“He’s gonna need a hospital!” Shannon snapped at Gale with fire in her eyes. “You know, for the delirium.”
Gale sighed as if that was a huge inconvenience to him. No doubt his precious expedition would be cancelled if a student had a major injury. One of us conservationists was one thing, we signed up for a hazardous career. The future lawyers andbusiness moguls were another. He glanced at his phone and frowned. “No bars.”
Damn it.
I dug through the med area and came out with a CB Radio. I turned it on and started with the channel it was already on. “Mayday.”
“He lost a lot of blood,” Shannon told me. “His blood pressure is on the floor now.”
“No blood bags,” I told her, changing the channel. But I found the medical records, thumbing through them. “Mayday. Medical Emergency.”
“It was the Lizardman,” one of the boys squeaked.
“The Lizardman doesn’t exist.” Gale chuckled nervously. He had the same tension in his shoulders that he had when he was about to politic his way out of a situation. “It was an alligator.”
“Alligator or not, can you do your damn job?” Shannon snapped at Gale. “Why don’t you have the med bay properly set up?”
“I was just getting to it, Miss Fredricks.” His eyes cut to her in warning. The use of Miss instead of Dr was a soft threat not to cross him, but she was too busy saving a life to care.
“Shannon, he’s A- blood type. So am I,” I told her, flipping the channel, trying every setting possible, but there was nothing. Surely there was a ranger or a hermit in range of us.
The only response I got was static. My heart dropped to my stomach.
Dread dripped down my back.
The water stilled, like he was waiting for me to figure out what he already knew. As if we’d taste sweeter with defeat weaved through our bones. Even the bugs and frogs went quiet, because we were the only ones who didn’t know.
My hand froze where I’d been placing an IV in my arm. Tears pricked my eyes, but didn’t fall.
Help wasn’t coming.
Hewas.
My breathing hitched. Everything flew out the window, and I struggled to remember even one survival tactic.
I could feel his presence deep in my chest.
One of the boys backed up from the group with panic in his eyes. The kind of fear that made reasonable people run right into the jaws of death.
“Stay with the group!” I yelled. “Get away from the water!”
Without warning, the boy’s feet came out from under him, and he hit the ground with a painful grunt. Tears were already streaming down his face as he rolled over to face the monster, walking out of the water on all fours.
As wrong as he looked on two legs, this one made my entire body quiver. His arms and legs were too tall to look natural.
His special blend of human and monster rang every prey alarm in my mind, that we were his food, and we were already between his teeth.
The fabric of Shannon’s pants darkened, but she never stopped working on Drew.
Her reaction woke me out of the state of purgatory I was in. I took a step forward to see if my body cooperated again.
“There’s only one of him. Jump him!” A student gave a battle cry, running toward the creature with a walking stick and his ego. The group joined him with yells of their own.
“Stop them!” I told Gale.
But he watched as the monster smoothly slid to two legs and grabbed one of the men by the throat, and held him two feet above the ground. The others stopped, waiting to see what the monster would do with his hostage.
The man gurgled and desperately kicked to escape. The monster’s lip lifted with a snarl before, squeezing his fist closed,until a sickening crack filled the air and the boy quit fighting. Then he tossed him aside as if he was nothing.
