The Miskatonic Manuscript (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens Book 2) (31 page)

“Just what it looks like,” Matthew replied, as they all watched the gray triangular fin slicing the water off to starboard. The fin was as tall as Skeezix, if Skeezix had wanted to stand up, which he most certainly did not. “Shark.”

“Shark?” Skeezix asked. “It looks like a submarine. And what’s that thing following behind it, moving back and forth?”

“That’s its tail,” Matthew replied.

“Its tail?”

That meant the shark was about twice the length of their 12-foot canoes.

“But it eats, like, plankton, right?” asked Skeezix, a bit nervously.

“It eats whatever it wants,” Matthew replied. “But it’s a deep-water critter, by nature. The only reason it would be drawn into waters this shallow would be for a nice luncheon buffet of something the right size.”

“Great white?” Chantal asked, in a voice that would have seemed surprisingly calm, if it were anyone but Chantal.

“Maybe. It’s a little small for a megalodon. They could go 50 or 60 feet.”

The paddlers, still pushing their shoulders into it to maintain as much speed as possible, grimly gave the creature its name in Pthang.

“Tooth,” Skeezix translated. “They’re calling it ‘Big Tooth.’”

“In Greek, Megalodon,” Matthew said.

The torpedo-like gray form seemed to be having no trouble matching their speed, the side-to-side motion of its forceful tail enabling it to cruise along just below the surface some thirty yards to the right of the starboard canoe — the one in which Skeezix rode.

It was a stout, beefy creature, weighing many tons. Skeezix was right — it raised its own bow wave, like a submarine running just below the surface.

“That’s why you were worried about the seals,” Chantal said.

“Everybody has to eat something, and big sharks love seals. I believe that may be the ‘sea monster off Hope Island’ we’ve all been hearing so much about. Though in our case, I’m afraid it’s more than just a ghostly apparition.”

“I’m afraid you may not have long to remind me about my previous enthusiasm for the variety of nature’s bounty.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, babe.”

Chantal had calmly unfastened the lid of her aluminum case. She now started methodically assembling her .50-cal.

“I hate to see you put that thing to your shoulder again,” Matthew said.

“And I hate to see that thing bite one of these canoes in half,” she replied.

The dolphins had disappeared. Now, higher in the sky, three good-sized leather-winged pterodactyls were circling, gradually giving up altitude as they descended for a closer look at the developing chase. They looked to be about the size of single-man gliders.

“I don’t suppose those buzzards eat shark?” Skeezix asked.

“More likely they’re hoping to pick up some nice scraps that our new friend leaves behind,” Matthew replied.

The four Pthang were puffing, wasting no breath on talk but still driving directly for the point as fast as they could,

Now the shark dived, crossing beneath both canoes and then back again, actually brushing against the canoe that carried Skeezix as it came back toward the surface.

“What’s he doing?” Skeezix asked, none too calm, grasping both sides of the craft with whitened knuckles as it rocked from side to side.

“Checking to see if the canoes will bite back.”

“Which we will,” Chantal said, slamming her magazine home into her shoulder weapon. “If anything happens to me, dear, I’m sure you know how to work the bolt on this thing. Just get your body as low as you can, so the recoil doesn’t spill the canoe or throw you overboard. She do kick a bit.”

As she talked she slid her hips down till she was almost flat on her side in the canoe bottom, just her head and the rifle above the level of the gunwale, looking for a chance to get in a head shot should the massive beast draw away and then swing in on a more perpendicular course to sink its teeth into its birch-bark prey.

They were less than a quarter-mile from the point, now. The paddlers’ breathing was growing more ragged. The length of four football fields, now three football fields. The beast couldn’t swim in water as shallow as the canoe could handle. If only they could close the point.

Sure enough, the big creature angled away from them now, then turned and began accelerating back toward them, at an angle that would allow it to sink its teeth into the middle of the nearest craft. Skeezix, reluctant to scamper around and upset the craft’s balance even if he was currently cast in the role of banana in today’s banana split, just stared at the monster coming toward him. It raised its head partly out of the water now, the head alone as big as a double-door refrigerator, throwing a much bigger bow wave than the canoes. Scenes you saw in movies couldn’t possibly prepare you for the shock of the sheer size of the thing — a monster out of the half-remembered nightmares of the race. If one of those things ever got ahold of you, kicking and yelling were going to be about as useful as a cockroach turning to fight a shoe.

Chantal tried to line up her shot, though the canoe Skeezix was in — the target of the attack — was actually between her and the beast, both the canoe and its sail providing the attacker with a partial screen.

And even if she hit the thing, its momentum would probably still bring it, thrashing, into the starboard canoe with enough force to do structural damage, not to mention making it hard for the three occupants to stay aboard. Where the hell was the brain in that thing? Right behind the eyes, presumably. She braced the barrel against the gunwale, sighted on the left eye, which was now rolling back for protection, making the giant fish appear blind. “Skeezix, get down, down, down! I do not want to see your head creeping into my sight picture!”

Skeezix complied, with alacrity.

She slid her finger into the trigger guard … steady …

And then something else came out of the water beside the starboard canoe and hit the advancing shark in the side, just behind the head, with a loud splat that turned into a resounding thud.

The marine behemoth shook, giving up some of its speed. It turned, flipping its head completely out of the water, a head that towered six feet in the air, showing a mouthful of triangular white teeth in rows, probably only seven or eight inches long though they looked twice that size, trying to snap its jaws on its small attacker. It was close enough to the starboard canoe that Skeezix and both paddlers caught faces full of spray. But the five-foot dolphin was gone, sounding for the depths.

Wait. The first little mammal might be gone, but now a second came in like a torpedo from the opposite direction, off the bow of the starboard canoe, leaping at the last moment, then lowering its nose to slam into the gills on the huge shark’s right flank with its bulbous, insulated forehead. Hitting the sensitive gills interrupted the giant fish’s breathing.

The monster was confused. The canoes were starting to pull away. It shook itself to splash more water over its gills and turned to close
the canoes again, from behind. Which is when the third dolphin hit its gills, this time on the left side, again.

And here came the first little five-foot mammal once more, leaping from the water right behind the third, smashing its own forehead into the same sensitive gills at full speed, threatening to rupture the capillaries and cut off half the big beast’s oxygen supply.

The shark, thrashing first one way and then the other, was unable to turn fast enough to catch any of its bite-sized tormenters. And it had not lived this long by staying in the game when the odds turned. For now, it had had enough. Bending its body into a wide 180-degree turn, it dove to the southeast, sounding for the deeper water of the channel, and the island full of tasty seals beyond.

And now all aboard the two canoes let out a ragged cheer as they saw rocky bottom seven feet down and rising as their momentum threatened to beach them on the welcome sand and gravel of Warwick Point. The two stern men dipped their paddles, using them as rudders, elegantly turning the craft so they would just skirt the rocks of the point itself. Overhead, the three angular leather pterodactyls flapped for altitude and drew away, disappointed in their hopes for a meal of easy scraps. Eighty yards out, the three dolphins performed little surface-breaking victory leaps before turning east, as well.

The paddlers took it slow for a bit, passing their water skins and panting to make up their oxygen deficit, though there were smiles all around, and vows of friendship to the dolphin god.

* * *

The Pthang were preparing to unstep their masts and furl their sails, but Chantal through hand gestures convinced them to leave the sails up and try letting their booms out 45 degrees to starboard. The reed-mats didn’t belly out as smoothly as nice triangles of woven hemp, but with a little trial and error they got enough of a vacuum forming ahead of the wind-curved sails to build some headway, even heading due north with the westerly wind to port. The teen-age paddlers shrugged and nodded to each other; it would help.

They stayed close inshore now, heading almost due north, past Rocky Point and then Conimicut Point, where the bay finally started to narrow into a recognizable river channel. If this had been Earth One they’d be looking for the upscale yacht harbor of suburban Barrington across the way, though of course the shores of the Bay here looked as unsettled as something out of James Fenimore Cooper. Now Gaspee Point, which had been Namquid Point till the British revenue cutter Gaspee had run aground there in June of 1772, while in pursuit of the little packet Hannah. The Sons of Liberty — led by Abraham Whipple, South Main Street tavernkeeper Joseph Bucklin, and John Brown himself — had then proceeded to row out and burn her to the waterline. Threats to try the culprits in London led to the establishment of the first American Committees of Correspondence, and every schoolchild knew where that led — at least in the historical continuum in which Matthew and Chantal had grown up.

Less than five miles to go to the place where the city of Providence should be but, of course, wouldn’t be. It was past midday and the paddlers wouldn’t be able to stop for much of a lunch before turning back if they wanted to beat the sunset, though the long August evening would presumably help. Just Fields Point ahead, now, where the river would narrow to less than half a mile in width, marking the beginning of what the visitors from Earth One thought of as Providence Harbor.

And then one of the bow paddlers pointed and gave a cry. The others strained to see, but soon everyone but Matthew — possessor of the oldest eyes in the company — could make it out.

“A man waving on the beach,” Chantal confirmed. “They seem to recognize him, he’s certainly dressed like a Pthang.”

“Meaning he’s wearing pretty much nothing?”

“Exactly. There are others with him, too, working their way down out of the bushes to the beach. The way they’re moving, I’d say at least one, maybe two of them are injured.”

“The missing hunting party,” Matthew nodded.

Sure enough, once the two canoes were pulled up on the rocky shore the situation became clear. Avoiding both arachnids on the prowl and thundering saurians larger than they cared to tackle, the four hunters had been driven much further north than they originally planned, till they decided their best course was to lay up near the beach where they could tend the wounds of their two injured comrades while keeping an eye out for precisely what they’d now spotted — the Godsend of an unscheduled canoe from home.

They had some meat — like most subsistence hunters, they’d been able to saw off and carry along only the choice cuts, which usually meant the legs. These were a couple days old and already drawing flies; the visitors tried not to cringe too noticeably at the already ripening smell of what these men obviously considered to be the fruits of a successful if danger-filled expedition. Turok and Old Henry had explained that surplus meat — like that from the tyrannosaur Chantal had killed in battle as well as the mate she’d dropped in the clearing when she first arrived — would be sliced and hung on racks to dry into jerky, providing food for lean months to come.

Once the newcomers’ presence had been explained, Chantal and Matthew went to work using up the meager remainder of her First Aid supplies dealing with the injuries of the two hunters who had gotten the worst of their encounters with the thunder lizards. The Pthang already understood setting and splinting broken limbs, fortunately, and seemed to have done OK in that regard. Chantal was surprised at how well some of the remaining nasty slashes seemed to be healing, though one was refusing to close, oozing enough yellow fluid that she decided to sprinkle in the last of the powdered antibiotic she had on hand.

There was no question of taking the canoes further north at this point. Four full-grown men and the precious meat, added to the original four paddlers, was a full load. The Pthang didn’t want to seem inhospitable, but it was obvious they had to turn south before losing any more daylight. They seemed very pleased when their guests made it clear they understood and were ready to tackle the last couple
of miles to their destination on foot. Matthew would carry Chantal’s empty rifle case. Given what they’d been through, she preferred to keep the weapon at the ready.

The Pthang tried to give them more food than they could carry. Laughing and gesturing “Enough!”, Matthew and Skeezix stowed what they could in a couple of makeshift backpacks, adding a water skin each across their shoulders till they looked like Basque sheepherders ready to strike out for the high pastures. After that was sorted out there were handclasps all around and the two canoes — now fully loaded — turned quickly for home.

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

On foot, the travelers from Earth One found the last two miles of their journey — along the stretch of waterfront where the berths and quays of Providence Harbor would have stood, back home — uneventful. When they reached the mouth of the Providence River itself, however — the Seekonk curving off to the east beyond Fox Point — they were all a bit shocked by how different the landscape looked.

In its two-and-a-half centuries of human habitation back on Earth One, the river had been tamed into little more than a picturesque canal suitable to provide a nice waterfront vista for the downtown seafood restaurants. Here, though, considerable waterflow obviously still poured from the north during spring runoffs, and hurricanes untamed by locks and gates obviously swept up from the south each fall, resulting in enough erosion that the little river poured down into the wider Seekonk from between a pair of substantial bluffs, dotted higher up with the entrances to a series of caves.