Shadow Of The Abyss

by Edward J. McFadden III

  ***

  Lenah never asked him about Kabul. She knew it was bad, and Splinter understood that on some level she didn’t want to know. It was easier that way. Like the cop on the beach, Splinter didn’t add up on their cookie-cutter list of roles he was supposed to fill. It was much easier to pretend he didn’t exist, collateral damage of their freedom that they’d rather not face.

  Splinter and Lenah went to the mattresses aboard the Evenstar. Lenah stocked up on food and Splinter managed to get the pets onboard. Poseidon prowled the deck, but Galatia and Nereus huddled below, Nereus shaking like a leaf.

  Wind tore across the bow, and the Parker lifted and fell with the roll of the waves. Sea spray fell across the windshield, and auto sensor wipers pushed it away.

  Splinter felt Lenah’s eyes on him. Watching, but not looking like she was watching. He chuckled. They knew each other that well.

  “You OK?” she said.

  “Lenah, about the other night. I…” he stammered, and this was when she usually said something like, “I understand”, or “when you’re ready” and let him off the hook. This time she stayed silent. So did he. The engines hummed, and sea spray carved a path of white over the ocean. He said, “I’m sorry. It’s just when I get like that…”

  “Maybe less vodka?” She was pissed and Splinter didn’t blame her.

  “It’s worse most nights without it,” he said.

  Lenah looked away, then her head snapped back. Her eyes narrowed and her full lips became a thin red line. “Saw the news,” she said.

  “You stop in for questioning?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She said nothing and looked away, but he knew why. She would lead them to him, and she knew Splinter didn’t want that.

  “Thanks. For the boat. All the food. Helping me out,” Splinter said. “Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Yell at Nereus.” She met his eye, then looked away. “Don’t go thinking this means I give a shit about you.”

  “Who? Me?”

  “We’re gonna catch the thing. Drag its dead body into port and make everything right. My charters will be booked for months,” she said.

  “Don’t know about that. If—” Splinter grabbed the dash as a large set rolled through and the twenty-eight-foot Parker dipped forward into a wave valley. Water splashed the windshield and he shifted his weight to maintain balance. “You think people will want to come out here if they see what’s swimming in the depths?”

  “I do. Same reason half the population under thirty is looking forward to the zombie apocalypse.”

  Splinter said nothing. She had a point. She always had a point. She was looking at him again, and Splinter said, “What happened in Kabul that night. I don’t remember pieces of it, Lenah. But if you need to hear the version I beat myself up with, I’ll tell it.”

  Lenah pulled back on the throttle. The Parker settled in the water and their rooster tail and wake smashed against the transom.

  “Let’s get a slick going. See if we can draw this thing in,” she said. The wind and current pushed them back toward the mouth of the inlet.

  “Chum out here? This thing was last seen in the bay,” Splinter said.

  “Tide’s coming in. The slick will get pulled into the bay and we’ll follow it in.”

  Splinter nodded. He knew the sea, but she knew how to catch fish.

  They went out on deck and Lenah opened the bucket of three-week-old chum and began ladling it into the sea. Splinter covered his nose. The smell made his stomach gurgle, and he coughed. He’d smelled corpses that had baked in the desert heat for days, but that was nothing compared to her concoction of fermented fish heads, rotten squirrel, and tuna blood, all mixed and aged to perfection like a nasty wine. She called it her “secret sauce.”

  The oily nastiness spread-out like an oil spill, drifting toward the inlet as it undulated on the rippling sea. When the bucket was half empty she sealed it and secured it to the gunnel with a bungee cord.

  Splinter’s eyes watered, and he dry heaved.

  Lenah laughed. “Hope you didn’t have eggs benedict for breakfast.”

  Dried sailfish, bread and water was hardly eggs benedict, but his stomach heaved anyway as bile crept up his throat. The scent stuck in his nostrils, and he rolled his shoulders and tried to crack his neck.

  Lenah went into the pilothouse and spun the wheel to port and the Parker’s bow pointed with the wind, the back of the pilothouse serving as a sail. Back out on deck, she said, “Now we wait.”

  Splinter thought that was all fishermen did.

  They didn’t speak for a long time as the ocean breeze pushed the Parker behind the slick. Seagulls moaned, an occasional sailfish streaked by. A pair of dolphins floated off to port, examining them, looking like they wanted to play. Splinter knew that wasn’t a good sign.

  “So this story you beat yourself up with. It’s not that I want to hear it. Really. I think I know you and you’re a good person.”

  Splinter laughed.

  “Hard to see maybe because you do your best to hide it, but whatever you did I’m sure you have an explanation.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  She looked away.

  The wind kicked up, and the Atlantic reminded them she was there. A large set of waves swelled beneath the boat, crashing over the bow and rocking the Parker. Splinter lost his footing and fell as Lenah clung to the gunnel.

  “You OK?” she said.

  Splinter got up, staring at the horizon, but there weren’t any more large waves.

  “You can thank that gust of wind for that. We should have been paying attention,” Lenah said.

  “Story of my life.”

  Silence again. Waves slapped the hull, wind whistled around the pilothouse and snapped their flag, and the Parker’s marine antenna swayed back and forth.

  “I guess what bothered me most was when they court-martialed me. They let me off with an honorable discharge in the end, but it still felt like punishment. Worst part is, I deserved worse.”

  Lenah sat on the gunnel, her gaze shifting every few seconds to the surface of the sea. The sun had passed noon, and the afternoon was waning as the inlet drew closer. Another hour and they’d be in Indian River.

  “We went in to get a corporate asshole who’d partied too hard in the hash bars in Kabul. The war was in full swing, so it was supposed to be an easy crash and grab. In and out in half-an-hour. But they were waiting for us. Knew exactly where we’d hit them.”

  Lenah’s head jerked up. “How?”

  “They’re not as stupid as we like to pretend. They study our tactics, and they covered all three of our potential entry points. Drew us in and ambushed us. I lost three men in a fire fight. Head shots.”

  Lenah gazed out at the sea and wouldn’t look at him.

  “They called me back. Said I was to retreat to the extraction point. I ordered us forward and that was ultimately the excuse they used to kick me out. Disobeying a direct command from a senior tactical officer,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you follow orders?”

  “I don’t know,” Splinter said. He let out a long breath and closed his eyes. “I was in a rage. I pressed forward, chasing down the guys who’d killed my men. They led us straight into another trap and I lost four more. Right there in front of me. I pushed on, command chattering in my head, my remaining men trying to get me to see reason. But I was gone. Snapped. Lost it. I don’t remember much after that. The Navy jag said I went on a rampage through two buildings, and killed seven people, no combatants.”

  Splinter searched the ocean, but saw nothing but whitecaps and the shimmer of the sun. “And you saw the ending on the news. Haven’t fired a gun since and I jump every time something bangs. In the dark the fog comes on and I’m not sure if I can control myself.”

  “Was that you on the video?” Lenah said.

  Splinter nodded. She didn’t look away or appear disgusted as he’d expected. Her face
instead filled with pity, and somehow that was worse. That look that told him he was a lost cause. There was no hope.

  “You don’t remember anything about the other people they say you killed?”

  Splinter shook his head no. “I have a memory gap of about eight minutes. The docs said it was blindness and mental blocking brought on by the extreme battle conditions and my PTSD. One doctor said it was like I was a metal railing that’s been painted too many times. Layer upon layer of trauma, until there’s nothing else there.”

  The Evenstar was almost to the inlet and the sun was starting its descent to the horizon. They’d seen no sign of the beast. No waste. Fish parts. No blood in the water, and the local fish didn’t appear spooked.

  They floated a few more hours, through the inlet and into the bay, and as the sun set and the tide shifted, Lenah started the motors. “I’m gonna head over to Jennings Cove and anchor up inside the hook for the night so we can eat and catch some sleep. Work for you?”

  Splinter nodded in the twilight.

  10

  After two days of searching they’d seen no sign of the creature and Splinter was starting to wonder if the huge fish had gone back out to sea. Fishing is a solitary and frustrating business, and Lenah and Splinter were already getting on each other’s nerves, living on the boat with no other human contact. The animals helped, though they favored Lenah and that pissed Splinter off. The three in-greats. He’d pulled them from the garbage, and they abandoned him for the first pretty face. Splinter smiled. When this was all over he thought it best the three of them stay with Lenah. They’d be better off away from him.

  The day had been hot and humid, a sparrow fart breeze doing nothing to stir the air. They’d caught a few sailfish and tarpon for dinner, but there was no sign of the leviathan. The Parker rocked in the gentle swell as it cut through the water at a steady twenty knots, sea spray raining down around the boat, a fifteen-foot rooster tail jetting out behind them. Splinter hardly noticed the motion. He had his Navy legs back, and his body adjusted with every shift in the boat’s position.

  “Before we anchor up for the evening we have a stop to make,” Splinter said.

  Lenah drew back on the throttle and the engines eased and the boat slowed.

  “Will’s meeting us down on Middle Point at sunset.”

  “Do tell,” Lenah said.

  “Don’t know. He was going to dig in and we’re… gonna tell him we didn’t see shit,” Splinter said.

  Lenah tapped her NAV screen and set a southern course down Indian River to Middle Point. “Eighteen minutes, but figure twenty. There’s two boats on the NAV and I’m going to steer clear of them.”

  Splinter nodded. They weren’t wanted, but if those vessels were coastie, police or harbor patrol, and they were stopped, it would be game over.

  “Can you get the Zodiac ready?” Lenah asked.

  “Aye aye, Captain.”

  Splinter fetched the deflated dinghy from the cabin and brought it out on deck. He unsnapped the hasps on the bag and unrolled the boat. It was Splinter’s twelve-footer, and it was covered with yellowed patches and dirt and the hull numbers were half-smudged off. He took out the air pump and connected it to the port pontoon, and ass-inched across deck to the battery compartment. He opened the battery cabinet and connected the pump’s negative and positive leads to the battery. The pump rumbled to life and Splinter went to get the outboard.

  Lenah cut the motors and the Parker eased through the dark bay. Splinter finished filling the Zodiac then put it in the water and tethered it to an aft cleat. He mounted the new 15HP Merc Lenah had bought and placed his sixty-inch speargun in the bow. To the west the calm waters of the inner bay of Snake River stretched into the distance, and off the bow to the east, Vitolo Preserve was edged in rocks and mangroves.

  A flashlight blinked on in the darkness. Then off. On. Off.

  “Dropping anchor,” Lenah yelled. She spun the wheel, turning the Parker into the wind as the anchor released from its holding clamps. Chain rattled over the bow and the anchor splashed into the water. Its line rubbed and squeaked as it ran out fast, then eased when the anchor hit bottom.

  The Parker drifted for another twenty seconds then jerked to a stop when Lenah locked the line and the twenty-two-pound fluke anchor sunk its teeth into the soft bottom. She switched off the red/green bow light, turned on the white NAV light mounted atop the pilothouse, then turned off the electronics and the cabin light.

  Headlights spilled across the mangroves as cars raced along A1A. The scent of the sea mixed with rot and tainted with gas fumes reminded Splinter of San Francisco Bay. Pipers and herons chirped and sang, frogs bleeped, and seagulls squawked at the sparrows who fought for dead crabs along the shoreline. The water was still, and the dinghy hardly moved as Splinter and Lenah positioned themselves in the small craft. Lenah sat by the transom on the starboard pontoon, and Splinter sat forward, half on the wooden bench seat and half on the port pontoon.

  The Merc screamed to life with one pull. Lenah adjusted the throttle control and put the motor in gear. She pushed the control arm left, and turned toward shore, the whine of the outboard pushing the Zodiac like a brick.

  Will stood on a rock looking out on the bay. The shoreline was stacked with stones except for a patch of sand just big enough to beach the dinghy. Lenah cut the motor and the Zodiac crunched onto shore.

  “Hope you brought beer,” Splinter said. “Warden here doesn’t allow the devil’s juice on her ship.” Splinter hadn’t had anything to drink in three days, and he felt like shit. His muscles and joints hurt, he had a headache, his knee screamed, and the slightest thing irritated him. But he felt better than he had the prior day, so that was something.

  “I did. A six for us to split,” Will said.

  “I’ll take what I can get,” he said. Inwardly the anger rose in him, and the fog covered his eyes. Another person trying to control what he did. He could drink whenever… He rolled his shoulders and tried to crack his neck, a blood vessel in his forehead pounding like a bass guitar.

  Will broke off a beer and handed it to Splinter, who opened it and took a long pull. “It’s like that first sip of wine after you’ve crossed the desert.”

  “Scent of a Woman,” Lenah said.

  “Ding ding. We have a winner,” Splinter said.

  No one spoke, and an awkward silence stretched on. Will knew Splinter and Lenah had been together, and he also knew Splinter threw film quotes at her. It was a thing they did. Had done.

  “You want to walk to the ocean? Cooler out there,” Lenah said.

  “Sure is. I was out there before you came. Wind’s light.” Will climbed down from his stone and headed for the deer path that ran through the mangroves. Mosquitos and flies attacked as soon as the friends passed into the mangroves, and Will ran. With light winds the insects set up camp in the vegetation and feasted on any blood that came their way, including birds.

  They exited the forest and climbed over the dunes, being careful not to step on the beach grass. The Atlantic lapped gently over rocks and crushed stones. A gibbous moon hung on the horizon, and thin clouds drifted like streamers across an otherwise clear sky. The beach was deserted.

  “What did they think of my place? They freak about the gun cabinet?” Splinter said.

  “I didn’t tell them where you live yet,” Will said.

  “Ah, dude, you’ve got to—”

  Will put up a hand. “You were right. So far they’re patronizing me, being nice to grandpa because they really don’t have anything anyway. I’m saving it for when they do.”

  Splinter smiled and nodded.

  “You guys OK? Need anything?” Splinter opened his mouth and Will cut him off. “Do you need anything, Lenah?”

  “We’re good for now, but I may need to meet you for a food drop in a couple of days.” Lenah jerked a thumb toward Splinter. “This clown can’t fish for shit.”

  “And you’ve been hauling them in?” Splinter said.

&
nbsp; Lenah looked to Will, and said, “We haven’t hauled in much.”

  “You’re not alone. Every charter in the marina is complaining. Saying they’re below pre-tsunami levels,” Will said. “They’re bitching all the way up to St. Augustine. Flights being canceled. Hotel no shows.”

  “Is the irony lost on anyone that the very thing that brought the fish might have also brought what’s chasing them away?”

  “What’s irony?” Splinter said, but he couldn’t say it with a straight face.

  “In other fun news, there’s a dog missing. Owner claims it was running on the beach. No corpse. Yet,” Will said.

  “You think it’s our boy?” Lenah said.

  “Why do you assume it’s male? Bit sexist, isn’t it?” Splinter said.

  “No.”

  “Can you two do this someplace else? As much as it might surprise you, this old white man doesn’t like his ass getting chewed off by flies,” Will said.

  “What do you think about the dog?” Splinter said.

  “Normally, I’d think nothing of it. But I walk the beach down by South Beach Park. Knew that dog. I don’t think Kissenger drowned. The seas were calm, and Kiss could swim like a dolphin. Would always come out of the ocean to say hi to me.”

  “So you think this thing came into the wave break? That close?” Lenah said.

  “No, but I can see Kiss sensing the thing, swimming out and going after it,” Will said.

  The sea breeze rattled the beach grass, and the ocean sucked pebbles and shells back into the Atlantic.

  “There’s a little more. Another boat got busted up off South Beach Park. Man missing,” Will said.

  “What are the coasties saying?” Splinter said.

  “Nothing. Total silence. Three rescued boaters were guests at the infirmary on the Coast Guard base on Seaway. Took them out on a MH-60 Jayhawk yesterday morning to Miami,” Will said. “The orange-strips took the hull also, pulled it out of the bay that night. I asked to see it and they sat me in a waiting room for four hours before they told me to come back tomorrow.”

  Splinter sat on the sand. “At least we know where to look,” he said.