Rising Tides: Destroyermen

by Taylor Anderson

  The second thing that almost destroyed them, despite the fact that they were molested by no more of the growing number of land-weary, lethargic shiksaks they saw, was the blistering, killing, physical pace Silva set beneath the murderous sun. The newly arrived shiksaks that had ventured so far from shore—probably staking an early claim to an ultimately less-crowded nesting area—would recover their “land legs” in time. They had to be finished by then. As the day wore on and they heaved the boat down the mild, much appreciated slope into the narrow savannah that Silva called the “kudzu patch,” the apparent tension of the island itself began to grow. Lizard birds squawked querulously and the strange little birds in the clearing swarmed erratically from place to place, or burst their formations completely into chaotically buzzing individuals. The odd, purplish flowers of the kudzu seemed to dance and sway with the breeze, as though imitating live creatures grazing about. The prickly thorns, so small and difficult to see when the group had passed this way before, were now larger and more erect on the vines. They carefully gave them a wide berth, laying the wooden rollers to clear the menacing patches of the weed.

  Odd, hoarse cries resonated from the tall trees ahead that separated them from the beach, and they saw many small—and not so small—creatures beginning to gather there. Shrieks exploded as fights broke out between different species. Lawrence warned that the fights would become general among individuals eventually, as the furry, gourd-like fruits in the trees were exhausted. Saying he had an idea, he sprinted back the way they’d come. A smallish shiksak thundered ashore, bellowing its arrival, beyond the massive trees ahead that they’d chosen for their size. It thumped and thudded directly beneath them, headed toward the boat at first, but then steered hungrily toward the coyly twitching kudzu flowers, crashing into the patch with a triumphantly gaping maw. It snapped voraciously at the flowers for several moments, but then seemed to grow sleepy, as if sated and now torpid. A little unsteady, it groped its way out of the kudzu in the direction of a distant shiksak that was still resting from its arrival.

  “Young bull,” Silva opined through gritted teeth as he reslung his weapon and took up his rope again. “Bet he don’t get to be an old bull. Kinda sets a fella back, thinkin’ ’bout all the times he’s acted the same damn way.” He gasped and heaved in time with the others. “Whoo-ee! Liber-tee! Where’s the grub? Where’s the broads?”

  The raucous sounds of wildlife grew, birds erupted from the grass, the trees, everywhere, swirling madly and densely enough to create a kind of shade. Small shapes scampered in all directions to the extent that tripping became a concern. It was as if they somehow knew the full infestation was finally at hand. Even Rajendra quieted his objections and laid to with a will. It was late afternoon when, exhausted, panting, they finally placed the boat between the two trees they’d chosen, more by size, direction, and proximity than anything else. They rested briefly, gulping the rum-tinged water Brassey shared out with a tin cup. They’d already laid in plenty of water, and most of Silva’s surviving “prize” rum he’d taken during their escape from Billingsley had gone to purify it into a kind of grog. Most, but not all. There were still medicinal purposes to consider. They didn’t have a moment to lose, but they had to rest a little before they attempted their next pair of tasks. A misstep now or a mishandled line would doom them all.

  “Are you ready for this?” Sandra finally asked.

  Captain Lelaa nodded, looking at the trees, ears twitching appraisal. “I have been climbing masts since I was born,” she said confidently. “These ‘trunks’ will be simpler.”

  “Them double-block falls are kinda heavy—an’ you gotta make sure they don’t get tangled up,” Silva fussed. When they’d escaped, they unhooked the falls, thinking at least the rope might be handy. Now the heavy block-and-tackle arrangement might prove their salvation. They never could have built a set in time.

  Lelaa practically sneered at Silva. “Mind your own business. Just keep those creatures up there away from me,” she said. The creatures in question, a wild variety perched high in the tree’s broad canopy above, had stopped squalling and now peered sullenly down at them.

  Silva nodded, and setting down the Doom Whomper, he selected a loaded musket from within the boat. “You got it, Cap’n.”

  “What can I do to help?” Sister Audry asked, still somewhat breathless.

  “Nothin’ right now. Might not have to do anything a’tall ’til you climb aboard,” Dennis answered, “unless you want to try your hand at shootin’?”

  Sister Audry shook her head. She had no experience with firearms of any sort. She still looked concerned. “But the boat is so heavy! How will we lift it up there?”

  “A double-block rig’ll let you lift four times the weight as usual. I can hoist a thousand pounds easy as peein’ with that rig . . . if you’ll ’scuse me for sayin’ so.” He paused. “Just take my word for it. Five big fellas, two strong ladies—countin’ the squirt—a ’Cat that’s prob’ly stronger than me, and a fuzzy, stripey lizard—I figger we can lift close to twice what that damn boat weighs. We oughta be able to manage without you and Mr. Cook.” He looked around. “Say, where’s that stripey lizard, anyway?”

  Lawrence reappeared, trotting carefully around the kudzu with something almost as large as he was slung on his back. As he drew near, Sister Audry wrinkled her nose and Rebecca scolded, “What is that vile, revolting stench?”

  Lawrence flung his burden down unapologetically, and Silva stooped to examine it.

  “Yuk,” Dennis said. “What the hell’s that?”

  “The scent glands o’ that shiksak us killed,” he said. There was a little blood around his mouth—he’d apparently paused long enough for a quick meal while he hacked the reeking things off with his cutlass.

  “Aggh, they stink!” Silva exclaimed as the full force of the stench hit him. The glands were little more than pebbly, scaly slits in two large, dark patches of skin. “How’s that work?” he wondered aloud. “I seen deer tarsals an’ such, but you’d think a sea monster wouldn’t do that.”

  “They aren’t sea ’onsters on land,” Lawrence pointed out.

  “Well . . . what are you gonna do with ’em? Roll around on ’em an’ pretend to be one?”

  Lawrence actually seemed to consider it before shaking his head. “He’ig ’ull,” he said.

  “Bull?”

  “Yess. His scent keeph others a’ay. I tie these to trees, other ’ulls, at least, stay a’ay.”

  That made sense. Dennis had been a little worried about that. Big as these trees were, their roots weren’t all that deep. He figured a really big shiksak might knock one over if he decided to whack on it.

  “Good thinkin’, twerp. Course, now you got that stink all over you, where are you gonna stay?”

  “He can stay with us,” Lelaa snapped, starting her climb. “If I can stand your stink, I can learn to put up with his.”

  For the first time since they’d been marooned on Yap Island, Dennis Silva heard Rebecca’s sweet, unfettered laugh. He grinned. “I guess I am gettin’ a little ripe,” he confessed, “but with mucho respecto, Cap’n, you smell kinda’ like a hard-used hairball.”

  Lelaa snorted and scampered up the tree. About forty feet up, still short of the lower canopy, she stopped and began expertly rigging a seizing around the trunk. Something quick and leathery, with what looked like gliding wings stretched between its front and back legs, lunged down at her. Rajendra’s musket flared, and light, fleshy bark sprayed at the creature’s face. Never stopping, it leaped over their heads with a shrill cry, arrested its gliding fall on their other tree about fifty feet away, then raced into its darkening bower of leaves.

  “Missed!” Silva said grandly, laying his musket against the boat and retrieving the Doom Whomper in case anything large chose to investigate the noise of the shot.

  “So?” Rajendra said hotly. “I did my job!”

  “Yeah,” Dennis replied, looking back at the clearing, “about as well a
s usual. Half-assed. Spoiled my shot.”

  “Boys!” Sandra insisted, steel in her voice. “You will stop baiting each other and cooperate!” She knew she wasn’t being quite fair to Rajendra. Silva had started it—as usual—but erratic as Silva sometimes was, he was a lot steadier than Rajendra. For Rebecca’s sake, she wouldn’t single him out. She was “playing favorites” and knew it, but Rajendra had proven time and again, once that very day, that her control over him was tenuous. He might be loyal to the princess, but not to the group, and his judgment had always been questionable. Silva couldn’t be controlled at all, except through his loyalty to her and Rebecca, but the group as a whole was “under his protection,” as he saw it. Also, his survival judgment might sometimes be extreme and disproportionate, but it had a good record of success. The last thing they needed right then was for him to go into one of his infamous sulks.

  Dennis Silva actually thrived on adversity and Sandra suddenly realized that in that sense he was a lot like Matt. Silva was over the top, where Matt was thoughtful—unless he lost his temper—but like it or not, their survival depended on the big gunner’s mate, and for all their sakes, even Rajendra’s, “over the top” was okay with Sandra.

  Lelaa finished her knot and hooked on, then slid down the trunk, straightening the tackle as she went. On the ground, she hooked the bottom block onto the eyebolt at the boat’s bow, leaving the fall rope dangling. She scooped up the second tackle and went up the next tree.

  “Oh, please do hurry,” Rebecca pleaded. “The sun is almost set!” It was true. The sun was falling rapidly now, as usual, and the trees and the clearing behind them were filling with gloom. Menacing shapes crashed about, and other creatures, much like bats—maybe they were bats—had joined the swirling birds.

  “I shall, Your Highness,” Lelaa assured her patiently. As before, she quickly finished her chore, with no distractions from above this time, and scrabbled her way to the ground.

  “How we gonna do this, Cap’n?” Silva asked. “One end at a time, or climb in and try to lift her from inside?”

  Lelaa glanced at Abel, alert and listening, but virtually helpless in the boat. “It will be dangerous either way, and from within, it will be more so. That is how it must be done, however. We will add weight that we must also lift, but some cannot climb. Besides, if we remove the provisions from the boat—which we must to lift it one end at a time—we will then have to hoist them aboard as well.” She looked around at the twilight. “We must risk a quick ascent or we will be at this for hours. I do not think we have the time.”

  “That’s it, then,” Silva said. “Ever’body aboard!”

  “This is madness!” Rajendra stated. “We would all be safer to lift from the ground!”

  “Captain Rajendra,” Lelaa said ominously, “we have worked together despite our differences, but do not imagine those differences do not still exist. You really must cease your constant objections and observe the obvious. Add to my earlier argument that we cannot secure the down-hauls within the boat if we raise it from the ground. Where would you have us secure them? To the trees here at this level, where any passing creature might gnaw them in two? All aboard.”

  Rajendra couldn’t fault Lelaa’s logic, and whereas Silva had promised not to “hurt” him, Lelaa had made no such pledge. She had simply swallowed her anger and done as she had to. Her reminder of a possible reckoning was probably more intimidating than Silva’s harangues because it was the first she’d made in a long time, and she also had a more untainted claim on his honor as far as he was concerned. Besides, he harbored a real, secret . . . racial . . . fear of the physically diminutive but powerful—alien—Lemurian captain. He made no more objections.

  Working together creditably enough—despite their differences, most of the “muscle” were seamen after all—they slowly, carefully hoisted the battered longboat into the sky between the two trees. There was a bizarre unreality about the whole situation that escaped none of them, but it was indeed their only chance. As the final rays of the sun surrendered to the sea, they saw the water beyond the trees, within the breakers, almost working with humping, splashing shapes, eerily void of color until they gained the shore, and then only briefly until they absorbed the darkening shades of their new surroundings. About thirty feet above the ground—high enough, they hoped—they secured the down-hauls to cleats on the boat’s gunwales. Then they sat quietly, staring at the starlit transformation of the island they’d learned to hate but of necessity called home.

  “God a’mighty,” Silva whispered. “It’s like you threw the manhole cover off a sewer an’ looked down on a million man-eatin’ pollywogs swarmin’ in there.”

  As usual, he was exaggerating, but not by much. Lawrence had been right. Evidently, they’d made it just in time. They never would have survived another night on the ground. The shiksaks had come to Yap.

  “It’s a kind of hell,” Rebecca said, and Sister Audry drew her close.

  “How long will it last, Lawrence?” Sandra asked, also whispering. It seemed appropriate. All the creatures on the island, in the trees, had gone silent except for the bellowing, grunting, roaring shiksaks themselves.

  “I don’t recall,” Lawrence hissed back. “I stayed in the trees, hungry, thirsty. . . . I don’t know. Long days and nights.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Talaud Island

  Irvin Laumer leaned on the coaming of S-19’s squat conn tower and cast a suspicious eye toward the brooding volcano that increasingly inhabited the expedition’s thoughts. Nobody trusted it, and everyone felt convinced it was “up” to something, but the morning had dawned on a beautiful day, the kind that scoured away stress and fear with its simple charm alone. A brisk, cooling breeze, almost magically free of humidity, stirred the tree fronds and rippled the lagoon. High, wispy clouds moved across an otherwise brilliantly blue sky. The mountain near the center of the island seemed to have simmered down. Only the slightest trace of steam vented from the high, distant peak, and for once, its flanks weren’t shrouded with mist and the workers could see the scars of its recent tantrums. The ground still moved, but not with the violent, jolting shudder it had for many days; now it was more like a steady, sullen grumble than anything else Irvin could compare it to.

  “I think we’ll have her refloated today,” Tex Sheider predicted optimistically, appearing beside him. The shorter man scratched his nose with a kinked piece of wire, the braided insulation charred.

  The day had clearly affected the man’s mood, but he might be right, Irvin thought. “Technically, S-19’s been ‘refloated’ for weeks now,” he pointed out. “Ever since the basin filled up.”

  “Yeah, but I meant floating free,” Tex explained. Irvin nodded. He’d known what he meant. He gazed out at USS Toolbox, securely moored in the lagoon. A pair of boats they’d lashed together with a flat deck between them, like a catamaran, was pulling for the beach laden with the big scooplike device they’d fashioned to dredge the sub clear of the sand. The scoop would be dropped near the submarine, and Toolbox would drag it into the lagoon with a pair of reinforced capstans operated by nearly her entire crew. A messenger line marked the scoop’s position, and when it reached a floating platform, the scoop was hoisted and laid back upon the deck of the twin boats. The thing was a stone bitch to row, and it was hard work, especially against the wind like today, but the crews that rotated the duty didn’t seem to mind that much. They were proud that their labor revealed the most measureable sign of progress toward releasing the sub from the beach. Irvin was proud of them, and by his estimate they were nearly done.

  They could probably get the sub out now, by fending off aft and pulling her out nose first, but it would be dangerous work. The spiderlobsters had returned the night before, and they had no idea if any remained in the basin or not. The scary-looking half-skinny-lobsterhalf-spider critters weren’t the menace they’d been when they first appeared. Now that the crew knew they couldn’t climb up on the boat, when they’d come back a few time
s after the first terrifying battles, most of the crew on the shore simply took refuge on the sub. This time, they’d contented themselves with shooting a few that scuttled around on the beach, tearing at equipment, or some that seemed intent on wrecking the little “fitting-out pier” that Carpenter’s Mate Sid Franks was working on. They needed the pier to finish preparing the boat for sea once they got her loose. Even now, ’Cats were boiling spider-lobster tails for lunch, and savory smells reached Irvin’s nose now and then. The creatures had changed from terror to treat. They were still dangerous in the water, though, and the jet of seawater they “spat” could easily knock an exposed worker into the sea. It would take very exposed workers, standing in water up to their knees on the stern of the boat, to protect her delicate screws. Better to let the dredge handle it.

  Irvin saw Franks wave at him from the pier, and he waved back. Franks and a detail were planking it now. If all went well, they might have S-19 free of her enclosure before nightfall. Once that was achieved, they’d inch her toward the pier with her electric motors, tie her up, and begin final fitting-out for their long-overdue and much-yearned-for departure. They might even get the port diesel up and running before they set out, but Irvin didn’t consider it a priority compared to so many other ongoing projects. They had nearly a full load of fuel and the starboard engine ran fine, with every apparent intention of continuing to do so. Right now, it was a matter of “okay, propulsion works well enough, let’s concentrate on what we need that doesn’t work at all”—like sonar, comm, the stove, the crew’s head, etc.