by Greig Beck
CHAPTER 09
Pacific Ocean, off Pacific Beach, San Diego
Re-Evolution: 007
Drake was back out on the bay, heading out, and already about 2,000 feet from the shoreline where the water darkened as the sea bottom sloped away to about 200 feet of deep blue. There was a slight chop on the surface, but his streamlined Nellie cut through it like a hot knife through butter.
Several times last night and once this morning, the weird blackouts had occurred, accompanied by the tingling that started in his belly and then washed right through him. No one he talked to seemed to have noticed, and when he brought it up with a guy on the dock, he just stared back as though Drake probably needed to see a doctor, rather than it being an external phenomenon.
One thing that the Amazon had taught him was that life was short and should never be taken for granted. Enjoy it while you got it…so, he simply pushed it from his thoughts.
He flicked his head, whipping water from his eyes, and stared dead ahead. It was a good day for sailing, and he thought it odd that no one else was out here with him. In the distance, he saw there was a lump in the water, and he craned his neck trying to get a better look, but it seemed to vanish before his eyes.
One of those weird-ass giant jellyfish, he bet. This time, he decided to get a picture and kept heading toward it. But he gave the tiller a touch so he wouldn’t sail right over the spot just in case it was something half submerged, like a log or lost shipping container. His Nellie was a Catalina Capri, built for speed and beauty, and definitely not for breaking ice packs.
The wind gusted a tad harder and the boat lifted a little and began to skip and dance across the surface. Drake was forced to lean back to stop it flipping. He was closing in on the spot he’d seen the dark shape, and as he leaned out even further, he caught sight of the thing almost right below him. His heart jumped in his chest.
There was a huge head only about 10 feet down, nearly as long as his boat, and it was attached to a long whale-like body—and worst of all, it was now trying to keep pace with him.
Drake couldn’t tear his eyes away and saw it was turned slightly on its side so as he looked down at it, it was looking back up at him. Then to his horror, he could tell it was coming up.
“Jesus Henry Christ!”
He tacked away, his hands moving furiously to drag in ropes, keep the tiller tight, and also reposition himself to rapidly build up more speed. He twisted on the gunwale to look back and saw the lump in the water breach, coming after him.
There was a plume of water mist like that from a whale, but unlike a whale, there were two instead of one, as if there were two spouts close together, like from a freaking big nose.
Drake felt his heart galloping now, and he turned ahead to see just how far he was from the shoreline—still 1,600 to 1,800 feet at least.
He angled even steeper into the wind and headed directly in. Drake was skimming now, cutting it fine between top-speed and tipping over. And that was the last thing he wanted, because he had a pretty good idea that if he went in the drink, he wouldn’t be climbing back out.
He snapped his head around for a quick look back and saw the lump still there, not gaining, but not falling away either. The huge bulk of the thing was making V-shaped waves as it chased after him. Whatever the thing was, it was damn big and fast as hell. But he had a good lead and with the wind up, he intended to keep it.
Then the Nellie hit something, soft and pillow-like, and he immediately knew he’d just run over another of those goddamn giant jellyfish. The boat’s speed was cut by three-quarters.
Drake furiously re-angled the boat, tugged in the sail, and the Nellie gathered again as the breeze lifted the boat as if a giant hand gave her a gentle push along. He was soon back up to speed, but looking back, his lead had been cut in half.
Damn, damn, damn… This can’t be happening, he thought. He left all this shit behind on that damned plateau nearly 10 years ago.
Drake whipped his head back again toward the thing following him, and then forward. His swift little boat was eating up the yards toward the beach. He didn’t have time to get back to the club wharf, so anywhere dry would do.
He looked back again and gritted his teeth. Then he hit another jellyfish and grunted as he was thrown forward.
“Fuck the fuck off!” he screamed. He madly went through the motions once again to regain his speed. He looked back and felt a cold hand on his neck—the damned thing was gaining on him. It was 500 feet back before, but now only about 200. He turned back to the beach.
Come on, baby, you can do it.
Once more his boat skipped along, and then he hit every racing boat captain’s number one enemy—the calm spot. Drake had to leap forward to stop from falling back into the water as the boat settled into the dead zone of no wind.
Oh, shit, no.
Then it was over and the wind started up again. But now he had to go from a standing start this time—slow, so slow. But up he climbed—5 knots per hour, 10, 15, 20… Drake looked back and could see the lump of the beast’s back clearly now. It was a shining gray like a whale but with darker banding. It was so close he could see a few barnacles on its back, and horrifyingly, the two large predatorial eyes were fixed right on him.
His boat skimmed fast once more, and he counted down to the shore—400 feet to go, with the thing only 100 back now. He watched it for a moment more and saw it accelerate, trying to catch him before he got away.
He turned back toward the bow and leaned forward as if this was somehow going to make him and the boat a little more aerodynamic. How far must he go before the creature decided the water was too shallow? Or could it come up on the land—remember the damn jellyfish and the bird? Impossible, he thought, begging it not to be true.
Faster, faster, faster, he urged Nellie.
Below him, he started to see clumps of weed. It must have only been about 20 feet deep here. He hurriedly turned back and saw that the thing was gone. Or had dived.
No way, it was too shallow. The boat skipped toward the shoreline—80 feet, 50, 30, 10, and then he hit the sand and leapt out.
Drake didn’t stop running until he was 50 feet up the first sand dune. He spun back.
The sea was calm. Except for the whitecaps, there was no monstrous lump or wedge-shaped head rearing up. But he knew what he saw. He grimaced as the tingling rushed over him again—and then the sunlight blinked off then seconds later, back on.
Drake looked up at the sky. And what the hell is with that? he demanded of the big yellow orb.
“You tryin’ to commit suicide, son?”
“Huh?” Drake spun.
There was an old guy standing up on one of the dunes, holding his sandals with a pair of binoculars around his neck.
Drake pointed. “Did you see that?” His voice was higher than he wanted.
The old guy’s face twisted in disdain. “Course I saw it.” He stepped aside and thumbed over his shoulder to a sign jammed in on the dune.
Drake’s mouth fell open in disbelief as he read the huge yellow sign’s black lettering.
Kronosaur season—no swimming, no boating, and no fishing until further notice.
There was a stenciled image of the sea reptile he just saw.
“What?” Drake felt his eyes actually bulge. “Is this a joke?”
“Idiot.” The old guy began to turn away. “There’s a reason we stay out of the water this time of year. It’s mating season for the big kronos. They make a kill, and they’ll hang around all year.”
“This is madness.” Drake ran up the dune to grab the guy’s arm. “When did this happen?”
The old guy suddenly looked a little worried by Drake then, who was still tough and brawny-looking even though he was now in his 50s.
“When?” The old guy shook his head, looking confused. “It’s always been like this. Every season on the warm current they migrate up the coast.” He backed up. “Just…just stay out until about October, orright?”
&n
bsp; “Yeah.” Drake nodded slowly. “Yeah sure.”
The guy turned and vanished up and over the dunes. Drake looked back out over the water. It now looked ominous, threatening, and mysterious. He then stared down along the waterline where his boat was beached. He really wanted to believe it was some sort of prank on him. But he knew what he saw, and knew something bad had just happened that defied belief.
He felt the tingle in his belly again, and he knew whatever was happening was still happening. His phone rang and he pulled it out, looking at the caller id—it was Helen.
CHAPTER 10
Weird is the New Normal.
Ben Cartwright put the phone down slowly and turned to Emma.
“That was Drake. He and Helen are coming over; I mean, they’re on their way right now. They want to discuss something important with us.” His eyes were on hers. “He sounded a little agitated.”
“They’re back together?” Emma’s brows went up. And then: “Did they say about what?”
“No.” Ben slid his hands in his pockets and ambled toward her. “But I can kinda guess, can’t you?”
“You think it’s happening to them too?” Emma turned to stare at the empty fireplace for a few moments. “But why us? I mean, why is it just us seeing the weird things going on, but everyone else is acting like all the weird is normal?”
“The weird is normal.” He paused, staring down at her. “The new normal.”
She looked up quickly. “Do you think it’s because we went, um, back?”
Ben shrugged. “I don’t know. How? Maybe there are others, but then, why doesn’t Zach see how strange it all is? To him and everyone else, it seems to them that it’s always been like this, and we’re the ones out of sync.”
“Only we see the change,” Emma said softly.
Ben walked to the window. “And it all worries the hell out of me.” He spoke over his shoulder. “When will it stop? I mean, what comes next?”
The doorbell rang, and he and Emma got to their feet. “Time for some answers,” Ben said.
Emma pulled the door inward as Ben stood at her shoulder. When Drake entered, she hugged him, and then allowed him to pass by her so he could shake Ben’s hand. She went to also hug Helen and chat softly to her.
It’d been a while since they last saw each other or even spoke, and to Ben, they looked the same except their hair contained a few streaks of silver, and the sun had pressed a few more fine lines onto their brows and at the corners of their mouths. However, he bet that the haunted look around their eyes was something new.
“Come through, come through.”
Ben led them into the living room where there was a coffee pot on the table, plus freshly sliced orange cake that Emma had baked that morning. Behind them, the fire popped, and the place looked and smelled inviting, hopefully a sanctuary from all the confusion.
“Where’s boy wonder?” Drake asked.
Ben chuckled and thumbed toward the steps. “I’m betting either slaying dragons or chopping up zombies online.”
“If only he knew what his father had done—slain some real ones; dragons, I mean.” Drake sat down on the couch and looked at its clean surface. “Hey, no dog blanket covered in hair for a change.”
“Yeah, about that.” Ben looked grim and clasped his fingers together. “What’s a dog?”
“Huh?” Drake frowned and held a slice of cake suspended from his mouth. “What does that mean?”
Helen also sat down and Emma spoke as she poured her a coffee. “You see, there’s no such thing…anymore.”
Drake and Helen sat and stared as Ben continued. “We had a dog, we know we did. But he’s gone.” He frowned. “No, he’s not just gone; he never even existed. In fact, no dogs exist anymore.” He looked at each of his friend’s faces. “Except in our minds.”
Emma’s mouth was a flat line. “Something has changed. Somehow, our world has changed.”
Drake lowered his hand holding the cake. “I knew it.” He turned to Helen. “See?”
Ben sat on the edge of his chair, big hands grasping his knees in front of him. “I’ve seen things, weird things, that I don’t understand. I think you have too, right?”
Helen nodded. “Yes, yes. Plants, carnivorous, that attacked my students. They never existed in our time before. I would know if they did.” She shook her head. “And my students acted like I was the crazy one for not recognizing them.”
Drake nodded. “Yeah, that was the kicker for me; everyone else acting like I was the odd one out. I was out boating and got chased by something the size of a freaking whale. But it wasn’t. Looked like a giant lizard that swam under the water…” He turned to Helen. “What did you say it could have been…?”
“Kronosaurus, Tylosaurus… maybe one of those, but both long extinct,” she said softly.
“That was it—a Kronosaurus—yeah, a freaking monster. Just made it back to shore with my skin.” He sat back and scoffed. “But what was even weirder was on the beach an old-timer chewed my ass off because I shouldn’t have been out on the water.” He scoffed. “You know why? Because it was goddamn sea reptile season—Krono season!” His eyebrows were up. “What the hell? When did that happen? I mean, there were even signs stuck on the beach as warnings. They weren’t there before, I know it.”
Ben nodded. “The world is changing. We now live in a world where dogs don’t exist, and sea monsters do.”
“That’s a shitty tradeoff,” Drake said.
Helen’s vision seemed to have turned inward. “Dogs never evolved. And other species never went extinct. Evolution is on a whole new pathway.” She looked up. “Something happened to change everything…in the past.”
“And is still happening,” Emma said. “Hey, has anyone felt strange lately? Like, um, a tingle running through them?”
“Yeah, yeah, like a mild electrical current that runs from your head to your toes, and ends up in your belly,” Drake said. “And the light flicks on and off—the sunlight.”
“Yeah, me too,” Ben agreed. “I felt it just before I saw the tree species change down in Utah. The weird feeling rushes through you as the lights black out, and then there’s a change.”
“And they’re getting bigger,” Helen said. “We did it, we changed something in the past, we broke the rules.” She looked at each of them. “And now we’re going to pay for it.”
CHAPTER 11
Toronto, Canada—Bay Street Business District
Chess Monroe briefly glanced over his shoulder at Mohammed Ibn Aziz as he came down the main street flanked by three enormous men in dark suits that barely contained their hulking muscles. One walked in front, and the other two just behind each of his shoulders.
Aziz used to be the chief accountant for the Maghadam crime family, and since he had been picked up by the CSIS—the Canadian Security Intelligence Service—and threatened with life in prison, he was rumored to have flipped. Word was that he agreed to give evidence against the family for a new name, new home, and complete amnesty on all charges. He’d agreed, and all he had to do was survive until his single court appearance in a week’s time.
No one was even supposed to know he had been picked up, and this one last venture outside was to his strong box at the bank to retrieve some documents he’d need to put the Maghadam elder’s heads on the block. The State Prosecutor’s Office would then do the rest.
The thing about organized crime, and the families who ran it, was they had enormous resources at their disposal—money, property, businesses, and contacts in everything from the highest office of politics all the way down to the most cunning street urchin. Therefore, for every snitch like Aziz, there was a counter-snitch prepared to give up their mother for a golden goose egg.
The Maghadams already knew about Aziz being picked up, they knew about him getting ready to testify, and they even knew about the visit to the bank, probably minutes after it was floated in at the CSIS.
Toronto’s Bay Street was fairly busy at 2pm in the afternoon, and
even though it was downtown in the financial district, its coffee shops were overflowing with outdoor business meetings, groups taking the opportunity to take a break and talk a little office treason, and also several weary shoppers walking from one set of retail hubs to the next.
The two men and a single blonde woman at one of the tables laughed and sipped coffee, and the woman leaned forward to cut some cake with a fork. If a trained operative were looking for potential risks, or something that stood out as incongruous, they would have seen that even though she wore expensive clothing, she held the fork roughly in her hand and her fist had knuckles that were raised and calloused.
Chess was one of the two men at the table with her. Both of them were also dressed well, in linen sports jackets, one blue, one brown, and pressed shirts, but they too had the facial features of men used to brutality rather than corporate finance.
Two blocks further down Bay Street, a van moved slowly and then double-parked. The single driver, a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman, had a small communication pill in her ear, and waited. In the back of the van, another man also waited by the sliding door.
As the Aziz party approached, from the café table one of the men facing the group counted the steps of the coming men and lowered the cup a fraction from his lips.
“Now.”
The man in the blue linen sports jacket left the table to wander down the street in front of the approaching Aziz group. The two remaining coffee drinkers continued to sip their coffee, laughed, relaxed, and made small talk as they faced each other. However, behind their dark sunglasses, their eyes were fixed on the party of four now coming abreast of them.
Just down the street, the man in the blue linen jacket slowed so he was only a half dozen paces in front of the lead bodyguard. He spoke softly.
“Show time.”
From his sleeve slid an 8-inch steel spike and he stopped, spun, and then lunged. Before the lead bodyguard could react, he had jammed the spike into the side of his neck.