The Reef Ship Geraldo
by James Edward O’Brien
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:
The wall of junk stretched from the ocean floor to the surface: old tires and trolley cars, plastic bottles and jetsam. The manmade reef intersected a fault line that made it a divining rod for seismologists hoping to predict tsunamis and other catastrophes.
For months, it had vibrated like a tuning fork without any of the calamities that should have followed. The flotilla sent their shoddiest sloop-of-war for a closer look. Admiral Grandin led the expedition. She brought Pegreen, the resident geologist, the sloop’s gunner, and a marine ornithologist.
Nobody’d had much use for a degree-carrying ornithologist since the last great extinction, but the sloop had a shortage of hands. Toshiro reckoned that’s why they’d dusted him off.
As the sloop neared the reef, the solar sail’s panels rattled in their fixtures. The water was choppy, jarringly choppy.
“See, Admiral?” Pegeen said. “Something’s doing down there.”
“Is that your scientific hypothesis?” Grandin snarled at the geologist.
She drove a boot into her gunner’s shin as he slumbered hull side, fishing pole between his knees.
He shot up, wiped the drool from his mouth. His fishing pole skittered across the side of the ship and plunked into the water.
“There’s no fish out here, anyway,” Pegeen said, hoping to make him feel better. “No fish anywhere anymore.”
“A boy can dream.” The gunner yawned and rubbed his shin. “You happy with our steady diet of algae and bean sprouts?”
Toshiro butted in. “Let’s say you bagged some rogue fish––the world’s last. You really gonna bag it?”
“You bet I would,” the gunner said.
Pegeen licked her chops. “Extinction on the menu, eh?”
The waters frothed. The sloop rocked side-to-side. The droplets of condensation amassed on the solar sails ricocheted like stray bullets. The gunner scrabbled for his artillery chair and strapped himself in.
He shrieked at Pegeen. “This the big one, Doc?”
“Could be the start of a wave train––but not like one I’ve ever––”
A transparent spire pierced the water. The sloop’s crew held on for dear life. The deck teetered. Anything not nailed down went the way of the gunner’s fishing pole. The sloop seesawed.
The spire’s bulbous bottom broke the surface as if a great, invisible hand plucked a translucent vegetable from the depths. It hovered above them. The sloop careened toward the stormy footprint left in the spire’s wake. The hook of the gunner’s fishing pole was lodged in the vessel’s gelatinous skin.
The fishing line curled and spit like a livewire before it tautened; the pole shot toward the sloop like a javelin. It pierced the deck. Wood groaned. Toshiro and Pegeen watched, frozen. The gunner swiveled in his artillery chair. He aimed the nose of the naval gun straight at the murky teardrop suspended above them.
Toshiro leapt for the firing mechanism, clasping his hands over the trigger. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Returning fire!”
“You crazy?” Pegeen roared.
The gunner fought to extricate Toshiro’s paws from the firing mechanism. “Let go!” he howled. “You wanna die?”
“Nothing wants to die, you idiot––hold your fire!” Admiral Grandin barked. “Not birds, not fish, not anybody.”
Eyes, legions of eyes like polished black onyx looked down upon them through the bulbous, mirrored base of the vessel. Eyes framed by gills, eyes set in faces sleek and pale as dolphin bellies: a battalion of finned bipeds from inside the capsule regarded them silently.
The vessel shook like a dog in from the rain, showering the sloop below in sea foam––each fleck of moisture a psychic push that opened deadened pathways tucked deep inside the crew’s brains.
A voice resounded through their simian skulls. We pegged you for the brave ones once upon a time. Rising from the primordial muck––eyes and fins landward. Odd, how the more you multiplied, the lonelier you became––the less room for us, for anything.
The sloop groaned. The fishing line strung ship-to-ship reeled the sloop skyward. It passed through the husk of the vessel as if pushing through a yolk sac. Inside, only breathlessness.
Rushing water muted a short, sharp pop: a sound like an abattoir bolt gun. The catch of the day––of a lifetime, even.