Arctic Gauntlet

by D. J. Goodman

  The entire experience would have been hideously quiet and eerie if only the ship around them hadn’t kept shimmying and shaking. The floor had gradually been going at more and more of a slant, enough so that when they finally found a set of stairs leading up they found it difficult to go up them without clinging desperately to the railing. Amani made a comment that she thought she could hear rushing water somewhere farther down the stairwell, although Quinne didn’t want to stop long enough to listen. If Amani was right, the rushing water could have just been a burst pipe somewhere. Or it could be a sign that the ship was really and truly sinking.

  They would have gone all the way to the top, but the final door was locked and there appeared to be no way of opening it without a key. They had to go a couple of floors down to find an exit that would open for them. They came out on a long, open walkway that gave a spectacular view of the ocean.

  “Where even are we?” Jimmy asked.

  “As far as I can tell, the Letroix Corporation’s equivalent of the penthouse,” Quinne said. Nothing else about the ship as they had experienced had been run down or bad, but it was obvious that the cramped hallways and small rooms of their own floor were economy class. Here was the ritzy area. Well-tended plants were positioned at key areas to catch the sunlight (or at least they looked like they had been, before the ship had shifted and the pots had slid). Even though this whole walkway was open on one side, the place felt warm, heated from some hidden vents maybe. Probably incredibly wasteful, but that wasn’t the kind of thing that people who could afford having rooms here would care about. The doors to the individual rooms were made of some kind of wood that Quinne couldn’t even begin to hope to identify, although she had no doubt that the wood was real and not just some kind of particle board like their own doors.

  Wanda let out a low whistle.

  “I know, right?” Quinne said. “Given how much I had to pay just for my cheapo ticket, I can’t imagine what it would cost to have a room up here.”

  “Okay, so now what are we going to do?” Jimmy asked. “We have higher ground.”

  “I… I don’t know. Is anyone in any of these rooms?”

  They knocked on two or three of the doors. Only once did they hear a voice on the other side, a woman who breathlessly told them that they needed to go away or else she was going to call the cops. Quinne wasn’t quite sure how that was supposed to work in the woman’s mind, but she didn’t think trying to talk to her would accomplish anything. Otherwise most of the doors were locked. One opened at Amani’s touch, showing a spectacular suite inside including a Jacuzzi, a complete fully stocked bar that looked like it needed to be manned by a real bartender servicing the occupants at all times, and something in the bathroom that none of the others could identify (although Quinne certainly knew a bidet when she saw one.) The room looked like it had been hastily abandoned, with a few socks and frilly panties still sitting on the floor in the bedroom. They found a few minor first aid supplies and spread them out among the four of them, just in case, but beyond that there was nothing in the room to help them.

  In fact, there didn’t seem to be anything on this entire floor to help them. Unless they suddenly decided their lives depended on playing a game of racket ball. A sign on the walkway said there was a court nearby.

  “Okay, let’s all just stop and take a breath,” Quinne said. “Get our bearings, assess where we are, that kind of shit.” Maybe the situation wasn’t as dire as they had initially believed. The floor no longer seemed to be shifting beneath them, at least, and might have even gone back a little toward being level.

  “Wait, when was the last time we even felt something hit the ship?” Jimmy asked.

  “When we were about halfway up the stairs,” Wanda said. “You think maybe those creatures have gone somewhere else?”

  “Hmm” was all Quinne said. She didn’t think anything of the sort, but she didn’t want to be the pessimistic one. She would welcome an end to this madness just as much as anyone else. But realistically, if there was a calm, likely they were about to go through a final storm.

  “Someone hold my hand?” Quinne asked.

  Amani immediately took it, only afterwards asking, “Why?”

  “And then you hold on to something, or to someone else that is holding on to something. I want to take a look out over the side, and I don’t want to go for a swan dive if the ship suddenly chooses that moment to start dancing again.”

  Once they had a short human chain set up, Quinne went to look out over the side. Although it hadn’t seemed like it in their hurry to get higher, they had gone up about six or seven stories. Some distance below her she could see the main walkway of the deck that went all the way around the ship, with several more stories beyond that before the water. At least, that was the way it was supposed to be. The Lucky Lady Duck was clearly still at a slight tilt, with their opposite side farther down in the water and this side elevated. Whatever had happened to cause the ship to start tilting, it probably wouldn’t take that much more for the whole cruise ship to go completely over onto its side. Quinne remembered seeing that happen to another ship on the news quite a few years back, yet it had never occurred to her that it would happen to the boat she might be on. She guessed she’d just assumed that safety precautions had been taken since then to make sure something like it never happened again. Those precautions probably would have worked if not for, surprise surprise, an attack by three aquatic dinosaurs.

  “See anything interesting?” Jimmy asked from his spot as the anchor of the human chain.

  “Interesting, yes. Comforting, no. The tilt is worse than I thought it would be.”

  “That’s nice and all, but what about the sea monsters?” Wanda asked. “Anything?”

  Now that Wanda mentioned it, Quinne couldn’t see any sign of the three creatures. And given how active they had been such a short time ago, she couldn’t help but think that had to mean something bad. She said as much out loud, but Wanda scoffed.

  “Since when is the lack of murderous sea creatures such a bad thing?” Wanda asked.

  In a few seconds they had their answer. It wasn’t an answer anyone could have possibly predicted.

  That sound came again, the mournful, horrible wail, and this time it lasted for several seconds longer than either of the other times. If there had been time, Quinne probably would have quipped something about how Wanda had just had to say something, didn’t she, but no sooner had the words occurred to her that there was another sound, along with a slight shake of the ship. The sound was obviously some kind of splash, very similar to when the liopleurodon had jumped from the water to take Sarah, and yet, despite being farther away, it could be heard more clearly. Half a second of thought told Quinne that this must be because something new had come out of the water, something bigger. She saw something flying toward them, something that made zero sense, and if her brain had paused for just a breath longer to try to identify it, all four of them would have died in that very instant. Instead her instincts took over, telling her to run before she could even understand what was happening, and the other three followed her, all of them desperately going full speed down the walkway, trying to avoid the massive shape coming toward them, getting bigger, more improbable, more ridiculous, and yet no less deadly.

  Then the place where they had just been standing was hit with a liopleurodon.

  No, not just a liopleurodon, Quinne corrected herself as the concussion from the force of the hit behind them threw them all off their feet. The liopleurodon. There was only supposed to be one, according to everything they had seen so far, and it definitely wasn’t supposed to be flying. And as it smashed sidelong into the ship, obliterating the walkway and rooms both behind them as well as anyone or anything that might have been on the floors directly above or below them, Quinne understood it hadn’t been flying at all.

  It hit like an explosion, and as Quinne found herself twisting in the air from the force of the hit, facing backwards as she flew away from the imp
act. She saw as the liopleurodon, its head directly facing them, made one final desperate attempt to snap at them, as if it personally blamed them somehow for its predicament and wanted one last half-hearted attempt at revenge. Debris rained around her as she hit the floorboards. Quinne tucked herself into a protective ball, taking special care to shield her eyes. Something hit her hard on her broken arm, and while she did manage to keep from screaming, she thought she might have blacked out for a few more seconds at the pain. Whatever had hit her was big and hard and heavy. As she sat there on the floor, her body wracked with pain, chaos falling all around her, her eyes shut tight against any small flying objects threatening to blind her, the thought occurred to her that she could give up here. Really, she’d done well, considering. She was happy enough with what she had done with her life, and she’d done far more than was expected of her to keep that life over the last several hours when her vacation had become Hell. If she was done now and she opened her eyes to find herself in some Great Beyond she hadn’t fully believed in before, she would be at peace with that. Right?

  Right?

  No. Not right. Fuck giving up. She hadn’t given up through the various traumas of her past, so she sure as shit wasn’t going to give up now. Time to open her eyes, assess herself, and see what she could do about squeaking a few more minutes out of her life.

  She moaned and shoved away something that had landed on her, something that didn’t want to budge. Once she realized it was one of the planters she’d seen earlier, she stopped trying to push it and instead just rolled it off on its side. The way it had landed resulted in a lot of pressure and pain in her ankle, but it wasn’t nearly the agony of her broken arm. She’d probably still be able to stand on her ankle and run if she had to, although it would not be pleasant.

  Sitting up and looking at the ruin around her, it was difficult to make sense of the state of things. Farther down the walkway everything looked fine, if a little toppled and disheveled from the impact. Quinne seemed to be in transitionary zone of destruction, where the floor was broken and hanging badly in some areas, but most of the mess was broken pieces and parts from where the liopleurodon hit.

  And that was the weirdest sight of all. It had created a sort of impact crater in the side of the ship. As far as she could tell, it was a more or less round area of destruction a couple of stories high and wide, although she couldn’t be sure from her current perspective. The liopleurodon was in the center of it all, apparently impaled on support beams and other pieces of shredded cruise ship. She could see jagged chunks of metal protruding from its hide in some places and keeping its dying form from slipping back into the ocean. It had other wounds as well, the likely results of its fighting with the other creatures, yet still, with all this damage, it appeared to be hanging on to its last shreds of life. Its head turned away to the sea and it made a mournful hooting noise as it wiggled, trying to dislodge itself.

  It looked exactly like one of those old singing wall-mounted fish. Despite her anger, despite her pain, despite her fear, Quinne laughed.

  “And that’s why I’m going to hell,” Quinne muttered. Finally, it occurred to her that she was the only person she could see, and began frantically looking around for the others. It didn’t seem possible that all four of them could have somehow survived this, yet she quickly found her three companions in various piles of debris. Wanda looked like she had suffered the least. The impact had somehow thrown her the farthest down the walkway, and the worst she could claim was she’d fallen in a painfully awkward way when she hit. Amani looked the worst at first glance, but a quick check and a speedy use of some of the first aid supplies they’d found revealed that while she was cut up in a great many places, none of the shrapnel had hit anything vital and most of her wounds were superficial.

  When they pulled Jimmy out from under a broken door, though, they saw the worst damage in their particular group.

  “Something’s wrong,” Jimmy muttered. “Something wrong with my eye. Why can’t I see?”

  “You can’t see at all?” Quinne asked.

  “I… I guess I can see with my right eye. It’s foggy, but there. Why can’t I see with my left?”

  He couldn’t see with his left eye because he didn’t have one anymore. The socket was actually empty, with a few nasty trailing cords of viscera from which it probably should have been hanging. They would probably even be able to find it somewhere in the pile if they took the time to look for it. But Quinne was pretty sure their time was almost up. Instead Wanda gently cooed soothing things to him while Quinne and Amani did their best to create makeshift bandages from pieces of their clothing. The binding job they did over his gaping hole probably wasn’t very good, but Jimmy was the nurse, not any of them, and he was too shocked to give them any pointers.

  “Is it dead?” Amani asked, pointing back in the direction of the liopleurodon. It wasn’t moving anymore.

  “Looks like it to me,” Quinne said.

  They had to hurry away from it as the floorboards beneath their feet strained. Too much more time here and the floor would probably give out from under them. But as for where exactly they should go, Quinne was at a loss. The entire ship was still rocking from the creature’s impact, and while that had somehow tilted it slightly back from it precarious position, she had no doubt that the resulting loss of structurally integrity to the Lucky Lady Duck meant that it was probably sinking faster now.

  “I don’t get it,” Wanda said as they stopped near the end of the walkway, both to catch their breaths and because they had nowhere else to go. “Why would it do that?”

  “Why would what do what?” Quinne asked.

  “The leo plural… thing. Why would it just jump at the ship like that and kill itself?”

  “And why were they all fighting to begin with?” Jimmy asked, his voice ragged and hoarse. “None of them seemed to have a problem with each other earlier in the night.”

  Quinne was pretty sure she’d figured out the answer, but to her surprise Amani answered first. “It didn’t jump at the ship. They were fighting because something agitated them. Whatever’s been making that noise, I think they’re scared of it. They were fighting probably out of confusion or something.”

  “What the hell could possibly be so scary that it frightens three huge sea monsters?” Jimmy asked.

  “So, what, the leo thing jumped at the ship in some desperate attempt to get away?” Wanda asked.

  “No, not jumped,” Quinne said. “If it had done that under its own power, it would have come at the ship head on. It didn’t. It hit the ship on its side.”

  “Meaning what?” Jimmy asked.

  “Meaning something threw it,” Amani said. “Something out there in the water picked up the giant prehistoric sea creature and threw it at us.”

  There were several moments of silence before both Wanda and Jimmy started cussing. “So we’re screwed,” Jimmy finally said. “That’s it. No trying to swim away, no lifeboats, no anything is going to protect us from something like that.”

  “Things can’t get much worse,” Wanda said.

  “Honey, I know you mean well, but please tell me you didn’t just say that,” Jimmy said. “Every single time anyone ever says that things can’t get worse, that’s exactly when things get worse.”

  “I know that, but I did it on purpose,” Wanda said. “I figure that’s such a horrible cliché, that this time, instead of things getting worse, something will suddenly happen to make things better.”

  Quinne shook her head. “Sorry, Wanda, but I’m pretty sure that’s never, ever the way things work out.”

  That was when they heard the sound of approaching helicopters.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Honey, if you weren’t standing on my left side where I can’t see you, I’d kiss you,” Jimmy said.

  “If you save it for later we might be able to do more,” Wanda said.

  “Which direction is the sound coming from?” Quinne asked.

  “Um, Quinne?
” Amani said. “We’re in the Arctic Circle. There pretty much isn’t anywhere for something to come from except south.”

  “Um, right. How about which direction relative to the ship?”

  “Sounds like the front to me,” Wanda said.

  “We need to get higher,” Quinne said. “If we can’t even see them, they sure won’t be able to see us.”

  The sounds had been faint at first, enough that Quinne thought they might just be wishful thinking, but they were definitely noticeable now. And their group wasn’t the only ones who had heard them. From somewhere below them, they could hear a large crowd of people, likely on the front deck, cheer at the approaching rescue. Quinne suspected this wasn’t going to be an immediate happy ever after, however. According to Masterson and his people, there were only going to be three choppers, at least in the first wave. And given what had happened with the liopleurodon, Quinne didn’t think the Lucky Lady Duck would still be here when the second wave arrived.

  “It looks like there’s another set of stairs over here,” Amani said, gesturing down an interior hall. With Quinne using Amani to help support her weight and Jimmy using Wanda to guide him, the foursome found their way to the stairs and went up the last couple of flights to reach the very top of the ship. Here the wide open space was taken up with, of all the goddamned things, a golf course. Quinne could just imagine wild golf balls getting caught in the wind to fly deep out in the Arctic, where they would bean some unfortunate polar bear in the head. There had to be environmental regulations about that sort of thing, not that the Letroix Corporation would always see fit to follow such rules when they were so far from civilization.

  “This is surreal,” Amani said as they all came out onto the golf course. “We’re on a golf course up about ten stories in the Arctic Ocean while we wait for helicopters to rescue us from sea monsters.”