For all intents and purposes, Chambers Bay was isolated, cut off from an unknowing outside world. The phones had been out now over 24 hours, and the choking blanket of gray, damp fog yielded little more than a few begrudging feet of horizontal visibility.
Twice during the early hours of the morning, two-man teams in four-by-fours attempted to head north on the highway to Waverly. One had crashed 300 yards outside of the village limits; the second was found abandoned by one of the patrols. Both men were missing.
During the night, the makeshift communications network set up by the RCMP began to fail, and by dawn only three of the original eight units were still operating.
The 0614AM transmission of the Everett-Forrester team was cut short, and Madden and Kendall took two men and hurried out to check out the situation. Both Everett and Forrester were found hanging from a tree near Clyde Everett's pickup truck. They were dead and stripped.
Madden and Kendall returned with the news and summoned what was fast evolving into a war council — Caleb, the other two RCMP officers, Gregory and Hawkins, Doc Ferris, Bert Johnson, and yours truly, who was still referred to as Researcher.
"How many men can we muster for another sweep?" Kendall began.
Gregory, the tallest of the three, picked up his clipboard and began to toll off the names. He came up with 13, then counted again to verify his figure.
"Christ," Madden muttered, "how many have we lost?"
"We've lost fourteen people since this nightmare began," Doc confirmed, "and four more are unaccounted for."
"What the hell good does a plan do us if we can't stop the damn thing?" Jake grumbled.
Kendall held up his hand. "I've been thinking about something Elliott said. Remember how he said the thing burned like an inferno last night, which got us to questioning how many of them there actually were?"
Everyone appeared to nod in unison.
"Doc thinks," Kendall continued, "that the reason the bullets don't do anything but destroy what appears to be lifeless tissue is because the damn things are operating on an essential base of plasma."
"Plasma?" Madden repeated.
"Plasmodium, to be more specific," Doc interjected.
"Highly volatile once the membrane is penetrated. We simply shrink it with heat," Kendall said triumphantly.
"Before everybody goes off half-cocked, I need to remind you that it's only a theory," Ferris cautioned. "But from E.G.'s description of what happened to that thing out there When the truck blew up, we just may be on to something."
It was time for me to play "yeah, but," and I did. "Yeah, but I don't know what actually happened to the thing. It turned into an inferno, all right, but we aren't one hundred percent sure that put an end to it."
"Sounds too simple," Jake protested.
"What are you proposing, Sergeant?" I wanted to hear Kendall's plan.
"Different plasma forms react differently to excessive heat," Ferris warned.
"I'm not talking heat," Kendall maintained. "I'm talking fire, and lots of it."
"What are you gonna do?" Jake grunted. "Set the whole damn woods on fire and hope and pray those damn things are in there?"
"I think we'd all be interested in your plan, Sergeant," Ferris mumbled. The old man had a habit of talking around his pipe, and there were times when no one could understand him.
"There's nothing wrong with the scheme we used in the second sweep. We had a good plan — knock the thing down with the tranquilizer darts from a 731 loaded with Selphon 3431 and then get the trap blanket over it and anchored."
I glanced around the room to get a reaction to Kendall's plan. Everyone was nodding except Jake and Bert. Jake looked skeptical. Bert was wearing an expression I couldn't read.
If anyone had bothered to ask me, I would have told them that I was just as dubious as Madden. As far as I knew, yours truly was the only one who had actually survived a face to face encounter with a creature, and I had misgivings about the so-called tranquilizers and trap blankets. At the moment I wasn't sure there was anything that would hold that thing. In my book, Kendall's plan was tenuous at best.
"Since we now believe we're dealing with something that is essentially constructed of a plasma base, entirely different than anything we've ever experienced, we're not going to take any chances. The minute we knock it down we're going to douse it with gasoline and put a torch to it."
There was another nervous exchange of glances.
Jake was more to the point. "I'd feel a lot better about this scheme of yours, Kendall, if we knew where the damn things were."
"Or how many of them we have to contend with," I added.
Kendall was implacable. "Look, we've got to do something. We can't just sit here and let those things pick us off one by one. The only thing we know for certain is that conventional means won't do the job, so let's use that knowledge to our advantage. Let's play our hunch and go straight for the big heat."
Madden was nodding. "I agree with Kendall. We can't just wait for those damn things to make their next move. We'll be sittin' ducks if we do."
Ferris took a long drag on his pipe. "Keep in mind that we have to be prepared for more than one of them."
Kendall was undaunted. "We'll organize it a little differently this time. Gregory is concerned that we don't have much more than a handful of men we can depend on. Those ten men plus the six of us gives us very little operational latitude. We'll have to leave one group to patrol the perimeter of the village, another group will do a house to house, and the third will man the command center here at the schoolhouse to make sure the women and children are all right."
"Hell," Madden protested, "we need twice that many just to get an effective sweep of the area between Caleb's marina and the Carson road."
For the most part, I had demonstrated a certain amount of wisdom by staying out of it. Every part of my body from the hairline down was either battered, bruised, broken, bleeding, or otherwise malfunctioning. The thought of charging off into a fog-banked forest after something I knew my trusty Mauser wouldn't stop had little or no appeal. The bottom line was that up to this point in the unfolding Chambers Bay drama, I hadn't seen anything that would stop our foul-smelling tormentor. Kendall's rapidly devised plan with the gasoline and torches sounded good in theory, but I'd have been a whole lot more comfortable if I'd actually seen it work in a true-to-life, practical demonstration.
"I can't agree with you," Doc interjected. "Looks to me like we'd be a whole lot safer if we made sure everybody was safe and secure in the old schoolhouse and waited for help. This fog has got to lift sooner or later."
Kendall shook his head adamently. "We can't afford to wait," he repeated.
It was Caleb's turn. He had been strangely silent up to this point. "I agree with Doc. It makes sense to me. Get everybody into the old schoolhouse. That gives us only one place to protect. By now the authorities must realize we've got something drastically wrong here. Kendall hasn't been able to report in to his post, the phone lines are all down, and they know the fog has thrown a blanket over this place and trapped us."
"I don't know how long we could hold out if we did sit tight," Jake countered. "I've seen this damn fog close in up here on the northeast corner of the coast for a week at a time. This is only day three, and we've already picked the shelves clean over at Palmer's market."
"I understand the psychology of mass confinement," Kendall Shot back. "We won't be able to control the people in another day or so. I say we don't have any choice but to go out there and destroy these creatures. If we don't, Chambers Bay is likely to come apart at the seams."
Kendall had convinced them. This time there was no apparent dissent; there wasn't even an exchange of haggard looks. My most recent bout with the creature hadn't completely reduced me to the role of a bystander, but it had significantly curtailed my enthusiasm for a return match.