Ben reached up and yanked down on the throttle. The boat leaped forward, the beast thrown backward off its feet. There was a great thud as it collided with the stern wall, and for a moment Ben feared the boat would overturn. Its bow had risen with the sudden acceleration, but rather than smacking back down into the surf, it plowed forward that way, the bow tilted up and gravity dragged Ben back against the captain’s chair. If only the beast had been thrown out of the boat…
A harsh scrabbling sound as the beast recovered its balance. Ben peered around the side of the chair and saw it crawling toward him. Its great talons carved vicious grooves in the floor, the carpet tearing easily, the wood beneath splintering. Ben pushed up on the throttle but realized his mistake too late. The beast tumbled forward into the stairwell, its torso bumping down the steps.
Toward Julia.
No!
Ben grabbed the only thing at hand, a red fire extinguisher that was clipped to the wall. Snatching the extinguisher from its cradle, Ben leaped onto the beast’s back, raised the canister and brought its hard base down on the back of the beast’s head. The beast growled, pushed up on an elbow. Ben raised the canister again and delivered a bruising blow in the small of the back, and this time he did incur enough of its wrath to make it push up out of the stairwell after him.
Ben scuttled away toward the rear of the boat, the beast seeming to go on forever as it rose to its full height. But at least it was moving away from Julia.
The beast stalked closer. Black liquid pattered from its various wounds. The knife handle jutted absurdly out of its calf, but the beast behaved as though the wound was merely a matter of course, hatred and hunger the only emotions inscribed on its hideous caprine face. Ben pulled the pin on the red canister, got swayingly to his feet and aimed the nozzle at the creature’s eyes. He’d just begun to squeeze the handle when a long, muscled arm looped toward him and smacked the canister aside. It struck the top of the low boat wall and tumbled into the sea. Ben had sprayed white foam in its face, but only enough to momentarily blind it. He glanced left and right and ripped open the first storage compartment he spotted. Within he found flotation devices, a gas can and behind that, a couple of oars.
Ben swallowed.
The gas was useless. If he set the beast on fire, the whole boat might go up in flames. The oars, though… If he could knock the beast out of the boat, perhaps he could simply motor them away.
He reached in, tossed out the red-and-white ring buoy so he could access the other items. He made to grab the gas can, but forgot how his palm had been skewered until he lifted the can halfway out. Hissing, he dropped the can on the deck, but thankfully, it didn’t spill open. He glanced at the beast; it was wiping white foam out of its eyes and growling in irritation. Ben grabbed an oar, cocked it back and let loose with his hardest home-run swing. He caught the beast under the chin, its horned head snapping back. It bumped against the passenger’s chair and rebounded at him, snarling. Ben swung again, but the beast caught the flat oar blade, ripped it out of his hands and slashed down at him with it. Ben dodged the oar, but before he could gain his balance, the beast kicked him in the belly with a huge hoof. Ben was propelled backward into the stern wall, the wind knocked out of him.
The beast gave him no time to recover. In an instant it had cast the oar aside and lunged for him. Ben rolled sideways but only partially avoided the beast’s groping talons. It snagged his shorts, hauled him closer. One razor-sharp talon sheared through the side of his shorts and dug a deep gash in his thigh. The beast slashed at Ben’s bare torso, tore three long stripes through the flesh of his stomach. Sucking in air, Ben sprang to his feet, and before the beast could react, he kicked it in the face. The beast’s scimitar teeth clicked together and a look of surprise and pain showed in its features. Yet in the next instant, it had regained its poise and swung an enormous black fist at Ben’s face. So sudden was its attack that the blow caught Ben in the mouth and sent him flailing backward against the side wall. His bottom lip had been pulverized, the flesh split so badly that his mouth immediately filled with blood. But this was a secondary consideration, for he had completely lost his equilibrium, was now tipping over the edge of the boat. He clutched the wooden rail mounted atop the side, but his body continued over. Then he was dangling one-armed along the side of the boat, his body trailing through the Pacific.
The beast stalked over, and Ben was fleetingly certain it would simply disengage his fingers and send him splashing into the ocean. But it seized him by the shoulders and hauled him back inside the boat. Then, without letting his feet touch the ground, it cinched its long fingers around his throat.
It lifted him, one-armed, into the air. Then Ben watched its jaws open wide and knew what it had planned.
A bloody feast before it took his daughter back to the island.
Chapter Six
Ben seized the creature by the wrist, dug his fingers into its flesh, but its grip on his throat only tightened. He kicked madly at its groin, its stomach, but it scarcely jolted at all. Its maw yawned wider, wider, the teeth curved and tapered like scythe blades, the tongue resembling some deadly black viper eager to inflict its fatal bite.
It lowered Ben toward its open mouth, a dark gleam of delight in its pupilless eyes. Ben gave off squeezing the creature’s wrist and set to battering its face, but it barely seemed to register the blows. As Ben drifted nearer and nearer to the creature’s waiting mouth, he thought of Julia, who was likely close to succumbing to malnourishment. He thought of Joshua, who would grow up without a father after all, the boy so young he’d barely remember Ben after he was gone. And Claire, his wife of less than a year. She was a better woman than she realized, and now Ben would never have a chance to remind her of that again. Because the beast was throttling the life out of him, bringing his face ever closer to those dripping, lethal teeth.
Ben looked into Gabriel’s eyes. He could see where he’d shot the beast earlier, the left eye that hadn’t really mended from the bullet wound. He remembered something Joshua had said to him back at the airport, something that hadn’t struck him as odd at the time:
Don’t lose my claw.
The beast drew Ben nearer, its mouthful of discolored spears readying for a fatal bite. Its foul, pestilent breath—the odors of rancid meat and decaying vegetation—enveloped him. Ben yanked the eagle’s talon from his pocket, clenched it between his fingers and plunged it into the beast’s remaining eye.
The talon tore the beast’s eye in half, a paroxysm of sclera and blood splattering over Ben’s knuckles. Roaring with rage, the beast dropped him to the floor and tumbled backward into the controls. There was a brittle snapping sound, the boat’s slow progress coming to a complete halt. Then the beast’s immense body yawed toward the stairwell, and this time there was no preventing its fall. The boat jolted as it crashed to the cuddy cabin floor. Ben scrambled forward, dove into the stairwell and landed on top of the writhing beast. The creature’s upper body lay at the foot of the mattress, but from where it was it could easily seize one of Julia’s legs. Ben clambered over the beast, knowing he could not simply haul it back up the stairs. He lifted Julia from the mattress as gingerly as he could, then hurried past the roaring monster, whose hands were still clutching its hemorrhaging eye.
Ben scuttled up the stairs into the daylight, which had grown brighter, the rain dissipating. It mattered little, though. All that mattered now was finding a way to finish the beast. He had the lighter and the gas can, but he couldn’t very well torch the bastard. It all came back to somehow getting the beast off the boat and driving away.
Ben placed Julia on the cushioned bench on the starboard side of the boat near the stern. The boat’s gas tank, he saw at a glance, was almost half full. But the throttle, he realized with horror, was totally ruined. When the beast had fallen against it, it had snapped off most of the control, and what did still remain was twisted beyond functionality. Ben grasped
the pitiful nub that had once been the throttle and attempted to move it up or down, but it was no use.
Oh Jesus, he thought. The boat was incapacitated. Which meant there was no means of escaping the beast even if he did manage to wrestle it off the boat. And that left them…
…where? There might be more weapons downstairs, but what good were they against the monster? Unless he could stuff a grenade in its mouth and blow the damned thing into a million pieces, it would simply keep coming. He’d pumped eight bullets into the beast back in that clearing, and a few minutes later it had pursued them into the ocean like some killer whale.
Ben took his hand off the busted throttle and closed his eyes. The only sounds were the bubbling hum of the MerCruiser’s idling engine and the noises emanating from below. Only these noises were not bellows of rage and torment. They were…
Ben crouched in the stairwell and saw the beast huddled over Elena Pedachenko’s corpse, its head bobbing as it feasted on her entrails.
Throat dry, Ben grabbed the gas can and returned to the stairwell. He unscrewed the lid, straddled the far edge of the stairwell so he was directly over the beast’s cloven hooves. Then, he upended the can, let the yellowish gasoline gurgle out. The wet chomping noises ceased immediately, a low-pitched, questioning sound echoing up from below. Then the beast looked straight up at Ben, one eye a mutilated hole, the other coated with a milky, mottled film. The rest of its face, Ben saw with revulsion, was sloppy with gore mined from Elena’s abdomen. Something that looked like a purple sausage was impaled on the creature’s teeth. Rivulets of blood spilled over its chin and throat.
It was climbing up the steps again, moving, Ben realized, by touch rather than sight. Ben reached over and grasped the lighter.
He hesitated. What if the whole boat went up with Julia still aboard? Worse, what if the beast simply flopped into the ocean to extinguish the fire and then climbed back aboard to resume its relentless onslaught? No, he had to send the monster back down the stairs and then seal it inside with the cuddy cabin door.
Ben stepped over the chair and seized an oar with the intention of forcing the beast back down the steps, but before he could act, the beast’s forearm cleaved the air and cracked Ben on the bridge of the nose. Ben was thrown into the back corner of the boat opposite his daughter, his shattered nose pumping blood over his chest. Worse, the beast seemed not to be interested in finishing Ben now, but was instead groping around the other side of the boat.
Looking, Ben realized with a sick jolt, for Julia.
Ben toiled to gain his feet, but the world went gauzy. He had no idea how much blood he’d lost, but if he didn’t end this immediately, he’d lose consciousness, and that would be the end of both Julia’s life and his.
With a supreme effort Ben was able to partially focus his eyes. The beast was nearing where Ben lay, and at a glance Ben saw that Julia’s tiny form was still bunched in the opposite corner of the stern.
The oar was only a couple feet away. Ben reached for it, hoping the beast’s vision was too damaged to notice, but just before Ben’s fingers grasped the wooden handle, a weak cry sounded from his daughter. Ben froze. The beast whipped its head toward Julia, a rabid leer stretching its blood-slicked mouth.
“NO!” Ben roared.
The beast’s reflexes were evidently still sharp because the moment Ben cried out, it was on him, its talons rending the flesh of his arms, which he’d thrown up to protect himself. Ben quit trying to stave off the attack and rolled sideways in an attempt to escape. But once on his stomach the beast pinned him down with a huge hand. With the other it set to work slashing at his back, scourging his flesh and filling his body with ghastly, sizzling agony. Ben knew in another moment it would be ended; if the beast reached his spine, it would tear through it like a celery stalk, and then Ben would only be able to watch, paralyzed, as it did what it pleased with Julia. Either it would devour her the way it had Elena, or it would spirit her back to the Sorrows. It all came to the same thing.
His eyes burning with the sting of tears, Ben reached back and grasped the only thing his fingers could reach—the creature’s phallus. With all his might Ben squeezed it, and with a deep bellow of pain the beast pawed at Ben’s wrist to disengage his grip.
But Ben was not going to let go. He twisted around as the beast rose, and now he clenched his gored right hand and aimed a brutal uppercut at the beast’s stomach. The punch was true, the beast doubling over and knocking Ben’s forehead a glancing blow with a wild elbow. Ben lost his hold, landed on the floor, but he found the oar immediately, and without pause he pivoted and let loose with another vicious swing. It caught the beast on the top of the head and consummated the damage Ben had done to its horn earlier. The whole thing shattered, the ancient brown fragments slapping the bench seat beyond. The beast glared up at Ben with a damaged eye, and Ben jabbed at it with the rounded handle of the oar. The squishing sound it made filled Ben with an insane species of joy. The creature reeled against the starboard wall. Ben could smell the gasoline wafting not only from below deck but also from the creature’s soaked haunches, but he couldn’t set it aflame. Not yet.
To keep it off balance, Ben raised the oar, chopped down at the side of its head. Ben raised the oar again, tore down at the beast, but its left arm shot up, caught the oar blade, then cast it into the ocean. Ben lunged for the lighter, which lay on the floor near the stern wall. He got hold of it, but before he could turn, a holocaust of pain exploded in his left bicep. The beast had bitten into his arm, its teeth sinking deep into his muscle, the pain indescribable. His arm still fixed in the beast’s steely jaws, Ben opened the lighter with his bad right hand and flicked the wheel. A dim glow appeared. Ben forced the lighter toward the beast’s gas-soaked haunch, but the fire went out. The beast’s teeth sank deeper, deeper, the great razored teeth grinding against Ben’s humerus. Moaning, Ben flicked the wheel again. The small flame appeared. Ben held it to the glistening fur.
Then a carpet of blue flame enveloped the creature’s lower body, the beast releasing Ben’s arm and staring down in mute dismay. Ben shoved it backward, and the creature blundered toward the stairwell. Ben was briefly hopeful it would tumble down the steps, but at the last instant, it caught itself. The flames continued to crawl up the creature’s mountainous body. Ben reached down, gripped the gas can. The creature lunged for him.
Ben whipped the mostly full can at its face and smashed it in the nose. It staggered back. Ben swung the can again, but the creature caught his wrist, squeezed. The can tumbled into the darkness of the stairwell and overturned, the glugging sound just audible above the uselessly humming engine.
The beast was a seven-foot-tall torch now. The flames shimmered the air around it, yet impossibly, it refused to relinquish its hold on Ben’s wrist. Ben stepped toward the beast, hammered its chin with a head butt, and though he drove the beast back on its heels, it was still two feet away from the plunge into the stairwell and the spreading pool of gasoline. Then the arm not squeezing Ben’s wrist snaked around Ben’s back and drew him closer, like some hellish waltz, and Ben felt his chest and stomach blistering from the flames. The beast opened its horrid fanged maw for one more bite. Screaming with pain and fury, Ben drove his thumb into the creature’s half-seeing eye and jerked down. The beast howled. The flames swarmed over Ben’s hand, but the creature’s hold was finally broken. Ben braced himself, and despite the way the flames scorched the flesh of his palms, he pushed on the beast’s chest and drove it backward toward the stairwell. The beast plummeted, shrieking, into the darkness, and without pause Ben whirled and hooked the ring buoy with his useless right hand and scooped up Julia with his left. He bounded toward the stern and leapt as far as he could into the water. There was a low whump behind him as the gasoline pool in the cuddy cabin ignited. Ben hit the water, doing all he could to keep Julia from going under. She did so anyway, briefly, and then he was lifting her onto the ring buoy and kicking
madly away with his sneakered feet. From the boat he heard the beast’s tortured squalling. Ben felt slow, sluggish, but they moved steadily, the boat floating gradually in the other direction. On top of the ring buoy, Julia was coughing and spluttering, the sounds heartbreaking, but he dared not stop kicking for anything. They were perhaps thirty feet away when there came a high-pitched zipping noise. Knowing exactly what it was, Ben rose out of the water in an attempt to shield Julia. But when the explosion came, the blazing wind from the blast still propelled them forward, Ben’s already bleeding back was singed by the gust of superheated air. He was aware of the hail of shrapnel assaulting the water around them. The ring buoy rocked wildly, but Ben kept Julia firmly perched atop it. To his vast relief, she was no longer spluttering or gasping for breath, but she was crying, and to Ben’s ears this was for once the most amazing and welcome sound he’d ever heard.
“We’re gonna make it, honey,” he whispered. “Daddy’s gonna keep you safe.”
Julia wailed, a lusty, full-throated cry, and though Ben hated to see the pinched face and the gummy tears squeezing out of her eyes, he silently gave thanks that his baby was still alive. He peppered his little girl’s reddened face with kisses. And moments later, when he spied the pieces of wreckage that had been catapulted in their direction, he was only a little surprised to find amongst the chunks of boat hull and splintered pieces of wood a half-melted lifejacket, the orange-and-white fabric looking like something that had been toasted over a campfire. Careful to keep Julia as safe and dry as possible, Ben worked the lifejacket over his shoulders, not yet bothering with the clasps. They were probably too melted to fasten anyway, and he was damned if he’d take both hands off Julia even for a moment.
Castle of Sorrows Page 38