It was another five minutes before they finally let her out.
“Okay,” Wilkes said as he opened the door for her. “End of the road.”
“Now do I get told what the hell is going on?” she said.
A tall dark haired man walked towards her and thrust out a hand to be shaken.
He at least looks military.
She couldn’t have taken him for anything else. He looked to be in his late thirties, maybe a year or two either side of forty. He carried himself stiff and straight, he didn’t have a hair out of place and, although he wore a black sweatshirt and black pants, he wore it as if it was a uniform. She expected a clipped, stern voice to go with the look and was surprised by a soft Southern drawl that was almost whispered.
“Colonel Stack,” he said. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but we needed to get you here in a hurry. I trust they looked after you?”
She laughed.
“Oh yes. We had a wonderful trip, full of witty conversation and giddy delights.”
She saw immediately that Stark’s sarcasm detector was not a well-developed part of his armoury; he looked puzzled by her remark. She decided to plough on regardless.
“So what exactly does Homeland Security need with a marine biologist?”
He smiled, but there was a strain in his eyes that told her he hadn’t slept for a while.
“We were told you were the expert on this kind of thing.”
She sighed loudly.
“For fucks sake, just tell me. I’ve had enough of this cloak and dagger shit.”
Wilkes looked ready to laugh, but a glance from the Colonel quickly put paid to that.
“Whatever you want Miss Menzies,” he said, and pronounced the name the Scottish way.
He is full of surprises this one.
Stark led her round the side of the Hummer and for the first time she got sight of the carcass of the whale that lay there.
She smiled.
“I knew there had been a mistake. I deal in crustaceans not cetaceans.”
“No mistake Miss,” Stack said. He took her by the arm. His grip was firm, but not painful, as he led her over to the whale. Or, more precisely, what was left of it.
My God. It exploded.
That was her first thought. She’d seen bloated carcasses before, in situations where the vegetable material in the dead beast’s stomach started to ferment in hot damp conditions. At first glance this looked to be the case here. The whole belly had been laid open.
But when she looked closer she saw that this hadn’t been a standard case of spontaneous bloating. Something had hacked its way out. The sand for yards around was red and damp. The air smelled, heavy with the tang of blood and stomach acid. She put her hand across her mouth and stepped in closer. The edges of the flesh were not ragged. Indeed they looked cleanly snipped, as if by scissors.
Or claws?
Something shifted in the pit of her stomach, a sinking feeling as she had the first inclination of why she’d been rudely awakened.
She turned to Stark.
“What happened here?” she asked. “You didn’t bring me all this way in the middle of the night to look at a dead whale.”
“No Miss Menzies. We didn’t.”
Stark led her towards the far side of the whale. Two field tents were set up on the shore above the beach. An ambulance was parked at the side, doors closed. A pale-faced medic stood to one side, smoking a cigarette, looking drawn and shaky. Stark led her into the nearest tent.
“Three researchers were working on the whale,” he said, and paused, as if wondering how much to tell her. “They were butchered… there’s no other word for it. We found pieces of them all over the beach. It was like a war zone. We’ve only just got through cleaning up.”
The worry grew bigger in her.
“How does this involve Homeland Security,” she asked. She was buying time, hoping against hope that her suspicions would be proved wrong.
“I was called in a couple of weeks back when it was obvious something was happening.”
He sat her down next to a laptop.
“This was taken off the coast of Cuba, two months ago,” he said, and accessed a menu. The laptop’s DVD drive whirred into action.
The screen showed an underwater scene. At first it looked completely out of focus, but someone behind the camera sharpened it up and zoomed in close on the action. Two divers in full wet suits and scuba gear approached a wreck. Twin funnels rose over rusted bows. To Shona’s untrained eye it looked like a cargo boat of some kind, and one that had been sunk for some years… long enough for the corals to start encrusting it.
The divers moved slowly and carefully up to the nearest part of the rotting hull. The area was heavily silted up and their flippers disturbed whorls of sediment with each stroke. One of the divers got in front and started to try to clear an area around a hatchway. He worked on it for some time, brushing away sand. The operator took the opportunity to pan the camera around. The view showed the full length of the hulk, including a large hole halfway along lined with buckled metal that looked like it had been blown out from the inside.
By the time they panned back to the hatchway the diver had cleared the area. He reached out and turned the handle, having to use two hands and put all his strength into it. The hatchway opened slowly, revealing deep darkness inside.
The diver turned and made a circle with forefinger and thumb towards the camera. Just as he turned back something long and white lunged forward out of the hatchway.
The camera spun wildly.
Sediment got kicked up, obscuring the view. Things went dull and murky, making it hard to tell what was going on. White showed again, moving quickly in the murk. More sand got kicked up. Something passed in front of the camera, a white blur. Little detail was visible, but Shona saw enough to bring her worst fears rushing in.
It can’t be.
The camera drifted, unmanned, to the deck and lay at an acute angle. At the far end of the deck there was a last flash of white, then all went quiet.
The swirling sand settled slowly.
A severed leg, blood oozing behind it, floated past the lens.
All went black.
Shona remembered to breathe.
“Who took the film?” she whispered.
“They were Navy Seals,” Stack said. “In Cuban waters on a mission. We lost two men, and a third is still in hospital. He’s missing an arm, taken clean off at the elbow, as if hit with a sword.”
What killed them?
Shona didn’t vocalise the question. She had a sickening feeling that she already knew the answer.
“I’m starting to see why you need me,” she said, little more than a whisper.
Stark nodded.
“We needed the best. We have a serious problem.”
He tapped another item on the menu.
“Florida, last month.”
It was a newspaper article.
“Great White in Miami waters?”
“Local doctor Sam Johnson made a gruesome discovery this morning while taking his morning constitutional. His dog Rex brought him an unexpected gift… a shoe, with a severed human foot still inside.
“A few yards further along the shore the doctor discovered the partially digested remains of a human torso. Officials have now sealed off the beach and have reported several other body parts as being found strewn over a large area.
“Meanwhile concern is growing as to the fate of the Robbins family. The family’s yacht went missing three days ago in calm seas. Rumour is spreading all along the coast of a Great White being seen cruising the area. But so far, there have been no confirmed sightings.”
“It wasn’t a Great White, was it?” Shona whispered.
“No. It wasn’t,” Stark said. “We have the autopsy report for you on the body parts that were found, and the results of a full forensic examination of the area.”
“Was it the same thing as in Cuba?”
Stack didn’t r
eply. He hit another menu item.
“This is from just last week,” he said. “A young family were on the beach in Cape Charles in Virginia.”
Shona heard children laughing as she turned back to the screen.
It was a home video. Two young children waved excitedly at the camera, both less than five years old.
“Chase us Daddy,” one said. She took the hand of her sister and together they ran off down the beach towards the water. The person holding the camera followed slowly behind, the picture shaking and wavering in time with their steps. The kids leapt into the sea, splashing each other excitedly. The older of the two ducked the other’s head under the water, bringing squeals of excitement and outrage. More water got thrown and the squeals got louder.
“Play nice kids,” a voice said on camera.
The kids kept splashing, getting increasingly excited.
Shona realised she really did not want to see what was coming, but she couldn’t keep her eyes off the screen.
“Come on Daddy,” the eldest shouted. “This is fun.”
The sea was white with splashing from flailing arms and legs.
The person carrying the camera started to move closer to the water. There was a flash of white under the water, heading towards the girls.
“Emma. Kate. Get out of there. Right now!”
The girls either didn’t hear or pretended not to. They kept splashing.
There was another flash of white.
The water turned red. The splashing got frantic, spray rising high, obscuring the view of what was happening. One of the girls screamed, but the noise was quickly silenced. The camera dropped to the sand, showing only a man running to where a red slick lay on the water.
“Emma! Kate!”
His shouts turned to wails of grief.
The only other noise was a loud clickety-clack, like distant castanets.
Shona turned away, tears forming.
The poor babies. That poor man.
“There’s one more,” Stark said, leaning forward, but Shona had already seen more than enough.
They’re back. Just like he said they’d be.
“Do you have a cell-phone?” she said.
“You’ll find one in the Hummer,” he replied.
She rose, knocking over the seat behind her, and left the tent.
“Where are you going?” Stack called after her.
“To talk to the one Menzies who should be here,” she replied. “I need to call my father.”
4
Porter kept a close eye on the crab. It was rapidly outgrowing the tank, having more than trebled in size in the two weeks since he’d caught it. It was now nearly two feet wide across the back, with a span of over three feet from claw-tip to claw-tip.
It ate ferociously, consuming everything that was put in the tank, whether it was animal or vegetable. It had a particular liking for wiener sausages that Porter found faintly nauseating. Everything went into the maw, and only little neat piles of scat came out the other end. The cage was starting to smell but Porter was wary of trying to clean it. He suspected that if he put an arm into the tank, some, maybe most, of it would be gone in seconds.
The crab looked very angry.
It banged on the glass of the aquarium, morning, noon and night. Sometimes Porter thought he could hear a rhythm in it, a manic drummer trying to send a signal. At other times he found himself joining in, fingers beating out rhythms on the arms of his chair.
The noise was driving Sarah to distraction.
“Can’t you shut the little fucker up?” she asked, at least three times a day.
Then again, the girl was easily distracted. Shiny objects, crap television shows and food could all stop the flow of her thoughts almost instantly. Porter reckoned she only had three brain cells working at any one time, and even then one of them rarely spoke to the others. She was just about the dimmest creature he’d ever met. For a while she had made up for it by being spectacular in the sack, but the constant banality was wearing him down and he guessed it wouldn’t be too long now before he asked her to hit the road.
The crab banged on the glass.
“Can’t you shut the little fucker up?” she whined.
“Just open the lid and shake your ass at him,” Porter said. “That’ll give him something else to think about. And one of them claws might give you an unexpected thrill at the same time.”
Porter laughed loudly as the girl gave him the finger.
“I don’t know why I put up with your shit,” she said petulantly.
“It must be my good looks and charm, doll,” he said and leered.
She ignored him. She gingerly lifted the lid and dropped in a thick chunk of baloney. The crab scuttled over it almost before it hit the floor of the tank. It tore neat little strips from the meat and delivered them, almost daintily, to its maw. It worked so fast that the meat would be gone in seconds.
Then the banging will start again, and Sarah will start whining. Again.
New day, same old shit.
He hadn’t told her about his idea.
It had come to him in a flash, just last night. Remarkably, he’d still been sober at around eight o’ clock. He’d put on the television to avoid listening to Sarah’s babbling about some new pair of shoes she was thinking of buying. The television was showing an old movie, about a travelling carnival.
“Come and see the only mermaid in captivity,” a barker called, and the punters flocked to the booth. Dollar bills flowed like confetti at a wedding, even though the mermaid was obviously an old monkey with a cod’s tail strapped to its ass. That didn’t matter. “See the freaks” a large colourful sign had said. It was like a light-blub switching on above Joe Porter’s head.
A crab that big has to be some kind of freak.
And straight after that thought there was another.
A lot of people would pay good money to see it. And maybe, just maybe, a zoo would pay good money to buy it.
The thought had kept him awake most of the night, lying there listening to the thud of pincer on glass and the scurrying of legs on rough sand. He’d got up and drank more whisky while watching the beast.
It kept banging on the glass.
Keep at it fucker. Grow big and strong. You’re my meal ticket out of this shit-hole.
And even in the cold light of day, when sobriety started to creep close, the thought still wouldn’t go away.
That fucker is getting huge. Some zoo will pay through the nose for it.
He’d noted down a list of possible numbers to call earlier. But he had no intention of telling Sarah. She’d want to share.
Fuck that for a game of soldiers. Once I get the cash I’m outa here like shit off a shovel. And I’m not taking anyone with me. Shit. The crab is probably more intelligent than she is.
He couldn’t complain about the view though. Sarah was bent over the aquarium, tapping on the glass, amused, for a while, as the crab tapped angrily back. Denim cut-offs rode high on her buttocks and her tits hung heavy in a loose halter-top.
She saw him looking,
“Do you like?”
He grunted and took a swig of rum.
She stuck her tongue out at him and went back to teasing the crab.
Porter looked at the telephone. He couldn’t wait any longer. The idea was too big in his head.
“Sarah?” he said.
She looked up expectantly, a smile starting.
“Fuck off for five minutes. I need to make a call.”
He ignored the hurt look she threw at him as she went out onto the deck. He heard a splash as she dived into the water, and more splashes as her strong swimming stroke took her away from the shore. Once he was sure she was far out of hearing distance he picked up the phone.
Getting anyone to understand the power of his idea proved more difficult than he’d hoped. His first choice, the Queen’s Zoo he remembered visiting as a child, turned him down flat after hardly twenty seconds. Central Park Zoo proved slightly b
etter.
“It’s a big crab you say?”
The voice on the other end of the line was a Doctor Newman, the third person he’d spoken to, and the only one so far to show even the slightest interest.
“It’s a very big crab,” Porter said. “You ain’t never seen nothing like it.”
“I doubt that very much,” Newman said. His voice had a clipped nasal quality to it that immediately got on Porter’s nerves. “But I’m certainly interested. Bring it to me in the morning and I’ll give you a professional opinion.”
“Can’t you send someone out here?” Porter asked. “I told you… it’s a big fucker.”
Newman laughed but even on the end of a telephone line Porter could tell there was little that this man would ever find funny.
“No,” he said bluntly. “It’s your crab. Either bring it here, or keep it there. I don’t really care either way.”
If Porter had met Newman in a bar they would now be less than five seconds from a fight.
But I need that money.
He bit his lip and kept his temper.
“And if I bring it, you’ll pay?” he asked, trying not to sound needy.
Newman sighed so loudly that Joe heard it on the line.
“Just bring it here. We can discuss a monetary arrangement if it does indeed prove to be as special as you say.”
“I told you…”
Newman didn’t give him a chance to finish.
“Yes, it’s a big fucker. I heard you the first time. Just bring it.”
Crustaceans Page 2