The Ocean Dark

by Christopher Golden

  The sirens had been following closer than they’d thought.

  “Beautiful,” Gabe said, looking around at the various fissures and caves that formed tunnels leading away from the shaft. “Which way do we go?”

  Voss twisted around to stare at him. “Are you kidding?” She pointed to the water, where in addition to the tide rising, the reach of the daylight streaming down from above retreated toward them with every passing moment. “The sun’s going down. We’ll be in the dark again, and then nothing will stop them.”

  As if in punctuation, Stone fired a couple of rounds back into the tunnel they had just escaped.

  “We go up!” Voss snapped, shuffling along the ledge toward the front of the shaft, where the wall canted slightly, so the climb would be less sheer. Her throat tightened and her mouth had gone completely dry. Her heart thudded in her chest as she realized this was their only possible exit, their last chance.

  The siren song grew louder, echoing off the walls of the shaft in an eerie, ghostly cry. Something splashed, and when she glanced over she saw two of the sirens slithering from the water in the places the sun had already abandoned. Something white breached the water, rolled, then submerged again.

  “Look at that fissure in the back,” Crowley said, right behind her.

  “Son of a bitch,” Gabe whispered.

  In the fissure opposite their position, where there was no ledge at all, several of the things lay motionless, black eyes watching, unblinking, waiting. One of them uncoiled its lower body as lazily as a snake in the desert sun.

  “Climb,” David said, nearly drowned out by the maddening, growing song. “Just climb.”

  Gunshots echoed up through the shaft.

  Voss spun and saw a flash of white emerging from yet another tunnel, but this one was still washed in sunlight. She blinked in amazement as she saw it was not white, but silver—Alena Boundreau’s hair. Lieutenant Commander Sykes followed her out onto the ledge, both of them looking around in a panic only to come up short, expressions stunned, when they saw Voss and David and the others.

  Then Tori Austin emerged.

  Voss held her breath, not daring to hope, until Tori reached back into the tunnel and helped a staggering figure out onto the ledge. He looked pale and weak, but her partner was alive.

  “Josh!” she shouted.

  He looked up. Their eyes met. Without another word, they nodded to each other across the sun-splashed water, with the night and the tide and the devils moving in, and both started moving.

  Two sailors practically spilled out onto the ledge, firing into the tunnel behind them. One of the sirens lunged out after them and it began to smoke and then burn. Screaming, it kept going, rolled off of the ledge and into the cooling water with a hiss of steam that rose as it plunged into the dark.

  “Climb!” Voss shouted.

  And they were all in motion, reaching for handholds, racing the encroaching dark.

  ~87~

  If the shaft had been straight, a sheer ninety-degree angle, Josh wouldn’t have had a chance. He knew it, and from the look in her eyes, Tori knew it, too. The Vicodin had long since worn off. Instead of feeling as though he swam inside a fishbowl, looking out at the world, he felt like Caesar, a dozen knives stabbing him from every angle. But no matter how bad his pain might be, Josh had no intention of surrendering to it.

  He climbed.

  Sling tossed aside, unabashedly shouting and cursing God and Miguel Rio, he launched himself up the ragged, rocky wall of the shaft as fast as he could manage. The pain blinded him for seconds at a time, during which he had to pause, take deep breaths, and then reach up again for a new handhold. A bullet had made the wound, but now it felt like someone had thrust a knife into it and begun to twist, hacking at muscle and scraping bone. Sweat poured down his face.

  But he climbed, only somewhat aware of the others around him, of the siren song and the diminishing reach of the sun.

  “Come on, Josh. Faster,” Tori urged. She reached down and got a grip under his right arm, trying to pull.

  “I’m going as fast as I can,” he said through pain-gritted teeth.

  But he did manage to find more speed, to drag himself higher, fresh rivulets of blood pouring from his shoulder down his chest, trickling down his side, soaking into his shirt. He imagined it dripping into the water far below, driving the creatures into a frenzy, like throwing chum in the water to stir up sharks.

  I’m not fucking chum, he thought.

  But his left hand felt numb. He held onto a rocky outcropping and could not feel his fingers for a moment. Alarmed, he pulled the hand away from the wall and then started to slip. Josh laid himself out flat, his right foot maintaining its hold even as he scrabbled for a better grip with his left and with both hands. His numb left hand couldn’t grasp properly and he knew he would fall.

  Tori and Voss, just above her, called out his name.

  A strong hand pressed against his back, shoving him against the stone.

  “Just hang on,” a voice said. “Wait there for a second.” And as he waited, the owner of that voice moved sideways on the wall below him, breathing hard with the effort, and then came up on his left side. Another hand grabbed him under the left arm, and Josh managed to turn his face to see who had come to his aid.

  Gabe Rio.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Josh said.

  Gabe didn’t even blink, his face washed in the dimming daylight that streamed down from above. The former captain just grimaced, settling himself more securely against the shaft wall, and got a better grip on Josh.

  “We go in tandem,” Gabe said. “First me, then you. I’ll go up a few feet, then help you after, and keep you steady, then climb up after you. Tori’ll watch you on that side. But we’ve gotta move our asses.”

  Josh stared. Seconds ago he’d been cursing this man’s dead brother. Gabe had been guilty of multiple crimes, and Josh had come along and ruined his life. Now, without hesitation, the man came to his aid. He had no words to thank Gabe, or to express his doubt or surprise. He doubted anything he said would be welcome, or sufficient.

  “Let’s go,” Josh said.

  They climbed just as Gabe had described, but it felt excruciatingly slow. Sykes and a couple of the other sailors were scrambling high above them already, having covered nearly twenty feet already. To Josh’s right, Alena and her grandson had their reunion on the rock wall but there were no tearful hugs. The two Boudreaus exchanged a few words and then they were climbing, breathing hard and focused entirely on where their feet and hands could find purchase. One of the sailors, a lieutenant, had a harder time than the others and kept about even with Voss, who had slowed down so as not to get too far ahead of Josh.

  “What happened to Dr. Ridge?” Voss asked.

  Josh swallowed hard, remembering the screams. “Wrong turn.”

  He didn’t mean it as a joke, and Voss didn’t take it as one. They were past the point of humor. Long past.

  For minutes that seemed an eternity, he climbed, Gabe gripping his armpit and pulling upward on muscles that burned with strain. His clothes were tacky with blood and stuck to his skin and the flesh around his wound tugged with every movement of his arm, but still he climbed, unwilling to consider the alternative.

  “Jesus,” said the lieutenant, above him and to the right.

  Josh risked a glance up at him, noticing how fast the light was fading, and saw that the sailor was staring back down the shaft. When next he rested, with Gabe scrabbling up a few more feet, Josh looked over his shoulder.

  The ledge where they had come into the shaft had been submerged. Now that the tunnels were flooding, water pouring in from all sides, the tide had begun to rise even faster. But it was no longer the tide that made his muscles clench and his heart race

  The tide could only rise so far, but even as the tide rose, the light receded. They were on the eastern wall of the shaft, climbing in the last vestiges of sunlight that peeked in over the rim above. A clear line
separated day from night in that shaft, and it moved up toward them as fast as they could climb, perhaps faster.

  And just behind that demarcation, like runners at the starting line, the sirens clung to the walls of the volcanic shaft, creeping upward along with the encroaching darkness, just out of the sun’s range. If some of them were sluggish during the day, they had certainly woken now. In a single glimpse, even with his eyes not adjusted to the balance of light and dark, he could make out fifteen or more of them, and others were climbing the western wall of the shaft, where the sun had long since surrendered its hold.

  “Oh, my God,” he whispered.

  His numb fingers missed a hold. He scraped them raw grabbing for another, slammed his shoulder against the wall and screamed at the impact. His voice sounded a little like a shriek, and even something like the cry of the sirens that echoed all around them.

  “Careful!” Voss shouted.

  Tori shot her a hard look. “We’re being careful! He’s fine!”

  If he could have managed it, Josh would have laughed. He was far from fine.

  “Just keep going,” he rasped, breathing hard. Even his eyes hurt. His whole body felt heavier and he knew that blood loss and trauma were taking their toll. He would be lucky to hang on, never mind climb.

  Yet with Gabe’s help, he kept going.

  Tori didn’t know why she stayed with him. She wanted to just climb. Sykes and Mays, and another sailor she didn’t know, were moving fast, maybe twelve or fifteen feet from the top. Guarino and another sailor had moved over to try to help speed the Boudreaus along, but they were making decent time.

  She should climb. She should leave Josh behind. He had said as much himself at least half a dozen times back in the tunnel and she knew he would not blame her now. And maybe that was why she couldn’t do it.

  It wasn’t love. No matter what she’d been through, or how many foolish things she had done in her life for the sake of unworthy men, she wasn’t stupid enough to believe that. But she had made a connection with him, gone to a place inside herself that she had never found before, and it had made her see herself in a new way. And the woman she now saw in herself would never abandon this man, or perhaps any man, just to save herself.

  So close to death, and yet it made her feel alive.

  Voss hated her. She wanted to peel Tori right off the wall and toss her down into the water like feeding time at the zoo. Over the years they had been partners, Josh had become her best friend. How was it possible that he could get tangled up with this woman, a suspect, in the middle of a case? How was it possible that he could feel something for her, could sleep with her, endangering his career and the squad and their partnership? Could Voss have misjudged him so completely, or was there just something about Tori Austin?

  Voss hated her, but she admired her, too. Six feet away, Tori mirrored her terror back to her. An invisible link tethered them together, two women striving to survive. Two women who couldn’t conceive of letting this one man die. Voss had been hardened by her career choice and the things she had seen, but what had forged that steel in Tori Austin?

  Jealousy didn’t suit Voss. She despised it in herself. She loved Josh but had never been in love with him, would never have jeopardized their partnership by pursuing something sexual--something complicated--with him. But they had developed an intimacy that she had never felt with anyone, and intimacy wasn’t easy for her.

  Now this woman they ought to be putting in jail had gotten a piece of that, and Voss hated her for it.

  But she wanted her to live.

  “Come on, Tori!” she snapped. “Don’t let him slow down. We’re racing the goddamn sun.”

  And they were. Both women looked down and saw the line between light and darkness sliding up toward them, chasing them toward the surface and the sky, and they climbed faster.

  Alena’s chest burned. It felt tight and her breath came too fast and she focused on the muscles in her arms, waiting for pain that would be a telltale sign of a heart attack. But that pain didn’t come. The fist in her chest was the grip of fear, as all of her illusions about her life were stripped away. Her work was important—more important, maybe, than she had ever realized—but she thought of her daughter, and the time they could have spent together. Time squandered in favor of adventure and discovery. Alena loved those things--they meant the world to her--but not as much as her family meant.

  Her fingers searched for a crevice, found it, plunged in, and she boosted herself a few more feet before reaching for higher toe-holds. The shaft angled downward at about eighty percent here, and the climb was getting easier. Faster. Above her, Lieutenant Commander Sykes and two of his men were nearly at the top, the sun limning them in golden halos, like gods coming down from Olympus. Nearer, but still a few feet higher than she was, Guarino and a sailor she didn’t know scrabbled side to side in search of better grips, moving like spider-men, then pausing to check her progress.

  The song of the sirens echoed off the walls, and it had become maddening. She wanted to scream back, and so she did, opening her lips and crying out at them in wordless fury.

  “Alena,” David said.

  She turned to look at him. So handsome, her grandson. Only a few feet away, he climbed at her side, and now he focused on her, locking eyes.

  “We’re almost there. Keep going.”

  “Keep going,” she repeated. “Don’t tell me, kid. I’m in better shape than you’ll ever be.”

  As he plastered himself to the shaft wall and slid his knee up, boot probing, he actually managed to smile at her, though fear and desperation glittered in his eyes. David hauled himself up a few more feet and Alena redoubled her efforts, keeping pace with him. She glanced down and caught her breath.

  The darkness had come within six or seven feet of Josh, Tori, and Gabe. Lieutenant Stone and Voss were only a few feet higher. The sirens clung like leeches to the wall, black eyes gleaming like the volcanic rock. They had fifteen feet or so to reach the rim, and Alena didn’t think they were going to make it.

  She reached up, not paying enough attention, and her fingers slipped off a tiny outcropping of rock. She slid, scraping her right cheek on the wall and banging her chest, bruising ribs, but she managed to catch herself.

  David put out a hand to steady her, shifting his weight, and his foothold gave way, crumbling beneath him. His eyes went wide and he tried to grab hold of the wall, but his fingers scraped downward. Without a hand or foothold on the right side, and with his weight tilted that direction, he began to fall.

  Alena screamed his name. Eyes wide, she watched as he pressed himself against the shaft wall, dragging bloody fingers down the black stone. One foot caught and his knee buckled and he nearly tipped backward but he shook it free and somehow managed to slow his descent and finally stop.

  Not soon enough.

  Half in darkness, now, he looked up at her, his face still in sunlight. Instead of fear, his eyes were full of a terrible sadness and a kind of confusion, as if he did not know how he had come to be there.

  Alena started to descend, half climbing and half sliding after him.

  “Doctor, no!” Guarino shouted. “Get out of the way!”

  The sharpness of the command forced her to look up. Guarino clung to the wall with one hand even as he used the other to grasp the strap of his assault rifle and swing it around from where it had dangled against his back. One-handed, he took aim. Beside him, the other sailor did the same, fumbling with the gun, foot slipping, getting a new toehold, barely hanging on.

  “You’ll hit David!” Alena screamed at him.

  Others were shouting as well, voices merging with the screeching song of the sirens, echoing around the shaft.

  Guarino ignored her, focused on David. “Head down!” he shouted.

  Alena twisted again in time to see David press himself hard against the wall, even as he tried to climb with torn and bloody fingers. Guarino fired, bullets tearing into the darkness, clipping stone outcroppings and ricoc
heting. Two of the sirens were ripped away from the wall by bullets and tumbled into the darkness, sickly, fishbelly-white bodies uncoiling as they fell.

  But Guarino and the other sailor couldn’t hit the ones coming up beneath David without shooting him as well, and as Alena watched, her grandson began to scream. Panic made him tear his gaze from hers, but she could not look away as the things swarmed over him. One of them, overzealous, scaled his body like a ladder but climbed too high, into the sunlight, where it smoldered and ignited and screamed. Its serpentine lower body twisting, it shoved off from the wall and plunged into the water below, the splash dousing its fire and its cries.

  “Damn it!” Guarino shouted.

  From the corner of her eye, Alena caught his movement. He tried to scrambled to one side, searching for a better angle, a cleaner shot, and he lost his grip. As he fell, panic seized him and he pulled the trigger, but the bullets chipped at the stone walls with little effect and then Guarino screamed the rest of the way, following the siren into the water, from which he would never surface.

  “Alena!” David shrieked, voice ragged as they tore at him. “Go!”

  But Stone and Voss had been in motion all along, and now they opened fire, shooting the sirens that were attacking him. One by one, the creatures peeled off the wall and fluttered into the abyss.

  “Climb, David!” Alena shouted.

  Somehow, he did. She could see the agony etched into his features and she wondered what his legs must look like after the sirens’ jaws had been at work, and the suckers on their hands had scoured the flesh. But he climbed.

  Voss shot at the things that were still coming up as Stone edged over beside David to speed him along.

  “Climb, damn it!” David shouted up at her

  That got Alena moving.

  “We’re out!” Lieutenant Commander Sykes called from above. “Move it!”

  And then Alena felt a hand grip her wrist and looked up to see Voss and Mays reaching for her. They hauled her over the rim, onto a thick mat of vegetation, trees sparse overhead. She climbed to her feet and glanced at the horizon, where the sun slid rapidly into the water. Its light reached only a few feet into the cave they had just escaped, and the leech-white creatures stirred at the edges of the dark, ready to erupt in pursuit the moment the last sliver of the sun vanished in the west.