Leviathan

by Jared Sandman

  The mechanic nodded. “They both died on July fourth, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary for the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Weird, huh?”

  “Yeah, weird.” She wasn’t paying much attention, more engrossed with the camera at the moment. To her the machine looked like an eyeball suspended in a box.

  Kelly humored Rafe because she liked him. With few exceptions, people on the crew didn’t socialize with the Jamaican. He was a loner by nature, like herself, so they bonded out of their shared love of solitude. She didn’t mind his company and understood he needed to talk sometimes. “You hear the one about Lincoln and Kennedy?” she asked.

  “What about it?”

  “I forget the specifics, but apparently there’s a lot of similarities between their presidencies. Both were assassinated, both succeeded by a man named Johnson. Buncha stuff like that. You might want to look into it.”

  “Sounds cool,” Rafe said.

  “Thought you might be interested.” Everything looked in order with regard to the gear. “All right, I’ll be around. Tell Bart to call me when we get there.”

  “You got it,” Rafe said and replaced his earbuds.

  * * * * *

  At a maximum speed of twenty knots, the Aurora arrived at the desired coordinates ten hours later. The Florida Keys were two hundred and twenty-four miles west of them, the coast of Africa a sizable four thousand, one hundred forty-seven miles to the east.

  Bart paged Kelly over the ship’s intercom. She left the photo lab where she’d been going over video footage and rejoined the crew on the observation deck. Bart dropped anchor on the shallower bottom shelf, and the Aurora floated an eighth of a mile over the deeper chasm of the Sylvian Trench.

  “We got five hours ‘til sunset, people, so let’s get this in the water ASAP.” Being the sole woman on the crew, Kelly was in a precarious position. She didn’t feel awkward giving commands to the other men because she’d always been a natural leader. Kelly was meticulous and surrounded herself with individuals she trusted, not those who sought to undermine her through sexism or personal animosity.

  Bart moved the ship’s crane over the camera. A crewman climbed the side, careful not to damage the mechanism. If he broke anything, he feared Miss Andrews’ wrath. He wasn’t afraid she’d fire him, rather that she’d dropkick him into the Atlantic. He hooked the latch on the crane’s dangling chain to an oversized industrial screw atop the camera. After the man descended, Bart hoisted the entire contraption over the water and dropped it slowly into the waves.

  Kelly returned to the lab. The space held the ship’s darkroom, its red lights turned off at present. Along the far wall were three closed-circuit televisions. Two of them were off, the other still playing videotape of her last expedition. Rafe sat in front of the screen, editing together the best footage to show their employers.

  “How goes it?” she asked.

  “Gimme a minute.”

  “Is the camera on yet?”

  “I gotta get everything set on my end first, before I worry about what’s going on down there.” He plugged a computer adapter into the outlet and turned on a second monitor. “Nothing’s coming up,” he said a few moments later. “Your piece of shit ain’t working.”

  Kelly’s eyes went wide, her pulse quickened. No, that couldn’t be right. She’d inspected everything herself several times.

  “I’m joking,” he said. “We’re live.”

  She took a joke as well as anyone; she just didn’t like to be the butt of one. “Very funny,” she said. “Why can’t we see anything?”

  “Wait for the silt to die down, then visibility should improve.”

  The controlled portion of their research was finished. The previous week they sent a regular underwater camera to the bottom of the Trench. Scientists long wondered what type of creatures dwelled there, and Kelly felt prior testing methods were flawed and outdated. To prove her point, the last time she dropped normal underwater lights as standard operating procedure for other research teams. They tried to catch sea life in a natural environment by taping whatever swam in front of the camera. What they didn’t understand is that most marine animals — especially those that spent their lives in the darkest crevices of the ocean — were frightened away by bright halogens. Lighting the depths like Times Square was the last way to get accurate data.

  To combat this oversight, Kelly rigged her latest camera with infrared technology. It was costly, but the superior results would pay off the investment.

  She’d spent five years after graduate school in the Pacific Rim, studying volcanic vents and the giant tubeworms that occupied them. It was there she first encountered the strange array of animals suited for a deep-sea habitat. The fish down there were like nothing else on earth, deformed grotesqueries warped to fit their bleak environment. Beings such as the glowing anglerfish and the viperfish were hideous yet held an air of subtle beauty. It fascinated her how they accommodated to extreme surroundings. They’d adapted against cold, lack of sunlight, and overwhelming pressures that would kill any human. Many had even evolved individual bioluminescence. She realized then she wanted to investigate those creatures shunned by the animal kingdom. They were rejects, something with which Kelly identified.

  “Are we recording?” she asked.

  Rafe said, “It’s a go.”

  The infrared went undetected by the fish since it emitted a beam unseen in the normal light spectrum and didn’t interfere with the ecosystem. A second thermal imager registered body heat from any life form that passed by the camera, whether hot- or cold-blooded.

  This was the reason Kelly Andrews had devoted two hundred, fifty thousand dollars and two years of her life to build. This was her moment of truth.

  * * * * *

  Within three hours the pair of them verified two species of undiscovered fish and a new type of eel. The images captured on film were amazing: a rare, astonishing glimpse into life three miles below sea level. The murky world she and Rafe watched was one few had the pleasure of experiencing. She was part of the elite ranks to have explored such depths, alongside such researchers as Robert Ballard and Sylvia Earle. Based on the information they accumulated, marine science could take another step forward into the realm of —

  Something swam by the camera. Something large and obscured.

  “You see that?” Rafe asked. The water was cloudy with sediment. Anything beyond ten feet couldn’t be viewed clearly, and over fifteen was pitch black since water absorbed infrared beams faster than air. While visibility was better the last time they came, there was but a fraction of animals to document.

  Kelly’s heart beat harder than before. “Move the camera. Stay on that thing.”

  Rafe took what looked to be a videogame joystick from underneath the computer console. Kelly had noticed a distinct lack of wildlife on scene over the past several minutes. All other sea life had left the area, as though sensing a predator in the vicinity.

  When Rafe moved the joystick to the left, fifteen thousand feet below the camera followed suit. It shifted around and glimpsed a fleeting, muscular figure that appeared to be a quadruped. The thermal imaging couldn’t discern its entire mass, though the form was at least thirty feet long. A tail the size of a tree trunk swept behind the creature in S-shaped undulations. Its body was dark blue on the screen, nearly the same temperature as the ambient water. The bones of its snout and eye sockets gave off a soothing yellow hue. Its skull was very long, almost like a meaty beak, topped with a rounded protuberance. Its movements exerted the self-assured authority that only came from a beast with no natural enemies.

  “What is that?” Rafe asked.

  Kelly knew what it was: her ticket to the cover of National Geographic.

  The beast opened its maw at the camera. Seconds later a brilliant white blast exploded from its mouth, ringed red around the edges. The blooming cloud of color engulfed the camera. The last moment of live feed showed the beast approaching close enough to block the entire frame. Then th
e camera went dead.

  “Get it back online,” Kelly said. Desperation crept into her voice.

  Rafe rooted through a bundle of wires beneath the computer. “I’m tryin’.”

  Thirty seconds passed without progress, and that’s when Kelly decided to pull the plug on the project. She ran from the photo lab, darted to the observation deck and called down to the crewmembers. “Bring it up. Bring it up.”

  Kelly turned to the pilothouse. “Raise the camera. Raise it now.” She made an upward-swooping motion with her arms.

  The captain heard her pleas, and the Yumbo crane soon began winching up the device. The thick links of chain clinked together, dripping seawater as they emerged from the depths. Kelly climbed down to the weather deck during the six minutes it took the camera to ascend. When the gear finally reached the surface, she didn’t like what she saw.

  The quarter-million-dollar piece of equipment had been reduced to a pile of mangled metal and twisted titanium. Kelly said nothing as the apparatus swung over to rest on deck.

  Upon closer inspection she noted several gashes in the metal frame. She touched one of the bars and felt the warmth it radiated. The entire camera was warm to the touch, odd for the cold depth at which it had been. Puncture marks riddled the camera, pierced the Plexiglas and flooded its insides. Water dribbled out of a few holes and onto Kelly’s sandals.

  She turned to Rafe, sickened by the spectacle. “See what you can salvage of the software. The hardware’s FUBAR.” She had learned the term from her father: Fucked Up Beyond All Repair.

  Her eyes returned to the deep grooves running along the machine’s lateral side. Although the camera was busted, the mission itself wasn’t a complete bust. The equipment’s destruction hadn’t ruined any of the information that’d been transmitted over the last couple hours, all of which was stored on the Aurora’s mainframe.

  Kelly spied a white shard jutting out from one of the perforations. She dug it out of the rut for further investigation. The object was the same length as a piece of chalk and had a rounded tip. At first it looked like dead coral. She’d studied several dried reef samples over the years, and this had the same ossified texture.

  Rafe stared at the item from over her shoulder. “And that is?”

  “I dunno,” she said. This was a lie, of course. She understood exactly what she held, the mere thought of which excited her.

  It was a tooth.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  KELLY HAD HIGH hopes for the expedition, only to have them literally chewed up and spit out. Whatever had done that damage was still out there, teasing her to find it. The Aurora arrived in port ten hours later, at six in the morning. What a difference twenty-four hours made. At sunrise yesterday she’d been anxious to test her new toy; now the camera was forgotten in favor of more thrilling prospects.

  Captain Bart steered the ship into dock, a tricky maneuver he handled with expert care. After shutting off the engines, he turned to Kelly in the pilothouse. “Sorry ‘bout your luck.” It was the first thing he’d said to her since the previous afternoon, when she’d locked herself away in her berth. Kelly slept a few troubled hours before joining the captain around four and had derailed his every attempt to make conversation since then.

  “Me too,” she said.

  She’d told the crew there had been an underwater earthquake, which must have shaken loose a rocky shelf above the camera and smashed the equipment. No one questioned her, though everyone understood she was lying for some reason. The only other person who knew the truth was Rafe, and he’d been sworn to secrecy.

  An urgent knock came at the wheelhouse door, after which a young intern popped in his head. Kelly identified him as one of the local college students. Billy was his name, or possibly Bobby. “There’s someone waiting on the dock for you,” he told her.

  “Who?”

  Billy or possibly Bobby shrugged. “Never saw him before. Short guy, big ears.”

  Kelly sighed because she knew who it was. “I’m on my way.” The intern nodded and closed the door. She walked over to Bart and clapped him on the shoulder. “Tell your guys they’re free to go, then get a warm meal and a cold beer.”

  “Aye-aye. We’re heading out again, right? Sometime soon, I mean.”

  She didn’t respond, unsure whether she’d even have a job waiting for her after this fiasco. “I’ll see you when I see you,” she said as she left for shore.

  A man greeted Kelly on the pier, a jacket wrapped around him despite the warm temperature. Already at six it was a pleasant seventy-three degrees. His name was Edgar Wallis, the Institute’s legal counsel and lapdog to Lucas Hamilton, Kelly’s employer. “Hello Edgar,” she said.

  He turned to acknowledge her. “How nice to see you, Miss Andrews.”

  She couldn’t bring herself to say the same about him. “Whaddya want?” she asked.

  “It’s not so much what I want as Mister Hamilton. He wishes to meet with you. Immediately.”

  Who’d told Hamilton about the mission’s mishap? She hoped to break the bad news herself, put a positive spin on the story before he issued her the inevitable pink slip. “He couldn’t pick up the phone?”

  “He wanted me to retrieve you personally. I have a car waiting.”

  “So do I,” she said. “I’d rather drive myself, thanks.”

  “Suit yourself. Just know I’ll be tailing you the whole time.”

  “For future reference, I don’t appreciate having tabs kept on me like some parolee.”

  Edgar smiled, rodent teeth exposed through thin lips. “The Institute is worried more about its property than you.” He motioned to the Aurora. “That ship will be around long after you’re gone,” he said. “Mister Hamilton expects you for an eight-o-clock appointment, so don’t dawdle.” He headed across the parking lot and left her to fume.

  Kelly mused on the best way to tell her boss about what had happened. She was as energized about the meeting as she was nervous. After all she had something important to show him. It was burning a hole in her pocket, and it wasn’t money.

  * * * * *

  The Siesta Key Research Institute was a state-of-the-art complex located sixty miles south of Miami, outside Florida’s Biscayne National Park. Established in 1965 on land leased from the state, it stayed open due to generous benefactors and government grants. It was overseen by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization to help protect the Florida Reef Tract, the third largest coral body in the world, which stretched from Miami to the Dry Tortugas.

  Studies occurred continually at the facility, from testing the medicinal properties of shark cartilage to training dolphins for covert military use. The estate extended across three hundred acres, two-thirds of which was part of the Atlantic Ocean, quarantined by underwater nets. Fishing was prohibited, as was recreational diving. The only people allowed inside the center were employees and schoolchildren who came on field trips from the local elementary schools.

  She arrived at the Institute shortly before eight and went straight to Hamilton’s office. Edgar was seated at a desk outside the door. He flashed a fake, unfaltering smile that irked the hell out of her.

  “Is Hamilton in?” she asked.

  Edgar shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”

  “Can you tell me where he is?”

  “That’s private information.”

  “Edgar,” she warned.

  “If you must know, he’s with Lucy and Desi.”

  Kelly smirked. “Was that so hard?”

  With time to spare, she stopped at her office to change. She’d worn the same outfit for two days, her clothes rumpled with a hint of brine and sweat. A placard on the door read KELLY ANDREWS, PH.D. Although she had earned her doctorate in Marine Science at U.C. Santa Barbara, she refused to use the doctoral title. Doctors treated patients and diagnosed diseases; she considered herself a scientist. Her employees knew this as well and understood if they called her Doctor (or Missus for that matter), they’d get an earful.

&nb
sp; The room wasn’t spacious, which didn’t bother her because she spent so little time there. Her desk overflowed with graphs and charts spread helter-skelter. Thumbtacked to corkboard beside it were the schematics for the infrared camera and blueprints for the Simon, a scientific submersible.

  The far wall was plastered with various accolades she’d received over the years, including her college diploma, a plaque from NOAA for outstanding community service, and a PADI certificate for divemaster. The most prized honor was a hand-drawn picture given to her by the students of Miss Carlin’s third grade class. It showed a woman (herself presumably) standing atop a green submarine. In the background was a rainbow and dolphins leaping from the ocean. She was so touched by the gift she had it laminated then later decided to frame it.

  A bookshelf lined the same area, filled with an array of scuba manuals and fish identification textbooks. Among her collection was a signed copy of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a present from her father upon high school graduation. She treasured the book, knowing full well he paid a handsome sum for it. Kelly had since added another pricey volume, a first edition of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species.

  A knapsack underneath her desk stored an extra outfit. She stripped out of her used clothes and felt refreshed after changing. She left the office and traveled outside along the sidewalk that circled the compound. Kelly passed the labs and loading dock, heading to the saltwater tanks on the south end of the complex. An artificial reef had been built off the beach, comprised of a section of Tampa’s Sunshine Skyway that had collapsed in 1980. The Institute had contractors dump the construction debris offshore to give shelter to fish and other sea life. The plan worked, creating a unique mini-ecosystem for the researchers to study.

  She found Hamilton with Lucy and Desi, two of the Institute’s most beloved specimens. He wore a blue wetsuit and had a bucket of sardines in hand. Lucas Hamilton was the acting director of the Siesta Key Research Institute, the only individual to whom Kelly reported.