by Jack Heath
‘Otto,’ the engineer said. ‘That storm is rolling in.’
Unease clawed at Otto’s heart. ‘What does that mean?’
‘You’re too deep to be affected and we’re too big. So all it means is that we may lose radio contact.’
‘For how long? I—’
07:30The submersible lurched downwards. Otto yelled in panic. He hadn’t been watching the ground closely enough. He was falling into a hole.
The pressure gauge shot upward. 114 MPa—the tested limit.
116 MPa.
119.
123.
07:20Thinking quickly, Otto wrenched the joysticks apart. The robotic arms shot outward and slammed into the sides of the hole, stopping him from falling any further.
The hull moaned ominously. It was under more pressure than it had been designed to take.
‘What’s going on down there?’ the engineer demanded. His voice was fuzzy and faint.
07:00‘I’ve fallen down a hole,’ Otto said. ‘I’ve braced myself against the walls, but I can’t climb out. If I let go with either hand, I’ll fall. What should I do?’
The radio crackled. Otto could hear the engineer saying something, but he couldn’t tell what.
‘I didn’t catch that,’ he said. ‘Can you say again?’
More crackling, but no trace of a voice.
Otto cursed. He was on his own.
There was a way out—he could dump the ballast and float back up to the surface. But if he did that, the mission was over, with only a solitary bone to show for it. He wouldn’t be able to dive again until the storm passed.
But what choice did he have? He couldn’t climb out, and he couldn’t stay here. At any moment, the sub might implode.
06:30Something moved above him.
He looked up in time to see a mass migration of fish. Squids darted past the top of the hole. Giant crabs scuttled over the top of it. Hulking sharks cruised by. Despite his mother’s lessons, Otto didn’t recognise any of these species. They must have evolved differently to cope with the pressure.
All these creatures were moving in the same direction. It would have been the perfect opportunity to catch something and complete his mission if he weren’t stuck in this hole.
06:00The hull creaked under the strain of all the water. Otto’s fingers hovered over the ballast-release switches. If he abandoned his mission, the flyrus might kill thousands of people. But if he didn’t, he would be crushed to death. What could he do?
A huge black shadow swept across the top of the hole and then vanished.
Otto looked up, eyes wide. What was that?
05:30Perhaps it had been what all the other fish were fleeing from. It was certainly big enough.
‘Can anyone hear me?’ he said.
Not even a crackle from the radio.
‘There’s something alive down here,’ he continued. ‘Something huge. I think—’
He screamed as a dark shape rushed down into the hole. Huge tentacles closed around the dome.
No, not tentacles. Claws. The sub was clenched in a giant hand!
The robotic arms scraped the sides of the tunnel as something pulled the sub out of the hole. The sub’s underwater weight was three tonnes. Whatever this thing was, it had unbelievable strength.
‘Something’s got me!’ Otto shouted. ‘Help!’
05:00Suddenly he was face to face with the monster. It was like a crocodile that had grown to the size of a 747. Bulging muscles uncoiled beneath a shell of black scales. Yellow eyes as big as soccer balls peered through the glass at Otto.
The monster was so big that he couldn’t even see all of it. Just the head, the hand and something swirling in the distance which might have been a tail.
Otto sat perfectly still. Maybe if he didn’t move the beast would decide he wasn’t edible.
04:40A gigantic mouth opened wide, revealing teeth like elephant tusks.
‘Help!’ Otto screamed again, but then the mouth clamped down. Teeth rammed the sub from all angles. One of the halogen lights cracked and went out.
An alarm wailed behind Otto’s ears. The controls lit up with warning lights. One of them read: HULL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED. The creaking of the sub became a roar, like a rocket taking off.
04:00The monster retreated, looking puzzled. It had probably never bitten anything which hadn’t immediately turned to mush. It craned its head sideways for another attempt.
In his desperation Otto flicked every switch he could see. The sub lurched upward as the ballast disconnected from the base—
03:50But the sea monster grabbed it before it was too far out of reach. Otto screamed as that enormous mouth filled his vision again. The creature had opened wider this time. He could see the spongy protrusions at the back of its throat. Its tongue looked like a mouldy surfboard.
When the jaws closed around him this time the teeth didn’t touch the sub. The monster was trying to swallow him whole!
03:30The membranes at the back of the throat peeled back, ready to suck him into the purple pit.
Otto leaped into action. He stuck his robotic arms outward, jamming one into the roof of the creature’s mouth and stabbing the other into its tongue.
Then he hit the green button.
The monster thrashed as the sub tried to rip out its tongue and put it in a sample pouch. Otto was flung forward and back inside the sub. It was like being crammed into a barrel and rolled down a hill.
02:50But the thing still didn’t open its jaws and spit out the sub. It was time for more drastic measures.
Otto tilted both feet as far forward as they would go.
Beneath him the treads spun at full speed. The sub couldn’t move, so the treads churned up the beast’s gums instead. Scraps of flesh floated up past the glass.
‘Let me out!’ Otto roared. He leaned back on the pedals, spinning the treads in the opposite direction, attacking the creature’s gums anew.
A black cloud of blood filled the monster’s mouth. The throat opened, as if to swallow him—
And then a tide of vomit surged up the creature’s throat. Otto screamed as the vile gunk swept up the sub and carried it out into the open ocean.
02:00When the visibility cleared, he saw that the giant beast was being attacked. Drawn in by the blood, leechlike creatures swarmed all over its scales. Strange sharks with four eyes each latched onto its underbelly. A cloud of things which looked a bit like big seahorses with stinging tails appeared. Otto watched with fascination and horror as they burrowed under the monster’s eyelid.
Seconds later the giant creature shuddered and went limp.
01:30Freed of both the monster and the ballast, the sub was already starting to rise. Otto grabbed the joysticks, flung his mechanical arms downwards and just managed to grab onto the dead leviathan.
The monster was heavy, but the sub was extremely buoyant without the ballast. It zoomed upwards through the ocean with the giant creature trailing behind it, hundreds of parasites still attached.
The water got brighter and brighter. Soon he could see the surface, a shimmering curtain, and through it, the afternoon sun.
00:59Snap! The hull cracked. A jet of saltwater hosed down the inside of the cockpit. Otto turned his face away from the freezing spray.
Just a few more seconds, he thought.
He could feel another leak springing by his feet. Soon his shoes were drenched. But he was almost there. Almost—
00:50Splash! The sub burst through the surface into the afternoon sunlight. Otto stabbed frantically at the control panel until he found the control which released the seal around the glass dome. It rose up with a hiss and his ears popped as the pressure equalised.
The ship was right nearby. He could see his mother standing on the deck, staring at him.
‘Hey!’ he shouted, waving. ‘Is this enough weird life forms for you?’
00:25She stared at the gigantic floating corpse, swarming with never-before-seen parasites from the mysterious depths of the ocean. A wild grin spre
ad across her face.
Otto had never seen her look so amazed.
She cleared her throat. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘It’s a good start.’
00:00
NUCLEAR FAMILY
30:00 ‘Stay right where you are,’ Mum said. ‘This place is dangerous.’
‘You said the contamination would be gone,’ Milla objected.
‘I said it should be gone. But we need to be sure.’
Milla looked around. The lake didn’t look that bad. There were no plastic wrappers waltzing in the breeze, no mountains of discarded batteries, slicks of oil or any of the other things she’d seen on her travels with her parents. Just a dusty slope leading down to a flat, green lake. A line of birch trees stood on the other side under a grey sky. It was oddly peaceful.
29:30But thanks to the visor of the hazmat suit, she felt like she was seeing it all on television. They had been in Russia for two days but she didn’t feel like she had experienced it. The airport had been just like any other airport. The hotel in Moscow had been like any other hotel. Now here they were in the wilds of Siberia, and she couldn’t smell it or touch it because of the hazmat suit.
She had begged to come on this trip. She had argued that it couldn’t be more dangerous than staying home, where a deadly virus was sweeping the country. She hadn’t realised she would be seeing Russia exclusively from behind glass.
28:50‘Don’t get too close to the water,’ Dad said, his voice crackling through the suit’s speakers.
Milla sighed. ‘I’m not moving.’
Dad shuffled through the dirt towards the lake, waving a plastic cylinder in the air. An eerie clicking sound rang out from a speaker on his belt.
‘Better hustle,’ Mum said. ‘These hazmat suits only have thirty minutes of air.’
28:20‘I know, I know.’
‘What happened here again?’ Milla asked.
‘The Soviets built a reactor near here in 1945,’
Mum explained. ‘They spent ten years making nuclear weapons and dumping all the radioactive waste into this lake.’
‘That was a long time ago.’
28:00‘Yes, but radiation fades really, really slowly. As recently as 1990, just standing on the shore of this lake for an hour would kill you.’
Milla felt a little ill. ‘We’ll be OK though, right? With the hazmat suits?’
‘The suits will stop us from breathing any radioactive particles, but the lead lining is pretty thin. Strong enough radiation could still penetrate it—that’s why you shouldn’t go too close to the lake.’
‘Stop it,’ Dad said. ‘You’re scaring her.’
He was right, but Milla didn’t want to admit it.
‘Why don’t they make the suits thicker?’
‘Lead is heavy. If the lining was thicker, you wouldn’t be able to walk.’
27:00Milla already found it hard to walk. The suit felt heavy, like a medieval suit of armour. She noticed for the first time that nothing was growing in the dirt around the lake. No grass, no weeds, no wriggling earthworms.
She smiled weakly. ‘So I suppose a swim is out of the question.’
Mum laughed. ‘Right. But if it’s any consolation, the water is only half a metre deep.’
Milla squinted at the lake. ‘Really?’
‘Yep. After a disaster in 1968—’
‘Polly,’ Dad warned.
‘The Russians filled the lake with concrete blocks,’ Mum continued, ‘to stop the contaminants at the bottom from moving around.’
26:30‘What kind of disaster?’ Milla asked.
Dad shot Mum a pointed look.
‘The lake dried up,’ Mum said. ‘The wind blew the sediment from the bottom across the nearest town.’
‘Oh no! Did anyone get sick?’
‘That was a long time ago, sweetie—’ Dad began.
‘Half a million people got radiation poisoning,’ Mum said. She didn’t sound excited anymore, but at least she was telling the truth.
Milla stared into the green, still water. ‘That’s why the UN sent us here,’ she said.
26:00‘Right. We can verify that no radiation remains and that the concrete is doing its job. To make sure it never happens again.’ Mum turned to Dad, who was waving the Geiger counter in the air near the water. ‘How are we doing, Trent?’
‘It’s not good,’ Dad said. ‘Give me a minute.’
25:45Milla stared up at a small aeroplane which had just appeared over the distant mountains. She had travelled with Mum and Dad to many toxic places, ranging from sun-blasted desert dumping grounds to a floating garbage patch in the middle of the ocean, but she’d never been anywhere radioactive.
‘What does radiation do to a person?’ she asked.
25:00‘Depends on how much you’re exposed to,’ Mum said. ‘If it’s only a little bit, nothing. If it’s a bit more, it can interfere with your DNA. You might get cancer later in life, or have children with birth defects.’
‘And if it’s a lot?’
‘It’s like getting burned,’ Mum said. ‘Your skin peels off. You start vomiting, your brain gets—’
‘That’s enough,’ Dad said.
Milla appreciated that Dad wanted to protect her, but not knowing was even scarier. Maybe she shouldn’t have insisted on joining this expedition.
‘It’s not going to happen to us, sweetie,’ Mum said. ‘The hazmat suits will protect us.’
24:20Dad’s shoulders slumped. ‘Correct—but we’d be dead without them, according to these readings.’ He pocketed the Geiger counter. ‘The levels haven’t died down as much as we would have hoped. We’re going to have to check the river as well. It’s possible that radioactive particles are seeping into the Arctic Ocean.’
‘Come on,’ Mum said. ‘Let’s get back to the truck.’
24:00The truck was parked nearby, but it would take them a long time to get in. They would have to enter the airlock, get sprayed by high-pressure hoses, drain the airlock and take off their hazmat suits before they could move on.
Milla took one last look up at the Russian sky.
‘That plane’s awfully close,’ she said.
Mum and Dad looked up.
There was a moment of silence as they contemplated the sight—a small aeroplane, tilted forward and banking slightly, thin loops of smoke unspooling from one engine as it zoomed closer and closer to the ground.
It was headed straight for them.
‘Run!’ Mum screamed.
23:45Milla was the slowest to react. She had spent so long convincing herself that they were safe. But when Mum and Dad turned to flee towards the truck she did too, the unease in her chest exploding into full-blown panic.
She ran as quickly as she could but in the lead-lined hazmat suit, that wasn’t very fast. The roaring of the plane engines got louder and louder, filling her helmet and hurting her ears. Her feet sank too far into the dust with every step. It was like one of those nightmares in which a monster was chasing her through quicksand.
She was falling behind. Her parents wouldn’t leave her—they must think she was with them.
‘Mum!’ she screamed, so loud her throat bled. ‘Dad! Wait!’
But she couldn’t even hear her own voice over the screaming of the plane. There was no way they would hear her.
23:00Dad had almost reached the truck when—
Smash! The plane hit the lake behind them with a sound like a shopping trolley crashing into a drum kit. The sky went black. A hailstorm of concrete whipped past Milla, punching holes in the dust all around her and thunking against her helmet. As she fell, a propeller shot past, missing her by centimetres. She landed facedown in the dirt.
Then the lake itself fell out of the sky in a thunderous downpour. Milla was crushed beneath the deluge of radioactive water.
22:45She might have blacked out for a few seconds. It was hard to tell. But at some point she found herself lying in the mud, ears ringing, limbs aching.
‘Milla!’ The voice had been sho
uting for a while but she hadn’t recognised her own name until now. Someone was shaking her shoulder.
‘Mum?’ she groaned, rolling over. All her muscles ached.
22:30Her mother’s hazmat suit was spattered with so much mud and concrete dust that she looked like an orc or a troll.
‘Milla,’ she said. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘I … no. I don’t think so. Are you OK?’
‘Polly! Milla!’ Dad’s voice.
Milla turned her head but couldn’t see him. Just the twisted ruins of the plane, half-submerged in the lake. The cockpit was empty—either no-one had been in it or the pilot had been thrown clear on impact.
‘We’re over here,’ Mum called. She didn’t raise her hand.
‘Are you hurt?’ Milla asked again.
21:00‘I think my arm is broken,’ Mum muttered. ‘I’ll check it when we’re in the truck. Do you still have suit pressure?’
Milla suddenly realised how much danger they were in. She and Mum were covered in radioactive slime. If either of them had the smallest puncture in their suits …
Milla pinched the fabric around her wrist. Her fingers left dents, but they smoothed themselves out. Her suit still had pressure.
‘I’m OK,’ she said. ‘You?’
‘I can’t check. My arm …’
Milla pinched Mum’s suit. It still seemed to be pressurised.
Dad stumbled into view. He was almost as dirty as them. ‘Is everyone all right?’ he demanded.
‘You tell us,’ Mum said. ‘How much radiation are we being exposed to right now?’
‘We’ll be OK,’ Dad said. ‘So long as we get into the airlock and get these suits cleaned up right away.’
‘Uh, Dad?’ Milla pointed to the truck.
20:00Mum and Dad gasped. The aeroplane propeller had impaled the truck, shearing through the metal and glass. The insides were open to the air, splattered with radioactive slop.
‘We’ll have to go to the nearest town,’ Mum said.
‘It’s ten kilometres away,’ Dad said.
‘How long until we run out of oxygen?’ Milla asked.
‘We have plenty of oxygen. But every time we exhale, that increases the amount of carbon dioxide—CO2—in the suit. Once four per cent of the air is CO2, we can’t breathe the air.’ Dad always gave too much information when he was nervous. ‘In about twenty minutes the CO2 will reach toxic levels.’