"What?" I mumbled. It was a question born out of confusion. The confusion was in the distance — frenzied voices, people milling about, shouts. I forced one eye open. "What's going on?"
"They were attacked," B.C. shouted, trying to get through to me.
The other eye opened. "Attacked? Who?"
"The sweep team," Brenda sobbed. She pointed to the throng milling around a harried-looking Doc Ferris.
From there on it was automatic. The legs unhinged and I was upright, vaulting over that last two rows of rickety old bleachers and sprinting toward the mass of confusion. Doc, Jake and Kelto were at the core of the crowd, gathered around and hunched over a trembling form. It was elbowing, shouting and shoving, but I got in and got a look at him. He was hysterical, a matted, fear-ridden, terrorized human being with a missing arm.
Doc was twisting the bloodstained tourniquet first one way, then another, trying to stop the hemorrhage.
"What the hell happened?" Jake screamed.
That's when I saw the second one. He couldn't have been more than on the threshold of puberty. He was smeared with blood, trembling, his breath coming in spasmodic gulps. "It… it… it tore Luke's arm… arm off."
"Who tore it off?" Madden was near hysteria himself.
"The… the… the thing tore it off," the boy sobbed.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the mangled boy slump to the floor. Gregory was shoving people aside, trying to give Ferris and his tragic charge more space. Doc was on the floor beside the youth. A pool of blood bridged the distance between them, and the boy began to scream. Suddenly there was a violent convulsion, and just that quickly, it was over. The crowd was suddenly quiet. Ferris sagged to his knees, head forward; he too began to sob.
It was Madden who had the presence of mind to guide the hysterical youngster away from his companion. Jake's muted voice was working in a strange way, trying on one hand to comfort the youngster and at the same time probing, still trying to discover what had happened.
"Benny, listen to me, you've got to get hold of yourself. I've got to know what happened."
The redhead looked up from the protective crook of Jake's huge arm with fear-ridden eyes. The words were being blocked out by desperate gulps of air. Ferris moved in and took the boy by the shoulder, shaking him. "Answer the Constable, Benny. You have to answer him. We've got to know."
"How many of them were there?" Jake kept digging.
The youngster hunched his trembling shoulders and looked down at the floor.
"Was there more than one?" Doc pushed.
The boy managed a single nod.
"More than two? More than three?"
Benny nodded a second time.
"What happened to the rest of the sweep team?" Madden shouted.
"They… they… they took 'em," the boy gulped.
"Who? The sweep team? They took the sweep team?"
The boy managed another nod.
"You saw those damn things carry off Kendall and Johnson and Caleb and the others?" Doc repeated incredulously.
The boy tried to clarify his answer, but the effort came out garbled and broken.
Madden looked at me, then at a stunned B.C. "What the hell were you kids doin' out there in the first place?"
"When… when you didn't come back," Benny stuttered, "Sergeant Kendall figured… figured they got you and the… the others. He was… he was… goin' after you. Luke and me… decided to follow. We… we thought we… could help."
Ferris patiently guided the terrified youngster to a chair, set him down and took a seat facing him. "Look, Benny, I know you've been through a lot, but this is important. We have to know what happened. You keep saying 'they'. How many of them were there?"
The boy could manage little more than a shiver. He looked back with pleading eyes at his interrogator. Again, words failed him.
"Which way did they go?" Ferris asked quietly.
The boy pointed.
"That's west," Jake declared, looking back at me.
"Benny," Doc began again, his voice measured and calm, "we can't help if we don't know what happened. Now, I want you to take a deep breath and try to tell me everything that happened from the time you left here. Do you understand?"
The youngster choked back still another sob and somehow tucked his head down deeper between his narrow shoulders. It was as if he were trying to hide from the awful thing that he had witnessed.
"Benny, you've got to try," Doc urged.
Again the boy nodded.
Finally the first effort broke through the wall of fear. "We… we saw 'em leave." The voice was still fragile and hesitant. "Luke and me, we… we decided to follow. They… they headed straight for old man Hall's marina. We… we watched them spread out. Luke wanted to follow… but I was scared. We kept losin' them… in the fog. I never saw fog that thick. Luke… Luke called me a chicken. Then all of a sudden… we heard growlin' sounds… lots of noise… like stuff breakin'. There was shots and screamin'."
"Did you see anything?" Doc interrupted.
"It was them," Benny blurted.
"Are you certain?"
"All of a sudden I heard one of the men cussin' and then he started to scream. Luke saw it. One of them… one of them things had Sergeant Kendall. Luke said he was all bloody. The thing was draggin' Sergeant Kendall by his head. Luke said it just stopped and tore Kendall's head off… like he was some sort of a doll or somethin'."
"What happened to the rest of the team?"
"Luke and me could hear them things growlin' and screamin'… screamin' like animals. We saw the bodies of Mr. Hazel and the two Click brothers… they was all torn apart."
"What about Caleb Hall and Bert John-son?"
"We… didn't find their bodies… but we could hear all… all that noise in the fog up ahead of us."
"Which way were they headed?" Jake was double-checking.
Benny shrugged his shoulders again. "There was so much fog. I… I… kinda lost track."
"What happened to Luke?"
Benny's eyes suddenly clouded with terror again. Another wave of tears began streaming down his dirt-smudged face.
Ferris put his gnarled old hand on Jake's shoulder. "Give him a minute," the doctor said softly.
"I started… started runnin' back toward town… and all of a sudden like, Luke was yellin' to let go. When I turned around, this big black thing had Luke by the arm. He… he took one of them weird-lookin' paws and put one against Luke's head and held onto Luke's arm with the other. It… it just ripped his arm right out of the socket… like it was a chicken wing."
In the background I heard Brenda shudder; she turned away and began to cry. Madden put his arm around her.
"Then… then the thing shoved Luke away and… and squatted down and started eatin' Luke's arm…" The words trailed off, and Benny stared silently into our faces.
Jake didn't waste any time. We huddled briefly, and the decision was made to implement the still somewhat sketchy Madden-Wages plan. He was convinced it was pointless to go back to the spot where the two boys had witnessed the Kendall atrocity. He had bought my theory, and he was determined now to find access to the caves.
Ferris seemed to be evolving as one of the few rational voices in the rapidly developing scenario. He listened carefully while Madden roared through the hastily constructed plan, questioning where appropriate, confirming when he thought we were on the right track.
Madden considered time to be our biggest enemy. The longer the creatures had Johnson and Hall, the less likely we were to find either of them alive. I didn't tell him that as far as I was concerned, the moment the two men became captives their chances of survival were next to nothing.
Gregory was dispatched to Caleb's marina with instructions to round up a specific list of supplies — heavy nylon rope to be used for scaling, cotton rope, pulleys, tackle and four one-gallon containers of gasoline. B.C. was hustled off to Palmer's market for flashlight batteries, empty milk bottles, work gloves and matches. My assignment was a little more complicated. I had to gain access to Clayton's Hardware, locate some kerosene lanterns, heavy duty snaps, two utility tool belts and anything else that looked as though it might come in handy in exploring caves. All of this left Jake with the task of rounding up additional ammunition — a flare pistol, two more revolvers and the department's two 40-channel hand held units with boom mikes.