Arctic Gauntlet

by D. J. Goodman

  “Hon, please don’t say something like ‘it can’t get any stranger than this,’” Quinne said.

  “Oh h… er, fuck no,” Amani said. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Look! They’re over there!” Wanda pointed out to some distant point near the horizon. Quinne’s heart nearly stopped with her relief at the sight. She didn’t know enough about helicopters to be able to identify the make by name, but they were the kind with twin rotors on top, as well as open sides. Their emergency-red color made them easy to see even from a distance. That also made it clear that instead of the promised three, there were five.

  “Oh thank God,” Wanda said. Quinne saved the thanking, though. Sure, five was better than three. But there were hundreds or thousands of people still on this ship. Five wasn’t enough. The percentage of people who survived was going to be very, very small, and just because their group was at the highest point didn’t mean that they were the first ones the choppers would go for. The cheers from the deck meant the number of people who had gathered there would be massive, making that a highly likely target for the helicopters’ first stop.

  They weren’t the only ones who had worked their way to the top of the ship, though. At the end of the golf course closest to the front, there was already a small crowd of others that had gathered. Quinne could certainly be a vindictive person under the right circumstances, but she was still disturbed by her anger and disappointment in seeing that Lundgren was among them. And of course, where there was Lundgren there was also Masterson, his two cronies, and the chick that Masterson had picked as his love interest for this particular adventure.

  “Does it make me a bad person that I’m disappointed to see they’re still alive?” Amani quietly asked Quinne as they made their way across the golf course.

  “If you’re a bad girl, then I’m a bad girl, Amani. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Wait, didn’t you literally do a series called I’m a Bad Girl?” Jimmy asked Quinne.

  “Should I be upset that you know that?” Wanda asked.

  “Only if I watch it without you.”

  “Wow, lots of flirting,” Quinne said. “Do remember that they probably won’t let you two jump each other’s bones in the helicopter.”

  A shadow crossed over Wanda’s face. She gestured with her head at Quinne. Taking the hint, Quinne had Amani take over helping Jimmy while Quinne and Wanda hung back a little, the two of them engaging in a low conversation.

  “I think I already know what you’re going to say,” Quinne said.

  “Do you? And what am I going to say?”

  “Something to the effect of, if it comes between making sure you get out of here or Jimmy instead, make sure it’s Jimmy. Am I right?”

  “More or less.”

  “You really don’t value yourself that much?”

  “I value myself quite a bit. But I’m dead in a few months anyway. I shouldn’t be taking a spot on that helicopter that can go to someone else.”

  “So what are you going to do, just walk away when the helicopters come? Jimmy’s not going to let that happen.”

  “Then you need to hold Jimmy back. He still has time left. Lots of it. I know he loves me, but I also don’t think he would have really married me if the situation were different. At least, not yet. He might have later, but not now. When I’m gone, he can still live and find another.”

  “You know this is cliché as shit, right?”

  “Do you promise me you’ll do what you can to make sure he doesn’t stay behind with me?”

  “What if you don’t have to stay behind? What if the helicopters come back in time to get you as well? You’re not going to do something stupid like jump off the side of the ship once he’s gone, are you?”

  “I love my life. If I see a way to get those last few months, then I’m taking it. I’m not going to be throwing anything away. But come on now, Quinne. Be serious. We both know there isn’t going to be anything left for a second wave of the rescue to get. Right?”

  Quinne nodded grimly. “Fine. I’ll do what I can. But I’m hardly in a state to stop him if he goes charging after you.”

  “That’s all I ask.”

  Masterson and the rest of the group at the edge of the golf course were so busy waving their hands in an attempt to get the attention of the helicopters that none of them paid any attention as Quinne, Amani, and the newlyweds joined them. Lundgren noticed their presence after a few seconds and gave Quinne the stink eye, but otherwise he said nothing. There was a palpable sense of relief among the group that disturbed Quinne a bit. They were absolutely, one hundred percent sure that they were the ones the helicopters would come for first. There was no way it could be any different. Quinne looked down at the front deck of the ship and saw every other survivor of the ship down there, and she wondered if any of them had the same level of certainty. Or maybe some of them saw the number of helicopters and understood. There were certain people who always got rescued first while others were left for later. This was the way of things. The fact that the pansexual porn star, the young Muslim woman, and the black couple were up here with the so-called important ones was pure luck. Looking down at all those people, the vast majority of which she knew very well were never going to make it off, made Quinne want to throw up.

  Masterson and his own people didn’t seem to have these same troubled thoughts, but neither did they look as celebratory as those around them. Masterson may have proved himself to be little more than a moron masquerading as an intellectual, but he seemed to at least have the sense to know that this wasn’t over yet. While Gordon and Mickey nervously gave exposition regarding the approaching rescue, Masterson lifted his assault rifle and…

  Wait, what?

  “Where the hell did Masterson get an assault rifle?” Quinne asked. Her question wasn’t directed at anyone in particular, but Lundgren was the one who gave her an answer.

  “Found it in the emergency supplies,” Lundgren said simply.

  “Since when the flying fuck does a family cruise ship need an assault rifle in its emergency stocks?” Quinne asked.

  “Look, don’t go asking me for the logic,” Lundgren said. “Masterson didn’t seem so surprised to find it, though. It’s like he just kind of assumed it was his right and fate to have it.”

  “You’re head of security. You didn’t try to take it away from him?”

  “Why would I?”

  “If I or Amani or Jimmy had walked up here carrying an assault rifle, what would you have done?”

  “I would have shot your asses.” Lundgren didn’t seem to think there was anything hypocritical about any of this, and Quinne figured it wasn’t an argument she would win. It was hard to argue with people who refused to use logic.

  A spontaneous cheer erupted from the massive crowd below, although Quinne wasn’t quite sure what exactly had triggered it. In response, though, that noise came again. Mournful. Sorrowful. Alien. Ungodly loud. So loud, in fact, that that every single person below went quiet as they had to cover their ears. Quinne and everyone on the golf course followed suit. She didn’t even have to wait for the sound, so much longer than any of the times before, to be finished before she understood exactly what it meant.

  Time was up. This was the end.

  Chapter Sixteen

  From their spot at the top of the ship, Quinne had the perfect view of the horror show that happened next. The first thing she saw was the plesiosaurus some distance off to the right side, but she saw immediately that something was wrong with it. Instead of rising to the surface head-first, she saw its tail and backside bob up. Even from this distance she could see that the plesiosaurus had taken substantial damage from its fights, and not every wound could be accounted for by just the megalodon and the liopleurodon. In fact, there was one very noticeable wound along its side that had clearly not been the result of teeth but of some long, straight, sharp object, like a knight had gone up to the creature and tried to slay it with a sword, getting in a mortal wound before th
e plesiosaurus got its revenge. The gouge was so bad that Quinne couldn’t begin to understand how it could still be alive, and yet it bogged and thrashed organically, like it was in the final struggle of its life. She didn’t think anyone else noticed this. Most of the people’s attention was once more on the helicopters as they came within rescuing distance. They probably would have been able to load the most people if they had been able to land, but passengers had taken up every available flat space on the deck. While four of the helicopters hovered, their pilots obviously taking a moment to assess the situation, the fifth helicopter broke away from the others.

  It headed for the top of the ship, the golf course, and the people waiting there.

  “Everyone, make room!” Masterson extrapolated. “Give the chopper some place to land!” Not that anyone really had to move anywhere. There were plenty of flat open spaces behind them. Masterson seemed to be giving orders purely because he thought he had to.

  “It’s coming!” Amani said. “Quinne, we’re actually going to make it out of here!”

  Quinne heard her but paid little attention. The plesiosaurus vanished back into the water like it had been sucked down.

  When it came back up, though…

  The thing that held the plesiosaur by the neck looked very much like a tentacle, but not so much the tentacle of an octopus or squid. It was chitinous, like an insect, and segmented, reminding Quinne of the close-up view of a spider’s leg, except with infinitely more joints. And unlike a spider, it wasn’t black or brown or red. Instead the tentacle was translucent, the muscles and nerve endings and other unidentifiable interior structures visible through a gauzy haze. In that way it reminded Quinne of some kind of tapeworm, or perhaps some sort of exotic jellyfish. Of course, Quinne had never seen a tapeworm or jellyfish tentacle that was nearly ten stories long, so that comparison ultimately failed.

  In the end, there wasn’t actually much of anything Quinne could compare it with. This was not another prehistoric sea creature. There would be no finding this thing in the fossil record. No matter what that tentacle might be attached to beneath the water, it was something that no human had seen before.

  “Holy…!” Masterson expatriated. That was the only sound anyone was able to make before the tentacle whipped the dead or dying plesiosaurus back and, using it like a club, slammed it down on the front deck of the Lucky Lady Duck. No one on the deck had time to scatter, and even if they had had the time, they were packed so closely together they wouldn’t have been able to run anyway. The bulk of the plesiosaurus crushed a huge number of people all at once, creating a massive spurt of red like someone had crushed a blood-filled water balloon with a sledgehammer. Quinne screamed, and one of the children with one of the other people on the golf course cried, but the carnage was too quick to otherwise react. The tentacle lifted the dead and broken monster again, and this time when in attacked the plesiosaurus came down at an angle, not just smashing more innocent passengers but also sweeping a large number of them off the side.

  The helicopter over the golf course stopped its descent, obviously deciding that actually landing was too risky when something completely terrible and unknown was happening below. The other helicopters started to pull up and away, but before they could make a safe distance two more of the tentacles erupted up from the other side of the ship. One grabbed a helicopter through the open door in its side while the other tentacle tried to wrap itself completely around a different helicopter. The rotors sliced large chunks out of the tentacle, causing the tentacle to retract all the way back into the water, but the tentacle had still managed to damage the chopper’s back rotor. It started spinning out of control and hit the water with a colossal splash. The first tentacle again smashed the increasingly broken plesiosaurus against the deck. Although the cruise ship had shaken with every impact so far, this time Quinne could tell that the damage was critical. The Lucky Lady Duck lurched beneath them all, tilting forward as the front end of the ship slipped beneath the water. Quinne no longer had any time to be horrified for the thousands of people dying below them. She was too busy trying not to slide right over the edge of the golf course.

  Gordon slipped, hit a protective railing that was supposed to keep people from falling off the roof of the ship, and then tumbled off below.

  “Gordon?” Masterson asked. Actually asked instead of whatever the hell else he had been doing. He seemed thoroughly confused about what had just happened. “That’s… that’s not the way he’s supposed to die. He’s supposed to have the final heroic sacrifice that saves the rest of us. I don’t…”

  Quinne didn’t pay attention to anything else he said. Instead she hit the ground and grabbed at the artificial turf of the last hole’s putting green. “Down!” Quinne yelled at her friends. “The lower you are, the less likely you’ll lose your balance and fall!” This left her unable to see what was happening below them, but from the way the ship rocked and shifted she could tell this was it. This was the moment the Lucky Lady Duck finally sank. And it wasn’t going to be like in Titanic either, something that inexorably took up screen time. She could see more tentacles just over the edge of the roof, coming up and then dashing down to dig into the ship. This thing, this final boss sea monster, wasn’t going to wait for the ship to sink under its own power. It was going to pull the ship down.

  Amani followed her lead, but found a better hand hold in the last hole itself. Neither Jimmy nor Wanda looked like they were able to grab on to anything, but the angle of the ship wasn’t quite enough yet for their weight to overcome their friction against the turf. Quinne looked back at the others and saw a teenage girl of about fifteen, looking frightened and unsure as she fell and tumbled toward the edge. She stopped herself right before the railing, but not before bowling into Mickey, who in turn hit Masterson’s fuckbuddy and sent them both toppling against side railing.

  “Mickey? You’re supposed to give the final quip,” Masterson said. “And Nina, what about our final kiss? This isn’t the way these stories are supposed to go. I’m the hero.” He stumbled toward the edge, yet managed to keep his footing.

  “I hate to break it to you, Masterson,” Quinne called at him, “but I don’t think you were ever the hero of this story. Real stories like this don’t have heroes. The best they get is survivors.”

  “I’m the hero!” Masterson screamed at the sky. He didn’t give any more indication that Quinne existed than he had during any of the rest of this trip. “I’m supposed to save the day! I even have an assault rifle! That’s how it works! I’m…”

  A huge tentacle snaked over the edge, wrapped itself around him, and then yanked him away. The last scream he made was high-pitched until it cut off abruptly.

  Quinne looked up at the rescue helicopter, which was managing to stay just out of range of any of the tentacles. The pilot had apparently abandoned any thought of landing or getting closer, but a metal basket lowered from its side, moving down in their direction. Quinne looked around for everyone that hadn’t fallen, only to be shocked that, out of the entire group that had been here, only six remained. Other than Quinne’s group, the only people that had managed not to fall were Lundgren and the teenage girl, and she was just barely holding on.

  “Lundgren, you’ve got to get her!” Quinne screamed.

  For several seconds it looked like Lundgren was going to ignore her. Quinne could have tried to help the girl, but Lundgren was closer, and he didn’t have the disadvantage of a broken arm or sprained ankle.

  Come on, Lundgren, do the right thing, Quinne thought. There had to be a part of him that wasn’t a selfish bastard. He hesitated as the ship lurched, everything underneath them dropping a few feet. Finally, as Lundgren caught his balance, a pained look came over his face. He looked at Quinne and the others, scowled, and then went back for the girl. While Quinne and the others struggled to help each other, Lundgren grabbed the girl by the hand and yanked her in the direction of the rescue basket. If the ship hadn’t dropped, the basket would have been low enou
gh to rest on the golf course by now. Instead it was a few feet in the air, and Lundgren had to lift the girl up and shove her over the side to get her in. He then grabbed a hold and pulled himself in with her, then turned to the others and held out his hand.

  “Move!” he yelled. His cry was drowned out by the creaking and screeching of metal. While the back end of the Lucky Lady Duck had previously been slowly rising up as the tentacles grabbed the ship and tried to pull it under, the back now shifted so that the ground beneath them was almost even. That might have seemed like a good thing under other circumstances, but here it could only mean that the tentacles must have grabbed the other end of the ship as well and were pulling it down to join the front. The basket appeared to shoot up out of the reach of Quinne and the others, and then slowly continued to rise.

  “What’s happening?” Amani asked. “Why are they flying away?”

  “They’re not flying away,” Wanda said. “We’re sinking faster.”

  Whoever was at the controls of the helicopter was reeling in the basket with Lundgren and the girl, but from the other side they were lowering another basket. It was dropping as fast as it could go, but the downward momentum of the sinking ship was faster. The helicopter tried to compensate by lowering with it, but now tentacles whipped every which way, a few of them coming very close to the rotors.

  “Amani, jump for the basket!” Quinne screamed at her. The young woman didn’t hesitate, leaping for the basket right as it got within reach and getting a good grip on the edge. She pulled herself up and over, then turned to help the others.

  “Come on! You can do it!” Amani yelled at her. The ship kept dropping, and the helicopter wasn’t lowering itself anymore for fear of the tentacles. This was it. The last chance for all of them.

  Quinne spared only the briefest of glances at Jimmy and Wanda, just enough to see that both of them were about to try the jump as well, before she jumped for the basket. Her right arm hit the side, causing enough pain that she had to desperately fight to keep consciousness, but she got her left arm high enough to hook over the edge of the basket, where Amani grabbed onto her and did her best to keep Quinne from falling. Keeping hold became so much harder less than a second later, though, when she felt a weight grip her bad ankle and yank downward. At first she thought one of the tentacles had to have gotten her, until she looked down and saw Jimmy clinging to her leg for dear life with one arm while he offered the other to Wanda, who grabbed on just as the ship shifted again to drop dramatically below her.