I lay panting in the shallows, struggling one-handed to get out of my diving gear. The shot echoed, loud enough to make me jump. I twisted around, one flipper on and one off.
Susan had Jordan’s rifle. She was pointing it at the two men. Another shot rang out, and the men started screaming. She was shooting into the ground, right next to them.
Jordan was trying to talk to her, but she motioned him away with the rifle.
Priscilla knelt beside me in the water, undoing the last strap of my equipment. “Talk to her, Mike. Somebody’s going to get hurt.”
I nodded, shrugged out of the buoyancy vest, and walked toward Susan. She was firing into the ground, in a pattern around them. So far, I don’t think she had hit either of them, but only skill and plain luck had saved them. Luck would run out. Part of me wanted them bleeding, hurt. Maybe we could hang their dead bodies near the entrance to the park with a sign: “These Men Killed One of Our Animals.” Yeah, maybe that would convince the tourists to behave.
“Susan, give the rifle back to Jordan.”
“They killed him, Mike. They killed Irving.”
“I know.”
One of the men said, “She’s crazy.”
“Shut up,” Susan said.
“I’d do what she says, mister,” I said.
The man huddled against his companion. Both of them looked white in the moonlight. They stank of beer and urine.
“They slaughtered him,” Susan said.
“Give me the rifle, Susan, please.”
“What’s going to happen to them? If I don’t hurt them, what will the law do?”
“A hundred-thousand-dollar fine, or a mandatory ten-year prison sentence.”
“Do either of you have a hundred thousand dollars?” she asked.
The men looked at each other, then at me. “Answer her,” I said.
“Hell, no. We haven’t got that kind of money.”
“Susan gave a thin, tight smile, and handed the rifle to Jordan. “You better pray you get ten years apiece, because if you don’t…” She knelt beside them. “I’ll hunt you down and shoot you both.”
“Hey, lady, it was just an animal.”
I grabbed Susan and pulled her to her feet before she could slug him.
Jordan said softly, “I’ll let you have the rifle again.”
Susan leaned into me. “You’re bleeding.”
“A present from Little Irving.”
She held my hand in her smaller ones, but I knew she wasn’t trying to stop the blood flow; she was looking at the bite radius. My wife the scientist.
I missed Irving when we went down to the barricade. No happy snorts, no bubble blowing, no dragon head butting your ribs. It was lonely. Baby Irving is like most of the monsters, shy. The best picture we have is a night shot of ripples on the water. My bite mark did prove our point. Pictures of my hand will make up part of Susan’s report.
Susan now thinks that all lake monsters are capable of cloning themselves by parthenogenesis. The clone is born at the death of the parent. That would explain why no one has ever seen more than one lake monster at a time. It also explains why both lake monsters that had been autopsied in the past had unborn babies. Pollution killed them all. Irving died from injuries, so his baby lived.
The problem is that cloning leads to mutation and genetic drift. You need sexual reproduction in a vertebrate to keep the species healthy. Maybe centuries ago the lakes were all connected, but as the land closed in and isolated the monsters, they had to survive long enough to reproduce, so they cloned themselves. The individual genotypes were saved, but there is no known natural way for lake monsters to find mates. Without help from man, lake monsters are probably a dead end. If we don’t kill them off first, that is.
Little Irving’s birth put a stop to the Lake Monster Breeding Program. Susan was out of a job, but since she is already living in the Enchanted Forest National Park and has full cooperation of the park service, she has a good shot at new grant money. If she gets it, we’ll be studying the sex life of the red-bearded leprechaun. The real question is, are there any female leprechauns? No one has ever seen one. This problem sounds vaguely familiar.