by Laura Martin
Desperate, I pushed my face up into the tiny pocket of air, gasping. Panic clawed at me as I hovered there. Everything around me was freezing blackness, and I knew I was going to have to force my head back under the water if I had a prayer of finding my way out. I hesitated, and my muscles cramped with the mind-numbing cold. You can do this, I commanded myself. With one last deep breath, I submerged myself again.
This time my hand curled around the corner of the door within seconds, and I pulled myself through. Terror moved like lightning through my veins as I clawed my way towards the surface, all the while imagining gigantic plesiosaurs circling me. Soon that terror was replaced by the realisation that I still couldn’t see any light above me. My burning lungs had had enough. They jerked violently inside my chest. I needed air. I inhaled.
Freezing water started to pour into my lungs, but a moment later my head burst through the surface and into glorious fresh air. My body heaved, and I vomited. Water gushed from my nose and mouth as my ears rang. But I was alive. A starry night sky winked above me, and I tried to understand what I was seeing. I’d expected to come up inside the bubble of the dock, and I looked around wildly for my friends. Panic squeezed my still-pounding heart as I took in the empty rolling waves. I was alone.
No, I thought stubbornly. They have to be around here somewhere. I’d fumbled around in that elevator so long that I knew I was the last one to make it out. If they hadn’t made it up, then … I stopped that train of thought. Thinking about them getting eaten or drowning was too much. To my right, the lake was bubbling as a dark red light shone up through the water. I stared at it in confusion for a minute before I realised that it had to be the remains of Boz’s conference rooms.
Suddenly I heard a shout to my left. Turning, I could just make out arms waving in the distance. The relief that washed over me almost made the terror of swimming through plesiosaur-infested water fade away. Almost.
The dark forms were paddling hard away from the bubbling red light. I followed, but my flailing strokes were pathetic in comparison, and I almost lost sight of them twice. I’d never really had to swim before. North Compound had had a small pool, but it was only four feet deep, barely enough to teach us the basics during the survival unit in school. I’d thought learning a skill we’d never actually use was laughable, but it was anything but funny now.
The whine of an engine droned overhead, and I looked up to see four massive black helicopters emerge from the darkness. They each shone a spotlight down on the wreckage of the lab, illuminating water filled with thrashing, snarling plesiosaurs. It was the light, I realised. They were attracted to it just like they had been attracted to the lights of the lab. My heart felt like it had lodged itself in my throat as I took in the sight of those enormous creatures less than 200 yards away. I paddled harder, praying that they hadn’t noticed me. Over the rushing wind and crashing waves, I slowly became aware of another sound. I stopped swimming, my body bobbing up and down in the waves as I turned, this way and that, trying to spot the new threat. The sound was too low to be another helicopter.
A small arc of light suddenly bounced across the water, catching my attention. I stared at it for a moment, trying to figure out what I was seeing. A second later the light flashed into my eyes, temporarily blinding me. I threw a hand up to block it just as I heard Todd’s familiar voice call out. I squinted against the glare and made out a small shape careering across the waves. I felt a flash of relief as I realised that somehow my friends had found a boat. If I could reach it, I could get out of the dark, churning water, and right that second there was nothing I wanted more. I started swimming towards it, the flashlight lighting up the water in front of me. My feeling of relief flitted away a moment later as I realised what Todd had just done.
“Turn off the light,” I yelled, my burning lungs and aching muscles forgotten as I put on another burst of speed. “Turn it off!”
“What?” Todd called back.
“The light!” I screamed. “Turn off the light!” He clicked it off, but a quick glance behind me confirmed that he was too late. Two enormous forms were moving swiftly through the black water straight towards me. Even in the near dark, I recognised Pretty Boy’s grisly crocodile-like jaw as its head emerged, its eyes flashing and focussed. The other plesiosaur wasn’t moving quite as fast, but it had a head start on Pretty Boy. Its shape made me think that it had to be an elasmosaurus, but it didn’t hoist its long, snakelike neck out of the water like I thought it would. Instead, its small arrow-shaped head darted only a foot or so out of the waves before submerging again. I swam harder, trying to calculate which would reach me first, the boat or the plesiosaurs.
Moments later, I knew the answer to my question. Teeth clamped onto the pack I still wore, and jerked me underwater with a violent snap. Black water surrounded me as the long-necked elasmosaurus shook me from side to side. The joints in my neck and shoulders popped as it tried to break my back. A silent scream ripped out of me, but before I could inhale my second lungful of icy water that day, something slammed into the side of my attacker and the elasmosaurus released my backpack. I clawed my way back to the surface, emerging just in time to see Pretty Boy tighten its enormous jaws around the long, muscled neck of the elasmosaurus. Apparently it didn’t appreciate someone trying to steal its dinner. The elasmosaurus let out a high, screeching squeal and craned its head back in a futile attempt to take a chunk out of its attacker. I’d barely processed all of this before a huge paddle-shaped fin came crashing down on top of me, sending me plunging down into Lake Michigan’s icy depths again.
The water churned around me, full of thrashing fins and flashing teeth, and I connected with the smooth muscled back of the long-necked elasmosaurus as it struggled violently in Pretty Boy’s massive grip. I managed to figure out which way was up, despite the chaos, and resurfaced midstroke swimming hard, my body one raw nerve of panic. Luck was with me, and when I blinked the water from my eyes, I was only a few feet from the small boat. A hand reached down and pulled me over the side. Someone revved the motor and the boat spun around and away from the fighting monsters. Before I could even register that I was still alive, we were bouncing over the waves, the keening of the dying elasmosaurus filling the air behind us as more plesiosaurs swam over to investigate.
I was shaking so violently my teeth were in danger of biting my tongue off. Todd’s face materialised in front of me, and I blinked at him. His mouth was moving, but my ears were still roaring and my heart hammering too loudly to hear anything he was saying. All the adrenaline of moments before seemed to suddenly drain out of me, leaving me nothing but a shivering puddle of exhaustion.
“You OK?” Todd shouted again, his face tight with concern.
Maybe I’m in shock? I thought fuzzily. How long had he been talking to me? I wasn’t sure. My brain felt caught in an impenetrable fog as I relived the last few minutes of horror over and over again. The bombing. The elevator. The plesiosaurs. All those teeth.
“Sky!” Todd said again, grabbing my face between his hands. “You’re freaking me out. Say something.”
I blinked at him. Why was I still lying on the bottom of this bumping, jarring boat? I felt like a fish out of water, gasping for air and staring up at the night sky as it whizzed by overhead. I should probably respond, I reasoned, but I couldn’t remember how to talk.
“Of course she’s OK,” Chaz yelled. “She’s alive, isn’t she?”
I glanced around the tiny boat, registering for the first time that it had only two other people in it. The numbness of a moment before evaporated. I sat bolt upright so fast I conked heads with Todd, who yelped and rocked back, rubbing his forehead. This couldn’t be right. My hand reached out as if on its own and grasped Todd’s shoulder. “Where’s Shawn?” I demanded; my voice sounded hoarse and raw in my ears.
Todd swallowed hard, glanced over at Chaz, and then looked down as though he was wishing he could sink through the bottom of the boat and disappear. “He didn’t surface,” he said,
barely audible over the slap, slap, slap of the boat hitting the water and the whooshing of the wind.
“No!” I screeched. “Turn back. We have to go back. He might be in the water somewhere.” I would not leave my best friend behind.
Todd shook his head. “We can’t.”
“We have to,” I cried. Didn’t he understand? We’d forgotten Shawn! Lunging forward, I attempted to wrench the engine control out of Chaz’s hand.
She shoved me back with enough force to knock me on my butt. “Stop it,” she snapped. Her face was sad, devastated, and resolved. “He wasn’t there. We looked. He never made it up.”
“No.” I shook my head, refusing to believe it. “He had to make it up. I was the last one out of the elevator.” My mind raced frantically back to that terrifying eternity in the pitch black, those last moments underwater. I’d been sure there was no one else in there – I’d never felt so completely and utterly alone in my life.
“I’m sorry, Sky,” Todd said slowly, as though he were talking to an upset child. “Schwartz never made it up either. If we go back now, they’ll catch us. We can’t. He never made it up. I swear.” I slumped to the floor of the boat in exhausted defeat. Behind us the scene of the decimated lab played out under the beams of helicopter lights. The water still roiled and frothed red, churned into angry waves by the plesiosaurs that circled and battled one another. Bits and pieces of the destroyed lab had bobbed to the surface, and I recognised the broken remains of a desk moments before one of the plesiosaurs shoved it back under the water. But the scene was quickly swallowed by the darkness, and I shut my eyes as tears were blown off my icy cheeks by the wind that whipped past us. Chaz was steering the boat with a determined precision, but I couldn’t make myself care where we were going. The only thing that mattered was that we were going away from the lab, away from Shawn. I shut my eyes again, blocking out the anxious expressions of my friends as I tried not to drown in the pain that was slowly burning through me.
Thirty minutes later, Chaz finally ventured to break the silence. “What took you so long to come up?”
I shivered. “I couldn’t find my way out. The water came in too fast, and it was so dark.”
“Yeah, I think I just survived my worst nightmare,” Todd agreed. I rubbed my hands up and down my arms in a hopeless attempt to warm myself, but the icy cold was just as much on the inside as it was on the outside, and no amount of rubbing was going to fix that.
“Where did you get the boat?” I asked.
“We came up right outside one of the boat dock bubbles. Thankfully someone left the keys in this one, or you’d be a goner.” Chaz shook her head, her face sober. “We almost swam right past it. The docks are impossible to see at night. It was a lucky break that my arm brushed against it when we were swimming.”
“What now?” I asked, although with Shawn gone I wasn’t sure it mattered.
“We get out of the water,” Todd said. “Take cover and hide until things calm down.”
Chaz nodded, her mouth pressed into a grim line.
A long while later, we spotted the shore. We were coming in fast. Too fast. Chaz fumbled frantically with the engine lever, but it didn’t seem to be doing much.
“You might want to hold on to something,” she warned. “I’ve never landed one of these before.”
“Of course you haven’t,” Todd said, groaning, as he quickly grabbed the side of the boat, crouching for impact. I had enough time to brace my feet before the boat careered into the beach with a screech of metal and an explosion of sand. When we finally came to a shuddering stop, I had to use my left hand to pry my frozen right hand off the side of the crumpled aluminum boat. The engine sputtered and then died with a hiss of steam. The silence of the forest seemed to press in on us from all sides. We sat there, breathing hard as the sounds of the night slowly started back up.
“That could have gone better,” Chaz said, echoing my own thoughts as she slumped in the boat.
“No kidding,” Todd said, already pulling himself to his feet.
“If anyone finds out I trashed a boat, I’m so dead,” Chaz moaned, taking in the wreckage.
“You really think anyone is going to care about a boat when half the lab just got destroyed?” I snapped.
“I hope it wasn’t half the lab,” Chaz said, looking worried. “I initiated the lockdown pretty fast.”
“Are we supposed to know what lockdown is?” Todd asked.
“You saw it,” she said. “Each tunnel is equipped with thick metal plates in case we were ever bombed from above. They are supposed to protect the glass underneath from shattering in a direct hit. There are also those flood walls that drop into place, separating the lab into zones, so if one section does get damaged the entire lab isn’t destroyed,” Chaz explained. “You don’t live underwater without some precautions.”
“Well, that’s pretty smart,” Todd agreed grudgingly. I waited for Shawn to chime in, knowing this kind of thing was right up his alley, and then it hit me all over again that Shawn would never comment on anything again. That dark cloud of sadness threatened to overtake me once more, but I pushed it away to focus on Chaz.
Chaz shrugged. “We always knew there was a chance the Noah would find us someday, and if he did, he would try to destroy us. I’ve been practising emergency flood drills since I could walk. I can only hope that all that practice paid off.” She winced and looked away, and I realised that I wasn’t the only one who had lost something. We had no way of knowing just how much damage the lab had sustained or what the casualties were. Chaz’s whole world lay at the bottom of that lake, and she had no idea how much was left of it. I reached out and squeezed her shoulder. She quickly brushed tears away with the back of her hand and flashed a forced smile.
“We need to get back into the lab,” I said. “We can help the survivors, and we need to tell someone what’s happened. Schwartz is dead, and all of Boz’s council members probably died. Right?” I asked, looking to Chaz for confirmation.
She nodded, looking grim. “The conference rooms were the first hit. Even with the lockdown, the floodgates never would have had a chance to initiate there. We’re probably the only ones alive who know about the Noah’s plan.”
Todd shook his head vehemently. “You can go back to that lab if you want, but count me out. I will never, and I repeat never, go into a lab like that again. I spent the last few days listening to everybody rattle on about how safe it was, and then I almost drowned. Nope. Not happening.”
“Moot point,” Chaz said, shaking her head. “When a lockdown is instituted, it stays locked down until all the systems are stabilised and the threat has been neutralised. That could take weeks. Even if we wanted to get back in, we couldn’t.”
“Forget about the lockdown,” Todd said. “The Noah’s guys are swarming around the lab wreckage like flies on poop. If we go bouncing back out onto the lake in this boat, they’ll grab us for sure.” He gave the crumpled remains of the boat an assessing look and kicked experimentally at the side, where a rock had ripped a large hole. Wood splintered and crumbled, falling in chunks onto the beach. “Let me rephrase that,” he said. “Even if we had a way to go back out on the water, I wouldn’t.” I stayed quiet as I rolled this new information around, which was why I was the first one to see the trees to our left move.
“Shhh,” I hissed as I peered out into the darkness. Hearing the warning in my voice, Chaz and Todd followed my gaze, to where five sets of luminous green eyes were staring at us.
“Here comes the welcoming committee,” Todd muttered.
Time seemed to stretch and slow as we sat staring at the eyes. “Any chance one of you happened to grab a tranquiliser gun?” I whispered.
“No,” Todd said, his voice strained and tight. “I sure wish I had my bow, though.”
“Bow?” Chaz asked, aghast. “Why? Those can’t be more than young adolescents based on their height. I’m guessing they’re either ouranosaurus or iguanodons from the eye shape. Have you two l
earned nothing these last few days? They are probably just curious.”
“Yeah,” Todd grumbled. “Curious about how we taste.”
“They’re herbivores,” Chaz said, rolling her eyes in exasperation. “Just don’t turn into a leaf or spook them, and we’ll be fine.” The words had barely left her mouth before the eyes emerged from the trees to reveal green skin that rippled and gleamed in the moonlight. The dinosaurs’ massive heads were wide, tapering down to a square snout. They walked on all fours, their smaller front legs giving them a hunched appearance, but every now and then one of them would hesitate, rearing back to balance on their larger, muscular back legs. At around fifteen feet from head to tail, I had to agree with Chaz: these were young dinosaurs.
“Are you sure they won’t attack people?” I asked. I didn’t see any teeth, but their billed jaws seemed powerful. Chaz shushed me, her eyes never leaving these strange-looking dinosaurs. They were studying us with the same keen intelligence I’d seen in the dinosaurs at the lab.
“I should tag them,” Chaz murmured as the animals approached cautiously. “We haven’t seen many young iguanodons around these parts.”
“After everything that just happened, how could you possibly still care about the iggi-whatsits,” Todd hissed.
The iguanodons came snuffling along the side of the boat, bringing with them a pleasant earthy smell. They dwarfed me by a good four feet, but for the world of dinosaurs that was relatively tiny. We sat in silence as the creatures continued their investigation of our ears and shoulders for a few more minutes. Their hot breath tickled, and I had to fight the urge not to giggle. It wouldn’t be funny at all if I scared them and they accidentally smashed us.
When the dinosaurs finally moved away, Todd let out a huge sigh and turned to us. “Time to get under cover.”