The Raven (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) (8 page)

After shaking the knife free of its sheath, I see the glint of a five-inch blade.

Ignoring the undulations of the gore in front of me, I twist the knife downward, against the pink intestines. The flesh resists the blade for a moment, but then gives in to the steel. The blade passes through the viscera, and it quickly unravels from around my arm. But in slicing the digestive organ, I’ve also provided an exit for the ton of shit—literally—held in the humpback’s gut.

A brown cloud explodes around me, blocking my view. I gag at the sight despite the wet suit protecting my body from the sludge and the mask keeping me from smelling it. But as disgusting as being showered in whale feces is, it’s the worm-shaped flecks of white wriggling past that turn my stomach. If the parasites hadn’t found my body before, they have now.

“Jane!” Jakob shouts. “Are you okay?”

Never better
, I think, but I don’t say a word. I’m too focused on freeing myself and getting clear of the shit storm. I’m being dragged by my feet now, and the current has knocked me back, keeping me horizontal. I crouch my legs and stretch my arms down. The first tendril of intestine I find gets knifed a moment later.

The cloud of filth around me thickens for a moment, but then I’m free and the whale is moving beyond me. I kick away from the cloud billowing out from the backside of the Draugr like a jet contrail. I lose the creature in the cloud.

“Jane!” Jakob sounds horrified.

“I’m here,” I say. “I made it out.”

There’s no “Thank God” or “Are you okay?” though. He’s all business. “Jane, it’s coming back around. We’re coming for you, but it’s going to be close. You’ll have to come to us.”

I start swimming toward the distant black hull. The whale must have fled after swallowing me. I’m swimming as hard as I can, but it feels like I’m barely moving. That’s when it dawns on me that I’ve lost the DPV. Not only that, but since the DPV is controlled by feet, I’m not wearing swim fins. I might as well be standing still for how fast I can swim. But I try anyway. I’m not about to quit after passing through the gut of a humpback.

As the
Raven
gets closer, I realize they’re backing up to me, which will help me get onto the dive deck faster, but the spinning prop will pull me in. The end result will be something like a frog in a blender. Well, not something like. Exactly like.

“Jakob, cut the engines!” I shout. “I’m almost there.”

The rumble emanating from the
Raven
dies down, and I see the prop slow to a stop. The ship is still drifting toward me, but now that it has slowed, it feels impossibly far away. I surface for the first time since my retarded dolphin leap and see Malik standing on the dive deck, waving me on. Behind and above him is Willem. He looks like a noble Viking hero, with his blond hair caught up by the wind, a look of fury carved into his face, and a powerful harpoon gun gripped in both hands—a harpoon gun that seems to be aimed directly at my face.

When I hear him shout, “Dive,” I understand why.

The whale is upon me.

Without looking back, I dive beneath the surface and kick as hard as I can.

I hear a muffled crack, followed by an impact, a high-pitched squeal, and then—oblivion.

A concussive force hits me hard at the same time I hear its deafening roar. I feel pain on every bit of my body. And then, nothing.

If I weren’t wearing the mask, I’m sure I would have drowned. But I just kind of float limply like one of the many hunks of whale meat bobbing around me. I’m only partly aware of this. I’m flickering in and out of consciousness, severely dazed. I’m so far gone that when something wraps around me from behind, I don’t fight against it.

What happens next is a blur. I’m moving—being pulled, really. Then I feel heavy. The weightlessness of water is gone. I’m lying on my back. I hear voices. Shouting. My name.

Despite the volume and intensity of the voices around me, I feel comforted by the knowledge that I’m on the
Raven
. Someone came in to get me. But then some of the words filter in: “get it off,” “parasites,” “careful,” “everywhere.” I finally register what’s happening to my body. I’m being manhandled. I’m yanked, pushed, and pulled like I’m the last piece of candy that spilled out of Hansel and Gretel’s birthday piñata.

My eyes snap open with a surge of adrenaline. The first thing I see is Jakob, Helena, and Malik standing over me. Reaching toward me. Hurting me. Then I look down, following their eyes. The top of my wet suit is missing, as is everything I wore beneath it. But the sight of my bare breasts doesn’t even faze me. I’ve already seen what’s below them.

Malik, wearing rubber fishing gloves, has his hands wrapped around the waist of my wet suit and is forcibly removing it. I scream at the sight, but not because I think Malik is trying to harm me. In fact, he’s trying to save me. Either during my passage through the whale’s body or when I was coated in waste, or both, thousands of maggot-like parasites began gnawing their way through my wet suit. Had it not been the extra-thick variant designed for cold water, they might have reached my skin.

They still might, which is why the crew is tearing away my clothes with wild abandon. I kick with my feet, aiding Malik’s efforts. Jakob lifts me from under the armpits and pulls. The wet suit rolls in on itself, concealing the parasites as it slips free. Malik gathers up the freed clothing, bunches it up, and tosses it overboard, which I presume is where the rest of my clothes went.

Still, I feel no shame as I get my feet beneath me and start rubbing my hands over my body, inspecting every inch for a wound.

“Nothing on your back,” Helena says.

When I look at her, I notice that Jakob and Malik have both turned away. So I think nothing of it when I drop my panties and give my feminine parts a once-over.

“Clear in the back,” Helena says. For a moment I’m surprised and a little shocked that she’s inspected my ass, but ultimately I appreciate it. That is, until she says, “Hold on.”

“What!” I say.

“On the side of your right calf.”

I yank up my underwear and twist my leg to look. There’s a white spot surrounded by red, irritated skin on the side of my leg halfway between my knee and ankle. I fall to the deck, twisting my leg back for a closer look. Three-quarters of the inch-long parasite is still sticking out of my leg. My instinct is to reach down and yank the thing out, but I have no idea if these things are like worms. If it breaks on the way out, the half inside my body might grow to become a fully functional adult.

I pinch my skin and try to squeeze it out like an oversize whitehead. But it doesn’t budge. Instead, it wiggles frantically back and forth, and I can feel its tiny jaws chewing at my flesh.

“Keep it pinched,” Helena says as she crouches beside me.

I do as she says, but then I see a knife in her hand.

“Don’t cut it in half,” I say.

I can’t see what she’s doing as she leans in close, but I feel the flat side of the blade touch my finger for a moment. “I’m going to get the whole thing.”

I’m about to ask for some clarification, but then her arm whips to the side. For a moment, I feel nothing. Then a burning sting rises up through my leg, eliciting a pain-filled cry from my mouth. When she stands I see the chunk of leg flesh I’d pinched together between her fingers. The parasite, whole and living, had yet to pass through.

As she stands with the chunk of meat in her hands, I see what she’s about to do and try to stop her, but my voice is stopped by an involuntary gasp from the pain.

With a flick of her wrist, she tosses the sheet of skin—and the parasite sample we needed—overboard. I don’t bother mentioning it. It’s too late now.

Suddenly, Willem is by my side, first aid kit in hand. Like Helena, he’s unfazed by my nakedness. He should be, after all. He’s seen me more naked than this three times before—after getting out of the hospital and before I started picking bar fights. Without a word, he sets to work on my leg, cleaning it and then attempting to wrap it in gauze. But he’s struggling. His hands are shaking.

That’s when I notice his pale blue lips, shaking hands, and drenched hair. “You came in after me,” I say. It’s more of an observation than a question.

He nods, but it looks more like a seizure.

“Willem,” Helena says, taking the gauze from his hands and shoving him to the side. “Go change and warm yourself!”

After just a moment’s pause, he glances at me. When our eyes meet, I see relief in his face. He might be glad I’m alive, but I’m not the one telling him to go take care of himself, am I?

Willem obeys and disappears from the deck.

Helena attends to my wound, quickly and tightly wrapping it. The dressing will have to be changed soon—blood is already threatening to seep through, but it’s no longer flowing from my body like a mountain spring.

I’m about to thank her when I hear Talbot shout, “Captain! Klein says we’ve got a GPS distress call coming from four miles away. But the radar screen shows a large target eleven miles out and closing at thirty knots. The GPS signal is dead smack between us. I reckon we can beat the incoming target to the distress beacon if we go full steam ahead.”

While I just sit there wondering,
Now what?
Jakob rattles out a string of commands. “Ahead, full throttle! Get us there first! Helena, get back to the bow. Man the harpoons. Malik, stay here and be ready to take on survivors.” He turns to me. “And you. Go take care of yourself. But do it quickly. The fight isn’t over yet.”

I
limp my way through the ship, clutching the first aid kit and wrapped in a blanket. By the time I reach the second deck, I’m trailing drops of blood. My leg is throbbing, but the pain is bearable. Maybe because of adrenaline. Maybe because of elation at not being in the stomach of a zombie-whale. Maybe because I’m in shock. Who knows? I can’t complain.

Of course, when I sit on my bedside and peel off the wound’s dressing, I complain. A lot. The gauze pulls away small dollops of coagulated blood, reopening the wound. I watch the blood rolling over my leg. It’s dripping all over the braided rug. I’m not freaked out by the blood. I just don’t want to do what comes next.

Man up
, I tell myself. When I was a kid, the Colonel did this part. He was merciless about it. “Just grit your teeth and take it. Next time be smart enough to not get injured.” I never pointed out the number of scars crisscrossing his body. I was smart enough to know that wouldn’t go well. But his advice got me through a number of childhood gashes. It would get me through this.

I unscrew the rubbing alcohol. It was included with the first aid kit for sterilization, not wound cleaning. And I know it’s going to destroy good and bad cells alike. My father should have never used the stuff on my scrapes. But there’s no way in hell I’m going to risk leaving behind even a tiny fragment of that parasite.

As I move the bottle over my leg, the ship takes a wave hard, slamming through the water. The impact jars my arm and spills a few drops of alcohol. The drops strike my wound like little bombs, exploding pain beyond that of the original injury. I scream for a moment but swallow it down, grit my teeth like Daddy taught me, and douse the leg in liquid fire.

I growl at the pain, waiting for it to subside. The alcohol scours the dried blood from my leg. Pink fluid drips onto the blood-soaked rug. My nose twitches at the strong scent of rubbing alcohol that’s made my room smell like a doctor’s office. I feel the skin of my leg tighten as the liquid quickly evaporates. Then it’s over. The alcohol and pain are gone. But the freshly rinsed wound is now bleeding. Helena sliced off a chunk of skin half an inch wide and about an inch long. That it needs stitches is a no-brainer, but it’s not going to get any. Not unless Jakob thought to bring along a medic, which I assume he didn’t, since I’m sitting here on my bed, buck nekkid, tending to my own damn wound.

Using a few fresh sheets of gauze, I put pressure on the wound. A lot of pressure. Hurts like hell, but the flow of blood stops for the moment. I’m sure it will start leaking again when I start walking around.

Moving slowly and carefully, I take away the fresh gauze. It hasn’t bonded with coagulating or drying blood yet, so it comes away without aggravating the wound. After letting it air out for a minute, I place an antibiotic gauze pad against the wound, cover it with two absorbent bandage pads, wrap the whole thing in a thick layer of gauze, and then tape the shit out of it. It looks like a giant white tumor when I’m done, but I doubt I’ll bleed through it.

There’s a knock at my door. I turn to say, “One minute,” but the door is already swinging inward. Willem steps in, and his eyes go wide when he sees me, still naked on the bed.

“Sorry,” he says, spinning around. He doesn’t leave, though.

“Nothing you haven’t seen before,” I say. “Though some of me is missing.”

“Are you all right?” he asks.

I stand, putting just a little weight on my leg, and grunt. “I’ll live.”

A chill grips my body, covering every square inch of me with goose bumps and making my hair stand at attention. As I open my backpack and root around for fresh clothes, I glance at Willem. He’s got on fresh jeans, likely fleece-lined, and a few layers up top covered by his trademark sweater. He’d been wearing similar clothes when I saw him, soaking wet on deck. He’s lucky all those wet layers didn’t pull us both to the bottom. That we’re both standing here is a testament to his strength and strong will.

“Thanks, by the way,” I say as I slip into some tight boxer-briefs and pull on my loosest pair of pants. The black cargos aren’t exactly stylish, but they fit over my wrapped wound.

I don’t see him shrug, but I know he did. “You would have done the same for me.”

“I would have tried,” I confess. But I’m not sure I could have dragged his two-hundred-plus-pound body out of the water. I slip into a formfitting, moisture-wicking black long-sleeve shirt and then follow it up with an equally tight black wool shirt. I catch my reflection in the room’s mirror. My hair is matted against my head, weighed down with sea salt. Luckily, my go-to hairstyle is easy. I put both hands in my still damp hair and shake. The resulting mess is just about perfect. My damp hair chills my hands and sends another
wave of goose bumps over my skin. Without thinking, I grab my black cloak, throw it around my shoulders, and button it at the top. Warmth envelops me.