Gargantua Read online

  THE TV EVENT OF THE YEAR IS NOW A THRILLING NOVEL!

  The sparkling waters around the tropical island of Malau attract surfers, fishermen, and tourists from all around the world. Now they’ve attracted something else. Something big . . . and incredibly dangerous.

  It begins with an earthquake, and the mysterious deaths of two young women. Local authorities are baffled by the tragedy, until a visiting American scientist realizes that the tremors have driven an unknown creature up from the ocean depths . . . and there may be more than one.

  Soon the entire island will tremble beneath the thunderous tread of a gigantic mutated behemoth, the likes of which the world has never seen. No warning, no scientific theory can prepare mankind for the awesome reality of . . .

  GARGANTUA

  Kikko climbed up behind the abomination. This is going to be fun.

  Then it got dark.

  It’s morning. It can’t get dark. And it’s not cloudy.

  Realizing he was now in something’s shadow, he turned around.

  The sky was blotted out by a ten-foot-long head with two horns on top of it.

  Whoa. The big daddy of all abominations.

  Kikko screamed.

  The head leaned forward. Its teeth were numerous, looked to be razor-sharp, and were heading straight for Kikko.

  GARGANTUA

  Copyright © 1998 by 20th Century Fox Film Corporation

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  Tor Books on the World Wide Web: http://www.tor.com

  Tor ® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  ISBN: 0-812-57098-7

  Cover art by Gabriel Galluccio

  First edition: May 1998

  Printed in the United States of America

  For the Geek Patrol—Drewshi, the Hawk Man,

  the Lip-Chick, and the Tall Cool One—

  for all those Wednesday nights.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank Ronald Parker, the writer and producer of Gargantua, who went above and beyond the call of duty to help me flesh out his script; Tor Books editor Greg Cox for giving me the assignment in the first place and for generally being a good egg; Greg’s noble assistant Karla Zounek for keeping me up to date; Ms. G.A. DeCandido for invaluable editorial input; Marina Frants, for local color, scuba diving and fish neepery, and general support; Ocean Realm magazine, especially the various articles in their Winter 1997/98 issue; Jim Macdonald for invaluable technical expertise; Spiff’s Newt & Salamander web page, which has everything you ever wanted to know about salamanders but were afraid to ask (http://www.users.interport.net/~spiff/Newt&Salamander.html); and Key West musician Michael McCloud and the sadly now-defunct Seattle trio Uncle Bonsai for musical inspiration.

  PROLOGUE

  “C’mon, ‘Stairway to Heaven’ is the best rock and roll song ever.”

  As always, John made that pronouncement at the loudest possible volume. Marina sighed. She’d known John since high school, and he always seemed to subscribe to the theory that whoever spoke loudest had to be right.

  Dave, of course, chimed in. He was constitutionally incapable of agreeing with anything John said—not difficult, really, but it was a knee-jerk reaction. “Please. The song sucks. Hell, Robert Plant wrote the goddamn thing, and he doesn’t even have any idea what it means.”

  John was in the middle of sipping from his beer bottle, and so couldn’t reply verbally without spilling it.

  That left it to John’s fiancée to come to his defense. “What difference does that make?” Laura asked. “I mean, all those stupid Bob Dylan songs you drool over don’t make a lot of sense, either.”

  “Look,” John said, having finished his sip and now screwing the bottle down into the sand, “every time radio stations do those best rock songs of all time polls, ‘Stairway to Heaven’ always wins. Period, end of sentence.”

  John also liked to say period, end of sentence as if it would actually end the argument. It never did, but he always looked disappointed when someone kept the discussion going anyhow.

  Marina turned and gazed out into the ocean as she scrunched sand between her bare toes. The sun had started to set, painting the sky in glorious bursts of red, orange, and purple. So of course the guys are talking about music, she thought with an internal sigh. We travel halfway ’round the world for sun, surf, and scuba diving, and they sit here and have the same stupid conversations they have back home.

  Marina and her friends sat in a circle on Malau’s largest beach. A bonfire blazed in the circle’s center, and Marina’s boyfriend Greg was holding a large pan over it by its long handle. Inside the pan was the first batch of fish that the others had caught that day while Marina, Greg, and Dave went diving. The group had decided to escape the latest in a series of brutal Minneapolis winters by taking a tropical vacation in the South Seas. Malau—one of the few local islands whose economy relied more on fishing than tourism—proved the best choice, as they wanted to avoid the usual tourist traps.

  Greg got into the act now: “What about ‘Layla’?”

  John got his disappointed look. “That isn’t a song, it’s two separate songs that have nothing to do with each other.”

  Marina sighed again. She had been hoping that her boyfriend would stay out of it, but no such luck.

  “Yeah, but ‘Layla’ has the hook—the guitar riff. I mean, everybody knows that guitar riff. Name me one riff from ‘Stairway to Heaven’.”

  Marina suddenly stood up. “Guys, I’m gonna take a walk, okay?”

  Various murmurs of “yeah,” “okay,” and “whatever” came from the group. Greg said, “The first batch of fish is almost ready, hon.”

  “I’m not really hungry,” Marina said, which was a lie. She just hated eating newly captured fish. She knew it wasn’t rational—back home, she would gleefully sink her teeth into fried shrimp or smoked salmon—but here, in a place where fish were primarily a subject for her underwater photography, eating them seemed wrong somehow.

  Carol also rose. “I’ll go with you,” she said.

  At first Marina was going to object, but then she nodded. She didn’t really know Carol very well. Marina had been friends with the others since either high school or college, but Carol was just the girlfriend Dave happened to have on this particular trip. He went through about four a year, and indeed had been dating a woman named Kim when they first planned the trip. But hey, maybe this’ll give me the chance to get to know her better, Marina thought.

  She looked out again at the colors of the sky. The purple was starting to overtake the red and orange. Besides, I have to share this sunset with someone.

  They started to walk down the beach quietly at first. A warm breeze wafted gently through Marina’s hair as she watched the colorburst that was the South Seas sky. Sometimes she wondered why she stayed in so cold and bitter a place as Minneapolis when places like this existed. Right now, she felt like she would have been content to spend her entire life just sitting with her eyes closed and letting this amazing breeze caress her face.

  This place is magic, she thought, not for the first time. At sunset, the sky had more colors than a Monet painting. At night, the stars came out in numbers she never would have believed possible growing up as a city girl. And during the day, the water was a deep, pure blue.

  “Marina?” Carol asked, startling her—she had temporarily forgotten the other woman’s presence.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you have any idea what they’re talking about?”

  Marina couldn’t help laughing, as
she forced herself back to the real world. “Music—rock and roll songs.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  Marina stared at her companion in something like shock. “You date Dave and you don’t listen to rock and roll?”

  Carol shrugged and folded her arms in order to rub them. Marina noticed goosebumps on the other woman’s arms, which surprised her—while it was cooler than the one hundred degrees it had been that afternoon, it was still quite warm out.

  “He tried to get me to listen to some stuff, but—I dunno, it’s just noise, y’know?” Carol’s voice suddenly grew distant. “That is so beautiful.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think I’m ever going to get tired of the sunsets here.”

  “Hm? Oh, I meant the music those guys are playing over there. That’s real music, y’know?”

  Marina blinked. She had noticed the music playing, of course—the drums sometimes threatened to drown out everyone except John—but hadn’t paid it much heed. About thirty feet from where she and her friends had set up their bonfire, a bunch of locals had gotten together for a kind of jam session—in fact, their playing was what prompted the discussion of which rock and roll song was the greatest in the first place. Marina had the tinnest of tin ears, and so had no idea what kind of music they played, nor whether it was any good. It was heavy on percussion, a steady, rhythmic, loud beat. Certainly the people dancing to the music seemed to think it was worth bopping around to. They all had huge smiles on their faces. Marina couldn’t help but compare them to the people dancing at her uncle’s wedding the previous summer; they had smiled, too, but they were the plastered-on smiles of the terminally-polite-but-not-really-caring-that-much. These people were genuinely enjoying themselves, as enchanted by the music they danced to as Marina was by the setting she walked in. But then, that could just be the native spirit of happiness.

  Good God, she thought, aghast, listen to me—I sound like some kind of British colonel in a pith helmet travelling to the dark continent for the first time. But it was hard not to think of the Malauans as anything but congenial and happy with life. The unconditional friendliness with which the locals treated everyone—even a bunch of loud, obnoxious tourists from Minnesota—truly delighted Marina, and just added to the magic.

  Suddenly, her knees felt like they were shivering—but she still wasn’t in the least bit cold. Then the tremor became more pronounced and a rumbling sound seemed to come from all around her. Great, another stupid tremor. The brochure had promised “at worst” the occasional tremor, and the travel agent insisted that the island had “maybe one a week,” but there had been at least one per day since their arrival four days earlier. It was the one thing that spoiled the magic.

  The tremor died down after about ten seconds, followed by the sounds of whooping, cheering, and hollering from the gang around the bonfire—John was loudest, of course. Marina shook her head.

  “They’re nuts,” Carol said. “This whole island could crack down the middle, and they’d think it was some kind of roller coaster ride.”

  “Well, y’know, we are here to have fun,” Marina said, surprised to find herself coming to the others’ defense when, in fact, she agreed with what Carol was saying. I guess it’s that instinct to protect the herd against outsiders, she thought with a small smile.

  “Not everything is necessarily fun. I mean, Dave keeps going off and diving with you guys even though I don’t dive.”

  “You can get certified here, y’know.”

  Carol shook her head vigorously. “You don’t understand, I’m claustrophobic. I can’t even go snorkeling.”

  “Oh.”

  “I just wish he’d show some consideration, y’know? I mean, you’ve known him a while—is he always like this?”

  Dammit, Dave, Marina thought toward her friend, you’re doing it again. Every single girlfriend of his got to the point where they’d ask one of his friends if he was “always like this,” and she was sick and tired of it. She especially didn’t want to have to deal with it on her vacation when there was a perfectly good sunset to bask in. I guess it isn’t just the tremors that can spoil the magic.

  “Don’t you think you ought to be talking to Dave about this?”

  “I tried—he just blows me off, says, ‘We’re on vacation, don’t be a pain.’ ”

  Well, he’s got a point, Marina almost said aloud but restrained herself.

  Then something caught the corner of her eye. “Hey, look at that!”

  “What?”

  She bent down to pick up a seashell that almost glowed in the dusky light. In the usual concave shape of shells, the inside was coral pink, but the outer part seemed alive with color, a combination of pinks, purples, whites, and grays.

  “Here’s another one,” Carol said, picking up one that was more of a solid pink.

  Marina smiled. Good, that distracted her.

  They spent the next minute or so gathering up shells. They’d probably abandon them before they went back to the small bungalow the group had rented, but it was a fun little diversion.

  “What’s all that?” Carol asked.

  Marina followed her gaze to a tide pool that was covered in netting secured by buoys. She had a feeling that she knew what those nets were for. But what the hell, let’s explore it anyhow. Anything to keep Carol’s mind off Dave.

  As they got closer, wading into the pool up to their ankles, her suspicions proved correct: it was fishing net. “Oh look,” she said, a note of distaste in her voice, as she picked up a small lobster. Next to her, Carol liberated a large prawn.

  Then she felt something tug at her feet. At first she thought it was seaweed, but then it dug sharply into her ankles.

  Another tug, and this time, she almost stumbled face-first into the shallow water. Something was yanking the netting around.

  Carol said, “Something’s trapped down there.”

  Dropping both the lobster and her seashells, Marina started to clamber out of the tide pool, Carol doing likewise.

  Yet another tug—more of a violent thrash, really—and this time, Marina did fall face-first into the water. Instinctively, she held her breath and closed her eyes before her face struck the water, feeling like someone had hit her with a damp washcloth.

  The net continued to yank at her ankle with ever harder tugs. Marina tried to get up, but couldn’t get her legs to cooperate. Falling down had only entangled them in the net more.

  A gurgling noise sounded next to her: Carol, trying to scream, but she too was face-down in the water. Marina struggled more, but only found herself tangled up worse. I’d kill for my dive knife right now, she thought.

  The yanking was steadier now, dragging Marina and Carol into the ocean. Carol had managed to turn herself over and was crying out with a full-throated scream, uninhibited by salt water.

  Marina found herself remembering a conversation with Dave the day they arrived. “Where are the lifeguards?” she had asked.

  “We’re not back home,” Dave had said. “Everything isn’t regulated up the kazoo and people don’t litigate at the drop of a hat.”

  At the time, Marina had found that refreshing. People had to get by on their own. Self-reliance. Marina had always prided herself on being self-reliant.

  Now, she cursed whatever idiot thought that the beaches of Malau didn’t require lifeguards. Self-reliance doesn’t do me a lot of good when I’m tangled in a net!

  She had stopped struggling, as it only made things worse, and tried to relax, hoping that it might loosen the net enough for her to swim out. Sadly, Carol did not come to the same realization, and she continued to thrash about more and more as they were dragged out of the tide pool and into the ocean proper.

  Marina remembered that Carol said something about being claustrophobic.

  Then she saw it.

  At first she thought it was a mask of some kind, floating in the ocean. Even in Malau, one always found such detritus in the water, and it was exactly the sort of thing that might get caught in a fishing n
et.

  But masks didn’t blink.

  They didn’t try to forcibly remove themselves from nets, either.

  It’s a head, she realized as the thing yanked itself suddenly to the left in an apparent attempt to free itself. The thing was green and scaly, with a small horn protruding from just above the eyes, like some kind of lizard or gecko or salamander or something—amphibians weren’t Marina’s strong suit.

  “Ow!” she cried as the net started digging into her flesh. As good an idea as it might have been to try to relax herself, it was doomed to fail when two other bodies in the net—Carol and this lizard-thing—were thrashing around like they were having seizures.

  The head shot upward, and Marina got a quick look at the thing’s long neck before the net twisted and yanked free of its moorings in the tide pool. Marina found herself suddenly completely underwater.

  She hadn’t had a chance to hold her breath this time, and she gagged as salt water filled her nose and mouth. The net pulled inexorably tighter around her legs, chest, and neck.

  Marina had managed to keep a relatively clear head, but now she couldn’t breathe and was effectively bound. Panic overtook her, and she too started thrashing about, trying to get a grip on the net to pull it off, trying to move toward the surface, trying to scream, trying to do anything, but to just get out of this.

  Her eye caught sight of something else in the net—it had to be the body that went with the head she saw. The forelegs were pretty strange-looking—more like claws. Plus, the body was as big as she was. And it seemed to be growing black spots.

  Marina realized that the spots weren’t on the lizard, they were dancing in front of her eyes—she was blacking out.

  One of the leg/claws ripped through the net, and the cords tightened around Marina’s neck.

  She tried to scream.

  Then everything went black.

  “Did you see that?”

  “What?”

  “Thought I saw something move in the water.”