Monster (34 page)

Lieutenant Nguyen was two hundred yards from Angela Warner's house when it exploded. First the top blew
off,
then a geyser erupted from deep inside, and finally the white tank beside the house went up like a miniature atomic bomb. A mushroom cloud of fire reached for the stars. Nguyen immediately pulled over to the side of the road. He thought he glimpsed a figure on fire kicking and yelling as it flew out over the lake. But then he blinked and the figure was gone, and he didn't hear a splash. Had he imagined it?

Nguyen got out of his car, stood in the suddenly hot night, and watched the house burn. He didn't use his radio to call for help
.
He imagined everyone in the town of Point had heard the explosion. Plus he wanted the place to burn as long as possib
le. The people who were inside –
he wanted them turned to ash, because that's what Angela must have wanted. He knew it was she who had stopped them, and even though he didn't fully understand what they were, he knew they had been horrible enough.

In the orange light of the fire Nguyen lowered his head and silently saluted Mary Blanc and Angela Warner.

EPILOGUE

Lieu
tenant Nguyen walked the shore of Point Lake not far
fro
m
where Angela Warner's house had stood. Although
t
he
fire had been before the winter had come and the
s
now had fallen, there were still signs of that horrible
night
to be found. The snow had covered most of what
rem
ained of the charred wood, but the black skeleton of
a su
pport beam still stuck up through the white blanket,
an
d a few boards from the balcony balanced precariously
on
the stilts of scarred wood that wouldn't stand the next
str
ong windstorm.

N
guyen made no effort to get
too close to the house, howe
ver. It might have been a place of triumph
–
he still
be
lieved that
–
but it held unpleasant memories for him.
He
had been present when the bodies of the thirty
-
two
Point
High students had been removed from the wreckage.
O
f course,
t
hey had not known then that there had been thirty-two peop
l
e at Angela
’
s house when it blew. There had not been a single intact corpse.

But there were experts for every task in the world, even
th
e
gruesome ones, and maybe mortician Kane had come
to l
end a hand. In any case, the burnt remains had been
gat
hered,
and the teenager
s had been numbered and ident
ified, mostly us
ing dental records.
Jim
Kline, Larry
Zurer
,
Carol McFarland
–
the list went on and on. Nguyen
ha
d
been surprised and maddened to discover Kevin Jacobs
ha
d also been killed. According to the experts, he had been
th
e
only one in the basemen
t when the explosion occurred. T
here had not been enough of him left to bury.

No remains had been found of Angela Warner though.

Not even in the water
.
Nguyen had made them sea
rch
there.

“Don't, girl,”
Nguyen called to his dog. She had belonged to Angela and her
grandfather; Nguyen had found her
wandering around the night of the blow-up, soaking
wet
and deaf. The dog had yet to regain all its hearing. Kids at the school, classmates of Angela's, had told her the dog's name was Plas
ti
c. Nguyen called her that sometimes.
“
Don
't
get oil on your paws,” he said. “Stay away from the water.”

Nguyen had come to say goodbye to the area. He was moving to California. Many people were leaving; Point was quickly becoming a ghost town. The trauma from the deaths of so many kids had shattered families beyond repair. They couldn't bear to live and breathe in the same place that had brought them so much grief.

Then there was the strange story of the oil spill.

Approximately six weeks after th
e explosion a gentl
eman by the name of Phillip Frazier was attacked while driving his company truck
–
a full-size propane tanker that was in the area
refueling
tanks for the approaching winter. Mr
.
Frazier was unable to explain afterwards what had attacked him, except to say that it had come at him from the
roof
of the cab and that it was stronger and faster than anything he had eve
r seen. In fact, he said it was so fast he didn't even see it.
The police thought that unlikely, but he stuck to his story.

Mr
.
Frazier had been knocked unconscious in
the attack
and his truck had been stolen. It didn't take long for
the
truck to be relocated, however. That evening, just after sunset, the wells that pumped on the hills overlooking Point Lake exploded. It seemed the thief had driven
the
truck up to the wells, probably coming at them from behind, and had detonated the propane tank in the midst
of
the small oilfield. Two of the wells had immediately caug
ht
fire, and before help could arrive all six were bu
rn
ing
out
of control. It was like the Kuwait oilfields after the
Gulf
War all over again. Experts had to be brought in from Middle East to extinguish the we
lls
, and that took several
d
ays. Even more unfortunate, the burning wells served as
c
over for a much greater cata
strophe.

There were six pumping wells on the hill. In addition,
t
here were another six wells that produced a tremendous
a
mount of oil without being pumped; the natural gas
p
ressure underground was enough to drive the oil to
th
e
surface. These six wells, and the holding tanks that
sto
red their oil, were also ruptured by the explosion of
th
e
propane truck. But they didn't catch fire. Their tank
lin
es
were broken, however, and the oil spilled ceaselessly into Point Lake for several days, a black river hidden by
th
e
flames of the other wells. Naturally, locals noticed
the
oil building up in the lake before the other wells
were
extinguished, but it wasn't possible to dam the flow properly until the flames had been put out. By then Point
L
a
ke had absorbed an oil spill that was irreparable. The
cos
t to clean it up was put in the tens of millions by state
exp
erts, and it was decided the
l
ake would be drained the
com
ing spring. Drained and covered over, it wouldn't do
to
have such a huge tar pit l
ying exposed.

So Point was a dead town. Better to get out while the
g
etting was good, people were saying. Nguyen agreed.
He
had other reasons as well.

He knew he was going to have to get rid of whatever was
sleeping in
Todd Green's grave before he left. It was a task
he
wasn't looking forward to.

“
Come on, Plastic,
”
he called as he stepped away from the
oi
ly shore and headed into the trees. The collie followed
ha
ppily,
wagging her tail. At first Plastic had clearly missed Angela and her grandfather, but dogs quickly forgot. They
we
re
lucky. “
Let's go see if we can find any game.
”

The snow crunched under Nguyen's boots as they hiked
i
nto
the woods. The light was poor
–
it was close to sunset
. He
should have come earlier, he thought. The ground
turned
upwards; he had to veer to the south to stay away
from
the place where the oil had burned and flowed.
Climb
ing
the hills was hard work in the soft snow. Nguyen
found
himself panting
and had to take numerous breaks,
even though he was in excellent shape. His constant
search
ing also made him
ti
re more quickly than normal
.
He had come to sa
y
goodb
y
e
to
the area
but
also was looking f
or
something he'd seen many times before
–
ever since the night the thirty-two kids had died in Angela War
n
er
’s
house.

Nguyen was searching for the remains of a dead animal
.

He found
one a few minutes later.

They weren
't
that hard to find if you knew where to search.

The animal was
a
deer
–
a
doe
.
There wasn't much of i
t left. It
had been complete
l
y gutted
by
what appeared to be a com
bination of teeth and knives. Bright
red blood soaked into the surrounding snow. The vacant eyes of the deer stared up
at
him. He doubted the animal had even got
a glimpse of what had killed it.

Nguyen had believed Phillip Frazier'
s story.

“No, girl,”
Nguyen snapped as Pl
astic tried to lick the blood. “
That's b
ad stuff. Stay away from it. Make you very sick.”

The dog peered up at him quizzically for a moment, then appeared to understand. She turned to chase after something else.

Suddenly the collie froze, its tail going straight up
.
But the dog did not raise it as
a
prelude to attack. Plastic whimpered softly. She was terrified.

“
What is it
,
girl?
” Nguyen whispered. He se
arched the woods but saw nothing. Nevertheless, a film of
s
weat
began to gather on his s
kin beneath his woollen shirt. He re
memb
ered the coldness in
Jim
Kline's eyes;
An
gela li
cking Mary's blood; the s
tink of the green fungus in Kane’s
laboratory;
the groan under the ground in R
est La
wn
Cemetery. A co
llage of the unexplainable floated on the
still air, mixed with the smell of evil. He remembered
his
glimpse of the burning figure being blasted out over th
e
cold water when the house had exploded. No re
m
ains
o
f
Angela Warner
–
no one seemed to know where she h
ad
gone.

Nguyen
glanced
do
wn at the empty eye of the doe. T
his was the ten
t
h animal he had discovered eviscerated
in
these woods in the last six weeks.

All these memories. They made him ask himself questions
.

W
hat was
out
there? What was watching him?

Something.

T
hen, an even more important question.

Why had he come to these woods so close to dark?

Foolish.

Nguyen turned back to the lake, back the way he had
come.
He put a hand on the gun under his coat. It was a
futile
gesture. He knew he wouldn't have time to use it if
he ne
eded
t
o. He called to Angela
's
dog.

“
Let's get out of here, girl,
”
he said.