Chapter Three
As Chad Whittaker sat on the back deck of his house, the voice of his instructor from the police academy, Sargant Pete Moore, played back through the back of his mind: You’ve gotten too attached to your work if you bring your cases home with you.
Chad leaned back, chuckling softly to himself, then glanced down at the stack of manila folders that he had slipped into his laptop bag on the way from the station that day. What would old Petey say? Chad wondered.
Of course, nobody--not even Mr. Moore--could have predicted the catastrophe which would cripple the country just fifteen years later. As the chief of police for Livingston County, sometimes Chad felt like it was his responsibility to protect what remained of humanity. With so much at stake, maybe nobody could afford to be detached.
The top manila folder on the stack contained a description of all of the evidence collected at a house in the Bullard subdivision where the owners had been killed. None of the doors or windows were damaged, so the officers on the scene had ruled out the possibility that it was a burglary. Chad thumbed through the report, pausing briefly on a photo of the couple who had lived there. Mark and Penny Marshall were both former Fowlerville teachers in their early sixties. They had survived their children, one of whom had been stricken by the dino virus, and the other had been killed in action while serving in the Army years before the virus had begun to spread.
Back in the old days when police had to worry about just one type of human, murder always seemed tragic. Now that one quarter of the population had been lost to the dino virus, and even more had been killed by dinosaur hybrids, this murder somehow like even more of a waste.
Chad had ended his shift, but he knew that while he waited for his wife to finish dinner police troopers were searching the area and setting up roadblocks all around the county. He felt confident that whoever did this would answer for their crime. There are so few of us left, he thought. Every life should matter. Everything had gone to hell, but still there were criminals. Petey might have called it job security, Chad thought. I just call it sad.
The next manila folder contained letters he had exchanged with Lolita Burns, the social worker assigned to the county by the state. As the “Dinosaur rehabilitation liaison,” she was in charge of assessing each dino hybrid they captured before it was relocated to a training facility in Mid-Michigan. Most of the correspondence was written a few months ago when she had come very close to shutting down a school in Livingston County which had been established for non-feral dino hybrids between the ages of 5-13. It had taken the combined efforts of the Whittaker, the parents, and even the school’s owner, Deborah VanNocker to persuade Burns and the state government to back off.
The thought of these letters sparked new thinking for Chad. He quickly thumbed through the pages until he found a letter which had been written by Deborah. The address on the envelope read 7523 N. Cherry Lane. He pulled out the folder for the Marshalls, and searched for the report. Their address had been 7523 N. Cherry Lane. Chad remembered, then, that VanNocker had recently moved to a house inside the Hartland Village in order to be closer to her school, and the Cromaine Library where she had set up an administrative office after her house was broken into.
Two break-ins at the same address. That can’t be a coincidence, Chad thought to himself as he pulled out the folder for the previous unsolved burglary. That time, the door had been forced open and the house had been ransacked. VanNocker never reported anything missing, other than her recycling bin.
If they returned for VanNocker, they would have come up empty, but killed the Marshalls to eliminate them as witnesses. The two break-ins seemed related other than the fact that they were at the same address, but Chad couldn’t quite explain why. But, if they hadn’t gotten what they wanted, they might stay in the area. If they weren’t hiding, the only other places they would go to would be the school or the library.
Chad quickly scooped up the stack of folders, slid them into his briefcase, and stepped back into the house. He was starting up the stairs when his wife called for him from the kitchen. “Chad, dinner’s ready.”
“I’ll be right down. I need to make a quick phone call.”
“Alright.”
Chad stopped mid-way up the stairs. “On second thought, you might need to make it to go.”
He picked up the phone in his bedroom, and dialed the station. Lieutenant Maggie Sutton answered.
“Maggie, this is Chad. Have you heard anything more on the perps who broke into the house on Cherry Lane?” he asked.
“All of our teams are still searching.”
“Roadblocks?”
“Quiet.”
Chad hesitated while he reflected. If they weren’t on the road, and weren’t trying to leave the area, they might be hiding somewhere. “Is everything else quiet?”
“Just a couple of calls for animal control, but nothing major,” Maggie said. She was silent for a second, then added, “We did have a silent alarm triggered in the village a few minutes ago. I was about to pass it along to dispatch.”
“Where?”
“The Cromaine. After the first alarm went off last night, we almost wrote it off as a false alarm. Did you want me to dispatch someone?”
Chad spun the combination lock on the safe next to the bathroom door. He grabbed his badge and weapon. “No, I’ve got it.”
Once she had recovered enough of her strength, Cassandra had moved as far away from Vicki as she could without raising her suspicions. Vicki looked up when she heard Benjamin and Tracey’s father’s voice from the other side of the library, but then returned her full attention back to the computer screen. As soon as she felt like it was safe, Tracey scooted over to Cassandra.
“Are you okay?” Tracey whispered.
“I feel like I’m going to throw up,” Cassandra said.
“That’s awful that they shock you,” Tracey said.
“Your owner doesn’t make you wear a collar?”
Tracey shook her head. “He’s my father, not my owner.”
Cassandra opened up her eyes wide as she took in the information. “I didn’t know my father, or my mother.”
“My mother died when I was very small,” Tracey said. She shot a glance at Vicki, then back at Cassandra. “Why aren’t you with your parents?”
“My parents abandoned me at the hospital, without waiting for me to hatch. Then I was transferred to a special hospital for baby halflings with my brothers and sisters. Vicki and Benjamin adopted me when I was two.”
“That’s sad,” Tracey said. The look on Cassandra’s face made her add, “I mean about your parents. I’m glad that you were adopted.”
“Well, I always remembered traveling around the state a lot. I met a lot of families with halflings. I used to think that I would be able to find my real parents.”
Tracey was forming another question, but stopped when Vicki began to shout at the computer.
“You stupid machine!” Vicki exclaimed.
“What?” Cassandra asked.
“When I clicked ‘print’ for the spreadsheet, I wanted to print it here in this room. Instead, its printing in some other room.”
“I could figure it out,” Tracey offered. She rose to her feet, and carefully approached from Vicki’s side. As she talked, she glanced at the screen. Most of the information on the screen was foreign to her, but the names in the first column of the spreadsheet reminded her of the students in her class at school. “Click print.”
Vicki followed Tracey’s advice. The print screen returned to the computer monitor. “See? That’s the name of the printer in the breakroom,” Tracey said. “That’s just down the hall from here.”
To Tracey’s surprise, Vicki pulled a hand gun out of her purse and fired three times into the computer’s CPU. The screen went dark, and the CPU bellowed thick smoke. “Okay,” Vicki said, “let’s go get it.”
Benjamin and Marcus were only a few feet into the patch of overgrown grass, when a loud crunching sound c
ame from the ground. Benjamin lifted up his foot, and peered at the bottom of his shoe. “What is that?”
Marcus had already glanced at the ground where he saw the remains of a freshly crushed dinosaur egg. “The dinos like to nest in grassy areas,” he explained.
“So that’s a--”
“Egg.” Marcus forced a smile. “You could have stepped into worse.”
“Gross.” Suddenly, Benjamin regained his composure and thrusted the shotgun towards Marcus. “Let’s get this over with. Move.”
Marcus sighed. “Alright.”
They had only moved a few more feet farther when the grass around them began to rustle violently. Benjamin raised the shotgun, taking aim. “What is that?” he shouted. Seeing his chance, Marcus dove into Benjamin, throwing him off center. The shotgun misfired. Something nearby let out an ear splitting shriek.
Benjamin swung the butt of the rifle back towards Marcus, catching him in the ribs. Marcus recovered, and managed to land a few punches. As Benjamin teetered backwards, his eyes grew wide, and he shouted, “Get down!”
Marcus dove to his left just as Benjamin opened fire. A dino hybrid collapsed to the ground.
“What?” Benjamin demanded. When he whirled around to face Marcus, he realized that his captive had disappeared into the weeds. “I don’t care if you run, you coward,” Benjamin spat. “I’ll get your van, and then we’re going to get your little dino-girl.” He resumed the path that they had been following towards Marcus’ van.
As he walked, the ground started to feel squishy as if it had been recently disturbed. Benjamin paused, then spread the grass in front of him with his fingers. The ground dipped downward into what appeared to be a sizeable hole. “I’m on to you,” Benjamin yelled. “It wasn’t enough to humiliate me with the eggs. You wanted to trick me into stepping into this hole--”
Suddenly, he was overwhelmed by a sharp pain in his leg. He had grabbed his calf with his hand out of reflex, and now when he pulled it back, he saw blood. Two more things happened before he could recover from the shock of being bitten. First, he saw two eyes staring back at him from the bottom of the hole, and Marcus rammed into him from behind, pushing him over the edge and into the hole.
As Marcus fell with Benjamin, he realized that the hole wasn’t as deep as it looked. More of a crater. Pain shot up his arm when he landed on his bad shoulder. Just five feet away from him, Benjamin was still laying on his back. His body was convulsing, and every once in a while he would let out moans.
The shotgun had landed between Marcus and Benjamin. Marcus opened it up. As he had suspected, Benjamin had used the last round to kill the dino.
Benjamin let out a loud moan, and began to roll over. He seemed to be searching his coat pocket for something. To Marcus’ surprise, a hand produced a cell phone and tapped a button. Benjamin finished his roll until he was sitting up, and held the phone up this his ear. Marcus stayed very still, obscured by the long grass in the crater. He could already see how the serum from the dinosaur’s bite was affecting Benjamin. The skin on his face and arms were turning leathery, and already he could perceive spots developing on his face. He could also see, when Benjamin lifted his left arm to rub his forehead, that his fingers had grown longer and his nails were thicker.
The cell phone emitted a chirp as it made a connection, and Marcus could hear someone answer the call.
“We need help,” Benjamin said into the phone. He seemed to be struggling to pronounce each word. His voice sounded deeper. The voice on the other ended sounded sharp, almost angry. “I know. We located the list, but then we ran into trouble.”
Then Benjamin was silent while he listened to the other side respond. Judging from the tone, they were giving him detailed instructions. Marcus reflected on the mention of a list. He had thought that the three intruders had taken refuge in the library, or had perhaps planned on reselling some of the items in the library. Most of the information in libraries was free, so Marcus couldn’t imagine any list that would be worth the effort of breaking in.
The person on the other end of the conversation must have finished their tirade, because Benjamin was talking again. “No problem. We’ll deliver both the list and the girl dino to the Institute, then kill her father.”