Loch Ness

by Donovan Galway

  “It’s moving in!” Billikin called.

  They gathered around his monitor to watch as the creature angled in to close the gap.

  “That is one fast lizard, boss.”

  “Kill the engines!” Beau called into the intercom. As the ship slowed to a halt, the crew looked at him in shock. “Trust me,” he assured them. “Watch what it does.”

  They all turned back to the monitor to watch the monster’s reaction. “I’m betting it’ll go back to trailing if it thinks it stopped us.”

  “Not sure, boss,” Billikin said as he studied the readings. “You may be right but… it’s diving! It’s going deep.”

  “Track it. Keep an eye on it.”

  Louisa went to the door. “I need something from my room. I’ll be right back.” As before, no one paid any attention to her. Beau stood in the middle of the room and stood deathly still as if listening for the creature. The two techs kept their heads in their work, though no one noticed them exchanging fearful glances. Davis watched his barrage of equipment, calling out positions every few seconds. She gave them one last look and then darted out. She ran down the corridor and into her room where she’d left her phone turned off. Sitting on the bed, she frantically activated it.

  Billikin had an offset simulated view of the beast on his computer. It showed the relative position of the predator and the Discovery Princess. “Boss. Look at this.”

  Spencer went immediately to the console. “What? What?”

  “It’s coming up. By this arc, it’s coming up under us.”

  Beau studied the simulation. It showed that the thing dove to a depth of one hundred and seventy feet and started coming back toward the surface. The computer had extrapolated a projected target by completing the arc already made. It showed it coming up directly under them. “Is this real time or…”

  The entire ship rocked with a sudden impact. The blow threw them all to the port side along with any equipment not battened down. Omar was struck in the back of the head with a flying PC monitor. Kenny fell to the floor as Billikin landed on top of him. Beau held tight to the counter and survived the impact unscathed.

  The Princess settled back into her wake but the power was faltering badly. Below decks, the engine room was flooding. The two engineers on board fought to get out of the rapidly filling room as water gushed from two large tears on each side of the bilge. They had been nearly bitten in half by the tremendous hunter. The ship was well built for a yacht but was never designed to withstand the structural challenge it had been dealt. The midship was twisted and the frame of the lower decks bent. The crew chief fought with the watertight door but the frame had been crushed around it. The door would not budge. His junior climbed up through the spraying seawater and they pulled in unison against the steel door.

  Louisa cautiously rose from the floor of her stateroom. She could feel the deck listing to port. There was no doubt what hit them and she fought off the terror-induced panic to dial the phone. No text this time. She needed help.

  John sat on the bridge and stared out across the open sea. He knew Ireland was off their port rail but he stayed too far out to see the coast. Spencer would do the same so as not to frighten off his quarry.

  His phone rang instead of the anticipated vibrating text warning. He looked at the screen. It was Louisa. She was calling. For some reason, he was unprepared to hear her voice but he swallowed hard and pressed the receive button. “Lou?”

  “We’re hit, John. It hit us and I think we’re sinking!”

  “What hit you? Where did it come from?”

  “Antarctica. Beau lured it with one of your calls.”

  “What? What call?”

  “I’m not sure. File 127, I think. Hurry. This thing is big.”

  “How did he get that…?”

  “John! You want to fight or just this once focus on the big picture? We’re in trouble here!”

  “We’re coming, Lou. Do you know what it is?”

  “Liopleurodon, I think. But it’s a record size. Be careful.”

  “Lou! Don’t let it…”

  He heard her scream with a sudden impact that was close to an explosion. “We’re hit! It hit us again!”

  The phone went dead on that word.

  “John! John!” She realized he was gone but he got the message. Her phone was dead but he was coming. All she had to do was survive.

  Spencer led the crew out of the control room. The electricity was dancing across the steel floor and he thought it best to get clear until they could cut the power and reboot. Beau directed everyone to the highest point for safety but Kenny, for no reason clear to anyone, ignored him and went to the rail.

  Kenny was in shock. His best friend had just been killed as he watched and no one cared. They just left him down there. And what did it? Where was it? Why was this happening? As he pondered blankly, oblivious to Spencer’s repeated orders, he stared down into the dangerously close sea. To his rising horror, the sea stared back at him. It was still deep. Thirty or forty feet maybe. But the eyes were locked on him and coming fast. He fought to overcome the paralyzing fear and turned to run.

  “It’s coming again!” he shouted just as the sea behind him exploded. The rest of the team shuddered at the sheer size of the behemoth as it breached the surface and rose up and over the side of the Princess. The gray-green head was like that of a blunt-nosed alligator. The five to eight inch long teeth protruded from the eight-foot wide jaw. It literally climbed aboard using its front fins to hold the rail. The ship leaned with the weight of the giant and everyone clung to their rail and sat as still as possible.

  Kenny had no such composure and dove from the beast by trying to climb back into the control room. They could hear him calling for Omar as the Liopleurodon watched him, then went after him. It leaned on the superstructure of the aluminum body and the sides began to give way. They heard the groan of the main support beams succumbing to the ten tons of reptile.

  Inside, Kenny screamed and tried to find the one spot that would not be flattened. He’d seen it in a dozen movies. There is always one spot that is safe if you can get in it in time. That thought was with him right up until the entire ceiling of the room came down upon him. He called once more to Omar before falling victim to the erred movie myth. No space in the room was left unscathed.

  Below decks, the engine room filled to the ceiling but the water stopped at the watertight door. The Princess would remain afloat, but both men remained trapped inside.

  * * * * *

  “We need to call this in,” John said without actually moving, as though waiting for approval or contradiction.

  “And tell them what?” Frank obliged. “That Spencer is being eaten by the Loch Ness Monster?”

  “What else can I do?”

  “You can keep doing what you’re doing.”

  “And while I’m doing it, what’s happening to them?”

  “John!” Kyle said in a tone uncharacteristically firm. “There’s a reason that call would sound ridiculous. It is. Has it occurred to you that Spencer might be using Louisa to draw you out of the loch so he can move in and claim your find?”

  John shook his head. “Louisa would’ve told me. No way could he pull this off without her knowing.”

  “Need I remind you of where he got the call in the first place?” Mac challenged.

  Kyle added to the suspicion. “Did she know we were coming? Maybe they cooked this whole thing up because you didn’t respond. Even if she didn’t think of it, I know for a fact Spencer’s easily that devious. Where the almighty buck is concerned, that smart prick would toss his own mother overboard in a heartbeat.”

  Mac could see John was fighting the logic in the theory. He wanted to believe Louisa. He wanted to rescue her. Mac wanted him to see the big picture. “John. You have to admit it’s pretty broad. I mean, if I had to think of the one thing to lure a Loch Ness Monster specialist out of the loch just when he might find the monster, the only thing I could think of would prob
ably be an even bigger monster.”

  “Throw in a pretty girl and they had you racing away from the one thing you needed to stay near.”

  John felt their argument taking hold. “The odds are astronomical but I have to admit the logic is pretty persuasive.” The team watched silently, having made their plea, as John considered the options. Calling the Coast Guard with a wild accusation would tend to discredit him unless it proved completely valid. But not going at all meant he was leaving her and his colleagues, if not friends, in great peril. Moreover, the greatest of all finds was out there. His find was hiding and going nowhere for the moment so it was safe.

  “Watch those instruments. Be sure they don’t pass us through the Irish Sea. If we stay on course, we’ll find them no matter what they’re up to.”

  “Does that mean you don’t fully trust her?” Kyle asked with a gleam of anticipation.

  “Considering the fact that she stole my research and gave half of it to Spencer and is likely putting her name on the rest, and she only calls when she wants something, and we haven’t had… well no. I don’t think I’ll trust her enough to risk looking stupid to the authorities or risking losing any more research to her. Let’s go see for ourselves what she’s up to.”

  Aisling looked at him in awe. “Where’d you get this girly? Who-ers are Us?”

  John tried to look out at the horizon as if it made him look less like the gullible schoolboy Louisa had played him for. “We were colleagues and friends and I just assumed it would escalate as soon as we got time. Well, she got tired of waiting. Took what I like to call the next best thing and took off.”

  “What was the next best thing?” Aisling asked.

  “In your humble opinion,” Kyle elaborated.

  John thought about it with amusement. Pointing to the file drawer next to Kyle, “Open that drawer. Find the disc labeled with files one twenty to one thirty.”

  Kyle looked in the drawer and found a row of CDs filed numerically. He produced the one John had requested and followed John’s gesture by placing it in the drive of his computer.

  “Pull up file 127.” Kyle did and they found voice recognition files with audio patterns. “Turn on the speakers. It’s an audio file. Play the next three or four.”

  Kyle ran the file and they listened to a series of muffled grunts and moans that seemed at first to resemble whale songs. But they were lower, more primal.

  “That was it,” John said with a distinct tone of irony. “That was worth betraying me. Her loyalty was bought by a grunt.”

  “What do you suppose it’s grunting about?”

  “We think it’s a mating call. Can’t be sure. But that’s the one Beau used to lure it up here.”

  Aisling moved closer to the speaker. “Can you play that again?” Kyle complied and she listened intently. “That’s not a mating call. It’s a distress call. It lost its mate. It’s calling to her.”

  Kyle was stunned. “How would you know that?”

  “Do you have any more on there? Can you play them?”

  Again Kyle complied and she listened to an array of sounds which seemed to be made by the same animal. The last sound he played was a sharp, barking like sound. All four of them gasped as Aisling made the same sound. She tucked her chin into her neck and made a deep grunt as though she was clearing her throat. She did three consecutive grunts and stopped. Then repeated it. The recording did the same though Kyle hadn’t played that much yet.

  “Now that’s the darnedest coincidence I think I’ve ever seen,” Mac said.

  Kyle was still flabbergasted. “How in the hell…”

  “You’re a caller,” John said. “You do know how to call it.”

  She looked at John with all the sincerity she could muster. “I swear on my life, I thought it was nothing more than a child’s game. My grandfather used to teach me these silly sounds and make me repeat them. I had to know the difference. He had calls for being hungry, sick, happy, scared and, as he put it, in love. I first learned to recognize them. Then he taught me to do them.”

  Kyle played another and she immediately identified it as ‘food.’ “Granda did this when I was out playing at tea time.” She did a low moan which sounded nothing like the one on the computer. The men looked at her and shifted uneasily as though they were beginning to doubt her. Not only was the sound wrong, it could never have been heard across the neighborhood. She looked up at the ceiling where several eight-foot lengths of loose pipe in varying diameters had been stored. Every space on a ship underway was precious and they had utilized the high ceiling in this cabin to store these pieces of one to four-inch steam pipe. Aisling pulled a two-and-a-half inch diameter piece down and put her lips to the end of it. Making the same sound now through this pipe came out exactly like the sound of the beast. Like an Australian didgeridoo, she sang the extinct song like an expert.

  Looking away from the pipe to the astonished scientists, she smiled. The pipe had left a noticeable black ring around her face but no one noticed or cared. “That means it’s time to eat,” she proudly announced.

  “One of them found a food source,” Frank suggested.

  “This is amazing,” John said. “You can really identify all these sounds?”

  “I think so. I didn’t think they were real but now that I hear them, maybe my Granda wasn’t so crazy after all.”

  “Wait a minute,” Mac said. “Just hold the pickles. If you’re right, that means Spencer was playing a distress call.”

  Frank picked up on it immediately. “Yeah. Why would another ples follow a distress call halfway around the globe?”

  “That’s my point,” Kyle confirmed. “A predator would move in right away if it thought the animal was wounded or in trouble. They’re claiming this one followed them all this way but didn’t move in? What do they think it was waiting for? That doesn’t make natural sense.”

  “Unless it was waiting for the prey to nest,” John suggested. “Maybe it wanted to find out where they were going.”

  “Actually, that makes sense,” Frank said. “It’s the nest that’s the real quarry. That might explain why the thing didn’t move in. It didn’t want to spook it, just wanted to follow it to the nest.”

  “Can I drive?” Kyle asked. “Seriously. I know how this thing will act. I think I can anticipate it. Maybe out maneuver it.”

  “Fine. Go drive.”

  Kyle grinned excitedly and climbed the ladder toward the helm.

  “That call. The ples was going to lay its eggs. The thing knew that.”

  Frank nodded. “It’s like finding a map to the Grail. The big one has probably been stalking the smaller ples since the Jurassic period. A constant battle of one finding the nesting ground and the other moving to a new one.”

  John was still trying to justify his own position. “So this thing followed them halfway around the globe and just before they get to the nest it attacks? I can’t buy that. It’s too neat.”

  “What if they provoked it?” Frank suggested. “Spencer darted for the coast. It might have thought they were trying to hole up. Any predator would react instinctively to an evasive maneuver. Right?”

  John tried to take in all the input and perspectives. “So either Spencer is the most creative liar on the planet or Louisa’s in serious trouble.”

  “I really wish you hadn’t put it that way,” Frank said.

  “Why?”

  “Let me put it this way,” Mac said. “Do you think you could convince the government to fund you for a year, full ride, to record the fingerprints of dolphins to determine the genealogy of the species?”

  John was perplexed but immediately replied, “Dolphins don’t have fingerprints. They don’t even have fingers.”

  “Spencer got a two-year grant,” Mac said.

  “When it comes to either money or putting his name on something, there’s literally nothing he won’t do. He just might be the most creative liar on the planet.”

  Again John was left to ponder his conscience. H
e came to the gut-wrenching conclusion that if the worst had happened and she had been telling the truth, they were likely already too late.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Of the entire compliment of Spencer’s twelve-person crew, four remained alive. The Discovery Princess sat in the open sea, dead adrift and powerless. The bridge and upper decks were crushed and the boat was slowly sinking, though they seemed safe for the moment. The bow of the crippled boat pointed upward as a result of the twisted frame. Beau, Louisa, Davis and Jones sat on the deck behind the rail waiting for night to subside. Dawn was still an hour away but the quartet had become inconsolably restless. Beau could not tell another tale of his exploits and Billikin had run out of insults.

  “How certain are we this thing is a night feeder?” Billikin asked no one in particular.

  “We’re far from certain,” Louisa replied. She sat on the deck with her back against the solid rail. Her head rested on her knees and Billikin was not worth the effort required to lift her head to answer. “We believe it’s a night hunter because it prefers deep and dark areas. The light would put it off.”

  Beau elaborated. “Anything this size hunting by day is typically a bug-eater. Like whale sharks or baleen whales. They eat the tiny things that don’t have the sense to run when they see a giant coming at them. If it likes actual meat, it needs to be able to hide.”

  “Sounds like more of a preference than a hard and fast rule,” Jones said.

  “Pretty much.”

  “So it might still be out there waiting for us?” Billikin posed. “Even if we wait until daylight, it will still be looking for us.”

  “Not necessarily,” Beau said. “It may have given up and moved on.”