The Found World

by Hugo Navikov

  He took in a huge breath, using his chest and stomach muscles to “store” air by swallowing it, then took another deep breath to fill his lungs and plunged under the rising water.

  ~~~

  The lights stayed on long enough for Brett to get a good look at exactly where the hatch was before he submerged, which he was glad he could do because he’d have to open his eyes in the salt-water environment soon enough, and that was going to burn. He could open his eyes for just an instant and then would have to shut them if he was to avoid swelling them up so badly he wouldn’t be able to see clearly for hours. And if this sea monster was any indication of what they would be finding under the island, he was going to need his sight to be as good as it could possibly be.

  When he had pulled himself along the railing halfway down the metal stairway and was thinking about how glad he was the lights had stayed on this long, he realized with a groan that he had no flashlight or other device in order to see inside the pitch-black cargo hold. He knew basically where in the compartment the container holding the explosive ordnance was, but he didn’t know what kind of mechanisms it used or where the control panel hatch was so he could arm the whole thing to blow. He couldn’t hold his breath forever—he’d have no time to feel his way around as he tried to locate the damn things in the huge hold. There wasn’t likely to be much in the cargo hold except for provisions and the mission’s soon-to-be-lost-forever large equipment, so at least he wouldn’t have to guess where to start, but still, he knew his chances were slim. His chances and therefore everybody else’s chances.

  Even if he could hold his breath for an epically long time even for him, once the last of the air-containing ship went under and all of that remaining buoyancy was lost, the iron ship would sink so fast he’d never be able to get out and reach the surface. The fact that he was willing to die didn’t mean he wanted to die. Not yet, anyway.

  He made it after about twenty seconds to the hatch. He got to the wheel and immediately started turning it, happy that Bantu kept his ship in such good working order that the wheel offered almost no resistance at—

  WHOOSHHHH

  —the wheel was yanked from his hand as the water in the stairwell burst through the suddenly wide-open hatch. Brett was hurled forward in the wave rushing into the cargo hold, making his eyes pop open and his breath involuntarily escape. He was in dry air for the moment, but that moment wouldn’t last long—the ocean was going to fill the giant space in less than two minutes.

  However, in the less than two seconds that the lights illuminating the cargo space remained on before all electric power was lost and he was able to have his eyes open not underwater, Brett could identify the metal containers marked DANGER: HIGH EXPLOSIVES.

  Then it went dark, and although the current carried him toward his target as he swam, by the time he got there the hold was filled. The air-filled compartment might have been the only remaining source of buoyancy keeping the sink from heading right for the bottom, so now the surface might be unreachable within sixty seconds.

  Before he went under again, Brett was able to once again swallow air and get some deep into his lungs for his extended breath-holding technique. Now, he was flying blind and the clock was running in several different ways at once. He groped to where he made contact with the container and moved quickly along its twenty-foot length, feeling for anywhere there might be the groove of a panel cover.

  There! His fingers reached it and pried it open. He opened his eyes for a second but got nothing but stinging sensation; the only thing visible in the blackness was a tiny white LED display that he wouldn’t be able to make out without goggles on, no matter how close he got. The light-emitting diodes did show him that there was a numeric keypad below it, but anything written on the panel door for the idiot commando’s reference was completely invisible in the dark.

  His air wasn’t quite used up yet, but soon it would be and he’d either succumb to a lack of renewed oxygen or he’d inadvertently gasp for air and drown right there. He swooshed his head from side to side, eyes open for an instant and then again, looking for anything that might serve as a light source: another hatch, a goddamn floating flashlight placed there by Poseidon, anything. But there was no light, and so there was no way he could see the code to arm the explosives. Also, there was a new and horrendous creaking of metal, which sounded to Brett very much like a large boat giving up the ghost and being compressed one last time as it slipped beneath the waves for the final time. No air and no light, Brett thought, his mind preparing itself for the inevitable. It’s like being deal already—

  KROOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG! With an almost unbearably loud shriek of iron tearing, an enormous crack tore through the hull of the cargo hold. Light poured in, even if it was the blue light of the sun as seen from beneath the surface of the ocean. The hold was already full of water, so nothing rushed in and he wasn’t swept out. He could see the black writing of the indelible marker now:

  CODE: Ø Ø Ø Ø

  Crane couldn’t remember THAT? Even underwater and about to die, Brett smiled and shook his head. But the smile faded when he heard the continued creak of the hull and then heard a primal screech that he knew could only be from a creature as massive and terrifying as the island’s colossal dragon serpent. He also noticed that it didn’t feel like the ship was sinking anymore, no increase in water pressure and no floating inertially as the hulk went down.

  Then he saw the thing’s face again and knew: It’s holding the ship in its jaws.

  Was the sea monster trying to eat the entire Slangkop II? He thought that maybe the ship had been torn in two when the rip in the hull of the cargo area occurred, and the beast might have sensed a little morsel was inside this piece. Brett didn’t know and he didn’t care—he had light and for the next seventy to ninety seconds, he still had oxygen.

  He pounded four zeros into the keypad, and a couple of words appeared on the LED display. He squinted as hard as he could, eyes sizzling, but he could only guess it was asking him how long until the charge should explode. He hit what felt like the 3 and the 0 and then what he hoped was ENTER. Maybe he had guessed correctly: the display changed and it looked very much like it could be counting down.

  Either way, his time was up—with another deafening rending of metal, the opening in the hull tore open, and Brett could see that another section of the ship had fallen away. The leviathan was gripping this last section, the one Brett and the explosives were in, and bringing it up toward the surface. The sea monster seemed to understand smashing things, and Brett felt sure the thing was about to rear up out of the water and come crashing back down with what was left of the Slangkop, destroying everything still in one piece, including Brett.

  The cargo hold was yanked out of the water, and Brett was swept out of the ruined hull as the water flowed down out of every breach in the hull. The armed container of high explosives also slid to the opening but was only just too big to fall through. Air! As he fell the twenty feet from the ship back into the water, Brett was able to inhale a body-full of sweet oxygen, holding it as he fell back into the water and beneath. On the way down, he opened his salt-painful eyes and saw at least six lifeboats a good distance away, far enough maybe that—oh, hell! Brett curled himself into as protective a ball as he could underwater.

  The Chinese dragon sea monster crunched down on the ruins of the ship and lifted it higher to bring it down against the concrete-hard surface of the water. As it reached the crest of its swing—BOOOOOOOOOOM—the ordnance went off, blasting the serpent’s huge head into fifty chunks and separating every part of the ship into automobile-sized blades of burning metal.

  The water shook with the force of the explosion. A few seconds later, Brett could feel huge plates of metal slice through the water all around him … but none cut him in half. For a moment, he remained under the water, his held breath keeping him floating toward the surface after his plunge. In a few moments, he bobbed up into the open air. The sea was suffused with the creature’s bl
ood, as red as a matador’s muleta. Sharks would be there soon, monsters devouring monsters. And everything else they could get their teeth into, including Brett.

  He took stock of his surroundings. On one side, he could see the lifeboats pretty far off, and beyond that, what could only be the tip of the volcano on Tristan da Cunha. The whole little fleet, including the serpent, must have drifted during the whole nightmare in the direction they had already been heading. Captain Bantu knew what he was doing when he went up to the bridge at the onset of the attack, probably setting the engines to full speed ahead in the direction they needed to go if they were ever to get to the island.

  He turned to look in the other direction and saw, on the other end of a thick rope than had been ripped clean through, a lifeboat that had to have been placed in the water but kept with the ship. Although Brett had been thinking bait for the monster, obviously he had ended up being the bait. The creature’s violent treatment of the Slangkop II while Brett was swimming around inside the cargo hold must have severed the rope and sent the lifeboat placidly floating away.

  Brett got to the lifeboat, threw himself inside it, took a minute to catch his breath and make sure everything was still connected to his body, and then stuck the oars in the oarlocks and got rowing to catch up with the rest of the survivors. Whoever that might be.

  ~~~

  Brett could hardly believe it, but almost everyone had survived. And Captain Bantu was quite the mariner: he was able to get the shell-shocked occupants of the Slangkop II’s lifeboats corralled into a little fleet and land them on the north shore of Tristan da Cunha. Once the boats had been dragged onshore, some of them sinking into the wet sand a bit from the weight of automatic weapons, RPGs, and other armament Crane and his men had been able to grab before the ship went down for the last time. Brett had seen a lot of other, much heavier weaponry in the shipping container housing the explosives, including vehicle-mount machine guns and surface-to-surface missiles. The latter was clear evidence that, whether Lathrop was on the run from the Organization (doubtful) or still fully on their side (which didn’t matter, as long as Brett got his information), the global cabal was funding this little adventure and supplying it with arms no other NGO could get it hands on. There also were Jeeps and an entire armored vehicle to mount those guns on; but all was beneath the waves now.

  Lathrop, Ellie and her crew, Popcorn, Commander Crane and his four remaining soldiers, Captain Bantu and of his two crewmen were all there and intact. There was also the Organization woman, who didn’t seem terribly fazed by what had just befallen them. Surprised, sure, but not fazed. Brett couldn’t begin to guess what the woman’s story could be.

  “Mister Lathrop, we are on land now. I relinquish command to you,” said Captain Bantu formally. “We are near the only souls on this island, about one kilometer to our west. There are three hundred people in a village, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas. I will remain there and alert my people about our misfortune. In perhaps a month, there could be another ship here to take us back to Cape Town.”

  “A month?” Popcorn said in horror. “I don’t even have my laptop anymore!” Others in the group seemed equally put out, although probably for less whiny reasons.

  Lathrop put up a hand. “Not to worry. Once we have secured our prize, there will be transport for our return. There is no airfield here, but Organization helicopters can travel long distances. Now that there will be no heavy equipment coming back, thanks to our sea monster, everything and everyone should be transportable by these conveyances.”

  “Organization helicopters, huh?” Brett said with a cynical tone.

  “Believe me or don’t believe me, Mister Russell. At this point, I truly could not care less. All that should matter to you is that your payment will be genuine information. As I say, I haven’t looked at the dossier and thus cannot be tortured into revealing the contents—”

  “I don’t torture people,” Brett said. “That’s what you do.”

  Lathrop must have been very tired by their collective near-death experience, because he actually laughed and waved Brett off like he was an annoying child. “Do stop wasting your breath and everyone’s time, Mister Russell. If I possessed in my mind but refused to give you what you seek, you would break every single bone in my body, one by one, until I told it to you. Is that not so?”

  Brett chewed his lip for a moment. Finally, he said, “All right. So we can get back in Organization choppers, and you can carry your superweapon in them too, I’m assuming.” He looked to the west, where he could see the slimmest sign of human habitation: Edinburgh of the Seven Seas. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  ~~~

  The road, when they found it, led to horror.

  Edinburgh of the Seven Seas—Bantu told them on the walk over that locals always referred to it either as “the Settlement” or “the Village”—was made up of a few dozen red-roofed buildings that housed the three hundred residents, schooled the children, and comprised the entirety of the economic and social activity on Tristan da Cunha. There were hotels for the visitors and seafarers who stopped on the island for rest or refueling. The few trucks and cars that had made it to the island usually dotted the streets.

  But now, just on the main drag that the Slangkop II survivors could see when they came around the corner, bodies lay everywhere. Blood literally flowed on the street from dismembered corpses into the storm drains. Bodies and pieces of bodies were scattered as if torn apart by huge animals in mid-run. Nothing moved except botflies buzzing between carcasses on a feeding frenzy.

  “D-Do you guys see what I’m seeing?” Stefan asked everyone and no one, the camera he had rescued from the ship hoisted onto his shoulder and capturing the carnage on video.

  “I want to leave,” Ravi said from right next to him. “I want to leave right now.”

  “Then you’re seeing it.”

  Brett shut his eyes and said a quick prayer, but like Stefan, it was to anything listening and to no one except himself. He opened them and looked at Lathrop, whose cool demeanor was definitely a little offline as his wide eyes took in the scene. “More escaped cryptids?”

  “I … would assume so. The idiots must have left the portal open.”

  Brett saw Crane’s eyes flicker at idiots. They weren’t talking about Doctor Merco and his people. “You already sent a team in,” he said, forcing himself to turn away from the horrible scene and look squarely at the Organization man. The way he said it, it wasn’t a question. “They’re the ones who left this ‘portal’ open. Merco is a scientist—he wouldn’t be so sloppy. And he probably knew you would send people after him.”

  Lathrop met his gaze defiantly and said, “Mister Russell, it can come as no surprise to you that seeking your assistance is the very definition of a last resort.”

  “I thought you brought me in to beat the Organization.”

  “There are a lot of people dead here, you Indiana Jones wannabe, so let’s just drop the pretense, shall we? Of course I still work for your former employer. They are the ones who tasked me to use whatever means necessary to bring back this man who ran off with Organization property—a weapon for which he was paid outrageously, even by Organization standards. All right? I have what I promised you—any means necessary, remember? Now, shall we all remain here as tasty morsels while you and I talk about the niceties of my position within the company?”

  Brett had no choice but to give in. No boats or helicopters except those contacted and paid for by Lathrop and the Organization would be stopping as Tristan da Cunha for at least a month and possibly much longer. If Lathrop and his apes left Brett and the rest of them there to die, then they would die. So Brett shrugged with feigned insouciance and said, “Fine. But don’t be expecting me to save your life if one of these things come after you.”

  Lathrop smirked and let out a single chuckle. “Mister Russell, until I give you the information I promised, I am literally the safest person on this entire expedition.”

  At the lo
ok on his pale weasel face, Brett punched Lathrop right in the mouth. The well-dressed man stumbled back but didn’t fall down; the blow had been the weakest Brett could manage that would still leave an impression. Then Brett turned, patted Ellie on the shoulder to comfort the crying woman for a moment, then started on. “Let’s go,” he said, and everyone else followed, Lathrop wiping blood from his lip at the back of the line.

  ~~~

  Mangled human bodies along with several corpses of large and heroic-looking dogs were everywhere in the Settlement, but there was no sign of any monsters. That wasn’t enough to comfort anyone, since no one knew what had done this and so couldn’t guess whether the things were crouching nearby and readying to strike. Judging by the shredded and mangled bodies, however, it became clear to Brett that whatever the cryptids were, they weren’t doing this for food. Very little of the carcasses seemed to have been consumed, even if parts had been ripped off and flung blocks away. Thus, the things couldn’t be sated enough not to kill, since they weren’t doing it to get full.

  This seemed like a preemptive attack meant as defense. To keep humans away from the underground world, whatever that world was? Or were they sicced on the unfortunate residents of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas by a human, whether Merco or the previous platoon of Organization-funded mercenaries? It didn’t matter. Or, if it did matter, Brett wouldn’t know until the creatures had set or been set upon them, and that would be too late to do anything about it except run.

  After seeing dozens, maybe hundreds, of massacred humans and animals all through the Settlement, finally they reached the end of the badlands leading to the huge central peak. “I assume you know where this ‘portal’ is, Lathrop?”

  The man bristled at the rude familiarity of Brett’s address but was able to swallow it enough to say, “Yes, of course I do. We shall need transport, however, and the vehicles were lost in the sinking of the ship. Now, if you have some—”