Hellboy: Unnatural Selection(101)

"No!" Leh said.

Hellboy let himself fall into the vat, grabbing on to its lip with his free hand.

"No!"

Hellboy dragged the demon up over the lip and swung it above his head, letting go and watching as Leh fell, and fell, and fell, twisting down into the darkness of the Memory, its screams dying out just as its falling body finally faded from sight.

"Back where you belong," Hellboy said. He groaned. Blood was pulsing from his fresh wounds. And below him something waited. Usually he didn't mind heights, but that endless darkness scared the crap out of him.

He hauled himself back over and fell to the deck, wiping blood from his eyes before taking off after Liz.

He'd only had a fleeting look at Abby — the fur, the muscle, and the teeth — but he knew that he didn't want Liz facing that on her own.

The ship shook again, and he felt the first waft of heat from distant fires.

Damn, he thought, they sit around doing nothing, and when they do act, they're too damn efficient.

Hellboy figured he had a few minutes before he became fish food.



* * *



Liz found him huddled in a small room with a broken door, bleeding to death. His throat had been ripped out, and chunks of meat were torn from his stomach, legs, and back. Nothing had been swallowed. The werewolf had spat the chunks of Benedict Blake across the floor, as if leaving them as a sacrifice or an offering. To what, Liz did not know. She stood and watched the old man staring at bits of himself as the life slowly bled from him, and when Hellboy arrived, she turned and walked away.



* * *



Hellboy took one look into the room and saw that the man was dead. More than dead, he was fading. Becoming transparent. Slipping away into Memory. He should be famous, but he had been shut away in this old ship for so long that, ironically, no one would ever remember him.

"Maybe Leh will have use of you yet," Hellboy said. It was a pretty uncharitable thought, he supposed, but that's just the way he was feeling.

He ran after Liz, and together they made their way up on deck.



* * *



The New Ark was sinking. It listed badly to port, the bridge had been all but blown away, and a great slick of debris and fuel had spread across the ocean from the holes in its hull. Several parts of it were on fire, and smoke billowed skyward and merged with that already there from the destroyed helicopter.

The sun was sinking into the land visible to the west.

From the south, two Tornados were streaking across the waves on an attack run.

"I think we should jump," Liz said.

Hellboy shook his head. "I think we'll be OK. Look." There was a helicopter hovering a hundred yards off the bow, and in its open doorway stood Abe Sapien. He waved once at Hellboy and Liz, but he was looking elsewhere, scanning the deck, searching the waves.

Hellboy's satellite phone went off. "Hellboy, where is she?"

"She's still inside, buddy."

"You didn't bring her out? You didn't stay to find her?"

"Abe, I really don't think she wants to be found."

A pause. "That's what she said last time," Abe said. They watched him drop the phone back into the helicopter and dive into the sea. He went in with hardly a splash.

"This baby's sinking," Hellboy said. The sea was now swelling up over the deck, and the sounds of ripping metal and rupturing bulkheads were deafening. He was very tired.

His wounds had begun to hurt for real. Liz held him up and waved the helicopter in, and as the deck vanished below them, they were winched up into its cabin.



* * *



Below the surface, the sea was in chaos. Bubbles and wreckage from the ship obscured Abe's view, and the water stank from the ruptured fuel tanks. He pulled himself past floating debris and headed for the sinking vessel, and he did not even hesitate before diving deep and finding his way in. It was suicide, he knew that. But he had found Abby through her own suicide attempt, and there was no option but to try to save her again.

The ship swallowed him up, and he started to feel his way through its ruined corridors and water-filled holds.

Some lights were still working. They cast strange shadows in such turbulent waters. Several times Abe thought something was swimming right at him, but it always resolved itself into nothing more than another surge, another gush of fuel-tainted water being forced along passageways by the pressures of sinking. He forged on, smelling blood here and there and trying to follow its trail. He lost it, found it again, went deeper. The ship was turning as it sank, and he was almost deafened by the sounds of metal twisting and breaking apart. The thumps of distant explosions crushed him against bulkheads. Doors swung open and blocked his way. Something soft and warm grabbed at him, and he kicked out, feeling his feet connect with a slippery thing. By the time he'd turned around, whatever had reached for him had vanished into the chaotic shadows.