And so the Nazca booby chicks had evolved a strategy that would seem horrific to human eyes. The first chick that hatched would push the second chick out of the nest, letting it dry up and die in the harsh Equatorial sun.
That looked similar to what had happened here. The two eggs looked like they’d been broken open on the top by some outside force. But instead of the unprepared hatchlings getting tossed out of the nest, something had gnawed on them.
Maria looked around at the broken and crushed pieces of eggshell surrounding the two that had never hatched. Assuming all of Call It George’s eggs were roughly the same size as the two remaining, there were enough shards here for…
“Three?” Kevin asked her.
Maria nodded. “I was just about to say the same thing.”
This wasn’t over. There were at least three more giant killer turtles out there.
17
Maria had half-expected the Cameron to no longer be there by the time the two of them hobbled to the edge of Isla Niña near where Mrs. Schmidt had originally disappeared. But the boat was there, and after they waved their arms at it for long enough, Maria finally saw a flurry of activity on the deck, culminating in them launching the remaining Zodiac.
It had already been some time in the late afternoon by the time Maria and Kevin had seen the sun again. The final flare had lasted for a little while longer before guttering out and leaving them in total darkness. There had been a lot of fumbling around, some bruised shins, and Kevin was pretty sure he had a few broken toes in addition to his ribs now, thanks to outcroppings in the water he’d found the hard way. Maria had needed to whisper her mantra to herself for a while before she remembered her idea that there must be a lava tube coming out somewhere on the surface of the island. A long time of trial and error, along with some desperate and scared declarations of love in the dark between them just in case they didn’t find the way out, eventually led to them feel the slightest of breezes flowing down from one of the tunnels.
Getting out had hardly been easy for a woman with one fake leg that wasn’t designed for crawling around in caves and a man suffering from multiple injuries. There’d been a number of tense and scary moments. The tunnel had even gotten so thin that Maria had to ditch her tank to fit through. Eventually, the tunnel had brightened, though, making their diagonal climb easier, and broken the surface through a short cliff-face near the far side of the island. After what they’d just been through, climbing up the side felt easy, even as hungry and exhausted as they were. Then there’d been the final trek across the island to where the Cameron could see them. Under other circumstances, Maria would have been overjoyed at the prospect of walking uninhibited across one of the Galápagos Islands, but now she barely had the energy to stand, let alone examine her environment.
Cindy piloted the Zodiac that came to pick them up. The two of them quietly climbed (and almost fell several times) down into the raft while Cindy asked them a stream of questions that neither of them had the energy to answer. All Maria could manage was, “We’ll explain back on the Cameron.” Although Cindy looked disappointed at this, she grew quiet and dutifully piloted the Zodiac back.
While Cindy sat in the back controlling the motor, Maria and Kevin huddled together in each other’s arms near the front. The buzz of the motor and splash of the water provided just enough audible cover that they felt comfortable having a private conversation, even with someone else with them.
“You going to be okay?” Kevin asked her.
“I think so,” Maria said, then paused to gauge the truth of her answer. She was surprised to realize she wasn’t lying at all. “I think I’m going to be okay.”
“Are you sure? There were a couple times during the climb where I thought I might lose you. Mentally, I mean.”
“I know, but really I think I’ll be fine. Or, wait…” She reached down and yanked the flipper off her left foot. She held the foot up and wriggled her toes in the gentle sea breeze. “Now I’ll be fine.”
“I’m still not sure what to make of that. That really helps?”
“Bizarrely, yeah,” she said. “Maybe that’s a tic that’s going to go away at some point. Or maybe the need to see my remaining toes and make sure they’re there is going to be a permanent part of my personality for now on? Who knows? Think you can handle a girlfriend with a strange phobia for wearing a shoe?”
“Maria, I can handle anything at all with you. I take you however you come.”
“Careful, I can make a dirty pun with that.”
“Probably shouldn’t,” Cindy said. “I can still hear you both, you know.”
“What about you?” Maria asked. “You going to be okay? I mean, I was only bitten by a shark. You were actually eaten. Sort of.”
“Don’t know. We’ll see. Honestly, though, if I can survive what happened to me in the bar, everything else is just gravy.”
She didn’t have to ask which bar he was talking about. She remembered it all perfectly.
The Zodiac made it back to the Cameron in record time, and the rest of the crew gently helped them both aboard. Kevin ordered Gutierrez to immediately head back to Puerto Ayora. Not only did he really need a doctor about now, but they had plenty to warn the locals about.
Maria sat down on the deck and removed her specialized prosthetic. Overall, she’d been happy with its performance in the water, although everything afterward had left much to be desired. She’d have to talk to the people who made it for her and have them tweak the design.
It’ll be Bionic Leg Mark II, she thought. Kind of like Iron Man. Holy shit, am I Iron Man now? The idea made her strangely giddy. Kevin found a spot on the deck to lay down and rest while Maria attached her normal prosthetic. Everyone who wasn’t doing something essential for the boat gathered around them.
“So?” Merchant asked. “What happened?”
“Here.” Maria handed her the GoPro that had been strapped to her head. “See for yourself. I’m not sure what it all caught, but if it recorded even a fraction of what we saw, I can guarantee you huge ratings on Sea Avenger’s premiere episode.”
Merchant looked like she was ready to salivate as she took the small camera in hand, but to Maria’s surprise, she didn’t immediately go check to see what it had captured. “But what about you?” she asked. “Are you going to be, you know, okay? You know, from now on?”
“Merchant, if I didn’t know any better, I’d almost say you cared.”
“I told you from the beginning that I’m not Vandergraf. If we’re going to continue working together, you’re going to need to learn to believe that.”
“Maybe I will. I’m fine right now. Baby steps. Let’s take a break before the next sea monster, though, okay?”
Even as the words left her mouth, she realized how badly she was jinxing them. Simon, who hadn’t said anything so far, noticeably gasped.
“Yeah, um sorry about that. So, there’s a couple things everyone needs to know. First, Call It George is dead. Second, Call It George was a female. She had babies. At least three.”
They all stood and listened raptly as she recounted everything that had happened from the moment she had gone in the water to the point where they had emerged on the far side of Isla Niña.
“That’s perfect,” Simon chimed in when she was done. “If the mother was named Call It George, then the three babies can only be…”
“Simon, for God’s sake, don’t,” Cindy said. Simon continued as though she hadn’t said anything.
“…Hug It, Pet It, and Squeeze It!”
Whether they were too tired or because they knew it was pointless to resist, everyone just nodded as though those were perfectly acceptable names for baby gigantic sea turtles.
“They shouldn’t be anything to worry about though, right?” Gary asked. He’d been so caught up in Maria’s story that he’d forgotten to film her, although Charlene looked like she’d been picking up the slack. “I mean, their mother was a giant mutant, but babies should be easy to deal wit
h, right?”
“Uh, no,” Maria said. “Sorry to break it to you, but I think we’ve already seen the babies, or at least one of them. Call It George was huge. You should see it on the footage, but she wasn’t the same creature that snatched up Kevin and Ted.”
Ted, who’d been hanging back from the rest as though he was afraid just being around them would result in something trying to eat him again, spoke up in what could only be described as the frightened squeak of a hamster running from an owl. “You mean the thing that tried to kill me was the small one?”
“Yep. And unlike Call It George, who seemed to be grown into the cave like it was her shell, the babies probably aren’t confined to one spot. That one that got Kevin and Ted didn’t come from the direction of the island, remember.”
“So what does that mean?” Merchant asked.
“It means we’ve got to warn people,” Maria said. “At the very least, Isla Niña has to be shut down to visitors permanently. It’s now the home of the world’s only known species of gigantic sea turtle, and we already know they don’t have any problem with seeing humans as food.”
“You’re going to just let them go?” Gary asked.
“We’re not in the profession of eliminating endangered species just because they’re inconvenient,” Maria said.
Kevin moaned from his spot. “We still can’t be sure that these giant turtles are naturally occurring, though.”
“How could they not be?” Cindy asked. “It’s not like someone one day just said ‘Hey, you know what would be a fun thing to do over the weekend? Splicing together a bunch of turtle DNA and then mutating it. It’ll be a blast!’”
“Sounds like a great weekend to me,” Simon said. “Almost as fun as teaching the mutant turtles ninjitsu.”
“You didn’t see Call It George up close like I did,” Maria said. “She definitely had traits from a number of different turtle species. I’d put more money on someone having engineered her than her occurring naturally.”
“Especially since we’ve never seen anything like her before,” Kevin said. “The Galápagos Islands may generally be considered remote, but in the modern world nothing is that remote. We would have found some hint of her species before. Anything from nests to bones in the fossil record. Something like that doesn’t just spontaneously appear in nature. It would defy everything the islands themselves have taught us about natural selection.”
“Still, I don’t know if I can successfully spin that,” Merchant said. “It’s going to be interesting enough to try convincing people that whatever footage you got was real. No one’s going to believe that someone genetically engineered Call It George on purpose.”
“I would,” Simon said. “Sounds like a great monster of the week to me.”
“You don’t count,” Cindy said.
“Then don’t say anything about that yet,” Maria said. “On the unlikely possibility that this idea is true, we don’t want people to get in a panic at the idea of someone creating giant sea creatures for shits and giggles.”
“We’ll need to say something to the authorities,” Kevin said.
Maria nodded, although she wasn’t sure she agreed with that. Without any clue about how this had happened, they couldn’t be sure who to trust. The only guaranteed trustworthy people were those that were on this boat.
“We keep our suspicions to ourselves for now. Once we get back to the mainland, we can send a more qualified scientific team to study Call It George’s remains. From there, whatever they find, that’s what we’ll go to the authorities with. Can everyone agree to that?”
Before everyone could voice their opinion, Gutierrez called to her from the cabin. “Maria or Kevin! One of you get in here!”
“Don’t try moving, baby,” Maria said to Kevin. “You just rest. I’ll take care of this.”
“Good idea. I’ll just lay here and count my broken bones.”
“If you really want to pass the time, make a song out of it,” Maria said. “Works for me.” She made sure her normal prosthetic was strapped on tight, then got back to her feet with Merchant’s help and went to the bridge.
Gutierrez was at the controls, pushing the Cameron down around Isla Santa Cruz now at a speed that was probably illegal in these waters. He had the handset for their radio in his hand, and once he saw her, handed it over.
“It’s that Padilla kid. Says it’s important.”
Maria took the handset. “Ernesto?”
It crackled in response. “Where have you people been? I’ve been trying to reach you for hours. I was getting ready to get on my boat and organize a search party.”
“We’re fine. Ish. We’re not dead, at least.”
“Excuse me?”
“Never mind. We can fill you in when we get back. In the meantime, you might want to let anyone in charge know that Isla Niña is probably going to be closed off indefinitely.”
“You found it? Call It George was really there?”
“And then some.”
“Well, me telling the mayor that no one can go out to Isla Niña probably will not go over very well. That’s why I’ve been trying to radio you.”
“What have you got, Ernesto?”
“I found out some information about what’s been going on at Isla Niña prior to it being opened to the public.”
Maria paused, thinking about everything they had just said regarding someone or something bigger involved in all of this. “Maybe this isn’t something we should be discussing on an open band.”
Ernesto paused. When he spoke again, he sounded embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I’ve already been using an open band to get most of this. I didn’t think.”
Maria sighed. “That’s alright. Can’t be helped. Tell me what you’ve got.”
“I talked to someone with contacts in the Ecuadorian Navy. They’re the ones who are supposed to be in charge of patrolling these waters and making sure no one violates the protected areas.”
“Didn’t you say they’re pretty bad at doing that?”
“Oftentimes. Lots of corruption. But I was specifically looking for any corruption regarding Isla Niña.”
“Okay. Continue.”
“Apparently, around a year ago, a large sum of money crossed the palms of certain important people. The result was that for several months, the Navy studiously patrolled the area around Isla Niña without letting anyone go anywhere near it.”
“Like they were acting as security for something that was happening there.”
“Yes. Then, several months after that was over, Mayor Estevez suddenly became very interested in opening Isla Niña up to the public. He’d never seemed to care much about the island before, but all of a sudden, the addition of a new island to the itineraries was essential to the tourism trade.”
“And let me guess: certain officials opened it up with no trouble.”
“Yes.”
Maria paused, trying to put all this together. It looked more and more like Call It George had not been a naturally occurring creature, or at the very least had been put here on purpose. And then what? The island had been specifically opened up so someone would discover it? Why go to the trouble of genetically engineering a creature in secret, if that was indeed what had happened, only to ensure that it was found?
“Do you know anything about the money trail?” Maria asked.
“It’s not like under-the-table bribes leave a lot of paperwork.”
“Right.” So who would have done this? Was this a terrorist thing? Seemed highly unlikely. Genetic engineering of giant monsters was hardly the style of groups like the Taliban and ISIS. It had to be someone or some group with lots of money. How much money would that even take?
A thought suddenly occurred to her. Probably the same amount of money needed to hire a special ship to come out to the Sea of Cortez and try to tie up loose ends like Laramie.
Mercer, Maria thought, reverting back to the name she had originally known the young woman as, what was it you knew that no one els
e wanted you to say?
“Any physical evidence you have, I’ll need it,” Maria said. “Private channels in the future, though. Something smells incredibly fishy.”
“That’s probably because you’re on the ocean.”
Maria smiled. “Leave the bad attempts at humor to Simon. We’ll see you when we get in. At this speed, it will probably only be a few more minutes. And try to get the mayor to listen!”
“I will try.”
Maria handed the handset back to Gutierrez. For several long seconds, he gave her a funny look.
“What?” Maria asked.
“Are we in the middle of some kind of conspiracy?”
“Conspiracy’s a strong word.”
“I’m also betting it’s the right word.”
“Let’s not jump to any conclusions. But in the meantime, everything you just heard doesn’t leave the Cameron. I’m starting to feel a healthy sense of paranoia.”
“Maria! Get out here!” Kevin screamed from out on the deck. She immediately turned and did her best impersonation of a run to join the others.
“What is it?”
“We’ve got a problem. A big one,” Cindy said. She pointed out at the water behind them.
Ahead of them, they were just coming up around Isla Santa Cruz to the point where they could see Puerto Ayora, yet no one seemed to care about that view. Instead, every single person was looking in the Cameron’s wake as it sped through the water. At first, the churning water in the wake hid what had everyone’s attention, but it didn’t stay that way for long. Somewhere behind them, the water frothed more than it should simply from the Cameron’s presence. Something huge breached, then fell back to the sea before anyone could get a clear look at it.
“Hug It,” Simon said reverently.
They’d been followed from Isla Niña. And now, thanks to them, Hug It was headed directly to Puerto Ayora.
18
“We’ve got to turn around!” Maria yelled into Gutierrez.
“What? Why?”
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