Monstrum (11 page)

Espi is ruined. She presses her hands to her ears, closes her eyes, screws up her face and erupts, screaming along with her mother. Her answering shrieks are so loud and tortured that she is surely destroying her vocal cords.

Both sets of screams continue beyond our fruitless searching and last into our frenzied efforts to flip the raft. And then the splashing reaches a horrific crescendo, and on its other side is silence.

An utter, reverberating and awful silence that tells us Mrs. Torres is gone.

Espi, realizing this, sags limply against Murphy. Her head lolls to one side.

I thank God that Mrs. Torres's suffering is over.

One millisecond after that, a foreboding new fear fills me up and bleeds out of my pores: how long until that cruel animal comes back for the rest of us?

The answer to this silent question isn't long in coming.

That screeching begins again. There's a round of cries from the group.

“Where is it?'' Maggie shouts. We all crane our necks and look around for any hint of another disturbance in the water, but there's nothing.
“Where is it?”

“Wherever it is, it's taunting us,” Sammy says.

I think Sammy's right.

Maybe it's my imagination, but the noise seems less eerie and more triumphant this time, as though the creature that makes it—and I'm certain now that it isn't an orca, because no mere whale could be this determined and relentless—revels in its reign of terror over us. As though its pleasure is increased by our fear.

As though it's . . . stalking us.

“It's coming,” Axel says weakly.

We all spin around to follow his fixed and wide-eyed gaze, and there it is: another speeding hump of water, not a hundred feet away and headed directly for us.

“The raft.” Murphy's voice is unruffled, as though what we're facing is no trickier than changing a car's flat tire on the side of the road while dodging traffic. But it's just the thing we need to silence our panicked yells. “We need to flip it.
Now
.”

We don't need telling twice.

We converge on one side of the raft and put our arms and backs into raising the edge of it over our heads. But by the time we get one corner up, we've maxed out our dwindling strength; the raft is huge and heavy, and we'd have better luck grabbing the edge of a tennis court and trying to flip
that
.

It's useless, and we all recognize it by letting go and backing out of the way as the raft flops back into the water.

A quick glance over my shoulder shows me that the thing has halved the distance between us and is closing in. A wave of cries, shrill and hopeless, rises up from the group, but I'm determined not to give up. Giving up on anything pisses me off, and I have a mutant stubborn gene. Mona always complained that my temperament is somewhere between that of a mule and a pit bull.

I know resistance will ultimately be futile. It's not like climbing onto the raft will give us the safety of an aircraft carrier, or anything like that. It's just that I don't like the idea of serving myself up to this thing like a cocktail weenie on a skewer—that's just not me.

So I hoist one leg up onto the upside-down raft, concentrate on heaving the rest of my body out of the water and scramble onto the slippery bottom. I've got nothing to hold on to and no reason to hope for survival. But at least I made it a teensy bit harder for that creature to eat me the way it did Mrs. Torres.

I'll cross the next bridge on the way out of this nightmare when I get to it.

The thing is bearing down on us now, and I realize there's more to it than was visible on its last pass. It's the size of a conversion van, not a sedan. And now it's close enough for me to get a quick glimpse of the black and white markings on its face, a jagged row of teeth and the gleam of an enormous eye that's luminous and trained on me.

Oh, God. Please, God, help me.

Moving as quickly as I can from my precarious perch, I stick a hand down over the side and reach for Maggie. Murphy, getting the idea, helps boost her up from underneath.

“Hurry!” I shout as Maggie crawls onto the raft next to me, excruciatingly aware that the thing is now within lunging distance, and whatever time we have left is running out. “We have to get out of the water!”

Without warning, a bright white light shines right in my face, blinding me. I shrink away from it, shielding my face with my arm to stop the sudden bolts of pain through my eyeballs. At the same time, a startling but welcome new sound fills the air: the mournful blare of a ship's horn.

The light recedes enough for my pupils to adjust, and I see the creature swerve around the raft and disappear into the water, with only its fading wake to remind us that it ever existed.

I lever myself up to a kneeling position and try to make sense of what's happened.

Is that . . . is that a
boat
over there, not fifty yards away?

Since I've developed a healthy fear of hallucinations in the last several minutes, I don't exactly trust my senses. Even when I focus my squint on the massive black hull with
Burke & Co.
lettered in white; the enormous pair of glowering eyes painted on the hull; the deck, which is lit like the Christmas display in a Macy's window; and the dark outlines of people standing at the railing and staring down at us, I can't make myself believe it.

This astonishing reversal of fortune is too good to be true, and apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so.

“Oh, my God.” An's mouth is contorted with laughter, her eyes stream with tears and her words are barely coherent. “I can't believe it! Oh, thank God! Thank you, God!”

I watch, crouched on all fours and openmouthed, as a smaller boat zooms out of the ship's shadows, pulls up alongside the raft and lingers, motor idling. My mind disconnects from this new reality while the several men on board shout greetings in Spanish, throw ropes and life preservers and help the others aboard, one by one.

An goes first, then Espi, Maggie, Axel, Mike, Carter and Gray, who shoots me an anxious look over his shoulder as he climbs into the dinghy.

Finally, only Murphy and I are left.

Panic belatedly sets in, freezing me in place.

“Bria Hunter,” Murphy says. He's still in the water with his arms hooked over the edge of the raft. “Would you like to get your arse off the raft and into this dinghy before these kind gentlemen decide we're not worth the trouble and leave without us?”

I blink at him.

I'm fine with the general idea—move your limbs, get off the raft and climb into the other boat. Got it. But I am suddenly so overwhelmed with violent shakes that I cannot make my body cooperate. Five minutes ago, we were all dead, for sure, and now we're rescued, and I just can't get over the shock.

“I—I need a second,” I tell Murphy.

Murphy lets out a frustrated huff, but something else has snagged my attention. The dinghy has maneuvered closer to my perch on the raft, and a man with wind-whipped hair is clinging to a ladder on its back end.

No, not a man, I see.

A boy my age or a little older.

“This Bria Hunter does look like a lot of trouble,” he tells Murphy in perfect, unaccented English, reaching out a hand to me. The soft mockery in his deep voice scrapes over my spinal cord, stiffening it. “We'd better help her in since she's too scared to help herself.”

That does it.

Ignoring his hand—screw him!—I roll off the raft and back into the water, which hasn't gotten any warmer in the last few minutes. Something long trails, almost lovingly, past my thigh, and I jerk in the beginnings of a panicked convulsion before reminding myself that it's probably just the sargassum.

I manage to regain a drop of composure and doggie paddle the two feet to the dinghy. Once there, I climb up the ladder, brushing past the imposing length of the boy's body. Then I inch my careful way to an open space on the bench seat where my surviving classmates are, sit down while Murphy also climbs aboard and settle in for the short ride to the ship, excruciatingly aware of the boy's attention following me.

The motor revs, and the dinghy speeds toward the ship. No one speaks. Our rescue party consists of four or five men in addition to the boy, and I'm sure they have questions about our ordeal. But they don't ask and we don't volunteer, probably because we're all wearing identical expressions of frozen shock.

I, for one, am chained and padlocked inside my lingering terror.

The wind hums in my ears and the water sprays my face, and then, almost before I know what's happened, we've arrived and are maneuvering into position so that we can be absorbed by the looming ship.

As the men stand up and secure the dinghy with quick, efficient knots, I look way up, to the deck, where a new, taller man is joining the spectators lining the rails. I can't see his face clearly, but his stance is wide-legged, and the tilt of his chin is arrogant.

“I'm Captain Diego Romero, and this is the
Venator
.” His voice booms over some sort of PA system with an authority that commands attention, if not blind obedience. He pauses, glancing at each of us in turn, and I feel the burning weight of his gaze before it moves on to the next person. “Welcome to my ship.”

By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.

Macbeth,
IV.i.44-45 (William Shakespeare)

O
nce on board, we're herded into a large cabin with pristine counters and cabinets, several narrow beds covered with white sheets and a stainless steel table. There, we are all quickly examined by the English-speaking medical officer, pronounced healthy except for a few assorted cuts and bruises, covered with blankets and plied with some sort of liquor—brandy, I think—liberally laced with hot tea. I guess when you've nearly died at sea, no one cares if you're legal or not.

I gulp it down, and it trails fire to my belly, warming me.

Just as my body begins to defrost, we are collected by another crew member and led to a different area of the ship where, we are told, the captain will meet with us while we are fed. After that? He promises us hot showers, dry clothes and bed, all of which sound good to me.

We shuffle along the corridor as fast as our traumatized bodies will carry us.

“When can we call home?” An asks anxiously.

“Yeah,” echoes Mike. “We need to let them know we're not dead. They've got to be going crazy.”

“Don't worry,” the Spanish-accented crewman says. “The captain is in touch with the authorities. He has everything under control.”

The others nod, satisfied with this explanation. Since I'm an emancipated minor with no one waiting by the phone, desperate for my call, I focus on this unofficial tour and survey our new surroundings.

My experience with ships is limited to the cruise Mona and I took to Panama City the last winter before she got sick. That ship had an over-the-top name that I can't remember now—something like
Glory of the Seas
or
Windward Haven.
Mona sprung for a suite, which resulted in the captain gifting us with a welcome-to-my-ship fruit basket the size of the produce department at our Walmart. The ship was a monstrosity—it was like a big slice of Las Vegas glitz and luxury floating through the Panama Canal.