The International

by Christopher Vale

  “Is that a shark?” she asked in English.

  “Not exactly,” Axel said as he backed toward her.

  Suddenly another creature swam into view. It was a shark. Partially at least. It had a head like a shark. A body, fin and tail like a shark. But it also had arms and legs like a human.

  “It’s a wereshark,” Axel said matter-of-factly. The wolfmen the Nazis had created at the lab in Antarctica were not enough? These mad scientists had made sharkmen, too?

  Brygida sighed. “What the hell is wrong with these sick people?” she mumbled more to herself than to Axel. She then turned back to the scientist and spoke in German. “Where are they keeping their prisoner, Alena?” she demanded.

  The scientist shook his head. “I-I d-don’t,” he replied nervously. “I just study the sharks.” He was clearly terrified and Brygida believed him.

  “Why don’t the sharks swim away?” Axel asked in German.

  The scientist turned to him. “B-because there is a steel cage that keeps them trapped. Luckily for everyone.”

  “Lucky?” Brygida asked. “Why?”

  The scientist chuckled nervously. “Because they are smart. Maybe as smart as us. They are amphibious and they hunt in packs like…um…like, killer whales.” He smiled eerily as he stared at the shark/human hybrids swimming around them. “But they are brutally efficient killers. He turned back to Brygida and his look chilled her to the bone. “And they enjoy the taste of human flesh.”

  ***

  Volker strode along the corridor. The guards dragged Alena behind him. Suddenly he stopped when someone called out to him.

  “Herr Doctor!” the voice came.

  Volker turned around to see a man in a crisp gray uniform with “SS” emblazoned on his collar jogging toward him. “What is it?” Volker asked.

  The man stopped running just short of them. “The intruders have taken the elevator to the bottom,” the man informed him.

  “The observation deck?” Volker asked.

  “Yes, sir,” the soldier replied.

  “Disable the elevator,” Volker snapped.

  The man nodded. “We already have, sir,” he replied.

  An evil grin spread across Volker’s face. “Excellent,” he said. “Flood the deck.”

  “Yes, Herr Doctor,” the man said and spun on his heel, sprinting back in the opposite direction.

  Volker turned to Alena. “It appears that I am not in trouble after all,” he cackled.

  “We shall see,” Alena sneered.

  ***

  Axel watched the sharkmen swim around the glass walls occasionally slamming into them. Each time they did so, it caused Axel to jump nervously. Brygida, meanwhile, was focused on finding Alena.

  “So you don’t know where Alena is? The Russian super agent that your people brought from Antarctica?” she asked the scientist, causing him to shake his head. “But surely you know where they are most likely keeping her.”

  The scientist looked down at the steel floor.

  Brygida pushed the scientist backward, slamming him into the glass wall and causing the sharks to swarm to him. The creatures pressed their heads against the glass hungrily. Axel couldn’t help but notice their eyes. They had human eyes, and it sent a shiver up his spine.

  “Easy, Mom,” Axel cautioned nervously, worried she might shatter the glass in her zeal.

  Brygida paid him no attention. “Tell me where they are keeping her or I’ll blow your head off right here.”

  “L-like I said, I don’t know,” he swore frantically, then took a deep breath. “But if she is on the base, I would guess she’d have to be in the living quarters.”

  “Where are the living quarters?” Brygida demanded.

  The scientist pointed up at the glass ceiling. “That floor above us.”

  Brygida tilted her head back to peer through the glass ceiling. The floor was well above them. Several stories above them. There was a lot of ocean between them and it, but fortunately they had an elevator.

  Brygida released the scientist and stepped away. “Alright,” she said as she watched him. Without taking her eyes off the scientist she spoke to Axel in English. “Let’s get back on the elevator,” she instructed her son.

  “Absolutely,” Axel said. He turned and hurried back into the elevator, glad to be leaving the shark hybrids down below.

  Brygida backed into the elevator, keeping her eyes on the scientist. As soon as she was inside, Axel pressed the up button, but nothing happened. He pressed it again. “Oh no,” he said.

  “What’s wrong?” Brygida asked.

  “It’s not working!” he shouted angrily.

  “They have probably cut the power,” the scientist offered in German. “They would want to trap you down here.”

  “Dammit!” Axel swore.

  Suddenly red lights began to flash around the deck as a foghorn like siren blared. The scientist glanced around and then down at his feet. Water was coming in.

  He dashed for the elevator.

  “What’s going on?” Brygida asked in German.

  “They’re flooding us!” the man shouted back in the same language.

  “Flooding us?” Axel asked.

  “Yes! Now give me a boost, there is a ladder in the elevator shaft!” the scientist explained.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” Axel said. He then turned to his mother. “Ladies first,” he said in English, smiling as he cupped his hands while intertwining his fingers. Brygida slung her rifle over her shoulder, stepped into his palms, and Axel boosted her up to the ceiling of the elevator where she opened the service door and climbed through.

  “Hurry, they are coming!” the scientist shouted as he danced around nervously and kept watching the door.

  “Who’s coming?” Axel asked.

  “The shark hybrids,” the scientist said.

  “What?” Axel asked. “How did they get through the walls?”

  “How do you think they are flooding us?” the scientist shot back. “They opened up to the ocean!”

  “Oh crap!” Axel said in English before glancing up to see his mother lowering her hand to him. He leapt up and grabbed hold. With her super strength she easily pulled him up with one hand and set him on top of the elevator.

  “Hurry!” the scientist shouted.

  Brygida toyed with the idea of leaving him down there to be drowned or eaten by the sharkmen, but decided they might still need him and lowered her hand back through the service door for him. He leapt frantically in the knee deep water. He was too short though. He leapt again. She could see the panic on his face. He leapt once more and she caught his fingers and was able to pull him up and out of the elevator through the service hatch.

  All three stood atop the elevator staring up at the ladder leading several stories up to the living quarters above. “Let’s get moving,” Brygida said and took hold of the rungs, pulling herself up. She began to climb quickly. The water was already bubbling up through the service hatch when the scientist climbed onto the rungs.

  “Hurry!” he shouted at Axel in German. The water began to fill the elevator shaft and Axel heard the scientist squeal in terror. He turned and looked down to see shark fins circling the shaft below them. Suddenly, one of the sharks leapt out of the water and grabbed the scientist in its powerful jaws. The shark and the scientist fell back down into the water with a splash and Axel’s eyes popped wide in terror as the water turned red with the man’s blood.

  Axel looked back at his mother above him. “Go!” he shouted frantically in English. “Go, go, go, go go!” Brygida quickened her pace, responding to the terror she heard in her son’s voice.

  The water continued to rise faster and faster. After a long and grueling climb, Brygida eventually reached the top. She tried to open the elevator but the doors would not budge. “Help me!” she shouted down to Axel as the water continued to rise and the shark fins rose closer and closer to their prey.

  Axel climbed up beside his mother. He reached up to help her
, and when he touched the doors he felt electricity course through him. “Wait a minute, the doors are sealed,” he said.

  “Sealed?” she asked, the exasperation ringing in her voice. “Of course if you’re going to flood the lower level you want to seal the doors.”

  “Magnetically sealed,” Axel smiled. “I think I can short it out. Move back,” he instructed and his mother moved to the side. Axel placed his hand on the door and sent a shock through the metal. He heard a click and pop and a small explosion. Unfortunately, the shock was enough to blow Brygida off of the ladder toward the water—and hungry sharks—below.

  Axel reached out and caught his mother’s hand just before she fell into the water. He pulled her up and thanked God that she was a small woman. A shark took the opportunity to leap up out of the water and barely missed Brygida’s boot as it snapped at air before splashing back down into the water.

  Axel swung his mother back to the ladder and she quickly scurried up the rungs to join him at the top. “Let’s open it,” she said and pulled the doors open. She squeezed through and Axel followed her.

  “Close the door!” Axel shouted at her once on the other side. The two of them then spun quickly to see dozens of armed Nazi soldiers staring at them, surprise on their faces, rifles slung over their shoulders.

  “Hi,” Axel smiled.

  Chapter 7

  Alena had been pushed down to her knees, her ankles still bound and her wrists cuffed behind her back. A guard kept the barrel of his rifle pressed against the back of her skull forcing her head down. She was still able to see Volker’s boots as they paced nervously back and forth.

  Volker, Alena, and the guard were on the bridge of the U-Boat, along with the captain and his crew readying to evacuate if necessary. Alena smiled to herself. Take away his attack dog Freyja, and Volker was nothing more than a weaselly little coward. Typical.

  The absence of Volker’s pet super Aryan presented Alena with her opportunity. Her legs and arms may have been bound, but her super speed was not limited to her running ability. She rolled over onto her back before the guard could even blink and shot her legs out, driving her heels into the Nazi’s knees with blinding speed, buckling them.

  Alena was able to flip back over onto her own knees and then push herself to her feet, well before the scream of intense pain escaped the guard’s lips. She backed up into the guard’s body as he began to collapse to the floor, and before he hit the deck, she had jerked his key ring from his belt. By the time Volker and the U-Boat captain had turned around to see what the commotion was all about, Alena had unlocked the cuffs and scooped up the guard’s rifle, aiming it at them.

  Volker and the seamen leapt in shock. “Don’t move a muscle!” Alena spat at them in German.

  “What are you doing, my dear?” Volker asked in a kind, grandfatherly voice, as a sweet smile spread across his face.

  Alena chuckled. “I told you, you were in trouble, Herr Doctor,” she said as her eyes narrowed.

  Suddenly, Alena heard a footfall on the steel deck behind her and spun to see a Nazi soldier aiming a pistol at her. She quickly fired two shots, dropping him. When she turned back around she saw Volker sprinting through the far hatch. She was about to chase after him and drag him back into the bridge by his hair, but then she noticed something else. Something even more important, and decided to let him go. He couldn’t outrun her, and besides, where was he going to go?

  “On your knees!” she shouted in German as she aimed the rifle at the crew of the bridge. The captain and his men began to comply lowering themselves to the deck with their hands in the air. “Not you,” Alena smiled gently at the radio operator. “I need you to send a message.”

  ***

  Axel and Brygida were pinned down. The living quarters of the underwater base was built in a square with the elevator in the center. There was only one way into the elevator room from the hallway of the living quarters.

  Upon exiting the elevator shaft Axel and Brygida had encountered dozens of Nazi troops who had all dressed quickly and rushed out of their rooms at the sound of the alarm to board the elevator to go to their stations. But the elevator had been shut off and never come to their level. Thus, the are was crammed with soldiers. Taken completely off guard by the sudden appearance of Axel and Brygida, the men swiftly retreated as blue lightening bolts leapt from Axel’s hands. The SS troops quickly recovered from their surprise, however, and returned fire, pinning Axel and Brygida down in the room with the elevator.

  Axel fired a blue energy bolt from his finger tips, forcing an enemy soldier to duck his head. He then glanced nervously back at the elevator door expecting to see water leaking through. He was relieved not to find any.

  His eyes met Brygida’s and he could see that his mother had shared his fear. “They must have closed the hatches again!” he shouted over the gunfire.

  “Well, they wouldn’t want to flood their own living quarters would they?” Brygida smiled.

  Suddenly they heard a bang behind them and turned to see the elevator doors slowly opening.

  “Oh no!” Axel said. Apparently the sharkmen could open doors.

  “We can’t stay here!” Brygida shouted the obvious and then glanced around. There was a secure bulkhead door over to her right. She dashed to it and spun the rotating dog lever before yanking the hatch open. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw steel steps ascending.

  “Axel!” she shouted over her shoulder. “This way!”

  Axel quickly followed his mother through the hatch. He turned around to close the door when he saw the elevator open up and the head of a shark peek through. Axel quickly slammed the door shut and latched it. He spun back around and bounded up the stairs following his mother. Axel heard heavy gunfire and screams of terror from below and assumed that the sharkmen had found prey in the living quarters.

  Brygida quickly led the way, but took a second to glance over her shoulder to make sure her son was following. Seeing him just a few steps behind, she quickened her pace. She was in a hurry. A big hurry. Brygida didn’t panic very often. She had survived the Holocaust, the War, mad scientists, Soviet missions, assassination attempts, a crashing airplane, and even werewolves. But this time seemed different.

  This time they were on a Nazi base in the middle of the ocean, with no land in sight. There were an unknown number of Nazi soldiers and even amphibious, bloodthirsty sharkmen inside the base. She still had no idea where Alena was, but worried frantically that she was on the floor Brygida was fleeing. How would she and Axel get back down there? Even if they did, how would they survive the soldiers and the sharkmen? Even if they did how would they escape the oil rig?

  She pushed the worries away. This was no time to panic. She had to focus. This was war. Something Brygida had a lot of experience fighting. As she calmed her fears, her instincts began to take over. Her fighting ability was enhanced by her super strength, and Soviet combat training, but the truth was that Brygida was a natural fighter. That was revealed the day her husband died, when her instincts had taken over. That was happening now as she pushed her panic away and let herself go. It was survival mode now, and when Brygida was in survival mode, you did not want to get in her way.

  Brygida continued to climb the metal steps as a cold killer took complete control of her actions. Suddenly, she noticed the hatch on the floor just a few steps above pop open and the barrel of a rifle poke through. Brygida lunged for it, and yanked the rifle and its owner through the hatch slamming them into the metal steps with a yelp. She spun the rifle around and aimed it at her victim when she suddenly stopped, gasped and dropped the rifle as she saw Alena lying there, her eyes wide with shock.

  “Alena!” Brygida heard Axel shout as he pushed past his mother to help his friend to her feet. Brygida’s killer instinct was quickly replaced by her maternal one as she rushed to Alena and threw her arms around her.

  “Oh darling I am so glad you’re safe!” she said as she fought back tears of relief.

  “
How did you find me?” Alena asked, excited to see Brygida and Axel.

  “You’re old comrade, Sava,” Axel said.

  “Where is the rest of your team?” Alena asked Axel.

  “It’s just us,” Axel replied.

  “What about Alexi?” Alena asked.

  “As far as I know we gave him back to the KGB,” Axel told her. “Traded him for a CIA agent or something like that.”

  Alena smiled, relieved to hear that her brother was, she assumed, safe and sound with his own people.

  “We’ve got to find a way out of here,” Brygida interjected, cutting the reunion short.

  Suddenly they heard the blare of alarms!

  “What’s that?” Alena asked no one in particular.

  Brygida and Axel looked at each other, as Brygida answered Alena’s question. “They are flooding the base,” she said.

  “Volker!” Alena spat like it was a curse word. She regretted letting him go. Her eyes met Brygida’s. “I’m going to go find him,” she said and was about to flash away, when she suddenly felt Brygida’s arm on hers.

  “Not this time,” Brygida said. “You’re staying with us. We’re not losing you again.”

  Alena sighed, but relented. After all, it had been her impulsiveness that had placed her in such trouble to begin with.

  “Um, Mom,” Axel said and Brygida turned to look at her son and noticed him staring down at the stairwell below. “The water is coming much faster this time!”

  Brygida followed Axel’s eyes to see the water rising quickly, just a few floors below. Suddenly they heard a loud bang as a metal hatch burst open. Brygida gasped. The sharkmen! “Let’s move!” she shouted to Axel and Alena as she led the way quickly up the steps toward the surface which was still several stories above them.

  Axel followed behind Alena as they bounded up the stairs as quickly as they could, their boots ringing against the metal steps. Then the sound changed. No longer did Axel hear a clanging on the metal, but rather a splash as his boot landed in water. He glanced down to see the ocean had risen to catch them. He peered over his shoulder. The entire stairwell was filled with blue green water.