Dinosaur Lake 3: Infestation (9 page)

“I’m no fool. I’ll stay inside,” the older man
responded. “Besides, I have to protect my little squirrel buddy. When I find
him, that is.”

“Justin,” Henry turned to his son-in-law, “would
you and your friend please drive Ann’s car and take her home for me? You have
weapons if they’re needed. But be careful anyway. Don’t stop the vehicle for
anything. I’ll take my car and meet you back at the cabin. I won’t be long. We can
talk about what we’re going to do next when I get there.”

“Where are you going?” Ann wanted to know.

“Ranger Gillian and I have to make a stop at the
Klamath Falls Police Department. They need to know what’s going on here in town.
They need to be warned so they can prepare. I won’t be long, Ann. I’ll apprise
them of the situation and be home fast as I can.”

“They won’t want to believe you, Henry,” Zeke mumbled.
“Dinosaurs running amuck in Klamath Falls. Ha. Just be careful they don’t lock
you up for a crazy person, son.”

“Then I’ll have them phone Captain McDowell or Agent
Patterson for confirmation that dinosaurs do exist even in this day and age.
Let the army or the FBI persuade the police I’m telling the truth.”

“You won’t be long?” Ann grabbed Henry’s hand, edged
up closer to him. She was frightened, he knew the signs. Frightened for him as
well as herself.

“No, not long.”

They said their goodbyes to Zeke, who was almost
too busy searching for his lost squirrel under tables and sofas to be bothered
and the four split up. Ann, Justin and Steven driving to the park and Henry and
Gillian making a detour to the police department a few miles away from Zeke’s.

As Ann’s car drove away Henry hoped they’d end up
at the cabin safely and he’d make it back in one piece as well. The night was
coming and what else would it bring beside the darkness?

*****

Henry wasn’t surprised when the Klamath Falls
police chief, a stout fellow who went by the name Lester Chapman, didn’t take
him seriously about there being dangerous lizard-like creatures loose in the woods
around the town. Henry knew better than to out-and-out call them dinosaurs.
Most people tended to laugh at the very thought of them running loose anywhere
in the real world. It didn’t matter what had occurred in the park six years or
a few months ago. If a person hadn’t actually been there and seen the prehistoric
creatures with their own eyes, they couldn’t believe in them. It was only human
nature to be a cynic about the implausible.

So Henry’s visit with the police chief was short
and not sweet. The man, eyes lowered and mouth a tight line throughout the
conversation as he pretended to shuffle papers around on his desk, didn’t
actually laugh, but Henry could hear it behind his words.

“Where exactly did you say this, ah…confrontation
took place, Ranger Shore?” The police officer was a small man with very short
hair and bored eyes. He had this way of blinking a lot and looking elsewhere
when he was talking. It was distracting.

“It’s Chief Ranger Shore. And the confrontation took
place at Zeke Johnson’s house on Main Street, not far from here. At the rear of
his yard where the woods start. Zeke used to be the publisher of the Klamath
Falls Journal until my wife, Ann, took it over from him.”

“Oh Zeke, I know Zeke.” Then the officer gave Henry
a meaningful smile. “But he’s getting up there in years, isn’t he? Got to be in
his eighties now. Not doing too well, I’ve heard. Physical ailments associated
with age. A tiny bit senile. And sometimes older people, especially those who
live alone, think they hear and see things that aren’t really there. You know,
to get attention, company?”

“Zeke isn’t anywhere near senile. And he doesn’t
need to make up stories of monsters in his back yard to get attention. He has
plenty of friends.”

“I believe you, Ranger.” He spread pudgy hands
across the papers on his desk. There were other officers milling around outside
the office, some listening to them through the open door, curious. “But he is
an old man who spent his life publishing stories. I remember that series of
articles some years back about the dinosaurs in your park. Very entertaining. Those
photos were so real looking, too. Almost had me believing in them myself.
Almost.” Another condescending grin. Henry felt like punching his ignorant smug
face.

“Just go take a look at the damage they did to his
porch.”

“Okey-dokey, I just might do that. Soon as I have a
little free time.”

Oh well, Henry thought, he’d tried. He did warn the
police chief. Just wait. Let him learn the hard way. What Henry was concerned
about was the town and the people in the town. They needed to be warned, as
well. Maybe Ann, who was friends with a lot of the owners, could call a couple
of the local radio stations and have them put out a warning. She could run a front
page story in her newspaper or post something on the Internet. Facebook or
something. She knew more about social media than he did.

As Henry left the police station he told himself
he’d have to have a few higher-ups drop in on the Chief to back up his story.
Like Justin or Captain McDowell. Or perhaps someone from the FBI like Patterson.
But he had no idea where Patterson was these days. Traveling, last he heard. Maybe
the doubting police chief would believe one of them. Or maybe not. Henry had
done what he could. Now he had his own problems to tend to.

*****

When he arrived at the cabin after dropping Ranger
Gillian off at headquarters, Steven, Justin and Ann were gathered around the kitchen
table eating cold meatloaf sandwiches and swilling down coffee. Ann had even scrounged
up a cake for dessert. When he walked in, she rose from her chair and slipped
into his arms. The day had unsettled her and she needed reassurance. Needed her
husband to hold her. He needed the same.

“Did you run into any more of those little monsters
on your way back?” Henry asked her as Justin and Steven looked on.

“No, not a one. We drove here from town and nothing
jumped out in front of the car or tried to hitch a ride. In fact, the park is
strangely quiet tonight.”

As if all the indigenous animals were hiding. Henry
didn’t blame them. If he could he’d hide, too.

Tugging away from his embrace, his wife smiled and
sat down. She looked unusually tired. Probably from what she’d gone through.
The scare she’d had. Zeke’s incident. Any number of other things.

“And you…see anything suspicious on your way home?”
She picked up her sandwich and took another bite. The kitten appeared from the
other room and scrambled into her lap. With a yawn, it curled up and went to
sleep there. Henry reached down and stroked the feline as he walked past. It
meowed and went back to sleep.

“I saw no dinosaurs of any sort anywhere.” He
grabbed a cup of coffee and slid into the chair next to her. “But I, too,
noticed how silent the park’s land is. I didn’t see one animal, furred or
feathered, of any sort anywhere. Of course it’s dark outside now and hard to
see much of anything.”

Steven, munching on a sandwich, between bites, spoke
up, “Chief Ranger Shore, your wife’s been kind enough to shelter, feed me and
answer a whole mess of questions about all your earlier dinosaur exploits.
Amazing stories she and Justin have been regaling me with.” The young man
grinned at him and for a moment it was like having two Justin’s in the room. In
so many ways, the men were alike. Even their excitement over the circumstances.
Only difference, he was Justin years past. Overly eager. Innocent. Unaware of
what was to come and how destructive and deadly the dinosaurs could be.

“Steven and Justin are both our guests for the night,”
Ann announced. “I don’t think it’s safe in the park in the dark. They shouldn’t
be out there. None of us should.”

“I concur,” Henry said. “Good idea, wife. It’s not
safe out there. Best to be cautious.” They had two guest rooms so there was space
for everyone. Henry got up and made himself a sandwich so Ann wouldn’t have to.
He was sure she’d waited on the men and she didn’t need to be waiting on him,
too.

“So what have I missed?” Henry asked when he was reseated,
though it was easy to guess. Ann’s laptop was open and humming away beside her
on the table and its screen had on it a full color picture of the water
dinosaurs from the lake that morning that either Justin or Steven had taken.
Henry recognized the cast of characters. It was the big leviathan wrestling one
of the smaller ones.

Justin had his iPad out, as well, and its screen
was filled with another version of the larger monster.

“These photos are incredibly disturbing,” Ann
murmured as she clicked through them, eyes glued to the screen, her sandwich on
the plate in front of her, and which she hadn’t eaten much of. There was a
smudge of ketchup on her lower lip.

Steven launched into a recounting of the morning’s
adventure, complete with sound effects and embellishments, and Henry mused over
what an intuitive guy he was. Witty. No wonder he was an entertainer. By the
way he spun out his story Henry could see how he’d make a good novelist. His
vivid descriptions made you feel you were right there with him on the boat seeing
the monsters tussling, or him splashing helplessly around in the water trying
to avoid being eaten. Henry had been there but listening to Steve’s version had
him reliving it over again. So much so it made him uneasy. The boat could have
been wrecked and they could have died. Been dinosaur snacks. They’d been lucky.
Again. Henry wondered when that luck would run out.

Ann seemed impressed with the musician. Her interest
was genuine when she looked at or conversed with him. So he must meet her stamp
of approval, which made Henry like the young troubadour even more.

The four of them studied the photos they’d taken and
talked among themselves for a while, their eyes taking turns going to the
windows, their ears alert for any suspicious noises beyond the glass. They’d
brought the danger home with them.

“I think I’m going to go to bed. It’s been a heck
of a day and I’m tired,” Ann told Henry and the others after they’d taken in
the nightly news on the kitchen television set. There was nothing on it about
dinosaurs in the park or in the town. No alerts, no alarms. No massacres. Not a
thing. No reported attacks. No sightings. Nor anywhere else. Henry was
relieved, yet he imagined they were only in the calm before the storm. The
worst was coming, as it always did when dinosaurs were involved.

“Goodnight, honey,” he told his wife. “Sleep in
tomorrow. We’ll be leaving early, I suspect. We have things to see to. But,
please, this time, don’t go anywhere. Stay here in the cabin. Keep your gun
close. If Zeke needs you, call me or the police chief in town. Don’t go out
there alone.”

“I won’t,” Ann sighed, “leave the house, Henry. I
promise. I learned my lesson.” Her smile was firm, but there were faint circles
under her eyes.

She kissed him goodnight, took leave of her guests
and exited the kitchen. Henry watched her go, a slight frown on his face. With
all that was going on, most of the time Ann would want to be in the thick of it.
Taking notes and scheming how she could use the developing story to boost the
newspaper’s declining circulation. It wasn’t like her to slip out early on the
action. Wasn’t like her at all. But he’d observed her odd behavior lately. She’d
been distracted, slow to react to anything and exhausted a lot. He pushed what
that might be attributed to from his mind. He couldn’t go there, not tonight.

Justin had been comparing Henry’s description of
the dinosaur that had assaulted him and their cat the evening before to perhaps
a
Coelophysis
. “But that meat eater lived, oh, at least, thirty-five
million years ago. I can’t believe our species smorgasbord could reach back
that far. But then, again, anything’s possible with what we’ve already seen. Though
Coelophysis
does sound a lot like the creature you met in the woods.
They were pack hunters and had small, birdlike heads with sharp teeth. The name
means ‘hollow form’ because some of their bones were hollow making them
lightweight like a bird. Their front limbs were like arms with three strong
sharp claws to grab their prey. Yet the
Coelophysis
had a long tail, not
a short one. Hmm.” The scientist went back to scanning through dinosaur
pictures on the website. “I’ll keep looking.”

Steven had been busy most of the evening, when he
wasn’t gaping at the photos or keying in things on his iPad. Notes, he maintained,
for his book. He couldn’t wait until the next morning when their adventure, as
he was putting it, would continue. After what he’d been through already, Henry
had to give it to him, the man had courage. Or he was just a thrill junkie.

“But on another matter,” Justin questioned Henry after
Ann had retired to bed, “I assume you’ve called in the troops and the
appropriate authorities and they’ll soon be inundating the park? Which means
it’s going to get crowded here again.”

“Worse, I’m afraid this could mean the end of
Crater Lake National Park as we’ve always known and loved it. My job.
Everything. I could be retiring even earlier than I had anticipated. The park
service could decide it’s entirely too dangerous to remain open, this dinosaur
problem has occurred far too often, and shut us down for good. I wouldn’t blame
them. Station the army here to keep people out until they can eradicate the creatures
once and for all, if they can. I have my doubts. This situation has been
building for years, six as far as we know of; probably more.