Peter Benchley's Creature (12 page)

"You're gonna
open
it?"

"Think of the tape, Brian. Even if the guys from Oregon jerk us around, think of the tape we'll get. First guys to open a long-lost bronze box. I tell you, we can sell it to
Eyewitness News
for ... who knows how much?"

"But suppose there's a body in it. That wouldn't be—"

"There's no body, unless it's King Kong himself. Look at the size of the damn thing. It must've fallen off a ship, probably something valuable, too, if they took the trouble to case it in bronze." Buck turned off the camera and let himself drift down to the sand bottom. He steadied himself, adjusted the lamps, the focus of the lens. "Okay, Brian, swim down to it and sit on it so I can take your picture, show how big it is."

"I don't know . . ." Brian hesitated, kicking slowly to maintain a position six or eight feet above the box.

"C'mon, Brian . . . don't you want to be famous?"

14

IN the sealed box the ambient pressure was constant, but in the electromagnetic field nearby, there was a change. It sensed this. There was life nearby, life of size and substance.

And then a sound—though it did not recognize sound as sound but only as a minuscule compression of the tympanic membranes on either side of its head.

Then the sound stopped.

It was ravenous with hunger. When all the nourishment it had derived from the meal it had had in the 'alien and threatening surroundings above had been used up, it had left its box and hunted.

It had found that there was no food here. It had emerged and sought to feed on some of the countless tiny animals to which it had become accustomed, but had found nothing. Confused, it had swum up and down the water column, seeking life—any life—that would give it sustenance.

It had seen living things, but they had been too swift, too wary, too elusive. It had struck one or two, but been unable to catch them.

Increasingly desperate, driven by signals that it knew only as need, it had swum farther afield.

It had found food—some, not much, barely enough to maintain life.

There had been a small thing that had suddenly appeared above, thrashing in panic, and it had grabbed the thing and taken it down and consumed it, collecting indigestibles—fur and gristle—in the side of its mouth, like a cud, and then spitting them out.

There had been a larger thing, almost as large as itself, also above, not at home here, and it had seized it from below and dragged it down and tried to consume it. But it had been too big to consume at once, and the uneaten part had drifted away. It had followed the body until a wave had carried it out of the water, out of range.

Then another living thing, slow and clumsy, had fallen into the water, almost within its grasp, but had escaped.

Its programming told it that it must hunt soon, and successfully, or surely it would cease to exist.

It knew there was a living thing nearby now.

It would eat it.

15

"STRADDLE the box," Buck said, "like a horse."

"I can't, it's too wide."

"Then sit sidesaddle. Pose for me. Pretend you're in
Playgirl.
"

Tentatively, awkwardly, Brian swung his legs over the side of the box. To steady himself against the current, with one hand he gripped the heavy black wire that led up to the surface.

He's spooked, Buck thought as he watched Brian through the viewfinder. In another minute, he's gonna bolt for the boat. To distract him, Buck asked, "How's your air?"

Brian reached for his gauge, raised it to his mask. "Fifteen hundred. How long we been down?"

"We got another ten, fifteen minutes anyway."

Brian leaned over the edge of the box and ran his hand along the lip of the lid. "How you gonna open the thing?" he said. "Don't look to be a latch anywheres."

"If we have to, we'll go up and get a pry bar."

"S'pose it's alive in there ... a specimen, like."

Buck laughed. "That box coulda been here years. What the hell could be alive?" He finished shooting, turned off the camera and let it hang from the thong around his wrist. "Now, let's see if we can crack that sucker open."

Brian slid down off the box, and as he landed, his flippers disturbed the fine sand, kicking up a cloud of milky silt. He saw something fly upward in the cloud, then settle again a few feet away. "What's that?" he said.

"What'd you see?" asked Buck, and he kicked slowly over toward Brian.

Brian dropped to his knees and ran his fingers along the surface of the sand until they touched something solid. He picked it up and looked at it. "A bone," he said.

"What kinda bone?"

Brian held it up. It was about five inches long, and curved. "Looks like a rib bone. I dunno what from." . "Size of it, I'd say a dog."

"What's a dog bone doing down here?"

"Beats me," said Buck. "See if there's any more."

He dropped down beside Brian, and together they began to dig.

It sensed faint sounds from the sand nearby.

Prey.

It felt for the release button. It pressed the button. Slowly the lid began to rise.

"Look here," Buck was saying. "A jawbone. It's a dog for sure, and something ate it." He held up the jaw and pointed to slashes in the bone. "Tooth marks." Buck saw something dark in the ashy silt, and he reached for it. It was round and blackish and hard, roughly the size of a plum. He ran his finger over its surface, first one way then the other. "I'll be damned, Brian . . . it's a fur ball. . . like what a cat pukes up." Buck rose to his feet and took a step backward. He raised the camera and switched it on. "Two shots, Brian, then we're gone," he said. "Hold up a couple bones and the fur ball. You can go back up to the boat if you want, while I open the box."

It swam out of the box and landed on the sand. Because its body contained no air spaces, it was not weightless in water, it was negatively buoyant: it would sink. But because, like all of its kind, its chemical composition was more than 90 percent water, it was only a few pounds negative. It could hover with almost no effort, and—thanks to the webbing on i,ts extremities—it could swim very fast, it could actually fly through the water.

Now it propelled itself off the bottom and veered toward one end of the box.

Buck had composed a perfect shot. Brian filled the frame, on his knees, holding two bones in one hand and the fur ball in the other, all nicely contrasted against the white sand. Buck pushed the "record" button.

"Good job, Brian," he said. "Now smile, like you're selling something in a commercial." He saw Brian try to smile, then look up at the camera.

Suddenly Brian's eyes opened wide, and he dropped everything and shouted something.

"Brian!" Buck said. "Goddamnit!"

*    *    *

There were two things, not one. They were big and slow and very close.

It pushed off the bottom and lunged forward, thrusting porpoise-like with its posterior webs. It covered the short span of open water in less than a second.

From somewhere in its numbed brain came a recollection of these beings, a familiarity, and with the recollection came a sense of purpose: its mission was to kill these things.

As hungry as it was, as satisfied as it would have been with eating only one of them, it was programmed to kill both.

It seized the first, and buried its claws in soft flesh.

Brian reeled backward on the sand and watched, paralyzed, as a cloud of blood—dark green at this depth— exploded from Buck's carotid artery. Buck's legs jerked, throwing up a cloud of silt, and his hands flew upward.

Brian couldn't see what had Buck, but it was big, and whitish, and it had come from somewhere near the bronze box.

Through the murk he saw silver flashes tearing again and again at Buck's throat, until his head was connected by nothing but bones and sinew.

Brian scuttled backward, and then he realized that safety lay not horizontally but vertically; he pushed off the bottom and kicked upward, reaching frantically for the rubber-coated black wire that led up to the buoy on the surface. He found it and began to pull himself upward.

But the wire had bowed in the running tide, and Brian's weight merely consumed the slack in the bow: instead of pulling himself up, he was pulling the wire down. Relieved of tension from above, the sensor that had snagged beneath the box slid free and bounced along the sand. Now the boat above was drifting free, carrying the sensor, and Brian, with it.

Brian looked down and saw Buck's body sag to the sand, still spilling blood.

Then the thing turned toward him.

It had eyes, chalky white, hueless eyes.

It pushed off the sand like a rocket. It seemed to be flying up at him.

Still kicking, still pulling with one hand, Brian reached for the knife strapped to his calf. His fingers scrabbled at the rubber safety ring that held the knife in its sheath. It stretched, snapped back, stretched again and flopped away. Brian yanked the knife from its sheath.

The thing continued to soar upward, kicking like a dolphin, making no sound, blowing no bubbles. Its' claws reached for Brian—ten of them, each curved like a little scythe.

Brian glanced up; the surface wasn't far, he could see the sun. Rays of brilliance slashed downward through the green water.

Then he looked down, and the thing was upon him. Its mouth opened, and a flash of sunlight struck row upon row of triangular teeth and made them glitter like silver stars.

Into his mask Brian screamed, "No!" But there was no one to hear him.

Claws dug into his ankle, puncturing the flesh and dragging him down.

He raised the knife and swung it blindly. Something grabbed his wrist, and steel slivers cut through the
veins and tendons. The knife fell away.

He released the wire and flailed with his other hand, but it, too, was grabbed, and his arms were forced wide and his head thrust backward.

He tried to scream, but as he opened his mouth, something thudded against his mask, stunning him.

And then he felt the teeth at his throat.

His last sight was of a cloud of his own blood billowing up against the rays of yellow sun, a mist of orange.

It sensed that the thing was dead. It held on with claws and teeth, and spiraled downward with its prey in a slow ballet of death.

Once on the bottom, it carried the prey over to where the other one lay on the sand, rolling back and forth in the current. And then it began to feed.

On the surface, the small boat was caught in the flooding tide. It moved quickly, spinning erratically in lazy circles because of the drag caused by the heavy rubber-coated wire dangling off the bow.

It grounded briefly on a shallow reef, but the surge from a distant ship lifted it gently up and over the reef and sent it on toward shore.

16

CHASE aimed the bow of the Whaler toward an empty slip in one of the floating docks in front of the tiny yacht club on the western edge of the borough. He wasn't a member of the club—he didn't play tennis, race sailboats or wear pastel slacks emblazoned with ducks—but he had known most of the members for decades, liked many of them, and they never begrudged him the loan of one of their coveted slips.

The water was glass calm in this hour after dawn, as if the day's breeze hadn't decided which direction to blow. Seabirds hadn't yet begun to feed, so beds of fry made barely a ripple as they scurried aimlessly between anchored yachts.

Chase pulled the gearshift lever back into neutral, then turned the key that killed the engine, letting the boat nose silently into the slip. He saw Max standing in the bow, ready to fend off the dock, and told himself: keep your mouth shut, don't warn him again to be careful that his fingers don't get squashed between the boat and the dock, don't tell him again to watch his balance so he doesn't fall overboard.

Max bent his knees and braced himself and fended off perfectly, hopped up onto the dock with the painter in one hand and cleated it off like an expert.

Chase didn't say anything as his son cleated the stern line, didn't congratulate Max or even nod in acknowledgment of a job well done. But he did congratulate himself as he noticed Max's little smile of pride, for he realized that he was learning something nearly as difficult as how to be a parent—when and how to
stop
being a parent.

He passed Max his knapsack and climbed up onto the dock, and they walked together toward the parking lot.

A single gull cawed in the distance, and somewhere in the borough a dog barked. Otherwise, the loudest sound they heard was the soft hiss of their feet on the dewy grass.

Then, carried across the treetops, came the muted bong of a church bell ringing six times.

"Six o'clock," Max said, and he looked around as if in discovery. "I've never been up at six before. Ever. I mean, since before I can remember."

"At this time of day, everything's new and clean," said Chase. "It's the time for belief in second chances."

"I should've come with you before." Max started to say something more, hesitated, then took a breath and said, "You're worried about money, aren't you . . . about maybe losing the island?"

"Not at six o'clock in the morning, I'm not." Chase smiled. "It's impossible to worry about money at six o'clock in the morning."

They reached the parking lot, and Chase leaned against the wall of the clubhouse and stretched his calves and thighs while Max unzipped his knapsack and spread his gear on the pavement.

For the first days Max had been with him, Chase had gone running alone, waking, automatically as always, at five or five-thirty and circling the island six times, a course of two miles, more or less. He had showered, shaved, dressed and eaten, and was at his desk or in one of the labs by the time Max got up at eight or nine, grumpy and uncommunicative until infused by Mrs. Bixler with glucose and protein.