Chapter 33
H
e had managed to get up onto the bed. The water was lapping at the box spring, getting higher by the minute, and the room was nearly dark. To his side, Christie bobbed facedown, his long legs and arms spread wide. He knew he needed to move, and soon, but for the first time in a very long time, Frankie Rollins decided he deserved a break.
His head was . . . well, it was still attached. There were no other positives, other than the fact the scrambled, feverish sequences of thought, of deviousness and plan and strategies that had dominated his mind, seemed to have been broken the moment it met Thor’s fist. What remained were small, isolated thoughts.
Head hurts. Water is cold.
He concentrated, was rewarded with something more complex.
Francis Rollins is a grade-A asshole.
The idea he should take a break, though—that was good. He scooped up a double palmful of water and splashed it over his face. The cold water hit his eyelids, and his forehead seemed to contract, sending a fresh burst of pain deep into his skull. When it passed, he felt good enough to take stock of his situation.
No gun, no iPhone. The two tools that made Frankie a non-passenger, separated him from the unwashed masses. From the—what had Moore called them? Sheep. He was a sheep, then. He would learn humility in his old age.
He continued his reconnaissance, checking his shoes, the inside of his socks, under his belt. Nothing. He brushed over the inside pocket of his sport jacket and his hand lingered, feeling the hard edges. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye, heard the splashing at the same time. A light beam was bouncing down the hallway.
His eyes darted across the room and his gaze landed on a speck of brightness floating on the dark surface of the water. He took two steps and was just starting to reach for it when the voice came from the doorway.
“Stop.”
Frankie froze, the hypodermic needle only inches from his hand.
“Or go ahead. But you get shot in the back.”
He turned around, hands held high. “I wouldn’t’ve believed you, you said that earlier.”
“Yes,” Thor said. “I know.” He motioned with the pistol and Frankie sat back down, squinting. Thor had the flashlight beam trained directly on his face, and Frankie held up a hand to block it. The light stayed there, blinding him when he peeked around his hand.
“Come on,” Frankie said.
The beam dropped to center on the middle of Frankie’s chest, and Thor took a couple steps inside the door. He had a pistol in his other hand, and tucked inside his belt was Frankie’s knife. He had wondered where that had ended up; he couldn’t remember seeing it since he’d pulled it out of Thor’s foot the day before.
“Time to settle the score?”
Thor reached behind him and closed the door, pushing a small wave of water into the hallway. It was only marginally darker with the door closed; the little bit of light was coming through the tiny porthole above his head, and it was already underwater. The emergency lights had gone out while he was unconscious.
“Listen,” Frankie said. “I could do it again, it’d be different. But it happened, it’s over. No need for bad feelings. Hell, I like you, Thor.”
“It was only business,” Thor said. “Correct?”
“Correct.”
“I, too, am a businessman. Ever since I was young boy, working on my parents’ farm outside Sundsvall, I knew good work meant good money. We cut up fat pig, we get more money. Skinny pig, we get less. So always I look for the fat pig.”
“If that’s a compliment,” Frankie said. “Thank you. Right now I was thinking I was more of a sheep.”
“The skinny pig,” Thor said. “They are dangerous, less profitable, but sometimes are interesting.” In the darkness, Frankie saw his big shoulders hunch once, then deflate. “It was not a good decision I made.”
“There’s more money—”
“No, skinny pig.” He pulled the knife from his belt. “Now I do my own work.”
Chapter 34
D
estiny led them to the far side of the deck, across from the stairwell. They could see Latham and Kharkov in the seat behind the pilot, watching them. The chopper looked like a giant hummingbird in the wind, twitching and tilting in the strong breeze. There were still a few people between the swells, one of them swimming weakly. Another bobbed lifelessly, dark hair flaring around the head. Brian was reminded, suddenly and fiercely, of Gilly.
“What?” Destiny asked. “What’s wrong?”
He started to turn away, to stew in his dark thoughts, then turned back and jabbed a finger at the ocean. “It’s so goddamn
relentless
,” he said. “Won’t let us go, won’t let us catch our breath.”
She nodded. “Stubborn. Like you.” She smiled, and it was the first time he’d seen her do it honestly. It opened up her entire face. “You have backbone, Brian, but you carry an awful lot with you. You can set some of it down.”
“What do you mean?”
“We need you, Brian. Let the other stuff go and help us, right here and now.”
There was a sudden constriction of his throat. Suddenly, he was not standing on the deck of a doomed ship but inside the hospital room, Sienna heaving and straining, her rounded belly pushing up the light blue hospital gown. They had gotten stuck behind a line of pulp trucks on the way in to the hospital and by the time they arrived at the hospital it was too late for pain medication, she was dilated to eight, and he was in a frenzy until Sienna reached up, between contractions, and took his hand.
It’s okay
, she had said, with that calm in her voice.
It’s like it’s meant to be.
“Brian? Look.”
Thor stood at the top of the stairwell, holding a small blue cooler aloft. There was a smear of blood on the handle, and his hands and cuffs were stained pink. “Is here!” he bellowed into the air. “I have it!” He shook the cooler victoriously in the air.
The chopper tilted back toward the deck of the
Nokomis
, the downdraft flattening and contorting Thor’s face. It stopped ten feet above him and Thor craned his ear toward them. Brian could see Latham’s mouth working from inside the cockpit, shouting to Thor, who shook his head and put the cooler behind him. Latham shouted again. Thor took another step back, started to say something with his free hand out in front as though about to give a lecture, then staggered. He caught himself, then took two more halting steps backwards. Then he collapsed, three red blossoms spreading out on his shirt, and his outflung hand brushed against the cooler. It started to slide across the slanted deck.
Brian broke into a shambling sprint as the helicopter tilted to the side, the pilot’s head twisting around to yell something at Latham. The cooler was picking up speed as it neared the edge and Brian tried to force more speed out of his legs. It was like chasing a fly ball during high school, one that was just out of reach.
He broke into a slide at the last second, his left leg extended. The cooler hit his ankle, teetered as though it would tip over his ankle, and then came to a stop two feet from the edge of the railing. It would have slid underneath the bottom rail, he saw, lying there panting. It would have gone right over.
The chopper hovered over him, the downdraft pinning him for a moment, and then he was in the lee of its underbelly. He flipped the cooler open and saw a dull purple heart inside a gallon-sized plastic baggie, half submerged in blood, the remnant ice cubes floating in water around the bag. The large arteries had been cut off cleanly, the veins on the heart itself a purple so deep they were almost black.
He held the plastic-shrouded heart aloft, the cold water dripping down his forearm. The chopper backed off, circling to his right, then descended until it was nearly eye level. Latham crouched in the doorway, his blotchy face streaming with sweat. Behind him, Kharkov had leveled his pistol at Brian.
“Thank you!” Latham shouted.
“Get off!” Brian yelled. “We get on.” He shook the bag, the organ thudding softly against the plastic. “Then I throw you the heart!”
“Or,” Latham shouted, “you throw it onboard, and Kharkov won’t gun you down. Only deal you get!”
Brian glanced back at Destiny. At Taylor peeking from behind Destiny’s back. He knew better. There would be no mercy; they would not let them go. Latham had directed the murder of several people with no more thought behind it than a man swatting a mosquito. He wouldn’t stop now.
“Give it to me!” Latham shouted.
Let it go
.
Destiny’s words, Sienna’s words. The impulse started small, flared, and before he could stop himself Brian twisted around, his arm coming back, the weight and feel of the heart not so different than a baseball. He threw it as hard as he could, the plastic flapping around the heart as it arced out over the ocean. Latham turned to watch it. The heart curved slightly with the wind, just like a tailing line drive, and landed forty yards out in the ocean with a small splash.
“Run!” Brian motioned to Destiny and Taylor as the chopper roared behind him. He waited for the slugs to hit him, for the tilted deck to rise up to meet his face. “The stairwell!”
He ran toward the top of the stairs, reaching it at the same time as Destiny and Taylor. The chopper had spun in a tight circle and was hovering fifteen feet above the surface. The baggie was riding a swell, the plastic bag flapping, skittering away from the downdraft of the chopper. It rode the top of the wave, enough air sealed inside the bag for it to be buoyant, the purple swell of the heart pressed against the side of the baggie. Kharkov stepped out to place a boot on the landing skid, shrugging off his jacket. He paused, pointed.
The pilot looked down and then the chopper jerked, and Kharkov had to grab the side of the chopper door to keep from falling off. The pilot pulled back on the yoke just as the kronosaur leaped from the water, its jaws clamping down halfway between the cockpit and the tail rotor.
It wrenched the chopper hard to the side as it fell back to the ocean, a movement rehearsed on thousands of spines. The lightweight infrastructure of the helicopter bent back on itself, the main rotor spinning back in a scream of shredding gears. One of the blades snapped in half and spun wildly out to sea, skipping across the waves in massive furrows of water. Another blade, still attached, caught the kronosaur just behind the jawline.
The air exploded in shrapnel, and a huge gout of blood jetted out of the kronosaur’s neck. Brian watched, not even ducking when a ragged chunk of blade hurtled past them in a buzzing whine, as the tangled mass of machine and beast fell into the ocean. Several more pieces of rotor blade shattered against the side of the
Nokomis
, and the surface of the ocean was suddenly pockmarked with fountains.
The kronosaur twisted, its giant tail writhing around the tail of the helicopter. The pool of blood around it colored the waves red and still it continued to bleed. Kharkov was pinned against the doorway, trapped in the mangled metal. A piece of steel protruded from just below his belly button, and he was looking down at it even as he went under.
Latham had climbed to the small pocket of air at the top of the chopper’s cabin. He screamed. His voice was tinny inside the chopper, then it choked off to nothing as they sank lower into the water, the chopper’s engine smoking and hissing into silence. The kronosaur twitched one more time, the chopper still clamped firmly between its jaws, and from somewhere under the surface a massive fin sent a whirlpool spinning to the surface. Then they disappeared, leaving a final gyre of swirling, red-tinged water.
* * *
They waited for several minutes, watching the water. Waiting for the monster to emerge, its wounds healed through some ancient alchemy. But the water was still except for the waves, the air empty except for fog and a few tendrils of smoke, quickly dissipated by the wind.
“It’s dead,” Destiny said after a while. “And you don’t look happy.”
Brian watched the water. “No,” he said. Underneath them, the ship groaned, then yawed to the side.
“The lifeboat,” he said. “We need to get on a lifeboat right now.”
Chapter 35
A
ll six lifeboats bobbed on the surface of the North Atlantic, the icy Kaala current streaming beneath them. They were eighteen feet long, with bright orange canvas enclosures and plastic windows. The hulls were aluminum, fitted with 50-horse Honda outboards. The small flotilla moved in circles a hundred yards from the
Nokomis,
which was slowly disappearing into the ocean. Destiny, Taylor, and Brian were alone in their own lifeboat; it could hold ten people, but the remaining passengers had decided it was better to deploy all the lifeboats.
“I thought it would go down faster,” Taylor said, her voice muffled from the inside of the parka they had found in the captain’s office. “Is it even going to sink?”
“Yes,” Brian said, looking through the milky plastic. The lifeboats were better quality than he had expected, and the new Honda outboards had all started on the first or second pull. He watched the sea as they rode the swells, his hand making constant, minute adjustments to the tiller. “It’ll sink.”
“When?” Taylor said.
He looked at her, huddled deep in the parka in the bow of the lifeboat. “There are air pockets inside,” he said. “The water has to push them out, all the way out, before it will sink. Some ships go down fast. Other never really sink, they just bob along on the surface, half-in and half-out.”
“Neither dead nor alive?”
“Huh?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Maybe the
Nokomis
won’t sink, either.”
“Maybe not.”
He looked down at the fuel gauge on the six-gallon tank, trying to do the math. They were somewhere between forty and sixty miles from shore, not an impossible distance with the fuel-efficient Hondas. But the swells were twelve to fourteen feet, and many a small-craft sailor had swamped on the back side of swells half the size of these.
He scanned the horizon. If they spread out, the noise from the props might confuse the sound signature. At the same time, they would quickly become separated in the fog and heavy swells.
Pick your poison
, he thought.
“Mister?” She reached up and pulled on his sleeve. “Why do you look so worried?”
“Me, worry?” He patted the bench seat next to him. “Come here. We need to stay warm.”
“You didn’t answer me,” Taylor said, moving closer to him. “Isn’t the sea monster gone?”
He caught Destiny’s eye. “Did you notice?”
“What?”
“The kronosaur that attacked the helicopter,” Brian said. “It had both eyes.”
She started to protest, then paused, looking at him. “Oh, shit. I think you’re right.”
“Maybe the original one left,” he said. “Maybe this other one scared it off.”
“Are you serious?”
“It’s possible.”
They motored in place, the prop spinning just hard enough to keep them pointed into the waves. After a while, Destiny and Taylor moved closer to him. Soon Taylor’s breathing grew deeper, her mouth open slightly, the tip of her nose red from the chill. Destiny watched the sea, one hand wrapped in Taylor’s, the other just above Brian’s elbow. She laid her head on his shoulder, and after a while her eyes closed.
He adjusted the throttle, feeling their warmth as his eyes swept the cold and massive swells of the Kaala.
* * *
He woke with a start.
The
Nokomis
had disappeared in the few minutes he had been asleep. He ran his eyes along the horizon, trying to get his bearings, but everything was gray. He let the boat drift in the swells, took note of their bearing, then swung the boat around and traveled back in the opposite direction.
The sound of an outboard approached them, running at top speed, the pitch of the engine a throaty scream. It rocketed past, hidden by the fog, the bow smashing into the swells. The thudding went on and on, becoming distant, then there was a sudden crunching noise, followed by a strangled cry for help. It was followed by the monotonous sound of the waves.
He looked at Destiny. She was staring at Taylor, her lips moving but no sounds coming from her lips.
The
Nokomis
appeared in front of them, the ship’s nose sticking almost straight out of the water like an iceberg. He nestled the lifeboat next to it, then maneuvered around the far side when he heard voices. The other four lifeboats were in a small circle just off the bow, the passengers shouting and gesturing. Brian heard the word
shore
, saw two men point at quartering angles. He motioned for Destiny to take the tiller and climbed out onto the enclosure, the canvas slick under his boots.
“Over here!” he shouted, motioning toward the
Nokomis
. “Get off the open water!”
They glanced at him and waved him over, mistaking his words for a cry for help. The two men were pointing toward an area that, to the best of Brian’s reckoning, would take them out to the Flemish Cap.
“You’ll die!” he shouted as the lifeboats headed out to sea in a single line, waves splashing over the enclosures. The boats motored on, the ones in the rear spreading out slightly to avoid the wakes of the boats ahead of them. The tiny armada disappeared into the fog, the whine of the outboards fading.
“You’ll die,” he said again, this time only loud enough that he could hear it.
He dropped back into the enclosure and motored closer to the
Nokomis,
maneuvering in the waves until he could touch the hull, the fiberglass sliding slowly downward under his palm. Around them massive bubbles broke the surface, and the ship gave off a litany of groans and creaks as the last of the air pockets were squeezed from the hold.
In the distance came the sound of splintering metal, the whine of a propeller spinning in air instead of water. More screams, and another kind of splashing, more irregular than the waves. The gnashing of teeth on metal.
He leaned down and began to unlace his boots.
* * *
The room had tilted almost ninety degrees. Frankie managed to climb up and over the bed, squatting awkwardly atop the headboard. His back was pressed where the ceiling met the wall, his right wrist was tethered to the headboard. It had been the last industrial-strength zip tie in the bag, Thor’s final parting gift. The plastic band was indented into his swollen flesh, and blood was pouring down his forearm.
Below him, the water was coming through the closed door in surges. His ears popped just before each decrease in elevation, the pressure in the room building and popping.
He turned on Prower’s satellite phone with his left hand, letting the light from the screen illuminate the room. Christie’s body was floating faceup around the room, riding the invisible mini-currents as the water poured in. The dark cave in his chest revealed a hint of pink lung, the darker flesh interspersed by the red-gray ovals of sawn rib bones.
It was, Frankie thought, a colorful way to die.
He leaned down and began chewing on the zip tie. The plastic was slick and hard under his teeth, and the swollen flesh of his wrist made it impossible to reach it with his molars. The water was only a foot below him, the pressure building on his back as the bed tried to float upward. From outside the ship he heard a man yell
You’ll die!
, his cry followed by the faint buzz of outboard motors.
He pulled his head back. The plastic had a couple tooth marks in it but was otherwise unaffected. His ears popped as the water surged in again, flowing up and over the top of the headboard. The water was red from Christie’s blood, and Frankie was loath for it to touch him. He felt a stab of fierce unfairness that Christie hadn’t had to scratch and claw his way to the bitter end.
Then, in the dark and stinking cabin, he laughed, and some of the bitterness went away. It was fair; it was the ultimate in fairness. In a moment, the bloody water would drown him. He had chosen to go on the ocean; he had elected to deal in flesh and blood.
“It’s fair,” he croaked, and his laughter echoed back to him in a gargle.
He closed his mouth. Maybe if it was just him who died, just the people involved in the game, it would have been fair. He thought of the scared eyes of the little girl, of Destiny’s face losing its defiance as that single tear trickled down her cheek. She, at least, had been courageous enough to break free of the path Frankie was leading her down, the path he’d been on as long as he could remember.
He turned Prower’s satellite phone around, the artificial light casting his face in stark detail. There was a single service bar, he saw, and the battery was still half-charged.
Perhaps the last few steps on his path could break him free, too.
* * *
The predator whipped its neck to the side, the violent action finally dislodging the last aluminum hull from its teeth. The remains of the lifeboat sank slowly, the long jagged gashes in the metal leaching blood from the predator’s gums.
All around it, prey were dead and dying. The predator swam from one to the next, eying each one in turn. Its tail lashed back and forth, its nostrils flared.
The other predator, the one that it had felt approaching all day, the one that was to have been its mate, with which it would have coupled under the rough seas, was gone. Destroyed by the prey, the violent harmony of the world disrupted again. It could feel the discordant vibration, throbbing along the surface nerves. Alongside it was a deep and unfulfilled ache, not entirely physical.
A lone surviving prey flapped at the surface. The predator swam closer, moving faster when it saw the hairy face, the strong build. It circled around, heedless now in its fury, and saw it was not the prey it sought. The predator turned in a tight circle, its long tail slicing through the water. The sharp scutes along the edges sliced the man in half, sending a cloud of blood and offal blooming in the water.
The predator barely noticed. In the distance, something was pounding, the slap of flesh on shell. There was still prey left. Somehow, the predator was certain that this last survivor was the one it sought.
* * *
She had ceased arguing with him about the time he took his last boot off. He tossed it into the enclosure and motioned for Taylor to look away as he unbuckled his pants and dropped them, then stuck Frankie’s Glock in the waistband of his boxers. He dropped over the side of the lifeboat, sucking in a great breath as the icy water hit him. Destiny looked down at him as he released his hold on the side of the lifeboat and pushed away from them.
“Go,” he said. “Please. This is the only way.”
She turned the boat away, moving just fast enough to climb over the swells, and didn’t look back.
He swam toward the great curved keel of the
Nokomis
. The entire back half of the ship was already underwater, and the portion of the keel that was normally underwater stuck up like a barnacled hand clutching for air. He swam next to it, feeling the strange downdrafts of current from the sinking ship. They would be much stronger once the rest of the ship sank, which would create a void, a new gravitational pull.
The ship was dying, her last words muted groans and creaks. He pressed a hand against the slimy hull and could feel her shuddering, the vibrations soft and loud, some long like a sigh, others short, hiccuping buzzings as infrastructure crumpled.
He began to slap the side of the hull.
The sound was weaker than he had hoped it would be, lost in the groaning of the ship. He pulled Frankie’s Glock free and used the butt to tap against the hull, being careful to point the muzzle out to sea. His breath was short, his testicles drawn up tight and hard. He wasn’t sure if it was the cold water or the fear.
My last great insight, he thought. Being very cold and very scared feels, physically, about the same.
Or not. Sometimes it was hot, a scalding rush of terror that seemed to rise up within him like a flood of hot vomit. And he had felt it as a pressure, the closing of the vise around him. He hammered the side of the keel. The important thing was to keep moving. There, that was a better philosophy. Forget the fear and keep moving.
The pounding did not seem to be working and he was wondering if he should try to shoot a round into the ocean when he saw a furrow of water erupt between the waves, a hundred yards in the distance. He smacked the hull again, and a few seconds later the kronosaur carved another furrow of water into the swells, now only seventy yards away.
He pulled himself around so that the keel of the ship was pressed directly against his back. The barnacles scraped against the knobs of his vertebrae as the ship continued to sink.
Easy
, he thought.
Easy now.
A large air bubble blossomed around him and he dropped suddenly, robbed of his buoyancy. The bubble dissipated and he pulled himself back to the surface, sucking in a shaky breath. It was impossible to swim in an air bubble. Perhaps that was the best philosophy of all. He had no idea what it meant, other than being true, but it sounded like it was a good saying.
Hold it together.
A spray of water shot out of a swell thirty yards away and he smacked the last bit of hull that was above the surface, then took a deep breath and let the last of the
Nokomis
take him under. His left hand ran lightly along the hull of the keel, his fingertips digging at the seams. In his right hand he held the Glock, his finger curled around the trigger guard. He was fairly certain it would fire underwater. He was also fairly certain that its effective range was no more than ten or fifteen feet.
Behind him, the
Nokomis
gave a long shudder and slipped deeper into the ocean, now completely submerged. In front of him, a portion of the gray depths solidified into a shape, propelling toward him with four large, rotating flippers.