The Ocean Dark: A Novel

by Jack Rogan

  But Garbarino and the other sailor couldn’t hit the ones coming up beneath David without shooting him as well, and as Alena watched, her grandson began to scream. Panic made him tear his gaze from hers, but she could not look away as the things swarmed over him. One of them, overzealous, scaled his body like a ladder but climbed too high, into the sunlight, where it smoldered and ignited and screamed. Its serpentine lower body twisting, it shoved off from the wall and plunged into the water below, the splash dousing its fire and its cries.

  “Damn it!” Garbarino shouted.

  From the corner of her eye, Alena caught his movement. He tried to scramble to one side, searching for a better angle, a cleaner shot, and he lost his grip. As he fell, panic seized him and he pulled the trigger, but the bullets chipped at the stone walls with little effect and then Garbarino screamed the rest of the way, following the siren into the water, from which he would never surface.

  “Alena!” David shrieked, voice ragged as they tore at him. “Go!”

  But Stone and Voss had been in motion all along, and now they opened fire, shooting the sirens that were attacking him. One by one, the creatures peeled off the wall and fluttered into the abyss.

  “Climb, David!” Alena shouted.

  Somehow, he did. She could see the agony etched into his features and she wondered what his legs must look like after the sirens’ jaws had been at work, and the suckers on their hands had scoured the flesh. But he climbed.

  Voss shot at the things that were still coming up as Stone edged over beside David to speed him along.

  “Climb, damn it!” David shouted up at her.

  That got Alena moving.

  “We’re out!” Lieutenant Commander Sykes called from above. “Move it!”

  And then Alena felt a hand grip her wrist and looked up to see Voss and Mays reaching for her. They hauled her over the rim, onto a thick mat of vegetation, trees sparse overhead. She climbed to her feet and glanced at the horizon, where the sun slid rapidly into the water. Its light reached only a few feet into the cave they had just escaped, and the leech-white creatures stirred at the edges of the dark, ready to erupt in pursuit the moment the last sliver of the sun vanished in the west.

  The high, keening melody diminished, and then she heard Sykes barking into a radio and the roar of helicopter rotors not far off.

  Gabe, Tori, and Josh crawled out of the cave shaft. Voss and the nameless sailor lifted the sweating, glassy-eyed Josh to his feet, even as Alena went to help Stone haul David out onto the ground.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  It was a foolish question. The legs of his trousers were soaked with blood and his hands were scraped raw. He swayed, barely able to remain sitting up.

  “Not yet,” he murmured. “Get us out of here.”

  “Which way?” Tori said, shouting to be heard, all of them casting frantic looks into the shaft.

  Sykes raised a hand and pointed down the hill—for they were on the mountainside now. “There! West toward the sun, stay in the light as long as you can, but run for the beach! The chopper’s coming down there!”

  As Stone bent to lift David in a fireman’s carry, Alena looked down into the shaft and saw those pale, hideous faces with their black eyes staring back. But they were not the only things out of place. Spaced all around the shaft’s rim there were small gray rectangles—explosive charges that had been set sometime in the past few hours. A radio signal would set them all off at once, and the idea woke her up. She stared at the sirens and hatred filled her. It gave her back some strength, but she knew it wouldn’t last.

  Then they were all running, Josh staggering, and Tori grabbed her wrist as she went by. Alena careened through the trees with her, branches whipping at her face, and as she caught a fresh glimpse of the horizon, the sun going down, shadows gathering all around them in the trees and brush, a single thought filled her mind.

  Detonate. Push the goddamn button. Burn them all.

  –88– –

  On the bridge of the USS Hillstrom, Ed Turcotte watched the sun slide into the Caribbean with a horrid fascination. His every muscle taut, he glanced back and forth between Captain Siebalt and the communications officer. A terrible weight bore down on every man and woman there as the last of the golden daylight faded.

  “Sir?” the communications officer said, glancing at the captain. “Mr. Keck’s awaiting the detonation order.”

  Siebalt glared at him, and Turcotte knew that look. Don’t tell me my business, it said. He had given the look enough times himself.

  Every cave and vent the sweep teams could find out on the island had been mined with charges as the afternoon wore on, even as others explored tunnels and tried radio and phone signals to get some update on the people they had lost below and those who had gone down after them. All of the ships had moved in closer to the island after the Antoinette had been scuttled—but not too close, the captains far too wary of sharing the freighter’s fate. The choppers had evacuated all personnel just before dusk, but now kept doing flyovers, searching for some sign of the Boudreaus, Voss, and Hart, and the others who were inside the warren of tunnels in the island’s womb.

  Bud Rouleau, the Kodiak’s captain, had kept his Coast Guard ships close, but he deferred to Siebalt, just as Turcotte had to. In the wake of the clusterfuck on the Kodiak’s deck, with the Tyree woman’s death and the destruction of the creature they’d retrieved from the Antoinette—their one test subject—the civilian chopper had been grounded. Nobody would be allowed to leave the area until someone took control of this mess, and right now the person in control was either dead, or they were about to kill her.

  Siebalt took a deep breath, glanced at the sliver of the sun still visible out on the ocean, the horizon striated with color, and turned as though to give the order.

  “Don’t!” Turcotte snapped.

  Captain Siebalt shot him a dark look. “Dr. Boudreau left us with an order—”

  “Yeah, David Boudreau. He’s a kid, for Christ’s sake. You can’t detonate with all of those people still unaccounted for! We both have people still out there.”

  “We did,” Siebalt said, his gray eyes hard. “In a minute, it will be full-on dark. Anyone left in those tunnels is dead. And anyone on the island will be. My orders are to blow the place and kill as many as we can.”

  “You won’t get them all now anyway,” Turcotte snapped.

  Siebalt turned away, looking to the communications officer. The whole bridge was silent. “We’ll start cleanup at dawn. For now, we follow our orders. Lieutenant Chang, the order is given. Detonate.”

  “Yes, sir,” the communications officer replied. He tapped a key on his console. “The order is given—”

  But Lieutenant Chang didn’t finish. He raised a hand to the earpiece of his headset and turned in his seat. “Captain, message coming through from Chopper Three. They’re out. Lieutenant Commander Sykes is radioing for evac.”

  Turcotte whispered the first grateful prayer he’d said in years.

  –89– –

  Tori ran so fast she could barely keep her legs beneath her, and somehow Josh kept pace. His face had gone pale as the moon and he held his arm tight to his body as they careened down the hill together. Gravity seemed to give him the momentum and speed he needed, but how he kept his feet under him she had no idea. Voss dodged around trees and crashed through vegetation to Tori’s left. Up ahead, Alena Boudreau navigated with remarkable grace, alongside the lieutenant she’d heard called Stone, who carried David over one shoulder, sometimes running and sometimes staggering under the burden. Lieutenant Commander Sykes and the other surviving sailors—Mays and Crowley—ran a dozen yards ahead of them.

  In the shadows of the trees and the thick tangles of brush, night had already fallen. A sliver of sunlight remained on the horizon ahead, but it could not reach those dark places. The last golden light of day splashed the island in broad swathes, and Tori aimed for those, darting from light into shadow and then into
twilight again. Her face burned like it was on fire—blood rushing through her, flushing her skin—but from the back of her neck and all down her back, Tori felt cold. That was the chill of vulnerability, the icy weight of the creatures’ attention.

  For they were there, in the shadows already. She caught a glimpse of sickly white as she sprinted from one splash of light to another, moving from a small slash of black rock, a narrow cave in the face of the hill. Only one of them, and only that cave, but there had to be others beginning to emerge.

  No one screamed to run. They were long past such urgings, and fleeing for their lives now. Her breath came in gasps and gulps and her arms pumped at her sides. Branches whipped at her face and she brushed them aside, her focus alternating between Josh—whose every step brought a grunt of pain—and the horizon, where the sun seemed to melt into the darkness of the ocean, her skin prickling with awareness of the hunger that exuded from the island. And all along their path, the maddening song of the sirens began to rise from a whisper to a wail.

  At the bottom of the hill, they hit a clearing of rock and scrub and Tori searched frantically for any sign of a cave, but saw none. From here she could see, through sparser trees ahead, the white sand of the beach and the indigo gleam and white foam of the water beyond. The sun only peeked over the edge of the world now, and she knew that, close as they were, they would never make it. The song rose, and she could picture the creatures in her mind, climbing out of their watery caves or slithering up onto shore.

  They had seconds. A minute or two at most.

  Josh faltered and nearly went sprawling. She reached out to grab his hand, but Voss beat her to it, pulling hard on Josh’s wrist.

  “Run, goddammit!”

  Tori didn’t know if the woman meant her or Josh, but she put on speed. Voss hauled Josh along beside her, shouting at him not to fall, to put one foot in front of the other.

  Lieutenant Stone stumbled, and he and David Boudreau went sprawling. David cried out in pain at the impact on his bloody legs, but then Mays and Crowley were there, hoisting him up again. This time Crowley carried him, with Stone and Mays on either side, ready to take over if necessary. They weren’t going to leave anyone behind.

  Alena kept pace with the sailors who were trying so hard to save her grandson’s life.

  Left arm pinned to his side, Josh careened toward a ridge of black rock. He managed to plant his foot on it and spring forward. Tori felt sure he would trip and fall, but still he crashed forward.

  Watching him, Tori stepped on a stone, twisted her ankle, threw out her arms for balance and tried to get her feet under her again, only to catch the toe of her boot on a root. She fell hard, rolling over twice, a third time, slamming her back against a ridge of stone.

  In shadow.

  To her right, the darkness had grown thick. The singsong voice of the sirens had taken on an almost taunting air and as she rolled to her knees and started to rise, she saw them in the trees—three of the creatures moving low to the ground, in the brush, out of the twilight. They slid toward her, too fast.

  In the same moment, she realized the little light around her had become moonlight. The last of the sun had vanished into the ocean. Up at the top of the hill, the sirens would be swarming out of the volcanic shaft. They were close enough to hear the roar of the chopper’s rotors, out on the beach, maybe fifty yards away, but she would die here in the night’s shadows.

  But Tori didn’t give up. She pistoned her legs, leaping to her feet, and turned to run.

  “Get down!” Josh snapped.

  Tori had no time to think. She dropped to her knees again just as Josh and Rachael Voss strode toward her with the righteous purpose that came with authority, guns raised. They had only pistols, not the Navy’s assault weapons, but they fired again and again, and the bullets tore the sirens apart.

  It was all Josh had. He dropped the gun, swaying on his feet, and nearly fell. He would have, if Tori and Voss hadn’t been there to prop him up, and then they were nearly dragging him through fifty feet of sparse trees toward the beach.

  Alena Boudreau went past them, headed the wrong way.

  “What are you doing?” Voss shouted.

  “Not leaving his gun behind!” Alena replied, snatching up Josh’s gun and then racing to keep up with them.

  Then the hillside they had just descended came alive with white, undulating flesh—the sirens that had nearly taken them underground, at last giving chase. Alena and Voss fired in motion. Tori shouldered as much of Josh’s weight as she could, but Voss held him up as well, still managing to shoot at the things churning down the hill behind them.

  “Let’s go!” Sykes called from up ahead, as if they were dragging their feet and not one hundred eighty pounds of bleeding FBI agent.

  Then they burst out of the trees and onto soft sand that gave way beneath Tori’s boots, making it hard to run and even harder to drag Josh. Stone and Crowley had run ahead to the chopper, which waited on the beach with its door open. She saw Agent Nadeau leap out, beckoning and shouting, though his voice could not be heard over the chopper and the sirens. He helped them load David onto the helicopter.

  Sykes and Mays and Gabe Rio had waited for them, and now all three of them raised guns to cover their race for the chopper. Tori saw something rise from the water and looked into the waves. They were there as well, emerging from the darkness of the deep water, rushing through the surf, mouths opening to reveal those needle teeth, faces split by rictus grins—as if the things could smile.

  And they sang.

  Mays fell under the onslaught from the water in seconds. He tried to shoot, tried to tear the creatures off, but arms and tentacle-like bodies wrapped around him, and the sailor went down amidst the teeth and the screaming melody of the sirens.

  Gabe spun, took aim, and tore up the water and the sirens slithering from it in a hail of bullets. White flesh and splashes of dark ichor spattered the waves. Mays was already dead, but Gabe killed as many as he could and kept the line back.

  Sykes and Crowley, who came back from the chopper to help, took aim at the creatures surging from the undergrowth and opened fire. Tori did not even turn to look. Her eyes were on the helicopter, on the open door, and she barely even saw the three men with their assault rifles now, two Navy heroes and one gun smuggler who seemed to have forgotten who he’d once been. And she realized that she had forgotten as well. The past didn’t matter anymore, only tomorrow. Only the next sunrise.

  Nadeau rushed to meet them, and helped Tori and Voss half-drag and half-carry Josh the last dozen feet, and then they were scrambling into the back of the chopper. Nadeau and Voss slid Josh away from the door, their focus on their fellow agent, and that left Tori alone to reach for Alena’s hand, helping the woman in beside her. She went immediately to David and began to investigate his wounds, shouting for a med-kit.

  Gabe and Crowley jumped onto the helicopter, but Sykes shouted something none of them could hear over the roar and kept firing into the dozens of creatures even as the chopper began to lift off. Only then did the lieutenant commander throw himself into the back of the helicopter. The gunfire ceased for a second or two, and then he and Crowley were both hanging out the door, firing again as they rose into the air.

  Several of the leeches clung to the undercarriage and one crawled up the door on the other side of the chopper, but as they picked up speed and roared away from the shore, out over the dark water, they peeled away and tumbled into the sea.

  Tori heard a voice, shouting, and looked up to see the pilot barking something into his headset, radioing the Hillstrom with the news. The first explosion came three seconds later, punching the air and rocking the chopper, propelling them toward the small cluster of ships a mile or two offshore. In the space of several heartbeats, hundreds of charges blew, spewing black stone and dust and chunks of earth into the air, lighting up the sky, and setting fire to the trees.

  They were out of the caves. They’d have nowhere to go when the sun rose exc
ept into the water, and tomorrow morning, the extermination would begin. Those who weren’t crushed in collapsed caves or burned by the flames or the sun would have to be killed, and that would take time. Eventually, Alena’s people would destroy them all. Tori found comfort in that, and in the knowledge that when they finally killed the last of the creatures, she would be far, far from here.

  She turned to look at Josh and saw that he had fallen unconscious at last, passed out in Rachael Voss’s lap. His partner stroked his hair, her own clothes stained with Josh’s blood, and Tori knew she was alone.

  But alone didn’t scare her anymore.

  –epilogue– –

  MIAMI

  Gabe sat in the dark, in a chair he had never used when he and Maya had shared this apartment. Its plush burgundy fabric gathered dust in the far corner of the living room, near the windows, where Maya had intended to use it for reading or for extra seating when they had company. A floor lamp arced from behind and the windows would have provided light during the day; it really was the perfect reading chair, though she had only rarely used it for that. As for company, they’d had very little over the past couple of years.

  The window looked out at the lights of Miami. Even with the air-conditioning up too high, the way Maya liked it, the view of the sparkling city warmed him. He relished it, knowing that tonight would be the last he ever spent in Miami. The window also looked down on the street that ran by the front of the apartment building, and he could see the dark sedan parked across the road, and even the orange flicker of a burning cigarette inside. Agent Nadeau smoked. His partner, McIlveen—Mac, they called him—gave him shit about it: a constant stream of banter that Gabe would not miss.

  He wanted quiet now.

  Outside the apartment door there came the jangle of keys, followed by the scrape of one seeking the lock. With a click, the door swung inward and Maya entered, silhouetted in the light from the corridor, which made the red highlights in her hair glow. Just watching her move, the shape and gentle, familiar curve of her, Gabe felt his heart break all over again. His breath caught in his throat and he wondered if it had been a mistake coming here.