Gargantua (25 page)

A snarl on his face, Derek did as he was told. The harpoon gun went flying off behind Derek, who then hungrily snatched at the preferred life preserver.

Okay, that accounts for all the humans, and for the baby. So what happened to Dad and Junior?

Suddenly, Brandon sank underwater.

It happened so fast, Jack almost didn’t see Brandon actually go down. One minute he was dog-paddling over toward Hale and Casey, the next he was gone.

“Brandon!” he shouted.

When his son didn’t resurface after a second had passed, Jack gingerly removed his lifejacket, took several quick breaths to super-oxygenate his blood, and then dove under the surface.

Jack had never been the greatest swimmer in the world.
Relentlessly competent
was how Diane had described his swimming ability when they were dating, and he hadn’t improved much in the subsequent ten-plus years. Add to that the bruised ribs, and it was a struggle to move downward, much less find his son. He had to rely much more on his feet than his arms, as each movement of his right arm sent splinters of pain shooting through his chest.

Within a few seconds of agonizing swimming, he found Brandon, whose lifejacket had gotten caught on one of the stray ropes from one of the two mangled ships.
But the rope’s taut,
Jack realized.
That doesn’t make sense.

He peered down—to see that the other end of the rope was wrapped around the tail of the nine-footer.

Kicking fiercely toward Brandon, Jack noticed that both the giant creature and the nine-footer were swimming downward.
I guess they’ve given up on us. But why have they—?

Then he remembered:
The Iozima Ridge. This is where they came from. I guess they’ve decided that life outside the nest is more trouble than it’s worth. Nice to see my instinct was right.

Unfortunately, their homesickness was threatening Brandon’s life.

Ignoring the pain, he pushed ever downward, finally managing to snag Brandon. As he undid the boy’s lifejacket, dark spots started to form in front of his eyes. His right arm felt sluggish as he wrapped it around his now-free son. A lecture from his scuba diving certification course came back to him: “It’s not the oxygen deprivation that gets you, that makes your vision cloudy, that gums up your reflexes; it’s the carbon dioxide buildup. CO
2
is
not
your friend.”

He kicked as hard as he could toward the surface, using his left arm to push downward in the hopes of propelling himself up as fast as possible, cradling Brandon in his right.

On the way up, the baby creature came swimming down.

For a brief instant, Brandon and Casey exchanged glances. Brandon reached out and touched Casey’s face.

Then they continued on their way, each back homeward.

Jack spared the baby one final look down as they tried to get surfaceward. Casey swam as fast as he could, trying to rejoin his brother and father.

The instant his head broke through the surface, Jack took the longest, deepest breath he’d ever taken—then cried out in pain, as the sharp intake pained his bruised ribs. But he didn’t care—he’d never enjoyed taking a breath so much in his life.

A plank from one of the boats floated nearby, and they both grabbed onto it.

Then they looked at each other.

Brandon fell into Jack’s arms and hugged him tightly.

That hurt even more than the breath had, and Jack cared even less. Part of him hoped Brandon would never let go.

Clutching his son in his arms, Jack looked over at Hale, who was smiling. “Did you free the baby?” he asked.

Hale nodded. “Yeah, I figured the little bloke belonged with his family.”

“I can’t bloody believe you did that,” Derek said, rubbing his jaw. “Don’t you realize—”

Paul rolled his eyes. “Give it a
rest,
Derek.”

Hale suddenly perked up. “What’s that sound?”

“What sound?” Jack asked. Then he heard it: a motor. He turned to see a boat with the letters
USMC
stencilled on the side.

Standing at the prow was Colonel Wayne. To Jack’s amazement, he was grinning ear to ear.

“Someone call a cab?”

EPILOGUE

“D
erek Lawson, you are under arrest.”

Those were the first words Joe Movita said when Derek Lawson set foot onto Malau from the Marine boat. He said them as he grabbed Derek’s arms and yanked them—perhaps a bit too violently—behind his back and applied handcuffs to the fisherman’s wrists.

“What’re the charges?” Ellway asked as he followed Derek off the boat—though, Joe noticed, the marine biologist moved more gingerly.

“Assaulting a police officer,” Joe said, pointing to his left eye, which had swollen half shut.

“Ooh, that doesn’t look good,” Ellway said, taking a closer look at the chief’s face. Then he clutched his side. “And this doesn’t feel good.”

“I’d say you should see a doctor, but she left on the last ’copter.”

Colonel Wayne stepped down and looked angrily at Joe. “And how come you weren’t on that copter, Chief?”

“I had some unfinished business with Derek here. Besides, Malau is my home. I’ve lived here all my life, and I’ve been responsible for its well being for all of my adult life. Captain goes down with the sinking ship, y’know?”

Wayne shook his head. “Yeah, well, you’re lucky.”

“How’s that?”

Derek finally spoke. “These bleedin’ idiots led the creatures back to their homes.”

“Sonar confirmed it,” Wayne said. “Dad, Junior, and the baby all went deep into the ridge.”

“I don’t think we’ll be seeing them again,” Ellway said. “My guess is that Junior and the baby went exploring out of the fault line and found themselves on Malau. Mom came after them, and ran afoul of the human predator. Dad came to retrieve Mom’s corpse and finish her job of bringing the kids home.”

“Gotta admire family loyalty,” Doctor Hale added.

Joe shook his head. He’d never even met his own father, yet it was out of a sense of loyalty to him that he took on the role of the island’s protector—the same role his father had taken on when he challenged the Japanese overlords of Malau during the war.
Odd that giant reptiles would have the same kind of loyalty.

He also thought about Jimmy, to whom he had made a promise. In a sense, it had been kept, though Joe wasn’t sure that Jimmy would see it that way.

Well, it’ll have to do,
he decided as he led Derek off.

By morning, most of the inhabitants of Malau had returned. They had barely had time to settle on Kalor before they were called back. But in Colonel J. Christopher Wayne’s considered opinion, the threat had passed, so it was safe.

Hot on the locals’ heels were the media, all of whom wanted to know everything about the monsters that had terrorized the island. The lack of any video footage disappointed them, as did Wayne’s monosyllabic replies to their endless questions—Wayne hated dealing with the press, and eventually he said that he’d only talk to Bateman. The
Malau Weekly News
editor had done well for himself, as his were the only pictures of the nine-footer, but not nearly as well as that
paparazzo—what was his name? Askegrit or something?
—whose photo of Big Mama Lizard had been snatched up by every news agency on the planet.

From this point on,
Wayne thought,
it’s just cleanup after a successful mission.

I just hope General Cox sees it that way.

Cox arrived in a helicopter several hours ahead of schedule. His full complement of troops were still on a troop carrier plowing its way through the Pacific from Okinawa. A tall, imposing man with a shaved head who always wore mirrorshades and smoked Cuban cigars, he had known Christopher Wayne since they were both newly promoted sergeants at the latter stages of ’Nam.

As he set foot off the chopper and ran over, bent double to stay out of the wash of the blades, he cried out, “Chris, you mind telling me what the
hell
is going on here?”

Wayne saluted first, which Cox returned. “If the general would be more specific as to—”

“Oh, can the crap, Chris, I’m not in the mood,” Cox said as he removed a Havana from his shirt pocket. “I tell you I’m takin’ over, and your response is to blow up a damn
ridge.”
He bit off one end of the cheroot. “You wanna explain that one?” he asked as he lit it.

“You told me that you would take over the mission upon your arrival, General. I took that to mean that I still retained command
until
your arrival. I was given a plan that stood a good chance of solving the crisis with less risk than an all-out assault.”

“And you used civilians on a military operation,” Cox said, a haze of cigar smoke now floating around his cue-ball-like head.

“The civilians came up with the plan, and they had the expertise. Plus, the plan was sanctioned by the local government, at whose behest we were here. This is Malauan soil, General, and—”

“Wait one fucking minute. You’re telling me that you were whipped by the guy who runs the fucking
restaurant?”

Wayne glared directly into the general’s eyes—or, at least, where he imagined the general’s eyes to be behind the mirrorshades. “No sir, I’m telling you that I decided to go with the plan sanctioned by the duly elected leader of this sovereign nation.”

Cox took a long drag on the cigar, then blew out a chimney’s worth of smoke. Wayne hated cigars even more than he hated the tropics, but this was his commanding officer . . .

“It’s a good thing for you this worked, Chris.”

“A good thing for all of us, sir. A frontal assault would’ve resulted in a lot of dead Marines, and might not have worked.”

Cox shook his head. “Fine, whatever. I’ll call off my guys.” He took another drag on the cigar. “Jesus fucking Christ, it’s hot. Where does a guy go to get a drink in this hellhole?”

Wayne smiled. “Follow me, sir,” he said as he led the general toward Manny’s.

Jack Ellway stared at the screen of Mulder, his laptop computer, presently serving its intended function by sitting in his lap. He had been in the Malau Clinic since his return, having had Brandon and Paul bandage him up. When Alyson returned from Kalor, she fretted over her lone patient—the rest had remained in Kalor’s superior facilities—redoing the bandages “so you don’t look like the Mummy’s love slave,” and ordered him to rest in bed for at least a day.

Brandon had fetched his laptop so he wouldn’t go crazy.

“What the hell’re you doing?” came the voice of Alyson Hart.

Jack turned and looked sheepishly at her. “Uh, playing Minesweeper?” he ventured lamely.

“Right. News flash, Jack,” Alyson said with that amazing smile of hers, “when your doctor says, ‘You need rest,’ that doesn’t mean, ‘You should chart fish migration patterns,’ or whatever it is you do on that silly machine.”

“You should listen to her, Jack.”

Jack peered past Alyson to see that Doctor Hale, Paul, and Brandon had come into the room behind her.

It was Hale who had spoken. “This sheila knows her business,” he added.

“Sexist terms notwithstanding,” Alyson said, folding over the monitor on the laptop, “you should be relaxing. That’s why I’ve kept those press vultures out of here.”

Looking at Paul, Jack said, “So why’d you let him in?”

Putting his hand to his chest in mock outrage, Paul said, “You wound me, sir. Besides, I invoked local privilege. But I had to promise all nine hundred reporters out there some kind of statement on how you’re doing.”

Shaking his head in amazement at his new celebrity status, Jack said, “Tell them I’m fine.” Jack had given a statement to the press earlier, after which Alyson had forbidden any press to set foot across the clinic’s verandah without a verifiable injury. When Jack had pointed out that some of them might injure themselves in order to get an interview with Jack, Alyson promised to make sure that whatever the injury was, it would get infected.

“Uh, Dad?” Brandon said. “Doctor Epstein called. She wants to know where your first report is. We, uh—we’ve been here a week, y’know.”

Jack chuckled. In all the excitement, he had forgotten about the reason he came to Malau in the first place: to chart the effects of the seismic activity on the local marine life. He was to spend six weeks here, e-mailing a report to his supervisor, Doctor Emily Epstein of UCSD’s Biology Department, every week.

“Geez,” Paul said, “doesn’t she watch the news?”

“Actually, she doesn’t,” Jack said. “When someone asked her what she thought about the O.J. verdict, she thought they were talking about orange juice.”

Brandon asked, “So, uh, what do I tell her?”

“Tell her to put Fox News on.” He laughed. “Then tell her I’ll call her tomorrow.”

Brandon smiled. “ ’Kay.”

“So, uh,” Paul started, “can you give me a little more? If I go back out there with just, ‘He’s fine,’ I’ll get lynched.”

“Oh come on, Paul,” Jack said with a grin, “you’re a big-time reporter now. Embellish.”

Paul rolled his eyes. “Please. After running the one-man weekly for all these years, I’m just not cut out for this big-time crap. I’m waiting for this fifteen minutes to be over, so I can have my life back.”

“I would’ve thought this
would
be your life, Paul,” Alyson said with, Jack noticed, not a little snideness.

Paul shrugged. “After I graduated Berkeley, that would’ve been true. Hell, I’ve already got six job offers that I would’ve gladly killed for five years ago—but they’re all off Malau. And, to be honest, I love it here.”

Alyson blinked. “You never struck me as the sentimental type, Paul.”

“I have depths you never bothered to plumb, Doctor,” Paul said archly. “Besides, it’s not all sentiment. For one thing, tourism’ll probably shoot through the roof ’round here, which means I can raise my ad rates with a clear conscience and make a killing. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go embellish.”

With that, Paul left. Hale, on then other hand, moved closer to Jack’s bed. “I’m afraid I’ve gotta get a move on as well, Jack. Need t’get back to the Institute—Board of Directors got all browned off ’cause I was takin’ ‘unnecessary risks,’ and a load of other crap, so I gotta go an’ soothe ’em.”