Shadow Of The Abyss

by Edward J. McFadden III

  Splinter sloshed his way to the bow and let loose with a primal scream of anger. He brought up the rifle, fired, and heard the smack of the bullet as it hit home. His legs shook, and pain lanced his back. Deep in the fog he pulled a thirty-five-caliber hollow point bullet from his pocket, loaded it into the high-powered Marlin, and fired.

  Again.

  And again.

  He didn’t hear the slap of the bullets striking home. All he heard was his own savage scream.

  The beast roared and launched from the water, its right flipper landing on the transom and pushing the Parker beneath the waves. The bow rose from the water and Splinter grabbed hold of the lead line that was tied to the bow cleat. He hung on as his feet washed out from under him and the Evenstar yawed and almost tipped over.

  The Parker’s hull was filled with Styrofoam-like material, so unless the craft was broken into multiple pieces it couldn’t sink, but it could be turned up-side-down.

  The creature opened its jaws and the rows of teeth bit down on the port side gunnel and tore a six-foot section from the side of the boat. Water surged through the hole, the Yamahas pushing the bow downward into the waves.

  Lenah cut the engines. The boat stopped and bobbed up, but tipped sharply to port.

  “Here! Splinter!”

  Splinter heard the echoes of Lenah’s voice in the back of his head, a distant call behind the fog. She shook him, her beautiful face suddenly in front of him.

  “Splinter! Put this on.”

  She thrust a yellow deflated lifejacket at him and ran back to the pilothouse.

  Seawater reached the top of the gunnel as the creature chomped on the Parker, fiberglass, wood, and metal spewing from the beast’s mouth. The leviathan eased back into the sea, its jaws smacking, massive flat head thrashing like a shark.

  Splinter shook his head, the fog fading, the fear draining away like sewage. “Lenah,” he said, and pushed through the rising water toward the pilothouse.

  The sea calmed. Debris floated all around the Parker, which was totally swamped. There was a foot of water in the pilothouse and the cabin below was totally submerged. All the bridge electronics were out. The battery compartment was sealed, but wasn’t water tight and it was currently underwater.

  “Do you see it out there?” Lenah said. Her dark silhouette reflected off the pilothouse window, and in that moment, Splinter realized he loved her. Who else would stay with a crazy bastard like him?

  “Yeah, off the stern. It’s circling us. Hopefully it didn’t like the taste of fiberglass,” Splinter said.

  Three-foot waves rolled into the Parker’s windshield, the pilothouse the only part of the boat above water. The vessel rolled and yawed with each set of waves, but the layered foam in the hull was keeping the Parker afloat.

  “Meow. Meow.”

  “Oh god. Poseidon,” Splinter said. He dove into the water and swam into the galley without thinking. If he were to get trapped or disorientated, or if the fog returned…

  The cat was on top of the storage cabinet in the far corner of the galley, curled up in an air pocket.

  Splinter’s head burst through the water right next to the cat and Poseidon hissed at him.

  “I don’t blame you for being pissed, but you wanted to stay. You’re gonna need to go under pal, and fast.”

  The air pocket was getting smaller as the swamped Parker shifted.

  Poseidon seemed to understand, and she let Splinter take her in his arms. He stroked her and kissed her on the top of the head. Then he shoved the cat under his arm like a football, covered her nose and mouth as best he could, like he was holding the nose of the football the way he had in high school.

  Splinter dove, swimming with one arm, pushing himself toward the galley exit. It was only six feet, but it was the longest swim of his life. Poseidon struggled and fought to breathe. Splinter’s arm felt like lead, his legs slowing with pain and weariness, his knee screaming, the adrenaline draining away.

  Lenah gasped when Splinter emerged into the pilothouse. He released the cat, and Poseidon screeched and swam, pulling in air. Lenah picked her up and put her over her shoulder like an infant, slapping her back and forcing out any water. The cat sputtered and coughed, but appeared fine.

  They’d survived.

  The creature circled.

  19

  Water sloshed around the inside of the pilothouse, slapping against the bulkhead. The Parker’s engines and cabin were submerged, and the boat rocked with the ocean swell. Darkness blanketed the water, and moonbeams cut through the cloud cover and sent errant rays across the undulating sea. The air smelt of resin, dead fish, and fear.

  Lenah snapped an emergency glowstick and the pilothouse filled with pale yellow-green light. She and Splinter peered through the windshield, and every few seconds the creature’s caudal fin passed close to the boat and disappeared into the blackness, its wake rocking the Parker.

  “What’s it waiting for?” Lenah said.

  “It’s confused. It thought the boat was food, but now it’s debating how hungry it really is. It just fed, so maybe it will move on.”

  “What are we going to do if it doesn’t? The wind is picking-up out of the west, which means these rollers are going to get bigger as they stand up.”

  Splinter said nothing. He didn’t know what they’d do if they ended up in the drink with the creature. “Do you have a life raft?” They’d lost the Zodiac in the first attack when it was thrown from the deck. Splinter was sure it was floating out there somewhere, but in the darkness, there was no way to see it even if it was close enough.

  “I took it off to make room because we had the Zodiac,” she said. “You think it would matter? I’m not bouncing around on the open ocean in a blow-up toy with that thing around.”

  “If you see another choice, I’m open to suggestions.”

  “You want a suggestion? Shut up, Splinter. Look at my boat. My life.”

  Splinter’s eyes shifted to the brackish water rolling over the pilothouse deck. She had a point. This was his fault. She’d wanted to go to the coasties from the beginning, but it had been his insecurities, obsession, and fears that led them to their current dire situation. His inability to seek help. To want help.

  “I’m sorry, Splinter. It’s just…”

  “Don’t you dare apologize. I’m the one who’s sorry. You didn’t want to be out here. You shouldn’t be out here. This is all my fault. You’re right.”

  Water gurgled and snapped as it hit the hull. A thick patch of clouds passed overhead, cutting off the moonlight and turning the ocean into deep space. Waves pushed against the half-submerged pilothouse, and the whistle of the wind rose and fell with each set of waves. Yellow-green shadows danced on the bulkhead, and the dot of a red light in the distance made Splinter think of something.

  “You have an emergency beacon?”

  “I did. No idea where it is. Underwater somewhere.”

  “Great.”

  Lenah gasped, and Splinter jerked back from the command console.

  The beast floated over the Parker’s submerged bow, its massive white body filling the windshield. Luminescent eyes protruded like giant warts from the side of the creature’s flat head, steel gray baseballs rolling their way. Its flippers were still, but the creature’s long crocodilian mouth was slowly opening, revealing its razor-sharp teeth. It wasn’t coming forward. It hung still, waves breaking over its exposed back and tail.

  “What’s it doing?” Lenah said.

  “I think looking for us.”

  “It’s huge. Its torso looks bigger than a whale.”

  “Be quiet and don’t make any sudden movements. Stay still,” Splinter said.

  “Mmmm. OK. You think that will help?” she whispered.

  Splinter said nothing.

  “Because I don’t think staying quiet is going to help at all when those jaws come through the windshield.”

  A large red tongue lay in the long mouth behind the teeth. Splinter thought th
e thing was smiling at him. With two sharp pushes of its flippers the beast inched forward, its nose touching the glass of the Parker’s windshield.

  The creature closed its jaws and eased backward. Time slowed, and Splinter realized he knew nothing. He was an insignificant piece of sand on a never-ending beach. The beast backed away, slate-gray eyes blinking as it disappeared in the inky water.

  “Did that just happen?” Lenah said.

  “Did you get a picture?”

  “Camera is underwater somewhere,” she said.

  “You get any pictures before it got dark?”

  “A bunch. Don’t know how good they were. We’ll never know now, but I probably got something,” Lenah said. “You hit it with the dart though, right?”

  “I saw the dart hit and penetrate next to its flipper. We should be good.” If they lived to tell anyone the frequency of the tracker dart.

  Lenah said nothing.

  To the south, the dark outline of Seagull Island was like a distant black rock on the horizon. If they had the Zodiac they could’ve made a run for it, but the island was at least five miles away and there was no way they could swim it with an apex croc on their asses.

  Splinter didn’t know what to say. Expressing his feelings to others had never been a problem, until Kabul. His stomach heaved. He had to say something, break the silence that threatened to pull them under.

  “I ever tell you I love the name of your boat?” he said.

  She chuckled. “Ironic it’s going down.” Arwen Undómiel, daughter of Elrond, was called the Evenstar because she was the most beautiful of the last generation of elves to live in Middle Earth.

  Splinter said nothing.

  “My father used to call me the Evenstar. He wanted to name me Arwen, but mom wouldn’t let him. Said it would mark me a geek.”

  “That so bad?”

  “To her it was. I think she was afraid we wouldn’t be able to relate. That she’d lose me. She wanted me to listen to country music. Not worry about life so much.”

  “Dad was the task master?”

  “Kind of. He was always preaching about making decisions that affect your future. He wanted me to be happy more than anything else, I think. Don’t get me wrong, he pushed me to reach my potential. Both my parents loved the sea, so it makes sense that I’d end up out here.”

  “You speak of your father in the past tense.”

  “He died last year. Cancer.”

  Splinter had no idea. She’d never said anything. “I’m sorry for not being there. I—”

  The Parker was thumped on its starboard side and the half-sunken boat was driven into the sea. Poseidon screeched as she got tossed across the cabin, arms and legs fanned out. Splinter lost his footing and sailed across the pilothouse. He twisted in the air like a receiver diving for a ball in the end zone and snatched the cat from the air as he crashed into the bulkhead, cradling Poseidon in his arms. Splinter landed in the rising floodwater as the creature continued to drive the Evenstar beneath the waves.

  Lenah gripped the command console and managed to stay on her feet, but she dropped the glowstick and it sank beneath the water.

  The pilothouse door window shattered, and Lenah screamed. Splinter tried to get to his feet, but the deck tilted at a forty-degree angle and was half filled with water. Something snapped, and the sound of cracking fiberglass filled the cabin as water poured through the broken window.

  “We need to get out of here,” Lenah yelled.

  Splinter was fading. Water poured over him, and he floated toward the pilothouse ceiling. Anger rose in him. Fear. Fear of dying out here in the wet barren nothingness, where nobody would know or care. He’d given his life, and it had been taken, and he didn’t see how he would ever get it back. So why not die here?

  Splinter fell into the embrace of his abyss, the other Splinter rising through the PTSD fog.

  The young girl wore a tattered yellow dress, and long strands of greasy black hair fell across her face. Her eyes were brown pools of fear, and she looked at him with a pleading face. Gunshots rang out, and firelight danced in the ruins of a brick building.

  Splinter fired.

  Then Jasmine was there, the bullet striking her in the head and blowing her brains out the back of her skull. He just shot his sister. She looked so much like that girl in Kabul. The yellow dress and dark hair. He hadn’t shot his sister. But the little girl…

  Jasmine rattled around in his head. “They were the enemy. Sometimes there are casualties of war,” his sister said.

  “You weren’t there. You didn’t do it.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  The fog thickened, and his hands shook. The water rose, and the ceiling came to meet him. He’d just close his eyes, force all of this from his head, but the faces wouldn’t leave him alone. The memories of those killed, and those he couldn’t recall. Those were the worst, because when a lost memory did come through it was like killing all over again, and it tore him apart.

  Lenah floated beside him. She had his shirt in her coiled fists. She was screaming, water rising around her, but Splinter couldn’t hear her. He was lost in the fog. Give up, he told himself. Let go.

  Splinter blinked, his head pounding in rhythm with his heart.

  “Splinter!”

  He said nothing.

  “Swim. Swim as if your life depends on it because it does.”

  “I love you,” Splinter said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Lenah froze for an instant, her beautiful brown eyes filling with tears.

  Fiberglass cracked and snapped, water filled the cabin, and the beast bellowed as its powerful jaws crushed the Parker.

  “Then follow me. As soon as you’re clear of the boat, inflate your vest. Let’s go soldier!” She pecked him on the lips and dove into the floodwater.

  “One more time, buddy,” Splinter said.

  Poseidon meowed and didn’t fight as Splinter took the cat beneath his arm and covered her mouth and nose as he had before. Pushing off the bulkhead, he dove for the broken pilothouse window. Below the dark water the green-yellow light of the glowstick Lenah had dropped lit the way. The sinking boat yawed, the broken window moving away from Splinter as he was sucked upward with the surging sea.

  He stroked with one arm, fighting his way to the window. The glowstick faded. Something rushed past him in the darkness, a large fish running from the leviathan. Bubbles streamed through the pilothouse window as Splinter crashed against the windshield, and white foam sizzled on the glass.

  The Parker rocked as the beast rammed it again, and Splinter tumbled through the water like dirty underwear in a washing machine. Food wrappers, supplies, everything they had with them churned in the deluge, the light from the glowstick dying out.

  Poseidon struggled, and Splinter’s lungs burned and his eyes stung. He found the pilothouse window and pushed off the bulkhead, stroking hard, legs kicking, putting out one last effort. Bubbles escaped his lips as he let out the last of his air. Tiny pinpricks of light danced before his eyes.

  The Parker finally gave up the ghost and split in half, fiberglass shattered, wood snapped, and metal bent as the twenty-eight-foot Parker broke apart. A torrent of seawater pushed Splinter into the ceiling of the pilothouse as it tore from the deck and sank into the Atlantic.

  Splinter pulled the red clasp on his lifejacket and closed his eyes.

  20

  The life vest inflated, and Splinter was thrust upward in a swirling cloud of bubbles. The water was cold and dark, and he couldn’t see beyond the surging whitewater as he was sucked toward the surface. His shoulder hit something hard, and for a moment he was held up. He wiggled and shifted his position and continued upward through the darkness.

  Splinter broke the surface, gasping for air, lungs burning. Blackness covered the ocean, and debris from the Evenstar littered the surface, rolling with the waves.

  Poseidon scrambled from Splinter’s grasp and perched herself on his shoulders, coughing and choking up water.r />
  “Easy, buddy. You made it.” The cat looked like a drowned rat, but she was alive.

  Splinter remembered Lenah and yelled her name, then stopped. The creature was about, so he felt it best to keep quiet. He searched the flotsam; pieces of broken fiberglass, seat cushions, papers, everything they had was either floating in the drink or on the bottom of the ocean in what was left of the Parker.

  “Here! I’m here.”

  Splinter’s heart ached, and relief swam through him. If she’d died on his watch that would’ve been the end for him. “You OK?”

  She laughed. “All things considered.”

  The larger parts of the Parker were sinking and disappearing beneath the dark waves, but Splinter grabbed a seat cushion and used it to help support his weight. His lifejacket was working, but he was at the weight limit. He gently stroked through the water, trying not to disturb the debris field.

  Lenah clung to a chunk of fiberglass that had once been part of the Evenstar’s bow. Her lifejacket was punctured and lay across her chest like a deflated balloon. When Splinter reached her, she threw her arms around him and they started to sink.

  “Easy, there. Here.” Splinter thrust the seat cushion in her direction and she pounced on it.

  The wind out of the west picked up and wave heights increased from three to five feet and crashed over the remains of the sunken boat, driving the debris into the depths.

  “Quiet,” Splinter hissed.

  To his right, thirty yards off, a white caudal fin swished back and forth as the beast circled the debris field. The ocean surged when the beast swam past, but it was hard to see the creature in the darkness.

  It was hours until sun-up. A big wave crested and closed out on them, pushing Splinter underwater. Poseidon squealed, and positioned herself on Splinter’s head as he tried in vain to stay above the waves.

  “Here.” Lenah slid Splinter a chunk of the Parker and he placed the wet cat atop it. Poseidon did her best to stay balanced on the piece of fiberglass as it shifted in the turbulent sea, but Splinter had to help her or she would have slipped off.

  The wind howled, and Splinter’s fingers and toes were getting cold. The sea was temperate, but with the wind picking up the water felt icy. Splinter and Lenah huddled together, Poseidon on her float between them.