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Finally, with the earsplitting noise of steel being torn like so much canvas, he began to truly emerge. A red arm rose from the foredeck, an elongated triangle, tube feet waving. Another erupted through the side of the ship. A third swelled within the superstructure, bursting portholes and hatches. The big golf ball that sheltered the radar crumpled, the legs of the mast snapped or bent, and the golf ball smashed down onto the pier.
A fourth leg rose behind the container that held the Mother Rock and wrapped itself around the prize.
Napalm took a step back and stared in blank astonishment. But Peaks recovered quickly and recognized the threat: this new beast was after the rock, too. And Peaks meant to have that rock for himself.
“Fascinating,” Peaks said with his monster’s voice. “I’d love to study you. But sadly, I have to destroy you.”
Vincent’s answer was a soft but defiant “Try.”
Napalm sprayed fire at the crusted leg cradling the container. The leg drew back, dropping the heavy container onto the deck with two loud bangs—the noise of the container hitting the deck, and a split second behind it the deeper thump of the Mother Rock slamming around inside the container.
Napalm bounded over the side, crashing down in fire and smoke on the deck of the Okeanos. But that deck was being torn apart, with great jagged rips opening, as if the entire ship was exploding in slow motion.
Napalm rained fire down into the gaps and was rewarded with a very human-sounding scream. Then, from the direction of the bow, an arm no longer attached to Vincent’s main body came at Napalm, trailing its ruptured viscera, running on tubular legs like a red torpedo.
Napalm turned and blew flame at the arm, but it did not stop. It burned, but it did not stop, and Napalm felt rather than saw a second detached arm slithering toward him from the starboard side, crawling up and over the rail like a sea monster rising from the water.
“Burn!” Peaks roared, and he spread his liquid fire everywhere. It rolled across the deck, blistering the paint, seeping down into the holds, lighting up anything flammable, food supplies, scientific gear, specimens, bodies, the ship’s cat . . . and Vincent.
But Vincent’s detached arms continued their advance on Napalm, their tubular legs burning and regrowing, burning and regrowing. They marched like fearless warriors through walls of flame, over blistering magma. They burned and smelled of fish. They burned and sent up an oily smoke. They writhed and twisted and were consumed, and yet kept growing.
Impossible!
The scientist in Peaks, the rational mind that still worked feverishly beneath the animal rage of Napalm, could not believe what it was seeing. Could not imagine that anything biological could so ignore its own destruction. It wasn’t courage; the sections were mindless automata, indifferent to their own survival, driven by the will of the thin boy with the glittering eyes.
The ship was sinking. One of Vincent’s legs had pushed through the wrong part of the ship and water was gushing in through a five-foot hole below the waterline. The deck, already a crazy quilt of twisted metal and fire, tilted as the bow began to settle.
Vincent did not feel the agonies of his detached sections, but he felt a dull pain from those parts of his core that burned, dull pain being all his starfish nervous system could convey. The pain was tolerable. What was not tolerable was the fact that he had been forced to let go of the box and its precious contents.
Furious and afraid, Vincent now began willfully ripping the Okeanos apart, tearing off great slabs of steel and hurling them at Napalm with shocking force.
A two-ton segment of deck hit Napalm like a sharp-edged Frisbee, cutting deep into him, spilling a gusher of magma, and causing Napalm to howl in pain and fury.
On the wharf Dekka and Armo, Shade and a de-morphed Cruz, stood watching in confusion.
“Which one do we fight?” Dekka asked.
Off to their right, Drake seemed equally nonplussed. He stood there, whip arm twisting in agitation, as his body regrew melted flesh.
The Coast Guard was less indecisive. They were getting frantic, screamed orders from DiMarco on the radio: Sink the ship! Sink it now!
The Bofors opened up at point-blank range, firing into the port side of the already-sinking Okeanos.
Cruz covered her ears with her hands. The noise was staggering: ripping steel, the furious sound of a fire running out of control, the BamBamBamBam! of the Bofors gun, the thwack-thwack of the helicopter, all punctuated by Vincent’s shrill screams and the rumbling roar of Napalm.
The Okeanos, or what was left of it, settled into the mud. Its main deck was now well below the level of the dock, its superstructure looking like a tin can after someone had dropped in a cherry bomb, shreds and tatters hanging.
And now, no longer hidden by hoods, nightmare creatures leaped onto the land. They looked like humans being hugged from behind by giant red centipedes. And as they advanced, they sprouted tendrils like worms, tendrils that grew from human stomachs and chests, whipped furiously like electrocuted spaghetti.
“You’re. Dekka,” Shade Darby said, slowing her speech.
Dekka shot her a surprised look. “Do I know you?”
“Shade. Darby,” Shade said. She pointed at the advancing meat puppets and said, “I’ve. Got. Them.”
Vincent’s human meat puppets were quick, but not to Shade. The whipping tendrils were bewilderingly fast to a normal human, but not to Shade.
She unwound the thick rope that had been used to tie the Okeanos off to the dock. The end of the rope was burning. She whipped the rope around over her head, not at her maximum speed—the rope would have come apart—but far faster than a human could. Then she smacked the rope end into the nearest meat puppet. The impact slammed the creature so hard, it careened off the edge of the dock and fell into fire.
