The Ocean Dark

by Christopher Golden

  Behind him, one of the sailors tripped and fell. Gabe thought he heard bone crack and the sound unleashed a fear he had kept bottled up. He twisted around and flashed the Maglite and saw it was Manetti—the medic—who’d fallen. The man’s face reddened with pain that built into a roar, even as the other sailor bent to help him.

  A hand clamped on Gabe’s wrist and he whipped around to see David hauling on him, nearly dragging him. Gabe surrendered to that grip and kept moving, and moments later he was at the top of the ridge. The darkness there had not been a dead end, but a turn in the tunnel, a place where the fissure ended, but a split in the stone led into a larger chamber--a void in the subterranean heart of the island.

  They all stopped in that chamber—perhaps twelve feet wide and ten high--and stared back the way they’d come, waiting for Manetti and his companion to emerge. The song rose and multiplied into a harmony. More than one of the things had been lured by the splash of that Maglite, or the beam of light in the water--the presence of something down there with them that didn’t belong.

  Gunfire erupted back in the fissure, reports echoing, drowning out the sirens’ song. And, amidst that cacophony, a man screamed.

  “Damn it!” Lieutenant Stone snapped. He leveled his weapon and started back into the fissure, but David grabbed his arm to stop him. Stone looked like he might take a swing at the younger man.

  “Listen!” David said.

  They all did. At first there came no sounds at all—no cries of the wounded, no gunfire, no calls for help. But then the song began again, further away, echoing.

  “They’re dead,” Agent Voss said.

  Stone glared at her a second, then relented.

  “The light must have disturbed them. Or the splash, I don’t know,” David said. “But the singing, I think it really is some kind of echolocation, like bats. They have eyes, but they must use that also. If we were still back in the fissure, they would know we were there.”

  The song continued.

  Gabe felt ice trickle down his back. “So that, right now? That sound is them hunting for us?”

  “And maybe talking to each other. There’s too much we still don’t know.”

  Gabe stared at him. He might be young and even a bit clumsy, but all of a sudden Dr. David Boudreau seemed far more valuable, and formidable.

  “We know all we need to know,” Voss said, “which is that we can’t go back that way.”

  Nobody bothered to argue. Especially when the lone song was joined by another. Crowley led the way into the new tunnel, taking point again, with David following.

  Gabe looked at Voss and Stone. “I’ll cover the flank,” he said, showing them his empty hands, “but not without a gun.”

  “I’ve got it,” Stone said, gesturing with the barrel of his assault rifle. “Go ahead.”

  But Voss didn’t move. She stared a Gabe a long moment, then sighed. “Fuck it,” she said, handing him her pistol and then drawing a second from a holster at the small of her back.

  “Thanks,” Gabe said, meaning it.

  Voss shot him a hard look. “I hope you can aim.”

  Then she vanished into the tunnel, and Gabe followed, the pistol in one hand and the Maglite in the other.

  ~85~

  Alena kept pace with Sykes and Paul Ridge, with the rest of the group following behind. All her life she had been active, and as she had aged she had done everything in her power to preserve herself. It had pleased her to defy the years, and often enough she had indulged that defiance in dalliances with younger men—sometimes much younger. Now she cared nothing for her appearance. All that mattered was the thousands of hours she had spent in the gym or the pool, the hundreds of hiking trips, the years of exploration in rough terrain.

  In the dark, with the weight of the island pressing around her, Alena forged ahead, silently challenging the rest of the team to keep up with her. She worried about Agent Hart and the woman, Tori. The FBI man had slowed considerably—and who could blame him with a bullet wound in his shoulder—but with the tide rising and the daylight above ground by now beginning to dim, at some point they might have to move faster. She feared what might happen to him then. If she could, she wanted to see every single one of them get out of this. But if that proved impossible, she would settle for as many as possible.

  She didn’t want to die.

  The fear would have engulfed her if she let it. Instead, she forced it down and back, so that it sat in a tight little ball at the base of her skull. She had lived a long and fascinating life, but she planned to continue doing so, and the years she’d already had would be no consolation to her if she died now, down here in the dark.

  She waved the Maglite beam ahead of her, narrowing her gaze.

  “Paul?”

  Sykes looked at her, but Alena ignored him, stepping aside for Ridge to pass. All three of them trained lights on the tunnel ahead, where it split into two forks: a gentle left and hard right. Upon quick perusal, it seemed the left fork narrowed but sloped upward, while the right widened and led down. Tumbles of black stone shards indicated that the right hand tunnel might not be entirely stable.

  We’re essentially inside a volcano, she chided herself. Nothing is stable.

  “Which way?” she asked.

  Ridge and Sykes both shone their lights first to the left and then the right. Sykes started off to the right a few feet while Ridge went left.

  “Why are we even talking?” Tori asked. “Left is up, and up means out.”

  Ridge glanced back at her. “It might not be that simple.”

  Tori sighed, but her focus remained on Agent Hart. Alena kept her Maglite beam aimed at the ground so as not to shine it in anyone’s eyes, but the illumination gave her enough light to see the sweat on Josh Hart’s brow and the way he propped himself against the tunnel wall, as though the smooth black stone was the only thing keeping him standing. Tori caught Alena looking, and a wordless communication passed between them. If Josh had to sit down, he probably wouldn’t be getting back up.

  Alena glanced at the three sailors who brought up the rear—Mays, Guarino, and Charlie. If they had to carry Josh, it would slow things down even more. Every second of indecision now could end up being costly.

  “Paul, check out the left tunnel. Let’s find out if it really does lead up and out,” she said.

  Ridge nodded grimly, aimed his Maglite, and stepped into the tunnel.

  “Mr. Deaver,” Lieutenant Commander Sykes called. “Go with Dr. Ridge. Cover him.”

  “Yes, sir!” Charlie snapped off a salute, and Alena realized she had just learned his last name.

  Ridge vanished into the tunnel with Charlie close on his tail, the barrel of his assault rifle tipped toward the ceiling. Mays and Guarino shuffled up closer, just behind Tori and Josh, and Alena though they were all holding their breath.

  “Do you hear that?” Tori whispered.

  Alena frowned and stared at the tunnel where Ridge and Charlie had gone, thinking she referred to their progress, but she didn’t hear anything.

  “What is that?” Mays asked.

  Sykes turned toward the right hand path and start down it again, just a few steps, and then at last Alena heard the sound that had distracted them. Somewhere off in the tunnels—impossible to know how far with all of the echoes and twists and turns—a siren song had begun.

  “I guess we’re not going that way,” Josh said, sliding up the wall to stand straight, a determined look in his eyes.

  They all looked to the dark opening where Ridge and Charlie had gone. Just as they did, another sound interrupted the siren song down to their right--a ripple of distant, muffled gunfire.

  Alena froze, staring, aiming her flashlight beam at Sykes and beyond, down along that tunnel. Immediately, she knew David had come for her, and he wouldn’t be alone.

  “What the hell?” Tori asked.

  “My grandson,” Alena replied, heartbreaking love doing combat with fury and frustration inside her. “Goddamn fool.�
��

  “He’s brought a whole team down here?” Sykes asked.

  Alena turned to him, irony twisting in her. “He loves me.”

  But she could see that Sykes understood that the stakes had changed. The gunfire and the unnerving, hideous song of those monsters meant David and his team were either retreating by now or rushing this way. It also meant there must be no exit ahead, unless they wanted to fight their way past the sirens to get there.

  Alena hurried to the entrance of the tunnel Ridge had entered. Someone would have to run the other way and try to lead David back here with whoever he’d brought with him, and then, if this truly offered a way out...but it had to. There was no other way.

  “How are you doing up there, Paul?” she called.

  “Good! Maybe great!” Ridge shouted back down to her. “It keeps going up, and there’s light! It won’t be an easy—“

  Alena had just started into the tunnel, light picking out the easiest footholds on the rough slope, thinking that the climb would be rough on Josh, when Ridge cried out. Charlie Deaver swore loudly, and then she heard what sounded like a splash.

  Panic seized her. “Paul? Damn it, Paul!”

  Behind her, questions and curses merged into one stunned reaction--sailors’ voices merging with Tori’s frantic query. Alena did not stop to think; she steadied herself with her free hand and scrambled up the slope.

  Ahead, someone began to scream.

  “Paul!” she shouted, and far ahead and above her she saw the glimmer of daylight that had so excited Ridge. Silhouetted in that light, Charlie Deaver knelt on the ground, and only now did she hear the sailor’s shouts.

  “Dr. Ridge!” Charlie called. “Take my hand. Grab my fucking hand!”

  Alena shone her Maglite on the scene and saw what had happened. The tunnel floor vanished a few feet from her, some past tremor having split the stone there. Focused on the daylight ahead, Ridge had gone one step too far before he had seen the drop, and slid into the crevice, and into bubbling, foaming sea water ten feet below.

  “Jesus, Alena, help me!” Ridge cried.

  Her flashlight beam struck his face and he closed his eyes but did not stop scrabbling for purchase, trying to climb back up. Charlie dropped flat on his stomach, arms thrust into the crevice. He had Ridge by the wrists and strained, cursing madly, trying to haul him back up.

  Paul Ridge had tears in his eyes. No matter how hard Charlie pulled, he seemed to keep slipping. Alena couldn’t breathe. She knew—knew—even before she flashed her beam lower and the light picked out the sickly, pearl-white hand wrapped around Ridge’s ankle, suckers tugging at flesh as Charlie attempted to haul Ridge out of the hole.

  Something broke the surface of the water below Ridge, and she expected to see those black eyes, the glistening white scar-tissue face. Instead what coiled out from the dark water was the thing’s tail. It wrapped around Ridge’s leg, curling up as far as his groin.

  “Charlie, let go,” Alena whispered.

  “Fuck that!” the sailor said. “Take my gun. Shoot the damn thing!”

  Her flashlight picked out his weapon, there on the black rock. He’d set it aside so he could use both hands to grab for Ridge—a brave and foolish thing to do. But maybe he was right, maybe she could do it. She picked up the assault rifle, stepped to the edge, aimed just over Ridge’s back at the thing in the water.

  Sykes came up behind her, then, put a strong hand on her hip and moved her aside. He took aim and pulled the trigger, squeezing off two careful shots. One of them hit the siren’s tail and its head surfaced, mouth opening to reveal rows of needle teeth, screaming.

  It burst from the water, reached up with both hands and sank talons into Ridge’s back, and peeled him off the rock wall with sheer strength and its own weight. Screaming, Ridge did not let go of Charlie’s wrists, instead dragging him over the lip and down into the crevice with him. Both men plunged into the water.

  In the glow of Alena’s flashlight beam, they struggled and died, blood foaming up in the roiling water.

  “Deaver!” Sykes shouted, and Alena heard his voice crack, just once, before it became a roar. “Goddammit, Deaver!”

  Sykes clicked over to automatic and pulled the trigger, bullets punching into the water and into flesh as well. Alena knew some of the shots would hit Ridge and Deaver, but she didn’t try to stop Sykes. To her, it was a mercy if the bullets killed them.

  One of the sirens bobbed to the surface, dead.

  Sykes lowered his weapon.

  But then, one by one, three pale faces pushed up from the dark water, one of them painted with human blood. They opened their mouths, teeth gleaming, and screeched that inhuman melody.

  Sykes fired again but they submerged the moment his gun barrel twitched, and there would be no telling if he hit them.

  Alena grabbed his arm. “Stop. We’ve got to run.”

  “Screw that, they’ll only come after us,” he said, shaking her off.

  “Let them. At least you’ll get a clear shot. But the tide’s rising. If water floods through here, we’re in their element.”

  Sykes fired again into the pit. “This is their element! It’s their home!”

  “And right now only a handful of them know we’re here, or we’d be dead already,” Alena snapped. “We don’t know how they communicate, but the others will find out. We’ve got to go!” She grabbed the barrel of the gun, so that he twisted to meet her gaze. “Now!” she snapped.

  With one last look into the water, Sykes nodded and together they scrambled down the slope and back to the fork. Tori and Josh had already started along the right hand tunnel. Mays and Guarino waited for orders.

  “Move!” Sykes barked.

  Alena could see the questions in the sailors’ eyes. They’d heard the siren song and gunfire from up ahead as well. Weren’t they running toward the same thing they were running away from? And maybe they were, but Alena told herself there might still be a way out up ahead, a branching tunnel or a cave mouth. If not, at least they would all be together—she and David would be together, one last time—and they would have all the guns in one place. As long as they were still breathing and moving, there was hope.

  From the tunnel she and Sykes had just vacated, the song rose again. The sirens were coming after them.

  “Watch our flank!” Lieutenant Commander Sykes told his men. “Kill anything that moves in behind you!”

  “Yes, sir!” Guarino and Mays snapped.

  Then Sykes nodded to Alena and they were running along that right hand tunnel, wider but sloping downward three or four feet. The water level couldn’t have been more than six feet beneath them. By now it had already flooded into the tunnel they’d originally entered, hours ago in the grotto. Soon it would rush through these damp, dripping channels, and then it would be over. But until then…

  “Run!” she shouted to Tori and Josh, who were ahead of them.

  Her own heartbeat pounded loud in her ears and her breath came in ragged gasps, and it didn’t seem to matter anymore what shape she was in. Fear aged her, made her feel slow and vulnerable. As she gained on Tori and Josh, she saw that the FBI agent had quickened his pace but only to a staggering jog, and she knew he would never get out of there alive.

  For the first time, Alena Boudreau knew that they were going to die down there.

  ~86~

  Voss saw daylight.

  “Lieutenant!” Crowley called from up ahead.

  “I see it!” Stone shouted. “Go!”

  The tunnel had widened but the ceiling had dropped by several feet, so even Voss—the shortest of them—had to crouch to run. Crowley hustled, moving ahead so fast that Voss could barely keep up.

  “It’s got to be a vent or something,” David Boudreau said, behind her.

  “I’ll take it, whatever it is,” Voss replied, ducking quickly to avoid bashing her temple against an outcropping. “Watch your head.”

  Gabe Rio and Lieutenant Stone came last, with Stone flashing his Ma
glite over his shoulder every few steps. Their faces spoke of desperation, and Voss found herself unable to draw a distinction between them. A criminal and an officer, they were both men trying to stay alive, and willing to fight to keep others alive as well. A part of her—a little voice in the back of her mind—tried to remind her that hunting Gabe Rio had led her to this place, but she ignored it. Who they were up in the sunlight didn’t mean a damn thing down here in the dark.

  The song pursued them as well--the insidious banshee wail of the sirens--but instead of a scream it seemed a whisper, and came only in small snatches of melody. The things were back there, following them in the tunnel, but they scuttled along, keeping out of the reach of flashlights and bullets, and Voss felt sure they were waiting for an opening.

  “Here!” Crowley called. “Be careful!”

  Voss blinked as she emerged into sunlight. Crowley grabbed her arm and pulled her aside and as her eyes adjusted she saw why. The rest of them followed, spilling out onto a wide ledge, and Voss felt her heart sink.

  They were in an open volcanic vent, not unlike what the grotto might have been before time had worn one of its walls away. Half a dozen tunnels opened into the chamber--a thirty-foot wide shaft that went up at an eighty-five-degree angle to the surface. The sight of the sky should have lifted her spirits—the daylight shone down into the shaft all the way to the ledge where they stood, and the creatures could not follow them out without burning—but the sky had darkened and the angle of the dimming light revealed just how close they were to dusk, and how long they had been down there, under the ground.

  The ledge that ran around the shaft alternated in width, as much as four feet in some places but barely an inch in others. The water had risen to just three feet below the ledge.

  “Get away from the tunnel!” Sykes snapped.

  Voss moved, skirting the shaft on the ledge, and turned just in time to glimpse something pale and white dart back into the deeper shadows of the tunnel from which they had just emerged.