Hellboy: Unnatural Selection (11 page)

"And we have to go all the way in."

Gal smiled. "All the way, brother."

"Damn, now I feel sick as well."

Gal laughed and led the way. They left their heavy rucksacks just inside the cave entrance, out of the sun but still in daylight. That comforted Richard. With everything he and Gal had done over the years since their mother's murder, he was still afraid of the dark. He dreamed about that night sometimes, and when he woke up screaming, it was the darkness itself that was bearing down upon him, not what was hidden within. The darkness, the great unknown, still stalked him when he was awake. He supposed that was partly the reason he was doing his best to uncover some of what it concealed.

That and revenge.

Gal's flashlight beam flooded the cave when daylight faded away. Richard turned his flashlight on and combined the beams, shining them into the cracked walls and rugged ceiling. The floor here still consisted of sand; the sea must flood in here sometimes, and he hoped their calculations about the tide had been correct. Perhaps there were other ways out of there ... perhaps ... but he had no desire to find out.

In there for three days!
the old drunk had said.
No light, no food, drinking my own piss. Three days! And I heard it calling to me every minute of every hour of those days.

They worked their way into the cave, squeezing through a couple of narrow openings where the rock walls and ceiling had been scoured smooth by water being forced through at pressure. The sand floor eventually gave way to rock, and all signs of the sea — smashed shells, dried seaweed — vanished. The cave headed up, then down again, turning left and right. Cracks led off to the left, but Gal and Richard chose the easier route. The drunk had tried giving them direction, but he had been so flooded with rum by then that his words had been slurred beyond recognition.
Stray un,
he had said,
Jus go stray un.

It took half an hour to reach the cave. It opened up suddenly, and the space took their breath away. The flashlights were powerful, but even they could not fill the cave with light; there were always shadows evading the beams. Richard felt as though they were being stalked.

"There," Gal said. "Do you hear that? Is that what the old fool meant?"

Richard opened his mouth to try to calm his breathing. His beam shook, and he placed the heavy plastic flashlight on the ground, propped against a rock. "Yes," he said.

Something was whistling at them. Gently, consistently, so low that it was almost below their level of hearing. It was sensed rather than heard; Richard felt the tiny hairs in his ears reacting to it, his skull vibrating slightly with the sound. And it seemed to be coming from all around.

"He thought it was the kraken's ghost," Gal said. "Stupid old shit."

"And it isn't?" Richard said. "Are you really sure of that?"

"Were not here to find a ghost," Gal said. He walked into the center of the cave and looked around, turning a slow circle and splaying his beam across the lower walls. "There!"

The two brothers hurried to the light patch in the dark rock wall. Something glittered in there. Like treasure seekers, they felt their excitement rising, but this was not any traditional treasure. It was evidence of the past they sought, proof of a myth. And like everything else they had spent the last ten years searching for, its discovery delighted them.

"It's huge!" Richard said.

"Imagine the size of the thing this came from ... "

"How did it get in here? What's that it's buried in?"

Gal stepped back and aimed the beam wider. "Whale," he said. "Dried, fossilized. Maybe this cave was under water. Earthquake could have closed it in, raised it, who knows? Who cares? Father will be so pleased with this. We've sent him things of the air and the land, now he'll master the sea as well."

Richard produced his knife and set to work prizing the barb out of the hardened whale hide. The barb was as long as his hand, and it was set in a definite circular scar on the whales skin, a sucker mark. Richard could have stood within the diameter of that circle with room to spare.
The size of this thing! he
thought. But soon he would not have to imagine it any longer. Soon his father would bring it back from the Memory. That scared him, but it thrilled him as well. With so much power at their disposal, how could they not find the vengeance they sought?

It was all going to be so easy.

Two hours later they emerged back into the sunlight. Gal had one arm slung across Richard's shoulder. The sending had tired him more than ever, and there was a small smudge of dried blood beneath his nose. Richard had pretended not to notice.

The rains had come and gone, and the trees along the back of the beach steamed in the afternoon sun. It was hot, humid, sweaty, but they were both glad to feel the sun on their skins once again.

As soon as Richard had removed the sucker tooth from the wall of the cave, the whistling had stopped. Gal said it had been a draft of air moving across the tooth, but Richard wondered. Perhaps it really had been the ghost of the kraken, singing into reality from the vagueness of the Memory, silenced now in anticipation of what might come next. Silenced and ready.

"A
DRAGON?"

"Yeah. A Firedrake, apparently."

"And I thought my giant alligator was hard work." Abe Sapien sounded impressed, and Hellboy loved him for that. He hadn't yet mentioned the fact that the dragon had beaten Hellboy off, and for that he loved him more.

"You got to see Venice, at least."

"Hey, you went to Rio. I would have seen Lake Okanogan, too, if Tom hadn't called me in."

"Tough on you. Hey, I found a good bar called Zero's."

"And?"

Hellboy raised an eyebrow. Abe could read him like a book. Maybe that's why they were such friends, though sometimes Hellboy thought they were friends in spite of that. "And ... ?"

"Amelia Francis?" Abe smiled.

"She's very nice. Didn't know you'd met her."

Abe shrugged. "I haven't, but I spoke to her a couple of years back when I was looking for the Loch Ness Monster."

"Never did find that one, did you?"

Abe stared. Blinked. "So what happened with the dragon?"

Hellboy slapped his friend on the shoulder, and they both laughed. They had a close friendship, and when they went on separate missions, Hellboy was always pleased when they met up again. He guessed they saw something familiar in each other, some inexplicable thing that science had yet to unravel.

"Hellboy, Abe, good to see you again."

"Hi, Kate." Hellboy turned to the woman who had just walked into the conference room; Kate Corrigan, professor of the supernatural and consultant to the BPRD. He always enjoyed Kate's presence, though it usually meant that something big was going down. Tom Manning strode in behind her, face grim, and his single glance confirmed Hellboy's suspicions. "Tom," Hellboy said. "Good to see you again."

"Abby is missing," he said. "I've asked Liz to get back here as soon as she can; she should be here by the end of this meeting." No questions about Abe's time in Venice. No questions about Hellboy's Rio adventure or how he felt after his drubbing by the dragon. All business and no small talk.
This,
Hellboy thought,
could be bad.

"When did you last hear from Abby?" Abe asked.

"Yesterday. She was in Baltimore. She'd made contact with the werewolf and killed him. Out in the street, in broad daylight, I might add. She sounded confused and upset, and I told her to come in, but she never showed. Her satellite phone has been turned off ever since, and there's been no more contact. An hour ago I listed her as officially missing with the Baltimore Police Department, but ... "

"But if she doesn't want to be found, she won't be," Abe finished.

"Hey." Hellboy touched Abe's shoulder. He knew there was something special between Abe and Abby, though it was more of a paternal concern than anything sexual. Abe had pulled the werewolf girl from the bottom of the River Seine, dragged her back from suicide, and though it had taken time, her gratitude had grown. There was a love between them now, something profound and deep. "Hey, she'll be all right."

Abe nodded. "I know she can look after herself," he said. "I'm just afraid that one day she won't want to. Some people accept the mystery of their lives, others never can."

"We'll find her, Abe," Tom said. "In the meantime — "

"Who have you sent after her?"

"No one."

"What?"

"I can't spare the manpower." Tom stared at Abe and Hellboy and indicated that they should take a seat. They did so, waiting to hear what Tom and Kate had to say. Even Abe said no more. There was a heavy atmosphere in the room, loaded with awful potential like a breaking news item on TV. "You may all want to take a drink," Tom said. "This could be a long one."

"Not thirsty," Hellboy said. "Abe?"

Abe made a rude gesture.

Tom sat at the head of the conference table, and Kate took the seat next to him, opening her briefcase and spreading a slew of papers across the polished oak surface. Photographs, photocopies, a few CDs; her eyes seemed to dance from one to the other and grow more serious with each second.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Hellboy said. He had a thing for bad feelings. His tail twitched and scratched at the timber floor.

Tom rapped his knuckles on the table and sighed. "Guys, the shit has really hit the fan. The missions you've just returned from are the tip of the iceberg. Liz had what sounded like a nasty encounter with a phoenix in Greece, and other agents have been investigating other sightings across the globe. They've all been highly visible occurrences. Hellboy, the dragon you met was a case in point. It's been splashed across the media all over the world. Abe, the alligator you tackled is already on Italian TV. The list is long, but so far we've had unicorns running through the streets of Manila, a troll pulling trucks off the Sugg Gate Bridge, mandrake plants sprouting in banana plantations in South America, sirens luring ships onto rocks in Newfoundland ... and the list goes on. Very visible, very filmable, and all pretty nasty. Death tolls from each separate occurrence hadn't been high and were mostly a result of press or curious publics getting too close."

"You said
hadn't
been high," Abe said. "Has that changed?"

Tom bit his lip and looked down at the table. Kate shuffled papers nervously.

"What?" Hellboy said. "Hey, Tom, we're big boys. Abe and I have been through enough crap — "

"Not like this," Tom said. "Hellboy, this is all new. This is
different.
We're used to fighting things that are between the lines or below the radar of normal perception, powers that work behind or beyond reality to achieve their own ends. What we have now ... " Tom shook his head and rubbed his eyes. "Kate?"

Kate Corrigan forced a smile and stood. "The shit that Tom talks about hitting the fan shouldn't be real, but it is," she said. "In the past twelve hours, four airliners have been brought down over Europe, one of them crashing into Zagreb. Almost two thousand people have been killed. Flight recorders and radio transmissions received from the first downed aircraft talked of little men running across the fuselage and smashing their way out of panels in the cockpit."

"Little men?" Abe said.

Hellboy frowned. "Gremlins."

Kate nodded and continued. "Six hours ago in Paraguay, hikers entered a village to find its entire population dead, totally drained of blood. Many of them had been killed in their homes, but there were a few in the streets and a concentration of corpses in the village church. Several dead creatures also lay in the streets, brought down by gunfire. Bats. Huge, bodies as big as a fully grown adult, with unnaturally long canine teeth, and their stomachs were distended with the amount of blood they'd drunk."

"Not good," Abe muttered.

"Yeah." Hellboy stood and paced over to the window, looking out at the HQ's gardens. "Is there more?"

"Believe it," Kate said. "More than a hundred men have vanished in the Azores in the last day. Some of their bodies have been washed up on beaches, minus their sexual organs — "

"Ouch," Hellboy said.

"Quite. Their throats are ripped out as well. The ones who hadn't already been got at by normal marine life displayed signs of human teeth marks on their wounds."

"Human?" Abe said. "Mermaids?"

Kate shrugged. "Who knows? But men are still disappearing, and women are patrolling the beaches with shotguns."

"Daryl Hannah was never that nasty," Hellboy said.

Tom stood. "We saved the worst until last," he said. "This one's ... "

"Beyond belief?" Hellboy asked.

Tom shrugged, then turned and used the remote control to open the doors on a digital projection screen. "I could tell you, but I think seeing it would be easier." He said no more, falling silent as he scrolled through commands on the screen and prepared the footage. It started to play — an aerial shot of a cruise liner, huge, long, sleek — and he paused the film. The picture froze, jerking subtly back and forth as if the ship sought to escape being viewed.

Hellboy knew that it was going to be bad, and he wondered what every person on that ship was doing as the actual scene was shot. There would be couples making love in their cabins; people playing sports; others watching films in the ship's movie theater; families eating in the various restaurants onboard; mothers reading on deck while fathers showed their kids the wonders that such a cruise ship would contain. The frozen moment in time should have screamed happiness and joy, instead of dread and doom. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see, but knew that he would open them again when he heard Tom press play. That was his job: to see the doom and gloom of things, instead of the joy and happiness.

"Here," said Tom Manning. "This is where it changes. This was shot by a press helicopter doing a feature on this new cruise ship. The footage was impounded before it could leak out. You'll see why."