Mirella returned with a gurney a moment later, and wheeled it up next to the tub.
The mermaid examined Mirella, and the gurney, and then me.
I don’t know that she understood what we were there to do, or that she would have agreed with the decision had she understood. I do know that for whatever reason, she decided we were people she could trust. I also suspect she felt as if she had nothing to lose by doing so. She was already dying alone in a tub in a strange building, surrounded by the wrong species. I had to think she saw no downside to seeing if we could improve her circumstances. Anyway, she accepted the situation for what it was, and with our help climbed up onto the gurney, lay down, and allowed us to strap her to it. I covered her with a blanket, although I couldn’t tell you why. It just seemed appropriate.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”
* * *
The building had exactly one elevator, and like everything else there it was in a location that wasn’t immediately obvious. And, since it was not intended for public use—it was ostensibly a freight elevator—none of the maps were helpful.
We did find it, though, and it was actually working, which I appreciated. I wasn’t looking forward to taking the mermaid down a flight of stairs, as this would unquestionably force her to re-examine the decision to trust me in the first place.
The elevator dropped us off right at the ambulance bay, and that made some sense. A few minutes and lot of struggling later, she was loaded in the back. That was when doctor Cambridge showed up.
“What are you doing?” he shouted. He was alone, and didn’t have a gun in his hands, so I had no reason to pay any attention to him.
“I’m bringing her back to her people,” I said.
“But she’s still sick!”
I slammed the back of the ambulance closed while Mirella climbed into the driver’s seat.
“I know she’s sick. Did you manage to make her better?”
“I don’t know. I was trying something… I had an idea, and I wanted to… Adam, I’m still studying the condition, but I need more time! I am so close!”
Her species was tearing the island down around us and he thought he had time to run some more tests. I wondered if Lew Cambridge was always this clueless and I just never noticed before.
“You’re out of time,” I said.
“This is irresponsible, you’re killing her!”
“She’s not the only one that’s sick. Lenny caught whatever they have and it killed him in about ten seconds. It killed Bruno, too, and he was an incubus, so whatever this is, it jumps species. You realize you may have started an epidemic, right? But either way, you’re going to have more subjects to study soon enough. And how do you know her people don’t have a cure already?”
“I don’t know how advanced they are.”
“Let me help: they’re advanced enough to create a tsunami. Look, go ask your prophet, I’m pretty sure she’ll tell you this is the only way.”
“She’s dead.”
“Then ask her scribe. Oh, and don’t let him disappear, he and I have a lot to discuss.”
“Adam, we have to go,” Mirella said.
“I’ll be back,” I said to the doctor. “Assuming I live through this.”
Mirella pushed a button inside the ambulance that was of the standard garage-door variety, and worked in exactly that manner. A second later, she was revving the engine, I’d jumped into the passenger seat, and we were staring at more foot-deep water covering an open road.
“What’s the plan?” she asked. “Can’t we just find a merman and hand her over?”
“Let’s go to the largest concentration of them we can find.”
“That would be the hotel.”
“Then let’s go to the hotel. And turn on the flashing lights.”
“The dome lights.”
“Yes, those.”
* * *
We ran into no interference for the first few blocks. It seemed Mirella’s assessment of the scene outside was accurate: the mermen were being drawn toward the hotel by the concentrated resistance there. If they began with the assumption their queen’s disappearance was an act of malice, it made sense that she would be held in the most fortified place. At the same time, the efforts of the leader I met in the jungle made me think they were willing to consider a negotiated settlement.
At least, that was what I was counting on.
I was in the passenger seat with plastic bottles of alcohol and one of Mirella’s knives, intending to puncture one and toss it out the window at the first sign of resistance, but after a couple of blocks I put down the knife and dug the radio out of my bag.
I opened a channel and got a lot of static, then something that sounded almost like Esteban, the sound of gunfire, and more static.
“Esteban, is that you?”
Static.
“Adam, I…”
Static.
This was going to be more frustrating than it was worth.
“Mirella, does your cousin know Morse code?”
“How would I know?”
“I dunno, maybe it came up at reunions.”
“It didn’t. But he might. I don’t.”
“It’s not something goblins are taught as children or something?”
She just glared at me, so I dropped it, and started sending a message using the radio static. I figured if Esteban was listening to the channel and nobody else was trying to use it, and he could understand Morse, it would get through.
Basically, I couldn’t control the fact that there was static on his end every time I hit the transmit button on my radio, but I could control the length of time I hit that button. So I sent a bunch of dashes and dots in a repeating message.
“That’s modestly clever,” Mirella said. “What are you telling him?”
“We’re in the ambulance, don’t shoot us.”
“I would hope they already know not to shoot at ambulances.”
“Wait.”
Esteban replied.
Surrounded. Bring atomic bomb if you have one.
“What did he say?” Mirella asked.
“That things could be going better.”
We turned the last corner before the avenue leading to the hotel’s front parking area.
The contrast in how this scene looked, between the last time I was there and this time, was pretty drastic. Dmitri and his collection of ex-mafia, retired celebrities, former CEO’s, accountants and attorneys had formed a makeshift defensive wall against enemy incursions with their Humvees and minivans and SUV’s and jeeps. Now they were standing on top of those vehicles and firing down at the mermen. It was a good idea, tactically, with the one problem being that they didn’t have a way to block off the water, so it was just a matter of time before the approaching army figured out they could swim under the cars, and pop up on the other side.
Esteban, it seemed, was anticipating exactly this, because as we drew closer I spotted him and two of his deputies, swords out, in front of the hotel doors.
The army of mermen was hard to recognize at first because they didn’t pop out of the water often, and were tough to spot below the surface. Dmitri had lights trained on the surface, and his people were firing at all the moving water they could identify, which out of context looked kind of ridiculous.
Twice, I saw an attacker surface far enough to get cut to pieces by a hail of bullets. This seemed like an irrational approach. I had a suspicion their bodies were more jellyfish-like when they were submerged than when they were out of the water, and I didn’t think bullets would do lethal damage to a jellyfish. Or perhaps it could, but not easily. But, they weren’t my bullets.
“Much closer and the creatures will target us instead of the convoy,” Mirella said.
“I know, that’s the idea.”
I flipped on the siren.
We were just at the edge of the parking lot, past the gates. As anticipated, the siren had a much more dramatic effect than the dome lights did, because t
hese were beings who relied a good deal more on sound than on sight. It worked, in other words, which was why we didn’t get a whole lot further than the edge of the parking lot before the first attack.
Two popped up in front of us. Mirella jerked to the left to avoid them, only to discover three more. She turned again, and clipped one of them, which rocked the whole vehicle sideways and onto two wheels for a half second. We settled back down, and Mirella floored the gas.
We were on a beeline for the convoy, and traveling thirty-five miles an hour. I was pretty sure even a head-on with a merman wouldn’t stop us at that speed.
It didn’t take a merman: just a curb. The parking lot wasn’t uniformly flat. There were raised curbs here and there to help define the regions within which one could park a car versus where one might drive one’s vehicle to and from the parking area. We couldn’t see any of the curbs because it was dark out and there was over a foot of water hiding everything. Speaking for myself, I forgot they were there at all.
So we hit a curb, on my side of the vehicle. This lifted us up onto two wheels again, for about ten feet. Had we remained unmolested, we would have righted ourselves, but then a couple of mermen surfaced and effectively finished the job of dropping us on our side.
We skidded to a stop on Mirella’s side of the van, with me on top of her on account of my not having on a seatbelt.
We lay there quietly for a few seconds. The siren perished in a strangled warble, so all we had was the sound of gunfire outside.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yes.”
The whole ambulance rocked. Something was hitting it hard from the outside.
“I’m looking forward to the rest of your plan,” she said. “Maybe you can set us on fire next.”
“You’re almost right. Can you get to the back and make sure she’s okay?”
“Once you get off of me, yes.”
I climbed off of her.
The inside wasn’t really meant to be moved around in when the whole thing was sideways, so the going was awkward, but I was able to get my hands on one of the bottles of alcohol. Then I climbed, until I made it to the passenger door, pushed it up and climbed onto the side/top of the van.
We were completely surrounded by mermen, and I was being spot-lit by someone from the convoy. You know, just in case any mermen a half-mile away couldn’t see me.
“Adam, don’t move!” It was Dmitri, using a megaphone, from the end of the convoy. “We will come get you.”
“Stay there!” I shouted. I didn’t think he could hear me, though, so I shook my head and held my hands up and hoped he understood the universal symbols for don’t fucking do that.
The mermen surged, and one punched the side of the ambulance. It rocked and I nearly fell off.
“Okay, okay, hang on!” I said, this time to the surrounding army. I raised the jug of alcohol with a theatrical flourish, popped the top off. I flung some of the contents at the one who punched the ambulance.
He recoiled with a shriek.
“You all know what’s in this bottle now, right?” I said.
I knew they couldn’t understand me, but whatever. I swung the bottle around to get everyone to take a step back, and then I poured the contents over my head.
It took sixty thousand years, but I finally found a problem where a bath of alcohol was the answer.
I walked to the back of the ambulance and jumped down. The mermen at that end gave me plenty of room. I locked eyes with one of them. He looked a lot like the one I’d conversed with on the mountain, and it would have been nice to say it was him, and here we were again, settling things, but in truth they all looked basically alike to me.
“Hello,” I said. I held my hands out, palms up, arms open. For most tribes of human and non-human, this indicated I had no weapons, and could be trusted. Hopefully it meant the same thing to them, but considering they probably had to deal with octopi, who knows?
I knocked on the doors.
“Mirella, are you ready?”
A voice muffled by the layer of car between us answered.
“What am I ready for? What are you doing out there?”
“Is she free of the gurney?”
“Yes.”
“Then open the door.”
She pushed from the inside and the lower door opened, and fell. I reached under and pulled the other door open, so it looked like I was helping—and perhaps directing—what happened next.
What happened next was, the mermaid came out. It was slow, and she was clearly not doing spectacularly well, which may have had as much to do with being strapped to a gurney in an ambulance that was currently sideways, as it did with whatever disease she was fighting.
Still, she climbed out, using Mirella’s hand for support. I would have helped too, but I was covered in alcohol, and I was pretty sure she didn’t want any part of that.
She perked up as soon as her fins hit the water.
Then she let out an ear-splitting shriek. I reacted by nearly letting go of the door, which would have been really bad because she was still under it.
Her cry was met by something akin to a cheer from the mermen that was, collectively, even louder than what she’d done, but a lot more diffuse, and not issuing from a single source right near my head, so it wasn’t as intolerable.
She walked forward, then dove into the water, and disappeared.
I didn’t know, yet, if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“Now what happens?” Mirella asked, fingering the hilt of one the swords on her back.
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps we will all just wear alcohol all the time from now on.”
“I could think of worse.”
The lead merman—the one I locked eyes with a minute earlier—took a step forward and looked me up and down. I lowered the door, and resumed the posture: arms open, hands open, palms out.
He responded by howling, which could have been bad. But it was possible I’d begun to understand them a little bit, because I could tell by the tone that this wasn’t a threatening cry.
He mirrored my posture, and we stood there like that for a few seconds. Then he raised one arm with a closed fist, held it, and then opened his hand.
Around us, the mermen dispersed, which was kind of stunning. Since they sank into the water as miraculously as they appeared to rise from the water, it looked like all of them melted collectively.
After maybe thirty seconds of this, it was just me and Mirella and the last merman. Then he did something that was nearly a bow, tapped his chest with his fist, turned and performed his own vanishing act.
We stood there in silence, alone, for a time. Mirella was ready to draw at the first sign of an attack, but it looked like we were in the clear.
“Well,” Mirella said, “I find it hard to believe that worked.”
“Me too.”
“Next time, can we try it without the car accident?”
“Hey, you were the driver.”
“I mean, why not just release the mermaid right away?”
“You have no respect for pageantry,” I said. “Besides, she couldn’t be seen as escaping. We had to hand-deliver her. Otherwise, they’d probably still want to kill everyone.”
* * *
Dmitri took a while to convince.
Absent a mode of transport, Mirella and I walked across the parking lot to the edge of the convoy, under the judgmental gaze of the spotlight. It was a little unnerving because while I was pretty sure nobody was going to be shooting at us intentionally, this was a trigger-happy bunch, they were sleep deprived, and they’d been firing at ripples in water for the past few hours. Every whorl and perturbation could be misinterpreted, and I didn’t want to be in the middle of an unnecessary hail of bullets. Or really, any kind of hail of bullets.
I tried to explain via shouting and gesticulation that all was well and they could stand down and things were cool, but again, I was dealing with people who’d been shooting at mal
evolent shallow water. Trust was going to come slowly. So we walked carefully, trying not to trigger an overreaction, until we got within earshot.
“What did you do, my friend?” Dmitri asked. The voice came from one side of his spotlight, but I couldn’t see him because of said spotlight.
“I gave them who they were looking for,” I said.
“Did you now? And who was that?”
“It’s a really long story. Can you shine that light somewhere else before my girlfriend takes it out with a knife?”
“Was that a suggestion?” she muttered.
“Absolutely.”
“Adam, are we truly to believe they just took their… whatever… and went home? That we should not anticipate a renewal of hostilities?”
I looked around. The island behind us was silent, almost tranquil, in the way cemeteries were tranquil. I held my arms out and spun around a little, as if to invite a renewed attack.
“You can anticipate whatever you want,” I said, “but they’re gone. And personally, I don’t feel like going through the rest of my life waiting for an attack from a pool of water. There’s too much water to worry about.”
Dmitri cut the light, and after my eyes adjusted it became clear Mirella and I were standing in front of an actual firing line. It was peopled by some of the wealthiest beings in the world, which just made the whole thing that much weirder. The 1% stood ready to gun us down.
“How can we be sure?” Dmitri asked.
“You can’t,” I said. “We speak different languages, so I couldn’t exactly get a guarantee from them. But they were heading for the ocean last I checked, so if you want to row out there and see how you do on their home turf, have at it. Thing is, I understand there’s an evacuation that needs managing, so if I were you, I’d focus on that while I could. I would personally love nothing more than a drink and a hot shower, so can we all go inside now please?”
* * *
I declined the opportunity to get directly involved in the rescue operation, because I had other things that needed attending to, including the securing of a stiff drink.
Immortal and the Island of Impossible Things (The Immortal Series Book 4) Page 31