“Wait!” the leader cried in a normal language, rushing over and trying to soak up the blood with her sleeves. “We want you to hunt humans, not us! Not the Order of Dagon!”
But it was too late. The creature they had called a Shoggoth attacked.
Madison didn't know what to do when the screaming started. Her feet were planted firmly in place. She heard Alice yelling at her to run, but she couldn't move a muscle. And then her friend was back up the stairs and pushing her down the escalator. They sprinted across the floor toward the main door.
Madison heard a strange sound and ducked just as a body flung clear across the room. It was the bound prisoner. She heard the sound of bones breaking when he landed. Then she was jumping over the sandbags just as three more shots went off. Glancing back, she saw the creature slither toward the cult leader. The woman was about to run, but a dark tentacle wrapped around her and squeezed, and her insides became her outsides. Her knife clattered to the ground. Others screamed and tried to flee, but the monstrosity caught them all, one by one.
Madison didn't want to see any more. She ran as fast she could, with Alice close behind. Then she was outside with the cool wind against her face. She rushed down the concrete steps toward the water.
The tide had lowered.
* * *
The boat had moved downriver during the night. It was now wedged inside the front window of a submerged car, the stern kicking up to the sky.
“There!” Madison said, pointing. “I see the boat!”
Alice threw the empty gun away and waded into the current. Madison followed closely behind, feeling the cold water stab at her legs, numbing her body in waves.
They made their way along the side of the hospital, moving as quickly as they could, checking each step carefully. But the current proved too strong for Madison. She slipped and went under. Strong hands gripped the back of her dress, wrenching her up.
“Be careful!” Alice shouted. “Hold on to my jacket!”
Madison held Alice tightly, and they continued moving forward, until they were crawling on top of a submerged car and catching their breath. Overhead, the sunlight struggled through the fleeting storm clouds. The warmth felt good on Madison’s face.
“We just need to make it to the next car,” Alice said. “Stab anything that tries to get you.”
Madison had forgotten all about her knife. She slid it from out of her boot and held the blade tightly in both hands, then nodded that she was ready.
They slipped back into the water and traveled fifty paces, to a crooked telephone pole caked with algae and mud. The boat was much closer now, only twenty paces away. Madison was about to ask Alice a question when a splash startled her.
She glanced behind her. Alice was gone.
Madison screamed for her friend, but there was no answer. She was just about to dive under the water and look for herself, when Alice suddenly resurfaced, her chest bleeding from deep claw marks.
“Keep moving,” Alice said, coughing. She held her chest tightly, blood trickling through her fingers and staining the water.
They traveled until the current went over Madison's head. She stood on her tip toes, angling her nose to the sky, but it wasn’t enough. She went under and coughed and swallowed water. The knife drifted out of her hand, lost forever in the current. But then Alice was there, grabbing her up and cradling the girl her in her arms. She lifted Madison high in the air and placed her on top of the car roof.
They were at their destination.
Madison jumped into action and began wrenching the boat free from the damaged windshield. Alice helped, standing in the water, keeping an eye out for more attackers. The boat was a little bigger than Madison had previously thought—maybe seven feet long. But they would both fit inside just fine.
They finally wrenched the boat free. With their combined strength, they stabilized the craft in the current. Madison threw her pack inside and crawled in. Alice was about to jump inside as well, but something bumped into her and she lashed out with her knife, nearly setting the boat adrift.
“You have to go on without me,” Alice said, straining to hold the boat in place. The muscles in her arms and neck began bulging from the tension. She looked like she was in a lot of pain.
“Wait—you can't!” Madison began.
“I'm bleeding, Maddie. They can smell it on me. They'll chase us through the whole goddamned city.”
“But you have to come with me!”
“I love you, Maddie. I love you as much as my own daughter. Now get going and don't stop. Don't ever stop.”
Alice released the boat.
Madison screamed, and tried to stop the boat, but the current caught hold and flung her downstream. She glanced back just in time to see Alice crawl on top of the car hood. Then she saw the Deep Ones attack—first one, then two, then a dozen. Alice lashed out with her weapon many times in a violent frenzy. Blood and severed limbs splattered the water.
Madison’s thudded against another vehicle and stopped moving, momentarily. The bow of the boat dipped and water began rushing inside. If she didn’t push off and continue moving, the water would submerge the small vessel.
Madison knew what she had to do. Grabbing up her gear, she hefted it over her shoulder and was about to jump out, leaving the boat to suffer its own fate. But when she glanced back, all she saw were Deep Ones swarming over the vehicle like mutated rats escaping a flood.
Alice wasn’t there anymore.
* * *
Madison floated for three days throughout the ruins of the city. Once in a while something struck the bottom of the boat, but the vessel never capsized. There was a small leak near the seam, and she had to bail out water every few hours. But it didn't bother her. It gave her something to look forward to.
Eventually the days stretched into a week, and the constant sun on her body made her lightheaded. The river widened into a vast sea, and she found herself in the Great Ocean.
She knew she needed to get out of the sun, or else she would become dehydrated. So she propped up her jacket with branches fished out of the water and made a makeshift lean-to. Every morning she boiled water with the candles, breathing in the vapors to avoid dehydration. The salt collected on the bottom of the tin cup in tiny crystals, and she tapped it out into the water. She ate her food until there was nothing left.
Once, a storm hit and nearly tipped her over. But she remained steadfast and rode out the wind and rain, always watching the horizon for any signs of life, of land, of anything. Sometimes the Deep Ones swam past her in a collection of ripples, as if they were a school of fish. But they never attacked. She didn’t know why, but she assumed they must have thought the boat was a piece of driftwood and decided to leave it alone.
After two weeks she began feeling tired more often. At night she stared up at the sky, at all the stars looking like tiny holes in the night. And then she looked past the lights, at the heavens beyond the far reaches of space. She thought about her parents and wondered if they were waiting for her. She also thought about Alice.
Once, when she looked into the water, she could see her best friend just below the surface, her dark hair billowing in the waves, her clothes torn and bloody. Madison tried to rescue her by reaching down into the water, but Alice sank out of reach, gone forever. Madison cried and yelled for her friend to come back. But Alice never did.
Then one day Madison jerked awake and felt something covering her body. She realized she hadn't bailed out the water in a very long time. But she didn't care anymore. She could barely move, could barely think straight. The boat lurched and began to sink just as she managed to pull herself up and glance over the side.
To her amazement, she had arrived at the edge of the world.
The boat jettisoned over a gigantic waterfall. Instead of falling, the boat glided through the sky like a midnight dove, weightless and free. She reached out her hand and touched the stars and planets with her fingertips, smeared them like acrylics across canvas. The sky dis
torted in ripples and smoothed back out into glass.
Throughout the spectacle, she began hearing the frog-talk echoing to her like a long-forgotten dream, beckoning her to join them. A staircase materialized out of obscurity, cloaked in mist and shadows, looming before her in monolithic proportions.
But Madison didn’t fall for it. She remembered Alice’s words, which now seemed like years ago, and she fought against the siren song, resisted the temptation to join them in their strange world. She concentrated on her mother and father instead. She concentrated on Alice.
Immediately the staircase rolled back into the mist and was gone. The amphibian song dissipated, and Madison’s vision shifted back to the night stars spread out in front of her like glass.
She was back in her boat, sinking.
The waves pressed down on her chest and drew her breath out in gasps. But she didn’t care anymore. She welcomed it this time. She held her arms open wide, like a child waiting for the loving embrace of a parent, and as the boat sank slowly beneath the waves, she felt her soul lift higher and higher and jettison throughout the cosmos like a rocket ship exploding through distant galaxies.
Familiar voices called out to her, guiding her like beacons in the night sky. The voices became stronger and everything shifted around her in a kaleidoscope of colors; it changed from the watery night spotted with stars to a summer field full of sunshine and dandelions.
She was finally free. And then she was running home, quickly.
SURVIVING THE RIVER STYX
Paul Michael Anderson
Even doped-up, Riley knew getting on an ocean liner wasn't a logical extension of immersion therapy.
His view was a pastel panorama that ran like tie-dye. Far off in the bay, the ocean liner Queen Victoria III squatted like a marshmallow in the steel-wool Atlantic. Voices washed over him, a meaningless tidal roar, pressing him further into the wheelchair. His arm tingled where Dr. Hogan injected him. Nothing else did, though. All numb.
Andrea and Hogan stood elongated before him, the only clear things on the crowded dock. The curls of Riley's wife's hair were rusted horseshoes; Hogan's beard a writhing hive of ants. Andrea's eyes twinkled and Riley tried to remember the last time that had happened. Before the trouble with his company, surely.
His eyes moved slowly over the ocean liner. Each incision of the various decks transformed the ship into rows of gleaming teeth. The boat that would take them to the liner bounced over the grey waves, approaching, and vertigo bloomed like a flower in the center of Riley's head. All that water.
Surrounded by all that water.
His heart pounded enough to make him hiccup.
I can't do this! How can they expect me to do this?
Riley heard a scream. He passed out before he could tell if it was him or someone else.
* * *
Unconscious, he felt calm; he felt himself. He was everything he knew Riley Christopher McCarrick, millionaire software whiz-kid, to be. The quaking ruin that reality thrust upon him—too scared to be in the shower for longer than five minutes, cringing if an errant raindrop smacked his face—was banished.
Sound began to filter in, growing louder as the darkness lightened. The sounds smoothed, separated into Andrea's and Hogan's voices.
Andrea: "Can't believe how long security took."
Hogan: "Be glad they didn't take us back to the port."
"That guy tried to rip someone's throat out with his teeth."
A sound of a hand across fabric. Hogan rubbing Andrea's back? Riley's stomach tightened. When was the last time Andrea had allowed him to do that? "The man's gone. An isolated incident." A dry chuckle that sounded like dead leaves rattling. "Maybe he was aquaphobic, too."
Why is that funny? Riley thought.
Soft footsteps, then Andrea said, "He's waking up, Derek."
How do you know his name?
Hogan's said, loudly, "Are you with us, Riley?"
He opened his eyes, and Hogan's face hovered just inches above him. Riley cringed. Hogan stepped away.
"Are you okay?" Andrea asked. She stood beside the bed on his left.
"How are you feeling?" Hogan asked. He pulled an unmarked vial of piles from his blazer pocket.
Riley ignored him. Their cabin was standard mid-level hotel fare...just on the water. A sliding door led to the balcony on the right, covered by a near-sheer curtain. The smudge-line of the horizon peeked in, and he turned away, his stomach a ball of discomfort. Who in his right mind puts a man phobic of water...?
Hogan cleared his throat and nudged one of Riley's fists with a glass of water until Riley took it.
"How long was I out?" Riley asked.
"Roughly six hours. We've been at sea for four."
Silence fell, the kind of silence no one wants to break. Hogan watched him. Riley watched his hand gripping the glass until his knuckles whitened.
"What are you thinking?" Andrea asked.
Riley frowned. "I'm thinking who in their right mind puts a man afraid of water on an ocean liner?"
"Now, Riley, you're not afraid of water," Hogan said, his voice smooth and quick. You could tell he'd said this kind of thing before. "This is stress, exacerbating a pseudo-fear of open water. Your aquaphobia is nothing but smoke-and-mirrors. I'm trying to help you remember what's really important in life—"
"Shut up." Riley swung his feet out over the side of the bed and forced himself to stand. Lightheadedness smacked him and he planted his feet. "What's the term you're always throwing around—‘obfuscate’? Excellent word. You're obfuscating the point. Who in their right mind puts a man afraid of water on a goddamn cruise?"
Hogan and Andrea retreated towards the alcove.
"You're obviously excited," Hogan said. He shook the pills. "Perhaps you need—"
"Get out."
"Maybe later." Hogan set the vial down on the desk. "But, really—"
"OUT!" Riley hurled the glass. Hogan and Andrea ducked, and the cup exploded against the far wall.
Hogan flung open the door and dashed out, Andrea at his heels. In the hallway, a man in a white button-down shirt sprinted past, his face a pale, shocked blur.
Riley slumped against the wall, dizziness slamming his stomach into a blender. I can do this. I can do this.
His gaze fell upon the vial on the desk, and he didn't know what he hated more—Hogan, the ocean, or how much he wanted those pills.
* * *
If he didn’t look outside, his nausea and vertigo were dim annoyances. He'd taken a pill, hating himself for it, but it had slowed him down, calmed him. The pill wasn't as powerful as the shot Hogan had given him, but he thought if he took more than one at a time, it could be.
His eyes fell upon his things scattered across the bedspread, among them an issue of Wired with him on the cover. THE FIRST STAR TO FALL? Read the caption. Riley McCarrick's Omega Systems the First Casualty of the New Global Economy?
His fists clenched, his trim nails digging into the palms. He barely felt it.
Riley hadn't needed Hogan to tell him that his aquaphobia stemmed from stress, which fed on the control he lacked at work and home. It was all pop-psychobabble. What Riley needed was help controlling it.
Hogan began mentioning a cruise after a year of everything continuing to spiral out of control. Andrea had been for it from the beginning, showing an enthusiasm he hadn't seen in years. She'd called it a second honeymoon, a chance for renewal. He'd felt tag-teamed.
Why would they do this? A part reasoned. Andrea could be spiteful, but you pay Hogan.
Andrea might be paying him more, and maybe not in cash. Paranoid, but she knew Hogan's name when Riley had never told her. Hogan had rubbed her back when she barely let Riley near her anymore.
The cover smiled at him, a photo from before Omega went public, and his wife didn't hate him. He sneered and smacked it aside. The movement brought the vertigo back, and he sat down on the edge of the bed, breathing through his mouth. He could imagine the ship heaving this wa
y.
"Fool," he muttered, and made himself straighten. He spied the vial of pills—unmarked, of course, my dear Watson, what better to enhance the delusions of the victim?—on the edge of the desk, and picked it up, rolling it in his hand. He'd already had one, and more might invite another acid-trip fever dream, but what did he care? He didn't know how long this cruise was. Andrea—ah, and the delusion grows roots, Watson—had set it up.
He thumbed the cap off and shook two out, setting the vial down. The tiny white pills looked so innocent. Alice ate the cake that read EAT ME, and down the rabbit hole she went.
He dry-swallowed the pills.
* * *
The colors popped, the sound of the ocean was in time with his pulse, and he didn't know if he was asleep when the knocking started, or if he just became aware of it. It was too crisp and professional to be anyone but room service—had he ordered food? Had Andrea, working like Oz far and away, ordered it?
The knocking continued, forever and ever, world without end, amen, chunky peanut butter.
Christ, just leave the food at the door. When he was hungry, he ate pills. Didn't they understand that?
He stumbled into the alcove and nearly flattened his face into the wall. Whoopsie. Who knew they offered plastic surgery cruises? Captain, I wish to flatten this nose of mine. Money is no object. Just ask Andrea, the Great and Terrible Invisible Wife of Oz.
He slid towards the door and fell against it, pawing the handle until he could stick his head out.
The clerk on the other side looked how Riley felt; hair a crow's nest, dark bags bulging under red-ringed eyes that cut to the left and right, a mouth that twisted and writhed, two-parts sour grin, one-part anxiety.
"I don't want any food," he said. That's what he thought he said, anyway.
The clerk's mouth quivered like a sound wave. "So you haven't eaten, sir?"
"No," Riley said. "You and Andrea gonna force-feed me? Me no hungry. You go away."
He thought he heard a scream and started to dismiss it, until he saw the clerk cringe.
Fearful Fathoms: Collected Tales of Aquatic Terror (Vol. I - Seas & Oceans) Page 43