Arctic Gauntlet

by D. J. Goodman

  “Moooooooooommmmmmmm!”

  Quinne, even though she was busy babbling herself, instinctively grabbed Amani and slowly pulled her back in the direction they had come.

  “Quinne, what was that?” Amani asked. “That looked like a…”

  “A sea serpent. Yeah, I know.”

  “Actually, I was going to say dinosaur.”

  “Sure, that too. One of those dinosaur sea serpents.”

  The boy’s voice rose from down the hall against the din. “It was a plesiosaurus, Mom! A real live plesiosaurus!”

  “A plesiosaurus,” Quinne muttered to herself. “Sure, why the hell not?”

  “Do you think that was the thing we saw with the whales?” Amani asked. “If it was…”

  She didn’t finish. The head punched through the wall just a few feet further down from where it had first appeared, although this time with enough force to completely rip away that entire section of wall. There was enough of an opening in the wall now that it could get part of its neck in as well, allowing it to look back and forth down the two different directions. There was no doubt about it now: this was definitely some sort of prehistoric creature, something that should not have existed in the modern world. Beyond that, Quinne’s scientific knowledge was completely lacking.

  For a moment it looked almost peaceful. The creature cocked its head in a gesture that Quinne would have called curiosity, if the movement hadn’t immediately followed such violence. In the space of those few seconds, she could nearly believe that it wasn’t going to eat them at all.

  Then the head turned away from Quinne and Amani, in the direction of the boy, his nearly nude mother, and whoever her lover might have been. Faster than anyone could follow, the thing’s enormous jaws snapped at them. There was a splash and spray of red, leaving the woman and man now wearing a thin sheen of blood along with their sheets and underwear. It took Quinne a second to understand that the two protrusions suddenly growing out from between the monsters teeth were legs.

  “No! No! No!” the mother screamed. “You can’t…”

  On some level she had to know that the plesiosaur wouldn’t have any reason to listen, but the plea sounded so genuine, like she thought that maybe, just maybe, the monster would show mercy, open its mouth, and let her son live. Instead the head pulled back again, vanishing outside, leaving everyone in the hall shell-shocked after the unexpected carnage.

  “Run,” Quinne said to Amani. She was surprised at how calmly the word came out of her mouth.

  “But…” Amani’s objection didn’t seem to consist of anything more than that one word. If she had anything more coherent to say, the rest of the phrase wouldn’t come out.

  “Run!” Quinne said, much louder now, and the noise broke her paralysis. She grabbed Amani by the hand, turned, and bolted back in the direction they had come.

  There were more sounds behind them: a feminine human scream, the nails-on-chalkboard screech of twisting metal, the shattering of wood or whatever other material had been used to make the decorative interior of the ship, some kind of cut-off gulp from the man, more glass breaking, so many other sounds that Quinne could never hope to identify. Nor did she want to. All of her instincts told her right now that the only thing she truly needed to concentrate on was running, getting as far away from here as possible, and if she could manage it, keeping the sweet young woman beside her safe as well. She was sure that, if her survival needs required it, she would let Amani go in order to save herself, but until such a thing was truly needed she would protect the girl as much as possible. For some reason, the fact that she had been about to sleep with the girl made Quinne feel responsible for her. There wasn’t a lot of sense to the desire, but there it was.

  Quinne heard the woman’s scream for several seconds before it stopped, although she had no way of knowing if it was because the woman had stopped, or if she had run off somewhere to hide, or if she had suffered the same fate as her son. She wanted to look back to see for certain, but the more animalistic part of her brain told her that she couldn’t do that, that to look back was equal to death. Instead she concentrated purely on the sounds behind her, her only warning about whether or not the creature was ready to come for the two of them next, as well as the stretch of hall in front of her. The corner they had turned to get here was at least fifty feet ahead, an easy enough distance to cover under normal circumstances. In this instant, however, that space felt infinite, an impossible distance that she would never be able to get across. She couldn’t even be sure that they would be safe once they turned that corner and headed back toward the shops and main thoroughfares of the ship. It was simply a short-term goal, an easy to comprehend destination among so many other things that her mind simply couldn’t deal with at this time.

  Behind her something hit the wall hard enough that she felt the concussion in the air. Then there was another, and she risked looking back just long enough to see the wall immediately behind her bulge from the blow, sending another shower of glass shards against her back along with a spray of near-freezing seawater. Whatever this thing was, it could apparently see her through the windows. She just hoped it wasn’t smart enough to see the direction she was going and…

  The entire next moment took no more time than a few beats of her rapidly pounding heart. Not even fifteen feet down the hall, she saw the wall begin to bulge. With it she felt and heard the deep bass thud of the plesiosaurus’s head hitting the weakened hull. The glass shattered, but there was no time for either Quinne or Amani to raise their arms to shield their eyes. The wall collapsed inward, spraying debris and even more water. The head rammed through, its mouth opening to reveal teeth like a hacksaw and blood-red gullet. No, she only partially realized as she tried to pull back from the attack. Its gullet wasn’t actually colored red by itself. That was in fact the blood of the little boy, and possibly his mother and father. She even thought she saw broken bones and ripped flesh deep within the maw, although that might just be some nightmare detail her mind would add to the horrible memory later.

  What she was sure of, though, was that they were running too fast. Quinne and Amani were heading right for its mouth.

  Quinne put both her feet down, trying to stop their momentum. For a moment she almost lost her footing. She was trying to get it back when the instinctual part of her brain piped up and said “No, lose your footing!” There was no time to give it any rational thought, and if she had that probably would have been the moment she died. Instead she let her balance go, her feet sliding out forward in front of her as they skied over the seawater. Quinne held tight to Amani, pulling her down with her, and it was only halfway through the slide that Quinne realized there was a small gap between the bottom of the monster’s jaw and the floor. It was just small enough that any normal sized man probably wouldn’t have been able to make it, but both her and Amani were on the petite side. It would be just enough room for them to get through, if, that was, they had enough momentum to slide through the growing puddle of water underneath and come out the other side with enough distance that the creature wouldn’t realize what was happening and snap them up at the last second.

  Quinne couldn’t help herself. She had to close her eyes.

  Her senses were reduced to touch, sound, and smell. The water sloshed all around the two of them as, even with her eyes shut, enough light got through her eyelids that she could see the shadow of the monster’s head over them. The scent of the water was sharp and briny, but nowhere near as strong as the horrible rotten-fish and coppery-blood stench of the plesiosaurus’s breath. Something briefly scraped her nose, like the flesh of something scaly and clammy. They were even close enough that Quinne could hear a gurgle in the creature’s throat, like it was trying to find some way to express its dismay that its prey had suddenly disappeared.

  Then they were out the other side. Quinne wasted no time yanking Amani further away and to her feet, a feat made difficult but not impossible by the puddles on the polished floor. Quinne thought she could
feel the movement of air as the monster tried to twist its head in their new direction, but she didn’t dare turn to be sure.

  Stumbling to their feet, Quinne and Amani ran down the rest of the length of hall and around the corner. Even when Quinne felt like they were probably a safe distance, she wouldn’t let Amani stop.

  Chapter Five

  When they did stop running, it was only because they literally ran into the couple that had been trying to get into the room down the hall. In that minute or two of chaos—Jesus Christ, was it really only that much time?—she had completely lost track of anyone else in the hallway other than Amani. Now that they were out of immediate danger, Quinne could spare a thought for the others that might have been caught in the carnage.

  The couple had stopped right at the staircase before the hallway came out into the main concourse. They were a young couple dressed in their evening best, and judging from the big rock next to the wedding ring on the woman’s finger, Quinne guessed they were likely newlyweds on their honeymoon. Well, it had already proven to be a honeymoon neither of them would forget.

  Quinne and Amani turned a corner and hit the woman, who was doubled over with her hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath as her husband leaned against the wall. The woman yelled and almost fell over, but her husband caught her before she hit the floor. Quinne almost expected him to angrily berate them to watch where they were going, then remembered, Oh yeah, sea monster attack, and figured the time for politely watching what they were doing was over.

  “Okay, I just want to be clear on something,” the man said as both Quinne and Amani joined the woman in gasping for breath, although hers had an extra wheeze that sounded like she might have other problems as well. “What I think just happened actually happened, right?”

  “Depends on what you think happened,” Quinne responded.

  “I think a fucking dinosaur just broke into the ship and ate some people.”

  “Then yeah, that’s my understanding as well.” She looked back and held her hand up for quiet. The other three obliged, allowing Quinne to listen for sounds of any other attack or people trying to escape. Everything in that direction was silent except for the ever-present hum of the ship’s engines.

  “Did… did anyone else see if anyone from that family back there escaped?” Amani asked.

  It was the woman that responded. “That naked chick was finally running when I last looked back, but I don’t know what might have happened after that.”

  “And the guy she was with?”

  “I saw him,” the man said in a whisper. “He didn’t… you know.”

  Quinne knew. She also knew that no one needed to ask about the boy. Not a single person in that corridor had missed what happened to him.

  “Isn’t there supposed to be an alarm or something?” the woman asked.

  “I think so,” Quinne said, “but maybe nobody knows yet.”

  “If something huge rips several holes in the side of the ship, I think it would be hard for the captain to not know that something had happened.”

  “We need to go tell somebody,” Amani said. “So they can do a rescue or something like that.”

  “Rescue?” Quinne asked. “Sweetie, I don’t think anyone is going to be able to rescue the people that thing ate.”

  Amani blanched at the word “ate,” as though she hadn’t allowed herself to think of what had happened in those terms yet, but she didn’t back down. “That’s not what I mean. What about all those other cabins up and down that hall? Sure, it’s dinner time, but what if there were more people in there? All that has to happen is for them to poke their heads out to see what the fuss is…”

  Quinne finally understood. “Right. The longer we wait to tell anyone, the more likely it is that someone else gets taken by that thing. Come on.”

  Quinne and the three others (the man and woman, between pants, introduced themselves as Jimmy and Wanda) ran the rest of the way back to the main rotunda where they had last seen the captain, but by the time they had reached it, someone had already blown the ship’s horns to signal a general emergency. The few safety briefings the passengers had heard during the first days of the cruise told Quinne that this particular sequence of toots typically signaled a fire. She supposed no one had ever bothered to come up with a signal for a sea monster attack, even if the captain finally believed that something was out there.

  The main hall was abuzz with activity, including a number of passengers frantically running around looking for children, friends, and loved ones. A team of security people had formed up and were listening to their walkie-talkies, presumably as the captain gave them instructions as to what to do next. Given the lack of utter, incomprehensible terror on the faces of any of the crew, Quinne suspected they still didn’t have the all the facts about what had happened.

  Neither, apparently, did Quinne and her erstwhile squad. The farther they got into the room, the more she overheard stories and rumors of other things that had happened. There were reports from other places along the same side of the ship of something huge slamming into it. A couple of people who had been on the deck said they thought they’d seen something huge in the water, and the walkie-talkies squawked with news from other members of the crew of holes appearing on the ship. As far as Quinne could tell, though, they were the only ones who had actually seen the creature in action. Or, at least, they were the only ones who had lived long enough to tell about it.

  “Hey!” Quinne said, waving her hands in the direction of the security chief. A tag on his uniform identified him as M. Lundgren. “Hey, someone has to get back to my hall. There’s a…”

  “Ma’am, I need you to stay calm and go back to your room.”

  “No, listen, we can’t go back to our rooms, because…”

  “Ma’am, if you don’t go back to your room I’ll be forced to taser you.”

  “Wait, what? You don’t understand…”

  Someone came up to her from behind and shoved her aside as if she were just some debris that had gotten in their way. It took Quinne a moment to remember the guy they had seen earlier. Masterson, she thought.

  “There’s a sea monster attacking the ship,” he said.

  “Masterson,” Lundgren said. His tone of voice gave Quinne the distinct impression that he’d talked to Masterson before, and he wasn’t happy to have to do it ever again. “I should have known you had something to do with this.”

  “Damn it, man!” Masterson pointed at Lundgren in an overly dramatic gesture that was somehow peculiarly close to a flex. Quinne even though she could see the man’s shirt tightening, fighting not to tear. “This has nothing to do with our history and you know it! Every single person on this ship is in danger unless you and your men do something!”

  Quinne was pretty sure she could hear an exclamation point at the end of every single one of Masterson’s sentences. If this were a comic book, his speech bubbles would have been spiky, excited explosions rather than simple, round bubbles. If he continued speaking at all, he was likely to blow out his vocal cords. She tried to interject.

  “Hey, he’s right. Down by my room we…”

  Lundgren and Masterson continued on as though Quinne wasn’t there. “I’ll never forgive you for what you did, Masterson. He was just a puppy. A puppy, for Christ’s sakes!”

  “Um, hello? Over here?” Quinne asked. “Kind of got really important information about…”

  “I did everything I could save him!” Masterson said.

  “Okay, this is starting to get ridiculous,” Quinne said. “What am I, just some extra in the background here?”

  Neither of the men answered her. They just continued to yell at each other over what Masterson had or hadn’t done to save Lundgren’s Chihuahua fifteen years ago. Quinne tried to keep up for a while, then gave up and turned back to the others.

  “Look, the security people are professionals, right? They and the rest of the crew are trained for emergencies like this.”

  “Emergencie
s like this?” Wanda asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “Okay, maybe not like this. But emergencies in general. And they have to know about the damage. They’ll send someone down that way to look for anyone still hiding.”

  “We can’t just let them go over there without knowing what they might run into,” Amani said.

  “It sounds like Muscles McGee over there knows what really happened just as well as we do, and he’s not having much luck convincing Security Chief Lundgren,” Quinne said. “And he’s a scientist. If Lundgren won’t listen to someone like that, he sure as hell won’t believe a porn star.”

  Both Wanda and Jimmy looked surprised, and maybe even a little turned on.

  “That buff guy’s a scientist?” Wanda asked.

  “You’re a porn star?” Jimmy asked at the same time.

  They both looked at each other with a strange combination of sheepishness and bemusement, as if they both had caught the other thinking something they shouldn’t.

  “Focus, please. The point I’m trying to make is that we need to find somewhere we’ll be safe until someone with far more smarts or power than any of us figures out what to do.”

  “We’re on a boat full of holes,” Jimmy said. “I don’t really think there’s going to be any place safe.”

  “Oh crap, are we going to sink?” Wanda asked.

  Quinne shrugged. “Uh, I don’t think so. At least, I hope not? None of the holes in our hall were below the waterline. As long as they stay that way, the ship should be able to continue on just fine.”

  “And what happens if that thing decides to Swiss cheese some part of the ship that’s under the ocean?” Wanda asked.

  “Then we’ll just have to…” She trailed off as something occurred to her, and from the horrified look the others gave she guessed they’d figured it out, too. Quinne had been about to say that they would just have to get in the lifeboats. The problem was that, in this case, all they would be doing was making it easier for the plesiosaurus, or whatever the hell it was, to turn them all into snacks.