Summer Odyssey

The Alexander Chronicles

Part Two

Chapter V: The CSS Birmingham

After about two hours on the lifeboat, we finally spotted land. Annabeth was shocked by how far we'd traveled. "That's Virginia Beach! Oh my gods, how did the Princess Andromeda travel so far overnight? That's like-"

"Five hundred and thirty nautical miles." Percy answered so quickly and automatically it was almost like he was a computer.

"How did you know that?"

"I-I'm not sure."

"Percy, what's our current position?" What was Annabeth thinking? How could Percy possibly know where we were?

And yet, he did. "36 degrees, 44 minutes north, 76 degrees, 2 minutes west." Again, as quick and automatic as a computer. "Whoa, how did I know that?"

"Because of your father. You have perfect bearings at sea. That is so cool." Annabeth then guided us to a demigod hideout that she had made with Thalia and Luke on their way to Camp Half-Blood five years ago. I could tell that even the thought of Annabeth and Luke together made Percy upset, or maybe the word was jealous. Wait a minute, Percy jealous of Luke? I filed that away for another time, a time when we weren't running for our lives.

We rested for about an hour before heading out to the coast. "So, Percy. Do you think that your dad will give us another ride, or do we have to find our own way to Polyphemus?"

"Who knows, Annabeth? I hope he will, but with Alex here, who knows."

"Um, guys? I don't think we have to worry about that right now."

"What are you talking about Alex? What do we have to worry about besides getting the Fleece?"

"I can smell sulfur. And this is even worse than the Hydra."

"What could be worse than the Hydra?"

"Well, there's the Kraken, or the Leviathan. But they're probably a long ways from here." Just then, the sea in front of us started to boil, almost as if something was rising from the deep. "I may have spoken too soon." And unfortunately, I had, for before us, the Kraken rose out of the Chesapeake Bay. It was at least 1500 ft tall and 300 feet across with three thousand-foot tentacles, four scorpion-like legs, four clawed fingers on it's building-sized hands, an enormous armored body, and a head the size of the Parthenon with a mouth full of six-foot teeth and a bad attitude. (i.e., picture the 2010 Kraken.) "Um, guys. We've got a problem."

"YOU THINK?" Annabeth yelled at me. "How are we supposed to kill this thing? I've never even heard of this monster!"

"THIS is the Kraken! Dad told me about this while I was on Olympus. He said Perseus killed it when he saved Andromeda, but he didn't say how." Annabeth then pulled out a bow and started shooting at it's eyes, mouth, armpits and joints in the legs, Tyson picked up rocks and started throwing them at the Kraken, while Percy pulled out Anaklusmos and slashed at the tentacles when they came close. I decided to fly up about 150 ft and start shooting it with my lightning bolt. Fortunately for us, it was a slow monster, and we were always able to stay out of reach.

After we had been fighting about fifteen minutes, I started hearing things; I could have sworn that I heard cannon fire. I would have written it off to my imagination or sensitive hearing, until I noticed explosions on the back of the Kraken. I decided to help the newcomers out by getting the Kraken's attention to focus out to sea. Eventually it got the idea and turned it's attention to me and the Confederate-style ironclad? Eventually the ironclad got a lucky shot in (a cannonball in the mouth) and the Kraken exploded into a mountain's worth of sulfur. It was only then that I noticed that the flag was not one of the Confederate flags, but one that seemed to belong to Ares. Then, from inside the ship, we heard a very unwelcome voice. "Losers. But I suppose I have to rescue you. Come aboard." Clarisse, oh joy.

After we were given a tour of the ship, Clarisse sat us down to dinner and told us that Tanty banned us from camp for eternity and Mr. D would kill us if we came back (I just love my brothers, don't you?) And apparently Ares gets a tribute from the losers of wars, the Birmingham being the South's tribute, and he gave the ship to Clarisse for her quest. Also, Clarisse had only the ship to help her out, not even her brothers and sisters offered to help her out on her quest.

That night, I had a dream, but it didn't involve Kronos or anything else Greek. I was standing on the bank of the Thames River in London, and it was 2004, three years ago. (Don't ask me how I knew that, I just did.) Two people stood in front of an Egyptian obelisk, I think it's called Cleopatra's Needle. The man was dark-skinned, with piercing brown eyes, a goatee and the face of an Egyptian pharaoh. The woman had white skin, blond hair, and deep blue eyes. "You're sure? Absolutely sure?" the man asked the woman.

"She told me this is where it begins. If we want to defeat the enemy, we must start with the obelisk. We must find out the truth." I noticed that she was wearing an amulet, one that almost looked like a kind of knot.

"I don't like it. Won't you call on her help?"

"No. I know my limits Julius. If I tried it again . . ."

The man, Julius, then pulled an ivory boomerang and a long stick out of a bag. "Ruby, if we fail-"

"We can't fail. The world depends on us." They kissed and then started chanting in a language that sounded a little like Arabic. As they chanted, the Needle started to glow . . .

I woke with a start, wondering why I had a dream that seemed to do more with Egypt than our quest. But maybe Egypt had more to do with this than I thought. After all, Phoebe warned that if Olympus survived, we would have to "Beware Egypt's rise." But that was a problem for another day. Right now, we were nearing the lair of Scylla and Charybdis, the main entrance to the Sea of Monsters. "So, what's your plan Clarisse? Scylla or Charybdis?"

"Charybdis, of course. Scylla's too high to shoot, while Charybdis just sits down there at the center of her whirlwind. So, we set a course straight for her, train our guns on her, and blow her to Tartarus!"

"Are you mad, Clarisse?"

"HAH! You afraid to get wet?" Percy showed up about thirty minutes later, and Clarisse explained her plan.

By the time we were nearing Charybdis, the ship had been battered by ten-foot waves at least half a dozen times, and the boiler room had heated up to the point that the zombies were vaporizing in the heat. Tyson left to fix the boiler, and we shot at Charybdis. From where I stood, it didn't look like we had done much damage to here, let alone blow her to Tartarus. Then Charybdis spit everything out, including the cannonball that had managed to actually hit her (and it blew a hole in the side of the ship.) When the wave hit us, I got blown out of the ship and into the sea. I watched helpless as Scylla attacked the ship, and the boiler finally blew. I couldn't believe that anyone could have survived. I was so focused on watching the wreckage for signs of survivors that I never noticed the Kraken (giant squid) until it was too late to escape. The Kraken surrounded me with its tentacles and swallowed me whole.