The Breach

by Edward J. McFadden III

  The following day, the press and bigwigs gathered back at the elevated ninth hole tee box at Woods Point to honor Randy and Tanner, and all those lost fighting the sea scorpion. Medals were given, kind words were said, and when it came time for Tanner to go on stage, he waved and declined comment. The flood water had subsided, and Dan had caused little flooding, because unlike Tristin, Dan blew through at low tide.

  The crowd milled about after the ceremony, and Tanner spotted Silva leaning against a tree in a small stand of thin oaks. He waved. Tanner waved back and Silva walked over. The two men shook hands, and then Silva hugged Tanner.

  “Glad to see you in one piece, my friend,” Silva said.

  “You too. You OK?”

  “Fine. I was luckier than you and Randy…well, maybe not as lucky as Randy, but pretty lucky.”

  Tanner nodded. “So that’s it?”

  “Yup. The official position of the government is that the sea scorpions were anomalies they don’t expect to see again.”

  “What could they do, anyway?”

  “A lot. They can take a picture of your asshole from space, so I imagine if we tried hard enough, we could find the things if they’re out there to be found, but you’re right, it would be beyond a long shot. The creatures would have to be close to the surface in order for satellite imagery to pick them up.”

  Lucky-shit came running up and rubbed against Tanner’s leg. Silva bent and pet the animal. “This the guy you found floating in the bay?”

  “Yup. We call him LS, stands for Lucky-shit.”

  Silva laughed. “I’m glad you made it, Tanner.”

  LS barked and Tanner turned to see Randy’s son wheeling his father across the fairway toward him along with Audrey, Tina, and a gaggle of kids. They were waving and shouting as kids do. Pride filled him, and he realized there was no place he’d rather be.

  When Tanner turned back to Silva, the agent was walking away from him into the trees. No goodbye, or farewell, or exchange of addresses for Christmas cards. Tanner never saw Silva again.

  “We’re heading to The Cull House for lunch,” Audrey said.

  “Good idea,” Tanner said. “I’ll meet you guys there. I need to check something first at the station.”

  Audrey caressed his face with the back of her hand and smiled. “Be quick.”

  “I will.”

  Tanner hobbled over the golf course, the green grass and shrubs flourishing as if Tristin and Dan had never been. He walked around the station house and waved to Beth in the tower. He sat on the beach, and six-inch waves of green water and seaweed rolled onto the sand. LS sat beside him, and they looked out on the Great South Bay and the breach beyond.

  There are days that fly by in an instant and minutes that last a lifetime. Tanner leaned back onto the sand, petting LS, and shielding his eyes from the sunlight. He pulled his hipflask and twisted off the cap. As he brought it to his lips, he froze, Randy’s voice echoing in his head. He stared at the stainless steel flask with the Navy logo on its side.

  “Sorry, Dad,” he said, and tossed the flask into the bay.

  Epilogue

  Nineteen days later…

  Cindy Devero finished mixing her mimosa as she stared out the sliding glass doors at the back of her kitchen. Sunlight reflected off the Great South Bay, making the water sparkle like diamonds. She had the doors open, and the sweet scent of seawater wafted through the screens. Water lapped against the shore, and Cindy looked at her feet, remembering how her kitchen had been underwater just three weeks ago. Many of the houses along the shore were still unoccupied, but her brother was a contractor and he’d ripped out what couldn’t be saved, dried out the rest with heat fans, and put everything back together for her in a week.

  She took a sip of her drink, the bubbles in the champagne tickling her nose. Pounding bass came from an upstairs bedroom where her daughter Tristin blasted her latest crush band, and the thumping shook the delicate light fixture that hung in the kitchen. Tristin had had a difficult couple of weeks of being teased and mocked by just about everybody she encountered. That had mostly ended as the hurricane passed into memory, yet it would be years before “Tristin the storm” was forgotten, if ever.

  The day was crisp, but warm for early October, and Cindy searched for her sunglasses so she could take her drink out onto the deck. They were in her purse, and as she grabbed them, a gust of wind pushed through the sliding glass door and she hugged herself.

  She climbed the stairs to her bedroom and put on a light sweater. From the bedroom windows, the view of the bay was even more spectacular. Sailboats dotted the horizon and power crafts zigged and zagged every which way. Cindy smiled. It was good to see people back out on the water. After what happened, she’d wondered if people would ever be comfortable out there again, but people are resilient, and their memory for fear, while it may be the strongest emotion folks respond to, still had a relatively short shelf life. The monsters were gone, and no others had appeared, thus the case was closed.

  Cindy hopped back down the steps and grabbed her drink. Her daughter’s music had stopped and been replaced by a hollow tapping noise that sounded like something fragile banging on wood. She considered going to the steps and yelling up to Tristin and ask what she was doing, but Cindy didn’t really care. The last few weeks had been hard, and she hadn’t regained all her anal tendencies yet.

  She slid open the screen and stepped out onto the deck. It too had been submerged in water, but it was made of a new synthetic material that could take any punishment water could throw at it. That’s why she’d spent the extra money for the stuff. When you lived this close to the water, one constantly planned for the inevitable flood.

  She sat in her favorite lounge chair and closed her eyes, letting the sun warm her face. She took a sip of her mimosa, and placed it on the table beside her. She was dozing when she felt the slimy kiss of her Labrador, Lester, on her face and she squealed.

  The dog backed off and sat, looking up at her with expectant eyes.

  “Nothing for you now,” she said. “I’m not going inside. I’ll give you something later.”

  As if the animal understood English, it laid on the deck, watching her, waiting to hold Cindy to her promise.

  She drank the rest of her mimosa and the sun and the sea and the gentle breeze rocked her to sleep. She awoke to the sound of Lester barking. Not the vicious “someone bad here” bark, but a lower, more concerned bark that was half-growl, half-yip, as if the dog couldn’t decide whether his alarm was warranted.

  “What is it, Lester?”

  The dog had his head tucked under the deck railing closest to the bay, but Cindy saw nothing that would upset the dog. Her hand darted out to pick up her drink, and when she realized she’d already finished it, she sighed.

  Cindy got up from the chaise lounge and made her way across the deck to Lester. She pet the animal on the head, and said, “Quiet now. What are you barking at? Quiet.”

  The barking ceased, though the dog whimpered and cried.

  She heard the tapping again and frowned. She’d thought it was something her daughter was doing, but the sound was stronger outside. She listened hard, walking all around the deck and trying to locate the noise.

  It was coming from beneath the far corner of the deck, closest to the bay.

  Her eyebrows knitted.

  The bay rolled beneath the deck where it met a series of large boulders that formed a seawall along the seaward side of the property. She thought perhaps a piece of garbage had floated beneath the deck and was hitting something as the tide came in and small waves rolled into shore.

  She put down her empty glass and mounted the steps down to a thin patch of grass that ran next to the deck. Lattice with square holes hid the deck supports. She worked her way toward the seawall, peering through the lattice for the source of the sound, but saw nothing.

  The sound got louder and she knew she was getting close. Cindy knelt and pulled back a piece of lattice tacked to the frame wit
h finishing nails. It was dark beneath the deck, and lines of sunlight leaked through the spaces between the deck boards, but it was hard to see.

  The clicking sound had become even more pronounced, and she stuck her head through the open hole she’d made.

  In the far corner, the sea pushed something against one of the deck supports. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but when they did, she gasped.

  A large brown speckled eggshell bobbed and rolled in the bay, its remains tapping against the deck frame. It had been cracked open, and was empty.

  The End

  Read on for a free sample of Blood Cruise

  Edward J. McFadden III juggles a full-time career as a university administrator and teacher, with his writing aspirations. His novel AWAKE was published by Severed Press in 2017, and his short story Doorways in Time recently appeared in Shadows & Reflections, an estate authorized Roger Zelazny tribute anthology with an introduction by George R.R. Martin. His first published novel, The Black Death of Babylon, was published by Post Mortem Press, followed by Our Dying Land (Padwolf Publishing, Inc..) and HOAXERS (Crossroad Press.) Ed is also the author/editor of: Anywhere But Here, Lucky 13, Jigsaw Nation, Deconstructing Tolkien: A Fundamental Analysis of The Lord of the Rings, Time Capsule, Epitaphs (W/ Tom Piccirilli), The Second Coming, Thoughts of Christmas, and The Best of Pirate Writings. He’s had more than fifty short stories published, and in the 90s Ed was editor of Pirate Writings Magazine, which became Fantastic Stories of the Imagination. He also edited Cosmic SF. See The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction for full details. He lives on Long Island with his wife Dawn, their daughter Samantha, and their mutt Oli.

  1.

  Six levels of security.

  Dr. Harold Glouster had insisted on ten, at the very least, but the company he worked for, Oceanic Applied Sciences, had told him six would be sufficient. After all, despite the passive sounding name, they were one of the world’s leading defense and weaponry research and development firms. If they could not keep Dr. Glouster’s project safe then no one could.

  That was the point that was hammered home to Dr. Glouster time and time again when he made his weekly report via video conference to the OAS board.

  “It has become too smart for its enclosure,” Dr. Glouster sighed as he stared at the eight faces that filled the split screens on his computer monitor. He gave a sidelong glance at the massive tank of saltwater that took up almost the entire room he had been working in for the past eighteen months. “I cannot stress enough—”

  “Yes, Doctor, we know,” Mathias McDowell, CEO of OAS, interrupted. “And your concerns are noted and being taken seriously. As I have said time and time again.”

  “Yet you do nothing about it,” Dr. Glouster responded. “I stated four weeks ago that I would need a new facility. You did not deliver.”

  “You are working in the most state of the art bioweapons labs in the world, Doctor Glouster,” McDowell snapped. “It is not a simple matter to just move you to a new facility. Your work has specific needs to be considered that would render any outfitting of a new facility useless to future work.”

  “You mean it is too expensive,” Dr. Glouster countered.

  “I do,” McDowell said, smiling the smile that had Wired, Forbes, and Vanity Fair magazines scrambling to get him on their covers once OAS went public the previous month. “Do you know why, Doctor? Because I run a company that is in the business of making products that make money. Your projections show that OAS will not see a profit from your product for at least a decade.”

  “It is not a product, McDowell,” Dr. Glouster said. “It is a living creature. I have manipulated its DNA, giving OAS two hundred and four new patents, but it is still a living, thinking, sentient being.”

  “Sentient?” McDowell asked. “Like a dog or cat, yes?”

  “Closer to a primate,” Dr. Glouster replied. “Its intelligence tests are off the charts as of yesterday. I do not know how, but it has made considerable strides in complex reasoning as well as applied recall. It is remembering significant amounts of information and using those memories to inform its decisions. Tricks I have used on it in the past, as recent as last month, to try to find its weaknesses are no longer effective. It knows the tricks and is even anticipating them.”

  “But it can be controlled, yes?” McDowell asks. “Like a dog or a cat?”

  “Have you ever tried to control a cat?” Dr. Glouster asked. “I believe you should be looking for a different example.”

  “Then forget the damn cat!” McDowell shouted. “Can the creature be controlled? Can it be given a mission, complete that mission, and return for further orders? Can it be trained like a dog and be just as obedient? That is what you promised me, Doctor Glouster. You did not promise me an eight-legged sea monkey that is more trouble than it is worth. And believe me when I say that it is worth millions upon millions at this point since you have gone well over budget and over schedule!”

  The look on Dr. Glouster’s face could not be interpreted as anything but contempt. It was reflected back at him by all eight boxes on the split-screen monitor. The man fought down the urge to tell McDowell to go to hell and walk away from the project. Just walk away from it all and let OAS sort it all out.

  But he could not do that to his creation. Not after all of the hard work, the loss, the sacrifices made. Not after what happened to Melanie Hecht. A true tragedy that would have ended any other career. But her death was the project’s breakthrough. A terrifying and repulsive breakthrough from any viewpoint, even by McDowell’s loose standards of morals, but a breakthrough that rocketed the project forward at an exponential pace.

  “Doctor?” McDowell asked, his calm restored that smile of smiles back in place. “Are you hearing what I am saying to you, Doctor?”

  “It has become too intelligent,” Dr. Glouster stated. “Let me explain why that is a problem.”

  “There is no need,” McDowell said, sighing heavily.

  His eyes flitted back and forth and Dr. Glouster could tell he was looking at his own split screen version of the board meeting. Dr. Glouster watched the expressions on the other board members’ faces and realized that something far beyond his control was going on.

  “What have you done, McDowell?” Dr. Glouster asked. “I would think an explanation of the subject’s rapid progress would be of the utmost importance. Is that not why we have these weekly meetings?”

  “It was,” McDowell said. “But this will be the last meeting. Everything I need to know is in your notes which I have handed to my top people for a full analysis.”

  “My notes?” Dr. Glouster gasped. “Those are encrypted on a laptop that I do not connect to the internet. You cannot possibly have access to my notes!”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” McDowell said. “But did you really believe a laptop given to you by OAS would ever be truly private?”

  He chuckled and rubbed at his temples.

  “Since we are nearing the end of the conversation, I’d like to let you in on a little secret, Doctor. Nothing you have been doing for these past eighteen months has escaped my notice. Nothing. Not even what happened to Dr. Hecht. Which, amusingly enough, you reported as a workplace accident. She slipped and hit her head, Doctor? And somehow her body was lost before it could be transported off ship? How do you lose a human corpse, Doctor? I have made sure protocols are in place to account for every damn paper clip, staple, and roll of toilet paper on that ship. A body does not go missing unless someone wants it to. Even then…”

  The split screens were replaced by an autopsy photo of the late Dr. Melanie Hecht, her body bone white and desiccated.

  “Surprised? You really shouldn’t be, Doctor,” McDowell continued. “Dr. Hecht was not a paper clip or roll of toilet paper. She was an expensive asset that OAS lost due to your negligence. Lucky for us all, her death was the turning point in the project. I was this close to pulling the plug on you, Doctor Glouster.” He held up his thumb and forefinger, squeezing them together until they
were only a hair’s breadth apart, as his image replaced that of Dr. Hecht’s corpse. He was the only image on the screen, the splits of the OAS board no longer visible. “And when you get the plugged pulled by me, you never get plugged back in.”

  He leaned back from the screen and folded his hands behind his head.

  “I am sorry, Doctor Glouster, but your request for a larger enclosure, as well as a larger facility all together, has been denied,” McDowell said. “I am also sorry to tell you that your services are no longer needed. We have what we need to proceed on our own and your continued refusal to be a part of the OAS team is just not acceptable. Consider your plug pulled.”

  The screen went blank before Dr. Glouster could respond. He stared at the monitor for exactly two seconds before jumping up from his seat.

  Six levels of security.

  All of which were designed to protect the ship from outside threats. But Dr. Glouster knew that outside threats were not the problem. It was what was already inside that was the true danger.

  2.

  “I just want you to be smart and safe,” Ben Clow said as he leaned against the door jamb of his daughter’s bedroom. “I know your mother will say yes to pretty much anything you ask this weekend, without any thought toward the consequences. It sucks, Tee, but I need you to be the adult while you are over there.”

  “I got it, Dad,” Tanni Hunsaker-Clow replied as she reclined against the mound of pillows on her bed. “I’ve been to Mom’s before, ya know? I am prepared for the complete and total lack of supervision and logic.” She looked up from her phone, her fingers pausing from their constant typing. “I’ll be sure to make nothing but rational decisions that have been thought through from all angles. I will not let emotion cloud my judgment or inform my choices.”