Out of the Night (6 page)

"Well, he's not out of the woods yet. How'd you know what to do?"

"I'm an EMT with the fire department."

He nodded and then, apparently finished with his initial examination of Mac, he turned his attention to her. "Are you sure you're not hurt?"

"Yes—just really tired."

The physician gave her a warm smile, reminding her of her father. Since arriving, she'd been too distracted to think of him, and suddenly the well of emotion she'd kept tamped down for so long threatened to bubble forth and overwhelm her. Dr. Sanchez must have seen it in her face because he stood and helped her to her feet.

"You should get some rest. I'll take over here." He held on to her hand while she worked the stiffness out of her leg muscles.

"Lieutenant Davis!"

A young man in his mid-twenties ran into the room at the doctor's shout. "Escort Miss Weber to one of the bedrooms so she can rest."

The man nodded and then led her out of the room. When they would have gone left to the residence rooms, Lanie stopped.

"I've got a bag in the Jeep." She started for the front entrance, but the lieutenant stopped her.

"You don't want to go that way, ma'am. I'll get it for you after I show you to a room."

He led her down the back hallway, stopping at the first door.

"Do I have to stay in this room, specifically?"

Lieutenant Davis gave her a puzzled look. "Beg pardon, ma'am?"

Lanie smiled. "I mean, could I perhaps stay in that room?" She'd noticed the room in their earlier search and now pointed to the third door on the other side.

He gave a final look at the door before them, shrugged, and dropped his hand to his side. "Yes, ma'am. My orders were only to take you to one of the rooms to rest. I don't suppose it matters which room you take."

She rewarded him with a smile. "Thanks. I think I'd prefer that one, then." She followed him to the other door and waited while he did a quick walk-through of the room.

"All clear, ma'am," he said, turning to her. "Try to get some sleep, if you can. We've got men all over the place; you're safe. If you need anything, just shout. I'll be posted outside."

"Thank you."

He nodded and started to leave, but stopped at the door. "Ma'am, if you don't mind my asking, why this particular room?"

She looked around at the mix of strange and familiar items lying about the place and felt her throat muscles tighten with emotion. "It was my father's."

The young man gave her a sympathetic nod, stepped through the door, and closed it, leaving her alone. For a long time, she stayed in one spot, slowly turning as her eyes traveled across the room. Books were piled on virtually every available surface, including the floor. Most of the piles contained research books, but there were several stacks of popular fiction as well. Her father had been an avid reader.

She didn't know how long she stood there, but it must have been several minutes before a knock at the door startled her from her thoughts. It was the lieutenant, delivering her bag from the Jeep. Seeing it bolstered her spirits a little, and she set it on the bed before slowly wandering about the room, continuing to take it all in.

Against the far wall was the desk her father had used. Several research volumes with yellow sticky notes bookmarking various pages sat to one side while magazines and printed articles littered the other. In the middle, a pile of used legal pads and mechanical pencils rested, as if he had just set them aside and was planning to return. Lanie trailed a finger across the surface of one of the pages, smiling when she spotted spilled pipe tobacco on the desk. She pinched the finely chopped leaves between her fingers and brought them to her nose to smell.

She used to hate the smell of his smoking, begging him to at least try the aromatic blends if he had to smoke at all. He always refused, arguing that the blends that smelled good tasted bad.

She rubbed her fingers together, letting the tobacco fall back to the desk. How she would give anything now to smell the acrid smoke from his pipe one more time.

Something tickled her cheek and when she reached up to brush it away, she found tears. She hadn't even realized she was crying, but once the waterworks started, she couldn't turn them off. She cried for both her parents, brought down too early in their lives, and for all the men here who'd died. She cried for herself, so alone now, and for Mac, who'd risked his life saving hers.

Finally, too exhausted to cry anymore, she crawled into her father's bed. She closed her eyes, remembering all the nights she'd sat curled up in a favorite chair. She'd read a book while he worked at his desk nearby, writing in his journal and smoking his pipe. The faint odor of his tobacco clung to the sheets and pillow, so she turned her head into it, letting the familiar scent envelop her and lull her to sleep.

Lanie woke feeling refreshed and confused. It took only a second, though, to recall where she was and everything that had happened. It was enough to bring her fully awake.

She strained to hear sounds from outside her room—something to indicate that she wasn't the only living creature still in the facility—that the monster, which had killed so many, hadn't returned while she slept and slaughtered her rescuers. All was quiet.

Throwing back her covers, she walked to the door and listened. She heard no sound. Because she couldn't remain in the room forever, she took a deep breath and placed her hand on the knob, turned it, and pulled open the door.

When nothing rushed to attack her, she stepped out into the hallway.

"Everything okay, ma'am?" Lieutenant Davis stood a few feet away, looking at her with polite concern.

"Yes." She gazed up and down the hallway. It was otherwise empty and appeared almost boring in its lack of ornamentation or activity. Satisfied, she turned to go back into the room, stopping in the doorway to look at Lieutenant Davis once more. "Did you stand outside my door all day?"

"Yes, ma'am." If he'd found guarding her door boring, tiring, or even insulting, he gave no indication of it. She suspected that was as much a credit to his personality as to his training, and she was grateful.

"Thank you." She gave him a smile to show her appreciation. "Would you happen to know how Mac—I mean, Captain Knight—is doing?"

He pressed the mike at his throat and spoke. "Doc, this is Davis. Ms. Weber would like to know how the captain is doing."

She watched as he stood there, his eyes focused elsewhere as if distracted, and then he nodded. "Roger."

Then he turned to her. "The captain is sleeping, but the doc thinks he's going to make it."

A wave of relief washed over her, making her almost giddy. Not wanting to embarrass herself in front of Lieutenant Davis, she thanked him again and went back into the room.

Then she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and gasped. She'd had bad hair and makeup days before, but this set an all-time new low. Digging in her duffel bag for her toiletry case, she hurried into the bathroom and showered. Afterward, she felt almost human again. As she took the time to fix her hair, apply a little makeup, and put in her contacts, she argued with herself that she wasn't doing this to impress Mac, who, other than saving her life, had treated her indifferently ever since she'd met him. She was doing this—just because.

Finding a fresh change of clothes, she considered burning the ones she'd arrived in and tossed them into the corner, pending a final decision. When she was finished dressing, she stared around the room, somewhat at a loss as to what to do now. Something she'd remembered before falling asleep tickled the back of her mind and she reached for the memory, finally grasping it. Her father had always kept a private journal, so somewhere in this room, she might find her father's last recorded thoughts.

She began with a search through the piles of books on the desk, but the dark brown leather journal wasn't among them. Next she turned her attention to the dresser and then to the small closet. After her first hurried search yielded nothing, she stepped back and surveyed the room, trying to imagine her father after a hard day, coming back to his room, anxious to fill the pages of his private journal with everything he'd learned.

While the desk seemed a logical place to work, he'd want to be someplace where he could hide his notes from prying eyes. Her father would have kept an ongoing record of his findings on the computer in the lab for the government, but he was still old school and didn't completely trust computers—or the government. His private thoughts and theories would have been recorded in the journal.

Lanie also knew that he never wrote in the journal without smoking, so she scanned the room, locating each ashtray. The one by the big easy chair in the room caught her attention. She hurried to it. A book called
Ancient Roman Times
rested on the side table beside the ashtray. A bookmark poked out the top at the last page her father had read. Lanie ignored it as she searched under the cushions of the chair. Nothing. Next she examined the pile of books stacked beside the chair, to see if the journal was one of them, but again, she came away with nothing. Finally, her eyes returned to the large volume on the table. It was thick enough…

She smiled as she lifted the front cover. There, set inside a cut-out section, lay the leatherbound volume.

Sitting down, she began to read.

March 6: I have arrived at the Taribu research facility. My excitement knows no limit. Never in my lifetime did I hope to verify the existence of El Chupacabra, the legendary goat-sucker. Now, thanks to the government's spectacular discovery, I have two specimens to study. Oh, if only I could share this find with Lanie.

Surprise and remorse filled her. She understood all too well what such a find would have meant to him. A life's dream come true. She hurried to read the next entry.

March 7: I have finished my initial examination of the chupas. One is much larger than the other and I believe it to be an adult, while the smaller one must be very young. At this time, I have no way of telling male from female, nor can I ascertain the relationship between the two creatures. As they were captured together, however, I suspect them to be an adult female and her offspring.

The creatures appear much as described in reported sightings. They are gray-skinned with a round head, large glowing red eyes, a slightly elongated muzzle with two fangs (approx. three inches in length), and a long tubular tongue. Its preferred prey is domestic livestock, which it hunts at night, piercing the throat and sucking the blood through its tongue.

The adult stands at about five feet while the younger creature is not quite two feet. It has powerful hind legs that enable it to leap great distances and heights. All four limbs end in sharp three-toed claws, and there is a single row of fins running down its back.

Flipping through the pages of the book, Lanie stopped at random to read.

… the chupas become almost stonelike in the light of the sun. At first, I thought they were dead, but it's more as if they are hibernating through the daylight hours…

The statue in the cage
, she realized.

…
I was able to tranquilize the baby long enough to examine it more fully. The fangs are hollow and when the chupa bites down, it secretes a venom into the prey's bloodstream, much as a snake would. Until I run more tests, I can only guess that this venom-type secretion acts as an anticoagulant
…

… I doubled-checked Juan's injury and it is fully healed. It's amazing. I had no idea the chupa venom would have such restorative powers for humans. I injected myself last night with a small dose collected from the baby chupa when I felt the onset of fever and sinus related to the common cold. This morning, I have never felt better. If the young chupa's venom can do this, what powers does the adult chupa's venom have?…

Lanie turned to the last entry.

…
tomorrow I will try to obtain a sample from the adult. I believe the safest time will be right before sunrise, when the chupa is weakest, before the sun turns it to stone
.

Her father must have tried to collect the specimen as he'd planned, but miscalculated the adult's strength before sunrise. When Uncle Charles called to tell her of her father's death, he'd told her that her father had been killed by a wild animal. In the Amazon jungle, such an event was not unusual. Now, though, she couldn't help but think the "wild animal" that had attacked and killed her father and the other man was actually the chupacabra.

If she was right, they would have the same puncture wounds on their necks as Mac had. Lanie knew it was time to do what she'd originally come to do. She needed to see her father's body.

Putting down the book, she walked out of the room to where Lieutenant Davis stood guard.

"Everything all right, ma'am?"

"I'd like to see my father's body. Can you take me to it?"

The young man relayed her request to the man in charge, and Lanie saw him nod once as he listened on the earpiece. He glanced at her and then quickly looked away, causing Lanie to wonder if something was wrong.

"Is there a problem?" she asked as soon as it was obvious that he was through listening.

"Yes, ma'am. You see, we searched the entire facility and only found nine bodies. The five men at the front and the four back in the lab. They've all been identified; your father wasn't one of them."

Feeling they'd had a miscommunication, she tried to explain. "No, I know he wasn't one of those men. My father and another man were killed a couple of days ago. That's why I came down here—to identify his body. It's probably in the back or something."

"Yes, ma'am. We were briefed on the circumstances of Dr. Weber's and Commander Burton's deaths and their bodies apparently
were
in the back, but they're not there now."

Lanie's confusion grew. "I don't understand."

"We found two body bags in the back. The ID tags were still attached, identifying them as containing the bodies of Dr. Weber and Commander Burton, but the bags are empty. They look like they've been torn open."