Reef of Death (The Zone Unknown) Read online

Slowly, the crab unfolded its legs. It seemed dazed.

  Timid.

  It’s frightened of me, the guard thought with relief. He watched the crab’s antennae swishing through the water. Soon, however, its antennae stopped moving and pointed directly at him. Then, slowly, it crept down the length of the cage, toward the warm flesh of the prisoner’s face.

  Closer, the guard counted ten legs on the crab, each as thick as a man’s arm, with a claw on the end that was the size of a fist. The claws tapped, then grabbed at the metal of the cage, moving the body of the crab closer—closer—until its antennae tickled the prisoner’s face.

  It’s only curious about the breathing mask and the bubbles, the guard wanted to believe.

  The crab leaned back on its rear legs, waving its four front legs. Its claws reached forward and began to move gently through his hair. It crawled closer, its black shining eyes staring straight into his. Under its eyes, a thousand tiny bristles began to circulate water through into its mouth.

  The guard’s breathing quickened.

  A claw reached forward and closed around a small clump of his hair. The prisoner shuddered. The crab pulled the clump out, then sucked it into its mouth.

  The guard cried out as another claw opened. It reached around and stroked his ear. This time he tried to jerk away, but his head was locked fast in the cage. He screamed. A billow of air burst from his mouth. The bubbles infuriated the crab. Its eyes narrowed. It moved closer and began shrieking.

  The giant crab shot its two front claws forward and grabbed hold of two more clumps of the guard’s hair. Pincers slowly closed their pliers’ grip around his ears. They yanked and cut until the guard’s ears pulled loose. Through the red bubbles of another scream, the guard saw the claws delicately release his flesh into the small, powerful jaws of a hair-rimmed mouth.

  The crab turned around and crawled off, tapping its way to the other end of the cage.

  It’s going to let me live, the guard thought. I’m going to live. It’s had enough. The blood in the water clouded his vision. He closed his eyes. He believed Dr. Ecenbarger would call it off. She had just wanted to teach him a lesson. They would take the cage off and unstrap him. They would lift him out.

  Suddenly, he felt the rebreather yanked from his face. He opened his eyes. The black, marble eyes of the crab were inches from his own. He felt something tickling his bottom lip. The crab’s bristles fluttered faster. The tickling of his lip turned to pain. Barbs on the bristles dug deep into his mouth.

  He tried to hold his breath against the pain.

  The crab sidestepped, as if it was doing a dance. Then, quickly, it was back in his face again. Two of its side legs swung in a wide arc and closed on the bleeding holes where once there had been ears. Claws dug deeper into the soft flesh, scraping the sides of his head down to the white of the skull. The guard tried to cry out, but his face had no lips. His lungs were empty of air. The final thing he saw before he drowned was the crab’s front legs shooting toward his eyes.

  The guard was dead only moments before the crab began to feast on his brain.

  Dr. Ecenbarger signaled an assistant to spear the crab and lift it out of the water. Others unstrapped the guard and pulled him out for the doctor to see.

  “What a talented species of crab we’ve discovered.” She laughed as she shook the crab off the spear and walked over to the control console.

  The grotto pool next to the tank lit up. A few small clownfish and eels scattered, attempting to hide among the sparse weeds and slick algae that lined the steep sides. The guards tossed the crab and the mutilated corpse into the grotto pool. They drifted slowly down like refuse toward the deep. The doctor threw a second switch.

  EEEEEEEE. EEEEE.

  The sound.

  9

  SCREAMTIME

  Maruul looked up at the familiar sound. She knew from the anguish on PC’s and Wally’s faces that they had watched everything.

  “That’s the sound again,” Maruul said.

  PC stared at the ripples near one end of the pool. “So it’s not a drill,” he said. “It’s one of her experiments. She’s figured out how to signal the killer fish that it’s feeding time—like one of Pavlov’s dogs.”

  They watched the body of the guard slip farther into the deep of the pool. A huge gray shadow began to separate from the blackness. PC, Wally, and Maruul stared in horror as the monstrosity that had devoured Arnhem and Cliff ascended into the light.

  The water boiled as the creature opened its damaged jaws, grabbing, biting—sucking the limbs of the corpse into its mouth.

  “The bang stick didn’t kill it, eh,” Wally said.

  In a few moments, all traces of flesh were gone, and the monster disappeared back down through a cloud of blood into the darkness from which it had come.

  “How could she train that monster fish to kill people?” Maruul wanted to know.

  “Sadistic genius,” Wally said.

  “Right,” PC agreed. “She probably didn’t train the fish, because it can’t be trained. She’s smart. She observes any kind of life when she sees it. It probably didn’t take her long to realize the fish gets excited when it hears a certain pitch of motor. She did what people do with orangutans when they put them in shows. They’re the one kind of primate nobody can train. All that funny mugging and clowning they do, they do naturally. Anybody who works with orangutans knows you just play around with what they like to do on their own. It makes them look like they’re trained. Ecenbarger figured out the motor makes the big fish crazy, and want to eat anybody around. That’s not exactly rocket science.”

  Wally rocked back and forth, a chant spilling from his lips. Maruul began to weep. “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  PC didn’t speak. He watched Dr. Ecenbarger below as she waved to a pair of her men on the scaffolding at the top of the huge canvas. They pulled knives from their belts, sliced at a rope. The canvas fell away. There was an explosion of light and color. Reds, golds, blues, orange. A vast wall of stone that seemed to be burning. Stone aflame. Pulsing. Dazzling. Blinding.

  “Sunset,” Maruul said, remembering her village’s treasure song. “Sunset hides beneath the sea…”

  Wally rubbed at his eyes. “Fire opal. Morga treasure is a wall of opal. One big slab of precious stone, eh. It is Morga fortune.”

  PC felt adrenaline pumping into his blood. He had seen a small opal in one of his mother’s rings. He’d seen others on display in museums, where he’d learned that opals were as valuable as diamonds and usually found only far inland in long-dry ancient seabeds.

  Wally whispered, “This very special opal. Sacred slab.”

  Staring at them were hundreds of figures painted on the towering wall of opal. Paintings of ancient people. Spirits. Kangaroos. Cranes. And everywhere, fish. They all appeared to be alive. Creatures real and imagined. A huge python was painted x-ray style to show its anatomy. A school of barramundi, giant perch, swirled up across the vast middle of the mural. Strange beings and other huge animals glared out of the wall. Images in red and yellow ocher and gold.

  “This is our dreaming,” Wally told Maruul. “Look at the history of your people.”

  Maruul couldn’t speak. For the first time, she truly felt that the religion of her village’s elders—the beliefs of Wally—were real. Wally heard cries from the past. The sounds of Marrawuti and of Lightning Man. The Great Serpent. And music. Music that made his heart dance.

  “What do the paintings mean?” PC asked.

  “They are the wisdom of my people,” Maruul said. “They have painted their wisdom to help all who need it.” She pointed to the top right side of the wall, a progression of painted images and scenes. “They have drawn the secret lore of hunting and the dangers of badlands.”

  “They warn of quicksand and show the way to game trails, eh,” Wally said.

  “And they tell what monsters to avoid,” Maruul said, pointing to the lower half of the opal slab, where horrible beasts and sharks ros
e from the depths of the ocean. What looked like the white spirits of smiling children were painted to look as though they were floating up between the monsters toward the sun.

  “Are they supposed to be ghosts?” PC asked.

  “I think they’re hunters covered with white clay,” Maruul said.

  “White clay protect Aboriginal people, eh,” Wally said. “White clay always part of sacred ceremonies.”

  At the base of the opal slab, Dr. Ecenbarger spoke to the shaman. He roared her commands out at the workers. “The Coast Guard, and others, will come back. We have little time. You will return to the ship and rest while we bring down the wall. After, you will return, work all night to load. We sail in the morning.”

  Dr. Ecenbarger exited quickly down the ridge behind the torture tank. The shaman followed her with the guards and dingo-head men.

  “They’re going to blow up the wall,” Maruul said.

  Wally watched the workers abandon their tools and move off down the tunnel. He began to weep. “They kill our dreaming. Kill it.”

  PC stood and looked across to the dazzling wall. For a moment he thought of Cliff, of his mother and father. Grandma Helen. He thought of his life back in San Francisco, and an aching emptiness raced through him. But there was something else. A determination stirred inside him from a hidden corner. He looked at Maruul and Wally and realized he was needed.

  He and his new friends would make a plan. They would give back to the Morgas what was theirs.

  And they would somehow bring back the Coast Guard to stop Dr. Ecenbarger.

  Punish her.

  Fix her.

  PC signaled Maruul and Wally not to move from the shadows until the last of the workers had disappeared. He turned on Ratboy and searched its encyclopedia for “rocks/minerals.” He found what he wanted:

  Opal: trigonal / hexagonal. SiO2•nH2O. Scatters light. Millions of tiny spheres of noncrystalline quartz. These spheres reflect and scatter light to give opal a play of colors. Precious gemstone.

  Maruul’s gaze was locked on the huge slab of opal and its paintings. “A small piece from the opal wall would save my village,” she said. “That’s what the elders would want me to bring back.” She looked to Wally, then to PC.

  “Yes. Even little piece worth plenty,” Wally said. “Much dollars. Maybe two million, eh.”

  “We’re getting it,” PC said.

  “What about the doctor?” Maruul asked.

  “If she tries to stop us, I kabob her,” Wally said.

  PC walked farther out onto the high ledge. To the left it dropped in steps like a terrace. Maruul and Wally followed PC down until they reached the tunnel floor. They approached the great slab of opal. Maruul picked up a few shimmering chunks of opal that had broken off from the base of the wall. “These will be enough for my village,” Maruul said. “Enough for all of us.”

  She gave the pieces to PC to put into the bag with Ratboy.

  A sound came from behind them. They turned.

  Nothing.

  “I feel someone watching us, eh,” Wally said.

  “Only spirits,” Maruul said, looking up at the brilliant paintings. For a few moments the three of them stood amazed at the shining history of a people.

  “I don’t want to leave this sacred place,” Wally said.

  “We must go back and get our rebreathers,” PC said.

  Maruul put her arm around Wally. “He’s right,” she said.

  PC led them down the tunnel toward the interface tank.

  More sounds as they neared a bend.

  Scuffling.

  Grunting.

  The noises were coming from the blackness of passageways and alcoves in the tunnel’s walls. At first PC thought it almost sounded like wind whirling past the stalactites. Maruul started to run ahead. PC and Wally jogged to keep up with her. PC felt the weight of the opals on his back. They jiggled and bounced against Ratboy in the shoot bag.

  Suddenly, a horrendous, hairy face rose up from behind a stone. Maruul screamed. A huge mouth opened, its yellow fangs and saliva bursting from black, stretched lips. The grotesque face and body lunged toward Maruul, his arms swinging and grabbing at the air. A roar erupted from his mouth.

  “A baboon!” PC yelled. “This one’s alive!”

  Maruul froze.

  Wally and PC grabbed her, pulled her away from the raging primate. The trio ran still forward. Other screeching baboons vaulted out from other niches and passageways. The maddened, howling animals surrounded them, screaming like inmates in a madhouse.

  “What are live baboons doing here?” Maruul asked.

  “One of Dr. Ecenbarger’s jokes,” PC said. “She probably makes pets out of them while she experiments on them. Animals trust her. She knows how to zero in on their instincts and twist them for her amusement. Baboons are easy to train. They don’t know she’s going to eventually inject them with some kind of new microbe or toxic waste and cut out their brains. She’s a real sicko.”

  A shrill diabolical laugh cut across the din.

  Dr. Ecenbarger stepped from an alcove, flanked by the shaman and the dingo-headed guards. “Here, Ko Ko,” Dr. Ecenbarger called to the largest baboon. Her pet let out a series of short, joyful shrieks and ran for the doctor. He leaped up into her waiting arms. “Ko Ko is such a good little monkey,” the doctor said. She turned to confront PC. “How nice to see you again, PJ.”

  “PC,” PC corrected.

  Several of her guards wore gas masks. They stepped forward clutching canisters with nozzles. “As I told you on the tour, PC,” Dr. Ecenbarger said, petting Ko Ko, “we take pride in keeping our experimental specimens alive as long as possible. As long as possible…”

  She stepped back as an orange-colored gas burst from the nozzles. It smelled sweet and sickening, like a strong perfume. PC felt it burn his eyes. Wally and Maruul covered their faces. For a few moments, they staggered, and then slowly dropped to the ground. PC thought about resisting—about kicking, punching—but his knees started to buckle, and his mind went blank.

  Maruul woke up on chilled, dark metal. Her eyes opened. There were shadows. Terrible smells. She jerked to a sitting position and felt bars of cold steel surrounding her. Hands grabbed at her through the bars. Stroked her. Hairy hands. She was locked in a cage! Other cages holding baboons were stacked beside her on a cart.

  “Help! PC! Wally!” she tried to call out, her voice muted by the effects of the gas. Several baboons imitated her panic, screeching, lying on their sides. They made fitful sounds, short comical noises, as they kept reaching into the cage, gently poking at her. One of them, Ko Ko, slid his hand in from behind her. He played with the beads in her hair.

  Maruul slapped the baboon’s hand. “Stop it.” The baboon whimpered, pulled his arm back into his own cage, and stared at her. She grabbed the door of her cage, rattled it as hard as she could. A steel Medeco lock held firm.

  BAM BAM BAM

  Sounds of a pneumatic drill.

  Maruul looked across the cavern to the opal wall. A dozen workmen were crisscrossing scaffolding, drilling, framing the wall with two-inch holes and seeding rods of dynamite into them. She looked for PC and Wally. Where are you? What have they done with you?

  They weren’t in any of the cages, and she couldn’t see anyone on the dark, high terraces. The lights of the grotto pool and torture tank were off. They’re going to blow up the wall. They’re drilling holes to blow up the wall!

  She tried concentrating on PC. She remembered when she’d first met him that day outside the hospital. This boy could be a friend, she had thought. But now that he was in danger, she realized she wanted him to become more than a friend to her.

  She saw a glow start filling the cavern. The lights came up higher, stronger. Soon the tank by the grotto pool was blazing.

  A sudden chill grabbed at her throat. Now there were two metal chairs in the torture tank.

  Maruul threw her weight against the door of the cage. It still wouldn’t budge. Ko K
o rattled his cage and tried to pull at the lock. Maruul collapsed, tears streaming from her eyes. The baboon watched Maruul through the bars of his cage. He saw her eyes searching, looking down at all the loose stones.

  Stones.

  PC awoke in blackness. His mind struggled against the numbing toxins of the gas. As he fought his way into consciousness, he realized he was bound, gagged, and blindfolded. A damp, putrid smell cut into his nostrils. He heard voices. Men shouting. Words he didn’t understand.

  The voices were closer now.

  Arms lifted him up. He was prodded, pushed to hobble and crawl along on his elbows and knees. The space through which he moved was dark and narrow. He could barely breathe. Soon he was lifted again and thrown onto a platform. He heard the racket of wheels. Felt the vibrations of a cart.

  After a while, the uproar and shaking stopped and he was made to stand upright. The tape was ripped from his eyes. The first thing he saw was Wally strapped underwater in one of the torture chairs. Wally sucked in air from a rebreather and stared out at PC.

  “Let him go,” PC tried to yell through his gag. He struggled to break loose from the guards. The shaman, towering, menacing in his dog-skin cloak, blocked him. He roared PC into silence.

  PC strained to look about. He saw men drilling, wiring, high on the opal wall. The lights in the grotto pool. More guards by the tank.

  “I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re worried about,” came Dr. Ecenbarger’s voice. The doctor moved into his view, a stethoscope hanging from her neck. “I don’t waste anything. The Aboriginal girl is very attractive. I know a number of entrepreneurs who’ll pay well for an exotic human toy.”

  PC tried in vain to remove the tape from his mouth. The guards’ viselike grip tightened. Dr. Ecenbarger moved closer and placed the end of the stethoscope against his chest. She listened to his lungs, his breathing. “Good. You’re physically quite fit, aren’t you?”

  Dr. Ecenbarger continued, speaking softly, scientifically, as she examined him. “There are other illnesses that have brought you to us, however. Greed. Pride? Trespassing. I’m sure you’re pleased to have disturbed Lt. Roessler. Oh, the Coast Guard left. They pretended to be satisfied. But Lt. Roessler will think about you unruly children. It’ll work itself over and over in his brain for a day or two until something will strike him as odd.