by Jeremy Bates
When three hours passed, she made the decision to circle Demon Island, not knowing what else she could do but unwilling and unable to do nothing.
This was now her seventh circuit and she had all but lost hope of spotting them.
Where they were completely eluded her. If something had happened to Marty and Dr. Montero on the dive, why hadn’t Radhika and Jacqueline returned to the Oannes? Surely they wouldn’t still be waiting around in the painted cavern they’d described? Surely they’d know that if Marty and Dr. Montero hadn’t yet returned, they wouldn’t be returning? At least not via the water. It was possible they had discovered where the lava tube emptied into the ocean. If the dive had been more difficult than they’d anticipated and they’d run low on air, it was possible they had decided not to backtrack through the tube but to do so on land. They might then have become lost in the rainforest. This was what Pip hoped for, but it didn’t explain Radhika’s and Jacqueline’s absence. Had they arrived at the same conclusion as Pip? Had they gone looking for Marty and the doctor? Had they become lost themselves? Had the villagers turned hostile and come after them? Were they holding them against their will?
If you’re drinking moonshine right now at some jungle orgy party, Marty, I will never forgive you. I will—
Starting in surprise, Pip squinted through the pilothouse’s windshield before jamming the binoculars hanging around her neck to her eye sockets. She eased the barrels slightly apart, and when the circular field of view focused, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
A merfolk was lying motionless on the beach.
∆∆∆
Pip ran helter-skelter to the aft deck workshop. Under one bench were two charcoal hard-shell tactical cases. She yanked them both out, ignored the lighter one, and opened the lid of the other. She removed the assault rifle cushioned within high-density foam, as well as the magazine, which she knew was loaded with 5.45mm underwater cartridges. Slinging the weapon over her shoulder, she skipped down the ladder to the aft hydraulic loading platform. She unclamped the tender that was strapped to it, shoved the inflatable boat into the water, and hopped aboard. It was equipped with an outboard motor, but right then she preferred stealth over speed and opted for the oars. When she reached the beach a hundred feet from the mermaid (the Oannes’ momentum had kept the ship moving even after she’d throttled down the engines), she pulled the tender up onto the sand, then ran barefoot toward the creature.
Washed in silvery moonlight, the merfolk was the most hideous yet beautiful thing Pip had ever witnessed, a human-like hybrid being that could have been one of Dr. Moreau’s Beast Folk stitched together via vivisection. Its bone-white neck and torso were smeared with bright blood. Eyes closed, it very well might have been dead.
Pip glanced back at the tender. She had to bring it closer so she could lug the merfolk’s body into it. Yet what if the thing was still alive? What if it dragged itself into the ocean before she returned?
She would have to make sure it was dead. It would be a shame to kill it. But even if it was alive, it wouldn’t be for long, not bleeding out like it was. And if she allowed it to escape, she would never forgive herself. Marty would never forgive her.
Marty.
Did Marty do this to the creature? It seemed too coincidental that the day he went hunting for merfolk, one turned up injured on the beach.
So perhaps he’s safe and sound, after all, she thought. Perhaps he’s captured a merfolk and is waiting for dawn before attempting to transport it back to the Oannes. Perhaps everything is going to be all right…
Pip raised the assault rifle, pressing the backplate snug against her shoulder. She had fired the weapon underwater on several occasions under Marty’s supervision, using small bony fish such as mullets and herrings as target practice. She had never fired it on land, however, and she recalled Marty telling her the cartridges used underwater and on land were different. Nevertheless, she didn’t think it would matter if the magazine was filled with aquatic rather than conventional bullets. She wasn’t sniping from four hundred meters away; she was firing point-blank.
The only real question, she decided, was where to shoot the merfolk? She didn’t want to destroy its brain or other important organs that would shed scientific light on its biology. Perhaps a burst of bullets to the throat would be best…?
“Je suis désolé,” Pip muttered under her breath as she aimed the gun. She was about to squeeze the trigger when ice-cold pain erupted inside her chest. Dumbfounded, she looked down at herself to find a bloody stingray barb protruding from between her breasts. She experienced no pain, only confusion, as she fell to her knees.
The coldness in her chest seemed to encase her entire body, freezing it, so she could no longer move or feel her extremities…and this was likely a good thing. Because the merfolk that had launched the spear through her back was slithering across the sand toward her, mouth agape, jagged teeth bared, black eyes shining with hatred and hunger.
Chapter 45
MARTY
Marty and Elsa continued in the direction they had been heading when they’d encountered the first merfolk. They had planned this course of action before diving for the assault rifle. Their reasoning had been that it would take them nearly thirty minutes to return the way they had come; that was a hell of a long time to be in the water, even with the protection of the firearm. Moreover, they would be all but helpless when passing through the tight restrictions, unable to turn around and fight back.
Continuing forward, on the other hand, was a gamble. They could encounter dead ends, become lost, or run out of air before finding their way to the open ocean. Yet given the alternative of being skewered with a spear, it was a gamble they were willing to take. Chances were good, they’d reasoned, that they were close to the exit. The distance they had already traveled and the strong currents they had experienced suggested it—not to mention the presence of the merfolk. Early humans holed up in the mouths of terrestrial caves rather than deep within the systems to be close to their hunting grounds, and Marty had assumed the same likely held for merfolk as well.
Elsa was in the lead, with Marty close behind her. The pain in his side had subsided, and he believed the wound was not as bad as he’d initially imagined. Every ten or twenty seconds he would glance behind them and expect to see any number of merfolk following in pursuit. There were never any there. The assault rifle had apparently scared them away for good. This was not surprising, as it had decimated one of their kind before their eyes. While white sharks and orcas and other pinnacle predators had formidable jaws that could tear them apart, those jaws had to catch them first. Marty simply had to point a strange device at them, and they were dead. The risk-reward trade-off was simply not worth it.
Elsa was looking back at him and pointing to the floor of the lava tube.
Parts of it were covered with scattered pockets of sand.
Marty experienced a wave of overwhelming relief, but he wasn’t going to celebrate until they were out of the water and on dry, solid land.
Rather quickly they began to see coral and urchins growing on the solidified lava, as well as small fish swimming in schools. Then there were no longer walls to either side of them, and the midnight-black water lightened to something slightly less opaque.
They surfaced at the same time. Marty shoved his mask up his forehead and removed his respirator from his mouth. The star-filled night sky had never been so big or beautiful.
Elsa removed her respirator and blurted, “We made it!”
“Let’s not celebrate until—” The rest of the sentence died in his throat. Some distance down the beach, the Oannes floated a little way out to sea. “It’s Pip! She must have come looking for us.”
They swam toward shore. When it became shallow enough to stand, they tugged off their flippers and ran side-by-side up onto the beach. Elsa stumbled to her knees, then fell on her chest in the sand, laughing in a way that sounded like she might be crying too.
Marty knelt nex
t to her and offered his hand. “There will be time for that later. Let’s get to the ship. Pip and the others will be worried sick about us.”
Wiping tears from her eyes, Elsa took his hand and they hurried at a brisk walk toward the hulking research vessel. Yet after only a few meters she squeezed his hand tightly and came to an abrupt halt.
He was about to ask what was wrong when he saw what had startled her. Ahead of them, huddled together on the sand, were the silhouettes of what appeared to be two or three merfolk.
Marty’s initial zap of fright was promptly pushed aside by reason and calculation.
They were on land. They no longer posed a serious threat.
This is your chance to kill one, he thought. Your chance to finally prove to everyone that you were right all along. Hurry! Before they get away.
“Stay here,” he told Elsa quietly, and then hurried toward the merfolk.
One was lying off on its own, unmoving. Another was sitting up, its pale back to him, bent over and…feasting on something? Marty had a bad feeling in his gut even before he made out the “something’s” head and frozen, terror-stricken expression.
Oh Lord, Pip, no.
A mournful sound had unwittingly escaped his lips, causing the merfolk to whirl around in alarm, its bloodied mouth dripping with torn flesh, its black eyes unafraid.
Aiming down the assault rifle’s iron sight at the center of the creature’s swollen forehead, Marty felt only cool rage as he squeezed the trigger and ended the blasphemous thing’s life.
Epilogue
25 YEARS LATER
RBC Place London, London, England
Jointly hosted by the Society for Marine Mammalogy and the European Cetacean Society, the World Mammal Conference was a biennial event that drew interdisciplinary scientists from every continent. This year it was a jam-packed six days filled with academic presentations, panel discussions, round tables, poster sessions, and workshops. Capping off the final evening was a sold-out closing banquet. The cocktail dinner was followed by a live performance of a band playing soul, funk, R&B, and pop. Presently the waitstaff were bustling about the auditorium, topping up empty champagne flutes in anticipation for the evening’s main event: the presentation of the lifetime achievement award to Martin Murdoch, emeritus professor of marine biology at Oxford University.
Dressed in a tuxedo and polished wingtips, Marty sat at the table of honor near the front of the large room. To his right was Radhika, ravishing in a ruby-red, off-shoulder gown. She had aged gracefully over the years, her brown eyes remaining bright with humor. At some point she’d developed a white streak through her glossy black hair à la Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein. She had been self-conscious of it at first, but he repeatedly told her it lent her a certain sophistication, and now she wore it with undyed pride. Also seated at the table were their three children. Sara, the eldest, had Rad’s eyes, sense of humor, and thin physique. She was in her final year at Bangor University in Wales, completing a degree in marine biotechnology. The other two kids had fallen farther from the tree and showed no interest in following in their father’s footsteps. Joe, fifteen, had his sights set on becoming an AI psychologist, and Freddie, eleven, had been talking nonstop about becoming a space tour guide after returning from his first family trip to the moon the year before.
Directly to Marty’s left was a conspicuously vacant seat that had been reserved for Dr. Elsa Montero. By the time the world had learned of the existence of merfolk, she had quietly gone off the radar. Marty had tried to get in touch with her over the years but had zero luck. The first he’d heard from her was when she’d rung him the week before to offer her congratulations on his lifetime achievement award. He invited her to the event, she demurred, he persisted, and she ended the call by telling him she would think it over.
As it turned out, she had decided not to come, and Marty was more disappointed than he would have anticipated; he had been looking forward to seeing her again.
To Rad he said, “Too much bubbly. Be back soon.”
“Don’t be long,” she replied, pecking him on the cheek. “They’ll be starting any minute.”
Marty made his way to the restroom, returning the smiles and nods of the people he passed. He relieved himself, rinsed his hands, and exhaled deeply—something he seemed to do more and more the older he became—as he stood in front of a mirror, studying his reflection. At seventy, he looked to himself as he always had, only with more wrinkles and gray in his sideburns.
Twenty-five years, he thought, reminding himself of the time that had passed since the events of Demon Island. Nevertheless, what happened then, and in the weeks and months that followed, still felt like yesterday.
When the Sri Lankan Coast Guard arrived at the island in response to the distress call Marty had made from the Oannes, they established a crime scene around the bodies of Pip and the two merfolk, and then whisked Marty and Elsa into custody aboard their two-hundred-plus-foot cutter. Senior officers interrogated them for an hour before they were flown by helicopter to a navy base in Tangalla, a large town on the southern coast of the country. They were held in separate rooms and grilled once again by a slew of high-ranking military officials. This continued throughout the night, causing Marty to object that the circumstances of the detainment felt more like a de facto arrest, and if they were going to charge him with a crime, charge him. When they didn’t do so by noon the following day, he refused to cooperate any further without an attorney present. An hour later they released both he and Elsa on the provision that they hand over their passports to the police when they returned to Colombo, and that they would not attempt to leave the country for the foreseeable future.
Marty spent the next two days organizing to have the Oannes piloted back to Colombo, while also trying to find out where Rad and Jacky were being held, as neither of them were answering their phones. Frustratingly, all the people he spoke with insisted they didn’t know anything about their whereabouts. Then he received a call from a nurse at a Colombo hospital who informed him that Rad had been admitted into the ER with significant orthopedic injuries. When he arrived at the hospital, he wasn’t permitted to see her, as she was undergoing emergency surgery. Twelve hours later the head surgeon explained to him where and how she had been discovered on Demon Island, he’d inserted rods into both her tibias, as well as a combination of screws and pins in the bones of her feet and ankles…and he wasn’t sure whether she would walk again.
Marty visited her in the ICU the next morning. She was awake but barely responsive due to whatever concoction of drugs she was being fed through the IV drip. Aside from the injuries to her legs, which were bandaged and stabilized in splints, she was missing most of her visible teeth. He had her transferred to a private room on an upper floor, and he spent every day at her side while she recovered.
During that time, Navy divers retrieved Jacky’s remains—what were left of them—from the bottom of the flooded cavern. After Rad detailed to military investigators how a merfolk had attacked and drowned Jacky, she and Marty were pressured to sign non-disclosure agreements preventing them from disclosing what happened on Demon Island to any other party, private or public. The same day the chief of police of Galle, the district in the Southern Province which had jurisdiction over Demon Island, stated during a televised press conference that “Daily Mirror reporter, Jacqueline DeSilva, and French national, Pip Jobert, were attacked and killed off Peytivu by a rogue shark that had since been captured and killed.”
Pip’s funeral was held in her hometown in France. Marty wasn’t invited, and even had he been, he wouldn’t have been able to attend as he was still prohibited from leaving Sri Lanka. Yet he called her parents the day after it to offer his condolences. They seemed grateful for this and told him something about Pip that he never knew: her birth name was Brigitte. “Pip” was a nickname she’d been given in high school, short for Pipsqueak. In typical Pip fashion, rather than let it bother her, she’d embraced it to the point it became her
preferred name.
Jacky’s funeral was a week later in Colombo. While it was covered extensively in the Sri Lankan media, it was a small, family-only affair. Marty attempted to contact her parents, but he was told by the help who answered the phone that they had no interest in speaking with him.
When Rad was released from the hospital, and returned to her house in Cinnamon Gardens, Marty arranged for a top dentist to replace her missing teeth with implants. When the swelling in her gums receded, it was as though she had never lost any of her teeth in the first place. He then hired a live-in physical therapist to get her back on her feet. Rad approached the locomotor training aggressively, spending hours each day performing task-specific, high-repetition movements. With the help of a weight-supporting treadmill, parallel bars, and crutches, she eventually regained enough balance, strength, and muscle memory in her legs to walk unassisted.
Marty visited her each day, stayed the night more and more often, and eventually checked out of the hotel down the road and moved in with her. Their relationship became one of mutual respect and friendship, far surpassing the transactional bond they had enjoyed before Demon Island, and he proposed to her six months after leaving the hospital.
While honeymooning in the north of the country, photographs and videos of the two dead merfolk were leaked to the public (as Marty always knew at some point they would be). A day later further leaks revealed that Jacky and Pip had not been killed by a rogue shark but rather man-eating merfolk, and that the infamous Dr. Martin Murdoch was at the center of this latest merfolk controversy. International news outlets jumped on the wild story, and Marty once again became an overnight sensation and punching-bag, inspiring wall-to-wall media coverage, viral memes, and fierce debates on message boards between skeptics and conspiracy heads.