Hellboy: Unnatural Selection(34)

The liner, massive engines still powering at the waves, began to lift.

A huge gray body surfaced beside the ship, and one eye — twenty feet across — clouded as it emerged into sunlight. The tentacles still raged across the decks, exploding parts of the superstructure and sending showers of timber and metal to splash into the sea. People ran here and there, sometimes in groups, more often alone and lonely in death. Tiny shapes floated in the sea around the emerging monster. Arms waved, but the unfortunates did not remain on the surface for long; the huge swells drove them down, and when they bobbed back up, they were lifeless, drifting at the mercy of the waves.

The kraken rose further, the liner now firmly in its grasp. Only a minute had passed between the first tentacle rising and the monster basking in the sun with the liner lifted almost clear of the sea. The ship's huge turbines still pumped spray, forming a rainbow at its stern. The sea boiled as if in fury at the kraken's appearance. Or perhaps the fury was directed at the ship itself, an invader here, a construct slicing the ocean and leaving only an oily wake behind. Because as the kraken suddenly rose higher and slammed down — breaking the ship's back, crushing it, spilling passengers like innards for the carrion creatures of the sea to pick off — the waters seemed to rise in celebration. Huge spurts erupted on either side of the ship, driven by the unbearable pressures of air escaping the crushed hull. Shapes rose and fell, forming desperate waving stars with arms and legs. Several small explosions blew out sections of the hull, but the worst destruction belonged to the kraken, and the kraken alone. It shook like a crocodile trying to drown a gazelle. The liner — gleaming white and proud once, now broken and sad — came apart.

After the kraken sank back below the waves, it took only a few minutes for the remains of the great ship to go under. None of those in the BPRD conference room spoke; none of them wanted to break the silence, because there was really nothing to be said. The helicopter must have swung in close then, because the view suddenly began to change. Instead of specks seen from a distance, the survivors in the water were suddenly real people — men and women, boys and girls. A few bobbed here and there — those flung free by the kraken's thrashing tentacles — but mostly the survivors clung on to ragged wreckage. The helicopter passed low across the disaster scene. Desperate faces turned upward, pleading to be saved.

"Turn it off," Hellboy said. He had closed his eyes, but he still felt the thrum of tension in the room. "We don't need to see any more."

Tom clicked the remote control. "That's about it. The helicopter left the area because it was running out of fuel. When the U.S. Coast Guard arrived three hours later, they found fewer than a hundred survivors."

"How many were aboard?" Abe asked.

"Almost three thousand, including crew." Tom's words hung in the room, accompanied only by the whir of the projection-screen doors enclosing it once again.

Hellboy whistled, looked around the room at Abe, Tom, and Kate, but for a while none of them had anything else to say. Tom poured some water, Kate leafed through a file, and Abe stared at Hellboy, his big eyes more watery than usual.

"So what's happening?" Abe said at last.

Tom looked at Kate and nodded.

"I don't need to tell you all just how wrong this is," she said. "All the creatures we've seen here are from myth and legend. Some of them go back thousands of years — the dragon, the phoenix — while others are more modern. Gremlins are a creation of the age of technology, an excuse for machines going wrong."

"Not an excuse any longer," Hellboy said.

"Maybe. We've all seen things here, things that most people wouldn't or couldn't believe. We know what exists beyond the everyday, behind the veil, and in the dark. And some of us can shift that veil. But what we're seeing here is a complete manifestation of a whole slate of myths, not just one aspect. It's not just a dragon or a demon, it's a Who's Who of world mythology, from the beginning of time up to the modern day. It's true. It's all here. There's a hundred hours of film of these things, and both of you have just returned from brushes with creatures of myth and legend."

"Brush? More like a hammering." Hellboy flicked at his arm as if still clearing water from his skin. He struck the floor with his tail and looked down at the table, angry.

"So where does all this come from?" Kate asked.

"Memory?" Abe said. "Collective subconscious?"