Skeleton Sea
Page 26
Holy freaking hell, it pushed me. And the bell where it bumped my shoulder gave to the touch, it was an ethereal gelatinous thing but it carried the weight of water—an iron ghost made of nothing but slime and water. Except for those tentacles, they were made of venom and I desperately kicked again to escape but as I kicked, a clump of tentacles caressed my legs.
It went on its drifting pulsing way and I went on my wildly propelled backwards way trying to escape to the corner of the cavern.
My legs tingled. I was stung. My breathing was out of control. Slow it down, fourscore and seven years ago....
I wasn't stung.
I blessed the skin of my wetsuit.
When I managed to regain my breath and my senses I saw that the next giant had already flowed out of the gate into the front room.
And then I saw a crazy thing.
Oscar Flynn had left his wall and was swimming toward the giant.
I yanked my gaze to Walter and Tolliver and Lanny and I questioned their sanity as well, for the three of them had left the safety of their wall and were inching toward the gate, Tolliver and Walter flanking Lanny, arms linked, as if they thought their joined mass was a match for these huge beasts. But maybe they weren't crazy, maybe they had glimpsed more giants coming out of the depths, or maybe they just could not bear to remain in that jail of a room any longer.
And now I turned my focus back to the things in front of my nose and I saw that the first giant was drifting-pulsing to the mouth of the tunnel and the second giant was through the gate and following its leader and the third was halfway through the gate.
Oh sweet Jesus they were leaving.
The sweet little current was taking them out of the cavern and it was clearly going to take them out through the tunnel to the open sea.
I got it.
I'd already seen one out there. I'd seen it two days ago on our first dive to Target Red when I'd looked across the chasm and glimpsed the ghostly shape in the murk, the shape I had thought was a Humboldt squid or undulating kelp or a huge purple-stripe jellyfish.
Purple-stripe huge? That wasn't huge, not compared to this giant, this thing. Compared to this, the purple-stripe was a delicate little flower.
The ghost I had seen across the canyon was the same as the colossal bruiser I saw now.
And then I wondered if Joao Silva had met one of these beasts, instead of a purple-stripe, ending up nearly stung to death.
But no, the fence gate was shut when we entered.
Lanny had to open it.
Still, he'd come here to fix what he broke and what if that was the gate, some Lanny blooper had that acoustically opened the gate and let some of these beasts out. And then somehow the glitching signal closed the gate again? However it worked, was it you Lanny?
I stared at him and even now, sandwiched between Walter and Tolliver, he held his hands over his face mask. Couldn't bear to look at what he'd done?
The three men rode the current toward the gate, passing through the chimney-hole light shafts.
I stared at the sifting falling particulates and I got it.
That fenced-off room was an aquarium.
Growing monsters, feeding them on zooplankton falling through the chimney holes, on the nutrients from the upwelling currents that washed into the tunnel and through the mesh of the fence.
I yanked my gaze to Oscar Flynn.
Why?
Flynn was approaching the third beast.
I glanced toward the tunnel. The first two giants had already drifted and pulsed their way into the tunnel and all I saw now were trailing tentacles. Okay okay, they're leaving. The last one, the straggler, was passing by right in front of me.
I held my breath. It's okay. He's leaving too.
For a moment I thought that Flynn was going to leave as well, follow the last one, swim on out the tunnel.
But he wasn't leaving. He was treading water right beside the thing.
That made no sense.
And then I swear he looked across the cavern straight at me and I swear that he smiled although of course I could not make out any expression behind his mask.
Oscar Flynn reached out and patted the bell of the mammoth jellyfish.
Like it was a pet.
A pet with billions upon billions of stinging cells lining the hundreds upon hundreds of tentacles.
Maybe their venom was mild.
Maybe it wasn't.
It wasn't mild, for Joao Silva.
I realized that it didn't matter, to Flynn, because he had no inch of skin exposed. He wore a Neoporene mask. He wore a fucking protective mask to guard against stings. If that tentacle that had brushed my leg had instead brushed my face, the skin there exposed, I guessed I would have found out just how venomous were the stings of Oscar Flynn's pets. I wanted to swim over and rip the regulator out of his mouth and skin the protective mask off his face and shove that giant off its drifting course, right into the face of its master.
I wanted to do crazy things.
Instead I swam the short distance to meet my friends. Walter released Lanny and wrapped his arms around me. Tolliver still held onto Lanny, pulling him close, whether for comfort or even now to prevent Lanny from doing the job he had come to do.
But what more was to be done?
Lanny did not look like he was up to doing any sort of job. His eyes, behind the face mask, were large. I thought I saw fear there.
What I couldn't see—when I looked—was Oscar Flynn.
Flynn had disappeared.
I figured he had followed his pets into the tunnel, out to open sea—and all I could think was good riddance to the lot of you.
And then I turned to look back at the room where the giants had come from and I saw that I was wrong.
Oscar Flynn hadn't escaped into the tunnel.
He had entered the fenced-off room.
CHAPTER 44
I thought, he's crazy.
What if there are more giants back there in the depths?
Yeah, crazy maybe but not suicidal, not Oscar Flynn, not the man with an ego bigger than his colossal pets.
No, he's not worried, he's in there on a mission.
Flynn was swimming toward the control panel where Lanny had tried to do his job. Where the cables ran. And now Flynn was going to finish the job.
The keypad light glowed. All systems go.
For what?
Never mind. You go. Grab Walter and Tolliver and Lanny and go now.
Go where?
To the tunnel of course—as soon as that last monster clears out you all can follow at a respectful distance and when you get out to sea don't stop going until you reach the surface.
Or, instead, go into the fenced room.
Grab Walter and Tolliver and the three of you tackle Oscar Flynn and incapacitate him and hope that Lanny doesn't follow you inside and get into it, hope you don't all end up in some tangled mess of flailing limbs and ripped-out regulators.
I must have flinched, ready to make a move, because Walter's grip on my arm turned to iron.
I looked at him and he nodded toward the control panel out here in the front room, the main power source, the big enchilada. Let's turn off the juice. Cut off Flynn's power. And then Walter let go of me and finned toward the panel.
I wanted to object. You don't know the code.
But Walter knew what to do. He had his dive knife in hand. The hell with keypads. He was going to cut the cable.
How long to cut through that thick band of insulation and wires, that thick snake?
I split my attention between Walter and Flynn, Flynn at the keypad in the fenced room and Walter putting his blade to the cable out here, and I saw Lanny trying to wrestle free of Tolliver and Tolliver trying to hang on to his catch. And I saw Flynn at the keypad punching a button.
I found myself finning through the gate into the fenced room, pulling my dive knife from its sheath.
Flynn flipped a switch
A floodlight blazed in the fenced room.
Flynn at the keypad hesitated, and then he nodded and his fingers flew across the number buttons. It looked for all the world like he was keying in a password. I remembered the numbers written on Lanny's slate. Flynn had given Lanny the password but we had interrupted Lanny before he was able to enter it.
Nothing interrupted Oscar Flynn.
We were too late.
Flynn pushed away from the keypad, finning toward the small PVC-framed gate set into the wall.
I had kind of forgotten it.
I remembered it now, with alarm. Password entered, signal sent along the cable to the gate mechanism.
The little gate was swinging open.
I began to retreat.
And while I propelled myself back along the fence line toward the main gate, I could not stop looking where Flynn was looking—at the little gate. The floodlit water rippled, a little current outflowing from the side room.
I thought I saw something riding that little current.
It was so nearly transparent I thought it was a trick of my eyes.
It was so small I would have missed it if I'd blinked.
It was a gossamer beauty.
It was perhaps the size of a thimble, see-through but for the peppering of gold flecks on the bell. The bell had flattened sides and from each corner trailed a long delicate tentacle, a good deal longer than the bell. The bell was remarkable largely because of its shape. Its shape was cube-like.
A word came to me—I actually heard the word, in my memory, in Violet Russell's voice—cubozoan.
Box jellyfish.
No no no. Oh holy shit no.
But wait, she'd said cousin, we get cubozoans here but they're cousins of the highly toxic tropical box jellyfish, the one in the Discovery Channel ten most deadly creatures documentary. Our little boxes are only cousins, gentle creatures with mild stings.
That's what she'd said.
Yeah sure but that's what she'd told us about moon jellyfish stings, before she was gobsmacked by the highly toxic Aurelia that had evolved into something from a bad dream.
The delicate little cubozoan was joined by another.
Holy holy shit.
I flipped and swam for the main gate and Walter met me there and yanked me through. We crowded up against Tolliver and Lanny, Lanny still in Tolliver's grip, Lanny shaking his head so hard he was going to give himself a whiplash.
In the fenced room, another cubozoan drifted out through the little gate.
And then another. And another and another.
And now there was a flushing of box jellyfish out of the side room. They multiplied, they bloomed, they kept coming and it seemed there would be no end to them.
And on they came.
We should go.
Was the tunnel clear?
I whipped around to look and saw the last monster still visible in the tunnel, the one Flynn had patted, his pet, pulsing now like a giant heart, filling the tunnel, the size of it still a shock. Oh lordy what a sight when I'd first seen them coming from the depths, a couldn't-tear-my-eyes-away sight. Didn't give another thought to the little gate into the side room, never dreamed of tiny cubes in there. Who would? With Flynn's aquarium stuffed with the big bruisers, who would dream of looking for anything else? Not with those giants standing guard.
Bodyguards.
I yanked my attention back to the fenced room. Even in the few moments I'd looked away, it had filled with more cubozoans.
Flynn hadn't moved. He hung in place, lazily finning.
I thought, you're crazy. You're going to get swarmed.
And he was.
The big diver all but disappeared in a thicket of delicate jellyfish. He wore them like a gossamer cloak.
I could feel it, I'd worn a cloak like that, I'd been coated with tiny glassy jellyfish, I'd swatted at my wetsuit, get them off, I'd tried to wipe my face clean of them but there were too many. I too had worn a jellyfish cloak and I could feel the panic.
Flynn wasn't panicking. Wasn't wiping his face. No need. His face was fully masked.
He was untouchable.
He turned now and swam toward the fence, toward the open gate. He swam sleekly and strongly, his cloak flowing with him.
Behind him, more box jellyfish swarmed out of the side room and it was a mesmerizing sight, glassy cubes shining in the floodlight, forming haloes in the shafts of light from the chimney holes.
And on they came.
Flynn slowed, careful not to outswim his cloak, gathering the jellyfish to him once again, and he now approached the gate in a more measured pace.
He was going to bring his cloak out to us. And the rest were going to follow.
Lanny lunged, breaking free of Tolliver, aiming himself like a missile at the open gate, latching onto the frame, trying to pull it shut.
The swing arm remained rigid. The gate wouldn't move.
He turned to us, urgent, and I was the closest to him, to the gate, close enough to see his eyes wide behind his face mask, and I knew what he was asking of us. Of me.
Help.
Don't let those things out.
I was frozen. You mean, shut those things in. You mean, shut Oscar Flynn inside because he wore a cloak of box jellyfish.
Lanny made a fist and punched in the direction of Flynn in his cloak. At the oncoming army of cubozoans.
And then Lanny looked at me. You know dive signals?
I knew that one. Tolliver taught us. Danger.
Lanny tugged again at the gate frame, wild with the need to shut it.
I pictured the hacienda where Lanny lived, trying to recall if there was a garage, if it had an automatic door, and if there was I guessed that Lanny had never had to open it during a power outage, because if he had he would surely now be looking for a mechanical release lever, the kind of bypass that disengages the drive motor and allows you to manually operate the gate.
I had.
And I'd been gatekeeper here long enough to recognize the power operator box, at the junction of the gate and the fence.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Flynn regrouping again, waiting for the current to bring the box jellies to him again, to cloak him again.
In his wake followed the entire cubozoan army.
I lunged for the operator box, found the manual release lever, flipped it, felt the tension in the armature ease. Felt control pass to me.
To me and Lanny.
We worked in tandem now, pulling the gate shut.
Slamming the door in Flynn's face.
No no no you won't release your pets into our sea.
***
An epoch passed.
The epoch that led from innocence to guilt.
Lanny wore his stubborn look, mouth sealed so tight it seemed he was going to swallow his regulator.
Tolliver and Walter were within a quick reach of the lever. Either one of them could disengage the lock and open the gate. It was under manual control.
They did not.
Flynn, on the other side of the gate, gripped the frame.
He was now fully coated. The fence was now fully coated. There were thousands of cubozoans swarming the fence, the front line nearly mashed and it was only the smoothness of the mesh and its gentle give that prevented wholesale slaughter. Hell, it was only the tiny holes of the mesh that prevented wholesale escape.
The four of us hung there on the free side of the fence.
And then Flynn drew his dive knife.
He put the blade to the mesh and the tip poked through one hole but the full blade itself could not fit into the tiny aperture and so he angled it to cut with just the tip, an awkward attack, trying to saw and rend but the strand of mesh under attack just bent around the knife tip, a polyfiber too slippery and too tough to slice.
He let go of the mesh and wiped his face mask
. Wiping away the jellyfish.
And now he switched tactics, slashing at the mesh, putting his whole massive body into the fight, and his jellyfish cloak rippled in alarm.
He began to panic.
He jerked his head to look along the fence line. Looking for what? A gap in the mesh?
And then he dropped his knife and put his hands to his neck.
He grasped the neck of his wetsuit. There was a gap, where the wetsuit neck did not quite meet the bottom edge of his sting-guard face mask, there at the base of his neck, a gap that must have opened as he lost control.
A little cube was there waiting.
And then another, and another.
Flynn wrenched and peeled down the neck of his wetsuit.
He wore a necklace of jeweled cubes, a choker of glassy tentacles.
An epoch passed.
The epoch that led from life to death.
His hands clawed his neck and his legs kicked out and his body twisted—violent violent violent—all of it so violent that he flung off jellyfish like a wet dog flinging off drops of water. It looked like he was trying to throw off his wetsuit or maybe even his skin. And then he froze. He went from fight to surrender in a flash, in a millisecond, in a speed that could not be timed. He went rigid. He went into shock. His eyes behind the face mask squeezed shut as though he could not stand the floodlight. As though he could not stand the pain. Shutting it out. Focusing inward. I thought, nothing else exists for him now. No memories, no hopes, no awareness of a mission and certainly no awareness of us out here, beyond the mesh, no knowledge that his audience watched in horror. He was subsumed. And then suddenly he spasmed. It came fast as a snake strike. His hands flew to his chest. His mouth opened wide, so wide that the regulator slipped out but it did not seem to matter because he did not try to find it and put it back. It clearly was of no use. Lungs paralyzed.
His mouth opened wide in a desperate gasp seeking air.
Finding only water.
CHAPTER 45
We four exited the cavern, exited the tunnel, into the open sea, and we swam with the need of survivors upward toward the air.
CHAPTER 46
Tolliver was at the wheel of the Breaker.
Walter and I sat on the starboard bench, flanking Lanny.