Push, push, push, but she couldn't. Get. In.
She started breathing even harder than she already was. Short, fast gasps that served not to energize but to drain her. She felt sluggish. Stupid. And if she wasn't careful, her air would –
Air!
She realized what was keeping her here, among the sharks that were now pushing constantly against her.
How long until they bite?
It was her ascent tanks. The air tanks she would switch to when she began her long trip to the top, two tanks she had slung in a side harness and that now kept her from getting into the hole.
She didn't think, just acted. Fumbled with the clips that bound the tanks to her. She would have to drop them. Leave them, and hope she could return to claim them after the sharks left.
If they leave.
Something nipped her leg. Not hard enough to qualify as a bite, but the pinch was accompanied by a small shake. A beginning to the bite and then to the frenzy that would follow.
Faster. Hurry. Faster!
She couldn't find the clips. Half in the ship, half out, and her arms couldn't bend around and find the clips.
She wiggled backward. Acutely aware that she was just presenting even more of herself to the sharks. Suddenly realizing that they wouldn't have to bite her: a nip to any of her air hoses could be catastrophic.
Back, Mercedes, get back, you worthless bitch!
It was Bill's voice that shouted at her. His words that almost ended her will to fight. She sagged for a moment, unaware of anything but the black edges seeping toward the center of her vision, the pound of her pulse.
Then a shark bit her.
This wasn't a nip, it was an actual bite. Fiery pain ran up her leg. Shocked her into action.
She found the rest of the clips and ties. Released the ascent tanks. They fell behind her, somewhere she couldn't see.
She wriggled her way into the porthole. Not sure how bad the bite to her leg was, not caring. She was in. She was away.
The darkness surrounded her.
And she was gone.
DANGERDANGERDANGER
~^~^~^~^~
After Mercedes disappeared, several things happened.
First, her go-home line caught on the rough edge of the aperture she had entered. It was a thick line, heavy gauge, strong.
It started to rasp back and forth. Started to fray.
Second, the sharks suddenly stopped moving. They floated motionless in the darkness. Each was aware of its brothers and sisters, hanging there in the silence of the deep.
Each was also aware of something else. Fingers reaching into rudimentary minds, pressing here, probing there. Touches that brought with them the basic impulses these predators could understand.
A moment before the sensations had been confusing. Each was herded in certain directions. Guided here with thoughts of foodfoodfoodfoodfood, then rocketing back with sensations of dangerdangerdanger.
None of them realized the way they were being used. Certainly not on a conscious level, and less so in the stimulus-response centers that were now being played so astutely. None understood that they had swam in controlled circles, that the strongest had been sent forth and turned away in very specific ways.
Ways that would drive them, and in so doing also drive the other. The strange creature that swam with even stranger fin-not-fin shapes. The thing that bubbled and made so much noise noise noise noise noise in the otherwise peaceful solemnity of the deep and the dark.
They drove it back
drove it back
drove it back
drove it back.
Foodfoodfoodfood and they raced at the thing, certain it was good, that it would satiate the sudden need in mind and emptiness in belly.
Then, mouths agape, they would hear the shriek of dangerdangerdanger and fling themselves away, turning on tail and rushing away until the cycle continued.
Then, suddenly, the strange creature had dropped away. Fallen into a hole that the creatures knew. This was a place darker than the ocean.
They hung there, motionless over the opening, but each knew that down there was dangerdangerDANGER greater than any they had ever known.
They hung. Fingers probed, tentacles tickled their minds.
Goodgoodgoodgood the sharks felt. Gogogogogo.
They shook themselves as one.
They swam away. To feed, to rest, to rut.
Away from the dark place.
Away from the dangerdangerdangerDANGER into which the strange fish had fallen.
DIAMOND
~^~^~^~^~
Geoffrey floated over crumbling bits of nothing and his head hurt and he wondered why the hell he was down here instead of in his nice office with its leather seats and air conditioning and his secretary with the amazing boobs. The pounding in his head was getting worse and worse, driving spikes into his mind, boom-boom-boom. All he could focus on was the pounding, all he could think of – aside from Jo of the Amazing Bazoombas – was sonofabitch, bastard, sonofabitch, bastard.
He was done. Tired. Thirsty. He usually brought along a squeeze bottle of Gatorade or something with a sport top to drink, but had forgotten this time. Drinking underwater was a tricky maneuver for idiot newbs, but Geoffrey was not an idiot newb. He had mastered the buying and selling of futures, the ability to be the short or the long of any deal and still make a killing; he could sure as hell manage squirting Mango Extremo into his mouth at fifty feet.
But you're not at fifty, G-man. One-hundred-fifty.
That voice pounded like his headache, and he wondered whose it was. Not his, that was sure. He was The Shiz, The Man, El Grande Macho. No way he was going to believe even for one second that this dive was beyond him.
So it must be that sonofabitchbastard Tim. Guy thought he knew everything. But what was he, really? A glorified swimming teacher. What did he know about putting together a portfolio, managing an ETF, predicting how far gold would go?
No, Tim was a twit and a bastard if there ever was one.
He might have been right about not going on this trip, though. Just not for the reasons he had his panties in a bunch about.
Geoffrey thought suddenly about Jo's panties. He hadn't seen them – yet. He bet they were amazing. And very small.
Geoffrey shook his head. His thoughts were all over the place. Was this the narcosis Sonofabitch Tim had been all over him about?
No. No way. That stuff probably affects lots of people, but I doubt it would get me this fast. Huh-uh.
Still, he thought it was probably time to go. His dive computer – which was a Suunto DX wristwatch style thirteen-hundred-dollar-top-of-the-line-you-sonofabitches-because-Daddy-deserves-the-best dive computer – said he had plenty of time left. But he was just… bored. Commodities were never boring. His life was never boring. Jo's fantastic chest muffins were definitely never boring.
But this, this was –
He froze. Stopped so suddenly that his right calf twinged from the speed at which he went from a leisurely kick to a stock-still hold.
What the…?
He had been swimming over a crumbled line of nothing. Just coral and little fishies and nothing else. But in front of him there was a huge pile of debris. Something that left no doubt in his mind that this was, in fact, a wreck. The structure itself was all but invisible, buried under the sea life that had slowly claimed it as its own. But something about the tilt, about the vertical lines where something had clearly shattered and come to rest in the perfectly straight layers and angles that nature abhorred… it all screamed "People Were Here."
The wreckage was a good six feet tall. It seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, though Geoffrey knew that was impossible. It had probably been there the whole time but he just hadn't noticed it because he was –
(narced oh man I think it's real and I might be narced time to go G-man time to go)
– thinking about Jo. Well, the good parts of Jo.
But here it was, piles of something that
had collapsed in on itself under the power of whatever had killed this ship.
And between the piles: darknesses. Cracks and crevasses that eluded the light from his (best in class!) dive light.
And in the darkness – in one darkness in particular – a flash of light. A gleam.
Geoffrey remembered the coin that Raven –
(no way to I call that douche nozzle Mr.)
– had pulled from the stiff. The corpse had been thoroughly creepy, but there was nothing creepy about that gold piece. Geoffrey traded in gold all the time, and he had a nose for what was valuable, what was junk, what prices would go up, what would go down. That sonofabitch coin was pure value, nothing but rising profit in its future.
And it had glimmered. Gleamed the way something in the crack right in front of Geoffrey was gleaming now.
Sonofabitch, yes!
He reached for it… and a flurry of fish seemed to explode from nowhere. One second he was more or less alone, and the next he was in the eye of an underwater hurricane composed of silver fish the size of his arm. They flashed and flapped, spinning around him so close that he felt the ten thousand caresses of their ten thousand fins as they passed over and under and all around him.
He felt his breathing speed up. Panic. What was up? What was down?
A piece of his mind, about three levels below the part that engaged first in Jo's sweater stuffing and now focused on the less pleasant fact of impending panic, whispered at him to slow down. To control his breathing. Shallow breathing used up air that much faster, used up the oxygen that was the only thing between life and death down here. No matter how top of the line your dive computer was, it couldn't recalculate based on your breathing too fast underwater.
Darkness pushed at him. Surrounded him. The pounding in his head worsened. He felt his mouth go dry. Surrounded by water and he felt like his tongue was a damn crouton.
He hit the release valve on his BC and dropped, hoping irrationally that if he could get close to the ground – or to the deck of this wreck – that he could get below the fish. Like they were a fire and the first rule was to stop and drop.
That's two rules, G-man. Can't you count?
Shut up, man!
He fell downward, only certain that this was down because the bleed-off from his BC should have dropped him like a rock.
And sure enough, he hit the deck a second later. Literally. Felt the soft coral padding him. It'd probably kill them, but that was their fault for not being able to get out of the way.
The fish were gone.
Just like that. There, then not there.
He looked around, suddenly unsure if he had really seen all those fish. Maybe he had dreamed it. Maybe he was narced.
He was still breathing fast. Too fast. He tried to slow down, to take deep breaths. Couldn't. Panic was by its nature a force beyond control.
Geoffrey looked around wildly, not sure what he was even looking for, but unable to stop himself.
He looked into the crack. That deep dark place with the shining light of something. And before he could think about it, could think about the wisdom of putting his hand in a hole in the deep water, he reached in and grabbed for the glimmer.
He felt something hard. Round. Cold.
He pulled it out.
Opened his fist.
SONOFABITCHBASTARDBITCH!
It was a diamond. Not dirty, not crusted over with slimy sea life. Gleaming, beautiful, perfect.
And it was the size of a golf ball.
You've made it, G-man! Screw the trades, screw the job, screw Jo, I'm playing with the big boys from now on!
Then something darted out of the crack. The same place he had put forth his hand and drawn out his chance at riches beyond dream. But the thing that came out now wasn't dream… it was nightmare.
A green flash. The impression of a writhing hose.
Then pain.
The moray eel had to be six feet long. Thick as Geoffrey's neck, its mouth a permanently grimacing line of razor teeth.
That mouth had engulfed Geoffrey's hand. Those teeth were digging into him. It hurt. Oh sonofabitch it hurt.
Geoffrey screamed. A silver cloud enveloped him as the regulator popped out of his mouth. Then it faded away from his vision. Instead of silver he saw red: a cloud of blood floating around his hand. Mixing with the green of the eel, a bright tableau of pain.
Geoffrey kept screaming. Started whipping his hand back and forth, back and forth. The eel just ground down harder. More blood came.
Geoffrey's thoughts tumbled. Jo's boobs. The time he nearly lost it all on the market. And a random bit of trivia: the fact that morays clung to anchors in the rocks and crevasses they preferred. Their bite couldn't kill a man. Impossible.
But they could hold tight. Hold so long that a diver ran out of air.
Geoffrey shook his hand. Harder and harder and so hard he felt his shoulder ache with the force.
The eel held on.
Its eyes, unblinking and wide, seemed full of malevolent purpose. Hold, hold, hold.
Geoffrey realized he had stopped screaming. He needed to breathe, but his regulator was still floating around somewhere in front of him. Somewhere he couldn't concentrate on because he was dealing with the bastard eel.
I'm gonna die. Gonna die without ever seeing Jo's panties.
He yanked his hand harder. Harder. Couldn't even see it now: it was completely obscured by a shifting mass of blood.
And the eel held on.
QUESTIONS
~^~^~^~^~
Sue swam along the surface of the wreck, barely registering that everything below her was passing far faster than the rate she was actually swimming. She only thought of Debi.
Found her tank.
She's dead. No other story.
What if the tank went down without her?
She's been gone for weeks.
People have survived at sea for longer.
She swam, and then bled some air into her BC so she could swim a bit higher. Readjusted for neutral buoyancy at a height that allowed her a wider field of vision, allowed her to see more of the ship in the brightness of her dive light.
She kept swimming. Couldn't stop – on any level.
The more of the ship she passed over, the more convinced she became that this was a World War II vessel. A twist of metal that could have been the remains of a deck gun. A pile of wreckage that might have been a radar array.
Over it all was the near-deafening drum of her pulse. She had heard some technical divers refer to the sound one heard while deep air diving as "the jungle drums," and the name was apt. It wasn't just a pounding, it was a beat syncopated to the pounding of her heart, the arrhythmic bounce of air bubbles going by her ears. The jungle drums. One part of the mind calling out Danger! in a scream that could not be countered, only ignored.
When the drums pounded, the darkness at the edges of her eyesight seemed to pull in a bit closer. Then in the near-instant silences between drumbeats, it would retract. In, out, in, out. But she couldn't be sure if the ins and outs were the same in length, or if the darkness settled a bit farther each time it encroached. Territory taken from her consciousness that might never be replaced.
The ship ended.
The end was abrupt, a falling-away from ten feet below her to something far deeper. This was another risk of wreck diving: operating at one-hundred-fifty feet was the level at the top of the wreck. Following its contours might mean much deeper diving, depending on the size of the vessel.
This ship looked like it had been sheared in half.
Torpedo? Mine?
She had no way of knowing. All she knew was that the contours of the ship had revealed no more clues. Nothing but Debi's air tank.
She needed more.
She had to find out.
She went over the side.
Down.
TREASURES
~^~^~^~^~
Mercedes hadn't gone far. Not far at all.
First thin
gs first: her leg. As soon as she got far enough into the space into which she found herself, she shined her dive light on her leg. There were three small holes in the calf of her wetsuit, and red gleamed within them. Not as bad a bite as she had feared – something on a level she wouldn't even have worried about if it had happened on land. But here, under so much water, it seemed terribly important. It threatened to swallow her attention, to swallow her in a gaping mouth of panic that would chew her up and kill her with nothing but the sheer power of fear.
She forced herself to look away. Searching for something else to focus on.
Her surroundings.
The hole she had entered led to a corridor. Like everything else around here, the lines were wrong: floor and ceiling and walls had shifted on their axis to the point where it was difficult to figure out which was which. But the space itself was open enough. A long tunnel, dark and forbidding.
She almost went back out. Almost turned around and just left. But the thought of those sharks kept her inside. And moving forward. Because what if they came in? What if they smelled her wound? The wound wasn't bleeding enough that she could see anything beyond the line of the wetsuit, but sharks could smell a single drop of blood a quarter-mile away. Her? Bleeding on the other side of a doorway with no door to close behind her?
She pushed on into the tunnel.
Almost immediately she started to realize why wreck diving was a specialized skill; why so many people loved and feared it with such intensity. There was a thick coat of sand on the floor, looking like it had lain undisturbed for centuries.
(How is that possible? This whole place moved six hundred feet just hours ago….)
The sand stirred as she passed by, even the tiny wake she created with her flippers enough to fling it up into water above. And since there was no current here, nothing to push it away or down, it simply surged upward and hung in a fog-like mass in the corridor. It pushed higher and higher, and was soon hanging directly below her… and rising.
Nor was that the only problem. For some reason the water above her was changing as well. It seemed… darker. Cloudy, with some kind of invisible film that pervaded every part, every milliliter of water.
The Deep 2015.06.23 Page 12