Serpent Read Free

beasts. You hear that kind of thing all the time.”
    Becker wasn’t convinced; he was stricken with the information in his hand and lifted the paper up as if to emphasize his point. “The Loch Ness Monster is bullshit and everyone knows it,” he said. “But right here – in this paper- an independent lab is telling us that we’ve got some kind of… Medieval dinosaur right here in Wales!”
    Dr. Paz nodded her head in resignation. “I know,” she said. “My main goal now is to uncover that entire skeleton and reconstruct it. I really want to see what that thing looks like.”
    Becker lowered the paper in his hand, struggling to collect his wits. He was genuinely blown away by the information. “Me , too,” he agreed, taking a deep breath as he labored for calm. His gaze moved to the tent where the students were diligently working. “But this really puts an entirely new spin to evolution if this information is accurate.”
    Dr. Paz was thoughtful, trying to be clinical about such outlandish news. “There are lots of descendants of dinosaurs that have lived into modern times, so this isn’t completely crazy,” she said. “Alligators, for instance. They have dinosaur ancestors. So do birds. Remember the movie ‘Jurassic Park’? There are lots of creatures that survived the Jurassic and Triassic periods, evolving into creatures we know today.”
    Becker knew that and he, too, was trying to be clinical about the information. He was a scientist, after all, so in his mind there had to be a logical explanation. “So something like this really isn’t out of the realm of possibility?”
    Dr. Paz nodded seriously. “It’s entirely possible, as strange as it sounds.”
    Becker pondered that for a moment. “I’ve got some students researching local legends simply because I’m trying to get to the bottom of all of these bodies,” he said. “I’ll see if they can find something about monsters or beasts roaming around out here. There has got to be some kind of local legend. A creature like this wouldn’t have gone unseen.”
    “My thoughts exactly,” Dr. Paz said. “You’ll let me know if they find anything?”
    “Of course,” Becker said as he handed the paper back to her. “We keep this between us for now, okay? I don’t want this news getting out, at least not yet. We’re going to have a hell of a time defending this.”
    Dr. Paz agreed. “I know,” she said, her gaze moving to the tent where Becker’s students were working. “But I think I have a theory about your human remains.”
    Becker looked at her curiously. “What’s that?”
    Dr. Paz reached into her pocked and pulled out a long, slender piece of bone. Upon closer inspection, Becker could see that it was a fang or sharp tooth. Silently, Dr. Paz motioned for Becker to follow her back over to the tent where she went to one of the tables and lifted up a femur bone. She looked at Becker.
    “Do you remember telling me that it looked as if these bodies had been hacked apart or dismembered by knives or chisels because of the hack marks in the bone?” she asked.
    Becker nodded. “Yes,” he said, looking at the bones spread over the table. “ All of the bones have those marks.”
    Dr. Paz shook her head. “Watch this,” she said. Then she took the long tooth and held it up to one of the hack marks in the femur bone. It fit the shape perfectly. When Becker saw that, his eyes threatened to burst from his skull.
    “No…,” he gasped.
    Dr. Paz nodded as she looked at the tooth, fitting into the hack mark like the last piece of a perfect puzzle.
    “Yes,” she whispered in return. “Th is is a tooth from that skeleton. These are teeth marks in the bone, not hack marks. Your bodies weren’t in a big battle, Bud. They were eaten by that beast out there.”
    Becker didn’t think he could be more astonished than he already was. He took the femur from her, and the tooth, and fitted the two together perfectly .
    “Holy crap,” he gasped in