Killer

“If, however,” Simon was lecturing now, as though to a backward child, “we stay clear, it will run out of air and – ”

“Simon! MOVE!” It was already coming up at them out of the shadows; magnified by the tricks of the water it seemed much closer than it really was, wrapped in the net like a drowned man. Horrible, unearthly. The silver column of the harpoon gleaming behind its head.

In a flash Simon was paddling again at top speed. The whale altered its angle of attack, trying to come up under the boat.

“Faster!” screamed Colin, craning back, still seeing it.

“Is it still coming?” gasped Simon.

“Believe me! You want it to bite you in the arse?”

Simon hurled the canoe wildly through the water, panic lending him strength.

At the last moment the net jerked the killer out of its angle of attack, and it hurled out of the water scant feet behind them, its scream of rage exploding over the air. The jerk on the rope pulled it back like a leashed dog. Kate was thrown flat on her back. The whale slammed into the water, floundering for a moment.

“TURN!” yelled Ross, up on his knees at full stretch, the second harpoon up, the white throat and belly just out of reach. “HURRY!”

Shaking his head like a wounded bear, Simon hurled the light craft round and back into the attack as the killer thrashed helplessly. For a second, the boat ground against the heaving side. Ross hurled the spear with all his massive strength.

As it felt the cold steel in its belly, the killer wrenched all the muscles from chin to tail. The great flukes slammed into something with jarring force. It twisted again and tried to dive.

As though in a dream, Kate, sitting up, saw the tiny canoe turn in and vanish behind the black bulk of its side as Colin drove his arm down. Then suddenly, incredibly, the canoe reappeared, broken, turning, flying. Colin seemed to take off and tumble like an acrobat through the air. Of Simon there was no sign. “Colin!” screamed Kate, dragging herself to her knees. “Colin!” The whale floundered and heaved, tangled in the rope now, as well as the net, trying to dive. The ocean closed its grey jaws, and suddenly there was nothing there.

Colin hit the water with stunning force. He knew he had at most two and a half minutes before his heart gave up the unequal struggle against the cold. The floe was fifty feet away. He struck out for it. His face seemed to be burning, his hand swelling with the cold. Every joint ached with it, every muscle throbbed and became numb. He kicked his legs with panic force, gasping air and water in equal amounts. Hair in his eyes. The ocean fought him every inch of the way. It flooded his boots, made his clothes like lead, it tore at every part of him with icy claws.

“It’s all right,” whispered the Queen of Bitches in his mind. “Just go to sleep. It’s all right. Go to sleep. Go to sleep.”

He was, in fact, almost asleep when he hit the floe, and it required every ounce of his strength, coupled with Kate’s, to get him out of the water and on to the ice. He began to shiver uncontrollably.

Kate looked down at the blue pinched face. My God, she thought, what do I do now?

Suddenly his eyes were open and he was struggling to sit up. “Must keep moving,” he said.

“Where’s Simon?”

“Gone. They’ve both . . .”

And then the whale exploded out of the water again and began to run towards them, humping itself out of the ocean, fin high, head still wrapped in the net. The killer, badly wounded, surged towards them with powerful inevitability. Kate’s hand dived into the pocket of her anorak. Then she was holding the Very pistol, pointing at the black mountain of the whale’s head, waiting for it to raise its face a little so that the shot would do more than just bounce off.

The whale’s head was perhaps twenty feet away. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

“No!” Colin’s hand crashed up under her arms. The gun wrenched into the air, exploding into life, sending a red flare curving up to blaze into life above the fogbank gathering to the south.

“Look!” He pointed. Incredibly, unimaginably, something was moving on the killer’s back.

Simon was dead and he knew it. Unlike Colin, he had not been thrown clear by the blow of the killer’s tail. Instead he had become entangled in the net, dragged down when the killer dived, for two and a half minutes of pure agony crushed against its side as it struggled under the water, trying to tear the spear from its belly, and then returned to the surface to breathe. Simon, too, had breathed, and was breathing still. But he had been in the water for more than three minutes. He couldn’t feel his legs. His hands burned with unbearable agony. The only thing keeping him alive was the faint warmth of the killer’s flesh against his body.

Something solid struck him across the forehead, and when he automatically reached up to ward off another blow, it slapped snugly into his hand – the handle of the axe. He looked at it stupidly for a second, then he began to laugh.