“We are your friends,” Nissa told her. “But going on and on about dying is not the best way to get healthy. Healthy minds make healthy bodies, you know.”
“I s’pose.”
Arzu managed a weak smile. “What’s her story?” she asked Nissa.
But before Nissa could reply, Rat jumped back in. “Evil wizard kidnapped me—”
“Warlock,” interjected Nissa.
“Whatever. Killed my mum and a bunch of my friends.”
Arzu gasped. “That’s horrible!”
Rat nodded. “He’s coming back, too, to finish the job.” She peered out over the sea, as if expecting the executed man to come swimming in at any moment.
Arzu followed her gaze, looking worried.
“Rat,” Nissa said, starting to lose patience, “they executed him. Do you know what that means?”
“Means they killed him,” Rat replied. “But he’s still coming back.”
“Rat—” Nissa began, but before she could say any more, she was cut off by the sound of a loud clanging.
She and Arzu looked around, and spotted a man atop a rickety tower, pounding on a big iron bell.
“What’s that?” Arzu asked.
“Alarum bell,” Rat said. “Somethin’s happening. Follow me.” And with that, she darted into one of the narrow alleyways between Scaletown’s floating houseboats.
“You follow,” Arzu said wearily. “I’ll catch up.”
“I won’t leave you,” Nissa replied. “I can take you back to the infirmary, and then—”
“No!” Arzu insisted, fire in her dark eyes. “I won’t go back there. Not yet.” She took a deep breath and coughed it out. “We’ll follow Rat together—just not very fast.”
“Okay,” Nissa agreed.
Together they hobbled through the floating alleyways and down the boardwalks that passed for streets in this place. They lost sight of Rat almost immediately, but it wasn’t hard to figure out where she was going; everybody else in the town seemed to be heading that same way as well.
Soon, they came to a large crowd assembled on Scaletown’s northwestern docks. The sailors, fishwives, and fishermen assembled were talking agitatedly among themselves. Something in the water seemed to be the focus of their attention.
As Nissa and Arzu made their way to the water’s edge, the alarum bell stopped ringing, and they could see a group of townsfolk—including Selni—dragging something from the waves:
A body!
FOUR
“Belna!” Selni said. “Belna, can you hear me?”
Nissa felt like vomiting, and the gods only knew how Arzu was keeping her soup down.
Selni knelt at the end of the dock, holding a blood-drenched body. The woman the healer was tending could barely be recognized as a woman at all.
Three of Belna’s limbs ended in stumps; only her left arm remained intact, though it too looked badly lacerated. Cuts also covered the mangled woman’s face and torso. Swaths of tan flesh lay visible through gashes in Belna’s shredded clothing, and blood and brine matted her curly black hair against her head. Her eyes fluttered open and then shut, over and over again, like a candle guttering in the wind.
“Belna…” Selni repeated, and then began chanting a healer’s prayer.
Would the gods listen, Nissa wondered? Did Selni have any divine powers, or just a knowledge of herb and remedy passed along through the generations? Certainly, Nissa had not as yet seen the healer demonstrate any ability to perform miracles, other than the ordinary kind wrought through hard work and tender care.
Rat was running around the edge of the dock platform, yelling at the top of her lungs, “Pod!” she cried. “Where are you, Pod?”
That’s when Nissa remembered where she’d heard the name Belna before: she was a fisherman, captain of a small ship and the mother of the boy who had rescued Rat and given the girl the serrated knife. That boy was named Pod.
Nissa shivered, despite the heat of the afternoon.
“We … we need to get out of here,” Arzu whispered to her.
“Yes, all right,” Nissa replied. “I’ll take you back to the infirmary.”
“No,” Arzu said. “You don’t understand. We need to get out of here—out of Scaletown. Right now.”
Arzu wasn’t making any sense. “What?” Nissa asked. “Why—?”
“Don’t you remember?” Arzu hissed. “We’ve seen this before!”
That’s when the bottom fell out of Nissa’s stomach. She staggered to the edge of the dock, fell to her knees, and retched into the water.
“Gods of Mercy,” she whispered. She’d been so worried about Arzu that she hadn’t noticed the similarities; Belna had clearly been savaged by some kind of huge shark.
Wiping the remaining sick from her mouth with the back of her hand, Nissa lurched to her feet. Arzu, who (though very pale at this moment) looked a whole lot better than Nissa felt, helped the young mage steady herself.
“But, that’s impossible!” Nissa whispered queasily. “Umira killed it.”
“I know,” Arzu replied.
“We sealed the rift!” Nissa said, voice cracking with desperation.
“I know,” Arzu repeated. “But maybe there was another one.”
“Gods of Mercy!”
“I don’t know how it’s happened,” Arzu said, “all I know is that we have to get out of here—right now!”
“How?”
Before the echo of Nissa’s question had died away, though, the town’s alarum bell began to ring again.
All the people assembled on the docks, which must have been at least three quarters of Scaletown’s population, froze at the sound—even those tending to the dying fisher captain. Everyone looked puzzled.
Then Rat’s frantic cry split the air, drowning out even the peal of the bell:
“SHARK!”
At first, some of the townsfolk chuckled. This was the Shark Keys, after all, and the people of Scaletown were used to dealing with the area’s most infamous denizens.
When they spotted the huge fin in the water, though, the laughter turned to gasps.
The dorsal fin cut through the waves at unbelievable speed, faster than any boat could sail. The portion of it showing above the waterline stood at least as tall as a man. The fin appeared grayish white, like a body left to float too long in the ocean, and huge gashes had been ripped out of its distinctive triangular shape.
Clearly, none of the villagers had ever seen a shark fin this large before—but Nissa and Arzu had: it could only belong to another monster shark.
The enormous fin was headed straight toward Scaletown. The streamers of blood dripping from the ragged triangle’s trailing edge made it clear that the beast had come from one battle … and was raring for another.
Nissa gasped. “Gods help us!” She and Arzu had barely survived the attack of one such monster, and then they’d had the “sea goddess” Umira fighting at their side. Did the village have such a hero to help protect them?
“Grab your harpoons, everyone!” called a burly man with a graying beard. Nissa remembered he was called “Admiral” Jorum, though he was really just the village chief.
“I ain’t got no harpoon, Admiral,” said a huge, muscular man. “I sol’ ’em all to our fleet.”
“Then grab that great mattock of a hammer you use in the forge, Vard, ye great lout!” Jorum commanded. “And Tybek, get your people to the scorpions. This fish ain’t no pirate ship, but I’m betting a crossbow bolt the size of me arm will slow it down a mite. The rest of you grab fishing bows, boathooks, nets, anything you can. If this fish means to attack Scaletown, we’ll let it know it’s been in a real fight! And hurry! We ain’t got much time!”
The townsfolk sprang into action, scurrying back to their houseboats to fetch their weapons.
Already the fin had halved the distance between it and the town.
Overhead, the warning bell kept ringing, but Rat had stopped screaming. The girl with the shock-white hair was now s
itting on the edge of the dock, her knees drawn up to her chest, gently rocking herself.
“C’mon,” Arzu said, yanking on Nissa’s arm, trying to drag her away from the docks. Arzu didn’t look very sick any longer; now she looked scared.
“C’mon where?”
“Anywhere,” Arzu insisted. “Away from here! We have to get away!”
“But we should help!”
“Helping last time almost got us both killed!”
The images and emotions from their previous battle sprang into Nissa’s brain, burning like the noonday sun on the open sea. Their ship demolished … their comrades devoured… They’d been lucky to escape. So lucky…
Then she remembered her dream from that morning. Had it been prophecy as well as memory? Nissa felt frozen inside, paralyzed in mind and body.
Arzu pulled her away from the docks. “C’mon, Niss!” she hissed. “If we can’t find a ship to get us away, we’ll be safest in the center of the town.”
Nissa staggered, her feet stumbling in the direction Arzu was trying to take her.
Yes. Arzu was right. The center of the town would put the most floating houses and boats between them and the monster. That made sense. At least it would give Nissa time to plan—time to build up her courage once more.
Nissa started to move of her own accord, but then she stopped and pulled free of Arzu’s grasp.
“Wait!” Nissa shouted.
“What?” Arzu snapped. Though still very pale from her illness, she flushed with anger and demanded, “Why?!”
Arzu wasn’t really angry, Nissa knew. She could see the fear in her lover’s eyes. Arzu was worried more about Nissa than she was about herself. It didn’t matter, though, because they needed to worry about someone else as well.
“We can’t leave without Rat,” Nissa insisted.
“Go!” Arzu said. “Get her! We don’t have much time!”
Nissa pushed her way back through the milling crowd. Men and women were running in every direction, some screaming with fear, but others moving with urgency and purpose.
Tybek, the settlement’s constable, was rallying Scaletown’s scorpion crews—readying the settlement’s big crossbows—while Admiral Jorum formed the other able-bodied townsfolk into a rough militia, armed with spears, gaffs, nets, and fishing bows. Selni was busy as well, organizing those not in the first two groups into support teams to help the combatants and, presumably, tend any injured.
But no one was paying any attention to Rat, sitting alone and silent at the end of the dock.
Nissa knelt down beside her.
“Rat … Tamara, honey,” Nissa said, gently putting her arms around the girl’s shoulders. “Come with me. We have to go.” Nissa made her tone gentle but urgent.
She started to stand, but the girl didn’t move with her. In fact, for a few moments, Rat didn’t give any sign that she even knew the young mage was there.
Then, her eyes brimming with tears, the white-haired little girl looked up at Nissa.
“H-he’s dead,” Rat said.
Nissa looked around, confused. The monster hadn’t reached the village yet. What did Rat mean? “We need to go,” she repeated. “We need to get out of the way of the fighting.”
“It killed him,” Rat replied. “Ate him in one bite.”
“Who?”
“Pod,” Rat blubbered. “My frien’.”
Could that be true? How could the girl know? Yet, in the infirmary, she seemed to have had some premonition that something bad was about to happen. “I’m sorry, Rat,” Nissa said. “But we still have to go. We can’t help Pod, now, and we can’t help defend the town, either.”
As she said it, though, Nissa wondered whether that last bit was true. She could hurl enchanted missiles and cast her shielding spell, too, and Arzu had that detonation hex—assuming she’d recovered enough to summon the concentration.
They needed to get back to Arzu, fast. Every moment they wasted, the shark swam closer.
Already, Constable Tybek’s scorpion archers had fired a test bolt in the monster’s direction.
The huge arrow vanished into the water just in front of the dorsal fin, and should have struck the huge fish beneath, but the shark did not turn aside.
The crews cheered the apparent hit, and made ready to loose volleys from all four of their weapons at once, but not every villager was helping. Some, like Nissa and her charges, where fleeing.
“Simpkins, you traitorous son of a sea cow!” Tybek cried, spotting a fishing boat bobbing in the waves nearby. “Get back here!”
Simpkins wasn’t listening, though. The fisherman had loaded his wife and young son into his dory and was, even now, frantically rowing away from the village. Already he’d put a good three hundred yards between his family and Scaletown.
Simpkins shouted something back, but Nissa couldn’t make out his reply over the noise of the battle preparations.
The shark changed course, veering away from the floating village and toward the smaller vessel.
Nissa’s heart froze.
Simpkins rowed faster, but not fast enough.
With a supernatural burst of speed, the great fish burst from the water, propelling a huge wave before its enormous bulk. The surge hit the little boat an instant before the monster did, filling the dory with water and washing Simpkins’ wife and son overboard.
Simpkins screamed and swung his oar at the shark, but the monster swallowed him in one bite. The dory smashed into splinters under the shark’s great bulk. The beast turned one cloudy eye upon the floundering survivors, and then snapped them both into its mouth, as though it were devouring minnows. The last of Simpkins’ terrified screams drowned in a fountain of blood and the sound of crunching bones.
Rat shrieked, her piercing wail cutting through the suddenly still air.
Every soul in Scaletown stood stock still, gaping.
“Loose, ye louts!” Admiral Jorum screamed. “Let fly!”
One scorpion crew managed to get a bolt off, but it missed badly. Before the rest could shoot, though, the monster submerged, turning tail and diving through the wreckage until not even its one of its ragged fins remained above water.
“Rat!” Nissa shouted at the screaming girl. “Let’s go!” She yanked on Rat’s arm, and the little girl stumbled to her feet.
Nissa ran through the crowd, now milling like a swarm of angry bees, pulling Rat along with her.
By the time the two of them reached Arzu, the little girl had stopped crying.
Arzu looked like hell. She was pale, had closed her eyes, and was leaning against the bamboo wall of one of the fisherman’s houses. At Nissa’s touch, her eyes flickered open.
“’Bout time you got here,” Arzu mumbled. Her words came out slurred, as though she was only half awake. Then, seeing the renewed chaos, she said, “What happened? Did I miss something while I was … napping?”
“It ate them!” Rat gasped. “It ate all three of them, and their boat, too—in one bite!” The little girl was trembling now, and Nissa couldn’t blame her.
“Niss,” Arzu said, “is that true?”
“Near enough,” Nissa replied. “Let’s get going!” she urged, pointing her lover deeper into the town, back toward the infirmary.
“Did you see it?” Arzu asked. She seemed unable to move quickly. “Was it…?” She didn’t seem to dare finish the question.
Nissa shook her head. “Worse!”
The last monster shark had been bad enough, but this one… The image of the horror burned in Nissa’s brain. It had been just as large as the shark they’d fought before, an enormous great white the size of a sperm whale, easily twenty yards from nose to tail. That, though, had been a sleek, muscular creature, while this…
Flesh hung from this beast’s hide in long, ragged strips, exposing the pale, cartilaginous structures beneath. Great holes punctured its sides, oozing seawater and yellowish foam. Huge chunks were missing from its fins, as though they’d been eaten away. One of its ey
es dangled by handfuls of whitish thread; the other was as cloudy as spoiled milk.
No living creature could have sustained that kind of damage and survived. Yet, the shark still swam, still killed…
“I…” Nissa continued, barely able to force the words out, “I think it’s dead.”
Arzu stopped and stared at her. They’d barely gone a dozen paces, and could still see the town militia, who were now shouting at each other and nervously eyeing the water for some sign of the monster.
Nissa’s lover looked confused. “You mean, they’ve killed it already? Then what are we running for?”
“I mean it’s dead, but it’s still moving!” Nissa said. “It was dead when the villagers first spotted it … dead when it killed those people! I don’t know if the townsfolk can kill it … because it’s already dead!”
“I told you he was coming back,” Rat said in a very small voice.
“You mean it’s undead?” Arzu asked, still apparently struggling with the idea Nissa was trying to convey. “It’s some kind of zombie?”
“Gods, Ar, I don’t know! All I know is that it’s coming, and I don’t think anyone here can stop it!”
Suddenly, the bamboo walkway they were on jolted upward, knocking all three of them from their feet. The thunder of splintering wood and rushing water filled the air, and one of the scorpions shattered into a thousand pieces as the zombie shark breached, hurtling its enormous bulk through the weapon’s platform.
The townsfolk who had been manning the huge crossbow flew into the air, like dolls tossed by an angry child. Constable Tybek had been among them. He screamed as the titanic jaws of the shark closed around him.
The beast shook its head, like a dog shaking a caught rat, and bloody pieces of Tybek flew in every direction.
The monster crashed down onto the dock, its enormous weight smashing the stout boards into kindling. Huge splinters speared the undead thing’s flesh, but the shark took no notice. It writhed amid the water and floating wreckage, destroying and sinking the two houseboats nearest it. It dashed one man to a pulp with a single blow of its snout, and then snapped a woman in two with its gore-stained teeth.
Zombie Shark Page 3
