Beneath the jet ski, the ocean bulges and we hydroplane down a watery slope before settling in the trough of a wave, wash all around us.
Something’s in the deep and deep inside us. That presence. The storm in our souls and minds. But it’s not here for us. Doesn’t even see us. It’s here for them.
‘No! No! No!’ I hear the Jacks yell in unison from across the water. Like Evan did. Only now it’s not denial. It’s terror.
A humpback whale explodes from the water, tossing speedboats like driftwood, becomes a mountain momentarily hanging in the air, and then slams back on more flailing Jacks, as inevitable as a landslide. There’s splintering and crunching and screaming. Searchlights are snuffed and the bright beams that remain skew in all directions. Another whale rockets from the water and more enemies are thrown and crushed and plunged into the depths. A third leviathan breaches, a monstrous eruption of barnacles and flippers, capsizing and crushing the remaining boats. I see Jacks clinging to wreckage. Another whale towers up and they’re all lost in its shadow.
But the chopper keeps coming, spotlight panning across wreckage and corpses for a moment before it zeroes in on us out on the dark sea. Its guns flare. Bullets boil towards us in the water as it races closer. I turn the throttle. The jet ski coughs, gets a burst of power, but I’ve got the handles turned so all I succeed in doing is turning us side on so Nathan and I present a bigger target. Then the chopper’s searchlight is eclipsed and its bullets are stopped by a monolith launching from the sea. We scream—and the sea and air and earth and universe seem to scream with us—as the aircraft plunges into the whale’s head and explodes with a muffled thwump.
There’s a terrible moment where machine and mammal are fused like a mutated statue before they subside together beneath the surface.
Evan between us, Nathan and I cling to each other on the jet ski, rolling with the waves, eyes aimed back into the searchlight glare from the remaining boats back at the mouth of the river.
‘They’re not coming,’ Nathan says.
‘The whales,’ I say.
I can feel them beneath us. The sensation’s not like I had with the dolphins. There’s no insight into their consciousness. They’re in their waters early because of the new winter. Ready to do whatever they can to keep Jacks out of their world. The whales aren’t here to spirit us to safety. I’m not even sure they care we exist.
We’re dead in the water. Rolling with waves that’ll push us to shore. And even if the currents take us north or south as soon as Evan comes around he’ll lead the Jacks straight to us.
I try the jet ski’s throttle again and again. The engine coughs and farts but won’t catch.
‘Ssssh,’ Nathan hisses. ‘What’s that?’
Over the waves lapping us, there’s mechanical rumbling. A Jack boat’s eluded the whales, is bearing down on us, smart enough not to use its searchlight. But I can’t see it silhouetted against the blazes back on land. The engine shifts down. It’s not approaching from the shore, it’s—
Dazzling light hits us from behind. We turn into the blinding glare of a boat’s searchlight.
‘Danby?’ comes a voice. ‘Nathan?’
Johnno.