“Quiet. I think they must have all been up here.”
“Christian, can you walk?”
He nodded weakly and then struggled to his feet. He stumbled towards me, but Ducky caught him.
“Easy, dawg. I got you.”
“K-Kevin,” Christian stammered, “where’s Louis?”
I opened my mouth, closed it, and shook my head. Christian began to sob.
“Let’s get out of here,” Juan said quietly.
I pulled him aside while Ducky helped Christian limp towards the stairs.
“What’s up?” Juan asked.
“I figured you should know. There was—something in the water.”
“What kind of a something? Another mermaid?”
“No. I’m not sure what it was. All I saw was a weird green light. And tentacles. Big fucking tentacles. Some of them were the size of tree trunks.”
He stared at me and I knew he believed me. At that same moment, the blazing fire suddenly went out. The roof was pitched into darkness.
“Shit,” he said. “We’d better get going.”
I stumbled as we walked towards the door. I glanced down and saw that I had tripped over the book. Pausing, I knelt down to examine it. The soggy pages were ruined now, unreadable. I wondered if that had something to do with the fire going out.
We entered the dark stairwell.
“What was the priest babbling about?” I asked as we ran down the stairs. “He said they started the rains?”
Taz swept the hallway with his rifle, but it was clear. “They said all kinds of shit. Talking loud and saying nothing.”
“Keep moving,” Juan said.
Instead of continuing the discussion, I concentrated on conserving my breath.
We made it back to the raft, and untied it as quickly as we could. We pushed off, with Ducky and I rowing again. The night was strangely quiet, except for Christian’s stifled cries.
I reached out and touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry about Louis.”
“Thanks, Kevin. I mean that. Did he—did he suffer? Was it over quick?”
I thought about Louis’s eyes as the tentacle pulled him down into that weird ball of light.
“No,” I lied. “It was over quick. He never felt a thing.”
Christian smiled sadly. “After all we’ve been through together, I just can’t believe—”
Something jumped out of the water in front of us. A dolphin. It chattered in alarm and then plunged back into the water.
Taz leaned forward. “What the hell was that all about? I thought they were supposed to be friendly and shit.”
The ocean suddenly came to life around us. Massive schools of fish plowed through the waves. More frenzied dolphins leapt from the water. In the distance, I spied the black hump of a whale. A flock of seagulls wheeled overhead, screeching in what sounded like fear.
All of them were hurrying away from the area.
“What the fuck’s this shit?” Ducky shouted. “The fucking fish gonna attack us now?”
“Something’s spooked them.” Juan pointed his rifle at the surface. “They’re fleeing from something. Row faster!”
We did. He didn’t need to tell me. I thrust that makeshift paddle into the water like a knife through butter. My heart raced in my chest.
“Animals can predict earthquakes,” Christian pointed out. “Does the same go for fish?”
A triangular fin broke the surface just a few feet away, and I saw the gray, sleek body of a shark beneath it. Taz drew a bead on the shark, but Juan pushed the rifle barrel down.
“Don’t shoot.”
“It’s a fucking shark, Juan! You seen Jaws?”
“It’s not after us. See? It’s swimming away, too. Leaving the area.”
We were about halfway back when we heard a great, sonorous bellow—part whale, part subway train—deep and powerful and extremely pissed off, by the sound.
Ducky jumped, and almost dropped his oar. “What the fuck was that?”
“Look!” Christian pointed back the way we’d come.
At first, I didn’t understand what I was looking at. The Trade Center building was barely visible, its walls engulfed in a quivering, snaking mass of shadows. Then I realized that the shadows were tentacles. There were hundreds of them, covering the walls and the roof. I followed them down to the ocean’s surface, and I screamed.
A great, bulbous head emerged from the water, the size of a hot air balloon. In fact, that’s what it reminded me of—a rubber, obsidian balloon—like what you’d see in a Halloween parade. Even from a distance, I could see its huge, teardrop-shaped eyes, glaring at us with a clearly malevolent intelligence.
“Row!” Juan shouted again. It sounded like something inside his throat ripped.
A loud, explosive crash rumbled behind us as the creature began to tear the building apart. Powerful limbs squeezed, cracking the concrete. They coiled around the steel girders, twisting and bending them with monstrous strength.
A corner edge of the building splashed into the water, sending a massive wave surging towards us. It rocked our makeshift raft, threatening to capsize us. We held on, clinging for support. Wave after wave crashed into us, and then the waters subsided again.
Ducky and I rowed as fast as we could. My arms ached by the time we arrived back at our building. The rest of the group stood on the roof, watching in horror as the entire Trade Center crashed into the ocean. Lee tied us off securely and we scrambled off the raft.
We quickly filled the others in on everything that had transpired over at the Trade Center—the graffiti, the Satanists and that weird spell book, the fight, and Louis’s death. They’d been watching through the telescope, but the thickening fog obscured much of the battle and they still had questions.
“What the hell is that thing?” Mike shouted.
“Apparently,” Juan gasped, trying to catch his breath, “according to the cultists, it’s the husband of that mermaid we killed earlier.”
“They called it Leviathan,” I said.
“Leviathan?” Anna asked. “You mean like in the Bible? The thing that swallowed Jonah?”
“It’s a Kraken,” Salty said. “I tried to tell you, but nobody believed me.”
“Don’t start with that shit again,” Sarah snapped. “Not now. That’s the last thing we need.”
Lashawn hugged Ducky and Taz both. Sarah draped a blanket over Christian’s shoulders, but it was as wet as everything else, and I doubt it provided him much comfort. Lori ran to me and I hugged her tight, our wet bodies shivering against each other as we watched the destruction. Danielle, James, and Malik cowered against Anna. Danielle began to cry, and a moment later, the boys joined her.
The squid creature’s rage echoed across the ocean like thunder. It heaved itself forward and then sank beneath the waves, sending a plume of water thirty feet into the air.
“What’s it doing now?” Lashawn asked.
“I think,” Juan said, “that it’s coming for us.”
He was right.
CHAPTER TEN
Believe it or not, for some strange reason, we didn’t run or panic. Maybe we couldn’t. It was as if we were all suddenly paralyzed. We stood transfixed, fear rooting our feet to the roof as the creature approached our building. Its sleek, black body surfaced again, cutting through the waves, and then submerged. Part of it looked like a squid and part of it looked like a giant snake. I caught a glimpse of an appendage resembling a big, membranous wing, but the spray concealed it before I could verify that’s what it was.
The storm intensified. The raindrops stung our exposed flesh, splattering against our faces like bugs on a windshield. Thunder grumbled overhead and blue flashes of lightning seared the weeping sky, turning night to day. The waves crashed against the building, their size and intensity increasing the closer the monster came.