“What now?” Lenah said. “We’re pretty far out and by morning I doubt the debris field will be easily seen.”
“Yeah, we’re screwed, blued and tattooed.”
“My dad used to say that.”
“Mine too.”
Poseidon meowed twice as if to say can we move on to more important things? Like where I’m getting my next meal, and how do you plan to stop me from becoming one.
“Easy, sweetie,” Lenah said. She stroked the cat’s wet hair and Poseidon closed her green eyes.
“I’ve got an idea, but you’re not gonna like it.”
“What? Swim down to the Parker and retrieve a fork to fight the thing with?”
“I was thinking butter knife.”
No laugh.
“We swim for Seagull Island.”
Lenah let out an exasperated sigh. “It’s at least three miles off, Splinter. I can’t see it anymore, can you?”
Splinter twisted his hips and spun in the water, holding onto the collar of his lifejacket. He searched for the island in the darkness, but he couldn’t find it. “We know what direction it’s in. We go southeast and as we get closer, we’ll see it.”
“I don’t think—”
A shriek of anger and pain rose above the crashing waves as the beast wailed. Lenah jumped, and Poseidon hissed. Splinter searched for the creature’s head, but couldn’t find it in the darkness. The creature’s labored breathing and grunting sounded like an out-of-tune car engine, and it was getting closer.
The beast’s right flipper brushed Splinter as the creature snaked through the debris, long mouth closed, searching. Splinter stayed still, holding his breath. The beast’s massive body disappeared beneath the surface. Splinter let out his breath.
“You think it’s best to stay in the debris field?” Lenah’s voice was shaky, and her teeth chattered.
“For now. I think it doesn’t know the difference between us and the pieces of the Parker. If we can keep it confused it might move on.”
“It can’t smell us? Thought you said it probably could sense vibrations in the water from miles away?”
“It probably can, but with all the debris, it’s getting mixed signals. As to the smell, I don’t know. A weak scent, we are in salt water. There’s no blood or other food floating around that I can see, but I can’t see far at all.”
The night dragged on, and the sea got colder. They drifted with the debris northeast away from Seagull Island, each wave taking them further from dry land and out into the vastness of the mid-Atlantic Ocean. An hour had passed since they’d last seen the sea monster, but Splinter knew it was out there. He could feel its presence like an enemy on the battlefield. The unease that something stronger and smarter was stalking you, looking for weaknesses in your armor, forming an attack plan.
Splinter and Lenah shivered, having been in the drink for over four hours. They pumped their legs to keep the blood flowing, but they were afraid to make noise or disturb the water.
“Splinter, what are we going to do? This thing’s gonna get us at some point.”
“What if we run a little test?” he said.
“Like?”
“I take my shirt off, fill it with some debris, and toss it as far as I can and see if the thing attacks it.”
“That’s pretty thin.”
“Paper.”
“But I got nothing,” Lenah said. “Can’t you just build us a new boat with spit and all the broken pieces?”
“Alright, I’ll make our decoy while you look around. See if you can find something to use as weapons.”
“You shitting me? Use a glass shard against this thing?”
“Maybe we can make a spear or two using cracked fiberglass as a point. At least then we could go for the thing’s eyes. Again, you got something better, I’m all ears.”
Lenah harrumphed and pushed off into the debris field, being careful not to disturb anything. Splinter pulled off his shirt and stuffed it with the innards of a seat cushion. Then he tied it off and tossed it as far as he could. It landed with a faint splash and floated southwest with the roll to the sea, separate from the debris field.
Nothing happened.
Lenah joined him. “This work?” She held two triangles of cracked fiberglass and a broken piece of wood covered in cracked fiberglass that looked to have been one of the hull’s interior ribs.
“That’ll work just fine. All we need is some twine.”
“What’s that?”
A fist of water rose from the Atlantic, moving toward the decoy. A tail flicked back-and-forth, the beast’s massive torso torpedoing through the water, jaws opening. The creature’s mouth closed on the stuffed t-shirt, and the beast dove, sending waves and sea spray across the debris field.
“That’s not good,” Lenah said.
“No. No it’s not.”
The debris thinned as pieces of the Parker sank or floated away, and dawn was still several hours off.
“Let’s go. Now while its down deep.”
“You sure? It took our decoy pretty fast. And won’t it notice us going against the wind?” Lenah said.
Splinter jerked his head side to side. She was right. So was he. “The current is taking us away from the island, and we need to get there or it won’t matter if this thing is after us. We’ll be dead. As we drift, the debris will sink and spread out and we’ll be left. Let’s break away and hope for the best. Make for the island,” he said.
“I guess you’re right. We can’t wait here any longer.” Lenah stroked through the waves, moving away from the remains of the Evenstar, and striking a line to where they thought Seagull Island should be.
Splinter plucked Poseidon off her fiberglass float and put her on his neck. “Hang on now,” he said to the cat. Splinter followed Lenah, looking back over his shoulder every few moments, expecting to see a tunnel of rectangular teeth coming at him.
Instead waves pounded him, and he and Lenah swam the valleys and faces of waves as a westerly wind kicked-up the Atlantic. They’d been in the water seven hours when Splinter yelled, “I see it. There. Look, Lenah.”
No response. Splinter thought she was ahead of him in the darkness. “Lenah!” No response. He’d seen her only a moment before when she crested a wave and rode its face, disappearing under the water.
A dorsal fin knifed through the ocean, cutting across the grain and heading right at Splinter. He held out his spear, the fiberglass point brittle, but sharp. The beast was almost on him when he saw the creature’s long conical snout and blowhole. The dolphin eased toward Splinter, its human eyes staring at him in the moonlight.
“Where is she?” Splinter asked.
He reached out to stroke the animals slick gray flank, but the dolphin rolled away and disappeared into the depths.
Splinter didn’t see or hear from Lenah for an hour as he backtracked, panic filling him with worry and despair. If she died out here it would be his fault, and he wouldn’t be able to deal with that. He called out to her, no longer caring if he attracted the beast.
They found each other by sheer luck with a little help from a fish. Lenah realized Splinter had fallen behind, so she’d turned around and headed back toward him, but they swam past each other in the darkness. Only after the dolphin had returned, squeaking and braying, did they find each other.
All the commotion was most likely what brought the creature.
The beast announced itself with a roar that echoed over the ocean like thunder. Splinter and Lenah clutched each other, Poseidon hissing and crying as she balanced on Splinter’s shoulders. To their left the beast surfaced in a mound of whitewater like a submarine. Its luminescent gray eyes shined in the night, sleek white skin reflecting beams of moonlight.
Splinter and Lenah stayed still, floating like logs on the churning sea. Even Poseidon seemed to understand what was happening and fell silent. The creature’s jaws snapped as it eased through the water, its flippers pounding, caudal fin thrashing.
In the distanc
e the dark outline of Seagull Island beckoned, a mile separating Splinter and Lenah from the shallows and safety.
The creature swam past them, moving in an expanding arc as it searched.
Lenah coughed, the sound loud and distinct.
The creature bellowed, and a shadow slid toward them in the dark water. Twenty yards out, giant eyes poked through the blackness, then a long mouth filled with teeth rose from the sea.
Splinter held his makeshift spear out before him, but he had no real hope of survival. He closed his eyes and waited for the abyss.
21
The leviathan’s head lifted from the ocean, its massive jaws opening, eyes locked on its prey.
Two dorsal fins knifed across the beast’s path, and a dolphin leapt from the water in a steep arc and crashed back into the sea next to the creature’s head. The pair of dolphins squeaked and clicked as the beast slowed.
The dolphins harassed the creature, and the massive animal snapped and bit at them as they swam circles around the monster. The sleek gray aquatic mammals were highly flexible, the equivalent of Ferraris. The apex croc was an eighteen-wheeler; large, bulky, and unable to change its direction quickly.
Water surged toward Splinter and Lenah as the beast thrashed and heaved, trying to bite the dolphins.
“They’re buying us time. Go. Go.” Lenah pushed away from Splinter and they swam for Seagull Island.
The wind died, and the sea calmed, which wasn’t good. The calmer the ocean, the easier it would be for the creature to sense their movements. Splinter followed Lenah, Poseidon clinging to his neck. The cat hadn’t scratched Splinter’s neck up too bad, but he had a couple of thin gashes that Poseidon had given him in her moments of panic.
Splinter had already sacrificed his shirt, but he still had his lifejacket. He inched next to Lenah as she breast-stroked through the ocean, her head half submerged as she drove toward the island.
“Lenah?” She didn’t hear him. He nudged her, and her head jerked from the water in panic, her head whipping around as she searched the surface.
“What is it?”
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Splinter said. “What if I took my life preserver off, smeared some blood on it, and let it float away from us with the current? Might bring a few more distractions.”
“You’re not bleeding, they’re just scratches, and I don’t suggest opening the wounds, but the decoy worked last time.”
“A great white can smell a drop of blood from miles away, it shouldn’t take much. It might buy us a few minutes with croczilla.”
Lenah peered toward the island that was still almost a mile distant. “You can swim the rest of the way?”
“You’ll need to take Poseidon, but yeah, I can make it.”
“Do it then.”
Splinter lifted the cat from his shoulders and handed her to Lenah. Poseidon didn’t protest, but the soaked feline didn’t look happy. He patted his friend on the head and said, “Bet you wish you went with the other two knuckleheads, don’t you?”
The cat stared at him with her glowing green eyes.
Splinter reached between his legs and undid the clasp that secured the lifejacket harness. Then he loosened the chest straps and slipped the jacket over his head.
He started to sink, and Splinter tread water to keep his head above the surface. He was tired, hungry, bruised, his knee ached, and as he rubbed the lifejacket along his neck, smearing it with small traces of blood, he felt dizzy and his vision blurred. He let the lifejacket float away, and it disappeared in the roll of the ocean.
“You OK?” Lenah asked.
“Um,” he mumbled. He felt like shit, but saw no reason to tell Lenah that. She was dealing with her own survival, her own pain. “I’ll be better when I feel rocks between my toes.”
Several minutes passed and the sounds of the dolphins struggling with the creature died away as the companions swam on. In the darkness, Splinter heard the beast pushing across the surface, like a sailboat cutting through chop.
“Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.”
“Nooooooo. Nemo can kiss my ass.”
They chuckled.
Splinter looked over his shoulder. “It’s going for the bait,” he said.
An orange glow hung on the horizon as the gray of daybreak seeped across the Atlantic. In the distance the beast’s caudal fin cut through the sea, making a line for his blood smeared lifejacket.
“We’ve got to move now,” Splinter said. “Second time pays for all. The decoy will only keep our alpha occupied a few minutes.”
They were a half mile from Seagull Island, and the shoals were closer, another quarter mile to go. Splinter was starting to believe they might make it when he heard splashing water, tearing flesh and cracking bone reverberate over the ocean.
“Swim hard now.”
“What about—”
“Swim!”
Splinter dove forward and stroked hard, his arms and legs heavy with lack of sleep and nourishment. Salt water stung his eyes, and his legs cramped from the cold—he’d been in the drink over eight hours—but he pretended he was in the Olympics, swimming the 500 meters, nothing on his mind except touching the side of the concrete pool.
He brought his head from the water and looked back. Lenah was struggling in the lifejacket while trying to hold onto Poseidon who slipped and grabbed at Lenah’s hair in a vain attempt to gain purchase.
Lenah screamed as the cat scratched her face, and Splinter stopped swimming to wait for her. When Lenah caught up, he took Poseidon from her and said, “Take that jacket off. We don’t have much time.”
What he didn’t tell her was there was a fist of water rising from the sea behind them.
Lenah pulled off her lifejacket and swam on. Splinter waited three heartbeats, then trailed after her, staying directly behind her. The ocean erupted and the beast moaned and roared as its flippers slapped the sea.
Splinter’s foot touched something, and he kicked it away, only to bump up against it again. Seagull Island loomed before them a quarter mile distant, its dark outline mocking them. To come all this way only to be eaten off the island’s shore would be the perfect irony.
“We made it! We made it Splinter!” Lenah stood in the ocean up to her shoulders, tiny ripples breaking over her as she waited.
Splinter tried to stand, but the water was still too deep, so he eased forward, stroking with his arms and letting his legs dangle. His toes touched the bottom, then he stood, neck high in the Atlantic, a stupid smile spreading over his face.
The creature breached in the shallow water, pushing itself up and out of the sea like a missile, jaws open. It landed with a splash that knocked Lenah and Splinter from their feet and drove them toward the island in a mass of whitewater that broke on a rocky beach.
The two companions hauled themselves from the sea as the creature used its flippers and tail to work its way back into deeper water.
The shallows grew silent, and Splinter and Lenah collapsed on the rocky shore, Poseidon shaking herself off between them, spitting up water and cleaning herself. Out at sea, the beast’s caudal fin paced just outside the wave break. The sun peeked its head above the horizon and the gray of dawn gave way to bright sunlight.
It was morning.
Splinter and Lenah lay on the beach, not speaking and staring up into the clear blue sky. Splinter’s stomach gurgled, and his mouth was so dry it felt like his lips were cracking.
Poseidon licked his face, and sat down, curling her tail around herself. If it wasn’t for the small beads of water on her slick fur it would be impossible to tell the cat had been through any hardship at all.
“So, since we’re alive, what was all that I love you stuff before?”
Splinter rolled on his side to look at her. Poseidon sat watching, her gaze flicking between Lenah and Splinter. She meowed three times, as if saying you better get this response right.
Truth was, Splinter didn’t know what she was talking about. He remembere
d saying something. The fog clouded his memory, and sometimes he forgot things he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t let her know he didn’t remember because whatever he’d said it appeared important to her.
He brushed sand from his face and said, “What do you mean, specifically?”
“Specifically? You told me you loved me. You don’t remember?”
Splinter opened his mouth to lie, but thought better of it. “I’m sorry, but I don’t, but I do love you.”
“Really? Haven’t we been through this?”
“Things have changed a little, no?”
“Not for me. You’re still the same person I’ve always known. I love you too, Splinter, but I just—”
“I understand,” he said, and he did.
Herons with gray and white feathers and long bright orange beaks inched from the mangroves, and seagulls shouted and circled above. There were thousands of them, and it made Splinter think of Hitchcock. He’d have had a field day with croczilla.
“Don’t they ever stop migrating?” Splinter said.
Lenah laughed. “The Birds. Most people wouldn’t get that one. It’s pretty old.”
“But you did,” he said.
The Atlantic splashed and a surge of water pushed through the gentle waves, driving across the shoals like a tsunami and breaking a hundred feet off shore. Whitewater rolled across the shallows only to be sucked back into the ocean.
The seagulls stopped shouting and the herons didn’t caw. Every living thing on Seagull Island had suddenly decided to be silent.
Splinter searched for the beast, but the whitewater dissipated, and the shoals went flat. “I think we should get away from the shore,” he said.
“Why? You think it can get us here?” Lenah said.
“I don’t know, but I don’t see why we shouldn’t take precautions. We’ve been lucky so far and that luck might run out.” Splinter knew that better than most.
The seagulls resumed their arguing as Splinter searched the shoreline for a trail through the mangroves. Everything was wet with the prior night’s rain, and Splinter and Lenah dropped to their knees when they saw a puddle in an indentation in a large stone. They both lay on the stone, faces pressed to the hot rock, lapping up water like puppies, Poseidon’s head pushed between them.
Shadow Of The Abyss Page 13