Gargantua (24 page)

“Very funny. Let’s do it.”

“How far down do we want the high-frequency speaker?” Hale asked as he hefted it over the rail. They had had to attach weights to either side of the speaker so it wouldn’t float.

“About twenty feet,” Jack said.

“Right.” Hale started lowering it into the water via the wire that connected it to the broadcaster.

Jack then lowered the other speaker, which wasn’t weighted, down to the water. It trailed obediently behind the boat like a trained water skier.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s do a sound check.”

Hale flipped two switches on the broadcaster, and the needle on one display swung all the way around to the other side. “The high-frequency’s working,” he said.

“Or at least the needle is,” Jack said with a smile. Then he noticed that Casey was tense in Brandon’s arms on the deck. He pointed at the baby. “Actually, based on that, it’s working. As long as it stays underwater and he’s above water, it won’t repulse him the way it should for the others, though.” He said that last primarily for Brandon’s benefit, as the creature’s sudden tension made the boy apprehensive.

Jack walked over to the camcorder and hit the
PLAY
button. “Camcorder’s on.”

Suddenly, the sound of Casey’s voice could be heard at a greatly amplified volume behind the boat. The baby himself looked around in confusion at hearing his own voice while not actually using it. Brandon fed him a cheese puff to calm him down as Jack pressed the
STOP
button.

“Let’s check the sonar,” he said to Hale. “We can get an exact position.”

They walked over to the sonar, which had, along with the broadcaster, come from Hale’s bungalow. The nine-footer was too small to register, but a sixty-foot-long reptile most assuredly wasn’t. It was moving alongside the boat. According to the sonar display, a green screen with tiny green pixels of varying intensity indicating mass picked up in the water, it was a bit over nine hundred meters away and thirty meters down.
Good, safe distance,
Jack thought.

Brandon stood behind Jack and pointed at the sonar display while looking at Casey. “That’s your dad,” he said. Jack smiled, and wondered if the creature truly understood that that green blob on the screen actually represented his father.

He moved over to the camcorder and once again hit
PLAY
. Again, the sounds of Casey’s voice were heard from the stern.

From the sonar, Hale said, “It’s turned and is moving toward us. It must be hearin’ the sound.”

“What should I do?” Paul called from behind the wheel.

“You’re doing it,” Jack said. “Just maintain a steady course.”

“Steady. Right.”

Jack smiled and moved over to the broadcaster. This was the tricky part. Casey’s voice would lure it closer, but if it got too close, the president’s boat would be returning to Malau as splinters. His hand hovering over the switch to turn the ultra-high-frequency noise on, he said to Hale, “Tell me when.”

“Almost . . . almost . . . almost . .
. now.”

Jack flipped the switch.

In Brandon’s arms, Casey twitched.

“Hell and damnation,” Hale muttered, “it’s still approaching, it—wait.” He let out a breath. “It’s eased off. The high-frequency’s keepin’ it back about forty-five meters.”

Paul’s sigh of relief at this news was audible on the deck.

Jack peered over Hale’s shoulder at the display. “It’s following us, though. Right where we want it.”

“Oh,
damn!”
Hale cried out suddenly.

Panicking, Jack said, “What? What?”
Did the sonar go wonky? Did the high-frequency cop out?

“No, nothing, mate, nothing. At least nothing for you to worry about. No, I just remembered that I never did my
Scientific American
column. I promised my editor I’d have it in by Friday. With all this hugger-mugger, I completely forgot about the blessed thing.”

Jack couldn’t help it. He laughed. “In the realm of great tragedies we’ve seen in the last week, that ranks pretty low.”

“You only say that ’cause you’ve never met my editor. She’ll be right browned off, I can tell you that.”

“I can’t see him.” That was Brandon’s voice. Jack turned to see him standing at the stern railing, peering over the side as Jack had been doing several minutes earlier. Casey stood on the deck bench and peered between the slats of the railing. Brandon looked down at the baby creature. “Can you see him?”

Smiling, Jack turned back around and put on the radio headset. “Sergeant Field, this is Ellway, do you read?”

“Loud and clear, Ellway,” said Field’s voice over the tinny speakers of the headset. “What’s the word?”

“We’re on course, heading toward the creatures’ home. Time to set the depth charges.”

“Roger that, Ellway.” After a second: “Depth charges away.” After several more seconds: “Congratulations, Mister Ellway, you are the proud father of a dead fault line.”

“Thanks, Sergeant,” Jack said with a smile. “Give my regards to Colonel Wayne. Ellway out.” He removed the headset and looked at Hale. “Okay, that’s the easy stuff out of the way.”

Suddenly, a spark flashed in the corner of Jack’s eye. He turned to look at the broadcaster in time to see several more sparks. “Oh, no,” he muttered.

Hale ran over to the broadcaster and started making some adjustments, but it kept sparking. “Hell and damnation,” he said, “it’s the circuitry. The high-frequency is failing.” Quickly but gingerly, Hale removed a panel from the broadcaster.

Reluctantly, knowing full well what he would see and hoping against hope that he wouldn’t see it, Jack looked at the sonar display. “The creature’s getting closer,” he said anxiously. The sonar placed it at thirty meters and closing very quickly.

Jack turned to see that Brandon was still standing by the back rail with Casey.

Beyond Brandon, he could see that the water was churning to a degree much greater than could be accounted for by simply being in the boat’s wake.

As Jack ran to grab Brandon, he could feel the boat speeding up.
Thank you, Paul,
he thought as he wrapped his arm around Brandon’s waist and pulled him away. He wasn’t sure how much good it would do—the creature was big enough that it probably didn’t matter what part of the boat one was on if it chose to attack—but it was probably safer at the center of the boat than the edges.

Brandon broke free, and Jack was about to protest when he saw that his son was going back for Casey, who still stood peering between the slats of the railing.

“Just a loose wire!” Hale called out.

Jack ran over to the broadcaster just as Hale reconnected a wire, then replaced the panel and switched the ultra-high-frequency back on. Jack turned to the sonar display to see that the creature was moving farther back—or, rather, since they were still moving at a good clip, the creature had stopped moving forward. Then, after a moment, it continued at a safer distance, this time staying fifty-five meters back.
The sudden burst of sonics that close must’ve spooked it.

“Well,
that
was fun,” Jack muttered. He looked up to the bridge. “You okay up there, Paul?”

“Oh yeah, just peachy,” Paul said, sounding breathless. “I’ll be fine the minute my heart restarts. Let’s not do that again real soon, huh?”

“I’ll do my best, mate,” Hale said.

“Dad,” Brandon said.

Jack looked at his son, and saw that he was gazing out onto the water behind them. Following his gaze, Jack saw a trawler making a beeline for their boat and gaining as fast as the reptile had done minutes earlier.

“What the hell?”

Then he recognized the man behind the wheel.
Derek. Jesus Christ, doesn’t this guy ever quit?

As he got closer, Derek pulled over to the port side of the president’s boat.
Makes sense,
Jack thought,
that’s the direction the current is going.

Then he noticed something else: thanks to that selfsame current, the speakers had drifted in the same direction. And Derek was pulling his propellor-powered boat into a position that put those propellors dangerously close to the two speaker wires.

He cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled, “Stay back!”

Hale and Paul did likewise. “Back! Stay back!” “Derek, stay back!”

Still steering with one hand, Derek picked up what looked like a harpoon gun with the other. “Hand over the little one!” he cried out. “I want the little one!” The New Zealander’s face had gone red, and his eyes looked wild.
I think our fisherman friend has lost it,
Jack thought, which might have given him some comfort—to Jack’s way of thinking, fewer people deserved it more—but for the fact that he was dangerously close to destroying the only thing keeping them all from becoming giant-reptile food.

“Please, Derek, back off!” Jack cried.

“Shut your mouth! Just hand over the little one—
and
your rotten kid too, for security! I’ll turn him loose when I’m safe!”

Like hell,
Jack thought, and immediately guided Brandon below decks. To his credit, Brandon didn’t even think of resisting, but grabbed Casey in his arms and went down the narrow staircase.

Paul shouted, “Derek, you moron, get out of here! The giant creature’s right below us!”

Having safely stowed his son, Jack turned to look again at Derek’s propellors—they were inches from the speaker wires. Then he looked at the sonar—the creature kept its distance at fifty-five meters, but that would change the minute those speakers stopped broadcasting.

Hale cried, “You’re gonna kill us all, you maniac!”

“Don’t think I wouldn’t!” Derek yelled.

And then it happened: the propellor sliced right through the speaker wires. The wires emitted brief sparks that died in the water, and the speakers belonging to Dak’s band floated off into the Pacific Ocean.

Hale said unnecessarily, “Jack, we’ve lost the wires.”

Jack looked at the sonar.
Thirty meters and closing. We’re toast.

“I’ve got nothing to lose, mates,” Derek was carrying on. “I’m not leaving without the creature and the boy!”

Twenty meters.

And then a massive head broke through the water.

For a moment, Jack Ellway couldn’t move. He was in complete awe. The nine-footer had been magnificent in its “plumage” of horns; the mother magnificent in size and grandeur. This one combined both of those elements, and it was an amazing sight. Jack found himself hypnotized by the creature’s majesty.

The hypnotism ended when it smashed Derek’s boat.

Derek screamed. The creature trashed the rear of the trawler. Derek somehow had the presence of mind to leap off before the next swipe, which took the rest of it. Then he swam toward the president’s boat.

“Y’know,” Paul said, “we
could
leave him down there.”

Jack had to admit to being tempted, but enough people had died already. “Grab my legs,” he said to Hale as he got down onto his stomach. Once Hale did as he asked, he leaned out as far as he could and reached toward the water. “Grab my hand,” he said to Derek.

To Jack’s relief, Derek grabbed Jack’s right wrist with his own right hand; Jack likewise grabbed Derek’s wrist with his right hand, using his left to haul himself and the fisherman onto the boat.

To Jack’s annoyance, Derek still held the harpoon gun in his left hand.

Jack reached for the harpoon gun, but Derek yanked it out of Jack’s reach, then swung it around and hit Jack in the stomach with the handle.

Wheezing, Jack fell to his knees, grateful for the lifejacket he wore—it probably dulled the impact. Even with it, he had had the wind knocked out of him. Derek stumbled forward and tried to punch Jack in the face, but was thrown off balance by the rocking of the boat. The swing went over Jack’s head.

Clutching his stomach with his left hand, Jack thrust a punch toward Derek’s stomach, which doubled the fisherman over—but he still didn’t relinquish the harpoon gun.

Jack made another lunge for the harpoon gun, but Derek once again hit Jack with the handle, this time in the upper thorax. Eye-tearing pain sliced through his chest.
Shit, I think he nailed a rib,
he thought as he lashed out with a backhanded punch to Derek’s jaw.

And then Jack found himself propelled upward.

There is a moment that high-divers experience when they hit the apogee of their dive, that moment when they hang in the air, the force of their leap off the diving board finally starting to give way to gravity but not yet willing to relinquish its hold. For that one moment, one is free of any constraints, but free in the air.

Jack felt that moment seconds after punching Derek. In that split second before gravity reasserted itself and pulled him toward the harsh waters of the Pacific, he looked down and saw why he had been thrown skyward in the first place.

The creature, having completed its demolition of Derek’s trawler, had apparently swum under the president’s boat and come up through the bottom, splitting the vessel in half.

Somehow, Jack managed to convert his tumble downward into a passable dive. It took all his willpower to keep from inhaling sharply when the water collided with his bruised ribs. Within a few seconds, he was treading water, kept afloat by the graces of the lifejacket.

He looked around quickly, trying to take stock of the situation. He saw Hale swim over to where Casey was floundering in the water—the little guy seemed befuddled by this turn of events.

Oh God,
Jack realized,
Casey’s alone. Where’s Brandon?

Then he sighted his son, who was gazing at Hale with a look of relief on his face.

“Toss the gun away,” came Paul’s voice from behind Jack. Maneuvering around in the water, Jack saw Paul holding a life preserver and speaking to Derek. Like the rest of them, Derek was treading water; unlike the rest of them, the New Zealander didn’t have a lifejacket, and he looked like he wouldn’t be able to keep the tread up much longer, especially since he
still
clutched the harpoon gun with his left hand like it was an extension of his arm.

“I mean it, Derek, toss the gun away,” Paul repeated.