Dark Waters

by Lucas Pederson

  The old woman gurgles something before falling still.

  Sylvi yanks the sword out of the skull and spins around just as Emma begins using the AT-30 as a club, obviously not figuring out how to shoot the thing. She beats at Jakob and Mike, but neither back down much. Indeed, they seem to surge forward without pause, back her into the supplies at the rear of the STAV.

  Over her shoulder, Sylvi says, “Aim for the heads.”

  But, as it turns out, she doesn’t have to do anything. Sylvi rushes forward, stabs both Jakob and Mike in the head and it’s over. Just like that. The men drop like ragdolls.

  Sylvi holds Emma for a moment as the woman shudders and sobs, then strides across the STAV to Miles, face drawn.

  “The fuck is going on, man?” She gives him a hard shove. He stumbles back into the cockpit doorway.

  “It’s toying with us.” It’s all Miles can think of to say at the moment.

  “You don’t say. I mean, zombies aren’t your usual ocean fare these days. I kinda figured that out when you went all fucking nuts on us. How is it doing this?”

  Miles shakes his head, gaze falling to the blood twisted corpse of Geri. “I don’t know. It’s a demigod, according to Geri. I don’t think I fully believed her when she said it, but I do now.”

  “Lovely. We’re tangling with a supposed demigod. Because of course we are. Dude, we’re fucked.”

  He looks at Emma, who settles into a seat, head lowered, crying softly into her hands. His sight floats over all the carnage in the STAV. He sees all this and—

  A cold hand slap onto his shoulder, gripping so tight the pain is almost crippling.

  “Damn it,” Sylvi says, yanking Miles out of those cold hands.

  He turns and draws his pistol. Ma and Jenna shamble out of the doorway and Sylvi dispatches them with ease. They drop and she kicks them to the side.

  Miles glares at the bodies and says, “I’m gonna kill it.” Not a she anymore. He can’t think of it as anything else but a vile monster. “I have to kill it.”

  “We can’t outrun it?” Sylvi sheaths her sword, frowning.

  “No. And when the thrusters run out of juice we’ll be floating in the water without any way to defend ourselves. We have to kill it.”

  Sylvi levels a glare on him. “Then let’s kill it.”

  He nods and tells her and Emma to strap in.

  “You won’t need my help?” Syvli frowns.

  “No. I want both of you safe back here. Just in case it gets in my head again.”

  She doesn’t like it, he can tell, but nods anyway. Orders are orders, and even Sylvi, even now, she listens to orders.

  Miles hunkers down in front of Emma. When she notices him there she gasps and tries to scramble away.

  “Hey,” he says. “It’s me. Don’t—”

  “Get away from me!”

  Sylvi touches his shoulder. He stands and faces her.

  “She’s been through a lot of shit during this mission. Let her be for now.”

  He cocks an eyebrow. “You’re friends now?”

  Sylvi releases a flat psshh. “You know me. Better not to care than care and lose everything.”

  Although he knows better, because Sylvi has shown she cares for everyone lately, even Emma, Miles pats her shoulder and tells her to keep Emma safe.

  He leaves the body of the STAV, shuts the cockpit door and locks it. He makes sure it’s secure. The last thing he wants is to kill anyone else. Jörmungandr is his target.

  Unable to shake Emma’s reaction toward him, Miles plops in Jenna’s seat, buckles in and checks all the gauges and the monitor. Everything is normal. The monitor is utterly blank. Ah, but it’s been blank before and they were still attacked. He continues the slow zig-zag maneuver.

  And once again, the minutes pass like hours. Slow, mind numbing. If it’s the classic way of making an enemy let their guard down by stalling, then he needs to keep alert. Because it’s watching carefully. It’s waiting. Once it notices a weakness, it’ll strike.

  There’s no warning. No pause. It all happens so fast he can’t avoid it.

  The monitor is barely through its beep when something slams into the STAV from the bottom. So hard they go from a depth of four hundred to two hundred. The force is like being in an elevator, only heightened ten times with speed. Stomach dropping and face numbing.

  And they’re still rising.

  Still—

  The STAV breaches the surface in an explosion of water. He catches a glimpse of the full moon, then the STAV drops below the surface. He blinks at the dark waters, then growls deep in his throat.

  “You fucking pussy,” he shouts. “You can’t kill me!”

  But there’s nothing on the monitor now.

  He dives to around three hundred feet, glaring at everything and anything as rage boils and froths.

  “Where the hell are you?” he whispers, propelling the STAV toward mainland again.

  Still, there’s nothing.

  He does not zig-zag this time. This time he figures out to remain sentient and have the STAV turn in every direction in slow intervals. Probably not the safest maneuver, but it’s all he can think of to do.

  “Come on, you bastard,” he says to the empty cockpit. “Come on.”

  Then, the faintest beep from the monitor sounds. Jörmungandr slithers over one hundred feet above. Miles stops the STAV facing toward the surface and nudges the thrusters a bit. The monitor picks it up. Not in full, but at least the end he’s looking for. The head.

  It passes by without an attack. Passes without pause.

  “Oh no you don’t,” Miles says, voice barely a voice at all. More like a growl.

  He hits the mid-thrusters, jolting the STAV into four hundred knots within six seconds. He shuts the mid-thrusters off for fear of draining too much power. If high-thrusters drain it all, mid-thrusters are a slow death. Or so he thinks. Truth be told, he just doesn’t know.

  Despite everything, though, he drifts within thirty feet of the nightmarish serpent. A creature that can not only devour but invade the minds of the living…and the dead.

  His gaze narrows on the shimmering outline of the monster and shoots a laser at it.

  Jörmungandr swerves away, then doubles back. He still can’t fully judge its length.

  Before he knows it, the serpent is glaring at him through the windshield.

  In the cockpit (or is it all in his head?) Jörmungandr whispers, “Your weapons of man cannot harm me. Kill the women and spread my seed to society. This is your final chance to do what’s right.”

  His heart doesn’t pound, nor his blood run cold. No. All is vengeance now. All is hate. All is…red.

  The serpent slithers closer, shifting just enough. Yes…just enough.

  His finger caresses the laser burst trigger as he aims for the glowing, yellow eye. “Fuck you.”

  Jörmungandr visibly stiffens, as though in shock.

  Miles squeezes the laser burst trigger, a shout of triumph exploding out him.

  Until he realizes the burst doesn’t contain the fang.

  It strikes the serpent hard, though, extinguishing the yellow eye. A black swirling of what he assumes is blood fills the water.

  In a moment, the STAV quakes. A series of violent groans and creaks sounds.

  “Foolish,” Jörmungandr says. “I was about to let you live. But now…”

  The STAV groans some more. Something hisses and a pressure alarm blares.

  The patched crack sneaks free of the patch and grows, spiderwebbing the corner.

  “I’ll crush this vessel and you will drown,” the serpent says. “Unless you kill those two women right now.” The STAV shakes violently. “Think about it, Miles. You can live through this. You can come out a hero, just like that piece of shit that killed my beloved Leviathan. You can go on and make a better life for yourself.” And before his mind’s eye he sees just how beautiful life will be if he chooses to do as the serpent says. He sees a life full of love and warm
th. Of a wife and child. He sees a nice two-story house in the woods with a lake nearby and oh, there’s a dog and the windshield cracks some more and water leaks through and—

  “No,” he roars, aims at the nearest eye, and pulls the trigger.

  He catches only a slight peek of the fang attached to the laser burst cap before it plunges into the luminous eye.

  Either in his head or everywhere, Jörmungandr shrieks. A high-pitched sound. He clasps his hands over his ears, but that doesn’t help much.

  The massive serpent thrashes. Realizing how insane the thrashing is, he hits reverse. Not soon enough.

  Jörmungandr’s head crashes into the STAV, knocking the vessel aside. It’s a tumbling, flipping world before the emergency thrusts stabilize the STAV.

  If Miles had anything left in his stomach he’d be vomiting. As it is, he’s stuck in a slightly nauseated state. Once this passes he checks the monitor.

  The serpent is still there. Still very close but…

  The STAV floats toward the surface. Even as he uses the mid-thrusters to dive, the vessel is being pulled upward.

  He cuts the thrusters and allows the STAV to float. Because wasting juice trying is stupidity.

  The STAV emerges out of the ocean, bobbing on the surface during what appears to be a mild storm.

  And still Jörmungandr remains on the monitor.

  Miles slumps, suddenly struck with weariness. Be it from everything that has happened or lack of sleep, or both. He slumps.

  But he can’t pass out now. The monster might not be dead. And he needs to check on Emma and Sylvi. He needs to…

  CHAPTER 24

  Warmth spreads over him and his eyes flutter open. He squints at the sunlight glaring at him through the windshield.

  A groan finds its way out of his throat and he tries curling in the seat to avoid the sun.

  It’s no use.

  He licks his lips though it does little to wet them. When was the last time he’d drunk anything? Not sure. A few hours? A day? Doesn’t matter, he’s damn thirsty right now.

  Miles unbuckles, sits up. His back is a series of crackles and pops. He waits for his body to come to terms with waking, then stands and unlocks the cockpit door.

  Neither Emma nor Sylvi are in the body. Unless they’re both in the tiny bathroom, but he can’t see this as a possibility. Instead of searching for them, he steps through the gore of his dead teammates to the water. He screws off a cap from a bottle and drinks deeply until the bottle is gone. He grabs another bottle, opens it, but this time drinks casually as he sighs and checks the bathroom just in case. The women aren’t there.

  After a moment, he stops at the passage leading to the top of the STAV. The hatch is open. How it was opened without him doing so from the cockpit, he doesn’t know.

  But…he found the two women. Or at least, he hopes so and not that Jörmungandr coaxed them out to their deaths.

  Even so, he grabs two more water bottles and climbs the ladder to the opening.

  “It’s about damn time,” Sylvi says the moment he climbs out of the passage. “Come enjoy the view.”

  Miles squints from the glaring sun but finds Emma and Sylvi sitting on the edge of the STAV, legs dangling over the edge.

  “Get away from there,” he says. “It…”

  He skids to a stop and turns in a slow circle. As his sight adjusts, the reality of what he’s seeing comes into full focus. For the longest time, he cannot speak. He can’t move other than turning.

  Partially floating belly-up on the lazy waves of the Pacific, is the serpent. Its stark white belly scales glint in the sun. The majority of the thing appears to snake out and away for miles, but the head is near. It thunks into the STAV from time to time from larger waves.

  The head is twice as large as the STAV, but when the waves loll it to the side he spots Fenrir’s fang still stuck in its eye.

  “Holy shit,” he manages.

  “Yeah. It’s one dead motherfucker,” Sylvi says.

  Breaking free of his shock, Miles walks over to the women and hands them the water bottles. Emma gives him a cautious look, but eventually smiles and says thanks. There will be no convincing her he’s okay now. She witnessed him brutally kill people. One of them his own brother. A fact that hasn’t really struck home to him yet, but he imagines will sooner or later. And when it does…what’s to stop him from pulling the trigger on himself.

  But for now, he sits beside Emma, legs dangling over the edge and takes a drink of water.

  All three of them stare at the sun kissed blue/green water and the floating corpse of an Old Norse demigod.

  A shrill cry sounds from above and a seagull lands on the white belly of the serpent. It pecks at the scales.

  Miles takes a long pull from his bottle of water, sighs, shakes his head, and says, “Fucking annoying little bastard.”

  He ignores the eyes on him and drinks some more water.

  His gaze drifts to the rolling waters lapping at the side of the STAV.

  What other monsters lurk below?

  What waits in the fathoms?

  What stalks these dark waters?

  The world has changed, and anything is possible.

  He’s just glad this shit over.

  THE END

  Read on for a free sample of Shark: Infested Waters

  Chapter One

  Simon didn’t have an exact word to describe the smell permeating the air. The closest he could come up with instead was a color: green. The air smelled green. The trees, the miles of endless forest, the river, the lifeforms running and scampering and screeching in the trees and underbrush. Even when it wasn’t actually green, it felt green, lush and growing and full of life.

  This was the world he’d always dreamed of visiting. This was the Amazon.

  He wasn’t the only one who stood on the dock and stared out at the lush world around them. Not including the captain and his two crewmembers, the tourist boat that he didn’t even know the name of yet would be home for the next several days to five other people. Simon hadn’t had a chance to meet any of them yet, as he’d been too busy rushing out to get his first true views of the untamed jungle river. He had to assume that everyone else had the same level of interest as him. After all, this trip hadn’t been cheap for him, and anything this expensive would only attract the die-hard true believers, right?

  As soon as one of them, a tall man with slicked-back black hair, opened his mouth, Simon knew differently. “This is seriously what we’re paying for?” the man asked.

  A young woman roughly Simon’s age turned to look at the man. Despite her petite stature being dwarfed by his, she shot him a feisty look that said she would be more than willing to take him on if need be, and if Simon were a bettor, he might even put his money on her.

  “What did you think you were paying for?” she asked. “Casinos on the river? Roller coasters? The whole point of a trip to the Amazon is seeing the wildest that the world has to offer.”

  “The wildest that the world has to offer is in my bed, sweetcheeks,” the guy said. Oh brother. Simon would have done something to put the asshole in his place, but he didn’t have to. The little woman was more than capable of doing it for him.

  “I don’t think your tiny little worm can actually be considered wild,” she said. She walked away from him then, but not before “accidentally” stepping on his foot. Judging from the hardcore wince he gave, she must have more force in that tiny foot than anyone gave her credit for.

  The tall man turned to Simon, giving him a look that obviously meant he expected to get some sympathy for his rude treatment. “I hate bitches like that, don’t you?”

  Simon tended to consider himself to be the quiet, unassuming sort. He wasn’t at home with confrontation. But in this moment, it felt very important to him that he unambiguously let this guy know that he wasn’t on his side. Almost before he even realized what he was doing, he gave the tall man the finger and then walked away.

  With the un
pleasant guy out of the way for the moment, Simon could go back to appreciating where he was and how he had gotten here. The Amazon had always been his number one dream vacation, but it had never been something he believed he’d get around to. He especially thought it would be out of the question given the massive amount of student loan debt he had to pay back now that he was done with college. But his aunt had given him the trip as a graduation present, and even though she could only afford to send him during the offseason, he was extremely grateful.

  Judging from the relative age of most of the other people waiting with him at the docks for their boat, Simon suspected he wasn’t the only one here to celebrate graduation. In addition to the obnoxious guy and the feisty young woman who had defied him, there were three others, a guy and a girl couple, as well as another young woman who appeared to have come with the feisty one. He hadn’t had a chance to truly meet any of them yet. Simon supposed he should try to introduce himself, as the six of them were all going to be on the boat together for just under a week, cruising down the Amazon River and taking in the unspoiled wilderness, yet he just couldn’t force himself to make the first move. He had always been rather shy, and nothing about this situation made that any easier.

  Short-and-Feisty, however, didn’t seem to have the same problem. “Hi!” she said to him, shooting out a hand for him to shake. “I’m Miriam.”

  “Simon,” he said, taking her hand. For someone so tiny, her grip was ridiculously strong. She cocked a thumb in the direction of the other young woman who had come with her. “That’s Katherine.”

  Katherine gave him an exaggerated wave, but said nothing else. The couple, seeing that the introductions were finally happening, came over and joined them.

  “I’m Lucas, and this is my girlfriend Lara,” the guy said. “Pleasure to meet you all.” He then paused and looked in the direction of the taller man, who was still glowering at the river some distance away. “Or almost all of you. Miriam, was Cory giving you any trouble?”

  “Not any trouble I couldn’t handle,” Miriam said.

  “His name is Cory?” Simon asked.