The Ocean Dark

by Christopher Golden

  “Yeah.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say. She’d spent her life depending on men and ,at last, the tables had been turned. Now she just wanted to live long enough not to regret it.

  The gap separating them from the last container was no longer than a ruler. Miguel had gotten that part right. They jumped it. Up ahead, Pang had already climbed into the lifeboat, which dangled tantalizingly close. On the deck above them, someone stood by to hit the controls, ready to winch them up.

  Pang twisted around in the lifeboat as though he was having some kind of seizure. “They’re coming! Run, Captain! Jesus, they’re coming!”

  Tori didn’t look back. Gabe’s labored breathing filled her ears. She thought she could feel his heart pounding beside her, just as she felt her own. To her left, white hands appeared, heads rising, as two of the creatures began to slither up onto the container.

  This time, no smoke rose from their flesh, and no blisters rose. She glanced to her right, to the west, just in time to see the last sliver of the sun vanish into the ocean. A flash of green light flickered on the horizon, and then the darkness swept in.

  Night had fallen.

  She and Gabe practically threw themselves into the lifeboat. The winches cried out from above, in chorus with the creatures’ song.

  “It’ll be okay,” Gabe said, sliding an arm around her. “It’s gonna be okay, now.”

  Tori went cold. “The hell it is,” she said.

  For even as the cables drew them up toward the deck of the Antoinette, sickly white shapes slithered up her hull in the moonlight.

  ~56~

  Night had fallen.

  Miguel stood on the deck of the Antoinette, Heckler & Koch assault rifle slung over his shoulder and the SIG-Sauer holstered at his hip. He’d handed over the controls of the crane to Rogan for the last half containers or so and now he waited at the railing, watching the lifeboat ascend toward the deck with Gabe, Tori, and Pang on board. He held his breath, a sick twisting in his gut as he prayed for them to reach the deck. The ship had lightened considerably—he’d dumped half their cargo over the side—so they’d be out of here at speed, if the fuckers would get down to the engine room and do their jobs.

  “Tupper!” he shouted, turning to the assistant engineer. “Get below, goddammit! We need to be underway, now!”

  The thuggish Tupper looked at him with idiot eyes. “Jimenez is down there now. We’re ready to go!”

  Other members of the crew were arrayed along the railing as well, watching the lifeboat’s ascent, but Miguel paid no attention to them. He leaned over the edge, glimpsed his brother crouched in the boat, and then turned to seek out Rogan. The young Irishman, face pale in the moonlight in spite of his seemingly eternal sunburn, hustled toward him from the direction of the crane.

  “What’s going on?” Rogan asked.

  “Kevonne’s dead. The others are coming up. Get your ass up to the wheelhouse and find out what Suarez is waiting for. Set course anywhere but fucking here, and full ahead.”

  Rogan nodded and started for the stairs before he faltered, head jerking back in confusion as he stared up at the accommodations block. Miguel spun to see what had so astonished him, and saw Angie Tyree helping the FBI man down the stairs toward the deck. Josh leaned heavily on her, the bloodstains on his shirt a potent black in the moonlight.

  Angie and Josh. Which begged the question, what had happened to Suarez? Something glinted in Josh’s hand, and Miguel didn’t need to look any closer to know it had to be the gun he’d left with Suarez. That didn’t bode well for the old Cuban, or for any of them. But Miguel didn’t much care anymore. Maybe Gabe would have a plan that would sort all this out, a story to tell Viscaya about rough seas, losing half their cargo, and dead crew members, but whatever Gabe had planned, Miguel had decided it would have to include an explanation that covered the death of an FBI agent. As soon as they were safely away, he would put a bullet in the guy’s skull himself.

  “What do you want me to—“ Rogan started to ask.

  A question interrupted by screams from below, shouts from the lifeboat. Tori and Pang cried out for them to bring the lifeboat up faster. Gabe’s deep voice provided a counterpoint, but at first Miguel couldn’t make out the words, so intertwined were they with the screams of the others. He thought Gabe was saying, “We’re coming up.” He blinked a couple of times, processing, and sorted out where he’d gone wrong.

  Not we’re. “They’re.” They were coming up.

  Even as this information clicked in, Tupper let out a shriek that tore the air, just a dozen feet along the deck to Miguel’s right. He swung the barrel of the H&K in that direction and saw Tupper go down. Miguel hadn’t seen one of the things up close before and for a second could only stare at its sickeningly white skin, oily and slightly jaundiced by the moonlight, and its puckered, serpentine lower body. Its long fingers dragged Tupper down and wrapped around his head, stifling his screams. Its jaws went so wide they seemed almost to unhinge and then it thrust its face at Tupper’s chest.

  People cursed and screamed and got the hell away from the thing and their dead crewmate, but there were more. One of them flopped onto the deck and slithered toward Valente with hideous speed. It knocked him down and sprawled on top of him, too fast for any of them to do anything.

  Miguel opened fire on the one that had killed Tupper, the bullets ripping it apart, then swung the gun toward Valente. But there were people running, too much chaos, and he hesitated in fear of killing one of his crew.

  Then there were more—too many—slithering onto the deck, and he turned to Rogan. “Get up top! Get us out of here!”

  He heard the whine of the winch cables as they brought the lifeboat to the top and spun around to see Gabe, Tori, and Pang climbing onto the deck. Pang supported Gabe, whose left leg was torn and bloody. Miguel started to run toward his brother, but then Gabe turned to look at him, eyes full of anguish that had nothing to do with his wounded leg, and Miguel faltered. Even in the midst of blood and death and inhuman horrors, Gabe saw him as the monster.

  ~57~

  When Gabe saw the guilt in his brother’s eyes, his first instinct was to shoot him. He had taken his gun back from Tori, and in one swift motion he raised it and swept the barrel around to aim at Miguel’s head. In that fraction of a moment, conscience overrode instinct and anguish; he thought of their mother, and what it would do to her to learn that one of her sons had killed the other. But he didn’t lower the pistol.

  “Drop it,” he said.

  Miguel slid the H&K assault rifle to the deck and took a step back.

  Screams drifted off across the ship and out over the Caribbean, swept away by the wind--cries of help in a place where no one would ever hear, or answer. The sirens—ancient things, Gabe thought, from a time before the world had surrendered its mysteries—came up the hull with a damp, dragging sound, and boarded the Antoinette. His ship. Once his pride.

  Pang let loose a cry of such terror—the nighttime fears of prehistoric children, when the whole world was unknown—that both Rio brothers glanced over. One siren wrapped around his legs while a second coiled its lower body around his head, crushing his skull. The gun he’d been holding flew from his hand, skittering across the deck.

  “Jesus,” Miguel whispered. “Gabe, we have to—“

  Gabe cocked the pistol. “Why?”

  People were running, climbing the stairs of the accommodations block or vanishing below, slamming doors, bolting locks. How long they’d be able to keep the things out, Gabe didn’t know. But he and his brother were staying where they were.

  Until Tori grabbed Gabe’s arm and twisted him halfway around.

  “Stop!” she snapped. “What are you doing? We’ve got to hide!”

  “You heard—“ he began.

  Miguel lunged for him. Gabe shoved Tori away, turned, and struck his brother across the cheek with the barrel of the gun, laying the skin open to the bone. Miguel staggered to his knees and scrambled up again,
starting to back away. He snatched the H&K up from the deck.

  “I’m sorry, Gabriel,” he said, only half-aiming the weapon. “You don’t understand. Maya needed me. You hurt her so much, and then it was like she was invisible to you, like you didn’t even see her anymore.”

  The things were coming for them, sliding along the deck.

  “Stop!” Tori screamed.

  Gabe lunged at Miguel, grabbed the barrel of the H&K with one hand, and cracked the pistol over his head with the other. He tugged the assault rifle out of Miguel’s grasp, turned, and tossed it to Tori, who caught the gun as though it might burn her.

  “Don’t you fucking talk about her,” Gabe rasped, low in his throat, not even sure his brother could hear him.

  Miguel collapsed into his arms, begging for forgiveness.

  Gabe held him close, heart breaking. “Sorry won’t do it, hermano.”

  Then he turned, aimed just past Tori, and put a bullet into the open mouth of a siren, blowing out jagged teeth and the back of its head. He fired again, taking it in the chest as it reared up, cobra-style, to attack her.

  Tori turned, swung the H&K, and strafed three others that were slithering toward them. Gabe and Miguel stood, together, then stepped up on either side of her.

  When Tori crouched to pick up the gun Pang had dropped, Miguel took the assault rifle back, and Gabe didn’t stop him. There would be no forgiveness, but they had no time for recrimination, either. Time had run out.

  ~58~

  Angie flinched with every gunshot, held her breath with every scream. She wanted to run, to abandon Josh and just go, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave him. It wasn’t that she was afraid of prison—not anymore. But without Josh, she would have been alone. So she let him put an arm around her and hustled him as fast as she could across the deck. They moved along the accommodations block, afraid of being out in the open, and when they reached the far side of the structure—with only bare deck between them and the port side railing—they hesitated a second.

  Long enough to hear the shuffle of footsteps behind them.

  Josh twisted, grunting in pain from the wound in his shoulder, and aimed the gun. Angie held him up, but prepared to bolt if they got to him, then realized that footsteps meant something human giving chase.

  Even out of the moonlight, in the overhanging shadows of the walkway above, she saw orange highlights in Rogan’s hair.

  “You were supposed to get the ship out of here,” Angie said.

  Rogan scowled. “No time. I saw you two and wondered where you two were headed. Then I figured it out—the covered lifeboats.”

  Angie held her breath. Was he trying to stop them? “I’m sorry, Tom. I never wanted to lie. I just couldn’t go to prison, and—“

  Rogan gave a short laugh. “Fuck ‘sorry.’ Let’s get out of here.”

  Josh nodded, turning painfully, urging Angie on. “Go.”

  The three of them hurried away from the shelter of the accommodations block, out into the moonlight, on the open deck.

  “They’re coming from the island, or around it,” Josh told Rogan. “They might not be in the water on this side, yet.”

  “Let’s hope,” Rogan replied.

  Their every step punctuated by gunshots, they reached the winch controls for the lifeboat Angie had in mind. They’d been built for high seas, for terrible storms, and perfected by the military. She didn’t know if it would keep the creatures out, but it was their only shot.

  Rogan tore the tarp off of the lifeboat as Angie worked the controls, raising the boat up, the crane arms swinging it out over the edge of the railing.

  “Listen,” Josh said, a bit dreamily. He’d lost a lot of blood.

  The gunshots and screaming had stopped, and now they could hear voices rising, singing in an eerie chorus. Rogan froze, staring. Angie tracked his gaze to the accommodations block. In the moonlight she could see at least three of the things clinging to the walls, their tails coiled like snakes. One hung from a walkway railing.

  The singing stopped, and all four of them attacked, smashing through windows and locked doors.

  “Oh, Jaysus,” Rogan said.

  Angie turned and saw one of the pearly white things gliding across the deck toward them. A second hung from the second story walkway on the accommodations tower.

  “Josh, get in,” Angie whispered.

  The FBI agent raised his gun, barely able to stand, and took aim. “The hell with that. You get in.”

  Rogan grabbed Angie’s hand and started pulling her toward the open hatch.

  Josh fired.

  ~59~

  Tori aimed at a siren and pulled the trigger.

  “Good, now run!” Gabe snapped.

  Together, she and the Rio brothers raced across the deck, firing at the creatures that came too close or tried to block the way. The gun in her hand had been Pang’s, and she only had it now because the sirens had killed him. If he’d still been alive, she might be dead. Was that luck, or fate? The question seemed important, now, because she had a terrible feeling that that fate had caught up with her. She had escaped it once, three years before, down in the tunnel underneath Penn Station. Now she wondered if she had been meant to board that train, to die in that explosion. Tori feared that death had come for her, but her body wouldn’t allow her to surrender.

  “Move your asses!” she screamed at the Rios.

  Miguel twisted, sighted on a creature darting toward them from the stern, and fired four rounds into it, practically obliterating its head. Tori and the Rio brothers crossed the vast, empty space where the stacks of containers had been before. Most of the cargo had been sacrificed to save her and Gabe and Pang, but now Pang was dead, and she and Gabe would be too if they didn’t find someplace to hole up where the creatures couldn’t get at them.

  Screams and gunshots echoed across the deck, followed by the shattering of glass and splintering of wood, and the squeal of warping metal.

  “I’m not hearing as much chaos,” Miguel said, with a hint of hope in his voice.

  “That’s not good,” Gabe replied. “When it all goes quiet, it’ll mean nobody’s left alive to make any noise.

  More gunshots, then, muffled and distant. Tori took off in a sprint, mustering all the strength she had left, and the Rio brothers did their best to keep up. The railing glinted in moonlight. To the left, the accommodations block loomed, but she could see silver-white things moving way up on the wall, nearly to the wheelhouse.

  “Suarez,” Gabe muttered, spotting the creatures moving toward the wheelhouse.

  But he didn’t slow down. None of them did.

  Silhouettes moved on the deck. A man screamed. A gun barked. Miguel grabbed Tori’s wrist and hauled her to a stop. Gabe faltered, turning to stare at them.

  “This is bullshit,” Miguel whispered. “We’ve gotta find an unlocked container, hide inside.”

  Gabe looked doubtful.

  “They’ll get in,” Tori said. “You’ve see them. They will get in, and we’ll have nowhere left to run.”

  Anger flashed in Miguel’s eyes. “You got a better idea?”

  Another noise came from up ahead and the moon seemed to grow brighter, the scene clearer. The scene playing out at the railing resolved itself. Angie and a staggering man tried to get into one of the enclosed lifeboats. Smart. Really smart. The things were like little submarines, almost. They weren’t meant to travel underwater, but they wouldn’t flood and they were swift. If they were fast, and most of the things were still on the Antoinette, they might get away.

  But Angie and Josh weren’t alone. Things writhed on the deck nearby as they scrambled to reach the lifeboat. How they were going to lower her down, Tori had no idea, and the question vanished from her mind when she heard the cry of a shredded voice, and saw that one of the creatures writhing on the deck was Tom Rogan. A siren had dragged him down. Rogan fought, his skin gleaming as sickly as the creature’s, and they rolled and twisted. He tried to drag himself away. />
  “Move!” Gabe snapped.

  As Tori and the Rio brothers ran up, Gabe shot both of the grappling figures. Rogan slumped to the deck immediately, bullet through his chest, but the siren flopped wretchedly on the deck for several seconds until the captain shot it again. Tori gave it a wide berth as she ran up to the winch controls, took in the cables, the way Josh leaned against the lifeboat, the blood on his shirt, and understood he’d been shot. He threw something into the open lifeboat hatch, but Tori had no idea what it might be.

  Angie stood frozen, staring at Gabe, half-crouched, as though grief might have felled her. “You killed him!”

  “I saved him,” Gabe replied. “Neither of you were going to do it.”

  The words chilled Tori, but she couldn’t deny that they were true. She glanced over at Josh, terror and regret and anger roiling inside her, but she tamped all of those emotions down when she saw how bad he looked. Josh held a gun in one hand but seemed barely able to stand, only still conscious by sheer force of will. Still, he focused on her, and a gentle sorrow touched his face.

  “Hey,” Josh said, reaching out for her.

  “Get in the goddamn lifeboat!” Angie barked.

  Josh ignored her. Alarmingly pale, he touched Tori’s arm, then pulled her to him in a weird embrace full of terror and blood and handicapped by the grips they had on their guns.

  “Fuck this!” Angie said, and lowered herself through the lifeboat hatch. “Who’s coming?”

  Gabe and Miguel moved toward the lifeboat.

  “I’m sorry I lied to you,” Josh whispered in Tori’s ear, breath brushing her neck. “It wasn’t all pretend.”

  She stiffened in confusion--pleased and furious and hopeless in equal measure. “Do it,” she said. “Get in.”

  More shouting came out of the night, down alongside the accommodations block—someone else trying to get a lifeboat into the water. Tori looked along the port side and saw people struggling, falling, trying to rise, as sirens attacked them.