"Oh shit! I'm in the monster! I'm in the monster!"

Baskel and Bozeman were sitting around the radio, listening to Lawless describe what he saw happening on a canal bank somewhere in Modesto.

Aside from the time Lawless knocked the cell phone out of Jensen's hand, and all they got were muffled voices, they'd heard every word he said. None of it had been helpful in locating the teenagers.

Officers checked in every now and then, reporting nothing. No citizen had called in complaining of yelling or noise that might have anything to do with their search for the, whatever it was, swimming around in the canals, killing people, tearing up their cars.

So, they sat and listened.

Then Lawless read the street name off the fence and the line went dead.

"Did he just say '

East Fairmont Avenue'?" Captain Bozeman asked.

"I believe he did," Baskel said.

They scrambled to look at the map. It took them twenty seconds to locate the street, ten more to see who was assigned to the canal, and another thirty to radio Howard and Stoveson.

The plan was simple: whatever team was closest to the attack would save the citizen, or citizens, and kill the big snake-thing. No one expected it to be that easy so they had a back-up plan they immediately put into action. Calls went out to other patrol cars to take up positions along the canal. They hoped one or more of the cops would see it and blow its head off.

Uniformed men and women scrambled to take up positions on Lateral No. 4.

Officers Howard and Stoveson were on the canal when the call from Detective Baskel came in over the radio.

"We've identified the location of the attack and it's on your canal. Get your asses north to East Fairmont and keep your shotgun pointed at the water. There are four teenagers at the scene, three males and one female, so don't fire at anything outside the canal unless you're sure what you're aiming at. Keep your radio line open. Move!"

Stoveson punched the gas and the patrol car took off. She was scared; images of Poloosa's body and patrol car flashed through her mind. The most dangerous situation she'd faced in sixteen months was a drunk whose family had locked him out of the house. They wouldn't let him in until he sobered up so he was throwing rocks at the house and screaming obscenities. Family disturbances could and often did have violent endings, but she would take a drunk any day over a monster that could bite through your car and tear you to pieces.

She took several deeps breaths, trying to slow her heart.

They followed Lateral No. 4 until it disappeared under McHenry, the four-lane road that bisected north Modesto. She flipped the emergency lights and siren on, but still had to wait thirty seconds to get across the busy road.

On the other side, they almost ran into a gate blocking the entrance to the canal. Howard jumped out to open it, but it was chained and padlocked. He ran to the trunk and grabbed a huge pair of bolt cutters, trying to ignore the invisible clock ticking away in his head. He fumbled with the cutters; the chain kept slipping so he called Stoveson. Sweating, she pulled the chain taut while he cut it. They rushed back to the patrol car and Howard prayed the minute it had taken to cut the chain wouldn't matter.

They roared off down the canal. After what seemed like an hour, really just two or three minutes, they turned a corner and saw a teenager in their headlights, running and yelling and waving.

Stoveson slowed and said into the radio, "We got a teenaged male running on the canal bank directly ahead of us. He appears to be injured."

Her adrenal glands went into overdrive, pumping out hormones that acted like hi-octane fuel for her skeletal muscles: she was in danger of hyperventilating.

But she was happy someone was still alive and yelled, "Hell yes! We made it in time!"

As the word "time" left her lips, she saw an impossibly enormous snake come out of the canal and lunge at the boy from behind.

"Look out!" she yelled through the windshield. She stomped on the brakes and yelled at Howard, "Out of the car! It's right there! Shoot it! Shoot it!"

There was no time. The creature's jaws closed down around the boy's waist and cut him in two. The creature's head was covered with blood and a coil of intestines hung from its mouth.

"Move!" she shouted at Howard. She herself did not move; her hands were glued to the steering wheel.

Howard opened the door and the creature hesitated, blinking its yellow slanted eyes at the headlights, then bent down and bit the boy's head off and slid into the canal.

Halfway out of the car, Howard raised the shotgun and fired into the canal. Shouting "Hey!" he cleared the door, pumped a shell into the chamber and fired into the water next to the patrol car. Shouting and pumping and shooting, he moved up the canal toward the boy's remains until there were no more shells in the gun.

He raced back to the patrol car and starting jamming shells into the shotgun and said to Stoveson, "Did you call for an ambulance?" When she didn't answer, he shouted at her, "Did you call for an ambulance?" She was frozen, but at least the spot was pointed at the canal.

"Hey!" he screamed at her, and she pried a hand off the steering wheel and picked up the radio mike. "Get an ambulance here then get your ass out of the car and help me find the other kids."

Her voice returned and she made the call.

The creature had been caught up in the thrill of the chase, and of the gluttony, and of the slaughter.

It had been so excited when it came out of the canal and attacked the prey that it had not been vigilant in keeping its guard up, and the human slipped back into its head. Then, at the end of its hunt, it had let the other humans in their machine get too close.

The humans and their machine infuriated it. It would make them pay.

The shock from having his vision change from prey to hunter in a split second almost drove Lawless mad.

He clawed at the seats and his face contorted. He tried to sit up but was pushed back by an invisible force. He screamed, "No! No! No! No!"

Terrified, Jensen moved as far away from him as she could, backing against the dashboard. She threw her arms across her chest, then reached for the door handle.

He quit thrashing and yelling and fell quiet. She waited, afraid he might be baiting her, that if she peeked over the top of the seat he would grab her and somehow suck her into his madness.

Seconds passed. She peeked over the seat, keeping her hand on the door handle.

He was laying on his back, eyes open, tears pouring from his eyes.

"What do you see?" she asked, quiet, cautious, ready to move.

"It's pure evil, Sandra. Satan himself couldn't be more evil that this creature. It just bit off the arms and legs of one of the boys. Now it's biting off the boy's head." He sobbed.

Jensen forgot her fear and wondered if she should try to stop the vision before he crossed into territory he could not return from.

"It's chasing them down," he continued, his words punching through the sobs. "It's hunting them one by one, on land."

Did he just say the monster was chasing people on land?

"It bit a hole in a fence and went into a backyard to get Nick."

Then, after a few seconds, "Oh God, please don't make me watch anymore." He continued sobbing.

Fifteen seconds later, he said, almost hopeful, "It's gone back into the canal. Weren't there three boys? It's only killed two, there's still one boy left."

"Maybe he'll get away," she said.

Then, Lawless did get excited. "Headlights! Cop car! Some of our guys are there!"

Jensen's heart jumped. "What do you see?"

"Oh no! Oh no! I bit the boy in half!" he shrieked, filled with grief. "The headlights are blinding me. Shoot me! Shoot me now while I can't see!"

He wept, loud and bitter, full of remorse.

Jensen cried with him, letting the tears roll down her cheeks. After a few seconds, in a broken voice, she asked, "Danny, where are you?"

"Canal. Back in the canal."

"What do you see?" She took some comfort from that familiar question.

"Black. Just black."

He was quiet for a few seconds, had stopped crying, when, "I'm looking at the back of a patrol car. On a canal bank. Lights are flashing."

"Can you hear anything?"

"No. No hearing, only feeling."

"Do you see any policemen?"

"No."

Jensen thought the creature must be looking at the back of the car at the scene and wondered if she should call Baskel. The cell phone battery was dead but she could use the radio. "Should I radio in? Do you think they're in danger?"

He didn't answer.

She picked up the mike and pushed the button. "Detective Baskel?"

The speaker crackled. "Baskel here. Why aren't you using the cell phone, Deputy?"

"Battery's dead."

"I'm moving toward the patrol car," Lawless said.

"Be careful what you say over the radio," Baskel cautioned. "Anyone with a police band could be listening in."

"I'm twenty feet behind the patrol car." Alarm sounded in Lawless's voice.

Jensen thought for a second, then said, feeling stupid, "We see the ... bad guy, in the canal, and he's sneaking up behind a patrol car."

"What number?" Baskel said.

"Can you see a number on the car?" she asked Lawless.

"It's not afraid."

"Can you see a number on the car?" she asked again, louder.

"Too bright. I have to go under."

"What do you see?" she shouted at him.

"Female," was all he said.

To Baskel, "I don't know what the car number is, but there's a female officer there."

There was only one female officer on duty that night.

"Shit. Car Thirty-Two, you've got a ... bad guy, coming up behind you, in the canal!"

"What?" Stoveson shouted into the handset. "What did you say?"

She was still in the patrol car, trying to work up the courage to get out and help her partner search for the kids. Her heart, which had just slowed to one-fifty, shot back up to two hundred.

"Oh man ..." Her mind froze.

"Do you copy Thirty-Two?"

The radio. She should respond. She could do that.

She pressed the button and said, in a voice that shook with fear, "Copy that. Please advise."

There was a short pause, then a new voice came on the radio, a female she didn't recognize, "Fire the shotgun into the canal again. Maybe you can scare it away. Keep your spotlight on the canal."

Who was that? What happened to Detective Baskel?

"Please advise, Detective Baskel."

"Do what she says!" Baskel's voice was distorted as he shouted at her through the little speaker. "And for God's sake, move it Stoveson!"

His command jolted her to life. She grabbed the spotlight, began moving it back and forth over the canal to her left, and reached for the shotgun. It was gone.

A head poked through a window and an angry voice said, "What's going on? Why are you still in the car?"

She screamed and swung at the head. She let go of the light and it swung up, illuminating a stand of trees across the canal.

"Stoveson, what the hell is going on?" the voice said, as the front passenger's door opened.

She stopped and caught her breath.

"It's behind us. In the water."

The creature moved against the current, enough to keep its place next to the human's machine, while it ran the information it had gathered above the water against its database of experiences. It could only compare this to its earlier attack when it had torn through the machine and fed on the human hiding within. But it expected the humans to be wiser now, to evolve and adapt as it did. They would anticipate it attacking them in their machine and would keep the light on the water.

And the bright light was bad. It had to avoid the bright light or it would be blinded.

Though it feared the light, it wanted the flesh hiding in the machine more. So it waited.