Hellboy: Unnatural Selection(33)

"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."

Hellboy opened his eyes.

The cruise ship moved on its way, all instances of happiness on board moving on as well, and seconds later the scene began to shift from reality into disbelief. The sea around the liner — previously disturbed only by the boat's wake — began to stir. Ripples turned to waves, and waves spun into swirling whirlpools that spat spray. It was as if the sea were heating up, reaching boiling point in a matter of seconds, and then something burst from its depths. Calmness gave way to violence. Peace gave way to terror. And the kraken surfaced.

A huge gray tentacle rose from the water, tip waving, feeling up the side of the ship. It twisted onto the deck and slapped down among dozens of tiny shapes fleeing its appearance. As it rose it revealed several bright red splashes on the deck. It smashed down again, swatting a dozen more vacationers into the pale timber. Several more tentacles rose to join it, and then on the other side of the ship, three more came into view. They curved up and over the superstructure, slapping, waving, punching down. Glass exploded out from windows, scurrying shapes were crushed or sent plummeting into the sea, and several lifeboats were knocked from their moorings. They fell, crashing into the churning waters, saving no one.