The Raven (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) (14 page)

Saying this makes me realize that I haven’t looked at the radar screen in a little while. Nothing changed during the night, except that the splotches representing the whales slowly encroached on our position.

Willem stands from the captain’s chair. “I’ll wake the others.”

I wander to the radar screen. “Your father is in my room.” I grin.

“Already planning our appearance on Maury Povich, are you?”

I laugh. “Did you just make a Jane Harper joke? I didn’t think you were capa—” I turn to the radar screen and never finish my sentence. The first thing I see is expected—several splotches still an hour out. But when the radar sweeps around again, I see two of the targets are just about on top of us. “Willem.”

I hear him stop at the door, but I can’t speak. I watch the screen as the radar sweeps around again. The two targets are gone on this revolution. Was it a glitch? Did they dive?

My thought process is cut off by the appearance of five new targets. Directly ahead of us, and much closer. “Willem!”

He rushes to my side. I point at the screen. “Please tell me I’m seeing things.”

We watch. The first radar revolution shows some of the far-off whales. The second reveals a few more of them, but there are still two unaccounted for. The third revolution reveals the five new targets ahead of us and elicits an “Oh shit” from Willem, which is so uncommon it’s akin to a normal person throwing themselves on the floor while wailing like a banshee. What he doesn’t know is that the five new targets are much closer than they were when I first noticed them. The combined speed of the
Raven
and the new targets is something around forty-five knots. They’ll reach us quickly.

The radar screen performs one more revolution, this time revealing several distant targets, but also the two that somehow closed the distance. “They’re only a quarter mile out!” Willem says. “They must have made a long dive. Stayed off the radar.”

I nearly complain that whales don’t know about radar, but then I remember these aren’t just whales. Willem rushes toward the back of the bridge, but not toward the stairs.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Waking up the crew,” he says as he places his hand on a red lever marked Fire. He yanks it down, and the whole ship fills with a high-pitched siren and blinking white lights. He leaves it on for just thirty seconds, then shuts it off. If the noise didn’t wake anyone up, chances are they’re already dead.

But it might be too little too late. The ship shakes from a hard strike to the port side before the first crew member arrives. A second blow rattles the ship on the starboard side a moment later. “Willem,” I say, pointing to the front deck. “Go! Shoot those sonsabitches out of the water.”

He pauses just a moment, looking at me like he’s trying to say something. Maybe good-bye. Then he’s gone. Out the door and charging off to wage war. I’ve just sent him to his death, I think, but am distracted from the thought when the ship rumbles like it was struck by a missile.

W
hat’s happening?” Jakob shouts as he barges into the wheelhouse. “Why wasn’t I woken earl—” He stops his question short when he looks at his watch. The attack is earlier than expected.

“A few of them dove deep and caught up underwater,” I explain.

“But that’s not—”

“We don’t really know what’s possible,” I remind him.

Klein and Talbot step onto the bridge.

“Where are Malik and Helena?” I ask.

“Already outside,” Talbot says.

I glance out the front windows and see Malik manning the port gun, Willem on the starboard, and Helena charging for the forward gun. We could have used a few more people with their instincts.

“You two know how to fire the harpoons?” I ask.

“Malik took me through the steps,” Klein says, “but I haven’t actually fired one yet.”

“Ain’t a gun I can’t shoot, ma’am,” Talbot says with a grin, no doubt looking forward to firing one of the cannons.

“Then move your asses,” I say. “Take the aft guns. Aim for the center of the head. You want to destroy the brain. I’ll join you in a moment.”

As they head for the exit, I ask, “Have either of you seen Nate?” I don’t think the kid could bring himself to actually shoot a whale, infected or not, but it would have been nice to have someone running ammunition.

Klein shakes his head no.

Talbot just shrugs. “Neither hide nor hair.”

I wave them away and turn my attention to Jakob, who’s behind the wheel. “Can you manage up here on your own?”

“Not much else to do from here except try to run them over,” he says. “If I need you, I’ll use the intercom.”

The ship shakes from an impact. I grip the radar screen to keep from spilling over.

“One more thing,” I say, motioning to the radar screen. “There are five more targets coming straight at us. I think they’re smaller, but they’ll be here in just a few minutes.”

“It was a trap,” he says. “The whole time. A trap.”

The discouragement in his eyes pisses me off. I head for the rear exit, saying, “That might be true, but the Olavsons don’t back down from a fight, do they?”

Fire returns to his eyes.

“And neither does the Raven,” I say. I’m not sure whether I’m talking about the ship or me, and I have no idea how Jakob takes the statement, but I feel the engine roar deep in the ship as the captain throttles forward, intent on bludgeoning some zombie-whales.

I find Talbot manning the aft gun and Klein at the port. Both are swinging their harpoons back and forth, searching for a target. I run to the starboard gun and nearly stumble overboard when the ship cuts into a tight turn. After catching myself, I take hold of the harpoon gun, switch off the safety, and look for
something to shoot. But like Klein and Talbot, I see nothing. I look to my left and see Willem at the front of the ship, also looking for a target.

They’re not surfacing
, I think. Unlike normal whales, the Draugar whales don’t need to breathe. So they don’t need to surface. And that makes our harpoons useless. They might be able to beat the hull to a pulp without
ever
surfacing.

Willem catches my eye. At first I think he’s waving at me, but then I notice he’s pointing. Behind me.

I turn toward the back of the ship and see them right away. Whales. A mile out. Rising and falling as they breach. The first is a humpback. And not a big one. But then a giant rises from the ocean. A blue whale. Perhaps a hundred feet long. Then a second. And a third. Their combined size and tonnage dwarfs the
Raven
. Three more behemoths—all sperm whales—rise, these just a quarter mile off. They’ll be on us in minutes.

I turn to the bow, looking for the other targets, but see nothing. They’re either still out of eyeshot or not breaching.

The ship rocks to the side as we’re struck from below. I see a flash of white several feet below the surface that I recognize as the pectoral fin of a humpback whale. “C’mon, baby, show me some skin,” I say, but it’s clear the whale won’t be coming any closer to the surface.

This might be the best chance I have.

So I take it.

I swivel the harpoon gun down toward the water, sight the fading fin, and pull the trigger. The harpoon explodes into the water, slipping through the waves with ease. I don’t see it strike the target, but a moment later, I know it did.

A geyser of water plumes into the air combined with a muffled
whump
. The impact-sensitive explosive head has detonated. Roiling water brings liquid red to the surface. Blood. But did I do any real damage?

I see the white fin again, shimmering pink as the morning light filters through the blood. When it reaches the surface, I see that it’s still connected to a large piece of meat that has been separated from the creature.

The whale surfaces twenty feet out. It’s moving quickly as its fluke pounds the water, but a large chunk of its right side, including the fin, is missing. The thing spins in erratic circles, unable to control its direction.

We don’t need to kill them
, I realize.
Just remove their ability to swim, or at least swim straight.

The whale spirals away from us, trailing a path of blood. It seems any fin will do, though the fluke would probably be best.

“Aim for the fins if you can,” I shout. “They’re not a threat if they can’t move!”

The
Raven
turns hard to port, bringing the wounded whale in line with the ice-breaking forward hull. Jakob is on the warpath.

Invigorated by drawing first blood, I begin to reel my harpoon. The line is slick with water and quite heavy. My shoulders burn after pulling in just one hundred feet of line, which I have to coil neatly next to the harpoon gun.
Why didn’t Jakob find something with a winch attached?
I think in frustration. Not only would it have been less work, but it would also go faster. I answer the question for myself. The newer, fancy harpoon guns not only cost a lot more; they also would need to be bought through a dealer, and the transaction would have been easily tracked.

I hear another harpoon fire, possibly Malik’s or Helena’s, but no secondary explosion. A miss.

The harpoon clears the water and feels heavier than ever. When pulling it hand over hand proves impossible, I just tighten my grip, lean back, and walk backward until the spear is lying on the deck.

“Klein!” I shout, looking back to see if the man is engaging a target. He’s not, and he turns to face me. “I don’t know how to rearm this thing!”

He runs to my side. “I’ll take care of it. Take my gun.”

While Klein heads for the watertight supply closet against deck one’s rear wall, I take up his position. I grasp the harpoon with both hands and quickly twist it forward and back, looking for something to shoot. There’s nothing in sight, but experience has taught me that shooting straight down is sometimes a viable option.

And it is. Rising from below is the distinct shape of a humpback whale. My finger goes for the trigger, but I don’t get a chance to fire. The ship shakes, front to back, as she strikes the immobilized whale. The humpback I shot looked to be in much better condition than the first, very decomposed, whale we ran down, and the impact is much harder. I’m knocked to the side and unable to fire.

But I don’t fall. I keep my grip on the harpoon gun, fully intent on reacquiring my target. So I’m still standing when it happens.

The whale breaches.

It rises from the ocean as though in slow motion. I see its striped underbelly, which can expand large enough to suck in thousands of gallons of seawater and food, rise ten, twenty, thirty feet above me.

And then—
fuck
—it arcs.

Toward me.

Twenty-five tons of whale flesh blots out the sun and comes crashing down toward me.

M
y mind switches off. I don’t see my life flash before my eyes. In fact, I don’t see anything because my eyes are clenched shut. I can’t hear anything because my adrenaline-fueled blood is rushing past my ears like a freight train. And let’s face it, smelling, tasting, and feeling are low-priority senses when you’re about to be smeared against the deck of a ship by a humpback whale.

An instinct for survival fuels my last-second attempt at escape. With my back to the descending whale, I run. But just two steps in, the whale lands with a boom that reverberates through the ship’s frame.

My first thought is,
How am I not dead?
Which is quickly followed by,
Where did the deck go?

Under the weight of the whale, the
Raven
has dropped several feet and canted sharply to the side, leaving me airborne and sprawling. With a shout, I collide headfirst with the harpoon gun’s solid metal base. The pain is intense, but I quickly realize that the impact may have saved my life.

I hear a distant splash and a shouted, “Man overboard.” Who was on the forward port gun? Malik. I’m flooded with relief and then guilt. I’m glad it’s not Willem, but there isn’t a person on the planet that I’d wish to be in these waters, certainly not a man I now consider a friend.

He must have been knocked over the rail when the ship canted. Speaking of that…I grip the harpoon gun, climb to my feet, and turn to my left. The whale is there. Right there. Just ten feet away.

How did it miss?

A breeze tickles my wild hair.
We’re moving
, I think. Had the
Raven
been idle, I would have been crushed. Twenty knots of forward momentum saved my life. We’ve slowed considerably now that we’re supporting more than a few thousand extra tons, but we’re still floating. That’s something.

A shift of movement catches my attention. The whale’s eye. It’s staring at me.

Though it’s not really a whale’s eye anymore. Humpbacks’ softball-size eyes are largely black and kind looking. This monstrosity is white. And wriggling. The orb is full of parasites, some larger than I’ve seen before, maybe several inches long. Their beady pinhead-size eyes stare at me. They’re hard to see, but I can feel them.

The whale writhes back and forth, sliding the top half of its massive body over the crushed rail, back toward the water, where it will be able to strike again. The ship tips as the whale’s thick skin is gouged by the broken rail. It’s a slow and messy retreat, but the whale will be back in the water, ready to strike again, in seconds.

“Oh, I don’t think so!” I shout at the whale. I get a hold of the harpoon gun and swivel it around so the pointy end is aimed directly at the whale’s worm-filled eye.

My finger finds the trigger.

I hear somebody shouting. I can’t distinguish the words, but it sounds like a warning.

I ignore it. This whale needs to die. Here and now.

When the whale’s movements become frantic, I can’t help but grin. The Draugar parasites know what’s about to happen.
Do they
fear for their lives?
I wonder.
Do they fear being separated from the collective consciousness? Or are they just committed to the mission, whatever that might be?

I decide I don’t give a shit and pull the trigger.

The resulting twin explosions take place in just over two seconds. My mind registers the first as the harpoon leaves the cannon and punches through the whale’s eye, slipping inside its skull. When the explosive head tears through the Draugr’s parasite-laden mind and strikes the inner skull, it detonates. But the explosion, deep inside the colossal skull, doesn’t just punch out the other side, it bursts, in every direction, including back at me.