Our Children's Children

43

It was the dog that did it. Bentley Price hadn't had a drink all day. The road was a narrow, winding mountain road, and Bentley, exasperated beyond endurance at what had happened to him, was driving faster than he should. After hours of hunting for it, he had finally found the camp — a very temporary camp by the looks of it, with none of the meticulous neatness of the usual army camp, simply a stopping place in a dense patch of woods beside a stream that came brawling down the valley. Filled with a deep sense of duty done and perseverance paying off, he had slung cameras around his neck and gone plodding toward the largest of the tents and had almost reached it when the colonel had come out to stop his further progress. "Who the hell are you," the colonel had asked, "and where do you think you're going?" "I am the Global News," Bentley had told him, "and I am out here to take some pictures of this monster hunt. I tell the city editor it isn't worth the time, but he disagrees with me and it's no skin off my nose no matter where I'm sent, so leave us get the lead out and do some monster hunting so I can get some pictures."

"You're off limits, mister," the colonel had told him. "You are way off limits, in more ways than one. I don't know how you got this far. Didn't someone try to stop you?" "Sure, said Bentley, up the road a ways. A couple of soldier boys. But I pay no attention to them. I never pay attention to someone who tries to stop me. I got work to do and I can't fool around…"

And then the colonel had thrown him out of there. He had spoken in a clipped, military voice and had been very icy-eyed. "We've got trouble enough," he said, "without some damn fool photographer mucking around and screwing up the detail. If you don't leave under your own power, I'll have you escorted out". While he was saying this, Bentley snapped a camera up and took a picture of him. That made the situation even worse, and Bentley, with his usual quick perception, could see his cause had worsened, so had beat a dignified retreat to avoid escort. When he had passed the soldier boys who had tried to stop him they had yelled at him and thumbed their noses. Bentley had slowed down momentarily, debating whether to go back and reason with them, then had thought better of it. They ain't worth the time, he told himself.

Now the dog.

The dog came bursting out of high weeds and brush that grew along the road. His ears were laid back, his tail tucked in and he was kiyodeling in pure, blind panic. The dog was close and the car traveling much too fast. Bentley jerked the wheel, the car veered off the road, smashed through a clump of brush. The tires screamed as Bentley hit the brakes. The nose of the car slammed hard into a huge walnut tree and stopped with a shuddering impact. The left-hand door flew open and Bentley, who held a lofty disdain for such copouts as seat belts, was thrown free. The camera which he wore on a strap around his neck, described a short arc and brought up against his ear, dealing him a blow that made his head ring as if there were a bell inside it. He landed on his back and rolled, wound up on hands and knees. He surged erect and found that he had ended up on the edge of the road.

Standing in the middle of the road was a monster. Bentley knew it was a monster; he had seen two of them only yesterday. But this one was small, no bigger than a Shetland pony. Which did not mean the horror of it was any less.

But Bentley was of different fiber from other men. He did not gulp; his gut did not turn over. His hands came up with swift precision, grabbed the camera firmly, brought it to his eye. The monster was framed in the finder and his finger pressed the button. The camera clicked and as it clicked the monster disappeared.

Bentley lowered the camera and let loose of it. His head still rang from the blow upon the ear. His clothes were torn; a gaping rent in a trouser leg revealed one knobby knee. His right hand was bloody from where his palm had scraped across some gravel. Behind him the car creaked slightly as twisted metal settled slowly into place. The motor pinged and sizzled as water from the broken radiator ran across hot metal.

Off in the distance the still-running dog was yipping frantically. In a tree up the hillside an excited squirrel chattered with machine-gun intensity. The road was empty. A monster had been there. From where he stood, Bentley could see its tracks printed in the dust. But it was no longer there.

Bentley limped out into the road, stared both up and down it. There was nothing on the road.

It was there, said Bentley stubbornly to himself. I had it in the finder. It was there when I shot the picture. It wasn't until the shutter clicked that it disappeared. Doubt assailed him. Had it been there or not when he'd shot the picture? Was it on the film? Had he been robbed of a photo by its disappearance?

Thinking about it, it seemed that it had been there, but he could not be sure.

He turned about and started limping down the road as rapidly as he could. There was one way to find out. He had to get to a phone, he had to somehow get a car. He must get back to Washington.