Piranha
Author: John Sayles; Leo Callan
Date: 1978-01-01 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: They came downriver in their thousands. Their teeth could strip a living man to the bone in seconds. Their hunger for flesh was insatiable and their vicious attacks had already left a trail of carnage and mutilation in their wake. As the waters flowed, so the deadly fish went with them, ever nearer, nearer to the unsuspecting Lost River Holiday Camp. Children bathed, couples lingered in the shadows, water-skiers sped unknowingly towards the horror that was surging towards them. And for the piranha, it was feeding time.
Publisher: Headline Book Publishing

They came downriver
in their thousands.
Their teeth could
strip a living man
to the bone in seconds.

Their hunger for flesh was insatiable and their vicious attacks had already left a trail of carnage and mutilation in their wake.

As the waters flowed, so the deadly fish went with them, ever nearer, nearer to the unsuspecting Lost River Holiday Camp. Children bathed, couples lingered in the shallows, water-skiers sped unknowingly towards the horror that was surging towards them.

And for the piranha, it was feeding time.

PIRANHA
starring

BRADFORD DILLMAN
HEATHER MENZIES • KEVIN McCARTHY
KEENAN WYNN • BARBARA STEELE

A New English Library Original Publication, 1978
Published by arrangement with United Artists Corporation
© by John Sayles, 1978
© this novelisation by Leo Callan, 1978

First NEL Paperback Edition October 1978

NEL Books are published by
New English Library Limited
from Barnard’s Inn, Holborn,
London EC1N 2JR
Made and printed in Great Britain
by Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd,
Aylesbury, Bucks

ISBN: 0-450-05345-8

CHAPTER 1

A quiet, peaceful moon shone down on the woodland, lending a peaceful glow to the trees in the warm summer night. Carried on a faint breeze, the humming chorus of crickets was the only sound to break the silence.

Then a new noise interrupted the solitude of the woods, and a movement on the winding and half-overgrown track through the trees set the leaves rustling anew. Two people, dressed for hiking in loose shirts and shorts, were making their way along the path, pushing past the tangle of branches, their eyes attempting to scan through the darkness for some sign of their bearings. On their backs they carried packs that looked—and were—tiringly heavy.

At length the girl stopped, pushing hair from her face and attempting to stretch her aching back. Her voice in the darkness was plaintive.

“It’s got to lead somewhere, Dave!”

Her companion turned back to look at her, grinning. He recognised the plea in her tone, and sympathised. He was quite bushed himself. “We’ll stop and make camp pretty soon,” he assured her. “Got your breath?”

“I suppose so.” Her reply was resigned. “Okay, let’s go.”

They plodded on, the girl now making heavy weather of it—then a few paces later the young man stopped again. Almost cannoning into him in the gloom, she cried out in alarm.

He pointed. Not three yards away, almost concealed by a tangle of vegetation, was a notice. Although it was weatherworn, the wording was still legible:

US ARMY TEST SITE—AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY

“Hell,” the girl said. “We’ve come all this way only to find this! Now I suppose we just have to turn back.”

Dave was scanning the track beyond the notice. There was no sign of any attempt having been made in the last few years to keep the path clear of weeds and underbrush, suggesting that the site was no longer used. He thought of the long trek that had led them here; of the prospect of retracing their footsteps all the way back . . .

“Aw, why bother?” he said at last. “This place looks deserted, we’re not about to get jumped on by a bunch of armed guards and thrown in the slammer for spying! C’mon, Barbara, let’s go up there.”

Barbara looked like she was about to argue, but the thought of the long journey back changed her mind for her. With a small shrug, she followed him on past the sign.

Some time back in the past, the site had been fenced off. But now the perimeter enclosure was the next best thing to ramshackle, and the gate that had been made in the wire fence hung loose and dejected on its hinges. Reaching it, Dave held it open for Barbara to pass through.

“Looks like nobody’s been up here for a long time.” He spoke quietly, his voice hollow in the night’s stillness. “It’s open house.”

Barbara hesitated in the gateway, feeling uneasy. “Think we ought to?”

“Who’s going to know the difference? Come on, we’ve got to camp somewhere for the night soon, or it’ll be dawn before we get any sleep.”

They moved on. Ahead of them now, where the path widened out, was a courtyard surrounded by a cluster of long, low buildings with a distinctive military air about them. In the centre of the yard a flagpole stood bleak and bare, like the long-dead stump of a lightning-blasted tree. Barbara halted as they reached the pole and gazed around, hands on her hips. A low whistle escaped through her teeth and she said, “Quite a place, huh? I’m going to have a look.”

“Don’t go too far,” Dave advised, and leaned against the flagpole as she walked away. For a minute or so he just stared up at the moonlit sky, enjoying this opportunity to relax—then Barbara’s disembodied voice called out through the darkness from a short distance away.

“Hey, Davy! Over here—there’s a swimming pool!”

“What?’ Dave was astonished. What in hell would an army encampment want with a swimming pool? Straightening up, he crossed to where she was waiting for him, and saw that she was right. A large, concrete-lined pond stretched away on the far side of the courtyard, the still water gleaming black and silver under the stars, its surface faintly ruffled by a light wind.

Barbara stared longingly at the water. “It’s a hot night . . .”

“Yeah.”

“Think it’s deep?”

“We can both swim, can’t we?”

They exchanged a look, and laughed. As one they discarded their backpacks, then began to peel off their clothes. They were both touched with the same feeling of excitement—that childlike delight in doing something pleasurable but forbidden.

Dave paused, his shirt half off his shoulders. “Think there’s anything in it?”

Barbara grinned! “Turkey! What could possibly be in it? It’s a concrete pond.”

“Ever see The Creature From The Black Lagoon?” he teased.

“No.”

“Attack of the Crab Monsters?”

She punched him playfully. “Stop trying to scare me! Come on, we can wash the dust off.”

When Barbara was naked, she scrambled across the pile of her clothes to the water’s edge. No point in being chicken about it—straight in, she thought.

A loud splash echoed across the courtyard, and drops of water spattered the pool’s edge as she jumped in. A moment later her voice gasped out.

“Whooo, it’s cold!”

A second splash erupted as Dave joined her. She duck-dived, then came up again. “Hey, what have I got here?”

“My big toe. Stop messing around.”

She splashed away from him, swimming on her back. “Ever see Revenge of the Toe-Snatchers?”

“Ha ha. Very funny.” Dave started to swim in circles, allowing the buoyancy of the water to carry him lazily along. Suddenly Barbara surfaced beside him, her hand locked round his leg.

“Ha! Gotcha!”

He rolled, kicking water at her. “Okay, knock it off—it’s too dark to fool around.”

She dived again, and a minute later he felt something pinch his leg.

“Barbara!” He was getting angry—this was no time for dumb games. Some yards away he heard Barbara’s voice.

“What? I didn’t touch you!”

He sighed. “Look, lay off, will you? The hell you didn’t touch me—you pinched me. Ow!”

Barbara’s voice was still some distance off, and Dave’s pulse began to beat just a little too fast for his liking. Suddenly he yelped again, and she called out, nervously, “Don’t! That’s not funny, Davy. You’re scaring me.”

Dave took a deep breath and glanced towards the edge of the pool. It looked a long way off. He shouted back, horrified by the quaver in his own voice. “Something bit me, Barbara, I’m not kidding . . . there’s something—AAAHHH!”

The scream was shocking, a cry of absolute pain and terror. Barbara shrieked out to Davy, but her voice could not cut through the yells of agony and appalling fear now issuing from the centre of the pool. Frantically, she launched herself forward and began to swim wildly in his direction, churning the water with her thrashing arms. As she swam she started to call out to him again—but before her lips could form his name, they distorted in a grimace of pain—and then she too started to scream.

The water in the pool agitated violently, foaming and frothing. And under the moon’s cold light the black and silver surface seemed to be tinged with a dark, heavy crimson . . .

There was no-one to observe the window that suddenly lit up in one of the low buildings that surrounded the courtyard. And by the time the light went out again, the surface of the pond was calm and unruffled, without a single ripple to break its smooth surface.

CHAPTER 2

Sitting on the river bank in the drowsy heat of the sun, Paul Grogan presented the perfect picture of a man at peace—at least outwardly. Lazily hooking a minnow on to the end of his fishing line, he cast it out into the current in the centre of the river. The hook and float landed with a soft plop, inaudible to Paul above the rush and gurgle of the water, and he settled himself back on the bank, holding the pole idly in one hand and keeping half an eye on the bright spot of the bobbing float.

Paul Grogan was a man in his early thirties, tall, lean and brown, with the seasoned air of a woodsman about him. But anyone who looked beyond the surface, beyond the mask of his peaceful face, might have detected the traces of strain and worry and bitterness that had dogged his life for the past few years. It showed most clearly in the restlessness of his eyes; they had a dark, almost haunted look that suggested that he was very far from being a man at peace with himself.

Now, though, he was trying not to think overmuch about the aspects of his life that had caused him so much pain. His mind was on the fishing float still leaping and jerking in the racing water, all his concentration focused on the small, bright object.

Suddenly the surface of the water around the float started to swirl and thrash. The head of a huge catfish broke the surface, the gleaming body beneath twisting madly as the fish struggled to free itself of the hook that was caught in its mouth. Grinning, Paul grasped the rod in both hands and began to haul the fish in slowly, playing it on the line, careful not to act too fast or too early and make the mistake of losing his catch through haste. The catfish gave him a good fight, but the outcome was a foregone conclusion—Paul was too experienced a fisherman to be outwitted even by a fish as old and therefore cunning as this one. Within two minutes the catfish was gasping and flopping on the bank, and he was disentangling the hook from its slippery gills before dealing it a quick coup de grâce. Then, laying it out on the grass beside him, he reached into his tackle box and pulled out a half-full whisky bottle. For a moment he sat staring at the bottle, the gold liquid inside winking almost mockingly at him in the sunlight, then he unscrewed the top. Trying not to dwell on the old and as yet unanswered question of whether the liquor was a solace or a curse, he raised the bottle in salute to the catfish, and took a long pull.

The afternoon wore on, and Paul occupied himself with the small but necessary tasks that filled his days back in his isolated woodland cabin. It was a lonely existence, for the cabin was situated in a rocky, mountainous area where only the hardiest or the most determined ever ventured. The tracks into town were rough, the summer weather fierce enough to be daunting, and so Paul was, to all intents and purposes, something of a hermit up here. Not that he was complaining—these days he found his own solitary company more tolerable than that of the friends and acquaintances he used to know. This way, whatever he did, he had only himself to account to. Here, it was easier to forget, or if not forget, at least to nurse his bitterness in his own way.

At last he entered the cabin, carrying an armful of newly chopped wood for the kitchen stove. Banking the stove up, he glanced in the cracked and fly-specked mirror that hung askew above the sink. His own face stared hollowly back at him, decorated with a three-day growth of stubble, and he grimaced. Scratching absently at his chin, he moved in the direction of the bathroom and started to hunt through the medicine cabinet for his razor, unable to remember where he had seen it last. Rooting through the jumble of tubes and bottles, his fingers closed round a small, bright cylinder, and he stared at it, his face giving away no emotion. A lipstick case. Without another thought he tossed it into the wastebin, and resumed his search.

Finding the razor at last, he treated his face to a rapid onceover, then, feeling a little more presentable, returned to the kitchen. He didn’t really know why he didn’t just give up shaving altogether and grow a beard. He supposed it was a last trace of vanity still left in him, a need to maintain some of his old standards, even though there was no-one to maintain them for.

In the kitchen he picked up the whisky bottle again and poured what was left into a canteen. He tossed the empty bottle into a box, where it lay among at least a dozen more empties, and walked out into the strong sunlight.

Minutes later he was sitting on the cabin steps, cleaning and gutting the catfish on a spread-out sheet of newspaper. As he worked, an elderly collie appeared from the fringe of trees a few yards away, nose up, sniffing the air. It saw Paul and, associating him with the source of the aroma, trotted towards him with its ears pricked. As it approached its tail began to wag, then it half crouched and wriggled the last few feet, nose now outstretched towards the catfish.

Paul laughed, and put out a hand to ward the old dog off. “Hey, that’s my supper, Brandy—you stay back!”

Brandy gave him a silly look and rubbed her head against his palm, always on the scrounge for approval and affection. Paul said, “Sit,” and she obeyed, tongue lolling.

“Where’s the old man, huh? Dragging behind?”

As though evoked by his question, an ageing man trudged into view from the trees, pulling behind him a child’s toy wagon on which a sack was precariously balanced. Though unkempt and shabbily dressed, there was a certain air of seedy dignity about him, as though whatever knocks the world cared to offer him would be met with an unfailing good grace. Reaching the cabin, he sat down stiffly on the step beside Paul, and nodded a greeting. Then he grunted, stretching his legs out before him. “That trip up from town’s a killer. I hope you appreciate this.”

Paul smiled. “You ought to get a car, Jack.”

The old man made a noise that was half-way between a laugh and a snort of derision. “I got a car. Had it for years. It’s up on blocks, where it belongs. Doesn’t cost me, doesn’t pollute, and it’s a damn’ sight safer. Get one yourself—then you can lug your own stuff up here for a change!” With a sigh he dug his hands into the sack and pulled out an assortment of bottles, which he lined up on the step like targets on an Aunt Sally.

“One scotch, one gin, one bourbon, one vodka.”

With anyone else Paul might have felt embarrassed. With Jack, he just grinned. “Ah, Jack, you’re the Seventh Cavalry! I just ran dry this morning.”

Jack grunted again, and added, “Oh, yeah—almost forgot. One sack of corn meal. Man cannot live by booze alone, as they say.” He dumped the bag beside the bottles, and Paul leaned back, making himself comfortable.

“So, what have I been missing back in town?”

“Nothing,” Jack told him. “People running around, lousing up the land, fouling up the air, then complaining because they ain’t enjoying life any more. Better off up here by ourselves. Oh, by the way, that’ll be thirty-two dollars fifty. Plus tax. And a small delivery charge.”

Paul glared at him, but not maliciously. “I thought that was included in the rent you charge, you avaricious old fart!”

Jack’s lined face crinkled into amusement. “Y’know, you’re lucky your miserable personality doesn’t get to me. Fact is, if you hadn’t moved up here this summer I might have lost my nerve and sold up this place. I’d be back selling underwear or designing nuclear power stations, or whatever it is they do in the city these days.”

Paul opened the gin bottle at his side and took a generous swig, wiping his mouth afterwards with a satisfied sigh. Jack eyed him.

“Why don’t you try and go easy on that stuff? Doing you no good at all.”

“What’s it to you?”

Jack shrugged, slightly piqued. “I dunno. Seems like us hermits should stick together, I suppose.” When Paul made no comment, the old man hauled himself to his feet. “Come on, Brandy, let’s go! I’ll see you next week, Paul—maybe you’ll be in a better mood by then.”

Paul smiled to himself as Jack and Brandy trudged away, but he said nothing.

The jeep lurched drunkenly along the rutted road, kicking up a fantail of choking dust in its wake. The wheels bounced in and out of potholes and the vehicle rocked like a ship in a storm, as though the driver had concluded that the only chance of getting along this track was to make a rush at it and pray for luck. So far the luck seemed to be holding, but judging by the occasional spurts of steam coming from the radiator, it didn’t have much longer to run.

Careening round a bend, the jeep came in sight of the cabin by the river, and instantly the driver slammed on the brakes. Bucketing wildly the jeep slewed to a halt and a young, fair-haired woman—the last person who might have been expected to be found driving like a maniac in this wilderness—sprang down from the cab. Wiping sweaty hands down her slacks, she opened the jeep’s bonnet and immediately stepped back as a jet of hissing steam boiled into the hot air. She stared at it for a moment, then sighed, turned around and began to walk purposefully towards the cabin.

Paul was just serving the sizzling catfish from the pan to a plate when the knock sounded on the door. Wondering who the hell could have come visiting, he called out over his shoulder that the door was open and slid into his chair before the table, moving the canteen of whisky within reach of his hand.

He was chewing the first succulent mouthful when the woman put her head round the door. Presented with his back view, she said hesitantly, “Paul Grogan?”

Paul screwed round on the chair, frowning. “Yeah—why?”

She came in, proffering a small business card which she had fished from a pocket. “My name’s Maggie McKeown. I work for a skip-tracing company—”

“A what?” Paul ignored the card, staring critically at her in a way that she found slightly disquieting.

“I find missing people.”

Paul’s frown deepened into a scowl and he demanded, his tone on the edge of belligerence, “Did my ex-wife send you?”

Maggie looked nonplussed, so obviously that wasn’t it. Paul waited for an explanation, still watching her, and she said briskly, “I’m looking for a pair of teenage kids, Mr. Grogan, not for errant husbands. These two have been missing for a week now. They told friends they were going backpacking up here.”

Now that he knew the visit had no connection with his own life, Paul lost interest and turned his attention back to the fish. “Haven’t seen ’em,” he said through a second mouthful. “You talk to the sheriff’s people.”

“I did, and it was them that put me on to you. They said it was a big mountain.”

“They’re right. It is.”

Maggie stared at him, irritated by his indifference. “I figured they might have followed the river,” she said, doggedly determined not to be put off by this man’s attitude. “Are there places to swim near here?”

Paul sighed. He wished this woman would go away and leave him in peace. Pretty she might be—despite his solitary life he hadn’t forgotten how to appreciate a good-looking girl—but she seemed to be the businesslike type, the kind he’d seen too much of in the past and didn’t want to encounter again. “If they drowned,” he said, “they’d be swept down to the dam. You’re starting at the wrong end.”

Maggie’s mouth pursed angrily. “I’m starting at the wrong end with you, all right!” And when Paul didn’t react, but simply went on eating, she added sharply, “Look, am I interrupting something? This is important!”

Once again Paul swung round to face her, and this time there was a look of resigned humour in his eyes. “Hey, cool it, lady! I didn’t axe-murder your young couple. I haven’t seen them, I can’t help you. Okay?”

Obviously, from the look on her face, it wasn’t okay. She asked if there were any other shacks nearby.

“Cabins,” Paul corrected her gently. “This is a cabin.”

“Cabin, then. There’s no need to split hairs. Are there any more—or any places at all they might have holed up in?”

Paul was looking at her again, appraising her hair, her face, her slim figure. At last he replied, “Old fella named Jack has a place downriver a bit, but I know for a fact they’re not with him. And there was some kind of military testing site up the mountain. Closed down five or six years ago.”

A light of hope burned suddenly in Maggie’s eyes. “It’s worth a look,” she said. “Okay, let’s go.”

“Go where?” Paul demanded.

“You’re taking me up there.”

His jaw dropped. This woman had to be kidding! “Oh no I’m not!” he protested. “This is no concern of mine, lady. None whatsover!”

Half an hour later, Maggie McKeown’s jeep was bucketing along the mountain track that wound upwards through the dense trees that covered the slopes. Maggie was crouched over the wheel like a demonic racing-driver, her eyes straining through the whirling dust in an attempt to stay on the road and avoid the worst of the potholes. The jeep’s engine snarled and spluttered, but so far it hadn’t given up the ghost. And beside Maggie, somewhat bewildered as he hung on to a strut with one hand and his whisky canteen with the other, sat Paul.

If anyone had asked him why he had allowed himself to be bulldozed into this crazy ride, he couldn’t have answered. But somehow, Maggie had overridden all his objections, pushing him into a corner until there was just no way out—so here he was.

To console himself, he unscrewed the top of his canteen and tried to take a pull of its contents without either falling out of the jeep or knocking half his teeth down his throat. Just as he had the neck to his lips, the jeep hit a pothole and juddered like a bronco. Paul gave up, and wiped the liquor that had splashed out from his neck and shirt-front.

“Jesus, take it easy!” he growled.

Maggie swung round another hole, larger than the previous one. “Don’t worry, I’m a good driver.”

Paul looked over the side of the vehicle, saw the ground lurching sickeningly by, and looked hurriedly away again. “Glad to hear it. I’ll take a nap, shall I?”

She shot him an angry glance. “You think I’m wasting my time, don’t you?”

He slumped back into the seat with a scowl. “No. I think you’re wasting my time.”

They said nothing more until at last the jeep reached the end of the track—or at least, the point where the road became utterly impossible for anything on four wheels. Paul was thankful to leave the vehicle behind for the safety of his own legs, and they plodded along the track to the spot where the rickety gate marked the entrance to the old testing station.

Maggie went through without hesitation, and, reluctantly, feeling that he couldn’t very well back out now, Paul followed.

The deserted courtyard had an altogether different aspect in daylight. There was a pristine cleanliness about the area, giving the impression that whoever had inhabited it had but recently upped and gone, leaving not a trace of disorder behind. In the distance, beyond the flagpole, the concrete pool was a still mirror, reflecting back the pale gold light.

However, rather than approaching the pool—which they assumed could hold nothing to interest them—they headed for the nearest of the low-roofed buildings, pushed the door open and walked in. Their footsteps echoed in an empty hallway, where shafts of sunlight cut in through the windows and made patterns on the dusty floor.

Though there seemed little point, Maggie cupped a hand to her mouth and called out, “David! Barbara!”

The echoes shouted back like ghostly mockingbirds.

The hallway was deserted. Maggie tried again. “David!” She shivered at the empty echo.

“Come on,” Paul said quietly. “Let’s go back outside. There’s nothing here.”

They wandered out into the sunlight, and Maggie walked across towards the pool. The gaunt shadow of the flagpole fell across her as she stood staring down into the murky water and Paul came up beside her.

“What were they testing here?” she asked musingly.

“Who knows?” Paul gazed around, more uncomfortable than he would have liked to admit. Although he couldn’t put a finger on it, there was something about this place that gave him the creeps. “I hiked up here once with my ex-wife. They had guard dogs out, electrified fence, the works—whatever they were protecting, they must have thought it was important—or dangerous.”

He started to walk on, but Maggie said, “Hold it—” There was something lying by the poolside a few yards away, and she went to pick it up. It was an earring, in the shape of a gold disc engraved with initials.

She held it out to Paul. “B.R. Barbara Randolph.”

Paul swore. Then he saw the hiking sock and picked it up, feeling a sense of foreboding somewhere deep inside him that he didn’t like one little bit. “Think this might belong to them?”

Together they turned towards the pool, neither liking to look at the other because they knew what they would see in each other’s eyes. Their gazes scanned the still, innocent-looking pool, and Maggie found herself morbidly guessing at how deep and how steeply sloping it might be. Paul squatted down at the water’s edge and plunged his hand in, skimming at a scatter of dead leaves that drifted on the surface. After a moment or two he pulled his hand back and shook gleaming droplets from it.

Slowly, Maggie spoke. “Their parents said they were both excellent swimmers . . .”

Paul nodded, and forced himself to ask, “Wouldn’t they be—floating on top by now?”

She bit her lip. “It takes a while for a body to bloat with gas . . .”

“Jesus!” Paul turned abruptly away. “Nice business you’re in.”

She shrugged, aware of it, but nonetheless not wanting to dwell on the thought. “Think there’s a way to pull the plug on this thing? We’ve got to find out somehow.”

“It’s worth a look. There’s a shed over there, look, with a load of cables running from it. If there are any sluice-gates, the controls are probably in there.”

Turning, and thankful to leave the pool with its as yet unguessable secrets, they made their way across the courtyard to the shed Paul had pointed out. As they went in, they were surprised to find the shed crammed with a baffling array of technical and scientific equipment. While looking like any old shack from the outside, the shed’s interior was a veritable powerhouse.

Paul’s fingers traced a line along the buttons and switches on a large instrument panel, but he stopped what he was doing when Maggie suddenly said, “Paul, someone’s been here.”

“Huh? How do you know?”

She held up a mug. “Coffee. There’s still dregs left, and the sides of the mug are warm.”

“Could it have been them?”

She shrugged. “Who can say? I—hey, wait a minute!” And like a terrier she dived under one of the benches, dragging out an assortment of articles that had been half concealed underneath. Two backpacks, boots, clothes.

“My God!” She looked up at Paul. “They’ve been here all right, no doubt of it now. And unless they brought a complete change of clothes with them . . .” She left the rest of the sentence unfinished.

Paul swung back to the instrument panel. “I say we drain the pool.” He started once more to scan the switches. Temp., Agitation, Salinity, Ph Factor, Mineral Balance . . .

“Drain,” he said at last, triumphantly. “Well, this is it.”

Behind him, Maggie’s voice was uneasy. “Do you think we ought to?”

“We’ve got to find out somehow. If it still works, this is the quickest way to know if they’re down there.”

“Dear God, I hope they’re not!” She stood motionless, watching, as Paul pulled back the drain lever. A faint humming sound started up somewhere in the machinery, and they looked at each other.

Then, with an abruptness that was shocking, an unfamiliar voice barked out.

“What are you doing?”

CHAPTER 3

Paul and Maggie swung round. Standing in the doorway was a bearded, middle-aged man carrying a clothsack and a boathook. His face was warped into a look of horror.

Before Paul could even begin to explain, the newcomer had dropped the sack and was shoving him aside, reaching for the drain lever. Recovering from his initial surprise, Paul shouted, “Who the hell are you?” He was ignored, and as the stranger’s fingers closed round the lever Paul suddenly grabbed his arm, hauling him back. Instantly the man jerked himself free. The boathook swung, catching Paul and knocking him backwards, and the intruder was grabbing for the lever again. In a desperate effort to stop him, Paul snatched the other end of the hook and pulled hard, swinging the man off balance. They staggered round the shed, both trying to wrest the hook from the other’s grasp. Paul was tall and well-built, but panic seemed to lend his opponent an almost unnatural strength. He kicked out without warning, and his foot hooked around Paul’s ankle, throwing him sideways. He fell, losing his grip on the boathook, and as he scrambled to his feet again the man hurled himself straight at him, forcing him to stumble back against the wall. Immediately he found the shaft of the boathook pressed against his throat, digging against his windpipe. The other man’s face was a twisted, demented mask inches from his own, and the hands that gripped the hook, forcing it harder against Paul’s neck, were white and straining with the effort. Paul tried to yell, but all he could manage was a croak, and his arms, beating against his assailant’s chest, had no effect.

Behind his attacker Maggie came into focus. She had been looking for a weapon, but had found nothing of any use—a chair that was too heavy, a knife that was too dangerously sharp and could lead to murder—and now, in desperation, she brought Paul’s whisky canteen smacking down on the bearded man’s skull. Neither the blow nor the canteen were hard enough to do any damage, but it was enough to make him kick out backwards. Maggie sprawled on to the floor, but was up again in a moment. Again she brought the canteen down, and a third time, and the man momentarily took his attention from Paul to turn on her. The boathook swung and clipped Maggie, knocking her hard against a bench—but it had given Paul the chance he needed. Gasping down air, he drew his fist back, and putting all his remaining strength into the action, landed an almighty punch just behind his attacker’s ear. For an instant the man stayed on his feet—then soundlessly he keeled over and slumped to the floor in a huddled heap.

Paul let out a groan of pain and sank to his knees, holding the hand that had delivered the punch and which now ached abominably. Beside him Maggie raised her head and attempted to struggle into a sitting position. They were both breathing hard, and Paul managed to speak first.

“Are you—are you okay?”

Maggie coughed rackingly. “I think—he—knocked the—wind out of me. How about you?”

“My hands feel broken.” He was still nursing the bruised knuckles.

Maggie started to crawl towards the bearded man, who lay unconscious, face staring starkly towards the ceiling. Looking down at him she said, “Who is he? Is he alive?”

Paul rubbed his face. “No idea. Whoever he is—or was—he didn’t want us draining that pond.” He climbed unsteadily to his feet and, taking Maggie’s arm, helped her upright too. She was still looking at the man.

“He’s breathing.”

“No thanks to you.”

“What was I supposed to do?” she demanded. “He had you by the throat!”

Paul shrugged, unwilling to let her believe she’d done him any favours. “I’d have got loose in a second.” Fishing, he found his canteen, and held it up for inspection. “Look at this—you put a dent in it.”

She gave him an aggrieved look, but only said, “Can I have a sip of that?”

He held it out. “It’s not water.”

She took it, and he shrugged and went back to the unconscious man as she tipped the canteen to her mouth. A moment later she grimaced. “Ugh! You’re right, it’s not water.” Then she saw that he was bending over the bearded man’s sack, examining it. “What’s in there?”

Paul straightened, the sack in his hand. “You’re not going to believe this, but—” He pulled out something limp and furry and very dead. “It looks like a Persian, two tabbies and a cocker spaniel.”

The whisky Maggie had drunk threatened to come back the way it had gone, and she swallowed hard. “Jesus!”

Paul pulled a face as he dropped the dead cat back into the bag. “Everybody needs a hobby,” he said, and immediately wished he hadn’t. The attempt at flippancy just didn’t work.

“Hobby my ass,” Maggie commented from somewhere behind him. “Look at this.”

He followed to where she was bending over what appeared to be a large fish tank, empty. The central section of the tank was broken up by walls of transparent plastic that formed a small but complex maze.

“It’s like they use for experiments with laboratory rats,” Maggie said thoughtfully. “You know, where they have to make it through an obstacle course to get a reward. A kind of intelligence or initiative test.”

“But for fish?”

“Who says it’s fish?”

Paul repressed a faint shudder. “This place is beginning to give me the creeps. Let’s take a look at that pond.”

Privately thinking that the contents of the drained pond might be far more likely to give them the creeps than this relatively harmless shed, Maggie nonetheless followed him outside.

The drainage mechanism had done its work, and the pond was now a smooth, deeply concave expanse of concrete, with only a few isolated puddles to show where the water had been. Sliding down the sides, Paul and Maggie began to explore the bottom.

Paul hunkered down to taste the water from one of the larger puddles. He licked his fingers, then raised an eyebrow.

“What is it?” Maggie asked.

“Water’s salty.” He shrugged, thinking no more of it, and they continued walking.

“Where does this drain to?” Maggie inquired after a few more seconds.

Paul paused to look around. “It was a fish hatchery before the Army took it over. It probably drains underground, into the river.” He would have said more, but stopped as she gripped his arm.

“Uh-oh . . .” She pointed, and he saw what she had already seen. It was too distant to be able to make it out clearly, but . . .

They hurried ahead, to where a huge grating marked the place where the pool’s water had drained away. And twisted round the bars of the grating was a shape composed of bare, white bones, ribcage and skull—all intact.

Maggie made a choking noise and looked away as Paul, fighting back his own nausea, bent to examine the skeleton. “It’s a dog,” he said at length. “Something big, like a shepherd or a labrador.” Biting his lip, he looked speculatively at the grating. “You don’t think—those kids—they could have fitted through here?”

Maggie shook her head, still unwilling to look. “Not in one piece.” Suddenly she turned her head towards the shed. “That guy—do you think he’s all right up there? I wonder if he’s come round yet.”

Her question was immediately and unexpectedly answered by the distant whirring of a motor engine starting up. Seconds later they heard the roar of the jeep pulling away.

Paul stared stupidly in the direction of the perimeter fence, where they’d left the vehicle. “Oh, shit!” He sounded as chagrined as he looked.

Maggie was already running towards the sides of the pool, scraping hands and legs in her hurry to climb out. “Come on!” she yelled back.

They arrived, breathless, at the spot where the jeep had been parked just in time to see the last of the dust settling in the wake of the vehicle’s departure. Double tyre-tracks bit into the loose, dry earth, and Maggie said something decidedly unladylike.

“He must have hot-wired it.”

“Very observant,” Paul commented drily. “So now what do we do?”

“God knows. I—” She broke off suddenly as, from somewhere ahead of them down the track, a horn started to blare. The racket went on and on, until it was obvious that, somehow, the siren had stuck. And the noise wasn’t diminishing.

Paul looked at her. “He’s crashed it,” he said urgently. “Come on—we’d better get to him fast!”

It was less than two hundred yards to the spot where the jeep had left the road. It lay on its side halfway up an embankment, the two uppermost wheels still spinning drunkenly, and the horn still shattering the peace with its noise. Paul tried to unstick it while Maggie bent over the still figure of the would-be thief. He had been thrown clear when the jeep went over, and lay on the road with blood pouring from an ugly gash in his forehead. Crouching, Maggie felt his pulse, and called out in relief, “He’s alive.”

A sudden, shocking silence descended as Paul finally managed to free the jammed horn. Wiping his hands, he came down the bank to join her. “He’s indestructible. Are there any bones broken?”

“What do you think I am, Florence Nightingale?” she retorted. “You can judge as well as I can.”

Paul gazed at the unconscious man, assessing his likely weight. “We’ll have to carry him down to the cabin,” he said at length. “If he screams out in pain, there’s probably something broken.”

“Carry him?” Maggie looked appalled. It was a long enough trek back to the cabin without a burden.

“I don’t see that we’ve got any choice. We’ll wait a second, though, so you can catch your breath.”

She eyed him sideways. “You’re all heart.”

Back at the river, Jack was cleaning fish. After his trek into town he’d spent the afternoon at his favourite pastime, feeling the need to relax and shake off the pervasive influence of the city that always made him feel uncomfortable and vaguely depressed. He’d made a good catch, and now sat on the little wooden dock that fronted his own cabin, his bare feet dangling in the cool water while he worked away with his gutting knife. Beside him, Brandy yawned blissfully and sniffed at the fish, knowing she mustn’t touch, but aware too that there would be plenty of titbits for her later. Jack was whistling tunelessly through his teeth, enjoying the warmth and enjoying the invigorating swirl of the water around his tired ankles. Expertly, he scooped the innards from the catfish he held in his hand, and flicked them with a deft motion out into the river current. The fish-gut floated for a few seconds as the race of the water caught it, then bobbed away rapidly downstream. Jack was by now busy on another fish, and so he did not see the sudden agitation of the water around the drifting detritus, a churning and threshing that had nothing to do with the current. When the fish-gut disappeared, it happened so quickly that it would have been impossible for any observer to see exactly what had come up from the river’s depths and snatched at the morsel. Jack went on with his work, still whistling, unaware of any disturbance. But Brandy was more alert. She suddenly got to her feet, hindquarters quivering as her hackles rose, and a low, threatening growl coming from her throat.

Jack stopped what he was doing, the knife poised in mid-air as he stared in surprise at his dog. Her teeth were bared now, and she was staring fixedly at a spot somewhere near the middle of the river.

“Hey, what’s got into you?” Jack grunted. “It’s just the river out there, same as always. I swear, I think you’re getting senile, girl. Soft in the head!”

Brandy continued to growl, taking not the least notice of him, and with a sigh Jack scooped out another wad of fish-gut and tossed it into the current. Then he dug the point of his knife into the wooden dock post at his side, and stiffly bent forward to start washing the gutted fish in the water at his feet. And then he stopped, staring. The look that came over his face was one of puzzlement, and suddenly he winced as if with pain. Travelling down to his feet, his eyes widened in shock and appalled disbelief.

Around his ankles, the water was churning. Bubbles that were not white but red—red—erupted on the surface. And streaks of crimson were beginning to flow downstream from his feet, mingling with the eddying water.

With a suddenness that broke like an explosion on the quiet afternoon, Jack screamed. It was a scream of pain—of agony—and he went on screaming, his voice getting higher and more panic-stricken with every breath. Beside him Brandy was barking in a series of maddened, high-pitched yelps, adding a counterpoint to the hideous shrieking that now rang out over the river.

CHAPTER 4

Maggie stood in Paul’s sitting-room, flexing stiff muscles and staring at the large and ferocious-looking barracuda that hung, stuffed and mounted, on the wall above the mantel. Below it, ranged along the mantel like trophies of a more bizarre contest, were the bottles that Paul had bought from Jack earlier in the day. She noticed them, smiled wryly and moved on round the room, taking it all in.

From the next room, Paul called out, “There’s no way we’re gonna get this guy down to town without your jeep.”

It was an obvious statement. The effort of bringing him down this far had almost killed them both, and Maggie certainly wasn’t prepared for another ordeal like that one. “Then where is the nearest help?” she called back. “He might have a fractured skull, or something.” Absently she picked up a framed photograph from the table, turned it over in her hands. Paul’s voice floated through the open door.

“We’ll have to get him to the dam. There’s usually a ranger there.”

Maggie was gazing at the photograph, which depicted a small, freckle-faced girl, proudly displaying a T-shirt with the legend LOST RIVER inscribed across the chest. Her face was wreathed in a broad smile, and she held an oar in her small hands.

“Did you hear what I said?” Paul shouted.

Maggie came out of her reverie. “Huh? Oh—yes. How do we get there?”

Paul came into the room, saw her, and crossed to take the picture, quite gently but firmly, from her hands. Putting it back in its place he said, “On a raft.”

He started for the front door, and Maggie followed him. “A raft? Don’t kid around! How do we get there?”

Paul grinned over his shoulder at her. “Who’s kidding? Come around the back, and you’ll see.”

Maggie stood behind the cabin, gazing in astonishment at the crude yet sturdy wooden raft that had been propped up against the back wall. Paul seemed amused by her surprise.

“It doesn’t look much, but it’s tough enough. I read my daughter Huckleberry Finn last summer, and she got sort of carried away with the idea. Wanted to light out for the territories. I didn’t want to disappoint her altogether, so we did this between us for a compromise.”

Maggie had to admit that it was a pretty good job, and commented, “It looks authentic.”

“It is. Cut the logs ourselves, and didn’t put a single nail in her. It’s all leather lashing.”

Maggie nodded, walking round the raft to see it from all possible angles. Then she asked, “Where’s your daughter now?”

“Summer camp, on the other side of the dam.” As if he wanted to change the subject, Paul added quickly, “Come on, we’re wasting time. Help me get it down to the river, then I’ll heave the old guy on to it and we can get started.”

Pulling and heaving, they dragged the raft, which was surprisingly heavy, to the water’s edge, and Paul made it fast. “Stand back,” he said as they pushed it, tilting, over the edge of the bank, “When we let go, it will make a hell of a splash.”

The raft hit the water with a wet thump, sending a cascade of silver droplets back on to the grass. It bobbed and rocked, but stayed afloat.

Maggie watched it for a few seconds. “How sturdy is this thing?”

Paul shrugged. “We never tried it before. My daughter is afraid of the river.”

“Well,” Maggie said resignedly, “I suppose I’m just going to have to be a guinea-pig. You get the old guy—I’ll hop on and see whether it’s sink or swim time.”

The sun was beginning to slide slowly out of the sky as the raft with its three people on board glided downriver with the fast-running current. On either bank, trees stood in silhouette with the approaching dusk, and as the colour drained from the sky the whole river vista began to take on an alien and faintly malevolent look.

Kneeling on the back end of the raft, the pole in his hands cutting through the water with smooth, sweeping motions, Paul kept his eyes fixed on the curving race of the river ahead, mentally calculating how long it would take them, at this speed, to reach the dam. Poling the raft wasn’t entirely necessary; it would have made reasonable headway alone on the current, but the action, as well as keeping their course straight, also gave him something to do. Simply sitting, he felt helpless.

The bearded man was now conscious. He had come round shortly after they loaded him on board their craft and shoved off, and now he was propped in a semi-sitting position, his hands tied to prevent any further violent outbursts. Maggie sat close by him, watching him anxiously, but for all the reaction he had shown since regaining consciousness she might as well have not existed. He simply sat, staring blankly out over the water like a retarded child.

After a while Maggie turned to Paul, her face uneasy. “I wish he’d say something.”

Paul glanced at the motionless figure beside her. “He’s taken some hard shots. He seems kind of dazed.”

She nodded dubiously. Then, “Who do you think he is?”

“He’s a goddamn nut case, that’s who.” Paul grimaced. “Look at him.”

“I’m trying not to. He just stares—it’s giving me the willies. How far is it now to the dam?”

Paul had just worked that out. He said, “I don’t think we can make it before it gets dark. We’ll have to camp somewhere and go the rest of the way in the morning.”

“We have to spend the night with him?” She looked again at the bearded man, and suppressed an unpleasant shiver.

Paul sympathised—the prospect didn’t appeal to him either, under the circumstances—but there was nothing he could do. “I don’t see how we can avoid it,” he told her. “I don’t relish the idea of trying to guide this thing downriver in the dark.”

Resigned, she nodded briefly and turned her attention back to the river. Scanning the bank ahead, something caught her eye. She was about to draw Paul’s attention to it when the faint sound of a dog barking drifted up to them from a little away ahead.

Instantly Paul looked up, frowning, and she said, “What’s that?”

“Jack’s dog.” Now Paul was looking distinctly uneasy. “His place is set back in the woods up there.”

“Is it always so ferocious?”

The raft was slowing fractionally as he stopped poling. “You know,” he said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her do more than roll over and beg for food. We’d better take a look.”

The dock was in sight now, and Brandy was a small, barely distinguishable brown and white spot on the wooden boards. She was running back and forth, and her hysterical barking echoed eerily across the river. Guided by the pole, the raft started to curve out of the main stream, and now they could see Jack’s cabin standing alone at the edge of the tree-belt. But there was no sign of Jack.

The raft bumped against the dock and Paul made it fast as Brandy rushed up to them, paws scrabbling on the boards in her frantic haste. The barking dropped to an urgent whine, and as Paul climbed onto dry land she tugged hard and insistently at the leg of his trousers.

“Easy, girl, easy . . .” Paul said absently, patting the dog as he gazed around. There was a pair of boots, instantly recognisable as Jack’s from their battered, well-worn but comfortable look, standing abandoned on the dock, and he frowned, puzzled. Why on earth should Jack leave his boots out here?

Then, behind him, Maggie said, “Paul. Look here.”

He turned. She had climbed up from the raft and was pointing down at something—a stain—on the dock boards. Still gleaming wetly, the stain was a dark reddish-brown, and from the single large patch two parallel trails led away from the dock, towards the darkening woods.

Paul stared down. “Blood . . . ?” It wasn’t quite a question, nor quite a statement; as though he knew the truth but could hardly bring herself to believe it.

Brandy suddenly started to howl dismally, and renewed her efforts to drag Paul by his trouser-leg. Gently disengaging her teeth he waved her on, and she darted away towards the trees, stopping after a few yards to look back and check that they were following. Filled now with an ugly sense of foreboding, Paul and Maggie hurried in her wake.

They skirted the cabin. Seeing the door standing open, Paul called out, but there was no answering response, save a fresh burst of barking from the frantic Brandy. The dog was on the edge of the trees now, looking like a little ghost against the dusky twilight secrecy of the leaves, and as they followed on she dived in among the foliage. Her barking echoed back to them and they started to run, anxious not to lose her. Up a slight bank, through the crowding press of trunks, until the trees gave way to a small clearing—

“Oh my God!” Maggie’s voice broke from her throat, harsh with shock, as they both stopped rigid and stared in horror at the sight before them.

Jack lay on his back in the clearing. His face had turned a hideous blue-grey shade, and his mouth was fixed open, as though emitting a soundless scream of protest to the indifferent trees above him. His eyes bulged, glaring lifelessly upwards. But, ghastly though the sight was, it was Jack’s feet, not his face, that held Maggie’s and Paul’s devastated attention.

Or, rather, the place where Jack’s feet should have been. For, protruding from the legs of his trousers were nothing but stumps—chewed, bloody and raw stumps, the white glimmer of jagged bone showing through the gory pulp that was all that remained of his ankles. Dark, moist redness soaked the ground around them, and Maggie felt her gorge rise almost uncontrollably.

Moving like a very old man, Paul had forced himself to go forward and examine the body more closely. His voice was faint, strained, barely recognisable.

“He must have dragged himself this far . . .”

“But his feet.” Maggie turned away, revolted. “They’re gone . . .”

“He bled to death.” Paul still stared at the corpse, but he was beginning to tremble.

She tried to set her spinning mind to rights, looked desperately for some small piece of sanity to hold on to. “What—what could have done it?”

“He was—I don’t know.” Paul shook his head, unable to say any more, and she went forward to touch his shoulder in an awkward gesture of compassion. “I’m sorry . . .”

Abruptly he turned away from her, but not before she had seen that he was crying. “I’ll get a shovel,” he said, forcing himself to sound as matter-of-fact as he could. “He—he wouldn’t want to be buried in town.”

He walked away, and Maggie was left standing in the clearing with only the low-pitched and utterly miserable whining of Brandy to break the silence.

Lost River Summer Camp was a hive of activity. Small girls in bright swimsuits, like a swarm of vivid bees, had congregated around the river-bank and their voices rang out happily over the water. Some of them were actually swimming, determined to improve their skill in the water, while others watched and urged them on, or merely sat around in the warm, late sun.

On a small jetty at the river’s edge, one little girl sat alone, peering down into the water, one foot dangling just above the surface hesitantly. Her face was troubled; she seemed to be lost in a daydream of her own, and when Laura, one of the teenage supervisors, came up behind her and spoke, she jumped.

“Suzie?” Laura smiled down at her. “What’s the matter? Don’t you want to go in the water?”

Suzie Grogan—Paul’s daughter—shook her head, her freckled nose wrinkling. Laura sighed, but kindly. “There’s no need to be scared, Suzie,” she assured the child. “You just have to swim out to the marker and back. You’ve probably swum twice that far in a pool.”

Suzie gazed out at the marker buoy, and shook her head.

Laura tried again. Maybe reminding her of the idea of team spirit would help. “If you don’t pass your solo swim, you can’t get your Water Scout badge and help your squad.”

“I don’t care.” The answer was emphatic, uncompromising.

Laura squatted down beside the small girl, looking at the river with her. “What are you afraid of, honey?”

Suzie turned wide, blue eyes solemnly to her and said, “Things.”

“What things?”

Suzie shrugged. “Things in the water. Things they don’t have in swimming pools.”

Laura couldn’t help smiling. Obviously the child had been watching too many late movies. “Like sea monsters?” she said. “There’s only a few little fish in here, Suzie. They eat plants at the very bottom of the river and aren’t at all interested in little girls’ fingers and toes.”

The discussion was interrupted suddenly by a shout. “Dickenson!”

Laura sighed. She recognised the voice as that of Mr. Dumont, the head of the camp. He wasn’t exactly noted for his patience or subtlety, and for Suzie’s sake she hoped that he would not notice the child’s fear of the river.

She called out, “Over here!” and Dumont appeared from behind a gaggle of children. He looked faintly ridiculous in a pair of Madras shorts and a baggy safari jacket with an overlarge bowie knife in the belt—rather like a misplaced and overgrown Boy Scout—and he was carrying a sheaf of letters.

“Letter for you, Dickenson,” he said as he arrived, holding out an envelope. “That same boy.” His expression was one of barely concealed disapproval.

“Thank you.” Laura took the envelope. Then she saw that Dumont was looking hard at Suzie.

“Still haven’t tackled your solo swim, Grogan?”

Suzie’s cheeks reddened and she mumbled, “No, sir.”

“She’s afraid of things in the water,” Laura put in, not certain whether this would make Dumont’s attitude better or worse.

Dumont snorted. “Things! What things? Fish?” His eyes bored into Suzie, who blinked back nervously. “People eat fish, Grogan. Fish don’t eat people! You don’t want to let your squadmates down, do you? What squad are you on?”

“She’s with my squad,” Laura told him. “The Minnows.”

“Well. Do you want to be the one who costs the Minnows the camp competition? Of course you don’t!”

Suzie was by now looking thoroughly miserable, and Laura tried to come to her rescue. “She’s doing really well in the handicrafts, Mr. Dumont.”

Dumont turned the gimlet gaze on her. “Handicrafts? Handicrafts don’t take any nerve, any intestinal fortitude. You know what that means, Grogan?”

“Yes, sir,” Suzie responded in a small voice. “Guts.”

“Right.” Dumont looked pleased; he had made his point. “Tell you what,” he added generously, “I’m taking some across to the new resort tomorrow to be in a television commercial. If you do your solo swim, you can be in it too.”

Suzie frowned. “I don’t want to.”

“Nonsense. Everybody wants to be on television.”

Suzie’s mouth pursed stubbornly, and to avoid any further argument Laura asked quickly, “Is there any mail for her?”

Dumont flipped through the sheaf in his hand, then shook his head.

“Nope. Skunked again, Grogan.” He started to move away, then stopped, looked back and pointed at the child. “Guts.” he said emphatically, and walked on.

Suzie turned her face back to the river, biting her lip. Laura crouched beside her again. “Your dad hasn’t written to you, has he?”

The little girl shrugged, then hung her head so that Laura shouldn’t see her face. Laura put an arm round her small shoulders.

“C’mon, honey, let’s go inside. Maybe we’ll have you try the swim tomorrow with an inner tube.”

Wordlessly Suzie rose, and as they walked away Laura felt an overwhelming wash of sympathy.

CHAPTER 5

The scream cut through the night and set the walls of the cabin rattling. Distantly an owl hooted as if in answer, and a moment later a light came on in the adjoining room. From the doorway Maggie could see the bearded man in the moonlight that filtered in at the window. He was tied down to the couch, but he was wide awake—and still yelling.

She ran into the room. “Easy, now. Easy.”

His terrified eyes met hers, and he seemed to relax a little. At least, the screaming stopped. Suddenly he tried to raise his head closer to hers, and said clearly, “Razorteeth!”

She drew back slightly. “What? What’s Razorteeth?”

Ignoring her question, he gabbled, “Did you drain the pond? Tell me, please!”

“Yes,” she said, “We found a—”

He interrupted her with a long-drawn wail. “You let them out!” And he started struggling, fighting against the binding ropes until they cut into his skin.

Maggie was thoroughly alarmed by this time. “Let who out—?” she started to say bewilderedly, and at that moment Paul came in, dressed only in his underpants.

“You okay?” He was bleary-eyed. “What’s he doing?”

Maggie didn’t answer him. She was still trying to get some sense out of the man on the couch. “Who did we let out?” she demanded of him. “Was it a young couple?”

He shook his head, jerking it from side to side, and moaned, “You don’t know what you’ve done! Untie me, you’ve got to untie me.

Paul strode across to the couch and grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him the way a dog shakes a rat. “The question is what you’ve done, mister! What happened to those kids?” He finished the question with a final, vicious shake, and the man seemed to become hysterical.

“You don’t know!” he babbled. “They’ll breed like flies—there’ll be no way to stop them—”

“Talk sense, dammit!” Paul grabbed him again. “Those kids—”

Maggie put a restraining hand on his arm. “Paul, don’t—” and the man cried out, “They’ll kill me! They will. I won’t talk!”

“The hell you won’t!” Paul raised a hand to strike, but Maggie shouted to him to stop and made him hesitate. Then, with a grunt of disgust, he released the man. “Okay, my friend. They’ll sweat it out of you in town.” He turned and went back to his room, and Maggie looked at the bearded man, who was now bug-eyed with a weird blend of terror and confusion.

“They’ll kill me.” His voice was quiet now, as if with shock. “They’ll kill all of us. They will.”

Sighing, she followed Paul.

He was back in bed, sitting up, sipping from his ever-present canteen. Maggie stood in the doorway. “He thinks somebody’s going to kill him.”

Paul wiped his mouth. “He’s right. I am, if he steps out of line.”

Her throat was dry, but she felt an overwhelming need to smoke. “Have you got any cigarettes?”

He shook his head. “I quit a year ago. It interfered with my drinking.”

“Oh.” She paused, then, “Can I come in for a minute?”

He gestured. “Sure.”

She sat down on a corner of the bed and he offered her the canteen. Shaking her head, she asked, “Did you start drinking before or after?”

Immediately his eyes were wary. “Before or after what?”

“Your wife left you.”

He let out his breath sharply and she could see he was angry. “What sort of a question is that?” he demanded. “Look, I’m not one of your lost people—”

“Missing people. I’m sorry, I was just interested.”

“Don’t be,” he snapped. They were both silent for a while, then suddenly he said, “How did you know she’d left me?”

Maggie shrugged. “Lucky guess. If she had died, you’d have pictures of her up in your cabin.” She shifted, then rose. “Mind if I sit next to you?”

“Go ahead.”

She moved until she was beside him, and stretched her legs out along the bed’s length. He put the canteen down. Now that he’d started to tell the story, there seemed no point in hiding the rest of it. Thoughtfully, he said, “When she left she said she couldn’t stand the sight of me.”

Maggie decided against making any noises of sympathy; he was the type of man who would only be irritated by them. “How long were you together?” she asked.

“Ten years.” There was a hardness to his tone now that she suspected had taken much time and practice to acquire; a busted marriage, whatever the feelings of the parties involved, couldn’t be easily forgotten. “She was seventeen when we eloped in her father’s car.” He laughed, humourlessly. “We thought we had the world by the balls.”

“Where did you live?” Maggie was aware that she was maybe asking too many questions, but her curiosity had been aroused and she really wanted to know.

Paul didn’t seem to mind the probing. “We lived in town,” he replied. “I worked at the smelting operation downriver at the quarry.” Maggie had by now moved even closer, but he didn’t seem to mind that either. “Then the government closed us down. Said we were killing too many fish. They bought the land cut-rate, gave it to the Army, and the Army sold it to some resort outfit. Somebody must have made a bundle somewhere along the line.”

She didn’t make any comment, and after a few moments he turned to look at her. Instantly she smiled and said, “What’s wrong?”

“Huh?” Paul looked at her blankly, and she laughed.

“You’re so tense.”

Paul felt suddenly uncomfortable, and shrugged. “I guess I’m not used to being around people.”

Softly, Maggie said, “That’s obvious. I’ve been trying to hint my way under the covers for five minutes now.”

Paul was nonplussed by that bald statement. “Jesus—” he said, sounding almost unnerved. “You’re really something! I bet you got an A in assertiveness training.”

“Look,” Maggie told him, “I’m too freaked out by all this to be alone tonight, and it’s either you or Silent Sam out there.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Thanks!”

“I could really use the company.”

A dozen different retorts were on the tip of Paul’s tongue, but somehow it didn’t seem worth saying any of them. Christ, he was still a man, wasn’t he? And here was a good-looking woman offering herself to him on a plate—he’d be a damn fool to look the other way, however ironic it all seemed.

With a sigh that had an element of defeat in it he pulled back the covers and Maggie slid into bed beside him. For a moment they sat awkwardly, neither knowing quite what to say, or if they should say anything at all. At last Paul reached out and doused the kerosene lamp. In the new darkness he felt Maggie’s warm body move against him, and cautiously he reached out a hand to slide it round the contours of her waist. Together, they slid down under the blankets.

The following morning found Paul and Maggie back on the raft, resuming their journey downriver to the dam. Again, for their own safety as well as his, they had tied the hands of their unwilling companion, who sat in his place as before, staring out over the sliding water. This time, though, there was a sullenness about him—now that his shock had largely worn off, his mind was more coherent and it was clear from his look that he was determined to be as unco-operative as possible.

As well as the bearded man, they had taken on another passenger. Brandy, Jack’s dog, crouched miserably at one end of the lashed logs, occasionally craning her head to look down into the river, and sometimes giving what seemed to be a nervous shiver. She was still mourning Jack and, knowing her as he did, Paul suspected that her grief would live as long as she did. They had managed to get her to eat a little food early in the morning, and to follow them when they left. Next to Brandy, Paul sat, feeling too lethargic to pole the raft on its way. His tackle box lay against his hip, and as they drifted on he opened it, took out a fresh whisky bottle, and carefully refilled his canteen. Maggie watched him, but made no comment as he tipped the canteen to his mouth and swallowed several times in quick succession. For a moment their eyes met and there might have been a challenge in Paul’s glance, but seeing that she was showing no disapproval, he let it go.

Maggie turned round and leaned over the side of the raft, letting her hand trail in the murky water. It felt cool, refreshing . . . for half a minute she watched the little curdling bow-wave left behind her palm as the raft sailed on. Something brushed against her thumb like a tiny caress, caught momentarily then swept on. Weed, or something. Her fingers dabbled, like bait on a fisherman’s hook . . . then her thoughts were interrupted by Paul’s voice.

He had set the canteen down, and was glowering at the bound man at the other end of the raft. “Okay,” he said decisively, if a little tiredly, “Now, my friend, we’d better get down to business.”

The man glared back, silent.

“Number one,” Paul pointed, “What happened to those kids?”

No answer.

“All right. Try number two. What were you doing up at the Army site?”

Still not a word. But now the man was watching Maggie, looking at her hand in the water with a faint but increasing mingling of fascination and horror.

Paul sighed, making himself more comfortable. “We’ve got all morning, pal,” he said in the kind of tone that suggested his patience had a long way to go before it ran out. “Try this—”

He was interrupted at that point by a harsh croak from the man. “Stop that!”

Maggie looked up in astonishment, her hand still trailing. “What?”

The man was pointing at her now, growing more agitated with every moment. In the middle of the raft, Brandy had suddenly risen to her feet, her lips drawn back over her teeth, and was starting to snarl softly. Her claws clicking and scrabbling on the wooden logs she moved to the edge of the raft, looking out into the water, and the snarling turned into a thick heavy and menacing growl.

Paul said, “What the—” and Maggie demanded, “Stop what?”

“Your hand!” The man was almost as agitated as the dog. “Take your hand out of the water, for God’s sake!”

Brandy barked suddenly, a harsh challenge, and Maggie pulled her hand clear of the river. She felt suddenly unnerved, and in the abrupt silence that followed the outburst of the man and the dog she asked, “What’s wrong with the water?”

Again, there was no reply. The bearded man just went on staring at the place where Maggie’s trailing fingers had been, as if waiting for something to happen.

Paul cut in. “Since you’re talking this morning, buddy, how about a name at least?”

The man turned frightened, faraway eyes on him and said absently, “Hoak. Dr. Robert Hoak.” His voice had a certain dignity as he repeated the words.

Maggie, however, wasn’t interested in names. Brandy had begun to snarl afresh, and she said urgently, “What is wrong with the water?”

Slowly Hoak turned his face towards her and regarded her with an awful solemnity. As if choosing his words very carefully, so that their simplicity might have maximum effect, he said, “The water is full of carnivorous fish. Piranha.”

Paul’s eyes rolled upwards in exasperation. “Oh, Christ!”

Maggie, however, forestalled his anticipated outburst. “Wait a minute, Paul,” she said. She turned to Hoak. “Piranha, in here? How’d they get in?”

An utterly humourless smile crept across Hoak’s features. “You let them in when you drained the pond at the test site. If you hadn’t been in such a hurry—”

“You might as well be talking about giant cockroaches!” Paul exploded. “Piranha! I’ve never heard such—”

“Paul.” Again Maggie tried to persuade him to at least listen to what Hoak had to say, but he went on, disregarding her.

“Look—Piranha are tropical fish; this is cold mountain water. They wouldn’t last a minute!”

Brandy barked again and started to paw the raft as though preparing to jump into the water. Maggie took hold of her collar, and her face was uneasy as she remembered just why the dog had come with them in the first place. The sight of old Jack, lying dead in the woods with only those grisly, mutilated stumps where his feet had been came back to her in a vivid and unwanted flash. Something had killed him, and neither she nor Paul had been able to come up with any sane answers, as yet. And there was certainly something in the old story about animals being more sensitive to danger than humans. Again she looked at Brandy, who had stopped barking but was crouched on the logs, hackles up, and growling savagely at the water.

Suddenly she felt cold, despite the heat of the day. From being a calm, peaceful friend, helping them on to their destination, the river had become a thing of malevolence—unknown, secretive, treacherous. She knew then that she was frightened.

“What about Jack’s feet?” she asked softly. “And the skeleton in the pond . . . ?”

Paul thought about this for a moment, then rounded on Hoak again. “What were piranhas doing in that pond?”

Hoak held out his bound hands. “Untie me.”

Angered, Paul lunged forward and caught hold of him. “What if I dip you in the water a bit first, Doc? See if you’re making the whole thing up or not?”

Hoak turned white—but before he could protest Brandy barked again, and this time she wouldn’t stop. Her body sank lower until she was crouched snakelike on the logs, snarling and yapping furiously. Her haunches tensed and her body quivered. Paul shouted at her to stop barking, but she ignored him.

Now her whole body was coiled like a mainspring—and before either Paul or Maggie could do anything to stop her she had leaped forward into the racing river.

“Brandy!” Paul’s voice was whipped away on a sudden gust of wind that sprang seemingly from nowhere. The dog was swimming strongly towards a particular place in the river—the spot she had been watching. And suddenly the water around her churned with shocking abruptness into a welter of foam.

Brandy barked, stopped swimming and began to snap ferociously at the water by her face. She thrashed, almost sinking under the surface but appearing again—and then Maggie saw that the water round her was reddening.

She screamed out, “No!” and as a counterpoint to her voice Brandy yelped. The yelp became a howl, and her snapping redoubled until she was at the centre of a frantically splashing maelstrom. Her howls rang in the ears of those watching in horror from the raft, and all around her the river’s surface was darkening, darkening, turning first scarlet and then crimson.

Maggie was never sure of the exact moment when Brandy’s cries of agony ceased, or the moment when the dog’s bloody body finally swirled down into the darkness of the river and was lost from sight. But for a while after she had vanished the water continued to churn, and now and then the “plop” of a fish—or something like a fish—breaking surface sounded among the gurgling noise of the water.

The raft sailed on. No-one—not even Hoak—could find a single word to say, until at last, when the scene of carnage was falling behind them, Maggie broke the silence.

“She—she attacked them. She knew what they were, and she attacked them.”

Paul’s face was strained and sick. Now, there was no denial he could make to Hoak’s story that would stand up, even in his own mind. “She saw them kill Jack . . .” he said flatly.

Hoak made no comment, but his expression was grim.

The water around the raft was still showing scarlet streaks as the current carried Brandy’s blood downriver. But it seemed that in her death-throes she had still been able to retaliate, for suddenly out of the swirling murk something that looked like the remains of a large fish rose to the surface and bobbed alongside them. Gingerly, fighting back a feeling of revulsion, Paul leaned out and scooped the thing onto the logs, where it lay like some macabre relic of a ghoulish feast.

The fish was nearly two feet long. Only the head was left, together with a few scraps of flesh that clung to the backbone. The dead eyes stared balefully back at Paul, and he poked at the head with a cautious finger.

“Jesus . . . look at the teeth!”

Twin rows of vicious little needles, red with blood, ringed the creature’s mouth. Those teeth were as sharp as knives—sharper, he remembered with a twinge of horror, thinking of Brandy’s appallingly rapid fate.

Maggie craned over to see. “Is it . . . ?” and Hoak spoke up.

“Serrasalmus Mutandis.” He too was regarding the remains of the piranha. “A brand new species.”

For a long moment Paul stared at him. Then, almost under his breath, he said, “Jesus God!”

It sounded like an admission of defeat.

CHAPTER 6

Further on upriver, Jim Blake was enjoying a pleasant morning. Expertly manoeuvring a small canoe towards a clorox bottle buoy moored out near the current’s centre, he turned his head to look at the small figure of his son, who sat in the stern finishing a can of soda. As the last drops trickled down his throat he carelessly tossed the can over the canoe’s side. It bobbed, glinting in the sunlight, for a few moments, then sank.

Jim slowed the canoe as he reached the buoy, caught hold of the bottle and started to pull up the net that was attached to it. The canoe lurched like a bronco, and he called back, “Lean back, Bobby, we’re tipping too much. And what did I tell you about throwing stuff in the water? If everybody did that, there wouldn’t be room for the fish!”

The boy grinned. “Okay.” He leaned back, and watched as his father hauled the net in. He was expecting to see what he usually saw—a good catch of fish wriggling and jumping among the green mesh. But, to the surprise of them both, the net was empty.

Jim examined it more closely, then held it out to Bobby. “Will you look at that! Full of holes.”

Bobby frowned. “What happened?”

“Beats me.” Jim shook his head in puzzlement. “The fella at the store said this thing could hold a twenty-pound catfish. Just look at it!” He was turning the ruined net over and over in his hands. Right now, it was holed big enough for a whale to get through, he thought.

“Maybe something cut through it?” Bobby ventured.

“There’s nothing in this river with that much bite. Nothing that I’ve ever come across. I think we just got sold a bill of goods on these nets.” He sighed, thinking of the work and money wasted. “Better check the other one.”

Picking up the paddle again, he propelled the canoe onwards down the river, to where a second marker bobbed in the current. While the little craft swung with the flow of the water, Jim leaned precariously out, thrusting his arm down into the river.

“Feels like its snagged on the bottom,” he grunted, pulling at the net underwater with no result. His arm was in almost to the shoulder, and as he tried to pull back to make a fresh attempt he found that his hand was caught in the snarling folds of the net. “Dammit, now it’s got me tangled!”

Bobby leaned forward interestedly. “You want me to help?”

“No, you’d better stay over there, and balance the canoe. Otherwise we’ll both tip into the river.” Jim was still pulling and tugging, more interested now in freeing his hand than in drawing up the net.

Bobby continued to watch, drinking from a second can of soda. “I thought you knew all about this kind of thing, from when you were a boy,” he remarked.

Jim grunted with frustration. “When I was a boy we made our own nets and made ’em right.” A pause. “Jesus! I think something’s caught in it . . . ouch!”

Bobby’s eyes widened as his father winced. “Did you get bit?”

“Sure felt like it. I gotta get loose from this—”

Even as he spoke, he felt a second nip on his arm—but this time, where the first had been like a small pinprick, the second felt like someone had scored a cutthroat razor along the flesh for six inches. He yelled out—and suddenly the water came alive around him. Churning, frothing, foaming into red bubbles, it erupted like a boiling cauldron with Jim’s arm like a stirring-spoon at the centre. Jim’s cry became a scream, and Bobby cried out in alarm as he too saw what was happening.

“Dad!”

“Stay back!” Jim shrieked through a daze of agony. “Stay back, or we’ll both go over!”

But he was too late. Bobby had already leaped up and was scrambling along the length of the canoe towards him. The vessel rocked wildly and started to tip, and Jim screamed again as his arm was shredded by what felt like a million knives, as blood flowed thick and curdling in the water and the churning reached frenzied proportions. He just had time to yell out, “Bobby—no!” before the canoe was rolling, rolling, hurling them both towards the swirling, bloody water . . .

Further on downriver, in the grounds of the Lost River Resort, Dumont, the head of the summer camp, was reviewing a squad of his charges who had been picked to take part in the TV commercial for the resort’s opening. Squinting at the hard blue of the cloudless sky, he reflected that they couldn’t have hoped for a better day for it, then he turned his attention once more to the gaggle of small girls before him.

“Okay, campers!” His voice had an authoritative satisfaction. “At thirteen hundred hours we muster in front of the bathhouse for the day’s shooting. We want to put on a good show—we want to display the winning attitude we try to breed here at Lost River. I think you all know your line by now, so let’s hear it.”

Twelve high-pitched voices piped up in response, “It’s great!” Somehow, it lacked a certain conviction—the girls sounded as bored as they felt by now with all this practice and no action. Dumont shook his head.

“Weak, that was very weak, campers. Let’s have some voice now, belt it out—”

“It’s great!” An improvement, but not much—and certainly not enough to satisfy the makers of the commercial. Dumont felt his patience beginning to ebb.

“I hand-picked you people for this mission. Don’t let me down!”

“It’s great!!”

Dumont sighed. “Well, better—but it still lacks that Lost River spirit, that Lost River pride! You’d better practise that now—practise till H-hour.” Giving a curt nod that was intended to imply his displeasure if they should fail him, he marched away. The children looked after him with wide eyes in which the beginnings of contempt were all too obvious.

Unaware of the children’s scrutiny, Dumont made his way over to where the early minutes of the commercial were already being filmed. The sponsors had picked an actor of small reputation and uncertain ability to do the talkover, and now he was standing before the cameras, flashing white teeth that must have cost a small fortune in dentistry bills, and doing his best to be confident, friendly and persuasive all together. Dumont lingered nearby, watching the proceedings.

“. . . Lost River is lost no more,” the actor was saying. “Yes, friends, you can be part of a modern ecological miracle! Acres and acres of reclaimed land nestle in a scenic mountain valley, site of the newly formed Lost River lake. You’ll find swimming, sailing, water-skiing, snorkling, skin-diving, shuffleboard—and just take a look at our beautiful marina—”

Dramatically he held out a hand, and the camera panned back to take in the view of the water spread out behind him. And there, right in the centre of the long-distance shot, was Dumont. He was standing staring, one hand behind his back while with the other he was absent-mindedly picking his nose.

Seeing him, the actor stopped dead, and the foghorn voice of Gardner, the resort’s owner and therefore the important noise on the site right now, rang out.

“Cut! Cut it.” A moment later the figure behind the voice stormed out of the centre of a small gaggle of people a few yards off. His loud red blazer almost seemed to march before him as he strode up to Dumont.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he barked, his face now almost the same hue as his jacket.

Dumont looked surprised and chagrined. “Me? Uh—I was, uh—watching.”

Gardner smacked the heel of one hand against his own forehead in a gesture of despair. It was either that, or thump the idiot. “We’re not ready for you,” he said in clipped, heavily emphasised syllables, as if talking to a retarded child. “We do this, we do the before-and-after on the smelting towers, then you. You’re standing in camera range, we got you in the shot.”

Understanding dawned, and Dumont said, “Oh.” Then, after a moment’s thought, “How did I look—?”

Gardner just stared at him. Then he snarled over his shoulder, “Whitney!”

A lackey in blue was at his side in less than five seconds. “Sir?”

Gardner kept his eyes on Dumont, as though he couldn’t quite believe that this was actually a human being he was dealing with.

“Would you escort this gentleman back to his little friends—and keep him there till we need him?”

“Yes sir.” Whitney almost, but not quite, jumped to attention. As he escorted the puzzled Dumont away, Gardner turned back to the camera crew and the actor, who was trying to keep in check a desire to laugh.

“Thank god the rest of the bozos don’t get here till tomorrow,” he said. “Okay—take it from the top, and we’ll see if we can manage to get it right this time.”

On the raft that still drifted downstream, Dr. Hoak was being subjected to a barrage of questions. At Maggie’s insistence (though he himself was none too sure of the wisdom of the idea) Paul had loosed Hoak’s ropes, and he now sat with stiff dignity at one end of the craft as it travelled on downstream. At the moment when Dumont was making a fool of himself at the resort some miles ahead, Maggie was staring at the doctor incredulously. Her voice was low. “You mean the government paid you to breed those monsters?”

Hoak nodded. “More than we’d ever have been paid for private work.”

“For raising fish?” Paul was looking over the side at the water passing rapidly beneath them, and he couldn’t get the memory of Brandy’s death-struggle out of his mind. That, and Jack . . .

“It’s more complicated than that,” Hoak told them. “It involved genetics, radiation, behaviour modification, selective breeding—you name it. They called it Operation Razorteeth.”

“What was it all for?” Maggie asked. Even the name of the experiment made her feel cold inside.

Hoak hesitated before replying, with a small, resigned smile, “To destroy the North Vietnamese river system, when the war was on. We were supposed to develop a strain that could live in cold water and that would reproduce at a greatly accelerated rate. They provided anything we needed, no matter what the cost.” He shrugged. “Then the war ended, and there wasn’t any need for them.”

“You sound disappointed,” Paul commented.

Hoak stared at the logs by his feet, his face expressionless. “They poisoned the water with our creation in it. All that work . . .”

“But some survived,” Maggie said darkly.

Hoak nodded, looking wistful. “We produced a lot of mutants. A few were resistant to the poison, they ate the dead and began to breed. Suddenly, there were hundreds of them, and still increasing.”

“Our tax dollars at work,” Paul cut in bitterly.

Maggie looked at him with a mixture of sympathy for his feelings and anxiety about the anger that still broiled inside him, threatening at any moment to explode from him like a volcano. “Well,” she said, “I suppose it’s no more astounding than the government spreading disease germs in the subway, or CIA prostitutes dosing their clients with LSD.”

“It was science,” Hoak said, as though that were excuse enough. “It was for the defence effort—”

“Defence my ass.” Maggie rounded on him. “You were going to put them in rivers where they could kill people!”

“I never killed—” Hoak started to protest, but she interrupted him, “Including civilians!”

“I didn’t want—”

“And little kids, swimming in the rivers.”

The scientist shook his head wearily. He seemed suddenly confused. “I never meant anyone to get killed. It was science—”

He was trying desperately to justify, to himself and them, the viewpoint which for so many years he had never questioned, and Maggie could see that his resolve was beginning to crumble. But Paul wasn’t paying attention. Something the doctor had said had struck an abrupt and appalling chord in his mind, and he was staring downriver as the truth dawned.

“Kids in the river—” he said, startling Maggie. “Oh God!”

“What’s wrong?”

He faced her, gripping her arm with a new urgency. “The dam! They’ve been letting water through every couple of days to keep the level steady on the new lake. The camp is there—the kids—my little girl, Suzie!”

Maggie felt her pulse lurch and begin again at a faster rate. The thought was just too hideous to contemplate. As Paul grabbed the pole and started to thrust the raft on faster, she turned to Hoak.

“Just—just how dangerous are these creatures?”

Hoak’s face had paled as Paul spoke, and it was clear that he was now downright scared. In a low, tremulous voice he said, “They kill more people every year than sharks do.” He paused, gazing at her hollow-eyed. “They attack anything that moves . . .”

CHAPTER 7

If Laura and Betsy, two of the Lost River camp supervisors, had had the least idea of the conversation that was taking place just a few miles upriver from their peaceful lake, it would have instantly wiped the smiles from their faces and replaced them with blind terror. They stood together at the water’s edge, watching their young charges (those who had not been detailed to trail with Dumont to the resort for the filming of the commercial) splashing about in the cooling shallows. Yelps and whoops of delight mingled in with the splashing as the children played impromptu games of tag or water-polo, the more expert swimmers having a distinct advantage over those who still relied on inner tubes to keep them afloat. Little feet and hands paddled busily under the surface, sometimes brushing a swirling strand of weed that tangled momentarily around a toe or finger before releasing its gentle grasp. Someone duck-dived; a stream of bubbles broke on the surface and for a few moments it seemed as though the diver was staying down too long for comfort. Then a small, wet head broke the water, laughing, and Laura laughed too. It did the heart good to see the kids enjoying themselves so energetically, she thought; so much more so when the presence of Dumont, with his endless militaristic games and moralising, was removed. This was what summer camp should really be all about.

She waded a little way into the water, letting the tiny wavelets lap refreshingly around her knees and digging her toes deliciously into the soft silt at the bottom. Beside her, Betsy checked her watch and sighed.

“They’ve had long enough. Better call them in, I suppose.” She sounded as reluctant as the children would feel. But duty was duty.

Betsy’s whistle shrilled, cutting across the clamour of joyful noise from the water, and immediately the campers stopped what they were doing and began slowly to wade or swim back to shore. Another of the supervisors had now come down to the lake’s edge to join them, and as the children came clambering out of the water the three girls called in their own squads to line up.

“Minnows over here!” Laura’s cheerful voice cried.

“Goldfish!” Betsy shouted, “Let’s go!”

“Guppies!” the third girl called. “Let’s have my Guppies!”

The Minnows, who consisted of a group of very young girls, mustered in a rough approximation of a straight line before Laura, and she looked them over. There, she noticed, was Suzie Grogan—and her swimsuit wasn’t even wet. Inwardly, Laura sighed. The child’s phobia about the water was something she simply couldn’t understand. Give Suzie a man-made swimming pool and she would splash around happily all day long. But faced with the lake, the river—any body of water that was natural and therefore might contain other forms of life than human swimmers—and wild horses wouldn’t make her go in. Laura foresaw further clashes with Dumont over the business of Suzie; the camp leader wasn’t exactly noted for his sensitivity, and to him one small girl’s irrational fear was nothing more than a show of obstinacy to be overcome by whatever means were necessary, force included. Laura felt desperately sorry for Suzie—she seemed to be an odd one out in more ways than one, and although she was reluctant to talk about it, Laura knew that she was bitterly unhappy about the situation with her father. He hadn’t written, hadn’t visited—Laura thought he was a pretty undesirable character anyway, for since he and Suzie’s mother divorced he had become a hardened drinker. Not a fit father, in fact, for any child. She knew she shouldn’t be judging Paul Grogan out of hand, but looking now at his daughter she couldn’t help a wave of anger and resentment rising within her at the man.

The Minnows were mustered now, and after a quick glance to make sure they were all present, Laura said, “Okay—buddy system, hold up your arms.”

The idea of the buddy system was that, for the duration of the camp, every camper should have a “special friend” who would be their prime companion, sharing their secrets, helping each other out. The system worked well enough, even if the friendships it generated were often somewhat false. Now the little girls were joining hands in twos, each pair holding up their clasped fingers. Suzie, Laura noted, was buddy with a girl called Darlene. They seemed to get on together well enough.

She glanced down the lines of the other squads marshalled at the water’s edge, then stepped back so that all the children could hear her.

“Okay, everyone—it’s ten thirty. You know what time that is?”

All down the lines faces fell, and most of the campers let out loud groans. Laura smiled dryly.

“That’s right, calisthenics.” She paused, waiting to spring her surprise. “But since Mr. Dumont is busy across the lake and can’t lead us, I don’t think we could do them right, do you?”

Hope sprang into their small faces. “No!” the kids chorused.

“In that case,” Laura was grinning broadly now, and exchanged a wink with Betsy. “You’ll just have to go back in the water for another hour!”

The answering cheer was deafening. Lines broke into chaos as, with a single mind, the children turned and scampered back towards the lake. Water fountained as the fastest runners leaped in, and within seconds a full-scale race was on to see who could get to the buoy that marked their boundaries first. Betsy strolled over to join Laura again, her eyes on the small, thrashing bodies paddling madly across the sunlit lake.

“Doesn’t look much like a race so far, does it?” she remarked with a smile. “Nobody stays in their lanes.”

Laura too was watching, affected herself by the air of joyful exuberance. “Who cares?” she said. “They’re having a great time.”

On the raft, Dr. Hoak was attempting to rationalise the hideous experiment that had led to the escape of the deadly fish. His forehead was creased in a troubled frown, and he had to keep talking, talking, explaining why he had done what he did, what it meant to him as a scientist. Maggie listened in horrified fascination; she found it almost impossible to believe that any human being with a conscience of any description could condone what Hoak had done, no matter what the reason. Paul, less patient, was tight-lipped and silent, grimly poling the raft along and inwardly thinking that he could break Hoak’s back as soon as look at him.

“It was pure research,” the doctor was saying now, in a flat, toneless voice. “No scrounging for grant money, no academic politics. You don’t know what that means to a scientist in my position.”

No one else spoke. Contempt hung like a tangible force in the air around him. Miserably, he continued, “I mean, we never thought they’d actually go through with it. If we had, well—but we never dreamed . . . It was such a wonderful opportunity, you see, all the funds, the equipment—”

This time Maggie couldn’t resist a sharp retort. “You fed them,” she accused. “You kept them alive.”

“I was continuing the experiment,” Hoak told her solemnly. “There was so much more I could do with the species, so much further I could take them.” Suddenly he stared at her as the meaning behind the look in her eyes dawned on him. “You don’t—you’re not holding me responsible for—” He stopped, and when there was no response he said, “You are. That’s incredible. My God, you’re blaming me!”

Paul felt his gorge rise. That this man could even try to justify what he had done, to wriggle out of the responsibility now that it had all gone hideously wrong, sickened him to the gut. Savagely, he said, “I think if you open your mouth again, I’ll stick this pole in it.”

Hoak looked as if he was about to protest at this, but, seeing Paul’s face, changed his mind and stayed silent. A flicker of real fear showed at the corners of his eyes.

Maggie was gazing ahead downriver, cupping a hand to her brow to shield the dazzling light of the sun. “Do you think they’ve opened up the dam yet?” she asked, voicing the thought they had both been thinking for some time.

“We can only hope,” Paul replied. And then, abruptly, he tensed. “What’s that?”

Maggie frowned, not understanding—but a moment later she heard it too. A small, thin wail of a voice, in the distance. It sounded like a cry of despair—or a cry for help.

Now even Hoak was listening, and moments later the three of them heard the voice again, more clearly.

“Daaaaady! Daaaaady!” The unmistakable voice of a child.

Paul cursed under his breath and Maggie, seeing a second pole lying on the raft, grabbed it and added her strength to Paul’s, propelling the raft along as fast as they could. Hoak knelt at the front of the raft, unable to help in any physical way but anxious to see the source of the distress call. Now the voice was calling again, yet more urgently, “Daaaaady! Help me, Daddy!”

“Oh, my God!” Maggie strained harder at her pole and the raft ploughed through the water, churning up a chaotic wake and bucketing like a bronco. The image of Brandy was fixed horribly in her mind; Brandy struggling as the piranha shoal swept over her, engulfed her, tore her flesh to bloody pulp. And now it seemed there was a human being in the water up ahead—a child, helpless and frightened. They had to reach him quickly, had to!

Suddenly Hoak let out a yell and pointed. “There! Up ahead!”

They saw him at the same moment. A boy, maybe twelve years old, sitting precariously on the upturned hull of a canoe that was settling lower and lower in the water, bobbing like a cork about to submerge. A criss-cross pattern of blood was running from ugly lacerations on his arms, and his face was stained with tears, reddened, and screwed up into a mask of shock and terror. Around him, like satellites of the overturned canoe, cans of soda floated on the eddying current. And all around the craft, the water was stained a dark, malevolent red.

“Daddy?” The boy had seen them, but his face was blank. “Help me, Daddy!”

Maggie cupped a hand to her mouth and called out, “Stay on top! Stay on top of the canoe! We’re coming!”

The water around the canoe splashed ominously, as though disturbed from beneath, and the canoe seemed to settle still lower. Maggie flashed a frightened look at Paul.

“It’s sinking, Paul, the canoe’s sinking!”

Hoak too was watching with horror as Paul and Maggie redoubled their efforts to speed the raft on. There were perhaps two dozen yards between them and the stranded boy now, but the canoe was still settling, and it was clear that at any moment it could give up the ghost and go under, taking its passenger with it.

Maggie felt as if her arms were about to fall out of their sockets with the strain. Her muscles burned, and her heart pounded both with effort and with the horrified thought of what could happen if they were too late. At her side Paul poled furiously. And now the bows of the canoe were starting to slip, to dip beneath the river’s disturbed surface, and the boy was sliding, slipping—

“Daddy!” The tremulous voice was almost breaking. “Help me!”

Hoak was crouched at the raft’s edge, desperation in his expression, one hand reaching forward as though to save the boy, though they were still much too far away to help him.

“Daddy?” Maggie felt sick with terror at the very sound of the boy’s cry. “It’s going under, Daddy, help me!”

At that moment something snapped in Hoak. Paul and Maggie would never know if it was genuine concern for the boy, or whether his submerged conscience had suddenly rebelled against his efforts to keep it down. But whatever his reasons, he acted before anyone could stop him. Launching himself from the platform of the raft, he dived into the river and began swimming strongly with the current towards the canoe.

Paul’s whole frame went rigid as he realised what Hoak was trying to do. The man was mad—and whatever he might have done, however much he was to blame for this horror, he couldn’t, mustn’t risk his own neck in such a grisly way.

“Doc!” he yelled despairingly after Hoak’s swimming figure, “Get out of there, don’t do it! Come back, Doc!”

Hoak either didn’t hear, or took no notice. He was swimming with powerful strokes, his head up, gasping for air between each splashing movement. And he was moving much faster than the raft, he was almost at the canoe. The boy was watching him bemusedly, tears running down his cheeks, but now he was silent. The canoe, lurched, tilted—and as it started its final slide down into the depths of the river, Hoak reached it. In one desperate lunge he grabbed the boy as the canoe slithered out of sight below the surface, and as it went Hoak went with it, sinking beneath the churning water with only his hands, holding the boy, clear of the river.

And as Hoak vanished, the water around the spot began to churn furiously. Maggie screamed, and both she and Paul saw the sudden swirl of red that broke surface, rising in a thick, viscous cloud like oil in the water. Bubbles foamed scarlet, and the renewed screams of the boy echoed Maggie’s as the thrashing water boiled madly all around him.

The raft sped on to the scene, almost running right over the struggling boy, and as Paul used the pole to swing it around. Maggie leaned out and grasped hold of the boy, hauling him aboard, where he sprawled on the logs, winded and shocked into silence. Above the water now Hoak’s empty hands were frozen into claws, as though the agony that racked his body as the invisible piranha attacked him had locked his muscles rigid and immovable. Paul shouted over to Maggie, “Get the Doc! Pull him in!” It was probably too late, he thought, but they had to try and save him after what he had done.

Maggie scrambled to the edge and took hold of the reaching hands. She yanked, hard, and the water thrashed anew as Hoak’s body rose from the river and slumped on to the raft. For a moment Maggie’s face was immobile as she looked down at the doctor, then it warped into a look of abject horror and revulsion, and her stomach heaved as she struggled to stop herself being sick on the spot.

Hoak’s clothes were a shredded mess of tatters, exposing the barely recognisable remains of the body beneath. Flesh was mangled, skin torn as if by the teeth of a ravening tiger; blood soaked every inch of him. His face was pitted with punctures and gashes, blood flowing over it to form a grotesque mask. Here and there a glimmering of ivory-white showed, where his limbs had been chewed through to the bone.

Maggie backed off, unable to look at the doctor and yet unable to tear her gaze away. Then she gasped, and hissed under her breath, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God—he’s still breathing! He’s still alive!” She wanted to retch, forced the spasm down.

At the other end of the raft Paul was holding the boy, who stared out over the water with a completely blank expression. Gently, Paul tried to draw him back out of his catatonic state by asking, “What’s your name?”

The boy continued to stare but did not answer. Paul stroked his hair awkwardly, trying to engender some sense of security, however small, into his frozen mind. “Do you remember your name?”

Maggie was now crawling across to join them, and she spoke softly to the boy. “Who else was with you? Who else was in the canoe?”

For the first time a semblance of understanding came into the child’s eyes, and when he replied, his tone was disturbingly matter-of-fact. “My Daddy,” he said. “He fell into the water.”

Maggie and Paul looked at each other. Neither cared to imagine what must have happened when the boy’s father went overboard. Neither of them liked to imagine what the boy must have seen.

Behind them, Hoak moaned, and Paul scrambled to his feet, balancing his way over the logs until he could kneel beside him. The shock of seeing the mangled state of his body stopped his pulse momentarily, but after Jack—who had been a close friend—it could have been worse.

The doctor was trying to speak, working his mutilated and distorted mouth, and Paul bent closer to listen. The smell of blood filled his nostrils in a choking wave as he put his ear close to Hoak’s face.

The doctor’s voice was no more than a toneless croak, as though his vocal cords were as mangled as the rest of him. “We knew they’d never dare to use them—it was research—pure research—”

Paul took hold of his shoulders, trying to be gentle yet desperate to get the information he so urgently needed. “Doc, you’ve gotta tell me more about them. You bred them, you trained them. What else can they do? And more important of all—how can they be stopped?”

Hoak struggled to answer him. But before he could speak, a new light appeared behind the agony in his eyes. It was a light of resignation, of certainty, of relief. A ghost of a smile worked its way onto his bloody lips.

“You’d be surprised . . .” he whispered softly. And as he stopped speaking, the life left his face, and his eyes became glass which stared unseeingly up at the sky.

Slowly, Paul rose. “Christ . . .” his tone was quiet. “He’s dead, Maggie.” Picking up his jacket he draped it over Hoak’s body, covering as much of it as possible both as a gesture of respect and so that they would not have to look at the gruesome sight of it. Then he went back to where Maggie was sitting, cradling the boy in her arms like a baby. Grimly, he gazed back towards the spot where the tragedy had happened. The river was calm there now, no trace of the churning and foaming that marked the passage of the deadly piranha shoal. Only a couple of tin cans and a styrofoam cooler bobbed languidly on the surface. To any casual observer, it would seem that nothing untoward had ever taken place.

Paul sat down heavily on the logs, too dispirited now to pole any more. “He just died,” he repeated. “Just died.”

“Did he say anything?” Maggie asked anxiously. “Anything of any use, I mean?”

Paul shook his head. He looked defeated. “No. Nothing at all.”

CHAPTER 8

At the Lost River camp, the assorted ranks of Minnows, Goldfish and Guppies were still making the most of their respite from Dumont’s eagle-eyed surveillance. Sunlight glittered like molten silver on the water of the lake as they swam, splashed and fooled around, droplets streaming from their small bodies, many of them with the makings of a good tan brought on by sun, wind and water.

On the shore, Laura sat on a sunlit patch of grass with her brown legs stretched out before her. She was keeping a weather eye on the children, but the main focus of her concentration concerned her conversation with Betsy—a conversation that centred around Suzie Grogan.

Laura had been working at Lost River for some time, and had seen previous summer camps, which Betsy, as a relative newcomer, had missed out on. And therefore Laura was well aware of the background from which Suzie came—and, particularly, the trouble she had had with her father. Now, she was in the middle of filling Betsy in on the details, to illustrate her point.

“Anyhow, it’s parents’ day, and Suzie’s father comes down to see her,” she was saying. “Well, he’s plastered. Same thing happened the year before, only this time Dumont tries to kick him out. Says he doesn’t want a dirty drunk upsetting all the kids.” She smiled faintly. “We ended up having to fish our fearless leader out of the river with boathooks.”

Betsy giggled, then stifled it. It wasn’t really a laughing matter, as it must have made poor Suzie feel pretty awful. Nonetheless . . .

“I’d have loved to see that one,” she said.

Laura was about to continue, to expand the saga of Paul Grogan’s misdeeds, when something tugged at her arm. Starting, she looked down to see the small girl called Darlene, Suzie’s buddy for the duration of the camp, gazing up at her with troubled eyes.

“Laura,” Darlene’s voice was as concerned as her face. “Laura, Suzie’s crying.”

Laura and Betsy exchanged a glance, and Laura said with a sigh, “What else is new? I’d better go and see what it’s all about this time. Watch out for my Minnows, will you, Betsy?”

Taking Darlene’s hand, she allowed herself to be led away from the lake shore to the river bank. There, all alone, Suzie sat hunched and waiflike on a wooden jetty. Leaving go of Darlene, Laura went to her and knelt down. Suzie didn’t want to look at her, but Laura could see the streaks of wet tears on her freckled cheeks.

“What’s the matter now, honey?” she asked consolingly. “You want to tell me?”

A shake of the head. Laura glanced up at Darlene, who said, “The other kids were yelling at her because she wouldn’t race. She’s afraid to put her feet in the water.”

The same story as before . . . Laura took Suzie’s unwilling hand. “Is that right, Suzie?”

A pause; then Suzie nodded.

“Well, I’ll try to get you out of the tube race if you want me to.” It was the only reasonable solution Laura could see under the circumstances; there was no need to upset the little girl unnecessarily. “Do you want me to?”

Another nod. Clearly Suzie wasn’t in the mood for talking.

Laura rose to her feet, and added reassuringly, “In just a few days you can go home and be where the only water is in your bathtub. You’re not afraid of bathtubs, are you?”

Suzie shook her head.

“Good. You can just stay out of rivers and lakes and oceans until you’re not afraid of them anymore. Listen, after lunch I’m off duty for an hour—would you like me to take you and Darlene over to look at the new resort?”

It was a tempting offer, and a very small smile crossed Suzie’s face just before she nodded. Having settled the matter to the best of her ability Laura walked away, and Darlene followed her a few paces, gazing back over her shoulder at the smooth-running river. Biting her lip, she said to Laura, “There’s nothing bad in the river, is there?”

Laura was amused by her show of doubt, but managed to hide it. “No, honey,” she replied. “Nothing bad. Just a few little fishes.”

Paul and Maggie had been trying to find something that would break the dreadful pall of silence. Since Hoak died they had been drifting slowly on, avoiding looking at the body under Paul’s now bloodstained jacket, anxiously watching the boy they had so dramatically rescued, who had withdrawn once more into his trance-like state, staring blankly ahead of him. After a while they had resumed the effort of poling, but still the silence between them remained almost intolerably tense. The trouble was, there was only one subject on their minds, and though neither of them had any desire to talk about it, there was simply no other option. And now they were going over the pitifully few facts they knew about the piranha, attempting to assess what—if anything—might be done to stop their bloody progress.

“So far,” Paul said, “We know that they can live in cold water—”

“And they seem to be moving downriver,” Maggie added.

“Right. And they’re big. From the size of the head of that one we pulled out, they must be at least two feet long, on average.”

Two feet. Not a monstrous size, by any standards, Maggie thought. And yet they had torn Hoak to shreds in seconds . . . and Brandy . . . and this poor child’s father, no doubt.

She cast a quick glance at the still corpse of Hoak. One hand, unnoticed by anyone, was trailing in the water like an ugly parody of a day-tripper dabbling a careless finger. Blood was still trickling from the wrist, snaking down the palm and either dripping through the minute gap between two logs or swirling away into the water from the tips of the dead man’s fingers. Maggie looked away again.

“We’ve got to find someone who knows how to deal with these things,” she said. It was an unnecessary statement.

Paul nodded agreement. “There’ll be a phone at the dam. We can call ahead, warn them. My God, I only hope we’re in time!”

Spurred on by the thought, they put their flagging energy into poling the raft along. Their speed increased fractionally—and then one of the logs, beneath Hoak’s limp, white hand, trembled briefly, as though a shock of some kind had just shuddered through it. The dead hand flopped in an almost lifelike gesture, then settled again, a new trickle of blood induced by the movement flowing down the palm and on to the raft’s surface. A few moments later the same log shuddered again, and it seemed that something was definitely stirring beneath it, pushing it against its lashing with some force. Hoak’s hand started to tremble—and then with an abrupt snapping noise, the leather lashing that bound the log to its fellows gave way. The log jumped, then detached itself from the main body of the raft and went whirling away astern, turning end over end with the force of the current.

“Hey!” Paul had seen the log go, and Maggie turned at the sharp sound of his voice.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the lashing’s working loose.” He started to advance towards the centre of the raft to investigate, but stopped as another log, on the other side; also broke loose and floated away in a swirl of water. This one was right by Maggie’s feet, and she was forced to jump aside, almost tipping herself into the river as she struggled to retain her balance. Her voice rose shrilly as she realised what was happening. These logs weren’t breaking free of their own accord—something was breaking the thongs that held them!

“Paul!” she shrieked, “Something’s under us, something’s doing it!”

All around the drifting raft the water was beginning to churn in a way that was now horribly familiar to them. Occasionally a brief flash of something shiny and scaly broke surface. And very, very faintly, below them, they could hear a tiny noise sounding like teeth . . . gnawing teeth.

“The blood—” Paul was momentarily frozen into immobility as the truth hit him. “It’s the blood—the Doc’s body, the blood is seeping through the cracks in the raft. They’re—they’re eating away at the lashings to get to him!”

Under the raft, unseen by Paul and Maggie but nonetheless hideously real, the piranha were indeed swarming. Like a flock of ravenous locusts—but a thousand times more deadly—they jostled and battered each other, teeth snapping at the wood of the raft, at the leather lashings, stirred to a frenzy by the sweet, tantalising taste of blood trickling down from above them. And any minute now, they would break through to their goal.

Paul was frantically scanning the bank, wondering if he could steer the raft in and reach dry land before the whole craft fell apart. Even as he was calculating, swinging the raft around to leave the main current, Maggie screamed again. The log on which she was standing was breaking away, dipping wildly under her feet. And below it, the water was thrashing wildly. “Paul! It’s coming apart!”

They had only one chance, and Paul made his decision in a split second. The damage was done now and the raft was too far gone for them to stop it disintegrating altogether—but if he could heave Hoak’s corpse over the side it might distract the insatiable piranha long enough for them to reach the safety of the bank. He rushed across to the body, his balance perilous on the collapsing raft, and started to push it to the edge. But suddenly the boy, who throughout all the furore had merely sat dazed and unmoving, came to life. Launching himself at Paul he grabbed on to Hoak and started crying out, “My Daddy, my Daddy!”

Paul tried to fend him off. “I’ve got to get rid of him!” he yelled. But the boy was almost like a piranha himself, holding grimly onto the corpse, and nothing Paul could do would shake him off. Over and again he cried, “No, that’s my Daddy!”

“Jesus!” Paul called out, “The kid’s flipped!” Desperately he gripped the boy by his shirt-front and savagely thrust him backwards, forcing him to release his hold on Hoak. It was cruel, but it was necessary. The boy sprawled, breathless, and Paul took the opportunity to heave Hoak over the side and into the river. Cold water splashed him as the body hit the surface with a slap, and then the water turned into a violent maelstrom as the piranha, seeing their quarry unexpectedly thrown to them, hurtled in for the attack. Brilliant crimson swirled nauseatingly as the snapping, fighting monsters covered Hoak like a vile living skin, their teeth ripping into the dead man’s flesh as they stripped him to a skeleton to slake their insatiable appetite.

Paul, on the raft, was grimly hanging on to the boy, who had recovered and was trying to jump into the river after the man he thought was his father. He struggled like a dervish. The raft was careening towards the bank, but more logs, their lashings now hopelessly mutilated, were breaking away, and the whole structure was on the point of complete collapse. The boy kept on screaming, “Daddy! Daddy!” as Paul held him back, but suddenly Maggie’s voice cried out, making him spin around.

“Paul!” She was stranded on two logs which had miraculously held together while those on either side of them had sheared away and were lost. And the thongs that held the two intact were themselves about to go.

Paul could see that she only had one chance, and it was a slim one. He yelled, “Jump, Maggie, quick!”, and even as he shouted the two logs started to come apart. Teetering, barely able to balance, she bunched her muscles and made a valiant leap for Paul’s section of the raft, the section that was still—though only just—holding together. For a terrible instant Paul was certain that her strength would not be sufficient, that she would fall into the roiling water, but her feet found the hard surface and she fell on her knees to safety.

Another log broke away, and the entire craft trembled. Paul yelled, “They’re attacking again! The blood’s soaked into the wood, they won’t stop! We’ve got to get to the shore!”

He was poling frantically, and though the raft was narrowing the gap between itself and the bank, there was still a way to go. In a desperate attempt to buy a few more precious seconds, Maggie snatched up the bloodstained jacket that had been used to cover Hoak, and tossed it into the river. The water erupted volcanically around it as the piranha launched themselves on this momentary diversion. But the raft was still disintegrating—they had a matter of seconds to save themselves.

Paul dug deep with his pole, forcing every ounce of muscle-power in his body into the motion. Another log, then another, spun and swirled away, and now they were standing on just two logs, from which the leather thongs were gradually unravelling.

“Jump!” Paul screamed. The ruined raft was swaying towards the bank, but an eddy of the current could easily carry it a few feet out again, and there would be no second chance. Almost without thinking Maggie flung herself towards the bank, and, hurling the pole aside, Paul snatched up the boy and jumped after her. Earth and grass came spinning to meet him, edged by the menacing swirl of water, and then the breath was knocked out of his lungs as he and the child landed heavily on solid ground.

Beside them, Maggie was picking herself up. She was breathing heavily, partly from exhaustion and partly from realisation of the narrowness of their escape. If they had hesitated just for a moment, they would now be struggling in the river while the piranha shoal came racing in to attack with their searing razor teeth. She glanced out towards the water, and saw that it was now quiet and innocent-looking, only a few individual logs drifting lazily downstream. Biting her lip hard, she closed her eyes to muster her self-control, then opened them again, aware that at last her taut muscles were beginning to uncoil.

Paul was on his feet again, and she asked him, “How far is the dam?” Thoughts of the children and the summer camp were still foremost in her mind.

Paul scanned the scrubby landscape. “Close,” he said. “I think it’s close. I know the direction—I’ll run ahead. We can’t afford to waste any time. You’d better follow on with the boy.”

She nodded agreement, and watched him as he set off at a loping run towards the boundary of the untidy woodland that flanked the river. He disappeared into the trees, branches and undergrowth cracking and crackling as he pushed through, and she sank down on the bank again to get her breath back properly before following. Under her breath, she murmured desperately, “Dear God, let him be in time!”

CHAPTER 9

Ranger Parker hadn’t really got any complaints about his job. Sure, it got boring at times, when no one came around and there was sweet damn all to do for hours on end. And he wasn’t too keen on being stuck in the dam control tower when the weather was like it was now. But it all had to be watched, all had to be checked . . .

He was thankful for the small colour TV that sat in one corner of the tower’s control room. Given the opportunity, Parker could probably have devoted his life to the watching of television, and he wasn’t over-particular about the programmes, either. At the moment he was engrossed in a third-rate soap opera, dividing his attention between the screen, a control panel opposite, and a large salad sandwich with an over-generous helping of mayonnaise. Beyond the television, through the wide vista of the plate-glass window, he would have had a magnificent view of the dam, had he chosen to pay it any attention. The wide, quiet pool formed by the dam wall glimmered with sunlight, the water below, where it led away towards the summer camp and that new resort was a steady and smooth glide.

Parker yawned. He couldn’t really be expected to take much notice of the beauties of the scenery. After all, he saw it all day and every day, and anything could become familiar enough to be dull. Reluctantly turning his gaze from the screen—where two actresses were hotly debating the moral question of adoption or . . . ?—and crossed to the instrument panel on the other side of the control room. He scanned, as he had done so many times, the gauge labelled “water level”, and scrawled a quick note on his clipboard. Getting a bit high. About time to let some of the buildup through to the resort. Screwing his head round so that he could see the TV screen once more, he started to move slowly along the line of switches on the panel, feeling blind for the one he needed. One, two, three—it was the fourth along, if he remembered aright. Briefly he dragged his gaze away from the TV to double-check, and saw that his finger had indeed come to rest on the switch marked Level Control—Open. Looking at the screen once more, he started to press the switch, but hesitated as a particularly dramatic moment in the soap-opera threatened to reach its climax. Parker’s finger hovered, but his attention was now wholly captured by the unfolding drama, and he wasn’t the kind of man who could concentrate on two things at once.

Even if he hadn’t been utterly glued to the TV, Parker would have had no way of knowing that at this moment Paul Grogan was crashing and stumbling through the woods beyond the dam, fighting the agonising muscular pains that shot through his exhausted legs, forcing himself on with the last remaining tatters of his strength. His face was bruised and scratched where he had blundered in his haste into tree-trunks and overhanging branches, and his eyes were staring with exhaustion and desperation. To his spinning mind it seemed that this ordeal was never going to end; that he would run and run for hour after endless hour, only to find that he was no nearer his goal than when he had set off. But he had to reach it, had to!

Without warning, he broke from the dense trees into a clearing more than a clearing, in fact, it seemed to be the edge of the wood. For a moment he was disorientated, his shoulders heaving as he stood still and tried to catch his breath. Then he realised that he was at the edge of the wood—and that not fifty yards away was the control tower of the Lost River dam.

His legs didn’t want to obey him. All they wanted was to sink down in a complete collapse on the soft turf beneath them. But with a vast effort of will Paul made himself move again, staggering towards the tower that loomed so close.

“If I give the baby up for adoption, no-one’ll ever know,” the voice of one of the soap-opera actresses declared from the TV set. She’d never win any Oscars, but then Ranger Parker wasn’t particularly discerning.

“Don’t you think he’ll be suspicious?” her companion asked. Parker, chewing now on an apple, watched intently, fascinated.

“I’ll tell him it’s Larry’s. Or Tom’s.”

“Tom is a priest, Rachel, you can’t do that!”

Unconsciously Parker nodded his agreement with that statement. It wouldn’t be right. Then, suddenly, he realised that he was getting too involved in this damn programme—almost as if it was all for real! Laughing to himself at his own foolishness, he remembered that he was supposed to be dealing with the dam’s water level. Time enough for TV when he’d done his job . . .

The two actresses were arguing furiously as he turned and looked again for the level switch. His hand reached out, touched—

At the same instant, the door of the control tower was flung open with a crash. For a second or two Parker didn’t register the intrusion; he thought the noise had come from the TV. But when someone hurtled across the room and grabbed hold of his wrist, wrenching him away from the level switch, he was so shocked that he yelled out, jumping like a jack-rabbit.

Inches from his own face he saw what looked like a madman, wide-eyed and panting, hardly able to speak at all as he tried to draw great, deep breaths. Parker goggled—then the stranger said, in a voice loaded with desperation and menace.

“Don’t open it! Whatever you do, don’t open it!”

Some time later, Paul and Maggie were standing with Ranger Parker at the water’s edge by the dam, watching as a convoy of army trucks bumped and jolted down the rough track towards them, kicking up dust like a mule-train. Bringing up the rear of the procession a jeep lurched, and behind the harrassed-looking driver sat two people; one, an efficient-looking and bespectacled dark-haired woman, the other an ageing man in the splendid uniform of a full colonel.

Paul had to give Parker his credit; once he had calmed him down and explained the situation, he had acted with commendable efficiency. Where a lot of men would have wasted valuable time arguing that Paul was a maniac, Parker had decided there was little to lose by giving him the benefit of the doubt, and had alerted the nearest Army HQ. The alacrity with which they had reacted told Paul that they knew far more about this situation than they were prepared to admit publicly, and he felt a resurgence of his old anger as he watched the convoy coming nearer and nearer. As the first in the line pulled up a few yards away, he felt Maggie squeeze his hand reassuringly. He tried to smile at her, but the result was bleak and half-hearted.

The jeep came to a halt, and immediately the colonel sprang nimbly out, the woman following him at a distance. He strode up to Paul and demanded, “Grogan?”

“That’s right.” Paul held his sharp gaze, his own eyes smouldering.

“Waxman. Colonel Waxman.” Peremptorily, the officer shook hands. “And this is Miss Mengers. She’s a scientist from the civilian side, and it’s her job to know about these things.”

Paul nodded to Mengers, who looked back at him doubtfully. Her expression was troubled.

Without any further preamble, Waxman turned to the soldiers in the trucks, and started barking orders. In less than two minutes the men had set up a contraption that looked faintly like a gibbet, with a pulley at the top. As they worked, Waxman turned again to Paul.

“Of course, we’re grateful you came to us directly, Mr. Grogan, but frankly I feel your story is nothing short of preposterous.”

His words were smooth enough, but Paul knew in his bones the man was lying. He was about to reply, but the scientist, Mengers, cut in, as though to back Waxman against any possible show of doubt.

“You realise that the piranha is a warm-water fish—and this is hardly the Amazon.”

Paul sighed, shoving his hands deep down into his trousers pockets. Levelly, but firmly, he said, “I told you on the telephone that these are mutations. They’ve already killed five people that I know of.”

Mengers looked chagrined, but she retorted, “Science fiction, Mr. Grogan. That’s just not possible.”

Waxman, meanwhile, was watching the setting up of the apparatus, and now he called out, “Ready with that bait, soldier?”

“Yes, sir!” A young, uniformed man snapped to attention, and Paul saw that two of his comrades were hauling a large haunch of some unrecognisable meat from one of the trucks. Waxman nodded approval.

“Then let her go, son.”

The meat was attached to a hook on the end of the pulley, and, after letting out a good length of slack, the soldier swung the haunch around his head like a hammerthrower warming up, and hurled it out into the water of the dam. It hit with a heavy splash, and promptly sank.

For a minute or so everyone watched in silence. Then Mengers said, “Actually, a piranha was once caught in a pond in Miami, Florida. 1972, I believe. But the Game and Freshwater Fish Commission poisoned the water and, of course, that was that.”

Maggie eyed her sidelong. “That was that, huh?”

The scientist shrugged. “Of course, the rumours persisted, but . . .” And her voice trailed off as Waxman interrupted, calling to the soldier at the pulley,

“Okay. Pull it in, son.”

The soldier began to reel in the line, which glinted with drops of water as it rose taut and shining from below the surface. Everyone’s attention was riveted now; Maggie bit her bottom lip and Paul felt his heart rate increasing uncomfortably. The rope rose—it was impossible to tell whether anything heavy still remained on the end—and then, abruptly, the hook came into view. Clinging to the hook were a single large bone and a few small scraps of fleshy sinew. Nothing else.

Paul heard his own breath leave his lungs in a rush, and he realised that he was actually relieved. At last, his story had been irrefutably vindicated. He looked at Waxman, and saw that the colonel’s face, under its tan, had paled by a noticeable few degrees. Maybe he had come here knowing more than he was prepared to admit, but nonetheless the confirmation had taken him aback.

Waxman sighed, and gestured to the soldier at the pulley. “Tell Sergeant Howco to start pumping,” he said flatly.

“Yes, sir.” Snapping briefly to attention again, the soldier ran off.

Mengers, the scientist, walked away from the edge of the water, her step slow and thoughtful. Now that her scepticism had been proved so spectacularly wrong, she seemed to have accepted her error without rancour, and was now thinking over what could be done about the situation. At length she spoke.

“We should be able to get them all in the same area.” And then, looking at Paul and Maggie in a way faintly reminiscent of a schoolmarm lecturing a none-too-bright class, “They travel in schools, you know. We’ll be using a double dose of our most effective poison.”

Paul treated her to a cynical glance. “Came pretty well prepared, didn’t you?” And Maggie asked, “Won’t it ruin this section of the river?”

Waxman, overhearing, said, “Sometimes it’s necessary to destroy in order to save.” The comment sounded pat, and Paul turned on him.

“What if they realise they’re being slaughtered and head back up the river?”

Mengers stared at him as if he were mentally subnormal. “We’re talking about fish, Mr. Grogan. Fish. They don’t realise much of anything.” She moved away, towards the trucks, and Paul saw that the soldiers were now unloading a long snake of a hose. In the gloom within another of the trucks was the dull gleam of a metal drum. It struck him suddenly that his own earlier remark about the militia having come well prepared had been all too accurate. All these preparations just didn’t fit in with Waxman’s official attitude, which had been to doubt the existence of the piranha until proved wrong. Suddenly he strode after the colonel, who was now supervising the unloading.

“Listen!” he snapped, grabbing Waxman’s shoulder and spinning him forcibly around. “What the hell’s going on with you people—who have you been trying to kid? You knew these things were really here, or you wouldn’t have brought all this stuff!”

Very deliberately, Waxman removed Paul’s hand from his braided shoulder. When he spoke, his voice was icy. “Okay, Grogan, here it is.” Behind him Mengers hovered, anxious, and Maggie had come up to join Paul. “You and Miss McKeown are the only civilians who know about this project—”

“Operation Razorteeth—” Maggie put in.

“—which doesn’t exist.” The colonel finished in a tone that carried more than a trace of threat.

Paul stiffened angrily, and Mengers spoke up, attempting to take the edge of Waxman’s words. “What the colonel means is that we’d prefer it if you’d consider yourselves with us. Part of the team, if you will.”

Paul gave her a look which conveyed only a portion of the disgust he felt. “It figures,” he said under his breath, and he and Maggie walked away, leaving the two staring grimly after them.

By the time the soldiers had got their equipment set up and ready to operate, another vehicle had come bouncing down the track to halt at the water’s edge. Sadly, Paul and Maggie watched the boy they had saved from the canoe being gently lifted on to a stretcher, which was then loaded into the ambulance. As the two medics who accompanied the vehicle closed the rear doors, Maggie thought that the last image of the boy, his face pale and his eyes catatonic, would remain imprinted on her brain for the rest of her life. As the ambulance pulled out, back the way it had come, she turned with a sigh to watch as the business of destroying the piranha began in earnest.

There were two hoses, each held by a soldier who stood at the edge of the dam water. They looked like sleek, dormant pythons, limp in the sunlight. Then someone yelled, “Okay—start her up!” and the pythons started to writhe and jump as liquid was pumped into them from the drums still hidden in the trucks. Moments later twin gouts of a foul-looking greenish fluid came spewing from the nozzles and fountained down into the water, which foamed with acid-green bubbles. The other soldiers came down to watch as more and more of the powerful poison spilled into the water, and after a while two of them brought a long-handled net and started to fish around at the lake’s edge. The task was fruitless for a while, but as the last of the poison was being pumped in, one of the men yelled out, “I got one! I got one in the net!”

His companion and one or two others ran to join him, and stared down at the dead fish which lay in the net, its weight bending the net-pole. The mouth was fixed open, exposing the twin rows of murderous teeth.

“Jesus, look at the thing,” someone said.

The soldier who had made the catch nodded sagely. “That scientist, Mengers, said it’s a Brazilian Piranha.”

The other whistled through his teeth. “It’s an ugly mother, whatever you call it.”

And somehow, that seemed to sum it up.

CHAPTER 10

The army detachment had made camp for the night at the dam, and Paul and Maggie were asked—politely, but in a way that suggested they’d be wiser not to refuse—to pitch in with them. They had been allocated a tent, and as the night deepened they lay on cots inside the canvas folds, a kerosene lamp glowing serenely between them, and Maggie was talking.

Paul guessed it was the strain of the day that had suddenly made her bring up the subject of her own past. She needed, he thought, the chance to talk about something other than the piranha, something personal that could help her forget the horrors of the past two days. Yet, intrigued as he was, he found his mind wandering uncomfortably as she talked.

“So this guy I was living with just took off on me,” she was saying. “Disappeared without a trace. I thought maybe he was in some kind of trouble, so I hired the skip-tracing company to find him. They worked with me, put a lot of the pieces of his past life together. It was fascinating. I got hooked on the process.”

She was staring at the tent ceiling, a faraway look in her eyes. Paul asked, “Did you ever find the guy?”

“Eventually. He just got up one morning and hit the road. One of those characters who makes a career out of being enigmatic.”

“What happens when someone you’re looking for doesn’t want to be found?”

“That’s what really intrigues me,” she said. “Figuring out why somebody would want to disappear, reconstructing their personality, it’s like wandering through a maze.” She paused, reflecting a moment or two before continuing, “Yeah, but what’ll I say to the parents of those kids when I get back? I mean, do I need an okay from General Patton out there, or what?”

Paul, however, wasn’t listening to this last remark. Something she had said had triggered a synapse in his mind, and now his thoughts were racing to a hideous conclusion.

So abruptly that Maggie jumped, he sat up in his cot and shouted, “A maze!”

“Huh?”

He turned to her, his eyes alight. “Did that ranger have a map of the river in the control room?”

Maggie thought back. “Yes, he did. A big relief map, on the wall. Why?”

Paul leaped out of his cot and began rapidly to dress. “Get your clothes on,” he ordered her. “Remember that fishtank we saw up at the Army site while Hoak was conked out?”

Maggie frowned. “What about it?”

“Come on, hurry!” He didn’t seem to have heard her question, but, buttoning his shirt askew, was already heading for the tent flap. “The maze,” he said again. “The maze!”

Colonel Waxman wasn’t overly pleased at being dragged from his sleep in the middle of the night, but he eventually succumbed to Paul’s insistence and, with the ubiquitous Mengers in tow, followed Paul and Maggie to the control tower. Rushing into the control room and switching on the lights, Paul thumped his hand against the map of the Lost River system and said, “Look! Just look at it—carefully.”

Slowly Waxman walked forward to peer at the map. His eyes took in the line of the river itself, the test site where the piranha had bred, the dam, the continuing snake of the river as it wound its way on to the resort lake, the summer camp and, eventually, the sea. Paul stood beside him, hands on his hips, and as Waxman’s face creased into a bewildered frown he said, “You’re a full colonel, right? I assume you can read a map. Just look—” With his fingers he traced the route of the river. “Here’s the dam, right? Follow the river an eighth of a mile upstream, here—” His finger stubbed down. “There’s a stream, feeding into it. Follow the stream back up and you come to a fork. Follow the other branch back downstream—right there. It feeds into the river on the other side of the dam.” He straightened up, meeting Waxman’s eyes. “Which means that the piranha have a way to get around the obstacle.”

A delicate cough behind the colonel was Mengers. Glowering at Paul through her glasses, she said, “Highly unlikely.”

Waxman nodded agreement. “In fact, it’s impossible,” he stated firmly. “Look, Mr. Grogan, I’ll not dispute that such a bypass exists. But those creatures are fish—they have neither the intelligence nor the motivation to find it.”

“You know better than I do what Hoak was into,” Paul argued hotly. “Breeding them for endurance and intelligence, and God knows what else!”

Waxman continued to look at him, but his eyes were growing increasingly hostile. “The situation is already under control, Grogan,” he said warningly.

“What is this?” Paul almost shouted. “You’re deliberately ignoring me!”

Waxman moved a pace towards him. “Listen to me, Grogan. I’m only going to say it Once. This project does not exist. The piranha do not exist.” He paused, licking his lower lip. “And if you don’t keep your mouth shut about this, neither will you.”

Paul was momentarily stunned as the full flavour of Waxman’s words hit home. Beside him he heard Maggie draw a sharp, nervous breath. At last, he found his voice.

“What the hell decade are you living in, Waxman? The war’s over, dammit!”

Mengers smiled. “There’ll be other wars, Mr. Grogan. And, you can be sure, other projects. We have all kinds of things. Things you’d probably—” and at a warning look from Waxman she fell abruptly silent.

The colonel was smiling, but his eyes were fish-cold—as cold, in fact, as a piranha’s. “I’m sorry to have to do this, Grogan,” he said evenly, “But believe me, it’s for your own good.”

At a signal from their superior, two soldiers—armed—entered the control room and took up stations on either side of Paul and Maggie. Waxman nodded to them. “You’ll be kept under guard until this business is finished with,” he said. “And I would advise you not to cause us any more trouble.”

There was nothing Paul could say, and Maggie was speechless with fright and astonishment. Sullenly silent, they had no choice but to allow themselves to be hustled away.

They were back in their own tent, but this time there was a difference. Outside the canvas walls, his shadow occasionally passing across like a ghost, a soldier on sentry duty paced up and down. His presence made it quite clear that Waxman’s threats had been far from empty—Paul and Maggie were, in effect, prisoners.

Inside the tent, Paul sat on his cot, watching the soldier’s shadow passing to and fro. He had been thinking, and at last it seemed that the thinking had paid off. Rising, he lifted up a sleeping-bag and started to zip up its side.

“What are you doing?” Maggie whispered from across the tent.

Paul smiled grimly. “You’re going to have to distract our friend out there.”

“Why?”

“So I can get away.”

Maggie bristled visibly. “So you can get away? What about me?”

Paul shrugged. “How should I know? Just get him with his back to the opening here.” He grinned wickedly. “Give him the old come-on.”

Halfway to the tent-flap, Maggie stopped. “What if he’s gay?”

“Then I’ll distract him. Come on, let’s go.”

Maggie raised her eyes heavenwards, but made no further comment. She slipped out of the tent, straightened, and moved slowly towards the sentry a few steps before stopping and giving him a disarming smile. He continued to pace, ignoring her.

“Um . . . hi,” Maggie said.

No response. Maggie thought for a moment, then tried, “Nice night.” It was lame, and again the sentry took not the slightest notice.

Oh well, Maggie thought, might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb . . . clearly, she said, “Um—are you gay?”

It worked. The soldier stopped pacing, and turned on his heel until he was facing her. His face was as dark as thunder. “What?”

Maggie grinned in a silly way. “I was just—uh—reading this article in this magazine, and—ah—here—” She moved around him, warily, and started to edge him back towards the tent opening. “Let me get a look at you in the light,” she finished.

The soldier was still frowning, but now he was obviously more than a little confused. “What did you ask me before?” he demanded.

“Oh, um—nothing.” Quickly Maggie moved closer, and whispered in his ear, “Want to see my appendix scar?”

Confusion gave way to complete bewilderment, and the sentry said, “Are you okay, lady?”

Maggie grinned again. Then said, “Look! Up in the sky!”

“Huh?” By now hopelessly muddled, the sentry automatically turned his gaze skywards. Rapidly Maggie began to unbutton her shirt, saying as she did so, “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s—”

“Now look,” the sentry’s eyes were returning to a more earthly level. He was convinced that this woman was raving mad, that it was high time someone did something to stop her lunatic antics. He was unaware, at that moment, of Paul, who was silently emerging from the tent behind him, sleeping-bag in hand.

Maggie yelled, “It’s SUPERMAN!” And as the sentry looked at her again, she stuck her chest out at him. Shirt unbuttoned, no bra beneath, her breasts jiggled inches away, and the soldier let out an involuntary yelp of shock. Then his eyes riveted on her face, and, downright frightened by this fresh burst of craziness, he took a step back.

That was all that was needed. Like a cat Paul pounced, the sleeping bag coming down over the sentry’s head, plunging him into muffled blackness. He started to kick and shout, but the bag was now down almost to his knees, and his cries were stifled by the padding.

Choking back a laugh, Paul dragged the unfortunate sentry into the tent, Maggie following with his rifle. “Well,” she said, “How did I do?”

Paul looked at her, and guffawed. “You were just—unreal!”

Several minutes later, a jeep started up with a harsh cough near the edge of the makeshift camp, and a moment after that twin headlight beams stabbed the darkness as Colonel Waxman’s personal car hurtled out of the camp as though all the devils from Hell were on its tail. It bucketed away over the rough ground, and at the wheel Maggie spared a perilous moment to look at Paul.

“Where did you learn to hot-wire a car?” she yelled over the racket of the engine.

“I was an Eagle Scout! Hey, look where you’re going!”

The jeep swerved, rocked, righted itself and careered on in the direction of the main road.

They made the road, which was deserted at this hour, and drove on until they came to a phone booth situated on a bend. Parking the jeep, they sprinted to the booth, and Paul dialled the number of the Lost River summer camp. When the insistent ringing was at last answered by a bleary voice, he demanded to speak to Dumont. After what seemed like an age of waiting, he was put through.

Dumont was not pleased at being woken from his much-needed sleep. Leaning out of his bed, he growled into the mouthpiece, “Hello? What?” Long pause. “What piranhas? What the hell are you talking about? Huh?” Another silence. “Are you crazy? Look, who is this?” Then a frown spread over his face. “Grogan, huh? I remember you. You’re not crazy, you’re drunk!” He waited, hearing the voice at the other end as it grew more agitated, then said, “No, I don’t want to talk to your friend. I’m sure she’s drunk, too. You wake me up again and I’ll have the cops on you. And no, you can’t speak to your daughter! Sober up, Grogan!” And with that he slammed the receiver down. Rolling over in his cocoon of blankets, he snorted, “Piranhas!” And within less than a minute he was sound asleep again.

In the phone booth, Paul slammed the receiver down in utter disgust and said feelingly, “Asshole!”

“He didn’t believe you?” Maggie stated the obvious.

“He thinks I’m drunk.” Paul left the booth, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, and she said, “Can you get through to your daughter?”

“Not a chance. Come on, back to the jeep. We’ve got to get down there.”

They raced across the road, where the jeep was still sitting with its engine ticking over, and scrambled in. Maggie stamped down hard on the accelerator, and the vehicle took off like a bullet out of a gun, tyres screeching and leaving rubber. Half a mile on down the road they passed by a small side turning. Neither of them paid any heed to it—it had no bearing on their route—but as the staff car hurtled past, a second pair of headlights came on in the darkness of the slip road, and seconds later a police patrol car hurtled from the turning and took off in hot pursuit of the flying jeep.

Half a minute later, Maggie looked in her driving mirror and swore. “Paul. Behind us.”

Paul screwed round in his seat and saw the patrol car on their tail, the circular light on its roof flashing like a berserk lighthouse-beam.

“Shit!” he said, “We’ll never outrun him in this thing. Better pull over.”

Maggie started to decelerate, saying without much conviction, “Maybe he’ll believe us. Maybe he’ll help us.”

It seemed an agonising age, after the jeep had stopped, before a tall, lean police officer came strolling up to the window of the jeep and looked in, pointing a flashlight on to Paul and Maggie’s faces.

“We-ell.” His voice was a sarcastic drawl. “Where’s the war, then, buddy?”

There was no point beating about the bush, and no time to be lost in explaining all the background details, Paul decided. “We’re trying to get to the Lost River summer camp,” he told the cop. “We’ve got to warn them—there’s a shoal of piranha, killer fish, loose in the river, heading their way!”

The officer gave him a long look, his scepticism undiminished. “Piranhas, huh? And where did they come from?”

“From an Army test site on the mountain,” Paul told him.

He smiled humourlessly. “That’s posted up there. There’s no trespassing.”

“Posted or not, two people were killed up there,” Paul said desperately, trying to make him see the urgency of the situation. “And more have been killed along the river.”

“You’ve got to believe us!” Maggie added fervently.

“Killed, huh?” The cop adjusted his flashlight so that the beam fell more directly on Paul. “Say, aren’t you Grogan?”

“That’s right.”

The man nodded, his mouth tightening into a hard line. “I remember we had you in on a drunk and disorderly last month.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Paul exploded, “I’m not drunk—this is for real! Dammit, I’ll take a breath test, whatever you want, just listen to me!”

The cop deliberated for a few seconds. Then he said, “Think I’ll take you up on that, buddy, back at the station. While we’re there, you can explain what you’re doing out this time of night in an Army staff car.”

Maggie leaned over. “There isn’t time!” she protested. “We’ve got to warn those people!”

“If there’s any warning to be done, we can handle it,” the officer told her firmly. “And don’t get any notions, either of you, ’cause I got my gun in my other hand here. So no heroics, okay? Let’s go.”

There was no chance to argue further. With a terrible feeling of dread, Paul and Maggie climbed out of the jeep and followed the officer to the patrol car.

Within the hour, the local sheriff’s office was on the telephone to Colonel Waxman. Waxman took the call in the dam’s control tower, and behind him Mengers waited to hear the outcome.

“Yes, we’ve got a bit of a situation up here, a very delicate situation,” Waxman was saying. “You could help to keep it under control by holding them for us. And make sure they don’t communicate with the outside—we’re trying to avoid any unnecessary panic.”

“Yes, Colonel.” The cop who had arrested Paul and Maggie leaned over his desk, a deferential expression on his face. Not that this military bigwig could see it, of course; it was simply an automatic reaction. “Yes, I understand. Their best interests, I agree. Certainly. And don’t forget we got your car down here. It’s in good shape. You’re welcome, Colonel, see you in the morning.”

He hung up, and paced slowly across the office to a row of cells that looked vaguely reminiscent of the jailhouse in a Western movie. In adjoining cells, separated by a solid wall so that they couldn’t even see each other, Paul and Maggie sat. The officer leaned up against the bars of Paul’s cell, arms folded.

“Best make yourselves comfortable, folks. You’ll be spending the night.”

Paul sprang to his feet, horrified. “What about a phone call? You have to allow us a phone call!”

He received a solemn shake of the head. “That’s only if you’re under arrest. You folks are just bein’ held.”

“On what count?” Maggie demanded.

“Suspicion.”

“Suspicion of what?”

The cop shrugged. “Nothin’ in particular. Just suspicion. Now,” he said, gesturing towards a door at the end of the cell-block, “There’s a fella named Leonard sleepin’ in the next room. He’s your jailer. You wake Leonard up, you’d better have a damn good reason. Try and relax till morning—everything’ll get straightened out.”

“It’ll be too late,” Paul said hopelessly.

The officer raised a hand, silencing him before he could say any more. “I don’t wanna hear it. I’ve got to get back on that road now, so you folks just behave yourselves.” He started to walk away, but Paul shouted after him, gripping the bars like a wild, caged gorilla.

“Wait a minute! You can’t just leave! My daughter is down there, there’s kids down there! The piranha are still out there, believe me! You’ve got to believe me!”

His only answer was the slam of the office’s outer door. For what seemed a long time he stared dismally at it, until Maggie’s hand came reaching and fumbling round from her own cell bars, her fingers feeling for his. He held her hand, but it brought him no comfort.

Back at the dam, Colonel Waxman was on the phone again. This time he was speaking to Gardner, the owner of the new holiday resort, and it was a conversation that he would prefer no one to overhear.

“So I wanted to warn you, just in case they were able to get a call through,” he said in his smoothest, most confident voice. “A groundless panic of that kind wouldn’t help our grand opening day.”

On the other end of the line, Gardner, tieless and harassed, was pacing around one of the recreation rooms with the phone on a long extension cable. All around him, workmen were as busy as harvesting bees, painting the walls, and the room was a chaos of paintpots, rollers, dust-sheets and stepladders. To keep a workforce going round the clock was costing Gardner a bomb, but there was no option—if the resort was to open on time, the price had to be paid.

“No, no,” Gardner said. “We certainly don’t want that.” His tone was unctuous, like that of a menial clerk addressing his employer. “I appreciate the warning, Colonel. I’ll brief the staff. By the way, are you going to make it down tomorrow?” He smiled as he listened to the reply. “Good, good. Your presence will lend a certain . . . prestige to our opening. No, nobody’s aware of your investment, Colonel. With me, a silent partner’s privacy is sacred. Yes, right. Goodnight, Colonel.”

He replaced the receiver, sighed, and turned to the busy painters.

“All right, you guys, let’s haul ass!” Gone was the obsequiousness, replaced by hectoring authority. “That stuff’s gotta be dry by ten o’clock!”

CHAPTER 11

Just as the first watery streaks of dawn started to creep up on Lost River, heralding another scorching day, Maggie was lying flat on her back under the sink in her jail cell, one foot kicking hard and rhythmically at the waste pipe. She had wrapped a blanket round the pipe to muffle the sound and, so far, had managed to avoid waking the unseen Leonard in the adjoining room. To Paul, the muted noises coming from the next cell were frustratingly baffling—he knew Maggie was up to something, but hadn’t the least idea what it could be, or how it could help them in their present predicament. At last, unable to contain his curiosity any longer, he hissed at the dividing brick wall, “What are you doing in there?”

The pipe was starting to bend under the repeated blows. Between breaths, Maggie said, “Did I ever—tell you—about Moe Schneider?”

“Moe who?” Now Paul was hopelessly lost.

“Schneider.” Maggie kicked again; the pipe was definitely coming away.

“Who’s that?”

Maggie gave herself a brief rest, and replied, “This character they sent me to find one time. He was a plumber who was always running off and getting busted for indecent exposure.” She kicked out again once more, harder, and was rewarded by the sight of the pipe breaking away from its connection to the plughole of the sink. Scrambling to her feet, she reached for the twin taps and turned them on full. Water cascaded into the sink, and she smiled with satisfaction as it gushed through the hole and started to spread in a large puddle on the floor.

“Hey!” Paul called from next door. “What are you doing?”

She didn’t answer the question, but instead concentrated on lifting the porcelain lid off the toilet cistern next to the sink. As she lifted it, she said, “I was saying, about Moe Schneider. He was in the clink so many times, he developed a regular escape routine.” She paused to climb up on the toilet seat, balancing carefully with the porcelain cistern lid in her hands. “And of course, being a plumber, he used what he knew best.”

Paul said, “Huh?” but before he could say any more, she had dropped the lid on to the concrete floor, where it smashed to thousands of pieces with a noise fit to wake the dead. It would probably wake Leonard, too, so she had to be quick.

Paul’s voice called out, “Jesus, are you okay? What are you doing?”

Maggie was kicking chunks of shattered porcelain into a corner, and then she ran to the bars, paddling through water which was now seeping out into the main office as the taps continued to flow. “Give me one of your socks, hurry!” Her hand, clawing, reached through the bars.

“What?”

“One of your socks—it’s part of the plan! Hurry, the crash probably woke him!”

Mystified, but seeing no point in arguing, Paul started to haul one of his socks off, and hopped across his own cell to hand it to her. Running back to the sink, she turned the taps off, and stuffed a large chunk of the broken cistern lid into the sock before throwing her blanket over the remaining debris.

“This plan,” Paul asked warily, “Whatever it is—did it ever work?”

“No, but he came damn close a couple of times.” Maggie grinned to herself. “Pretty damn close.”

As she stopped speaking, the door beyond the cells opened, and the tousled and bleary-eyed figure of Leonard, the resident jailer, came out. He was a tall, lugubrious-looking man with a slow step and, Maggie hoped, an even slower mind. Now he was blinking in the bright light, rubbing a hand through his hair.

“Sweet Jesus, what’s goin’ on out here? Sounded like the roof fell in.” Then, seeing the water, he moved across the room until he was standing in front of the cells, his feet, ridiculously, in the spreading pool. “Where’s all this water from?”

Maggie, hiding the sock behind her back, did her best to look helpless and innocent. “Something’s leaking in here. I’m going to catch pneumonia if it doesn’t stop.”

Leonard scratched his head, peering between the bars at the damaged sink. “Looks like your sink trap’s bust.”

Maggie took a tighter grip on her improvised cosh. “I’ve tried and tried, but I’m just not strong enough to put the pipes back together.”

“All right,” Leonard grunted, “You just stand back there. I’ll take a look at it.” He fumbled with the big key ring at his belt, selected one key and opened the lock of the cell door. Beyond the wall, Paul was almost exploding with frustration—he had no way of knowing exactly what Maggie’s plan was, and the agonies of not being able to see a thing that was happening were driving him quietly crazy. Biting his lip, he crossed his fingers and hoped.

Leonard walked into the cell and knelt down by the broken pipe. Maggie hovered close by, still clutching the heavy sock, and said, “You move over by the wall there, Missy. What the hell did you do to this thing? Were you trying to crawl through the drainpipe?”

Maggie didn’t answer, only watched as he turned his attention once more to the pipe. When she was certain he was engrossed, she raised the sock with its solid payload, poised, then brought it down; hard on the back of the jailer’s skull.

For an awful moment she thought that the attempt had failed. Leonard rose ponderously to his feet, turned, and stared at her with a frown of puzzlement. Then a second later, to her intense relief, he keeled soundlessly over and collapsed in a senseless heap on the sodden floor.

Maggie stood very still. Then, in a small voice, she said, “Oh my God, I think I’ve killed him . . .”

Paul couldn’t take it any longer. He ran to the bars and rattled them furiously, shouting, “What’s happening? What’s going on in there?”

Ignoring him, Maggie bent to take Leonard’s pulse. There was an unmistakeable beat, and she cried out in relief, “He’s alive! He’s alive, Paul!”

Paul groaned. “Maggie, to hell with him! Get me out of here and tell me just what happened!”

This time, she took notice, and muttering an apology tried to unhook the key ring from Leonard’s belt. “They’re chained to his pants!” she shouted a minute later.

“Well, take his pants off, then!”

“Okay.” She hauled the trousers off, and ran out of her cell with them trailing like a flag behind her. As she started to try various keys in the lock of Paul’s door, he asked her curiously, “What did you hit him with?”

“A piece of the toilet lid.”

“Jesus.” He was both appalled and impressed, uncertain which feeling had precedence. “Oh well, thank you Moe Schneider! Think one of those keys fits a patrol car?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Maggie grinned as the fourth key clicked in the lock and the cell door swung open. “That’s it! Let’s go.”

Seconds later, the sheriff’s office door banged behind them.

Full dawn had come to the summer camp, and already the morning air was warm and beginning to shimmer. The children, with their seemingly boundless reserves of energy, were already up and about and at a small lifeguard shack down by the river’s edge, Suzie Grogan sat on the bank with Betsy, the leader of the Goldfish squad. Betsy had taken it upon herself to have one last try at persuading Suzie that there was nothing to fear about swimming in the river. And, as she had half expected, the attempt had failed.

“Won’t you even try sitting in an inner tube and paddling yourself around?” she asked.

“Uh-uh.” The little girl shook her head vehemently.

“I mean, it’s almost impossible to fall in,” Betsy persisted gently.

Suzie gazed at her, stubbornness written all over her small face. “They can still get you,” she pronounced solemnly.

“ ‘They’, huh?” Betsy sighed. “Well, if that’s the way you feel, honey, I’ll help you get out of the race. We will have to think of an excuse Dumont will buy.”

Hope flickered in Suzie’s eyes. “I got poison ivy.”

“So has everyone else in camp, so I’m afraid that won’t work. Wait a minute . . .” She fished in her pocket and produced a red-ink marker. “Give me your knee.”

Obediently, Suzie stuck out one leg, and Betsy dabbed at it with the marker until it was smeared with a harsh red stain. “There—it looks just like a bad graze. Get Darlene to take your place in the race, and if Dumont squawks, you can show him this. We’ll get you a big bandage.”

For the first time in days, Suzie looked almost happy.

While Betsy was helping Suzie Grogan with her problems, two of the camp’s small boys had sneaked away from the eagle eyes of the supervisors, and had made their way to a quiet backwater of the river far enough from the camp to be out of sight and earshot. Here they had rigged up an old tyre to hang from a tree branch like a swing over the river, and while one boy swung cheerfully like an acrobat, the other was treading water in the river below him. He duck-dived suddenly as the other boy made a flying leap from the tyre and cannonballed down into the water, then both came up together and began to swim in lazy circles.

“Great idea, huh?” the one who had been swinging on the tyre called.

“Yeah—but what if Dumont finds out?”

His companion rolled onto his back and kicked water in silver droplets high into the air. “Dumont’s got his head up his rear. He’ll never miss us.” And he dived again, plunging down into the murky darkness below the surface, unable to see more than a few yards in any direction, but not caring. After all, what could possibly be in a little old river like this that could cause him any trouble?

The great moment had arrived for Gardner. Resplendent in his red blazer with the Lost River emblem gleaming on it, he stood at the foot of a dock that stretched out into the brand-new marina, checking his watch as it ticked round towards the magic hour of ten o’clock. Beyond him, sailing and motorboats bobbed at their moorings like a flock of brightly coloured seabirds, and at his back was a red, white and blue ribbon that stretched across the dock, tied at either end with a big, gaudy bow. And mustered on the bank was a veritable horde of holidaymakers—people who had come down specially for this day, to enjoy all the facilities of the new marina, and, hopefully, to be tempted into buying one of the bright new chalets that were offered for sale as holiday homes.

Again Gardner looked at his watch, in time to see the second hand sweep round to ten precisely. Straightening, he clasped his hands together and cleared his throat importantly. The chattering crowd fell silent, and Gardner spoke.

“Well, folks, it’s precisely ten o’clock, and on behalf of the Lost River Development Corporation I’m happy to welcome you to our opening festivities.”

A good-humoured cheer went up, and Gardner felt gratified. “If you have any questions during the day about the purchase of a site up here, we’ll have our people mingling with you throughout the day to answer them. Remember, you have no obligation to buy anything, only to enjoy yourselves.” He paused to allow a thin ripple of laughter to die down, then said, “Honey?”

A little girl with blonde hair done up in bunches marched out of the throng, dressed in a mini-Majorette’s outfit of red, white and blue and carrying a pair of giant plastic scissors. Some of the women in the crowd made “oohing” and “aahing” noises at her appearance, and she walked up to the ribbon and held up the scissors. At a nod from Gardner, she cut the tape, and everyone cheered loudly. Over the racket, Gardner called, “Don’t forget the free barbecue at one o’clock!”

People were crowding past him, hurrying to get to their boats and make the most of the glorious day, and Gardner breathed a sigh of relief as he started to walk away back to his office. He was exhausted—but at least there might be time, now, to get a couple of hours’ shut-eye before he had to get back into the thick of things. He’d close the blinds, take the phone off the hook, lock the door, and just relax back in his big swivel chair with his feet on the desk and the air-conditioning going full blast.

Paul’s hopeful prediction that one of the jailer’s keys might fit a patrol car had proved to be right. Now they were hurtling down the highway in the direction of the resort and the summer camp, tyres screaming on the dry road as Maggie hurled the vehicle round corners and hairpin bends. A few days ago Paul might have been terrified half out of his life by this display of recklessness; but he was used to Maggie’s driving by now and thought little of it—particularly with the threat of the piranha strong in his mind.

Suddenly, as they negotiated a particularly tight bend, he said, “Salt water!”

“What?” Thankfully, Maggie didn’t take her eyes off the road.

“I just remembered. It was salt water.”

“What was?”

“In the pond at the test site,” Paul said. “I thought it was strange at the time, but then I forgot about it.”

Maggie didn’t see how this had any bearing on the situation. “So?” she asked.

Paul glanced at her, and she could see that he was more worried than ever. “Piranha are freshwater fish,” he told her. “So Dr. Hoak must have bred a strain that can live in both fresh and salt, like salmon. That’s why they’re heading downstream.”

The full impact of what he was getting at dawned on Maggie then, and she felt her skin begin to prickle all over, the way it sometimes did in the few minutes before a thunderstorm. “And if they get to the ocean . . .” she said slowly, then her voice trailed off as she found herself unable to put the rest of the sentence into words.

Paul finished it for her. “There’ll be no way to contain them. They’ll be able to swim up every river system in the country.”

Without her being aware of it, Maggie’s foot pressed down harder on the accelerator, and the labouring car gathered even more speed. “Oh my God!” she said under her breath.

At the summer camp, Dumont had called the children from their morning games to announce the start of the water race. Immediately all the participants raced to the lake’s edge and a scramble started to take up positions with the big inflated inner tubes. The idea of the race was to sit in the tubes, and, using them like small coracles, paddle out to the bobbing marker buoys and back in double-quick time. Ready to referee the race and make sure nobody cheated, Betsy and Laura were already at their station, sharing a seat on another, larger tyre-tube which floated around the halfway point. Betsy had kept her promise to Suzie Grogan, finding her a large bandage which she had tied round her “grazed” knee, and now she could see the little girl sitting alone by the lake’s edge, watching. She was conspicuous in her solitude—maybe too conspicuous, Betsy thought suddenly. It would have been better if she had kept well out of sight, particularly as Dumont wasn’t in the very best of moods this morning.

She might have attracted Suzie’s attention, waved to her to find somewhere less obvious to watch the race, but she was too late. The burly figure of Dumont was already striding towards the lone figure on the bank, bearing down on her like a vulture eyeing up a lost lamb.

Reaching Suzie, Dumont cleared his throat. Suzie looked up, squinting against the sun, then when she saw who it was she sprang to her feet, a guilty flush spreading over her face.

Dumont frowned down at her, the wrath of God about to break. “And what are you doing here, young lady? You’re supposed to be out in that race.”

Suzie tried to put into the words the explanation she and Betsy had cooked up, but could only manage a stammer. “I—um—”

“I don’t want to hear any excuses,” said Dumont implacably. “Get yourself a tube and get out there.”

“But I—” Regaining some of her wherewithal, Suzie pointed to the bandaged knee, where a few spots of “blood” from the ink marker were showing through. The camp leader was not, however, prepared to be impressed.

“On the double, camper!” Now his voice had an unmistakable edge of menace. Suzie’s face froze miserably, and turning she hurried away. Dumont watched her go until he was satisfied that she would not disobey his order, then he marched off towards the water, ready to begin the race.

As soon as his back was turned, Suzie halted. Keel-up on the edge of the water, not a dozen steps away from her, was a large rowing-boat, looking like the abandoned shell of some gigantic turtle. Suzie hesitated a bare moment before making for it. If she hid under its boards, propping it up so that she could peek out, she could watch the race without being seen. And Dumont would never find her.

She dived under the boat just as Dumont, now in the water, raised his starting pistol. And at that moment, the shoal of piranha was a bare hundred yards away upriver . . .

CHAPTER 12

“Ready?” Dumont’s voice echoed across the still water as he stood chest-deep in the lake, a starting pistol raised high above his head. A row of eager faces watched him, waiting. The pistol went off with a loud crack, and the first leg of the relay race was under way.

A wave of shouting and cheering rose up, ringing in the ears of the children who were paddling madly forward on their inner tubes, heading for the marker where the second-leg racers waited to grab the batons. Little feet kicked busily below the surface, churning up the murky water, weeds and eddying currents swirling all around in the disturbance. And deeper down in the water another disturbance, steadier and with a terrible, inexorable motion, marked the progress of the piranha shoal. To any creature with intelligence, the kicking feet of the campers were an unmistakable marker, showing the precise location of another “shoal” of living beings. And, as so many people had already found out to their cost, the mutated piranha possessed far more intelligence than might be expected from any other fish.

The first leg was coming to an end as the leaders reached their markers and the batons were snatched by their team-mates. Those still waiting started to scream encouragement, urging their comrades on to greater effort. But when the screams of one second-leg racer, at the end of the line, changed subtly in pitch and quality, everyone was too busy concentrating on their own team to notice. The new screams were louder, edged with a hysteria that sprang from sudden and agonising pain. But from their vantage-point, Laura and Betsy could see immediately that something was wrong.

Laura grabbed Betsy’s arm. “What the hell—” she said, and even as she spoke Dumont too noticed that all was not well. A frown knitted his eyebrows together and he waded a pace deeper into the water, shielding his eyes against the sun’s glare as he struggled to see what was amiss with the now shrieking child. The race started to degenerate into confusion as more and more of the campers realised that something untoward was happening. The water around the stricken child was thrashing now like a boiling cauldron, and Dumont strode in deeper, trying to signal to the nearest supervisor to go in and help. He was totally unprepared for the moment when what felt like a thousand small, slimy bodies struck him, homing in from the depths of the lake—and totally unprepared for the first searing, stabbing pain in his legs as the ravening piranhas’ teeth ripped into his unprotected flesh.

Dumont let out a yell that would have done justice to a banshee, and started to beat frantically at the water. Chaos erupted on the placid lake as more of the children began to scream, mostly from sheer terror brought on by lack of understanding of what was happening to their leader and their friends.

On the big inner tube, now bobbing like a drunken cork on the choppy surface, Laura and Betsy were paddling as best they could in the direction of the milling children. Realising that they were all in danger, though as yet unaware of its exact nature, they had managed to hold on to their self-control, and as they paddled Laura yelled at the top of her voice, “Pull your hands and feet out of the water! Don’t try to swim, stay as still as possible—just stay on top of your tubes!” A dozen different possibilities had flashed through her mind as to what could be attacking the children—alligators and sharks being the foremost—but whatever the truth, the only important thing was to get the kids to safety as quickly as possible.

A muffled report meant nothing to the two girls, until, looking down, Betsy saw air bubbles streaming to the surface from the underside of the tube on which they crouched.

“Laura!” Her voice was a shrill squeak. “The tube’s ripped open, it’s sinking!”

“My God, no!” Laura too had seen the damage, and in sudden panic both girls stopped paddling, clinging to each other as the tube started to deflate. More bubbles appeared, and beneath their weights they could feel the tube becoming flaccid, weakening, letting them down closer and closer to the water where the deadly peril lurked. Beyond them in the deeper water the terrified campers were crouched on all fours on their own tubes, their faces frozen in fright as they floated helplessly, drifting without control.

Back at the shore, Dumont, his legs streaming with his own blood, was staggering out of the water, dragging with him an unconscious child. He had snatched her literally from under the very noses of the piranha, and by some incredible piece of luck had been able to get both himself and the child clear while the underwater monsters were diverted by the panic further out. He collapsed face down on the bank, sobbing with shock and terror like a baby.

And just a few yards from him, Suzie Grogan was staring in rigid horror from the sanctuary of the upturned rowing boat. She had no idea what was going on, but her instincts told her that everyone—not just the bloodied Dumont—was in hideous danger. If she had stopped to think, she might have felt that her own fears—about the lake had been spectacularly confirmed—but there was no room in her mind for such ideas. She had seen Laura and Betsy, stranded on their sinking inner tube, hanging on to each other and crying out for help, and her sense of loyalty urged her to do something. Laura and Betsy were her friends, they had been kind to her, tried to help her—she had to try and save them.

Scrambling out from under the boat she heaved at it, straining her small muscles, and with a thud it righted itself on the bank, its prow pointing at the water. Pushing down a rising sense of terror at the thought of venturing across the lake—even in a proper boat—she grimly leaned her weight against it and tried to push it the few feet to the lake’s edge.

Her attempts were fruitless. She simply wasn’t strong enough to shift the boat, and it stayed stubbornly where it was without moving an inch. Desperately Suzie looked around for someone who might help her, but there was nobody—all her friends were out on that deadly water, screaming, crying—

Suddenly she made up her mind. She’d never move the boat alone—but nearby were several spare tyre tubes. Her only hope was to make use of one of those.

She dragged one to the water’s edge and laid an oar over it to form a crude seat. Scrambling on, she experienced a second rising of terror in her stomach, but again forcibly quelled it, and pushed off with the other oar. Trying not to think of what could be lurking under the surface of the lake, she started to paddle as fast as she could towards Laura and Betsy.

Betsy was hanging onto Laura’s arm, almost unbalancing her and threatening to send both of them pitching into the water at any moment. Hysterical, she kept screaming, “It’s sinking, it’s sinking, it’s sinking!” and the sound of her voice was echoing in Laura’s ears, dragging her self-control towards the point where it would snap and she would panic the way Betsy was panicking. All around them the campers bobbed on their tubes, crying, shivering, calling for help, and there was nothing she could do for any of them.

When she heard Suzie Grogan’s voice calling urgently to her across the water, she thought for a terrible moment that she had flipped, that the panic had sent her finally over the edge. But, screwing her head round in a brief moment to look, she saw the small girl paddling determinedly towards her, calling out, “Laura! Betsy! Hold on!”

Betsy started screaming again, and the inner tube lurched, on the verge of sinking. Desperately Laura reached out a clawing hand towards Susie as she approached, and was able to grab onto the oar Suzie held, pulling the child’s tube close enough for her to crawl on. Turning, she reached out to help Betsy across—but Betsy wasn’t there. The sinking tube had drifted several feet away in just a few seconds, and the gap between them was too great for Laura to reach over.

“Quick, give me the oar!” she said to Suzie and, grasping it, tried to stretch it across the gulf that had opened up between them and Betsy. Betsy leaned perilously to grab the oar, but as she did so the tube on which she was sitting gave up the ghost. With a last flurry of air bubbles it sank, and Betsy was left treading water. For a moment or two she stayed afloat, looking all around her in renewed panic—then she screamed. Horrified, Laura saw her jerk as though controlled by invisible strings, then with a second appalling shriek she was pulled under the water, her limbs thrashing. One arm, still above the surface, snatched at the oar and gripped it, but only for a moment before the fingers went rigid in pain, and arm and hand vanished.

Laura yelled, “Betsy!” For one instant only as the water thrashed and bubbled she thought she saw Betsy’s twisting, struggling form below the surface—but she seemed to be covered in writhing, fishy bodies. And the surface of the lake was rapidly turning blood-red.

Even as Betsy was disappearing under water, dragged down by the attacking piranha, a police car came screeching into the parking lot of the summer camp. Two doors slammed simultaneously as Paul and Maggie leaped out and started sprinting towards the lake. Reaching the shore, they stopped, stunned by the terrible sight that confronted them. Screaming children drifted on the surface, which seemed to be slicked over with a dark, spreading red stain. Paul swore under his breath with the shock—then he saw the rowing boat. Racing over to it, he gave it a hard shove and sent it careening down the bank into the water. He jumped in—then froze as he saw a small, familiar figure paddling towards him on an inner tube, with another, older girl crouching behind her.

“Suzie!” His voice was both shocked and relieved.

The little girl’s face lit up with astonished joy as she saw him, and suddenly it seemed to her that all her wavering faith in him had been restored in the space of a single moment.

“Daddy!” she called, “Daddy!”

Paul turned to Maggie. “Call the resort—they’ve got to be warned, those monsters’ll be there in a matter of minutes. I’ll get these kids out of the water.”

Nodding, Maggie ran off in the direction of the camp office, and Paul looked for the rowing boat’s oars. Finding that they were missing, he kicked a board loose from one of the boat’s seats, and began to paddle out towards Suzie and Laura, who were drawing slowly closer. He met them half way, and in a flurry Suzie scrambled into the boat and hugged him tightly, tears streaming down her face. Climbing in behind her, Laura gave Paul a brief nod that expressed all her relief and gratitude and as the boat nosed on reached out to help the first of the stranded campers aboard.

Disentangling himself from Suzie’s embrace, Paul grabbed the oars from the tyre tube and started to row strongly towards the terrified children.

But the piranha, still swarming like deadly locusts under the water, had embarked on a new tactic. Swimming under the inner tubes where the children floated, they were using their razor teeth to burst the rubber, and one after another the tubes began to pop, air bubbles fizzing as they deflated. The children’s screaming redoubled as they felt themselves sinking, and, crouching in the bow of the rowing boat, Laura’s eyes widened as she realised what was happening.

White-faced, she turned to Paul. “They’re popping the tubes! Oh hurry, for God’s sake, hurry!”

Paul said nothing, but rowed all the harder.

At the Lost River Resort, Gardner had just woken from a peaceable and refreshing nap, and was preparing to go out into the sun to answer the inevitable barrage of questions from the visitors and generally play the genial host. He certainly felt more human after his rest, and was about to swing his feet off the desk and tidy himself when the telephone rang.

Lifting the receiver he said in his best friendly voice, “Lost River Campsites, may I help you?”

At the other end of the line a woman’s voice garbled three quick, frightened sentences.

“Emergency?” Gardner said, and listened again. Then a smile spread across his face as he recalled the previous night’s conversation with his friend, Colonel Waxman.

“Yes, that is serious.” Now his tone was unmistakably patronising. “We’ll have to clear the water at once. Thank you for calling.” He put the receiver down, and chuckled. “Thousands of piranha heading our way! Waxman was right—they are nuts!”

Back at the summer camp, Paul had done all he could. He had rescued every child he could find, bringing them all back in the dangerously overloaded boat, and now Laura was mustering them all together on the shore. She was a brave girl, he thought, doing her very best to behave normally, to give the kids some sense of security by sticking to patterns with which they were familiar. But she looked exhausted.

“Okay, Minnows now,” Laura called, clapping her hands. “Minnows line up, buddy system—get with your partner!”

Slowly, shuffling, the children formed themselves into some semblance of a straight line. Many of them were still crying as they joined hands and held up their arms. At the end of the line, nearest to Paul, stood Suzie. She held her hand up in the air, but there was no Darlene to link with it. Suzie did not know exactly what had happened to her friend, but she had seen her sinking, clinging desperately to her inner tube as the air rushed out of it. And she knew that there was no chance that Darlene might come back.

As the children mustered, Maggie came running from the office to join Paul. He looked at her urgently. “Did you get through?”

She sighed. “I told them the whole story, but I don’t think they believed me. I felt like I was being humoured.”

“Christ! We’ll have to go ourselves, and make them listen.” He turned to Laura. “Can you handle things here?”

Laura looked back at him with tired, red-rimmed eyes and tried to smile. “I think so.”

“Right.” Going across to Suzie, he crouched down and hugged her. “I’ll come back for you real soon, honey. You be brave and help out here, okay?”

Suzie nodded, and as he and Maggie hurried away she stared after them. Laura stroked her hair. “Don’t you worry,” she said, and there was a level of respect in her voice. “He’ll be back.”

The piranha were now on their way to the resort lake. Their numbers had been diminished slightly by the poison the Army had poured into the water up at the dam, but it had only been a matter of minutes before the leaders of the shoal had found the backwater that had taken them round the obstacle and back into the river’s mainstream. Their route had taken them through the creek where the two truants from the summer camp had been playing with their tyre. And now, even as Paul and Maggie headed for the resort, one small boy was clinging to the tyre, which hung still over the placid water of the creek, and tears were pouring down his face as he softly cried out for someone, anyone, to help him.

There was no-one to hear him. A few feet below, on the surface of the water, a dark reddish-brown slick floated, with dully gleaming shards of what might have been bone bobbing in the midst of the sticky substance. And as he hung helpless from the tree branch the boy was haunted by the hideous memory of what he had seen not a few minutes before.

“Help me!” His voice called plaintively across the deserted creek. “Somebody, help me!”

The trees whispered impassively in a slight breeze, and no-one answered.

At the resort lake, the day’s entertainment was in full swing. The lake was awash with colour as motorboats, sailing boats and swimmers in bright costumes and caps jockeyed for space on the blue water. On the wide crescent of the artificial beach people were packed even tighter, some sitting and enjoying the sun and the view while the more energetic divided their time between the sand and the water. It was, altogether, an idyllic scene.

It looked idyllic to Colonel Waxman as he sat in the stern of a pedal-boat with the scientist, Mengers, at his side. They were being taken by Whitney, Gardner’s second-in-command, across the lake to a giant anchored float where a cocktail party for the elite among the guests was in full swing. The resort certainly was swarming, Waxman thought—the pedal-boat was having to weave a complicated route among boats, sailors and swimmers—just now a girl had surged past like a graceful dolphin, blonde hair trailing behind her, and another was treading water and smiling at them just a few yards away. He was almost sorry when they reached their destination and stepped out onto the float.

Instantly Gardner detached himself from the crowd on the float and came to greet them.

“Colonel Waxman! Dr. Mengers! What a delightful surprise!” His voice was loud enough to ensure that a number of people heard him—it wouldn’t do to let anyone think that this meeting had been set up beforehand.

Waxman returned the artificial smile, at the same time hissing through his teeth, “They busted jail.”

“I know.” Gardner would have made a good ventriloquist; his smile didn’t alter one jot. “They called.”

“Is your staff ready?”

“They’re all set.”

Mengers spoke up at this point. “You’d better call your friends at the local newspaper and warn them they might be getting a few crank calls.”

Gardner frowned. “But won’t that just make them—”

He was interrupted by Waxman before he could finish his objection. In a parade-ground whisper the colonel snapped, “You got your orders, mister. Hop to it!”

Gardner’s pride deflated. Meekly he said, “Yes, sir,” and turned to look for Whitney. “Pedal me back to the shore, Whitney. Right now!”

As Gardner and his surprised aide headed back to the pedal boat, Waxman and Mengers moved towards the throng around the bar. Almost immediately an enormously fat woman in unflattering lilac bubbled up to Waxman.

“General Waxman! Why, it’s been so long!”

Waxman stared at her, trying to put a name to the face but failing. Politely, he replied, “It’s Colonel, Ma’am.”

She pouted. “Colonel still? I can’t imagine why!”

From her vantage point Mengers saw the colonel’s stance become just a little straighter, his chest puff out just a fraction of an inch. And when he said sagely, “Politics, Ma’am. Politics,” she couldn’t resist a small, cynical smile.

In the distance, well away from the gentler niceties of the cocktail party, the activities of the marina were in full swing. Slightly apart from the main throng of boats a young couple were struggling with the complexities of handling a small boat under full sail. In the middle of the lake, where the water was at its deepest, a scuba instructor was taking a class of four wet-suited tourists on a diving lesson, while some hundred yards from them two girls in a motorboat were preparing to set off, towing a young man on water-skis behind them. None of them—as yet—had a care in the world.

Back at the site office, Gardner had made his call to the local newspaper, and, suitably forewarned, they had promised that any “crank” calls would be treated with the contempt they deserved, and ignored. Now he was issuing orders to a thoroughly confused Witney, unaware that at this moment a patrol car with Maggie at the wheel and Paul in the passenger seat was hurtling down the road towards the resort.

“Every phone on the premises, understand?” Gardner was saying. “All out of order. We’ve got to stop this hoax. All incoming calls will be switched through here. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.” Whitney hadn’t the least idea why this hoax should have caused so much trouble, but it wasn’t his place to argue. He left his superior standing in the office shaking his head, his face thunderous.

“Piranhas!” Gardner muttered in disgust.

The scuba instructor was, on the whole, pretty pleased with his small class. All too often he seemed to get lumbered with the kind of jokers who didn’t know a flipper from a face-mask, and who tended to get themselves into the most idiotic sort of trouble simply because they didn’t pay attention to the rules. This bunch, though, were more sensible than most. They’d done a bit of diving before, they’d said, and now that they were actually under the water they were doing well.

They were swimming in single file, with the instructor in the lead. The water was a far cry from somewhere like the Mediterranean—it was impossible to see more than a few yards, and they’d had to limit themselves to just having a good time and improving their technique, rather than looking for anything of interest. Still, it passed an afternoon . . .

The last wet-suited tourist in line suddenly felt one of his flippers loosening, and in an economic movement he turned in the water and brought his foot up to adjust it, a stream of bubbles rushing from his air-tank. Tightening the flipper, he glanced back through his mask the way he had come—and saw something. Peering harder into the murky water, his eyes suddenly widened and bulged out of their sockets as he saw what it was.

Fish. A whole school of them, moving as though with one mind through the dark water, straight towards him. But they weren’t ordinary fish. Their open mouths were lined with teeth—teeth that looked like twin rows of murderous needles—

The sight of the piranha held him rigid for a few seconds—and that was too long. Before he knew what was happening, and before he could do anything to warn his friends, the shoal was sweeping over him. Swarming, they covered him—and as he opened his mouth to scream, losing his air tube and gulping water, the lake around him began to churn wildly.

A minute or so later the small sailing boat piloted by the young couple skimmed over the spot where the scuba divers had been. The young woman was learning pretty well, under her husband’s guidance, how to handle the boom of their small craft, and he joked that he would make a sailor out of her if it was the last thing he did. Showing her how to tack and bring the boat about, he guided her hand and the craft slewed round a little too sharply, sending water splashing over the woman’s legs. She laughed, reaching down to rub at the wet patch on her white jeans—then paused.

“Harry!”

“Hmm?” He was concentrating on something else, not really hearing her.

“Harry!!” Her voice was more alarmed now as she studied the stain on her trousers. It was red, showing starkly against the white fabric. She dabbed with a finger, licked—

“Harry! There’s blood in the water!”

Those were the first two incidents. And others were starting to occur all around the resort. Somewhere on the crowded beach, someone screamed down by the lake’s edge. Another cry sounded from the marina area, then another. And in the roped-off section of water that was kept specially for swimming, a number of people raised their heads, confused and a little alarmed by the sudden commotion. One man, drifting lazily in an inner tube with only his head, arms and shoulders out of the water, screwed round in an attempt to see what was happening. As he moved, he felt something touch him. And a second later he started to jerk and jump as though a thousand volts of electricity were being shot through his body. His mouth opened, hideously contorted in a screech of agony, then with a loud report his inner tube burst, exploding into fragments as something tore into its fabric. With a final shout the man vanished underwater and did not reappear. Someone close by also started screaming, and within moments the panic had spread, until the swimming area was transformed into a melee of thrashing bodies and screaming faces. The piranha shoal had swarmed straight into the cordoned-off section of the lake, and now the swimmers were trapped like cattle in a pen. The water erupted, frothing and churning, and blood swirled as though some joker had emptied a huge drum of red paint into the lake. A teenager and an older woman, swimming desperately for the shore, felt teeth like knives sink into their legs, then their bodies were torn by a murderous agony as the shoal fastened onto their flesh, ripping it from the bone. Another man, face grim and terrified, struck out strongly, knowing that his only hope was to fight his panic and try to get to the shore by the shortest possible route. Stroke—stroke—breath—stroke—stroke—breath—his rhythm was implacable, and silently he prayed that he’d make it. Stroke—stroke—he should have raised his head then to take in air, but instead his body seemed to slide smoothly on down, slipping under the surface with barely a splash. A few moments later, blood billowed to the surface in a murky cloud.

The other swimmers went on struggling, trying to reach safety before whatever it was that lurked in the water got them too and dragged them screaming down to their deaths. They had no clear idea of the nature of this horror, but that no longer mattered—the peril was real, and it was among them. And beneath them the piranha swarmed, incensed by the blood in the water, incited by the thrashing arms and legs as the holidaymakers fought to get to the shore. Never had they had such an abundance of prey, and they darted from one to another, biting, tearing, shredding indiscriminately. On the surface the screaming increased as more and more people felt the first onslaught of a piranha attack, while deep down in the water a tight-packed bunch of the creatures ripped at a bloody pulp that had once been a human being.

The swimmers fought on, jostling each other in their panic, carnage all around them. On the shore a five-year-old boy stood watching, licking at a large pink candyfloss and unable to understand why all those grown-ups were yelling and shouting. Intrigued, he went on staring, as more and more people around him became aware of the chaos and came running down the beach to see what was amiss for themselves. They met the first wave of swimmers who were hurling themselves out of the water, some torn and lacerated, others hysterical, and were driven back as the press of people from the water tumbled like a living wave onto dry land.

In his office, Gardner was on the telephone, discharging his duty. This was the last call he’d have to make with any luck, and though he could understand Waxman’s paranoia, he really thought the colonel was taking his precautions a little too far. The office was quiet, the air-conditioning humming gently, the blinds drawn, and Gardner was oblivious to any activity beyond this private oasis.

“No,” he was saying into the phone receiver, “It’s completely false. They’ve already made several calls to—” His words were abruptly cut off by the slam of the office door as Whitney burst in without knocking.

“Sir, sir!” Whitney was breathless and white-faced, and Gardner turned on him furiously, cupping a hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.

“I’m on the telephone!”

“But sir, the piranhas—”

Gardner felt his blood boil at this piece of crass idiocy. Through clenched teeth he hissed, “I thought I told you not to even say that word!”

“But the piranhas—” Whitney persisted desperately. Gardner sighed, closing his hand tighter over the receiver.

“What about the goddam piranhas?”

Whitney took a deep breath. “They’re eating the guests, sir!”

All traces of colour drained from Gardner’s face, leaving it as white as his aide’s. His voice shaking, he spoke once more into the phone.

“Bob? Ah—I’ll have to get back to you on this, okay? We’ve got a little—um—situation here.”

CHAPTER 13

The arrival of the piranha shoal had unleashed a chaos on the resort that turned it, in the space of a few minutes, into a vision of Hell. The monstrous killers seemed to be everywhere, attacking with a voracity that would have done justice to a school of maddened sharks. On the float where the cocktail party was taking place, panic had broken out as the guests realised that something was very, very wrong. They saw the water around them frothing red, heard the agonised screaming of the piranhas’ victims, saw frantic swimmers, eyes bulging with terror, thrashing towards the float to find sanctuary. The float began to rock, sending its elegantly-attired passengers staggering, then it settled lower and lower in the water as more people clambered on board, until it was in danger of sinking altogether.

At one edge of the float, knocked off his feet and now clinging grimly to his precarious hold, Colonel Waxman kicked out savagely at a swimmer who was trying to climb aboard. The man fell back with a cry of pain, blood flowering from his nose, and moments later he sank beneath the water in a swirl of gore as the shoal attacked and tore his flesh to shreds.

Waxman was bug-eyed with fear. Of all the people on the float, only he and Mengers knew the real source of the chaos, and the fact that his confident predictions about the piranhas’ intelligence had gone so horribly wrong made him not only afraid, but also angry. Waxman was a man who didn’t like to be argued with. And the thought that a bunch of brainless fish had got the better of him was almost more than he could bear.

The float was rocking again, water sloshing over it in waves as yet more swimmers struggled to gain a foothold. People clawed at each other, their survival instincts swamping every other feeling as they fought tooth and nail for precedence. Another swimmer grabbed at the edge of the float near Waxman, and again he kicked out, not caring what happened to anyone else so long as he saved his own skin. But this swimmer was more tenacious than the first, and as Waxman kicked he grabbed at his uniformed leg and hung on. Unbalanced, Waxman felt himself tipping towards the water, and he fell in on top of the swimmer with a splash and a cry of terror. Seeing his plight, Mengers, loyal to the last, scrambled across from her position in an attempt to help him. But she was too late. Waxman and the swimmer screamed together as the piranha homed in on them, and within seconds blood was flowing in the water as both men disappeared under the surface together in a welter of bubbles. Mengers was left crouched on the edge of the raft, staring in horror at the colonel’s hat bobbing gently on the water in an oily smear of crimson.

Paul and Maggie screeched into the resort’s car-park to find the place in total panic. People were running in every direction, screaming, crying, searching vainly for lost spouses, parents, children or friends. The beach looked like the aftermath of a terrible battle, with those who were too badly injured to help themselves lying groaning on the shore while blood-smeared men and women staggered about like shell-shocked soldiers. Maggie was stunned almost into immobility by the sight, but Paul knew that there was no time now for emotion. Pulling her with him, he weaved his way through the carnage to where a small motor-boat lay beached. Its engine was still turning, the screw thrashing the water at its stern, and clearly its occupants had had no other thought than to get themselves to safety, as far from the lake as possible.

Paul uttered a silent prayer of thanks for this incredible stroke of luck, and hustled Maggie into the boat. Turning it around, he opened up the throttle and the small craft nosed out into the lake, throwing up a white bow-wave that was tinged with red. Swinging the boat out to avoid a deflated air mattress that floated like a dead thing on the surface, he headed into deep water.

Sitting in the prow, Maggie tried not to look at the hideous scenes all around, and asked, “Where are we going?”

Paul pointed to a spot at the far side of the lake. “The lake narrows there. It’s right where a refinery used to be, and the piranha’ll be bunched tight when they come through there.”

“What then?” She was puzzled.

“Well, there are still smelting tanks there. There might be enough waste left in them.”

“It’ll kill fish?”

He smiled without a trace of humour. “It’ll kill anything. We’ll pollute the bastards to death!”

Unbelievably, there were still a few people at the resort who were blissfully unaware of the horror that had struck the marina out of nowhere. Among these few were the two girls with the motor-boat, who were now hurtling at full speed across the lake, towing the young man on his water-skis behind them. The wind was in their faces, spray whipping past them, and they laughed delightedly with the thrill of it. After a few minutes they had started to play games with the skier, and now were trying to dump him in the water, zigzagging the boat so that he skied in a figure-eight formation across his own wake, bumping and jolting.

Laughing still, the girl at the boat’s wheel accelerated even faster, but suddenly her companion grabbed her arm. “Nancy, I think something’s wrong.”

Nancy giggled. “Yeah—we haven’t managed to dump him yet!”

Behind them the skier was waving, taking one hand off the towbar for a precarious moment. They couldn’t interpret the signal, and so had no way of knowing that the young man had just seen something that had unnerved him. It had appeared in the water ahead, and the wake of the motor-boat had brought it eddying to the surface. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like a human being—or rather, the remains of a human being—surrounded by shredded pieces of a wet-suit, and floating in a slick of blood.

In the boat the other girl, Shelley, tugged at Nancy’s arm in earnest. “I’m serious—he looks really scared. You’d better stop.”

“What?” Nancy hadn’t heard her over the racket of the engine.

“I said cut the motor,” Shelley yelled. “Cut the motor!”

This time Nancy heard her, and the urgency in her voice hit home. Nancy started to pull back on the throttle and the boat slowed down. The line to the skier slackened fractionally, and as he felt himself beginning to sink he realised that the girls had completely misunderstood the meaning of his signalling. Horrified, he shook his head frantically, waving again.

“No! No!” His voice rang across the water, but was lost to them.

Shelley was peering back over the stern of the boat, and suddenly she got the message. “Wait, he says no,” she called back to Nancy. “Speed up.”

Nancy raised her gaze heavenwards, muttered something about people who couldn’t make their minds up, and let the throttle out again. As the boat pulled away, the young skier’s face relaxed into a look of profound relief.

Further out across the lake, a second motor-boat carrying Paul and Maggie skimmed across the surface of the water. Clear now of the resort and the horrors that still reigned there, they were heading for the far shore, where the outlines of a number of long-abandoned buildings rose above the water where the lake narrowed down and became a river once more. Paul slowed the boat, sweeping in a wide curve to approach the refinery from the best angle, then suddenly said under his breath, “Oh God, no.”

“What’s wrong?” Maggie asked. The place certainly looked pretty dilapidated, half in and half out of the lake, but she couldn’t see anything that could give them trouble. Paul, however, could.

“It’s all flooded,” he said. “The waste tanks, the control booth—it’s all under water.”

Looking more closely at the layout of the refinery buildings, Maggie could see that he was right. “What do we do?” she asked.

Paul thought hard. The boat was now riding on a gentle swell raised by the light wind, and the outlines of the buildings rose and fell in his line of vision.

At length he said, “We’ve got to try and open those tanks somehow. Where’s that tow-line?”

“Here.” Reaching, Maggie grasped the length of rope and handed it to him. “What are you going to do with it?”

“Well,” Paul tied the line in a firm knot around his own waist. “You’re not going to like this, but—”

Shock and realisation hit her together and she stared at him aghast. “Paul, no—you can’t! The piranha—”

He stopped her in mid-sentence. “Yes, the piranha. If we don’t stop them, they’ll head on downriver, and before we know it they’ll be in the ocean, where they can breed like flies and no-one can touch ’em. Just think, Maggie, think about what you saw at the resort back there. Could you risk that happening all over the country—all over the world?”

Slowly Maggie turned around, gazing back across the wide expanse of the lake towards the distant beach and marina. She could, of course, see nothing of the rampant panic back there, but the memory was clear and horribly sharp in her mind. And if she could have transferred her consciousness back to the marina at that moment, she would have had no second thoughts.

Far from receding, the panic was increasing as people milled helplessly about, some injured, others separated from their companions, all in a state of terrified shock. On the shore, where the frantic Whitney had almost pulled Gardner in his haste that his boss should see for himself, a man went running up the beach screaming hideously, the whole left side of his body torn open and blood gushing from the gaping wound. Children were howling, dogs barking, and Gardner could only stand and stare in utter astonishment at the scene.

Out on the water, the lone skier had so far been lucky. He had heard a little of the commotion across the lake, and knew that something very serious was up—something dangerous, something that lurked in the water. He had all but thrown up at the sight of that mutilated floating corpse, and now his only thought was to get to safety—somehow.

As the boat careened towards the shoreline, he raised an arm and forcefully pointed towards the dry land. But Nancy and Shelley, unaware of what was happening, only shook their heads and laughed and accelerated again.

The skier took a deep breath. He had one chance, and it was a slim one. Unless he took it right now, he could go on like this all afternoon—or at least until the girls thought he had had enough and, very gently, let him down into the water where the peril lay. Gritting his teeth, he let himself swing right out away from the shore, then sharply turned in again, hurtling across the boat’s wake and allowing it to give him the extra momentum he needed. Then, hoping he’d judged it right, he let go.

His own impetus carried him in a curving arc towards the shore. There was a long way to go, but . . . he felt himself starting to lose speed, and willed himself to go just that bit further, just that bit further.

The land came up to meet him, a deserted strip of shore far from the chaos of the marina. At the last moment he kicked himself free from the skis, jumped, and splashed through two feet of lapping water to safety. Behind him the motor-boat’s engine note changed as the girls came about and made a pass in front of him, waving and laughing. For a moment he stared at them and at the water—then he collapsed in a dead faint on the sand.

In the boat, Nancy shrugged. “Chicken!” she said cheerfully. “He couldn’t take any more.”

Shelley grinned in agreement. “Yeah! Let’s take one more turn about before we pick him up. Let him wait a bit. Serve him right.”

Nancy let out the throttle once more, and the boat hurtled away towards the more crowded area of the marina. She was intent on handling the craft, and so was not the first to see that something peculiar seemed to be happening at the marina.

“Nancy,” Shelley was standing up in the boat, pointing ahead, “What the hell’s going on over there?”

“Huh?”

“Up ahead—seems like there’s some sort of commotion.”

Nancy took a moment to peer forward, and saw what looked like a mass rally on the shore. “Don’t know,” she said. “Let’s go and have a look!”

Further in towards the beach, a man on a water scooter was heading as fast as he could towards the sand, screaming as he went. Something clung to his leg with the tenacity of a leech—but it was no leech. Its teeth were gnawing madly at him even as he dragged it along, and the scooter veered wildly as, desperately, the man reached down and tore the piranha free, hurling it out into the water. Blood poured down from a severed artery, and as he frantically rode on, the man was oblivious to the motorboat with the two girls on board, approaching fast at an angle.

Nancy, however, had seen him. She yelled, “What the hell?” and as it became obvious that the idiot on the water scooter wasn’t going to do a damned thing to get out of her way, she was forced to swing the boat aside as he cut directly in front of her.

The fast-moving outboard heading towards the beach from the opposite direction didn’t stand a chance. The two craft met head-on, and as the bows of the speedboat ploughed into the outboard, the petrol tank burst apart and the two boats erupted together in a sheet of exploding flame.

On the beach, Gardner covered his face with his hands and started to sob.

CHAPTER 14

Paul had stripped down to his underpants, and was making the free end of the tow-rope fast to the boat. Behind him Maggie sat shivering, horrified by the knowledge of what he was going to try to do, yet knowing that he had no other choice. By risking his own life, he was doing the only thing he could to stop the inexorable progress of the piranha. But she didn’t dare to think of what might happen to him if the deadly shoal had already crossed the lake.

“Okay.” Paul was ready. “Now, remember what you’ve got to do. Count slowly to three hundred, and then whether I’m back on the surface or not, you gun it out of here. If I’m not up by then it means I’m in trouble, because that’s as long as I can hold my breath. Let’s get our count together, now.”

Maggie nodded, unable to speak, knowing that any attempt to dissuade him would be useless. “One—two—three—four—” Their voices were in together, and Paul let himself over the side of the boat. Taking a deep breath, he plunged under the surface, leaving Maggie alone on the water, steadily counting.

The water was murky, reducing visibility to a few yards, but it could have been worse. Paul wished he had a face-mask to make it a bit clearer, but that couldn’t be helped now. Swimming down, he sighted the tanks quickly, and seconds later the control booth loomed into view. It looked like a cab of a giant crane, the front panel made of glass, dimly showing the outlines of the equipment inside. He groped around until he found the door to the booth and, grasping the handle and pulled.

Nothing. Either it was locked, or the pressure of the water was holding it tightly shut. There was only one way of getting in, and swimming around to get in the best position, Paul kicked out with both feet at the glass panel of the window.

Up above him, no more than a vague shadow from the vantage-point of the deep lake, Maggie sat in the boat, one hand on the throttle control while the other twisted nervously at a strand of her hair. She was still counting steadily, her own voice a monotonous rhythm, concentrating.

“Thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four—” Dear God, she thought, please let him succeed. Please let him get to those tanks before—

She couldn’t bear to finish the thought, but it lurked there in a dark recess of her mind, sending cold fingers of dread through her. Before the piranha come.

The kick had worked, and now a gaping hole showed in the glass of the control-booth window. Paul had swum clear of the fragments of glass as they swirled and drifted away from the jagged gap, and as soon as his passage was clear he propelled himself gently towards it. Getting through was tricky, but he managed it without mishap, and swam over to where a large wheel-valve was fixed to a control panel.

He didn’t bother to check the level meters of the tanks—being submerged for so long, the chances were that they were no longer accurate, and even if there was only a minute quantity of effluent left in the tanks, it might be sufficient to do the job. Grasping the wheel, he tried to turn it, but it was jammed fast. Mentally cursing, he braced his foot against the panel—a difficult operation, as the buoyancy of the water made him almost weightless—and strained at the wheel, struggling to get it moving. The water reduced his muscle-power considerably, and he only hoped that the wheel mounting hadn’t rusted—if it had, he might as well give up right now and swim back to the surface.

Still the wheel refused to budge, but Paul wasn’t prepared to give up. He knew he hadn’t much time left—although he had stopped counting, a faint but increasing drumming in his ears and the threat of constriction in his chest told him that he would have to go up for air before long. Bracing himself again, he pulled, pulled . . .

Paul’s back was turned to the shattered window now, and so as he heaved at the stubborn wheel-valve, he was unaware that he was being watched. First one pair of cold, expressionless eyes, then another and another, observed him from beyond the glass panel, and in the murky water something stirred, bumping against the pane with the gentlest of thuds. It beat its tail against the smooth, transparent surface, then with a quick wriggle of its gleaming body it drew back and prepared for a second onslaught. All around it more were beginning to swarm, nosing the glass, writhing beyond the barrier, hunting, seeking a way in. As if guided by some malevolent, preternatural intelligence shared among them all, the piranha had left the carnage of the marina behind and were moving on, heading by instinct for the place where the river continued on its seaward journey. As the bottleneck narrowed at the end of the lake, they had known—somehow—that here among the drowned buildings was more prey—more living flesh to be torn and eaten. They had sensed its presence—and now they could see it.

As though dancing in some grisly slow-motion ballet, they swam and circled around the glass. As yet they were unable to pass through it—even a concerted onslaught by the whole school would have been unlikely to smash the panel—but they were tenacious; beyond that barrier was food, and they would not give up until they had found a way to get to it and attack.

Suddenly, one of the largest piranha made the vital discovery. Tail flicking, it darted through the hole Paul had kicked in the panel, and instantly its fellows started to crowd through after it. In grim formation, the shoal moved silently, inexorably towards the place where Paul still fought with the valve.

On the surface, Maggie counted, “Two hundred and five, two hundred and six . . .” Down below her, Paul had to will himself not to let out a cry of triumph as the wheel-valve at last began to turn. He let out a few bubbles of his precious air—knowing he had very little time left—and concentrated his remaining energy on spinning the wheel, faster and faster. Beyond him, outside the booth, something gurgled in a row of huge pipes that lay submerged in the silt of the lake bed and a second later a trickle of green sludge began to flow from the first, quickly followed by another and another, until all the pipes were emitting a thick, foul cloud of effluent. The water around them darkened as the stuff mingled with it, turning the underwater world beyond the glass to a blinding fog.

The valve stopped moving, and Paul knew it was fully open. Aware of a mounting sense of elated relief, he turned, launched himself away from the panel—and immediately thrashed backwards again, eyes starting almost out of their sockets, as he looked towards the glass window.

The piranha were a dozen feet away, and coming straight at him. More of the monsters were crowding in through the shattered glass, filling the booth, bearing down on him from all sides. He was trapped, like a rat in a cage.

Paul felt panic rising in his throat, and he fought to quell it. Struggling to retain his reason, he decided that he had one chance, and one only. If he could break through the swarming killer fish, burst through their ranks before they could react, get through the glass and up to the surface, he might save himself. It was his only hope—and if he failed, he would be torn to shreds, his flesh ripped from his bones by those ravening teeth even as he fought them.

They were four feet away—and Paul acted. Shoving off from the wall as hard as he could, he launched himself straight at the oncoming shoal. The momentum took him through their midst—but he had reckoned without the speed with which these monsters could react. Even as he hurled himself, kicking strongly, towards the glass panel, they had turned sinuously and were up with him, thrashing all around him. Wildly, Paul kicked harder and buffeted at the killers with his arms, trying to stave them off. He felt a searing agony tear at his skin, and a red smear of blood clouded the water close by his face. The piranha were all over him—snapping, rending, the water now darkening further, turning crimson as blood flowed from the wounds their teeth were inflicting.

Paul beat at the glass, searching for the hole he had made, unable to find it. All the while a thought raced through his agonised mind through a daze of pain and terror—don’t open your mouth, don’t let yourself scream, don’t open your mouth whatever you do—but he couldn’t take any more, the piranha were swarming over him like a vile living skin, writhing, wriggling, biting, cannoning into one another in their efforts to get to his unprotected, bloody flesh.

Maggie’s teeth were clenched as she counted. “Two eighty-nine, two-ninety—” she couldn’t leave Paul, couldn’t—but she must stick to what she had promised.

“Two ninety-eight—” Her hand tightened on the throttle control, and she listened to the boat’s engine note.

“Three hundred!” And before she changed her mind, Maggie let the throttle out full. The propeller started to turn with a lurch; white froth churned under the keel, and the prow rose in the air like a rearing horse as the motorboat gunned away over the lake surface. At the wheel, Maggie’s eyes were suddenly blinded by tears.

Behind the boat, the tow-rope went taut. And down under the surface of the water, where blood and effluent were churning together, Paul knew that he couldn’t stand the agony and the horror any longer, that he had to try and scream as the piranhas’ savage teeth sawed and stabbed at his flesh. He kicked desperately, knowing it was futile, but driven by his survival instinct to fight while he still had life. And then he felt a terrific pull that jerked him violently against the glass panel. It gave, cracking and splitting apart with the force, and in a cloud of blood and glass shards Paul exploded through the window, dragged by the tow-line as Maggie opened up the throttle and the boat hurtled away. Paul was torn from the piranhas’ grip, and plunged through the water, now slimy with the discharge from the pipes, like a grotesque comet, leaving a red trail of his own blood in his wake.

The throttle was fully open now, and the motorboat was riding the choppy water like a bird, skimming and leaping at top speed. Maggie felt hideously sick, and hardly dared to look behind her, certain that she would see only the slack end of the rope snaking behind. But when she did summon the strength to turn her head, what she did made her leap to the controls and cut the engine.

The tow-line was taut. Something heavy was being dragged along underwater. As the motorboat slewed to a halt and stayed rocking gently on the surface of the lake, Maggie scrambled into the stern and feverishly hauled on the rope, pulling it in as fast as she could. And then, suddenly, it went slack. Her heart stopped beating, and she redoubled her efforts. Moments later, the end of the rope appeared, the knot broken, the loop that Paul had tied around his waist gone.

Maggie gasped and sat back on the gunwale, staring blankly at the water. She hadn’t imagined it, there had been something there. It had to be Paul, there was no other possibility—but what had happened to him?

“Oh, no!” Her voice was barely recognisable, choked and distorted. “Oh my God.” She started to shake, shivering uncontrollably with shock and grief. And then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a movement in the water.

Before Maggie’s stunned gaze, a human hand—more claw than hand, it seemed, for it was clenched in a rictus of pain, streaked with blood and smeared with a foul greenish stuff—appeared unsteadily above the lake, groping blindly. Finding the gunwale, it clamped on and, like a hideous mutated spider, started to claw its way towards her.

Maggie’s scream echoed the whole length and breadth of the Lost River Lake.

“PAUL!”

CHAPTER 15

The sun was slipping gradually down the clear sky, bringing the first wash of twilight as evening settled over Lost River. At the resort, panic had given way to a different kind of chaos as the Army, police, ambulances and a bevy of media representatives, from TV company trucks to radio cars to newspaper journalists poured into the site. It seemed that everyone was trying to do everything at once, and the only contingent that was relatively unhindered was the ambulance men, who were loading the injured on to stretchers as fast as they could, with the help of a detachment of soldiers. All around them camera crews swarmed like flies, filming every piece of debris they could set eyes on. Some were grim-faced and obviously sickened by what they found, doing what they had to simply because it was their job. Others, however, were taking a ghoulish delight in unearthing all the horrors of the day.

One newscaster, broadcasting live for a major network, stood on the beach amid the human litter of dead and injured, rescue workers running about like ants around him.

“The actual details of the disaster remain sketchy,” he said into his microphone. “But as you can see, the carnage here certainly speaks for itself.” With one hand he indicated the sand at his back, and the cameraman zoomed in somewhat shakily on a corpse which lay sprawled a few yards away in a pool of drying blood. The eyes stared sightlessly at the dusky sky, and the body was a sickening mass of gore, all the skin stripped away from the flesh and bones. Instantly an Army officer, his face livid with anger, hurled a blanket over the body and muttered something about profanity, and the cameraman swung away, visibly annoyed that his shot had been ruined before he had had time to really dwell on it. Resignedly, he focused once more on the newscaster.

“We can only speculate as to the true dimensions of this ecological disaster. Is this the beginning of Nature’s revenge for man’s destruction of the environment?” Dramatically he paused, while the camera panned again around the horrific scene and the sound recordist homed in on the background noises of shouting, crying and arguing. “Only time will tell.” And with a sage nod, the newscaster signalled to the director that he had finished.

Melodramatic though his approach had been, that newscaster had at least had the good grace not to badger the victims of the grisly scenario for eye-witness accounts. Another, however, from a different network whose equipment was stationed on the other side of the crowd, had no such scruples. He was in his element, running from one person to another, picking on anyone who looked as if they were shocked or injured or bereaved, thrusting his microphone in their faces and demanding a personal summary. He had just been attempting to cross-question a man who lay stunned and bleeding on a stretcher, and had been thwarted by two stony-faced ambulance men who carried his subject off under his very nose, when he saw a small girl, looking lost but apparently uninjured, wandering past him a few yards away. Intercepting her, he knelt down and put on his best avuncular smile.

“And how about you, little girl? I’ll bet you’ve seen some shocking sights you’d like to share with our TV viewers.”

Suzie Grogan stared solemnly back at him. Behind the apparent composure of her face, her eyes were dismal. “My daddy hates TV,” she said flatly. “He says it’s ruining the country.” And with that she walked purposefully off.

Piqued, the reporter stood up, waved to the camera to cut away from him until he’d found a more talkative victim, and wandered through the crowd. Suddenly someone grabbed his arm, and turning he looked into the white face of Gardner, who, if he remembered rightly, was some kind of bigwig round here.

“You!” Gardner was in a white rage, mostly generated by stark fear. “You’re not going to put any of this on TV! You do, and you’re gonna find yourself with the biggest lawsuit you ever saw, buddy!”

For a moment the reporter glowered at him, then he reached out and pushed the irate man away. “Go to hell!”

Gardner staggered back into a knot of people and stared after the reporter, feeling as though his whole world had come to an end.

Further away, near the fringe of the main activity, an ambulance was parked with transfusion equipment set up in its rear compartment. From the equipment long, slender tubes ran, pumping blood to a pale, heavily bandaged figure on a stretcher. From under the pristine hospital blanket, Paul Grogan’s eyes moved restlessly around the site, glazed with pain.

At his side Maggie knelt, wanting to cry but knowing that for his sake she must keep as cheerful as she could, to rally him. They’d said he would live, but his recovery would be a long, slow process. And she knew only too well that nothing would erase the memory of this nightmare, for either of them.

She reached out to him, holding a flask. “Would you like a drink of this?” she asked gently.

He tried to raise his head, but the effort was too painful. “What is it?” he asked in a whisper.

“Water.”

She held it to his lips and he took a weak pull, then made a face. “You’re right. It is water. Ugh!”

Maggie smiled, but inwardly she felt as though her heart was breaking. She supposed she should have been glad, for by his bravery—an insane piece of bravery which had so nearly cost him his life—Paul had saved them all from a menace that was too horrifying to think about. Without him, the piranha would still have been swarming in the river, journeying on towards the sea where they could breed and terrorise with no-one and nothing to stop them. Paul was a hero. But Maggie couldn’t be glad. In her heart, as she looked at Paul’s torn and lacerated body, she felt only a terrible bitterness.

The Pacific surf boomed with a sound like constant gunfire on the miles of pale, broad sand that marked the coast. On the edge of a bank of dunes, peaceful and isolated, a solitary fisherman sat preparing to cast his line out into the rolling surf. Beside him a transistor radio blared tinnily, giving out some news programme of something peculiar that had happened up at a river resort. The fisherman wasn’t really paying attention; he only had the radio on for company, and was more intent on baiting his hook.

“A statement from government marine biologist Dr. Florence Mengers called for a full investigation to ensure that the whole truth will come out,” the announcer said. “Meanwhile, she stated that there is no indication that any of the deadly piranha have escaped through to the ocean.”

Unconcernedly, the fisherman finished his baiting, and stood up to make his cast. The line flicked through the air in a glitter of silver and splashed into a rolling wave. It sank into the green water, drifting down, down through the turbulence to the cool, still depths below, where it hung tantalisingly, a lure that no fish could resist, hopefully.

And it wasn’t long before something did come investigating. Or rather, several things. Ten or fifteen or them, swimming in from the darkness deeper out in the sea, nosing around the hook, looking, as they were forever looking, for something to satisfy their insatiable appetite. Snapping, their needle-sharp teeth demolished the bait in seconds, breaking the line and sending the hook spiralling down to the sand at the bottom. Then realising that there was nothing more for them here—that they must look elsewhere for better prey—the survivors of the piranha shoal swam on along the quiet, peaceful coastline.

Table of Contents

- Back Cover
- Movie
- Titlepage
- Copyright

- PIRANHA

- CHAPTER 1
- CHAPTER 2
- CHAPTER 3
- CHAPTER 4
- CHAPTER 5
- CHAPTER 6
- CHAPTER 7
- CHAPTER 8
- CHAPTER 9
- CHAPTER 10
- CHAPTER 11
- CHAPTER 12
- CHAPTER 13
- CHAPTER 14
- CHAPTER 15