"Stop that!" Elliott said sharply.
Will quit scratching and let his arms hang limply at his sides, his shoulders sagging. As Chester watched, a droplet detached itself from Will's face and sparkled momentarily as it caught the light. But Chester couldn't tell if it was a tear or merely seawater.
"Look at me," Elliott ordered Will.
Will didn't move.
"I said look at me!"
Will raised his head and regarded Elliott groggily.
"That's better. Now let's get something straight… we did what we had to," she told him firmly, then softened her voice. "I'm not thinking about it… You do the same."
"I… " he stammered, shaking his head slowly.
"No, don't… Listen to me. You made the second shot because I couldn't. I failed Drake, but you didn't. You did the right thing… for him."
"OK," he eventually replied, the word almost lost in a sigh. "Did you mention something about dinner?" he asked after a long pause. The look of despair was still deep in his black-ringed eyes.
"How do you feel?" she asked, remembering the night crab she was standing on — and not a moment too soon, as it rippled its fins in the sand to dig itself out, frantically trying to get back to the water.
"Rough," he said. "My head's stopped buzzing, but my stomach feels like it's been on a roller coaster."
"You need to get some hot food in you," she said, lifting her foot from the night crab as she unleashed her knife. The appendages under its head were flexing like animated TV antennae.
For a split second of silence, Will took in the creature, then cried out:
"Anomalocaris canadensis!"
To everyone's surprise, his demeanor went through a rapid transformation. He became wildly excited, jumping up and down and waving his arms.
Elliott flipped over the night crab and positioned her knife in the join between segments on its flat belly.
"Hey!" Will screeched. "No!" He stuck out a hand to stop Elliott from killing it, but she was too quick. She pushed in the knife and the appendages on its head immediately went limp, ceasing their endless waving.
"No!" he shouted again. "How could you do that? It's an Anomalocaris! " He took a step toward her, his hand outstretched.
"Keep away from me," she warned him, holding up her knife, "or I'll skewer you."
"But… it's a fossil… I mean… it's extinct… I mean I've seen a fossil of it… It's EXTINCT!" he yelled, becoming even more agitated as none of the others seemed to understand what he was trying to tell them.
"Really? Doesn't look too extinct to me," Elliott said, hefting the dead animal up before him.
"Don't you realize how important this is? You can't kill them! Leave the rest alone!" He'd noticed the second sack and wasn't shouting anymore, just yammering, as if he knew he wasn't going to get anywhere with Elliott.
"Will, chill, OK? The other sack's only got shells in it. And anyway, Elliott says there's a shed load of these crabs out there," Chester tried to tell him, motioning out to sea.
"But… but…!"
Elliott's expression of pure exasperation was enough to stop him from making any more of a fuss. He bit his lip, looking on in horror at the lifeless Anomalocaris.
"It was the biggest predator that swam the seas… the T. Rex of the Cambrian period," Will mumbled forlornly. "It's been extinct for nearly five hundred and fifty million years."
When Elliott produced the mollusks, as she called them, from the second sack, Will was equally flabbergasted.
"Devil's toenails!" he gasped. "Gryphaea arcuata. I've got a box of them at home. I found them with my dad at Lyme Regis… but just fossils!"
So, with the impaled Anomalocaris suspended above the flames, Elliott, Cal, and Chester sat around the prehistoric barbecue, while Will sketched a living devil's toenail that he had begged from Elliott. Its brothers and sisters (or maybe both — Will couldn't quite recall if they were supposed to have been hermaphrodites) hadn't been so fortunate: Tucked into the hot embers at the edge of the fire, they sizzled softly.
Will was talking to himself and grinning inanely, with the sort of absolute absorption a young child might show when examining a creepy-crawly it has caught in the garden. "Yes, really thick shell… look at the growth rings… and there's the lid," Will said, tapping the end of his pencil on a flattened circle at the widest end of the shell. He looked up to find all eyes upon him. "This is just so cool! Do you know this was the predecessor to the oyster?"
"Drake mentioned something about that. He liked his raw," Elliott said matter-of-factly as she repositioned the Anomalocaris in the flames.
"None of you has the faintest idea how important the discovery of these animals is," Will said, becoming frustrated all over again by their total lack of interest. "How can you even think about eating them?"
"If you don't want yours, Will, I'll take it," Cal piped up. He turned to Chester. "What is an oyster, anyway?"
As the food cooked, Elliott brought up the bizarre corridor of sealed cells she had seen with Cal in the Bunker.
"We knew that there was some sort of quarantine area," she mused, "but not where it was or what it was for."
"Drake did say that, but how did you first hear about it?" Will inquired.
"From a contact," Elliott answered, hastily looking down. Will could have sworn he saw a flicker of unease in her eyes, but he told himself it must have been due to her discovery of the sickening cells.
"So all the people were dead," Chester stated.
"All except for the one man," Elliott said. "He was a renegade."
"The others were Colonists," Cal added. "You could tell from their clothes."
"But why would the Styx go to all the trouble of bringing Colonists down here just to kill them?" Chester asked.
"I don't know," Elliott shrugged. "They've always used the Deeps as testing grounds — that's nothing new — but all the signs now are that something big is about to break. Drake's idea was that the three of you might help us throw a monkey wrench into the works and mess up whatever the Blackheads are doing. Especially him over there." She made a face as she glanced at Will, who was still staring in horror at the cooking Anomalocaris. "Though I'm not too sure if Drake really thought that one through."
Elliott removed the Anomalocaris from the flames and put it on the ground. Then she peeled back one of the segments on its underbelly with the tip of her knife and began to carve up its carcass. "It's ready," she announced.
"Oh, great," Will said hollowly.
Nonetheless, when the food had been divided up, Will capitulated. Putting aside his journal, he began to eat his share, reluctantly at first, but then devouring it hungrily. He even agreed with Chester that the Anomalocaris was pretty similar to lobster. The devil's toenails were a different matter altogether, and the boys grimaced as they valiantly attempted to chew them.
"Hmmm. Interesting," Will commented as he finished his mouthful, pondering the thought that he was one of very few people alive who'd feasted on extinct animals. The image of him eating a dodo burger suddenly popped into his head, and he smiled uncomfortably.
"Yeah, really cool barbecue," Chester laughed, stretching out his legs. "It's sort of like being back home again."
Will nodded in response.
The invigorating gusts of wind, the crackles of the dying fire mingling with the crash of waves, and the taste of seafood in their mouths — all this made Chester and Will experience the deepest pangs of homesickness. These elements invoked other, carefree times back on the surface — it could have been a vacation outing or a beach party late one summer's evening (and although Will's family rarely went on such outings — not together, anyway — he was still moved by the notion).