Helena crouches atop the forward deck, holding one of the automatic weapons, but she tosses it away. Klein stands behind the wheel, steering the fast-moving craft, angling it toward the Raven. They’re alive!
My small measure of relief is short-lived. A blur of white pulls my eyes down. Two ghostly white forms lit by spotlights surge out from beneath the Raven’s hull and rocket toward the approaching speedboat. I recognize them immediately. Narwhals. Their sixteen-foot-long, two-ton bodies will make short work of the small craft, which appears to be just fifteen feet long and a small fraction of the weight. But the danger is increased dramatically thanks to the ten-foot-long tusk jutting out of the whale’s head like a unicorn’s horn. That the creatures are now Draugar is almost fitting; their name comes from nár, the Old Norse word for corpse.
As the white blurs close in on their target, I aim the harpoon just ahead of the whales, which also happens to be just ahead of the speedboat, and fire.
47
The harpoon launches. Coils of cable unravel as it travels the distance. The tip pierces the ocean, slips through a foot of water, and comes to rest a foot inside the head of one of the two narwhals. Then it explodes and reduces the front half of the creature to something resembling pink-slime beef filler.
But despite my lucky shot, the second narwhal continues forward unscathed.
Klein reacts to the sudden appearance of the whales, and the explosive fate of one of them, by turning the wheel. But the effort is too late. Almost four thousand pounds of fast-moving whale strike the bottom of the fifteen-hundred-pound motorboat, and Einstein’s laws of action and reaction take over.
The ten-foot tusk pierces the hull first, slipping through the fiberglass like a needle through skin. The lance stabs up, emerges from the deck, and punches through Klein’s chest, lifting him high into the air like a speared fish.
The whale’s head strikes next. The ship’s forward momentum is arrested in an instant. Helena, however, continues moving. She’s launched out over the ocean. Halfway through the arc of her flight, she takes control of her body, twisting until she’s facing forward. The chaotic fall becomes a well-formed dive.
God, I like this girl.
She enters the water like a torpedo and surfaces just ten feet from the Raven’s hull. I toss a few more loops of cable into the water so that it goes slack. In my current condition, I couldn’t possibly climb up the frigid metal cable, but Helena is strong and wearing gloves, which do nothing to thaw her out—she’s soaked to the core—but help her grip the line.
When she nears the main deck, I reach over the rail, take her coat, and help haul her up. We fall to the deck, cold, wet, and exhausted.
Willem must have seen all this because once Helena is safe on deck, the Raven’s engines roar. We pull away from the island at full speed.
“What about Klein?” Helena asks, pushing herself up. Her lips are blue, and her body is starting to shake.
I shake my head. “He didn’t make it.”
She clenches her fists and whispers a curse. The anger gripping her face is suddenly replaced by concern. She looks around the deck. “Where are the others?”
“Willem is in the bridge,” I say. “Talbot is dead.”
My silence about Jakob is deliberate but quickly noticed. Helena grips the arm of my sweater, twisting the fabric. “Where is Jakob?” she asks.
I look at the glowing island of ships, but I can’t bring myself to speak.
Helena twists her fist. The sleeve constricts my arm. “Where is my father?”
“Doing what needs to be done,” I say, never taking my eyes off the cruise ship.
Helena follows my gaze and looks at the ship. “No…”
A muffled whump makes me jump. The sound is so deep and powerful that it shakes my body. A sharp crack tears through the air and is followed by a fireball like something out of a sci-fi apocalyptic film. The orange glow, traveling at the speed of light, illuminates everything for a mile. The boom, traveling at the speed of sound, arrives next. It knocks Helena and me to the deck, which is good, because a hot pressure wave follows.
The ship is lifted up and tilted at a sharp angle. Helena and I slide across the deck on a collision course with the port rail. The ship rights itself a moment before we hit, sparing us further pain. While the ship cants back and forth, finding its equilibrium, Helena and I clutch each other, ducking our heads beneath our arms as glass from the shattered bridge windows rains down from above.
When the sound fades, the glass stops falling, and the ship is no longer wobbling like a Weeble, Helena and I separate and get our first look at the aftermath of the explosion.
The gates of hell have been opened in the North Atlantic. The cruise liner—what little hasn’t been reduced to confetti or already sunk—is burning with flames that reach hundreds of feet into the air. The surrounding ships are shredded, sinking, and burning as well. It’s the world’s biggest bonfire. If there are any astronauts looking down at this part of the world tonight, I have no doubt they’ll see the orange glow as easily as I do. We’re a half mile from the burning fleet, but I can still feel the heat. Helena’s soaked clothes are actually steaming.
“He did this?” Helena asks.
I look up at her. She’s even more beautiful in the orange glow. I nod. “He died well.”
Despite the tears threatening to spill from her eyes, she smiles. “He died amazing.”
“Yes,” I say as one of the large ships overturns and slips beneath the waves. A series of secondary explosions rips through the night as fuel tanks erupt and add to the column of fire. Even the water surrounding the ruined fleet is burning. “He did.”
An impact rocks the ship.
“Fucking serious!” I shout, annoyed that this fight is not yet over. The fleet is destroyed. The Queen is dead. And they’re still taking potshots at the Raven? Unless… “What happened to the blue whales?”
“They left an hour ago,” Helena says. “Most of the whales did.”
“Where?”
Helena looks straight ahead and points. “North.”
As I stare into the darkness to the north, I see something large faintly glowing in the light cast by the massive fire. “What the hell…”
The ship is struck again. I feel the jolt, but it’s nothing compared to the impacts delivered by the sperm whales that attacked before. A juvenile humpback breeches and slams itself onto the deck. It doesn’t come close to landing on us, but we back away as it flops back into the ocean.
“I think they’re pissed,” Helena says.
She’s right. They’re not going to let us leave without a fight. “Where’s the grenade launch—”
“Jane!” Willem shouts from the bridge.
I look up and see him leaning out one of the shattered windows. His face is covered with bloody cuts, probably from flying glass, but he appears to be okay, that is, if you ignore wide-eyed worry.
He thrusts a finger north, pointing toward the faintly lit object. “Take cover!” he shouts.
Take cover?
He shouts again. “It’s a destroy—”
A sound like the world’s largest chain saw revving up pulls my attention north. In the distance, I see twin spikes of fire. The light illuminates the giant ship that I quickly recognize as a US destroyer. Bright orange tracer rounds flow toward us like twin laser beams, chewing a path through the water, straight toward us. The buzz of the twin chain guns is joined by the slower but louder boom of two 57mm close-in guns. The big gun fires two rounds every second.
The barrage is enough to tear the Raven to pieces, so I don’t bother taking cover. If the Draugar have a destroyer, we’re like Spock in the Enterprise’s reactor room—dead—except without the being-reborn Project Genesis stuff.
So I watch.
As the powerful rounds rain down, I’m struck by a realization—this destroyer has really shitty aim. They’re chewing up the water all around us, but not a single round has struck the ship. Not one.
<
br /> Then the world goes silent, and the destroyer disappears into the darkness once more.
“Are you crazy?” Willem shouts from above as he reappears in the window.
Helena stands up next to me—she’d dived to the deck.
I shrug. “I didn’t think it would matter.”
He shakes his head, exasperated.
I hear a voice. It’s small and garbled by static. “Come—this is—Is everyone—” The voice is coming from the radio.
“This is the Raven,” I hear Willem say. “Say again. I repeat, say again.”
The destroyer wasn’t trying to kill us, they were saving us!
I rush up the stairs, pushing my sore legs to the limit, and enter the bridge as the voice replies. “This is the USS Bainbridge. Are you okay? Did we get the sonsabitches? Over.”
Willem turns to me and extends the radio in his hand.
Helena enters behind me. “What are you waiting for?” she asks.
At first I think she’s talking to Willem, but then I notice she’s looking at me.
“Why me?” I ask.
“My father made you first mate,” Willem says. He doesn’t need to explain any further, but he does. “You’re the captain now.”
“But—”
“I’ve seen his will,” Willem says. “The Raven is yours. It was always intended to be.”
Something about the way he says this triggers a realization. “You knew,” I say. “You knew he wasn’t bit.”
He nods. “I figured it out.” He holds the radio out. “Captain.”
I take the radio from him slowly, the surreal moment dragging out. I push the call button and speak. “This is Jane Harper, captain of the whaling vessel Raven. We’re in bad shape but alive. Thanks for your assistance. Over.”
“Copy that, Harper,” the man says. “Maintain your heading, but be ready to power down. We’ll come alongside. Or medics are standing by to receive you. Over.”
“Roger that,” I say with a grin, hearing my father’s voice in my own. “Will do. Over.”
“Sounds like you’ve done this before, Harper. You have a military background?” the man asks.
I think of all the time spent with the Colonel, being taught the same lessons as the men he trained, learning the lingo, and taking more hard knocks than the average recruit.
“Yeah,” I say. “I do.”
EPILOGUE
Two hours later, our wounds have been tended to and we’re enjoying bowls of beef stew in the Bainbridge’s mess. We’re warm, bandaged, and safe but feeling a little bit in the dark, since no one has said a word to us in the past thirty minutes. I’m pretty close to pulling a “Harper,” which is the moment my father, or I, lose our patience and tear some unfortunate soul a new asshole until answers are forthcoming. If not for my physical and mental exhaustion, I’d have already started my one-woman war for answers. For now, the stew has bought the crew some time.
While being patched up, we were gently interrogated by the ship’s captain, Kane Gilmour, who looks a little like Richard Gere but with a scruffy beard. He spoke to us one at a time, asking about our encounters with the whales, what happened on the island of ships, the parasites (after I brought them up), and why the Raven was outfitted like a “whale slayer.” He started with Willem and finished with me. When I completed my description of the Raven’s weapons and their intended purpose, he gave a nod, said, “Awesome sauce,” and left.
We were escorted to the galley a short time later and offered a choice between fish fillets and beef stew. We all took the stew and were pleased when large cubes of corn bread arrived with it.
With my stomach near bursting, I lean back in my chair, stretch, and let out an old-fashioned military-style burp that relieves some of the pressure on my stomach.
Willem chuckles and polishes off his meal.
Helena, however, has only eaten half her food. She sits across the table from Willem and me, looking back and forth at the two of us. “How did you do it?”
“Do what?” I ask, thinking she’s talking about some aspect of our time inside the Poseidon Adventure.
“Deal with all this,” she replies. “The first time, I mean. After the island. Our friends are dead. My father. Not to mention all of the people just living their lives on all those ships. They’re all dead, and we’re eating beef stew and laughing at burps.”
By we, she means Willem and me. She’s definitely not laughing.
I look to Willem. “Some of us did better than others.” It’s an admission that doesn’t agree with me, but it’s the truth. “I hid. Drank. Got in fights. Watched TV. You know, real womanly stuff. Mostly I tried not to think about what happened, but that’s impossible.”
I shift in my seat, battling my physical and emotional discomfort. “Your brother did it right, though. Focused on his family. Forged strong bonds.”
“But,” Helena says. “Your father…”
I know what she’s trying to say. I don’t have a family. But she’s wrong. I hold my hand out to Willem, and he takes it. “Families can be made,” I say and hold out my other hand to her.
She smiles and wraps her fingers around mine.
“We’ll get through it together,” I say. Thinking of family brings my thoughts back to Jakob and his final words to me. “Before I left him—your father—he said something that I didn’t fully understand.”
They both look at me with eager eyes, clearly curious about the last words their father spoke on this earth. “Iluatitsilluarina ukuaa,” I say.
The response is immediate and not at all what I expected.
Both of the somber Vikings break out laughing. Willem’s laugh is subdued, but his face is turning beet red. Helena cups her hands over her mouth in an attempt to mute her laugh, but to no avail.
“What, did he call me a bad word or something?” I ask.
“Depends on your perspective,” Willem says, laughing a little harder now.
Helena opens her mouth to speak, and it’s clear by her expression that she’s about to let me in on the joke. But Willem raises his hand at her. “Wait! Don’t!”
“Willem,” I growl, “I swear if you don’t—”
“Daughter-in-law,” Helena blurts out with a guffaw. “He said, ‘Good luck, daughter-in-law!’”
That wily SOB. I try to fight it, but a smile creeps onto my face, which is likely growing as red as Willem’s. When the door to the mess bangs open, I’m grateful for the distraction. That is, until I hear the tone of our visitor’s voice.
“Harper!” Gilmour shouts. He enters with two other officers and a few sailors.
“What’s going on?” I say, sounding a little defensive because it looks like I’m about to be thrown in the brig.
But Gilmour pounds straight past our table and heads for the flat-screen TV mounted in the back corner of the mess.
I stand and follow him. Tight wraps on my legs, coupled with some military-grade painkillers, dull the pain from my injuries, but the ache seems to have grown worse, or maybe I’m just noticing it without zombies or whales trying to eat me.
“What’s going on?” Willem asks.
Gilmour turns on the TV and steps back with a remote in his hand.
“Three fifty,” one of the other men says.
Gilmour changes the channel, punching in the numbers with enough force that the remote makes a crunching sound with each push. The screen goes black while the satellite TV connects to the selected channel. Gilmour looks back at us. “Nuuk has been quarantined.”
Helena pushes past some of the men blocking her view of the TV. “What!”
“Came through ten minutes ago,” the captain says.
The channel connects, and an image is displayed on the screen. It’s a helicopter view, Nuuk. The patchwork of islands filling the harbor and the brightly colored homes, not to mention my towering apartment building, are easy to identify.
I notice the lack of channel logo or graphics and ask, “What channel is this?”
“It’s a secure military channel,” Gilmour says. “This is a live feed from a recon Comanche.”
The aerial view sweeps down toward the harbor. Lines of docked ships stretch along the dock…which is covered in corpses.
“What happened?” Willem asks.
When the view shifts from the dock to the long, pebbly beach just beyond, I know the answer to that question. Thirty now empty lifeboats line the shore. They didn’t carry survivors. They carried Draugar. That’s why only injured, immobile, and weak Draugar remained behind. The rest—thousands of them—were sent to Nuuk.
The camera pans up, revealing a city in ruins. Smoke billows from several fires. I can see people running. And more chasing them. Cars race down streets, careening into everything and everyone.
“No!” I shout. “God damnit!”
Willem puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. He calms me and reassures me all at once.
“You know, I thought you all might be suffering from some kind of delusion,” Gilmour admits. “Whales are one thing. They were attacking us all day.”
“They weren’t attacking you,” I growl. “They were distracting you.” I point to the screen. “From them.”
Gilmour frowns. “Parasitic zombies are a little hard to swallow. But now…” He motions to the TV. “I mean, there it is. Reports coming out of the city support everything you’ve said.”
“What are you doing about it?” Helena asks.
“Right now?” Gilmour says with a shrug. “Nothing. We’re waiting for—”
“Take us there,” I say.
“What?”
“The three of us,” I say. “Give us weapons or not. But take us there.”
“There is an army of those things running around the city.” Gilmour shakes his head. “Even if you weren’t torn to bits—which you are—the three of you aren’t going to take back the city on your own.”
“I’m not interested in Nuuk,” I say.
The Raven (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) Page 25
