Chupacabra (22 page)

Marty, Luther, and Dylan were walking down the corridor toward the nursery, pushing two carts with empty five-gallon buckets.

“So what was that all about?” Dylan asked.

“Hopefully, it was about our grisly death via the chupacabra camera,” Marty said. “I started going over the sequence of events: The last thing they saw before the camera died was me probably looking … well, scared to death. Then I went back even further, to when Butch and Noah were checking doors.”

“Your eidetic memory,” Dylan said.

“Oh, brother,” Luther said.

“It does come in handy sometimes,” Marty admitted, ignoring Luther.

“Remember that remote Butch was carrying?”

Dylan nodded.

“I think that’s how they were controlling the chupacabra and seeing everything it was seeing. The death of the camera and me being scared to death got me thinking about what death by chupacabra might look like after he had his way with us. I put it all together when I saw the blood and guts in the nursery. I don’t know if it’ll work, but it was worth a shot.”

“So now we’re ghosts,” Luther said. “But we can’t pass through concrete walls. We still have to figure out a way of getting out of here with two dinosaurs.”

“You two
do
look kind of like ghosts,” Marty said.

“Yeah,” Dylan said. “There’s a shower in the nursery. I get dibs on the first scrub.”

“Are you nuts?” Marty said. “We don’t have time for showers.”

“Easy for you to say,” Luther said. “You’re not covered in dust and defecation.”

Marty swiped the card through the nursery lock and opened the door. They walked in.

“How often do the hatchlings have to be fed?” Marty asked.

“Used to be every two hours,” Luther said. “Like clockwork. And if you’re late, they get a little crabby and grabby. Gotta count your fingers after the feed to make sure they didn’t get an extra chunk of meat.”

“So Yvonne should be coming down here to feed them soon,” Marty said.

“Which means we need to get them out of here,” Dylan said.

Marty shook his head. “Not necessarily.”

“What do you mean?” Luther asked.

“Do you know what Yvonne has?” Marty asked.

“A bad attitude,” Luther said.

Marty laughed. “You’re right about that, but do you know what else she has?”

Luther grinned. “Duh
du jour
. She has an elevator key.” He pulled the bloody meat cleaver out of the side of beef and brandished it like a mad butcher.

“I was thinking of something a little more subtle,” Marty said. “And a lot more fun.”

 • • • 

Grace was having no fun. Every shadow and bush looked like a homicidal Butch McCall, although she really wasn’t worried about him killing her. She was worried about him intercepting her before she reached the elevator, or worse, him seeing her use the elevator, which would lead him to Marty and the others.

She was walking past the sleeping penguins in Antarctica when she heard the helicopter. She looked at her watch. It was still an hour before sunrise.

Why are they arriving so early? Noah must have called them. What’s changed?

Grace quickened her pace, then heard something, or someone, coming up behind her. She jumped off the path and crawled beneath a bush.

 • • • 

Butch heard the chopper, too, but ignored it. Someone was coming his way and it could be only one of two people. One of them had once hit him in the head with a tree branch. The other had just kicked him in the face. If it was Marty, he would snap his neck. If it was Grace?

Outcome to be determined.

He did not like getting kicked in the face. He did not like nosebleeds. He would like to snap her neck, too, but that would be difficult to explain to her grandfather. And then there was Marty. Grace knew where he was. He was absolutely convinced of that. And if he snapped her neck, it would make it difficult for her to tell him.

The footsteps grew louder. He stepped off the path. It was perfect. Pitch-dark. No lights. He could tell by the way they were walking that they weren’t afraid. There was no caution in the footfalls. He crouched like a tiger.

Surprise and overwhelming force.

He launched himself.

The surprise was all Butch’s. His prey was bigger than Marty and Grace put together. There was a loud
Oomph!
Then something cold and hard slammed against the side of his head. Butch stopped himself from killing his attacker just in time.

“What the blazes do you think you’re doing?” Noah Blackwood shouted.

There was just enough light to see the thing Noah had slammed into his head. It was a pistol. The barrel was pointed two inches from Butch’s nose. It wasn’t shaking, which frightened him more than the gun itself. There was no time to reach for his own pistol. All he could think was …

I’m going to die now.

But he didn’t die. Noah allowed him to live. He lowered the pistol and stood stock-still.

“Explain,” he said.

Butch got to his feet and swallowed, trying to get enough spit into his mouth to speak.

“Well?”

“I … uh … I thought you were Marty.”

“Marty’s dead!” Noah shouted. “That Luther kid, too. Nine did his job. Yvonne did her job. While you were up here having a stroll through the Ark with your radio off!” He raised the pistol and pointed it at him again.

“Grace,” Butch said.

“What about her?” Noah growled.

“She’s out here somewhere.”

“You told me she was asleep in her bed.”

“She was, then she came out through a secret passage. I didn’t know you had secre —”

Noah’s curse cut him off.

“I caught her once,” Butch continued. “She said that Marty was waiting for her up here.”

“What do you mean you ‘caught her
once
’?”

“She got away.”

“Find her! Bring her to the mansion. And turn your radio on!”

Noah hurried away.

Butch watched him disappear into the fog. His head hurt. His nose hurt. He turned his radio on.

Where is she?

 • • • 

Grace was curled up under a bush less than fifty feet away, trying to stifle her sobs. She had heard the exchange, but had paid little attention after Noah shouted out that Marty and Luther were dead.

It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t gone with Noah Blackwood, Marty and Luther wouldn’t have come looking for me. They’d be alive. We’d all be —

Noah walked right by her hiding spot. If she could have, she would have killed him right there on the path, but to try would have been reckless and useless. He would grab her, haul her back to the mansion, and she’d be flown out of the country. He didn’t know yet that she had actually seen Marty and had been below, but he was going to figure it out as soon as he got to his
lair. He’d see that all of the bedding was gone and know that she had used the laundry chute. If he checked the desk, he’d see that the three key cards were missing.

If he checks the computer …

She didn’t even want to think about that. It was too late for him to get back the files she had uploaded to Marty, but he could very well discover she had switched the
Wildlife First
episode.

There’s nothing I can do about that. What I can do is get out of here and tell everyone that he murdered Marty and Luther with a genetically engineered chupacabra. I can tell them that the Ark is nothing more than a breeding ground for his sick collection of stuffed animals.

The only way to avenge Marty and Luther was to tell the story. She wiped her tears away. There would be time for grief later. Right now she needed all of her wits to get out of the Ark. The keepers arrived at seven thirty. They were bused in from an offsite facility near the park. Once the keepers were inside the Ark, the buses returned and picked up the maintenance and gardening staff. The last group to arrive were the concession people. Security was very careful about checking people into the Ark, but very lax about who exited. She might be able to sneak out while they were checking people in. If that didn’t work, her next opportunity would be when the Ark opened at ten. There was always a huge crowd waiting to get inside, mostly school groups. Noah’s security would no doubt be watching the entrance and exit closely, but it would still be difficult to pick her out from the hundreds of kids coming and going.

She looked at her watch. All she had to do was stay hidden from Butch for two hours. She guessed the bush she was hiding under was as good a place as any.

Butch can’t possibly look under every bush in the …

“Your grandfather’s waiting for you.”

Grace jumped up, took one step, and fell flat on her face.

“Ouch,” Butch said sarcastically. He had her by the ankle. “That must have hurt.”

She kicked at him with her free foot.

“That ain’t happening again,” he said. He grabbed her other foot, flipped her onto her back, and sat on her, pinning her arms down with his knees. He looked at her and grinned. “Boohoo, you got a nosebleed. I know exactly how that feels.”

He reached back and unclipped his radio, but he didn’t get it up to his lips. It flew out of his hand, then he was plucked off of Grace as if the night had reached out and grabbed him.

“She’s coming,” Marty said, eyeing the Gizmo’s screen. “Get into position. And don’t do anything until I give the signal.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Luther said, finding his spot.

Marty looked at Dylan. “And you’re sure the chupacabra can’t get out of the cabinet?”

“Positive,” Dylan said. “It’s made out of heavy-gauge stainless steel. The wire’s tight.”

There were a dozen good places to hide in the nursery as long as Yvonne didn’t start poking around, which Marty doubted she would. She looked as if she was in a hurry. She also looked ticked off. Her trademark pleasant smile had been replaced with an angry scowl. She was carrying the remote, looking down at what he assumed was the video screen. She stopped outside the nursery and swiped her key card. Marty flew the dragonspy back to the elevator to watch for Butch and Noah. The nursery door hissed open. She walked in and set the remote on the butcher block.

Marty was hiding in the walk-in cooler, watching her through the little frosted window. If she happened to open the door, all he had to do was duck behind a side of beef. The place was packed with them. He was about to give the signal, which
was three clicks on the radio, when she picked up the cleaver and started hacking meat.

Probably not a good idea to make our move while she has the cleaver.

She was pretty good with it. She chopped off what she needed, tossed the hunk on the table, then expertly cut the meat away from the bone with a butcher knife. When she finished, she buried the knife into the butcher block and took her harvest into the nursery.

The hatchlings were awake, and had been for ten minutes, screaming their heads off and flipping their fisted tails around like prehistoric maces. Marty had worried about how they were going to move them without getting killed, but Luther assured him that as soon as they’d had enough to eat, they would go completely comatose until they ran out of gas.

Marty stepped out of the cooler and peeked through the door. Yvonne had her back to him and was completely focused on the feeding, which Luther had guaranteed she would be because if she didn’t focus, she was liable to get her pretty hands torn off her wrists.

Marty gave the signal.

Two apparitions rose up behind straw bales on either side of her. At first, she didn’t see them. She only had eyes for the dinos. But Luther got her attention by making a creepy ghost noise. She glanced to her left and let out a shriek louder than the hatchlings’. She backed away from Luther, right into the dusty arms of Dylan, causing her to shriek even louder, which seemed impossible. Luther ran over to help restrain her, but Dylan didn’t really need any help because Yvonne seemed to have shrieked the fight right out of herself.

Marty walked over with the remote control as they tied her hands behind her back with her lanyard, after removing her key card. They pushed her down on a straw bale.

“I thought you were dead,” she said breathlessly, staring at Marty and Luther. “I saw it. It was horrible. I felt so bad. It was all Noah Blackwood and Butch McCall. I would have called the police by now, but they’ve knocked out all of the phones. I was on my way out of the Ark to report these hideous crimes, but thought I should stop by here first and feed the hatchlings. Who knows how long it will take when the police get ahold of this.”

“Wow,” Luther said. “What a whopper! You recover quick.”

Marty smiled. She
had
made a remarkable recovery from being scared to death a few seconds before. He showed her the screen on the controller. The “chupacabra” was rooting around the lab in hog heaven. “Who do you think that is?”

She turned her head away, as if the sight was too distasteful for her to look at. “I don’t know,” she said. “Perhaps a custodian. The poor, poor man. I’m just happy it wasn’t any of you.”

All three of them gave her humongous eye rolls.

“What are all these buttons for?” Marty asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Butch and Noah always work the controls.”

“Then why do you have the controller?” Dylan asked.

She gave him an odd look, as if she were momentarily confused, but Marty didn’t think it was because of the question. She didn’t know who he was, or where he had come from, which meant that Butch and Noah didn’t know he was here, either.

“Why do you have it?” Dylan repeated.

“I stole it from them,” she said. “I didn’t want them to use the … uh …”

“Chupacabra,” Dylan said.

“The genetic mutation you made in your monster lab,” Luther clarified.

She was obviously shocked that they knew as much as they did, which made Marty happy. He wanted Noah to think they knew more than they did, too, and she was certain to tell him.

“Okay,” Marty said. “We need to wrap this up.”

Dylan and Luther lifted her to her feet.

“Where are we going?”

“For a walk,” Marty said.

“It would be easier if you untied my hands.”

“Forget it.”

“What about the hatchlings? I need to finish the feeding. At least untie me long enough to finish.”

The hatchlings were throwing a dino fit.

“They’ll be fine,” Luther said. “I’ll come back and finish up after we drop you off.”

“Drop me off where?”

“There’s another animal that needs your attention,” Marty said. “And he’s a lot hungrier than these two.”

He checked the Gizmo. The coast was clear.

“You can’t!” she screamed.

“Of course we can,” Dylan said.

As they walked her down the corridor, she pleaded, begged, and cried. By the time they reached the lab, Marty was starting to feel sorry for her. Then he reminded himself that she helped
kidnap Grace and the hatchlings, and sent the chupacabra after Luther, and probably shared a fist bump with Noah when she saw the mess on the other side of the door.

“I guess you know what’s behind this door,” Marty said, holding the controller. “Are you sure you don’t know how to use this thing?”

Yvonne shook her head.

He shrugged and looked at Luther. “Okay, just crack the door so it doesn’t get out, and shove her in.”

“No!” Yvonne shouted. “I know how to use it! I know how to use it! Untie me and I’ll —”

“Just tell me what to do and I’ll type it in.”

She told him.

“And that combination makes him go to sleep?”

“Yes. For a little while. There are electrodes embedded in Nine’s brain. We can make him do whatever we want.”

“Nine?”

“That’s what we call him.”

“What happened to One through Eight?” Dylan asked.

“They didn’t work out,” Yvonne said. “Now let’s get away from here.”

“I can’t do that, but I’ll tell you what I will do,” Marty said. “I’ll put him to sleep.” He acted like he was typing in the code she had given him.

“But he won’t be asleep for long,” she said. “And my hands are tied.”

“We’re giving you a sporting chance,” Luther said. “Which is more than you gave me.” He swiped the key through the lock, then reached inside quickly, switched the light off, and closed the door.

“Not in the dark!”

“It’s better that way,” Luther said. “You really don’t want to see this thing coming at you.”

“I’m not sure I got that code right,” Marty said, looking confused. “If I messed up, just stay away from the blinking light on the harness.”

Luther reopened the door, Dylan pushed her inside, and they pulled the door closed behind her.

They gathered around the monitor. The infrared picture wasn’t that good, but it looked like the potbellied pig was following her.