Monsters In Our Wake Read online

  She passed the bit of drill string to him. “See those markings right there?” She pointed to some deep grooves in the metal with a fingertip. He held the metal to the light. The indentations were like nothing he’d ever seen before. But he guessed that wasn’t that surprising, since he’d never seen steel shatter like glass, either.

  “Yeah,” he said, returning it to her. “What about it?”

  Flora hesitated, biting her lip. She glanced around the table again. “They’re tooth marks.”

  The table erupted—everyone but Thor jumped at the chance to jeer at her. Flora looked frightened, but to her credit, she squared her shoulders and waited. It took several long minutes before Frank’s voice could be heard above the din.

  “Are you trying to tell us—?” The sailor choked on a laugh before he could finish. “Are you actually trying to tell us there’s a bloody sea monster down there?”

  Flora’s face turned almost as red as Frank’s. “I’m not saying it’s a sea monster, but it’s some kind of creature, yes.”

  “Could be a shark,” Liam said, sounding hopeful. Thor was relieved at least one of the guys was being reasonable.

  She shook her head. “No shark has this kind of power, or teeth this large. At least, not one we’ve identified.”

  “Ooooh, beware the mystical giant shark. It’s coming to get us. There it is now.” Frank waggled his fingers on top of his head to simulate a shark’s fin, while the other men sang the Jaws theme with varying skill. Apostolos was one of the only ones not laughing. Thor had yet to see him crack a smile.

  “Maybe it’s something like Megalodon. It’s happened before, where people have discovered living creatures once believed to be extinct,” Thor said.

  Frank rolled his eyes. “Yeah, and maybe it’s a giant squid.”

  “Giant squids don’t have teeth, you dumbass.”

  “Sure they do. And who are you calling a dumbass, dumbass?”

  Flora slammed her beer down hard enough to make it foam out the top. She pushed her chair away from the table and stood, hands on her hips, eyes narrowed. “I should have known you weren’t mature enough to deal with this. You’re no better than a bunch of children.”

  It was difficult to make a dramatic exit in such cramped quarters, but she did her best. Soon enough the men heard the slamming of her cabin door, followed by the click of the lock. The crew laughed harder.

  “Aren’t you going to run after your girlfriend, mate?” Frank’s eyes glittered with hilarity and booze. If he wanted to get a rise out of Thor, he’d picked the wrong guy. Thor had three younger sisters—Frank was welcome to do his worst. “It’s fucking obvious you’ve got a thing for her.”

  Thor finished his beer. “Nah, I’m not in the mood tonight.”

  As his inane joke earned more laughs, he felt guilty. Flora was only trying to do her job. She didn’t deserve to be mocked and ridiculed because she didn’t piss standing up. He wondered if she’d had any idea what she was in for when she agreed to be their surveyor.

  “Dumb fucking broad,” Apostolos said once it was quiet again. “Nothing but dead weight. Blaming her incompetence on sea monsters. And I thought I’d seen everything.” He spat into the red bandanna he carried with him before tucking it into his pocket. Thor sincerely hoped he didn’t make his wife wash that thing. “Next she’ll be saying fucking unicorns did it. Soon as we get to shore, I’m letting her go.”

  Apostolos was infamous for hating the men who worked under him, but at least he loathed everyone equally. The only way to tell he approved of someone’s work was if he asked him to join another of his crews. This was Thor’s third job with Apostolos, so he hoped that meant he was standing on a sturdier deck than most.

  Thor examined the scarred piece of metal Flora had left behind. “These do look like tooth marks.” He tossed the bit of steel to the captain. “And I’ve never seen a creature that could do this kind of damage. She didn’t say it was a sea monster. She said she didn’t know what it was.”

  Apostolos slammed the metal down on the table with a thud. “Pah. They’re dents. They don’t look like tooth marks to me. For all we know, she’s making this shit up as she goes along. My decision is final. She’s done.”

  The captain folded his arms, signaling the subject was closed, but Thor knew Flora had a marine biology background—geology had only been her minor. If anyone on the crew could tell the difference between tooth marks and plain old dents, it was her.

  As much as he wanted Apostolos to reconsider—there had to be some reason a scientist like Flora had taken this job, and he suspected the reason was money—Thor also hoped she was wrong.

  An obstruction they could deal with. But a creature capable of reducing solid steel to rubble?

  If it could do that to the drill, what could it do to them?

  Chapter Four

  “What are we going to do about them, Nøkken?”

  My wife tore around our home, destroying knickknacks and priceless treasures with each thrash of her tail. When she crushed our son’s shipwreck collection, I realized I had to do something to calm her before she did the humans’ work for them.

  Stretching myself to full size, I moved to block her, hoping the sight of someone she loved would make her stop. The female of our species is larger, stronger, and much more deadly. They’ve been known to reduce their entire family to chum in a single fit of temper. It’s not surprising the males are taught to respect and obey them from birth.

  The risk I took was huge, but we’d been happily married for over five thousand years. Surely that counted for something.

  When she saw me blocking her path, her eyes narrowed. I prepared to defend myself, as futile as that would be. She glided toward me until our snouts were nearly touching.

  “Let. Me. Pass.”

  “Darling, you must calm down. They are vermin. Barnacles on our backsides. It’s not worth getting yourself into a lather over. I can take care of them, I promise.”

  I believed I already had, by destroying that child’s toy they’d dared to plunge into our home. At least temporarily. We both knew they’d return. Such is the way with vermin.

  “You don’t have the spine for it.” She snarled at me, showing off needle-sharp fangs dripping with ichor. This was not going to be a good day. “You’ve always been too soft-hearted, Nøkken. We see evidence of their destruction every single day, and yet you insist on letting them live.” She pushed by me with the slightest flick of her tail, and I went crashing into the wall, badly torn by her scales. A school of tuna appeared, darting this way and that, most likely drawn by the odor of my blood. I ate a few, but they were so puny I could barely feel their tiny bones crunch between my teeth. It didn’t help.

  “I will rend them,” my wife screamed, and propelled herself to the surface as if an irresistible force had launched her. Sighing, I shook my head, but I wasn’t worried. I knew she’d turn away before the humans saw her. In spite of her inconvenient temper, Draugen was no fool.

  The sad story of our distant cousin Uisge served as a cautionary tale. A single peek at the world above her beloved loch, and she’d become a reluctant celebrity. Now humans constantly invaded her home with their cameras and ridiculous sonar equipment, eagerly anticipating the next sighting. Poor Uisge. The lady gets no peace, despite having stayed well hidden for decades. Whenever we hear from her, she is understandably depressed.

  “I would have torn them apart. All of them, until there was not a single one left to snap a picture,” Draugen always vowed, cursing her cousin for being weak and stupid and softhearted. Unfortunately, Uisge’s window of opportunity was barred shut. The one time violence would have done some good was in 1933. But how could she have anticipated what would happen? Humans used to fear us. Now they sought us out.

  Our long lives have provided us with many benefits, including the opportunity to witness evolution at work. We’ve watched creatures become stronger, more agile, and less vulnerable with time. Those who don’t adapt die
out, and that is something we’ve been forced to accept. But the great mystery is how human beings have evolved backward, becoming less intelligent with every generation. In spite of this, they continued to propagate at an alarming rate.

  It boggled the mind.

  When they first arrived on the scene, they were comical creatures, really. Stumbling around, grunting and snorting, barely able to feed themselves. And the smell. I hate to be boorish, but it was enough to knock you over. They were clearly kissing cousins with the apes, but at least the apes were civilized. Apes knew how to keep themselves clean, something early man obviously hadn’t discovered.

  “Well, this won’t last long,” I said to my wife, and we shared a good laugh over it. But now I feared the humans would be the ones laughing last. And if that was the case, we could bid goodbye to this great earth and every living being upon it.

  The cave-dwelling years, known to our kind as the “good old days,” didn’t last long. This new creature was possessed with an uncontrollable desire to explore, to reach, to expand its boundaries. Wherever it went, it was hell-bent on destruction. Wild spaces, other organisms—even those of its own kind—met death at its hands. While watching humans used to be a mindless form of entertainment, the wife and I grew worried as we saw these crude monsters destroy each other. We’d never seen another animal act this way, before or since. Humans appeared to be on a brutal quest for power, a thirst that was never quenched or even slackened. We buried our heads in our beloved ocean, thankful we didn’t have to deal with them—a virtue of being able to avoid dry land entirely.

  We should have known what was coming.

  By the time they’d perfected sea travel—well, perfected it as much as they could ever hope to—we knew not to snicker at their tiny boats, which resembled so many toys scattered across the great roof of our home. A creature that has no consideration for its own kind is one that needs to be regarded with caution.

  As they discovered what the ocean had to offer, it was inevitable that more and more humans would take to the water. For the first time in our history, man was in our territory. It was inevitable that we’d have skirmishes.

  The old men of the sea were more intelligent than I’d given them credit for. Instead of charging us with their primitive weapons, which I’d seen them do to other beasts, they screamed in terror at a mere glimpse of me or my wife, and struggled to steer their tiny craft in the other direction. My son loved to play with shipwrecks, and collected them like treasure. In more than a few of the relics, he’d found some old maps with our territory circled in faded ink. The maps were too miniscule for us to read, so we relied upon him to tell us what they said. As much as we loathed the humans, we were always curious to discover what crazy invention they’d think of next.

  Here be dragons, the seamen had written, and it made my wife smile. Before long, the sailors had found another route to travel between their beloved Europe and the so-called New World, and we were left in peace.

  It’s a pity things always have to change.

  Chapter Five

  Flora didn’t sleep that night. Her claustrophobia had returned with a vengeance, and she spent the hours until dawn staring at the bunk above her, feeling like the weight of the ocean was pressing down on her chest, crushing her. The sedative her doctor had given her for such moments failed to kick in. Sometimes, she suspected he’d humored her tales of crippling anxiety and panic attacks by giving her a placebo. Her friend Meredith, a psychiatric nurse, had assured her the pills were the real deal.

  Fat lot of good they were doing her now.

  She knew all the tricks. She raised her arms over her head to get more air into her lungs. She turned her head to the side so she was staring into her tiny room instead of at the upper bunk, which was much too close to the tip of her nose. She took deep, slow breaths to prevent hyperventilation.

  And still her mind betrayed her.

  You can’t breathe. You’re going to die. You can’t breathe. You must get out. Can’t breathe. Going to die. Must get out. Must get OUT.

  Can’tbreathedyingcan’tbreathegetoutgetoutgetout.

  The psychiatrist had taken her more seriously than the doctor had, but she’d only been able to see him three times before her coverage ran out. Three fifty-minute sessions didn’t even crack the surface of everything that was wrong with her. Thankfully, along with the tricks he’d given her one crucial piece of information.

  “When you’re claustrophobic, your body sends a fight-or-flight signal to your brain. That’s why you feel like you’re dying. But if you wait it out, your body will send another signal that lets the brain know the danger has passed. All you have to do is wait.”

  “Wait?” The idea of experiencing a panic attack for longer than a minute was terrifying. “For how long?”

  “It varies, but typically, twenty minutes should do it,” the psychiatrist said in the matter-of-fact manner of someone who had never suffered from clinical anxiety.

  Twenty minutes. Just twenty minutes.

  But hadn’t it already been hours? It certainly felt that way.

  When the tricks didn’t work and even the sedative failed, she whispered to herself. “You’re okay, Flora, you’re fine. You’re in your cabin and you’re safe and nothing’s going to happen to you.”

  She forced herself not to think of the shattered drill string or the teeth marks.

  She tried not to think at all.

  Flora didn’t know why she bothered whispering. She could have shouted show tunes at the top of her lungs and still gone unheard. From their boisterous discussion in the messdeck, the men either thought she was still awake—or they didn’t care.

  She heard Apostolos broach the possibility of returning to the mainland. She also heard him vow to fire her the second the ship docked. Before she could pull her pillow over her ears, Thor had defended her, trying to reason with them, and for a moment, she felt hopeful. But the rest of the guys only mocked him.

  Unfortunately, she heard that too.

  The one benefit of insomnia was that it gave a person plenty of time to think, and at about three in the morning, Flora felt she’d devised a solution. Even though Apostolos had laughed along with the others, he respected Thor. She could hear it in his voice. He wasn’t as gruff with him as he was with the others, and she’d heard Frank grumbling about how only Thor was a sure thing for the next job.

  “Thor is always on the callback list,” Archie, another man on the crew, had said. “You know that.”

  And best of all, Thor believed her. It was in the way he examined what was left of the drill string, and the sincerity in his voice last night. In the morning, she would go to him and ask him to plead her case with Apostolos. As much as she hated to ask anyone for help, she couldn’t figure out an alternative. She kept picturing Zach, and how she’d promised him karate lessons this year. His friends kept busy running from activity to activity. Flora knew her son longed to join them, but she’d never had the money. The contract with the oil company had changed that. It had the potential to change a lot of things if it lasted long enough. But if she had to work in a lab again, she’d be lucky if she could afford to buy her son a new jacket.

  Her decision made, Flora rolled onto her stomach, pressing her cheek into the damp pillow. She still didn’t sleep, but the pressure on her chest subsided until it no longer felt like a heart attack. Closing her eyes, she waited for daylight.

  * * *

  She’d been lurking outside the men’s quarters for two hours before the first man stumbled out of his bunk. As soon as Flora heard him fumbling with the door, she was on her feet, ignoring the sharp crack from both her knees. Her ass was numb from sitting on the cold floor.

  But it wasn’t Thor. It was another man whose name she couldn’t remember. He jumped when he saw her, narrowly missing hitting his head on the doorframe.

  “Jesus Christ—you scared me to death. What the hell are you doing out here?”

  She was about to apologize, and then
remembered the conversation of the previous night. Maybe this man hadn’t been a part of it, but he hadn’t put a stop to it, either.

  Flora straightened to her full height, lifting her chin. “I need to speak to Thor.”

  “Well, you’ll be waiting awhile. He’s always the last one to haul his sorry carcass out of bed.” With a distasteful snuffling sound, he pushed past her, muttering something about having to piss.

  Whatever his name was, he was right about Thor. Flora fidgeted while the other men slowly left the cabin and went about their business. Most didn’t bother to acknowledge her, but they had plenty to say once they were safely past. How did women ever get pegged as the gossips? From what Flora had witnessed, guys were way worse.

  She’d almost given up when Thor finally appeared, a faint shadow of stubble on his chin and crumbs of sleep in the corners of his eyes. She stepped forward to block his path.

  “Good morning.”

  “Oh,” he said, his eyes widening. “Sorry, I almost didn’t see you. I’m a zombie before I have my coffee. How’d you sleep?”

  How long had it been since a man—anyone, actually—had asked her that question? Five years, six? She’d lost count.

  “Not well.” Taking a deep breath, she decided to come out with it. “To tell the truth, I’m afraid of losing this job, Thor.”

  He lowered his gaze and rubbed his whiskery chin.

  “I heard what the guys were saying last night. I heard what Apostolos said.”

  “I’m sorry, Flora. I tried to reason with them, but they weren’t having any of it.”

  She sighed. “I know; I heard. Thank you for trying. It’s more than anyone else did.”

  “I know some of that stuff must have been hard to hear, but the guys were only having a bit of a laugh. As you must have noticed, there isn’t a lot for entertainment around here.”