by Rory Harper
The tentacle started to slide back outside, and I fell on it. I wrapped my arms and legs around it and dug in. “Come on, people! Help me hold this thing down.” Nobody but me knew what was going on, but everybody piled right on and pinned that tentacle to the floor.
Razer was one of the ones near me. I let go of the tentacle when it seemed to be trapped pretty well. “You, hands, just hold onto it for a minute. Razer, you still got that ugly ol’ Bowie knife in your room?”
“Surely do, Henry Lee. You figure on relaxing with a little whittlin’ after your invigoratin’ swim?”
“Sort of. There’s some kind of sea monster outside that tried to eat me, and I’m aggravated with the son of a bitch.”
He went to get his Bowie knife while I turned to the iron room and pushed its curtains aside. I rummaged around until I found what I wanted. I pulled out two ten-foot lengths of three-inch line pipe and hammered the wing nut down on the unions to make one twenty-foot length. Then I dug out a carton full of victaulic clamps.
Everybody watched me while they hung onto the whipsawing tentacle. Razer pushed out of his room and handed me the Bowie knife, still in its scabbard. I unsnapped the catch and shook the scabbard off. Ten inches of gleaming razor-sharp tungsten carbide steel glistened in the torchlight.
The four- and five-inch victaulics were too small, but the six-inch one fit just right when I slid it over the tip of the three-inch pipe, then slipped the Bowie knife in between its gasket and the outer wall of the pipe. I pulled the clamp arm down, and it snapped tight over the haft of the Bowie knife. The blade protruded over the end of the iron pipe just right. I stood up and hefted it in both hands.
I was half proud of myself. I’d made a pretty good harpoon out of things that were laying around the house.
I pulled aside the curtain into Doc’s room and maneuvered the length of the harpoon until the tip pointed at the hole in the top, which was sphinctered closed.
“Sprocket!” I yelled. “I’m going outside!”
I turned to the people who were watching me. Behind them, another group was still holding down the tentacle.
“I doubt the first one will do the job. If y’all could see about finding some more knives and making more harpoons, they might come in handy.” I raised my voice. “Those of you holding down that tentacle --- soon as I get situated topside, start pulling it in as much as you can. We need the monster as close up as can be managed.”
A minute later I was poked halfway outside in the howling hurricane again. Sprocket pitched around, and slung sideways, and crashed half through waves on occasion, but it was practically peaceful compared to the banging around I’d gotten when the monster had me.
The harpoon felt light as a toothpick in my hands. It only weighed about a hundred pounds. Exactly the right length and weight for skewering uppity sea monsters.
I didn’t see nothing for a few minutes. It took that long for the boys inside to haul in that tentacle. Then, slowly, thrashing and fighting, the sea monster was drawn closer. I still couldn’t make out the details of it in the dark, but I could see enough to aim the harpoon.
I wanted to wait until it was slid right up next to Sprocket. Tentacles whipped through the air, slapping onto Sprocket’s body and curling around him. For a second one of them was in reach of the harpoon. I jabbed at it. The Bowie knife sliced into it, and the tentacle recoiled and disappeared into the darkness again.
Then the bulk spurted nearer. The monster wasn’t trying to get away at all. It didn’t mind getting in close and dirty. Flailing tentacles surrounded me. A couple of them wrapped around the harpoon and tried to tug it out of my hands, but I held on. Sprocket bucked and sunfished under me, then the monster got a good grip on him and dragged him underwater. Sprocket reflexively closed his sphincter around my waist. I held onto the harpoon while the water swirled around us. Then the monster flipped Sprocket completely upside down, and I lost the harpoon.
I pounded on his hide so he’d let back inside, but I guess he was busy and didn’t notice. I realized shortly that I couldn’t hold my breath forever.
Fortunately, before I turned completely blue and exploded, Sprocket surged out of the water again, simultaneously relaxing his sphincter enough for me to slide back inside.
The room was dark. The warts had all gone out again. I felt my way toward the curtain leading to the corridor.
“Henry Lee?” asked the chief, so close I jumped and gave out a yip. I reached out. He thrust a length of pipe into my hands.
“You put that last one into the monster?” the chief asked.
I shook my head, then realized he couldn’t see it. Sprocket lurched under us, and I almost dropped the harpoon he’d given me. “No, sir. But this one ain’t gonna be wasted.”
“Good. They got a little assembly line out in the corridor by the iron room. More knives and other pointy objects in Sprocket than I would have thought possible.”
Sprocket seemed to settle for a moment, so I grabbed the bottom rung and pulled myself upright.
“Thanks, Chief.”
“Sure. I’ll be waiting with another one when you want it. Uhh … Henry Lee?”
I was halfway up the ladder. “Yeah, Chief?”
“I really was your friend until everything got in the way. I’m sorrier than you’ll ever know about how it’s all turned out.”
Sprocket’s sphincter opened, and I maneuvered the harpoon through the hole. “Me too, Chief.” I don’t know if he heard my words. The wind might have blown them away. I went back into the storm.
Matters hadn’t changed much. Sprocket and the sea monster still wrestled.
I got a sighting on the monster. I waited until the pitching stopped for half a second, then drew the harpoon back over my left shoulder with both hands and twisted around halfways to pull my back and arm muscles as tight as possible. When they’d reached maximum tension, I held for an instant longer, then whipped the harpoon around as powerfully as I could. I didn’t see it hit, but I heard the whistling shriek the monster let out when it drove deep into him.
I pounded on Sprocket and he loosened his sphincter again. I dropped into the room. The illumination warts glowed feebly now, enough to show the chief’s smile as he handed me another harpoon.
When I got outside again, I saw that I wasn’t alone anymore. Doc and Razer poked out of holes nearby.
“You didn’t think we was gonna let you hog all the fun, did you, Henry Lee?” Razer shouted.
Then Big Mac started laughing behind me, poking out of his own hole.
“Hot damn!” he yelled. “This here beats the wrestling matches seven ways from Sunday! Sprocket and the Crew versus the Mystery Sea Monster in a winner-take-all title bout!”
Another long screech erupted from the sea monster when four more harpoons slammed into it.
When I come back up with another harpoon, Big Mac had one, too, but Doc and Razer had decided on a change of weapons. Doc cranked up his thirty-ought-six and pumped slug after slug into the sea monster, alternating with Razer blowing holes in it with his .40 caliber rifle.
Big Mac flung his harpoon. I drew back and was about to let fly, when Sprocket’s tongue slapped me lightly on the chest. The length of it wound around me, sliding up my body until it reached the harpoon and curled around it.
I got the idea. I let go of the harpoon and Sprocket whipped off into the darkness with it.
“Go get him, boy!” I shouted hoarsely. “Now you got something to do it with!”
It was downhill from there for the sea monster. Between us all, we’d messed it up good. Sprocket put the finishing touches to it.
He drilled it to death.
* * *
Shortly after the sea-monster-attack part of the day ended, we got back to the submarine adventure part again. We were still far from shore in the middle of a hurricane.
Sp
rocket blew the air out of his bladders and dove for the bottom. Doc found under his bed, miraculously unbroken, the bottle that we’d been passing around. The same bunch of us congregated again in Doc’s room and passed it around while Sprocket headed for bottom.
After a few sips, I started to relax. The hard part was behind, I figured. Then the sphincter in the ceiling blew loose.
I went from leaning comfortably against a wall to drowning in the darkness within two breaths. Doc and Razer gagged and choked somewhere nearby. The flood swirled me against the ladder, and I managed to grab one of the rungs as it went by. The ladder was directly underneath the high-pressure jet of water blasting in through the sphincter. For a second, it dwindled to a trickle, as Sprocket tried to tighten down again, then spurted out again to a three-inch-wide gout.
Sprocket had been weakened by the fight with the sea monster, and he couldn’t keep that sphincter ring muscle tightened down completely against the outside water pressure.
Without even thinking about it, I lunged up another couple of rungs and plunged my fist through the sphincter. I forced it through the ring muscle until I was up past my elbow. Sprocket’s muscle tightened down around my biceps. With something other than itself to clamp down on, the sphincter was strong enough to shut out the water.
I hung there while the room slowly drained. We later figured out Sprocket sucked it in through the tip of his tongue, then pumped it into a bladder through his internal valve system.
Within a couple of minutes, Doc found a five-inch bull plug in the iron room. After I pulled my arm loose, we forced it, rounded end first, against the incoming water until it fit snugly in place of my arm. The sphincter clenched around it just fine.
I sat down on Doc’s bed, trying to flex some life back into my paralyzed arm. Sprocket had clamped down on it pretty hard. We all watched the bull plug for signs of another leak.
“Might look through the iron room some more,” Doc suggested to Razer. “We better be ready if another one gives way.”
A couple did, mostly up front. Sprocket had gotten so wrenched around by the sea monster, not to mention the other fun during the past few hours, that some of those muscles must have got just plain exhausted. We plugged them off, and they held. But we stayed paranoid the next couple of hours.
* * *
I was dreaming of being dry when somebody said, “Henry Lee, wake up. Something’s wrong.”
I snapped to attention and rolled out of my bed before I was awake. The words whispered to me had ruined my sleep dozens of times before. They could mean anything from stuck pipe to a flaming, explosive blowout. I relaxed when I realized where I was and that the chief had been the one shaking my shoulder. “What’s the matter? Sprung another leak?”
“No. I think we’re on shore.”
We stepped out of my room into the corridor. It was littered with sleeping bodies. Beyond a certain point, we had all been forced to quit worrying and just catch up on our sleep.
“What makes you believe that?”
He led me to the front of the corridor, just behind Sprocket’s mouth.
“Listen,” he said. “What do you hear?”
I leaned forward and cocked an ear. “A high whistling sound. Real faint.”
“Right. Like the hurricane blowing. But if we were on the ocean floor, we wouldn’t hear that. And if we were floating, where we could hear it, Sprocket would be rolling in the chop. He’s steady as a rock.”
“You know, you may be right, chief.” I grinned and rubbed my hands together. “We made it! Goddam, we made it!”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. There’s a problem. He won’t open up.”
“What do you mean?”
He pulled at the thick curtain of flesh that was the back of Sprocket’s mouth. “I mean this is clamped shut. He won’t let us out.”
I looked at him pityingly. “You mean he won’t let you out, Chief.”
He turned red. “Maybe that’s it.”
I rapped on the corridor wall to get Sprocket’s attention if he wasn’t already listening. “How about letting us out now, buddy?”
When I tried to pry the curtain open, Sprocket refused to relax it for me, either.
“Huh. Maybe he’s still protecting us from the hurricane. I imagine it’s pretty rough out there if we can hear it from here. Probably all kinds of debris flying through the air.” I raised my voice. “I just want to take a quick look, Sprocket. Won’t even step out of your mouth.” He still wouldn’t cooperate.
“What the hell,” I said to the chief. “Might as well take it easy till the hurricane blows over. I trust Sprocket to let us out when it’s safe, and not a minute sooner.”
“It’s hard to wait, after all we’ve been through.”
“How come you’re in such a big hurry to get out there, Chief? You got some music to face, you know.”
He shook his head. “Not if I can help it. That’s why I want to leave now.” I looked down when I felt the point of the knife in his hand press into my stomach.
“Aw, Chief.”
“I tucked it away when we were making harpoons, Henry Lee. Tell Sprocket to let me out.”
“Or you’ll cut me?”
“I don’t have any choice.”
“You never seem to have any choice but to hurt people, do you? When are you gonna learn? Every time you pull this crap, you just get in further over your head. Go ahead. Cut me. I ain’t cooperating any more.”
I held my breath while he nudged me with the point again. I guess I was still being a dumb ol’ country boy. I couldn’t make myself believe he’d actually stick it in me.
After a second he sighed and pulled the knife back. “I can’t do it.”
“Good. Now, let’s go back, and—”
“But I can slash my way out of Sprocket if I have to,” he interrupted. The edge of the knife moved to press against the curtain. “Tell him to open up or I swear I’ll make my own opening.”
“Chief, for the love of—”
He jabbed the knife into the curtain. Then again. Sprocket moaned. “Open the goddam curtain!” he screamed. He stabbed a third time.
The curtain relaxed and the chief pulled it open with his free hand. I watched Sprocket’s blood drip onto the hallway floor.
“You won’t get far, Chief. It’s all been a big waste. Everything you’ve done.” Behind us, half a dozen hands woke up and watched us. The chief ignored them.
“It wasn’t as easy as it should have been, that’s for sure.” He undid two of the buttons on his shirt. The leather bag containing the emeralds hung around his neck once more. “But a half a million dollars should make it worth the effort.”
He nudged me into Sprocket’s mouth. The curtain closed behind us. I started to make a move in the darkness, but the knife pressed deeper into my side.
“Open wide, Sprocket,” the chief said. He poked with the knife again. “Time for me to check out. Open up, Sprocket! Don’t make me use the knife again.” Sprocket’s mouth opened.
Sprocket stood right inside the seawall, not a hundred yards north of the Bali Room. I’d been right about the serious major hurricane weather. The wind screamed into Sprocket’s mouth, driving with it rain as cold and hard as frozen buckshot.
Suddenly my ears felt as if ice picks had stabbed into them. I yawned enormously and they popped. The chief did the same, keeping the knife firm against my side.
“You won’t get twenty feet in that,” I shouted to the chief.
“Not your problem, Henry Lee. So long.” He stepped off Sprocket’s lip and staggered as the full force of the wind hit him. It shoved him ten feet, then knocked him down.
Sprocket’s mouth snapped shut before I could see whether he made it back up.
I thought about trying to convince Sprocket to let me go after him. Then I thought about where the chi
ef must have gotten the emeralds from, and forgot about everything else.
Doc was lying with his head in a pool of blood when I tore into his room. He was still alive, though.
* * *
The chief had bashed him pretty hard. We begged with Sprocket to let us get medical help. But he wouldn’t open up, even when we got abusive. He plain refused to let anybody out.
I’m ashamed of the memory, but I was thinking about poking the curtain with a knife a couple of times to change his mind, until Doc came to on his own.
He said we should wait. He didn’t know either why Sprocket was being such a pain in the rear about it, but we were all alive so far because of him. Best to trust him a while longer. We waited over nine hours. Doc seemed to have nothing worse than a terrible headache and a superficial gash. The first aid book listed all the symptoms of concussion and internal hemorrhaging, and he didn’t appear to be possessed of any of them.
When Sprocket’s mouth finally opened and I stepped out, the hurricane had moved on, and a crowd stood around Sprocket. Star and Sabrina and the other girls from Lady Jane’s crew were right at the front of the crowd.
Star tasted as good as I remembered.
* * *
We told the DPS troopers about the chief being on the loose, armed and dangerous. They identified him an hour later as the mystery patient in the intensive care unit at UTMB Hospital, just one floor below the ward Doc and a half-a-dozen other hands from Sprocket and the ship had been checked into for observation.
Star and me went down to see the chief. He’d been found unconscious in the street by a Texas Ranger who was on the lookout for looters. The hurricane had finished tearing up the island only thirty minutes after we came ashore.
The chief had made it almost two blocks before he dropped.
Me and Star held hands and looked at him through the thick glass window. They had him isolated in a huge pressurized vessel, with only one husky male nurse sitting beside his bed reading a book.