Piranha

PROLOGUE

The steamer SS Roraima was sailing toward the Apocalypse.

From the bridge of the Canadian cargo and passenger ship, First Officer Ellery Scott peered through a gray snowfall dirtier than anything he’d seen during a sooty London winter. Although it was 6:30 in the morning, the light from the rising sun could do little to penetrate the ash drifting over Saint-Pierre’s harbor. The outline of “The Little Paris of the West Indies,” as Martinique’s commercial center was known, resembled less a thriving city of thirty thousand and more a blurred Impressionist watercolor recently fashionable in the Caribbean town’s namesake.

Scott absentmindedly stroked his silver whiskers as he turned toward Mont Pelée, the volcano looming above the harbor. Although he normally bore a jovial demeanor that made him well liked by officers, crew, and passengers alike, today he could manage nothing better than a wary frown. He’d been a sailor for twenty years, aboard every kind of cargo vessel, at sea through murderous gales and towering rogue waves, but the stout old sea dog had never seen anything as ominous and foreboding as the mountain only three miles to the north.

Rolling thunder pealed from beneath its depths at regular intervals, as if a great roaring beast lay within. Darkness shrouded the peak, and a sulfurous odor permeated the air. Scott could imagine the Devil himself taking up residence in such a place.

“What do you think of this weather, sir?” Scott asked with a casualness he hoped did not betray his apprehension.

Captain George Muggah, his face etched with lines carved by years of salt and sun, and his upper lip hidden by a bushy mustache, glanced up from his log and squinted at the otherworldly tableau.

“Stay the course, Mr. Scott,” he said, his voice steadfast. “Unless I hear different from the harbormaster, we’re going to drop anchor.”

“This ash might foul our equipment. It could delay our sailing this evening.”

“Then I leave it to you to make sure the crew sweeps the decks and keeps our machinery clean. There are eighteen other ships at anchor. If it weren’t safe, they’d be long gone.”

The thick coat of ash floating on the water made it look as though the ships to either side were moored on dry land. At the risk of seeming impertinent, Scott persisted. “What of the explosion we heard two nights ago?”

They had been at anchor off Dominica fifty miles north when a blast at four in the morning rocked the ship so vigorously that cups and dishes crashed to the deck.

Captain Muggah went back to scribbling in the log. “I’m inclined to agree with the Portsmouth telegraph operator, that it relieved the pressure inside the volcano. It may continue to belch, but I’m sure nothing will come of it.”

Scott wasn’t as sure, but he kept his tongue still.

After they found their berth and dropped anchor, the harbormaster and doctor came aboard to check the ship and make sure the crew and passengers carried no contagious diseases that might infect the island. Both of them downplayed the continuing volcanic activity and bolstered Muggah’s supposition that Pelée’s growl wasn’t dangerous. The current activity was nothing more than the mountain’s last gasp.

Because it was Ascension Day, all the laborers would be at morning Mass, so Scott and Muggah headed down to the officers’ mess for breakfast. They discussed the day’s lading schedule — unloading lumber and potassium from New Brunswick, loading rum and sugar bound for Boston — but nary a syllable was spoken of the volcano, even though its rumblings continued to make it impossible to ignore.

After finishing breakfast, Scott went up on deck to receive the local agent who would be supervising the stevedores.

The 340-foot cargo vessel was a simple design, with holds fore and aft of the midship bridge topped with a single funnel. Masts equidistant toward each end were used for lifting heavy cargo. Every inch was dusted with Pelée’s bountiful output. As Scott walked, his treads left prints on the deck.

Passengers crowded the railings for a view of Saint-Pierre’s menacing backdrop. Some of them were sweeping ashes into envelopes and tobacco tins as souvenirs. Two women raised parasols to keep their dresses from being dirtied.

One man Scott recognized, a meek German named Gunther Lutzen, was even setting up a tripod so that he could photograph the scene. He’d boarded two days before in Guadeloupe, and Scott had rarely seen the man without his camera.

“A fine day for pictures, Mr. Lutzen,” Scott said.

“Yes, I am very interested,” Lutzen replied in halting English.

“Is this for your scientific expedition?”

“No, that is complete. But I will be pleased to add this photo to my…” He paused and pulled a German — English dictionary from his pocket. “Ach, what is word for Sammlung?” He leafed through the pages.

“‘Collection’?” Scott offered.

Lutzen smiled and nodded vigorously. “Yes, of course. ‘Collection.’ English is my new language. I learn still. My sister in New York gives me child’s books to read.”

Scott patted him on the shoulder. “You’re doing well. It’s better than my German.”

Lutzen laughed and put away the dictionary so he could jot in his ever-present notebook. Scott went on, nodding greetings to other passengers as he passed.

When he reached the forecastle, he saw Monsieur Plessoneau, the local agent, coming up the gangway that had been lowered to his boat. Plessoneau, a gaunt man dressed in a white suit and straw hat, shook hands with Scott.

“Good to see you again, monsieur,” Scott said. “I see that your angry mountain hasn’t hurt business.” He nodded to the other ships stretched out across the crescent-shaped harbor.

The Frenchman pursed his lips and blew through them. “Oui, but we are hoping the worst is over.”

Scott frowned. “What’s happened?”

The comment elicited a rueful chuckle from the agent. “We have been hearing from Pelée for over a month now. The ants and centipedes at the sugar mill in Usine Guérin were the start of our troubles.”

“Ants and centipedes?”

Plessoneau made a face. “I will not miss them once I return to France. We call the ants fourmis-fous — crazy ants. They swarm over everything, biting in a frenzy. The centipedes are even worse. One foot long and black, a few bites will kill a man. It took every mill worker to save the horses. Then the snakes arrived.”

Scott’s eyes widened at the mention of snakes. Insects were one thing, but he could not bear the idea of facing a snake.

Plessoneau nodded in return. “Hundreds of fer-de-lances — pit vipers — suddenly appeared four days ago out of the forest in northern Saint-Pierre. Fifty people and hundreds of animals died. Then a day later a mud slide destroyed the mill. Fortunately, it happened at night, but we still lost many men.”

This was sounding more like the coming of the Apocalypse that Scott had imagined as they sailed into the harbor.

“Perhaps we should leave and stop here on our return trip instead,” he said.

Plessoneau shrugged. “I was going to suggest that since it is a holiday, many of our men won’t work, and you might continue on to Fort-de-France and come back tomorrow. You will need the harbormaster to give permission, though, and he may not let you.”

“Why not?”

“Because the governor has ordered troops to keep people from fleeing the city. There is an election in three days, and he is worried that it will not happen if everyone leaves. Some got out, but peasants are coming to Saint-Pierre from farms on the mountain slopes, so it’s as crowded as I’ve ever seen it.”

“Suppose we leave anyway?”

“Only one ship has so far, an Italian barque called Orsolina that had loaded only half its sugar cargo yesterday. The harbormaster refused permission to depart until they’d finished loading, and he threatened the captain, Marino Leboffe, with arrest. Supposedly, Leboffe, who is from Naples, told the harbormaster, ‘I know nothing about Mont Pelée, but if Vesuvius were acting the way your volcano is this morning, I’d get out of Naples.’”

“He might be right.”

“It is your captain’s ship, but another leaving without permission may cause a panic with the others. A French cruiser just arrived in Fort-de-France, the Suchet. She might be called on to stop you.”

“Let’s see what Captain Muggah thinks,” Scott said, and led Plessoneau to the bridge.

The captain listened to the agent’s tales but was unmoved. He waved a copy of Les Colonies, the city’s newspaper, which the doctor had left with him.

“The editorial in here says the mountain is safe. That’s good enough for me. Now, prepare the ship for unloading.”

There was no arguing with the captain. His decision was final. Scott gave him a curt, “Aye, Captain,” and escorted Plessoneau back to his launch.

Scott bade him adieu and made his way back to the quarterdeck, where he found the third mate gazing at the city in rapt silence.

“Mr. Havers,” Scott said, “what’s caught your eye?”

“Well, it’s a peaceful sight, isn’t it, Mr. Scott? Gray, but bathed in a bright sunshine.”

Scott grudgingly agreed that the sight was mesmerizing. But “peaceful” was not the word he would have chosen. To him it still seemed ominous. “We have work to do. The captain wants this deck to sparkle by the time we leave.”

“Aye, sir. But do you mind if I take just one photo before we get started? My camera is on my bunk.”

Scott took out his pocket watch. 7:49. What with the dockhands at Mass, a few minutes wouldn’t hurt.

He smiled and nodded. “But hop to it.”

“Thank you, sir,” Havers said with glee, and ran toward the crew’s quarters.

Scott had moved only two steps toward the bridge when it seemed as if the sun had been extinguished. With dread, he looked toward Pelée. The sight that met his eyes caused him to be rooted in place as if his feet were trapped in cement.

A massive plume of black smoke and ash shot straight up into the sky like the expulsion from a battleship’s cannon. The side of the mountain blew apart, and a second mass of ash churned down the slopes of Pelée in a glowing avalanche of superheated gas. The deadly flow was aimed directly at the city of Saint-Pierre. At the rate it was going, it would engulf the town in little more than a minute.

Still, Scott couldn’t move. He was mesmerized by the appalling view, which was silent until the deafening shock wave arrived and blasted him backward. He would have remained pressed against the bulkhead until he was taken by the deadly cloud if not for that unholy sound. Thrown off his mark, Scott came to his senses. His first impulse was to get the ship to safety, so he sprinted toward the bow.

As Scott came amidships, he met Captain Muggah running in the other direction. The captain must have had the same idea as Scott.

“Heave up, Mr. Scott!” the captain yelled as he raced past toward the bridge.

“Weighing anchor, aye!” Scott yelled back. The third mate who’d gone off to get his camera joined the captain on the bridge, ordering the boilers up to full steam.

Scott reached the anchor chain and engaged the steam-powered donkey engine to raise the anchor. Passengers around him screamed in terror and ran in every direction, unaware of how to protect themselves from the coming rain of fire. Most of the crew fared no better, and despite Scott’s shouts for help, none came to his aid.

He counted fifteen fathoms of chain retrieved when the lethal cloud of ash rolled over the northern edge of Saint-Pierre, setting everything it touched aflame and blowing apart stone structures as if they were made of matchsticks.

The cloud continued to roll out over the harbor, where it met the cable-laying ship Grappler. She did not have time to catch fire before she was capsized by a wall of water. The tsunami swept toward them, smashing one ship after the other.

With fifteen fathoms of chain still to go, Scott knew getting the Roraima out of the harbor in time was hopeless. He scrambled to find shelter. With only seconds until the fire reached him, all he could do was snatch a large tarpaulin from one of the ventilator covers, flip it over to create multiple layers, and pull it over his head. He threw himself to the deck and huddled beneath the tarp, with only a tiny hole to see through. He could see Captain Muggah barking out orders on the bridge, defiantly trying to save his doomed ship.

Scott felt the heat before the blast wave. It rose to such a degree that he thought he would be cooler inside one of the ship’s boilers. The layered tarp deflected the worst of the heat; without it, Scott was sure he would not survive. It was confirmed when he watched in horror as the captain’s mustache, hair, and clothes were set on fire. The captain wailed in unbearable agony, and Scott was spared from seeing more when Muggah dropped from view.

Hot stones and mud pelted the tarp, some of them smaller than buckshot, others as big as a pigeon’s egg. None of them were traveling at a speed that would injure Scott, so he simply endured the hail of stones, listening to them hiss as they splashed into the water beside the ship.

A moment later, the blast wave reached the Roraima, causing the tarp to be nearly ripped from Scott’s hands. Both masts were sheared off two feet above the deck as cleanly as if they’d been cut by a saw, and the smokestack snapped in half. The tidal wave struck the side of the ship, initially tilting her to port before jerking her so hard to starboard that the ship’s ice rail dipped into the sea.

Fearing that he’d be pitched into the water, Scott cried out and scrabbled to find a handhold. He slid down the ash-covered deck, still under the tarpaulin, until his feet slammed into a cargo latch. For a second he thought the ship would capsize like the Grappler, but the old girl held strong and bobbed back up, though she still carried a heavy list.

Scott opened his eyes, peeked through the tarp’s hole to get his bearings, and saw that he was just opposite the forecastle. He was about to make a try for it when the door swung wide and two sailors, Taylor and Quashey, reached out and dragged him inside.

They closed the door and covered the portholes with mattresses, trunks, anything they could find. When the room was sealed, they huddled beneath the tarp and blankets, waiting for the end — either of the firestorm or their lives.

After what seemed like an hour but could have been no more than ten minutes, Scott felt the heat abate. Hoping the worst to be over, he stood and opened the door.

With one look, he realized that the worst was just beginning.

The deck was littered with charred corpses. Men, women, and children were burned horribly or coated with enough ash that they appeared to be frozen in concrete. He could not tell passenger from crew.

He stepped gingerly around them, searching for any signs of life, when he found someone facedown, the back of the clothing burned away. The poor wretch was moaning in pain. Scott gently turned the person over and reeled backward when he saw the awful visage.

The man’s hair was gone completely, his skin blackened and his nose and ears misshapen and melted to his face. The only reason Scott knew it was a man and not a woman was because of the remnants of coat and tie that were still intact beneath his folded arms. His lower half was burned to a cinder. Scott figured the man must have been lying on his stomach when the fire scorched him.

“Help me, Mr. Scott,” the man sputtered through cracked lips.

Scott looked at the man in confusion. “Do I know you, sir?”

“Don’t you know me, Mr. Scott?” he croaked, every word an excruciating effort. “I am Lutzen.”

Scott gaped at Gunther Lutzen. He would never have recognized the German.

Lutzen trembled as he raised his arms toward Scott, who thought the man was reaching out for aid. Instead, he lifted his precious notebook and held it toward Scott. Now he realized that Lutzen must have thrown himself on the notebook to protect it from the flames.

“I’m dying. Give this to my sister.”

Scott did not want to see another man die, so he desperately searched for any signs of help coming to them. A cargo vessel he recognized as the Roddam was turning to port to head out to open sea, and he could see that the entire stern was on fire.

“Please, Mr. Scott,” Lutzen said, drawing Scott’s gaze back to him. “Ingrid Lutzen, New York City.”

Seeing that there was nothing more to do for the man, Scott nodded and carefully took the notebook and tucked it into his waistband. “Of course, Mr. Lutzen. I’ll see to it.”

Lutzen couldn’t smile, but he nodded in understanding. “Tell her I was there,” he said with a pitiful wheeze. “I made the breakthrough. It will change everything. They shined like emeralds, as large as tree trunks.”

He coughed violently, his body shaking from the strain. Scott tried to stand to go find him water, but Lutzen grabbed his sleeve and pulled him close so that Scott’s ear hovered over his mouth. He whispered three words, then his hand fell away from Scott’s coat. Lutzen became mercifully still, finally free from his pain.

Scott remained kneeling for a moment, confused by what he’d heard. Then more groans caught his attention, and he was on his feet. With the captain dead or mortally wounded, he was now in charge.

Scott gathered as many survivors as he could find, a total of only thirty out of the sixty-eight on board, and half of those would likely not make it through the night. Scott and three other crew members were the only ones not badly injured. They set about constructing a raft out of the remains of a lifeboat, but their efforts were rendered moot when the French cruiser Suchet arrived in the afternoon and took them aboard, leaving the Roraima behind to sink. The officer who gave him coffee told him that they feared not a single soul in Saint-Pierre had lived through the holocaust.

With nothing more to do now that he and his few charges were safe, Scott took Lutzen’s journal from his waistband and flipped through it. As he’d suspected, he couldn’t understand a word of it. Not only was every page written in German but the majority of the writing consisted of equations and scientific mumbo jumbo. Scott hoped Lutzen’s sister would know what to make of it and vowed to keep his promise to return it to her.

Scott thought about what he’d tell her when he met her upon his arrival in New York, whether to save her from the horror of what her brother had suffered. He thought she deserved the whole truth, including Lutzen’s last message to her.

He wanted to make sure he remembered it verbatim in the days it would take for the trip north, so he scrounged a pencil from one of the Suchet’s sailors and leafed to the first blank page. Scott scribbled the cryptic phrases he’d heard, Lutzen’s raw voice in his head.

Tell her I was there. I made the breakthrough. It will change everything. They shined like emeralds, as large as tree trunks.

Scott paused, still unsure whether he’d heard Lutzen’s final three words correctly. He shrugged and reproduced Lutzen’s strange message exactly.

I found Oz.