The Raven (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) (7 page)

“As would you,” he adds.

I’m not so sure about that, but I don’t mention it. He’ll just disagree anyway.

Klein returns from the chart room holding two cameras. The one with the clear plastic casing is obviously mine. I reach out, take it, and head for the door. “Let’s get this over with.”

C
ould be a little more subtle there, Malik.” The wet suit fits like a glove, and while I may not be an Amazonian bombshell like Helena, I’ve got a nice figure, which right now is smoothed out and accentuated. Given the way Malik’s eyes linger on my lady curves, you’d think it was a sheer body stocking. Of course, we’re the only two people standing on the dive deck off the back of the ship, so there isn’t really anyone else to look at, and he might just be checking over my gear. But I don’t think so.

The big man turns away, embarrassed. “Sorry,” he says. “I’ve been at sea too long.”

I laugh but then realize he might not have been joking.

Then he adds, “Sometimes even the fish start to look good,” and I laugh harder for just a moment before stopping cold.

“Wait, are you comparing me to a fish?”

Malik pulls my face mask down. The gear is fancy, and I’m not sure where it came from. Maybe Jakob bought it with his insurance claim. Maybe they stole it. Whatever the case may be, the ends justify the means. And I’m just glad we have it. The full face mask will let me breathe freely and communicate with the bridge. The rebreather strapped to my back mixes trimix—oxygen, helium, and nitrogen—with my exhaled carbon dioxide. The rebreather is 95
percent more efficient than an air tank and can last for up to eight hours. It’s smaller and lighter than a traditional air tank, too, which means I can move more quickly, especially with the wonky DPV (diver propulsion vehicle) I’ve been given. It weighs nearly a hundred pounds, but will carry me through the water at 4.3 knots—about five miles per hour—which is faster than Michael Phelps, or anyone else, can swim. What makes this DPV different is that instead of held out in front of me with my hands, it will be attached to my feet. Speed is controlled by a pedal, and I steer just like I would if I were swimming. I’ll be an honest-to-goodness human torpedo. But the best thing about it is that my hands will be free to collect samples, which is pretty much a nightmare made real, so I’m focusing on the cool gear and Malik’s wandering eyes.

Malik, on the other hand, is back to business. “Check your mic.”

“
Raven
, this is Raven. Jakob, do you realize how redundant and confusing that is? You need some originality in your names.”

“We hear you,
Jane
,” he says. “Iluatitsilluarina.”

I recognize the Greenlandic phrase for “Good luck.”

“Qujan,” I reply.
Thanks.
“Good to go?” I ask Malik.

He hands me a mesh bag containing a glass jar for samples and a variety of blades for acquiring them. “I’ll toss in the DPV when you’re ready.
Iluatitsilluarina
.”

I look down at the water. Its bright blue surface is speckled white from the clouds above. While I can’t see anything below, I feel like I’m looking into the eyes of a thousand hungry Draugar. As much as I love the ocean, and diving, this is where the enemy now resides. And I’m about to jump in.

Idiot
, I think to myself.

Without another word, I step back and fall into the water. I feel the frigid water wrap around my body, even through the wet suit, but it will be a while before it becomes unbearable. The DPV’s battery life is just one hour, and I don’t plan on being in the water a second longer. In fact, I’d like to be back on board inside thirty minutes.

I spin around in a tight circle, looking for an attack I’m sure is coming. But there is nothing around me except for endless blue. Water sheets from my mask as I surface.

“Move back,” Malik says. When I kick away, he pushes the DPV into the water. The white device, which is shaped like a blender with two large propellers at the end, splashes into the water and bobs to the surface. “I’ve already turned it on. Just put your feet where I showed you and accelerate with the pedal on the right side. To stop, just lift your foot.”

I straddle the tubular top that contains the DPV’s engine and batteries and carefully slip my feet into the slots on either side. I can feel the pedal beneath my right foot. I give the pedal a tap and am propelled through the water. I turn in an arc, getting used to how the thing moves. As I finish my arc, I give Malik a thumbs-up, angle myself down, and push the pedal hard.

Before I can blink, I’m fifteen feet beneath the surface. I arch my back and level out, correcting my course so I’m just beneath the
Raven
’s hull, headed toward the bow, beyond which I’ll find the corpse of a whale and maybe something more. I feel safe and hidden inside the shadow of the
Raven
’s black hull, but it lasts for just a moment. As I pass out of the ship’s shadow and into the morning light, I get my first glimpse of my target. It’s just a dark blue shape a hundred feet ahead, but as I’m propelled closer, the form resolves.

The wide barnacle-encrusted fluke tells me I’m approaching from behind. So I angle out and away, hoping to identify the species. “Almost there,” I say.

“What do you see?” Jakob asks.

“Not much yet. Hold on.”

The DPV slows as I pull my foot away and turn back toward the whale. Then I see it. All of it. “Holy shit.” It’s just a whisper, but Jakob hears me.

“What is it?” he asks. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” I reply. “But I can’t say the same for the whale.”

The front half of the whale—a fifty-foot humpback—is intact, but the rest of it is in ruin. The whale has been torn open from just behind the pectoral fins, up and back to the dorsal fin. Nearly all of the meat and muscle between this area and the whale’s fluke is gone, though much of the gap has been filled in by giant tendrils of intestine, organs, and stringy veins. Several feet of spine, which is nearly all that’s holding the fluke to the body, have been exposed.

“Looks like something, or several somethings, made a snack of the whale.”

“Orca?” Jakob asks.

It’s a good guess. Even when not possessed by parasites, killer whales are known to attack and consume their larger cousins. It’s not exactly cannibalism, since orcas are really porpoises—big dolphins—not whales. While orcas don’t normally kill people outside of captivity, there were a few reported attacks around Greenland two months ago, just before all the sea mammals started going AWOL.

I take a look around and see only the whale and the
Raven
’s hull. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a pod of Draugar orca circling
out of view, but I trust Jakob would let me know if something appeared on the sonar.

Ignoring the tendrils of gore wriggling in the current, I aim toward the humpback’s head and accelerate.

Whales have always made me feel small, even though I’ve only seen them from the deck of a ship. Being this close to a fifty-foot giant makes me feel absolutely insignificant. And blue whales can be twice this size!

Moving slowly, I head toward the creature’s massive mouth. Humpback whales are filter feeders. They suck in vast amounts of seawater and then use their giant tongues to force the water back out through their sieve-like baleen, filtering out the tiny krill. Normally they’re not a threat to people, though I suppose this one could easily suck me in, filter me out, and swallow me whole. I have no intention of being a modern-day Jonah, though, so I keep my distance.

I’d hoped to find its tongue hanging out of its mouth, but no such luck. The Draugar are the basis of not only modern zombie stories but also the vampire legend. Young generations of parasites reside in the gut, driving their host to consume flesh. Brain matter is a delicacy. Once the parasites have matured, they move to the tongue, covering it in a layer of wriggling white worms. The parasites on the tongue easily invade new hosts via simple bites and start the cycle anew. Victims decay to a point, but everything essential is preserved by some kind of secretion. This gives the Draugar the look of a zombie, but the eternal life of a vampire. And since they’ve got some kind of hive intelligence, controlled by a much larger Queen, they’re capable of strategizing in ways I have yet to comprehend.

All of this flits through my mind as I swim back toward the eye. If there is one other place the parasites are guaranteed to be
found, it’s the eyes. They fill the host’s eyes, wriggling inside the juices and using the clear membrane as a window on the world. A single human eye might hold fifty parasites, each of which has two black specks for eyes and a tiny but powerful mouth. I doubt they can see well individually, but together, who knows?

I pause in front of the closed eye, knife in hand, sample jar ready. My plan is simple—jab the eye and position the jar to catch anything that spews out. I aim the knife tip over the navel-orange-size eye but don’t strike. My pondering on the inner workings of a Draugr has me concerned.

“Jakob,” I say. “How do we know this whale is dead? Like really dead, not Draugr dead.”

“It’s not breathing,” he replies. “Did it move?”

“No…but do Draugr even need to breathe?”

His answer is not what I was hoping for. “I—I don’t know.”

Damnit
, I think. I should have thought of this before I jumped in the water. But I’m here now, and the whale hasn’t shown any sign of life.
Just do it and get the hell out
, I tell myself.

I take one last look around, searching for some imagined danger, and then turn back toward the eye.

The white, wriggling,
open
eye.

I
have no idea if they can hear my rapid-fire string of curses up on the bridge of the
Raven
or not, but I’m pretty sure even the Colonel would have winced at some of what I’ve just shouted.

“Jane, what happened?” Jakob says. He may not have understood what I’ve just said, but he clearly understood the abject horror that fueled my words.

“It’s a Draugr!” I shout. “A fucking Draugr whale!”

I jam the DPV pedal down as far as it can go, surging up through the water. A sound gives chase, deep and resonating. I recognize the whale call instantly. The ten-second blast vibrates my insides and makes my head spin. But it’s not the sound that bothers me; it’s the knowledge that sound travels faster and farther in water. Whales can hear each other’s calls hundreds of miles away. This means that every Draugr whale inside a several-hundred-mile radius might now know exactly where to find the
Raven
.

The DPV launches me out of the water, but not completely. After catching a glimpse of the
Raven
, I fall back to the sea. I manage to arc my body and reenter smoothly, but feel like a doofus—first for leaping out of the water like some kid pretending to be a dolphin, and second for not keeping my wits about me. Fleeing up? Where the hell is
up
going to get me?

As I surge beneath the water again, I’m pummeled by a strong current that spins me around.

The whale isn’t just alive. It’s mobile. The fluke pounds at the water, pushing the whale away from me.

I take the chance to flee. Horizontally. Toward the
Raven
.

“Jakob!” I shout. “Make sure Malik is waiting for me on the dive deck!”

The old captain either doesn’t hear me or just ignores me. Seems he’s got plans of his own. “Try to keep track of your distance to the whale,” he says. “Willem will try to harpoon the monster, but he can’t if you’re too close.”

Feeling a small measure of security knowing Willem is watching over me with a weapon that can destroy the Draugr whale’s brain, or remove its fluke, I look back so I can give a report.

But I see nothing.

“I don’t see it!”

That a creature so big, so close, could already be out of view seems impossible. “Jakob, I—”

“Beneath you!” Jakob shouts. “It’s beneath you!”

I glance down into the dark deep and see a vague circular shape rising up to swallow me whole. The shape emerges from the gloom as the whale’s wide-open maw. Capable of pulling in eighteen thousand gallons of seawater, the humpback has no trouble sucking me in.

Darkness surrounds me. The circle of sunlight above me begins to close. Near hysterics, I scream, “It swallowed me! Jakob! Oh my God!” I continue to scream as I slide deeper, thrust inward by water pressure. My body is jolted and beaten. My mask is nearly pulled from my face, but I manage to get a hand over it. I’m not sure why I bother. Drowning would be preferable to being digested or, more
likely, turned into a human Draugr. I may also find the belly full of parasite larvae, hungry for sustenance.

For a moment I’m stuck, clogged in the whale’s esophagus. But the water pressure behind me builds. I’m squeezed so tight I can’t breathe. I can hear Jakob shouting in my ear, but I can’t reply.
I’m going to die here. I’m going to die in the throat of a whale like a hunk of mozzarella in the throat of a fat man who doesn’t chew!

My chest feels like it’s going to implode. The pressure becomes unbearable. My mouth opens to scream, but without airflow, I can’t make a sound. Then I’m free, launched like a torpedo by the water pressure pushing from behind. I tumble through the water, limbs flailing for a moment before I’m snagged by what feels like soft, squishy ropes. But I’m not in its stomach. I can feel the water pushing past me.

While gulping in air, I twist and turn, trying to free myself. At first, I’m not sure why I’m struggling. It doesn’t really matter what part of the whale I’m lodged in. Sooner or later, the parasites will find me, if they haven’t already, or I’ll be melted by stomach acid or drowned. Then I see a flash of blue.

I turn toward the color again. Beams of sunlight ripple through the water.

I passed straight through the ruined, stomachless whale! But I’m still stuck. As I fight to free myself, I realize where I am—tangled in the beast’s intestines. I look for the knife in my hands. It’s gone. As is the sample jar. But the mesh bag of sheathed blades is still attached to my weight belt. Fighting against the loop of bowels wrapped around my arm, I reach for the pouch and dig inside. I can’t feel much with my gloved hands, but I find what I think is the thickest handle and pull it out.