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Miriam’s carefully-considered gambit worked, as the Mama Jean cut across the water in near silence. She studied the deck of the ship in front of her and saw no evidence that Bark knew of their presence. She wouldn’t be able to stop Mama Jean from crashing into the side of Madre’s Mayhem, but she hoped that the element of surprise would be in their favor. Miriam didn’t fret about the old man who waited for them, though. She worried about the unstoppable kraken waiting beneath the waves.
As their boat inched closer and closer, Miriam made out the silhouettes of Stacy and Bark emerging from the hold. She was still alive, and if Bark hadn’t killed Stacy, then that meant Tanner might be alive, as well. The hope buoyed her spirits, but when Tommy pulled his gun from the holster, it brought her back to reality, causing her to grab the gun she’d taken from the Coast Guard cutter. She’d shot a man before — or at least a government experiment that had once been a man — so she felt confident that she could pull the trigger if she had to.
But she knew that couldn’t be the plan. Though they could probably justify killing Bark in cold blood as the two boats sidled up beside one another, Tommy had made it clear that he wanted Bark alive.
Closer. Just a dozen yards away now. Macy stood at the bow of the ship, resolutely holding on to a rope that Miriam had given her. Once they touched, Miriam would toss the rope up, hopefully onto something sturdy, and then she and Tommy would scramble up as quickly as they could.
A good plan that broke down the moment they watched Bark throw Stacy over the side of the boat.
Tommy gasped and ran from the cockpit to the bow of the ship. Miriam was surprised when he didn’t jump in the water, his body seemingly frozen in fear. She knew what she had to do. From the cockpit, she took off in a dead run and dove into the water without saying a single word to Tommy or Macy, her head barely missing the hull of Madre’s Mayhem before descending into the water.
By sheer intuition, Miriam managed to skirt along the bottom of the Mayhem, hoping her breath would hold long enough to make it to the other side. The strange muffled noise of the two boats knocking together told her that Bark would now be alerted to their presence. When she could spare a hand, Miriam felt for the gun tucked in her shorts. Still there.
The pressure in her lungs built, but she ignored the pain, knowing that she had minutes. She needed to stay alert and focused, and hope that Tommy could keep Bark at bay long enough for her to get Stacy to safety. When the hull started to creep back towards the water, she knew she didn’t have far to go.
She broke the surface, gasped for air and looked around for any sign of Stacy.
Though bloody and confused, Stacy sat treading water, understandably surprised to see Miriam. With Miriam’s hair darkened by the water and matted against her face, Miriam doubted that Stacy would even recognize her.
Miriam swam to Stacy and looked into her eyes. “Are you okay?”
Stacy only nodded, her eyes vacant. She was clearly in shock, which limited Miriam’s options. Getting back on the Mayhem would be a daunting task, but Mama Jean’s lower profile gave them a fighting chance. It was longer than Miriam wanted to stay in the water with a potential kraken lurking nearby, but swimming around Madre’s Mayhem was their only option. With Stacy hooked under one arm, Miriam set out towards the bow.
A gunshot rang across the water. Miriam swam faster.
***
Tommy clumsily worked his way up to the deck of Madre’s Mayhem, leaping over the wall to see Bark there and charging him. He tried to avoid him but proved too slow, falling to the ground as Bark’s leathery hands grasped for his throat. Tommy worried that Bark would go for his gun, but Bark’s huge body prevented him from reaching across to get it himself.
The old man was strong. Stronger than he had any right to be. Tommy bucked and shifted and tried to throw Bark off him but instead just felt the vice-grip of Bark’s hands. Tommy tried to plead but could barely even breathe, left only to stare into Bark’s hateful eyes. Tommy had never seen such eyes on Bark before.
Tommy clawed at Bark’s meaty hands, to no avail. At least Miriam would save Stacy. At least Tommy’s sacrifice would serve a purpose.
Clunk!
Just when Tommy considered giving in to the larger, stronger man above him, Bark’s hands went slack, and he rolled off to the right, clutching his head and rattling off a string of expletives. Tommy was left looking up at the flushed, anxious face of Macy Donner, now staring with disbelief at the baseball bat in her hand.
The time to worry about Macy would have to come later. Hearing Bark scuttle across the deck, Tommy jumped up, pulled his gun from the holster and fired a round towards where he guessed Bark to be. The shot missed wide, and Bark took the opportunity to crawl across the deck and slip head-first into the hold. Tommy heard him hit the bottom hard.
“Stay here!” Tommy warned Macy.
Tommy inched towards the hold carefully, unsure of what might happen next. He felt certain that Bark would have a gun. Above the hole leading downward, Tommy peeked over into the darkness. He could barely make out Bark’s silhouette at the bottom of the stairs, a gun pointed up toward Tommy’s head. Tommy dodged out of the way, but Bark never pulled the trigger.
Bark’s gruff voice echoed up, “I don’t want to kill you, Tommy!”
“Yeah?” Tommy asked. “Could’ve fooled me.”
Tommy tried to find an angle that would give him the advantage, circling around, but unless he learned to ricochet bullets, Bark had him in a standoff. Tommy looked at the hold’s heavy wooden door and started concocting a plan. If he couldn’t take Bark out, maybe he could lock him up, sail the Mayhem back to port and then deal with it.
“Leave. Get back on your boat and go home!” Bark yelled.
“Not gonna happen, Bark.”
Bark’s gun cocked. “If you don’t, I’ll kill the kid.”
***
Miriam wrapped a blanket around Stacy’s shivering shoulders, frantically looking around the boat for Macy. If she wasn’t on the boat, that meant she went over to the Mayhem with Tommy. It didn’t make sense that Macy would have left the safety of the Mama Jean. The adrenaline shot through Miriam like a bullet train, now driven by a need to protect the two most important people in her life.
“Stay here, ok?” Miriam said, trying to get Stacy to focus. “I’ll be right back.”
Stacy rocked back and forth on the bench curved around the aft section of the boat. She needed help, comfort, and probably a doctor, but Miriam either didn’t have or couldn’t spare any of those things. She patted Stacy’s shoulder one more time and bound towards the bow, scrambling up the side of the Mayhem just in time to hear Bark threaten Tanner’s life.
Tommy eyed Miriam quietly, his face sullen and hard. Macy sat against the wall of the deck, clutching tightly to the bloody baseball bat.
Miriam assessed the situation and quickly realized what Tommy surely already knew — a head-on attack against Bark would only mean Tanner’s death. But if they left, Bark would likely kill Tanner anyway. There had to be another way. A way to turn the tables. She searched the deck, her eyes judging the usefulness of everything she saw.
She looked again, this time searching the wooden deck, her eyes landing on bullet holes.
Miriam motioned with her left hand for Tommy to keep Bark talking, while she quietly got to her hands and knees and crawled slowly towards the holes. If they went all the way through, then maybe she could get a good angle on Bark. Guess where he was by his voice. Though it was a long shot.
“If you do that,” Tommy shouted. “Then you’ll be a murderer, Bark.”
“Ain’t nothin’ new, Tommy.”
“Prison. Forever. Maybe the death penalty. Do you want that?”
Miriam made it to the holes and inserted one of her fingers all the way through. She wondered why there were bullet holes in the deck of Madre’s Mayhem and decided that she could thank the Coast Guard for that. Her angle would be limited, but she could at least get a shot down. If it didn’t hit Bark, it might at least startle him enough. Or it might get Tanner killed.
“I’m sorry, Tommy,” Bark hollered up, the slightest hint of strain in his voice. “I didn’t want it to go this way.”
“You’re sick, Bark,” Tommy said. “We can help you. If you just give yourself up now.”
Miriam judged Bark’s location and knew there’d be no hope of a direct hit, but she placed the muzzle of the salt-water drenched gun against the hole, hoping that it would still fire. She conjured up the image of the hold in her mind, trying to imagine where he might have Tanner. She needed verbal confirmation. She needed to know she wouldn’t hit him.
“Tanner?” she yelled suddenly. “Are you alive?”
Almost immediately, his voice reverberated up. “Miriam? I’m here!”
Perfect. She could tell that Tanner sat somewhere closer to the bow of the ship, far away from the hole that she meant to use as a distraction. She exchanged a look with Tommy, hoping that he understood the stakes. Once she fired, Tommy would have to act fast before Bark could get his bearings and kill Tanner.
Bark yelled up, “You brought that stupid girl?”
“Yeah,” Tommy replied while shooting her a smirk. “She’s persistent.”
Bark let out a short, sharp laugh. “Well, now you know the kid’s alive. So, I mean it. I’ll shoot him.”
Tommy widened his eyes and gave Miriam a sharp nod. She took a deep breath, tightened her muscles, and squeezed the trigger. Tommy leaped into the hold, skipping the stairs entirely. She heard the thuds and echoes of a scuffle, but no gunfire yet. She scrambled over and dropped down into the dim light of the hold, where Tommy sat on the floor, blood trickling from his hairline.
Bark held a gun at Tommy’s head, an evil smile on his face. Miriam didn’t spend time to formulate her plan. Bark hadn’t registered her arrival into the hold yet, and she had to take advantage of it. She pulled up her pistol, aimed, and fired.
***
To Tommy, it seemed like the bullet had torn through Bark’s shoulder in slow motion, blood and tissue spraying out like snowflakes drifting to earth. A shoulder wound wouldn’t kill Bark, but it at least caused him to drop the gun. Tommy scanned for his own gun, found it, and scooped it up. He shoved it into his holster, certain that Bark wouldn’t need to be threatened now.
Bark clutched his right shoulder, blood seeping through the cracks in his fingers. He started to turn towards Miriam but fell to his knees before he could make a full turn. Then onto his back. Bark coughed and sputtered.
Tommy moved to Bark, kneeling above him. The man’s eyes no longer held the hateful vitriol from before. Tommy brushed Bark’s hands away from the wound, took the handkerchief from his back pocket, and pressed down hard. It wouldn’t be enough, Tommy knew, but it would help. Maybe give Bark a fighting chance to make it to a hospital.
He didn’t expect the sadness to weigh on him as it did. He didn’t just need to save Bark to be a good person. He wanted to save him.
“You ok, Tanner?” Miriam asked, breaking Tommy from the moment.
“Yeah,” Tanner replied. “I’ll be fine. Help him first.”
Tommy didn’t pay attention to what Miriam did, only barely registering her slipping through a door to another room.
Holding his handkerchief firm, Tommy said, “We’ll get you back to a hospital, Bark.”
Bark faintly nodded, his eyes hazier by the second.
Tommy kept talking. “Why Bark? Why’d you do all this?”
He could see the corners of Bark’s mouth trying to form a smile, but before he could get there, he coughed and moaned. “I... I wish I knew, Tommy.”
Miriam appeared again, this time holding a sizable first aid kit. She went to work immediately, brushing Tommy aside as she dressed the wound with expert grace.
As she worked, Tommy muttered, “Thank you.”
“I’m not a monster, Detective,” Miriam said without missing a beat. “I don’t want anyone to die. Help me here.”
Tommy took her cue and helped lift Bark up slightly so that Miriam could get to the entrance wound on his back. Bark groaned in pain. Tommy marveled at Miriam’s skills. The resilience. The maturity. A kid. The same basic age as all those kids that ruined his life every spring break, but this time someone he could look up to. He never expected to find a role model in someone so much younger than himself.
“Is Stacy...?” Tommy asked.
“She’s fine,” Miriam responded. “On the Mama Jean. In shock, I think, but fine.”
Miriam studied her work, and then nodded.
“Okay,” she said, ushering Tommy to gently lower Bark back down. “We still need to get him to a hospital, but I think we can move him over to the Mama Jean.”
With that, Miriam stood and crossed over to Tanner, hugging him before going to work on the knots holding him to the table. Tommy sat next to Bark, surprised when he felt a rough hand close around his own. He looked down at Bark.
“Thanks, Tommy,” Bark whispered.
Tommy squeezed the old man’s hand, trying to offer comfort whether or not Bark deserved it. The emotions coursing through him were complicated and difficult to understand, but he would figure those out with time. He took a deep breath, finally allowing himself to detach from the situation. They got Stacy and Tanner back. Apprehended Bark. But it wasn’t over.
Almost on cue, Madre’s Mayhem sank deeper in the water, rocking harder than it would from any wave one could expect this far out.
A scream echoed from outside.
***
Tanner’s face was swollen and bruised. He looked hungry and tired. He smelled bad. But most of all, he was alive. Miriam felt whole again, ecstatic to have him back. It wasn’t their way to heap praises and love on one another, but she knew he felt the same.
By the time the boat rocked, Miriam was working on the last of the knots. When Macy’s scream rang out, Miriam desperately wished she could be in two places at once. She couldn’t protect Macy and Tanner at the same time, though. The best she could do was to get everyone in one place.
“Can you walk?” Miriam asked Tanner.
He pushed up to his feet gingerly, holding the table for support. He’d be able to hobble along, but he was in no shape to fight a kraken. Neither was Stacy. Nor Macy, for that matter. As much as Miriam wanted to complete the task, she recognized that circumstances didn’t allow for it now. She slid herself under one of Tanner’s arms and took the brunt of his weight from the table.
“We gotta go,” Tommy said from across the hold, trying to pull Bark to his feet. Bark cussed and moaned, but Tommy managed it just as the boat rocked again, almost sending both men back down.
Miriam shuffled forward, Tanner in tow. She ignored the protests of pain that escaped his throat with every step and forced him to push on. The stairs were difficult, but Miriam went behind him, pushing up with all her strength. If he slipped and dropped his full weight on her, she’d stand no chance of keeping him up, but Tanner’s strong biceps proved up to the task of heaving himself up, even with limited use of his ankles.
Miriam took in the situation and saw the tentacles curling around the boat. She wondered whether the Mama Jean was similarly afflicted. Macy was no longer onboard. The baseball bat rolled around on the deck. Miriam counted off the tentacles. Four. All wrapped around the boat she stood on. That left four more unaccounted for. She could only hope that the kraken used them for support instead of going after the Mama Jean.
Tommy’s labored grunts pulled Miriam’s attention back down to the stairwell, Bark’s pained face looking up at her. Below, Tommy supported Bark on his back, but the old man was far too heavy and large for Tommy to walk up the stairs that way.
Miriam nodded to Tanner and they both dropped to their knees, reaching down and instructing Bark to grab hold with his good arm. Together, Miriam and Tanner heaved Bark up onto the deck, Tommy pushing from underneath. Bark screamed in pain. Miriam didn’t know if he’d make it, but she wasn’t going to leave him to die. She’d done the revenge thing with Cornelius. She wasn’t going to do it here.
Besides, was any of this really Bark’s fault?
Once all four were on deck, Miriam dragged Tanner along towards the Mama Jean. Halfway there, he resisted, hanging back and surveying the deck, his eyes wide with wonder.
“She’s... amazing,” he said. “Just give me a few minutes.”
Miriam’s heart broke. Not him. Not Tanner.
“No!” she forcefully spat out. “We’re going.”
When he continued to resist, she shouted to Tommy, “Detective! Help me!”
Right behind her, Tommy lowered Bark to the ground, spent a half second surveying the insane tentacles whipping around them, and took up Tanner’s other side. His added strength provided enough leverage to pull Tanner along to the edge of the boat, until they looked down at the bow of the Mama Jean. Macy stood at the bottom, gesturing frantically. No sign of the kraken on this side of the boat.
The drop wasn’t far, but Miriam knew it’d be painful for Tanner. She couldn’t make herself care. Getting him away from the kraken took priority. With Tommy’s help, they heaved him over the side and lowered him as far as they could before dropping him down and letting him fall the last few feet. Macy immediately scooped him into her arms and cupped his face, muttering words Miriam couldn’t hear.
A tentacle lashed out and grabbed at Tommy, but he evaded just in time. The two rushed together to get Bark, going through the same routine with him after Macy helped Tanner hobble away. Tommy jumped down next, leaving Miriam alone on Madre’s Mayhem. The boat shook and shuddered. What did the kraken mean to do?
A tentacle snaked towards her methodically. She managed to grab the bat rolling on the deck and slam it down against the tip, grazing the smallest of the suction cups. It retreated briefly, long enough that Miriam was able to turn and hop down onto the Mama Jean.
She counted six tentacles now, all wrapped around the now-abandoned Mayhem. It creaked under the pressure. As Miriam started the engine on her own boat, the hull of the Mayhem cracked, a string of broken metal snaking up the side. Like legends of lore, this kraken was about to sink a sizable ship. And that meant they had time.
As Tommy and Macy tended to Stacy and Tanner, Miriam, for all she could, pushed the Mama Jean away from the creature she’d come to kill, away from any chance to learn more about a monster that defied existence. With Tanner safe, now she could mount a real hunt. A real expedition.
With the distance between them growing, Miriam looked back to see the kraken slide off the broken pieces of the Mayhem. Though she couldn’t be sure, it seemed to lurch in their direction as it slipped below the waves.
