by Jonah Buck
Denise reached around and tried to tug at the knife pinning her to the crate. She was stuck on her back with the one arm extended and nailed down, leaving her like a turtle that had been flipped over. She was in a terrible position to defend herself, and it was also difficult to flop her free arm around to try to unpin herself.
Dagenais tapped the crowbar against the side of a crate like a man testing out a new car by kicking the tires a couple of times. He nodded to himself, apparently satisfied. Sweat was running down his brow now. It was springing up on Denise’s skin, too.
The fire was spreading and driving the temperature up inside the freight shaft. Now, it was hot as a desert inside the metal room. As the fires spread, the walls would begin to heat up and turn the place into a convection oven. That was assuming that the fires didn’t reach the stores of ammunition first and blow the entire cruiser out of the water. But some of the sweat steeping on Denise’s face was cold fear.
She knew that Dagenais hadn’t grabbed the crowbar to open any of the nearby crates. If he had a firearm, he would have finished her off by now. Maybe he could have pulled the knife out and done the deed with that, but he had to assume that she’d fight like a wildcat the second he freed her from the crate. With his head in its condition, he knew there was no guarantee he’d end up on top in that situation.
He was going to take the crowbar and beat her to death with it while her hand was still pinned. Simple as that.
TWENTY-ONE
SHIP OF THE DAMNED
Denise reached over and tried to get a grip on the knife handle again. If she could just pull it out, she’d be free and she could also defend herself a little. The knife didn’t have the crowbar’s reach, but it was better than laying there like a dog showing its belly. Her fingers touched the handle of the knife, and that alone sent searing pain through her hand.
Dagenais stepped closer, tapping the end of the crowbar against his hand as he walked. He didn’t look happy about what he was going to do, but he didn’t look like he was too torn up inside about it, either. It was just a necessary chore, like mowing the lawn.
The air was already dark with smoke. The emergency lighting shimmered through the swirling darkness. Suddenly, the room became much darker, though. Denise looked up.
Above them, the sunlight had been blotted out by a massive shape. The flyrannosaurus stared down at them with its bulging compound eyes. Its claws snaked over the edge of the gap and clacked on the metal.
Dagenais turned around and looked up. “Merde.” Still gripping the crowbar, he backpedaled toward the stairs as the beast shifted its bulk and started to climb down into the freight shaft with them, crawling down the side of the wall with surprising agility. The noise from the exploding pistol bullets must have attracted it back to the freight shaft.
Denise had stopped breathing. She stared up at the alien horror as it shimmied down inside the ship. When the creature reached the ground, it stood back up to its full height. From there, it only needed a few quick steps to cut Dagenais off from the staircase back up.
This was her chance. Denise peeled her eyes away from the scene playing out in front of her and turned her gaze back to the knife sticking out of her hand. Keeping her pinned hand as still as possible, she reached out again for the knife. Every little movement jangled the sliced nerve endings against the blade, and she had to keep her breath coming in sharp little gulps to keep from screaming.
She grabbed hold of the knife’s handle and took a deep breath. This was going to hurt. There was no way around it. She knew she couldn’t stay here, though. The flyrannosaurus wasn’t coming toward her. It either hadn’t spotted her yet, or it thought the colonel looked a little tastier. Even if the creature didn’t spot her at all, she knew that the fires would eventually roast her. There was no help coming.
If Cornelia was here, she’d probably have some advice on how to deal with a situation like this. The best way to pull the knife out. How she should protect her hand after it was free. Denise didn’t know a better way than to count to three, though.
One…two…three! She tore the knife free in one quick movement. It was like being unexpectedly hit with a brick. There was no transition period. All of a sudden, her entire world was just a bright flash of pain. Her senses couldn’t even figure out what signals to send her brain for a second because everything was being jammed out by the overpowering sensation coming from her hand.
Somehow, she managed to avoid screaming. Instead, she made a low, guttural noise that seeped out from between her clenched teeth. She yanked her hand back and held it flat against her body. Blood seeped out and stained the military parka as she pulled herself up into a low crouch and peeked over the nearest crate.
Dagenais was moving backward through the debris around the crashed elevator, trying to always keep boxes and equipment between himself and the flyrannosaurus. The monster kicked aside debris as it moved toward him, backing him toward the rear wall. Between the monster and the crackling flames, there weren’t many places he could go, and he was rapidly running out of options.
Denise slid to her feet and started toward the staircase upward. Never mind the pontoon boat. She couldn’t drag it out of here unnoticed. With the creature preoccupied, she did have a chance to escape, though.
Then, she saw something. She looked back and forth between the monster and the stairwell. The monster. The stairwell. The monster. The stairwell.
She started moving toward the flyrannosaurus. She took slow, careful steps, trying to disturb as little of the debris as possible. She knew that she was only going to have a single chance at this.
More than anything else, she wanted to get the hell off this ship of the damned. Just take off up the stairs and find her way to a lifeboat. Leave Dagenais to his fate and run. It could be as simple as that.
But there was something she needed to do. She knew she wouldn’t be safe just because she was off the ship. Once it was done with Dagenais, the creature would just crawl right back up to the surface, and eventually, it would fly back to shore. If she was caught out in the open, floating helplessly in a lifeboat, it would just swoop down on her, and that would be that.
There was another concern, though. Dagenais wasn’t in the right about what he’d done, but Denise knew what he’d been trying to accomplish. If the maggots or the flyrannosaurus made it to civilization, the results would be cataclysmic. She didn’t know just how far the thing could travel. She didn’t think it could make it to another continent, but that was only a guess. Once it ran out of food here, what was stopping the creature from setting off in a new direction to search for more? She didn’t know the monster’s capabilities. Maybe it could reach the tip of South America or the Cape of Good Hope or Australia. Hopefully, the thing would just starve to death in due course, but there wouldn’t be a place in the southern hemisphere that was completely safe until the creature was dead.
Slinking up behind the creature, she passed under its long, armored tail. Inching forward now, she ducked down and grabbed something from the remains of the ruined elevator.
Dagenais had realized he was in danger of being trapped, and he kept pushing his way blindly past the crates, trying to circle back around toward the stairs. The creature simply knocked supplies to the side as it moved, though. It was coming closer with every step.
Denise scurried up directly underneath the armored titan. She felt like the mouse about to bell the cat. The monster loomed over her, unable to see her because she was directly underneath it. Coming up directly next to one of the creature’s enormous feet, she stopped.
She took the cable she’d grabbed from the downed elevator and threw it around the monster’s ankle. She moved carefully, so the metal wire didn’t actually come into contact with the creature’s leg just yet. Then, she looped the end of the cable back around. The cable had a hook at the end with a clasp. She took the clasp and snapped it down on the cable, creating a sort of noose.
Just then, the creature pushed aside a final
row of boxes and stood directly over Dagenais. The creature’s proboscis twitched, and a massive glob of revolting fluid showered onto him. Screaming, Dagenais tried to thrash at the foul liquid, but everywhere it touched simply burned away more of his flesh.
It looked like someone had left a waxwork mannequin out in the heat. Flesh dribbled away in syrupy rivulets. Fatty tallow splashed onto the floor and sizzled like butter on a griddle. The scream filling the freight shaft was loud but short lived. Skin and meat slid off the colonel’s skull as his clothing started to dissolve on his body. The man’s skin bubbled and ran down his bones, and muscles and organs liquefied into a bloody slurry. His connective tissue started to fail, and pieces fell off the body as he flailed. An arm. His jaw. They plopped to the ground as the acid started to pit the bones. Dagenais split in half, sending his guts tumbling out onto the floor in an undifferentiated mass.
Denise knew her chance when she saw it. She darted out from underneath the monster and made for the stairs as silently as she could. Hopefully, the creature would slurp up what remained of Dagenais before it turned her attention to her.
No such luck. The flyrannosaurus noticed her before she made it twenty paces. She was standing next to the pontoon boat when it spun around to face her. The creature reared its head back, and Denise knew what was coming next.
She did the only thing she could. She snatched up the waterproof tarp she’d torn off the pontoon boat earlier and threw it over herself. A second later, the spray of acid hit her in a hot shower. It was like getting caught in a springtime storm in hell.
The odor nearly doubled her over. It made her eyes water and her throat burn. Breathing too much of it would probably burn a hole in her lungs. Coughing and gagging, she threw the tarp to the side. Its waterproof surface had repelled the spray of gunk for a few precious seconds, but now it was melting like a slice of cheese on a hot sandwich.
Reaching the stairs, she started climbing as fast as she could. Her leg ached where she’d hit the water earlier, but her hand screamed each time she jostled it. Her face scrunched itself up into a pained snarl as she moved up the steps as quickly as she could.
The flyrannosaurus took several steps, moving closer to blast another sheet of digestive fluid at her. It took one last step, and then the cable she’d tied around its leg snapped taught. Stumbling, the creature turned its head to better angle its compound eyes down at its feet. Perplexed, it jerked at the cable, but it didn’t come loose.
That cable was meant to support a metal platform and tons of equipment at a time. If the creature had any significant intelligence, it would simply reach down and pluck the clasp away. Instead, it started to flail at the cable, tugging and kicking with its leg as it tried to free itself. The cable jerked and danced, but it didn’t snap.
Denise lunged up the remaining steps and threw herself into the empty corridor as another spray of acid hit the stairwell. Picking herself up, she took one last glance back down into the freight shaft. The flyrannosaurus was still trying to kick its way free of the cable. Eventually, the impromptu manacle might snap, but it would probably take a while. Until then, the creature didn’t have enough slack to climb back up onto the upper decks. It was trapped down in the shaft. And with that fire spreading…
Limping down the corridor, Denise took the first set of stairs she could find that led upward. She pushed open a door and found herself out in the smoky sunlight. The temperature outside, hovering around freezing an hour ago, had risen substantially in the vicinity around the cruiser. The fires were everywhere now. There were still a few crew members trying to douse them, but the flames were only climbing higher and higher, spreading further and further. Originally, it would have been easy to contain the blaze, but everyone had been too busy just trying to survive the monster’s initial attack that the situation had grown completely out of control.
Shuffling toward the railings, Denise saw that there were already a number of lifeboats missing from their moorings. A couple more had been damaged in the creature’s assault. There were still some that were useable, though. Moving like one of the undead creatures haunting the mainland, Denise shambled her way over to the nearest lifeboat. Pulling herself inside, she pulled the winch and lowered the boat down into the water.
The lifeboat had a small motor and a cache of rations. She was mostly glad for the motor. If she had to row with a pair of oars, her arms might have fallen off at this point. As she cranked the motor, she heard another lifeboat buzz closer.
A voice shouted at her in French. She looked up and found herself looking down the barrel of a rifle. There were six French sailors in the boat, all of them covered with soot and grime. One of them had his arm in an improvised sling. The man with the gun shouted at her again and jabbed the rifle in her general direction.
Goddammit.
The man with the sling apparently spoke English. “You are one of the quarantined individuals we have been looking for.” There was a brief but furious discussion inside the other lifeboat. The man with the rifle jabbed at her again and said something to the man with the sling. None of the others had a gun. They were trying to decide whether or not to shoot her on the spot.
Finally, the man with the sling spoke again. “You are now our prisoner. Two of our men will board your boat and steer it to shore with us. Do not attempt to escape, or you will be shot.”
As promised, to sailors transferred themselves over to Denise’s boat. They cranked the motor to life and steered the boat after their companions as they sent the little vessels toward shore.
Denise sat still and grimaced as they bounced along the waves. Her hand still hurt, and her leg grumbled each time she rocked in her seat over a new wave. She didn’t know what the sailors were going to do with her. Dagenais wasn’t around to order them to kill her. The fact that they hadn’t executed her on the spot was another good sign. They weren’t sure what they were supposed to do with her, so they were going to wait until they found a more senior officer to tell them what to do. Depending on just how onboard the rest of the team was with Dagenais’s leadership, that could either go badly or very badly. At the very least, she suspected there was a good chance she’d disappear into a French military prison in some backwater part of their territories.
There were more lifeboats already sitting on the shore. They’d pulled in next to the abandoned landing craft. The boat ahead of her pulled up to the shore and beached itself on a narrow strip of sand. Her boat slowed and puttered in next to its companion a few seconds later.
One of the sailors pushed her out of the boat, and she stumbled onto the shore. The sailor with the rifle was already waiting, as was the man with the sling.
Even from here, Denise could feel a trace of heat from the flaming ship. She turned around looked at the floating pyre. More lifeboats were streaming away from the cruiser. Fire danced from bow to stern. Even from here, it was obvious that the vessel was a complete loss. There was no sign of the flyrannosaurus. It must still be shackled down in the freight shaft. Whether it was alive or dead was up for question, though.
Then, the question answered itself. The fire must have finally breached one of the ammunition storage chambers. There was a flash like a bolt from heaven, and the entire ship annihilated itself in a single instant. The colossal fireball shot into the sky and spread outward. It looked like the end of the world peering over the horizon.
A second later, the shockwave hit the beach. Denise covered her ears against the gigantic roar as sand and water pelted her. A wave crested on the water and rocked the lifeboats that hadn’t yet reached the shore as bits of flaming metal and debris rained down into the harbor. After a few moments, the sky stopped belching debris, and the hot glow in the distance faded. There was no sign left of the cruiser.
Denise watched the entire scene with weary eyes. She’d done it. She’d killed the creature. There wasn’t any guarantee it would do her any good now, though. That would all depend on what the sailors decided to do with her.
&nbs
p; Her hand still hurt. Really, everything hurt. All she wanted to do now was sit down on the sand and wait for her fate to be decided. She couldn’t fight the sailors. They had the only gun, and there would be more of them arriving in the next few minutes. Even if she could run away from the little group that had captured her, which was unlikely given that her leg was stiffening up, more sailors had already landed. She just didn’t see the rest of them yet because she was down by the shore. The rest of them must have been up near the remains of Delambre Station.
Her captors weren’t interested in letting her sit around, though. The one with the rifle poked at her, prodding her up the shore in the direction of the shelled rubble. She imagined that eventually, the group was going to head out on a mass exodus toward Merovée Station. It was the only shelter for miles, and when the katabatic winds started howling again, they would need it. She figured there was a decent chance they wouldn’t bother to bring her along for that trip, though. It was even money that she’d be left right here with a bullet in her skull so they could overtake the other station unencumbered.
They crested the slight slope up to the remains of the station. A conversation buzzed around Denise in French. She couldn’t understand any of the words, but it clearly wasn’t happy. The rifle was jabbed in her direction a couple of more times to emphasize a particularly vehement point.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” a female voice said. Denise’s head whipped up.
Cornelia stood near some of the battered ruins, a scratched-up elephant gun pointed casually in the sailors’ direction. Metrodora stood next to her, a pistol in her hand as she watched the sailors who had already landed ashore. A couple of motor sledges sat nearby.
“Look what I found in the rubble,” Cornelia said, raising the elephant gun a little. “Had to dig it out, but it still works fine. Metrodora and I decided to come over and visit after you called us on the radio. Figured that maybe we could lend a hand. Our ride should get here in a couple of hours, and then we can go back home.”