Dead Bait

by Romana Baotic (ed. )

  Am I hunting a more primitive mind? Is that why I do this? I think it must be, but I can’t assume it’s stupid. Most of Earth’s predators have primitive minds which doesn’t prevent them from being very good at what they do. My quarry is no exception, or someone would have found it before me.

  Another step and my eyes dip under the water. One more and I feel a wave wash over my head. It’s bright here and I almost hope I won’t get to the warm, watery twilight. If there’s nothing to find I can enjoy a nice dive in the light. But it’s wishful thinking. There’s no doubt in my mind that I’ll range out into the murky depths. Yesterday I thought the killer didn’t care if anyone searched for it, or just wasn’t aware. The shoe proved at least one of those false.

  I lean forward and start kicking, trying to keep myself straight. Waves try to travel in straight lines but nature doesn’t usually like things so simple. Every tiny thing changes the shape of the wave just a little, driving the currents. But a line is as good, or better, than a random search even if it leads out into the kelp forest.

  I find a small strand of seaweed in less than fifteen feet of water. It’s the thick, leafy kind and the police divers spent time here yesterday. They didn’t leave any footprints – the sand here shows the same current ripples – but I can see a lot more broken or torn strands than there should be. A couple of intact vines twitch when I get close, so quick I barely see it, but it’s enough to tell me I’m being watched.

  The patch is small enough for me to see through to the other side, but I still feel nervous slipping between the strands. They brush across my body, almost but not quite clinging to the wetsuit with just enough feeling to remind me what it’s like on bare skin. My heart starts to beat a little harder, but I swim through into deeper water, deep enough to see where the darkness begins.

  Well, not really, but even as deep as I am, light doesn’t travel far before the ocean swallows every photon. It’s one thing to be fifteen feet under the surface and something else again to look through ten times as much water at that depth. But I still can’t shake the belief that this would be easier a few hundred miles to the south. And warmer.

  *

  Swimming deeper, it strikes me that evolution is an active force. The world is a big, strange place and anyone who will tell you we’ve found everything there is to find doesn’t have much imagination beyond the six o’clock news. Water covers three quarters of our planet. We’ve literally just begun to scratch the surface and new species are turning up all the time. Even if you don’t believe in evolution, you can do a bit of reading to find out how little we really know about the oceans. And if you do believe, you have to admit that it’s an ongoing process. There are more things on Earth, Horatio.

  I realize I’m ranting to myself and try to focus more on the water around me. I should be a lot more alert right now, watching and listening. Mostly watching.

  Sound carries under water, far but slow and distorted. If you bang two rocks together, the sound is hollow and drawn out. Along with anything else, it hardly makes it through the noise of your own breathing. To me, underwater is noisy and quiet at the same time. If I could hold my breath and listen, I think there must be incredible things to hear. It would only work for those few seconds I held still, not long enough for the roaring silence to fade.

  But then, I’m not sure I want to hear the sounds that might come out of the kelp forest in front of me. It stretches far beyond my vision in both directions and swallows up the light just a few feet inside. I can’t know how deep it goes without swimming through, and I really, really don’t want to do that.

  No twitching here, the individual strands just wave back and forth almost in unison. I’m sure it’s keeping tabs on me somehow, but maybe the intelligence of a seaweed patch goes up with its size. How’s that for a creepy thought? My mind throws up a sudden vision of a 1950s horror movie, “The Seaweed that Ate New York” or maybe San Francisco. Moments that give me thoughts like that are either brilliant flashes of clarity or quick dips into insanity. Maybe both.

  Did the police divers come out this far? They should have caused a lot more damage. Could the forest clean itself up somehow or heal broken strands? God, when can I stop having these thoughts? Floating in thirty feet of water while staring at the kelp forest for thirty seconds, I’ve just taken seaweed from a primitive water plant to an intelligent, self repairing collective creature bent on mankind’s destruction.

  A new thought: maybe it’s my own hatred of seaweed driving me into this. Maybe when I was a kid I got stuck in a bunch of weeds while swimming and developed an unusual fear of water plants. The disappearances and deaths are just coincidences wrapped up in my delusion. Finding the shoe yesterday was just bad timing. Half an hour in either direction and I never would have seen it. Someone else would have picked up the shoe, shaken the toe down to the heel, called 911. Watching the evening news, I’d put one more pin in the mystery bulletin board.

  Am I just trying to give myself a convincing reason to not go in because it scares the hell out of me? I can admit that, but am I scared enough I’ll be able to live with not knowing?

  I don’t know how long I float, staring into the dense weeds, but when a few strands pull against the current, my heart stops for a moment, then starts hammering as they pull apart to make a round hole at least ten feet across in the dark green wall. The ripple of motion continues away from me, a path stretching into the gloom, a tube leading through the kelp, but to what?

  My mind screams at me to get away, swim back to the shore, get out of the water and never come back. It’s a trap, a mouth into the maw of the best, a tunnel into its lair. If I go in, I’ll be drowned, killed, eaten. An uncontrollable shiver racks my body and for a moment, the rational part of my mind beats against fear.

  The image of an open door snakes its way around the fear and closes it off without removing it. A trap, maybe, but it’s also an invitation. Isn’t it better to be a guest than an intruder? The current pushes me a little closer to the entrance and I lean forward and start to kick even before I’ve made up my mind. The gloom swallows me in a heartbeat.

  I can’t resist looking back. The round opening into a suddenly lighter ocean makes my heart jump a little. Whatever mind controls the kelp, it lets me have that glance without closing the opening, but I don’t doubt it’s too late to turn around. Having accepted the invitation, it would be rude to change my mind now and I have no idea how sudden flight might be interpreted. I don’t want my flipper washing up on the beach tomorrow.

  I swim through the false twilight for a long time before it opens into a bare area with a sandy bottom, probably about twenty feet wide and more or less circular. Looking up, I half expect a ceiling of seaweed, but there’s only water and dim light flickering on the surface far above me. I’m at the bottom of another tube, this one running straight up to break the surface thirty feet away or more. A little reassuring, if there weren’t so much kelp between me and the shore, and I’m sure plenty brushes the surface for the free photons.

  I drift almost to the middle of the circle, then pull upright and let my feet sink to the sandy bottom. Looking around, there’s nothing but the closing curtain, and I bite down hard on the mouthpiece. Committed, and if not, I should be.

  Is it a relief to know I’m right, that there is some intelligence at work here? Not yet. Not without motivation. Right now, I don’t feel any malevolence. I don’t feel much of anything outside my own fear, but I want to believe it’s just curious. I want to believe my relentless search for clues and explanations opened my mind to something, and that something just wants to talk.

  I’d really like that to be true, but I remember the toe.

  I wait long enough that I start to think about how much air I have left. The wrist gauge shows three quarters so I’m not worried yet, but the waiting makes me nervous. Something sent me a clue, an invitation and when I came, it opened a path for me, so unless it just wants to see how I react, it must want something. To communicate?


  Maybe I should wish for this to be an episode of some sci-fi show. Where’s my universal translator? Almost everyone has one on TV, except on those odd shows where all the aliens speak English. Somehow I doubt the seaweed speaks English and since whatever’s controlling it can talk to seaweed, I’d bet it isn’t going to swim up to ask me how my day’s going. Ditto if it is the seaweed.

  Something changes. It takes a long time to decide what, or at least it feels like a long time. There’s some pressure in the water, not like a wave, exactly, but pushing in from all sides. A shiver runs up my spine, then another, and I peer into the kelp forest looking for something, anything.

  Then a wave rolls across me, presses me to my knees, but it’s not water. It’s not even physical, but it feels solid enough, a wave of hunger and raw, primitive hate. Standing on land, I’d cringe or try to step back, but it comes from everywhere at once and the best I can do is wrap my arms around myself, gritting my teeth so I don’t curl up into a foetal ball.

  Is it darker? All of the sudden I feel like there’s less light in the dim space but I’m sure it’s only mid-afternoon. The shadows are deeper, darker, menacing. I’m in a fairy tale, deep in the woods waiting for the Big Bad Wolf to jump out at me. I’m far from home with a broken down car in a bad neighbourhood at dusk. I’m a small child who’s locked himself in the basement with nothing but a flashlight to keep the monsters at bay. Does the water or the wetsuit keep me from trembling? What will the Big Bad Wolf look like? And what is that noise?

  I’m not sure how long I’ve been hearing the tiny clicks, like - I don’t know, like those noises dolphins make when using their sonar to look for food. But this is quieter, like it’s far away and made by thousands of dolphins at the same time, more dolphins than you could imagine together.

  When it comes, it’s small, so tiny I almost don’t notice it but the movement draws my eye. It’s a sand crab, not much bigger than the first joint of my thumb and for just that one heartbeat I wonder why it’s so far from shore. My experience is of them living in that zone between the tides where the sand is always wet, hunting for things too small for me to see. But I’ve honestly never thought about it. Has anyone ever studied them? What’s it doing here?

  I don’t wonder for long because it isn’t alone. Three more slip out into the dim light, all scuttling towards me, then a dozen more behind them. I whip my head around, body spinning with it, and the view is the same on all sides. A trickle turns into a flood. A hundred, five hundred, thousands of tiny crabs moving with a single purpose, coming together as a single mind. A swarm.

  I’ve found it.

  Heart pounding in my chest, I push up off the sand before any of them reach me, finding a new equilibrium about three feet above what’s rapidly becoming a chitinous carpet. Stories flood through my mind about giant killer ants in South America, swarming over prey too slow to move and stripping it down to bones in a few minutes, but those stories wash away under a flood of hate and anger.

  Tiny armored bodies crushed under cruel or uncaring feet. Piled on top of each other in a bucket waiting to be thrown against walls or stones or used as bait or just slowly starve to death. Stuck in someone’s pocket to take home and slowly die in a glass box or escape to become a dried, desiccated husk in some corner or on the floor of the car. Millions of cruelties and indignities piled on their species over thousands of years. The images slam into me over and over and I press my knuckles to my temples. Get out, get out, get out!

  The images recede, leaving the hate behind. A boiling, seething mass of tiny malevolent eyes and grasping pinchers covers the sand. The clicking sound is obvious now, but knowing doesn’t make me feel any better, especially when I see them start pulling themselves up the nearer strands of seaweed.

  Now I understand. Prey, tangled and unable to escape, waits as the horde of crustaceans swarm up the strands and suffers death by a million tiny cuts. How long would it take them to strip a person down to bones? How long would you live while those tiny claws snipped away bits of your flesh? How long to carve through a wetsuit? How long before you decide you’d rather drown? I don’t know if I want any of those answers.

  They crawl up the kelp all around me, throwing hate. Everything slides into a new perspective. I’m not here to talk. I’m here to understand. They, it wants me to understand before I die.

  What can I say and how can I say it? Humans are cruel and stupid, but we’re learning. And how do I get that across? I think of people walking away from the beach and never coming back, of people just watching them from a distance and never getting close enough to touch. I think of a beach undisturbed by human hands or feet.

  Do they believe me? Do they hear? Can they?

  A strand of kelp bends toward me, rippling against the current. I snatch my hand back and look around for an escape route.

  God, a thousand typewriters heard from a mile away and they keep coming. The carpet of crabs extends into the gloom on every side and they swarm up the kelp strands, following the first few scouts. I’m the next meal. Another strand moves, a slow rippling snake easy to dodge, but still only one.

  Stupid. I’m so stupid. Caught up in my own arrogance, I thought the Swarm wanted to talk, but all it knows is hate and hunger. No. No, there’s more than that. It wants me to know why I’m being eaten. It understands cruelty. Based on the visions it showed me, what else could it have learned from us but cruelty? It’s an easy lesson. Are there more than a handful of species that wouldn’t learn the same thing given our history? Even the animals we supposedly love and keep as pets could easily find reasons to hate us.

  Funny how the mind works when you think you’re about to die. I should be spending my last few seconds trying to think of a way out, but I just can’t see one. Stupid.

  I remember I have a knife and pull it out now. As the next piece of kelp reaches for me I swing, a long slow swish through the thick water. It jerks back before I can connect but the motion twists me to glimpse the surface. My only chance.

  A half dozen slimy ropes snake out at once and I kick hard for that dim light. Forgetting everything I ever learned about swimming, I claw at the water with my hands. One strand catches me around the ankle, but I’m strong enough to break one and it doesn’t even slow me down. Two strokes later, one catches my other ankle and suffers the same fate.

  I remember the mass of kelp parting to make the tunnel. Why is it only sending a few strands at a time? Why not just wrap half the forest around me and pull me down to the dinner table? Two wrap around my right wrist and I lose the knife jerking it free, making another grab for the surface. It was probably just slowing me down anyway and with the second hand free to pull against the water, I break into air a little faster.

  I have to fight the urge to spit out the mouthpiece. Treading water for a moment, I turn to get my bearings and find the shore, shaking my head to clear the water from my mask. It takes a second to understand what I’m seeing.

  Standing on top of the kelp, on top of each other, bobbing up and down on the gentle waves, there’s a ring of crabs. In front of me and off to the left I see shore and the edge of the bay which makes open ocean behind me, but the ring goes all around. God, it’s playing with me. The Swarm is playing with me.

  Swarm. When did I start to think of it that way?

  I am so screwed. And they, it, the Swarm wants me to know it. Like the world’s biggest cat playing with its food. I’m the mouse that sees the tiny opening my tormentor left unguarded and I rush for it only to find it isn’t unguarded after all but exactly where the cat wanted me to go to draw things out and make the meal more entertaining.

  That’s me. Dinner theatre for a group mind made up of sand crabs.

  Something wraps around my left ankle and pulls. I jerk back and it either breaks or lets go. My kingdom for a giant underwater lawnmower. I’d cut the whole damned forest down right now and mulch the crabs for fertilizer. Better them than me.

  Swim for shore. What else can I do? Give u
p, I guess, but not yet. I plough through the crab ring, feel the tiny impacts on my forehead and shoulders, the little clinks against mask and mouth piece. Clinging strands of kelp reach out and tighten as I pass by, trying to slow me, stop me. But they don’t try hard enough to keep me from moving. Not yet.

  My heart pounds like I’m sprinting the last hundred yards of a marathon. I don’t think I’ve worked this hard since track in college, but choosing between being carved into tiny, edible chunks and a heart attack followed by drowning is easy. Heart attack, here I come.

  More seaweed tries to latch onto me and every stroke gets harder. I clamp my teeth on the mouthpiece and focus on the beach, farther away than I can possibly reach. Kelp snatches at every limb and I can’t understand why I’m still moving, why it’s still letting me think I can get away, but I don’t really have the breath or energy to waste time caring. Push for the shore. That’s all I can do.

  And then I’m free. A few broken strands cling to my wrists, ankles, and waist but nothing else tries to grab me. I swim another dozen strokes to make sure I’m completely out of reach, then slow to a gentle crawl, still making progress, but not working hard to do it. Still alive, I need to catch my breath. I get to keep living. The thought doesn’t bring as much joy as it should because I’m so tired. I can be happy later.

  I stick my head completely in the water and just kick a little. The bottom is murky but I can sort of see sand and an absence of crabs. The typewriters, quieter, haven’t disappeared from my hearing just yet. Breathing just a little easier, I keep swimming.

  Am I the first one to escape the Swarm? It’s an uncomfortable thought, now that I can think again. Someone would have written about it or reported it. I must be the first, but then my survival doesn’t make sense. Had I just been really lucky and caught the Swarm on a bad day? I have a hard time with that. As hard as I had to work, getting away was too easy.