Serpentine (8 page)

He suddenly wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. He wasn’t scared, but felt out of place. And if there
was
something going on here that involved the government, did he really want to be trespassing?

This thought stopped him as he came to the decorative rock wall that separated the back yard from the small stretch of beach. He peered out onto the lake and was reminded again of why he loved it out here. On still nights when the weather wasn’t stifling hot, there was a simple beauty to moonlight on a lake that was almost hypnotic.

“Wayne?” Al’s voice was soft and ghost-like behind him.

“Yeah?”

“Look at that.”

Wayne turned around and saw Al directly behind him, pointing to the water’s edge.

“I don’t see anything.”

“About three feet from the water, slightly to the right.”

Wayne carefully stepped over the rock wall and trained his eyes in that direction. He saw something there, a weird shape in the sand that was barely visible in the weak moonlight. It looked like someone had dragged a large stick over the sand and had drawn a straight line that was interrupted by a slight curve.

“A snake, maybe?” Al asked, coming over the low rock wall and joining Wayne on the sand.

“That would be a huge snake,” Wayne said. “It would have to be heavy to leave a print like that. It would also be wide as hell.”

As Wayne hunkered down and looked at the vague print in the sand—headed from the sand and into the water, from the looks of it—he thought his friend might be right. Still, he couldn’t think of anything else that might leave such an indentation in the sand.

“It does look serpentine,” Al said, now hunkered down by Wayne. “But the shape isn’t right.”

They looked at it for a moment longer in silence. They two men knew each other well enough to know what the other was thinking…and as it just so happened, their thoughts were identical.

Whatever this print was, it was certainly made much more interesting by the fact that there had been government vehicles parked in front of this house for several days.

Wayne and Al stood back up in unison. Wayne looked away from the suspicious print and then out onto the water.

“Any ideas?” Wayne asked.

“Yeah,” Al said.

“What?”

“That it’s time to get the hell out of here and head back home.”

Wayne didn’t argue. His eyes lingered on the water for a moment longer before they returned to the snake-like imprint in the sand. It was barely there at all and was maybe a few days old if he had to guess. Still, it was pronounced enough to make him feel uneasy.

“Yeah, good idea,” he said, and started back towards the rock wall and the dark yard beyond.

ELEVEN

Scott woke up at seven thirty, feeling more refreshed than he had in quite some time. He had fully expected to have a hard time sleeping in the country, with the dead silence of the forest interrupted only by crickets and tree frogs. But the exact opposite had happened. For the two nights he had been renting out the cabin two lots over from where George Galworth and several FBI agents had died, Scott had slept like a baby.

He walked out onto the cabin’s back patio with a cup of coffee and a plate of scrambled eggs. He took a seat at the patio table and looked out onto Clarkton Lake. The sun had been up long enough to evaporate the ghostly mist that rose up from the water in the morning but the scene still looked ethereal. He looked to the right and could just barely see the edge of the little beach that sat behind George Galworth’s old cabin.

He’d gotten a call from the real estate agent yesterday while he’d been inside Galworth’s cabin. The call had come from a boisterous and rather loud fellow named Stephen Collins. Collins had wanted to know when the government might be done with the Galworth cabin, so they could better update their listings and availability. Scott had assured Collins that the government would compensate him above and beyond his usual prices for his full cooperation. While he had spoken to Collins, there had been three other field agents behind him inside the property, taking notes, repairing the front door discreetly moving the corpses of the agents that had come before them, and fixing up all other damages.

Collins had also asked when George Galworth would be able to speak with him. All Scott had said in reply was that it was all classified information and that he would be updated as soon as possible.

The fact of the matter was that Scott had no idea how long this would take. He had no resources, no real help from the outside (except for the grunts that had come to help clean the property), and he didn’t expect to get any. He never really got excessive information on any of his cases. He was a specialist of sorts, coming in to clean up high-profile messes that other agencies had left behind. These were typically messes that had high risks associated with them. He’d been called the Ghost by some, because he was usually in and out in of a case quickly. His work often involved talking to and roughing up witnesses, removing evidence, or finishing a job that those originally assigned to the job had been unable to complete.

But this one was going to be different. For starters, he had no idea what he was looking for. All he knew was that it was highly suspected that George Galworth and the crew he had been working with had been attacked while doing research in the Aleutian Trench. It was being speculated that whatever attacked them had infected (or, rather,
impregnated)
Jimmy Wilkins and KC Doughtry while killing the other three men on the crew.

Galworth, Doughtry, and Wilkins had died less than two weeks after having been rescued from the trench and cleared by medical teams. From what Scott knew based on the reports he had been given, Doughtry and Wilkins had been killed when a creature had erupted from their bodies like something straight out of a sci-fi movie. The creature had come out of their mouths, shattering their jaws and, in Doughtry’s case, literally splitting his skull with the force behind it.

As of now, that’s all Scott knew. He assumed that the creature that had sprung out of George Galworth had escaped, as evidenced by the blood trails he had seen on the floor. Furthermore, he was also certain that the creature was now living in Clarkton Lake. Scott was keeping his eyes and ears open for any local news about sightings or any attacks in the lake but so far, he had heard nothing.

As if the universe were in tune with Scott’s troubles, his cellphone rang as he ran through all of this in his head. He tore his eyes away from the sight of the lake and headed inside through the sliding glass window where his cellphone sat on the kitchen counter. His display told him that it was Roger Lowry—not someone you wanted to speak to first thing in the morning.

Still, the hope that Roger might have updates that could help him get this nightmare assignment over made him actually
happy
that his supervisor was calling. He answered on the third ring, preparing himself for Roger’s typical blunt candor.

“Good morning, sir,” Scott said, trying to start on the conversation on a polite note.

“I’ve got some information for you,” Roger said, getting straight to the point. “Based on what we can tell from data retrieved from submarine these poor bastards were working in, as well as the scraps of evidence from the Wilkins and Doughtry residences, we feel that we now have more of a complete story on what this thing is, what has happened so far, and how you can potentially find it.”

“I’m listening, sir.”

Roger started with the bits that Scott already knew: about how their sub had been compromised and something had killed three of the six crew members in a grisly fashion. He then went on to describe how events had occurred in the homes of Jimmy Wilkins and KC Doughtry.

The gentler of the accounts came from Jimmy Wilkins’s residence in Sacramento, California. On the day he had died, his wife had gone to work like any other day while Wilkins remained home, complaining that he felt ill. Sometime before noon PST, Wilkins had died in his bedroom. It wasn’t clear what had killed him first: the rupture to his skull or being suffocated by the creature that had hung three feet out of his mouth. Wilkins’s wife had discovered him in that very state that afternoon—with a portion of the dead thing in her husband’s mouth—and called 911.

About four hours later, the Wilkins residence received a phone call that was unanswered due to Wilkins’s wife not being home. A message was left on the answering machine from KC Doughtry, whom at the time had no idea that Wilkins was dead, asking Wilkins to call him right away.

It still wasn’t clear how Doughtry had learned about the death of Wilkins. But early in the morning nine days ago, Doughtry had sent an e-mail to George Galworth, stating simply:
Wilkins is dead.

Sometime after this, Doughtry had locked himself in his bathroom. When his wife had unlocked the door to check on him, she was attacked by the creature that had erupted from his mouth. It choked her to death and, at some point, chewed off half of her right hand. This was all pieced together by the forensics team that had showed up about an hour later, just as their ten-year-old son was getting off of the bus.

“The kid was excited because the following day was the last day of school before summer vacation,” Roger explained coldly.

“What about the creature?” Scott asked. “Was it recovered?”

“Yes. It apparently got confused and tried burrowing into the toilet. It was too big to fit, though. It got stuck and when it tried to attack the team that showed up to retrieve it, it was pretty slow and lethargic. They killed it easily.”

“You think it was suffocating as it attacked?”

“Seems that way. Like a fish out of water for too long.”

“What else do we know about it, sir?” Scott asked.

“There’s nothing concrete, but the marine biologist that we’re consulting has a few assumptions. First, the thing is going to grow very quickly. Based on the two carcasses she’s studying, she believes the creatures are large to begin with, but are sort of compressed to stay inside the bodies they are grown in. The dead one at the Doughtry house was a little over four feet long when they recovered it. The one they pulled out of Jimmy Wilkins was about the same.”

“What else?”

“The good news is that I can possibly narrow your search down. If what you told me the other day is true and this thing is capable of slithering around on the ground for small periods of time, the biologist thinks it might stay close to shore. But, on the other hand, that doesn’t jive with the fact that the thing apparently originated in one of the deepest parts of the ocean. The marine biologist thinks a life form like this one would have hung around the cracks and crevices within the trench. That means your specimen is probably going to try to find the dankest, darkest, tightest places to live.”

“Then why would it come to shore? If it likes tight dark places, wouldn’t it want to stay
away
from the shore?”

“Yeah. Until it needs to eat.”

Scott looked out to the lake, barely visible through the sliding glass doors from where he stood by the kitchen counter. To think that something very similar to the creature they were talking about could come upon that shore to kill vacationing tourists and unsuspecting locals was terrifying.

Scott wondered if it had already started and he simply hadn’t heard anything about it yet.

“Another thing that might help,” Roger said. “The experts here seem to think that as this thing gets bigger, it will lose some of its speed. So it might be easier to catch as it grows. But they say it’s likely still going to be strong as hell.”

“Should I get local law enforcement involved?” Scott asked.

“Not yet. Put that off as long as you can. In the meantime, I suggest you keep an ear out for any deaths on or near the water. Even if it just appears to be a simple drowning, I want you on it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want updates the moment you get them.”

Scott opened his mouth to give another
Yes, sir,
but Roger had already hung up. Scott sighed, pocketed his phone, and walked back out onto the back porch.

He looked out to the water, over towards George Galworth’s house again. He started to make a schedule for his day, doing his very best to busy himself with the details.

That way, it was a bit easier to pretend that he wasn’t starting to get a little scared.

TWELVE

Joe had been surprised that his mother had let him take his bike back down the trails without at least some sort of argument. She seemed to be in a good mood when he asked, and that had been another plus. Usually when his mom was in a good mood, it meant that things were okay between his folks. And while he still wasn’t sure what exactly was going on between them, seeing his mother smile always managed to put Joe in a good mood, too.

But it wasn’t his mother’s good mood that he was thinking of as he cruised down Kerr Lane. Instead, he was thinking of Valerie, the girl that he had met for a grand total of eight minutes yesterday—the girl he was somehow already developing a massive crush on.

He carefully checked the clock on his iPhone as he neared the place they had planned to meet. It was five minutes after three, which meant he was late. He hoped she hadn’t given up on him. Or, worse yet, what if she had decided to not meet him after all? What if he had sort of creeped her out with his boldness?

And where had that boldness come from, anyway? He was
never
confident around girls and never knew what to say in those awkward situations when he knew he was expected to say
something.

But Valerie had pulled it out of him and—

When he saw her standing in the spot where he had wrecked his bike the day before, he couldn’t keep the smile from stretching across his face. She was standing in the center of the dirt road, giving him a sarcastic
slow down
gesture. And behind that gesture was a smile that made his entire body feel as if it had been flushed with heat.

Joe came to a stop directly beside her. He did everything he could to not stare her down like some crazed stalker…but he wasn’t doing a very good job.

“I thought I’d make sure you came to a safe stop,” she said. “I don’t know that I could watch another ugly spill like yesterday.”

“You’re hilarious,” Joe said.

“I know.”

Joe dismounted from his bike, leaning against it as they stood in the center of the road. The shade of the overhanging trees kept the sunlight mostly away, creating a dusk-like atmosphere. Joe wasn’t quite sure why, but it felt perfect for their little rendezvous.

“How was skiing?” he asked. He noted the way her hair was still slightly wet, presumably from spending time out on the water.

“It was fun,” she said. “I’m not very good at it, though. I stayed up for about twenty seconds one time but bailed hard. How about you? You ever ski?”

“No.”

“You should. It’s fun.”

“I can barely swim, much less ski,” Joe said.

“Really? You don’t swim, you don’t ski and let’s face it…you aren’t very good at riding a bike. What do you do in New York?”

“Not much. I listen to music a lot. My folks will sometimes let me go to indie shows if it’s an all-ages venue and I’ve been getting good grades. I also play football with some friends every now and then.”

Valerie had started to walk as Joe spoke. He followed her as she led him further down Kerr Lane. He pushed his bike along, making sure to keep it on his left side so that he could walk directly beside her.

“What kind of music are you into?” she asked.

“Everything. But mostly metal. How about you? What do you do for fun?”

“Hold on one second,” she said. She looked ahead and Joe realized that they were coming up on the driveway of the cabin that Valerie and her father were staying in.

“What is it?” Joe asked.

“I don’t want Dad seeing you. I’m pretty sure he’s half-drunk in front of the TV watching the game, but still…can’t be too careful.”

She stared at the house for a few moments and then started walking further down the road. She quickened her pace though, as if expecting her father to come out of the front door at any moment.

“It’s safe,” she said, waving Joe on. “Come on.”

Joe followed, still pushing his bike along. When the cabin was behind them, Valerie slowed down, waiting for Joe to catch up.

“Is your dad really that strict?” Joe asked.

“Sometimes. It got worse when mom died. And now that there are boys calling the house for me sometimes, he gets really protective.”

“You have boys calling your house?” Joe asked. The mere thought of it was like razorblades in his gut.

“Some,” she said. “But nothing like that. No boyfriends. Why? You jealous?”

Joe only shrugged, caught off guard for the first time. He was sure he was blushing, so he looked down to the ground.

“What do you want to do?” Valerie asked.

“I don’t know. What
is
there to do?”

“I know this place pretty well,” she said. “Like I told you yesterday…me and Dad come here a lot. I can show you some secret places I’ve found.”

“Like what?”

She gave him the same smile she’d shown him when giving him the slow-down gesture; it was a smile that Joe was coming to find was a weakness of his. It was like some weird Achilles heel that he had no guard against.

“Do you trust me?” she asked.

“I hardly know you,” he said.

“That’s now what I asked.”

“I don’t know.”

“That hurts.”

“Sure,” Joe said with a shrug. “I guess I trust you. Why do you ask?”

“Just come with me. I want to show you something cool.”

“I have to be back at the house by five o’ clock.”

“That’s plenty of time,” Valerie said. “I should be back by then, anyway. Dad will start to freak out if I’m gone for too long, especially if he keeps drinking.”

“Then lead the way,” Joe said.

They walked further down Kerr Lane, the road getting a bit rougher the further down they went. Joe started to regret bringing his stupid bike. Having to push it meant having his hands occupied. He wondered what it might be like to hold Valerie’s hand. He wondered what she would do if he reached out and took it. Of course, it was a moot point because he had the damn bike to push along.

When they had walked a quarter of a mile or so away from Valerie’s cabin, Valerie stepped off of the road and into the tree line. Ahead of her, the woods were relatively thin. The lake peeked through like a muddy promise through the trees. She started down that way, looking back over her shoulder to see if Joe was following along.

“Where are you going?” Joe asked.

“There’s a trail down here,” she said. “It’s pretty short. Come on.”

Joe didn’t hesitate. He followed her into the woods, finally resting his bike on the ground (the kickstand long ago having fallen off) among leaves and other woodland debris.

As Joe followed Valerie into the woods, he was amazed at how different the environment seemed. Everything felt bigger, and the scents of the woods were thicker and somehow more alive. And above all, Valerie seemed more real. The road that led back to their cabins and their individual lives was behind them now. Here in the woods, there was just the two of them and that made Joe feel profoundly happy.

He walked close behind her and could smell some sort of lotion mingling with the very earthy combination of dirt and fish that seemed to emanate from the lake. He followed her footsteps as she merged onto a thin footpath that wound down a hill. Sitting at the bottom of the hill was an old wooden building. It was incredibly small and the roof looked like it might fall in at any moment.

“See?” she said, pointing happily to the building.

“This is one of your surprises?”

“Well, yeah,” she said, as if he were an idiot for not instantly seeing the charm of the place.

He walked down to the building with her and tried to find something remarkable about it. The roof had a hole in it on the right side and the wall beneath it was buckled and bowed a bit. A doorway sat on the other side of the small shed-like building. A door sat crooked in the frame, the hinges so rusted they had turned completely brown. The door was partially open, revealing a dusty and neglected interior.

“What is it?” Joe asked.

“I’m not sure,” she said, stepping up behind him. “I think it must have been like a shed for fishermen or something.”

She walked by him, her back brushing his arm as he did so. She walked inside the building, pushing the door open a bit more as she entered. Joe watched as the dust motes floated up and caught the murky sunlight that came in through the doorway. Inside, the floor was rotten in most places, revealing packed dirt and rotted wooden boards underneath.

“This is what my mother would call a death trap,” Joe said.

“There was a big black snake in here last summer,” Valerie said. “I scared it away with a stick.”

“And you come out here why?”

“Not the interior design, that’s for sure,” Valerie said.

Joe looked around the place. There was an old bench attached to the left wall, battered and worn. Along the front wall, there was what looked to have once been an old rack of some sort. An old neglected hammer hung from the wooden frame, along with a stripped fishing pole and an ancient-looking pitchfork. Old fishing line rested on the floor beneath it, tangled and forgotten.

Valerie walked out of the building as Joe looked around, again passing close enough by Joe so that they brushed against one another. Back outside, she headed around the dilapidated right side of the building. Joe followed dutifully behind her and saw a severe dip in the land. Several feet ahead of them and resting at the bottom the hill was a muddy bank and two old boats. One looked like an old canoe and the other was a basic cheap aluminum fishing boat. Neither of the boats looked like they had been used within the century. Beyond these boats, the muddy bank became muddy water that eventually joined with the not-quite-as-muddy lake.

“I took one of those boats out last week,” she said. “But I almost didn’t make it back. There was only one oar inside of it and I suck at rowing. It’s pretty hard to steer with one oar. Still, it was fun.”

She looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to say something. He looked back at her for a solid three seconds, their eyes locked awkwardly, before he understood what she was getting at. She was asking him if he wanted to go out on the water with her in one of those rickety boats.

“That might not be such a good idea,” he said.

“Scared?” she asked, her tone far too disappointed. “I mean, since you can’t really swim and all.”

“No, I’m not scared,” he said. “I’m just not very coordinated, and if we’re supposed to be back by five o’ clock…”

“Good thinking,” Valerie said. Still, she looked out to the boats longingly.

“What else do you do when you’re not chasing snakes away or going out on the lake in the world’s oldest boats?” Joe asked.

“Nothing much. I just walk around the woods, checking out the people on vacation. I especially like to watch them wreck their bikes.”

“Funny.”

They were standing two feet apart, Joe’s posture as rigid as the trees around them. Valerie was swinging her arms nonchalantly, looking out to the lake. Joe wasn’t sure, but he thought something was bothering her. She had a look in her eyes that his mother often got after his folks had a particularly heated argument. He wondered if Valerie’s look had to do with her dad. Whenever she mentioned him, there seemed to be anger and annoyance in her voice.

“So what else do you do?” Joe asked. “For fun, I mean. I asked you before and you didn’t answer because we were running by your cabin.”

The confidence that he had managed to dredge up the day before was nowhere to be found now. He was very aware that this girl had some sort of hold on him even though he barely knew her. It was an uncomfortable thing to realize and it made his heart feel like it was boxing his tonsils. Despite that, it was also amazing in a way he had never expected.

“Oh. Well. I draw a lot,” she said. “I don’t think I’m good but my dad thinks so. He says I get it from my mom. He swiped one of my pictures and sent it to some contest earlier this year.”

“Did you win?”

“Third place. Twenty-five bucks.”

“Nice. Is that what you want to do for a job?”

“I’m not sure. What about you? What do you want to do after school?”

“No idea. I’d love to be in a band, but the chances of that are slim to none.”

“Do you like music because your dad does it for a living?”

The question was so simple and direct that it caught him off guard. He’d considered this before, usually when he’d sit in the living room in their apartment and watch his dad tinkering with a keyboard. He would never tell his father, but he loved to watch the man work. When an idea hit him and he was able to execute it, there was little in the world that rivaled the joy Joe felt in seeing his father so focused and excited.

“I guess,” he answered. “But I don’t want to do the kind of music he does…slow boring stuff for movies.” This actually wasn’t true at all, but he thought it would probably make him look slightly more attractive to Valerie. He had no idea why and wished he hadn’t have said it once it was out of his mouth.