by Brian Keene
“Of course.”
“We’ve got a full case of torches, so we should be able to make as many trips as necessary, to get everything of interest. If we need to, we can use a few of them at a time.”
“What should I do while you’re down there?” Abhi asked. “How can I help?”
“Keep an eye on our dive lines,” Carrie said, grinning. “And have fun with your Sudoku.”
“You can count on that.”
“Don’t go anywhere, Gordo,” Paolo said to Abhi.
“Gordo?” Abhi frowned. “I speak Spanish, you Chilean jackass. I know what that means. And for the record, I am not fat.”
Paolo shrugged. “Where I come from, it is a term of endearment.”
“Where you come from,” Abhi replied, “people still think electricity is a new invention.”
Carrie handed a diving mask to Paolo.
“Make sure the seal is tight,” she told him as she donned another for herself.
“This isn’t my first dive, Carrie.”
She bit her lip until the urge to reply sarcastically had passed. “No, of course it’s not. I was just referring to exposure. The wetsuits are sealed, so our skin shouldn’t be exposed, but if my theory is right, you don’t want water getting through the mask.”
“What about our mouths?”
“That can’t be helped.”
Nodding, he strapped weights to his belt, which would allow him to descend faster. Then, he took three more measured breaths, slipped the mask over his face, and slid into the water. Carrie sighed.
“Even this has to be a competition with him,” she said.
“At least he didn’t call you fat,” Abhi said.
Carrie put on her mask and quickly followed Paolo beneath the waves.
Abhi pulled a small silver flask out of his back pocket, unscrewed the lid, and held it aloft in a toast.
“Salud,” he said, and took a drink, grimacing at the taste. He shivered. “Best batch of paint thinner I’ve ever tasted.”
He was struck by the silence. Feeling sheepish, he returned the flask to his pocket and picked up his umbrella.
And waited.
* * *
Carrie stuck to her dive line. It would be especially important farther down, where visibility would be extremely limited, even with their phosphorescent torches. Things could go wrong on a dive, even to one not already cursed with the problems their expedition had undergone, and even to experienced divers like Paolo and herself. She could get a cramp, inhibiting her ability to swim up. If she didn’t equalize and the pressure damaged her eardrums, vertigo could set in quickly. She’d known a diver that had happened to. The hapless man had swam farther downward, believing himself to be surfacing the entire time. It could be even more dangerous ascending. When a diver was resurfacing and the pressure on them decreased, there was a risk of blacking out. That risk increased if they paused or exhaled. Staying close to the dive line could mean the difference between life and death in situations like those. As her instructor had said, all those years ago, “Don’t think of it as a dive line. Think of it as a lifeline.” It had been one of the most important lessons she had ever learned.
As she had expected, their visibility was poor, but she was surprised to discover it was even worse than it had been just a few days before, when she’d dove with Peter. Obviously, the collapse was growing worse, as more and more sand and silt were churned up into the water. Despite the debris, she saw Paolo a few meters below her, silhouetted in the glow of his phosphorescent torches. He followed his own dive line, headed toward the rim of the collapse. He paused, glancing up to make visual contact with her, and waved. Carrie waved back.
When they reached one hundred meters, Paolo paused for a moment. Carrie studied him closely, looking for signs of distress. He met her eyes, shook his head, and continued his descent. There was so much debris swirling around them that Carrie was reminded of a snowstorm. If the collapse continued, she thought, and the evacuation didn’t happen, then Mauritius’s tourist board might have to advertise an underwater blizzard rather than an underwater waterfall.
Her lips began to tingle, and for a moment, she panicked, remembering what had happened the last time she’d felt this. They grew numb, but the sensation didn’t increase or spread. Still, the feeling left her unnerved.
The water grew colder as they descended. At one hundred fifty meters, they reached the spreading seafloor. While their visibility was still hampered, there was less debris in the water here, due to the currents. Carrie’s eyes widened in surprise. The seafloor was littered with the dead bodies of fish, crabs, and other marine life. Most likely, all of them were victims of hypoxia, a condition that was probably spreading as the collapse continued to reduce the oxygen content in the coastal waters.
Reaching the end of their limits, both of them hurriedly collected samples from the corpse-strewn bottom, and then, with air still left in their lungs, followed their dive lines back up to the boat. Because a diver’s lowest level of oxygen usually occurred twenty seconds after surfacing, Carrie exhaled at the end of her ascent, and then inhaled immediately upon breaching the surface. She held that breath for a moment and clenched her stomach muscles, then repeated the process again, increasing both her oxygen and blood pressure.
“Are you okay?” Abhi called.
She nodded, blinking. It was hard to see him. The temperature change and immediate sunlight were both disconcerting. She waited a moment, letting her eyes adjust. Paolo surfaced next to her, hooking his breathing as she had just done. Carrie realized he was clutching something in his hand.
“What do you have there, Paolo?” Abhi asked, putting down his umbrella and moving to their side of the boat. “Dinner?”
Still focused on his breathing, Paolo held the object aloft. It was the corpse of a horseshoe crab. Carrie noticed something odd about it right away. It was stiff and rigid, rather than floppy.
“A scientific sample,” he panted, shaking water from his eyes. “As you requested.”
Assisted by Abhi, they clambered aboard the boat, removed their masks (which had fogged up from the temperature change) and unloaded their first haul of samples.
“Seriously,” Abhi asked again, “what’s with the crab?”
“Hypoxia,” Carrie replied. “It’s what happens when the water is low in oxygen. It’s usually caused by agricultural pollution or jellyfish blooms. Or, in this case, the collapsing seafloor. The bottom around the trench is littered with dead stuff.”
“Except it’s not hypoxia.” Paolo poked the dead crab with his finger. “I thought so at first, too, but look at this. You see?”
Carrie frowned. “No.”
“It’s frozen solid. Go ahead and inspect it for yourself.”
She did, tentatively at first, and then with astonishment. The creature was indeed frozen, as if it had just been removed from the freezer of a supermarket, rather than the seafloor. Although they didn’t have a thermometer on hand, it was obvious to Carrie that the crab’s body was far colder than even the ambient temperatures Paolo had found it at, one hundred fifty meters below. Even now, after bringing it up through the warmer tropical surface waters, and exposing it to the sunlight and heat here on the boat, it hadn’t begun to thaw.
“This isn’t hypoxia,” she said. “This is something else.”
Paolo nodded. “Right, it looks like it at first blush but hypoxia isn’t what killed this creature. And I bet if we go back down, we’ll find that the other corpses are just like this one.”
“So,” Abhi said, “there’s this hypoxia thing, but something else killed this crab?
Paolo and Carrie nodded.
“But if it wasn’t hypoxia,” Abhi asked, “then what was it?”
“I don’t know,” Carrie admitted. “Something … new. We need to get back down there and retrieve more samples. Abhi, can you put this in the cooler, so we can study it later?”
“You mean … touch it?” He paused, staring at the crab wit
h concern. “It’s not infected with something is it? I don’t want to catch a disease.”
“It’s hard to say for sure,” Carrie admitted. “I don’t know of any sort of virus or bacteria that would cause this, but we should be careful all the same.”
Abhi opened the toolbox, pulled out a faded red grease rag, and used that to pick up the corpse. His nose wrinkled. He carried the dead crab gingerly, arm outstretched, as if it were a live grenade. Then he placed it in the cooler, closed the lid, and shuddered.
Carrie turned to Paolo. “What happened down there? Was everything okay? I thought you were in trouble for a second.”
“At about a hundred meters,” Paolo confirmed. “Yes, I wanted to talk to you about that before we dive again. I think you’re right about that weird neurological effect in the water. It hit me just past a hundred meters or so. My lips began to tingle, and get numb.”
“I felt it, too. But I’m okay now.”
“Yes,” Paolo agreed, “it seems to have passed for me, as well.”
“Well, just to be safe, let’s use the tape to double seal the seams on our wetsuits.”
She retrieved the roll of tape and began applying it to Paolo’s suit. Then he did the same for her. Carrie shivered as his fingers brushed against her, but if Paolo noticed, he gave no indication.
“Ready?” he asked, when finished.
She nodded. “Let’s go.”
“Or,” Abhi suggested. “We could just call it a day, head back right now, and find a bar. Surely this is enough of a sample to study.”
“Come on, Abhi.” Carrie smiled. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“I left it behind in my forties.”
Carrie winked at him. “Then do it for science.”
She dived back over the side with a splash. Paolo followed her. Abhi moved to the side of the boat, and watched them vanish beneath the murky surface.
“They may be scientists,” he muttered, “but I’m the only one smart enough not to go back down in that mess.”
* * *
When they were gone from sight, Abhi fished out his flask and took another drink. Then he retrieved his meerschaum pipe and his tobacco pouch. The pipe had belonged to his father, who had bought it in Syria during World War II. His father had never smoked it, but when he died, Abhi had broken it in. He had realized too late that actually using the pipe would cause it to lose its ivory color, but it was still precious to him, and a source of comfort. He had been all over the world in his sixty years, and the pipe had accompanied him for most of those travels. He had smoked it in countless ports of call. He packed it now with aromatic tobacco—a mix of cherries and ginger scents, and lit it. It took him a few minutes to get it going, and he had to shield it from the wind with his hand.
“Ah, there we go.”
Puffing thoughtfully, he leaned against the rail and considered how quiet it was. Even the waves seemed muted as they lapped against the boat.
Slowly, his gaze turned to the cooler. He thought about the horseshoe crab inside. Despite the heat, his skin prickled. He puffed his pipe more furiously, and rubbed his arms.
He stared out at the surrounding ocean, and noticed for the first time that they were the only vessel in sight. Usually, this area would be busy with nautical traffic, but sea lanes had been rerouted due to the studies of the collapse. Still, he thought there would be at least a few civilians or tourists daring to break the quarantine. At the very least, there should be some boats from the scientific flotilla about. But the ocean was deserted. It then occurred to Abhi that the sky was deserted, as well. Back at the harbor, it had been choked with squabbling sea birds, but they seemed to be avoiding this region. Even the water seemed lifeless. Except for the waves, it remained still. There were no fish jumping or curious dolphins coming up to inspect his craft. The latter could be attributed to the collapsing sea floor, but he didn’t think that would deter the birds.
He smoked and stared for a while longer, until the ocean and the sky merged into one endless, unbroken gray and white plane. Then he retrieved his flask and had another drink, shuddering as the molten liquid burned its way down his throat.
Eyeing the vacant horizon, Abhi suddenly felt very alone.
Puffing the pipe, he returned to his Sudoku book, but found it hard to focus. He kept looking up, and eyeing the cooler nervously.
“Any minute now,” he whispered. “They can’t stay down there forever.”
SIX
Halfway through the second dive, while Carrie gathered a plant sample and placed it in a container, she noticed a sudden and drastically pronounced decrease in the temperature of the water around her—the equivalent of walking from the heat into a freezer. The ocean, already murky with the stirred up silt and sand, seemed to grow darker. Her skin prickled. Quickly sealing the container and securing it on her belt, she glanced around the gloomy waters for Paolo, to see if he’d noticed the temperature drop, as well. She spotted him, illuminated by the ambient light of his torch, as he hovered almost directly over the trench, collecting samples from an overhanging wall of broken coral. A sea anemone was perched nearby him, tentacles frozen in mid-wave. The anemone’s usually vibrant body was uncharacteristically bland, to the point of being almost completely devoid of color.
The coldness and darkness grew more pronounced. They seemed to press against her like physical entities.
Carrie didn’t panic, but she definitely felt unsettled. Her diver’s directional sense of temperature told her that the steadily increasing cold was emanating from within the trench itself. This was something new, something she hadn’t experienced on the dive with Peter. Or, if she had, she no longer remembered it, overcome as she had been by the other events from that fateful excursion.
Kicking hard, she swam out to the side of the chasm, above and to the right of Paolo. Yes, she was certain the cold was radiating from the chasm. It was easy to imagine it as an almost physical thing. She thought about the horseshoe crab Paolo had recovered—frozen solid. Curious, she pulled a torch from her belt, and dropped it downward.
Her lips began to tingle again, but this time, the sensation was much stronger, and the numbness occurred more rapidly. The water temperature continued to fall, along with the torch. Alarmed, Carrie watched the light descend. It seemed to slow, as the numbness crept into her cheeks and nose. The torch twisted and turned, and she had a flash of memory—her and her sister catching fireflies one summer and putting them in a mason jar with tin foil over the top. It had been a magical night. Their parents had let them stay up late, and they’d danced around in the backyard, laughing with delight, chasing after the diminutive and fleeting lights as they flickered from one blade of grass to another. They had caught them carefully, mindful of not squishing the fragile creatures. As the moon rose higher, and the evening grew darker, they had pretended the insects were fairies, just like Tinker Bell in Peter Pan. Later, they had poked tiny holes in the tin foil with a toothpick, and put the fireflies on the nightstand between their beds. All night long, they’d slept in the soft green glow emanating from the jar …
Carrie suddenly came back to herself, wondering just how long she’d been daydreaming.
What the hell is wrong with me?
This wasn’t like her at all. This was the type of thing that got a diver killed. And why did Paolo seem oblivious to what was occurring? He was supposed to be her dive partner. He should have noticed her state. And surely, he could feel the temperature plunging? It was all around them now.
Her lungs ached. She was nearing her limits. She needed to start ascending now.
Panicked and disoriented, she focused instead on the spiraling light of the falling torch, just as something hiding in the darkness snatched it from the water. She couldn’t tell what—the water was filled with too much debris—but she caught a glimpse of something spindly and knobby and segmented. Whatever it was, the thing broke the torch into pieces, extinguishing the glow. Then, the creature moved toward them.
&n
bsp; Carrie felt the water shift as a massive, dark form glided from the trench. This must be it, this is what she saw with Peter. It was much closer than it had been on that previous dive. Then, it had been far away, a shadow amongst the other shadows in the trench. Now it was emerging. Indeed, it didn’t seem to stop emerging. Like a long train, coming out of a tunnel, more and more of it appeared, flowing from the crevice. Terrified, she glanced at her partner. Paolo’s attention was still focused on the coral, and he seemed unaware of the danger surging toward them.
With little air left in her lungs, she darted toward Paolo and caught his attention. He smiled as she approached, holding up one hand and giving her the okay symbol. Carrie grabbed his arm and pulled hard, kicking for the surface. Offering no resistance, Paolo immediately followed her.
Carrie couldn’t see much beyond the light of their torches, and the dim hue of the sun far above—indeed, the surface had never seemed farther away than it did now. But despite the engulfing shadows, she had a sense of something aggressively pursuing them, pushing both water and cold in front of it like a wall as it ascended. Paolo must have felt it too, because he suddenly paused and turned. Then, he lit a torch and dropped it toward their pursuer. As they watched, the shadows seemed to snap the light up. Then, the torch was gone.
Wide-eyed, Paolo swam upward again with renewed speed. Carrie braved one last glance, trying hard to catch a glimpse of the creature below them, but it was still indistinguishable—just a dark, monstrously big, amorphous mass, radiating cold.
Her ears began to ring, and she felt her pulse throbbing in her throat, as her oxygen ran low. The aching in her lungs increased, becoming a sharp, urgent, pounding pain. Kicking hard, she headed for the surface, following Paolo’s wake. The coldness seemed to follow, nipping at her flippers. Carrie stared upward, focusing on keeping the bottom of the boat visible. It floated above them, a safe haven full of sunlight and shelter and most importantly, air.
Suddenly, her left leg seized up, as if she had been shocked. The numbness in her face grew stronger, and Carrie had to fight to keep her mouth from opening involuntarily. Her eyes felt droopy, and the ringing in her ears was now a siren. Her left leg was useless. She struggled to swim upward, using her other leg and arms to propel herself, but the paralysis crept up her side. Her other leg began to tingle.