The Montauk Monster (10 page)

Meredith flipped the file open. Dalton picked up the first picture and felt his heart race.

He’d seen this thing last night. And it was very much alive.

Tom and Jason never went to sleep that night. They’d gotten so engrossed in a wicked game of
Mob of the Dead
that they’d simply forgotten to go to bed. The beers were eighty-sixed by three in the morning and the weed held out until around six. Now it was nine and they were wired from drinking several cans of Monster to keep any hangover from creeping into their dry skulls.

“Jay, you wanna go to IGA and pick up some of the shit we need for tonight?”

Both were slumped on the couch watching a rerun of
Charmed
with the sound off. “I’d rather watch
Halloween
and go to sleep. Where’d you put the Blu-ray?”

“It’s all the way upstairs.” Tom pried himself off the couch. “Seriously, we might as well get it done now so we can sleep the rest of the day and be ready to party. I promise we’ll watch
Halloween
tomorrow. Hell, we can watch all of them if you want then. Just as long as we take a break to watch
The Shining
at some point.”

Jason broke out in a big smile. “Now you’re talking, swizzle stick. Who says youth is wasted on the young?”

Tom went to the bathroom to make himself look less like a meth head. He didn’t want the oldsters working at IGA calling the cops because he made them skittish. Through the bathroom door, he said, “You still never told me what made you break the Jenna bong. That was irreplaceable.”

Jason bumped into the couch as he tried to slip into his Vans.

“Must have been someone’s dog. I kinda freaked when I heard it coming at me. My ninja skills went into high gear.”

Tom splashed water on his face. “Dude, we could make an awesome comic about a ninja that uses bongs instead of throwing stars.”

“We could serialize it in
High Times
,” Jason laughed.

They clambered into Tom’s car, a twelve-year-old Chrysler that was a year past being taken out behind the woodshed, and headed into town. The IGA was the first store before the little shops took over on Main Street. As he pulled into the lot, Tom looked in his rearview mirror and frowned.

“What the hell kind of circus is that?”

“Where?” Jason asked.

Tom pointed over Jason’s shoulder.

He parked the car and they got out to watch a dozen unmarked, white vans tear down the Montauk Highway. The windows were tinted so dark, they couldn’t make out anyone inside. Even when the light turned red, they all kept right on going. Cross traffic came to a standstill as those who were out and about stopped to stare at the strange procession. They drove past the plaza and beyond, never slowing down.

“Dude, that was crazy,” Jason said.

“Maybe they’re an undercover team looking for the puppy that spooked you like a little girl.”

“I swear, I will find another Jenna. I’ll even go to the city and hit every head shop if I have to.”

Tom slapped him on the shoulder. “I might hold you to that. Now let’s get everything we’ll need for tonight’s munchies.”

They were approached by Can Man, looking the worse for wear. The older man stopped in front of them but peered somewhere past them.

“Hey, Can Man,” Jason said, offering his hand. He didn’t respond.

“Can Man, you all right?” Tom asked.

His eyes flittered about, then came into focus, settling on their faces. “Sorry. I’ve got a lot on my mind today. I found a dead dog this morning. It was torn up really bad.”

“I wonder if that’s your dog, man,” Tom said to Jason.

“That’s freaky.”

Can Man shook his head. “The cops said it was a golden retriever. But someone tore it apart.”

Jason gave a short laugh. “You been hitting the hard stuff? I didn’t know you drank.”

His demeanor changed swiftly. He was not in the mood for jokes. “You fellas better watch yourselves. I know what you and your friends do at the beach. And I know all about that party of yours tonight. If you’re smart, you’ll cancel it. If you’re lucky, the cops won’t even let you get to the beach. Stay home.”

Tom didn’t question how he knew about the party. Can Man was plugged into the town like no one else. He heard everything. The whole shtick of the old man warning the kids was a little too much out of
Friday the 13th
for him, though.

Instead of questioning him or blowing him off—which could only make things worse, judging by the shroud of anxiety surrounding the man—Tom said, “Thanks, Can Man. You’re always looking out for us. You take care of yourself, too.”

They left him before he could say anything else. Once inside the air-conditioned mini-market, Jason said, “I wonder if what he said about the cops closing off the beaches is true. That would suck balls.”

Tom grabbed a cart and headed for the junk food aisle.

“Can Man’s just having a bad day. We’ll be fine.”

Meredith saw the shock on Dalton’s face and knew she was right. He leaned against the wall, his icy blue eyes darting all over the photo. The muscles in his jaw clenched and unclenched.

“You took this?” he asked.

“Yep. I took about a dozen and made copies. One for my report, the others for myself. It was just too strange to watch it get lost in the paperwork shuffle.”

The photo showed a slightly bloated, blue-skinned animal lying on its side. Tufts of dark fur sprouted here and there, but most of the flesh was exposed. The face looked something similar to the mythical Minotaur, though the nose had been broken off. It had a massive lower jaw with serrated rows of teeth. The skin of its jaw had been flayed away, revealing stark white bone. Its front paws were cloven hooves, while the back were more like a dog’s, with four-toed padded paws.

“What the hell is it?” Dalton said, mostly to himself.

“No one knows,” Meredith said, handing him another picture taken from a different angle. Dalton’s eyes grew wider. “After Frank and I moved everyone away, we called Anita Banks over to claim the body. A call came in and we had to bail before she got there. When I caught up with her later, I was psyched to hear what she thought of it. The only problem was, she never saw the body. By the time she got there, which was about twenty minutes after we called her, it was gone.”

“Maybe it washed back out with the tide.”

Meredith firmly shook her head. “Nope. It was low tide at the time. The only way that thing made it off the beach was by someone taking it away. But that’s not all of it.”

Dalton shuffled through the pictures, stroking his chin, deep in thought. “This thing looks a little smaller than what I saw, but the rest of it looks pretty close. I should have shot the damn thing.” He tossed the file onto her desk. “Tell me the rest.”

She pointed a finger at him. “I will, but if you tell me I’m nuts, I’ll introduce my crutch to your head. Understand?”

For the first time that morning, he smiled. “I do. I want to figure out what these things are and I don’t think anyone else is going to tell me much. For now, you’re the expert.”

Meredith sat in her computer chair and typed
Montauk Monsters
in her search engine. Up came dozens of images of dead, ghastly beasts, all of them rotting in the sand. “The first few were found right here, which is how they got their name from a guy named Loren Coleman on the cryptid circuit.”

Dalton leaned over her shoulder, staring at the thumbnail pictures. “What the hell is a cryptid circuit?”

“You ever heard of cryptozoology?”

He shook his head, leaning over to use her mouse to click on an image and make it larger.

Meredith said, “It’s the study of strange, unknown animals like lake monsters, Bigfoot, giant squids, chupacabra, you name it. It’s not a recognized science, but plenty of people all over the world are really into it. They call these animals
cryptids
. Our local beasties are on the top-ten lists for anyone interested in cryptozoology. But since it’s a kind of underground thing, no one in authority really takes it seriously.”

“So you’re telling me these things are like Bigfoot?”

“No, they have no relation to Bigfoot, other than the fact that people have seen them and can’t explain what they are, and there’s no solid evidence for their existence.”

Dalton scrolled down the screen. The pictures seemed to go on forever. “And all of these things have been washing up here and no one talks about it?”

“Again, no. The majority have been found here on the eastern end of Long Island as well as coastal Connecticut, but creatures like these have been seen as far south as Chile and as far north as Halifax.”

“So how isn’t this news?” Dalton stared at her like she was a teacher and he was the new kid in a new country who couldn’t comprehend how his adopted society worked.

“Because it looks and sounds crazy. Every now and then one of these things will appear and get a little press, but it’s always done tongue-in-cheek, like when the news reports on strange lights in the sky and they play over-the-top creepy music in the background and the reporter can barely keep the shit-eating grin off her face.”

He walked out of the little room and halfway down the hall. “But there are so many pictures. That’s evidence.”

Meredith had to suppress a sigh. “In this day and age, photographs are hardly evidence. My ten-year-old niece can cook up an image of one of these things on her computer and you’d never know that it wasn’t real. The other side of the problem is that the bodies disappear in every single case. Sometimes they’ll make it as far as an animal hospital, but not for long. The official word is that they’re raccoon carcasses disfigured by time spent in the water. Does that look like a raccoon to you?” She tapped one of the pictures. “Someone knows what they are and they’ve been collecting the hard evidence so the whole thing is trapped within the world of cryptozoology, which people think is best left for kids who don’t know better and adults who’ve gone fruit loops.”

Dalton pinched the corners of his eyes. He looked like seven shades of hell. She needed him to believe. Ever since the one she’d seen with Frank, she’d carried her secret obsession around with her, not even telling her mother about it. Gray was one of the only people who had ever seen one of these things alive.

“So, are you ready to report me to Campos? Tell him I’m not mentally fit for the job?” She held her crutch across her chest as if it were a talisman that would ward off any reply she truly didn’t want to hear.

He came back into the room and reopened the file, tossing the pictures around the desk and over her keyboard. His head swiveled from the pictures on the desk to the ones on the monitor. “They all look alike, but different. If they’re the same things I saw last night, they’re strong. Stronger than any man. And vicious.”

Meredith leaned close to him. “Is that your way of saying you believe me?”

He paused. “I don’t know. I believe what I saw. And I believe that these things resemble it. My questions are why are they here now, alive, where did they come from and where are they hiding?”

When he straightened up, he staggered and Meredith had to grab his shirtsleeve to keep him from tripping over her leg. “Okay, you’ve officially crashed,” she said. “That’s what happens when you mainline endorphins for hours and suddenly stop. You’re going down there.” She pointed at a doorway down the hall.

“What’s down there?”

“My guest bedroom. You need some sleep and you’re not driving. You’ll feel better when you wake up. When your head is a little clearer, I can answer at least one of your questions.”

One of his eyebrows cocked up. “Oh yeah, which one is that?”

“I’m pretty sure I know where they came from.”

Anita Banks awoke in her hospital room to a geyser of fire racing through every cell in her body. Her sheets were soaked with sweat. She could feel a haze of heat hovering over her skin. It hurt too much to breathe, much less ring for the nurse or even cry out for help.

What’s happening to me?

Against her will, her bowels let loose. It felt like lava. Her eyes rolled to the top of her head from the unbearable agony and shame that came with it. Her tongue was an immobile emery board. It even hurt to blink.

Oh God, I’m going to die.

What was that thing that had bitten her? What poison was roiling inside it that could do this to her?

Somehow, she managed to turn her head, each stolen centimeter bringing ripples of agony as her burning skin brushed against the pillow. The bandage around her arm, covering the bite wound, was solid red. A thick, yellow substance oozed within the filaments.

This was the source of her pain, the ground zero for the wildfire infection that was incinerating her alive. The IVs of antibiotics hooked to her arms might as well have been flowing with water. She realized with sickening clarity that nothing could save her.

I won’t be the only one. If they don’t kill it, other people will end up just like this. I’ll never know what they really are.

She stiffened as what felt like a river of boiling oil poured down her spine. Every organ along the way flinched, twitched and spasmed, fanning the flames of torment.

There’s still so much to do. I never made a will. I never told anyone how and where I wanted to be buried. Please don’t cremate me. I don’t want to burn like this anymore.

Hot tears rolled down her face as she felt herself come to a boil. Her heart stuttered, racing to keep her systems going, but failing.

Something popped, but she couldn’t see what it was. The room grew darker. An awful smell washed over her.

Is that me?

The uneven rhythm of her heart constricted her chest. She prayed it would stop before the fire finished having its way with her. She struggled to remember how to say the Our Father, the first verse circling through her head,
Our Father, who art in heaven
, until all thought, and mercifully, all pain, ceased.

Sergeant Dennis Campos led the pair in their discount suits out of Captain Hammerlich’s office and through the station. Every line on Hammerlich’s phone was lit. He was irritated and had little time to play usher. Campos was impressed by how stoic his boss had been through it all. But he knew him better than that. Hammerlich was not happy with their visitors or their news.

Campos felt like he hadn’t slept in weeks. The harsh glare of the sun stabbed his eyes and hammered the inside of his skull.

One of the pair turned to him. His name was Dr. Greene but he didn’t look like a doctor. He had a Cary Grant air about him, tall with dark hair and a vibe of always being the calm within the storm. “And you haven’t had any calls or sightings since daybreak?”

“No, nothing. I have my guys out patrolling every street, looking in every crevice they can find.”

He was going to have to call the night and graveyard shifts in a few hours. They’d been dead on their feet and in need of a few hours’ rest. He hoped they got enough to get them through the night. These fucking things were like vampires, descending on the town at night and fleeing from the sun to some secret hiding place.

“It’s best if you closed all of the beaches. We’ll be happy to write up the warning. We could say the bacteria levels in the water are too high for safe swimming.” This from the younger of the two, a redhead who made a pantsuit look pretty damn sexy. Campos struggled to remember her name.

He rubbed at his temple and said, “That’ll work for the sound waters, Dr. . . . Ling, but not the Atlantic side.”

“We could use the hypodermic-needle scare,” Dr. Greene suggested.

“Wouldn’t it seem suspicious to have two warnings at the same time?”

Dr. Greene gazed into the distance. “We’re not concerned about suspicion, Sergeant. For now, we need to keep people away from the beaches. We have a team at the East Hampton hospital now, quarantining the victims. Suspicion will be high and rumors will fly, especially in a close-knit community like this. We can deal with that later. Have everyone debriefed before they go out so they take the proper precautions. I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”

Greene held out his hand and Campos reluctantly shook it. The two doctors walked to their sedan and pulled out of the lot.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and called Adelle. She answered on the first ring.

“Adelle, I need you to pack a couple of bags, get in the car and drive to your sister’s house.”

She laughed, thinking he was joking. “I don’t think I’m going to drive all the way to Cape May today. I just put a load of laundry in and we have dinner with Linda and George tonight.”

Campos breathed heavily into the phone, wanting to yell but knowing that wouldn’t make things any easier. “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. Honey, I love you, and I need you to do exactly what I said.”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence. “Dennis, what’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure. But I can’t do anything effectively if I don’t know you’re safe. You need to be off the island before it gets dark.”

Dalton had been asleep for only a couple of hours when Meredith knocked on the door. “Are you decent?”

He had to lift the covers and look to be sure. When she had offered a bed to crash in, he had been too exhausted to protest. He didn’t even remember how he had gotten in the room.

“It depends on how you define
decent
,” he replied. His throat felt as dry as the sand at Coopers Beach.

She came in wearing a formfitting, black jogging suit and carrying a glass of orange juice. “I would have brought you breakfast in bed but that costs extra. Plus, it’s a pain in the ass to balance a tray with this damn crutch.” She smiled and sat on the edge of the bed. Her smile snuck right inside him, planting the seed of an ache to take her in his arms. He’d thought about getting this close to her many times, but never in the manner in which it actually happened. Reconciling his fantasy with their reality was difficult first thing in the morning when dreams and desires were just seconds from feeling as real as the warmth of the sun.

He took the glass and downed the juice like it was a shot at the bar.

“Jesus, I was thirsty. Did you sleep?” he said, pushing himself up. His uniform was draped over a rocking chair by the window.
Did I do that?
he thought. No, he wasn’t that neat. He wondered what Meredith saw while he snored.

“I got my catnap in. I’ve told you, I don’t sleep much. Besides, some very interesting things have been happening while you dreamt about bikini babes at car washes.”

He was about to defend his dreaming honor when she slapped his leg and snorted. It was a very unladylike laugh, which made it all the more endearing.

Dalton heard the low murmur of a television coming from downstairs. “I bet the news is buzzing right now.”

“That’s the interesting part,” she said. “There isn’t a thing on the tube or the radio about last night. Not even the local news is covering it.”

“How is that even possible? Those guys are up our asses when we pull someone over for speeding.”

“If you ask me, someone’s come in and put the lid on everything. But there is one little tidbit of news every station is hooked on. All of the beaches on eastern Long Island are closed because of, get this, high levels of bacteria in the water.”

Dalton shifted and said, “I’ll feel more comfortable if I have some clothes on. Do you mind closing your eyes for a second?”

“And here I thought all this time you wanted me to see you in your birthday suit.” She closed her eyes and put her hand over them.

He jumped out of the bed and slipped into his pants and shirt. “Not before we’ve at least had dinner. You can open your eyes now.” She pulled her hand away, fishing in her pocket for her phone. “Closing the beaches isn’t abnormal. Happens all the time. This is New York, the sludge capital of the United States. Well, other than Philly. I guess that’s why it’s a perfect excuse.”

Meredith said, “Exactly. And no one is questioning why they’re closing the sound and the ocean at the same time. I don’t remember that ever happening. Check this out.”

He took her phone. It was open to her Twitter account. She’d pulled up everything under the Montauk hashtag. The screen was loaded with short bursts of people talking about the odd events of last night. They covered everything from the animal attacks to Officer Henderson’s disappearance, people in protective suits collecting dead animals and some kind of lockdown at the hospital.

“It’s the same with Facebook,” she said.

Dalton scrolled through the sometimes-frightening messages. “You can’t stop social media. Just ask Egypt.” He opened some photo links to see pictures of mauled cats and dogs. “You said you think you know where these animals are coming from.”

“I’m not the one who originally came up with the idea, but I’ve looked into it a lot and it makes sense,” she said.

She pulled herself up with the aid of her crutch and started to make the bed. Dalton grabbed the sheets on the other side and helped. As she tucked everything in, she said, “You ever hear of Plum Island?”

He did his best to mimic her bed-making skills, knowing he was failing miserably. “No. Sounds like a place you land on in Candy Land. I play that game all the time with my niece.”

“I’ll forgive you that. You’re not from around here, so there’s no reason you’d know. Hell, I bet a good number of island lifers don’t even know it’s there. Read this.” She typed onto her phone’s screen and gave it back to him, this time with the Wikipedia entry on the island. It was pretty sparse and only took a minute to read through.

“Okay, it’s an island where the government studies animal diseases. You think these things live on Plum Island? That wouldn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. Anyone working there would have seen and reported them a long time ago.”

Meredith plumped up the pillows and placed them on the bed.

“They don’t live there,” she said. “They’re
made
there.”

Meredith stared at him expectantly. His thumb swiped over the screen. He took a long time to read through the several web pages he’d searched. “Well, this place definitely has the conspiracy guys jumping. It says they think that Lyme disease and the West Nile virus both escaped from there on the back of bugs or workers who weren’t decontaminated properly. I admit, that’s some pretty serious shit if it’s true and it’s crazy to think they got away with it without even a slap on the wrist. But it seems a little farfetched that no one’s caught on to them. This is major stuff, Meredith.”

She took a deep, calming breath. He’d come this far. She didn’t want to lose him now. But things weren’t going to get easier to digest. The little three-mile-long island wasn’t even listed on most maps. Since it had been purchased by the government in the ’50s to house their animal disease research labs, it was as if they had wished it away—the great and powerful Oz hidden behind a curtain of secrecy. “I know. Look, I don’t believe everything I read on both sides of the issue, but there’s enough smoke there to know there’s a fire burning.”

Dalton paced around the room, handing her phone back. The doubt in his face suddenly changed and he sat down in the rocker, resting his elbows on his knees. “Those people on the beach, Margie Salvatore,” he mumbled. He sat straight. His eyes looked panicked. “Dammit, Anita. I have to call the hospital.”

Meredith thought of Anita. She was one of the sweetest women she’d ever met. When Meredith had gotten in her accident, Anita was one of the first people to come see her in the hospital. Over the next grueling fourteen months, she had baked Meredith more brownies and cookies than she could eat in two lifetimes.

She had forgotten that Anita had been bitten, right in front of Dalton. Her heart sank as Dalton dialed his own phone, his jaw tightening as he listened to the hospital rep deliver what appeared to be very grim news.