Leviathan Rising

by Jonathan Green

  But there was so much more wrong with it than just its grossly exaggerated size. As the squid-beast sped towards the sub-liner, homing in on the movement of the figures it must have detected fleeing along the brightly lit Promenade, the image of its horrific, unreal form was seared onto Ulysses' retinas. He could still see it now, in his mind's eye, as he turned his attention back to the matter of escape; although now it had become the more immediate need of escaping from the coiling clutches of the squid-monster closing on the Neptune, than the longer term plan of escaping on one of the stricken liner's submersibles. And was that really an option now, with their worst fears realised in the form of the savage, hungry sea-beast?

  It was the sea-devil all of them must have imagined when Ulysses had spoken of being trapped between the Devil and the deep blue sea. Although it looked like an overgrown squid - Architeuthis Giganticus rather than just Architeuthis Dux - it was far more than simply an overgrown mollusc. To begin with, too many clutching tentacles reached from the appalling head of the creature, with the length, strength and size of ship's cables, masses of puckered, grey suckers opening and closing like a myriad foully kissing mouths.

  The monster also lit the way before it, a bioluminescent lure, the kind Ulysses would have expected to see projecting from the head of a deep-sea angler fish, pulsing with blue light, ever darting ahead of it, like some herald-symbiote with a mind of its own.

  And it was not only the lure that the beast had borrowed from that deep-sea dwelling genus of fish. In the split second that Ulysses' spied the creature for the first time, as its tentacles had spread wide, no doubt preparing to seize the ship once again in its leviathan clutches, its mouth parts had been exposed. Instead of a horny beak, angler fish jaws, wide enough it seemed to swallow small ships whole, stretched even wider, to dislocating proportions.

  And the creature didn't only come armed with deadly natural weapons; it was armoured too, as if anything in the oceans could possibly threaten a monster like this! A crustacean-like shell covered the squid-thing's back, from the top of its soft head to its tail. What kind of freak of nature was it?

  Was it of nature at all?

  Time slowed, the rising plane of the Promenade extending elastically before Ulysses, as he realised how far they still had to go to reach safety. And even if they made it through the double doors ahead of them, would they really then be safe? The monster had had its part to play in crippling the ship and sending it to the bottom of the sea, leaving them all teetering between life and death on the knife edge precipice of the yawning Marianas Trench.

  ''Come on!" Ulysses shouted, urging Nimrod, and the unnerved Miss Celeste to draw on hidden reserves of strength.

  As he and Nimrod pushed as hard as they could, adrenal glands flooding their bodies with their oh-so necessary secretions once more, practically carrying Miss Celeste along with them, as well as the chair, Ulysses fixed his eyes on the way ahead.

  Directly in front of them Major Horsley was helping Lady Denning on her way, the pair of ageing adventurers huffing and puffing their way up the deck, neither daring to stop in case their feet lost their grip on the wax-polished boards or, Heaven forbid, the monster caught them. Ahead of them, John Schafer was offering all the encouragement he could to his darling dear heart and her aunt, for them to keep going - apparently neither of the women having yet seen this new threat - keeping them focused on reaching the doors. But all his good works might prove to be for naught, if Professor Crichton had anything to do with it.

  The emeritus professor was stumbling forwards but with his gaze directed back up over his shoulder, unable to tear his eyes from the squid-beast. He was gabbling to himself, his face white as an albino sea slug, apparently calling on the aid of the Almighty to get them out of this mess with cries of "Oh, God! Oh, God!" and whimpered sobs of "What have we done?"

  As the two officers leading the escape party raced ahead to get the doors open, leaving a moaning Dr Ogilvy to struggle on as best he could alone, Ulysses could not help looking back at the approaching leviathan in the face of Professor Crichton's inability to take his eyes off the thing. He instantly wished he hadn't.

  It was nearly on them, tentacles already reaching out over the steel-glass bubble of the enclosed deck, mouth agape, javelin-sharp fangs like drawn-out steel fish hooks, poised ready to spear them and draw them into its hideous maw. Ulysses fancied he caught a glint of evil intent in the huge, watery eyes looking at him through the glass shield.

  "Herregud," Ulysses heard Thor Haugland utter in appalled Norwegian behind him, "det er Kraken!"

  Of course, Ulysses thought, Haugland had given their tormenter a name: the Kraken, the many-legged sea monster of sea-faring legend, the horror that pulled ships beneath the waves and devoured their crews whole. Until that moment Ulysses would have put sea-dogs' tales of the Kraken down to a combination of ways of explaining away good old-fashioned shipwrecks and the discovery of creatures such as the giant squid lurking within the deeper oceans. Only now, he wasn't so sure.

  Constance screamed. She too had now seen the beast. Schafer pulled her close, urging her onwards, almost dragging her with him in her shocked state. Constance's maiden aunt didn't need any such encouragement; she had picked up her skirts and was sprinting away up the deck like a fell runner, bony ankles and varicose veins visible now beneath her fussy petticoats.

  "Don't stop!" Ulysses found himself shouting. "Just keep going. It's going to be all right!"

  In a cruel contradiction of Ulysses' words, a shuddering crash shook the escapees' world as the Kraken slammed into the dome of the Promenade Deck. The force of impact rocked the ship, which shifted still further to port, and sent the VIPs tumbling sideways. It was not as bad as the shaking they had received when the Neptune had first started to sink, when it had felt like their whole world was turning upside down, but it wasn't far off. Carcharodon's chair, suddenly losing all forward momentum, slid sideways into a bench which caught Nimrod, Ulysses and Miss Celeste, who ended up in the unimpressed butler's lap.

  The Neptune moved again beneath them, rocking back to starboard. Ulysses found himself suddenly looking up through the latticework of the dome above him. Where on the night he and Glenda Finch had experienced the thrill of a controlled submersion they had seen first the stars of the Milky Way and then the closing, plankton-rich waters of the Pacific above their heads, now all he could see was the horrid flesh of the underside of the Kraken as it, again, took the Neptune in its unnatural embrace.

  He could see spongy grey flesh - the colour of drowned sailors - and warty black hide, like the scale-less skin of abyssal-dwelling hunter-fish, lit by the yellow light of the humming deck lights. Fissures, like lipless mouths dotted the belly of the beast in curious arcs, describing large parabola scarring, which might almost have been bite marks. Other things clung to the vast body of the leviathan that might have been lampreys or remora sucking fish, or some deep-sea evolutionary offshoot.

  Following the dorsal line of the monster, Ulysses' eyes fell on the impossibly large teeth of the beast as they scratched against the reinforced dome with a sound like iron nails scraping on plate glass. The unpleasant noise not only set teeth on edge but also hearts racing and backbones prickling with fear.

  "Come on! We can't hang around here!" Carcharodon shrieked, feeling more helpless than ever.

  "Indeed," Ulysses agreed, pulling himself to his feet again, using the magnate's wheelchair for support.

  Miss Celeste having extricated herself from his lap, Nimrod assisted his master in getting the billionaire moving again. Carcharodon's PA relented at last and seemed happy just to follow at their heels and worry about getting herself to safety as quickly as possible.

  "Here, let me help."

  Glancing to his left, Ulysses saw that the two Chinamen had caught them up. And now it was Harry Cheng's turn to insist on helping with Carcharodon's chair. Mr Sin lumbered a few feet behind, looking, for the first time since Ulysses had met him, scared and out of b
reath.

  Another sound echoed through the enclosed space of the Promenade. At first it didn't even register with Ulysses or anyone else, or so it seemed from their lack of reaction. It was only when he felt his sixth sense flare hotly behind his eyes that he realised that something even worse was about to befall them. It was a creaking, popping sound. There it was again. And again.

  And now others could hear it too, curiosity flickering across already stricken expressions. And now there came a more sustained metallic groaning. And now the cascading water splash and splatter of rainfall, inside the enclosed Promenade Deck, at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

  "It's rupturing," Ulysses said, as much to himself as anyone, as the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle all came together in his mind. "The dome's rupturing! Run!"

  The sound of water was getting louder now, the pitter-patter quickly becoming a pouring sound, like a waterfall emptying into a swimming pool. Salty spray splashed into Ulysses' eyes, making him wince, as another rivet popped free and a pane of toughened glass fractured, allowing the first trickles of seawater in before the unbelievable tonnages of ocean pressing down on the ship found them. If nature abhorred a vacuum, the sea here seemed to abhor a breathable atmosphere.

  Within seconds more panes shattered and torrents of water rushed into the enclosed space from a dozen different points of entry. Now that the hungry sea had found a way in, there was no stopping it.

  Mr Wates and the purser stood at the now open doors at the opposite end of the Promenade, practically hanging from the handles to help heave the fleeing VIPs through one after another. The doctor was already through. So too were Schafer, Constance, Miss Birkin, and McCormack. Professor Crichton and Major Horsley were helping Lady Denning through even now, their feet splashing through the first surges of water splashing up the deck towards them.

  Ulysses, Nimrod, Jonah Carcharodon in his chair and Miss Celeste bounced over the threshold together, the writer Haugland flinging himself in after them.

  Ulysses turned to assist those at the door. Mr Wates and the purser pulled themselves inside, ready to pull the sealable bulkhead doors shut securely behind them and keep out the rising tide of frothing seawater. There were only Harry Cheng and Mr Sin still to come through.

  Cheng was now at the threshold, hair flat to his head, shirt and trousers soaked through. Mr Sin was only a few slippery feet behind him.

  But there was something else in there with them now as well. A snaking tentacle, like some huge, snub-nosed sea-worm, wending its way towards them, writhing and flexing as if guided by a instinctive sentience all of its own. The Kraken was determined not to let its prey get away.

  Someone screamed having caught sight of the probing squid-limb. And in that fatal second, the hulking Chinaman, terror writ large across his blunt features, stopped and turned. With an uncoiling lash, quick as a striking cobra, the tentacle extended, curled precisely around Mr Sin's waist and legs and then, just as quickly, pulled back. The chinaman, an eye-popping look of terror on his face, was dragged into the surging flood, silvery bubbles escaping from his mouth in a silent scream. Then, there above them beyond the ruptured bubble of the Promenade, was the monster's dreadful fang-lined maw, gaping open, ready to receive the tasty morsel.

  There was nothing anyone could do for him.

  "Close the doors!" Captain McCormack ordered as the water lapped at the sill of the doorway and Harry Cheng hurled himself past the threshold.

  The two officers did as their captain commanded, shutting out the sight of the glorious Promenade being swallowed by the ocean, shutting out the rush and roar of the hungry sea, shutting out the monster that would devour them all.

  They also shut in the wailing of the terrified Constance Pennyroyal and her aunt, shut in the mumbled entreaties of a biologist to the God he had foresworn, shut in the frustrated raging of the shipping magnate as he bellowed at his wretched assistant who had sought to do nothing but save his sorry skin.

  And so seventeen became sixteen.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sea Dog's Tales

  With the bulkhead door to the Promenade Deck closed, the last chapter in the life of Mr Sin was closed with it.

  Two were lost to them now. First Dexter Sylvester, with the catastrophe of the plummeting chandelier and now Mr Sin, Harry Cheng's right-hand man, taken by the beast. Two gone from the total party of eighteen survivors who had made it up until the moment when the ship touched rock bottom amidst the silt and skeletal remains of a million animals upon the ocean floor. They had thought things bad enough when they found their luxury cruise ship dropping into the fathomless depths like a stone, only at the time they had not realised that their greatest trials still stood ahead of them.

  With the impossible sea monster tearing away the glass and steel latticework from the once magnificent Promenade Deck, the Neptune having settled into its new position - listing slightly to port and leaving the escapees with an uphill struggle to reach the stern of the ship - there was nothing for them to do except struggle on towards their original target destination.

  And what a sorry and dishevelled lot they were, Ulysses found himself thinking. Wet, worn out and worried beyond belief, there wasn't a single VIP remaining that hadn't had all trappings of status and privilege stripped from them by the disaster that had them caught at its very heart. They all of them looked like they would not have appeared out of place amongst the ship's other passengers residing in Steerage.

  Even Nimrod's appearance was not up to his usual standards: his grey butler's attire covered with dark damp patches from the unwanted attentions of the seawater. Ulysses himself was soaked through to the skin, after his dip in the drowning pool of the Grand Atrium, as was the noble John Schafer. The man, a good ten years younger than the eldest of the Quicksilver boys, had a permanent steeled expression on his face. Whether he maintained such composure because he wasn't allowing himself the possibility of considering the direness of their situation or whether he was concentrating so greatly on the well-being of his beloved that he dared not risk a second thought about what might become of them, Ulysses did not know.

  And so they made their way onward through the stricken ship. Climbing ever upwards to reach the rear of the Neptune where they then hoped to negotiate a way down to the seemingly unattainable submersible bay. And from there, who knew what - considering the squid-beast's latest attack on the wrecked sub-liner.

  Captain McCormack took the lead, rugged determination described in the lines of his face, spacing his men out through the body of the party to help maintain cohesion and make sure no one got left behind. A number of them were beginning to flag, the adrenalin rush that had set them all off with seemingly boundless stamina had ebbed. Miss Birkin in particular was showing signs of frailty, quite possibly exacerbated by the huge levels of stress she had been put under. Ulysses still couldn't shake the feeling that she was keeping a particularly close eye on him. Lady Denning, never one to make a fuss, was also beginning to show signs of exhaustion. She appeared to be limping on her left leg and did not protest when Major Horsley - himself puffing and blowing like a grumpy walrus - took her arm to steady her.

  Miss Celeste had taken her place at Jonah Carcharodon's wheelchair once more, which seemed to be faring rather better than many of the party. And it was, once again, with reluctance that she accepted the slightest help from Ulysses and his manservant. So much so, in fact, that Ulysses felt guilty that he was forcing her to accept their assistance. Her knuckles whitened as they gripped the handles, as if making sure that her ungrateful employer made it to safety had become her raison d'être for keeping up the struggle herself.

  The curious trio of Crichton, Haugland and Ogilvy now brought up the rear. The three men had seemed to be subconsciously drawn to one another, although Ulysses couldn't help feeling that there was something else that united them. It was the fact that they were each only concerned with looking out for number one.

  Captain McCormack led them out of the shattered
remains of a parade of boutiques and into a curiously angled - yet mercifully unflooded - access way of grille plates and twisted metal staircases. The rhythmic drip-drip-drip of water entered even here, the ringing of their footsteps and the inescapable groaning of the buckling hull, were joined by another ominously mournful sound, that of Professor Crichton reciting poetry as if it were a dirge.

  "Below the thunders of the upper deep, far far beneath in the abyssal sea," he intoned, as if he was reading a eulogy.

  "For God's sake man!" Jonah Carcharodon called up the slanting stairwell from where Mr Wates was helping Ulysses and Nimrod carry him and his chair down the next short flight of steps. "As if things weren't bad enough, without us having to listen to you!"

  "His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep," Crichton went on.

  "Please, Maxwell," - it was Lady Denning who took up the baton to call for the disheartening recital to stop - "now is neither the time nor the place. What's done is done."

  "The Kraken sleepeth." The Professor stopped, a faraway look in his eyes, and certainly no indication that he had heard a word anyone else had said.

  "What was that?" Constance Pennyroyal asked, apparently glad to have something to take her mind off the overwhelming stress she was suffering, rather than continually mulling over the likelihood of any of them getting out of there alive.

  "Tennyson"' Major Horsley replied.

  "Indeed," Ulysses found himself adding distractedly, joining in the literary discussion. "The Kraken."

  Reaching another landing and making the most of the opportunity to rest, if only for a moment, Ulysses set Carcharodon's chair down again.