The Black

by Paul E. Cooley

  He’d never even considered the damned rig could just plain sink before they had a chance to take care of business. That would be the final “fuck you” from the universe.

  He grinned as the display lit up with information. Pressure. Depth. Speed. Coordinates. All the numbers seemed to dance before his eyes. He hit a button on the keyboard and the program started calculating averages. They appeared on the screen in neat rows.

  His children had done what they were told and were heading straight down. Catfish closed the laptop and shoved it into the waterproof satchel. Before he left his station, he dragged three fingers lovingly across its surface. That little computer had been his constant companion for the last year or so. But the satchel? Hell, he’d had that since he left school. It had been through a dozen laptops and other gadgets. And now, he would probably never use it again.

  Catfish blew out a sigh and ran out into the rain. A gust of wind hit him and he nearly slipped to the deck. Remembering how Aaron had broken his skull, he slowed his pace. Vraebel and Calhoun were hunkered down below the tool storage roof.

  He looked at his watch. “22 minutes until they hit bottom!” he yelled at Calhoun. Catfish pressed a few buttons on his diver’s watch and it started a 25 minute countdown. “That gives us three minutes of lull before we blow it.”

  Calhoun looked up at him and grinned. He turned to Vraebel. “We don’t have much time.”

  Vraebel rolled his eyes and pointed to the superstructure. “Are you kidding? That’s a fucking eternity for those things!”

  “Got that right,” Shawna frowned. She glanced at the superstructure. “We don’t have enough lights up there.”

  The rig chief stood and held a hand above his eyes to knock out the glare from the work lamps. “Bill’s on duty, Shawna. We have nothing—“ Vraebel paused.

  “What’s wrong?” Catfish asked.

  “I don’t see Bill. Or his light,” Vraebel said.

  Shawna pulled the flare gun from her pocket. She had two spare rounds and one in the chamber. Calhoun turned on his light. Catfish pulled his from the wet suit. With the rain pattering down atop them, he hadn’t seen any reason to change out of it.

  Vraebel expertly kept his footing as he walked from the tool area and to the derrick. The roughnecks were still sitting beneath it, a circle of work lamps around them. They looked spent and on the verge of collapse.

  Catfish watched as the rig chief said something to the crew. The men stood and pulled their lights. They had moved a few of the work lamps away from the drill table. Now it seemed it was time to put them back.

  He thought about running over there and helping, but something in his back told him that was a bad idea. Struggling to get the AUVs into the water and all the running around hadn’t exactly done his spine any good. Besides, the way he was tilting with the rig, he was afraid he’d drop one of the last halogens to the deck. And right now, they couldn’t afford that.

  Catfish watched as the men moved the generator and the four remaining lights to cover the drill table and the controls. The group stood on alert now. Vraebel waved to Calhoun.

  Thomas, head down against the wind and rain, carefully walked toward the derrick. Shawna and Catfish followed. The rig rocked as another huge wave hit. Thomas stumbled, but Catfish managed to steady him.

  “No falling down, old man!” he shouted above the din of the storm and machinery.

  The rig crew spread out to different positions, each manning a control station. Vraebel stood behind a steel podium behind the drill table. Calhoun’s remaining team met him there.

  “The men already know how to do this,” he shouted. “But just in case, here’s how you drop the drill.” The three of them watched as he showed them how to work the controls.

  Piece of cake, Catfish thought. Unless the black has hold of you. He turned back to the superstructure. Something glowed near the front hatch. As he watched, the glow moved and then went out. “Guys?” They ignored him. He rapped a hand on the control box and their voices went silent. “Think I know what happened to Bill!”

  In the dim glow spilling from the rig lights, they watched as the metal superstructure went from a gray to a gleaming silver. The black was coming down. All of it was coming down.

  Vraebel screamed at the men around the drill table. They raised their lights and pointed at the superstructure with shaking hands and knees. The distance was too great to do more than illuminate the wave of black that flowed to the deck. Tentacles and eyestalks waved at them as it slowly covered the distance from the edge of the superstructure and toward the pipe fittings.

  Catfish looked down at his watch. Fifteen minutes. They had to make it for another fifteen fucking minutes. “Shawna?” She stepped forward and stood next to him. “Light it up!”

  “Not yet,” she said. “Not yet.”

  #

  He felt the warm trickle of urine as it jetted into his underwear and streamed down his leg. He would have been ashamed had he not been so terrified of what he saw. The thing wasn’t just sliding toward them now. It was bubbling and popping and lifting itself upward. The creature contracted into itself, consolidating its mass, and finally, transformed into a shape.

  Short, squat legs sprouted from its base. The liquid continued to climb up the makeshift limbs as it grew a wide torso. The eyestalks and tentacles slid across its surface as they met in its center. Five legs. Seven arms. Nine eyes. And the goddamned thing was growing taller by the second. He heard none of the cracking and popping as it rearranged its internal structure to provide support.

  The ocean roared and another wave hit the rig’s aft. Even with the ballast keeping the rig as close to the ocean as it could safely get, the rig bobbed up and down like a bath toy.

  He grabbed the control panel’s edge to support himself as the rig took another shock. The thing trying to stand didn’t waver.

  Vraebel opened his mouth to yell something and then closed it. What was there to say? What orders could you give when you were trapped on a football-field sized metal platform in the middle of the goddamned ocean?

  He finally managed to pluck a thought out of the chaos in his mind. “Get to the fucking lifeboats! Now!” he shouted at the remaining crew. The roughnecks didn’t move. They were just as frozen as he had been. “Goddammit! I said move!”

  Finally, one of them did. He broke rank from the drill table and ran toward the lifeboats. He made it halfway across the deck before a long tentacle of black swished out from the thing’s solid form and took his feet out from under him. Jason Jones flipped in the air and then landed on his back. He had time to start a scream before the tentacle wrapped around his head and dragged him into the creature’s center. Jones’ body disappeared inside it.

  “Fuck!” Vraebel screamed.

  #

  Calhoun’s heart stopped. Just for a second or two, but he felt it seize. The sight of the thing forming on the deck had been enough to freeze his brain and everything else along with it. Vraebel was screaming at it in obscenities.

  Thomas shuffled behind Vraebel and searched the deck. There had to be something, anything they could use to slow it down and buy time. At this rate, it was going to be on them long before the AUVs could reach their target.

  Then he saw what he was looking for. “Martin!” The rig chief turned to him with wild eyes and shaking legs. “The gas for the generator! We need to light up the deck!”

  Vraebel blinked at him. Thomas slapped him hard across the cheek. Vraebel recoiled and then his eyes bore into Thomas’. “The gas!”

  “Right,” Vraebel said. “Right.” He turned to the crew. “Get that barrel of diesel. We need to pour it across the deck. Make it come through the fire. Come on. Move!”

  Vraebel and the three remaining crew ran to the orange and red barrels sitting by the tool area. Vraebel and one of the roughnecks walked a barrel toward the middle of the deck. The other pair of men did the same with the second barrel.

  The thing moved toward them. “Hurry!”
Calhoun shouted.

  Vraebel tipped his barrel over. Diesel fuel poured out onto the deck in a thick stream. The other barrel tipped further down. Black tentacles surged toward them. For a moment, Calhoun thought the thing would drag them back, just as it had with Jones. But the tentacles ignored them and moved for the men.

  “Shoot it!” Calhoun yelled.

  Shawna took aim at one of the barrels and pulled the flare gun’s trigger. The flare shot out of the gun with a bang and a puff of smoke. The deck turned red for an instant before the burning magnesium round struck the deck near the barrel of fuel.

  A line of fire of rose from the deck’s metal surface. The diesel fuel that hadn’t slipped through the steel grates formed a flickering zigzag of flame. One of the creature’s tentacles burst into bright licks of fire. The tentacle flopped and splashed into burning liquid.

  Calhoun looked up at the creature. The burning remains of the tentacle were no longer attached to it. The thing had simply severed it.

  “Fuck me,” Calhoun said. The diesel fuel would buy them a few minutes, but when it was done burning, they had nothing left to stop it but flares.

  #

  There was nothing to see unless it was through AUV 5’s blue-light cameras. It had reached its target coordinates and now it was holding its position. From the imagery AUV 5 had taken of the tube worm beds around the spud site, Catfish had worked out a safe area for the AUVs to hover. While he’d been dead on with AUV 5, he’d been a little off on AUV 1’s position.

  The AUV descended right on top of a tube worm bed. The tentacles wrapped around it like an octopus clutching a shell. Its metal skin slowly crumpled. A giant maw opened and then swallowed its metallic prey.

  AUV 5 noticed its brother’s signal had disappeared and took note of when the signal ceased. The tentacles tried to reach it, but it was just a few feet out of their reach. AUV 5 was oblivious to their movements.

  The spud site was caked with a brownish sludge. Had Catfish been able to see through the cameras, he would have thought it was a scab. The trench topography had changed yet again. The valley walls were closer together and a great hump had risen around the drill string.

  As AUV 5 sat in its position and waited, its seismic sensor registered a small tremor. It wasn’t the signal it had been programmed to look for, but it took the sensor readings and filed them away. The ground beneath it moved. A cloud of rock and sand puffed out.

  The tube worms stopped waving their tentacles and instead stood still. The ground rumbled as something started to dig its way out of the rock. AUV 5’s cameras finally noticed the movement and adjusted. If Catfish could have seen the monstrous eye that blinked below AUV 5, he would have screamed.

  #

  Vraebel slid toward the control box. The rig rocked again as another wave crashed into it. Saltwater sprayed over the crew and the fiery deck. The diesel fuel fire was fading fast. The thing knew it too.

  “Standlee!” Vraebel screamed. “It has to be now!”

  Catfish looked at his watch. He hoped like hell his babies were ready. “Hit it!”

  Lips moving in a silent prayer, Vraebel hit the switches. The drill table groaned as it loosed all its weight and began to turn.

  #

  The robot couldn’t feel the spider-leg appendages that crawled over its surface. The robot couldn’t see the giant divot in the ground beneath it. The AUV increased its propeller speed to remain stationary, but something was pulling it down. It was a mere meter from the thing below when the world shuddered as the drill string dropped and slammed into the ocean floor.

  The drill bit flew downward from the explosion. Tightly packed with concrete casing, there was nowhere for the force to go but down and out. The first joint of the drill string disintegrated into metal shards as the bit buried itself deep in the spud site.

  AUV 5 was suddenly free as the creature pulled back its appendages in great pain. The bit punched through rock and sand and buried itself deep in the creature’s belly.

  The seismic sensors went off the charts and its two final routines kicked in. AUV 5’s screws whined as it redlined its engines. The robot shot forward and down to the spud site. It crashed into the side, reversed, and then tried again until it made it inside the creature.

  Black sludge surrounded it. Its paint disappeared as the black burned it from its metal skin. AUV 5 kept its engines going until it made no further progress. The robot powered down its engines. The last command fired.

  Completely immersed in the flammable black, a solenoid clicked and a gout of flame hit the magnesium strips. Impossibly bright light flashed inside the creature’s belly. And then the world exploded.

  #

  The drill table shook and rattled. Shawna stumbled forward and then dropped to one knee. Catfish’s AUVs had done their job. Or at least she hoped so.

  The men were shouting to one another. She looked up and stared at the creature coming toward her. It was walking on those short, squat legs in slow steps. A large mouth opened in its center displaying a jagged maw that was amorphous in the dim light. The rig shuddered as another wave broke over the aft section. More water hit the deck and extinguished the last of the flames. They were defenseless now and the creature knew it.

  “Shawna!” Thomas shouted. “Fire!”

  It shot out a tentacle and slammed into the deck. The ground beneath her trembled. She cocked the hammer on the flare gun. It was now or fucking never. She aimed at the thing and pulled the trigger.

  A brief lightning jag of red illuminated the deck. And then the magnesium’s 3,000 degree flame touched the black. The world turned into a huge ball of flame that billowed dark smoke into the sky. The creature’s middle exploded into a yellow and orange wall of flames. The fire raced down its appendages with terrifying speed. The thing quickly lost cohesion and turned into a river of burning liquid.

  The burning black rushed across the deck in both directions. The sound of the rain pattering on the metal deck was lost below the crackling and sizzling.

  Something exploded near the superstructure. Two-thirds of the deck combusted. The shockwave knocked Shawna off her feet and she fell to the ground on her side. The flare gun slid from her limp hands.

  She rolled over and stared into the storming sky and the black smoke rising from the deck. The air was acrid and she couldn’t breathe. A body fell next to her. Ears ringing, vision blurry, she turned her head. Thomas was flat on his face against the deck. She tried to say his name, but the words died in her throat.

  Shawna groaned in pain as she tried to pick herself up. The roar of the fire might as well have been a thousand miles away. Screams and shouts of men in pain and frantic panic barely registered. She managed to roll over and start a pushup. “Thomas?” she tried to yell, but the word came out in a barely audible cough.

  She crawled to him and rolled him over. His eyes were unfocused and blood streamed from his forehead. His lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear him.

  Someone grabbed her shoulders. Someone shouted at her to move. Someone dragged her toward a lifeboat. A tentacle flashed out and tried to reach them. Just before it could make contact, it burst into flame.

  The rig rocked again, but not from a wave. The entire port side lifted up out of the water as a massive bubble hit it. She hit the railing hard, but it brought her back to her senses. Catfish had her arm and was yelling at her. The lifeboat was in front of them.

  The sound of panicked screaming filled her ears. She turned. A human torch was running to the railing. She wasn’t sure, but she thought it was Vraebel. The figure hit the railing and toppled over the side into the darkness.

  The deck canted to the other side and suddenly she was looking down into the ocean. The growling waves and howling storm was lost to her as something hit her head and the world went dark.

  #

  When Shawna awoke, she was staring up at Catfish. Even in the darkness, she could see the gash in his forehead. His chin was on his chest and he was snoring.

/>   A lightning bolt of pain lit her skull as she sat up. Where am I? She asked herself. And then it all rushed back to her. The rig. The deck. The black. Thomas’ motionless body staring up at a storming, lightning filled sky.

  The lifeboat was large. Built for ten survivors, it looked more like a fishing boat than an emergency vehicle. She dragged herself to one of the portholes and stared out at the ocean.

  Moonlight stared down through gaps in the clouds. But there was nothing to see but waves and water. She had no idea where they were, or where they were floating to. Something beeped inside the cabin. She was too tired to search for it. She knew what it was anyway—an emergency beacon.

  PPE would know where they were. And that meant everyone else would too. Shawna dragged Catfish’s legs until he was lying down. She pushed him on his side and he stopped snoring. In the darkness with the fresh breath of salt air coming through a cracked porthole, she spooned against him and waited to see what happened next.

  #

  In lower midnight, all is calm. There is no sound except for the echoing groan of the earth itself. The glowing greens and yellows of lantern fish or the phosphorescence of certain plants are the only light that penetrates the darkness.

  More than 5.6 miles from where the rig Leaguer once floated, there was a new trench. It was far deeper than its predecessor and as irregularly shaped as the Boulder Flatirons. The explosion that created it left no trace of what had once lain beneath the ocean floor. The tsunami now headed for far away land was the only evidence it had ever existed.

  A lantern fish descended into the new trench searching for food. Soon, others joined it. Their new home was deeper. But to them, it was just as dark and life-sustaining as the old one.

  The End

  Read on for a free sample of Predator X by C J Waller

  About the Author

  A writer, podcaster, and software architect from Houston, Texas, Paul E Cooley has been writing since the age of 12. In 2009, he began producing free psychological thriller and horror podcasts, essays, and reviews available from Shadowpublications.com and iTunes.