“I’m sure there’s a plan,” Quinne said. “The captain is probably signaling our distress right now. There will be some kind of rescue coming.”
“But what about…” Jimmy started to say, but he was cut off as a man cursed at them from across the room, loud enough that Quinne could clearly hear the creative combination of body parts he strung together even through the confused din of running passengers.
“The hell?” Quinne asked, turning in the man’s direction. He was older, either in his late fifties or early sixties, and dressed in a flannel shirt and red trucker’s hat. There were a number of other men, as well as a few women, in similar salt-of-the-earth attire, that surrounded him. Despite their age, none of them seemed especially frail, the kind of people who would proudly and belligerently respond, when asked what they did with their lives, that they “worked for a living, goddammit,” before turning their heads to spit.
“Her!” the man yelled, pointing in Quinne’s direction. “It’s got to be her fault!”
“What, me? What the hell did I do?” Quinne asked. Then, upon taking a closer look at the accusing finger, she realized he wasn’t pointing at her at all, but rather at Amani standing next to her.
“Oh fudge,” Amani muttered.
“Um, am I missing something?” Jimmy asked.
“I’ve run into these people a couple of times already on the ship,” Amani said. “It wasn’t pleasant.”
“What, is this some kind of farmer’s convention?” Wanda asked.
“I don’t know, but they were the ones thinking I looked suspicious.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Quinne said. “There is really not time for petty bigotry.” The group of pissed-off looking rednecks started stalking toward them, and although Quinne wanted nothing more than to go up to them and give them a nice verbal lashing of her tongue, she had a feeling that any attempt at confrontation would get ugly quick.
She looked back in the direction of Masterson just in time to see him getting ready to storm off in a huff. And that was really what it looked like he was doing. He had already turned away from Lundgren and was taking deep breaths like he needed to be in the right mindset to stalk off angrily. Realizing she probably didn’t have much time to try convincing the burly man to help them, Quinne quickly ran over to him and stood in his way.
“Hey, look, we saw everything, so if you just help us out here…”
Masterson had started moving forward before he realized something was blocking his way. Before Quinne could say anything more, he grabbed her by her upper arms, picked up her scrawny form, set her off to the side, and then walked on as though she had never been there.
“Okay, seriously, are you fucking kidding me?” she yelled after him. He gave no indication that he heard her.
When she turned back to see if the others had seen this, they were gone.
Chapter Six
For several long moments Quinne had no idea what to do. The chaos and panic seemed to be increasing all around her, and Amani and the newlyweds had disappeared into it, likely to get away from the mob of rednecks who seemed hell-bent on declaring that any brown-skinned woman in a head scarf must be a terrorist. Quinne supposed she had no real reason to try finding them. She’d only met Wanda and Jimmy a few minutes ago, and she had fully expected to never see Amani again after tonight anyway. There was no logical reason for her to be flustered that she couldn’t find them. Quinne had come onto the ship alone, she had planned on leaving alone, and apparently now she was going to deal with this crisis alone. She was good at alone. It had served her well so far in her relatively short life.
And yet…
The sheer terror and horror of what was going on here finally started to sink deep into her nerves. She’d been running on adrenaline for the last few minutes, pure survival mode, so it had yet to set in how deep in shit every single person was on this ship. Almost everyone running around knew that something bad was happening, most of them probably realizing they were in deep danger, yet almost none of them understood the nature of it. Yet Quinne had seen it. A dinosaur. A plesiosaurus. An honest-to-God sea monster. She had watched it attack. She had watched it… oh God… oh dear fuck… that little boy…
Quinne dropped to her knees and puked, but no matter how much her body rejected its contents, she could still smell that stench that came out of the thing’s mouth. The rot. The death. The blood. And the noises! She kept hearing them, over and over, the screams, the desperate shouts of the mother, squishing and crunching sounds that she wasn’t even sure if she remembered or was just imagining.
Her stomach heaved several more times, but everything she had eaten today had already come out during the first purge. Even with the bile stinging her nostrils, she couldn’t get the stench of the creature out of her nose. Looking up, she saw that barely anyone paid any attention to the skinny chick on her knees, ejecting her last shrimp cocktail. Only a few of them even seemed to smell the puddle, and they gave her a wide berth. They had much worse things to worry about, even if they weren’t sure what those things were supposed to be.
It occurred to her, as she sat there with her own vomit soaking into the material of her pants, that there was no way she would last very long on her own. It didn’t matter how self-sufficient she was, or how smart and resourceful. No one, no matter who they thought they were, would be able to last long in this situation alone. She had to find Amani again, if not for the young woman’s sake then at least for her own.
Besides, she still thought Amani was cute.
Quinne painstakingly got back to her feet, managing to avoid slipping back into her own puddle more than once, and then did her best to take a deep breath and try to figure out the chaos around her. Looking around, she realized that there were security cameras high up in every corner. No matter what Lundgren had said to Masterson, someone in charge must have seen what had happened in that hallway, or at the very least would see what had happened once they reviewed the security footage. The footage would do a far better job of convincing people than Quinne could. Informing people did not have to be her first priority. She could instead concentrate on finding her group.
She went back to exactly where she had last seen Amani and the newlyweds, although it wasn’t like she expected there to be some big clue she could follow. She tried to ask a few people in the area if they had seen anything, but they tended to have more questions for her regarding what was happening, and Quinne wasn’t sure how much she could say without sounding completely off her rocker. She wandered out onto the deck by the swimming pool, getting distracted yet again the fact that the pool even existed. Seriously, if the Letroix Corporation had known in advance that this ship would be used primarily for their arctic cruises, then how stupid did the people in charge have to be to think it needed an outdoor pool? She’d only see one brave soul try to swim in it on her second day. Despite the fact that it was supposedly heated, the guy had come out looking like an icicle.
But the expanse of the pool also provided her with a wide open spot across which she could look without people crowding in her way, and after looking around it for nearly a minute she thought she saw the flash of a familiar red trucker’s hat on the other side. There weren’t as many people to shove through here, allowing Quinne to get around to the other side with plenty of time to see Amani back up against a lounge chair and trip over it, causing her to spill rather close to the pool. Wanda and Jimmy were between her and the group of rednecks, who had shrunk down to only four people now. Quinne wasn’t sure what had happened to the rest of them, but the one in the trucker’s hat had apparently decided he was the leader of the group.
“Look, I don’t have no problem with black people,” Trucker’s Hat said. “Just get out of the way and let us take that bitch to where security can lock her up.”
“How many times do I have to tell you she didn’t do anything?” Wanda said.
“Don’t be naïve, girl,” one of the others in the group, the only woman who had stayed behin
d to be part of the mob, said with a haughty tilt of her head. “She had to be the one that did it. If she didn’t, then why is she on the ship alone?”
“Um, that logic doesn’t make any sense,” Jimmy said.
“You trying to get cute, boy?” Trucker Hat said. “We know what’s smart and what isn’t.
“Boy?” Jimmy asked. “Uh-uh, you better rethink pulling that racist shit on me.”
“Oh, pulling the race card now?” one of the other men in the group asked. “Well, I’ll have you know that it’s not even possible for me to be racist. I have black friends!”
Jimmy looked like he wanted to slug the bastard, but he knew damn well how horribly that would go downhill. Quinne knew they could take care of themselves, but she also figured there had to be something she could do to help. “Hey!” Quinne yelled at them. The woman glanced at her briefly, but otherwise she might as well have been nothing more than the scum on the bottom of these people’s shoes.
“Fine,” she muttered to herself. “Guess it’s time to pull out the big guns. Well, little guns, but they’re high caliber.” She unzipped her coat and then lifted up her shirt. “I said ‘Hey,’ you bastards!”
This time one of the men looked first before looking away, then did a wide-eyed double take. “Holy Mary Mother of God,” he whispered. This caused the rest of them to turn as well, with Trucker Hat looking last. Out of all of them, however, he was the only one who had the sudden look of recognition.
Looks like I’ve got a fan here, Quinne thought.
“Yeah, that’s right!” Quinne shouted. “You recognize the girls, don’t you?”
The woman turned to glare at Trucker Hat. “Hank, you better not know that skank.”
Hank, Quinne thought. Somehow I just knew this guy had to be a Hank. Shitheads like this are always Hank.
“Uh, no honey. Of course I… oh wow, that fairy tattoo is new, isn’t it?”
The tattoo in question was over a year old, which meant that this guy probably knew her best from her early cam-show days. Considering this guy was probably old enough to be her grandfather, the thought gave Quinne a rare moment of squick.
“You cheating bastard!” the woman yelled, shoving Hank into the pool. He didn’t even have a chance to surface before she dove in after him, her fingers tensed into talons that she probably intended to use to gouge his pervy old eyes out.
The remaining three rednecks scattered. All the other random bystanders that had been near the pool were also running away, but Quinne didn’t pay much attention to that. She pulled down her shirt and ran over to help Amani up.
“Oh holy hell, I think I finally recognize those breasts,” Wanda said. “Aren’t you Quinne Quiver? My last boyfriend jacked off to you all the time.”
“I can sign autographs later,” Quinne said. “Right now my nipples are so cold they could cut glass, so I need to get back inside. And probably it’s a good idea to do that before Thing One and Thing Two over there remember their irrational hatred of anyone that doesn’t glow in the dark.”
“Thanks,” Amani said to Quinne, holding her hand tight.
“No problem. Happy to help.”
“Oh. No, I don’t mean for that,” Amani said, gesturing at the couple still wrestling in the pool. “I think Jimmy and Wanda had it. I meant thanks for the free show.” She grinned in a not entirely innocent way, and Quinne gave her the same smoldering look back.
“Consider yourself lucky. Normally people have to pay a subscription for that view.”
“Hey, is there something else going on?” Wanda asked, gesturing out at the edge of the deck. Quinne hadn’t been paying attention to where everyone else was going before, but now she saw that the crowds of people had congregated along the railings and were peering down into the water at the base of the ship.
“Uh oh,” Quinne said. She waved her arms and shouted at the people as she ran in that direction, not that they were paying any attention to her. She would have tried the shirt trick again, but there were kids among the crowd over here. “Hey, get away from there! You don’t want to be…” She stopped when she got close enough to see through the crowd. “Oh wow. And also, fuck me running.”
One of the nearby parents turned and gave Quinne a sour look. “Language! This is a family ship!”
“Um, right. Sorry.”
“What is it?” Amani asked as she ran up behind Quinne. The crowd was thick enough here that the young woman couldn’t quite shove her way to the front.
“We’re screwed, that’s what,” Quinne said.
“Why?” Wanda asked.
“Remember that thing we saw in the hall?” Quinne asked.
“Yeah?”
“It has a friend.”
Chapter Seven
“What is that?” some little kid to Quinne’s right asked his mother.
“I think it’s a whale,” the mother said, although the tone of her voice told Quinne that she was pretty sure she was incorrect. Quinne was pretty sure as well, but she was damned if she could identify the thing with a proper name. It was certainly as big as a whale, maybe even more so. In fact, Quinne thought the ghastly bloody chunk of flesh it was toying with in its mouth might be the remains of a whale, most likely one of the ones she and Amani had seen slaughtered earlier.
Amani finally shoved her way up next to Quinne. “That’s not a whale,” she said quietly. “That’s a liopleurodon.”
“A who-what-now?” Jimmy asked.
“Another prehistoric sea creature,” Amani said. “Like the plesiosaurus we saw earlier.”
“How do you even know that?” Wanda asked.
“Don’t you remember that really old YouTube meme?” Amani asked. “The one with the unicorn?” Her voice switched over to a creepy sing-song. “Charlie. Chaaaarliieee. We’re going to Candy Mountain. Caaaandy Moooountain!”
Quinne and the newlyweds stared at her.
“Uh, yeah,” Amani said, looking away. “Anyway, there was a liopleurodon in it.”
Quinne supposed she had probably seen the thing in the water before in some illustration or other of ancient sea creatures, but it was entirely different to see the thing in the flesh. If she was forced to compare it to some more mundane creature of the world, she would say the liopleurodon resembled an alligator, but that would be like saying a garden snake resembled a giant Amazonian anaconda. Quinne had no way of knowing if this thing’s size was typical for the species, but it made the whales they had seen earlier look like puppies. It had gray skin mottled with green, and instead of feet it had four massive flippers, each one big enough to capsize a schooner. It was monstrous, a thing capable of mass destruction.
Which made it all the more incongruous that the thing appeared to be playing.
Quinne cocked her head and watched quizzically as the liopleurodon tossed the chunk of whale meat from its snout and out into the ocean, then sped off in chase of it. Once it had the meat in its mouth once more, it took just enough time to chew off a chunk before repeating the whole process. The giant, prehistoric killing machine actually looked like it was having fun.
The crowd around them murmured nervously, as though no one was sure whether they should be afraid for their lives or else amazed and entertained. For just those few seconds, Quinne fell on the side of entertained. Separated from the earlier events, this was objectively amazing. A dinosaur. There was an actual, honest-to-God dinosaur swimming in the Arctic Ocean directly in front of them. She had no idea how this had happened, but really, the how didn’t matter. It just was, and it was amazing.
“Is that what caused the ship to shake?” someone in the crowd asked. A number of people rushed to answer, even though none of them actually knew the answer. While Quinne herself knew, she kept quiet. Scanning the water, she couldn’t find any sign of the plesiosaurus that actually had attacked the ship, but that had been on the other side of the Lucky Lady Duck. She backed away from the railing, gesturing for her three companions to come with her.
“Two din
osaurs,” Quinne said when she was out of hearing range of most of the others. “One dinosaur is unlikely enough, but two?”
“That’s some Jurassic Park shenanigans going on there,” Jimmy said.
“Jurassic Park isn’t real, honey,” Wanda said. Then, quietly to Quinne, “Really, don’t get him started. He has a legit fear of velociraptors.”
“Doesn’t matter whether or not it’s real,” Jimmy said. “This right here is. And what do you want to bet that if there’s two dinosaurs…”
“Then there’s a good chance that there’s more,” Quinne said. “And our little cruise ship just so happened to sail right through their school, or whatever you would call it.”
“How long before we come out the other side of this school?” Amani asked.
Quinne shrugged. “I don’t know. That probably depends a lot on what the captain and his crew decides.”
“Well, at least this one doesn’t appear to be that interested in us,” Wanda said.
From somewhere down the deck someone shouted, “Everyone, stand aside! I can take care of this!”
“Um, for some reason I get the impression that it’s not going to ignore us for much longer,” Jimmy said, pointing the direction of the voice. The all turned to see Lundgren and a number of his other security people coming toward them, most of them with weapons drawn. Mostly they carried Tasers, but a few had hand guns. Lundgren himself had a harpoon gun.
“Oh for the love of shit on a bun,” Quinne said. “Really?”
“Everyone get out of the way,” Lundgren said. He shoved a couple of the passengers, ignoring their indignant cries until he himself was finally at the railing. “Whatever is out there, we’ll be the ones who…” He stopped as he saw the liopleurodon frolicking in the waves lapping off the side of the ship. “Oh shit. It’s an alligator.”
“Actually,” Amani started to say, “I’m pretty sure it’s…”
“Amani, hon, don’t,” Quinne said. “Something tells me he wouldn’t be able to pronounce liopleurodon even if he tried.”
Arctic Gauntlet Page 4