by Jonah Buck
The air was growing warmer as Denise angled her way back toward the staircase she’d come down. Under other circumstances, the heat would have been greatly appreciated. However, as she turned the corner, she saw that the entire stairwell was awash in flame. Obviously, no one had been able to control the fire in the bridge, and it had only spread downward. The ship’s entire command center was completely screwed.
Denise turned around and went back around the hallway. There were other places she could get back up to the deck. She took off toward the front of the ship, in the direction where she’d seen the sailors with the propane tanks headed. They must have been trying to get up to the main deck near where the flyrannosaurus was. That meant there had to be an exit somewhere up ahead. Now all she had to do was find a stairwell that wasn’t blocked off or guarded by sailors.
She stayed close to the wall as she moved. That was partly so she could lean against it a little to help support herself and partly so she’d be able to duck into some other corridor if she had too.
Ahead of her, two sailors dashed down an intersecting hallway without giving her a second glance. The red emergency lights were working to her favor. If people saw her out of the corner of their eye or from a distance, she was just another figure in a familiar style of jacket. Even so, she held the pistol she’d taken from Dagenais tight in her hand.
Ahead of her, part of the ceiling had been blasted open. A severed arm with a tattoo on the bicep lay untended on the floor. Something had exploded up on the deck directly above her. Maybe it had been a cluster of propane tanks. Denise could see a sliver of perfect blue sky overhead. Then something loomed past and blocked her view of the sky for a second. Denise caught a glimpse of iridescent black armor and a pair of bulging eyes.
Then, a claw slammed against the tear in the ship’s armor and tried to peel it back. A long, pointed talon slipped through the gap and reached for her. Denise scurried out of the way and continued down the hallway. Behind her, the claw withdrew, but she could hear the monster stomping across the surface directly above her.
Continuing forward, she found a closed door. Maybe it could lead up to the surface and away from the creature. If she could just get to the lifeboats, then maybe she’d be able to escape. She unlatched the door and pushed it open.
The door didn’t lead outside. It led to the ship’s forward storage area. Normally, there would have been a small freight platform to quickly raise and lower supplies from the surface down into the belly of the ship. Food, shells, medical equipment, it would all be brought down the shaft and offloaded here so it could be dispersed to the proper part of the ship.
However, the freight platform had collapsed down into the hold. There was a tangle of thick cables and clasps from the collapsed elevator. In addition, the stacks of supplies had been tossed about and flattened. What was worse, the fire had started to spread down here as well. Even as Denise watched, some flaming debris fell down from the upper decks and landed on a crate full of rations, which began to smolder and blacken. Soon, little tendrils of flame were beginning to lap at the wood.
The fires weren’t too intense down here yet. Only a small section of the hold currently had open flames actively chewing through the stacked items. Denise would have turned around tried to find another route to the upper decks but for one thing amidst the debris.
There was a small pontoon boat lying on the floor. Calling it a “boat” was probably giving it too much credit. The little platform barely qualified as a raft. It was just a simple, collapsible platform attached to a couple of runners and a small engine. Most likely, it was some sort of maintenance craft, something they’d send out to inspect the ship’s outer hull once a month and make sure there wasn’t any corrosion or buckling. It had one small seat and a rudder.
Perfect. If she could just drag it out of here and get it on the water, she’d have a ride back to shore. Then, all she had to do was lay low and avoid being eaten until the flyrannosaurus retreated to its den. That wasn’t necessarily an easy task, but she’d worry about it when she got to it. The mere fact that she was aboard the French cruiser right now was a pretty clear indication that a key part of her original plan had gone straight down the crapper. She was just going to have to riff together the last part of her plan on the fly and hope it worked.
Ideally, she would have also come up with some way to kill the damn monster rather than allowing it to escape back to its lair. She was a professional monster hunter, after all. That’s what she was supposed to do.
This time, there was nothing she could do about the situation, though. She had a pistol, but that wasn’t going to do anything against the creature’s armor. Even if she had her elephant gun, the creature had the fortitude of a tank. The best she could do was hope that it would leave her alone long enough for the rescue ship to arrive.
Once they reached the adult stage of their lives, flies typically didn’t survive for very long. She could only hope that the same was true of these things. Even if it could theoretically live for the next hundred years, she wasn’t sure it would be a problem for too much longer. Antarctica couldn’t support these things for too long if they were just left alone. Eventually, they would run out of food if they were just left alone. The maggots. The bug men. The flyrannosaurus itself. They’d starve so long as no one blundered into their territory for a while. Then there would just be husks and corpses.
Right now, that was the best Denise could hope for. If she’d known what she was going up against down here, she would have asked the Squires to give her a warship of her own. Not that the cruiser the French had given Dagenais seemed to be doing him much good. The monster could probably pry the turret off a tank and get to anyone inside. The creature was too fast and mobile to hit with anything big enough to actually kill it.
If she had time to execute the perfect plan, she would need to find a way to immobilize the monster first. Essentially, she’d need a giant sheet of fly paper. Once it was pinned to a single location, it would be comparatively easy to kill. Dousing it with gasoline and tossing a match at it would probably do the trick just as well as hitting it with one of the cruiser’s six-inch guns. The damn thing couldn’t be invincible.
Denise crept down the stairs that led deeper into the cruiser’s storage depository. Sunlight trickled down from the hole where the freight elevator had crashed down. The cold light battled with the flashing emergency lights and billowing smoke inside the storage area. She looked up as a shadow passed by overhead. The flyrannosaurus moved past the edge of the cargo shaft, temporarily blocking out the light from above. It had the crushed remains of a sailor in one of its claws. There wasn’t much left of the man.
She moved down the stairs as quietly as possible. The flyrannosaurus was well above her. She didn’t think it could reach down and grab her from the upper deck, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t spray a gob of digestive fluids at her, if given the chance. So far, it either hadn’t noticed her or was more interested in easier prey.
Cringing as she moved down the stairs, Denise did her best to ignore the pain shooting down her leg each time she put all of her weight on it. The leg wasn’t broken. She never would have been able to clamber up the netting and board the cruiser if she’d broken it. Slamming into the water after the plane crash had done a number on it, though. Now that she wasn’t numb all over anymore, she was really starting to feel it.
If the plane had crashed into the sea at full speed, she probably wouldn’t have survived. That shrapnel burst that killed Fletch had also taken out their engine and torn up their wings, though. They’d bled a lot of speed before that ice flow launched her into the air.
She was lucky to have lived through the crash, which only made her feel worse about Fletch. She and the Squires hadn’t told anyone the real reason why they’d been brought down here. That made her at least partially responsible for the events that followed, didn’t it? Denise wasn’t sure it would have made a difference in the end, but Fletch and Poole and the others had
n’t known the risks going in, and that seemed catastrophically unfair. This place had killed everyone from the Sulaco.
No. She corrected herself. Dagenais had killed everyone. The job was relatively safe until he showed up. She hadn’t known the full list of dangers either, and she would have left once they became clear. Then Dagenais showed up and killed most of the people she brought with her and forced the remainder right into the arms of the monsters. If it were up to her, maybe she couldn’t have saved the men the flyrannosaurus carried off when it first attacked the snow tractor, but everyone else would have still been alive.
Denise almost regretted not shooting Dagenais back in the radio room. Murdering him in cold blood wouldn’t have done any of the others a lick of good, though. When he sailed back to France, there would be authorities who had heard her side of the story. They’d either hear it in private, or if they didn’t want to listen, they’d hear it in the papers. When Dagenais arrived, he’d have to explain not only why he’d committed a small-scale atrocity but why he’d completely failed in his mission and nearly lost an armored cruiser. Given the sort of people Dagenais probably reported to, the latter would probably be more damning. He’d have hell to pay in due course. Maybe it wouldn’t be justice exactly, but neither was shooting him in the head while he was passed out on the floor.
She still kind of wished she’d shot him, though.
Denise reached the bottom of the staircase and hobbled over toward the little pontoon boat. Scuttling over, she tugged at it, trying to free it from some of the debris that had collapsed on top of one corner. Keeping an eye toward the ceiling, she glanced up every time she heard the creature shifting around above her. The hole above her was large enough for the monster to fit inside, if it really wanted to. Attracting the beast’s attention was the last thing she needed right now.
The pontoon boat sat near the remains of the collapsed elevator. There was a Gordian knot of metal cables, clasps, spilled hydraulic fluid, and twisted metal. Denise pushed some of the debris aside to get better access to the pontoon boat. The fire was starting to spread down here too, and she didn’t have much time.
There was a waterproof tarp caught on the side of the boat. She wrapped her hands around the tarp and pulled it free. Tossing the bunched material aside, she started dragging the little craft aside. It was heavier than it looked, and it made an awful scraping noise as she tried to pull it behind her.
Cringing, she looked up. The flyrannosaurus must have stomped away from the edge of the freight shaft, some other unfortunate soul having caught its attention. She knew she only had so much time, though. The ship was much quieter than it had been when she first dragged herself aboard. There was very little gunfire still popping from above decks. The creature hadn’t eaten everyone. A ship like this might have hundreds of people aboard. It had killed almost everyone who was caught out in the open or who tried to fight it on its own terms, though. The survivors were probably lurking in doorways, firing, and retreating as the monster drew close.
In place of gunfire, the sound of open flames was fairly loud now. Denise didn’t know just how far the fire had spread, but she already knew that the ship’s bridge was a loss. When the flyrannosaurus knocked down part of the cruiser’s smokestack, it must have spread burning material far and wide, though. Most of the crew was probably trying to fight the blazes at this point, and the sailors still firing at the monster were just trying to distract it from the crews with hoses.
Given that no one had even come to deal with the fire spreading in the freight shaft here, Denise was guessing they were spread pretty thin. That was fine by her. It would make it easier for her to drag the little pontoon boat away and scuttle back to shore.
“You,” a voice bellowed from behind her.
Denise spun around. Colonel Dagenais had moved down the stairs and into the freight shaft behind her. He had a reddening handkerchief pressed to the side of his head where she’d brained him. His scarred face was contorted into an ugly grimace.
Denise dropped her grip on the side of the pontoon boat and reached for the pistol she’d taken. It was too late, though. Dagenais came at her with a long knife he’d grabbed from somewhere. He slashed at her, forcing her back.
Now, she was really regretting not shooting him earlier. Denise managed to yank out the military pistol, but Dagenais was practically on top of her. He’d waited until he was right behind her before announcing his presence, sneaking up while she was watching out for the monster above.
She lurched backward to avoid another slash from the knife, but her footing was uneven. Her foot came down on a can of beans that had spilled out of a nearby crate. The can squirted out from under her, and her feet went with it. Denise let out a squawk as she tumbled onto her butt.
Her finger involuntarily tightened on the pistol’s trigger, and a bullet shot off into the corner and sparked off the bulkhead. The impact on her already aching limbs was enough to make her hiss in pain. She tried to lift the pistol up toward Dagenais, but he was too quick.
The blow to his head should have slowed him down quite a bit. It probably had. He almost certainly had a hell of a headache and a lingering dizziness. The problem was, he’d gotten the drop on Denise, and she was in no condition for a protracted fight, anyway.
Dagenais slapped the pistol away. It flew out of her weakened grip and clattered across the floor before landing in the fire on the far side of the crashed elevator. She threw out her other hand and grabbed onto the side of a crate in an attempt to pull herself up to her feet. She wouldn’t stand a chance flat on her back.
The knife arced down and stabbed straight through the back of her hand, through her palm, and into the crate’s wooden slats. It took a split second for the pain to reach Denise’s brain, but when it did, it exploded inside her skull. Any coherent thoughts blew away like they’d been hit with a bomb. One second, she was trying to figure out if she could get that pistol back or if she should run or if she could reach Dagenais with a good kick to the ankles and bring him down. The next second, that was all gone. There was just a single foghorn blast of pain.
The knife had landed just behind her knuckles, between her middle and ring fingers. The flesh on the palm of her hand made a tent shape where the knife exited her skin. Blood welled up from the back of her hand and welled downward. Her first instinct was to try to pull her hand back, which her body did without thinking. That only tugged at the sliced flesh and muscle, making the pain even worse. She went very still instead.
“You’ve ruined everything,” Dagenais said. His words were a little rubbery because he hadn’t completely recovered from the blow to the head he’d received. “Everything. You never should have come here. You weren’t here when the creatures first broke containment. If you had seen the things I saw that day, you never would have come. They never should have sent a second research team. They never should have allowed you here. They should have burned everything to the ground when we had the chance. Bringing people here only risked spreading the creatures to the rest of the world.”
Dagenais loomed over her, leaning against the crate he’d pinned Denise to. He was breathing hard, and he had flecks of vomit on his lapels. Denise had clocked him good, and he was suffering the consequences for trying to do too much after a head wound.
Denise was barely paying attention to him, though. She was making a high-pitched keening noise in her throat, and she couldn’t make herself stop. The knife in her hand quivered a little as something elsewhere on the ship exploded and sent shockwaves through the hull, and she had to bite down hard to stop herself from screaming.
Still panting, Dagenais seemed to be working up the strength to find something to finish her off with. Denise tried to reach over to the knife, but Dagenais simply reached over and applied some pressure to the blade. The sensation of the cold steel grinding another fraction of an inch through her nerves, carving through skin and muscle, sent her into a paroxysm of pain. She shrieked, and her boot heels tapped against the f
loor of the cargo hold.
Dagenais coughed and was nearly sick all over himself. It wasn’t a sign that he was squeamish about the sight of the blood pouring out of her hand. That was just a common result of recent head trauma. He managed to tamp down his gorge and backed away a few feet.
“Stay right there,” he said.
“You son of a bitch,” Denise managed to spit out.
Dagenais didn’t bother to respond. He clearly wasn’t interested in explaining himself any further. What he’d done so far seemed justified in his eyes, and that was obviously good enough for him. He clearly wasn’t interested in explaining himself any more to the likes of her.
He jumped as a gunshot rang out in the cargo hold. Another followed a split second later. The pistol that had fallen into the growing flames on the far side of the room. The ammunition was starting to cook off in the intense heat. Dagenais lurched behind a piece of crushed elevator equipment, shielding himself from the gunfire.
Denise flinched as each round shot off. The flinch sent another shiver of pain up from her hand, all the way up her arm, and through the entire rest of her body. There was no way to tell where any given bullet was going. She couldn’t even see the pistol from where she was sitting. Any stray round could end up buried somewhere inside her body.
The pistol popped and rattled for another few seconds, making noises like giant pieces of popcorn on a hot skillet. The individual bullets shot off in random directions, slamming into burning supply crates and the metal bulkheads. One of them zipped past a few feet over Denise’s head before hitting the wall with a ringing noise.
After a few seconds, the brass hail storm came to an end. There hadn’t been that many rounds in the magazine in the first place. It didn’t take them that long to blast apart once they reached the critical temperature.
When the pistol went silent, Dagenais stood up and grabbed a crowbar off the ground. The length of metal was probably down here to help pry open the crates of supplies. The colonel seemed to have a different use in mind.