by JE Gurley
The distance between the sonar blip and the schooner diminished rapidly. Josh peered at the eastern horizon, hoping for a glimpse of the sun rising, but saw only a faint lightening of the sky. Somehow, facing the creature in the dark was more frightening, more like struggling with a nightmare from which he couldn’t awaken. He urged the Miss Lucy onward, to go faster, but the engine was pushing as hard as it could. Time was growing short.
Elansky finally moved from her spot. She stood, stretched, and walked to the stern to join Bodden. She cast one quick glance in Josh’s direction, but her face revealed nothing. Josh longed for the Hua Qing mini-gun from the Pandora, but it was gone, sunk with the freighter. They had the SIG 556 with half a clip of 7.62 mm ammo, but it offered a poor defense against a two-hundred-plus-feet-long monster. If the sedative didn’t work … he didn’t want to think about it.
About two hundred yards behind them, barely visible in the darkness, a head slowly emerged from the water, creating a V-shaped wake behind it. The head continued to rise until it stood fifty feet above the water. It was a ceresiosaurus, but not Cere. Cere had perished in the Pandora. This was, as Elansky had guessed, Cere’s mother, larger and therefore more dangerous. The creature reached the sonar buoy and plucked it from the water, ripping the nylon towrope from the schooner’s stern. The trailing end of the rope snapped like a whip and rushed by Elansky’s head, almost lashing her in the face. The pinging stopped abruptly. Now, the creature’s attention focused on the boat.
Professor Hicks stood beside the cabin, watching the creature approach. He removed his glasses and wiped them on his shirt to clean them for a better view. He braced himself against the cabin with one hand as Germaine swung the boat to starboard in a hopeless move to outrun the creature.
“Keep it steady!” Elansky shouted. She raised the rifle to her shoulder and waited.
Bodden picked up a boat hook and stood beside her as if to protect her from the creature. Josh’s heart threatened to climb up his gullet. It hammered in his chest like a racecar engine before the starter’s flag dropped. His palms began to sweat. He wiped them on his pants. All he could do was to stand helplessly and watch.
When the creature was fifty yards away, she fired the dart. The report was louder than Josh expected as the projectile flew to the creature’s chest and struck. It remained embedded in the creature’s flesh. The pressurized container popped as it injected the MS-22 into its bloodstream. Elansky was taking no chances. She quickly fired a second dart, striking the creature in the shoulder. It, too, dug into the flesh and injected its load of sedative into the creature. Now, enough MS-222 was in the ceresiosaurus’ bloodstream to knock out a small herd of elephants. To Josh’s consternation, the creature continued forward without diminishing speed. It was almost on top of them.
Germaine spun the wheel to port, arcing away from the ceresiosaurus, but it craned its neck and snapped the top from the aft mast. Rigging and furled sails fell to the deck, almost knocking Elansky overboard. She leaped out of the way just in time. Bodden was not as lucky. The edge of the broken mast bounced off the boom as it fell and slapped him across the back, pinning him to the deck.
“Oh, my,” Hicks groaned. He turned to stare at Josh. “I’m so sorry, my boy.”
Josh rushed to the stern to help free Bodden. Elansky helped him lift the wooden mast from Bodden’s body, but picked up her rifle as Josh dragged Bodden to the cabin. They had more darts and MS-222, but no time in which to charge them. He watched as she removed the explosive-tipped shell from her waistband and loaded it. It was time to try to save their lives.
The creature didn’t give her the time. Germaine’s maneuver had placed some distance between them, but not enough. It slammed its body into the side of the Miss Lucy, half lifting it from the water. The port rail splintered and Josh heard the sickening sound of the wooden hull cracking. The propeller buzzed as it spun uselessly in the air. Germaine cursed the creature as if it had injured him. The boat righted itself as it landed, and the creature slowed down.
“Check the hull!” Germaine screamed at Bodden, but the first mate was in no shape to comply. Instead, Josh raced down the stairs to see if they were sinking.
Water poured into the passageway from the engine room. He forced the door open and saw daylight through cracks in the hull. More ominously, water bubbled up from a larger crack below the waterline. He grabbed an armload of blankets from one of the cabins and tried to stuff them into the cracks. He managed to slow the small leaks, but the water pressure in the large hole simply pushed the blankets out each time he tried. Finally, he gave up.
“It’s useless,” he called out to Germaine, as he rushed up the steps. “The engine room is flooding.”
Without power, they would be at the creature’s mercy. Josh wondered why it hadn’t finished them already. Back on deck, Bodden was coming to. Professor Hicks knelt beside him. He looked for Elansky and saw her standing amid the rubble of the mast, watching the creature. The ceresiosaurus remained behind them, trailing them from a hundred yards, as if it knew the schooner was sinking.
“I think it’s slowing down,” Hicks said.
“It should be down by now,” Josh replied.
Hicks shook his head. “Its physiology is much different from other reptiles. I miscalculated the MS-222’s effectiveness.”
There was no time for recriminations. They had both made a mistake – the professor in seeking to capture the creature, and him for not insisting that they didn’t. It would likely be their last mistake.
“It doesn’t matter now. We have to try to save ourselves.”
Hicks nodded. “Yes, tell her to use the explosive bullet.”
The creature submerged, disappearing as abruptly as it had appeared. Was it leaving? Just as he was turning to Germaine, he got his answer. The schooner lifted into the air as the creature rose beneath it. Elansky fell, dropping her rifle. It slid across the deck to disappear beneath the rubble of the mast. Josh felt himself flying over the rail. He grasped uselessly at the air and landed in the water. The schooner slid from the creature’s back, landing upright in the water, but the entire fore mast and bowsprit snapped like a felled tree and went over the side, trailing lines behind it. It acted as a sea anchor, slowing the schooner. The stern dipped lower in the water as the sea surged in. The engine flooded, leaving the damaged schooner dead in the water. For the Miss Lucy, only minutes of life remained.
Josh treaded water, waiting for the end. Germaine stepped from the wheelhouse and tossed something at the creature. Josh was surprised to see it explode. It was one of the grenades Knotts had given them on the Pandora. He didn’t know Germaine had kept his. The explosion sent shrapnel flying into the creature’s exposed back. It roared in pain and submerged, injured.
“Yeah!” he yelled in triumph. Germaine was not going down without a fight. His triumph vanished as the water swirled around him when the creature passed directly below him. He waited for the gigantic mouth to open beneath him and swallow him. The creature continued past him and surfaced ten yards away. He stared up at the enormous head and the reptilian eyes staring down at him and said a silent prayer for a quick ending, though he doubted it would be painless. Blood streamed from the wounds in the creature’s back, but they wouldn’t stop it from killing him.
“Josh!”
He turned to see Elansky standing on the sinking boat, pointing her rifle at the creature. Guessing her intent, he dove as deeply as he could. At the sound of an explosion, he surfaced. The ceresiosaurus was swinging its head wildly in agony, thrashing the water with its enormous fins. A fist-sized hole just below its head poured a steady stream of blood down its neck and into the water. True to her word, Elansky had hit an artery. The creature was dying. The question was would it die before it finished them all off, especially him? The creature’s wild thrashing churned the water around him. He swam away and toward the schooner.
Germaine helped him aboard. Water was just inches below the deck. Bodden was removing t
he tarp from the Miss Lucy’s lifeboat. Professor Hicks emerged soaking wet from the cabin with an armload of food and a small thermos of water. Somewhere along the way, he had lost his glasses.
“We did it,” Germaine said, smiling. A piece of shrapnel had found his arm. It bled through his shirt.
“But your boat,” Josh said.
“I’ve got insurance. I’ll get another boat, this time with two engines.”
“I think I got all I could salvage,” the professor said as he dropped his supplies into the lifeboat. “I suggest we leave this place. Scavengers, you know.”
Elansky dropped her rifle on the deck. It disappeared beneath the water.
“Thanks, Nina,” Josh said. “You saved all our lives.”
“You called me by my first name. Does that mean we’re dating?”
“Until you become a Marine again.”
“I’ve got a few days,” she said, smiling.
The ceresiosaurus had stopped its mad thrashing. Now, its head slowly lowered to the water and it rolled over on its side, its fins sticking into the air like a final wave goodbye. The creature was dead. Soon, it would sink back to the depths that spawned it. They would have no specimen to study. Just as well, he thought. Life needs a few mysteries.
The schooner began groaning as air escaped its hatches. It, too, was dying. Josh helped Elansky into the lifeboat, and then the professor. He took a seat beside Elansky and let her settle into his arms. Germaine was the last one off his boat. He shoved the lifeboat off the deck as the schooner sank beneath it. They moved off a few yards, on the opposite side of the boat as the dead ceresiosaurus. Josh was adrift on the ocean for the fifth time in a week. He hoped it didn’t become a habit.
22
Nov. 3, Kingston, Jamaica –
All his wounds were healing, but his dreams would be haunted by nightmares for some time to come. One did not face demons unscathed. Corporal Nina Elansky was gone, flying back to Guantanamo Bay for reassignment. Josh would miss her, but the day and night they had spent in bed together would last for a while. They would meet again, she promised, and Josh hoped so. She had dragged him from his self-imposed wall of indifference and planted him firmly back among the living.
The Andrews, apprised of the situation, had dispatched a helicopter to pick them up. Josh had reported the Pandora’s sinking to Captain Tremaine and the loss of the Russian nukes. He disavowed any knowledge of the Pandora, as Josh assumed he would, and promised to convey Josh’s report to the proper authorities. He was pleased that both ceresiosauri were dead, but refused to listen to Josh’s warning that there might have been more than two.
Professor Hicks was eager to return to TCU and examine the specimens the Navy had provided. Josh thought that he, too, would be eager to resume his studies and put the incident behind him. To his surprise, he decided instead to go to Grand Cayman and help with the recovery efforts. Captain Germaine assured him that as soon as the insurance paid his claim, he would buy a new boat and take him there. He had already picked out a used twin-engine catamaran.
Mutated creatures still prowled the deep dark depths of the Cayman Trench. Undoubtedly, they would once again prove a nuisance for mankind, but for now, the world was breathing a sigh of relief. After helping in George Town, he would return to TCU and join the professor’s research. However, for now, he had had enough of creatures up from the depths.
The End
Links to more deep sea terror from Severed Press. Click the covers to be taken to Amazon detail pages.
The Dead Bait series.