A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe)

by Leicht, Martin

  We veer to the left with exactly enough of a head start to avoid the giant black torpedo shooting through the ice, in the exact spot we would be now had we not abruptly shifted course. A spray of water and ice shards rains down on us. The enormous black creature twists and turns, giving us a view of what look to be two small wings and a white underbelly.

  No, not wings.

  Fins.

  A colossal killer whale is trying to murder us. Seriously, my life would be less weird if we were actually being chased by aliens.

  The whale crashes down on the surface of the ice, shattering the crust and parting the water in a tremendous splash. Our sled rocks with the wave, but thankfully we manage to avoid getting blasted to smithereens. This time.

  There is one moment, before the beast submerges himself again, when I swear to goodness he looks directly at me with his enormous round black eye. And it’s like I can read his thoughts, exactly what he’s thinking in that moment. He doesn’t see humans, or Almiri, or hybrids.

  He sees meat.

  The creature dives into the sea again. His huge tail rises up and slaps the side of our sled with a mighty thwack. The sled pitches over on its side, and we have no choice but to dive off as it flips and crashes down. My momentum sends me skidding on my stomach over the smooth surface for several meters. I spin around to see the dogs dragging the overturned sled away from us. Their harnesses scrape between the ice and the sled for several seconds and then snap free, sending the dogs skittering in six different directions across the ice. Dad and Cole run up beside me and lift me off the ground.

  “Come on, Elvie!” Dad shouts. “To Oates.”

  Oates is at least fifty meters away but has circled around and is heading back our way to retrieve us. But between us lies the large rift of icy seawater where the whale broke through. As we run toward Oates at an angle to circumvent the hole, the whale pops up again, his massive head bobbing almost playfully on the surface. He stares straight at us, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say the shitbag was smiling.

  Smiling with rows of enormous, sharp-ass teeth.

  The piteous whining howls behind me cause me to swivel my head. All around us the ice is breaking free, and large black snouts shoot out of the water. At least half a dozen of them, strategically positioned to trap the loose dogs inside a perimeter. They grab the canines, clamping down on the poor things with a crunching of bones that stifles their pathetic last yelps before pulling them down to a watery grave.

  We’re surrounded.

  The ice underneath us begins to shift, swaying with the waves like a toy boat in the bathtub. Not because one of the whales is beneath us, but because the entire surface as far as I can see is now breaking apart into smaller and smaller floes, bobbing on the surface like ice cubes in a giant drinking glass.

  “This way!” I shout, tugging my dad and Cole behind me and running along the length of the rift as I assess the least-damaged path. Oates seems to see it too and changes his course to run parallel to ours. He passes control over to Zee and moves back on the sled, attempting to unfasten something.

  We’re only about thirty meters or so apart from each other, but there’s no way to bridge the gap as more and more of the ice breaks free. The ground beneath us has, in a matter of minutes, almost completely disintegrated. I hop from one bobbing chunk of ice to another as Dad does the same. Cole has leapt several lengths ahead of us before realizing that he’s essentially abandoning us and turns back.

  “Elvie!” he screams at me. “Don’t look back!”

  Which, of course, is my cue to look behind me. And sure enough, that was a bad idea.

  Two whales are behind us, their tall dorsal fins slicing through the water as their massive heads plow through the broken ice. They’re not in a hurry, these two, as they swim brazenly along—they know they’ve found the buffet bar. The sheer size of the whales is enough to make me dizzy. From snout to tail, each is easily twelve meters long. In other words, I am currently being chased by two good-size trucks with teeth.

  Cue the Jaws music.

  Beside me, Dad slips as he jumps from one floe to another, landing awkwardly on his knee. I hop over to him and try to help him up.

  “Elvie, just go!” he shouts. “Go!”

  I ignore him, obviously, and continue tugging (’cause, dude, what daughter would actually leave her own father to be eaten by killer whales??). But suddenly I’m swooped up from behind and completely lose my grip on my dad. For a moment I’m positive that I’m about to be whale food, but quickly I figure out that Cole has me in his arms—and, to my horror, is hopping away from my father.

  “Cole, what are you doing?” I cry. “My dad!”

  Dad is waving us away, all heroic-like. Behind him the two whales grow ever closer, snapping at the surface like my dad’s the tastiest shrimp scampi they’ve ever seen. I flail blindly at Cole, punching his shoulder and slapping his face. “Let me go!” I holler. But to no avail. Cole continues on, farther and farther away, leading me to goddamn safety. The whales are right on my dad now; their jaws wrench open—

  Leaping across the ice like a Wuxia master, Oates lands directly on top of the foremost whale, brandishing the dog snare-pole in his left hand. Wielding it like a harpoon, he plunges the long rod directly into the whale’s blowhole. Immediately the beast lets out a raging, gurgling cry, and blood spouts everywhere.

  A now death-red Oates jumps from the creature as it sags beneath the water, the snare-pole still lodged in its head. “Look out!” I screech, although I know he’s too far to hear me. But I can’t help myself—a second whale is rearing up just in front of him, jaws open wide. I cower against Cole’s arms, watching in terror. The orca is big enough that it could easily swallow Oates and my dad in one gulp, but Oates doesn’t even seem fazed. In a flash he’s pulled something from his side—and between the white-blue glow and the smoke pluming from Oates’s glove, I piece together that it must be one of the heating pods, cranked up to max. Oates’s hand must be completely barbecued under his glove. I can’t even imagine the pain. The whale sure can, though, because as Oates hurls the pod into its gaping maw, the creature immediately rears back in agony, instinctively shutting its mouth, which just makes the situation that much worse. The whale thrashes erratically away from Oates and my father, sending huge waves crashing in every direction. Oates lifts my father off the ground and races away from us toward the remaining sled. Cole sprints quickly across the floes with me still in his arms toward the solid ice farther up ahead. Looking back over my shoulder, I see four dorsal fins appear behind Oates and my dad. They crest above the surface as they swim in pursuit of their prey.

  When we finally reach a sturdy patch of ice, Cole drops me on my feet, and I immediately start running around the edge to the sled, which Zee has brought to a stop as they wait for Oates and Dad. In all the panic I never got my thermal zipped up properly, and I’m soaked through all the way to my unmentionables. Between the cold and the sheer terror, my teeth are chattering so loud, I can’t hear anything that Cole is yelling at me. So we simply keep running—Zee and Bernard and the sled a jittery blur in front of me. As we race, I twist to watch Oates and Dad speeding just ahead of the whales—who are lifting themselves out of the water and crashing back down, shattering floes and sending them flying in their wake. Here I’ve spent the past several weeks panicked about aliens, I realize, and it’s the freaking animal kingdom that’s going to do us all in.

  Cole and I scramble on board the sled, then frantically wave on Oates and Dad. The instant they grab on to the side, Zee takes off again. When the ice gets solid, the whales turn and begin swimming alongside the sled, dangerously close to the spot where Dad and Oates are clinging for dear life.

  That’s when I notice Bernard. At the edge of the sled he is leaning way over, clenching another heating pod in his hands like a quarterback getting ready to toss a long pass.

  Our last heating pod.

  “No!” I scream as he twists the dial on the
pod. But it’s too late. Bernard tosses the heating pod at one of the pursuing whales.

  And it bounces harmlessly off its snout.

  Even so, perhaps sensing that these glowing rocks pose some sort of threat, the whales abruptly abandon their pursuit and dive below the surface. Bernard is still cheering several minutes later when, well clear of the orca threat, Zee slows to a stop so Dad and Oates can climb all the way on board.

  “Woo-ee!” Bernard cries. Now that we’ve stopped momentarily, the wind is no longer whishing past my ears, and for the first time I can make out actual words. My heart, I fear, will never return to a normal rate again. “Almiri-Enosi Alliance one,” Bernard says with a grin, “killer whales zero!” Then he suddenly drops his hands and his grin all at once, as if he realized something terrible. “Oh, wait. Man, they’re endangered, aren’t they? And we just, like, killed a whole bunch of them.”

  “I’m more concerned with the endangered species known as Elvie,” I say through chattering teeth. I help my dad sling his last leg over the edge of the sled, and hug him tightly. “If you ever, ever, try to sacrifice yourself so that I won’t get eaten by whales again, I swear I will punch you right in the mouth,” I tell him, squeezing tighter.

  “Understood,” Dad replies with his usual good humor. But as I hold him, I can feel that he’s trembling just as much as I am.

  “We’ve neither cause nor time for celebration,” Oates says. He’s swung himself into a seat easily and is inspecting the wake of our run-in with the whales. “We’ve lost most of our supplies and must press forward.”

  “Allow a moment to appreciate the victory, man,” Bernard says. “After all, it’s not every day that a humble professor of advanced dance ethnography is victorious when going mano a mano with a killer—”

  But that’s as much as he gets out before all hell suddenly breaks loose again. The first whale that shoots through the ice crashes down on the rear of the sled, missing Bernard by millimeters.

  The second whale has better aim. Before any of us can react, the monstrous animal snaps its jaws down on Bernard’s torso with a sickening crunch. Zee screams out, but there’s nothing she can do as the whale tosses Bernard’s bloody body straight up ten meters into the air and then grabs him again, biting straight through his midsection, killing him instantly.

  One hopes.

  The ice now completely gives way beneath the sled, and we splash down into the water. In front of us the dogs scramble on top of the ice as the sled weighs them down. Frantically we dart off the sinking sled onto the ice. Another whale surfaces and reaches out for my mother, but Dad pulls her back just in time and the hunter misses his prey. The whales—four, is it, five?—all turn their attention on the sled, biting and tearing at it, slowly pulling it down and dragging the dogs closer and closer to the water.

  “No!” Oates cries out. It’s the closest thing to anguish I’ve ever heard from him. He runs toward the dogs as they claw futilely against the ice, trying to break free from the harnesses, which are pulling them down into the water, where the whales wait eagerly. I try to make a move for Oates, but Zee grabs my arm.

  “No, Elvan,” she says. “We need to run.”

  “To the cliff!” Dad screams. He and Zee start running toward the high cliff face that lies several hundred meters away.

  I just stand, paralyzed, watching Oates. He’s leapt onto the sinking sled and is trying in vain to loosen the dogs’ harnesses. One of the whales takes a bite at him, but he ducks the rows of teeth deftly and delivers a shocking blow to the creature’s snout with his fist.

  It takes a certain kind of man to punch a killer whale.

  “Elvie, now!” Cole says. “While they’re distracted.”

  Cole yanks me out of my reverie, tugging me along beside him as we sprint away—but I can’t help gazing back at the man who saved my father’s life, and is now trying to save the lives of his beloved dogs. The whales are all over him, snapping with their jaws and slapping with their tails. The surrounding water grows redder and redder, although from Oates’s blood or the dogs’, I can’t be sure.

  The last thing I make out before I look away is Oates and the final remnants of the sled slipping beneath the surface.

  • • •

  We spend the night in a crevice in the side of the ice cliff, waiting to see if the whales have had their fill yet.

  It’s tight enough that we remaining four have to practically sit on top of one another, which is actually just fine with all of us, because without the tent or any heating pods the cold is brutal. The cave does spare us from the wind, though, which is some small comfort. Cole, Zee, and I try to form a protective shell around Dad, who is clearly the least able to withstand the icy temperature. Still, it’s not like I don’t feel the cold at all. It’s numbingly cold. I can barely bend my fingers, my joints are stiff, and the tips of my ears are practically burning. A normal girl would be half-dead from hypothermia by now. But as I keep discovering more and more, I’m not a normal girl.

  We watch, silently, as the sun sets across the ice. Through the thin wisps of clouds, the sky blazes orange, then red, then a deep burgundy, and finally a brilliant royal purple, until it sinks . . . down . . . into nothingness, and we are plunged into darkness.

  Black. It is pure icy black, all around us.

  “What are we going to do now?” I ask in a whisper. I’m afraid of the whales catching scent of us again, afraid of dying from the bone-chilling cold and never seeing my beautiful daughter again. Hell, at this point I’m getting pretty seriously concerned about the possibility of Yetis.

  “We have no choice but to move forward,” Zee says quietly. I think it’s the first time she’s spoken since the attack. I listen to her breathing, trying to judge how she must be feeling.

  “How are we going to make it with no supplies?” Cole asks. “We’re a full day out, even if we still had the sleds. And we can’t even melt ice for water.”

  “Yeah, it was a shame that Bern . . . that we lost the heating pods,” Dad answers. I listen for a change in Mom’s breathing but hear nothing. “In any case,” Dad continues, “Olivia—Zee—is right. We really have no choice but to go on. The way we came is, obviously, not passable anymore. We’d have to circumvent too much ground to make it back to camp. Finding the Echidna and figuring something out there is our best bet.”

  “But even if we find it,” I ask him, “what do we do then? How will we get back?”

  “Well,” he says, “we improvise.” And he lets out a little snort, like he just can’t believe the situation he’s currently found himself in.

  Beside me, my mother lets out a snort too. But it isn’t snide or dismissive. It’s a real laugh.

  “Zee?” Dad continues, his voice thick with concern. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  She doesn’t respond. But in the dark she reaches out her hand, searching for my father’s glove. She finds mine instead.

  I give her a sympathetic squeeze.

  “Our main concern,” Zee says after a moment of silence, “assuming we make it through the night, will be to find some food.”

  “Like what?” Cole asks. “Penguin? You think we could bludgeon them with our boots?”

  “That might not be necessary,” Dad replies, and I feel him shifting slightly inside the cocoon we’ve made around him. “I have four packs of protein gel and two packets of vitamin powder on my person.”

  “You do?” I ask, both elated and suddenly wary. “How?” And then, more pointedly, “Where?”

  “On my person,” he reiterates obstinately.

  “Where, Dad?” I repeat, fearing the worst.

  He lets out a sigh of resignation. “In my socks,” he answers, and my chest relaxes in relief. “If we ration them out, they should last several days.”

  “You’ve been carrying around food in your socks this whole time?” Cole asks. “Like, even while you sleep?”

  “Always be prepared for any situation,” my father says, and I can’t h
elp but smile. Maybe, just maybe, we will make it through this whole disastrous adventure alive.

  I close my eyes and do my best to sleep, picturing my beautiful baby Olivia back at the prison, awaiting my safe return.

  Chapter Eight

  In Which the Family Nara Visits a Ghost Ship

  The last thing I ever thought I’d long for in my entire life is to set eyes on the L.O.C. Echidna again, but after two long days of trudging on foot along the foot of the ice cliff, spending the intervening night huddled in another crevice that we carved out with small ice shards, the dark spot on the horizon is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I’m practically homesick.

  “Is that it?” I cry into the wind. Cole, whose eyes are considerably better than the rest of ours, squints into the nearly impenetrable white haze that blankets the ice field stretching out before us. The dark spot is a good half mile away, and its location will require us to leave the safety of the cliff and venture out into the open. That means the wind, which right now is only balls cold, will suddenly turn megaballs cold. It also means there will be nowhere to run to if our friends Jimmy Orca and the Orcettes decide to come back for a second helping of people food. So before we start chasing phantom ghost ships, I want to be sure.

  “It looks like . . . something,” Cole says helpfully.

  “Is it the ship or not?” Zee asks. “Harry can’t take much more of this cold.”

  “I’m fine,” Dad says, although he’s quivering so violently, I’m afraid the vibrations in the snow might start an avalanche.

  “You’re not fine, Harry, look at you,” Zee admonishes. “You’re chilled to the bone.”

  “I can manage,” Dad starts, pausing for a round of teeth-chattering spasms. “We need to be sure before we head out.”

  “Obviously,” Zee replies. “We should send the Almiri out to investigate. He can signal us if he gets a positive view from closer up.”