Dark Life: Rip Tide

KAT FALLS

To my dear friend Merle,
for turning her home into
a writer’s getaway. And
to my family, for being so
understanding and supportive
while I got away.

Easing back on the throttle, I slowed the submarine’s speed. The light-streaked ocean around us seemed vast and empty, but I knew better. We were heading into the biggest trash vortex in the Atlantic. A piece of history could broadside us at any time.

Sure enough, a shape swirled out of the darkness, glimmering in the sub’s head beams. Gemma leaned into the viewport. “A bicycle,” she said with amazement. “Just like in old photos.”

“That means we’re almost there,” I told her.

“We’re hiding a wagon full of crops in the open ocean?”

“In the middle of the trash gyre,” I explained. “Genius, right?” I checked the rear monitor to make sure the sealed wagon was still hitched to the back of our sub. “No one ever comes in here.”

She shot me a knowing look. “For good reason, I’ll bet.”

“Divers worry about getting crushed—”

“Do they?” she asked, a smile hovering on her lips.

“—but I’ve explored the vortex plenty and I’m still alive.”

“Ty, please don’t take this the wrong way….” Flipping back her long hair, she tugged a life preserver out from under her seat.

While she fastened the vest, I tilted the cruiser into a steep descent. With its barrel-shaped body mounted on twin thermal engines, the sub had enough heft to plow through the floating debris. I, however, was not so hardy; the sight of so much trash always hollowed out my gut.

At fifty feet down, it was just small objects gliding by—a headless doll, plastic bags, soda cans, and fishermen’s nets. Though abandoned, the nets were as effective as ever at trapping creatures, and I had to look away when we passed a tangled dolphin, long drowned. We pushed deeper, and larger items tumbled by—a TV trailing wires, a mannequin, a sparkling chandelier—as if caught in a slow underwater hurricane. It seemed like all the junk from past centuries had found its way here, to drift in an enormous circle forever.

“Where did this stuff come from?” Gemma shifted onto her knees to look up through the sub’s flexiglass canopy.

“Winds and currents picked it up from all over the Atlantic.” I swerved to avoid hitting a stroller.

Flipping on the exterior spotlight, I moved the beam across the drifting objects, not knowing what many were. A powerful upwelling kept them afloat while wreckfish, longer than me, lurked in the nooks, with their lower jaws thrust out as if anticipating a fight.

When the gyre’s rotation slowed to a standstill, I knew that we’d reached the center. Here, the debris simply turned in place.

“This is probably a stupid question,” Gemma said, shifting her gaze to me, “but if we leave the wagon here, what’s to stop it from floating away?”

“I’m going to hitch it on to something big.”

“Okay. What’s to stop both things from floating away? “

“We’re in the eye of the vortex. None of this scrap is going anywhere. Besides, I’ll be back at dawn to get it. Pa didn’t want the wagon to sit in the field overnight, all loaded up, looking like easy pickings. Just ’cause we’re the only settlers willing to sell to the surfs doesn’t mean we trust them.”

“Still, I can’t hear your father saying, ‘Go hide the wagon in the
giant trash vortex
.’”

“He doesn’t care where I stash it as long as it’s safe.”

She smiled. “Uh-huh.”

“Now, that’s an anchor.” Dead ahead, a fragment of an airplane pivoted on end with all the speed of a starfish.
Flipping the sub into idle, I grabbed my helmet from the seat behind me.

Gemma’s blue eyes widened. “You’re not going out there?”

“How else am I going to hitch the wagon on to that chunk of aluminum?”

“With those pincher-arm things.”

“That’ll take forever.” I headed down the aisle between the seats.

“You said that sea creatures have been migrating everywhere. If ocean currents carried all this trash here, then something could have hitched a ride.”

She was right, of course. Fishermen were constantly pulling marine life out of the Atlantic that used to live only in the Pacific or off the coast of Australia. So much land had flooded during the Rising that new channels had formed between the oceans.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, hoping it was true. Biting down on a tube in the base of my helmet, I inhaled a lungful of oxygen-infused liquid and then dropped out of the hatch in the cruiser’s floor.

“You better be,” she said through the receiver in my helmet. “Because if I have to come out there to rescue you, it’s going to ruin my day.”

That was putting it mildly. She hadn’t dipped so much as a toe into the ocean in over a month. A fact that pained me. But she’d agreed to come out in the cruiser today—
for the first time in weeks—so maybe someday she would try diving again.

I shot her a thumbs-up since I couldn’t talk with Liquigen in my lungs. With three kicks, I was at the cruiser’s stern, though the upwelling was so strong that it took effort to stay level. After attaching the wagon’s line to my dive belt, I stroked toward the piece of algae-covered airplane, only to stop short as dozens of large shadows streaked past me. Using my Dark Gift, I shot sonar at them and saw in my mind that they were piked dogfish—sharks, yes, but not a threat to humans. Still, I didn’t like the frenzied way they were swimming—as if fleeing.

I sent a series of clicks into the black depths. Tense seconds went by, and when the echo finally bounced back, the mental image was too cluttered to be of use. Far below lay a graveyard of derelict vessels that had been swept there by the currents. Within the pileup were cavities and crannies galore, which meant that
anything
could be lurking down there, hidden from my view—Dark Gift or not. A chilling thought.

Still, I was glad for my biosonar. So what if Topside doctors attributed subsea kids’ Dark Gifts to intense water pressure messing with our brains? I felt fine. Healthy. And was relieved that my parents had stopped worrying so much about me. Of course, it had only been four months since they’d learned that Dark Gifts weren’t a myth. And that both of their children had one.

Since I couldn’t get a read on the mountain of wreckage below, I turned my attention back to finding a place to hitch the wagon. I’d spotted a pair of portholes that would work when Gemma’s shout filled my helmet. I spun toward the cruiser. Then my brain caught up with my retinas, and I realized that I had glimpsed a huge shape hanging motionless beside me.

With a half turn, I found myself facing an enormous squid. Floating upright, it stood at least six feet tall, its purplish red body so thick I couldn’t have put my arms around it if I’d wanted to. The squid hovered, watching me. When its skin flashed to neon white and then blood-red, a name came to me—
diablo rojo.
Red devil. A creature with a reputation even more terrifying than its looks.

Edging back, I tried to suppress all the stories of these particular squid dragging swimmers into the depths and eating them alive. Not tall tales, but real accounts with witnesses. Of all the predators of the deep, squid got my heart pounding like nothing else. Sharks were fearsome, but just beasts. Whereas, in this creature’s eyes I saw an intelligence that scared me to the core.

Again its skin rippled from luminous white to dark red, and I knew that couldn’t be good. No doubt the squid was trying to confuse its prey. Me.

Escaping the diablo rojo would be impossible with the wagon’s towline attached to my belt. Slowly, I reached for the clip, but that triggered a reaction. Flinging out a tentacle, the squid walloped me across the shoulders with such force, my head snapped back.

Stunned, I straightened to see the creature flip itself horizontal with all eight tentacles and both feeder arms extended forward—pointing at me. I thrashed away, but the squid jetted in so fast I didn’t have time to escape. It slammed into my chest and sent me flying, but not out of reach.

Forcing my eyes open, I found myself enveloped within the umbrella of the creature’s body. I tried to unholster my dive knife, but the squid had my arms pinned to my sides. Tightening its grip, it pulled me against its razor-sharp beak and tried to crack open my helmet like it was a tuna’s skull. Thankfully the flexiglass held.

Gemma yelled something in my ear, but all I could focus on was the squid’s spike-covered tongue, inches from my eyes. I struggled to get free but the suckers on
the squid’s tentacles were lined with tiny teeth. Like thorns, they dug into my diveskin—probably not ripping through its iron nanoparticle coating, but even a snag could foul up the computer sensors that were woven between the layers. If that happened, I’d end up with a lot worse than torn skin. At this depth, I’d freeze.

The thought electrified me. I forced my knife upward, despite the squid’s stranglehold of a hug, and jabbed blindly. A ribbon of blue blood drifted up. At most I’d nicked a tentacle, but it was enough to send the squid flapping into the depths, carried away by its head fins.

Slumping, I glanced at the cruiser and saw Gemma’s stark face pressed to the viewport. The whole attack had lasted less than a minute. She hadn’t had time to react.

“What was that thing?” she shrieked in my ear. Probably had been the whole time, but now her voice penetrated my consciousness. “I told you to use the pincher-arm things. But no. You have to swim with monsters.” She sounded terrified and furious all at once.

I waved to let her know I was okay, though I wasn’t going to reholster my knife anytime soon.

“Great. So glad you’re fine,” she snapped. “Now get back in the sub.”

I held up a finger and sent a series of clicks into the depths. But with so much piled wreckage below me, it
was impossible to tell where the squid had gone. Moving quickly, I looped the wagon’s towline through the plane’s empty portholes and fastened the clip.

Had my shine attracted the squid?
I wondered.

Having faintly glowing skin could sometimes be a liability subsea. Yet most of the Benthic Territory settlers ate bioluminescent fish, and so we were all luminous to some degree. But I hadn’t immigrated to the deep like most settlers. I’d spent my whole life in the ocean, so my shine was a little brighter than the average.

“Can you please hurry—” Gemma’s words cut off on a gasp. “On the sonar screen. Something is rising fast.”

I flipped around, knife up, figuring the squid was back. But it was worse than that. One series of sonar clicks told me the creature wasn’t alone. Something I should have seen coming, since I knew that red devils were the only squid to hunt as a pack.

I kicked for the cruiser as they shot out of the deep—three of them, equally huge. They slowed to hover between the sub and me with their skin rippling from white to red then back again, which now I knew for sure was pre-attack behavior.

“Ty, hide!” Gemma shouted as she plowed the cruiser into the squid from behind. Instead of scattering, they whipped around to attack the sub.

“Oh!” she cried with disgust. “Get off, you slimy freaks.” She banged on the viewport and then turned on the wipers.

Knowing she’d be fine, I grabbed the moment to dart inside the hunk of airplane.

“Hey, can these things climb through the hatch?” Gemma demanded suddenly. “They can, can’t they? I’m shutting the hatch.”

I stayed put, and a moment later she returned to the microphone. “Okay, they took off. They’re mugging some poor fish.”

As she said it, I peered through the porthole and saw the squid in the distance, dragging a thrashing tarpon into the depths. Over eight feet long, it should keep them busy for a while. At least, I hoped so. Just then, the ocean filled with what sounded like dozens of diveskins being torn open simultaneously, followed by brutal chops. I shivered, knowing the bone and tissue being ripped apart could have been mine.

“Ty, where are you?” Gemma asked.

Unable to reply because of the Liquigen in my lungs, I started to swim out from under the airplane fragment, but then noticed a thick chain nearby, descending into the depths. I ducked out the opposite side instead, only to freeze at the sight before me.

Seemed I wasn’t the only one who thought the trash gyre made a good hiding spot.

“Come out,” Gemma demanded through the speaker in my helmet. “I can’t see you.”

I rounded the chunk of plane and beckoned her forward, indicating with my arms that she had plenty of room. Her exasperated sigh filled my helmet, but she put the cruiser in gear.

After checking with my sonar that the squid really had taken off, I turned back to the thing anchored nearby—a shaggy seamount, floating in the still, dark water. An illusion, of course, since seamounts don’t float. But the structure before me was so enormous, I couldn’t capture its shape with my sonar. I kicked in for a closer look, feeling like a minnow next to it.

“What is
that
?”

Even through the crackly receiver, I could hear the awe in Gemma’s voice.

I spelled out the letters slowly since sign language was still new to her:
township.

At least that was my best guess. Rounded and several stories high, it was definitely big enough to provide living quarters for four to five hundred people as well as the other facilities a community needed—filtration tanks for fresh water, kitchens and food storage, oxygen and heat generators. And the vessel sure was old and dinged up like every township I’d ever seen.

“A wreck?” she asked.

I shrugged. Seemed like the reasonable explanation.
Why else would it be submerged in the trash gyre? Townships could travel subsea, but from what I knew, most stayed on the ocean’s surface with their roofs retracted—fully or partially, depending on the shape of the vessel. So, yes, this probably was a wreck. But what a waste, sinking it here, when it could have been sold off for parts.

I didn’t see any glowing viewports or movement or any other signs of life on the inside, though the outside teemed with it. In fact, the exterior had its own mini-ecosystem going on. Barnacles encrusted the vertical windows; crabs frittered through the mangy seaweed that had started to sprout on the side panels; clouds of fish hovered all around.

Using my dive knife, I scraped away the algae on one window but could only see my own glowing reflection. Tapping on the wrist screen built into my diveskin, I intensified my helmet’s crown lights. After focusing them into one beam, I aimed it through the window, only to jerk back in surprise. A teenage boy lay slumped against the sill, with a blanket draped over his shoulders. His head rested on the crook of his arm as if he’d fallen asleep while peering outside.

If he lived on a township, he was a surf—short for “surfeit population.” I couldn’t remember seeing one like him, with his shaved head and the geometric tattoos edging his face. But then, I’d never gotten such a close view of a surf before.

“What is it?” Gemma asked. “What do you see?”

I motioned for her to wait, then banged against the flexiglass with the butt of my knife. The kid didn’t wake up. Didn’t even twitch.

Unease rolled through me like cold fog as I treaded water in front of the window. Nothing indicated the township’s engines were working. No hum of a turbine. No lights. No streams of bubbles. That meant no oxygen. No heat.

I shivered with the realization that I’d just tried to wake a corpse. Making it eerier, the boy looked to be exactly my age. Fifteen.

“Is there someone dead in there?” Gemma asked suddenly. “That’s what you’re looking at, isn’t it? A dead person?”

When I nodded, she jammed the cruiser into reverse and backed up a boat’s length.

Still, I hovered with my chest aching as though I’d inhaled too much Liquigen. Whoever he was, he could have been dead for a while. Maybe even years. He was so perfectly preserved, who could tell? The lack of air and frigid water temperature had to have turned the township into one giant walk-in freezer.

“Ty,” Gemma’s voice said softly inside my ear. “Come back. We’ll radio for help.”

Sounded good to me. I sure wasn’t itching to go poking around a ghost town, but a single thought kept me
from stroking away. What if someone inside was still alive and needed help?

Doubtful, yes, considering that seaweed had put down roots on the exterior. But a stationary township wasn’t necessarily a broken one. What if this township had been sitting here awhile but the engines had conked out only days ago? I had to check for survivors, no matter how unsettling the thought was.

I motioned to Gemma that I was heading inside. When she said, “Be careful,” I realized part of me had been hoping she’d talk me out of it.

Dropping under the immense structure gave me the uneasy sense of swimming beneath an island. The bottom was flat, so finding the entry port was easy enough. But one glance told me where the problem lay.

I swam out and circled the township’s perimeter. But with each hatch that I passed my stroke slowed. By the time I made it all the way around, my arms felt too heavy to lift—not because I was tired but because of what I’d seen.

Every single hatch door had been chained shut … from the outside.