Primeval Abroad

Chapter Twenty One

Abby was shooting through the water back to the tour boat. She had never swum so fast in her life.

Earlier, she and Connor had been treading water near the anomaly, waiting for the Santa Cruz sea serpent to return to the lagoon. But then, they had seen it attacking the boat, and at that moment, Abby had wasted no time in getting back there as quickly as possible. Connor naturally was following her (after all, he was Nick's father and cared about him just as much as Abby did), but Abby was swimming much faster, nothing got her going more than the need to protect her son.

Finally though, she clambered on to the boat and pulled off her flippers. Then she dashed on to the deck and towards the cabin areas. Running through the corridors, she saw many of her fellow tourists cowering inside their cabins. After seeing the way the Santa Cruz sea serpent had attacked the boat, she wasn't surprised.

Suddenly there came the sound of glass smashing and the boat lurched violently, throwing Abby to the floor. She quickly picked herself up and ran towards the source of the sound, her cabin. As she reached it, she was greeted with a horrible sight. There were bits of broken glass and knocked over furniture all over the cabin floor, Rex was nowhere to be seen and worst of all, there was the sight of the Santa Cruz sea serpent poking its head through the porthole. Its head was directly above the carrier basket where Nick slept peacefully, and its eyes-bloodshot from when Pedro had thrown soup in them-were regarding the baby hungrily.

"No, get away from him!" screamed Abby.

The sea serpent looked up to see the mother of its prey standing in the doorway, a look of fear and anger on her face. It wasted no time after that. It grabbed the handles of the carrier basket in its jaws and before Abby could stop it, it exited through the porthole with Nick.

Abby dashed to the porthole. There was nothing she could do. She could only watch as the sea serpent jerked its head up and threw the basket into the air. The basket itself turned upside down and soon floated down into the sea. Nick however was falling downwards right into the sea serpents waiting jaws. It closed its eyes and waited to taste the succulent child.

Then suddenly, there came a chirping noise and then...