Read Online Creatures of the Storm by Brad Munson - Free Book Online

new
species? We pick up crap like this off the desert floor every day.
If it’s not some bit of human detritus, then it’s some skeletal
fragment that’s been warped by the wind or heat. You know
that.”
    He jerked away from her and put the
straw-thing back on his display tray. “It’s nothing of the kind.
Nothing like that. Look at this one.” He used the tweezers to pull
up a larger claw-like thing, straight as a ruler along the back,
angling into a curve with an almost geometrical abruptness as it
swooped into a circular arc, razor-sharp along the inside edge.
    “Obviously avian,” she said, dismissing
it.
    “Bullshit,” he said. “You know goddamn well
there’s nothing in bird taxonomy that accounts for a claw like
that. Not bird, not reptile, not mammal.” He looked up to glare at
her, and for the first time Lucy could clearly see the rage in his
eyes.
    What an ugly, ugly
man , she thought. How the hell did he ever get this far?
    “Have you checked?” she asked, carefully
controlling her voice.
    He gaped at her. “What?”
    “Have you checked? If it’s not a bird, at
least not a local desert species, what about an exotic? What about
some, I don’t know, parrot or macaw that somebody bought over the
internet from a pet store in the middle of Africa, then dumped in
the desert when it croaked?”
    “That’s ridiculous,” he blustered, busily
putting the claw under the holding clamps on his microscope.
    “What about simple birth defects of an
indigenous species? Or malnutrition? Have you ruled that out? Or
anomalous regrowth of an injury?”
    “No,” he said, staring fixedly into the
eyepiece. “No, it’s not possible. Look at the ligature marks here.
It must be where the muscles, or something like muscles, linked to
the framework. And here, the fine cross-hatching, it’s as if a
secondary element overlaid the substructure and–”
    “And what, a whole new species is more likely
than a stray bozo-bozo lizard from Macadamia or a bird with a
busted wing? Come on, Michael. Think.”
    He slammed the countertop as hard as he
could. Glass and steel containers bounced and rang the length of
the laboratory. “You always do that to me!” he said, sounding like
a petulant child. “Always! I come up with a new idea and you piss
on it, without even trying to give it a chance!”
    She stared at him. “Michael. Honey. That’s
because you’re always wrong.” For a moment she thought of putting a
comforting hand on his shoulder, actually trying to talk to this
asshole, to reason with him despite the wild gleam in his eye and
his absolutely absurd proposal. “Look,” she said, straining to be
gentle, “I don’t know why you keep doing this. You have this
schoolboy obsession with making The Big Discovery and becoming the
Stephen Hawking of modern biology. But somewhere in there, Michael,
you know the truth. Science isn’t like that. It’s hard work, and
slogging, and incremental discoveries, not overnight fame and
fortune.” She gestured helplessly at the claw-thing. “This isn’t
going to do it, Michael. All you’ve got–”
    “Just look at it,” he said tightly.
    “Michael. All you’ve got is some weathered
speci—”
    “LOOK AT IT, GODDAMN YOU!”
    She stared at him for the longest time. She
forced herself to count to ten. “Okay,” she said, so quietly she
could barely hear herself over the rush of water outside the
window. “I’ll make you a deal.”
    “What?”
    “I’ll examine the specimen…and you tell me
where you took the goddamn ATV.”
    He glared at her. “I didn’t take it
anywhere.”
    “Oh, please.”
    “I didn’t take it anywhere important.
Just…out for a drive.”
    “Without permission.”
    He stared at her.
    “After what happened last time.”
    Still nothing.
    “When you know that another complaint or
insurance claim will cause the liability coverage for the whole
fucking installation to be withdrawn.”
    “It was nothing, Lucy. Really.”
    “No