Read 1941539114 (S) Online

Authors: Jeremy Robinson

Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Historical, #Military, #Supernatural, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Genetic Engineering, #Thrillers, #Science Fiction

1941539114 (S) (3 page)

BOOK: 1941539114 (S)
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I distract myself with visions of Collins dressed and speaking like Amy Pond, and I retrieve a gallon of water from the fridge. I pull the cap, drain it and use a fillet knife to carve off the top. The result is a big handled scoop, perfect for chumming, taking a piss or scooping up dead fish sludge.

Goose bumps pock my skin a second time as I step from the sixty-five degree cabin and out into the ninety degree summer heat. The stench of rot wafts over me, and I nearly gag. This time, smelling the scent anew, I recognize it. “Ugh, fish barf.”

“You think this is puke?” Maigo asks.

“Sure as shit ain’t shit,” I say, and head for the aft dive deck. “You can smell the bile. And the fish aren’t fully digested.” Hanging onto the rail, I crouch on the dive deck as waves slap and gurgle against the bottom, creating a rhythmic
galoop
that would normally relax me. Right now it’s reminding me of the
Jaws
chumming scene. But I’m not bothered by sharks. Not anymore. Not after what I’ve seen. If I see an open maw headed for the back of the yacht, it will likely be big enough to eat the whole boat.

Just scoop the fish, Jon.

I lean out over the water, reaching with the jug. Skimming the surface, I try to gather the oil slicked water without filling the plastic container. Then I lean a little further and go for a partially digested fish. The slender torpedo, ribs exposed, bounces off the edge of the jug and slides away.

“Need help?” Maigo asks, leaning on the rail, all smiles.

“You might have the strength of ten Hudson men—”

“Closer to thirty,” she says.

“—but I’ve still got a good ten inches on you and my lovely wife, so shut it.”

“We could duct tape it to a fishing pole,” Collins offers, and that’s not a bad idea, but I’m committed and stubborn so I just reach a little further.

The shrill whistle of DMX’s
Party Up In Here
blares from my hip, but I don’t really recognize it as Cooper’s ringtone until DMX shouts, “Ya’ll gone make me lose my mind.” That also happens to be the moment I flinch free of the rail and plunge headlong into the fish-gore-slicked ocean.

I feel the film of nastiness stretch and give way to my body, or at least I imagine I do. Then I’m several feet beneath the surface, writhing and kicking and shaking my hands over my nearly bald-ish head, trying to cleanse myself, hoping that the sun block shielding my Caucasian pallor from UV rays will also prevent the stink from sticking.

My eyes open despite the sting of salt water. Bits and pieces of fish cloud around me. I glance up. The warbling shapes of Collins and Maigo hover above, leaning over the rail. I don’t know if they’re talking, but since they’re not diving in, they must be able to see me scouring myself clean. And that’s when I realize that all my efforts have been wasted.

I still need to go back up through that stuff. I’m going to smell like Moby Dick’s ass for a week.

Movement spins me around, and for a moment, I forget all about how I’m going to smell, and think about how I smell right now, in the ocean, where animals that eat dead fishy smelling things live. The seven foot blue shark circling me is a perfect example. It’s the fifth most dangerous shark species in the world. Sometimes called the ‘wolf of the sea.’ But most of that is drama played up by Discovery Channel’s
Shark Week
. Only thirteen attacks on humans have been reported—ever—and only four of them fatal. Pit Bulls, which kill twenty-something people
every year
, are far more dangerous, and they can walk down the street with just a leash to keep them at bay.

The shark cuts a lazy circle around me, and I spin to match him, no longer caring about the fish flakes settling on my head and shoulders. The shark opens its mouth and scarfs down a partially digested fish.

Gross, dude.

Then he’s on to the next, twisting toward me for just a moment before eating another. He moves with relaxed slowness, like he’s just munched on a pot brownie. Probably been out here for hours, filling his belly. And now he’s like my Uncle Tony, unbuckling his belt and pounding out a burp to make room for Thanksgiving thirds.

And then, with a flick of its tail, the blue shark proves all of my assumptions wrong. Sunlight glints off its back as it charges—and flashes straight past me, disappearing into the gloom.

What the—holy shit!

A shadow slides beneath me. It’s the size of a submarine, but undulating side to side, like an eel, only with four long flippers. It slides into the depths, graceful and unconcerned.

With a kick, I rise to the surface, and this time I really do feel the filmy sludge wrap around and cling to me. Collins’s hand reaches down for me, despite the stench, though she has her nose covered with her free hand, and looks like she’s just sucked on a lemon. With her help, I have no trouble getting back on the dive deck, despite my shaking legs.

“Oh, God,” Maigo says, backing away. “You smell like an ostrich shart.”

It’s a good one, worthy of the Hudson name, but I don’t laugh.

“You okay?” Collins asks. “We saw the shark.”

“Did you see what scared the shark?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“Well, I think we can add the Great New England Sea Serpent to the ‘shit just got real’ list.” I look up at Maigo. “And for the record, I smell like sea serpent shart. Why would an ostrich shart in the ocean?”

“For real?” my daughter says. “You saw it?”

“Looked more like a Kronosaurus than the sketches I’ve seen. And longer. Maybe 150 feet.”

“Should we call it in?” Collins asks.

‘Call it in’ is our nice way of asking, ‘Do we need the military to blow it up?’ But nothing justifies that action. In fact, all of the ‘monsters’ we’ve discovered are natural occurrences. Freaks of nature maybe, but part of the ecosystem. They’ve all been peachy to be around. It’s the ones created by humanity that have gone on rampages and treated cities like buffets.

I shake my head and motion to the fish slick. “Pretty sure we’re not on the menu. And of the hundreds of sightings, not one of them involves an attack. We’ve been peacefully sharing the ocean with these things for a long time. No reason to change that now.”

“A Kronosaurus,” Maigo says, smiling, eyes glimmering with excitement. Though she was born from a monster, she is the most excited of us when we confirm the existence of another. I think it makes her feel less strange. If the world is full of monsters, she’s not all that different. It’s part of why she and Lilly have become so close. Like sisters. Really kick-ass, super-powered sisters. “Maybe we could call it Kro—”

A cell phone lets loose with a chipper ditty. It’s Collins’s.

“You really need to customize your ring tones,” I say.

“Because that worked out well for you,” she says with a sarcastic smile, stepping back to answer the phone. Speaking of which... I take my phone from my pocket and try to turn it on. Nothing. Good news is, I can have a new one delivered to the office before the end of the day. Bad news is it won’t have all those pictures I snuck of Collins’s butt.

Live and learn.

I shed my shirt and shorts before climbing back onto the deck in my mostly clean boxer-briefs. Maigo greets me with a gallon of water. She holds it out to me. “For real. You stink.”

After leaning over the side and pouring the water over my head and shoulders, the smell that remains could be from me, or from the dead fish still surrounding us in the ocean. I take it as a good sign that the blue shark is back, returned to his fish binge.

The world is a weird place, and getting weirder every day.

I towel off and put it, and my clothing, in a plastic trash bag supplied by Maigo. The water and bag are small gestures, but I find them encouraging. In the past, she wouldn’t have left the cabin. She might not have left the house. She would have missed all this. But now she’s out here, part of the experience. As gross as it might be, it’s also part of what bonds us as family.

Collins’s voice slides back into range as she wanders back out of the cabin and winces at the smell. “Okay. Yeah. We’re on it. Really? That soon?” She doesn’t look happy, but she’s listening. “Right. GOD.”

For a moment, I think she’s cursing, but then I realize she’s using the acronym for the Genetic Offense Directive, a black ops organization within DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. While the FC-P does our best to catalogue the strange and paranormal—and defend against it when necessary—GOD spends its time creating their own weaponized monstrosities. Although the creatures themselves aren’t always sinister—Lilly was created in a GOD secret lab once run by World War II Japan’s nefarious Unit 731—they do have a proclivity for cataclysmic destruction on an apocalyptic scale. Basically, the GOD are the bad guys. They don’t just use science, they twist it. And the results are...monstrous.

But GOD’s tech was also instrumental in stopping the Tsuchi—Kaiju sized spiders with a penchant for violent and unwelcome procreation. Of course, GOD also
created
that problem in the first place...so they’re kind of dicks. The one good thing to come from the organization was
Future Betty
, a mirrored, wingless VTOL aircraft officially known as an X-35. One of a kind. Using ‘repulse engines’ it can hover just feet above the ground with little more than a hum, or zip up into orbit, which I’ve only done once before promptly puking. After some upgrades provided by my Zoomb techies, it’s invisible to radar now, and thanks to its active camouflage, it’s projecting the sky above onto its belly, and vice versa. It’s also invisible to the naked eye.

“Understood,” Collins says in a formal way that tells me she’s ‘on duty,’ which means we just received a mission. “We’ll be waiting.” And that means we’re not boating back to port, we’re getting picked up. I’ll need to anchor
Penny
out here in the middle of Kronosaurus land. I pat the rail.

Sorry, baby, duty calls.

When Collins hangs up, I ask, “Do I have time to take a shower?”

“Fifteen minutes,” she says.

“What’s the rush?”

“Cooper says we have to assume GOD is monitoring our communications and might already be en route. Our only chance of beating them there is—”

“Future Betty,” I say.

“Right.”

“Unless they built another.”

She holds up a finger, like she’s about to object, but then points at me. “Right.”

“So what are we dealing with?” I ask, like I won’t be rattled by any answer she gives, and like I’m a badass 80s hero in tight blue jeans. But on the inside, I’m thinking:
Please don’t say Nemesis. Please don’t say Nemesis.

She taps on her phone’s screen and then turns it around, revealing a photo.

I hold my breath for a moment, then ask, “Where did this come from?”

“Anonymous tip.”

“Where is this?”

“Big Diomede Island, in the Bering Strait.”

And just when I thought the day couldn’t get worse than falling into prehistoric shart juice...
I’ve seen the symbol carved into the stone wall in the photo only once before, in GOD’s Area 51 headquarters, which is the very same place where they kept the remains of several species of alien. Well, two aliens and one over-sized alien head. The first time I saw this symbol, it was carved into a ten foot tall, blond man-thing’s chest. Human or not, the giant was part of a race of humanoids from whom a certain Nazi with a small mustache believed the Germanic peoples descended.

It was the symbol for Atlantis.

 

 

 

3

 

“Russia!” I’m seated in Future Betty’s hold, which was designed to transport a team of Special Operators known as the BlackGuard. They were badass killers employed by GOD, but sometimes being the toughest kid on the block isn’t enough. Sometimes you have to be smart. Or lucky. They were neither, and now they’re dead. Which is fine by me, since they tried to kill my team...my family. And now I have their transportation, which is whisking us—Woodstock, Collins, Maigo and me, northwest toward Canadian airspace at Mach 3. That’s 2284 ass-puckering miles per hour. “
Russia!
You didn’t say anything about starting an international incident!”

I’m sitting on one of two inward facing rows of seats lining the sides of the X-35. Collins and Maigo sit across from me, both dressed in the team’s new, and stylish black combat gear. It should protect us from bullets, knives and giant spider phalluses, should the need ever arise...again.
Ugh.
When the word ‘Russia’ came out of my mouth, both of them paled a little bit. While most of the world is on board with the FC-P’s advisement in all things Kaiju, Russia is closed off. It’s not really surprising, given their competitive history with the U.S. and recent events in the Ukraine. While I agree that Russia won’t know how to handle a bona fide Kaiju threat, not to mention an extraterrestrial threat, I’m not exactly comfortable with breaching their border unannounced.

“That’s why you’re not going to get caught,” Cooper says in my ear, over comms.

“Easier said than done,” I argue.

BOOK: 1941539114 (S)
13.66Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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