Hanging over the side of the boat, Cal and Travis hauled Wendy out of the water and into the boat. She splashed across the seats lining the bow and thudded onto the deck.
“Are you okay?” Cal asked, not knowing a better question.
“Tyde,” Wendy gasped. “Get Tyde.”
Cal helped Wendy to her feet and balanced her as she walked towards the back of the boat. Her tanks were cumbersome, but somehow she managed to get back to Milo and Lenny without falling.
The flashing of the strobe ceased. The water was dark and quiet. Something splashed, but Milo couldn’t be sure if it was a fish, the monster or Tyde.
“Leave him,” Lenny demanded. “He knew what he was doing and why he was doing it. It sure as hell wasn’t for us to wait around and get eaten next.”
“Shut your mouth,” Milo snapped.
“I’m just saying that his sacrifice shouldn’t be in vain,” Lenny argued. “That’s all.”
“Next word out of your mouth will be followed by a bullet from my gun,” Milo leveled the barrel of his handgun with Lenny’s face.
“He didn’t sacrifice anything,” Wendy added. “He’s alive. He’s going to be fine.” Lenny thought about the idiocy of her words, opened his mouth to argue, but thought better of it once he looked at Milo’s gun.
“Over there.” Travis pointed somewhere to the left. Milo couldn’t see anything. No Tyde. No strobe. No monster.
“Where?” Milo yelled back.
But the question answered itself as the water parted like velvet stage curtains to reveal the creature’s sleek head. With the day slowly chasing away the night, it was difficult to make out a great deal of detail. The large, crocodilian skull was more than enough to inspire Milo to swing the steering wheel hard to the right and gun the engines.
There was a loud gurgle, a mechanical chug and black smoke.
“The engines just quit,” Milo groaned. “Again.”
“I am relieved to see that I am not the only genius on the boat,” Lenny smiled, completely devoid of humor.
“Start helping or shut up.” Travis pushed past Lenny.
“I thought I was,” Lenny said.
Travis thought about passing a weapon to Wendy or Lenny. She could hardly stand and he was more likely to turn it on someone inside the boat. “Looks like it's us,” Travis said to Cal. “Remember the drill?”
“Point, pull and pump,” Cal repeated.
“Just like your teenage years,” Travis grinned. A little gallows humor never hurt.
Milo moved to the rear of the boat and pulled the covers off the smoking twin engines. Greasy tendrils of smoke wafted around his head, becoming tangled in his dreadlocks. Thick, black liquid leaked across the guts of the engine.
“Is it bad?” Cal asked. He watched the creature move closer. It swam with ease, an almost instinctual confidence. It may have never encountered boats or mankind before, but the predatory folds of its brain knew lame prey when it saw it.
“Yeah,” Milo said. “But focus on the water. Try to buy me some time.”
“Give me a gun,” Lenny demanded.
“I’ll give you a bullet,” Travis said. “Now get over to the controls and be ready to start the engines when Milo tells you to.”
“Certainly, Ms. Daisy,” Lenny said. He collapsed into the other seat and waited for the go ahead to get the hell out of here – something he had been advocating for since they pulled him into the boat. Wasting time trying to save people only got other people killed. It was simple math – with Lenny being greater than all other variables.
The creature surged beneath the water, a swell colliding with the side of the boat. Travis stumbled and fell on top of Cal, who hit the deck of the boat with a hollow thud. Lenny slipped from the driver’s seat, flailing and trying to regain his balance by lurching for the steering wheel. The engines swung with the wheel as Lenny fell, knocking Milo into the water. The heavy tanks on Lenny’s back carried him out of the seat and into Wendy. The added weight of her air tanks swept the two of them over the side of the boat.
Water flooded Wendy’s mouth and nostrils. She tried not to suck in more, but her lungs demanded air. She clawed at the water, trying to pull herself past Lenny. Weight belts and air tanks tugged them downwards, towards the bottom, closer to death. Somewhere beneath or beside them, the creature waited. It swam and hunted.
***
Tyde swam. There was nothing left to do. It seemed simple and on most days it would have been. Concern for Wendy, for the others, for himself, clawed at this chest and twisted his heart. Tyde’s panicked breaths rippled the water as he continued to slap the surface and pull himself forward. Tyde could have swam with more grace, could have dropped his tanks and made faster progress, but he needed to attract the monster, to draw it away from the others.
The surface of the water behind Tyde was still, a darkened sheet of glass. No monster, at least not on the surface.
Tyde looked towards the shore, his mind screaming that he get out of the water, that he find safety. There was none to be found.
Dark shapes, hunched and spiny, scuttled across the beach. Claws clashed as the monstrous crabs scurried along the shoreline, hesitant to enter the water where the other creature waited, but anxious for a meal.
“Where the hell are you?” Tyde asked. He did not want to see it, wanted to get eaten even less, but he couldn’t let the others die.
There were a series of splashes. A few startled shouts. Something happened to the boat, to everyone on it. He started swimming towards the boat.
Tyde had failed again.
***
Something passed beneath Wendy. She felt the pull of sand papery skin slide across her flesh. A metallic screech echoed through the water. The dive rig on Wendy’s back lurched backwards. The salt water stung Wendy’s eyes, but she forced them open. The blurry image of Lenny’s body shot past her.
The straps on her tanks jerked again. Wendy gasped, cold water gushed, burning like acid and filling her lungs. Black began to leak into the edges of Wendy’s vision. Her head throbbed. Her fingers fumbled with the straps on her dive rig, weakly pulling at the buckles. The straps remained in place.
The creature’s jaws closed around the air tanks as it dove deeper, pulling Lenny and Wendy further beneath the water.
***
Milo broke the surface of the water. He could feel the sting of salt water in the gash on his forehead from where the engine’s prop tore his flesh. The blood would call to the monster. In the deeper reaches of Milo’s mind, a dinner bell chimed.
“Give me your hand,” Travis said. He looked worn, but was still inside the boat. Cal stood beside him. They pulled Milo from the water.
“Like landing a giant fish,” Cal smirked.
“We’ve got enough of those around here already,” Milo groaned. “Where are the others?”
“Wendy and Lenny never resurfaced.” Travis tried to remain composed, to sound factual. Milo could hear the strain in Travis’ words.
“Over here,” a voice called. It was Tyde.
Moments later, Tyde was in the boat.
“Where’s Wendy,” Tyde asked. His eyes bore into the three men still in the boat. “Where?”
“She went over the side,” Milo said.
“You didn’t go after her?” Tyde ran to the edge of the boat and peered into the dark water. “You didn’t even try?”
Tyde pulled the knife from its sheath. He turned to look at the others and dove back into the water.
“Well, what now?” Cal asked.
“Get the engines working,” Travis said. “We need to be ready to go when Tyde gets back.”
Both Milo and Cal noticed that Travis only mentioned Tyde, not Wendy. They chose to ignore prophetic slip of words and focus on the boat.
***
Lenny twisted and slipped one shoulder free from the straps. The other remained twisted and refused to come free. The tanks strapped to his back crunched and pinched as the creature’s teeth
pressed closer together. Wendy’s motionless body hung limply next to him.
A hand closed around Lenny’s wrist. He turned, fighting the urge to scream, seconds later loathing himself for allowing fear to win out over intelligence.
Tyde pulled himself across Lenny’s body, a knife clutched in one hand. He began sawing the straps of Wendy’s dive rig.
The image of the knife flashed through Lenny’s mind. It was his only out. Lenny grabbed for the knife, twisting Tyde’s wrist and trying to take the blade.
Tyde turned and thrust the knife.
Something burned in Lenny’s side. He still wanted the blade, wanted his freedom. When Tyde turned back to the futile task to trying to free his, most likely already dead, wife, Lenny made one last attempt for the knife.
The straps securing Wendy to monster shredded, finally separating from the tanks. Her limp body slumped forward and drifted towards the surface.
Tyde grabbed for Wendy, but something pulled him back, loosening his grip on the knife. It spun slowly and disappeared into the murky depths. Tyde tugged and struggled to free himself from Lenny’s grip. His lungs protested, deprived of air. Spots swam through his vision. Tyde could feel Lenny pawing at him, perhaps in anger or a final feeble plea for help.
The knife wound slowly wept blood. Tyde had no weapon, no weapon other than his own primal urges to survive. He turned towards Lenny and saw two things – a small black pouch on the doctor’s belt and a large gash. With one hand, Tyde grabbed the pouch. With the other he thrust his fingers into the wound, grasping the soft flesh and pulling. He tugged and twisted the meat until something snapped and came loose.
Bubbles erupted from Lenny’s mouth as he screamed. Tyde’s attack freed Lenny’s arm and the doctor floated into open water. Tyde wanted to follow Lenny, to continue to cause him pain, to kill him. He needed to follow Wendy. He needed air.
This pouch held small, tan bricks – explosives, not rocks. The ones Lenny should have left at the bottom of Dean’s. Tyde wound the frayed straps of Wendy’s rig around the pouch. A small black box was tucked inside. Tyde fumbled with the buttons.
The darkness took over. Tyde could no longer fight it.
***
A body bobbed motionlessly on the surface of the water. It was Wendy. Lenny and Tyde followed close behind.
“Try the engine,” Milo said.
Cal twisted the key. The engines groaned as if in protest before coughing a cloud of black smoke and sputtering to life.
The throttle edged forward, Cal hesitant to gun the engines and attract the attention of the monster.
A muffled roar echoed, its ferocity softened by fathoms of water.
“What was th–” Milo’s words were cut short as a pillar of water erupted from the center of Dean’s, blossoming like a mushroom cloud. The boat dipped forward, riding into the trough created by the explosion.
“Hang on,” Travis yelled.
The pillar dissolved into a frothy, tumbling storm, large waves radiating away from its center. The bow of the boat dipped beneath one wave, only to be slammed by the next, pulled deeper beneath the water.
There was no choice but to abandon ship. The boat was swamped. Travis leapt into the next wave, Milo and Cal close behind.
The three men swam for shore, each towing a body with them.
Travis made land first. The crabs were close, reluctantly edging around the small rise that led onto the beach. Travis pulled Wendy onto the beach. She wasn’t moving. He fell to his knees and began rescue breathing. Nothing. More breaths. More desperate compressions. Still nothing.
Milo and Cal dragged Tyde and Lenny onto the beach. Both were awake.
“Wendy,” Tyde coughed. “Where is she?”
“She’s…” Travis stepped away, his legs coated with sand. “I’m sorry, Tyde.”
“No, no, no, no,” Tyde murmured as he crawled through the sand. How could she be gone? They had survived this long. Tyde cradled his wife and cried.
“She drowned,” Travis said, not knowing what to say, but feeling unable to remain silent. “I tried. I’m sorry.”
“What was that explosion?” Milo asked, eyeing the water. He turned towards Lenny.
“I’m bleeding,” Lenny said from where he lay in the sand, the water gently licking his feet. “In case any of you cared.”
“We don’t,” Cal said and kicked a small pile of sand towards his former employer. “Answer the question.”
“Jeez, talk about priorities,” Lenny groaned. “It was probably a combination of the liquid oxygen and explosives.”
“Is it dead?” Cal asked.
“Do you see chunks of sea monster bobbing on the surface?” Lenny said. “Dead things tend to float, especially pieces of them.”
“So what happened to it?” Milo asked.
“Who knows?” Lenny said. He pushed himself up to a sitting position, pain etched into his face. “An explosion of that magnitude could have collapsed the inner chamber of Dean’s. Maybe it’s dead. Or more likely it’s just trapped.”
“Good,” Milo said. “Either way it’s dead or dying.”
“Not quite, my overly optimistic friend,” Lenny cut in. “Dead? Maybe. Trapped? Certainly not. There are tunnels leading out of Dean’s to a myriad of other locations. If that wondrous creature is still alive, the last thing it is, is trapped.”
Travis walked over and knelt next to Tyde. “I know this is going to be hard, but we need to go. We can’t stay here.” The crabs inched closer, still aware of the sea monster, but emboldened by the close proximity of food.
“I can’t leave her here,” Tyde said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Go without me if you want.”
“Not happening,” Travis said and pulled Tyde up from the ground. Tyde lashed out, trying to strike Travis and collapsed back to the sand, his body trembling with choked sobs.
“Give him some time,” Cal said.
“We don’t have any.” Travis motioned towards the rise as the first crab, either braver or hungrier than the others, scuttled forward.
Small plumes of sand leapt into the air, the tang of cordite wafting along lazy salt breezes from across the water.
The crab’s legs buckled and twisted, its shell pocked and chipped from large caliber rounds. The others scuttled forward, eager to feast on an easy meal, even if it was one of their own.
A matte black helicopter hovered silently over the water, its blades causing the surface to ripple and dance.
“I thought stealth helicopters were only a myth,” Cal said, staring at the craft. “Like something that seemed like a good idea, but never really worked.”
“That’s what the government wants you to think,” Travis said. He waved his arms towards the sleek helicopter. It turned and headed towards shore.
The helicopter touched down in a swirling sandstorm. The crabs were busy eating, but it wouldn’t last long.
“Agent Howard, sir,” a soldier clad completely in black stepped out of the helicopter, pushing up the visor on his helmet. “Sir, we need to go. We are expected to report to the Peach Island facility by zero five hundred tomorrow, sir”
“Help me load this woman on board,” Travis said.
“Negative, sir,” the soldier answered. “We have weight restrictions and my orders are to retrieve you and Dr. Borges, sir.”
“How much can we carry?” Travis asked as he walked towards the soldier.
“My apologies sir, but I don’t think I made myself clear,” the soldier said. “My orders only detailed the recovery of you and Dr. Borges, sir. Weight restrictions are less of an issue than my orders, sir.”
Before the soldier knew what happened, Travis snatched the pistol from where it was strapped to the other man’s leg.
“Sir?”
Travis spun and fired one round. Lenny’s body went limp, the sand slowly turning black.
“Load her.”
***
Sand swept across the beach, caught up in the artificial dust devil
s created by the helicopter’s rotors.
Lenny coughed, blood spattering his lips. A cloying metallic taste crept through his mouth. It was bad, Lenny knew that much. Sand clung to the blood on Lenny’s face.
It hurt to move, to breath, but Lenny pushed himself up to a sitting position. The morning sun forced its way higher into the silken sky. A few stars clung to the vanishing darkness, the light a beacon that called to Lenny for reasons he did not understand. Nature. Beauty. These were things that Lenny never had the time; let alone the interest to ponder. But now, bleeding on this beach, Lenny found himself entranced by the dying flicker of these lights. The scientific part of Lenny’s mind knew that by the time these lights reached Earth that their source was most likely dead. Their decayed beauty an unwavering source of artistic inspiration and fascination for eons of humans, now were Lenny’s only source of comfort.
A dry scratching sound rustled behind Lenny. He knew what was coming, knew there could be only one outcome – where the bullet had failed, the crabs would surely succeed.
The water covering Dean’s rippled and shifted. A large curved form broke the surface, calling to mind old Loch Ness hoax photos, or at least what most assumed were hoaxes. Its massive head lifted from the water, perhaps checking for danger or food, before disappearing. The angle of the creature’s body led Lenny to believe that it dove down, back into Dean’s, into the tunnels – tunnels that could take it across the globe.
Lenny could not help but smile. The creature, his creature, had survived. He knew that it would. There had never been a doubt. Dinosaur, monster or myth, it did not really matter. This glorious creature had survived the relentless march of time, had proven to Lenny that there were still dark corners of the world waiting to be illuminated by science. Now it was free to find another corner where it could hide, could hunt.
Something scuttled across the sand, this time much closer. Lenny kept his eyes on the water, silently urging the creature onward.
The soft flesh of Lenny’s belly puckered and peeled back like the petals of a revolting blossom. Blood spilled across his lap in thick waves of unsettling warmth. The javelin-like leg of the crab pushed further through Lenny’s body, splintering bone and erupting from his back. Lenny coughed and tried to remain sitting, pawing at the spire that speared him to the ground. He tried to keep his eyes on the water, hopeful to see another glimpse of the creature, as the crab’s claws separated his head from the rest of his body.
RIP Tyde Page 15