Monster (24 page)

Beck took a slow, deliberate breath and tried to remind herself that these were animals, and animals just did what they did. Rachel liked Beck’s hair the way it was, and as for the reason— Beck snickered bitterly—did Rachel even need one? Was she even aware of one? Maybe appearances
were
important to Sasquatches; maybe they were unsettled by change; maybe Beck was projecting her own feelings into these animals and was totally wrong about everything.

Feeling grumpy, Beck took out her hairbrush. If she couldn’t wear her hair up, at least she could brush it again, her way of having the last word. She ran her brush through her hair with strong, anger-driven strokes, purposely turning her eyes away from Rachel and devoting her attention to Leah and Jacob.

Leah seemed in no hurry as she combed Jacob with her fingers. She deftly scooped out bugs with her fingernails and neatly arranged his coat one section at a time, all the while stealing an occasional side glance to see if Rachel was watching. Beck marveled at Leah’s expression. She reminded herself again that these were animals, but the more she watched, the more she had to wonder—Was it possible for an ape to be
catty
?

A movement from Rachel drew her attention—and held it. Beck stopped brushing, the brush poised in her hair at the top of a stroke.

In her slow, lazy way, and with her eyes focused on Beck’s right hand, Rachel was stroking the left side of her head with her big fingers.

Beck switched and brushed the hair on her left side.

Rachel clumsily stroked the right side of her head with her right hand, a hairy mirror image.

Beck felt Leah looking their way and shot a glance back. Leah immediately went to work as if she hadn’t been watching a thing.

Now, this was intriguing. Beck looked down at the brush in her hand. Was Rachel mimicking, or was she asking?

She rose carefully, tentatively. While gently touching Rachel’s chest to soothe her, she placed the brush against Rachel’s head and passed it lightly through the tangled hair.

Rachel sighed and relaxed. She was all for it, like a dog getting petted.

Beck brushed a little more, and Rachel leaned into it.

Well. Okay, then.

Beck kept going, brushing out the tangles, combing with her fingers, cleaning Rachel’s coarse, oily coat. When she stopped to pull twigs, bugs, leaves, and loose hairs from the brush, Rachel nudged her to continue. She returned to her work, parting Rachel’s hair neatly down the middle, coifing the sides and teasing the hair to give it body, blending the head and neck hair with the hair on Rachel’s back. She had to pause frequently to clean debris from the brush, but Rachel finally accepted that part of the process once Beck gave her first choice of anything the brush found.

Before Beck realized it, she was having fun. She started humming to herself, no tune in particular.

Rachel stared off into space and made a deep-toned noise of her own. “Hmmmmhmmmmhmmm.”

Beck smiled and kept humming, working on Rachel’s right shoulder. Grooming the whole body was going to be a big job, like brushing down a vertical horse, but the hair was mostly cooperative, sorting itself out and falling into place as the brush passed through.

Rachel watched, obviously pleased, as Beck brushed her right arm. “Hmmmmmhmmm.”

Beck started whistling just to see what would happen.

Rachel cocked her head, apparently surprised.

“Woo-w-whistle!” Beck said, and did it.

Rachel had to think about it and then tightened her lips against her teeth and made her playful teakettle sound. Beck laughed and whistled with her. It was just like getting their dog, Jonah, to “sing” by making high, howling sounds. Beck whistled, Rachel whistled; Beck whistled, Rachel whistled. Now for that left shoulder—

“Rooarr!” Rachel flinched so violently she sent Beck tumbling.

Beck righted herself, poised to run, expecting to die, thoroughly, shakingly terrified.
I’ve broken the rules!

But Rachel wasn’t angry. She looked down at her left shoulder, gingerly touching the place Beck had tried to brush.

Still trembling, and making sure she had Rachel’s permission for each step, Beck dared to come back.

Now that the caked blood was broken up by the brushing, Beck could see for the first time where the blood had come from. The wounds were recent and just beginning to heal—two large tears near the top of the shoulder with smaller cuts between and on either side. The curved pattern suggested the obvious: Rachel had been viciously attacked and bitten.

Beck backed away, the brush at her side, and stole a fearful glance in Jacob’s direction. He was still sitting against the tree, basking in all the attention he was getting from Leah. He met her eyes only once, then looked straight ahead as if he didn’t care to discuss it.

Cap, in billed cap and blue coveralls he borrowed from the caretaker’s garage, carried a bag of garbage on one shoulder to obscure his face as he walked down an alley to check out the rear of a particular building. During the summer quarter, many of the labs and classrooms were not in constant use, meaning the lab he needed might be empty. At least the alley was empty. He tossed the bag into a Dumpster, looked around as casually as he could, then walked briskly up the alley to a back door.

This was Corzine University’s Bioscience building, his old stomping ground, a modern, three-story structure with lots of glass, state-of-the-art labs and classrooms, and what used to be his office. Access through the front door would mean signing in and making his presence known, which would bring questions and permission denial, things he couldn’t afford. This door in the back, known only to maintenance staff and professors trying to avoid squabbles with student protestors, required only a key.

He pulled a key from his pocket, the one he’d unknowingly left in another pair of pants when the administrator told him to turn in all his keys. He’d planned to bring it back or maybe just mail it. If things didn’t go well today, they’d get it anyway.

The key worked. The door opened. He ducked inside.

He was in the combination office and locker room of the maintenance department. Against one wall was a row of lockers; opposite the lockers were the desk and cot of the head custodian, Louis. The desk calendar was filled with Louis’s usual notes and reminders in blue felt-tip pen. Good. Things were still the same. Hopefully, Louis kept the same schedule. He always arrived for work at eight in the evening, after everyone else had gone home—except for intensely occupied molecular biologists who had a habit of working late. He and Louis had gotten to know each other pretty well.

Cap even knew which locker was Louis’s, and that Louis never bothered to lock it. Inside, he found the custodian’s coveralls and, most important, an access card that operated the doors in the rest of the building. Louis lost that card once, and another time his youngest daughter had used it for making motor sounds in the spokes of her bicycle. Ever since, Louis kept it in his locker, strung on a lanyard.

Cap hung the access card around his neck. He checked his watch. Most of the staff and students were probably at lunch right now. This was going to be tight, but doable.

He hurried into the next room, where supply shelves reached to the ceiling and the cleaning carts were parked evenly spaced in a straight row. The trash cans on board were emptied and relined, cleaning solutions replenished, clean dust cloths in place, mops beaten and ready to go again. He picked a cart, added two more dust mops with big heads to the cart’s broom rack—in case he needed to hide his face—and wheeled the cart up to the metal-clad fire door that stood between him and the rest of the building.

Without waiting to rethink this or bolster his courage, he swiped the card through the slot of the keypad. The lock clicked open, and he pushed through.

It felt odd sneaking into a place where he felt so much at home. He’d been up and down these clean, off-white halls and through these department doors so many times he almost knew this place better than his own house. He hurried down the hall, avoided the eyes of a few students who passed by, came to a T—

A man with perfectly coifed hair and wearing a tailored suit stood at the end of the hall to the right; he was straightening a few pages that had gone crooked in a notebook he carried.

It was Dr. Philip Merrill, formerly the department chair of Molecular Biology, recently promoted to dean of the College of Sciences. He was more than well entrenched in the system—he practically
was
the system—and he and Cap had never been on good terms.

Cap turned down the hall to the left, ducking around to the front of his cart and pulling it behind him, keeping his back to Merrill and the cart with the big mops between them.

He rolled past an informal lounge area with chairs, a couch, and some
Science
,
Nature
, and
Cell
magazines, and then through some heavy double doors marked Authorized Personnel Only Beyond This Point.

Immediately to the right was a door with a large glass window. A placard on the wall to the left read Molecular Biology Research Center, and under that was a blank space where his name used to be. Cap swiped Louis’s card through the keypad, and once again, the lock clicked open.

Inside was a wondrous place, his former world. His micropipettes and PCR thermal cycler waited faithfully on the bench where he preferred them, although the electrophoresis gel boxes and power supply had been rearranged to someone else’s liking. The reagents inside the glass storage cabinets were exactly as he’d left them, so they would be available if he needed them. Joy of all joys, the fluorescent microscope was still in place and operational, its video camera still interfaced with a computer.

There was no time to waste. Cap parked the cart against the door, adjusting the mop heads to block the window. Then he pulled the blinds on the outside windows. He reached inside his coveralls for a paper bag, and from the paper bag he pulled three plastic bags—one containing the rest of the hair samples, one containing the rest of the stool samples, and one containing the squashed thermos that still held dried saliva. The folks at the Judy Lab were good people, but Cap knew they also had professional considerations, especially where former biology professors were concerned. Holding back a portion of the samples and keeping them safely tucked away was a planned precaution.

He’d already made a trip back to the Internet, asked the right questions, and gotten a positive ID on that “junk” DNA. Now he knew what to look for, and he had a very good idea where to find it. The procedure would only take a few hours, and he could do it alone. If Baumgartner’s not-so-subtle hint was correct, he would soon know.

As long as Beck was slow and careful, Rachel let her brush out the blood-encrusted hair around the wounds and even helped by licking the area with her tongue. It was tedious work, sometimes hair by hair—Beck didn’t want to get decked again—but they made it through the task together. The perilous area groomed, Beck stepped back to clean her brush, admire her work, and enjoy the feeling.

Rachel grunted, reaching for the hairbrush. Beck let her take it to sniff it for treats while Beck removed her jacket. Rachel sniffed the brush and probed it with her fingers, but better treats could easily be found for less work. She lost interest.

“Hmm?” Beck prompted, her hand extended.

Rachel gave the brush back.

Beck worked her way down Rachel’s expansive back and around her waist, nudging that big body one way and then the other so she could reach every side. Rachel was looking good, the dandiest Sasquatch in the forest.

She sent looks Leah’s direction.
Hey, Leah!
I’m
getting
groomed
! What do you think about
that
?

Jacob abandoned Leah, disappearing into the forest in his usual, mysterious way. With no source of glory, Leah sank against a tree and moodily examined her fingernails.

Rachel jutted out her jaw and wiggled it at her competitor.

Apparently, Leah reached some kind of limit. A plaintive expression came over her face; she actually fussed a little and then started to rise as if she would come their way.

Rachel lurched and barked at her, teeth bared, a display so abrupt and loud it made Beck jump. Leah sat back down, her eyes averted.

Beck wasn’t sure she could believe what she saw. “M-my, my!”

Rachel snuffed in Leah’s direction, an assertive postscript, then heaved a deep sigh and relaxed, looking lovely.

“Woo-w-well! It’s about time!” Beck touched the side of Rachel’s face and looked her in the eye, something only safe between friends. “See? You’re not so bad.” A cluster of mountain bluebells grew within reach. Beck plucked them up, twisted them together, and stuck them in Rachel’s hair. “The ugly duckling is now a princess!”

Rachel pulled the bluebells from her hair, sniffed them, and ate them.

Oh well.

When Beck heard a sickening, ripping sound, she knew what it was—and who was responsible—before she leaped lopsidedly to her feet to look.

“No, noo!”

She’d wondered where Reuben was, and of course, all it took to bring him out of hiding were Beck’s eyes averted and her jacket unguarded. He had her buckskin jacket in his teeth; he bit and yanked pieces of leather as if it were beef jerky. A sleeve was already torn off and lying on the ground by itself.

Beck limped toward him, yelling, screaming, waving her arms.

He found a pocket and pulled out Beck’s precious roll of toilet paper.

“N-n-noo! P-p-p-!”
Please!

She took one step too many toward Leah’s child. Leah exploded from the ground and became a fearsome wall between them, teeth bared, hands ready to break Beck in half. Beck lurched away to save her life, and Rachel caught her, growling, but moving to their safe zone.

Reuben discovered that the toilet paper could unroll.

Beck wailed in anguish and disbelief. This couldn’t be happening. God wouldn’t let a thing like this happen. This was worse than losing the jacket.

When Reuben pulled on the streamer of toilet paper, the dwindling roll danced and tumbled. He leaped with delight and pulled it again, getting another loop of streamer as a reward.