What Lurks Beneath (36 page)

V
al didn't hear the blast. But she felt it.

The pressure wave smashed into them, through them, causing pain in her chest and head—the parts of her body with air in them. Although the blast didn't propel her against the side of the tunnel, as she might have expected, it instantly compressed the gasses inside her.

She felt momentarily disoriented, clutching at her chest as she began to spin in the water inside the dark, narrow tunnel. The beam of her dive light swept across the rock in a great arc. She realized that Sturman's light had vanished, its own rigid, air-filled housing probably ruptured by the sonic pulse.

She knew that underwater explosions sent deadly pressure waves over long distances, and didn't dissipate, because seawater didn't compress like air. This sonic blast was probably similar. Even though they had moved some distance from the den, perhaps a few hundred yards underwater, they would be dead right now if it wasn't for the many angles and varying widths inside the twisting passage, which must have somehow reflected or altered the shock wave. Weakened it.

But Mack, and the other men. How close were they when it went? If any of them had still been alive somewhere back there, hiding from the beast, she knew they probably weren't anymore.

Whatever device Sturman had found—the weapon Breck had stashed years ago, and her uncle had brought down here to avenge him—had just gone off. Had possibly killed the single specimen of a previously undiscovered, almost certainly very rare, species of octopus. And its young—

Her hands went to her own womb. No. What if . . .

There was no time to think about that. Or to think about Mack and the others.

Sturman's hand found her arm in the darkness, squeezed it. He brought her toward him, and she looked into his eyes in the dim light. She could see dark blood trickling out of his nose inside his dive mask. It was cracked, and filling with water.

But he held up a hand and made an okay symbol with thumb and forefinger.
Are you all right?

One of her ears throbbed. One side of her ribcage ached. She could only hope that there was no significant damage to her lungs. But at least she didn't taste blood in her mouth, or feel it leaving her nose, as it was his. She nodded at him and returned the hand symbol:
I'm okay.

Then she pointed at him. Repeated the symbol. He began pointing at his head, toward the blood, and then something moved behind him.

Val jerked at him instinctively, trying to pull him away from the thing rushing up behind him, but then it was upon him. It passed over them.

It was a dense cloud of sediment, trailing the blast. In an instant, the visibility went to zero.

Val felt panic rising in her. Her air supply had already been dwindling. She had less than 1,000 psi, but she didn't know how much—500? And how much did Sturman have? It would take some time for this sediment to clear. Too much time, to see again, so they could try to find a way out. If there was one.

She tried to calm herself, to control her breathing as she knelt blindly on the cold cavern floor. She considered whether they should attempt to head back, toward the den, the mouth of the blue hole. The octopus would no longer be a threat.

No. It was too far, and the cavern might be damaged or destroyed now. They would have to try to somehow press on.

A fear unlike any she had known seized her heart. Because she understood the situation. She knew. Sturman's hand found her own in the darkness, and she accepted it. At least they were together.

Then he released her hand and fumbled across her body. Found her other hand, and the light. It was slightly visible now, at least up close to their faces. He pulled it away from her, and then tugged at her, insistently.

And she knew he was right. It would be better to die trying. Together.

 

 

He pulled her through the darkness, their gear thudding against unseen walls and ceilings, the tips of their fins striking the bottom. She could detect the light, moving erratically in Sturman's hand ahead of her, but its beam was still obscured by the churned sediment. She held her hands out in front of her, to prevent her head from hitting anything, contemplating her fate. The end. What would happen next? Would there be a next?

They arrived at a constriction. Sturman released her hand and slammed his body through it. But when he did, the top of his tank struck the rock. Bubbles began to erupt from where the regulator had become partially dislodged from the tank.

He pulled her through, and they continued. Then the bubbles pouring out of his tank stopped. He turned to face her. His mask had filled with water. He handed her the light, then squeezed her arm once and pushed her past him, but remained where he was.

She turned back to him and shook her head.
No.
She found the backup air piece attached to her vest and thrust it in front of him, and after a moment he shoved it into his mouth. He cleared his mask, and then moved beside her. She led them forward.

Now sharing air, they had only a few minutes left before it ran out.

The sediment obscured the cavern walls, and she was unable to maintain neutral buoyancy. Her head, her knees kept striking the rocks.

Then she saw something—a bend up ahead.

The water was clearing. She tried not to let hope overtake her, because that would just make it worse. Their air supply would be gone any second. Then she'd try to breathe in, but nothing would come. They would drown.

They kept moving. She started to make out more of the passage in the settling water. Then the beam of light became fully visible again, and she could see the pale walls clearly. Everything looked so drab, so gray and muted, except—

A flash of bright red. Her eyes had detected it for only an instant. But she'd seen something. Sturman grabbed her shoulder, squeezed it. He'd seen it too. They stopped.

She directed the light to her right, toward where it had been. She slowly swept the darkness with the beam, and then it was there.

A fish. A small, solitary red fish, with white stripes running down its body.

It was not a blind, cavern-dwelling fish, like the others she'd seen under the island. And it wasn't unfamiliar. It was a fish Val knew well. A squirrelfish. A
reef
fish. Which could mean only one thing.

The fish slowly turned and with a flick of its tail began to swim off. Val kept her light trained on their tiny companion. It paused, hovering a foot below the ceiling, looking at them. As if waiting for them. They moved toward it, and it continued away. With Sturman next to her, she followed. It led them into a side tunnel, one they hadn't seen before, one they had nearly passed.

With the fish leading them, they moved through the darkness. The fish's red coloration, its white stripes, it oversized dark eyes, reminded Val of someone she had met recently. Someone who had given her more than advice. Someone she now owed a great debt.

There was light up ahead. The water began to take on a blue hue where the passage widened.

Moments later, the cavern opened up into the side of an undersea wall. They kicked vigorously toward the sunlight filtering down through clear ocean waters above. She didn't see the fish anymore, and scanned the water all around her.

But it was no longer there.

T
he Obeah woman was gone.

Val had almost walked right past her settlement, without Clive to guide her and with no smoke rising into the forest to give away its location. The shack was still there in the small clearing, near the vegetable garden, and the rocks that ringed the fire pit were just as they had looked before. But the dwelling was empty, and the old woman was no longer there.

“You sure this is it?” Sturman said.

“Yes,” Val said. “This is where she was last time. I'm sure of it.”

She and Sturman had set out after breakfast, again riding in Mars's taxi for the trip deep into the big island. Then, on foot, they'd passed through the tidal creeks and deserted fruit-tree farm and into the fresh-smelling pine forest. As they'd hiked along the rough trails, hacking at overgrown vegetation, Val had tried to explain to Sturman how the sage, and the ambergris-scented amulet she had given her, had saved her.

The amulet had no longer been fastened around Val's neck when they'd surfaced from the blue hole. She had no idea when she'd lost it. Perhaps it had been torn free by the octopus. And now, like the necklace she'd given Val, the Obeah woman had simply disappeared.

Sturman again poked his head inside the dim shack. He removed his new baseball cap and rubbed his head. “You were really here just last week?” he said.

“Yes.”

“This place looks like no one's been here in months. Years, even.”

He was right. Vines Val didn't remember seeing before grew on the hut's walls, and weeds had sprouted on the dirt floor inside the place. It looked as though nobody had lived here in a very long time.

“I know,” she said. “This all feels like some sort of strange dream.” She sighed. “I have so many questions, but I feel like they'll never get answered.”

She wondered what Clive would say when she told him the sage was gone. He was still in the hospital, where doctors had him under heavy sedation. They'd needed to amputate his mangled forearm yesterday, just below the elbow.

Sturman said, “Maybe when Eric comes back, you'll get a few more answers. You sure you don't want to join him down here?”

Eric had already returned to Monterey Bay, to finish building a few more next-generation ROVs—“DORitos,” he'd called them with a smile—and to recruit a few capable grad students. It was one of the few smiles she'd seen on his face since their ordeal. She knew he was suffering from how he'd treated her uncle.

But Mack would have been proud of him. He'd put himself at risk to save Clive, diving in to pull the injured man to safety. He said he'd had a hell of a scare when the ruined remains of the Zodiac raft had risen up in the water beneath him. It might have been funny in other circumstances, but there was little to smile about. So many had died.

Eric had vowed to come back soon, for months of research. And Val had a feeling his decision wasn't based only on a desire to finish what they'd started. It might also have a little to do with Ashley.

She said, “I just want to go home. Maybe down the road I'll come back, if they find something. Other biologists are more suited to this. Squid are really my specialty, you know.”

Funding a project here on Andros wouldn't be a problem for Eric, or for any other researcher. The giant octopus and its brood were gone, buried when the cavern had collapsed. But Eric was already getting calls and e-mails from donors wanting him to use his ROV to further explore the blue holes, the offshore trench, to find this sensational kraken. Before he left, he'd shown them several of the unbelievable posts on YouTube and other social media sites, taken by visitors after the aquarium tank broke. Even though the octopus videos and images were all taken from a distance, and were mostly grainy, you could tell in a few of them what you were seeing. And now the press had gotten clear images of the severed arm section, with people in those shots for scale. The multimedia had quickly gone viral, and tourists had left Oceanus en masse.

But as they departed, Val's colleagues from around the world, the other cephalopod experts at universities, aquariums, and research centers, would soon be descending on Andros from all over. Other experts would be headed to Seattle, where the arm was now being shipped to on ice. They would study and dissect it there. Despite its size, it closely resembled the arm of a giant Pacific octopus, so it made sense to send it to an aquarium where the world's foremost experts studied that species. This was the biggest discovery since that of the aptly named colossal squid, off Antarctica. Even bigger.

At least PLARG would be largely involved in whatever exploration occurred here under the island, and in the Tongue of the Ocean. Its scientists followed protocols, and were careful not to alter environments they ventured into. But Val wondered what sort of damage the extended exploration, the numerous visits that were sure to come, might have on the pristine conditions here. Perhaps the US Navy would be a good thing, because it would restrict entry into so many areas offshore.

She wondered if the military had already known about this octopus species. And what else they knew that they might not be telling the public.

Sturman said, “Well, I'm glad you aren't coming back. I don't wanna lose you too.”

He hugged her and then stepped back, moving his hands up to her shoulders. He looked good. Clean. Although he was tired, and still reeling from the losses himself, his eyes were clear, without the bags under them she'd become so used to seeing before she'd left California weeks ago.

“How you doing?” he said. “Really?”

“I'm okay.”

She'd cried in bed last night, and she knew that the emotions would come back. Even though she knew Mack was dead, that there was no way for him to be alive, it just didn't seem like he was really gone. His wake would be down the road, maybe in a few weeks or even longer, when she was able to help her mom arrange it. Probably a small service in Florida, or in the Abacos. There would be no need for a burial or cremation, because anything that might have been left of her uncle had been destroyed in the blast.

She thought of Rabinowitz, and looked up at Sturman. “How are you?”

“I'm all right.”

But she saw the emotion behind his eyes.

He said, “I'm just glad you're okay.”

Sturman had said Rabinowitz had owed him, but he'd paid dearly. Wits had left behind a family. She wondered what the debt to Sturman had been for, but she didn't ask. He had to be taking this as hard as her, having lost another friend. She studied his face.

She had no illusions. Would Will ever drink again? Probably. He would have setbacks. But he hadn't had one last night, which was a very good sign.

He wasn't perfect. He would almost certainly make more mistakes. But she would try to make it work. Who else in this world would sacrifice so much for her . . . or for his family?

“What now?” he said.

“I guess we head back to Monterey. Are you going to keep working at the aquarium?”

“About that . . .”

“Will, what did you do before you left, anyway?”

He grinned. “Look, I was thinking. We should move somewhere new. I'm thinkin' of buying another boat. Starting a dive business again.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Well, you better not name your boat after me.”

“Maybe we could come down here, or move to Florida, near your mom.”

“Now you're really talking crazy.”

She wondered if running another business would make him even more prone to his bad habits. But maybe him getting “back on his horse,” as he would say, would be the best thing. Maybe they needed a big change in their life. They both clearly didn't do well in sedentary, routine situations. They thrived on excitement. Then again, if things worked out this time, then eight months from now they would have all the excitement they could handle.

“What are you smiling about?” he said.

“What?”

“I know that look. What are you up to?”

She smiled. “Well, speaking of names . . . how do you like the name Alistair?”

“For my boat? You serious?”

She took his hands into her own. “Will, there's something I need to tell you.”

 

 

Something didn't look right.

The large undersea feature was about the size of her family's two-room summer cabin back in Ontario, but upside down and shaped more like an inverted scoop of melting ice cream. Natalie hovered at the same depth, drawing air in through her regulator in slow, measured breaths, her body relaxed in a state of neutral buoyancy as she peered into the shadows under the overhang, at the odd coral knob. Like many of the other interesting coral features here, the prominence jutted Dr. Seuss-like from the reef wall, just above the darkness of deeper water below. But something about this one was different.

Natalie glanced back at her husband. Twenty feet away, Dan's nose was glued to the exposed reef wall above her as he continued to study a tiny neon blue goby. The problem with having Dan as a dive buddy was that he was what Natalie's other friends called a “lingerer.” While she liked to focus on the larger topography of a reef and scan the distance for passing sharks and rays, her husband was the sort of diver who was most interested in the smaller, more colorful life tucked into the reef. This habit often made it difficult for them to keep up with their dive master when with a larger group. Thankfully, today it was just them and another couple who had dived this area with them before.

She looked past Dan, where their friends weren't quite visible around a bend in the reef. She couldn't see them, but their twin streams of bubbles rose above them toward the surface. Dan had been in the same spot for the past few minutes, and the others were moving even slower for some reason. Natalie was getting restless. She looked back at the large coral prominence. It bulged downward, toward the hollow depths beneath the overhang.

The foursome was diving a wall off the Florida Keys. They'd arrived in the islands three days ago, part of a week-long vacation to escape the pre-winter cold in Canada. It was only October, but already snow had fallen back in Toronto, providing them the excuse they needed to find an incredible last-minute deal online. Since none of them had kids, it wasn't hard to be spontaneous with travel. Last year they'd all managed to take a six-night trip to Costa Rica to raft and explore the jungle, also on very short notice.

This being their first of two dives today, they had gone deep—planning for a 110-foot max depth—to explore a mostly vertical wall that rose to within fifty feet of the surface. The wall dive had offered some interesting channels and other coral features to explore, like the large knob in front of her now. Besides being upside down, this one almost looked like it had somehow changed in shape since she last looked at it moments ago. As if it had become smaller.

Dan was still thirty feet above and behind her, moving slowly in her direction. They would soon need to start heading into shallower water and back toward their rented boat. If she wanted a better look at the coral prominence, she'd better hurry. Dan would easily be able to find her, with the vis around eighty feet. She descended under the overhang, into the dark hollow.

As she drew closer to the knob, something moved on its surface. Maybe it was an eel hiding there, or a camouflaged reef fish. She finned harder, to see what had caught her attention. A body length away, she stopped.

The rough reef surface looked mostly the same as the rest of the wall. As she'd seen elsewhere, what appeared to be a huge, encrusted barrel sponge clung to the knob. But there
was
something different. For one thing, this feature lacked any substantial micro-structure—no deeper cracks, no crevasses for fish to hide in. And . . .

That was it. There were no fish here. The entire stretch of wall had lacked any larger sea life—grouper, sharks, reef crabs. But this coral formation was itself strangely devoid of any sea life at all.

None of the smaller organisms that normally moved in and out of the cracks in a reef were present here. No fans or brighter living corals, either—as though everything had died. Maybe the prominence took the brunt of the ocean currents, which could have sculpted away the more delicate features and prevented the establishment of reef organisms, but from her experience, sedentary reef organisms preferred to affix themselves in areas swept by a regular flow of water. What had she seen move on the knob, then?

The bottom surface of the prominence suddenly shifted upward. Ever so slightly. As if it were collapsing.

Impossible.

She stared at it for ten or fifteen seconds. Nothing. She blinked a few times. Her imagination was starting to take over. Too many beers with everyone last night in that Key West bar, and maybe too much of that kickass weed afterward. Maybe she should surface now. She looked at her air. She still had five more minutes at this depth, and she wouldn't be diving again for a long time after this trip.

She drifted closer. She was just beneath the knob, almost close enough to touch it.

There.
Something moved again. She was certain. Something was definitely hiding here, on the downward face of the reef. Something that hid itself very well. Her heart began to pound. She might see something interesting on this dive after all.

She focused on a dark crack the size of her forearm. Was there something within that hole in the reef? She stared at the dark slit, and saw movement again. But it wasn't a fish, or anything else hiding inside. The crack itself had moved.

It wasn't part of the coral reef. It wasn't coral at all. It began to change color.