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death, had taken her body into the old schoolhouse and solicited B.C.'s help. I joined up with what would have been Madden's team and hooked up with Caleb on the sweep effort. All the reports sounded the samesaw nothing, heard nothing, no creature, no nothing. |
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The men milled around the area in a kind of robotlike daze; most of them hadn't slept in 36 hours. They were operating on coffee, cigarettes and frayed raw emotions. What little banter there had been earlier had now disappeared completely. |
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Kendall was aware of the situation. He clustered the 20-odd men around him and signaled for silence. "It's a little after three," he began in a voice worn thin by the mounting hours of strain, "and most of us are out on our feet. I intend to initiate the same security plan tonight that we had last night. Everyone who isn't assigned to one of the patrol efforts will be restricted to the village." |
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Kendall's speech mirrored his own growing uncertainty. The situation was deteriorating. He knew it and the men knew it. The repeated failures to find and capture the wounded creature only compounded the problem. The men were losing confidence in both the man and his plan. |
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The trek back to the marina gave me some time to think. I didn't know how or why, but I was convinced that both Kelto and the old |
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