Monstrum (17 page)

My tirade finished, I glare and wait for the apology he clearly owes me, but it doesn't seem to be coming. So I give him a little prompt.

“Don't you think you should support me the way I've always supported—”

“I can't.” His glittering eyes seem to take up his entire face, and his voice is hard. “Not this time.”

He stalks off down the hallway, leaving me to gape after him.

“What the—?” I say to his departing back. In the entire years-long history of our friendship, we've never been this angry with each other, and, for the life of me, I can't figure out what just happened. “Gray? Gray!”

He disappears around a bend, never breaking stride.

I
'm storming back through the door and out to the deck to cool off a little when, without warning, my entire body seizes up with fear.

All the air wheezes out of my lungs.

Oh, God,
my mind races, trying to figure out what's changed, and then I realize.
Oh, God, ohgodohgodohgodohgod—

It's that smell again, saturating my nostrils and seeping its way past my pores and into my body, strangling me.

That foul, moldering stench of the whale creature.

This is no dolphin-induced false alarm, and if I need any proof that the thing has returned, it's not long in coming.

The sky goes dark in the space between one blink of my eye and the next, snuffing all remnants of the blazing pink sunset and orange sky and leaving me defenseless in this chunk of hell.

The animal's shriek rises up and fills the air, scraping my nerves and eardrums until both feel bloodied and raw. And then it shrieks again, as though it wants us to have no doubt that it is monstrous and powerful and can kill us whenever it decides.

Whimpering from my sudden terror and blindness, I fling my trembling arms in front of me and grab the railing, holding on to it for dear life.

I'm not the only one who realizes we're in trouble. A siren, shrill and insistent, comes over the PA system, and a calm male voice, presumably coming from someone in charge inside the wheelhouse, begins to issue instructions that I can't quite hear.

Thundering footsteps approach from my left. Before I can fully dodge out of the way, several shouting crewman streak past, jostling me as they hit the metal stairwell and race up it at top speed. At that moment, a new set of lights blink to life, illuminating the ship like a night game at Turner Field.

I'm torn between running for safety somewhere or following the crew to see what's going on and how bad it is, when I hear my name being called.

“Bria Hunter,” bellows Murphy before he hurries through the door and into view, “you've got two seconds to show your face before I turn this cursed ship upside down looking for you. And I'll do it, too, so you'd best not try me!”

“Here I am!” I yell.

Several other people call me, their voices relieved, and then the whole gang, including Gray, who looks glad to see me but still angry, appears and surrounds me.

“You okay?” Maggie asks, hugging me.

“Yeah. You?”

And I'm blooming like a June rose, thanks for asking,” interjects Murphy, nostrils flaring as he nails me with a
don't make me worry about you
warning glare. I nod. He looks slightly mollified, then turns to the others. “Now if you clowns are finished with this touching reunion, perhaps we should get below deck, where it's safe—hey! Get back here, you foolish children!”

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't plan to be holed up in some tiny cabin wondering whether the creature is about to kill us all. With a swift exchange of looks, I can see that they're not any happier with this suggestion than I am. The decision made, the other kids and I run up the metal staircase to the main deck.

“Hey!” Cursing, Murphy has no choice but to follow us.

Chaos reigns up here. Crewmen, now suited up with orange slickers and black rubber boots, shout at each other as they try to get organized. Some of them are hanging over the rail, doing something with the cables, while others work with the long-armed machine—a crane?—and try to lift something big and heavy out of the water.

The cables disappear over the side and into a stretch of black water that churns and splashes like a hooked swordfish on steroids, and I know that they've somehow tracked the thing. Caged it.

The other kids and I huddle together as though there could possibly be strength in numbers, and Murphy stands between us and the railing, holding his arms wide and backing us up several steps, as though one elderly adult could protect us from that thing, whatever it is.

I watch the proceedings for several seconds, and then something inside my head pops free and overcomes my fear.

“They should let it go,” I say to no one in particular. “Why don't they let it go?”

A single passing crewman with a red bandana tied around his forehead shoots me a glare over his shoulder, but everyone else ignores me. Or maybe they can't hear me over the alarms and the shouting and the ongoing directions over the speakers. Whatever. The collective indifference only cranks me higher, and two urgent thoughts stream through my head in an endless loop:

We don't need to bring that thing onto the boat with us.

We need to run as far away from it as we possibly can.

“This is crazy!” I say.

“Bria,” says a quiet voice that slices through my panic.

It's Cortés.

He's appeared beside my group and, to my consternation, doesn't look the least bit worried. In fact, his eyes are bright behind his windswept hair, and his exhilaration is a tangible force that prickles the air around me.

“They've got it under control,” he tells me soothingly. “You don't need to get so worked up. And we're about to witness history being made.”

At this, he points to another player in this unfolding drama, a videographer with his camera perched on his shoulder and a light aimed at the hustling crewmen.

I hesitate.

I want to believe that things will be okay and that the situation can be controlled safely. Really, I do. I can see the men on standby, the sturdy equipment and the firepower. They're adults and trained professionals with way more experience than I have, for sure.

But I cannot shake my foreboding, and apparently it shows on my face.

“Don't worry, my son,” calls a new voice.

Captain Romero descends the last few steps from the wheelhouse, where I assume he's been directing this whole operation, and strides over to us. Unlike his crewmen, he's made no concessions to the rising wind or the ongoing water spray from the struggling creature, and hasn't bothered with any protective gear. If the growing chill or wet bother him in any way, he gives no sign of it whatsoever. He looks, in fact, as though he's overseeing nothing more challenging than getting the boat docked at port.

“We will bring the creature on board and get him safely into his tank, tucking him in the way we would do a newborn baby,” Captain Romero continues, “and then Bria will see that she is in the safest possible hands and there is nothing to fear.”

He starts toward his men, who are struggling at the rail.

As usual, I don't know when to keep quiet.

“But what if you and your men can't handle this thing?” I call. “What then?”

Captain Romero stops dead, mid-stride. His shoulders square up, and then he is pivoting and on his way back to me with a rigid posture and eyes so cold and flat I have to resist the urge to back up several steps. Maggie and Gray, as though sensing trouble, crowd closer to me on either side, and Murphy edges slightly in front of me and crosses his arms over his chest.

“Señorita Hunter,” murmurs Captain Romero. All of the charm is gone from his voice now, and I feel the slow creep of dread up my spine. “You are young and ignorant, so I will excuse the insult.”

“Sorry,” I say, stung. “I just think—”

“My men and I are highly trained, and you are a schoolgirl who thinks too highly of her own opinions,” Captain Romero says. “Thus far, I've tolerated your silly opinions because you are young and charming, but I am now out of patience.”

I'm speechless—not so much from his words, but from his courtly demeanor turning into this raging arrogance. And yet there's a part of me that feels this may be the real Captain Romero and the other one was just a shell he put on when it suited him.

Gray and Carter, meanwhile, mutter with disapproval, and Murphy and Cortés both step in.

“There now,” Murphy says. “There's no need for that kind of talk to a young one.”

“Back off Bria,” Cortés says flatly.

Captain Romero's expression doesn't change, but his eyelids slowly lower and he cocks his ear to one side, as though to catch any lingering sound waves and confirm what he just heard. There's a long pause during which none of us seem to breathe. When his lids suddenly flicker open again, his eyes are lit with a strange gleam that makes me positive we don't want to press his temper.

“Señor Murphy, this is not the first time I've had problems with the disrespectful children in your care. Make sure it's the last.”

Murphy recoils. His brows lower into a forbidding ridge over his flashing blue eyes. “Now see here,” he starts.

“If you are not man enough to control a few unruly teenagers,” Captain Romero continues, “then I shall have to send all of you to your quarters, where you shall remain, under guard, for the duration of our journey together.” He looks to me. “Are we understood, Señorita Hunter?”

I glare at him, furious but not daring to say anything.

“As for you, my son,” Captain Romero says to Cortés, “if you speak like that to me again, you and I will have serious problems indeed.” He pauses long enough to let this threat sink in, but Cortés doesn't back down. “And now I must see to my men.”

The captain begins to stride off.

“You and I won't have any problems at all,” Cortés says to his father's departing figure, “as long as you're kind to our guests.”

This defiance doesn't go over well. Captain Romero wheels back around. His mouth twists into something feral and dangerous—a close cousin to a snarl—and he makes a sound that's almost like a hiss.

I shrink deeper into my skin as I realize, with a nauseating swoop in my belly, that all our fates are in the hands of a man I suddenly don't like and don't trust.

But Cortés doesn't flinch before his father's displeasure, and I feel a reluctant swell of admiration for him.

The standoff between the Romero men might have continued forever, but things are suddenly escalating among the crew. I hear the jolting clang of metal on metal, and discover that the men are trying to reel in something that looks like a giant shark cage or lobster pot rather than the creature itself. I can only see the top bars of the cage over the side of the ship, but judging from its wild swinging back and forth and the warning creak of weakening equipment, the whole thing is about to break apart.

“You can't do that!” Dr. Baer arrives on deck and races over to the rails, where he tries to push a couple of the men out of the way. A chorus of protests rises up, and the men lapse into Portuguese and Spanish as they argue and, I suspect, curse at Dr. Baer.

This is more than Captain Romero can take, and he mutters a string of Spanish profanities that I have no trouble translating. Wheeling away from Cortés, his face contorting with rage, arms gesticulating in slashing movements, he bears down on the men.

“Idiots!” he roars, switching back to English. “You cannot handle the swing-arm like that unless you want to break it! Listen to Dr. Baer! What are you doing?”

Murphy takes this opportunity to shoo us kids back several feet and out of the way of any wayward overhead equipment. We watch—with the same sort of frozen fascination that makes people collect around a building to see if a threatened jumper becomes an actual jumper—as the man with the red bandana climbs onto the rail and swings one leg over, leaning onto the jostling cage as he tries to do something with the pulley.