Chapter 5 #2
Her gaze trailed to below the mer’s torso.
A serpentine, bisected dorsal fin reached from his waist to just beneath where the knees would be on a human, slack and faded, as lifeless as its owner.
A dim overhead light gave off an ethereal, canary glow to the room.
His skin was hairless, and her gaze trailed to the half inch of webbing between his thick fingers.
Obscure markings of faded brown semicircles and wavy lines wove together in an intricate pattern across his arms and chest, their meaning and symbolism foreign to her.
A glance behind his ears and at his neck revealed four closed gill slits, nearly imperceptible to her eyes.
His teeth revealed a similar structure to her own. So, her hypothesis about them needing to eat fish wasn’t correct.
Two divers stood at the corner of the room, one man and one woman, beaming at their handiwork. A small group headed by Nick surrounded them, congratulating them and shaking their hands.
Luke bounded off to join them, and Angie slowly followed. He squeezed in between the group to talk to Nick and the divers, making excited gestures with his hands. Nick broke into a bright, toothy grin when Luke approached him, and they slipped into their own conversation.
“When did you find him?” Angie looked at each of the divers. “Where?” A pang of envy struck that she wasn’t the one to find the merman laying before her.
She certainly wouldn’t have killed him. Not before trying to understand him first.
“We found two of them when we were out scouting.” The female diver’s gaze slid toward Angie. “Crazy that they’re real, right? I could hardly believe it, myself.”
“But why is he dead? Can they not survive outside the water?” Angie struggled to piece together how the merman was found in the water and was now dead on land. “We could have tried to see if he could speak.”
“We brought it back alive like Zixin and Nick wanted. Tried to talk to it, but it just spouted unintelligible gobbledygook.” The diver pointed an accusing finger at the merman. “But the minute we put it on the table, it lunged at us, so we had to put it down.”
Angie shuddered at the diver calling the merman “it.” They were still part human to her eyes. “He was probably terrified.”
The female diver shrugged. “Maybe. I didn’t want to take a chance that it would kill me, though.”
Angie supposed she understood the diver’s point.
“How’d ya get the son of a bitch?” one dockhand asked, eyes wide with wonder, never taking his eyes off the merman. “I heard they hear real good and are awful squirrely.”
“Easy. You don’t hear a damn thing with the rebreather on,” the male diver said.
“Swam up real slow, didn’t make a sound, circled the area to create turbulence so they wouldn’t know where I was.
But she got the final blow. I just restrained it.
Easy to grab it by the tail when it isn’t looking.
” He held his gloved hands up. “I brought extra grippy gloves today.”
Their gloating at murdering a merman made her feel ill. As if they found it fun.
“Why did you only bring one back?” Another dock worker yelled out. “It’s not the male we want to see!”
“Does it matter?” Nick piped up, turning away from his conversation with Luke. “These heroes did you a favor, and all you can do is ask for more? Greedy little shits.” He rolled his eyes. “Who knows why Dad entertained the idea of talking to them. Primitive fish.”
Angie glared at him, letting out an exaggerated sigh.
“Fair question,” the same dock worker stated.
“They’re not light, you know. We caught the male first, and by the time we had secured him, the female had escaped. It probably bled out,” the female diver said.
They kept talking and poking and prodding at the merman, and Angie slipped out of the fishery. She was feeling claustrophobic with the crowd in the small space, and the damp, heavy air within the fishery was a heavy weight on her shoulders.
When seven o’clock came, most of the other workers had gone home, leaving Angie alone at the harbor and Bàba and Nick making their final rounds.
Once this last fishing boat, the Odyssey came in, she’d be free from work for today.
The Odyssey had missed her scheduled return time almost three hours ago with no word. Angie knew the small group of boaters that had gone out. They were constantly wary of the time and always gave their supervisors updates each hour.
Still, boats could miss their return for any reason, and if they didn’t show in the next thirty minutes, Angie could officially report them missing and call the Coast Guard.
Twenty minutes passed.
She reached around to her backpack and slid her phone out of the side pocket.
Baba, where are you? Odyssey still hasn’t returned. May need to report missing.
Bàba replied right away.
In the control room. Meet me there.
A brief pause, and ellipses popped up from his end.
Angie didn’t take her eyes off her phone as she walked to the control room, bemused as to why he was there. Normally, he let the dock operators have the run of the space and relay information to him as needed.
He texted back,
Just found out what happened to the fishers on the Odyssey.
Shit. Angie picked up her pace, finding him inside the small building with Nick and two operators at his side, surrounded by monitors focused on various spots in the docks. Two large radios flanked either side of the monitors on the central desk, and Bàba was looking through his phone.
“What’s going on? You found them?” Her words rushed out.
Bàba nodded. “They sent distress calls. But we did not receive them until several minutes ago.” He sighed. “I called maintenance to update our older radios.”
Angie’s gaze slid from Bàba to Nick, to the two operators, and back to Bàba, holding her shoulders tight with anticipation.
“I took a recording. Listen to this.” With visibly trembling fingers, he tapped on his phone. Voices came through, distorted and crackling.
“Mayday, we…help!”
“Storm surge, came…nowhere…controlled for now.”
A chill snaked down Angie’s spine.
“Tails…water…what the fuck?”
Static.
“...rfolk!”
“Boat rocking…can’t hold–”
A broken scream followed. “Fuck! They’re dead, they’re all d—”
Deafening silence.
With cold hands, Angie gathered her hair into a bunch and then let it back down while staring at the radios, now eerily silent.
Bàba put his phone away, his voice monotone. “Six of them. Gone.”
The operators were as pale as freshly bleached sheets. Nick looked as if he were restraining an outburst, lips clenched and cheeks puffed, eyebrows drawn together. Angie’s heartbeat slammed in her ears.
Bàba crossed his arms over his chest, speaking through gritted teeth. “If those creatures are going to hoard our food supply, have everybody starve,” he took in a sharp inhale, “and kill our people, then we will hunt them down. This is war.”