by E. Coulombe
“I can’t Grant,” the pilot answered. “This storm has just dropped down on us, with winds up to 60 mph already, and the rains have started. There’s no visibility. We’ll have to wait for it to pass.”
“What’s the forecast?”
“Not as bad as it could be. It’s headed your way, and the system will pass through sometime tonight with scattered showers tomorrow. We might be able to go then.”
“We’ve got to take the barge,” Andrew said when he heard the news.
“No way, we can’t take the barge out in that. We wouldn’t make it across the channel.
“Maybe not, but we’ve got to try.”
“But it will take hours, Emma may not last.”
“I know it’ll be difficult. With that storm headed this way, most likely we’ll be right in it.” Andrew clenched his fists. “But we have no choice Grant. If we don’t do it….look at her,” he said, gesturing into the room. “We’re losing her. We’ll lose the baby. I can’t….” he covered his face so his brother wouldn’t see him cry.
The nets worked as Lono had hoped. As soon as the men had placed them in the water, the thrashing Strunius became entangled, and started to sink towards the bottom. Kalani instructed the men to pull the nets up to the boat, and haul them in to shore if possible: better not to lose their hand woven nets.
Lono worried; they hadn’t seen the monster that had killed his friend Michael.
“I thought you stuck dynamite inside its mouth, that’s what I heard,” Kalani said.
“To one I did, yea, but another one came and got Michael.”
“Well, I no see fish that size float to the top.”
“But still, it could be dead. It’s got this plate of bone, or something, covering the whole head, maybe too heavy to float, just sinks dead on the bottom. I’m going in to take a look down there.”
“Now Lono?” Kalani asked incredulously. “I don’t know. Gettin’ late and looks like storm over Kauai.” Together, they watched the horizon to the south. Deep gray clouds were building, the wind was picking up.
“Hey, Lono, see over there,” Keikoa said pointing off the bow of their canoe at a large dark grey mass in the water. Kalani paddled from the rear while Lono readied his sling. They got there first and headed straight towards what looked like a massive stain on the water. As they neared they could see, in the darkening daylight, the stone-faced creature floating, its large belly exposed, its head hidden underneath the plate. Thirty feet long at least, the size of a small whale.
“Yeah, that’s the one. That’s what killed him,” Lono said softly. Kalani held the boat steady, Lono reached inside the canoe and took out Keikoa’s unloaded sling, to hook the beast and haul it into shore. The boat glided in, gently tapped the side of the beast.
But the creature wasn’t dead. The hit on its side awakened the stunned monster, and it spun over, opened its mouth to a full six feet wide, and suddenly Kalani found himself staring into a large dark cavern surrounded by razor sharp blades. Kalani fell off the far side as the fish locked down on the rear of the boat, snapping the thick koa frame like a toothpick; shattered. The other men were thrown from the canoe as the stern went down. The weight of the beast upended the canoe, lifting Lono, his feet planted firmly under the gunnels astride the canoe, high into the air – he stood poised, spear in hand, arm pulled back, and launched his spear, into the unprotected dorsal fin on the monster.
The beast jerked, released the boat from its jaw and took off as Lono held tight onto his sling and was pulled into the water, dragged over the surface, flipping and spinning behind it.
He wouldn’t let go.
Moki, his father, shouted at him from the nearest canoe, “Lono, let go, we can’t keep up!!!! Let it go!!!”
He tightened his grip, and the water became choppier as the gusts preceding the storm blew in. Lono was thrashing on the surface. The beast dove, and Lono went down with him, carried toward the reef below. The water was shallow here, and the beast came back up. The boats encircled him, he dove again.
Lono wrapped his arm around the spear and pulled himself onto the back of the beast. He straddled the monster, gripped his hand around the point of the spear which was sticking out of the other side of the foot thick dorsal fin. Lono just had time to fill his lungs with air before the beast dove again, trying to free itself from his weight.
Lono released the strap on the knife holster, gripped the knife tightly to his chest so that the force of the fast moving water wouldn’t jerk it free of his hand. This time he knew what he had to do. The rage inside of Lono, the anger, the seething warrior arose. He gripped the spear in his left hand and slid off the beast, which was swimming at a, breakneck speed to rid itself of the danger on its back. Lono held on with his right hand and slid over off the right side of the beast, with his left arm fully extended, the pain from his muscle holding hard, the warrior spirit within him.
The beast stopped suddenly, thrashed from side to side, and Lono couldn’t hold on. He was thrown hurling, head over heels, spinning free in the water. He stopped, righted himself, and looked straight into the deep black orb of the creature’s eye. Without thinking Lono plunged his knife into the center of the void. “This is for Michael” he screamed, just as the creature clamped its steel jaw around Lono’s leg.
An arm shot down from the surface, and Lono grabbed it, was pulled up, dragging the monster from his leg. Nohea, the oarsman in the second canoe, yanked Lono into his boat, with the creature hanging off of his leg - half dead, but not letting go. Nohea took his knife and sliced the creatures head off behind the amour plates. He had to use both hands to pry open the steel trap jaws, locked shut like a pig trap around Lono’s leg. The other boats pulled up alongside. Lono lay unconscious, bleeding badly, but still breathing, in the bottom of Nohea’s two man canoe. Kalani jumped out of the canoe which had rescued him, kneeled down on the outrigger beam of Nohea’s canoe, ripped off his shirt and wrapped it around a deep gash in Lono’s crushed thigh. The five-man canoe pulled alongside and carefully they transferred Lono’s body into it.
With chewed up paddles and gouged sides, the remaining canoes pulled into the cove and up to shore. The men jumped from the boats, guided them one by one through the narrow channel, lifted them across the reef, and up onto the sand. Rapidly the storm moved in, winds whipping across the water, blowing the surf towards the shore, and sand blasting up the beach, biting their legs as they secured their boats and moved gear.
Then it stilled. The air was silent. The men spoke only to cooperate. Working as a well trained team they carried Lono and the gear deep into the forest, using their machetes to chop down small trees, large leaves, and soft ferns. Woven with passion fruit vines, a dry shelter for the fire and the body of the young man appeared. Lono lay still, unconscious. Someone made a poultice of awa leaves, and wrapped it around his injured leg.
The bleeding finally stopped just as a heavy rain began to fall.
They carried Emma down to the barge and lay her on a makeshift bed inside the metal cabin-like shelter, the only structure on the otherwise flat deck, also housing the steering wheel. Only Andrew was allowed to come along, even though more men might be helpful on the crossing. Grant didn’t want to risk it.
In six foot high waves, sets to eight, Grant fought to steer the barge in a southeasterly direction, across the seventeen mile channel separating them from Kauai. Grant worked the wheel to keep the nose headed straight into the swells, and they progressed slowly across the channel. But Emma seemed to weaken by the minute, and they had only gone a mile when Andrew tried to wake her but couldn’t.
“Oh my god, Grant, I’m losing her,” he cried, holding her hand looking like a little lost boy. “What have I done? What have I done?”
“What do you mean what have you done? You haven’t done anything to her,” Grant answered emphatically, glancing back over his shoulder to see his brother’s face. He yanked the wheel back to the right to head straight into an oncoming swell. “What
’s going on Andrew? Why are we really out here in this storm?”
Andrew collapsed onto the floor beside Emma’s bed and draped his hands across her belly. “I killed my son, and now I’ve killed my wife.”
“STOP!” Grant bellowed. “You didn’t kill your son, George killed him! Blame him if you’re going to blame someone. He made those boys go out into those waters searching for his damn specimens,” Grant slammed his hand down hard on the steering wheel, “Michael would still be alive if it weren’t for him!”
Just as Andrew started to answer Emma opened her eyes. “Where are we Andrew?” she looked at him with frightened eyes, “what’s happened to the baby?”
“We’re trying to get to Kauai, Emma; you need to have an operation to save the child.”
“We’re on the ocean,” she looked around the dingy metal room, saw the rain splattering against the window and felt the boat heave with the oncoming wave. “Oh my god Andrew, I can’t have the baby out here.”
“We thought we were losing you.”
“It’s better now. The pain is gone, not like before, more like the first time with Michael.” Her face dropped as she said his name.
Andrew walked outside of the small metal shelter, breathing in the air, needing to be alone and give thanks, to whomever, for her life. For bringing her back to him. He started to weep, tears mixed with rain dripping down his face, off his chin. He cried and cried, kneeling next to the railing.
An oncoming wave smacked the boat hard, turned it sideways for a moment out of control, and the next one was, even larger, hit the boat broadside, streaming over the steering house. When they came out of the wash, Grant fought for control, and headed the boat once again into the swell, but when he looked out - he didn’t see Andrew.
He shut off the motor and ran to the back of the barge where Andrew had been kneeling. He shouted his name over the sound of the wind-whipped rain and listened for an answer. Finally, twenty feet behind the boat, he saw Andrew surface. He ran inside the wheel house, re-started the engine and turned towards his brother. When he reached him he shut the motor again and threw an inner tube tied to a rope over board. A perfect throw landed it on Andrew’s arm; he quickly put his head through, and immediately Grant pulled him towards the boat. Andrew pulled as well, a short distance away.
“Come on in Andrew, I’ve got you now,” Grant coached as he tugged on the rope to bring him in closer. But something caught his eye to the right and he looked to see, just below the surface, a spear headed fish.
“What is that thing Andrew? Looks like a baby marlin?”
The spear stuck up out of the water. Andrew saw it too. “Wow, that’s a Strunius. Thank goodness they don’t get any bigger, or at least not in the fossil record. Just the same, get me the hell out of here!”
Grant pulled hard on the rope, still a good ten feet to go. He saw another Strunius on the left, then two more on the right, their spears sticking up out of the water. “Dammit Andrew, you’re surrounded by them. They’re coming at you. Kick like hell!”
But Andrew’s kicking seemed to draw them towards his legs. One took a bite out of his foot. Andrew yelled with the pain.
“Hold onto the rope, wrap it around yourself. I’m going to tow you away from them.” Grant went inside and gunned the engine. Andrew twisted on the end of the rope, and Grant dragged him away from the fish, but when he looked back they were catching up and he couldn’t go any faster for fear of making Andrew lose his grip.
“Stop Grant!” he shouted, as the rope had twisted around his leg and was dragging him backwards on his belly. Grant shut down the engine, but Andrew kept coming towards the boat, and the rope got caught around the still spinning propeller. Grant grabbed his knife and raised his leg over the railing, ready to jump in.
“No, don’t! I’m not worth it Grant, just save Emma!”
“Shut up!” Grant shouted at Andrew, as he jumped into the sea. He swam down and cut the rope from his brother’s leg. “No one is going to die! Do you hear me? No one is going to die!”
They kicked out to climb in the boat just as the spearheads caught up with them. In a raging fury Grant sliced through three at once. But more came. He thrashed the water around him and they backed away for one second, giving him enough time to cut the prop free. He swiped at them again, cutting three more when they came near. One bit his leg, another tried to cut into his foot, but his boot protected him. One of them stabbed through his calf. With his free hand he grabbed onto the bottom rail.
Andrew was already up on the barge, flat out on the deck, leaning over the edge, with a knife in one hand, his free hand trying to get hold of Grant’s shirt. More came. They went after Grant’s thigh, in a feeding frenzy, ripping through his jeans, taking away parts of his flesh. Andrew looked down and saw a wall of red stone below his brother. What the hell? The Dunkleosteus? The stone wall started to move.
In a split second he threw his knife on to the deck and grabbed his brother’s shirt, pulling him from the water, with the weight of ten spearheads hanging on him. The vast jaws of the Dunkleosteus opened under Grant’s feet, the massive cleavers ready to slice, just as Andrew pulled him from the water. But the monster wasn’t after Grant. It took four of the spearheads in one bite, and then dropped back down to the ocean floor below.
Grant and Andrew collapsed on the floor of the barge, which was still bobbing on the water, rising with each swell. Blood was running from their legs, the rain washing it over the side – forming a dark pool in the ocean.
“Screw you and your damned monster,” Grant whispered as Andrew crawled into the wheel house. Grant started the engine and raised himself up. As the boat crested another swell, he looked through the windscreen for one second, just long enough to see the UH research vessel coming towards them. Andrew had collapsed.
Chapter Sixty Four
“Well we never expected to turn this into a delivery room,” the doctor joked. “A healthy six pound baby boy,” he told them all while sewing stitches into Grant’s leg. Andrew stood beside Emma, while Grant sat propped up on the next bed over. At first, the doctor explained, he thought he’d be performing an emergency C-section, because it seemed as though the baby was stuck in the birth canal. But after he made a larger cut, the head was able to move through, and the body followed. “Still it was a struggle,” he added, “but Emma seems fine.” He smiled at her as she lay exhausted on the next bed. Her eyes followed the baby which a student had taken to the sink to bathe. Kerri assisted him.
“But the baby’s premature doctor, shouldn’t he be in an incubator,” Andrew asked.
“Premature? How many months?”
“We thought six.”
“Well, I think you miscalculated. He seems fully developed. No problems that I can see, except for symptoms of mild spina bifida. “With spina bifida, at this spot,” using Kerri as a model he pointed to a spot on her lower back, “the skin doesn’t completely close around the neural tube.”
“What does this mean,” Kerri asked, “Is the baby going to be all right?”
“Yes, fine.” The doctor answered. “It isn’t severe. Mild spina bifida is actually quite common, about one in every two thousand births. Often people are born with it and they don’t even know it. Just a depression in the lower back where the vertebrae aren’t completely closed, marked by just a tuft of hair at the site.”
“I didn’t know it was that common.”
“Yeah, surprising isn’t it? For as little as we hear about it.” Just then one of the oceanography students called him over to the make-shift changing table they used to dress the baby.
“Pretty amazing isn’t it?” Andrew said to Kerri. “It occurs so frequently that it almost makes you wonder….”
“Wonder what?” she asked abruptly.
“Nothing.”
Kerri looked baffled. She’d gotten fairly good at reading between Andrew’s lines. There was something more. “Tell me doctor; isn’t spina bifida caused by the spinal column growing too ra
pidly? So that it gets too large for the protective covering?”
“We don’t really know, but that’s a good guess.”
“But doesn’t it usually start in the first trimester,” Andrew asked.
“That’s right, first thirty days normally.”
“Then that can’t be it,” Andrew muttered.
“Can’t be what?” Kerri whispered conspiratorially to Andrew, but she suddenly stopped, her eyebrows raised in shock. “Andrew, you don’t think….”
He shook his head rapidly and looked into her eyes, and for a fleeting moment she saw it again, that same frightening intensity, his eyes flickering and moving uncontrollably. “Nothing, I’m just guessing. I’ll feel better when we have him examined in Honolulu.”
“Well in any event,” the doctor sounded puzzled, “it’s a moot point now, come look at this.” They stood next to the doctor and looked down at the baby’s back. The opening was nearly sealed, the spine properly closed. “Odd,” the doctor said to Andrew. “I didn’t notice this before either.”
“What?”
“The spinal column is big, far bigger than normal,” he said gently turning the infant onto its side. A large swelling could clearly be seen running the length of the newborn’s back. “And the brain stem, too,” he added. “See that thickening on the back of his neck?”
“Will he be all right?” Andrew said, concerned.
“He appears to be fine, all his vital signs are normal. It may be a curvature of the spine. He’ll have to be x-rayed before we know more.” The doctor wrapped the baby and gently placed him in Emma’s arms. He went back to Grant, and indicated the door to Andrew and Kerri. “But in the meantime, let’s not risk further contamination.”
A light drizzle fell on them as they went out on the upper deck. George was waiting there with Sam. He leaned over the rail, hands clasped in front, eyes closed, and after a silent prayer he raised his head and looked out to sea.