The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

pain and anger. Three of the protective ocular membranes slid back from his eyes like electric car windows, allowing him to see in the bitter air.
    He thrashed his tail, pumped his great webbed feet, and torpedoed toward the shore.
    Gabe It had been almost ten years since Gabe Fenton had dissected a dog, but now, at three o'clock in the morning, he was thinking seriously about taking a scalpel to Skinner, his three-year-old Labrador retriever, who was deep in the throes of a psychotic barking fit. Skinner had been banished to the porch that afternoon, after he had taken a roll in a dead seagull and refused to go into the surf or get near the hose to be washed off. To Skinner, dead bird was the smell of romance.
    Gabe crawled out of bed and padded to the door in his boxers, scooping up a hiking boot along the way. He was a biologist, held a Ph.D. in animal behavior from Stanford, so it was with great academic credibility that he opened the door and winged the boot at his dog, following it with the behavior-reinforcing command of: "Skinner, shut the fuck up!"
    Skinner paused in his barking fit long enough to duck under the flying L. L. Bean, then, true to his breeding, retrieved it from the washbasin that he used as a water dish and brought it back to the doorway where Gabe stood. Skinner set the soggy boot at the biologist's feet. Gabe closed the door in Skinner's face.
    Jealous, Skinner thought. No wonder he can't get any females, smelling like fabric softener and soap.
    The Food Guy wouldn't be so cranky if he'd get out and sniff some butts. (Skinner always thought of Gabe as "the Food Guy.") Then, after a quick sniff to confirm that he was, indeed, the Don Juan of all dogs. Skinner resumed his barking fit. Doesn't he get it, Skinner thought, there's something dangerous coming. Danger, Food Guy, danger!
    Inside, Gabe Fenton glanced at the computer screen in his living room as he returned to bed. A thousand tiny green dots were working their way, en masse, across the map of the Pine Cove area. He stopped and rubbed his eyes. It wasn't possible.
    Gabe went to the computer and typed in a command. The map of the area reappeared in wider scale.
    Still, the dots were all moving in a line. He zoomed the map to only a few squaremiles, the dots were still on the move. Each green dot on the map represented a rat that Gabe had live-trapped, injected with a microchip, and released into the wild. Their location was tracked and plotted by satellite. Every rat in a ten-square-mile area was moving east, away from the coast. Rats did not behave that way.
    Gabe ran the data backward, looking at the rodents' movements over the last few hours. The exodus
    had started abruptly, only two hours ago, and already most of the rats had moved over a mile inland.
    They were running full-tilt and going far beyond their normal range. Rats are sprinters, not long-distance runners. Something was up.
    Gabe hit a key and a tiny green number appeared next to each of the dots. Each chip was unique, and each rat could be identified like airplanes on the screen of an air traffic controller. Rat 363 hadn't moved outside of a two-meter range for five days. Gabe had assumed that she had either given birth or was ill.
    Now 363 was half a mile from her normal territory.
    Anomalies are both the bane and bread of researchers. Gabe was excited by the data, but at the same time it made him anxious. An anomaly like this could lead to a discovery, or make him look like a total fool. He cross-checked the data three different ways, then tapped into the weather station on the roof. Nothing was happening in the way ofweather, all changes in barometric pressure, humidity, wind, and temperature were well within normal ranges. He looked out the window: a low fog was settling on the shore, totally normal. He could just make out the lighthouse a hundred yards away. It had been shut down for twenty years, used only as a weather station and as a base for biological research.
    He grabbed a blanket off of his bed and wrapped it around his shoulders against the chill, then returned to his desk. The green dots were still moving. He dialed the number for JPL inPasadena, Skinner was still barking outside.
    "Skinner, shut the fuck up!" Gabe shouted just as the automated answering service put him through to the seismology lab. A woman answered. She sounded young, probably an intern. "Excuse me?" she said.
    "Sorry, I was yelling at my dog. Yes, hello, this is Dr. Gabe Fenton at the