Monstrum (28 page)

A hint of amusement softens some of the harsher lines in the captain's face. “That's a matter of opinion, I suppose. Mad for passing up the chance to share in the riches, fame and honor that will come when I deliver the chimera to our employer in Rio? Of course. Mad for risking the storm? Maybe not. We are only skirting it, after all, and they'll use our escort ship rather than the dinghy. It is much sturdier and has a more powerful—”

Murphy raises a hand for silence and cocks his head. “Escort? What
escort
?”

The captain raises his brows. “My ship sails on business that is important, dangerous and secret, Mr. Murphy. It is company policy that the
Venator
never travels anywhere without an escort. Have you not seen the ship shadowing us on our port side?”

“Seen the ship?” Murphy splutters, outraged. “This isn't a Carnival pleasure cruise, man! D'you think I've had the time and opportunity to go strolling about the deck seeing the sights?”

The captain's eyes narrow.

“And if you have an escort ship,” Murphy continues, “why didn't you let it take us to Eleuthera when you caught the chimera and decided to sail it home to Rio?”

Captain Romero scoffs. “Why would I divert resources to take you home? I am not running a maritime limousine service. My mission is to bring the chimera safely to Rio, and, to do that, I need my escort to guard my precious cargo.”

“These children need to get home to their families!” Murphy shouts. “They're the only precious cargo you need to be worried about!”

Captain Romero waves a hand. “We disagree. At any rate, you can go now, so no harm done.”

“No harm done?” Murphy's face is purple, and he alarms me by clutching at his chest as though he's in pain. “Espi and Axel are dead, as are several of your crewmen! Or have you forgotten them already?”

“What significant scientific advance comes without sacrifice?” the captain asks. “Are you forgetting, for example, the hordes of workers who died from malaria and yellow fever while constructing the Panama Canal?”

“What? You're yammering about the Panama Canal when that thing's loose and killing people?”

“You're right,” Captain Romero agrees crisply. “Time is of the essence. I have a chimera to capture, and that won't be an easy task when I am shorthanded.”

His expression darkens as he continues, muttering to himself as much as speaking to the rest of us. “I should not have to accomplish this by myself, but what can I do? Some of my crewmen and the first officer on my escort ship are so pathetically superstitious that they cannot see a black cat without losing their bowels like an infant. They are afraid of their own shadows and fear the chimera as though it is Satan himself. They have decided to leave me, Dr. Baer and a skeleton crew here to bring the
Venator
and the chimera to port by ourselves. So that is what we will do. Good riddance to them and more reward money for us.”

Dr. Baer swipes at his bleeding cheek and gives the captain a hard stare. “We can't pilot this ship by ourselves and catch the chimera, Diego.”

The captain starts at the sound of someone else's voice and frowns at the ongoing disrespect, making a low rumbling sound in his throat.

“It's not possible,” Dr. Baer says. “We don't have the manpower.”

“It is possible, I assure you.” Captain Romero's face is still again, except for a spasming muscle along his jaw line. “I will pilot the ship. You will find the chimera. Simple.”

“And we'll get out of here with the crew before we miss our chance.” Murphy extends his arms to herd us together and toward the door, pausing to give Captain Romero a curt nod. “Good luck to you, sir, and to you, Baer. You're both going to need it. Let's go, you lot.”

I can't move away from the base of the tank.

“Bria,” An calls. “We don't have all day.”

I'm trapped inside my sudden terror. Something cold, wet, pulsating and invisible has just skimmed down the side of my face in a caress that's as gently reverential as it is obscene.

It's one of the chimera's tentacles. It has to be.

Trembling, I open my mouth to tell them what's going on—to scream for help—but all I can produce is a strangled gurgle because I can't breathe. My lungs won't work.

And then it winds its way around my neck, and I know that if it tightens down, I'm dead. Will trying to yank it off make it tighten down? Are my reflexes quicker than the chimera's? Am I already dead no matter what I do or don't do?

A second tentacle—or maybe it's only the tail end of the first—traces down my nose and over my lips. Total paralysis keeps me rooted to the spot, except for my pounding heart, which seems determined to escape through my chest wall and leave the rest of me to my gruesome fate.

“Bria?” Cortés asks sharply.

This is my only chance.

“Help . . . me,” I whisper, and twist my body, trying to wrench free.

The chimera reverts to its original form. Right before our disbelieving eyes, it materializes, grinning, in the tank, where it apparently was the whole time. My terror ratchets higher when its tentacles, pink and glistening like slugs, come into my peripheral vision. They stretch from the chimera, up through the bars at the top of the tank, and down to me.

“Help me!” I shout, grappling with the unyielding tentacles.

“Bria!” Cortés yells, his voice cutting across everyone else's shocked cries. Reaching for me, he wrestles with the tentacles, which do, in fact, tighten down. My lungs heave, trying for one good breath that doesn't come. An and Dr. Baer jump in to help Cortés. Maggie and Sammy shout encouragement.

Murphy and Carter swing their rifles up, stare down their sights at me and take aim.

The crushing pressure on my throat reduces my screams to gurgles. I try to pry the tentacles loose, but my hands are useless.

“Stop!” Gray roars. “Don't aim for the tentacles! You'll hit Bria! Aim for the body!”

Murphy and Carter swing around to aim at the tank. Captain Romero catapults in front of the tank, spreading his arms wide the way a normal person would protect their child from a speeding car.

“No!” he commands. “Don't shoot it!”

“Get out of the way!”

My straining lungs threaten to explode. Black spots appear across my field of vision, but not before I see Cortés bend and reach for something near his foot. I see the blurry gray flash of a blade as his arm swings down, severing one of the tentacles.

The chimera screams. Its raw agony soaks through my body the way its hot blood soaks through my clothes. The tentacle drops to the floor with a sickening wet thunk, freeing up my throat and letting me drop to my knees, where I gasp for air.

The remaining tentacle snatches my aquamarine necklace from my neck and retreats.

The chimera screams again.

Blind panic makes me scoot backward on my butt, as far away from the tank as I can get, until my back hits the wall.

“What's it doing?” shrieks An.

Murphy and Carter lower their rifles. Captain Romero, seeing the direction of everyone's gazes, turns to face the tank.

The chimera keeps its gleaming black eyes on us and its teeth bared as it shimmies and slides out of its shell, revealing a misshapen stretch of black and white body that culminates in those wicked tentacles, one of which is still gripping my necklace. Its legs remain with the shell and fall slowly to the tank's bottom, discarded. The chimera gives its body a single hard shake. The claws drop out and also drift to the tank's bottom.

“Oh, my God,” Maggie murmurs.

Now freed of all of its armored parts, the chimera thrusts its tentacles to propel itself to the top of the tank. My first thought is that it intends to yank the metal grid off the top and escape, but that's not what it has in mind at all. With a lingering look back at us, as though it wants to make sure it has a rapt audience for its stunning display, it reverses its position, presses its tentacles together to form a single long appendage and inserts the tip into one of the two-inch spaces between the bars.

I watch, cowering, as it flattens and wriggles its body through the space, which is impossibly and exponentially too small for it to fit.

But it does fit.

The head, now smaller and longer than the average cucumber, is the final part to emerge. A vigorous full-body shake like a dog does after its bath restores the chimera's body to its previous dolphin-esque shape and size, and it seems good as new, minus its shell, legs and claws. Free at last, the monster pauses atop the grid to roar with triumph and stare down at us as though deciding who it wants to eat first.

Its avid gaze lands on me and stays.

“Run,” I breathe. “We need to run.”

No one moves.

The tentacles undulate along the grid, snakelike now, and inch the chimera to the edge, where it rears up.

This, finally, galvanizes everyone.

We all scatter as fast as we can.

Behind us, the thing leaps the fifteen or so feet to the floor and lands with such light ease you'd think it weighed no more than a sparrow. I tell myself not to look, but I am Lot's wife and have a self-destructive fascination with what's going on behind me. So I take a glance—just a small one, over my shoulder—and see that the chimera has already regrown its spiny crab's legs. Only these are taller and faster than they were before, big enough to support a Great White rather than a mere dolphin.

The chimera, now six feet tall, at least, angles itself sideways, scuttling after us and zeroing in on me.

My mouth twists open, but the scream is caught in my throat and my body is a concrete slab of terror, incapable of movement.

A hand grabs my wrist, hard, and I discover that Cortés has me, and he's shouting for me to
run!
So I run. Captain Romero and Maggie are on my other side, closing in on the bottleneck of bodies at the door.

I see Murphy at the threshold, wildly waving kids through and screaming for Maggie, Cortés and me to hurry,
HURRY HURRY!
and not look behind.

But I do look behind.

The monster is now as much phoenix as it is chimera. The thing has regenerated a massive new shell to encase its growing body, and the shell is gray and unscratched, with spiked armor and rows of fortified ridges.

I keep running.

And I watch, with dread, as jostling bodies knock Maggie, the smallest of us, off her feet. I duck around the captain as he runs out of the cabin with the last of the kids, trying to keep her in sight. Before I can shout her name, she is skidding on her butt and coming to a stop at the chimera's many scuttling feet.

“Maggie!”

Sobbing, she focuses on me and frantically tries to get up.

So she doesn't see what I see—which is the chimera slowing to a stop and leering down at her from its shocking new height of about ten feet.

“Maggie!”
I shout again, trying to run back to her and struggling against Cortes's unyielding grip. “I have to get her!”

The grim resignation in his expression tells me what I already know. It's too late.

The chimera cocks its head and studies Maggie as though it can't believe its stupid good fortune.

Then it raises a claw and, with a horizontal snip so casual and effortless it might have been a gardener cutting roses, neatly cuts Maggie in two through the waist.

I scream all through the endless second when her head, arms and torso linger, teetering, on the bottom portion of her body. I stop screaming only when the ruined halves of Maggie topple to the floor, separating from each other in a shower of blood.

For one long beat, while I scream and scream and scream, the chimera studies its handiwork with a distinct lack of interest that I find insulting, even in my hysterical state. It doesn't bother eating Maggie, savoring the smell of her fresh flesh or even checking to see if she's got some jewelry it could pilfer.

None of that matters to the thing.

It killed Maggie for the same reason it hid in plain sight inside the tank and then attacked us at a moment of its choosing:

Just because it could.

Now it raises its head and, once again, zeroes in on me.

With Cortés's hand as my only lifeline, I run.