The Ocean Dark

55

Tori twisted her ankle jumping from the freighter’s deck. The drop couldn’t have been more than ten feet, but she had to leap straight out to reach the makeshift bridge created by the haphazardly placed containers. She landed badly, tipping to the right, and let momentum carry her forward, fresh sparks of fear erupting in her mind. How close was the edge? She spread out her hands, slowed her slide, and came to rest facedown on the warm metal roof of a freshly painted container, chest heaving.

Her right hand hung out over the edge, fifteen feet above the water.

With a strangled cry, she brought her hand in and rolled onto her back. A loud clang sounded as Gabe landed a few feet back, stumbling onto all fours. He stood immediately, grimacing as his knees popped. Dark circles had formed under his eyes and his expression had gone slack.

“Tori!” he snapped.

“I know!”

She flipped over, scrambled to her feet, and started moving. The metal rang with every footfall, echoing inside the container. Gabe kept pace just a few steps behind, his heavier tread thunderous. He was breathing hard, and she imagined she could feel his breath on the back of her neck.

Ahead, Pang and Kevonne had already jumped to the next container. A glance at them made Tori gasp. It had taken more than two hours for Miguel to finish laying the containers down for this rudimentary bridge. Some of the metal boxes were tilted, and others were separated by gaps that might well be too wide for them to jump. But they were out of time now, and it would have to do.

Twilight had come.

On the western horizon, the sun shimmered just above the water. To her right, the sides of the containers above the water were still washed with a warm golden light, but the waves — splashing higher now — had gone dark.

Tori wouldn’t even look to her left. She knew better. On the eastern side of that makeshift metal walkway, the creatures had started to crawl up out of the water, clinging to the sides of the containers in the indigo gloom. Their singing had grown louder.

Up on the deck of the Antoinette, silhouettes shouted down at them to hurry, to run, and she wanted to scream back at them and tell them how totally unhelpful they were. With the spray from the sea, the smooth metal of the container was slippery, and she moved as fast as she could. A wrong step now would slide her right off into the water and she wouldn’t let that happen; she had to stay in control. Looking at the sinking sun terrified her almost as much as the thought of glimpsing the sickly things lurking just out of reach of the daylight to her left, but she could not afford to run.

The first gap was only a few feet, and she and Gabe both cleared it with ease, slipping a little, but then hurrying on. When Tori came to the end of the second container, she paused, hands fluttering up to clutch the sides of her head, glancing around as she tried to figure out how to cross. The next container slanted down, away from them. The gap here must have been four or five feet.

“Just jump!” Gabe said.

Tori glanced down to the left. White, translucent fingers clutched at the edge of the next container, down in the shadows just above the water.

“I’ll slide right down,” she said.

“Good! It’ll be faster!” Gabe snapped. “Go, or let me by!” She knew he meant it. What got her moving, though, was the sight of Kevonne and Pang up ahead, nearly to the end of the container she was about to jump onto. It slanted down toward the water, coming within half a dozen feet of the waves — and whatever lurked beneath them. But the next container was a good four feet higher, and the one after that — though angled badly — even higher. Miguel had started dumping whole stacks of them overboard closer to the Antoinette, so the containers were like a jumble of huge stones, providing several possible paths to the ship. As she watched, Pang jumped up, grabbed the edge of one of the higher containers, and hauled himself on top of it.

“Tori, the sun!” Gabe shouted.

She backed up seven paces, took a breath, stared down at her feet a second — and saw that twilight had truly arrived. The gloom had begun to gather, making everything in her perception vague and golden.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered, suddenly sure they would not make it.

Tori ran and leaped, pulling her feet up, and landed on the next container, sliding down it much faster than she’d expected. Her heart pounded as she slid to the left and she put a hand down, trying to stop her slide, twisting around. Her legs were out in front of her, and she kept them straight as she collided with the next container, the impact ringing out over the waves.

The opening between the two containers might only have been twenty inches or so, but she was only six feet above the water. Frantic, she scrambled back up a little ways, pulling her legs away, staring at the darkness of that narrow gap as she jumped to her feet.

Kevonne and Pang had been here moments ago. They would reach the Antoinette first. Tori wanted to be with them. She wanted to be safe, locked in her quarters, surrounded by metal. A prison cell would do, at this point. She ran two steps and jumped up, grabbed hold of the top of the next container as she had seen Pang do, and pulled herself up. For a second she didn’t think she had the strength, but panic gave her a boost and she dragged herself onto the container’s roof. Still only ten feet off the water, but better.

Until she heard Pang shout just ahead, and the people up on the deck of the Antoinette screaming frantically down at them, and then the shriek of a voice that barely sounded human. Tori faltered, staring straight ahead, where Pang now stood alone at the edge of a container.

“Kevonne!” he shouted, stalking back and forth, jittery, gazing into the water. “Jesus, Kevonne!”

As Tori hurried toward him, Pang glanced at her, then at the setting sun. He shook his head, stepped back, and leaped to the next container. Only one more to go beyond that, and he would be at the ship. The crew of the Antoinette was lowering a lifeboat on its cables. If they could reach it, the crew would haul them up to safety.

Gabe pounded along behind her; she could feel the tremors in the metal beneath her feet. Tori raced after Pang, but he had become almost a silhouette himself. She glanced at the horizon and saw that the sun had begun to melt into the water, gliding down over the edge of the world.

“No, please,” she whispered, her chest aching with a thousand regrets.

Biting her lip, she kept on. The sirens’ voices grew louder, the song rising. Tori slipped, threw her arms out, steadied herself, and reached the next gap. The containers had landed at odd angles. She went to the right corner, took a breath, and jumped up. Her foot slipped and her shin cracked against the edge of the container’s roof, but momentum carried her forward and she regained her feet in seconds.

“Out of the way!” Gabe shouted.

Tori twisted around to see him jumping. She stepped back as he landed, fell, and spilled off to the side, his left leg shooting out into space. Into darkness.

Long, sickly white fingers wrapped around his ankle, suckers sinking into the flesh. Gabe’s eyes went wide as he screamed and tried to pull his leg from its grasp. The thing held on, its head rising just above the edge of the container. The last dim glow of daylight made its hand and face steam and blister and its song went silent. But it did not let go.

“Get off!” Gabe shouted, as it dragged him nearer the edge. He looked up, eyes wide, and stared at Tori. “Help me!”

“Pang!” she cried. “Pang, come back!”

But she knew Pang would not come back, not with the sun vanishing on the horizon. Knowing she should be running, saving herself, Tori grabbed Gabe’s outstretched hand and braced herself, giving him something to hang on to, some leverage.

“Pull!” she screamed.

Gabe’s face had gone red with pain and effort, but he couldn’t free himself. Tori knew she didn’t have the strength, and neither did he. One of the guns she’d had on the lifeboat had been lost when she’d landed in the water, but she reached behind her and tugged out the other. Holding Gabe’s wrist with one hand, she pointed at the creature’s oil-black eyes and pulled the trigger, expecting a kick. Nothing happened.

Swearing, she cast the gun aside, realizing it had been fouled with seawater when she’d had to swim for the trawler. But Gabe hadn’t gone under the water. She needed the small pistol whose handle even now jutted from Gabe’s rear waistband.

She threw herself on top of him, heard the thump of his forehead against metal and his grunt of pain and surprise. Then she snatched the gun from his belt, thumbed the safety, and took aim. The creature opened its jaw impossibly wide, darted hundreds of tiny fangs toward her hand, toward the gun.

Tori put a bullet through its throat, then a second through its head.

Creamy ichor, laced with red, burst out the back of its skull, and it slipped off Gabe, detaching from his flesh and the container. The suckers pulled away from metal with a disgusting wet smacking, but where the fingers had wrapped around Gabe’s leg, they pulled skin away with them. Gabe let out a roar of pain even as he dragged his leg in and staggered to his feet.

“Thanks,” he said, throwing an arm around her, limping as they hustled toward the last container.

“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 appeared. 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.