What Lurks Beneath (29 page)

T
otal darkness.

Ashley held the boy against her breast, keeping his head above the water, both of them trembling. He was no more than six or seven years old. She pulled his face back against her wet blouse.

She could hear the others' heavy breathing in the small room. She had gotten a momentary look at the area behind the door before the water had shorted out the electrical system, causing the overhead lights to go out. She remembered seeing only a pile of construction tools to one side, a workbench with schematics on it, a rough tunnel running away into the rock. In the light, she'd seen the shocked expressions of the boy, of Barbas, and Roxanne. And the man wearing a cowboy hat was standing in the water, his back to them, bracing something against the door.

She now stood on something submerged in the water, maybe the workbench or another table of sorts. Her damp head was only inches from the hard ceiling, but still the water came to her shoulders. At least they could still breathe. And the water seemed to have stopped rising—for now.

In the tunnel outside, the rushing water had settled, calmed. She hadn't heard anything against the metal door, now totally submerged below them, for some time. She breathed slowly, and recited the Lord's Prayer in her head. She had managed to calm the child's cries enough that he now only sobbed quietly against her neck.

“Is everyone all right?” It was Sturman's deep voice, coming from the far corner of the room. She knew he was alone there, standing on some lower object, but with his height he was able to keep his head above the water.

“There's something wrong with my knee,” Roxanne said, her voice quavering. She'd been in an utter panic until Barbas had shaken her and told her to control herself. From the sounds of their breathing, he now held her the way Ashley held the boy.

Sturman said, “Anyone else? Anything serious?”

Silence.

“Good. Does anyone have any sort of light?”

“I have a cell phone, but it's filled up with water,” Ashley said.

“There may be a work lamp, somewhere farther up the tunnel,” Barbas said.

“Battery-powered?” Sturman said.

“They use mostly plug-ins down here, but I'm sure we purchased some cordless lights as well.”

Sturman said, “Is there any emergency phone down here? A radio? Any way to communicate with the resort?”

“No,” Barbas said.

“All right then. Everyone stay put. I'll be back,” Sturman said. Ashley heard him swim past her, farther into the tunnel.

Just before the tank gave, the guard—a young man Ashley barely knew named Arthur—had tried to run away, through the jets of water. The boy's grandmother had looked at them pleadingly from the ground as Sturman had roughly shoved the rest of them through the door into darkness.

Then the boom. The moving wall of water. Him slamming the metal door shut.

She remembered the screams. They punctuated the sounds of the water at first, rising in high-pitched terror above them. The old woman, and more people farther down the tunnel, wailing as they were washed away, just before they drowned. Or worse.

And Georgina . . .
She felt tears rise and pushed away the thought. Not now.

She had thought the door's hinges would fail when she heard the wall of water burst through the glass and crash against it. The raging torrent had continued rumbling against the door in a deafening rush, pouring in underneath it, hissing through in pressurized jets along its sides and top, quickly filling the fluorescent-lit room with powerful, stinging streams as they groped for a way out. The lights went out then, but the hissing had continued as they stumbled in the darkness, seeking perches, finally fading only when the water had completely submerged the door. But the heavy metal door had held, probably in part because Sturman had anticipated the sudden pressure change and quickly braced a long board against it.

“Where does that construction tunnel go?” Ashley said, peering into the darkness where she could hear Sturman splashing through the water.

“Nowhere,” Barbas said. “It ends in another seventy or eighty feet. There's no outlet.”

“Is there any other way out of this room?”

“No.” Barbas said irritably. “Just the way we came in.”

After several minutes, Sturman shouted that he'd found something. Then, from a short distance away, a white light bounced along the tunnel walls as he swam back with it. When he rounded the bend, she saw that he was holding the light above him. It was protected by a metal frame and had a hook above it, like those used to hang under car hoods, but it was apparently battery-powered. Ashley could now see the heads and shoulders of the others poking out above the water.

In the harsh glow of the lamp, they quickly re-examined their underwater prison. A pocket of air remained in the last foot or so of space near the nine-foot ceiling, but silt-laden saltwater had flooded everything else, to a level just above the top of the door.

“That tunnel appears to slope upward,” Sturman said.

“Yes,” Barbas said. “It does. It will eventually head to the surface.”

“We need to head that way. The water in here may keep rising.”

The boy suddenly stiffened. “What's that?” he said.

“What's what?” Ashley said.

“That noise.”

Everyone else remained silent. She held her breath, listening. Hoping she would hear nothing at all. But then she heard it too. Something sliding across the outside of the door, making a slight squeaking sound. Like a squeegee on a dirty window.

Roxanne said, “They're here. They're here for us!” She moved toward the door.

“Stop,” Sturman said.

“But we need to let them in. Help is here!”

“No,” he whispered. “Get back.”

She moaned, but her voice was muffled an instant later as Barbas pressed his hand over her mouth. There was a rattle, and the doorknob jiggled.

“What's it doing?” Ashley whispered, looking at Sturman.

“It's trying to get in.”

T
he severed octopus arm was less animated now, but still writhed on the ground in front of Val. She kept her distance as she stared at it in wonder. It was enormous, the shape of an elephant trunk but longer, brownish-gray in color, the reds now fading to narrow streaks. It still moved on the wet concrete, like one of the headless vipers her father had killed when she was a child. It twisted, rolled over again, as if fighting to return to the water.

As if it had a mind of its own.

Biologically, an octopus arm wasn't much different than a snake's body. It contained a developed-enough nervous system to keep functioning to some degree, even after being separated from the animal's brain. In a way, it had a life of its own.

But on its severed end, the blue blood had nearly stopped seeping out. It would be unable to function soon. She wondered how much longer the arm had been before her uncle had lopped it off. How big this animal was.

A young policewoman stood nearby, to keep the tourists snapping images of the arm on their iPhones from going any closer. She had allowed Val to approach after she explained who she was.

Mack finished reattaching his limb on a nearby bench and stood. He walked up to the arm and kicked it, hard, with his prosthetic. “Hurts, doesn't it?” he yelled. He turned toward the water in the tank. “You only got seven-and-a-half now, you fuckin' squirter!”

Val said, “Mack, please. Move away from it. It could still hurt you.”

“Fine.” He moved over beside her, and nodded down at Eric. Resting on the ground near them, he was awake now, with a paramedic talking to him, but still grimacing in pain.

Mack told Val everything that had happened. He seemed overly happy when he talked about hurting the octopus. “So I guess now the kid here's a damn hero,” he said. “Unlike me.”

Eric glanced up at him for a moment, and then looked away. He was pale, and clearly in pain, but she knew that wasn't what hurt him the most.

When Val had first arrived, Eric had been semiconscious, attended by the paramedic inspecting the bruises forming on his hips and legs. Mack had been watching the lagoon anxiously. Will, Ashley, and several others were still missing. Apparently, they were all last seen headed into the underground aquarium tunnels, before they flooded.

“We need Eric's ROV,” she said.

“What? Why?”

“To see if they're still down there. They could still be alive. Eric?”

He looked up at her. “Yeah?”

“We're going to run back and get some equipment. And DORA. You think you can run her?”

He nodded.

Mack said, “You got a plan?”

“Come on. We'll make one as we go.”

They started to turn away when Eric spoke.

“Mack, I need to talk to you.”

“Save it, kid. And you're welcome.”

As they hurried toward the lobby, Val's thoughts returned again to her dad. He'd been a tall, rough man. A heavy drinker, with a temper. So flawed. But she'd always known that he loved her, and she'd loved him back for who he was. The way she loved Will.

Maybe there was still a chance for him. For
them
. If he was alive.

 

 

Anger. Confusion.

The octopus clung to the bottom of the tank, beneath the listing, four-story section of submerged safety glass. She had eliminated every possible threat she had encountered. Except one. Something small and unseen, outside of the water, had cut off a third of one of her arms. Her instincts had forced her to retreat.

She had lost arms before, when she was younger, and they had always grown back. But now, at this phase in her life, her body would no longer devote resources to regeneration. And the wound was painful, diminishing her capabilities to defend. She needed to return to her den, and to remain there to protect her defenseless young. But she could not. There was nowhere to go.

Bleeding, she had coiled the wounded arm close to her body and slid silently back into the deepest part of the tank. Then the currents in it had shifted, and she could taste familiar odors. Taste her den. From somewhere in the tank, water from near her brood was somehow flowing back into the tank.

She sought the small opening from which she had come, the narrow pipe that might lead to some way out, perhaps to the ocean. But it was obscured in rubble now. The thundering wall of water had broken apart rocks and glass, and the structures along the bottom of the space had changed. The opening was no longer there. Still, she could taste the deeper ocean water seeping in from somewhere below. She had searched the confined area for any way out, but found nothing.

So she rested, concealed at the bottom as her brain processed her options. She forced her inquisitive arms to remain still, so as not to reveal her position. She could not risk further injury. She would not fight again unless threatened. But the steady noise from the wind whipping across the surface above, and the relatively shallow water churning so close to her sensory organs, disturbed her. She needed deeper, quieter water. Safer water. And she needed to protect her young.

She rose off the bottom again, and moved into the tunnels.

T
he sounds against the door had stopped. It was quiet again, except for everyone's breathing.

“Maybe it left,” Ashley finally whispered.

Sturman said, “Maybe. But we need to move. Follow me.”

He turned and started swimming toward the construction tunnel, the light held above his head. Barbas tried to follow, towing Roxanne with him, but she was resisting in her panicked state. He stopped as he fought to calm her. Ashley lunged into the water directly behind Sturman, trying to keep her face above the water, the boy clinging to her shoulders.

Something slammed against the door. Something very heavy. The boy cried out.

“Oh, my God!” Roxanne shouted. “It's here again!”

Ashley heard a splash behind her and looked back. Barbas had released Roxanne and dived in after the others. The metal door groaned and then made a popping sound as it bulged inward. The long board Sturman had braced against it snapped, and it burst inward, sending up a wave.

A huge tentacle burst from the wave and slammed into the low ceiling, then crashed back into the water. It found Roxanne. Winding around her, it thickened as it contracted, the coils swelling under the strain. Roxanne's screams turned to a gurgling sound as blood erupted from her mouth and nose, spraying the ceiling.

The terrified boy tried to climb onto Ashley's head and she went under. Water went up her nose. She opened her eyes underwater as she fought to loosen his grip on her hair. She saw Roxanne's body moving sideways in the dim light, moving away from her. The thing was trying to pull her back through the doorway, but it was only opened partway, and her body wouldn't fit. The arm jerked at Roxanne's body several times, slamming her into the doorjamb until her crushed body finally disappeared into the rectangular hole.

Ashley felt her bladder go. She turned and kicked madly for the surface, her lungs burning. Then the boy's grip in her hair was gone, and his weight left her.

She popped back up to the surface, gasping. She turned around to see what had happened to him. But the boy was still there. Sturman had swum back to them, and now held the sobbing child against one shoulder.

“Here.” He thrust the light into her hand. “You lead. I got the kid.”

She grabbed the light, and without looking back she kicked into the dark tunnel.

 

 

“What
is
that?” Ashley whispered.

Until now, the question had remained unspoken. Nobody seemed to want to accept what they'd seen inside the tank, the living thing pressing its enormous body against the tall glass, covering it. The thing that had shattered the tank, and killed Roxanne.

“An octopus,” Sturman said. His cowboy hat was gone, floating somewhere in the darkness.

“What do you mean? It's too big. Nothing is that big.”

They stood in waist-deep water now, at the back end of the tunnel. Ashley was up against some tools submerged near them, where they leaned against the rough stone wall: a jackhammer, a few pickaxes. The light cast an eerie glow on the walls and ceiling, but barely penetrated the surface.

“How do
you
know what it was? Are you a scientist?” Barbas said.

“I know.”

Barbas said, “How did it get into my aquarium?”

“Good question.”

“Do you think it's coming back?” Ashley said. “Can it get in here?”

“I don't know,” Sturman said. “Probably.”

“Where's my nana?” the boy said.

Sturman held him to his chest. He looked at Ashley, shook his head. She bit her lip and took a deep breath before answering.

“I don't know, child. We'll look for her later, okay?”

“I wanna go home.”

“I know you do. I know. Soon.”

She wondered if he knew she was lying.