Chapter Twenty-Two: Boa vs. Python

“Every worm has its weak spot.”

-Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit

            “So where do we go from here?” Hendricks asked.

            “The docks are shot,” Helen sighed, leaning on the railing and looking out on the moon reflected on the sea. “So I don’t know where we can go.”

            “What about the helicopters?”

            “First of all, they’ll be guarded,” she said. “Second, I don’t know about you, but I can’t fly a helicopter.”

             “We should have asked Squidy there for a ride,” Hendricks muttered.

            “I doubt he would have taken us all the way to Key West,” Helen said with a half-smile. “Even if we could have made him understand.”

            “So, what then?” He asked. “We can’t use the main docks, we can’t take the Michelle, we can’t fly out, we can’t ride the Giant Squid, and we can’t use the secret escape boat…”

            He stopped, suddenly. Helen turned to stare at him.

            “My God,” she said quietly. “We’re idiots.”

            “If Prosser doesn’t have the manpower to guard the main docks,” said Hendricks slowly.

            “He definitely can’t guard the secret one under his villa!”

            “Which is the same reason he couldn’t have just sent someone to destroy it; the benefits of getting rid of a possible escape route just wouldn’t be worth the risk of weakening the things he needs to protect!”

            “Heck, he only had a few people guarding his own lab, and he couldn’t even reinforce those when Daisy ate most of them!”

            “Besides which, he probably wouldn’t have expected us to be able to make it that far, since he had concentrated so many of his guards at the exits to the facility!”

            “Which means that that same stupid boat we tried to get to in the first place is probably the only one left!”

            They both were so excited that they burst out laughing and Hendricks actually threw his arms around Helen and hugged her so tightly that he lifted her off her feet.

            “Okay,” he said, a little embarrassed. “So how do we get there?”

            “Back in and up to ground-level,” she said. “Then out the first door we find. Hopefully we’ll meet Ralph and Hogan along the way.”

            “What if we don’t?” Hendricks asked.        

            There was an uncomfortable silence.

            “Well…Ralph’s smart,” she said. “I think he’ll probably be making a move in that direction as well, right?”

            “Yeah…yeah, probably,” said Hendricks, brightening a little at this suggestion. “Okay then; let’s get a move on.”

            The balcony they were standing on was the lowest of a series of three, connected with steep staircases like a fire-escape. Since they needed to go up anyway, they climbed to the highest level before reentering the facility. The staircases were very rickety and didn’t feel at all safe, so that more than once they found themselves questioning this idea, but they made it up in one piece and were soon back in the all-too familiar concrete hallways.  

            “Concrete corridors,” Helen sighed. “If I never see another one in my life, it’ll still be too many.”

            “Look on the bright side,” said Hendricks. “Uh…I really should have thought of a bright side before I said that.”

            Helen laughed.

            “We know where we’re going now,” she offered.

            “Yes, that is a bright side! We have some idea where we’re going!”

            “Don’t knock that; that’s more than we’ve had for the past couple days,” she pointed out.

This was perfectly true, and most likely was the reason for their sudden lightness of spirits. Just having a clear goal in mind, and one which appeared to have a better-than-even likelihood of success, seemed a great victory and made them feel hopeful and excited as they hadn’t felt in days. It was enough to make them forget their aching limbs and blistered feet and soldier on through the corridors, doing their best to maintain their sense of direction, but borne up all the while by the thought that this time, this time they might actually escape.

            And, perhaps, this was the reason that they didn’t immediately recognize the noise coming up from behind him.

            “Hendricks,” Helen said suddenly, stopping him.

            And he heard it too; a sound like rushing water.

            “Python…run!”

            They took off, stumbling slightly on their worn-out legs. The sound of the great snake’s approach grew louder and louder, but they just simply couldn’t run as fast as they had been able to before. Even worse, they had no idea where they were running to.

            “Here!” Hendricks gasped at the first door they came upon. He threw it open and they rush through into what appeared at first glance to be a machinist shop. Slamming the door shut and backing away from it, they struggled to catch their breath.

            “Should have known,” Helen gasped. “It couldn’t possibly be that easy…”

            “Maybe he didn’t see us,” Hendricks offered. “Maybe he was just, you know, heading in this direction and…”

            The door suddenly shook with a powerful impact.

            “Never mind.”

            They backed further into the shop, past workbenches, lockers, and cars lifted up on elevators.

            “Wait a second…”

            They turned around. The room, they saw, was not a small shop, but only a corner of an enormous, almost empty garage. The huge, metal doors leading outside were almost directly across from them, and they were, to their surprise, standing half-open; just enough to admit a good-sized car.

            “Come on,” said Hendricks. “This way…

            They raced across the garage while behind them they heard the shop door (and wall) give way.

            “He’s just…going to follow us,” Helen gasped.

            “We can lose him in the forest,” Hendricks said wildly, more because he needed to have some hope that they would get out than because he actually believed it.

            I mean, he thought. We can’t possibly die now, can we?

            Python’s huge, blunt head came crashing through the shop, scattering tools, workbenches, and cars in his wake. He caught sight of the two flee humans and hissed menacingly.

            But they had almost reached the doors. Another few seconds and they would be out, and then (Hendricks thought) there must be some controls to shut the damn doors, and maybe they could…

            Whether there were or not, he never found out. At that moment the view outside, of the stars framing the dark outline of the trees, was blocked by massive shadow which loomed up and filled the whole space between the doors.

            In an instant, they both recognized it, they both called for the other to look out, and they both leapt aside in opposite directions as Boa charged into the room.

            The eyes of the two snakes met, and for maybe a full second the garage was completely still. Then, as though they had received some signal, they both opened their mouths and shrieked at each other. Acid flew from Python’s fangs and spattered against Boa’s exposed belly, but her double-hard scales withstood the attack. The jealousy and paranoia of her creator had protected her against Python’s primary weapon.

            Boa whipped her tail through the air straight at Python’s head. He ducked just in time and lunged forward. She charged to meet him. They met with a crash that shook the whole garage, their bodies entwining, their jaws snapping viciously at each other, but both sets of teeth foiled by their specially hardened scales.

            Meanwhile, Helen and Hendricks were scrambling to get away from the dueling monstrosities. They were so concerned with this, in fact, that it took them a moment to realize that they were now on opposite sides of the battle. They could catch glimpses of each other through the snarling and wrestling snakes, but neither dared to cross the battlefield.

            Python suddenly seized Boa’s neck in his jaws and slammed her to the floor, cracking it with the impact. Boa responded by slashing her tail across his underside, and the super-hard metal cut through his modified scales as though they were made of paper. Blood dripped from Python and he screamed in pain and fury. She swung again, but he dodged this time, backing away from his opponent.

            For a moment, the battle stalled as each snake, breathing hard, surveyed the other. Python holding his body aloft, bleeding freely from his wound: Boa waving like a snake charmer’s cobra, her tail twitching before her.

            For the first time since the fight had begun, Helen and Hendricks now had a clear view of one another. It’s possible that, if he had started a little sooner, Hendricks might have made it across. As it was, he hesitated for a second before making the attempt.

            Almost the instant he started moving, so did the snakes. Python shot forward and Boa charged to meet him. She stabbed, he dodged, and he spat, aiming for her head. He missed. The acid flew right over her and splattered against the wall, eating a giant chunk out of it.

Hendricks stopped himself just in time as Boa lowered her head and struck Python with the force of a locomotive just where his, Hendricks’s head would have been had he gone a few steps further. As it was, both he and Python were knocked to the floor with the force of the blow.

Hendricks crawled backwards, trying to put distance between himself and then shifting, rolling bodies before him. Meanwhile, Boa bent down and seized Python just below his tail. Swinging around in a great arch, she lifted his whole body off the ground as though he were a whip.

Helen only just managed to get out of the way before Python’s head sailed through the air right where she had been standing. He went on and on as Boa pulled him around in a huge circle until he slammed violently into the wall opposite.

This left Helen and Hendricks still on opposite sides of the room from the snakes, though now Helen was near the door they had come in through and Hendricks had a clear path to the door to the outside.

“Helen!” he called, struggling to raise his voice over the sounds of battle. “Just go! Get out of here! We’ll meet up later!”
            Helen couldn’t understand what he was saying, but she caught glimpses of his frantic signaling and took the hint. She didn’t want to leave him, but she too was beginning to think of not only how dangerous staying there during the battle was, but of what might happen if it ended and they were still in the room.

She nodded as exaggeratedly as she could, prayed that he saw it, and turned and rushed out through the ruined shop.

Meanwhile, they snakes were still fighting. Python had been stunned by the whipping motion and lay struggling on the floor. Boa loomed over him, her tail ready to deliver the final blow. She raised it straight over his body and stabbed down.

Python moved just in time. He twisted his body out of the way and drove upward with his head. He caught Boa off guard right under her own head and slammed it straight into the ceiling, causing giant chunks of concrete and masonry to rain down.

Hendricks ducked and fled for the door. Boa recovered herself in a moment and, seizing Python’s body, bowled him over so that for a moment they looked like two interlocking wheels. They crashed back onto the remains of the shop area, crushing anything that had escaped Python’s charge.

Hendricks reached the door and hesitated. Though he knew he ought to flee, he found he couldn’t resist pausing to watch the rest of the battle. He suspected it wouldn’t last much longer.

Python managed to shake Boa off of himself, and as she backed off, preparing for another attack, he whipped his tail through the ruins of the shop and sent a pile of smashed and torn debris at her.

Boa swept this out of the air with her own tail, but Python himself was right behind it. He caught her near the middle and tried to wrestle his body around hers. He received another deep cut from her tail for this and backed off. Boa came charging at him with both ends. He screamed as her tail drove right through his lower body, pinning it to the floor, and she seized his upper body in her jaws.

Python was now trapped underneath Boa. He twisted and snapped, but she held on grimly, beginning to entwine her body around his.

All of a sudden, Python seemed to flip over the little bit of his body which was still free, so that in an instant he was on top and she was beneath. Boa released him with her jaws and hissed angrily, snapping up at his head. And then, as soon as she opened her mouth, Python spat his acid right down her throat.

There was a horrific gurgling, hissing sound. Boa’s body twitched and convulsed violently, blood and foam bubbling up from her wide open mouth. She flopped over onto her side, still twitching.

Hendricks decided that was he cue to leave. He turned and fled into the night, as Python uncoiled himself and began shrieking his triumph over the limp body of Boa. 

Next Week:
Chapter Twenty-Two: Four Meetings and a Parting

Chapter Twenty-One: The Real Monster

“One felt as if there was an enormous well behind [those eyes], filled up with ages of memory and long, slow, steady thinking; but their surface was sparkling with the present: like sun shimmering on the outer leaves of a vast tree, or on the ripples of a very deep lake.”

-Pippin, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

            “You know,” said Helen. “You brush with death so much you should start making small-talk. You know, ‘hi death, it’s me, Hendricks; just passing through. How’s the family? Still trying to catch Helen?’ That sort of thing.” 

            Hendricks laughed weakly. He was glad she was maintaining her sense of humor.

            “I mean, how many people have ever wrestled with two different sea-monsters and survived?” she went on. “If we get out of this, you’re picking my next lotto number.”

            “Deal,” he said. “Uh, not to get serious again, but we probably should move on just in case that thing finds its way through to here.”

            “Right, lead the way,” she said, nodding in an exaggerated enthusiastic manner.

            “Are you alright?” he asked as they moved along the edge of the tank toward another door.

            “Can you think of any reason why I wouldn’t be alright?” she asked, laughing.

            Hendricks stopped and looked at her.

            “So, that’s a no then?”

            “Yeah,” she said, her smile disappearing. “That’s a no.”

            She was taking very deep, shallow breaths, then, all at once, she buried her face in her hands and began to cry uncontrollably. Hendricks hesitated in shock at the sudden shift in mood, then put a hand on her shoulder. As if it were a trigger, she suddenly threw her arms tightly around him and began sobbing into his chest. Startled, he awkwardly stroked her hair as he let her cry her heart out.

            It took a long time for her to calm down enough to speak again. When she had, though, she stayed where she was, pressed against Hendricks and holding onto him as if she thought she would fall away into nothingness if she let go.

            “I’m sorry,” she managed at last. “I guess I’m making a bit of a fool of myself…”        

            “No,” said Hendricks quickly. “No, it’s natural that you would be upset after all that’s happened.”

            “I’m just so tired,” she said. “So tired of thinking I’m going to die, of expecting to die, and then escaping only to do the whole thing over again. And all the while, I know that it’s only a matter of time before it actually happens, and…”

            “No!” Hendricks snapped. “It’s not! You’re not going to die here.”

            “Of course I am,” she said softly. “I dreamed it. This entire island wants me dead.”

            “That’s enough!” he said roughly. “I don’t care if everyone in the world is trying to kill you, I am not letting that happen, understand? You’re going to get off this island safe and sound and then…whatever you want to do with your life, because you’re going to survive, got it?”

            She didn’t answer right away, but just kept holding onto him and drawing deep breaths.

            “As inspirational speeches go,” she said at last. “I’ve heard better.”

            “Spur of the moment,” he said. “But the point is…”

            “I got the point,” she interrupted. She took one more deep breath and shook her head. “Okay, I’ll…I trust you. But if you’re wrong, I’m going to be very mad at you.”

            “That’s fair,” he said.

            There was a brief pause.

            “Uh, you can…let go of me now,” she said.

            “Right!” he hurriedly took his arms off of her and she straightened.

            “Okay,” she said. “You, uh, were saying something about moving on before I had a small break down?”   

            “Yes! Yes, uh…this way, I think…”

            They moved on, very subdued, picked the nearest door, and went through it into a narrow, metal corridor.

            “By the way, sorry I hit you,” Helen said as they walked. “But, you did promise not to throw your life away…”

            “Well, you know,” said Hendricks awkwardly. “The way I understood it was, that was only if I couldn’t save you and could have gotten away myself. Since Ralph and Hogan were right there, there was a good chance that whichever of us it didn’t get would be safe. I just…thought it’d better be me.”

            “Why you?” she asked a little sharply.

            “Because…well, because I’m the guy for one thing, and everyone knows that it’s better for the guy to die.”

            “That’s stupid!”

            “No, I don’t think so,” said Hendricks. “In any case, it doesn’t feel stupid to me. And I mean, it does seem to be the rule; ‘women and children first’ you know. I think if anyone should be complaining about that, it’d be the men, but I’ve never met one who did. There must be something in the male psyche that finds the whole thing fitting. I’ll have to ask Ralph about it.”

            “Why Ralph?”

            “I don’t know…he’s pretty wise guy. I mean, in the good sense, not the, you know, other sense. He gave me some real good advice last night.”

            “About what?”

            “Er…career advice,” Hendricks muttered. “Anyway, he seems like the guy ask about that sort of thing.”

            “Well, regardless,” said Helen. “I don’t want you exercising your masculine suicidal-heroics complex just for my sake, okay?”

            “If you don’t buy that,” Hendricks said. “There’s also the fact that you’re the one Prosser’s trying to kill because your very existence is a threat to his plans.”

            “Oh, yeah. That,” she muttered.

            “And I mean, if I survive, hey, so what? If you survive, you can help bring his whole scheme down.”

            Helen looked very put out by this and seemed to be marshalling counter arguments.

            “Maybe,” she said. “But look; I don’t think a few dreams are going to mean the difference between victory and defeat, okay? Anyway, that’s not your responsibility…”

            “Yes it is!” He said. “I promised to protect you!”

            “You also promised not to risk getting yourself killed if there was no hope of saving me!” she exclaimed.

            “And I haven’t, have I? We’re both still here.”

            “Yeah, but that’s only by dumb luck! You went within about six inches of getting your head bitten off twice already, when it was just as likely that I’d be next on the menu! You know I don’t want to die, but I also don’t want you to die!”

            “Well, I don’t either!”

            “Look, Hendricks,” she said in a softer voice. “I know I must sound so ungrateful after all you’ve done for me, but…but I just think it would be more ungrateful of me to let you get yourself killed simply for my sake, okay?”

            “I guess…”

            “You promised you weren’t going to do anything suicidal like that again,” she went on. “Now will you please keep that promise from now on?”

            Hendricks looked at her, wanting to argue more, but the expression on her face told him it was useless.

            “I’ll…yeah, okay,” he muttered.  

            “Thank you.”

            They walked on into another holding tank, this one much larger than any of the others.

            “Jeez, how many of these things does Prosser need?” Helen exclaimed, looking around the enormous room.

            “He was planning on making more monsters,” Hendricks pointed out. “These are probably for the next batch or…”

            He stopped suddenly, halfway up the room. This tank wasn’t empty.

            “Back!” He shouted. “Go back…”

            It was too late. As they turned to run, a pair of enormous pink tentacles rose out of the water, wrapped around their waists, and held them both just over the surface of the water.

            They struggled and kicked and screamed, but the tentacles were immoveable. Then they looked down at the monster that held them, and wonder overcame their fear and they stopped struggling.

            It was a giant squid: about a hundred feet long all told, brick-red in color with a light pink underside. But they didn’t immediately notice the size or color. Or rather, they noticed it as background, because what really captured their attention were its eyes. They were the size of car tires, lidless, a brilliant gold in color, but what made them so striking was their age. Hendricks thought he had never really understood the immensity of time until that moment; the endless succession of years piling upon years until you were dizzy with the sheer weight of it. Here, he felt sure, was some relic of an earlier age; perhaps the last of his strange kind, who had lived, unchanging, through untold centuries until it had come, like the light of a distant star caught for an instant in a drop of rainwater, to this moment of regarding them with a kind of mild interest. Even the black pit of its pupil seemed the blackness of a hole, immeasurably deep, which they, mere children, had come to dare to peer into.

            Hendricks knew that he ought to have felt afraid. Yet, somehow, he didn’t. Or at least, the kind of fear he felt was not the kind that he ought to have felt at that moment. It wasn’t the desperate, animal fear of being killed and eaten. It was the silence-inducing eeriness that comes when you visit a very old and very important building, or meet a great man whom you have heard about many times, but had never imagined you would actually stand in the presence of. It was a keen, sudden awareness of how very small, fragile, and clumsy a creature he really was. We are used to using very prosaic and lenient standards for our own self-comparisons. It is quite a shock when we find ourselves confronted with the unmistakably great and venerable; with something that commands our respect in such a way that we could not refuse it even if we dared.

            This creature, the Giant Squid, was something like that. It was so majestic, so ancient, so, in its own way, beautiful that Hendricks found himself reduced to simply gazing upon it in wonder. Neither Prosser nor Nelson nor any other scientist on this island had created this thing; that much was so obvious that it never entered his mind to suppose that they had. Their creatures were grotesques; hideous, bloated monsters that made the skin crawl and the heart falter just to look at. Up until now he had considered this only a side-effect of his fear for his and Helen’s lives, but now Hendricks realized that it was something else; something deeper, more primal in them that had cried out in protest at the sight of those monstrosities.

            Here, on the other hand, was something else entirely. This was the real thing; a genuine, nature-born monster.  It was the difference between the work of a true master and the crude copy of a first-year art student.

            All of this passed through his mind as the squid held him and Helen in its tentacles, regarding them inscrutably. Then, very gently, it raised another one of its tentacles out of the water and touched Helen’s hair with the tip, almost like it was trying to stroke her.

            “Don’t worry,” whispered Hendricks, for Helen looked horribly shaken by this. “I think he likes you.”

            “Why would that make me not worry?” she hissed back.

            The squid took no notice, if, indeed, it could even hear them. It continued to feel her hair with the tip of its tentacle by lifting it up and letting it fall back down over it. It seemed to fascinate the squid, but it was very gentle about it; as gentle as a human hand would have been. Helen, once she got over the initial shock of having her hair played with by a giant squid, actually found the experience rather pleasant, even charming.

            “Um, excuse me,” Hendricks said after a few minutes. “Uh, Mr. Squid? I don’t think you can actually hear or understand me, but, ah, could you maybe put us down now?”

            Helen shot him an amused look as she tried to gently push the squid’s tentacle away from her head. But, to their immense surprise, the squid, after apparently considering for a moment, actually did set them back down on the platform. Whether this was because it had actually understood Hendricks’s question, or simply because it was going to do so anyway he couldn’t tell, but he decided he should act as though it were the former, just in case.

            “Thank you,” he said after a moment’s surprised silence.

            The squid made no answer, but turned over and glided along its tank, waving its tentacles. Hendricks thought for a moment that it had lost interest in them, but then he noticed that it was doing something rather peculiar. It swam all the way to the far end, then turned around and spread its immense tentacles on the side of the tank like a fan. Then, after remaining like that for a moment, it swam back, looked at them with one enormous, ancient eye, then repeated the process.

            “You know,” said Helen. “Call me crazy, but I think he wants to tell us something about that wall. Come on, let’s take a look.”

            Hendricks had reached the same conclusion and followed her. The squid apparently noticed, because he stopped his back-and-forth dance and simply floated alongside them, marking their progress.

            “Hendricks,” said Helen suddenly. “It’s the gate! He wants us to let him out!”

            Hendricks could see this as well. He looked over at her uncertainly.

            “What do you think?” he asked.     

            “I don’t think the poor thing would hurt a fly,” she said. “I bet Prosser locked him up to study his DNA or something nasty like that. Let’s let him go!”

            “It think you’re probably right,” he said. “So how do we open this thing?”

            “There’s gotta be some controls around here somewhere,” she said. 

            They looked around, and sure enough they found a small booth marked ‘Watergate Controls.’ Hendricks tried a few of these until, finally, an alarm sounded and the huge gate began to creak open. 

            “Yes!” Helen exclaimed.

            The squid swam under the still-rising gate, then all of a sudden it swam back.

            “What’s it…”

            It suddenly reached up, wrapped a tentacle around each of them, and whipped them off into the water so fast that the barely had time to cry out in surprise.

            The next second, they were travelling incredibly fast down a dark, underwater tunnel. Water streamed passed them as they bumped along at the end of the enormous squid, which was rocketing down the tunnel with the speed of a torpedo. Helen and Hendricks struggled in its grip, their lungs burning, both asking themselves why they had ever thought they could trust a giant squid…

            But then, before they had quite given themselves up, the tunnel suddenly ended and they were in the dark ocean. The next moment, they had been lifted up out of the water, coughing and gasping for breath, and set on a narrow balcony built into the side of the cliff.

            “Well…” gasped Hendricks as soon as he had wind enough to speak. “I guess that saved us a step.”

            The squid reached out and stroked Helen’s hair one last time. Then it waved (and they couldn’t help waving back), and vanished beneath the water.

            “You know,” said Helen after a long silence. “I had just assumed that the only way you could get monsters was for someone like Prosser to make them. That there weren’t any real monsters, but just some things that someone had come up with in a laboratory.”

            She smiled unexpectedly; a real, genuine smile.

            “I’m glad that I was wrong.”

            

Next Week:

Chapter Twenty-Two: Boa vs. Python

Chapter Twenty: In the Docks

“You must not abandon the ship in a storm because you cannot control the winds. What you cannot turn to good, you must at least make as little bad as you can.”

-St. Thomas More, Utopia

            Ralph woke them all after a few hours. When they had shared a little food (Ralph and Hogan had done a little scrounging during their journey), they discussed what to do.

            “Obviously,” said Ralph. “The first thing to do is to get to the docks as soon as possible so that we – and especially Ms. Marshall – can get off this island.”

            “Do we know how to get there from here?” Helen asked.          

            “Of course!” said Ralph. “They’re not far. The trouble is, Prosser will certainly expect us to move in that direction, and it’s only too likely that we will encounter Mr. Simon or Mr. Wainwright or Ms. Orlich along our way.”

            “And…what do we do then?”

            “Improvise!” said Ralph cheerfully. “The same thing we’ve all been doing for the past few days!”

            “Do you really not have anything better?” Helen asked.

            “Well, if you can come up with a superior plan to deal with enemies who apparently cannot be killed, with the resources we have available, I would certainly be the first to say let’s hear it! If not, then, no I don’t believe we do have anything better.”

            The others thought about it, but they couldn’t come up with anything.

            “Then it’s settled,” said Ralph. “Now for the final race! All together, and God be with us all!”

            So they set out from the Blue Room (Helen felt a wonderful sense of relief in leaving that almost made her forget her fears), down a long, dark hallway (most of the lights seemed to have failed by now), turned right at a junction, and continued down another corridor.

            “Hey, Ralph,” said Hendricks suddenly. “You, uh, you seem to know your way around this place.”

            “I have a good head for directions,” Ralph said cheerily.

            “Yeah, but…have you been here before?”

            Ralph kept moving, but he didn’t answer the question right away.

            “As a matter of fact,” he said after a while. “I have. Though, the circumstances were such that I’d rather not say anything more about them. At least, not until after we’ve escaped. Surely you understand.”

            Hendricks thought he had some idea of why Ralph wouldn’t want to talk about it.  

            “Are you…one of them?” Helen asked, slowly.

            “One of whom?”

            “The, you know, Enhanced People?”

            Ralph laughed his booming laugh.

            “No! Not at all!” he said. “Neither Prosser nor any other of his butchers have done anything at all to me! Hah! As if they could! No, no, perish the thought, my friends!”      

            The very idea seemed to strike him as extremely funny, for he kept laughing for a long time, his deep, rolling laughter echoing all up and down the corridors. They would have asked him to be quiet, reminding him that they were trying to avoid detection and that there might be God-knows-what lurking around the next corner, but his laugh was so infectious that they found they couldn’t help laughing along with him, despite the fact that they didn’t even know what the joke was. 

            “We…really shouldn’t be doing this…” Helen gasped.

            “You’re probably right,” Hendricks said, forcing himself back into seriousness. “What, uh, what are we even laughing about?”

            “Oh, I’ll explain the joke later,” said Ralph, still chuckling. “And of course, it shall be ruined you’ll still wonder why you laughed. So, really, you might as well just let it remain a mystery.”

            No one quite knew what to say to this, so they continued on in silence for a while, feeling the unease of those who have indulged in some pleasure while duty still called.

            The harbor, it transpired, was set in a wide, half-moon-shaped bay, partially covered with a high concrete overhang. Piers and docks crisscrossed almost the whole bay, with at least a dozen speedboats, barges, and even a couple small yachts tied up to them. Around the outer edge of the harbor was a huge seawall with a single, heavy metal gate set right in the center

            And the gate was closed.

            “Uh…” Hendricks said, pointing.

            “Yes, that is a problem,” said Ralph. “But perhaps if we can get out to it, we might be able to open it again. At the very least, we ought to try.”

            They stepped out onto the docks. The creak of the wood beneath their feet sounded somehow ominous and foreboding in the stillness of the harbor.

            “Which one do we take?” Helen asked in a whisper.

            “Whichever one we can get to first,” Hogan answered.

            This, it turned out, was a small, white speedboat tied up only a few rows down from the door they had entered. They hurried down the dock towards it, keeping their eyes peeled for any sign of pursuit or ambush. But no one appeared, and no one stopped them.

            “That’s odd,” said Hogan. “I really thought someone would be here…”

            “Maybe we just lucky?” Helen suggested. “I mean, we’re kinda overdue, don’t you think?”

            Ralph didn’t answer, but was looking around with a troubled expression, as though he thought he must have missed something.

            Hendricks reached the boat first and leapt down into it. A second after he landed, something struck it violently from under the water, knocking him off his feet.  

            “Hendricks!” Helen shrieked.

            As Hendricks scrambled to right himself, the boat was struck again, harder this time. So hard, in fact, that it lifted partway out of the water. Hendricks fell backwards with a cry that was cut short as he hit the warm salt water.

            The others were yelling, but he couldn’t tell what they were saying. He floundered, tried to get his bearings, and struck out for the dock. As he swam, he saw a large, dark shape moving through the water in front of him. A shape that was horribly familiar…

            He reached up to the docks. Ralph seized his hand and lifted him out as easily as if he were a child.

            “What happened?”

            “Go!” Hendricks gasped, grabbing Helen’s hand the moment his feet touched the wood and pulling her back towards shore. “Get off the docks!”

            “What…” Helen began.         

            “It’s them! The sh…”

            But another second rendered any explanations superfluous. An enormous shark rose out of the water to their left, spread a pair of hang-glider-sized wings, and flew straight at the four of them, its jaws wide.

            “EVERYBODY DUCK!” Hogan roared, but it was hardly necessary. All four of them dropped to the deck and the great fish soared over them, bending its head down to try to snap Hendricks up, before folding its wings and diving back under the water.

            “What the hell are they doing here?!” Helen gasped after they had taken shelter on the shoreline.

            “Well,” said Ralph quietly. “That’s unfortunate.”  

            “What?” the others asked sharply.

            “It seems that Dr. Prosser has made very good use of his resources,” said Ralph. “Rather than wasting any of his people here, he simply shut the gate and…flushed the last two sharks in.”

            “So what do we do?”

            “Well, unless you would prefer to try an alternate means of escape,” said Ralph. “We simply need to acquire a larger vessel. One that they would be unable to overturn.”

            “That yacht,” said Hogan, nodding at the smaller of the two that were tied up on the other side of the bay. “I doubt they’d be able to knock that one over.”

            “Very well,” said Ralph. “Unfortunately, though, I don’t think we’ll be able to cover much of the journey from shore; we’ll have to venture back out onto the docks. Are you entirely sure you want to risk it.”

            “Yes,” said Helen firmly. “At least I am. I’m ready to get off this damn island.”

            “Yeah, me too,” said Hendricks. Hogan nodded, hefting his rifle.

            “Excellent!” said Ralph. “Then let us go forward boldly and trust to providence for our security!”

            Still working out what this meant, the others took deep breaths and rushed out onto the docks. The sharks weren’t long in attacking. From far out in the harbor, they each sprang into the air, spread their wings, and soared in matching arcs to the four companions. Hogan fired at them, causing one of the sharks to fold its wings and dive back into the water, but the other, despite its wounds, flew on.

            “Duck!”

            Everyone dropped to the deck as the shark flew over them, snapping at their heads, but too high to reach. It re-entered the water with a splash that soaked them all.

            “Now!”

            Ralph and Hogan were up in an instant. Helen and Hendricks were still stumbling to their feet when the dock lurched violently beneath their feet. The next minute, the whole structure collapsed.

             Hendricks plunged into the warm water, bumping painfully against Helen and the pieces of pier as he scrambled to the surface. Looking around, he saw that a twenty-foot section of dock had been torn completely away. Ralph and Hogan were already swimming for the next section of the pier, but it looked miles away.

            “Come on!” he called, and he and Helen struck out after them as fast as they could go.

            But the sharks could swim much faster, and one of them was already behind them, its dorsal fin streaking through water like a knife.

            Hendricks looked back; the shark was closing in. They would never escape…

            Without thinking, he grabbed Helen and pushed her in front of himself, so that he was between her and the shark. She made some sound of protest, but swallowed a lot of salt water before she could get any words out. Hendricks looked back, saw the great jaws open wide…

            Then, suddenly, the shark stopped dead a foot from his face. For a brief moment it was thrashing and snapping right in front of him, as though it were battling some invisible foe, and the next thing he knew, it had been jerked backwards into the water and out of sight.

            “What the…” he gasped.      

            “Come on!” They both turned back and swam as fast as they could toward Hogan and Ralph’s outstretched hands.

            “What happened?” Hogan asked as they pulled them up.

            “No idea…” Hendricks began, but Helen cut him off by hitting him hard across the face.

            “You bastard!” she snapped. “Don’t ever, ever do anything like that again!”    

            “No violence, if you please!” said Ralph, catching her as she made to swing again. “There’s plenty of that going on without us turning on each other!”

            “You promised!” Helen said, trying to shake her hands out of Ralph’s grip.

            “Oh, yeah,” said Hendricks. “Well…”           

            “Worry about it later!” Hogan snapped. “We have to move before either that thing or its friend comes back.”

            Helen glared at him, but they hurried along behind the others as they raced towards the yacht.

            “What about the gate?” Hendricks asked as they all climbed onboard.

            “We can try to open it when we get closer,” Hogan said. “Worst comes to worst, you can use your grenade to blow the damn thing off its hinges!”

            Hendricks untied them and they all raced into the cabin. Hogan seized the controls and the boat began to move slowly away from the dock. Something bumped hard up against the hull, but the boat only shook a little and continued to move.

            “Hah!” gasped Helen, sinking onto one of the seats. “I don’t care how big those sharks are; they can’t stop this thing!”

            And, very likely, the sharks couldn’t. But just as she finished saying this, four enormous, black tentacles, each as thick as a young tree, rose up out of the water and tore through the cabin.

            They all screamed and ducked while the tentacles ripped trough the windows and the walls, thrashing about, trying to find someone or something to grab a hold of. One seized the wheel and pulled it off like the lid of a soda-bottle. Another ripped the railing right off the deck, while a third simply began seizing bits of the deck itself and tearing up the boards.

            “The Octodile…” Helen muttered, gazing in awed terror at the tentacles.

            “Abandon ship!” Hendricks shouted, and seizing Helen’s hand he rose up to a crouching position and stumbled for the door. Ralph and Hogan were just ahead of him, while two of the tentacles were ripping off the roof.

            They reached the deck. Ralph, showing superb balance, sprang onto the dock, which was still only about six feet away. Hogan leapt after him, nearly missed, caught his outstretched hand, and was pulled up after him. Hendricks was just about to jump, when the boat suddenly lurched sideways, tipping him back, away from his friends. He and Helen both fell off their feet, seizing edges of the deck to stop themselves form being dumped into the water.

            Then, they both watched in horror as the massive, dark shape of the Octodile – seemingly swollen to nightmarish proportions since they had seen it last – lifted itself out of the water and onto the rapidly-floundering boat with a low growl. It’s ugly, blunt snout was turned towards them, its green, silted eyes narrowed in malevolent glee as it contemplated its meal…

            Then a series of loud barks announced that Hogan had fired upon it. The monster roared and with alarming speed dove off of the side of the boat towards the docks.

            “Run for it!” Ralph shouted, pushing Hogan away back toward the shore. “You two too! We’ll meet up later!”

            Hendricks nodded, more out of habit than because he thought Ralph could see him, and calling to Helen jumped over the side and began swimming as hard as he could to the next dock. Behind them they could hear a confused mix of the roars of the Octodile, mixed in with the barks of Hogan’s rifle and a number of shouts and the snapping of wooden planks. 

            Hendricks reached the dock, pulled himself up, and turned to help Helen up as well. The Octodile, he now saw, was ripping the previous dock to pieces in what seemed an almost methodical fashion. Ralph and Hogan had already retreated back up the pier and were navigating the gaps that the sharks had torn in them. Having apparently given up on these potential victims, the Octodile suddenly turned its huge head back towards Helen and Hendricks.

            There was maybe a split second that they were too terrified to move. Then, as the monster heaved its massive body back into the water, Helen and Hendricks found themselves on their feet and running as fast as their tired legs could carry them down the dock, though where to from there, they didn’t know.

            The pier swayed and shook ominously under their feet as the Octodile swept a part of it aside with a wave of one of its tentacles. They both stumbled and lost their footing for the moment, and as they did so a Flying Shark burst from the water in front of them and soared in their direction, jaws agape. They ducked, and the shark flew on. As it flew over the Octodile, the enormous tentacles whipped up through the air as though trying to snag the shark right out of the sky. The fish banked right just in time, flew on for a short ways, and then dove back under the water.

            “Oh, why doesn’t it just eat them instead of chasing us!?” Helen snapped as they stumbled back up to their feet. “I mean, they’re more of an actual meal; we’re practically appetizers to that thing!” 

            For whatever reasons, though the Octodile had decided to continue to pursue them rather than to try to chase down the sharks. Having paused briefly trying to catch its airborne prey, it once again directed its attention to the two humans struggling down the docks.

            “Where are we even going?” Helen gasped as the Octodile smashed another section of dock and capsized a small barge that was in its way.

            “I don’t…THERE!” Hendricks pointed. Another door leading back into the facility had just come into view as they rounded the curve in the shoreline. But it was still a good distance away.

            “Just…just keep going,” he added, as they both considered the distance to the door compared to their rapidly increasing proximity to the Octodile.

            So they kept going, stumbling and sliding on the wet, shaking docks as the monster bore down on them. As it drew closer, its front tentacles reached forward, feeling along the docks right behind them, picking up and discarding boxes, nets, bits of equipment, and anything else they happened to find as they crept closer and closer…

            One of the tentacles made a grab at Hendricks’s foot, and he jumped out of its grip just in time. The other grabbed at Helen’s ankle…and she didn’t.

            Helen fell forward, scrapping her hands on the planks. A second after she landed, the Octodile began to pull her back, screaming, towards its waiting jaws.  Hendricks skidded to a halt and turned back to help, made a dive for her outstretched hands, missed, threw himself forward again, and caught her.

            Now they both were being dragged back along the dock, while the Octodile pulled itself closer. Hendricks tried to brace himself with his heels, but he still was dragged along, and Helen’s wet hands were slipping from his grasp.

            She was over the side of the dock now, her feet dangling in the water, her face, which he couldn’t help looking straight into, was terrified, her wide eyes pleading with him to hold on. Hendricks braced his feet against an iron cleat, and for a moment they stopped. But he couldn’t pull her out of the beast’s grip, and as he felt her hands slipping out of his, and he realized that there was no hope; he couldn’t hold her like this. He had to try something else.

            “Here,” he gasped, pulling her hands over the cleat. “Hold onto this!”

            “What? No! Don’t let me go!” she pleaded.

            “I’m not,” he said, hardly knowing what he was saying. “I just…I need to try something else! Trust me!”

            Helen looked at him, desperately, and nodded. She grabbed onto the cleat, and Hendricks, with a painful wrench to his heart, let go. He ran along the pier and turned a corner as more tentacles shot out of the water towards her. The Octodile was closing in.

            “HENDRICKS!” Helen screamed as another tentacle wrapped around her waist.

            Hendricks chose his position, hesitated for a split second, and jumped onto the Octodile’s back. He skidded on the wet scales and nearly slid off onto the other side, but he managed to throw an around its thick neck and squeezed as tightly as he could.

            The Octodile roared in fury. Hendricks just had time to see it release Helen before he found himself dunked under the water as it rolled over. He came up again, sputtering, and went down again almost before he could take a breath. Again and again he spun over, while the black tentacles swirled through the air and water like a giant pinwheel, smashing bits of the dock like a lawnmower.

            Suddenly, the Octodile stopped spinning and made a violent twisting motion as it tried to find something to bite. Hendricks tightened his grip and began to wonder how on Earth he was going to get off.

            “Oh, God!” he exclaimed to no one in particular. “This was really stupid!”

            The Octodile roared again and thrashed about as Hendricks held on for dear life. Then, all of a sudden, a thick, black tentacle found him and wrapped itself around his stomach. Before Hendricks knew what was happening, he had been pulled off the Octodile’s back and was soaring through the air before being dunked hard into the water.

            The tentacle released him, and he began to struggle upwards, towards the surface.

            “Hendricks!” Helen called as he broke the surface. She was standing at the edge of the pier, only a few yards away, reaching out to him.  “Give me your hand!”     

            He swam towards her, reaching for her outstretched arm. But before he could go more than a few strokes, he felt three tentacles seize him all at once; one around his legs, another around his waist, the third about his neck. He gave a gasp of terror, then was pulled helplessly back through the water.

            Hendricks knew it was hopeless; that there was nothing he could do, but he still struggled and tugged at the immoveable tentacle about his throat. He could see the Octodile approaching through the water, its massive jaws open, ready to swallow him whole.

            Hendricks watched his death approach with a strange serenity. He was aware that he was terrified, but in a detached, almost clinical way. It didn’t seem to matter anymore, really…

            Suddenly, the massive jaws snapped shut, but not on him. The Octodile seemed to go into convulsions of fury, and Hendricks felt the tentacle release him. Then he saw why; a long boat hook had been thrust down through its upper jaw.

            Hendricks scrambled to the surface, gasping for breath. Immediately behind him, the water was boiling with the Octodile’s wrath. The deck was splintering as the tentacles tore through it  , but Helen stayed on one nearby pier, looking very white, but holding out her hand for him. Hendricks swam for it as fast as he could, but as he looked up to reach it…

            “LOOK OUT!”

            Helen looked and ducked just in time to avoid the flying shark as it soared over her, made an unsuccessful snap with its jaws, continued over Hendricks, and finally crashed into the water right on top of the Octodile. There was terrible roar as the two beasts attacked each other, but Hendricks didn’t look back. Helen was back at the dock’s edge in an instant, grabbed his hand, and pulled him up out of the water.

            A single glance told them that there was no longer any question of getting out this way. Almost all the boats were gone, and the ones that were left were out of reach beyond the open water where the two sea-monsters battled. Besides which, the water gates were still shut.

            “Come on,” Hendricks gasped. “Back inside! Quick!”

            They staggered back along the dock and through the door back into the facility. Before he shut it, Hendricks had a brief image of the flying shark being lifted, writhing and thrashing, out of the water, wrapped tightly in four massive tentacles. 

            He slammed the door, and they hurried through the dry dock and on to what must have been a holding tank on the other side, but this one mercifully empty.

“Thanks,” Hendricks gasped. “That was you who stabbed it, right?”

            Helen nodded, still trying to catch her breath.

            “That was…a lot smarter than jumping on it,” he added.

            She gave what was either a sob or a chuckle in answer.

            “By the way, Hendricks?” she managed after another second.

            “What?”

            “I think you’re officially not a coward anymore,” she said with a weak smile.

Next Week:
Chapter Twenty-One: The Real Monster