“They are. I’m disputing the word full. Surely there are limits to their population.”
“Well I don’t know. Before a couple of days ago I’d never laid eyes on one, so maybe. But the ocean is pretty big. These aren’t competing ideas. There could be millions.”
Esteban made a hissing noise of dissatisfaction I’d heard before, like every third time I called him Stubby without thinking.
“We have to operate based on what we know at this time. Any further speculation and we may as well stay here and complain about our coming doom, as that creature does.”
Esteban pointed to Steven, who was aware enough to recognize he was being referred to. He sighed and farted and rolled over.
“We push to the hotel, as quickly as we can, support the evacuation, and then go find this prophet you are keen on locating.”
“She may be at the hotel,” Mirella said. “We know your succubus friend went there.”
“You think he’s right?” I asked. “Do you want to go with him?”
“I go wherever you go, Adam, you know that.”
“I don’t think the prophet is at the hotel. They went to the hospital.”
“What is it you expect to accomplish in finding her?” Esteban asked.
“I have no idea.”
Esteban looked at his cousin, then at me, then back to her again.
“And you feel this is a solid decision?” he asked her.
“As I said, I go where he goes. He doesn’t often know why he does what he does, but he is usually correct. He has an instinct for the serendipitous.”
This, incidentally, was the best description of my life I’d ever heard.
“We’re going to the hospital,” she said. “You can push to the hotel. We’ll be fine.”
“We could use a car,” I said. “And a gun or two. Do you have any spare guns?”
15
Esteban offered the use of his handgun, but it came with an explanation.
“Their fat is too thick,” he said. “A head shot would do some harm, I think, but we never got one off. Those big guns I saw Dmitri with, those would likely commit damage, but this little pistol? You’re better off with a sword.”
Of course, a goblin would say that, because goblins will always favor a blade over a firearm, but that didn’t mean he was wrong.
I searched the bar for something bigger, but it looked like Trevor and Ivar also had no firearms on the premises, probably for the same reason: elves also prefer blades.
Plus, it’s a nice island. The need for an under-the-counter shotgun is somewhat lessened by the pre-arrival vetting process. If only we could have asked the mermen for references beforehand, this would have gone better.
So I didn’t bother to take Esteban’s handgun. I did end up with an iffrit, though. I wouldn’t call this better or worse, only different. I supposed if I had to, I could throw Steven. This wouldn’t hurt anyone—except for Steven, I guess—but it would be terribly confusing, and sometimes that’s enough.
He decided to get off the bar and ask to tag along at around the same time Mirella and I were looking into the process involved in hot-wiring the jeep located behind the pub.
“I can tell youse where the key at,” he said. “If you wanna.”
“Then tell us,” Mirella said.
“I’m comin’.”
She looked at me, and I shrugged.
“Fine with me. Do you know how to drive?”
“Adam,” Mirella said.
“He can’t be worse than I am.”
We already decided it would be best if I drove the jeep while Mirella stood ready to defend us with her sharp things. If we had located a big gun, this might have been a more complicated conversation, but as it was, the car was the only weapon I was going to be using on this expedition. This is not to say I’m not any good with a sword—I’m actually quite good indeed—only that Mirella is better.
Unfortunately, this meant relying upon my driving skills, which is another area in which she excels compared to me. In this arena, though, a sixteen year old with a learners’ permit is also a step up.
“He can’t reach the pedals,” she said.
“I can be a lookout,” Steven offered.
“Sure, whatever,” I said. “But why? You have enough alcohol in there to last a while.”
“Yeah, you think I’m safe here?” he said. “Them things come ‘round every night. I gotta shatter bottles on the floor to keep ‘em out, and it’s breakin’ my heart every time.”
He tossed me the keys.
“All right, come on then,” I said, sliding into the seat.
The vehicle had no roof or doors, only a roll bar. It also sat closer to the road than the boxy monstrosity I’d been piloting for the past two years. I actually felt more comfortable behind this wheel than I ever did in a comparable position in other cars. I wondered if the problem all along was the inability to rely upon my peripheral vision.
“How does breaking bottles keep them away?” Mirella asked Steven, as he climbed in behind us. It was one of those cars with a tiny back seat. It was perfectly suited for an iffrit. “Is it the glass?”
“It ain’t the glass, it’s the alcohol. They don’t like it. ‘Course it’s the good stuff they hate, not so much the wine or the beer. I got lotsa wine and beer, but no, it’s gotta be the vodka and whiskey and bourbon.”
I started the jeep. It was the noisiest thing any of us had done since blowing up the hillside, so I held my breath for a while, to see if the sound drew any attention. It didn’t, but it was still daytime. In a couple of hours, when the sun set, I could see the engine’s noise attracting them. Hopefully, we’d be at the hospital before then.
“If they don’t like alcohol, why do they keep returning to a pub?” Mirella asked.
“Lady, I don’t know. They just do. I’m hidin’ when they there. They’re lookin’ for something, and they know somebody’s inside, but they dunno to look for someone my size so they keep comin’ back like it’s a big mystery. And they go around the alcohol on the floor every time.”
“It could just be the glass,” she repeated.
“I’m sayin’, it’s not the glass.”
* * *
We checked in with Esteban, and then got going. He and his team were proceeding on foot, but only for as long as it took to locate a second vehicle. This being the sheriff and his deputies, they had a decent understanding of who owned what cars and where those cars could be found pre-tsunami. This might sound unlikely, except the committee mandated a strict limit on the number of motorized vehicles allowed. The local police knew who owned most of those cars.
Anyway, they had a plan, so I wasn’t going to worry about it. We had patchy radio contact with them, and that was enough.
The parking lot at the back of the pub was reachable via a narrow strip of pavement that swung around the corner of the building and descended to the lower island street-level. From there, it was probably only a mile to the front door of the hospital. If this were a remotely ordinary situation—if, for instance, I was using the jeep to transport an unwell bar patron to the emergency room—I could expect to be there in under half an hour. But the roads were still a foot deep in water and corpses and debris, so the question wasn’t really so much about how long this might take, as it was about whether or not there was even a route that would get us there.
We only got a hundred feet before the most direct course became impassible.
“That looks like a roof,” Mirella noted. It was one of the Bermuda roofs, common enough in the residential parts of the island, and apparently it was sturdier than the house it use to rest atop. The roof was intact, albeit upside-down, and no longer attached to the structure it used to protect.
I came to a slow, reluctant stop ten feet in front of it. Reluctant, because the water level stopped just below the front bumper, and I was worried about what might happen if I stopped too quickly and the water splashed up into the engine. I was half-convinced the engin
e compartment had an actual fire inside of it that made the car run. I’m still a caveman.
I put the jeep in reverse, which got water into the car itself, and headed to the left. We could only barely see the road; I had to rely on the positioning of buildings to guess where the streets were.
I ended up on a side street that opened into some more residential space, which eventually hooked up with the main road again on the other side of the roof.
“I keep expecting to hear someone cry for help,” Mirella said, “but there is nothing. Did they all drown?”
“Maybe. Or maybe they were attacked. It’s been two days, though, and nobody has been out here to tend to the injured. I don’t expect things have gone well.”
It wasn’t that it was quiet, precisely. We could hear the banshee wails all around, and without trees to knock down the sound it carried pretty far. It also felt like it was coming from the water itself, which was probably pretty accurate.
The smell was ghastly. It was late afternoon, and the sun had been baking the island all day, which only made things rot faster. A low ground-fog of evaporating water gave the place a quality one tends to associate with dreams. Or rather, nightmares.
“We are wading through death,” Mirella said. “Have you ever experienced anything like this before?”
“Well I mean, metaphorically, you just described my entire life. Literally? Sure. Only most battlefields aren’t this wet.”
I could only take the car up to about ten miles an hour, and only in short bursts. Mostly, we were going around five, which was almost slow enough to make walking seem like a tempting alternative. I would have suggested it, but there was something vaguely unsettling about the water.
Several more zigzag routes presented themselves as we got closer to the town proper and the debris became more concentrated. In an hour, we only made it about halfway.
“Do you feel that?” Steven asked. I’m conditioned to assume that when an iffrit says something like do you feel that, what’s coming next is a dick joke and it’s probably best if you ignore the question. That was likely not the case here.
“Feel what?” Mirella asked.
“In the ears,” he said. “I think they coming.”
She stood up, braced herself on the roll bar, and looked around. I still couldn’t hear anything unusual or feel anything unusual, but maybe what the iffrit was detecting was the same sort of thing only smaller creatures—like him, or like pixies—and animals could sense before an oncoming storm or a volcanic eruption. This would mean a squad of mermen was the equivalent of a natural disaster, and I was mostly okay with that.
“Maybe you guys are good luck after all,” I said to Steven.
“Of course we’re good luck. Gotta rub us though.”
Now that was definitely a dick joke.
“Adam,” Mirella said. She was calm, but an entirely different kind of calm. “You need to drive faster.”
I looked in the mirror.
“What’s back there? I don’t see anything.”
“There is something in the water.”
“It’s barely a foot deep.”
“Again, there is something following us in the water, and you need to drive faster. We can discuss the physics of this phenomenon another time.”
“I don’t know how much faster I can go, but hold on tight.”
I goosed the engine, and we lurched forward a little, but sluggishly. We were as much a poorly designed boat as a car in a few spots, and speeding up only helped the tires find more opportunities to lose contact with the surface.
“Faster, please,” Mirella said.
“I can’t go any faster. And we have a turn coming. No way I make it at this speed.”
This speed was twenty-three miles per hour, and the turn was a hundred and ten degrees, but I was imagining the consequences of trying a turn like that in a boat and not liking those odds.
On my left, something curious was happening in the water. What had been a smooth wake produced by the front of the jeep became two wakes, as it appeared there was something traveling next to us, beneath the surface. The thing was swimming pretty fast, which was remarkable for the fact that it didn’t appear to be there. I saw a white cloud under the water, but nothing I’d call substantial.
“It appears we’re being chased by a men’s shirt,” I said.
“It looks like a jellyfish,” Mirella said. “It isn’t a jellyfish.”
I had to slow down. The other option was to commit to the turn at our current speed and run a serious risk that we all learn the value of a roll bar and seatbelts, the problem being not all of us were wearing seatbelts.
When I slowed, the thing in the water shot past the front bumper. I skidded into the turn.
“That wasn’t so bad,” I said, as I straightened us out.
The water in front of the jeep erupted, and up sprang a merman. Just logistically speaking, this was probably the worst place he could have chosen for an attack, because I was already traveling in his direction, and saw no compelling reason to stop doing that.
We rammed him. This wasn’t fun for anyone. He didn’t present as an entirely immovable object, so the jeep didn’t come to a full and complete stop, but we did slow down quite rapidly.
Mirella, already standing, had time to jump, which was good enough to get her over the windshield and into a somersault and an upright landing far enough ahead that when the jeep came to a stop it didn’t also run her over.
Steven—somewhat less athletic and also too small for a seatbelt—ended up clinging to the wrong side of the windshield.
“That sucked,” he said, before letting go and sliding down the glass to the hood.
I, fortunately, had on my seatbelt. Otherwise I’d be looking at a broken leg or two and a face full of glass. What I did end up with was a sore shoulder and ribs from the strap, but that was all.
I put the car in park and stepped out, into the tepid seawater that surrounded us, and walked around the front of the jeep. The car had a dent that made it look like it had struck a boulder that was just a bit shorter than the top of the hood. The merman was nowhere to be seen.
“I think it went under the car,” Mirella said. She had two swords out and stood in a ready crouch.
“You don’t think it’s dead, or stunned?”
“I truthfully do not know.”
“Have you killed one yet?”
“I have. They fall when they’re cut. But I did this on land. In water, I’m told they are less solid.”
“Yeah but you’d think blunt-force trauma would…”
Then there was a rush of water, right next to me, and a second later I was falling backwards and the merman I’d hit was right above, arms up and ready to strike. I knew it was the one I hit because his side had a jeep-shaped bump in it. If they had ribcages, I broke his. Considering his jellyfish-swimming trick, they probably didn’t, but you get the point.
He didn’t get a chance at a downswing. He assumed I was the biggest threat, possibly because I was the driver, although I’m willing to consider sexism even across species. It was a mistake, anyway, because Mirella only needed a couple of seconds to cut through his thick neck and remove the stubby head from it.
A spurt of algae-green blood followed, and the thing collapsed in a disarticulated heap of flesh.
Mirella waited for it to spring back to life anyway.
“I think you got it, dear,” I said, climbing to my feet. I was soaked in seawater now, and not all that happy. It was going to be a long time before I stopped associating the smell of brine with the horrors of the lower island, probably.
“We can’t assume their head means as much to them as ours to us,” she said.
“Yeah, I think we can.”
“Start the car.”
I climbed back into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The engine made a sound like it really wanted to start, but didn’t know how to any more.
“I think the fire went out,” I said.
> “What?”
“It won’t start. I think he broke it.”
“It’s flooded!” Steven said, breaking out into laughter that really didn’t fit well with the quality of the joke.
Mirella looked neither amused nor calm.
“We’ll have to run from here,” she said. “And quickly.”
“We have another hour before sundown.”
“You saw how it traveled. It went faster than the car. So let’s hurry, shall we?”
* * *
We stuffed Steven into my backpack and got moving. This was preferable to leaving him behind, but only barely. From an ethical standpoint, I didn’t really have a huge problem making him stay in the jeep or finding his own way back to the First Pub, but that had more to do with a bias against his species than with him. He’d actually proven useful, and could be again if we ended up getting caught outside after sunset; hearing them coming before we did was a valuable asset.
I was now traveling with one of Mirella’s swords. She had the other one, plus all her knives, so she led the way.
Moving rapidly through water this deep was basically impossible.
“Are you coming?” She asked, the third or fourth time she had to slow down for me. It was embarrassing, as I am probably one of the best long distance runners alive (not that I’m bragging) but these were conditions I’d never tried to marathon in before.
“I can’t swim because it’s too shallow and I can’t run because it’s too deep.”
“Pick your knees up, as though clearing low hurdles. Or hop.”
“Hopping is worse. And the other thing is exhausting.”
“You have nothing to save your energy for, we’re only going a short ways.”
“I’m not saving myself for anything.”
“Then you’re getting old. Come on.”
She was sort of right. I probably was holding back a little, but only because that’s very nearly always a good idea. I didn’t want to be the game that got too tired to defend himself when the predator caught up.
I high-step-ran for a little while, and this did get me going faster, but it was murder on my legs. Mirella, being in better shape, and a goblin, did better. I wasn’t going to be keeping up with her no matter what I did.
Immortal and the Island of Impossible Things (The Immortal Series Book 4) Page 27