The Montauk Monster (18 page)

He finished his beer and tossed the empty into the sink. It clattered and popped out, rolling across the floor.

“What did they find?” Dr. Ling asked.

Don shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing. Like I said, the place went dark. No communications going in or out. The powers that be thought that maybe there’d been a power outage. The backup generators on the island were supposed to have been replaced twenty years ago, after a hurricane slammed the island. No one could count on those.”

Dr. Greene looked alarmed and highly irritated. “You mean to tell me they have a facility only a mile from a densely populated coast that is filled with deadly viruses and no reliable power backup? That’s gross incompetence bordering on homicidal.”

“You work for the government, doctor. This shouldn’t surprise you.”

“It doesn’t so much surprise as it sickens me.”

Rising from the couch, Dr. Ling paced between them. She said, “So if the power went out, all of the cooling systems would have gone off-line. Any airborne virus could easily escape containment once a certain temperature is reached. From there, it’s easy enough to slip through ventilation systems and be carried on the winds, or in the water current.” She chewed on the tip of her thumbnail. “It could also easily be another Lyme disease screwup. Flying insects could bring any one of those viruses to Long Island and Connecticut.”

“We don’t think bugs are doing it,” Don said.

Dr. Ling stopped pacing, turned and stood over him. “Then what is?”

Don cleared his throat. “It’s an animal. Or, I should say,
animals
.”

“Deer and dogs are good swimmers. They could easily make the trip,” Dr. Ling surmised.

“I wish it was that easy. We didn’t realize we were dealing with two major issues until we got here. These animals, they’re not exactly something you’ll find in nature.” He looked at his watch. It was after nine. “And as for DARPA, your guess is as good as mine. I don’t like them being here any more than you do. I know how they work. No one would even know them if they stood nose to nose. They’re goddamn ghosts, bad omens, a government-sanctioned secret society. Even my boss is keeping his mouth shut when I bring them up. If I knew why they were here, I’d use my psychic powers to win the lottery.” Looking out the port window in the door to Dr. Greene’s right, he saw nothing but darkness. “From here on in, you’ll need a military escort.”

“What?” the doctors said in unison.

“It’s for your safety. That’s everything I know. I have my own people working their keisters off trying to ferret out more intel. I don’t like this any more than you.” He suddenly wished he’d never given up smoking. He’d kill for a cigarette right about now. “We need you to work on whatever ultimately killed those people. It appears that everyone who would know what we’re dealing with is dead. A team of SEALS is out at Plum Island gathering all of the information they can. The place holds fifty years of research and notes, so it’ll be like diving for needles in haystacks.” All of the air and energy left him like he was a slashed tire tube. “If this gets out any further, I don’t even want to think about what will come next.”

Jason’s first great idea was to move the party from the beach to Money Pond. It was a bit of a hike through the state park to get there, but he was positive it would be police free. He’d always been fascinated by the small lake when he was younger. Money Pond was supposedly one of the places where the infamous Captain Kidd deposited his treasure. Gardiner’s Island just off the coast was a definitive location for some of Kidd’s booty. The Gardiner family, who had been threatened by Kidd to conceal his cache under penalty of death, was said to have delivered all of it to the court during the captain’s ill-fated trial. Rumors had been circulating for centuries that not all of it had been turned in. Plenty of people went there every year in search of any that may have been left behind.

Jason still thought about taking scuba lessons so he could plumb the murky Money Pond and waters around Gardiner’s Island himself one day. Even finding a handful of treasure would be enough for him and Tom to start their own publishing company, and they wouldn’t have to fight the uphill battle to get their comics and books in readers’ hands.

Tom, who had been staring at the keg sitting on the porch like it was a girlfriend about to board a plane to Zambia, said, “We can’t go there.”

“Why not?”

“We’d have to wear jeans and long-sleeve shirts. It’s frigging hot and humid. I’m not going to sweat my balls off, and neither are the girls.”

Pounding the arm of the couch with his first, Jason let out a string of expletives. “I swear to Christ, I hate fucking ticks.”

Montauk was tick—and therefore, Lyme Disease—central. They’d known plenty of people who had gotten it over the years and it wasn’t pretty. Everyone lived in fear of ticks. That’s why late-night parties were best done at the beach, where there were fewer ticks.

“Dude, it was a good idea. We could have gone crazy out there and no one would have even heard us.” He patted his friend on the shoulder and handed him a smoldering joint.

Jason took a hit, leaned back and closed his eyes, deep in thought.

“Look,” Tom said, “we could scale the whole thing down. I’ll ask Annie to bring her cousins over here and we’ll have some fun.”

“And leave out Skeets?”

“Okay, we can have Skeets over, too.”

“If Skeets comes, you know we also have to let Greg and Tim over, too.”

Tom rolled his eyes. “And before you know it, everyone will be here trashing my house. Forget it. Just us and the girls. I’m sure everyone will understand. This whole town is in, like, lockdown.”

Jason smiled and grabbed his cell phone. “Start texting everyone. We’re going to Highland Beach.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Yes, but that’s beside the point. We’ll have a beach, privacy and it’ll be tick free.”

“No shit, Jay. And we’ll all be drunk and dead within an hour.”

Jason’s fingers flew across his phone’s screen. “We’ll be fine. There’ll be a bunch of us. If someone gets stuck in quicksand, we’ll have plenty of people to pull them out.”

Tom sighed, staring at his own phone. Highland Beach had been closed to the public for as long as he could remember. It was way too dangerous. He and Jason had done some exploring there when they were in high school. Using a very long stick as a guide, they’d managed to steer clear of the quicksand, but it was everywhere. One wrong move and you were in serious shit. It was the only beach the police wouldn’t have bothered to patrol. No one went there, especially at night.

Tonight, they were about to be the exception to the rule.

As Mickey Conrad turned into the station’s lot, Dalton said, “Thanks, Mick. I owe you a steak for this one.”

“It’s gonna cost you Morton’s,” he replied, smiling.

“Unless Campos suspends you. Then you won’t be able to afford it.”

Inside, the station house was empty. Everyone was on duty and on the streets. Even Sergeant Campos’s office was dark.

“This is just eerie,” Meredith said, taking in row upon row of empty desks. Phones rang with no one to answer them. They would be diverted to an emergency phone center after four rings.

“You’re in luck,” Mickey said. “No one’s around to drill you a new asshole.”

“I have to see if Captain Hammerlich is here,” she said. Mickey shot Dalton a look, warning him to disavow Meredith of her intention.

Dalton gave a slight shake of his head. He was with Meredith on this one. They knew what was out there and it would be a crime
not
to tell the captain.

“Suit yourselves,” Mickey said. “I’m going back out. I’m sure I’ll see you at some point.”

When he left, Meredith started walking to Hammerlich’s office with Dalton in tow. It was in the rear of the building, some distance from the normal madness. His door was closed, the opaque glass revealing little. They could tell the light was on, but he often left without shutting out his light.

“You don’t have to do this with me,” she said, her closed fist pausing at the wooden frame. “With my current status, they’ll just push me into early retirement. But you have a whole lot of good years ahead of you.”

There was no way he was going to let her go this alone. In reply, he knocked urgently on the captain’s door.

They heard the casters on his chair squeak, then heavy footsteps. The door flew open. Captain Darren Hammerlich was a tall, wiry man with hard eyes and a cleft chin that looked like it’d been cleaved with a hatchet. He looked ten years younger than his fifty-five years and could outbox any man on the force who dared to step into the ring with him at the gym. He didn’t look happy to see them.

Framed, signed pictures of Mike Tyson, Joe Frazier, Evander Holyfield and even one of once-governor Jesse Ventura lined the wall behind the captain’s desk.

“Dalton, why aren’t you on patrol, and Hernandez, you were supposed to be at your desk hours ago. If I hear those GD phones ring one more time I might throw them all out the window.”

Dalton steeled himself. This wasn’t going to be easy. Meredith stood her ground, her knuckles white from squeezing the folder. Some of the pictures she’d printed up had started to slide out one end.

“Sir, if you don’t mind, we need to speak to you.”

He waved her off, turning his back on them. “I don’t have time to listen to excuses. Just get to work. I’ll deal with you both later.” He sat down and pulled up to his desk, engrossed in whatever was on his computer monitor.

They followed him inside, Dalton shutting the door.

Hammerlich looked up with a withering glare. “Have you both lost your minds?”

Dalton spoke up. “We thought so, at first. But we have to show you something. We think we know what’s going on.”

He studied them for an interminable length of time, folding his arms across his chest. Dalton met his gaze. If he wasn’t so sure of himself, of the evidence, he knew he would have caved and hightailed it out of the captain’s office.

Meredith placed the folder gently on his desk and opened it. A picture of the creature in the cattle pen stared up at him. He looked down at it, then raised his eyes to them.

“What the hell is this?”

“One of the things that’s on the loose,” Dalton said.

Hammerlich riffled through the papers. He motioned for them to take a seat.

“Where did you take these pictures?”

Meredith answered, “Some at Plum Island, in the government lab, and those others at the beach several years ago when I responded to a dead animal call.”

Each hand held one of the pictures. His head went back and forth between them like he was watching a tennis match. Finally, he put them down, spreading everything across his desk.

“Tell me what I’m looking at and why I’m not going to give you an official reprimand.”

Officer Jake Winn’s gut clenched the moment the shadowy creature leapt from the roof.

The children, who had been running as fast as they could, one of them even sprinting right out of her light-up sneakers, pulled to a terrified stop. Now that he could see the thing under the amber lights that circled the parking lot, his hopes for getting all of them to safety withered and died.

It was beyond words or comprehension.

What he’d at first thought was a dog was anything but. It had the basic structure of a large, powerfully built canine, but that’s where the resemblance ended. The face was like that of a wild boar, coarse, thick whiskers covering a blunted snout. Canines half a foot long snapped at the air, thick saliva splashing the gravel at the children’s feet. It had hooves instead of paws but the tail was long, twitching with agitation. Most of the fur on its body had shed. Blue-tinged skin gave it the appearance of a drowned animal.

The children shrieked as one, scampering back toward Winn.

Shit!

Their sudden movement gave the monster pause.

“Get behind me!” Jake shouted.

He saw husbands throw protective arms across wives, urging them to go inside. None of the women moved. Their babies were out there.

Winn drew his gun on the creature. It stared back at him with yellow eyes that shone with a spectral gleam of intelligence. It saw Jake for what he was—a threat to its next meal. Black and pink lips curled back. A throaty growl gave warning that he should stand down.

All of the children were now gathered at his back, some crying, the rest too petrified to make a sound.

He looked past the creature to the motel rooms. Several parents were making their way to the lot. It was understandable that they would do anything to save their children, but right now, they were destroying his chance to shoot the damn thing. If he went wide or high, there was a frightened parent within range that would take the bullet instead.

“Stop.”

They kept coming, now getting the attention of the creature. It took a quick look at them, then returned its attention to Winn and the children.

To make matters worse, it began to shift from side to side, bobbing its head as if to latch on to their scent, looking for the fastest way to get at them. Winn’s gun followed its movements.

It knows
, he thought with blossoming dread.
It made itself a moving target so I can’t shoot. What kind of hell did this thing come from?

Tiny hands touched his waist and legs, as he if were a totem of protection. In a sense, wearing his uniform, wielding a gun, that’s exactly what he was supposed to be.

“Folks, if you don’t stop, I can’t take this thing down,” he said evenly through gritted teeth. “If I can’t shoot it, someone is going to get very, very hurt.”

A boy bawled for his mother. One of the women walking toward them stopped, her face a mask of worry, pain and confusion. She must have been the mother of the boy. Her hands were clutched against her breast. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

All of the parents had stopped. The creature, sensing the change, flicked its terrible head to them and gave a hoarse bark. As fully formed and muscular as its body was, something was very wrong, almost unfinished, with its ability to vocalize.

Two men and one woman who had been to the left of the creature stepped carefully away, giving Winn a comfortable buffer should he miss.

“Kids, cover your ears,” he said, never taking his eyes off the prowling beast.

He pulled the trigger.

Incredibly, it seemed to anticipate the shot, bursting to its right in a full gallop. The bullet buried itself into the wall of one of the hotel rooms with a sharp crack. A man standing by the room leapt away from the splintering wood.

Winn watched the creature run in a half circle, its cloven feet pounding the gravel, never losing stride.

It was angling around them so it could get to the children from the rear, where no adults stood in its way.

Children and parents shouted, piercing wails that echoed into the night. The parents sprang into action, running for their kids. Most of the children dashed toward them. It was pure chaos. Two girls, neither older than seven, stood rooted to the spot beside Winn, following the creature’s line of attack with wide, wet eyes. They held hands, shoulders bobbing with sobs, too scared to break free.

Winn fired three rounds at the swift-moving monster. All missed, kicking up gravel, thudding into a car door and the last sailing off into the darkness.

It made a tight turn, now facing them, hurtling like a missile.

Winn fired again, this time grazing its hind flank. Blood misted the air, but didn’t slow it down. Before he could squeeze off another shot, it barreled into the girls, breaking their grasp on each other. Their bodies spun, hitting hard into the sharp gravel.

It dove into Winn. He heard, rather than felt, his ribs crack when its snout crashed into his chest. As he collapsed on his back, all the breath expelled from his lungs. His head turned in time to see the creature continue on as if he’d never been an obstacle. It pounced and took a chunk out of the back of a man’s neck. The light of the moon briefly caught the white of his spinal cord. The man collapsed. The little boy whose hand he’d been holding also went down. Adults and children scattered.

The pain in Winn’s lungs was excruciating. His diaphragm hitched, desperate to pull in air, but too shocked to do so.

When the beast made it past the fleeing children and adults, it skidded to a stop and rounded back to Winn. Its face was smeared with gore. Jaundiced eyes bored into the little boy shaking his mortally wounded father, trying to get him to stand up. From what Winn could see, the man was probably already dead.

It charged at the boy.

Despite the white spots dancing in Winn’s periphery, he rolled onto his stomach, raised his arm and fired. The boy screamed, his body leaping away as if he’d stepped on a hornet’s nest. He rolled on the lot, holding his arm.

Winn fired again. And again. His finger twitched against the trigger as fast as it could, sending round after round into the approaching creature.

This time, they all hit their mark.

It wasn’t until the hammer had fallen down on an empty magazine a half-dozen times that he realized the creature was down. Its shredded body had collapsed just five feet from him. The face was in ruins. Blood and scarlet tissue and shattered bone stared back at him. The stench coming out of it was unreal. His lungs, finally able to draw air, threatened to clamp shut again.

Turning his face away, he pulled himself up to his knees. He felt hands touch his arms. The girls were at his side, trying to help him up. One of them smiled at him, bits of gravel clinging to the side of her red face.

“Thank you for making the monster go away,” she whispered to him.

On his feet now, he patted her head. A woman brushed against him, nearly sending him back to the ground. She scooped up both girls, pulling them to her chest, kissing the tops of their heads.

Everyone staying in the motel was outside, gathering around the lot.

Winn remembered the boy. He was crying, hard, his armed pulled tight to his side.

He knew he’d shot him the moment the boy jerked away from his fallen father. Stumbling to him, he prayed he’d only grazed the boy. Anything worse was unthinkable.

West of the carnage at the motel, in a $3.8 million summer home on the Hamptons coast, the cast of
The Wealthy Wives of the Hamptons
was getting their first dose of reality.

A brilliant explosion of glass pebbles spilled from the raised deck overlooking the beach into the living room. Pam, a fresh-out-of-college production assistant, was lashed from head to bare calves by the shrapnel. She ran from the room, hands raised and trembling, screaming both with fright and the burning pain of dozens of tiny wounds.

Samar Van Dayton’s shrill shriek brought their epic battle to a halt. From her vantage point at the head of the mahogany table, she could see straight into the living room. Her chin quivered as she pointed toward the production crew, their backs to the scene.

“What the hell is going on?” Nancy Primrose shouted, upset that her grand moment was being usurped.

She followed Samar’s finger, head swiveling in slow motion, or at least that’s how it felt to her.

“Holy shit.”

The director tapped the squatting cameraman but he ignored everything around him, the view through his lens the only thing that mattered. Right now, he filmed the color draining from Nancy’s face and the rapid rise and fall of her chest.

Grace Bavosa and two of Samar’s friends had to tilt their bodies across the table to see. Grace’s wail topped all the others. She backed up against the dining room wall, scooting as far as she could, trembling behind Samar as if she were a human shield.

“Guys, get out of there!” Nancy screamed at the production crew.

It seemed as if they had all become statues after meeting Medusa’s gaze. Only their eyes moved, rolling back and forth as they took in the approaching trio of monsters.

What were those things
?

At first, Nancy thought that a pack of wild, perhaps rabid dogs had come crashing through the doors. The terror of getting rabies had been enough to close her throat.

She would gladly take rabies over anything these creatures would do to them.

All three looked very much the same, like animals born of the same litter. Nancy once dated a man from Wales who bred Irish wolfhounds for British aristocracy. Her favorite, Baldric, was so tall, its back came up to the bottom of her breasts, which were very high at the time thanks to a wonderful enhancement and lift she’d gotten in Beverly Hills several months earlier—a birthday gift from a previous boyfriend. She joked that the dog was big enough to ride. Her boyfriend, an old, rich codger who paid handsomely for a little slap and tickle, told her to go ahead and give Baldric a spin. She had, and the wolfhound pranced about with her bouncing on its back as if she were nothing more substantial than a flea.

These—
things
—were the size of Baldric, but they were certainly not wolfhounds. Their heads were much too small for their bodies, beanlike in comparison, with narrow, rheumy eyes, small, round ears and snouts that curved downward to sharp, tapering points like beaks. They looked diseased, their fur a clotted mess. Deadly-looking rows of sharp, crooked teeth were bared. It seemed odd that they made almost no noise, considering their manic entrance and menacing stance. Their throats could manage only a strange, asthmatic kind of cough.

Samar babbled, repeating, “Why is this happening to me? Why is this happening to me?”

Nancy looked down at the floor for something to defend herself with. She snatched up a handful of forks and knives. If jammed in the right place, they would make a formidable deterrent.

Finally, Ned, the cameraman who had been following their every move the past two seasons, swiveled on his knee to face the intruders.

He was just in time to film their attack.

Without warning, the beasts sprang at the production crew. One of them hit the front of the camera hard, smashing it into Ned’s face, shattering his eye socket. Before he could react to the agony, its front paws were on his chest as it lunged at his face, taking his nose, cheeks, lips and chin with one jaw-crunching bite.

Nancy backed up, crouched in a fighting stance, silverware flashing in front of her.

Another monster stood on its hind legs, towering over the director. It dipped its head down to his neck and shoulder, tearing at flesh, muscle and bone. A heavy arterial spray erupted from his neck, painting the ceiling and walls. The monster continued to work at his neck as he crumpled to the floor.

“Noooo!” Grace’s scream even made the creatures pause.

For once, Nancy was grateful for Grace’s hysteria.

“Help me lift the table onto its side!” she shouted at her costars. Reaching down for the leg—
Crap, this table is heavy
—she waited for them to take her cue. There was no way out of the dining room. No windows, no doors. They had to create a barrier between them and the bizarre animals that were now feasting on the crew.

Samar was the first to come to her senses. She put her shoulder under the edge of the table. Grace, who was in full-on panic mode, pulled it together enough to wrap her arms around another leg. Samar’s friends lifted it by the edge and together they heaved. They struggled to lift it from the floor, but once they had some momentum, it turned onto its side, settling with a thunderous thump.

“How the hell did they manage that?” Nancy exclaimed.

Samar’s two friends had somehow positioned themselves so they were on the wrong side of the table barrier. They were now face-to-face with the creatures, and judging by their screams, had gotten their attention.

The table filled half the entryway into the living room. Nancy knew it wasn’t going to be enough to keep those things out, but maybe it could slow them down enough so she could bury a fork in their eyes as they struggled over it.

“Samar, Grace, help me!” she shouted.

A pair of pale, well-manicured hands flopped over the lip of the barrier. The women shouted and sobbed. They were too incoherent to understand, but Nancy didn’t need words to know they were terrified.

“Grab their hands and let’s try to pull them over.”

Samar reached for a hand, still muttering “Why me?”

The hand went rigid. It was followed by a glass-shattering scream and what sounded like a water balloon bursting on pavement. Samar put a foot against the underside of the table and pulled. She flew back onto her ass, rapping her head against the floor.

“Samar!” Grace yelled.

Samar looked to her right, saw the alabaster hand in hers. She followed it to the wrist, then elbow, all the way to the torn, bloody shoulder. The rest of her friend was still on the other side.

Nancy struggled to pull the other friend but wasn’t strong enough to win a tug-of-war with the creature that yanked the hands out of her grip.