Monstrum Read online

  “Got it!” I say, grabbing the hard metal in both hands and trying to decide which end I need to lift to get the thing to release. It doesn’t go well. My teeth are chattering, my hands are shaking, my brain is panicked, and any nerve endings I may possess in my fingertips have now been frozen solid, so I can’t really feel what I’m doing.

  How can poor Macy even breathe in this ice bath? Surely she’s got hypothermia on top of a concussion or skull fracture or whatever dire head injury she’s sustained.

  That thought, more than anything else, spurs me on.

  I give the buckle a final, desperate yank, and am rewarded when it gives way.

  “You did it!” Espi cries.

  “Yeah,” I say grimly, because compared with what we have to do now, undoing the seatbelt was the easy part. “Let’s get her up. Grab her under the arm. No, other side. There you go. Macy? We’re going to get you out of here, okay? Try to help us if you can.”

  She groans.

  Working together, Espi and I each bend a little, take one of Macy’s arms and sling it over our shoulders. When Macy’s safely positioned between us, we straighten, pulling Macy more or less upright.

  This time, Macy makes a different noise. It’s the unmistakable high-pitched whimper of someone in pain. I think about her poor head, and how you’re not supposed to move people with head or neck injuries, but there’s nothing we can do about that now.

  “Sorry, Macy,” I murmur as we begin to move. “I’m really sorry.”

  Grunting and lurching, Espi and I head for the door. Macy hangs limply between us, more rag doll than person. Still, getting her out of there is like trying to move an elephant. I had no idea that one snotty little size-0 girl could be so heavy.

  We’re making slow progress until Espi yelps and stumbles on something, nearly taking me and Macy down with her. Staggering, we try to regain our balance.

  “Sorry, Bria,” Espi says, and I can hear the low sobbing in her voice as she struggles to get the words out. “I’m r-really sorry. F-for everything.”

  “You’re fine,” I say gruffly, not quite sure what she’s apologizing for. Is it for needing help? Being mean to me the entire time we’ve been in school together? What?

  Plus, I don’t do emotion well. Never have. It’s one thing when I’m the upset or scared person, but something entirely different when someone else loses it. It’s really weird, but it’s almost like Espi’s momentary weakness strengthens me.

  If Espi can’t keep it together, then I have to. Simple as that.

  Espi and I get into this weird, half-walking, half-swimming rhythm that seems to work. The water fights us every bit of the way, and it feels like there are three million miles between us and the door. The water’s up to my neck now, and I find myself tipping my chin up to keep it away from my mouth. Pretty soon that won’t work, and I’ll have to press my lips together to keep this foul ocean from getting inside me. The only good thing about this whole rescue situation is that both the back and front ends of the plane seem to be sinking at the same rate, so we’re not climbing uphill through the water.

  And then, suddenly, I can see where plane gives way to sky, and we’re there, at the door. To my joyous astonishment, the raft is also right there, or nearly there, propelled by Gray and Carter, who are manning the oars on either side. Best of all, the plane has now sunk so much that getting out of it and into the raft won’t require a jump. More like a short, doggy-style swim.

  I hope.

  A round of cheers rings out when we appear in the doorway, and the guys row harder. Maggie, An and Sammy, meanwhile, shift around in the huge raft, coming to the side nearest the door and reaching out their arms to help us.

  “Here,” says Maggie. She’s got Macy under one armpit now, and Sammy and An grab her under the other. Espi and I ease back a little, out of the way. “On three. One . . . two . . . three.”

  The three of them heave Macy up and over the raft’s outer tube while Espi and I help by shoving Macy’s butt. It’s undignified, and I hate to think about what it may be doing to a girl who’s already in terrible shape, but it works. Macy’s out cold when her body tips and she falls all the way inside the raft.

  The raft bobs and drifts several feet away.

  Sammy glances over his shoulder at Gray and Carter, who are huffing and puffing as they work the oars and try to maneuver the raft back into position.

  “Hey, guys,” Sammy calls. “Bring it this way some more, will ya? Toward the plane.”

  “Toward the plane,” Carter mutters to Gray. “Why didn’t we think of that, man?”

  Gray snorts.

  Sammy’s oblivious. “Okay, Espi. You next.”

  The transfer procedure goes much more easily this time. Grunting with effort, Espi uses her arms to lever herself up enough to throw a leg over the raft’s tube, and she’s in.

  That just leaves me on the sinking plane, and I’m more than ready to get off the thing. Plus, I’m having my first encounter with a clump of sargassum, and I don’t much like it. Leafy and scratchy, it surrounds me and clings, resisting all my efforts to push it away. In my overwrought state, it’s not hard to believe that the sargassum has a mind of its own . . . that it wants me . . . that if given half a chance, it will claim my body, incorporating me into this foul ocean until nothing of the original Bria is left.

  I can’t get into the raft fast enough. I’m heaving myself onto the tube, when a thought hits me, and I slip off again.

  Gray, naturally, sees and disapproves. “Bria Hunter,” he thunders, putting down his oar so he can focus all his fury on me. “What are you doing? For the last time: get in the raft!”

  “I am,” I say in my own defense, reaching back inside the cabin to the nearest objects floating on top of the water and grabbing whatever I can. “I’m just getting some supplies. We’re going to need supplies, right?”

  Apparently Gray doesn’t believe in supplies, because he lets loose with a string of curses. The others, however, agree with me, and they help me recover several things as they float by, including a couple of backpacks, a flat box, and a hard-sided carry-on.

  By that point, Gray’s had enough. Leaving his post at the oar, he picks his way across the raft and looms, glaring at me just as I’m handing up another backpack.

  “Gray,” I begin.

  That’s all I manage before he reaches down behind me, grabs the waist of my jeans, and single-handedly hauls me, facedown and spluttering with surprise, into the raft.

  I’m not speechless that often, but this is one of those times.

  “Hey!” I finally yell, outraged. “What’s the big idea?”

  Gray doesn’t back down. I hate that about him. It’s one of his biggest flaws, and I really wish he’d work on it.

  “I told you to get on the raft.” His voice is low, controlled, and he speaks as though I’m the first female member of the Three Stooges and therefore not to be trusted with any big words. “You didn’t get on the raft, so I had to put you on the raft. Any questions?”

  “Yeah! What about food, water and supplies? What if we’re floating out here for two weeks before someone comes to—”

  He advances on me until he’s one inch from my face. Then he lets loose, and it feels like I’m on the leading edge of a hurricane. “Food, water and supplies? You’re not going to need food, water and supplies, genius, if you sink to the bottom of the ocean and drown!”

  “Gray,” Carter tries. “Chill, man.”

  This tirade is enough to send me over the edge, too. Or maybe it’s that the enormity of our situation is beginning to sink in, or that my best friend, Detachment, is taking a coffee break and I am therefore all alone in this mess.

  “Well, what’re we going to do now, huh?” I screech. “Drink salt water? Fry up the raft and eat it for breakfast?”

  That gets him.

  “I don’t know,” he admits, calm again. “But at least you’ll be here to help us figure that out.”

  I’m not quite r
eady to let it go. I eyeball the plane, trying to figure out how much time we have left before it’s fully submerged. “Can we please just go back and get—”

  Without a word, Gray turns his back on me and returns to his oar.

  “Jackass,” I murmur to his departing figure.

  Gray looks over his shoulder at me, his expression murderous. “Say something else,” he challenges.

  This shuts me up.

  Looking for a dignified way off the playing field, I turn to the rest of the gang, all of whom are hovering over where Macy lies on the floor, trying to assess her condition.

  “If we could just find some dry clothes to put her in,” Sammy is saying, “that would be a good start.”

  “You guys search through the junk Bria grabbed,” Carter says. “We need to work on getting us away from the plane.”

  The plane.

  It’s going fast, with only a long and shiny strip from the top of the fuselage and the nose visible now. As the raft moves backward, out of harm’s way, water begins to churn harder around the plane’s edges, and again I have the feeling that the plane is fighting back and trying to resist this violent fate. For one breathless second, it lingers, where it is, and I find myself rooting for it. Not because it could fly us to safety or offer protection of any sort. But because if this ocean, which looks so placid at the moment, can do that to a plane, what will it do to us before this ordeal is over?

  Until this very moment, I’d had no idea how massive the plane is.

  Or how relentless the ocean is.

  Nothing can win against these dark waters.

  The churning cranks harder, into an obscene boil, and the plane protests the only way it can. The aluminum creaks and whines. Unseen parts of its anatomy snap and pop. Sparks fly and hiss as they hit the water. Steam and smoke rise.

  And then, with a final gurgling hiccup, the last few inches of the plane sink out of view. My chest squeezes, hard, and I don’t know if my despair is for the plane, us, or both. All I know is that that plane was our last link to civilization, and now we’re alone and in the dark with this endless water.

  We all lapse into an awed and hopeless hush that stretches farther than the invisible horizon.

  I’m still staring at the spot where the plane is now making its long journey to the bottom of the ocean, watching all that foaming turbulence slowly subside, when I am caught by surprise.

  Someone—Espi, I realize with a start—has swooped in to hug me. It’d be less of a shock to look up and find Santa Claus in my arms.

  “Wha—?” I say.

  “Thank you,” she says in my ear. “For saving our lives.”

  Over her shoulder, I gaze out at our new landscape. There is the sparkling black of the ocean and the flat black of the sky above it. I cannot understand why the ocean sparkles when there’s no moon or stars to project light onto the waves, and I cannot understand why the sky is so impenetrable when I know there’s no storm and it can’t be later than five or six o’clock in the afternoon. I cannot envision what kind of creature made that eerie sound I heard right after the plane crash, nor can I convince myself that I really didn’t hear any creature at all and it was just my imagination.

  And there’s more.

  My brain launches into an unwelcome slideshow of all the awful at-sea stories I’ve ever heard: Jaws; the torpedoing and sinking of the USS Indianapolis during World War II, which we read about in AP American history; the doomed whaling ship Essex, which we learned about when we read Moby-Dick, which didn’t end well for most of the crew; and that one poor bomber guy, also from WWII, who got shot down and drifted for something like forty days before being rescued—by the Japanese, who threw him into a prison camp for two or three years. I read parts of the book about him to Mona during her last month in the hospital, and it was not a happy story. Trust me.

  I think of all the ways we can still suffer horribly and die gruesomely out here, and I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to throw ourselves on top of the sinking plane, hitch a ride to the bottom, and get the dying over with right now, quick and easy.

  My heart feels like a crumbling stone inside my chest.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” I tell Espi grimly.

  “Shh,” An says suddenly, even though no one is talking. “Listen. Hear that?”

  My first thought is that it’s that terrible creature, and my entire body stiffens even though I’m determined not to freak out. Espi and I pull out of our hug. We all cock our ears and peer into the darkness, but nothing happens. All I can hear, aside from the water, is Macy’s incoherent moaning.

  “What’re we listening for?” Maggie asks.

  An holds up a wait-a-minute index finger, and then, yes, I hear something faint and bizarre.

  “Oooo-ear-mee?”

  We all exchange excited looks, and I know they heard it, too.

  It’s a shout. A man’s shout.

  But it sounds warped and distant, as though the sound waves are being bounced through a funhouse before they reach us.

  “It’s another survivor,” I say. “I thought they were bailing out down at the other end of the plane.”

  “Yeah, but where are they now?” asks Gray.

  I hear it again:

  “Eee-won-air?”

  “Mami?” Espi leans over the tube and shouts into the darkness. “Is that you, Mami? I’m over here!”

  “Oooos-at?” calls the voice.

  I can’t tell what direction it’s coming from—it seems to originate from everywhere and nowhere—or if it’s getting any closer.

  “Over here!” Espi twists around and shouts at Gray and Carter, who seem nonplussed as they shoot each other sidelong looks. “Row over this way! It was coming from over here!”

  The boys hesitate. “I thought it was coming from over there,” Carter says, pointing in the opposite direction.

  “Mmm-ear!” says the voice.

  We’re all shouting now:

  “What? Where are you?”

  “We’re trying to find you!”

  “We can’t understand you!”

  “I said, I’m here,” says Murphy in his unmistakable grumble, and he’s now so close and clear that he may as well have had a megaphone pressed up to our ears. This freaks us out, and we all jump as though we’ve been jabbed in the ribs with a fork. “What the feck is wrong with yer hearing?”

  And there it is, suddenly, not twenty feet away—a second raft, with Murphy at one of the oars.

  It’s just . . . there.

  Maybe it materialized. Maybe it was there the whole time. Maybe the darkness simply decided to open up and spit it out. Or maybe this kind of weirdness is our new normal, and we’d better get used to it.

  Because here’s another bizarre thing: it’s now a little lighter, and I discover that I can see better. It’s not the breaking light of dawn, or anything like that. The sky is simply a charcoal that allows a bit of illumination, where before it was as impenetrable as a black hole smothered in onyx flannel.

  Stunned, I watch as Murphy’s raft comes closer, and the shell-shocked faces of the other survivors materialize out of the gloom:

  Axel Hendersen, his best friend, Mike Smith, and—

  “Mami!”

  Espi’s joyous shout is returned by her mother, and they lapse into excited Spanish as the oarsmen in both rafts maneuver the rafts together until the edges bump. Both groups call out relieved greetings.

  Murphy looks to me and our gazes lock. His eyes crinkle, feathering crow’s feet from the corners, and I smile back. Never in my life have I been happier to see someone than I am to see this crotchety old man, but I don’t reach out to hug him because our relationship doesn’t work that way. When Mona got sick, he pretended he wasn’t looking out for me, making sure I was as okay as possible, and I pretended I didn’t need his gruff attention and advice unless I was in the middle of fencing practice. Now he pretends that I’m not his favorite student, and I pretend not to know that I am.

  I bl
ink back sudden hot tears. “About time you showed up,” I call.

  “Don’t think I won’t make you run extra laps for your cheek when we get back, Bria Hunter,” he answers.

  Thus concludes our emotional reunion. Now that I know he’s okay, I swipe at my eyes and look around.

  I’m thrilled to see the others, of course, but I’d had such high hopes when I realized there was another group of survivors. Now my stomach is knotted with disappointment. My desperate head count isn’t adding up to anything close to the nineteen students that were so excited to set out for the Bahamas a week ago.

  “Is this it?” I ask.

  Murphy, who’s busy tying the rafts’ ropes together so we won’t get separated, doesn’t bother looking at me. “Lovely to see you, too, Bria Hunter. Always a pleasure.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “I’d just hoped—”

  “You hoped what I hoped.” He glances up at me with his wizened eyes. “Which was that there’d be a damn sight more heads in this raft. Isn’t that right?”

  I nod.

  “Well, this is it, I reckon,” Murphy says sadly. “We’ve circled the area a good bit.” He pauses. “I don’t think anyone in the water is long for this world anyway.”

  I still don’t understand. “But . . . there were so many people in the aisle right after the plane hit the water.” I raise my voice, looking around at the others to include them in the discussion. “They all ran to the back end of the plane, where you guys were. What happened to them? Why didn’t they get into the raft with you?”

  Everyone in Murphy’s raft shrinks a little. They all hunch in on themselves and stare, with glazed eyes, out to sea. It’s like they’re determined not to answer or even hear the questions I’ve just asked.

  I wonder what could possibly be so bad after everything we’ve already endured today, but then the memory of that monstrous scream echoes through my head. Dread crawls all over me, clinging to my nerve endings like sargassum.

  “Murphy?” I prompt.

  He turns toward me at last. Hesitating, he runs a hand over his chest, reminding me that he took a medical leave last year after bypass surgery. He should have retired then, but he’s one of those old guys who can’t imagine sitting around the house, doing nothing. His face is ashen and I have a sudden vision of him keeling over from a stress-induced heart attack.