“Shit,” she said with a tired sigh. “Let me show you.”
Fifty-Two
Kaahin watched the girl suit up and slosh back to the stairwell.
The water in the hall was fast approaching their knees. Part of the yacht looked to be wedged on coral, but as the hull continued to take on water and weight, it was guaranteed to slip off that face soon enough.
The girl dropped into the cavernous hole like a bullet and he followed. Neither of them had any light, so they navigated the gloom with awkwardness. He followed the girl’s basic shape around the sunken corners and into the next hall. Then another. The environment, once an idle display of unfettered luxury, was now a surreal and twisted hellscape that mocked their treasured pursuits.
They swam through the living quarters and the girl pushed into one of the larger bunks.
The bed was overturned. The twisted frame rested diagonally against one of the walls. Furniture was strewn everywhere and the lightest bits floated overhead, ebbing against the ceiling in the thin space of air there.
The girl waved to him in dark silhouette. He pushed through the murky to reach her. She pointed to a thick hard shell case that sat wedged beneath a bureau. They went to work on pushing it away from the wall space—just enough to wrestle it free.
Kaahin reached down and took the case by its handle, wound back and pulled it free. He turned toward the entrance and swam straight for it, unconcerned with whether or not his partner in crime was following.
He cleared the doorway and the world exploded. The surface that had once been the floor, but was now a wall, ruptured. Broken hull pieces rushed toward him. The ship’s bottom punctured by a driving force moving like a bullet.
Kaahin had never screamed in his life. Not when his mother was gunned down on the beaches of Capetown. Murdered by police officers angry that she would not surrender her body. And not when his best friend and partner on the force was hacked to bits right before him with fire axes—retaliation for busting the wrong heroin den.
He’d always just internalized the pain. Let it attach itself to him like barnacles. Something he’d carry on his voyages as a reminder that life was pointless. Bad things happened to the people you cared for. And that he should simply adapt unless he wanted to be another forgotten victim.
Kaahin had never screamed before because that gesture belonged to the weak.
But he screamed now.
Because what came pushing through the darkness wasn’t manmade evil, but fate. A rushing meat grinder, chomping and obliterating everything in its way. The hull, the floor, collateral furniture, and whatever else got caught in its insatiable path.
Kaahin pushed back and slammed into another body: The girl. Contact sent them both tumbling through the flooded space, spinning into the confines of the bunk. The hard shell laptop case tumbled from his fingers, slipping away into the gloom.
The wall before him cracked inward and broke apart with sledgehammer force. The armored fish head appeared in the mist like a battering ram. It moved in on him without the slightest resistance, filling so much space he could not see beyond it.
Kaahin pushed for less constricted waters, hoping the angatra’s maneuverability down here was limited. But even as the fish fell from immediate view, that constant grinding continued to plague his ears.
The girl screamed. A swarm of oxygen bubbles rose through the space between them. The fish pushed in and its massive head craned to one side, its armored eye blazed, seeing him up close once more.
The broken blade that Kaahin had shoved inside the fish while on the American’s ship remained embedded there, poking from the side of its face like stubble.
Does it remember me? There was a fleeting second of eye contact and Kaahin swore there was recognition there. That scared him even more. He kicked off the wall and paddled up through the debris, making a shameless dash for open water. Behind him, more soggy cries. Good, he thought. Have at her.
Except the fish didn’t seem to care about her at all. Kaahin caught motion out of the corner of his eye and knew that it wanted him. He kicked and paddled and moved through the water, passing through the exploded hull like a torpedo.
Just get to the beach. To the weapons he’d tossed into the sand. The angatra wouldn’t be expecting that arsenal.
The water fought him. Bad undertow. It dragged him back with every stroke forward. He bent his knees and pushed, managing only to inch further. He felt frozen in place.
The grinding grew louder, practically in his ear.
And now he realized it wasn’t undertow. He was moving backwards, the water around him reversing direction, drawing back in a flash current. The angatra’s rapidly upending jaws were responsible, moving so fast that it was sucking him in.
Kaahin slipped the oxygen tank off his shoulders and spun through the water so he faced the surface. Beneath him, the fish surged up. Kaahin dangled the tank in one hand while the continuing to paddle with the other.
The chomping mouth was close, flying up from the depths like a nightmare. Kaahin released the tank like a depth charge. It floated down to where the angatra’s jaws cleaved it in two, dispersing compressed oxygen as both halves disappeared inside its mouth.
Then the fish charged up, undeterred. Kaahin bounced off its largest tooth again. He twirled along the fish’s face, finding himself once more against its eye. He’d never known sea creatures to glare with anything but indifference. But this orb was loaded with fire, as if every one of his Malagasy ancestors sat nestled inside it, driving this creature to accomplish what it had been sent here to do—punish the wicked.
He kicked off the side of its face and knifed toward the surface, reaching the coral shore and wading up through the shallows.
The fish wouldn’t relent. It tasted blood.
If anything, Kaahin had successfully driven it away from Madagascar. That might have to be victory enough.
He kicked until his paddling hands found soft, runny sand. Fingers disappeared into mud as he climbed up the embankment and into knee-high water. He rushed the beach, spinning and dropping onto his back as the dorsal fin sawed through aquamarine just beyond the shallows.
“Stay there!” Kaahin screamed. His breath was spent. His lungs burned.
Another figure broke the surface and stumbled ashore. Kaahin didn’t look. He was too terrified to take his eyes off the angatra, as if his ancestors might somehow enable it aground to finish the job.
A shadow appeared over Kaahin, blotting the moonlight. He flipped his neck back and watched the thin figure tear a diving mask off her face. Icy blue eyes stared down, blonde hair in soaked, matted clumps.
“I should throw you to that fish,” she snarled like a dog. “But I want to feel the last breath leave your lungs.”
The blonde knelt so that her thighs boxed his ears. She planted the blade deep inside his chest. Two hands squeezing the hilt, driving the knife deeper until Kaahin felt his heart puncture, the sting of cold steel deep inside his body. She pulled the knife out and the splatter painted her movie star face with gobs of thick, rushing midnight.
Kaahin’s vision turned to blood. His body jerked and the next thing he knew he was staring up at the stars. Thinking of his family. All the ways he had failed them. Taking relief in the idea that his disappearance might finally set them free.
His eyelids dropped like hammers.
Fifty-Three
Sara watched the pirate disappear into open water and the great fish followed.
She swam down to the floor and retrieved the hard case laptop, then headed for the Star Time’s flooded hallways, where the water was now waist-deep. Maneuvering was harder by the moment.
The trip back to the helm was slow. A grumbling yacht quake shook the world around her, prompting Sara to place a hand against the floor-turned-wall and squeeze her eyes shut.
Somewhere below, another piece of the hull broke away as the fish cleaved through it, decimating what little integrity remained. The walls gave deep and gutt
ural groans as if to say, we can’t hold much longer.
Her hands coiled around the busted windowpane. She squinted into the murk for signs that the stone monstrosity was just beyond, waiting.
The Star Time shook again, and what little of the overturned hull was left, blew outward like an aluminum can, delivering the killing blow to the ship’s structure.
The walls and floors creaked as cracks broke through them like opening fault lines.
The fish seemed to sense the Star Time was finished. Sara felt it punching through its length, a bullet through body armor, penetrating its structure like its walls and floors were soggy notebook paper.
The ship collapsed around her, and while the coast was anything but clear, it didn’t matter. Sara kicked through to the ocean and kept pushing.
The terrible stone head burst through the space that had been the helm. Indiscriminate blades decimated everything in a rush to meet her. The hard case laptop slid from her hand. She couldn’t alter her course to get it, just kept pushing because land was close.
She paddled for the shallows, twenty feet, maybe less. Breathing was hard. Panic making it harder. She reached the small incline and waded up out of the water, tossing her mask aside and letting the breather fall from her mouth.
“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” she said, dropping and crawling forward, unable to get far enough away from the water.
The corpse sprawled beside the weapons cache stopped her cold.
The pirate.
He was dead, the blade buried in his chest like Excalibur. The sight should’ve satisfied her, but there wasn’t time for it. His death restored nothing.
Another figure sat upright in the sand a few feet away, rocking on folded legs. “Oh God,” Sara said breathlessly, rushing for Carly and fearing the worst.
The woman was dazed, staring at the pirate’s body. At the life she’d taken. It hadn’t been the first, but Sara guessed this one had meant the most.
“Carly,” she said and put an arm on her shoulder.
The blonde reached up and touched it. Said nothing.
“You did it,” Sara said. She gave Carly’s shoulder a gentle nudge and the actress looked up at her.
“That’s a terrible noise,” she said.
The constant shink shinking of grinding teeth. The terrible, unexpressive fossil head writhed on the surface, head above water and looking straight at them.
Cold eyes. An endlessly gnawing mouth. One of nature’s most sadistic creations. Sara realized why it was no longer moving. The yacht’s twisted and broken fuselage had pinned it against the coral beds.
Sara felt her blood go cold, even as she laughed at this bit of dumb luck—the Star Time’s crumpled frame becoming its shackles, however temporary. Each time it reared its head to one side, the hull groaned and threatened to pull away.
Sara rushed the supply cache and snapped the rocket launcher from its rectangular case, nestling the cylindrical firing tube between her shoulder and neck. She pushed the trigger without hesitation and the rocket rushed off, bonking off the fish’s boney head—a waterlogged dud that plunked into the ocean, and out of sight.
The fish managed to wrestle itself to one side, dragging the Star Time’s frame with it. There were precious minutes left. Maybe one. As soon as it got free, it would gain the upper hand once more and she’d be out of tricks.
“Let’s see how you like this,” Sara cried. She tore the Bosch-branded jackhammer from its sack and strode into the water, rushing headlong toward that killing mouth.
Its eye spotted her. She was close enough to see the damn thing actually widen. It craned its head to face her while the demolished ship frame whined and heaved in the same direction.
Sara’s teeth scraped together with a similar shink, meeting the monster on its terms.
“Okay,” she cried and with a flick of her thumb, set the jackhammer whirring. “Let’s see you eat this!”
The chisel pumped forward with eager driving force, hungry for a target.
Sara’s body disappeared as she sloped down off the shallows. The water at her ankles, her knees, her waist...
She lifted the hammer overhead as the Indian Ocean swallowed her up to her shoulders. Her injured hand throbbed, her remaining fingers working hard to tighten around the grip, a spill of blood trickling out like the last drops of a juiced orange. The flopping fish could only anticipate her approach with steady bite.
Sara’s hands squeezed the jackhammer harder than she’d ever held anything. This was more than life or death. Flexing every muscle in her arms, she shoved it forward, straight against its killing teeth. The chisel cut bone like butter.
The dunkleosteus’ largest tooth broke away. With nothing there, the jackhammer pushed further into its mouth, dragging Sara right up against it, standing on the tips of her toes in order to stay above water.
The chisel cracked through the dunkleosteus’ face. Hammering through its rock veneer like it was highway pavement. A crack appeared just above its bite, where its nose might’ve been. Small sections of its protective armor began breaking away in an avalanche. The hungry hammer cleaved the scaly flesh beneath it, shredding it with ease.
Its eyes popped further wide, sensing imminent extinction. The jackhammer ate straight into the nearest socket, splitting away all the pieces of protection that had once protected it from natural enemies.
With a scream, Sara shoved the jackhammer inward until the chisel disappeared in full. It continued to burrow, tearing off its armor in even larger hunks. Blood began pumping through newly forged crevices until at last the chisel got gummed up on fish brains and cartilage, the assuring motor grind sputtered and then stalled. This as stone head slid away in hunks that sunk into the water around her.
At last, the body went limp.
Time to get the case, Sara thought, leaving the blade impaled inside the fish. What had once been the Star Time’s hull was unrecognizable—a hunk of twisted metal and broken plaster.
She went back to land to retrieve her gear.
It wasn’t over until she could call for help.
Fifty-Four
The Baroness was not happy to hear from Sara, or, more specifically, to learn that both her operatives were gone.
“They were bloody investments,” she’d said with exasperation.
“Just come get us,” Sara said and handed over the coordinates.
“Arrival in six hours,” the Baroness told her.
Sara didn’t mention that Roche’s treasure no longer existed. She feared that would prompt the businesswoman to cut and run.
Sara and Carly passed the time dressing each other’s wounds. Again.
Sara looked at the pirate lying on the far edge of the beach. Realized she was glad he was gone. “You did good,” she said.
“Yeah,” Carly said. “Maybe I did, but...” She pointed to the ocean where the round of the fish carcass was slumped against the shallows. “You had to show up, didn’t you?”
“I saw it more as pulling my weight.”
“You solved Roche’s shitty riddles,” Carly said. “People been trying to do that for a few hundred years. Victory lap’s yours to take.”
“Can I ask you something?” Sara said, eyes still with the pirate.
“Of course.”
“What did it feel like? Killing the one who hurt you.”
Carly wouldn’t look at the body. She drew scribbles in the sand with a broken branch. “Same as when I shot that pirate on the boat. I wanted to kill them, knew that I had to.” She looked at the corpse now and shook her head slightly. “But when I stuck that knife through him... and he pissed himself... shit himself... and I looked into his eyes and saw the horror that comes with everyone’s final moments...”
“I’m sorry,” Sara said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, hey, you didn’t let me finish.”
“Oh, uh, okay...”
“I’m glad I did it. Because someone like that, who can do what I just describ
ed like it’s business as usual, all part of the job? That’s pure evil. I don’t know how many lives we saved by taking him out of this world, but I don’t think I’ll regret it for a second.”
“If I had beer bottles, this is where we’d clink them,” Sara said.
They tried to sleep, side by side, and in the softest bit of sand the beach afforded. Waterlogged guns beside them, both women keeping one eye each pointed toward the trees. With so much adrenaline driving them, chasing sleep was a completely useless gesture. They laid in silence, no pressure to fill it.
Sara stared at the stars and thought of Isabella. Gradually growing so used to the idea of captivity that in the end she’d favored companionship over escape, no matter how contentious. Given the way in which those bastards had treated her, Sara didn’t blame her.
They sat up at the sound of every snapping branch or ruffling bird, positive that Isabella’s distant, hideous offspring would come clawing. They surveyed the night and each time found only an empty beach.
It was only once the sky began to lighten that Sara dozed. Her breaths were deep enough to fool her body into thinking she was relaxed, and it was only when a tired snore got caught in her throat that she sputtered and surprised herself into springing awake.
She sat upright and saw a half-dozen bodies standing at the edge of the forest, each of them looking at the sky, sniffing the air.
Skull faces, heaving shoulders, eager bone hatchets.
“Oh shit,” Sara said.
Carly sputtered beside her, coming to uneasy consciousness. But as soon as she was awake, she spotted them and went reaching for her gun.
The island residents started toward them as sunrise broke. Their horrible, scabbed bodies looked even worse, more diseased, in the morning’s rays beneath the clearing.
Uncertain shuffles became more confident as the hunters converged on their prey. Their ranks had probably never suffered losses before, and so there was caution in their steps, stalking forward in solidarity.
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