Silurid Page 3

  “Damn, and all this time I thought it was my math. Vernon must be in over his head,” Billy said.

  “He just better not do anything stupid and jeopardize the hatchery,” Jess said.

  The rain started coming down in a torrential downpour. The aluminum roof of the shed sounded as though a band of crazed monkeys were beating the metal surface with drumsticks.

  The man quickly closed his attaché case, held it over his head, and dashed to his car.

  Vernon stood in the rain with his head tilted back letting the drops splash upon his face. He turned and went back inside.

  “So what’s that brother of yours up to?” asked Billy.

  “I don’t know,” Jess replied. “But I’m starting to get a bad feeling.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Vernon Murdock leaned against the door in the shadowy interior of the Quonset hut. A lone incandescent light shone down on three computer monitors on a workbench.

  To the left of the workbench was a cement extension of the pond, ten feet high and almost twice as wide. The left hut wall was cut two feet above ground level, allowing a view of the pond only if a person was to get down on his knees to peer out. Steel steps led up to a catwalk running along one side of the extension.

  A video camera, mounted on a girder above, pointed directly into the structure. A coaxial cable ran down a beam that connected the camera to the VHS recorder on a shelf under the workbench.

  Vernon shivered and stepped away from the door. He drew the blanket down around his chest. He had been so consumed in his work that he had neglected to eat properly and sleep; so it was no surprise his health had been deteriorating. At times, he wondered if he might be going crazy, cooped up and alone.

  He felt a gentle breeze on the back of his neck. He turned, and saw that the door had swung open. Damn lock. He went over to the door and put his weight against it until the bolt caught in the lip of the doorjamb.

  The Quonset hut had to be over fifty years old, warping and rusting into oblivion.

  The rain steadily pelted the roof. The noise was almost deafening, like standing inside an echo chamber. Vernon wondered how he had been able to keep his sanity for so long.

  He sloshed through the two inches of water that covered the concrete flooring.

  Haphazard shafts of light shined through the roof of the building. It reminded him of the video he had rented once, Black Sunday. Bruce Dern played a terrorist and had tested a prototype shrapnel bomb in a barn. After the bomb had detonated, Dern returned inside to inspect the damage. The structure of the barn had been riddled with holes. The rusting Quonset hut was in similar shape, keeping the rain out as ineffectively as a colander.

  Vernon clomped up the stairs to the catwalk.

  He stood at the top, bracing himself with his hands on the rail. The water down below in the channel lock that connected out to the pond was murky. The waterline mark was green with algae on the concrete walls. There was no movement in the water. It was not like them not to pay him a visit to break the monotony, anything to escape the sheer boredom of endlessly navigating the pond.

  He sensed how a parent might feel, sitting by the phone waiting for a call from a son or a daughter that never came.

  Disappointed, Vernon strolled back down the steps and waded over to the computer monitors. Each monitor had a number just above the screen. The number one monitor displayed data collected from various sensors positioned in the pond.

  The computer evaluated the changes and growth levels of acidity, alkaline, bacteria, and algae within the pond and a bar graph in the lower left corner registered the current readings that recalculated in thirty-minute intervals. A red baseline was established for the maximum levels allowed.

  Three of the bars exceeded their limits because the circulation pump had stopped working over a week ago.

  Vernon had attempted to repair the pump. He’d gone out the other night and confiscated parts from the equipment shed, but after a few hours, he realized that the pump was shot. Without the pump to circulate fresh water into the pond, Zeus and Athena stood a high risk of contracting parasites that would ravage even their powerful bodies.

  Normally, Vernon would also have worried about the threat of suffocation, but he knew Zeus and Athena were adaptable.

  Still, he was concerned.

  The second monitor displayed calculations that rapidly scrolled down the screen. The processor worked diligently to keep pace with the constant changes of Zeus and Athena. Every change exceeded the levels that Vernon had initially established. He also used this machine for documenting his research—his lifework residing on the hard drive.

  The third monitor showed the tracking display. Two red blips moved sluggishly inside of a green rectangular shape. The blips were Zeus and Athena inside the pond. Vernon had tagged them with transmitters to study their swimming behavior.

  Now, the transmitters held only one purpose and that was to tell Vernon whether or not Zeus and Athena were mobile, still alive.

  Vernon went over to the refrigerator. The motor below rattled like the bolts and screws were about to shake loose. He opened the door and found a can of beer. Plucking the tab, Vernon took a deep swig.

  Putting the beer can up to his forehead, Vernon gazed over at the fish tanks lined up on three metal tables. The tanks were arranged in a progressive order, starting with the five-gallon tanks, then ten-gallon, twenty-gallon, fifty-gallon, ending with hundred-gallon tanks. Each tank was empty, only the scum on the glass marking where the waterlines had once been.

  Zeus and Athena had outgrown their homes long ago.

  Vernon shuffled through the water to the unmade bed on the other end of the hut. He fell back on the mattress, resting his head on the stale-smelling pillow.

  Why of all days, had they sent someone out to hound him? Couldn’t they just wait? So what if they were concerned about their investment. So what if it was taking him longer that what he had predicted.

  Jesus Christ! Don’t you know I’m trying to save the world here?

  Vernon took the crumpled envelope out of his pocket. He tore the seal and took the letter out. After a quick read, he got the jest—either show your results or repay the loan on the grant!

  But what could he show them? The first two years of his work had been more of a learning process than providing results. He had the hundreds of photographs of mutated and deformed specimens to prove it. After countless disappointments, he became discouraged. Then during the third year of his research, he made a breakthrough.

  That is when he began keeping his journal—The Silurid Result.

  Steadily, he worked around the clock, sleeping only when his body demanded that he rest. By then, he had exhausted most of the grant money given to him to solve the problem of world hunger.

  His goal was to develop a new aquatic species, one that would be a prime food source for the world to share.

  But as each year progressed, Vernon’s experiments soon strayed from their intended path, and eventually, Zeus and Athena evolved.

  Vernon glanced at his watch, too exhausted to think straight.

  It was almost noon, and he already had the chills and the sweats.

  His eyes burned from lack of sleep, and his body was completely drained of energy. He closed his eyes and drifted off into a deep sleep.

  The nightmare was basically the same with slight variations. Vernon would be wrapped in a bed of kelp, or tangled in a mass of hoses, or having the life squeezed out of him by enormous tentacles.

  And the water would teem with his blood.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Nell’s brother thought it would be funny and cranked the wheel in the direction of the cat dashing across the road.

  “Stop it, Sean!” Nell yelled, slugging him in the arm.

  Sean ignored her and made the golf cart go even faster.

  “Sean!”

  The cat—seeing its nine lives flash before its eyes—screeched in alarm.

  Sean veered away and not a s
econd too soon, almost clipping the animal.

  “Don’t get so excited, I wasn’t going to hit it,” he laughed.

  Nell caught a glimpse of the terrified cat darting into the rain. She could never understand why Sean got such a kick out of tormenting her and never missed an opportunity to scare her.

  “Yeah, you were, you dope!”

  “Watch out or I’ll make you walk.”

  “You do and I’ll tell Mom.”

  “Yeah, you would you little tattletale.”

  “I’m no tattletale,” Nell said.

  Never willing to cut her any slack, Sean steered the golf cart into a large puddle.

  Muddy water splashed everywhere. Luckily, they were in their raingear. Both Sean’s poncho and Nell’s yellow slicker were splattered with mud, but it was Max sitting in the rear cargo bed that got the brunt of it. He stood up and shook off, getting Sean back by flicking gobs of mud back at him.

  “That’ll teach you,” Nell giggled.

  “You laugh now,” Sean said, wiping mud off his cheek.

  They stopped at a set of steps leading up to a deck outside a trailer.

  Nell jumped from the golf cart.

  “I’ll be back in an hour to pick you up. You better be ready,” Sean said, and sped off.

  Nell ran up the stairs to the porch. She used her secret code, two knocks, a pause, then three more knocks on the screen door.

  The hinges creaked as the door slowly opened.

  “Well, if isn’t my favorite little scholar. Prompt as always,” said Professor Jonathan Stone, holding open the door.

  “Does that mean I get a star, Professor?” Nell asked, stepping inside.

  “Absolutely.”

  Nell took off her rain slicker and hung it on a hook by the door to dry. She sat on a short stool and removed her galoshes and set them by the door. Walking in her stocking feet, she glanced in the kitchen.

  Today, she only saw a few dishes in the sink. Professor Stone was far from being a clean freak. Chunks of chopped white meat were piled on a cutting board left on the messy kitchen table covered with fish guts and bloodstained newspaper—carp, courtesy of Sean.

  Professor Stone was waiting for her in the living room. He pulled a book from a shelf, thumbed through the contents, then placed a bookmark inside and closed the book.

  “Would you mind tending to our friends while I look for a video for today’s session?” he asked and left the room.

  “Sure,” Nell said.

  Professor Stone’s living room was unlike any other. Sure, he had his favorite chair, a TV stand with a VCR, a small table, and a couch, but that was pretty much it for furniture.

  The rest of the room was occupied by bookshelves crammed with more books than what were in the Madison Library and more aquariums than could be found in a small pet store.

  Nell went over to her favorite aquarium.

  Three red-tailed sharks—she had fondly named them Huey, Dewey, and Louie—swam together like the best of friends. Their bodies were black except for their tails, which were bright red. Though they looked like four-inch long sharks, Professor Stone said they were really members of the carp family.

  She sprinkled some fish food on the surface.

  Last session, she had learned the importance of a fish’s swim bladder. The swim bladder would fill with gas and kept the fish from sinking to the bottom. If a fish did not have a fish bladder, it had to keep swimming so that oxygen would flow through its gills.

  The real sharks in the sea did not have swim bladders, so they had to keep swimming all the time. That meant they never slept. Nell knew how cranky she could get whenever she missed her nap. She guessed that was why sharks were always so mean and ate people.

  Her second favorite aquarium was the one with the clown loaches.

  They were yellow mostly with black stripes. Slightly longer than the red-tailed sharks, the ten fish swam vertically rather than horizontally. One clown loach was on the bottom of the tank, lying on its side. Any other fish, and Nell would have been yelling for Professor Stone to tell him one of his fish had died. She knew better, having already fallen for their pranks.

  The clown loach was only resting, playing a trick on her.

  Nell could hear Professor Stone in the spare bedroom still searching for the tape he had promised. She crossed the room to the other aquariums.

  In one of the tanks was a slinky-looking fish with whiskers sticking out around its mouth. She had nicknamed the fish—Zapper. The fish was gray with flecked spots. All of Zapper’s fins were near its tail.

  She watched a curious goldfish—a feeder—swim too close to the electric catfish. The goldfish jerked, stunned, and sank to the bottom.

  Zapper swooped down and gobbled up his paralyzed prey.

  Nell knew better than to pet this cat. She gave Zapper a disgusted look and went over to another aquarium.

  Of all the aquariums, she disliked this one the most but was always drawn to the glass. It was like being in the car and glancing out the window and seeing something dead on the side of the road.

  As gross as it might be, you were still compelled to look.

  That’s how she felt whenever she looked inside this tank. The fish were definitely strange. They had heads for bodies and jagged little teeth. Their bodies were speckled with yellow and green glitter. She had never felt an attachment so she never named them.

  Most of the time, they barely moved. They would just stare, motionless, almost like they weren’t even alive.

  Hey, little girl. How about reaching in and giving us a pet?

  They gave her the creeps.

  Strange, the last time she had looked in this aquarium, there had been six piranhas.

  Now there were only five. Perhaps they had grown tired of being fed the scraps of carp and needed something tastier, even if it was one of their own.

  “I thought I’d never find it,” Professor Stone said, coming back into the room.

  “Is it a National Geographic?” Nell asked. She took a seat on the couch.

  “I believe so, yes.” He inserted the tape into the VCR and turned on the TV.

  A desert scene appeared on the television screen. The colors were faded and seemed to blend together.

  “I taped this off PBS years ago. It’s a little grainy, but I think you will enjoy it.”

  The narrator told a story about the desert and how animals coped with the heat.

  Nell watched different types of animals drinking from various watering holes.

  Professor Stone picked up the remote control and fast-forwarded the tape. A zebra struggled to free itself from thick mud in fast motion.

  The image changed and was slowed down to normal speed, showing brightly colored fish floating in a pond, blowing bubbles to the surface.

  “Those are Japanese fighting fish called Betas. See those bubbles they are making? That’s where they keep their eggs.”

  “That’s weird,” Nell said.

  “Wait till you see this,” Professor Stone said.

  The camera zoomed in on an extreme close-up of the inside of a fish’s mouth.

  “There are some species of fish that protect their young by housing them in their mouth.”

  “That’s gross,” Nell said, and made a face when she saw the fish’s mouth packed with roe.

  “That’s so other fish won’t eat her babies.”

  Another segment showed a fish crawling out of a mud hole.

  “See that, Nell. That is what’s called a walking catfish. The scientific name is Clarias batrachus. It can actually breathe out of water. Watch.”

  Nell stared at the screen and watched the fish wiggle its way out of the mud then used its fins to crawl over to another water hole.

  “Can the catfish in the lake do that?”

  “No. The fish you see here has adapted to its surrounding. In order for it to survive, it must be able to migrate to a new water source. This catfish actually has lung-like organs, much like ours. Pretty remarkable
, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Wow, I could put it on a leash and take it for a walk,” Nell laughed.

  The picture on the television turned blue, signaling that the tape was over.

  There was a knock on the front door.

  “Is that Sean already?” Nell said, realizing that her hour was up.

  Professor Stone glanced at his wristwatch.

  “See how time flies when you’re having fun.” He smiled. “Grab your gear, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Nell jumped off the couch and ran to the front door. She threw on her slicker and slipped her boots on.

  “Bye-bye,” she said and raced out the door.

  It was drizzling when she came outside but not raining as hard as before. She made sure not to slip on the steps and hopped into the awaiting golf cart.

  “Before we go home, Devon wants me to check the Pumpkin Eater and make sure she’s not taking on water,” Sean said.

  The rain was in their faces, so Sean didn’t drive as fast and reckless as earlier.

  Nell was glad.

  Sean was a daredevil and loved scaring her, but he wasn’t mean-spirited.

  Devon always got on Sean’s case, said he wasn’t responsible and that sometimes he acted like a kid much younger than his age and that it was time to grow up. Without their father around to watch over them, Devon was often forced to assume the parental role.

  They soon reached the cove below their trailer and stopped on the beach.

  Wooden steps led up the embankment to the McNeeley’s patio.

  “Go ahead, I’ll be up in a second,” Sean said.

  Nell ran toward the steps. She had a ritual she always did every time she went up or down the steps. Going down, she counted each step from one to twenty-two. Going up, she counted backward.

  “Twenty-two, twenty-one, twenty—” Nell said aloud. She counted the rest to herself and raced up to the porch.

  ***

  Kate stood in the kitchen of her mobile home and was buttering the last cob of corn. She seasoned it with black pepper, rolled it in aluminum foil, and placed it on a foiled stack occupying a platter.

  “Where did I put my wine?” Kate said, scouting around the cluttered kitchen.