IT LIVES IN THE BASEMENT (10 page)

“Oh how I wish I didn’t
believe in the bastards either,” Carter said with a sigh.  “Well, the first thing is to get Cathy and Sharon out of here.  And I’d like to give the girls an explanation that won’t scare the hell out of them.  When I realized that animal was a Tescara we saw last night, my first thought was these little bastards eat people, and here we are in a crowded campground on a long holiday weekend, with nothing between us and that carnivorous bastard but our tent.  The possibility of being eaten by one, I can tell you, scares the hell out of me, Mark.

“And I’ll tell you something else.  We don’t know if these Tescara can be killed
.  As near as Pete can tell from his studies and reports, the Tescara have been around as long as man and he thinks the original ones are still alive.  If that’s true, then they’re immortal beings.  And if they’re immortal, are they also invulnerable?  I see that thought doesn’t sit well with you either.  But think about it.  If the Tescara was created by genetic manipulation, then it’s possible they’ll live forever, and they can’t be killed.  Flynn was no fool Mark, and he was armed.  But a Tescara got him anyway.

“I think tonight we’re going to try t
o either tranquilize the bastard or kill it.  We have to find one Mark, but I don’t want anyone to know about our plan yet.  Pete has some video cameras, and we’ll try to get everything on film, so if we can’t kill the beast or capture it, at least we’ll have proof to show we’re not a couple of crazy cops.  And behind the seat is a cage Pete constructed, for if he ever had a chance to catch one.  Well, now may be the time.  You want to stay with us, or go with the women?”

Mark peered over the seat at the canvas lump.  He lifted part of the canvas to reveal a collapsed, heavy, metal cage.  The bars were shiny stainless-steel, an inch thick.  The cage looked as if it could hold an el
ephant. 

Mark shook his head.  “You’re serious, aren’t you,
John?  The damn cage looks as though it was made for a gorilla, not for that small animal we saw.  Christ on a crutch, how am I supposed to believe any of this?  Hell yes, I’m staying.  If for nothing else then to watch you two make fools of yourselves over some goddam rabbit.”

“Good enough
, Mark.  Now, let’s get the girls packed and moving.  If we’re successful tonight, we’re going to make national headlines,” Carter said softly with resignation.

Alvarez nodded and added, “And if we are not successful, we will probably end up dead.”

Sagano’s eyes widened.  “Jeez, John.  Is he always like this?  I still don’t see how you think the little animal we saw could hurt a full-grown man.”

The temperature in the Blazer
was over one hundred and twenty degrees as Alvarez opened his door. “And I pray tonight you will not get to see that happen either.  Shall we go have a cold beer, please?”

Their women were not cooperative.  From the moment Carter told them they had to leave, they became stubborn.  Although their wives were not told by their husbands what was going on, they knew it was something dangerous and they didn’t want to leave their men.

Carter finally relented and told a half-truth.  “Cathy, just listen for a minute.  There’s something living across the lake, either in the field or up where those new houses are under construction.  The creature is the same kind I know killed Flynn, and I plan on capturing it tonight.  Don’t argue, honey.  We want you two out of here where we know you’re both safe.  Capturing the creature will require all of our attention.  If you and Sharon stay here, we’ll be distracted worrying about your safety as well as our own.  Please, just throw some things together and take the car home.  Either stay at Sharon’s house, or she can stay with you, but for crying out loud honey, get going.  We have to make plans and get some sleep before nightfall.  How about it, Cathy?”

After forty years of marriage, and thirty-two of them being a
cop’s wife, Cathy gave in.  She knew John was right, they would make the situation worse if they stayed.

But Sharon wasn’t a cop’s wife, and she protested.  Loudly
.  “Damn you, Mark Sagano.  You’re not a cop.  What business do you have being out here if it’s something dangerous?”

Mark hugged her and whispered, “Listen Sharon, I’m sure it’s not dangerous, and when this
is all over, we’ll be laughing our heads off at these two supercops.  You watch and see.  But meanwhile, go with Cathy, please.  When they get done with their game, I’ll call and you can come back out.  Okay?”

Looking pleadingly into his eyes, she asked, “You promise you’ll be careful with whatever the hell you three are up to?”

He crossed his heart, smiling.  “Promise, honey.  How could I be any safer then with these two?  They have the guns, remember?”

Sharon Sagano stared at Alvarez and said sternly, “Sergeant, if you let anything happen to my husband, you
’d better be damn sure you’re someplace where I can’t find you.”  Then she turned on John.  “That goes for you too, brother.  If I’d have wanted a cop for a husband, I would’ve married one.  But I didn’t, I married this chubby, lazy man right here, and by God, I want to keep him.  Do you hear me, John?”

Carter nodded.  “Yeah Sis, I hear you.  Hell, they probably heard yo
u on the other side of the lake.  Don’t worry about Mark.  I’ll take good care of him.”

Twenty minutes later, o
nce their wives had left, Mark Sagano was passed out on his recliner, lawn chair, snoring loudly.  Carter and Alvarez were sitting at the picnic table under the hot sun, staring at Sagano sleeping in the only shady spot in their area.

Carter stated quietly, “I sort of wish he’d gone with the women, Pete.  I don’t want to be responsible for him tonight.  He still doesn’t believe our story, not that I blame him, but that could get him hurt.  We know, and we’re scared to death of those things, he isn’t.”

Alvarez nodded, reaching in the cooler for more beers.  “We can use him, John.  He is an Assistant DA, and his testimony could be invaluable.  We will let him run the camera while we operate the rifles.  He will be safe.”  Pointing across the narrow lake to the weedy field where the sunlight glinted off the slimy pool, he asked, “Tell me everything you can remember from last night, so we can figure out the best place to set up our gear.”

Carter opened his beer, took a cold drink then pointed.  “I first saw movement over there while I was looking up toward those new houses.  The moonlight was so bright I could see everything pretty clearly.  I didn’t know what the animal was at first, just thought maybe a deer coming down the hill.  The creature walked funny,
with short movements, stopping for a few minutes, then walking again, always slowly, as if it were checking the area out before advancing.  I’m not sure of the time when I first saw the animal, but according to Mark it was about ten after eleven.”

Alvarez interrupted.  “And how does he arrive at that time, John?”

Carter took another long, cold drink, finishing his beer, taking two more out of the cooler before he answered.  “He knew the time because of the bites we were getting on our lines.  Mark checks his watch every time we get a bite, or catch a fish.  Checking the time is a habit of his, and I’d just lost a fish, so he knew within a few minutes what the time was.  I’d just thrown my line back out when I noticed some movement and pointed it out to Mark.

“As I said before, I thought we’d get to see a deer, but it wasn’t.  The animal proceeded down the hill, keeping to those bigger clumps of bushes, and didn’t walk in a straight line. 
Looking through the binoculars, scanning from bush to bush, was the only way I was able to track the creature.  Tracking through binoculars is tough to do, no matter how bright the Moon, but I found it.  That’s when I let Mark look, to make sure I was actually seeing what I thought I was seeing.  Mark described what he saw, which matched what I saw, so I knew what it was.  A Tescara.”

Alvarez asked, “You knew then what the creature was, from my description a few years ago?”

“No Pete,” Carter answered, “Not right then I didn’t.  In fact, at first I had no idea what the animal was, but I knew it wasn’t a deer.  A Tescara never entered my mind until I watched it standing in one place for a long time, and I realized it was masturbating into the pool.  Then in a rush, everything you told me came back, and I got scared to death. 

“After I realized the animal was a Tescara, I had Mark start checking the time as it retreated.  The creature was visible by the pool for almost an hour; it disappeared over the hill at precisely
1:48 am.  When the Tescara left, the creature worked its way back up the hill, bush by bush, following the same path as when it came down the hill. 

“
I sat for a long time before I got my nerve up to call you. I was struck speechless by what I’d seen.  It’s, well, it’s a hard thing to admit something like this to yourself.”

Alvarez reached into the cooler for two more beers.  “Yes, I understand.  You are a modern man from a civilized world, and what you saw came from another time.  The Tescara should not even exist here today.  It should never have existed, but as we know, it does.

“I have brought a compressed tranquilizer rifle, with darts that should bring down a charging bear.  I hope they will be enough.  I shall endeavor to place one or more of the darts into the creature, and I wish you to be backup with the rifle, just in case.  Assuming the Tescara follows the same path, and why should it not, being the strongest predator on land and nothing can overpower it, I shall be right over there in the last of those bushes. That way, when the Tescara is at the pool performing, I shall be about twenty-five feet behind it.  With a clear, easy shot.

“And you, do you not agree the best place for you
, with the big rifle, is alongside the pool, to my left?  That way, if I miss or the darts are not effective, you will have a clear field of fire all the way back up the hill.  And your brother-in-law with the camera, I think he should be on the other side of you, where he will have the same open field, but you will be between him and the Tescara.

“But
, friend, if the Tescara attacks me, please fire.  I know you will worry about hitting me, but please fire.  I prefer the thought of dying from a bullet then from a Tescara’s claws and teeth.  Promise me this.”

Carter’s face frowned.  “No Pete.  If the creature races off into the bushes, I wouldn’t be able to see enough.  Hell, it could be running right past you and I wouldn’t know
it, I’d be shooting you for no reason.  No, I can’t promise you that.”

“Then promise me this
, John.  If you hear me screaming, you will open fire immediately.  I will not scream unless the creature attacks me, by then it will be too late to save me.  They kill so quickly there would be no time to worry about me anyway.  You open fire and pray that both of us are dead.  We must kill a Tescara or no one will ever believe our story.”

Carter reluctantly agreed. “Okay that I will promise you.  But Pete, don’t yell unless you
’re attacked.  I don’t want to shoot you.  What’re you planning to do with the cage?  You can’t seriously think we’ll be able to trap one, do you?”

The thin Mexican cop stared across at the field.  “Probably, yes, because this is the Tescara’s pool, and because it has to come here every might of the full Moon.  Yes, we may possibly be able to lure it into the cage.  I just hope the cage is strong enough.  If I can knock the creature out with the darts, then we must quickly get it into the cage.  I have no idea how long the tranquili
zers will affect a Tescara.”

Carter nod
ded.  “That’s just it, we’ve no knowledge where these things are concerned, do we?”

“We do know a few things, John.  We know whoever a Tescara attacks will die horribly and probably
becomes a meal for the thing.  I have no doubts it is capable of running up the hill carrying a full-grown dead man.  I fervently hope it is not me.  I hope none of us.

“We also know the Tescara will be here
, because it has to be here.  This is our only ace in the hole, so to speak.  We think the creature must come here, but we are not certain if this is the only pool it uses.  We do not know the territorial range of the Tescara, so even though I keep saying it has to come to this pool, it could be using another pool elsewhere,  or even a toilet in one of those newly constructed houses up on the hill.  But since it was not bothered last night, I see no reason it should not return here tonight.  So this may very well be our only chance to capture one.”

“So it’s do or die then, right Pete?”

“I wish you would find a different metaphor, but essentially, yes.”

As t
here wasn’t anything more to discuss, they went under the only tree in the area lending any shade, lying on the grass near where Sagano slept.   John laid there for a long time in a cold sweat, thinking he’d never get to sleep, when suddenly, someone was shaking him awake.  “Huh?  What?” he asked as he quickly rose onto his elbows, his right hand reaching instinctively for his pistol.

A voice came to him from the dark, close by.  “Easy, John.  It’s me, Mark.  You awake yet?”

Carter sat, shaking his head to clear the fog permeating his brain.  He felt disoriented as he thought he’d just fallen asleep.  Looking around, he noticed a few lighted lanterns shining from several surrounding campsites.  But their campsite was pitch-black and he wasn’t able to read the dial on his watch.