Devour (31 page)

He reached behind him and banged the hull one more time, then took his finger off the trigger guard and slipped the safety off.

* * *

* * *

It came for him with its good eye hidden, the jaws opening wide to reveal the curved teeth, streaked with blood and silvery smears of aluminum. Brian held the pistol steady, waiting for it to turn its head for the final strike. It could not hit him straight on without smashing into the keel; it would have to turn, and when it turned he would have his chance. His finger tightened on the trigger as he stared into the red rings of its gullet, the massive tongue. At those huge, ragged teeth, designed to clamp down and not let go.

He held the pistol up but made no attempt to aim. There would be a second, maybe two, when the head would straighten and he would have a chance at its other eye. It would be like a grouse thundering through an opening in the poplars, no time to aim, just point and fire. His breath was coiled in him, a tight circle below his Adam’s apple. He was not good at flushing shots, and unexpected turns and twists, but he would have to be now.

Turn,
he thought.
Turn, goddamn you!

It straightened at the very last moment, and even as his finger convulsed on the trigger he knew it was too late, that the window in which he might shoot had opened and closed faster than he could react. There was the briefest glimmer of that green eye, closed to a narrow slit, and then it was blotted out by the kronosaur’s upper jaw. He fired anyway and his arm bucked under the recoil. The kronosaur twisted its neck around, its jaws unhinging, opening and opening and clamping down.

He fired again and again, directly into the gullet. The keel scraped hard against his back, and he felt a large tooth slide by his belly. He pushed against it, still holding the pistol, knowing that any second the tooth’s sister would crush him from the opposite side. The keel scraped and shuddered behind him and Brian realized he was unhurt, that the kronosaur’s jaws had not closed. He looked up and saw an imperfect triangle of light above him, teeth sticking into the triangle but not closing.

He looked down. The curved tooth pressed against his belly, smooth on the outside, the inside with those flesh-anchoring, infection-causing, nightmarish barbs, and he understood. Its jaws had closed on each side of the keel, puncturing the sinking ship. It was unable to close its jaws all the way, the equivalent of biting down on a stick. And now, judging from the way it was thrashing, it was stuck.

He began to climb his way up through the stairway of massive teeth.

* * *

He broke the surface and gulped in a great lungful of air. The kronosaur’s tail was lashing the surface, the sharpened scutes slicing blindly at the waves. He could hear Destiny and Taylor screaming for him, Destiny’s voice telling him they were coming for him, to stay where he was. He waved them back and took another breath, then dove back under.

The kronosaur’s neck muscles were bunched as it tried to free its teeth, which were embedded deep into the fiberglass and steel infrastructure. There was a small gap between the keel and the back of its mouth where Brian had been, a small zone where the jaws had been unable to crush him.

The kronosaur’s good eye faced the surface, the pupil contracting as Brian drifted down toward it.

He trailed a hand along the keel, lowering himself onto the side of the kronosaur’s face. The pupil contracted more as Brian drew near, and it wrenched its head to the side. Fiberglass splintered, but its head did not move. The
Nokomis
, laden with many tons of seawater and still anchored, was all but immovable. The kronosaur’s tail lashed around toward him, but fell far short.

You’re mine,
he thought, feeling a hunter’s thrill.
You can’t get away.

He knelt on the rough hide, aimed carefully at the center of the furious green eye, and pulled the trigger. The firing pin clicked, then clicked again. He jacked the action back and the lone remaining shell, a dud, spun free and dropped away to disappear into the ocean.

The kronosaur twisted its head again with renewed energy. Behind Brian fiberglass ripped free, and the kronosaur’s head moved slightly. No more than an inch or two, but more movement than it had a moment ago. It was breaking free.

Brian let the Glock drop away and studied the creature. It had come for him again and again. It would never stop coming for him.

He reached for the green eye. The eyelid, thick and heavy, closed before he could touch it. He punched it hard until it opened, the kronosaur bucking and writhing under him now, and when the eyelid opened he slid his left hand in and just kept going, wrenching the eyelid back and hammering away at the rubbery pupil with his right fist, all his muscles going into the ten square inches of the knuckles. He felt warmth on his hand and saw pink jelly seeping from the eye. He wriggled his fingers into the crack and pushed in, his wrist rotating, fingers digging. There was infrastructure here, too, there was substance in the goo. He ripped and shredded, pushing in and pulling out, until finally his hand wrapped around a thick bundle near the back of the eye socket.

He pulled, and the kronosaur roared through its open jaws, the air coming out in wash of bubbles around Brian. He barely noticed as he bent on the kronosaur’s snout and pulled on the thick bundle of nerve. It would not pull free. He worked his other hand in and yanked on it with both hands as the kronosaur roared again and again, the tail lashing, the warm jelly of its eyeball cooling on Brian’s wrists and forearms. The bundle was anchored somehow. It would stretch but not break free.

Finally, Brian paused, aware the pressure was growing around him, the water much darker. The kronosaur’s teeth had punctured the last of the air pockets in the
Nokomis
, and they were sinking fast. The kronosaur’s remaining eye was just a bloody hole, and its body was convulsing as it breathed in seawater. He stood, looking down at it, wanting to say something, to feel something, to be triumphant. All he felt was the need for air.

He kicked toward the surface. Below him, the convulsing kronosaur descended in trails of bubbles, following the
Nokomis
toward the ocean floor.

H
e was shivering badly. They were moving across the swells, silently, the water in the bottom of the boat sloshing in concert with the motion of the waves.

“Brian?”

He did not open his eyes. It seemed like too much effort.

“Brian, I’m sorry.”

He opened his eyes, saw Destiny looking past him. He followed her gaze, his eyes coming to rest on a darker-colored patch of hull on the starboard side, several inches below the waterline. He knelt and ran his hands along the jagged opening, feeling the gentle pulse of the water entering.

He looked back to Destiny. “From its tail?”

“Yes,” she said. “It just grazed us. I know you said to stay back, but—”

“Not your fault.”

He glanced around, saw a blanket draped over a seat, and pressed it over the hole. Water pulsed through the fabric, and after a moment he dropped it and began to search the rest of the lifeboat. There was nothing he could see that might work better than the blanket, and that was like trying to plug a sucking chest wound with a Band-Aid.

“Brian?” Taylor said.

He turned to her, checked her life jacket, double-checking the straps, and then let his hands fall away. They sat together and watched the water climb. Already they were riding lower in the swells. A wave came up to the edge of the hatchway and washed into the floor.

“Brian?”

He pushed a tendril of hair off Taylor’s forehead. “Yeah?”

“Are we going to be okay?”

He looked out over the ocean. “We’re better than we could have been,” he said. “That’s all I can say. Better than we could have been.”

She put a small hand on his chest. “I can hear your heartbeat. It’s beating really fast.”

“You can, huh?” He patted her shoulder and smiled. Such a sweet, such an interesting little girl. “I bet—” He cocked his head and turned to Destiny, saw her eyes growing wide, her mouth opening in disbelief.

They moved out into the hatchway and the sound was much clearer, the thudding of rotors. They waited, wondering if it would pass overhead in the fog. It descended from the mists, hovering over the area where the
Nokomis
had sunk. Destiny screamed, her voice lost in the roar of the chopper. She stood and waved both hands over her head, Brian holding her waist to keep her from falling into the water. He was vaguely aware he was laughing, that Destiny was laughing, too, as she yelled.

His heart was beating very fast.

The helicopter rotated toward them, rotors sending out a circular field of ripples. They could see the pilot’s face, could see him register their presence. And then he mouthed three simple words, their content clear even from the distance:

* * *

Hundreds of feet below them, the upturned bottom of the lifeboat rode south on the Kaala, floating barely above the surface. The fog was starting to lift, and around them the great expanse of ocean revealed itself, the massive swells little more than ripples from their elevation.

“He’s not Coast Guard,” Destiny whispered.

“No,” Brian said.

“Who, then? Prower?”

Brian leaned forward and shouted into the side of the pilot’s headset; it was deafening inside. “When did you get the call?”

The pilot flipped on the loudspeaker. “Fifteen minutes ago.” He glanced into the small convex mirror mounted near the overhead controls, right where a rearview mirror would be in an automobile. “You didn’t make the call?”

Destiny and Brian looked at each other. Destiny pushed her hair away from her face and smiled.

She said, “Can we go back to land now?”

The chopper tilted forward and they raced over the water, the long lines of waves.

“Why are you smiling?” Destiny said.

“I’ve never seen it from up here,” Brian said. “I’ve always been down in the slop.”

She leaned over him, took in the view, and settled back into her own seat. “Looks almost peaceful.”

By her side, Taylor was already asleep.
An orphan
, Brian thought. The chopper pilot would drop them off on land, maybe with no questions asked. To the outside world, Taylor Millicent did not exist, and would likely be presumed drowned, along with her parents. According to Taylor, her only living relative was a near-senile grandmother—her adopted grandmother—in assisted living. It was an interesting situation.

“Yes,” he said. “I think I could watch it forever.”

“That’s right,” Destiny said. “You have trouble letting stuff go.”

He smiled. He was tired, more tired than he could remember being. A great warm weight on his chest, his neck, his eyes.

“What?” she said.

He closed his eyes. Below them, the helicopter’s dim shadow raced it back toward shore, a dark line on the horizon.

It was good to let go, he thought as he drifted off to sleep. And it was wonderful to have something to hold on to.

T
wo months later a Jeep Grand Cherokee pulled into a short, weed-lined driveway forty-three miles south-west of Akron, Ohio. The trailer park was in a rural township, and each driveway had a mailbox on the end, dented or flaking or leaning or, in some cases, all three. The one on the end of this particular driveway said ROLLINS and was leaning back at a ten-degree angle, as if recoiling from the street.

The man who emerged from the driver’s side was tall, his thick beard shaved close to his cheeks. He had the angular, rounded look of a man who tended toward burliness, now fresh off the heels of either a serious illness or serious diet. He glanced around, smelled the air, and his eyes drifted toward the treetops to check for the direction of the wind.

The woman who stepped from the passenger side was dressed in light jeans and a flannel shirt. Her hair fell to her shoulders, its color a honey blond at the roots, a darker orange near the tips. A shock of light green was enmeshed in the orange-colored hair.

She looked back toward the Cherokee, which was loaded with suitcases and boxes. There was movement in the backseat, and the woman asked the man a question. He glanced into the Cherokee, said a couple words, and smiled. Then he waved the woman forward.

In the distance, two or three trailer houses down, a dog barked. Someone shouted for it to be quiet and the dog gave one final bark, then fell silent.

The woman climbed the small wooden stairs set on cinder blocks, and rapped on the aluminum door. The door gave off a hollow, muted sound, and inside the trailer the babble of television voices went silent.

After a moment, the door opened. A heavyset woman in her sixties looked down at the younger woman, her face set in lines of suspicion. Behind her, a thinner woman, younger with hard lines around her eyes, watched with equal parts curiosity and mistrust. The older lady clutched a walker, the bottoms of the legs covered with tennis balls.

The woman with the multicolored hair began to speak. She talked of a ship, and how she and her friend—at this she motioned toward the man, who still stood by the door of the Cherokee—had lived when others had died. How they had lived because of her son.

The old lady stared at her for a moment, then spoke the name of her son, asking it as a question.

The woman on the stairs nodded.

The older lady said the name again, this time with a sigh. Then she turned and closed the door.

After a few moments, the young woman descended the stairs and they both got in the vehicle. The man backed out of the driveway, avoiding a fallen bicycle on one side, a deflated basketball on the other. As their tires crunched on the gravel between the rows of trailers the Cherokee’s window rolled down, and laughter escaped into the summer air. Then the vehicle reached the main road and turned left and disappeared, heading east, leaving in its wake a faint trail of dust.