Elise and The Astonishing Aquanauts

by Steven Welch

  MONSTROUS

  SCYNDA’S SKIN SHIVERED.

  A wave of color and texture swept over her, from her toes to the top of her head.

  The Razor was coming. There wouldn’t be much time.

  The bullet wound had sealed, but it was painful and the skin around the wound was injured and didn’t speak, didn’t change, just stayed a dull slate gray. There was something still inside her, an object from the man’s weapon, and it burned.

  The howling night winds lashed her with sand, but they were dying away bit by bit.

  Morning was near. The Razor would come with the morning, then. This place would be erased from the world.

  Much to do and no time.

  Her Men of Many Eyes were flanked around Scynda. She caressed the brick face of the Hospital and her skin became it.

  The human child was here.

  Scynda didn’t have time but she could taste the blood of the child. Her skin could sense her oils and scents and fear. The male human who had wounded her with the hot weapon was not here, so there would be no revenge on him. Not today.

  But Scynda would have the child and she would need to hurry.

  *

  Elise woke up and Gwynne was gone.

  She thought nothing of it and gathered her things. Elise kept her kit with her wherever she went. She felt safer that way.

  Charlie the crab followed her as she went to a stair well, stepping over a sleeping child as they went. His legs clicked and ticked on the tile.

  They climbed the stairwell and lifted the bracing that secured the door at the top. She popped out into the morning sun.

  The top floors of the Hospital had been destroyed, sliced away by who knows what, so the stairwell led to the new roof, a tangle of metal and stone that had once been a hospital floor. Now, it was a wide rooftop terrace where the kids could get fresh air, where they could see the city around them, always careful not show too much of themselves. Careful not to make themselves a target.

  Elise stretched as she made her way across the terrace. The wind was light and the air was cold. She could see her breath. She pulled a water bottle out of her backpack and a nutrition bar.

  She walked to the edge and looked out to the west, over what remained of Paris. The crab stayed back from the ledge as if nervous, but Elise didn’t mind heights so she sat down and let her legs dangle over the side.

  The nutrition bar was good, but had a funny taste that she couldn’t place. Chicken? She read the label. “Concentrated Coq au Vin.” Chicken and wine, mushed together into a bar. Well, Jules had been a jerk but Les Scaphandriers knew how to eat.

  She offered a bite to Charlie but the crab’s feelers waved wildly and it tucked its face down.

  “You don’t like this stuff, do you? We need to get you something to eat.”

  Something rustled behind her. Her head whipped around. It was Hemmi.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  He sat next to her, but didn’t dangle his legs.

  “Je deteste hauteurs,” he said, “I don’t like heights.”

  They sat quietly for a moment. Elise considered giving him a bite of her food, but then decided not to give him any. She wasn’t sure that she liked Hemmi.

  “You shouldn’t be so mean to Gwynne. She can’t help that she’s different.”

  “Different gets you killed. And she’s annoying, singing those stupid songs.”

  “The songs mean something to her. Maybe it helps her to think about the lady who protected you, Ms. Dodd.”

  “Yeah, well, Dodd is dead, right? She’s dead and we’ve got to be strong and, you know, forget those kid songs and move on.”

  Elise finished her Coq au Vin.

  “If Ms. Dodd wasn’t dead would you be so mean to Gwynne?”

  Hemmi didn’t say anything.

  Elise thought about the diary of Ms. Dodd. It had contained hand written charts and schedules. The nurse had raised the babies in a structured environment, or as best you could imagine under the circumstances. There had been daily prayer and song and chores and classes in French and English and math and everything else. For the first eight years of their lives, these kids had suffered, but they had some sort of order. Then, Dodd was dead. Where had the structure, the order, the environment that she had built, where had it gone?

  “Are you in charge?”

  Hemmi looked at Elise as if she were kidding.

  “Seriously. Who’s in charge?”

  “Pas moi,” Hemmi said. Not me.

  “Then, who?”

  “Nobody.”

  Elise was about to say something but stopped herself. There was something off to the west. A dark cloud. Too early in the day for the big sandstorms, but maybe this was something different.

  “Hey,” she said, and pointed off in the direction of the black mass on the horizon.

  “Storm.”

  They watched it as it grew. The storm was coming towards them, but as it got closer they saw that it didn’t span the entire horizon, as a proper storm would. Then there was a sound, a vibration.

  That’s a weird storm, Elise thought. It’s shaking the ground.

  A scream erupted from the stairwell.

  Elise and Hemmi turned around just as Zola came running up onto the rooftop.

  They saw the fear in Zola’s dirty little face and then they saw something else, something dark and slender and awful rising up behind him.

  “Hemmi!” he screamed just as a Man of Many Eyes reached out from the doorway and grabbed him by the leg. Zola went down and was dragged back, his screams becoming liquid and shrill.

  Elise and Hemmi had no time to think, no time to react, they were frozen, and they watched in horror as the Man of Many Eyes tore at Zola, ripping him, slicing him.

  There were more screams now from down below, shouts and pleading from the other kids of The Nursery.

  The rumbling vibration from the coming storm was getting louder, more intense.

  Elise felt as if her heart was going to explode from her chest. She glanced back over her shoulder.

  That wasn’t a storm. It was an ebony ship, as big as a city block or bigger, and it looked like a plow, or a razor, and it was tearing and slicing and ripping the city. Debris and smoke churned up from its massive blade and were sucked back into the mass of the thing.

  The coming black storm was a monstrous machine and it was excavating Paris.

  A hiss.

  Elise turned back and heard Hemmi gasp.

  Scynda the Assassin stepped out of the stairwell and onto the terrace, her skin red as blood and her teeth shining like needles.

  She hissed again and Elise saw that her eyelashes were tentacles that writhed and twisted around her face.

  Charlie the crab scuttled toward Scynda. Elise grabbed Hemmi by the wrist and pulled him, running, frantic to get away.

  But to where?

  The rooftop was a tangle of debris, stone, wood, and metal rods. Places to duck down and hide for a moment but was there another door, another hole they could drop into, another escape?

  Elise and Hemmi ran, not looking back, the entire hospital beginning to shudder under their feet.

  “Is there another door down?”

  Hemmi shook his head “no,” his eyes wide.

  They stopped hard at the other side of the rooftop, their feet practically at the edge of a five story drop to the street below.

  Elise turned back and saw the ebony ship in a hideous cloud of flying debris and destruction, a metallic tornado devastating everything in its path, now less than a mile away and it was so huge that it dwarfed the skyline.

  There too, was Scynda. She had tried to pursue the two of them, but Charlie cut her off and was standing, claws raised, between the kids and Scynda.

  Scynda was still smiling. How could something so terrible be so beautiful? She was sleek, her color shifting and shimmering from red to granite gray, her skin changing as well, her eyes piercing and hypnotic. Elise could see the wound
in her shoulder, a place where the skin didn’t change, where her flesh was dead. But those pointed teeth, those awful pointed teeth and claws.

  She didn’t seem eager to move closer, not willing to do battle with the crab. Elise saw why. Scynda was waiting. The Men of Many Eyes, her companions, emerged from the stairwell and slinked out onto the rooftop at her flanks. There were five of them.

  “No,” Elise said and made to run toward them. They would kill Charlie. Hemmi grabbed her and pulled her back.

  The crab stood its ground. The hospital was shaking now, and Elise could see dust rising as if the entire structure was about to fall apart. The roaring, sucking, overwhelming sound of the giant black ship was so loud now that it hurt her ears. The ship was a half mile away and already it became the horizon, an ebony wall devouring Paris.

  One of the Men of Many Eyes lunged for the crab and received a slashing from a claw. Blood sprayed. Two of the others leapt in and went for its legs. Charlie pivoted and slashed again. Scynda stayed back, swaying and moving as if somehow directing these assassin pawns. They went for the crab again and one of them got a leg and tried to flip it. A claw struck and the Man of Many Eyes lost a hand.

  It wailed.

  Elise had the dive knife out and was running towards them without even thinking. Hemmi couldn’t hold her back.

  Not her crab. Charlie was her only friend in this world.

  She fell as the building shook under her feet. Scrambled up and ran again.

  They had the crab now, three of them.

  Scynda moved in, grabbed a leg and wrenched, flipped Charlie. The dark red crustacean was swinging its huge claws, but it was on its back now. The eyestalks waved back and forth, desperate and frenzied.

  Elise couldn’t get there fast enough, her feet were clumsy, she fell again and scraped her face and Hemmi was next to her and this time he was with her, trying to help.

  Scynda smiled and plunged one of her clawed hands into the armored chest of her crab.

  “No!”

  The men of many eyes began striking at the crab, evading the flailing claws and legs, the blackness of the enormous ship swallowing the sky behind them, a coming storm of absolute death and destruction.

  Scynda struck Charlie in the chest again and again. The first strike hadn’t pierced the shell, but the second and third did, Elise could see the crab shudder and kick wildly.

  She screamed.

  It didn’t matter anyway because they were all dead in seconds. The black death ship as tall as a mountain was on them and there was no stopping it.

  “What’s that?” Hemmi asked, pointing.

  Elise looked up to the east.

  The submarine of Jules Valiance could fly, and apparently it had guns because it was firing bullets with deadly efficiency.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  TO THE WEST

  THE SUBMARINE OF Les Scaphandriers soared out of the east, a shining blue and gold missile as big as a small bus, and tracers blazed white hot streams from its gun turrets.

  The bullets hit the targets as if radar guided.

  The Men of Many Eyes erupted in a dark explosion of mist.

  Scynda looked up at the coming submarine and her eyes grew wide. The tentacles of her lashes writhed.

  Her skin, the talking skin, became as white as clean paper in the instant before a dozen heavy lead slugs hit. Scynda, the great assassin, the chameleon, the thing that haunted the dreams of the living, died instantly.

  The sub, propeller blades spinning from port, top, and starboard, swooped to Elise and Hemmi and hovered a couple of feet from the debris covered terrace. The blades kicked up dust but Elise couldn’t even hear them over the roar of the coming black ship.

  A porthole opened on the side of the sub and a little staircase dropped down.

  “I can’t leave them,” Hemmi said. He was crying and before Elise could say anything he was off to the stairwell and down into the hospital.

  Elise ran to Charlie the crab.

  Her friend lay on its back in a wide pool of blood and tissue that was the only thing left of the Men of Many Eyes. His eye stalks moved slowly right and left and then found her, focused on her. His armored legs were still.

  Elise could see the wound in his chest and she started to sob. She embraced him and the eyestalks followed her. She didn’t know if she should move him or flip him and the black ship was almost there and she didn’t want to leave him.

  “Idiot girl, we must go.”

  It was Jules. He was beside her.

  “No. He’s my friend.”

  “Ah, then he must come as well. Never leave a friend. Grab him.”

  Elise lifted one side of the crab, Jules got the other, and they ran back to the hovering sub.

  The cabin of the sub was like that of a small plane, with a narrow aisle and seats on either side. They set Charlie on the floor. Jules moved to the pilot seat and strapped in. His finger jabbed a button on the control panel.

  The porthole door began to close.

  “The kids down below, we can’t leave them.”

  Jules looked back at her and there was sadness in his eyes.

  “There is no time.”

  He was right. Beyond the thick glass forward window of the sub there was nothing but a hurricane of flying debris and a wall of complete, utter, blackness.

  The destroying ship was on them. If they didn’t fly away now, they would die.

  “This will be terrifying,” Jules said.

  The door shut, and the sub shot up so fast that Elise hit the top of the cabin with her head and then plummeted back to the floor, dazed and in pain.

  Jules Valiance had the sub in a steep climb.

  He looked out of the port glass, down at the city below. The Hospital was moments from being bulldozed under the mile wide swath of the black machine and consumed like everything else around.

  Jules turned back to the task of flying the sub. The air was turbulent, and he was concerned about dust clogging the vents, debris striking the propellers. The vessel shuddered as he went into a sharp turn back over the Hospital.

  “Mon Dieu. The little fellow.”

  There was a tiny figure on the rooftop. It was waving at them.

  Jules dropped the nose of the craft and spun down like a dart, the throttle shoved hard, the engines straining. Elise was thrown backward and grabbed onto a seat as she went to stop herself.

  “Perhaps you should obey traffic regulations and avail yourself of the safety belt.”

  Elise was dizzy and scared but she found the strap and clicked it at her waist and shoulders as the sub roller coastered down to within a few feet of the terrace.

  Jules popped the port hatch.

  Hemmi scrambled inside.

  “Strap in,” Jules said, and he throttled down and pulled back and the sub shot up almost vertically just as the mountainous black machine turned the Hospital into so much dust.

  The terrifying sound of the black machine faded behind them as the three propellers strained and the submarine bucked.

  Elise felt wetness on her face. Her head was cut, and she was bleeding. Hemmi sat stone silent, his eyes closed and mud streaks on his cheeks where his tears had carved dark paths. His breath was ragged. She looked to the floor of the narrow aisle between the two rows of eight leather and chrome seats and saw her crab there, legs slowly moving and eye stalks limp.

  “What can we do for him? How can we help him?”

  Jules spoke without looking back, his eyes locked on the sky ahead.

  “He is a crab. His lower carapace has been damaged and I have nothing with which to treat him. I’m afraid that…” he stopped. “Wait. Oui. There is something. Hold on. Might get bumpy.”

  He pushed a button and twisted a knob at the controls and auto pilot engaged with a kick and a drop.

  Jules was at the crab in a flash. He stared into its eye stalks.

  “Rest, monsieur chariot, you will not face heaven’s butter sauce today.”

&nbs
p; He lifted the creature gently but with effort, the floor lifting and shifting under him because of the turbulence, and moved him aft. There, Jules hit a switch and a floor hatch slid upwards. He disappeared below for a few moments.

  Elise watched anxiously. Seconds went by and her hands went to the buckle on her harness. She couldn’t just sit there.

  Jules popped up out of the floor, sealed the hatch, and scrambled back to the pilot seat.

  “Where is he?”

  “The outrageous missions of Les Scaphandriers presented great danger and there was always risk of swift, surprising, violent, sometimes ridiculous death. The brave victim of such fatal doings would be put in cold storage, down in the bay of the Aquaboggin, until a suitable time came for burial at sea with honors. This cold unit was also a wonderful way to chill our beverages, as you can imagine. Your crab is there now, cooled so that his metabolism slows and perhaps, the grip of death can be delayed. This is the way of the oceanic crab, perhaps your big fellow is no different.”

  “He’s on ice?”

  “Oui.”

  Jules pulled hard on the rudder and the flying sub shuddered and dropped hard to the right. Elise looked out of the starboard window and saw the mountainous black machine getting closer below them.

  “What are you doing? Let’s go,” she said.

  Jules said nothing as he swooped down closer and closer to the wall of metal that was chewing up the city below.

  Jules had to see. He had to see what it was that was eating his beloved Paris.

  The sub flew until it was perhaps a hundred meters from the roaring cataclysm of dust that billowed up from beneath the thing.

  Black metal plates with spiked rivets. Rust and dirt on the surface, but it was smooth and went on forever. Great rotating blades, like fat wheels, slicing and grinding and cutting the earth below as the great metal wall moved forward. Elise could see debris getting sucked up beneath the mountain of metal as if being vacuumed.

  It was a great black machine as big as a mountain that chewed up the earth and devoured what it wanted.

  The flying sub tilted up and around and they were over it again, flying just along the ridge of the thing.

  There was a rectangle of black, a control tower with stout metal rails that ran for dozens of meters along the top of the machine.