Benchley, Peter - Novel 08 Read online

And so the hunter rose, driven to cause not only destruction but death.

  50

  A THOUSAND FEET, Darling guessed as he calibrated the fish-finder. The thing was at a thousand feet, and it was coming up like a bullet. They had five minutes, no more, probably less.

  He jumped down into the cabin. “Get the boat hook, Marcus,” he said. “And make sure that detonator’s ready to fire.”

  “What’s wrong?” Talley asked.

  “The bastard’s coming up at us again,” said Darling, “and my bloody battery’s dead.” He disappeared down into the engine room.

  Sharp climbed up to the flying bridge, lifted the boat hook and examined the bomb. The paste of glycerine and gasoline had hardened, but it was still moist, and he smeared it evenly over the top of the explosive. Then he pressed the little glass bottle deeper into the paste, so it couldn’t fall out even if the end of the boat hook was waved around.

  The device was simple; there was no reason it shouldn’t work. As soon as air got to the phosphorous, it would ignite and start an instantaneous chain reaction, setting off the Semtex. All they had to do was make sure that the beast bit down on the bottle, or crushed it in one of its whips.

  All they had to do was feed an explosive to a hundred-foot monster, and jump out of the way before they were blown to tatters.

  That was all.

  Sharp suddenly felt sick. He looked out over the calm sea, dappled by the rising sun. Everything was peaceful. How did Whip know the creature was coming up? How could he be sure? Maybe what he had seen on the screen was a whale.

  Stop it, he told himself. Stop fantasizing and get ready.

  It would work. It had to.

  Darling crawled across the engine room and pushed the heavy twelve-volt battery in front of him. His knuckles were bloody and his legs cramped. When he judged that the battery was close enough for the cables to reach it, he unbolted them from the dead battery, without bothering to remove the dead battery from its mounts. He didn’t care if the fresh battery tore itself loose and tumbled around; once he got it to kick over the engine, he wouldn’t need it.

  He paused long enough to be sure he was attaching the cables to the proper poles—positive to positive, negative to negative—and bolted it down.

  Then he got to his feet and raced up the ladder.

  51

  ITS PREY WAS directly above.

  It could see it with its eyes, could feel it with the sensors in its body. It did not pause to analyze the quarry, did not seek signs of life or scent of food.

  But because the prey was alien, instinct told the creature to be wary, to appraise it first. And so, as a shark circles unknown objects in the sea, as a whale emits sonar impulses and deciphers the returns, Architeuthis dux passed once beneath the quarry and scanned it with its eyes. The force of its passage cast a pressure wave upward.

  Then suddenly the prey above it erupted with noise, and began to move.

  The beast interpreted the noise and movement as signs of flight. Quickly, it rotated the funnel in its belly, turned in its own length and attacked.

  52

  WHEN DARLING HAD felt the boat surge beneath him, he had held his breath and pushed the button, and then, a second later, had heard the rumble of the big diesel. He didn’t wait for the engine to warm up—he rammed the throttle forward and leaned on it.

  At first, the boat leaped forward, and then suddenly it stopped short, as if it were anchored by the stern. It tipped backward; the bow rose, and Darling was thrown back against the bulkhead. Then the boat fell forward again, and nosed into the sea. But still it didn’t move.

  The pitch of the engine had changed from a roar to a complaining whine. Then it began to sputter. It coughed twice, then died, and the boat lay dead in the water.

  Sweet Jesus, Darling thought—the beast has wrecked the propeller, either jammed it or bent it up against the shaft. He felt suddenly cold.

  He dropped down into the cabin and went out through the door onto the afterdeck.

  Talley was standing by the midships hatch, staring numbly at the sea. When he saw Darling, he said, “Where is he? I thought you said—”

  “Right underneath us,” Darling said. “He’s screwed us good and proper.” He went to the stern and looked down over the transom into the water. A few feet beneath the swim step, snaking out from beneath the boat, was the tip of a tentacle.

  Standing beside Darling, Talley said, “He must have tried to grab the propeller.”

  “Now he’s lost an arm,” said Darling, “maybe that’ll discourage him.”

  “It won’t,” Talley said. “All it will do is enrage him.”

  Darling looked up at the flying bridge and saw Sharp standing at the railing, holding Manning’s rifle. As he started up the ladder, he heard Talley say, “Captain …”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” Talley said. “This was all my—”

  “Forget it. Sorry’s a waste of time, and we don’t have much time. Put on a life jacket.”

  “Are we sinking?”

  “Not yet,” Darling said.

  The boat hook stood vertically in a rod holder, and Darling removed it and felt its heft.

  “I’ll do it,” Sharp said, gesturing at the bomb on the end of the boat hook.

  “No, Marcus,” said Darling, and he tried to smile. “Captain’s prerogative.”

  They both looked out over the water then, and as they watched, the sun cleared the horizon and faded from orange to gold, and the color of the sea changed from dead gray to steel blue.

  The beast writhed in the darkness, berserk with pain and confusion. Green fluid seeped from the stump of its missing tentacle.

  It was not disabled—it sensed no loss of power. It knew only that what it had perceived as prey was more than prey. It was an enemy.

  The creature rose again toward the surface.

  *

  Darling and Sharp were gazing off the bow, when suddenly from behind them came Talley’s voice, screaming, “No!”

  They whirled around and looked at the stern, and they froze.

  Something was coming over the bulwark. For a moment it seemed to ooze like a giant purple slug. Then the front of it curled back like a lip, and it began to rise and fan out until it was four feet across and eight feet high, and it blocked the rays of the sun. It was covered with quivering circles, like hungry mouths, and in each one Darling could see a shining amber blade.

  “Shoot it, Marcus!” Darling shouted. “Shoot!”

  But Sharp stood agape, mesmerized, the rifle useless in his hands. Then, below them, Talley heard something, and he turned to his left, and screamed. Amidships, slithering aboard, was the beast’s other whip.

  The scream startled Sharp, and he spun and fired three shots. One went high; one struck the bulkhead and ricocheted away; the third hit the club of the whip dead center. The flesh did not react, did not bleed, twitch or recoil. It seemed to swallow the bullet.

  More and more of both whips came aboard, writhing like snakes and falling in heaps of purple flesh, each atom of which moved and pulsed and quivered as if it had a goal of its own. They seemed to sense life aboard, and movement, for the clubs bent forward and began to move ahead on their circles, like searching spiders.

  Talley seemed paralyzed. He did not flinch, made no move to flee, but stood still, frozen.

  “Doc!” Darling shouted. “Get the hell out of there!”

  When both whips were heaped in the stern, they stopped moving for a moment, as if the creature were hesitating, and then suddenly both whips expanded with muscle tension, and the stern was pressed downward. Behind the boat, the ocean seemed to rise up, as if giving birth to a mountain. There was a sucking sound, and a roar.

  “Jesus Christ!” Darling yelled. “It’s coming aboard!” He backed away, holding the boat hook at shoulder level, like a lance.

  They saw the tentacles first, seven thrashing arms that grasped the stern and, like an athlete hoisting himself onto a para
llel bar, pushed downward to bring the body up.

  Then they saw an eye, whitish yellow and impossibly huge, like a moon rising beneath the sun. In its center was a globe of fathomless black.

  The stern was forced downward until it was awash. Water poured aboard and ran forward, flooding into the after hatches.

  It’s gonna do it, Darling thought. The bastard’s gonna sink us. And then pick us off one by one.

  The other eye came up now, and as the creature turned its head and faced them, the eyes seemed to fix on them. Between the eyes the arms quivered and roiled, and at the juncture of the arms, like a bull’s-eye on a target, the two-foot beak, sharp and protuberant, snapped reflexively, looking to be fed. The sound was of a forest falling in a storm, like great trunks cracking in a roaring wind.

  Talley suddenly came to. He turned and ran to the bottom of the ladder and began to climb. He was halfway to the flying bridge when the creature saw him.

  One of the whips recoiled, rose in the air and sprang forward, reaching for him. Talley saw it coming, and as he tried to dodge it, his feet skidded off the ladder, and he hung by his hands from one of the rungs. The whip coiled around the ladder, tore it away from the bulkhead and held it suspended over the flying bridge, with Talley dangling from it like a marionette.

  “Drop, Doc!” Darling shouted, as the other whip hissed overhead and slashed at Talley.

  Talley let go, and fell, his feet struck the outboard lip of the flying bridge, and for a second he teetered there, his arms cartwheeling as he groped for the railing. His eyes were wide, and his mouth hung open. Then, almost in slow motion, he toppled backward into the sea. The whip crushed the ladder and cast it away.

  Sharp fired the rifle at the beast until the clip was empty. Tracer bullets streaked into the oozing flesh and vanished.

  The tail of the creature thrust forward, driving the body farther up on the boat, driving the stern farther down. The bow rose out of the water, and from below came the sounds of tools and chairs and/crockery crashing into steel bulkheads.

  “Go, Marcus!” Darling said.

  “You go. Let me—”

  “Go, God dammit!”

  Sharp looked at Darling, wanted to speak, but there was nothing to say. He dove overboard.

  Darling turned aft. He could barely stand; the deck sloped out from under him, and he crouched, bracing himself with one foot on the railing.

  The creature was tearing the boat to pieces. The whips flailed randomly, clutching anything they touched—a drum of rope, a hatch cover, an antenna mast—and crushing it and flinging it into the sea. As it drew air into its mantle and expelled it through its funnel, the creature made sounds like a grunting pig.

  And then its rampage ceased, and as if it had suddenly remembered something, the great head, with its face like a nest of vipers, turned toward Darling. The whips lashed out; each one fastened on a steel stanchion on the flying bridge. Darling saw the flesh balloon as the muscles contracted. The whips pulled, and the creature lunged forward.

  Darling balanced one foot on the railing and one on the deck, and he raised the boat hook over his head like a harpoon. He tried to gauge how far he was from the beak.

  The creature seemed to be falling toward him. The arms reached out. Darling focused only on the gnashing beak, and he struck.

  The boat hook was torn from his hands, and he was thrown back against the iron railing. He saw one of the whips raise the boat hook, and drop it into the sea.

  His only thought was: I am going to die.

  The arms reached for him. He ducked, his feet slipped out from under him, and he fell, skidding over the edge of the flying bridge and dropping onto the sloping afterdeck.

  He found himself in waist-deep water. He started to slog toward the railing. If he could get overboard, away from the boat, maybe he could hide in the wreckage, maybe the creature would lose interest, maybe …

  The beast appeared around the edge of the cabin then, looming above him, its whips waving like dancing cobras. The seven shorter arms, and even the oozing stump of the eighth, reached for him, to push him into the amber beak.

  He turned and struggled toward the other side of the boat. One of the arms slapped the water beside him, and he dodged to the side, stumbled and regained his footing. How many steps to go? Five? Ten? He’d never make it. But he kept going, because there was nothing else he could do, and because something deep inside him refused to surrender.

  An obstacle blocked him. He tried to push it out of the way, but it was too heavy, it wouldn’t move. He looked at it, wondering if he could dive under it. It was the big midships hatch cover, floating. Lying atop it was the chain saw.

  Darling didn’t consider, didn’t hesitate, didn’t think. He grabbed the chain saw and pulled the starter cord. It caught on the first try, and the little motor came to life, idling with a minatory growl. He pressed the trigger, and the saw blade spun, shedding drops of oil.

  He heard himself say, “Okay,” and he turned and faced the beast.

  It seemed to pause for a moment, and then, with a grunt of expelled air, it lunged for him.

  Darling squeezed the trigger again, and the sound of the saw rose to a shrill screech.

  One of the writhing arms flashed before his face, and Darling swung the saw at it. The saw’s teeth bit into flesh, and Darling was bathed in a stench of ammonia. The motor labored, seemed to slow, as it might when cutting wet wood, and Darling thought, No! Don’t quit, not now!

  The pitch of the motor changed again, rose again, and the teeth cut deep, spraying bits of flesh into Darling’s face.

  The arm severed, and fell away. A sound burst from the beast, a sound of rage and pain.

  Another arm assailed Darling, and another, and he slashed with the saw. As the teeth touched each one, the arms flinched and withdrew and then, as if goaded by the creature’s frenzied brain, attacked again. A shower of flesh exploded around Darling, and he was drenched with green slime and black ink.

  Suddenly he felt something touch one of his legs underwater, and it began to crawl up his leg and circle his waist.

  One of the whips had him. He turned, trying to find it, wanting to attack it with the saw before it got a secure grip on him, but in the mass of curling, twisting tentacles he couldn’t distinguish it from the arms.

  When the whip had circled his waist, it began to squeeze, like a python, and Darling felt a stabbing pain as the hooks in each sucker disk tore into his skin. He felt his feet leave the deck as the whip picked him up, and he knew that once he was in the air, he was as good as dead.

  He twisted his body so that he faced the snapping beak. As the whip squeezed and drove the breath from him, Darling leaned toward the beak, holding the saw before him. The beak opened, and for a second Darling could see a flicking tongue within, pink and studded with toothlike rasps.

  “Here!” he shouted, and he drove the saw deep into the yawning beak.

  The saw stuttered as its teeth failed to slice through the bony beak, and skidded off. As Darling raised the saw again, one of the arms flashed before his face, circled his hands and wrenched the saw from them and flung it away.

  Now, Darling thought, now I am truly dead.

  The whip squeezed, and Darling sensed that the mist that dimmed his eyes was signaling the onset of oblivion. He felt himself rising, saw the beak reaching for him, smelled a rancid stench.

  He saw one of the eyes, dark and blank, relentless.

  Then suddenly the beast itself seemed to rise up, as if propelled by a force from below. There was a sound unlike anything Darling had ever heard, a rushing, roaring noise, and something huge and blue-black exploded from the sea, holding the squid in its mouth.

  The whip that had him contorted violently, and he felt himself flying, then falling into nothingness.

  53

  “PULL!” SHARP SHOUTED.

  Talley reached into the water and groped for Darling’s belt. He found it and pulled, and with Sharp hauling on his arm
s they brought him aboard the overturned hatch cover. It was awash, but its wood was thick and sound, and it was large enough to hold three of them.

  Darling’s shirt was in tatters, and streaks of blood crisscrossed his chest and belly where the creature’s hooks had torn at his skin.

  Sharp touched an artery in Darling’s neck. The pulse was strong and steady. “Unless something’s busted inside,” he said, “he should be okay.”

  In a dark fog, Darling heard the word “okay,” and he felt himself swimming up toward light. He opened his eyes.

  “How do you feel, Whip?”

  “Like a truck ran over me. A truck full of knives.”

  Sharp lifted Darling up and supported his back. “Look,” he said.

  Darling looked around. The motion of the hatch cover made him nauseated, and he shook his head to clear it.

  The boat was gone. The animal was gone.

  “What was it?” Darling asked. “What did it?”

  “One of the sperm whales,” said Sharp. “It took the whole damn squid. Bit it off just behind the head.”

  There was sudden movement in the water, and Darling started.

  “It’s all right,” Talley said. “Just life, just Nature.”

  The surface of the sea was littered with flesh, masses of it, and each one was being assaulted. The tumult around the boat had been like a dinner bell, summoning creatures both from shallow and from deep. The dorsal fin of a shark crossed the debris. The head of a turtle poked up, looked around, then submerged again. Bonitos rippled the surface as they swarmed on fresh and helpless prey. Triggerfish, yellowtails and jacks ignored one another as they darted through the rich broth.

  “Nice,” Darling said, and he lay back. “That’s the kind of life I like.”

  “I don’t know where we are or where we’re going,” said Sharp. “I can’t see land. I can’t see a thing.”