West Pacific Supers: Rising Tide (27 page)

He turned to look at
her, his eyes tender and red-rimmed. “I never know what’s worse,” he said,
reaching up to touch her face. “To know exactly where you are and what you’re
doing, to watch every excruciating blow on live news coverage, or to know
nothing at all and have my imagination create endless horrors as I wait.
Waiting and worrying, waiting and worrying. Sometimes I think that’s all I do.”

“I’m so sorry,” she
repeated, catching his hand in her own. “I’m sorry for everything… I’m sorry
for lying to you.” She paused and her voice was small as she broached the topic
they almost never discussed. “More than anything, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you
who I was until after you’d already proposed. It was
chickenshit
of me and it wasn’t respectful of you. I’m sorry.”

“I’m glad you did,
Camille. I never would have had the guts to ask you out if I’d have thought you
were Nova Girl.” He laughed suddenly, caressing her hand. “I was just so
thrilled to have a young, beautiful woman interested in my music - us folk
singers don’t exactly get a lot of hot groupies.”

She leaned over to
kiss him. “You ready to go in?” she asked, relieved to see him smiling again.

“Definitely,” he
said. “Though you know, once Meghan is down…” He ran his hand suggestively up
her leg. “I was just wondering…”

“Wondering what?”
she asked with a giggle, slapping his hand away.

“Wondering if you
got rid of all of the old Nova Girl costumes?” His eyes twinkled mischievously.

“Mr. Jules
Franklyn!” she exclaimed, trying and failing to sound indignant.

“Well?” he pressed.

“As a matter of
fact, I may have kept one,” she admitted, feeling like a teenager all over
again. She smiled to herself as she got out of the car.
Another advantage of the new training
regime is that even that damned miniskirt probably fits again. But I wonder
where I put the matching boots? Maybe Jules could read to Meghan tonight. That
would give me an extra 30 minutes to search…

5:13 p.m.,
Saturday, May 4th, 2013

100
Lighthouse Road

West
Pacific, CA

It had
taken Seawolf a couple weeks to comb through the news archives, police reports,
and team databases to see if there was anything else similar to what she had
encountered. There was depressingly little – almost as little as the total
amount of information she had on
Avalon
One
, which was precisely nothing. She knew she needed to call Paul
to see if he had heard anything, but she kept putting that off. She was still
bothered that he had asked her out the last time they had seen each other. It
simply made no sense. Of course, she knew all about
normals
who had mutant fetishes, but Paul just didn’t seem like the type.

She sighed. It was
ridiculous to avoid him; after all, he was the Coast Guard liaison and thus the
most likely source of relevant news about her current topic of investigation.
But at the same time, she didn’t want to give him false encouragement if he
actually had been sincere. But how could he have been? She walked to the
bathroom and yet again peered in the mirror at herself. No, Paul had to have
some ulterior motive, or perhaps he was just making fun of her. He might not be
the best-looking guy she’d ever seen, and his receding hairline suggested that
he was probably pushing 40, but so was she, and those weren’t big enough
detriments to explain why someone with regular DNA would want to go out with
someone as freakish-looking as she was.

She frowned and
tried to put Paul out of her mind as she continued reviewing one of her old
college textbooks. She had taken – and almost failed - an introductory course
on mutant genetics and she was hoping that the book would give her some ideas
about how that eel-like creature she had fought might have developed. It could
be a so-called “natural” mutant like she was, but she had a hunch that
Eel-thing was something different and probably more sinister. Her best theory
so far was toxic sludge dumped off the coast, or an outflow resulting from one
of those beach
renourishment
projects that she found
so suspicious. Large-scale pollution happened far more than it should and
experience had shown that it didn’t take much released mutagenic compound to
cause problems.

Seawolf jumped as
her HoloBerry rang. She quickly checked the caller ID: Coast Guard. She
swallowed hard, annoyed that her heart had begun to race. “Yes?” she answered
gruffly.

“Hi Seawolf,” said
Paul. “Ah, we’ve got a report that I thought you might be interested in. A
fisherman coming back in reported a sailboat that seemed to be abandoned. The
name matches a boat registered with the West Pacific Yacht Club - they say it
left on the 1st and hasn’t returned. Sounds similar to last time, so I was
thinking maybe you’d want to come check it out.”

Seawolf tried to
think of a counterargument, but it made too much sense. “Alright,” she said
cautiously. “Where are you now?”

“Just leaving.
Sending you coordinates.”

“Right,” she said.
“I’ll start swimming.”

It was a beautiful
evening, even if the water was still icy cold, but ideal for a long swim. She
reached the intercept coordinates with time to spare. She treaded water as she
watched the distinctive profile of the 47’ Coast Guard motor lifeboat
approaching. When it stopped, she pulled herself up the port recovery well,
ignoring the crewman who offered her a hand, shook the water out of her fur,
and joined Paul at the starboard bridge opening. He gave her a warm smile.
There was something about being out at sea that seemed to put Paul in high
spirits. Seawolf could relate. The swim had loosened her tense muscles and she
felt invigorated and ready for action. She couldn’t help smiling back, which
she almost instantly regretted when his smile broadened. “Great to see you! You
made good time.”

Seawolf felt her
pulse race a bit, but she frowned and snapped back, “I’ve done better. So,
where’s the boat?”

“Up near Lake
Tolowa
,” he said. “She’s a 22’
Nonsuch
,
licensed to a Philip Summers, an accountant for West Pacific Light and Power.
He seems to run her singlehanded, as you might imagine for a catboat.”

“What’s she called?”

“
Summer’s End
,” said Paul
with a wry laugh.

“Prophetic,” said
Seawolf.

“Let’s hope not.”
Paul turned back to the controls and the boat jumped forward.

They drove on for a
while in silence. The 47’ MLB had a cruising speed of 22 knots, though Paul was
pushing her beyond that. Seawolf enjoyed the feeling of the wind whipping through
her fur, or at least she did until she caught Paul staring at her. She had
spent most of her career wearing a wetsuit, and it had never bothered her
before, but she was now acutely conscious of how it hugged her body. Not that
she had anything to hide; she was in great shape. She just wasn’t accustomed to
someone looking at her in that way. She fixed Paul with a disapproving stare,
and he quickly looked away, coughing as he adjusted his dirty old hat.

The sun was setting
by the time they reached the coast off
Tolowa
Dunes
State Park and began their search pattern. Seawolf stayed out of Paul’s way;
the Coast Guard was the expert when it came to search and rescue. She was just
here in case Kelp-boy or Eel-thing showed up. While she waited, she ran a missing
persons check for Philip Summers and came up empty. Then again, public records
showed him to be 52 years old and unmarried; he was probably taking a week-long
vacation to celebrate Tax Day being over and no one would find it suspicious
that he hadn’t been at work or home for a while.

Before long, they
found the
Summer’s End
,
anchored off the coast and unresponsive. They pulled alongside and Seawolf
lightly jumped over as the
Coasties
secured the
sailboat. It was indeed abandoned. No signs of a struggle or anything unusual
below. The icebox was even fully stocked.

She was still poking
around when Paul came down, carrying a handheld marine transmitter and
receiver. “He had a working marine VHF set,” he told her, gesturing at the
radio, “but he didn’t send out a distress call - at least not that anyone
received.”

“Everything’s in
order down here,” she said. “He’s got food for a couple days.”

“She’s a pretty
little thing,” said Paul, looking around appreciatively. “Got an outboard motor
that looks in working order - heck, there’s even a full spare fuel tank. It’s
like he just disappeared.”

Something caught
Seawolf’s
eye out one of the portholes, something bright
blue flapping in the wind. Maybe a flag of some sort. “There’s something out
there,” she said, pointing, and then hurried aft past Paul to get above. She
brushed against him as she passed and she felt the scales on her arm prickle.

It was a towel,
knotted around the stern pulpit. She took it down and buried her face in it,
letting her superior sense of smell take over. When she looked up, Paul was
there. “Anything?” he asked.

She shook her head.
“A little suntan lotion and sweat but no
seasalt
.
Probably used it to wipe his face off at some point, but not to dry off. Which
probably means that he went in, but didn’t come out.” She frowned and swung a
leg over the rail. “Better see if there’s anyone down there.”

It was dark and
moody underwater. Seawolf briefly wondered why it was that lately she kept
ending up doing nighttime operations. She switched on her dive light and began
a circular search pattern around the sailboat, which cast a foreboding shadow
of deeper darkness. About 40 feet from the boat, she started noticing increased
concentrations of small fish. Flashing her light about, she noticed something
else - bits of something pale white floating in the water. She grabbed one of
the larger pieces and looked at it in the glow of the LED. The fur on the back
of her neck stood up: flesh, and it didn’t look like fish.

She found the body
half-buried beneath a protruding rock that created a sort of narrow underwater
cave. The corpse was naked and badly decomposed. The flesh on the legs was
shredded and small fish swarming the area were doing their best to finish the
job. Seawolf felt despondent as she began to pull the body out of the cave;
rescue had come too late for Philip Summers. There was a noise from above, a
shadow overhead. She
backflipped
to the side but
miscalculated for the closeness of the rock and smashed her left leg badly. The
creature above pressed its advantage and lashed out, brushing against her back
and sending several hundred volts of electricity pulsing down her spine.

Seawolf’s
body contorted in
pain. She started to scream, but had the presence of mind to keep her mouth
shut. She forced her body into a fighting stance and got her first look at her
attacker.

It was another
humanoid with the neck and head of an eel, but unlike the first one she had
faced, this one was wearing orange bathing trunks. It also appeared to be - for
lack of a better word - molting. Its flesh was grey and loose and there were
open wounds on its arms oozing some sort of pus. The eyes that met hers were
small, beady, and unfathomably alien, but Seawolf got the distinct impression
of misery. Then it attacked. She dropped her light and responded in kind.

Seawolf never could
remember underwater battles afterwards. Her instinct was always to end the
fight as quickly as she could, before her limited supply of oxygen disappeared.
She fought with a fierce brutality fueled by the inherently feral nature that
she suspected was at the heart of her deepest self.

She let loose with a
flurry of claws, kicks, and punches and was met with an equally ferocious
barrage of electricity and physical attacks from this new Eel-thing. As the
minutes passed, Seawolf sensed that its electrical discharges were weakening
and that when her claws did make contact with the creature, she was ripping off
chunks of flesh. As tell-tale black and white spots began to dance before her
eyes, she made a final salvo of attacks and was shocked when she tore the
creature’s left arm clean out of its socket. Horrified, she pulled herself out
of the attack and watched the mutilated creature fall to the ocean floor. She
wondered if she had killed it before she ripped its arm off. Shivering, she
grabbed her light and swam up for the surface and beautifully clean, fresh air.

It was dark now, but
she used her dive light to signal the Coast Guard vessel. Paul soon pulled the
boat alongside and this time, Seawolf did not refuse the offer of a hand to
climb aboard.

“My God, what
happened down there?” Paul said, gaping at her. Seawolf looked down at the
various gashes in her wetsuit that were dripping blood. Her left leg was raw
and bloody where the impact with the rock had torn scales off. She could smell
singed fur where the electricity had hit her neck and shoulders; she had a
slight ringing in her ears that was very disconcerting. Her claws were black
with blood and torn flesh, reminding her of the arm that had come out of its
socket. She shuddered and put her hands behind her. “Two bodies,” she said
curtly. “Both dead. I’ll retrieve them.”

Paul started to
argue, but Seawolf took a deep breath and dived back into the water. She
brought Philip Summer’s body up first, struggling to hoist him to where one of
the
Coasties
could reach and haul him the rest of the
way on board. She was raw with fatigue but they needed that mutant corpse for
genetic analysis. She dove back into the water one last time. There was the
rock where she had fought the creature, there was its arm - but no body. She
looked around frantically. There wasn’t enough current down here for it to have
floated off. The damn thing must not have been dead after all; it must have
regenerated and swam off, just like the other one. Angry and frustrated, she
grabbed the arm and started for the surface. A massive electrical pulse hit her
in the back, her heart pulsed erratically, and she blacked out for an instant.

The gulp of salt
water she instinctively took brought her around not more than a second or two
later. The creature had gripped her with its one remaining arm and was dragging
her under the protruding rock cave. She had no energy left for a fight; her
insides were burning with a terrible pain. Seawolf let her body go limp for
just long enough to touch her legs to the ocean floor, then she desperately
pushed off for the surface. The creature tightened its grip in surprise, but
the effort had been worth it. She crested the water, towing the creature, and
emerged into the brilliant spotlight of the MLB only a dozen feet away. Seawolf
closed her eyes and tried to swim for the boat, but she had no strength left.
The creature clawed at her, she dimly heard shouting; a line was thrown out.
She reached for it blindly, wrapped it around her arm – someone was pulling her
in - the creature hissed and electricity poured into her back. Once again, she
blacked out.

She came to at the
sound of gunshots. She was lying on the deck of the MLB, a crewman leaning over
her. “It regenerates,” she mumbled but the man clearly did not understand what
she was saying. “It regenerates!” she yelled at him as she sat up. He shook his
head and said something that she couldn’t quite hear. He was apparently trying
to calm her down. Well, she wouldn’t be calmed. This was important. They
couldn’t lose the damn thing now.