Paul Zindel - Loch

Zaidee was the first to see the little, black, shining body skimming again through the wake of their skiff.

“Wee Beastie!” she shouted happily.

The Revelation was gaining on them, the PT boat pacing itself easily off its port.

Loch saw the grid and its cement control bunker in the distance. He searched the ridge for any glimpse of his father. There was no one.

“The plesiosaurs are surfacing!” Zaidee cried out.

Loch looked back to see the water rupture as the creatures’ dark, scaly backs began to emerge from the lake. Their speed slowed and the handful of smaller beasts began to panic, skimming to the surface at the edges of the adults like frightened fish. Only one huge head began to rise from the herd, the tremendous bony mass and snout of the Rogue. The Rogue slowed, dropping back like a patriarch whose instincts are clear.

“What is the Rogue doing?” Zaidee asked.

Loch, understanding what was happening, answered sadly. “Protecting his family.”

The Revelation closed the distance between itself and the Rogue. Cavenger and his team were in place at the bow, the harpooner manning the huge gun. The Rogue lifted his head higher, showing more of his neck and letting the yacht come within striking distance.

“Oh, God, please don’t …” Sarah said aloud, as if magic would carry her words to her father. As much as she feared the beasts, she didn’t want to see them destroyed like this.

Boom.

The first harpoon exploded from the gun and entered the Rogue’s neck so deeply its shiny, metal tip burst from the scales beneath his jaw. Blood spurted out of the wound, rushing down into the water of the lake as the creature snapped his neck back and forth, trying to break free.

Boom.

Another harpoon tore into the Rogue’s shoulder, this one setting deep. Its explosive head detonated, blasting loose a vast slab of the creature’s flesh and muscle.

The PT boat began to circle the beast, its crew firing and refiring rifles, pumping bullets into his body. Sarah put her hands to her ears to try to block out the terrible, terrible noise of the shooting and the tortured roars of the beast. The Rogue kept trying to turn his head as if to see whether his herd was safe.

“The creatures are passing us,” Zaidee yelled as the clear springs of the shallows replaced the darker peat water.

She watched the huge blackness of the beasts rush by beneath them to halt at the mouth of the grid. What might have been Beast and two of the other larger plesiosaurs surfaced in front of the boat, forcing Loch to cut the motor and shift into neutral.

“They’re going to eat us!” Sarah screamed, flashes of what had happened to Erdon stabbing back into her mind.

“They could have done that already,” Loch said, ready at the wheel for anything.

With the skiff stopped, the herd had strangely quieted, the creatures sinking to the bottom. Only Wee Beastie stayed off the boat’s stern, clicking at them, motioning with his snout toward the slaughter of the Rogue, as if there were something they could do.

“What’s going on?” Zaidee asked, confused.

They looked back at The Revelation . Perhaps in a last desperate attempt to escape, the Rogue had sounded in the deep water. The harpoons were holding, their lines drawn taut as the yacht began to list from the great weight and strength of the beast.

Cavenger pushed his way to the railing and stared down into the black and bloodied water. Emilio, with a belt of grenades, appeared at his side.

“Kill it!” Cavenger screamed at him. “Kill it now!”

Emilio took a grenade, pulled its pin, and hurled it down into the water. Seconds later, there was the great sickening thud of an underwater blast and a great fountain of blood and water erupted from the surface of the lake. Still the harpoon lines were taut, pulling the boat down.

“Throw another grenade!” Cavenger ordered.

Emilio had time only to draw the pin out before the Rogue suddenly shot up out of the water like a huge submarine surfacing from a great depth. His body angled across the bow, then came crashing down and ripped away a section of the hull. He slashed forward with his fins as the men with guns on the PT blasted him mercilessly. One of the better marksmen hit the beast’s left eye, bursting it.

The impact of the Rogue’s attack caused Emilio to drop the live grenade on the deck. Cavenger saw the grenade fall, then watched helplessly as it rolled back, past the crew, and dropped into the maze of cables and wires of the sonar power base.

“It’s going to blow!” Emilio shouted, diving over the side.

Cavenger’s first, completely absurd, impulse was to berate Emilio, to scold and blame him for not following orders precisely. The harpoon team pushed by him, heading for the railing. The rest of the crew ran for the stern. In these last, futile seconds, Cavenger had no one left to order, no one to command. He was standing alone when the Rogue’s head snapped toward him. The mouth opened and the huge vise of teeth slowly closed on Cavenger’s head. In a paroxysm of death, the creature jerked back his neck, lifting Cavenger into the burning sun of a tremendous explosion.

Sarah screamed and threw up her hands to cover her face as a second, greater blast swallowed The Revelation in an immense ball of fire. As the storm of smoke and flames rose up into the sky, Loch went to Sarah and put his arm around her.

“I’m sorry,” Loch said gently. “I’m very sorry.”

The fireball turned into streaks of black and raining embers as the remnants of the hull began to slide beneath the surface of the lake. When Sarah lowered her hands from her eyes, her entire body shuddered and she burst into tears. “He was my father … my father,” she cried. “I know he didn’t always do the right thing-he needed so much to prove to everyone he was right. …”

“I guess being right isn’t enough,” Loch said, looking up to the desolate ridge. “I don’t think it was enough for any of us.”

Zaidee rushed to Sarah, flung her arms around her, and began to cry too.

CLICK CLICK …

They heard the sounds, and saw Wee Beastie’s head peer over the stern at them. He looked at them for only a moment, then swam slowly down to the herd.

Lake Alban was silent. A few of the crew from The Revelation had survived the great, ripping blast and had managed to swim to the PT. The crews of the fleet stood quietly on their decks, all guns pointed toward the skiff with the beasts beneath it.

Loch was the first to hear the sounds from below. “They’re making their music,” he said.

“Why?” Sarah asked.

The water around the skiff began to stir, then churn. It moved in increasingly greater swirls and turmoil until the heads and bodies of the beasts began to rise all about them. The beasts surfaced in a great circle, their heads and necks lifting high above the boat.

Loch, Sarah, and Zaidee stood together, looking up at the leviathans. The sound they made now was like that of a thousand cellos, a series of low, haunting notes that slid upward into an increasingly profound and complicated harmony. The music of the plesiosaurs was penetrating, vibrating the air in a way that could be felt on the skin and in the heart. Their singing transcended words and even thoughts, as Loch felt a warmth start in his brain, then move down his spine and flood his entire body. He knew from the look in Zaidee’s and Sarah’s eyes that they were feeling it, too.

To a man, the men with guns lowered their weapons as the sounds swept over them.

Loch didn’t know how he knew, but suddenly he was certain his father was on the ridge. He looked to the cement control bunker. Zaidee’s eyes followed his. They saw Dr. Sam looking down at them.