The Black: Arrival

by Paul E. Cooley

  *****

  They knew the room was bugged. They knew the cameras in the corners recorded every word they said. But that didn’t matter.

  A fresh pot of coffee sat in the middle of the table. Neil sat next to Kate and blew a cloud of steam from his mug.

  “This is crazy.” Kate poured a little cream into her coffee and then stirred it with a wooden stick. “I mean, they want us to just pretend nothing happened and start working with this shit like it’s just some other oil?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think that’s exactly why they want us on the project. They know we’re not going to do anything that might let it out.”

  Kate pursed her lips. “Maybe. But I don’t like the idea of living with a bullseye on my back.”

  “I don’t either. But I like the idea of someone else messing with that crap even less.” He sipped his coffee. “If I’m working with it, I know someone else isn’t. And I think we can help them at least keep it from getting loose.”

  “True.” Kate played with the stirrer. The fake wood was bright and grained except for where it had touched the coffee. Some connection started to form in her mind. It was an idea. The kernel of a plan. She couldn’t help but smile. She looked up at Neil. “So. Let’s say yes.”

  Read on for a free sample of Live Bait

  Acknowledgements

  I wrote this novel during a pretty turbulent time in my life. I started a new job, had to say goodbye to my furry son Indiana, and was finally forced to deal with mortality in a way I’d never expected. The fact I finished this book and have already started the third in the series is a testament to the support of my family, friends, and my readers. That said, I have to give a shoutout to the following folks without whom this book would not have been possible.

  Thomas Cooley—as with The Black, my father, chemical engineer extraordinaire, tutored me (once again and with less shouting) in chemistry and analysis equipment. He was always there when I had a crazy idea and even managed to plant a few of his own. Any violations of physical laws are intentional on my part. Any discrepancies with actual chemistry, however, are mine and mine alone.

  Carolyn Cooley—her constant support and cheerleading has always kept me writing. I am proud to be her son.

  As always, I have to thank The Fiendlings. They have supported my work since 2009 and continue their incessant clamor for more.

  Paul E Cooley

  April 2015

  About the Author

  A writer, podcaster, and software architect from Houston, Texas, Paul Elard Cooley has been writing since the age of 12. In 2009, he began producing free psychological thriller and horror podcasts, essays, and reviews available from Shadowpublications.com and iTunes.

  His stories have been listened to by thousands and he has been a guest on such notable podcasts as Podioracket, John Mierau's “Podcast Teardown,” Geek Out with Mainframe, Shadowcast Audio, and Vertigo Radio Live. In 2010, his short story Canvas and novella Tattoo were nominated for Parsec Awards. Tattoo became a Parsec Award finalist. He has collaborated with New York Times Bestselling author Scott Sigler on the series “The Crypt” and co-wrote the novella “The Rider” (projected release in 2015). In addition to his writing, Paul has contributed his voice talents to a number of podiofiction productions.

  He is a co-host on the renowned Dead Robots' Society writing podcast and enjoys interacting with readers and other writers.

  For more information about current and upcoming projects, please visit Shadowpublications.com.

  To stalk Paul on social media:

  Twitter: paul_e_cooley

  Facebook: paulelardcooley

  Email: paul@shadowpublications.com

  Want to know when a new book or podcast presentation is released? Join the Shadowpublications.com mailing list:

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  The Loneliness of the Midsummer Sturgeon Hunter

  The alarm clock went off at a quarter to four. My head pounded with the malt liquor I hadn't yet metabolized. Bones groaned from a week of overtime on the new high-rise construction site downtown. I lacked the strength to rise, but I thought of prehistoric fish and a little light glowed hot inside me. My first weekend off in two weeks. Today I was going fishing.

  I descended the ladder of the creaking loft bed, downed an energy drink in the dark. I gathered up my fishing gear and the bait sack from the fridge, then stepped out of the studio apartment into the brisk pre-dawn air. Except for some bums sleeping in doorways, downtown Portland was dark and empty. I lit a cigarette, hoping it would burn away the impending hangover.

  I could've driven to the river, but I loved walking through the city in the desolate hours, pacing the cold, dark tail-end of a summer night.

  The sturgeon gear was heavy and awkward to carry. A twelve-foot rod with a reel twice the size of my fist, a large nylon net with an extendable metal handle, several pounds of squid and herring in the bait bag, and a duffel containing a buck knife, pliers, headlamp, and terminal tackle.

  On the walk over Morrison Bridge, several boats sped along the river beneath, vanishing either upriver to Oregon City or downriver to Multnomah Channel, but none of the boats anchored up anywhere near the Esplanade in Portland Harbor, where I planned to fish. I sent off a silent prayer to the sturgeon gods and quickened my pace.

  Minutes before five, I finally arrived at my favorite fishing hole. From the other end of the floating walkway, another lone sturgeon fisherman was also arriving.

  I set down my gear well south of the other fisherman, alone, at the spot where the river depth dropped from thirty feet to eighty-plus. I rigged up with a whole squid, my go-to bait on most occasions. The tide was slack and hardly moving. Not ideal sturgeon conditions, but tides always changed and I had all day.

  Following my first cast, I checked the time on my phone. 5:03. Too nervous and cold to sit down, I lit a cigarette and paced, keeping a watchful eye on my pole for the familiar tap-tap of a sturgeon testing the bait with its vacuum-like mouth. Across the river, the neon Welcome to Portland sign flashed. Even when the fishing was slow, the Esplanade was one of my favorite places to be in the early hours. Some nights I went straight there from the bars just to watch the whole town come alive, before drunkenly stumbling home to bed.

  Over the next hour and a half, the bite was dead. Something bit a chunk out of a herring, but the teeth marks and the suddenness of the short strike suggested a species other than sturgeon, most likely a bullhead.

  The sun was coming up now and I began succumbing to the hangover, which thudded between my ears, making total agony of consciousness. I was resigning to a slow fishing day, even weighing the benefits of turning in early, beating back the hangover with a cold beer, when suddenly the ice was broken.

  The guy fishing to the right of me, about thirty yards away, hooked into a sturgeon. The guy's rod – a stout, yellow antique – buckled over. I looked on with the heart-thudding anticipation reserved for those who pursue big game. Every fish could be a giant.

  This fish turned out to be a shaker, maybe two feet long and well short of legal size. By the time the man had returned the fish to the river, I turned my focus back to my own rod. I was feeling increasingly desperate, more so now that I was running low on cigarettes.

  I lit one of my last cigarettes off the one before. That’s when my rod buckled. I waited for a second full takedown before setting the hook and feeling the affirmation of a fish on the other end. The sturgeon fought hard, diving deep several times.

  Cigarette pinched between my lips, smoke drifted up and made my eyes water, but I squinted against the sting and focused entirely on the fish, trying to anticipate its next movements. The sturgeon tore off on a run. I gained back line again before the fish made another run. We went back and forth like that until finally the great fish broke the surface, leaping fully out of the water, displaying its snow-white belly and sharp diamond scutes for all the world to see.

  I loosened the d
rag in case the sturgeon made a last ditch effort at freedom. With the pole in my left hand, I took the large net in my right, leaned over the railing, and scooped up the defeated fish. But already I could tell it was not a keeper. I tossed it back in the river and baited up again, confidence restored.

  Little time passed before my rod bowed again. I reeled up another shaker and tossed it back.

  The fishing slowed. Another half hour passed. I snubbed out my last cigarette and set about retying a new rig. That was when the fisherman down the way started yelling. At first it was hard for me to make out what he was saying, but the way his rod was bent into a horseshoe clarified everything. He was shouting, “Net! Net! Net!”

  I grabbed my net and hurried over. I kept my distance to give the man room to fight the fish, net poised so that when the fish rose, I'd be in position. But the water there was eighty feet deep, and the fish wasn't giving up ground easily. The man rode the fish hard. His drag looked too tight and I worried he was going to break off. Longing for another cigarette, blood pounding in my ears, I held my breath. The fight was almost over.

  Bubbles boiled on the surface, followed by a fat keeper sturgeon, likely a fifty incher.

  I lowered my net over the railing and down into the water to scoop up the trophy fish, but as soon as the nylon netting brushed against the sturgeon's gray, diamond-studded back, it took off again and bolted straight down into deep water.

  "Shit, man, I'm sorry," I said.

  The man looked pissed, but he didn't express it. "No worries. I'll get her back up," he said, while the fish peeled off line, heading straight for the bottom and out toward the shipping channel. The long run tired the great fish though, and soon the man fought it back to the floating dock. It thrashed its tail in futility as it rose to the surface. I was set on not bungling the net job this time.

  The fish rolled belly-up, exhausted. Except for the snow-white belly, the fish was as gray as a Portland day. It looked like a defeated god. The gills worked overtime. The tubular mouth protruded, stuffed with a whole herring. I observed all this in mere moments, and in one swift motion, I plunged the big net into the water and raised it up from beneath the fish. I lifted the net, muscles straining and heart thudding faster as I felt the tremendous weight of the fish.

  I heaved the sturgeon upward, but just before the net swung over the high railing, a massive boil appeared on the surface of the water underneath the sturgeon. With the swiftness of a black mamba striking prey, the head of a gargantuan beast rose up and swallowed the sturgeon whole. The monster's teeth tore through the net like it was made of cobwebs. The hooked jaws of the terrible fish were scarred and mottled green and brown, filled with teeth larger than a man's fingers. It engulfed the four-foot-long sturgeon as if it were a baitfish.

  The man screamed obscenities as the monster vanished in the mud-colored river with his catch, and I was left holding a mangled, empty net.

  "What the fuck was that?" the man shouted. "What the fuck?"

  Judging by its jaws, I would've guessed that it was a muskie, but muskie didn't live in the Willamette, and muskie didn't grow to be twenty feet long. Based on the size of its head, and the ease with which the thing gulped down a good-sized sturgeon, the monster was at least twenty feet long.

  The whole scenario had pretty much knocked the hangover right out of me. I could barely contain my excitement, or the trembling of my hands. Sturgeon over ten feet still lurked in the river, and in days now gone there had been sturgeon over twenty feet long. However, the days of twenty-foot-long sturgeon had ended more than a century ago, when rich San Franciscans developed a taste for caviar. Besides, sturgeons were more scavengers and bottom feeders than upper food chain predators.

  The man who'd nearly landed the sturgeon lit up a cigarette. "I swear, this river is cursed," he said. "My name's Bob, by the way."

  "Mind if I bum a cigarette?"

  The man fumbled at the breast pocket of his flannel shirt for his cigarettes, slid one out and handed it to me.

  I stuck the cigarette between my lips and reached for my lighter, but Bob held his own lighter up to the cigarette.

  I hated when people lit cigarettes for me. The flame always felt hotter when I wasn't in control. I didn't protest. I'd gotten a cigarette, after all.

  After a deep, lung-choking drag, I said, "I'm Gordon West."

  Bob nodded in acknowledgment of this, and we smoked in silence, processing what had occurred. When my cigarette burned down to a stub, I crushed it beneath my boot and nodded, having settled on a plan in my mind. "We have to catch it," I said.

  "If you want to go after that thing with anything less than the Marines, then I'd say you're crazy."

  "So what do you say?"

  "I'd say it's nice to meet you, but you're crazy."

  "You in, or you out?"

  Bob stood there, clearly replaying the scene in his mind, the monster rising up from the river and chowing down on the netted sturgeon. "Man, we can't go after that thing. This ain't fucking Moby-Dick," he said.

  It was the fastest and most ferocious animal attack I had ever seen in my life, and I'd seen plenty of great whites in action during the time I spent as a deckhand on a yellowfin charter off the coast of South Africa.

  "Guess you're right," I said, the initial excitement of the encounter now fading as reality set in. Odds of ever seeing the river monster again were slim to nothing. I figured I'd gotten my one good glimpse at something truly unknown.

  "Tell you what, though," Bob said, "I could really go for a beer after that."

  I held up my ruined net. "Well, since I lost your fish, I guess that means first round's on me."

  Live Bait is available from Amazon here