“Alright,” Ash says, giving the hole in the bone trove another long glance. He really wants to see what’s down there. Then he waves Kayla. “After you.”
Kayla nods and swims up the passageway with her team.
Ash stops, once more stares at the hole and dark tunnel beyond.
After a while, he sighs and joins the team out of the passageway.
THIRTEEN
For millions of years, the water has never been so warm.
The cold water of the tunnel mingles with the much warmer waters of the upper-waters. And as the warm water flows in, it pushes deeper into the tunnel. Deeper and deeper. Another fifty feet. Another hundred feet. Deeper still.
All flowing in through the hole in the barricade.
Like invisible tentacles, the warmer water slithers through the tunnel, branching off to other tunnels. It writhes against the ice, melting it. Not so slow, though not extremely fast either. A moderate melt. Thin cracks slither through the ice.
And, as the hours pass, something within the pocket of ice begins to stir…
FOURTEEN
Giles shakes his head and pats Ash on the back. “Well done.”
“I didn’t find these,” Ash says. “Kayla, Quinn, and their team did. Give them the credit, they’ve more than earned it.”
Giles nods, though his face has gone all sour looking. Pursing lips and all. Like he just bit into a lemon. “Perhaps I will.”
If Ash didn’t like the portly man before, he kind of despises him now. The sexist bastard. He turns away from Giles and joins Kayla, Julia and Quinn as they help sort the haul. The partial T-Rex skull rests, dripping on its own metal table. Placed on a separate table are the young brachiosaurus and carnotaurus skulls. Lake water pools on the floor. And, glaring with its massive, empty sockets on a larger table is the skull to a species Ash has yet to identify. The brontosaurus/ triceratops hybrid. Or at least he assumes it’s some kind of hybrid.
“Lots of hadrosaurs here,” Julia mutters as she places a duckbilled skull on the table in front of her. “Woolly Mammoths too, or at least bits and pieces of them. So far, I’m not finding any whole skeletons of anything, though.”
“There’s still tons of bones down there,” Kayla says.
Ash nods. “It’ll take a couple days to exhume them.”
Kayla, she gives Ash a tentative glance. “Sorry about your daughter, by the way.”
He chokes down all the emotions threatening to boil over, blows out a long breath. “Yeah. Thanks.” He looks away. “Anyway, let me know if you find anything unusual.”
At his back, Kayla says, “You need to let her go.”
A flicker of rage. He can’t even remember how many times people have told him this very same thing. Mostly Julia. The same shit. Let her go. Let her go? How the fuck is he supposed to do that? How? He never got a chance to say goodbye. She was just…taken from him. Taken and murdered by the lowest of scum. Jealous of Ash’s success, the monster stole Ky away. Stole her from him and left her lying in a swampy ditch outside of town.
Ash shivers, forcing himself not to spin on Kayla and unload all the pain and anger and sorrow flooding him. He manages a few shuddery breaths.
At his side, Julia whispers. “Easy. She doesn’t know how it is. Just—”
“But I do,” Kayla says, her tone firm. “I know more than you both can even imagine. My entire family was slaughtered one night while I was at work. Wife and two daughters just…mutilated.”
Ash turns, facing her, heart trip-hammering.
Kayla’s eyes swim in tears. Tears which soon trickle down the sides of her face. “Do you know what it’s like stepping into your home and finding their blood all over and…their…their…” She slams a fist down on the table. A few smaller bones clack onto the floor. “My wife was cut out from groin to sternum for fuck sake!”
“Oh…” Julia says. “Oh, hun.” She starts toward Kayla, but Kayla holds up a stopping hand.
“No.” She wipes tears away, sniffs, shakes her head. “No. I don’t want pity. I don’t want condolences. I’ve said my goodbyes. But don’t you ever assume I don’t know how it is to lose someone to a killer. Something in me died that night.” She glances away. “They never did find the bastard.”
Ash, oddly feeling better, straightens. “I’m sorry for your losses. And thank you.”
Kayla blinks, still wiping away tears. “Thank you for what?”
“For your condolences and for helping me to feel not so alone.” All the truth, because suddenly, he’s not the only one with a murdered son or daughter haunting them. He’s not the only one carrying around all the pain. Oddly, Kayla’s horrific story eases the storm pounding through his soul.
Kayla laughs a bit, wipes a stray tear, nods. “Good to know you’re not alone, eh?”
“Yeah. It does.”
What follows is a very long, very awkward silence finally broken by Julia.
“Okie dokie, then. Glad you two are kindred spirits now. You’re both awesome and all and have my love and condolences, but can we get this done so we can eat? My stoMach has resorted to gnawing on itself already.”
To this, both Ash and Kayla burst into gales of laughter. The loud, raucous kind. The kind that’s more relief than triggered by humor. Of release. Of letting go…
Once the laughter subsides and Ash is pretty sure everyone around them is thinking they’ve both fallen off the nut-wagon in Crazytown, Julia says, “You know they lock people up in padded cells who laugh for no reason, right?”
It’s enough to get Ash giggling again and he has to cough it out before laughter invades again. After a few seconds, he regains his composure. “Okay. Yeah, let’s get these sorted. Eat something and I’ll burn some midnight oil investigating.”
“I bet it wouldn’t help to know it’s already passed midnight,” Julia quips.
“Wait, what?”
“Look, dude, it’s not my fault you don’t know how to read clocks.” She grins, winks.
Chuckling, he waves her away and heads to his own pile of bones to sort.
As he sorts, something gradually comes to his attention. A very subtle thing at first, then he can’t not see it. He stops, face contorting into a frown. Running a finger along the ridged surface of a rib bone, his stoMach churns a bit. He drops the rib bone and hurries to Kayla’s table, sifting through the bones she’s already sorted.
“Ash? You okay?”
He doesn’t answer Kayla. He can’t. His mind is a maelstrom as he inspects a few bones from Kayla’s pile.
“Dude, you’re scaring the natives,” Julia spouts.
“Something is wrong with the bones,” is all he can manage as he lowers the large, attached magnifying glass to a femur.
“Other than mysteriously being tucked away under Lake Superior?” He can almost taste Julia’s sarcasm.
“Come here,” he says, staring into the magnifying glass.
Julia nudges him. “What is it?”
“Tell me what you see.” He steps away from the magnifying glass.
She bends, peering through the glass. She stands this way for a minute or so. Then…
“Are these…acid erosions?”
“Yes.”
She straightens. “StoMach acid…”
“A very high-powered kind too,” Ash says. “Whatever ate these dinosaurs, it regurgitated their bones.”
“Like an owl?” Kayla ventures.
Ash nods. “Very close, yeah. So, whatever ate these dinosaurs, it swallowed them in large chunks. The stoMach acid dissolved the flesh and nutrients, leaving only the bones, which it regurgitated instead fully digested.” He looks at a few more bones. “Also, if you notice, several of the bones are sheared off. Meaning, whatever ate the dinosaurs here chomped and swallowed instead of biting and ripping away flesh. This thing took bones and all.”
“What kind of thing could do such a thing?” Kayla asks.
Ash, drawing a blank, shakes his head. “Something very big and powe
rful.”
“Thanks, Dr. Obvious,” Julia says.
He ignores this and walks to the T-Rex skull. A juvenile nearing adulthood. The scrapes on the skull where it was chomped in two. The scrapes are slight. It literally appears a sharp blade just cut the skull in half. Like a snapping turtle…
There’s something he’s missing. A final piece to the puzzle. But he just can’t pin it down. No matter how much he looks, there’s simply not enough clues to go on.
Eventually he wanders to the brontosaurus/ triceratops skull, or whatever it is. The thing is huge and…
He leans close, eyes widening. A long gouge cuts down the center of the skull. This is something, but what traps his attention is a piece of whiter bone lodged into the gouge near the left eye socket. Something broken off that almost resembles a great white tooth. A very large great white. The tooth, if that’s what it really is, was snapped cleanly off whatever predator killed this strange dinosaur.
Ash turns. “Anyone have some pliers?”
There are eight workers in the Moon Pool room sorting, not including Kayla, Julia and Quinn. All of them stop and stare at him like deer caught in the headlights. Frozen.
Quinn says, “Hold on, might have something in the office.”
The eight workers glance at each other, shrug, almost in unison, and go about sorting. Well, more like a pre-sort so he can go through the bones more efficiently before sending them to be marked, recorded and stored.
“What is it?” Julia asks, walking over to him.
He points at the tooth, or shard of bone, or whatever it is. “Not sure. Looks like a tooth.”
She carefully inspects it. “It’s not a shark tooth, at least.”
“How do you know?”
Julia straightens, an eyebrow lifting. “You get hit in the head down there? Come on. You know when sharks lose their teeth they lose them at the root and another one replaces the missing one. They don’t break off.”
He nods. Of course he knows that. The information just hadn’t managed to swim through everything swirling around in his head.
“So, what do you think it is?” He taps the object. It’s cold.
“Whoa, dude, that’s your area. I’m just here for the whacky adventures.” Julia holds up her hands, spins and hurries back to the table beside Kayla and Quinn.
With a grunt, Ash returns his attention to the huge skull and that infuriating object lodged in the bone.
Finally, Quinn bustles up to him and places a pair of needle nose pliers on the table. “These okay?”
He withers a bit, but, “Yeah. Hopefully.”
“Good,” she says and bustles away. Because, apparently, she’s the bustling type.
Ash picks the pliers up and clamps the narrow jaws onto the bony object. It’s almost too wide to get a grip on it. He adjusts the jaws a bit, opening, sliding around, before finally clamping down once more. He gives the pliers a firm wiggle, but the object stuck in the skull doesn’t budge. He tries again, a little harder this time. Still, nothing.
“Maybe it’s part of the skull?” Julia ventures.
“It’s not part of the skull,” he says.
“Whatever, dude. You’re the boss.”
He rolls his eyes, sighs and continues trying to pull the shard of whatever from the skull. It just won’t move. It can’t be part of the skull. That makes no damn sense. Unless it’s some kind of bone growth. But if it’s a bone growth, whatever cut the gouge through the skull would have taken that imperfection with it. Would’ve scraped it right off.
“I need something with wider jaws,” he says and storms toward the office.
“There aren’t any other tools in there besides a screwdriver,” Quinn says.
He stops, takes a couple breaths and asks, “Okay, so where the hell can I find tools in this godless place?”
“Whoa,” Kayla says.
“Agreed,” Julia says. “Calm down, dude.”
“I’ll calm down when I get that fragment out of the skull. Now, someone tell me where the hell all the tools are kept.”
There’s a long pause, then Kayla says, “Maintenance. Those old grease monkeys have everything.”
“Great. Where is maintenance?”
“Through the doors there. Take a right and it’s the first door on the left.” Kayla shoots him a smile. “Just don’t get pissy with those guys. They’ll probably make you squeal like a pig.”
He leaves the Moon Pool room, not really sure what the hell Kayla is referencing. Sounds familiar though.
When he opens the door to maintenance, he’s assaulted by the reek of oil and what might be ammonia. Or ether. Shit, he doesn’t know. All he knows is it makes him gag a little. He tries breathing through his mouth and steps into a large room. Across the room is a large bay door. Dominating the center of the room are two mini-subs. The one closest to him is mostly in pieces. Rusty chains sway from the ceiling. The floor appears to be slathered with oil.
With a few careful steps deeper into the room, Ash says, “Hello? I need a pair of channel locks if you have them.”
Only silence greets him.
Not far to his right is a rolling tool box. Red paint faded to pink and peeling, there are roughly a million drawers. He shrugs and walks over to the toolbox. He’ll borrow a pair of channel locks, dislodge the object and return the plier before anyone knows it’s missing. Ash opens one of the top middle drawers. It’s full of grinding pads and god knows what else. He closes it and opens the drawer to the right. Screws, bolts, nuts and washers. He slams the drawer shut, quickly moving to the next. Nails. Next. Coils of wire. Next.
He blinks. “Chalk?”
Ash shakes his head and moves to the next drawer, this one reveals small screwdrivers.
Good, we’re getting somewhere now.
On to the next drawer and—
“What the shit crawlin’ through the belly of hell is goin’ on here? Git away from m’stuff!”
A tall, scrawny man with a reddish tuft of hair sprouting above his big ears, comes shambling out of the shadows. In his hand is a silver flask. His face is covered in freckles, skin otherwise utterly pale. Like a tall glass of milk. His green eyes narrow on Ash. The grimy blue jean overalls draped over his thin frame flaps as he motions toward the toolbox.
“The jackshit ya doin’ in m’toolbox, boy?”
“I just need a pair of channel locks,” Ash says.
“Channel locks, he says,” another, much deeper voice sounds behind Ash.
He turns to see a massive man lumber by the bay door. In his hand, there’s a toque wrench. His jowls quiver with every step. The reddish-purple bulb of his nose tells Ash all he needs to know about the man’s stance on drinking. Indeed, an old alcoholic. His considerable belly sways as he lumbers closer.
Ash holds up his hands, showing he means no threat. “Kayla in the Moon Pool sent me to get channel lock pliers.”
“Din’t think to ask?” The scrawny man asks, takes a swig from his flask.
“I didn’t see anyone so I—”
“So ya thought ya could just waltz in here and take whatever the fuck ya want? That it?” The fat man brandishes the torque wrench at him. “We don’t want your kind in here, snotnose.”
“Snotno—hey, look, I’m just here to help. All I need are some channel locks. Wide jaws.”
“They all adjust, stupid,” the tall, scrawny man says and bursts into cackles.
“Yeah, yeah,” the fat man says. “Stupid.”
He sighs, knowing he’s trapped by a couple of drunk idiots. A couple of…
Then he gets Kayla’s joke.
Squeal like a pig.
It’s a line from a demented film many decades ago about a few guys being terrorized by hillbillies. As the thought jiggles like gelatin, he almost hears the sound of dueling banjos…
A slice of fear cuts through him and all at once, he can’t find the strength to move, let alone talk.
The tall, scrawny man shuffles closer, cloudy gaze narrow
ing into a glare. “Who are you?”
“Um, I’m…” And for some reason he can’t remember his damn name. And it’s like the more he tries the more it evades him.
The fat man blinks wildly for a moment. “You’re…what?”
“Why, Clam,” says the tall man, “I do think he’s lost his tongue.”
“Must be from the south.”
Ash shakes his head, clears his throat. “I’m Dr. Ash Barrington.”
“Oh, well hell, lookie here,” the fat men, Clam says. “Got ourselves another doctor.” He places a large, chubby hand on Ash’s shoulder. “Tell me Doc…do you like games?”
“Games?”
The tall man steps beside Clam. They’re both grinning.
“Games,” the tall man says, grin barely faltering.
Ash looks from Clam to the tall man and back again.
FIFTEEN
The layer of ice is thin. So thin, it’s as though nothing is there at all.
Tiny holes let in more of the warmer water.
Flesh twitches, that has not twitched in millions of years.
A heart long frozen, thumps heavily. Muscles stiff from time and ice, quiver and stretch.
Massive jaws open and snap shut. A groan rumbles through the chamber it has been trapped in for centuries and the old monster awakens.
The holes in the ice widen, spilling in more warm water. Water that thaws its gills. Water which melts the ice sheathing its giant fins. Another groan quakes the chamber and a large piece of the ice wall breaks free and floats away.
Its tail slaps into the side of the chamber. Rocks crumble, chunks of ice bust loose and drift out.
The groan becomes a roar and with another swipe of its huge tail, it breaks through the ice wall of the chamber and into a wide tunnel. The old monster’s stoMach aches. A dull, though irritating pain. Food. Food is what it needs and it surges upward through the tunnel. Above, there is food. Its instincts spark. It fed from the waters above many times. There will be food.
Its boulder-like head crashes through the deposit of bones it left behind so many, many, years ago, shattering almost all of them. With a few sharp flicks of its tail, tilting its pectoral fins just right, this monster swims up through the widened passage. Something smells…different, but that doesn’t still the raging hunger curling around its stoMach like a serpent.
The Guillotine Page 9
