by E. Coulombe
George followed the shore as far as he could. At the end of Ko`olau he climbed a limestone rise, stayed on top for a few feet, then scrambled down a narrow drainage. He followed the drainage towards the sea but it ended in a waterfall, and he was forced to climb back out though herbaceous ground hugging vines, which soon gave way to shrubby naupaka, and then to hau bush - the impenetrable native hibiscus – which forced him to slow down as he slipped in and out of the tangled tree trunks. At one point he ended up walking along narrow trunks suspended twenty feet above the ground. He used his light and moved slowly. Finally he dropped back down into another drainage.
He had lost radio contact back at the last drainage - a small rise between himself and Andrew had placed him in a dead zone again. It had taken him over twenty minutes to travel a mile down the coast to the promontory Andrew had described.
Finally, he saw the light coming from the other side exactly where Andrew had first seen it. Not a good sign. It means the boys haven’t moved. George started to run over the lichen covered limestone. Andrew’s voice came on the radio.
“You’re there. I can see your light. Do you hear me George?”
“Yes. I’m almost there,” he answered as he crested the rise and looked down the opposite slope. He saw Lono lying on the cliff’s edge, the dive light was mounted on his chest, and pointing straight up into the air. He was alone.
“What is it George, tell me what you see?” he heard Andrew’s plea.
“It’s Lono, he’s alive but he’s hurt. Get help Andrew. NOW!”
Emma, Grant, and Nani could only hear Andrew’s voice; George’s reply was blocked by Kahili ridge.
“Have you searched the area?” they heard Andrew ask.
Silence.
“He could have lost his light.”
Silence.
“I’m coming down now George; the men have already launched the boats. I’m going to meet them at Kukui. We’ll be there in an hour. Hold on buddy.”
Emma couldn’t restrain herself. She grabbed the radio from Grant. “What about Michael?” she demanded over the radio.
Andrew hesitated before he answered, “Lono’s been hurt.”
“What about Michael?” Andrew didn’t answer. “Is Michael with him?”
Again Andrew didn’t answer.
“Oh my god,” Emma screamed at him.
“I’m going down now Emma. I’ll find him, and I’ll find Michael. Tell Grant to send more boats and as many dive lights as they can find in the village. Pull batteries out of everything. As many as they’ve got. I’ll meet them at Kukui.”
The radio was silent for a moment. Emma gripped it as though it were a life line to Michael, from which she could never let go. No one dared take it from her.
“I’ll find him Emma, I promise you - I’ll find him,” was the last thing she heard Andrew say.
Chapter Fifty Six
Five boats arrived at the scene. Both of the five-man outriggers, two smaller ones, and the whaler. All were fully loaded with spears, knives, dive gear, and even a couple of sticks of underwater dynamite that Grant had kept from his work with the Navy. The boulder had hit Lono hard when he’d landed on the ocean floor, and broken a couple of ribs, but he’d been able to climb to safety before he passed out.
George revived him with whiskey and water, and when the men arrived he was scrambling round on the ledge, scouring the boulder strewn cliff and shouting Michael’s name. Finally he heard a faint reply. He found the spot where there’d been a crevice before – but it was gone, collapsed under crushed boulders.
“MICHAEL!” he screamed down into the rocks. As if in reply, a deep resonating, slamming sound, like a wrecking ball, came to them, as the creature again slammed into the cliff face.
The whaler was below. Andrew shouted up to Lono. “It’s ramming the cave entrance. Smells blood. We’ve got to distract it!”
“There’s only one thing a beast knows!” Grant shouted, as he sliced his knife across the top of his forearm, put his arm down in the water, and let the blood flow freely. Almost immediately, the pounding stopped.
One of the larger outriggers moved in towards the cliff. Following Lono’s orders, George ripped up his shirt and tied it tightly around Lono’s chest to prevent his ribs from chafing against the skin inside. Wincing with pain, Lono climbed down the rock face, and he, along with four others, Andrew amongst them, slid quietly into the water. Kalani gave him a mask, knife, and spear, and one of the underwater explosives. They approached the wall where the fish had rammed it, but could see in their lights that the cave entrance had collapsed under the water. Lono put his mouth up to a small opening that remained, and screamed underwater. He waited but heard no reply. He had to surface. Kalani went down and tried to shine his light into the crevice, but the large boulders blocked the way.
One of the men stuck his charge into the opening. When the others had moved far enough away, he remotely detonated it. The explosion broke over them like a huge wave, they waited for it to pass, then swam in to pull out the remaining rocks. As soon as they were able to make a large enough hole, Andrew frantically shoved them aside and swam in.
He found Michael unconscious; most of his body including his injured leg in the red, blood-filled water. He slapped his son awake and forced him to look into his eyes, to focus on his words.
“You’ve got to swim out of here Michael. I’ll be behind you, pushing, but you have to swim. The entrance is too small for us to go together. Do you understand?” Michael closed his eyes. Andrew started to shake him again, until Michael nodded and said he could make it.
Andrew took the weight belt off Michael. The wet suit would help him float. He pulled Michael into the water, and shook him awake one more time. Michael curled over and headed through the narrow opening. Andrew was right behind, pushing on his legs. As soon as Michael’s head appeared Kalani grabbed it. Andrew swam up from behind, held him around the waist and pulled him towards the surface. But just then, on the other side of Michael, he saw it coming.
The sheer size of it stopped him dead. A ton of red colored flesh barreled down on them, its mouth slicing through the water, with knives in place of teeth! Andrew knew they had no chance against this monster; he swung Michael’s body behind him, using his own body as a shield. The monster’s jaw opened in front of him. Large enough to crush Andrew in one bite, but just then Lono swam in from the side, and thrust one of the charges into the giant’s jaw. The fish clamped its mouth shut.
Instantly the grenade detonated. The jaws split into several large pieces, the plates remained whole as they separated from its body. The black eyes burst from the pressure inside, a crack split open its belly. The concussive explosion rocked the men causing Andrew to lose his grip on Michael, and when he turned he saw his son’s body as well as Lono’s sinking alongside the fish, heading towards the bottom of the sea.
Kalani swam down and grabbed Lono. Andrew couldn’t hold his breath. He surfaced, and then went after Michael. He found him on the ledge below and breathed into his lungs. One of the other men swam down to help, and holding Michael they kicked towards the surface, their legs slashing through the water like jet propelled pistons.
They were almost up, the shadow of the canoe in view overhead, when suddenly the boat was hit. A larger shadow slammed the side and knocked the boat over, the men and gear were thrown overboard. Several of the men were thrashing, terrified to suddenly find themselves in the water, trying unsuccessfully to upright the canoe.
But the monster wasn’t done yet.
He saw the armor plated beast swim around the boat, and in one rapid motion it clamped its massive jaw over his son’s body, crushing it, and then disappeared into the depths below.
Chapter Fifty Seven
Strong winds blew across the water and up the shore, gusting winds carrying broken clouds across the three-quarter moon, darting in and out of a thick, dark sky.
A restless sky to match my restless mind, Andrew thought.
Disoriented he turned away from the coast and headed uphill, into the forest. He couldn’t tell if his loss of faculty was due to the darkness, or the on and off light of the moon, or the panic which gripped his heart each time he thought of his son.
He could hear him calling out, over and over Michael’s horror filled scream played in his head, begging to be saved.
If only he’d come sooner, Andrew thought. Realized yesterday. Could he have foreseen this, and stopped it at the beginning when he’d first created the Mutator? It was his fault, his own careless and reckless compulsion to know. He’d killed his son….his son who was just a boy.
It had taken several men to lift Andrew’s semi-conscious body into the whaler. They’d searched for Michael from the boats, but knew it was hopeless. Andrew woke up when they got back to the ranch. He’d stumbled out of the boat and headed into forest on unsure footing. The Nakoans and Grant tried to steer him towards the house, but he’d angrily brushed them off.
He stumbled across the roots of the old Banyan tree, which he hadn’t been back to for thirty some years. Instead of a pile of boards and ropes, it was still in tact, and he climbed the ladder and sat down inside the four by four, tin roofed room. The rain began to fall, pounding on the tin roof over his head. Loud, and hypnotic.
This old fort had been his first sanctuary. He had shared the best years of his life here, with Grant and Moki, until the summer of his fourteenth birthday when their father had announced that Andrew and Grant would be leaving at the end of the summer. His words were etched in Andrew’s brain.
‘You’re going to think this is banishment, but you must believe me, it is because we love you that we do this. Your mother and I’ (he invoked her name, but they knew it was him alone) ‘have decided that you and Grant will go to boarding school at St. Stevens Academy in California. You’ll live there four years and then go on to college.’
He didn’t have to say that part, the college part. He could have not mentioned college, just left it with boarding school, but he added the last bit to turn the screw. That’s how cruel his father was, that’s how much Andrew hated him.
Andrew had been fighting the decision. Trying hard to persuade his parents of the suffering he’d endure. But he was only fourteen, and he didn’t know the language to use. He couldn’t explain that happiness was far more valuable to him than an expensive education, that he’d lose his sanity, his mind, and become unbalanced if they sent him away from Nakoa. If he had to leave his mother.
Instead, he had run to the fort and hidden himself, stayed the night, crying, and cursing his father over and over.
A gust of wind ripped at the fort’s roof.
No wonder I never came back here.
He remembered Michael. A feeling gripped him for which he had no words, a gut wrenching ache that he couldn’t endure. He sat on the wooden planks, his legs drawn up beneath him; his arms wrapped tightly around, and literally pulled himself into the dark place. The dark place deep inside. It was dangerous to go there, he knew, but the pain would be lessened, would somehow become bearable, if he could just stay there a little longer, hugging his chest, and rocking his body back and forth.
A year after his father had sent him away, seated in the far corner of the library at St. Steven’s, he’d heard the headmaster’s footfall crossing the cavernous room. Andrew knew before he was told that his life would never be the same. He’d seen it in his brother’s crazed stare, silently fighting the random verbal torture from his classmates. He had felt it coming in his own obsessive vigil at the library, hiding in the corners, avoiding contact. And he knew it then, when the headmaster crossed the room, approached Andrew, and leaned in close to tell him that his mother was dead.
A loud gust of wind roused him. The rain was still pounding on the tin roof, and he couldn’t tell how long he’d been in the fort. Releasing his legs, he looked around: the floor was covered with water. A wooden box sat in the water in a corner of the fort. The treasure box, he remembered, where they’d locked away their best glass balls and shells. He reached across to pick it up but as soon as he touched the top it fell apart in his hands.
He threw the box from his lap, climbed down the ladder and scrambled through the iron wood forest in the blackness, wet branches whipped across his face, cutting his skin. The pain helped.
Chapter Fifty Eight
“Have you found him?” George asked when Grant entered the kitchen in the middle of the night.
“No. But I think I know where he is.”
“Great Grant,” George said facetiously, “do you want to share that information with us?”
“No. He needs to be alone.”
“I hope you’re right, but I’m worried. After last night, I’m spooked by my own shadow,” George said as he collapsed back into a chair. “I should go check on Emma. When is the doctor coming, anyway?” He started to rise though his body was obviously weary. But instead he turned to Grant, who had remained standing in the door way. “Doesn’t it bother you, being stuck out here on this barren island when you have an emergency like this to deal with?”
Grant didn’t answer.
“Where is Andrew?” George raised his voice. “He should be here. Dammit! He should be the one with Emma, not some stand-in like me!”
“He’ll come when he’s able.” Grant answered defensively. “Not when he himself is in need.”
“All right, okay.” George stood to leave. He’d been uncomfortable around Grant ever since the night of the dinner party when Grant had denied him access to the snail shells. He thought of Grant as a Neolithic Harvard Graduate, one of a breed of extremely sharp students who had the ability to absorb more detailed information than any of their competitive classmates but were frozen and dumbfounded when attempting to utilize that knowledge.
“We should be doing something now, with or without Andrew. I feel so completely cut off – dammit we need some help out here man. I know you have good reason for your fear of military intervention on Nakoa, but we at least need to get some of the UH experts over here. We’ve got a serious crisis brewing out in that bay – and I don’t know what it is! Right after we lost Michael, Andrew started ranting and raving that this was all his fault, kept going on about his … Mutator….Mutavor…or something like that?”
“Kerri,” he practically accosted her as soon as she entered the room, “do you know what in the hell Andrew was talking about? Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
Kerri started to speak, and then hesitated, looking at Grant.
“Dammit Kerri, if you know something, anything at all, now is not the time to hold back. We’ve got to do something!” George yelled.
But Grant stared her down, and she closed her mouth.
“Goddammit Kerri! If you know something, you’ve got to tell us. I don’t know what in the hell is going on out there, but I do know that Michael is dead because of it, and probably Old Man Kane as well. And maybe others if we don’t stop this soon.”
Grant finally nodded in agreement.
Slowly at first, then gaining courage as she spoke, Kerri explained everything, told them about the Mutator and what it had done to the water. She hadn’t wanted it to be kept a secret in the first place, that was Andrew’s wish, but after last night she was uncertain of Andrew’s sanity, and, she agreed with George, they needed outside help immediately. In spite of all the incredible science that was going on – or maybe because of it – she was beginning to wish Andrew had never called her back in Boston.
“It was the Ediacaran I saw,” George said, “Andrew had created it. And those creatures in the cave which attacked Lono…”
“The Ordovician Anomalocaris,” Kerri said indifferently, the wind taken out of her sails.
“Yes, that was it. And the creature I sent over to UH – it was a trilobite. But what killed the old man, Kerri?”
“We don’t know. That would have been early on.”
“Damn. What if it was that Ediacaran that I found, that thing that wa
s sucking on my arm? If I had fallen in and been surrounded by those… oh god, the poor guy…” George couldn’t look at Kerri; he didn’t want to see the fear in her eyes. This moment called for calm rationality, not dreadful second guessing.
“Andrew didn’t know. Not ‘til last night.” She felt the need to defend his actions, as well as her own. “Yesterday, in the lab, he was finally able to recreate the experiment. He knew he had something really powerful, far beyond what scientists around the world had been working on for decades. The bacteria actually evolved, right under the scope!”
“You know what’s really a shame,” George, who did not share in her excitement, cut in. “All this time Andrew’s been looking for the beginning and completely unable to see the results from his what’d you call it, his Mutator. While at the same time I’ve been looking at the results trying to figure out the cause. And if we’d been able to work together, maybe we would’ve seen it earlier, stopped it…maybe Michael would still be…”
No one spoke; a heavy sadness filled the room. Finally Kerri finished. “Well, anyway, Andrew said that when he put the pipettes in the washer, that’s when he realized what had happened. Then he spent the day trying to trace the path of the wash water, and finally found the old plans in the library which confirmed that it’d been washed out into the sea. We immediately thought of Lono’s night dive.” She sat down, exhausted by her confession.
“But you were too late.”
“But we were too late.”
“And the ferocity of these organisms?” George said. “Their behavior would be completely uncontrolled, unmodified. The innate fears which we all share, like fear of falling, fear of sudden movements, open spaces, approaching shadows, maybe even fear of death, were all genetically selected for as survival tools. Early life forms would be terrifying, not only for the unique weapons which they possessed but also for their ferocity; their total lack of fear and social control. Jeez, poor Michael…it must have been like a shark attack….but much worse. And maybe that’s why the monster kept coming back for Michael. Like a robotic death machine, it couldn’t stop.”