Gargantua (23 page)

As usual for Jack since arriving on this island, he got the exact opposite reaction he expected.

“I know, Dad. I knew you’d figure out how to save him.”

When will I learn to stop underestimating my kid?
Jack thought with a smile.

Then Brandon added, “Let me go with you.”

Sighing, Jack said, “I can’t do that.” He had expected this reaction, as well, and was rather dismayed to find that this one was spot-on.

“He’ll freak without me.
Please,
Dad.”

“I can’t, Brandon,” Jack said firmly, even though Brandon did have a point. Casey and Brandon had developed a bond, and having that bond around would have been useful. But the plan involved close proximity to a pair of creatures who were, between them and the dead female, responsible for over half a dozen deaths already—not to mention all the high explosives. He couldn’t expose Brandon to that.

Brandon looked down, unhappy. He crouched back onto the grass so he could cradle Casey in his arms.

Great. Here we go again. It’s my own damn fault for taking him all over the place. To him, this probably doesn’t seem any more dangerous than half the things we’ve done the last year. Maybe I should’ve just stayed home, gone back to teaching again.

He sighed.
Right, and lived in that house some more with all its reminders of Diane.

Shaking his head, he looked up to see Alyson Hart approaching.

“Hi,” she said with that amazing smile of hers. “Paul told me what you’re doing. I thought you might want me to look after Brandon—make sure he’s evacuated okay.”

“I’d really appreciate that,” Jack said gratefully. In fact, he was almost fawning in his gratitude, and when he realized how much so, he cursed himself.
That’s right, Jack, another problem successfully avoided by the usual Ellway method: running away.

“Well,” Alyson said, “see you on Kalor tonight.”

“Yeah,” he said, forcing himself to return her smile—which wasn’t that hard, really. Alyson made him feel very much at ease. “See you on Kalor.”

Oh, what the hell.
He leaned forward and gave her a brief hug. Then he joined Brandon in his crouch on the lawn.

Reaching for Casey, he said, “I guess we’d better get him used to me holding him.”

At first, Brandon seemed reluctant to part with the little animal, but after a second he let go of him. Jack didn’t pick him up at first, but gently petted Casey, giving him a chance to get used to Jack.

He glanced over at Brandon to see a look of great sadness on his son’s face.
Damn—this is harder for him than I thought. Probably harder than
he
thought. It’s easy enough to tell me that I’m doing the right thing, but to actually have to give Casey up is a whole other thing.
“Don’t worry, Brandon,” he said, trying to be reassuring, “I’ll get him home safely.”

Brandon’s response was so quiet Jack barely heard it. “He doesn’t have a mother at home.”

“But he’s got a dad,” Jack said, trying not to read too much into that statement. “He’s gonna be reunited with his dad.”

“But what if he isn’t?” Brandon cried, and this time he was quite loud. “What if something happens to his dad?”

“Nothing’s gonna happen to his da—” Jack started, but Brandon interrupted.

“The dad could die!” Brandon cried, throwing his arms up and down. “And then he’ll be an
orphan!”

“I’m gonna do everything I can to make sure—”

This time it was Alyson who interrupted. “Jack, he’s not talking about the creatures.”

Jack shot her a look, then looked back down at Brandon.

When Diane died, Brandon hadn’t broken down. Tears flowed, of course, both the morning it happened and during the funeral—it was impossible for them not to—but he never really
cried.
Or if he did, it wasn’t in Jack’s presence. At the time, Jack thought he was just trying to be strong. And perhaps he was.

But whatever strength he had marshaled had apparently now evaporated. Tears streaked down Brandon’s face from red eyes as he wailed, “I don’t want you to die! I don’t have anybody but you!”

Jack pulled his son to him and hugged him hard. “Aw, Brandon,” he muttered, and kissed him on the head.

I can’t just leave him like this.

A year ago, his brother Stephen had offered to take Brandon in when the go-ahead for the Hawaii trip came through. Jack had seriously considered the offer, then—but ultimately decided against it. Brandon had always come with him and Diane on their jaunts to various parts of the world—“making the world safe for marine biology,” as Diane had joked—and to have gone without him then would have been foolish on two fronts. To in essence abandon Brandon so shortly after his mother had, through death, done likewise would have been cruel. And besides, without Diane, he needed Brandon’s help.

“
Brandon, you and me—we’re all we’ve got.”

“Brandon—the past year, all the running around we’ve done . . . has it been okay for you?”

“When you lose someone—someone who took care of you—it helps if someone’s there to take over. Someone else who can love you and protect you.”

Jack broke the embrace and looked down at his son, who had stopped crying, though his eyes were still red.
I can’t go off on my own now any more than I could a year ago.

“Come,” he said. “I won’t leave you alone.”

Brandon sniffed. “Uh, Dad? How soon is the boat gonna leave?”

“Probably twenty minutes to half an hour. It kinda depends on how soon those two sergeants can set up the explosives and how long it takes to set the speakers up. Why?”

Now Brandon looked sheepish. “Well, uh, can we do any of that after the boat leaves?”

“I guess so,” he said, wondering where Brandon was going with this.
Admittedly, I’d rather do this sooner than later, but I’d rather do it right than sooner.
“Why, Brandon?”

“Well, see,” he said hesitantly, “Derek thinks I’m helping him kidnap the baby.”

“What?” On the one hand, Jack couldn’t believe it. On the other hand, he had no trouble believing it—there was very little at this point that he didn’t believe Derek Lawson to be capable of.

“I sent him on a wild goose chase, but he’s gonna figure it out. I told him I’d meet him at his boat in an hour.” Brandon looked at his watch. “That was about forty minutes ago. We were gonna take his boat to Kalor. He said that you couldn’t protect Casey from being dissected by scientists. But I knew you’d figure out a way to keep him safe.”

Jack was warmed by his son’s vote of confidence, even after all this.

“And,” Brandon continued, “even if you couldn’t, I wasn’t gonna leave Casey with
that
jerk.”

Laughing, Jack tousled his hair—in, he realized belatedly, the same manner that Derek did at Manny’s their first day here. Brandon, however, smiled, so he obviously didn’t mind.

He turned to Alyson. “I guess we’ll both be going, then.”

“Yeah,” she said, smiling. “So much for my brilliant plan. They evac’d all my patients, so I figured this was a good way to take care of
someone.
Physician’s instincts, y’know?”

Again, Jack laughed. “Right. Well, I’m sure I’ll see you later.”

She rubbed her hands for no obvious reason, and said, “Yeah. On Kalor.”

“Right,” Jack said.

And with that, she walked off.

Part of Jack wondered if there was more to it than “physician’s instincts.” Another part of him pointed out that Alyson lived on Malau and wasn’t likely to leave, while Jack lived in San Diego.

Of course, it might not be a bad idea to get a fresh start . . .

Shaking his head, he thought,
I’ll worry about that later. Right now, we have work to do.

He led Brandon and Casey toward the pier.

THIRTEEN

J
ack and Brandon arrived at the pier to see President Moki, Doctor Hale, Paul, and two Marine sergeants—he assumed these latter two were Field and Hughes, Wayne’s demolition experts. Hale and Paul had already put on lifejackets, and were lugging various bits of equipment onto Moki’s boat.

“Ah, Jack,” Hale said upon sighting him. “These two blokes are Mike Field and Bernie Hughes. They’ll be handlin’ the explosives.”

“Jack Ellway,” he said, shaking each sergeant’s hand in turn.

Field said, “Colonel Wayne said that we were to be at your disposal, sir.”

Jack nodded and looked at Hale. “You have the map?”

“Yeah,” Hale said. “Think you can handle the rest’a this, mate?” he asked Paul.

“I’ll muddle through, yeah,” Paul said as he hauled a large speaker encased in plastic onto the deck.

Hale smiled and rummaged through some papers before liberating the topographical map. “We’re gonna be leadin’ the creatures to their homes in the Iozima Ridge. What we’re gonna need you lot to do is—”

“Blow it up at the fault line, imploding the ridge?” Field ventured.

“Uh, right,” Hale said, looking as nonplussed as Jack felt. “How’d you know about the fault?”

“We’re Marines, sir. It’s our job to know.”

Jack hid a smile. Hale just grunted. “Right,” the latter said. “The coordinates—”

“We know where the fault line is, sir. With your permission, we need to gather up the semtex—we can be airborne in five.”

“That’s great,” Jack said quickly, not giving Hale a chance to respond. “Stay in touch via radio—we’ll let you know when we need you to make things go boom.”

Hughes actually smiled at that. “Going boom is our specialty, sir.” And with that, the pair of them moved off.

“Bloody showoffs,” Hale muttered.

“You’re just cranky ’cause you didn’t get a chance to give a lecture,” Jack said, slapping Hale on the back.

Moki stepped forward. “I too must depart. Best of luck to all of you.” The president shook each of their hands in turn, even Brandon’s, and he gave Casey a little pat on the head.

“We won’t let you down, sir,” Jack said.

“I’m sure you won’t,” the president said with a small smile, and then he, too, left.

Sighing, Jack turned to the others. “C’mon, let’s get this show on the road.”

Derek Lawson was furious.

The damn kid was late, and Kikko had disappeared.
And now they’re evacuating the bleedin’ island, and sooner or later they’re gonna make me leave. Well, that ain’t happenin’ without
one
of those beasts.

Then he heard the sound of a motor approaching and heading eastward.
What the hell?

He saw the familiar sight of Manny’s boat sailing out into the open sea at a rather brisk clip. Standing on its deck were Ellway, Bateman, Hale—

—and Ellway’s kid, the little monkey cradled in his arms.

I don’t bloody believe this. That little bastard!

Derek punched the wall to the bridge in frustration.
The little twerp double-crossed me!

He went over to the side to untether the boat. As he did so, Chief Movita approached. “Hello there, Derek.”

“If you’re lookin’ for a ride off the island, mate, tough luck. I’m evacuatin’ on my own, soon’s I can find Kikko.” That was a lie, both that he was evacuating and that he was waiting for Kikko, but Joe didn’t need to know the truth.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Derek. See, I’ve got bad news and bad news.”

As he tossed the ropes onto the boat, freeing it from the dock, Derek said, “Joe, I ain’t in the mood—”

“The bad news,” Joe continued, oblivious to Derek’s desire to get moving so he could catch up to Manny’s boat and claim his property, “is that we found Kikko’s body.”

That brought Derek up short. “What?”

“He was ripped to pieces. The current popular theory is that there’s another big monster out there.”

Damn,
Derek thought.
Poor bloke. I should’ve gone with him. Dammit.

“As for the other bad news—well, it’s been a little crazy around here, but I did finally get a chance to dust the nine-footer’s cage and chain for fingerprints. Imagine my surprise to find that two of the matches were for Kikko and Naru.”

Without missing a beat, Derek said, “My God, you think they freed the beast?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Derek. Those two don’t go to the bathroom without your prior permission. You were trying to steal the thing and screwed it up. I bet that’s how Naru
really
got hurt, too.” Joe took a pair of handcuffs out. “Either way, you’re under ar—”

Joe was unable to finish the sentence, occupied as he was with falling over backward from Derek’s punch to his face. Trying to shake the pain of the impact free from his hand, Derek ran up to the bridge and started the motor.

Goddammit, the whole bloody thing’s gone to hell.

The sound of a bullet ricocheting off the bow forced him to turn around. He saw Joe firing on the boat.

Keeping his head down, Derek steered the boat in the same direction as Manny’s boat had gone. After a moment, when he was out of Joe’s firing range, he set his trawler right in the other boat’s wake.

Only one thing for it,
he thought, eyeing the remaining harpoon gun.
Gotta get that little monkey away from Ellway and his brat.

Jack nervously surveyed the ocean. Intellectually, he knew that the two creatures would remain below the surface. They could move more efficiently through the water if they stayed immersed. The only reason to go above water was to obtain food—and right now, they were more likely to find food underwater.

But he kept looking anyhow.

Lieutenant Castro had radioed the position of the. two reptiles some fifteen minutes previous. Paul—who had been given piloting duties, amidst crowing over getting to drive the presidential yacht—had changed course so that they would be in front of the pair. Jack had then hooked up the camcorder—with which Brandon had recorded the baby’s voice shortly after they shoved off—to one speaker, while Hale had done the same with the other speaker and the ultra-high-frequency broadcaster.

“We’re in position,” Paul said from the bridge.

“Right,” Jack said, and looked at Hale. “Ready to lower the booms?”

Hale grinned at the figure of speech. “I thought those two smartass sergeants were handlin’ that.”