fleet boats idled close by, with John Randolph and Cavenger’s dive master shouting instructions to a half dozen motley frogmen who were diving, searching the area. There were shouts from other men on the shore where pines and thick brush blocked Loch’s view. He knew they had found the set of smaller scrapings and the underground spillway.
Loch raced back down the hill as fast as he could.
“What’s going on?” Sarah wanted to know when she saw him coming.
“Your father’s got Randolph with divers,” Loch said, working to catch his breath. “They’ve closed in on the trail. We’ve got to get Wee Beastie out of here.”
Zaidee and Loch looked at Sarah to see if she was with them. “All right,” Sarah said, “what should we do?”
“Get him into the jeep,” Loch said.
“No,” Zaidee cried. She pointed down the hill. “Look!”
A trail of dust was rising from the curving, narrow dirt road. Another company jeep with more of Cavenger’s men in it was heading up. Loch looked toward the grid, then to the pool. The creature’s head was out of the water. It was making cheerful sounds out of the breathing holes on its snout and staring at the rest of the big pile of squid and fish. Loch grabbed a bluefish and held it out to the creature. “Come on, fellah, you’ve got to come with us.” Loch moved around the edge of the pond to the spillway. Wee Beastie followed Loch, swimming along the rim of the pool. Loch tossed him the fish.
“The spillway is too shallow for him,” Loch shouted. “We have to help.”
Loch jumped into the pool next to Wee Beastie, as the creature snapped up the last morsels of the largest bluefish. Loch tried bracing his legs against the side of the pool to lift Wee Beastie into the flow of the spillway, but the creature was too slippery and heavy. Zaidee and Sarah rushed to get a grip, carefully sliding their arms under Wee Beastie’s two front fins. Wee Beastie didn’t seem to mind. He kept making cheerful noises and looking longingly over his shoulder at the pile of fish as they eased him up. Finally, he was out of the pool and into the shallow spillway.
A cry came from the top of the waterfall. They looked up to see the first frogman being washed over the falls and plunging downward. Two more terrified-looking divers were swept over after him.
Loch was out of the pool now. He pushed Wee Beastie along the wash, while Sarah and Zaidee continued to help glide him along by his fins. In another few feet the spillway was deeper and steeper, and they were able to move the creature faster.
“Let go,” Loch ordered Zaidee. “Delay them!”
Zaidee understood and turned away as the water rushed over her ankles. She headed back to the jeep, while Sarah and Loch slid quickly with the creature into the shin-deep top waters of the grid.
The frogmen surfaced in the pool. Zaidee knew it would take them a few moments to get their bearings. Finally, when they looked to the shore, all they could see was a small girl with short bobbed hair sitting in the back of a company jeep. She had her feet up and crossed, and was munching from a box of Fruity Pebbles.
“Hi.” Zaidee waved to them. “Nice day for a swim.”
The frogmen swam to the edge of the pool and pulled themselves out onto the granite ledge. They saw the pile of wet snorkel equipment thrown into the back of the jeep. “Who’s out here with you?” one of the frogmen demanded to know.
“A couple of friends. We’re having a picnic.” Zaidee smiled. “They’re in the woods looking for firewood. Would you like some Fruity Pebbles?”
They noticed the pile of squid and fish on the rock. “What’s that?”
“Oh, you know,” Zaidee said, “we always say, what’s a picnic without roast fish!”
Randolph’s voice came roaring from the top of the ridge. He was running down from the bunker, clutching a walkie-talkie and pointing downstream. “Get them!”
The divers turned and spotted Loch and Sarah splashing their way down the grid with a strange black creature. In a second, the frogmen were after them.
The water on the second level of the grid was knee-deep, sufficient for Wee Beastie to propel himself along beside them like a seal. Loch kept urging him on. “Don’t worry, fellah, we’re going to make it. Just hang in there. You’ll be okay.”
But the end of the grid steps looked too far away.
Sarah looked over her shoulder as she pushed ahead. “They’re coming!” she yelled. Loch turned and saw the frogmen already in the top of the grid. More men were racing down from the bunker to join Randolph. Loch could only think that if somehow Sarah and he could get Wee Beastie to the last grid step, he would make it over the last obstacle and escape into the deep, swift stream to Lake Champlain.
The frogmen were gaining on them.
“I’m getting exhausted!” Sarah yelled when the water grew still deeper near the end of the fourth step. Here a steel barrier forced the powerful surge of water to cascade down to the next step, a drop of several feet. Wee Beastie couldn’t make it over alone. The creature tried to turn from the barrier, to go back toward the pursuers, but Loch and Sarah got behind him again and started to lift him. With a great fluttering of his front fins, finally Wee Beastie went splashing over into the next grid step.
“What is that?” Sarah called as she and Loch dropped down to the lower grid. A rippling of white water lay directly ahead.
“Artificial rapids,” Loch called back.
“They look real enough to me!” Sarah gasped as the current pulled her along.
“Look!” Loch yelled, pointing ahead. Beyond the end of the last grid, coming up the stream, was a skiff carrying a crew of armed men. Cavenger must have had a second team searching downstream, and Randolph had ordered it into position with his walkie-talkie.
They were trapped; men were closing from upstream and down.
Back at the waterfall, Zaidee continued to relax in the backseat of the jeep, eating her Fruity Pebbles. Randolph was yelling at her, asking her about the black creature, what it was, what her brother and Sarah were doing with it.
“It’s an otter,” Zaidee told him, “a big old mutant otter.” The more Randolph yelled at her, the more she kept her attention on two things: the sight of her buddies trapped in the grid and the keys hanging in the jeep’s ignition. The second company jeep made it up the hill and screeched to a halt next to Randolph. Four burly men in fatigues leaped out to join in the chase. It was getting very unfair, Zaidee felt. Then the huge military helicopter lifted over the ridge with a roar. As far as Zaidee was concerned, that was downright mean. That was overkill.
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.