Merfolk

by Jeremy Bates

  With a yelp, Rad leapt into a crouch and stumbled backward in the dark. Something cool had touched her ankles. A moment later she realized what it was.

  Water.

  Impossible, she thought. The edge of the pool is—

  The tide.

  It came in, or went out, or did whatever the hell it does.

  And if the water level rose enough to touch my ankles, then Jacky must be practically submerged—

  Jacky cried out, a twisted, anguished screech. Rad saw, or thought she saw, a shifting of shadows. It was impossible to see anything for certain in the blackness.

  But if the mermaid had returned, why can’t I see its head? Why isn’t its hair glowing like it did before?

  There was no time to contemplate those questions. Jacky was screaming now, in what sounded like either unbearable pain or unadulterated fear.

  “Stop it!” Rad shouted hysterically. “Let her go!” She felt frantically around on the ground for the pile of rocks she had gathered. She couldn’t find them…and decided it didn’t matter. She had no target to aim at. If she threw them blindly, she’d have just as much chance striking Jacky as she would the mermaid.

  Jacky’s screams turned muffled and watery. A second later there was a splash and a breathless retch—what sounded uncannily like a final gasp for air—then silence.

  “Jacky!” Rad charged into the water up to her knees. “Jacks!”

  Nothing. Only Rad’s rapid breathing and her frantic thoughts: It got her. It pulled her under. She’s gone.

  “Jacks!”

  No reply.

  “Jacks!” Rad wailed, sounding more animal than human. She was close to hyperventilating, a hard lump in her throat making it difficult to swallow or catch her breath. “Jacks…?” she managed, the single word little more than a strangled gasp.

  She heard a new sound then, pitiful and mewling, and she realized she was crying.

  Chapter 39

  JACKY

  This is the worst way to die. My God, I'm being eaten. I'm being EATEN.

  In her mind, Jacky had been in a safe place—the gymnasium of her elementary school. It was a weekday morning. She was in grade two, and her class had been paraded down to the gym to participate in the Western-inspired Halloween-themed bake sale. Numerous adults Jacky didn’t recognize—and some she did like Neja’s mom and Brittany’s mom and her own mom—stood behind small tables loaded with baked goods: witch-hat cookies, brownie spiders, boneyard cupcakes, Frankenstein marshmallows, gingerbread mummies, pumpkin Rice Krispy squares, and so many more. Jacky had three hundred rupees to spend, and she was going happily from one table to the next, filing her brown paper bag with the goodies when a terrible pain erupted inside her tummy. She screamed, but none of the adults seemed to notice. And then some part of her mind told her she wasn’t in her school’s gymnasium; she was in a dark and dangerous place.

  Cold water was washing over her. She realized someone was holding onto her ankles.

  Her head became submerged. Water clogged her mouth, cutting off her scream. Flooded with sheer panic, she thrashed her arms and legs and broke back through the surface only long enough to expel the water she was choking on and to wheeze back the smallest amount of air.

  Then she was dragged under once again, the hands pulling her deeper and deeper.

  The mermaid’s hands, she thought, suddenly remembering exactly where she was and what had happened to her. It stabbed me in the stomach, and now it’s trying to drown me.

  Terror coursing through her like an electrical current, Jacky continued to thrash to free herself, but the mermaid’s grip was unrelenting. Soon she no longer knew which direction the surface was, her bulging eyes seeing only perfect blackness. Spasmodic breaths drew more and more water into her mouth and down her windpipe, causing it to lock up and divert the water into her stomach. Her oxygen-starved lungs felt as though they were filled with fire and ready to explode.

  Despite all of this, Jacky was aware that the hands were no longer holding her ankles; they were tearing her clothes from her body, which was floating with her torso arched forward, her limbs flowing backward. She couldn’t fathom what was happening, why the mermaid was stripping her, and she found she no longer cared. The pain had ceased and the struggle had left her. Half-conscious and enfeebled by oxygen depletion, she felt tranquil. Nothing mattered except—

  Except it wants to eat me. It’s stripping me to eat my flesh.

  This understanding was so repellent it jumpstarted her brain, kicking her from the pleasant stupor that had washed over her. Yet she discovered she couldn’t move, couldn’t fight back; she could only think again and again with abhorrent clarity that she was going to be eaten alive.

  Please don’t do this, she begged. Please let me go…

  And then fresh pain, sharp, hot, in her belly, yet somehow distant, fading quickly, leaving behind only a ticklish sensation, and she was glad she couldn’t see in the blackness, because she knew that ticklish sensation was her organs floating free of her body into the bloodied water.

  This is the worst way to die. My God, I’m being eaten. I’m being EATEN.

  As her energy continued to fade, she was no longer begging to be let go.

  She was begging to die quickly.

  Chapter 40

  MARTY

  "Mocking you?" Marty said, surprised.

  “Their laughter…I would swear it was…contemptuous.” She shook her head. “I suppose I’m being foolish, aren’t I? It’s this cave, being trapped here. It’s driving me loopy.”

  “I can’t tell you if the merfolk were mocking you or not, Elsa. I will only say that we must be careful not to anthropomorphize other animal behavior, despite how similar they appear to us. Having said that, it is a fascinating idea, and I would love nothing more than to spend an evening debating the matter with you. To do that, though, we need to find a way out of this bloody tomb. Any ideas that don’t involve us getting eaten alive?”

  “I was hoping you might have one.”

  He was silent for a long moment before saying, “The bag I dropped. We need to retrieve it.”

  She blinked. “I forgot about that bag. I meant to ask you what was in it when we surfaced in the first air pocket…?”

  “An assault rifle,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “An assault rifle?”

  “An amphibious one, yes, designed specifically to be fired both on land and in water.”

  Elsa laughed, a braying cackle. “You’ve got to be kidding me! No—please tell me you’re not kidding me.”

  He wasn’t. The United States and the Soviet Union became interested in underwater firearms when the two countries began deploying underwater saboteurs during World War II. The problem they faced was that water was bulletproof. Traditional bullets lost their trajectory and penetration ability almost immediately because drag at high speeds was much greater in water than in air. During the early Seventies, the US Navy introduced the first underwater assault rifle that fired dart-like bullets. Around the same time, the Soviets created a more sophisticated assault rifle that used the phenomenon of supercavitation, in which a blunt-nosed projectile created a bubble around itself to reduce drag. The weapon was used by Soviet and Russian Navy special forces for more than forty years until it was recently replaced by the ADS amphibious rifle—which was what was in the black ripstop bag on the floor of the lava tube.

  “I’m not kidding you, Elsa,” Marty told her. “The weapon went into mass production last year in Russia. When it became available for export several months ago, I was able to get my hands on one.”

  She wore a bemused expression. “So you could hunt merfolk?”

  “I’ve always believed—or hoped—it would only be a matter of time before Pip and I located merfolk. When we did, I wasn’t going to take a picture of one. Even a high-definition video wouldn’t convince skeptics, not after the Netflix debacle. I would need a specimen, dead or alive. Preferably alive, but how the hell was I supposed to acc
omplish that? Which meant I would have to kill one, and I didn’t think a speargun would do the trick.”

  “You were planning on murdering a merfolk on this dive?”

  “Murder? No, I wouldn’t call it that. Merfolk might share an ancient ancestor with us, but they’re not human. Now, I’ve already gotten an earful about the ethics of all of this from Rad, and this is neither the time nor the place to get into it with you—not to mention that my decision to bring that gun might just get us out of here alive.”

  “I’m not arguing, Marty. I’m just…surprised, is all.” She took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s go get the damn thing.”

  ∆∆∆

  They stood at the water’s perimeter. It had risen nearly to the lip of the rocky rampart.

  “High tide,” Elsa said somberly. “Jesus, that completely slipped my mind. It might get high enough to flood the entire air pocket.”

  “Good thing we’re not sticking around then.” Marty crisscrossed his light over the black water. “Where are you guys?”

  “I don’t see them anywhere.”

  “That doesn’t mean they’re not down there.”

  “They’re bioluminescent. We should be able to see them—” She stiffened. “They turned it off. Earlier, their hair wasn’t glowing…”

  He nodded. “Animals can control when they luminesce depending on their immediate needs, whether that’s to find a meal or a mate, or to scare off a predator. In hindsight, I’m guessing the merfolk we first encountered was lit up as a warning to us. We startled it. Now, having realized we’re not threats but potential prey, however many of them down there have likely turned off their lights to lie in ambush.”

  Elsa swallowed. “Thanks, Marty. You’re full of good news.”

  “We have to be prepared for the worst. This isn’t going to be a walk in the park.”

  “No, it’s not. So how are we going to go about this?”

  “Very carefully,” he told her. “And hopefully with a lot of luck.”

  ∆∆∆

  They strapped their air cylinders to their chests to act as steel vests of sorts, then slipped into the water as quietly as possible, lights on, dive knives out. With their backs to the wall of the cavern, they exhaled into their respirators and began their descent.

  Chapter 41

  RAD

  Jacky’s gone, she isn’t coming back, and if you remain standing there in the knee-deep water, you’re going to be pulled under next.

  Splashing up onto solid land, Rad ran through the grave-black lava tube back the way they had all come. Once she was a safe distance from the pool she should have slowed and proceeded more cautiously, since the merfolk could no longer catch her. Yet logic didn’t matter to her right then. She could have been free from the tunnels completely and careening through the jungle, and she wouldn’t have slowed down. The reptile part of her mind had wrestled control from her higher-level brain functions, it was telling her to run, and so she ran, no questions asked. She bounced off the walls, stumbled several times, and once fell hard to her knees but sprang up immediately, running, running, running.

  And then the ground disappeared beneath her. She had fallen through one of the shafts they had circumvented on the way in, a shaft that connected with lower, parallel lava tubes.

  She plunged through the unending dark in total silence. The impact with the ground shattered both of her legs an instant before she kissed stone, swallowed half her teeth, and lost consciousness.

  Chapter 42

  ELSA

  The only sounds were her timed exhalations and her tanks clanking against one another. Perspiration beaded her forehead. One drop trickled down her left temple into her eye, stinging it. When she reached the point where she could no longer control her descent with her lungs, she allowed a tiny amount of air into her BCD to compensate for the negative buoyancy. As she sank farther and farther down the water column, she swung the light strapped to her wrist as if she were blessing herself: left, right, up, down, left, right, up, down—

  She spotted a merfolk—sans luminescence—during the last downward gesture. It darted through the white beam with amazing speed, there one moment, gone the next.

  Stung with fear, she tried tracking where it had gone but couldn’t find it.

  Where the hell did it go? Where are the others?

  How many are there?

  This was suicidal, Elsa knew with certainty. The merfolk were at home in the submarine environment, swift and dexterous, while she and Marty were slow and ponderous. The merfolk were stronger and had mouthfuls of razor-sharp teeth, while all she and Marty had for defense were dive knives with short blades. They were sitting ducks.

  But what other choice did they have but to attempt to reach the assault rifle?

  None. If they had stayed put, they would have either run out of air or been swallowed by the tide. Descending through the merfolk-infested water was a do-or-die moment—desperate, extreme, yet inescapable. In all of her years of cave diving, Elsa had never experienced anything so harrowing, not even during the deep dive to retrieve Ron’s body. That had been a dangerous undertaking, but she had spent weeks planning it and had been ready for any contingency. Conversely, what she was doing now had been conceived on a whim and felt about as reckless as swimming with sharks while smeared in chum.

  You didn’t have a choice! So shut up and keep your eyes open! You’ll reach the bag, you’ll get the gun, and you’ll get out of there—

  Suddenly there was a swirl and boil of water, a flash of a tail. Elsa felt as though she’d been punched in the chest and realized the merfolk had thrust a spear at her. She swung her light back and forth, probing the black water. She raised her knife, readying to slash the creature if it returned.

  It didn’t.

  Marty was aiming his light at her chest. She glanced down, expecting to see blood leaking out of a gaping wound. There was none. The stingray barb attached to the tip of the spear had deflected off, or shattered against, one of the steel cylinders. She was uninjured.

  Slowing her rapid breathing, Elsa made an okay sign.

  Marty did the same.

  They continued the descent.

  Chapter 43

  MARTY

  When Marty’s light illuminated the black ripstop bag sitting on the cavern floor, his chest tightened. It was only a few meters below them and an equal distance from the wall. He halted his descent, touched Elsa’s shoulder, and pointed with his light. She saw it too and nodded.

  As they’d discussed, they promptly moved their twin tanks to the proper positions on their backs. They had reasoned that, being this deep, any attack would now likely come from above and not below. When they were ready, they finned quickly toward the black bag. Almost immediately Marty sensed movement swooping toward them from above and felt a sharp prick in his shoulder. Guessing the merfolk had misjudged the distance to him, hence the ineffectual jab, he rolled over in anticipation of a second and more violent attack.

  The merfolk—or perhaps it was a different one—appeared from nowhere and thrust its spear at his torso. He tried twisting out of the way but was too slow. The stingray barb impaled his side. This time the pain was hot and fierce.

  As the merfolk yanked the spear free, Marty grabbed the shaft and tugged it—and the merfolk gripping it—toward him. Simultaneously he drove his dive knife in an overhead hammer strike, plunging it into the side of the creature’s neck.

  It spasmed wildly, tearing the lodged knife from his hand and disappearing into the blackness. Marty was already rolling into a prone position and finning toward the bag. Elsa, he saw in his light, was already at it. She produced the assault rifle and pushed off the bottom, raising clouds of silt. When she was a meter from him she jerked suddenly and released the weapon.

  He finned past her without stopping, knowing if he didn’t retrieve the assault rifle they were both dead.

  It disappeared into the silt. Cursing to himself, he went in after it, feeling around blindly, fully awa
re that just because he couldn’t see anything didn’t mean the merfolk couldn’t see him. With echolocation, they would know exactly where he was.

  Patting the ground, he felt only stone and began to despair. He wasn’t going to find it in time—

  One of his hands brushed metal. In the next instant he had the assault rifle in both hands and was pushing off the bottom. When he emerged from the turbid water, he saw Elsa brandishing her knife, fending off two merfolk that floated before her, spears in their hands.

  His confusion as to why they weren’t attacking her lasted only a fraction of a second, because in the next instant he realized they were acting as a distraction.

  A third merfolk was soaring toward her, spear extended, from behind.

  Marty aimed the assault rifle at it and squeezed the trigger. The weapon had a firing rate of seven hundred rounds per minute with an effective underwater range of about fifteen to twenty meters at this depth. The merfolk was only three meters from him, and the onslaught of bullets shredded its body, killing it instantly. He swung the weapon toward the other two creatures, ready to unleash a thunderstorm of lead on them, but they had retreated out of sight.

  Chapter 44

  PIP

  Standing in the pilot house behind the softly glowing control panel, Pip was steering the Oannes around the perimeter of Demon Island yet one more time, the ship’s spotlight sweeping over the shoreline seventy meters away.

  When Marty and the others didn’t return on time, she wasn’t immediately concerned. They would be a little late, she told herself, just as they had been a little late the day before.

  When an hour passed, she became worried.

  When two hours passed, she became very worried.