Into the Storm (13 page)

Bernard Sandison burst into the wardroom, wide-eyed and gasping. “Beg pardon, Skipper, but you better come on deck.”

“Are we under attack?”

“No, sir. Not under attack, but . . . just please come and see.”

As one, spurred by the ensign’s cryptic statements, the assembly crowded for the passageway. “Make way!” the Bosun bellowed. “Make way for the captain!”

All the officers, including Nurse Tucker, scrambled up the ladder to the pilothouse. Everyone else climbed onto the amidships deckhouse to join most of the crew already there, or along the port rail below. In fact, the port side was so crowded that
Walker
was heeling noticeably. As soon as he gained the bridge, Matt heard Gray bellowing for the men to return to their duties before they capsized the ship. It was no use. For once, even the Bosun’s legendary wrath was wasted. Matt snatched his binoculars from Ensign Tolson and looked toward Bali—the direction everyone was pointing and staring. He adjusted the objective slightly.

The fog to the south had almost entirely dissipated and he clearly saw the northeastern coast of Bali less than a mile away. It was a scenic view, about what he’d expected from descriptions he’d heard and pictures he’d seen. Beyond the dark volcanic beach was a rocky shoreline, choked with a lush hedge of vines or brush. Beyond this boundary, a broad coastal plain rose steadily upward to the flanks of a distant mountain. He’d read the slope was terraced and had been for hundreds of years. Mr. Bradford had commented on it as well. He saw no terracing, but everything else seemed as it should. Except one thing. Upon the plain before him, in the middle distance, was a small herd of what could only be described as dinosaurs, grazing slowly along.

Ridiculously, the first thing that popped into his mind was that they were smaller than he would have thought, about the size of Asian elephants. But the long necks and whiplike tails protruding from the otherwise quite elephantine bodies were exactly what he’d have expected of an artist’s rendering of, say, a brontosaurus. He heard a small sound and glanced aside.

“Somebody grab Mr. Bradford. He’s about to faint.”

Jim Ellis leaned close and whispered nervously in his ear. “We’re
damn
sure not in Kansas anymore, Skipper.”

Matt grunted distractedly as the amazing creatures ambled unconcernedly along, much like cattle feeding on grass, except these animals took as many leaves from the trees as they did grass from underfoot. “Personally,” Matt whispered back, his voice shaky, “I liked the black and white part of that movie the best. Everything that happened once it went to color gave me the creeps.”

 

The Mice filed tiredly back to their stifling lair. There was way too much commotion on deck to rest. No good ever came from leaving their boilers. One of the water tenders looked up as they entered.

“What the hell’s going on up there? We run aground or something? Why are we heeling over?”

Isak looked at him with bleary, disinterested eyes. “Dinosaurs on Bali,” he said simply. Then he and his friend lay down next to the hull, where the water outside kept the plates slightly cooler. They wadded up a pair of greasy life jackets for pillows and promptly went to sleep.

 

All over the ship, men slowly returned to their duties or tried to rest. Some talked nervously among themselves, and others said nothing at all, pondering the implications of this latest mystery. A few might have panicked if not for the steadying influence of the older hands, but mostly the destroyermen took it in stride. It was just one more thing. What was one more thing after all they’d been through? They didn’t know what was happening and they knew it wasn’t right, but most were too tired to care. Men from Mars flying by on giant blue chickens would probably not have elicited a more prolonged response—but they probably would have been shot at if they came too close.

Dennis Silva was thinking just that. He manned the .50-caliber machine gun on the port side of the amidships deckhouse. He’d been almost finished putting it back together when the commotion began, and he’d been one of the first to see the creatures. Now he stood, still watching, with just a few others. The first group of “bronto-sarries” had moved along, but there was a steady stream of other, equally improbable animals. A smaller group resembling the first ones they’d seen appeared.

“Boy,” exclaimed Silva, “I’d sure like to shoot me one of those!” Tom Felts and Paul Stites looked at him.

“What the hell for?” Stites asked incredulously.

Silva shrugged. “Ever’body and ever’thing’s been pickin’ on us lately. I feel like pickin’ on somethin’ myself for a change.”

Felts shook his head. “I wouldn’t pick on one of those damn things. Hell, Dennis, what if they can swim? You’d have prehistoric monsters down on us too! Ain’t the Japs enough?”

Stites peered over the side at the water speculatively. “You think them things are really dinosaurs? I mean, there ain’t supposed to be dinosaurs on Bali, is there? I thought they all died off.”

“’Course there ain’t
supposed
to be none here.” Silva guffawed. “There ain’t supposed to be none anywhere! All that’s supposed to be here is a bunch’a nu-bile young native girls runnin’ around without shirts.”

Stites and Felts both looked at the island. “Well, where the hell are they?”

“Better ask the Skipper, fellas.” Silva’s grin went away, and when he spoke again his voice was uncharacteristically subdued. “I bet he don’t know either.”

 

For the first time since she could remember, Sandra didn’t know what to do. She didn’t have an answer or a solution or even a suggestion. That hit her almost as hard as anything else. Seeing the creatures on Bali did something to her that nothing else had ever accomplished: it shook her sense of pragmatic self-assurance to its core. She was still on the bridge, although she doubted she was supposed to be, but no one asked her to leave. There were no more critical patients to treat, and the seriously injured had been transferred to their berths, where the other nurses and their shipmates fussed over them and tried to make them comfortable. If not for the possibility of air attack, she would have already asked to have them moved on deck for fresh air.
Maybe I should move them up,
she thought, but the latest shock left her unable to concentrate. She’d always prided herself on her ability to adjust to any situation; that was what good nurses had to do. But this! What was going on?

She looked at the captain. He was deeply involved in a whispered, serious conversation with several officers. After the initial excitement, the ship grew eerily quiet. She looked aft. Now the mist had cleared and the sun beat down once more, and most of the men had resumed their duties, or the perpetual quest for shade. Now and then, however, she saw men glance furtively at the island as if to confirm they’d actually seen what they thought they had. She looked again herself. Sure enough, the bizarre animals were still there. The place was teeming with them. She shuddered. She was
not
imagining things. If she was, so was everyone else.

She looked back at the group of officers and saw the fatigue in their expressions—the tired, bloodshot eyes and haunted looks as they too glanced nervously toward Bali now and then. Captain Reddy looked little better than the others, but she admired the way he hid the fear and uncertainty he must feel. He just stood there, listening attentively and nodding occasionally. When she heard his murmured words, she was encouraged by how calm he sounded. She found it ironic and unsettling that, shortly before, she had been evaluating his steadiness from a perspective of self-confidence. Now she looked to him for reassurance.

Courtney Bradford had recovered himself, and now leaned against the port bridgewing rail, oblivious to the concerns of others and staring in rapt fascination through binoculars. She moved beside him.

“Are they truly . . . dinosaurs?” she asked in a quiet voice.

He nodded vigorously. “Of course! They do seem rather small, compared to what we were given to expect by the scale of most assembled fossils. But indeed, there can be nothing else to call them. Obviously, they shouldn’t be here! I’ve studied the charts, and I’ve been here before. That island
is
Bali. The only difference is the lack of agricultural terracing and, well, the dinosaurs, of course! The terracing is strange enough. It hasn’t been very long since my last visit, and I can assure you that even with a concerted effort and heavy machinery, the terraces couldn’t possibly have been removed so thoroughly as to leave no trace they ever existed. As for the dinosaurs?” He shrugged and smiled happily. “I have no explanation.”

“But surely . . . what could’ve happened?” She pointed across the water. “Those things have been gone for millions of years! You don’t think . . .” She couldn’t finish.

“Once again, I have no idea,” Bradford replied cheerfully. “Perhaps that disconcerting squall had some unusual effect beyond what we experienced? Perhaps. Time travel?” He snorted. “Hardly. If the Squall did something to us, it didn’t send us back in time! Time travel is, of course, impossible. Besides, during the age those creatures”—he waved toward land—“roamed the earth, the shorelines were shaped quite differently. Warmer temperatures, higher water . . . These islands are frightfully volcanic. They might not have even existed!” He pointed shoreward again. “That
is
Bali! So whatever is afoot, we’re in the
now,
if you follow my meaning? Of course you do.”

“But if this is now,
where
is it now? And where is the now we should be in?” Her voice was almost pleading. “Dinosaurs on Bali are impossible too, aren’t they?”

“Precisely.”

They didn’t run the strait that night. Instead, they remained at anchor and continued repairs while the officers pondered what to do. It was clear now, beyond doubt, that something extraordinary had befallen them. Bradford’s argument that they hadn’t been transported back in time was gratefully accepted, for the most part, but that left the burning question of what
had
happened. Was this simply some bizarre phenomenon localized in the vicinity where the Squall had occurred? Or had they been transported somehow to an entirely alien world? No. That couldn’t be. The stars were right, the sliver of moon did exactly what it should as it traversed the heavens overhead, and the charts showed them to be exactly where they were—anchored snugly between Bali and Menjangan Island.

But that couldn’t be. Nothing that had happened since the fight with
Amagi
and their subsequent entry into the Squall had been normal. The moon, the stars, the sun itself, and the very air they breathed—the smell of the sea upon which they gently rocked—all testified to their senses that nothing had changed. But there were monsters in the water and giant lizards on the land, and that couldn’t be.

Despite all their planning in the wardroom that day, no one knew how to proceed. If they’d been transported to another time or place, what about the Japanese? Were they still in danger from attack? If they went to Perth, would it even be there? Like any good destroyer commander, even in the face of such profound questions, Matt immediately began to worry about fuel. What if the phenomenon extended to Australia? Where would they get fuel? If it was even possible that Perth was gone, should they risk wasting all their fuel to get there? These were the questions he pondered now. The immediate concerns. What they would do in the long run hadn’t even entered his tired mind.

Like most destroyermen in the Asiatic Fleet, Matt had no family back home, besides his parents, to concern him. A lot of the old hands left wives and sweethearts in the Philippines, but most of them had already resigned themselves to the fact that there was nothing they could do for them while the Japanese ran unchecked. Even when they steamed away from Cavite that last time, Matt was struck by the stoicism of most of the married men. They knew they might never return. If they did, that would be good. If they didn’t, they’d keep fighting until they did. It was all very matter-of-fact. Whatever had occurred when they entered the squall had created a whole slew of distracting implications, and he wondered how the men would react to leaving their whole world behind? He wasn’t yet prepared to deal with that. Right now, his primary concern was for the safety of
Walker
and
Mahan
and their crews—and how best to use their fuel.

Utter fatigue finally forced him to turn in, but before he did, he ordered Jim to shut down one of
Mahan
’s boilers.
Walker
would keep both hers lit, just in case, but henceforth, they would conserve fuel any way they could. It was all he could do. Perhaps after some sleep he would think of something. Maybe he’d wake from this terrible dream and find that all he had to worry about, once more, was the Japanese. He stripped off his sweat-sodden uniform and lay on his bunk. The small, rattling, oscillating fan on the bulkhead labored to move the dank, stifling air. He was so very tired, but a vast tension clutched his chest. Even as he reached to turn off the light, the ghosts and monsters of the last few days began to gather around.