The slap knocks the scream right out of him. His hand goes to his face, and his eyes slowly rise to meet mine. Relief melts the tension in his face and body when our eyes meet. He’s really just seeing me now.
“Where—where am I?” he asks.
“You’re on board the Raven,” I say.
“The Raven…” He looks around the ship and sees one of the harpoon guns mounted on the aft deck. “A whaling ship?”
I know the kid is a Greenpeacer, so this could go bad, but there’s no hiding the fact that the Raven was outfitted for the sole purpose of slaughtering whales. “Yeah, you could say that.”
He looks even more relieved now, which surprises me until I remember what he’s probably endured.
“Thank God,” he says. He turns and sees the second and third harpoon guns. “Probably still not enough, though.”
I ignore the comment. “What’s your name, kid?”
“Nathan. You can call me Nate.”
“GreenpeaceNate?” I ask.
His eyes light up. “You follow me?”
“I do,” Klein says. “I’m SpooKlein.”
“Seriously? SpooKlein?” I say, looking at Klein. “Do you want your bosses to figure out it’s you?”
“You DM’d me,” Nate says. “About the…whale.” His eyes go distant for a moment.
“We found the whale,” I say. “The dead one.”
His head snaps toward me. “It’s not dead!”
I place a gentle hand on his shoulder. “It is now. It’s chum.”
“What about the others?” he asks.
“What others?” Malik asks.
“There were at least ten,” Nate says. “I think a few of them killed themselves ramming the ship. But I’m not sure if they can even die.”
“What happened to the Rainbow?” I ask. I’m not sure I want the answer, but I need it.
“I—I’m not sure.” He scratches his matted brown hair. “I remember the attack. The hull was in serious trouble. I was getting the life rafts ready, but it seemed like a really stupid idea, you know? If the Rainbow was in trouble, what good would an inflatable raft be?”
“What kind of whales?” Malik asks.
“Humpbacks mostly,” Nate says. “Two female sperm whales. And a big bull. They came when the dead—not dead—humpback called out. We thought it was dying and didn’t think anything of it when the others arrived. But then…” His eyes flick back and forth like he’s trying to remember something. “I don’t know how I got in the raft. I remember holding the case. Being ready to toss it overboard. But that’s it. My next memory is here.”
“Jane,” Malik says. “I’m going to warn Jakob about the whales. There might be more than just the one.”
I nod and Malik leaves. When I look back at Nate, he’s wide-eyed, but not from fear this time. In fact, with all the stupid resilience of the young, he seems to be perking up. “Your name is Jane?”
“Yeah.”
“And the captain is Jakob?”
“Yeah, kid, why?”
“You’re Jane Harper!”
I stand up. “How do you know my name?”
At this confirmation of my identity, he grins and chuckles. “Hashtag, awesome. You were trending the Twitterverse a few months back. At least in the circles I follow. I know all about what happened to you. Or what you say happened. I didn’t believe it.”
A shiver runs through his body, and I swear the kid is about to burst into tears, but he sniffs hard, crushes his hands into fists, and pulls himself together. He might not have believed my story before, but he sure as shit does now.
“No one did,” he says. “You were a traitor to the cause. But, man, your investigative videos went viral on YouTube. Your picture was everywhere, too, mostly because you’re kind of a hottie. Um, I mean. I didn’t recognize you because of the cloak—” His eyes appear a little less haunted as he looks me up and down. “OMG. It’s true! They said people were calling you the Raven. That you wore a cloak. I thought it was like that stuff. What’s it called? Legend or something. But it’s for real, right? The Raven. Awesome. BT-dubs, I never really believed you did it. Killed all those people.”
That’s enough of that, I think. “First, never say OMG in my presence again, or you might be the first living person I actually kill. Second, BT-dubs?”
“Uh—by the way. Dubs is—”
“Yeah, I get it.” I sigh. “Never say that again, either. Even the Greenlanders speak English on this ship.”
“’Kay,” he says.
“Jane!” It’s Malik, shouting down from the exterior bridge door. “It will be here in a minute!”
The engines fire up, and the prop starts chewing water.
“Coming!” I reply before yanking the kid to his feet. He’s wet, and cold, but he’s going to have to deal with that for a bit.
“What’s coming?” he asks, looking a little squirrelly.
I want to joke with the kid, but I can’t think of any funny way to put it. “The bull.”
Nate lets out an involuntary yelp that sounds something like a panicked zebra. Klein claps him on the shoulder. “BT-dubs, this ship can handle a single whale. And then some.”
I don’t know if it’s the use of the forbidden phrase or Klein’s confidence in our ability to slay whales, but the kid gives him a shaky grin, so I let it slide.
My leg starts to throb as I climb the exterior stairs to the bridge. My instinct is to stop and look at the bandage. See if it’s bleeding through. But I ignore it and limp back onto the bridge.
Jakob is still behind the wheel, his eyes locked on the empty ocean in front of us. The only other person on the bridge is Talbot. Malik now mans the third forward harpoon gun. I move to the windows, looking in all directions. “I don’t see it.”
“You will,” Talbot says. “It’s clo—”
The leviathan rises, shedding sheets of water as it arcs into the air. The bull sperm whale is a giant. It exudes power and ferocity. And for a moment I feel it is looking straight at me. Sunlight glimmers off its wet gray flesh, creating a surreal aura around the beast. It’s no wonder these creatures spawned legends of sea monsters.
The whale, just a football field away, descends with a mighty splash. I can feel the whump of its body striking the ocean through the metal of the ship.
“It’s going to ram us!” Nate shouts.
For a moment I think he’s being paranoid, but he has experience with these things that none of us do.
“He might be right,” I say to Jakob.
The captain is nonplussed. In fact, I’d say he’s in some kind of Viking berserker rage. His eyes are full of fire when he replies. “The Raven is a double-hulled icebreaker, and the bull’s head is little more than an oil-filled balloon.” He shoves the throttle to full. “We’re going to split him open like a melon!” He toggles a handheld radio. “Hold your fire down there, we’re going to ram the son of a bitch!”
I watch the dark shape of the whale approaching quickly. If the whale is still moving at thirty knots, and the ship is at its full twenty-knot speed, the fifty-knot collision is going to be jarring to say the least. Icebreakers aren’t designed to strike fifty-six-ton objects moving at fifty knots. That said, despite the whale’s size and power, it’s even less prepared for this collision. I have no doubt we’ll come out on top, I just don’t want to sink afterward.
With the collision imminent, I step away from the window and grip a chair bolted to the floor. “Hold on to something!”
I instinctually close my eyes and grit my teeth, waiting for the impact. Ten seconds later, I open them again. Nothing.
“He’s gone beneath us!” Jakob shouts. He picks up the radio. “Willem, Malik, move to the back! He’s coming up behind us.”
I see the two men leave the harpoons on the forward deck and make for the rear of the ship. I follow them, heading for the door. This isn’t just any normal whale. It’s controlled by an intelligence that makes it capable of strategizing on a l
evel that’s human. Maybe beyond human. They’re going to need all the help they can get.
I open the door as Willem runs past below.
“How do the harpoons work?” I shout down to him.
“They’re all loaded and prepped,” he shouts back. “Just aim and pull the trigger. And keep your foot clear of the line.” I’m not sure why we’re using harpoons with lines. We’re not trying to catch whales, we’re trying to kill them. But there’s no time to ask.
Willem takes the harpoon at the ship’s stern. It’s just above the cable connecting the Raven to the SuzieQ. Malik has the starboard gun ready, so I take the port. The big weapon weighs a ton, but it’s so well balanced and oiled that I have no trouble maneuvering it around.
If only I had a target. “See anything?” I shout.
“Nothing,” Malik replies.
“Willem?” I shout.
“Hold on…” he says. “I think I see someth—”
A sharp crack, like the snap of a felled tree, whips me around. For a moment, I think Willem’s harpoon has misfired and blown up in his face, but then I see the SuzieQ rising out of the sea. Water clings to its sides but then slurps away, freeing the boat from the liquid’s grasp. The ship splits in two as it’s catapulted upward, the halves spiraling away from each other, shedding planks of wood and random debris. A surprised shout rises in my throat, but it is squelched when I see what launched the SuzieQ skyward.
15
I watch in slack-jawed awe as the bull sperm whale rises from the depths like a living missile, following through on the blow that reduced the SuzieQ to toothpicks. The whale twists as it rises forty feet into the air, which is just over half its body length and also more than enough for it to peek over our back deck. Its creamy white eye seems to lock on me despite the absence of a pupil, mocking me, saying, You’re next. The raw power and horror of the creature immobilize me—that is, until I see the trajectory of a large chunk of hull.
It’s going to crush Willem, who has steadfastly stayed on task.
I’m already in motion when I shout a warning, but my voice is lost in the din of shattering wood and crashing water.
Willem tracks the whale through the air, aiming for the prodigious head.
The debris rushes toward him.
“Willem!” I shout.
I don’t know if he hears me, but if he does, I think he believes I’m ordering him to shoot. He pulls the trigger. The harpoon explodes from the cannon. A coil of white cable unfurls behind it. I see it all in a fraction of a second. After that, I’m airborne, lunging for Willem.
I strike him from the side like a half-pint linebacker. He’s not expecting the blow and tumbles to the side, taking me with him. There’s a tremendous crash from behind us as we hit the deck, which is reverberating from the blow. When I roll off Willem, we get a clear look at the chunk of debris lying on the metal deck where he had been standing.
“Thanks,” he says, but he doesn’t linger. He stands quickly and helps me up.
My leg screams in pain. Any healing has been undone by my pell-mell sprint across the deck. Could be worse, I think, looking at the debris. Then Malik is there, lifting the chunk of SuzieQ’s bow and heaving it over the aft rail.
“You struck the whale!” Malik shouts. “Center head. He’s done for sure.”
I’m not so sure. The sperm whale’s brain is located essentially in the center of its massive head. It’s protected on all sides by tons of meat, muscles, and the whale’s largest organ, called the case, which is full of yellowish, oily wax called spermaceti. All of that provides a nice buffer for ramming ships, or in this case, surviving a harpoon strike.
Granted, most whales would be stunned into submission with a hole blown in their head, but this isn’t just a normal whale. It’s Draugr, which means we can shred the case all we want, but it’s not going to stop until we destroy the brain or completely immobilize the body. Even stopping the heart won’t help. It’s the parasites populating the whale’s body that are keeping it alive and mobile now.
I look at the water behind us. All that remains of the SuzieQ is a debris field bobbing in the waves. The whale is gone, but it’s left behind its footprint—the large area of flattened water created by surfacing sea giants—and a swirl of straw-colored goo, which confirms a head shot.
Willem starts hauling in the line, and I see the harpoon rise to the surface. For a moment I wonder why the line isn’t embedded in the whale’s side, but then I notice the harpoon has no flukes. These harpoons aren’t made for catching whales. Armed with just the explosive tip, they’re designed for killing whales. Plain and simple. The line is attached so the projectile can be retrieved, rearmed, and fired again. It makes sense, since the harpoons are quite heavy and storing a large number of them on board would be difficult. Explosive tips, on the other hand…
Malik arrives with a wooden crate the size of a computer tower. He throws open the top, revealing a container that’s been divided down the middle by a wooden slat. On one side are the explosive charges that fire the harpoon. On the other side are the bomb tips.
Moving fast, Malik ejects the spent charge and replaces it with a fresh one. Willem gets the harpoon on deck, so I pick up a spear tip and hand it to him. He carefully slides it onto the end of the harpoon and secures it. Then, working together, Malik and Willem lift the harpoon and slide it into the large barrel. Total reload time is about a minute. In the heat of battle, it feels like a lifetime.
No wonder they’ve got so many harpoons, I think.
A splash of water draws my eyes to port. I’m confused by what I see for a moment; then my eyes focus and I realize that I’m seeing the underside of the sperm whale. It has breached on the side of the Raven and is falling toward us.
I’m thrown off balance as the ship turns hard to port, pulling the back end out of the monster’s shadow. The whale crashes back into the ocean. While it has missed crushing the main deck, it still slams into our side, sending a vibration through the ship.
I scramble to my feet and run for my harpoon. When I reach the giant weapon, I swivel it toward the rear of the ship and catch sight of the whale. It’s just off the port side, its head nearly touching the hull. Apparently even Draugr whales can be stunned. When hunting sperm whales, whalers typically aim for the sweet spot between the dorsal fin and eye. It’s here that the explosive head can penetrate deep into the whale’s body and cause massive damage to the heart and other vital organs. The trouble with this is that whales are designed to go long durations without taking a breath. Even with its heart stopped, the whale may still be alive and suffering, even when it’s pulled up onto factory boats. Possibly while it’s being disassembled for market. For me, this sweet spot won’t do any good. Luckily, my target is easy to spot. The giant’s gray body is marred by a five-foot hole, through which globs of spermaceti flow. The yellowish hue is easy to spot from the surface.
I focus on the yellow and place my crosshairs dead center.
What I’m about to do goes against everything I’ve done for my entire adult life. I haven’t always been the most passionate antiwhaler in the world, but I do believe in the cause and that harpooning is a cruel and disgusting way to kill an animal. What I’m about to do is wrong, but it’s unavoidable.
“It’s not a whale,” I say. “Not anymore.”
Then I pull the trigger.
The explosive charge that fires the harpoon is louder than any handgun I’ve handled, and it nearly knocks me over. I keep my grip on the large cannon and watch as the harpoon, trailing its white cable, soars down toward the ocean, piercing water, then whale.
The harpoon slips through the waxy oil and strikes the hard surface of the whale’s skull. The resulting explosion launches a spray of seawater, red, meaty mist, and globs of yellow. A fortunate sea breeze carries the fleshy debris away from the Raven, but not before I’ve caught a whiff. Coppery blood, cordite, and something fishy fills my nose, amalgamating into a scent that instantly sours my stomach.
But the horrible smell doesn’t stifle my excitement enough to stop the war whoop that comes unhindered from my lips. I step away from the cannon and up to the rail, looking over the side to see what’s become of the bull Draugr.
Willem and Malik step up to the rail beside me.
“Did I get it?” I ask. The water swirls with gouts of red blood turned pink as it mixes with seawater. Trails of yellow spiral up from below. It must be dead. Really dead. It has to be.
Then the whale’s fluke, which is like a muscular hang glider notched at the center, rises from the water and slams back down. There’s enough power behind the strike to convince me that the whale is not yet out of commission.
Malik begins hauling in the harpoon line, while Willem rushes back to his post. I just stand and watch as the whale pulses its tail down into the water and slides beneath the surface.
It rises again, coming alongside. When its head—what’s left of it—clears the water, I see what’s become of it. The whale’s brain is located at the center of the head, between the eyes. It’s so well protected that even after two explosive harpoon strikes, we have yet to reach it. What we have managed to do is separate the entire upper jaw and case. The lower jaw dangles uselessly below a huge empty space from which gouts of blood pour.
One more shot should finish it, I think.
Malik retrieves the spear, but he is moving more slowly to rearm the charges without Willem’s help. I really need to learn how to do this stuff, but now is not the time. I’m liable to blow off my hand, or worse.
I look back to the whale, hoping it’s still in range. But it’s moving away.
Not away. In a circle.
It seems we’ve managed to injure it after all. Or perhaps the parasites’ control can’t overcome the whale’s nervous system’s response to the catastrophic injury. Or maybe there aren’t any parasites at all, I think. As fear grips my chest, I look out at the whale, searching for some sign that it’s more than just a whale. Or less than a whale. I find my proof on the whale’s lolling tongue. It’s not pink, like it should be. It’s white, covered in thousands of parasite larvae anxious to be passed on to the next unfortunate host.
The Raven (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) Page 8