The Monster Missions Page 12

  “Are you okay?” I asked one morning as I watched him pick at his food. Garth never picked at his food, especially when it tasted as good as the stuff in front of us did.

  “Hmm?” he said, looking up.

  “Are. You. Okay?” I repeated, enunciating each word.

  Garth shrugged. “Just missing our old life, I guess.”

  “What about our old life?” I said.

  “The sun, for one thing,” Garth said. “Diving, scavenging, my family. I even found myself missing Gizmo a little bit yesterday.”

  “No way,” I said, shaking my head. “Now I know you’re lying.”

  Garth cracked a half-hearted smile. “Fine,” he said, “not Gizmo, but everything else. Don’t you miss it?”

  “Of course,” I said, even as I felt a pang of guilt at the lie. I missed my dad and my brother, but everything else had faded into the background without my even realizing. Life on board the Britannica was new and different, and after a lifetime of unchanging sameness, it was refreshing. Besides, even if Captain Brown ever allowed us to return, I couldn’t imagine going back to the Atlas knowing what I knew now. Sitting on that ship, waiting for the monster I’d unearthed to catch up to us, sounded like the worst kind of nightmare. I’d made a promise to myself that if I ever did get a chance to go back to the ship I’d called home for my entire life, I was going to go with a way for them to protect themselves.

  From what I’d learned from Mr. Weaver and Hector, most ships were brutally unprepared for any kind of attack. Which, since attacks happened randomly and rarely, wasn’t all that surprising. Most captains believed their duties lay in protecting their ships from the inevitable storms, pirates, fishing droughts, and ship damage, and they were unwilling to risk resources and time for something that might never happen. Besides, with the range of monsters that roamed the ocean, how was a ship supposed to prepare for an attack? It was no wonder so many captains like Captain Brown chose to keep the existence of sea monsters a secret.

  “After years of believing sea monsters didn’t exist, it’s like I can’t get away from them,” Garth griped, jarring me from my thoughts.

  “It’s not sea monsters you want to get away from,” Max said, sitting down beside us. “It’s Elmer.”

  “Fine,” Garth said, sitting back and throwing his hands in the air. “You’re right. I don’t want to deal with that mean old curmudgeon of a crustacean anymore.”

  “Fun fact,” Kate said, plopping down beside Max. “Octopi aren’t crustaceans. They’re mollusks.”

  “They are giant wet spiders,” Garth said, and Max snorted so hard his water shot out of his nose and across the table. “They are!” Garth insisted. “It’s like he sees me coming and is just waiting to do something awful when I get into his tank.”

  “That’s because he does see you coming,” said Max. “That thing’s smarter than Kate.”

  “I’d be offended, but he’s probably right,” Kate said with a shrug.

  “Do you think you could switch jobs with someone?” I said. “I bet if you weren’t getting dunked daily, you’d be a whole lot happier.”

  “He asked me,” Max said. “But I’ve cleaned out those tanks more than my fair share. Pass.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Kate said.

  “Trust me, I’m smarter than that,” Garth said.

  “Fine,” I said, setting down my fork decisively. “I’ll switch with you, then. Besides, I’ve never even seen the large-specimen room, and it’s about time.”

  “You haven’t?” Kate said, eyebrow raised in surprise. “How is that possible?”

  I shrugged. I’d been trying to get there ever since our first day on board, but life on the Britannica was so busy that finding a spare minute to poke around had been impossible.

  “I’ll switch,” I said again. “But you owe me one.”

  “He’s going to owe you more than one,” Max said, and everyone glanced over at him to see if he would elaborate. He didn’t.

  Garth and I walked together to the back of the sub, and I had to smile a little as Garth whistled happily. He turned left to head toward Hector while I kept going straight. I realized as I walked that I’d never asked Garth what the other specimens were besides old Elmer the mean-spirited octopus. As I rounded the corner and saw what was in front of me, that oversight seemed really, really dumb.

  The back of the submarine had a very similar feel to the hub, with its wall-to-wall glass, the only difference being that the glass in this room was part of eight floor-to-ceiling aquariums. I stood frozen as I took in the tanks. Some of them held creatures I was familiar with: a giant squid, a sea turtle, and an enormous octopus that had to be the infamous Elmer. The other tanks were more of a mystery. I walked up to the closest one and peeked in at the strange creature. Its head was similar to a pig’s or a boar’s, and it tapered back into a seal-like body with four elongated fins. Down the middle of its spine was a large ridge of spikes that looked lethally sharp.

  The tanks just got weirder from there. A pencil-thin, snakelike creature that had to be thirty feet in length was twisted and knotted around itself so it resembled a big orange ball of yarn with eyes. Another tank held what looked like a three-headed sea lizard, while the last tank held a bizarre anglerfish with translucent skin that revealed its skeleton and a twisted network of intestines that made my own stomach feel queasy.

  “Pretty impressive, right?” said a voice behind me, and I turned to see Weaver walking in holding two huge buckets of dead fish. He was wincing a little, probably from the still-healing stitches in his side, and I rushed over to take one of the buckets from him.

  “Very impressive,” I said. “What are all these . . . these things?” I said, searching for the right word to describe the contents of the tank and failing.

  “A little bit of everything,” Weaver said. “Some of them are creatures we captured and were unable to reintroduce to the wild—like Elmer,” he said with a nod at the tank with the giant octopus. “Most of them we research and release,” he said, jerking his head toward the tank with the piggish-looking monster. “The majority of sea monsters are much too large to keep in a tank, but every now and then we find a very young or unusually small specimen.”

  “I’d say this is unbelievable,” I said, doing another slow circle to take in the tanks, “but ever since the attack on the Atlas, I’m in the believing business.”

  Weaver chuckled. “I’ve never heard it put quite like that, but I like it. Where’s Garth?”

  “I switched jobs with him today,” I said, realizing for the first time that I probably should have asked permission before doing that. I bit my lip nervously. I’d seen what had happened to Megan after her scouting mistake, and scrubbing the floors of the sub on my hands and knees was not something I’d enjoy in the least. Captain Reese was kind but ruthless in her command of the ship, and I had no idea what an infraction like this would warrant for me or Garth. Wouldn’t that be my luck, I thought glumly—I try to do something nice for my friend and it backfires completely.

  “Well,” Weaver said after letting me stew and fret for a moment, “that’s not really how things are done around here, but if Hector is all right with it, I guess I am as well. Here.” I had no idea if Hector would be fine with it, but I said a silent prayer that he would be as Weaver motioned to one of the buckets. “Take that and follow me,” he instructed. I did as I was told, and he gingerly climbed the steps to the narrow walkway around the top of the aquariums, unlocked the top of the first one, and tossed in its occupant’s breakfast. It was my job to cart up the full buckets and retrieve the empty ones, and it wasn’t long before my leg muscles were burning. When we got to the tank with the long, thin sea creature that looked like a giant twisted ball of yarn, he paused and put on a large pair of protective goggles and then fished a pair out of his pocket to hand to me. I slid them on as he donned thick metal gloves that went clear up to his armpits.

  “Stand back,” he instructed me. “The fliexarmoni
ous is poisonous.” I didn’t have to be told twice, retreating so far that my back bumped into the tank on the opposite side. I watched, wide-eyed, as Weaver pulled out what looked like diced squid and carefully slipped it into the tank. The fliexarmonious suddenly lunged at the small opening Weaver had made in the lid of the tank. Thankfully, Weaver was faster, sliding the metal lock bar back in place a half second before the thing could reach him. He did this entire thing without breaking a sweat. Meanwhile, my heart felt like it had just stopped.

  “These creatures are still very much a mystery to us,” Weaver said. “Other than what they eat, we don’t know nearly enough.”

  “And all this research is to try to keep ships safe from attack?” I said.

  Weaver nodded. “It may be too much to hope for, but if there is one common thread that could help protect us, it would be worth it.”

  “Right,” I said, thinking again of my family aboard the Atlas. I’d always known that living on a ship was dangerous, with the unpredictable weather and the constant need to supply food and water to the people on board, but this new threat felt so much worse. You could prepare for the weather, and you could stockpile food and water in times of plenty, but there was no way to prevent a sea-monster attack.

  Or was there? The part of my brain that liked solving problems seemed to shake itself a little as it woke up. Tinkering and fiddling with things had been a huge part of what made me me aboard the Atlas, but I’d left that all behind me since coming aboard the Britannica. Part of that, I knew, was because I’d been too busy trying to get used to this new life in sea-monster-infested waters, but I knew a bigger part was that on the Britannica I just didn’t have the same access to junk I’d had aboard the Atlas. The biggest reason, though, was that the Britannica was all smooth and state-of-the-art, while the Atlas had been rust-riddled and patched. There was no need here for me to solve problems with my trivial inventions, so I’d pushed that part of myself aside, but maybe it was time to dust it off again.

  “We’ve found a few things that work to repel specific monsters, but nothing universal,” Weaver went on. “For example, magnets are great against a megalodon, but they also deter fish, and the last thing we want to do is set up a ship for starvation.”

  “What else?” I said.

  “Let’s see,” Weaver said with a sigh. “Lights, loud sounds . . . we’ve even tried some chemical sprays, but nothing has worked. Or, if it does work, it is too damaging to the environment or repels fish.”

  “Wow,” I said. “After all that you still think there is a solution out there?”

  “I do,” Weaver said. “All we’ve figured out so far is about fifty-seven ways not to repel a sea monster, and that’s pretty useful information too!”

  “Really?” I said, thinking back to Gizmo’s “failure isn’t an option” speeches. The fear of failure had been as natural as breathing on the Atlas, and here Weaver was acting like it was no big deal. Which, considering the stakes, seemed kind of insane. My mind was chewing this over when I felt something wet and thick slide down the neck of my shirt.

  “Elmer! No!” Weaver bellowed, but it was too late. I felt myself being lifted into the air, and I screamed, thrashing and turning to see the thickly muscled tentacle of an octopus inches from my eyes. That was the last thing I saw before I was slam-dunked into ice-cold water. I came up gasping, only to be dunked again. I came up a third time just as something large and black flew past me and into the tank. Elmer let me go, and I managed to grab the edge of the tank and haul myself out as Elmer helped himself to the fish Weaver had thrown in.

  Weaver hurried to help me to my feet and I stood there, spluttering in shock.

  “Sorry about that,” Weaver said. “I thought Garth would have told you not to stand that close to Elmer’s tank.”

  “Why isn’t it locked like the others?” I asked, trying hard to keep the accusation from my voice and failing.

  “Oh, it was,” Weaver said. “But Elmer has a deft hand at picking locks. He’s been known to unlock the other tanks as well, just for kicks.”

  “Some kicks,” I said wryly as Weaver handed me a towel.

  “He may actually like you,” Weaver said. “Usually he inks the people that he dunks.” I nodded, remembering the smelly, oily substance Garth had sported on more than one occasion. “If that stuff gets in your eyes, it burns like the dickens. It’s also a huge pain, since every time it happens we have to completely drain and refill Elmer’s tank, or it would eventually poison him.” He gave me a sympathetic smile as I stood dripping all over the floor. “Come on,” he said. “It’s time to show you the less glamorous part of this job: meal prep.”

  As I disemboweled dead fish and chopped up squid, I couldn’t help but agree with Max—Garth definitely owed me more than one. While we worked, Weaver explained that Elmer was a rehabilitation failure. They’d found him tangled in an abandoned fishing net and brought him into the specimen area due to his huge size, thinking he might be a relative of a monster they called the goliath. He’d healed quickly, but when they tried to release him, he just wrapped himself around the submarine like a barnacle and refused to leave, jamming himself back inside the hatch anytime it opened, until they gave up and let him stay.

  “Sometimes I think he’s studying us just as much as we’re studying him,” Weaver said, and I stopped filleting the fish I was working on to look at him, but it was impossible to tell whether Weaver was serious or joking.

  Once we were done, Weaver opened up a metal drawer in his small supply room and pulled out a tooth roughly the length of my arm.

  “Um, thanks?” I said awkwardly as I inspected the tooth’s impressively pointed end.

  Weaver chuckled. “You’re welcome,” he said. “But that isn’t a ‘welcome to the large-specimen lab’ present. I need you to take that up to the hub and give it to Captain Reese. If she isn’t there, she’ll be in her office.”

  “Okay,” I said, holding the thing out as I headed for the door.

  “Point the tip down,” Weaver called absentmindedly as he peered down at his tablet. “Wouldn’t want you to trip and impale yourself.”

  “Right,” I said as I flipped the tooth, “definitely wouldn’t want that.” I carried the tooth out the door and headed down the hallway.

  “Whatcha got there?” said a voice behind me a minute later, and I turned to see Kate walking down the hall wearing a greasy pair of coveralls.

  “Do you really think I know?” I said, eyebrow raised. “I’m just doing my best not to become a human kebab.”

  Kate snorted. “Working with Weaver is rarely dull.” She looked me up and down, taking in my still-dripping clothes. “I see you’ve met Elmer.”

  “We met,” I said, trying to keep the grump out of my voice.

  “Regretting switching with Garth?” she asked, keeping pace with me as I gingerly turned left and maneuvered the giant tooth down yet another hall.

  “Sort of,” I admitted. “What are you up to today?”

  Kate shrugged. “A bit of this, a bit of that,” she said. “I don’t like to stay with one job too long. I get bored easily. Twitchy.” I nodded: it was a personality trait of hers I’d noticed on more than one occasion. Sitting next to her at the mess hall drove me a bit nuts because she would bounce her foot the entire time, like if it just went fast enough, she might be able to take flight.

  “I’m surprised you signed on for life inside a submarine, then,” I said, gesturing as best I could to the close walls of the hallways. The tooth wobbled a bit in my hands, and I quickly tightened my grip on it again.

  “You sound like my mom,” Kate said. “She thought they’d send me back in a week, that I’d bounce off the walls, but as long as we get to go out on diving missions every now and then, I’m fine. Besides, Captain Reese lets me keep my duties pretty varied. Sometimes I help Brenda in the kitchen; sometimes I help Wilson in the hub; other days I work in the engine room. I used to do the large-specimen room, but then you and Garth came
aboard and the workload lightened a bit.” She glanced over at me, tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear. “So what do you think about life aboard the Britannica? Are you wishing you’d picked the work ship instead?”

  I shook my head. “No. I just wish I’d had a chance to say goodbye to my family. I left things in kind of a mess, and I’m not even sure if they know that I’m alive.”

  Kate grimaced. “I can’t imagine,” she said, then brightened. “But you are alive. Which means you may get to see them again someday—you never know! So make sure you don’t fall on that tooth,” she added with a wink as she waved goodbye and turned right as I turned left.

  “Everyone keeps saying that, like I’d do it on purpose,” I muttered, my arms trembling from the strain as I turned the final corner and entered the hub. A quick glance around showed that Captain Reese was nowhere to be found, so I turned and walked over to her closed office door. Propping the tooth gingerly against the wall, I knocked and waited. Nothing. I knocked again, a bit louder this time. Still nothing.

  I glanced back over my shoulder at the handful of crew members currently engaged in steering the submarine. By this point I knew most of the crew aboard the Britannica by name, and I noted that Ed, Tom, and Jim were all on duty along with Wilson. The first three were still strangers to me, but I knew enough about Wilson’s prickly personality to guess that he wouldn’t take kindly to being interrupted. I fidgeted nervously, wishing that Megan or Ryan or one of the other teenage crew members were around. They were always willing to answer a question or lend a hand, something I’d relied on more than once when Hector had assigned me a task that was over my head.

  Feeling a bit lost, I knocked one more time and then tried the doorknob. It turned, and I eased it open and poked my head inside. The office was empty, but I quickly popped my head back out, not sure what to do now. Should I just wander around, hoping to find her? Go back to Weaver and apologize for being terrible at this job? Neither of those seemed like a great option, so even though I felt weird about being in there when the captain wasn’t, I grabbed the tooth and stepped inside her office so I could put it on her desk.