Abyss

by Greig Beck

  Harrison looked up at the crushed blue velvet sky as the sun had just gone down. “Perfectisamo,” he breathed to the vanishing golden orb.

  “Ready yet?” came the excited voice from the cabin.

  “In three-two-one – here I come!” He clapped his hands and then led Bindy up on deck. She was blindfolded, and her long tanned legs, in the shortest white shorts he had ever seen, made her look even more appetizing than the delicacies on the table.

  “Okay … now.” He waited, grinning.

  She lifted the blindfold, one eye at a time. Her luminous smile widened and she jumped up and down, clapping like a child at a birthday party.

  “Yay!” She jumped into his arms. “I love you.” She kissed him hard, released him and scampered to a seat. “And I’m famished. What did you get us, baby?”

  Harrison came and stood by the table, draping a cloth over one arm, he bent slightly forward, motioning to the different plates. “I have the finest goose liver pate from Amsterdam. Caspian Sea Beluga caviar from the chillers of the imperial Russian Palace, and two dozen of mother nature’s finest Pacific oysters, hand shucked by thrice-washed albino virgins.”

  Bindy looked up at him, laughing softly as she enjoyed his show. Her cheeks were slightly reddened from the day’s sun, and it made her blue eyes glow in her honey-brown face.

  Harrison lifted the champagne. “And finally, for my love, she will sip Krug champagne, a steal at only $350 a bottle.”

  “Yes!” She raised a small fist in a victory salute.

  He poured two glasses, then sat, and held one up. “To the most beautiful woman I have ever met.”

  She tilted her head, holding her own glass up. “You mean the luckiest.” She leaned forward to kiss him, and then brought her glass to his with a clink. She closed her eyes as she sipped, swallowed, and then licked her lips, the tiny pink tip of her tongue the sexiest thing he had ever seen … at least for a few minutes.

  God, I love this girl, he thought. They’d been sweethearts ever since grade school, now fifteen years later, he was ready to ask her to be his wife. They’d eat, drink, make mad love in the cabin, and then he’d finish it all off by proposing on the stroke of midnight.

  He saw the huge silver moon beginning to rise and felt his head swim from excitement.

  Bindy sipped again, and raised her glass. “My turn.” She looked deep into his eyes. “To lovers everywhere – if only they could be as happy and lucky as we are.”

  “You make your own luck.” He returned the toast. “And tonight, I only care about you.” Harrison sipped.

  In an hour, they had eaten every morsel of food, finished two thirds of the champagne, and now lay intertwined on a long cushion-covered seat on the rear deck.

  “So many stars,” Bindy said languidly, her head resting on his shoulder.

  “It only seems like it because there are no background lights from the city.” Harrison stroked her forehead.

  “I love it out here,” she said. “It’s so warm and peaceful. Maybe we should just sail away. Spend the next year island hopping, living on coconuts, fruit and things we can catch.” She sat up. “You caught a lot today; you’re a good fisherman.”

  He nodded, pride swelling in his chest. “Was a good day; never seen so many fish. Maybe warm currents or something.” He looked down at her face. “Hey, feel like a swim?”

  She snorted. “No thank you; I can’t see the bottom.”

  “There’s nothing down there; not even sharks, which is weird. I bet that’s why there’s so many fish; the sharks have all gone south or north, or something.” He leaned forward, looking out over the dark water with the huge moon creating a silvery highway to the horizon.

  “Maybe next time.”

  There was the sound of a splash out in the darkness, and the boat lifted gently. There was no breeze, and it was far too deep for them to drop anchor so they had been drifting on the Pacific currents for hours. Harrison had no idea where they were now, but he guessed they were still about eighty miles out from the northern Mexican shore.

  The boat lifted again, and this time bobbed side to side. Bindy turned to stare up at him, her eyes wide. He just shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. The little wave that caused that rise might have started a thousand miles away and been traveling for weeks.”

  She nodded and relaxed, and then nestled into his body, soon turning over on top of him. “Mmm, I’m only interested in one rise at the moment.” Her hand went lower, squeezing him and tugging. “Let’s go inside, handsome.”

  He grabbed her chin, and kissed her deeply, feeling her tongue snake into his mouth. His body tingled; blood thumped in his temples, and also made his penis feel like it was about to burst.

  “Oh yeah.” He lifted her, and together then went down into their messy cabin, still kissing.

  Bindy pulled off her top, and spun to switch on the music tablet, picking her favorite song, a thumping Jamaican beat. She held his eyes as she began to shimmy out of her shorts.

  Harrison whipped his t-shirt off in a single motion, and took several tugs at his shorts to get them over a jutting erection. He stood, feeling like he was grinning like a loon, and with a face hot enough to cook on.

  She finally peeled down panties that were little more than lace and gossamer strings, and then stood with her arms out to him.

  “You magnific—”

  The explosive force that hit them cannoned them both into the ceiling. Harrison landed hard, shook his head, and saw that they, and the boat, were lying sideways in the water. There was a roaring as they moved fast, still being pushed hard. Whatever hit them must have been something big, a freighter maybe, and they were somehow caught up under its bow. It didn’t make sense; they were nowhere near the shipping lanes.

  “Harrison?” Bindy’s voice was groggy.

  “Something hit us.” He called out, crawling toward her.

  Bindy lifted one hand to her head, blood smearing her beautiful face. She looked up, confused, but not frightened. Water began to pour in on them then; the boat was going under, and taking them with it.

  “We gotta get out.” He grabbed her arm, just as an almighty crunch filled the cabin. The lights inside remained on, but he wished they hadn’t.

  Things were coming through the sides and bottom of the boat, large white triangles that looked like teeth – giant fucking teeth. They began to come together, and then everything exploded into wetness, as the ocean filled what was left of the cabin.

  Bindy was snatched from him, and he was suddenly in warm, dark water. He fought upwards for air, and exploded from the surface, dragging in a huge breath.

  “Bindy!” He spun. “Bindy!”

  There was only the weird sound of his near-submerged boat dying a few dozen feet from him. He could taste oil in the water, and blood, probably oozing from some wound on his head.

  “Bindy!” He screamed, and pounded the water. He sobbed, tilting his head back and crushing his eyes shut. He focused – he needed help, fast. Harrison began to swim back toward the hulk of the boat. In the silvery moonlight, he saw it begin to turn, and swing around toward him.

  He stopped swimming. It wasn’t his boat at all.

  CHAPTER 9

  Kern County, California, the Bone Beds

  Cate parked her dusty SUV beside a number of other cars and trucks and stepped out.

  “Oof.”

  She winced and tilted her head away from the sun that beat down on her ferociously. It felt like hot needles on her cheeks. She pulled a canvas broad-brimmed hat from her pack, shook it out, and jammed the warped thing on her head, already feeling a bead of perspiration at her temple.

  She raised a hand to hold the hat brim, and looked up at the green hills to locate the small track that wended its way up to the bone bed digs.

  She was to meet a paleontologist by the name of Rajit Vespinja, who she had been messaging back and forth about a new find he had made in a Middle Miocene excavation. Twenty million years ago this entire area
was an inland sea open to the ocean and sinking to a depth of 200 feet for countless miles. Estuary rivers had run into it, and the entire area was littered with bone conglomerations, piles of them, that contained traces of numerous sea creatures, sea mammals, and even land mammals that probably got washed into the depths and drowned during storms, or when they tried to cross the raging rivers.

  But what the area was really known for was the number of Carcharodon Megalodon remains that had been discovered here. Mostly these were just the massive teeth made of the super-hard dentin material that easily sailed through the millions of years. Sharks were cartilaginous creatures, and their cartilage scaffolding failed to mineralize like normal bone fossils. That meant there was usually little left to examine.

  It took Cate twenty minutes to puff her way to the top of the hill in the heat. Years of gym and jogging meant the strain wasn’t unbearable, but she was glad she’d worn more than a t-shirt and had brought a hat, as the sun and low humidity sapped as much moisture as it did energy.

  She crested the hill and stood with her hands on hips as she looked down into a gentle valley formed between two large, long hills. The edges of each had been cut out, and teams worked like small groups of ants fossicking for treats left behind by picnickers.

  The valley continued into the distance, joining other undulations in the geology. With all the massive lumps and folds, it was hard to believe this was a flat underwater plain some twenty million years ago.

  The bone beds covered many square miles, and just as she was wondering how she would ever find Rajit, she saw a figure waving and leaping across yards of broken soil and stone.

  My date arrives, she thought and waved back.

  She started down and met him halfway. Cate stopped before she got to him, so he could suck in huge breaths and catch his breath.

  “At last, Cate, it’s so good, to meet you.” He drew in a double lungful of air, let it out, and then stuck out a hand.

  “This is my honor, Doctor Vespinja.” She grabbed his hand.

  “Call me Rajit.” He kept pumping her hand. “And having the head of Stanford’s Evolutionary Biology department on my dig site is the real honor.” He finally released her.

  Cate looked out over the excavations. “This place is huge.”

  He followed her gaze. “During the mid-Miocene, it was an underwater plain, warm, and shallow; perfect for all manner of species to live, love and leave remains for us to find today.”

  She tried to imagine what it was like then – a warm and near tropical, shallow sea, millions of years before the next glacial epoch changed the water temperature and the currents, and also drained the inland sea to feed growing ice caps.

  The valley floor would have been the sea bottom, and up where she stood, the surface. She imagined the soupy water with all its bobbing, swimming and scuttling creatures. Most of the sea reptile giants of the prehistoric era had died off. But nature abhors a vacuum, and so something else rose to become ruler of the watery kingdom – and that was why she was here.

  “So, the new meg find?”

  Rajit smiled and clasped his hands together. “Yes, yes, so rare. They hardly ever leave complete traces like this. We’re very excited about her.”

  “Her?” Cate smiled.

  “We think so. The remains are abnormally large, and the females always seemed to grow the biggest.” He turned and waved her on. “This way.”

  They tracked along the valley floor, and Rajit waved at a few people who lifted their heads to stare for a moment. But most were down on their knees or lying on the ground, working with small brushes, tiny picks or, in some case, paintbrushes, clearing away dust and debris from remains.

  He pointed up at a group who were busy covering something in layers of gauze coated in plaster.

  “They’ve uncovered a Psephophorus, an extinct genus of giant sea turtle. Not as big or heavy as Archelon, mind you, but still about ten feet in length.”

  “Wow.” Cate was impressed. “So many fossils in one area – amazing.”

  Rajit shrugged. “Some scientists theorize that this particular area of coast became walled off, or rather walled-in, like a trapped inland sea, when the ocean started to withdraw.”

  “They were trapped like goldfish in a bowl,” she observed.

  He grinned. “What a sight that would have been to behold. All those magnificent creatures in one place.” He sighed. “I would loved to have been there. To just be able to get close to them.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Cate said softly.

  Rajit turned, surprised, but when he saw Cate was not forthcoming, he turned away and pointed to an enormous excavated area on the slope. “Our home, and the final resting place of Big Bertha.”

  They climbed the hundred feet to the midway point on the hill that turned out to be the size of a double football field gouged out of the rock and dirt. By the time they arrived, Cate was finally feeling the edge of exhaustion creeping into her muscles.

  Rajit put his hands around his mouth. “Okay everyone; take five.” He motioned to Cate. “This is Ms. Catherine Granger, head of the Evolutionary Biology department at Stanford University, a specialist on marine predators, who also has a keen interest in the Carcharodon Megalodon species.”

  Cate smiled tightly. She hated having her credentials rolled out, but if it was what got her the royal treatment on sites like this, she could hardly complain. “Thank you, Dr. Vespinja.” She waved. “Good morning, everyone.”

  She got greetings, appraisals, and a few smiles for a few seconds, before most went back to the work. Rajit led her closer.

  “Well, there she is; isn’t she beautiful?”

  Cate saw an area so carefully cleaned it could have been swept. There were ridges and bumps all along the flat plate they had cleaned.

  She walked along the edge. “Hard to take it all in.”

  “Ah, yes …” Rajit looked around, and then grabbed her elbow. “Come this way.” He dragged her to the opposite slope and climbed about twenty feet. He then stepped out on a ledge. He nodded, satisfied, and then pointed back down to where they had just been. “Now look.”

  Cate followed him and then leaned out; she immediately felt a chill run through her. There was the huge pressed imprint, at least seventy feet in length, from the massive scythe-like tail and ventral fins, to the sail-shaped dorsal fin. The massive fossilized creature ended in an explosion of teeth where the jaws had been flattened down and then compressed. But it was still easy to visualize how they would have looked.

  “It’s so clear,” she murmured.

  “Yes, and so rare,” Rajit responded. “Most of the fossils in these bone beds have been degraded because we think they were uncovered before they were fully mineralized. But Bertha here was most likely totally covered over, and fairly quickly, maybe by an underwater landslide. We can never know for sure, but it encased her in mud, and thus sealed her in.”

  He sighed again, long and slow. “What I would give to see one of these things alive, and swimming.”

  Cate gave him a wry smile. “Sure, so long as you’re nowhere near the water.” She motioned to the fossil. “May I?”

  Rajit grinned and nodded. “Sure, sure; it’s why you’re here after all.”

  “Thank you.” Cate hopped back down to be beside the flattened fossil. She then walked slowly along the body. It was compressed into just two dimensions, but the lumps of ribs, fins and other cartilage remnants were still apparent. It was an awe-inspiring sight, but she knew the remains didn’t do justice to the terrible monster.

  Cate had seen a living specimen, in the water, and then under the water, when one had attacked, and the horrifying nightmares of those moments never went away. It had taken a year before Jack Monroe had been able to even coax her onto the deck of his boat, and then another year before she’d let him take her for short trips around Nick’s Cove … and even then just hugging the coastline.

  She squatted down near the mouth of the monster, seeing the massiv
e arc of the fallen teeth, the spade-sized blades, each about eight inches long. Though these teeth still looked wickedly sharp, they were now blackened with age.

  She’d seen a gleaming white set of those teeth shear people in half, the maw opening wide to swallow them whole. She’d seen the huge body propelled through the water like an unstoppable juggernaut.

  She exhaled, reaching out one hand to lay her fingers at the jawline. “Some monsters, once seen, become less monstrous.” She ran her fingertips over the edge of one of the teeth. “And some become so much worse.”

  “That’s beautiful; is it Hemingway?”

  She smiled, distractedly. “No, Catherine Granger.” She stood up, dusting her hands together. “Time to go.”

  “That’s it? You came all the way out here, just for that?” Rajit’s brow furrowed. “There are other things to see and talk about.”

  Cate shook his hand. “I just needed to see it, is all.” She turned away. “Just to make sure it, and all my demons, were really dead.”

  CHAPTER 10

  200 miles west of Acapulco, edge of the Middle America Trench

  Samantha Britt hummed as she pulled on a sweater and then undid the arms of her allover suit that were tied around her waist. She then slid her arms and shoulders into the top half and turned to watch her co-crew members, Wade King and Andy McCarthy, clamber over the modified Alvin deep-sea submersible.

  Wade was the central casting action man – broad shoulders, chiseled chin and shock of curled dark hair over deep-set blue eyes. He was their pilot and engineer onboard the tiny submarine.

  Andy, on the other hand, was his complete opposite with short red hair, sprays of freckles across his cheeks and nose, and shoulders more at home on a milk bottle. Where she was the mission’s marine biology specialist, Andy had dual skills as a biologist and geologist. And he was definitely the brains of their group.

  She looked again at what would be their home for the next little while – the Alvin II, DSV, or Deep Sea Vehicle, looked like a bathtub toy. It was bulbous, sprayed red, and only twenty-four feet in length. Its looks were deceiving, however, as it was technologically brilliant and tough as they come.