Chapter 4

The weather had worsened. The wind had backed around and now blew from the opposite direction. Gusts had reached sixty miles an hour, with a sustained wind speed of almost thirty miles an hour. It made even a short trip across the ice treacherous. The Snowcat bucked and lurched with each new gust. In the barely livable cab, the five party-members clutched themselves and breathed plumes of smoke out their mouths. Jean-Claude drove.

“So, what you’re saying,” Jill queried, “is that our domed structure is a beacon?”

Aaron rocked with the motion of the cab. He had to shout to be heard over the wind. “We were supposed to find it before Gojira, or his tomb-mate were released.”

“And who exactly would have wanted that?”

“I haven’t exactly figured that out,” Aaron admitted. “Not enough facts yet.”

“Suppositions,” Jill corrected.

“Whatever.”

Marty looked from one to the other with amusement. He removed his canteen, unscrewed the cap, and took a long swallow. Half the contents were gone since leaving the cave, but like everyone else, was too occupied with the running discourse between Aaron and Jill to notice. He replaced the cap, then unscrewed it again for another swig.

The Snowcat worked around a northwest/southeast-running pressure ridge, and then came into sight of the huge, geodesic dome. The intense white light still shone upward from the center into the clear black sky; an eerie, iridescent spotlight in the blowing gale. It demanded everyone’s immediate attention.

“Our owner’s manual,” Jill said caustically. “Dead ahead.”

Aaron had to admit the description did sound a little silly, even to him. Not for the first time, serious doubts about his theory--and his very presence there--plagued him. “It’s only a theory,” he admitted.

Jill, staring intently at the slowly expanding structure, said: “Keep theorizing, Aaron. That’s why you’re here.”

THE DUKE RANCH - TRAVELLER, UTAH

An incessant buzzing of flies. At the edge of a streambed, several cows lay on their side, dead and mutilated. A single calf bleated nearby, trembling, standing beside the remains of its mother. A pair of vultures, possibly the same ones startled off their perch atop the ironwood tree by the alien spacecraft, settled to the ground in a flutter of wings. One, then the other, began poking at the mother’s carcass. The calf bleated again. Then its head snapped around. The pair of vultures looked up, also. Something was in the bushes.

The mountain lion stopped. It was low-slung, its nine-foot length and three hundred pounds of body weight set to pounce. It looked around the area cautiously; something had alerted its prey. Normally, it would never attack upwind, but no concealment was offered in any other direction so, patiently, every muscle tensed, it waited.

A sudden movement directly ahead. A flash of black swept in low over the streambed, ignoring the bleating calf and the two feeding vultures. It made directly for the crouching predator above the streambed, a high-pitched scream rending the night. Enraged, the lion leapt forward to meet the intruder. Its powerful jaws snapped shut on the interloper’s neck, silencing its scream. Its powerful fore legs wrapped around the creature, snapping the wings bones at the shoulders, depriving the creature of flight. The probe-bat struck the earth with the mountain lion directly atop it; the lion’s rear claws slashed into its belly, disemboweling it. One probe-bat, as terrible as it was, was no match for a fully-grown mountain lion. But half a dozen was.

One after the other, darks shapes swept down, razor-mouthed jaws and taloned wingtips ripping at the lion’s flank. The lion roared in outrage and hate, swiping at the reinforcements even as it tore savagely at the first probe-bat’s neck with its teeth. It finally leapt off its kill and downed one, then a second attacker, fighting with the skill and proficiency of a thousand generations of desert killer. But while its teeth were sunk into the shoulder of one opponent, the razor-sharp jaws of another ripped at its hide. Slowly, inexorably, the probe-bats wore the big cat down, until finally fear and self-preservation replaced the rage in its mind. By then it was too late. The probe-bats merged with it, wrapping their wings around each other and the mountain lion until nothing was seen but a tangle of wings and slashing jaws and gouging talons. Bright red blood--black in the moonlight--ran down the sandy incline to the edge of the stream bed, where it stained the water black. Across the stream, the calf uttered one final, miserable bleat, then it to was silenced.

THE PACIFIC OCEAN - 37°43’17.5”N 133°25’38.9”W

Sunlight glared off the water. Three small fishing boats--the Larry, Moe, and Curly, all of Seattle registry--sat sweltering in the heat, nets winched up on their booms, the crewmen intent on staying as cool as possible in the move-less air. Aboard the Curly, things were especially tense.

“Godammit,” a sweat-covered, shirt-less man growled. He bent over the greasy hulk of the boat’s diesel engine, which refused to run. “Try it now!” he yelled.

On the bridge, a young man with peach-fuzz on his cheeks twisted the starter switch. The diesel engine belched thick black smoke but failed to catch.

“It’s the injector’s,” offered a man with the name Butch stitched over the pocket of his work shirt.

“I know it’s the injector!” the first man exploded. He was the boat’s captain, and the captain of the little fleet. He threw down a wrench in frustration. “Gimme a goddammed half-inch!” he demanded.

Butch dug through the top tray of the open toolbox. “It’s not here.”

“Whatdya mean, it’s not there?”

Butch pointed to the water manifold. “You already got it. There.”

The captain looked where he was pointing. ‘“Oh,” he grumbled. “Thanks.” He retrieved the wrench and began adjusting the injector. “Try it now.”

But the young crewman was not listening to the captain. His eyes were locked on the old Loran unit mounted to the console. Something weird was going on out there.

“What the hell is he doing?” the captain demanded. “Tommy? You jerkin off up there, again? Get your fucking hand out of your zipper, boy!”

Tommy Jones was not worried about the captain’s scathing tone of voice, nor his insults. He was looking two hundred eighty degrees by the compass. “Captain? You better get up here! Something’s coming at us. Something big!”

The captain looked at Butch, who looked back, puzzled. “What the hell’s he talking about?” When Butch only shrugged, he climbed awkwardly from the engine space and looked around. He had to shade his eyes. “I don’t see nothing!” he yelled up.

“West-northwest!” Tommy yelled back. “Two eighty degrees!” More noticeably now, he was afraid.

The captain mounted the second step of the Jacob’s ladder, stared off at the horizon. “I still don’t see nothin’,” he complained--and then he did. He stood straight up. About two miles off, the water had turned to molten silver; sunlight glinted off something breaking the surface in a million, brilliant little flashes. “Holy shit!” he whispered. Then: “Nets in! NETS IN! GET THE NETS IN!”

He jumped down and raced to the electric winch. He threw the switch himself, began yelling to Butch to play the nets out over the water. He needed mobility for this, needed the forward motion of the boat to disperse the nets, but this would have to do. He cursed loudly at his first mate to get a move on.

“What is it?” Tommy cried out from the wheelhouse.

“Fish! Millions of fish!” In his life, the captain had never seen anything like this. Something-something unimaginable--was driving not just schools of fish, but entire populations before it. What was coming was an ichthyic stampede. Shear adrenaline-driven excitement refused to admit fear.

The crew of the other two boats had also seen the stampede. The crew of the Moe had reacted first, turned the trawled into the advancing tide and had deployed their nets. The Larry was just a bit slower, still intent on coming about. It would be close. Aboard the Curly, Captain Harry Jones was shouting orders.

“Get the engine hatch battened down!”

“Aye, Captain!” Butch scrambled to get tools out of the way and the hatch back into place. Water spilling over the gunnels and into the engine space could spell disaster for the boat. He struggled to attach the clamps while keeping an eye over the side.

“Tommy!”

“Aye, sir!”

“Get on the horn and radio shore we’ll need ice. Tons and tons of ice!” A catch even a fraction of what he envisioned could never make it back to shore, not in his holds, not with his ice maker. “Tell ‘em we’ll meet ‘em halfway!”

“Aye, Daddy!”

“Butch!”

“Yes, sir!”

“Get forward and--” And do what, Harry Jones never had the chance to say, because just then a mobile mountain of fish, tons, and tons of fish of every species, size and sex, predator, and prey alike, slammed into the nets. The boat was yanked violently backward, a tidal wave of water rolling over the transom, sending captain and crew alike scrambling for a handhold.

“Yahoo! Ride ‘em, cowboy!” Harry Jones yelled. He stepped deftly out of the calf-deep water, yelling up for his son to get the bilge-pumps running.

“Already on!” Tommy yelled back.

The nets were already full. The onslaught had the Curly lurching backward at ten knots or better, water pouring over the transom in a continual flood. “Haul ‘em in!” he yelled. “Get ‘em in before they swamp us!” He fought his way back to the gantry and reversed the winch. It began hauling in the nets, but slowly, groaning loudly under the strain, the gantry creaking menacingly; Harry Jones flung curses at them both.

Aboard the Larry, one of the nets had ripped loose and the sudden, off-center strain on its lines had the boat tipped dangerously to port. The Moe was not fairing much better. Alternating tugs on the starboard and port nets had the boat slewing dangerously back and forth, shipping heavy water. One of the tackles supporting the line suddenly gave way and Harry watched with shocked horror as rigging caught a deckhand across the chest and took him right overboard.

“Get these nets out of the water!” he screamed. His excitement had turned to fear. The vision of three, forty-foot coastal trawlers plunging to the bottom with all hands-on board had made the catch suddenly superfluous. All the fish in the world wouldn’t replace his boat--nor his life.

“Get ‘em out! Get ‘em out, out--OUT!”

Slowly, surely, the over-strained nets came up, breeching the surface and rising over the gunnels enough to man-handle them aboard. Each net contained tons of fish--tuna, yellowtail, snapper, and some dolphin, all of which spilled across the decks as Harry dumped the loads. Other fish jumped aboard of their own volition, as though convinced death at the hands of Harry and his crew was preferable to the alternative. An alternative to what? Harry wondered.

Suddenly the stampede was over. The water settled beneath the three boats, the bright cascade of millions of fleeing fish disappearing to the east. Harry didn’t care; he had more fish than he knew what to do with. He was about to issue another war cry when his son yelled down: “Dad! There’s something else coming!”

Harry laughed. More? How could there possibly be more? All the fish in the ocean had just swum by. But then Tommy yelled, “Dad, I’m not kidding!” and the fear in his voice got Harry moving. He struggled through the knee-deep fish to the freeboard.

“Oh, my God! What the hell is that?”

Coming at them at forty knots, humping the water into a broad bow-wave before it was something enormous. A twin row of jagged fins broke the surface in several places, and behind the wave, something was sweeping side to side.

“Tidal wave! Tidal wave!” Butch screamed. He scrambled up the ladder to the upper deck and along the wooden planking on his hands and knees.

“That’s no fucking tidal wave!” Harry yelled. “That’s some kind of fucking creature.”

Aboard the other two boats the approaching wave had also drawn pointed fingers and shouts of alarm.

“Get the engine started” Harry yelled.

Even had the Curly a workable engine, it would have done no good. The bow wave hit them broadside and hove the boat over sixty degrees; fish, tackle, nets, tools, everything not bolted done went into the water--Butch and the captain included. A moment later the Moe and the Larry were slammed together--almost comically--holing Larry below decks and stoving in the prow of the Moe. Immediately the Larry began to sink. Crewmen went overboard amid thousands of swirling, buffeting fish intent on making it into the safe depths. The crewmen, intent on just the opposite, swam through the turbulent wake of the now-receding sea monster toward the two remaining boats. Aboard Curly, young Tommy Jones struggled to his feet inside the wheelhouse and tried to take stock. He had a broken right wrist, if the weird angle and intense pain of his hand were any indication, and a massive lump on his forehead. He looked out in time to see the bow of the Larry slip below the waves. His last look around as he exited the wheelhouse and went in search of a gaff to help his dad on board, was the distant, eerie bow wave, heading due west, toward San Francisco.

ARCTIC OUTPOST ONE - COMMUNICATIONS ROOM

The communications officer handed Jill a headset. Aaron stood right behind her, pointedly ignored. Marty was across the room, standing beside a water cooler, incessantly filling, drinking, and refilling a cup with water.

The young officer said, “I’ve got the U.S.S. Idaho, part of the rescue team--”

“Yes,” Jill cut in impatiently. “How many ships?”

The officer said, “We’ve got video, hold on.”

A monitor flashed to life, showing the rescue ship’s communications room. A young lieutenant spoke into the camera. “Must’ve been at least three boats to begin with,” he said, “all coastal trawlers. Only one afloat now. The crews are all safe, but the remaining vessel has engine problems, so it’s just sitting there.”

“Eyewitness reports?” Jill asked.

“Plenty of them,” the lieutenant said, grinning slightly. “None that make any sense, though.” He continued speaking, but no audio came through.

“We’ve lost audio,” the communications officer confirmed. “I can patch in through the ham, but there’ll be a delay.” He flipped switches and adjusted dials, and the audio, though scratchy, came back.

“--reported a tidal wave. Another man described it as a large sea creature.” The lieutenant offered another tight grin. “Sea monster, were his exact words. It had fins on its back and an exceedingly long tail. Other sailors reported only a huge run of baitfish followed by an immense wave. Two of the boats were driven together and began to sink. That’s all we know.”

For lack of anyone else, it seemed to Aaron, Jill eyed him questioningly. Their quarry?

“It could be anything,” Aaron cautioned. “Ships go down all the time.”

“In perfect weather?” Jill countered.

Looking like he had just remembered something important he needed to say, Marty raised his hand with the paper cup still in it, then collapsed sideways against the water cooler. Both it and he crashed to the floor, the mostly empty water jug clattering across the hard rubber flooring to the wall. The others gaped at the fallen man, stunned, then Aaron rushed across the room.

“Marty? Marty are you all right?” He helped the young man into a sitting position then yelled over his shoulder at Jill: “Get a doctor, quick!”

Jill donned her parka, boots and gloves and hurried out of the hut. Aaron turned to yell after her to bring back a stretcher in case they needed one--Marty’s hand was unbelievably hot--but Marty began to shake uncontrollably just then. He stared up at Aaron, eyes shocked and disbelieving. His teeth banged together as though he were freezing cold.

“Marty? Marty, you just hold on, okay? Help is on the way.”

Between shudders, Marty managed to get out: “Water. I just need ... a glass ... of water.” The heat rolling off him was like sitting too close to a campfire.

“Hold on, buddy,” Aaron said. “We’ll get you all the water you want.”

A moment later the door banged open, and Jill reappeared with two orderlies, one bearing a red stretcher board, the other a black carryall box with a red-on-white First Aid logo. They positioned the board beside the now-unconscious Marty, man-handled him out of Aaron’s grip, and began to strap him down.

“We’ll take it from here, sir,” one of the orderlies assured him. “Please step back.”

Aaron arose and stood against the wall, feeling helpless. He looked across the hut at Jill, who looked pretty shaken herself; she returned his look with a wan smile. “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,” she said. “The flu, or something.”

Aaron shook his head. “He’s hot. Hot as a goddamn blast furnace. We need to get his temperature down.”

The orderlies carried Marty out of the building, the communications officer holding the door, while Aaron got back into his Arctic gear. Then he and Jill followed the stricken man and his two stretcher-bearers across the ice toward a half-buried geodesic dome. Stepping inside, Aaron saw that the dome did double-duty as both the camp infirmary and the cold storage locker. He hoped fervently the Marty wouldn’t end up going from one side of the building to the other.

“This had something to do with that new cavern,” Aaron said, unhappily. “You can bet on it.”

The orderlies lay the stretcher board bearing Marty atop an examination table and began removing the strap-downs.

In the softest tone she had used so far in addressing him, Jill replied, “Let’s not go jumping to conclusions, okay? The rest of us are fine, Aaron.”

“Are we?” he muttered. “I certainly hope you’re right.”

She tried for a neutral expression but was not entirely successful. “Let the medic’s do their jobs.”

The senior medic, a stout woman with severely cropped, short blonde hair, yanked open Marty’s parka--and gasped. Marty’s rib cage and shoulders seemed to be repositioning themselves beneath his skin.

The second medic took a half-step back, muttered “What the hell?” recovered quickly and began working the front of his shirt out of Marty’s jeans, unbuttoning it to have a look inside. Aaron wondered how anyone could recover so quickly. His own heart pounded, and his hands shook like someone with palsy. Whatever had Marty in its grip was no simple flu bug or rhinovirus.

“Once he’s stabilized, we’ll need to get him to better facilities,” the medic said. He applied thick blue gel-packs to Marty’s red and undulating skin. “Anybody know if he has any medical allergies?” When no one answered, he instructed 10 CCs of penicillin be administered via syringe. The female medic, recovered now from her initial surprise, busied herself hooking IV’s up to Marty’s extremities.

Aaron said, “We need to get him to a hospital just as quickly as possible, Jill.”

Jill wasn’t listening. A corpsman had just entered the infirmary and handed her a message from the communications officer, on a form called a “flimsy.” She read it carefully, then jammed it in her pocket.

“Are you going to tell me what that said?” Aaron asked.

Jill nodded. Her look of combativeness had all but bled away. “It’s another sighting. About two hundred miles farther east of the two sunken fishing vessels.”

Aaron looked alarmed. “It’s moving that quickly?”

She nodded glumly.

“They’ve established a direction?”

They stood back as the medics, having bundled Marty into a cocoon consisting of his parka and heavy thermal blankets, accompanied him out the door toward the makeshift airfield, and the waiting C-130 transport. Aaron and Jill trailed behind.

“Have they established a direction?” Aaron repeated.

Jill nodded but kept her silence as the two orderlies and the two medics together loaded Marty into the cargo bay of the C-130 and strapped him down to a makeshift gurney. Plastic IV bags were hung either side of him on steel poles. Stacked behind him in the immense cargo hold were dozens of the yellow drums containing the red-black fluid. Marty was awake again.

“You think it’s really Gojira?” he asked weakly. His color was no longer so dangerously red, a result, Aaron imagined, of the cooling gel-packs. He clasped his friend’s hand.

“If it is, I’ll say hi for you when I see it.”

Marty laughed, then coughed up greenish-yellow phlegm.

“We have to go,” the female medic told him brusquely. “Please exit the aircraft, sir.”

Aaron gave Marty’s hand one last squeeze. “You take care of my buddy. I expect to see him up and at ‘em again, really quick.”

The cargo door slid shut, the engines wound up to a roar, and then the big transport aircraft was moving toward the runway. Aaron and Jill took refuge from the propeller’s backwash beside a hut; they had to shield their faces from snow and ice particles. Aaron started when Jill placed her hand upon his shoulder.