Paul Zindel - Loch

Dr. Sam started to swim toward Randolph to drag him away from the creatures. But the wounds were too deep now. Blood streamed out into the water as if from punctures in a large, struggling doll. Finally, as the creatures pulled their attacker down, deeper, away from the light, one of Randolph’s arms was bitten free of his body.

The last Dr. Sam saw of Randolph was the halo of creatures surrounding his head like a scarlet wreath as they plunged him into darkness.

The vibrations from beneath the boathouse grew stronger. Sarah froze in the armchair, looking to Loch to see what their next move would be. They heard Zaidee calling to them from the end of the dock.

From the picture window Loch saw her still wearing the radio earphones in the boat. She was waving at him. “Hey! Something’s happened on The Revelation ! I can hear what they’re radioing,” she shouted.

Loch wanted to cry out to Zaidee, to warn her-but he didn’t dare make a sound. Somehow he felt the creatures would know she meant them no harm.

“Dad’s quit!” Zaidee shouted happily. “Cavenger wants him off the boat immediately. I think a helicopter’s lifting him back to the base. …”

Zaidee’s voice suddenly cracked and she went silent. Loch watched her lift her hand and point toward the boat slips beneath him. She was seeing something he couldn’t. All at once Sarah’s and Loch’s eyes opened in terror as the monstrous head of the Rogue lifted into view, filling the frame of the window. The massive yellow eyes of the beast fixed upon them behind the glass.

Sarah screamed as the shadow fell over her.

“Don’t move!” Loch told her, but she was out of control. She leaped up from the chair. Her hand reached out, and she grabbed a heavy ashtray from the table.

“No!” Loch shouted, rushing toward her-but it was too late.

Sarah hurled the ashtray toward the Rogue.

CRASH .

The picture window exploded. The Rogue shook his head, startled by the attack. He let out a loud, shrieking blast from his nostrils, slime splattering across the living room as he thrust his head forward.

The head and neck of a second beast, its snout thinner, coarser, ripped up through the center of the floor, blocking the door through which they had entered. Loch spotted another door, one off the kitchen. He grabbed Sarah’s hand.

“Go!” Loch yelled, pushing Sarah ahead of him.

In a moment they were out the door, running up the stairs of a breezeway. They burst through yet another door into a huge, empty warehouse with high, vaulted ceilings of corrugated tin.

“Where are we?” Sarah cried out, her heart pounding in her chest.

Loch looked at the cluster of machinery and huge blades at the far end of the building. “I think it’s the cutting room,” he said.

CRASH . The entire building shook.

Loch remembered the building was cantilevered out over the lake. “The creatures are hitting the supports.”

There was another, stronger impact near the breezeway, this time with the sound of metal twisting, beams cracking.

“Come on,” Loch yelled, grabbing Sarah’s hand and running for the far end of the building. Daylight streamed in through the cracks of what looked like a barn door past the huge sawing machinery. They swung the doors open, only to see a narrow walkway onto the elevated log sluice.

CRASH . The entire building trembled, began to dip downward, shattering the wall of windows. The only way out was onto the sluice.

“I hate heights!” Sarah shouted to Loch as he led her out and along the rickety gully. On both sides of the sluice was a fifty-foot drop.

There was another shock to the building, and a wall of logs on the mountain began to waken.

Loch looked back as the sound of the low, frightening rumble began to grow. There was a rush of water onto the sluice, and one by one logs dropped into the flow. The first log hurtled toward them.

“We’re going to have to jump into the log pond,” Loch said.

“I’m not jumping anywhere,” Sarah yelled.

“Get ready!” Loch warned, holding her hand firmly.

“I’m not jumping.”

“Yes, you are!”

Loch leaped, taking Sarah with him. They dropped down, down into the slim wedge of open water at the rim of the log pond, and surfaced quickly. For a moment they thought they were safe, but there came a rumbling noise from above.

“Oh, my God!” Sarah cried, as they looked up to see the sluice breaking and a log hurtling down at them. It fell with all the speed and force of a huge battering ram. Loch grabbed Sarah, set his feet against a pylon, and pushed them both away. The falling log crashed into the water next to them, a single untrimmed branch tearing across Loch’s shoulder like a whip.

“You’re bleeding,” Sarah gasped as they pulled themselves up onto the nearest floating log.

“It’s nothing,” Loch said, standing. Beyond the levee of the log pond, he saw, Zaidee was at the wheel of the skiff.

“Come on!” Zaidee yelled.

Loch waved to Zaidee and helped Sarah to her feet.

“Where are the monsters?” Sarah called to Zaidee across the landscape of logs.

“They were heading for you!” Zaidee yelled back.

Sarah’s eyes dropped. She saw the logs at the edge of the pond begin rising and falling.

“Let’s go,” Loch said, leaping forward onto the next log in the jam.

WHOOSH . A large plesiosaur rose out of the water behind Sarah. Its neck pulled back, its mouth opened wide. Sarah leaped toward Loch.

“Keep moving!” Loch ordered Sarah, pushing her on to the next log. By the time the creature lunged, they were running on top of the logs for all they were worth. Its teeth snapped at air; then it slid back beneath the surface.

“Hurry!” Zaidee screamed to them, nudging the bow of the skiff against the bank.

Suddenly, the log beneath Sarah started to lift up into the air. She fell across it and hung on as it balanced crazily on the massive head of a beast. The beast’s left front flipper crashed out of the water, slapping on top of another log to give it leverage. Loch ran straight for the creature as it raised its snout and thrust its lower bed of teeth forward. The rotting log with Sarah on it began to slide off the beast’s head. Loch tore off a branch and smashed it against the creature’s fin. The beast snapped at Loch, its teeth locking on the branch, cracking it into specks. The sudden motion set the creature off balance, and its fin slipped from the log. As the beast’s own weight pulled it back under, Loch grabbed Sarah and ran forward with her across the final stretch of logs to the bank of the levee and the awaiting boat.

Zaidee was ready at the controls.

“I take it all back,” Zaidee told Sarah as she helped her onto the boat. “You do have guts.”

“Thanks,” Sarah said, collapsing into the boat. “You have guts, too.”

Cavenger had been glad when the helicopter had?arrived to remove Dr. Sam from the yacht and take him back to the encampment. You don’t win the Grand Prix by stopping if someone crashes, Cavenger had to remind everyone. While all the other drivers are feeling bad about the flames and the wreckage and the burning corpse, that’s when you floor it!

“What should we do now?” Emilio asked Cavenger when the fleet had finished the sweep of the lake.

Cavenger swiveled in his seat at the control board. “We start back, sonar active.”

Emilio transmitted the order to the fleet. Captain Haskell led the turnaround at the west end of the lake. The fishing trawlers clanked their way past each other in a wide semicircle, giving great berth to the nets and exchanging flank positions for the return search. Cavenger motioned Emilio to keep his eye on the sonar screens, got up, and went to the munitions chest. He lifted the lid to check the rocket launcher and grenades. If any creature came their way now, Cavenger wanted everyone ready for a kill.