The Shadow Beneath The Waves

by Matt Betts

  “We can’t get him out without facing those things again,” Rina said. She stood apart from everyone else.

  “So how do we get help?” Cass looked around at the ship and found the lights were out again, and it was getting darker outside. “The radios?”

  “Out since we lost contact with you,” Martin said.

  Before anyone could continue, there was a sound outside like a massive wave in the distance and they all moved out onto the deck to see the calamity. All they would need was a sudden rogue wave to hit the ship to add to their problems. On the horizon, a massive shadow broke the surface, and continued to show the length of its body as it moved on and fell below the waves. The lighting was too poor to make out details, but the thing’s size was evident. As it disappeared under the sea, it was outlined in a sudden flash of blue, like lightning, and then it was gone.

  “I take it that was your creature?” It wasn’t a question for anyone standing nearby, it sounded to Cass more like a question Martin was asking himself or even possibly the sea itself.

  “We’re fucked. Even if we bring the engines back online, we won’t have any electronics until the solar collectors get to work in the morning,” Takis said. “What if that thing comes back and attacks us?”

  Jakob pulled a flashlight from his back pocket. “I got the generator working last time. I can probably get it going again. That’s some light, at least. I pull the plug on any parts of the ship we don’t use, and that should help everyone’s quarters and the navigation, hopefully.”

  “Fuck. Did you see that thing? Do you think this old cargo ship will get away from it? Seriously? I mean, excuse my language, but fuck.” Takis ran his hands through his scraggly long hair.

  “The way it took off, I’d say it wanted to get out of here,” Cass said. “What about the other things in the lab? Are you sure they’re not going to get out?”

  “I just saw a creature with tentacles as large as a skyscraper,” Martin said. “Forgive me if I’m not positive of a whole lot right now.”

  “Do you have any guns?” Cass wasn’t quite sure she could blow her cover just now by grabbing her own gun, seeing as she was all alone with the crew. Certainly she wouldn’t have any backup. But she also considered that her gun could make a difference if they got in a fight with anyone or anything.

  “Yes.”

  “How many? What kind?” Cass asked

  “I always have a shotgun and a revolver on board, but after the pirate attack, I had Ben bring more with the Alba Varden,” Martin said.

  “Anything that wasn’t used in World War One?” Jakob asked.

  23

  A new sound began to repeat and for a moment, Linden thought it was more from the computer, but realized after a moment that it was just his phone. The caller I.D. showed Forester was calling. “Yeah Lou?”

  “Hey, this might be a temporary thing, but our radar has lost track of the Adamant,” Lou said. “Thought you should know right away.”

  “Lost contact? Do we have a satellite watching the area yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  Linden thought about it a moment. It wasn’t uncommon for radar to lose contact during a storm, a solar flare, or other problems. “Weather?”

  “Clear as a bell from what we can see.”

  He looked at Holli, who was already standing to leave. “Okay, I’ll be back in a few.” He hung up and replaced the phone in his pocket. They’d decided to get coffee at the shop nearest their office building to review the latest round of data they’d pulled. “Do you want a coffee to take back to the office? A scone, something?”

  “I’m good. The extra-large should hold me through the next hour or ten. You can explain what that call was all about on our way back.” Holli grabbed her coffee and started walking.

  On the way out the door, Linden dropped five dollars in the tip jar at the counter. When he’d caught up with Holli he started to explain the situation as best he could. The more he’d thought about it, his department was huge after the war, but now it was literally just Lou and himself, along with a receptionist and… well, that was it. Surely the government wouldn’t mind if the department commandeered a key asset for an important lead in the case…

  “See, we may have finally found the Cudgel, but the people who located it? They just went missing.”

  “Jesus. When you get a lead, you get a lead.”

  Together they crossed in the middle of the street, dodging traffic, other pedestrians, and immense puddles. The previous night’s rain had made most of the area a wet nightmare. Linden wondered if the storms had somehow messed with the sensors locally and caused them to lose track of the Adamant.

  They headed upstairs, stopping at Linden’s floor. He noticed Holli had practically chugged the tall coffee she’d brought with her. “Late night?”

  “Every night is a late night. We’ve been busy figuring out some recordings from a gunfight on the African coast between…” She looked at Linden with a sudden realization. “Yes, late night.”

  He gauged her look as an indication that he wasn’t supposed to know the details and didn’t ask any follow up questions.

  They dashed to Lou’s office, swiping their badges at every door.

  Linden and Holli looked over Lou’s shoulders as he brought up all the information he could on his computer screen.

  “We could go in the conference room. No one is in there,” Lou said. “I mean, all that equipment and just us to use it. Seems like a waste.” He waited for the satellite info to download. “No? Okay. We’ll stay in my office with you both breathing your coffee breath on me.”

  “Sorry,” Linden said.

  “No, it’s fine. I didn’t want anything. Thanks for asking.” The video came up on the screen and Lou pointed with his pen. “See there they are. They’re pretty much all alone, except for this…” He tapped another ship on the radar image. “It’s about fifty miles southeast of your crew.”

  “What direction is the other ship headed?”

  “It wasn’t. It was stationary,” Lou said. “Also, we have that battle group that helped the Adamant with their pirate problem still on station just outside of the Adamant’s radar range to the east.”

  It was a couple of hours away, but those ships could move in to assist if they were needed. Linden crossed his arms and stared at the screen. “Okay. What next?”

  The video went into motion. “Nothing unusual, until just about ten p.m. our time. Watch.”

  The image showed the two ships sitting in the positions that they started in. After a few seconds, the Adamant disappeared from the screen, only to reappear a second later. “That’s it?” Linden asked.

  “Wait.”

  The ship disappeared from the screen twice more, then the third time, it stayed gone, and didn’t come back on the video. “This was taken earlier in the day. They are off of radar for a total of three hours.”

  “But they’re back now?” Holli asked.

  Lou looked up at Linden quizzically. “You can trust her. We all work in the same building,” Linden said.

  “Just not the same floor.”

  “Now you’re worried about security? Halfway through the stash of secret info?” Holli laughed.

  “You were quiet. I forgot you were there,” Lou said. “Yes they came back on, but watch what happens. They reappear just as the other ship disappears.” He played the video a little further and barely a moment goes by before the Adamant comes back onto the screen before the other ship goes off it. “And no, that one hasn’t come back on radar yet.”

  “No communications?” Holli asked.

  “None.”

  “Shit.” Linden pulled his phone out of his pocket and thought about what calls he needed to make, and whether it was time to make them. He had no idea what Cass was dealing with there. Maybe her cover was blown and she was out of commission? The crew would be angry if they discovered she was an agent, but none of them seemed terribly violent.

  “Get this together an
d prepare for a meeting in the conference room in an hour,” Linden said. “And keep watching both ships. I want to know when it reappears.”

  Linden walked out of Lou’s office and down the hall. He dialed his superiors and pled his case for retasking a satellite, but to no avail. They weren’t budging until they had better intel. He’d heard the same crap since Cass left on this particular mission. They wouldn’t pay to follow her around like a child.

  He dialed one of his friends in the naval quartermaster’s office. “Billy? Linden.”

  “Hey Linden,” Billy said.

  “Look, sorry to be abrupt, but I’m trying to get something done, and getting shit for help over here. Do you have any ships operating near the Aleutian Islands? Anywhere near there?”

  There was a quick tapping of keys. “Hold on.” The tapping continued. “We have a cargo shuttle that just took off from Sea Base Alpha and is headed to that general vicinity. Why?”

  “Well, we’re out of contact with a couple of ships and just want to see if there’s an explanation or if something’s gone wrong. If that shuttle could just do a fly-by, anything, and verify they’re okay while we’re sorting it out? We’re working on sending our own craft out.”

  “I take it you want me to contact you directly with any news?” Billy asked.

  “That would be correct,” Linden said. “Thanks, I will buy you a bottle of anything you want next time I see you.”

  “Not the cheap shit this time.”

  “No.”

  “And make it a case.” Billy hung up.

  Linden turned to Holli. “So, we have someone doing a quick flyover to see what’s what. Then we’ll see where to go from there.”

  The men’s room door opened and a tall man with a bad mustache came out. “Holli? Where have you been? I thought you left for lunch like…” He checked his watch carefully. “Like two hours ago.”

  “My fault. You must be Holli’s section manager. We haven’t met; I’m Linden Kemp, the director of the project down the hall. I’m so sorry. Holli was helping analyze something for us and I kept her too long.” Linden held his hand out to shake the manager’s hand and waited.

  “Linden, this is my manager, Gary Matthews.”

  “You’re the director of that project?” Gary asked. “I wasn’t aware that anyone still worked in those offices. In fact, I put in a request to annex a good portion of that space just last week.”

  “Well, I’m sorry.” Linden smiled and shrugged, finally dropping his hand. “We’re still there.”

  Gary continued to walk back to his offices. “That’s strange; they said it probably wouldn’t be a problem to get the space we needed.”

  “Want to transfer to my team?” It was directed at Holli—a none-too-thought-out question that spilled from his mouth before he could stop it.

  Holli patted him on the shoulder and started walking after her boss. “You don’t have a team.” They got in the lift and disappeared.

  It took a moment for Linden to accept that she was right. “Well, Gary, if you didn’t think anyone worked on this floor, why were you using our bathrooms? Gross.”

  24

  Martin followed Jakob down toward the engine room with a flashlight in one hand and his revolver in the other. His companion was similarly equipped, except his handgun was a brand-new Ruger forty-five with Taser under-attachment and a twenty-two round clip. It was big, and it was heavy, which is why Martin didn’t want to carry it. For Jakob, however, it wasn’t much of a problem. The handgun was more common with law enforcement and military police, as it allowed for both lethal and non-lethal means for dealing with an attacker.

  There were emergency lights all over the interior, but they were dim. It was hard for Martin to decide if the lights were defective, feeling the effects of the strange sudden power outages, or if they were doing their job exactly right. They’d literally never been used in the whole time Martin had owned the Adamant. He did know that the shadows they cast scared the bejesus out of him.

  “Down the corridor and left at the junction,” Jakob said.

  “Just keep leading. I don’t need directions.”

  “Unless something happens to me. Hell, it’s confusing in the dark down here,” Jakob said.

  It wasn’t reassuring to Martin. He had volunteered for this so he didn’t have to stay so close to the hysterical Caroline above decks. He felt for her, she’d been working with Lewis for years, but if he had to be near her now, he’d lose control of his own shit and he didn’t want to do that in front of the whole crew. “Fine. Don’t let something happen to you.”

  “It isn’t an option I was considering.”

  They came to the junction and turned left, as Jakob had said. He opened the hatch to the engine room and entered. Jakob reached up and grabbed two head lanterns from a hook near the door and gave one to Martin. They then proceeded down the short set of stairs to the generator on the other side of the room. “Man, it’s quiet down here. Usually you can’t hear yourself think in this area because the engine is going full blast. Now you just hear those waves against the hull,” Jakob said.

  Martin wasn’t in the mood for an existential analysis of their current situation. He wanted to get the engines roaring, and sail off in the opposite direction of the beast they just saw in the fading light of day. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Well, when you had them retrofit this old thing, they didn’t do the best job of marrying the old and new tech. So you need to flip that switch…” Jakob pointed his light at a yellow switch in a junction box on the far wall. “Right there.” He turned back to the generator and began hand-cranking a dial on the top of it.

  “Now?” Martin put his hand on the switch.

  Jakob jumped away from the generator. “No! Not yet. Waitwaitwait.”

  “Jesus, I wasn’t going to flip it.” Martin held his hands up as if he were being arrested.

  Jakob turned back to the generator and shined his light into the mechanism. “I’ll tell you when.”

  It smelled of oil and the fuel mixture that ran the generator, and some other terrible thing that Martin couldn’t place. It was filthy, he could tell that, even in the pitiful light. “You’re right, this place is a shithole.”

  “I never said that. Not exactly,” Jakob grunted as he worked at the machine.

  “Maybe if I’d put some money into it, we wouldn’t be in this situation. You were right. I need to be a little freer with the money from time to time.”

  Jakob stopped what he was doing and turned to look at his boss. “Did you just talk about spending money? Are you okay? Are you still in shock?”

  Martin tried to smile, but the situation weighed too heavy on him.

  “We’ll get out of this. Maybe we’ll head for Tokyo and ride out this whole thing.” Jakob turned back to the generator. “We’ll make it.”

  The words were hollow for Martin. He couldn’t see the bright side, not after one of his crew was dead. He sighed and leaned against a support beam. He was about to offer to help again, when a ticking sound caught his attention. At first he was concerned that the ship or some pipe was leaking and he was hearing a drip from somewhere. He should have let Rina come down. She knew electronics, so maybe she also knew plumbing. He called himself an idiot for making that equation and took a step toward the sound of the leak. He bent down to check a nearby pipe which he was unfamiliar with. As he did, the dim glow from the emergency lighting in the outer corridor dimmed further. He admonished himself again for being so cheap, but as he turned, he realized the light was being blocked by one of the creatures from the lab coming between him and the light. He could see its legs lifting and falling on the deck as it moved and made the noise he was looking for.

  “Martin? Go ahead and flip the switch,” Jakob said.

  Martin went hoarse, but managed to whisper a reply. “The door. Look up at the door.”

  Jakob whirled and saw the thing as well; it had spread itself out, extending its legs to their full le
ngth. It was easily four feet tall as it danced back and forth like a crab in the tide. Martin raised his gun and aimed. “Why isn’t it attacking us? It’s just moving back and forth for some reason.” To Martin it looked like a kid that had to pee, dancing around until it found a bathroom.

  “I don’t think it can make it down those stairs. They’re narrow and steep, not like the stairs from the next level,” Jakob said.

  “A monster whose weakness is stairs? That’s a pitch for the lamest horror movie ever.” Martin took a deep breath, feeling slightly better. “We should probably still shoot it, right?”

  Jakob looked like he was considering it when the creature moved back into the corridor.

  “You better run away,” Martin mumbled.

  “We need to warn…” Before Jakob could finish, the creature came charging back into the room and, as it got to the stairs in question, it threw itself awkwardly over the railing that blocked it. It tumbled when it hit the deck and rolled itself into a ball, pulling its legs back inside.

  “Holy shit.” Martin backed up and looked at Jakob. “Holy shit. Is there another way out of this room?”

  Jakob shook his head no.

  The creature came to a halt and unrolled itself. It looked like a turtle, trying to right itself and get back on its feet, but having a terrible time of it. The thing’s six long legs swung about in the air, trying to twist and push off the deck to turn over. The long tentacle-like stalks on its head were smashed, pinned to the deck, but they were writhing, trying to help the effort. The thing’s underside, now fully visible, consisted mostly of a large mouth surrounded by thick black bristly hairs. As it struggled, it let out a cry and exposed the rows of thin teeth as it opened its jaws.

  Martin saw what he was afraid was his only chance fading before his eyes. He moved closer and fired his revolver straight into the beast’s open mouth until the gun ran out of ammunition, then he moved back. The creature was flailing and shaking, moving itself in a widening circle, all the while letting out a terrible wail. One of the long, whipping legs caught Martin across the chest, and he shouted in his own pain.