The Ocean Dark

83

Sarah Ernst had never been so terrified in her life, but she tried desperately not to show it. Her face felt warm, but that might have been the sun. Did she look flushed to those around her? Could they tell she had started breathing in short, quick breaths? Her lips felt dry and she ran her tongue out to moisten them, thinking, Holy shit, this is real.

When Alena Boudreau had recruited her for this job, it had seemed fascinating. There would be secrets laid bare for her that other biologists would sell their souls to learn. Yes, some of those secrets might end up being weaponized, but even as a professor, Sarah Ernst had taught her students about conditional ethics. Some things were wrong under any circumstances, but other decisions had to be weighted against the planet-wide political and cultural conditions in which they had to be made, and Dr. Ernst had faith in the U.S. government. Yes, corruption infected it, but the core, she believed, was still worthy of her trust and her service.

And so she served.

The work had been everything she had imagined. The samples Alena had sent back from Donika Cave alone would end up being the most remarkable things that she, as a biologist, had ever examined. Or they would have been, if not for today.

“Dr. Ernst?” Captain Siebalt said.

Again she wetted her lips. “Sorry. Just kind of bracing myself.”

The captain smiled. “I don’t blame you. I think we all are.”

That made her feel a bit better and she allowed herself to take a look around. The chopper had set the rusty metal container down on the deck of the USS Hillstrom. She tried to count how many members of the Navy vessel’s crew were gathered around the front of the container with weapons drawn and aimed at the doors, but lost track somewhere in the teens. A couple of dozen, at least.

Sarah had always hated guns. They did not make her feel any safer. She looked at the metal doors of the container and wondered about ricochets. Her palms felt clammy. The sailors had begun to take glances at her, obviously waiting for the word.

“Hopefully it’s still unconscious,” she said, and then — thinking herself too quiet — spoke louder. “If you have to shoot, try to wound it, and try to keep it in the dark. We don’t want it exposed to sunlight.”

With one last, deep breath, she glanced at Captain Siebalt and nodded.

“Open it,” the captain commanded.

One of the sailors shouldered his weapon, strode purposefully to the front of the container, and swung up the heavy metal bar that latched the door. The man paused — she saw his back rise and fall as he took a breath — then hauled it quickly open, backpedaling out of the way.

Dozens of gun barrels rose and took aim.

Sarah held her breath, staring into the shadows of the container. Something rustled inside and she heard the ratcheting of weapons being cocked, but nobody fired. One of the sailors raised a fist, then opened it and gestured forward, and half a dozen men moved toward the open doorway.

“There’s movement, Captain!” one of them called.

“But it’s still in the body bag?” Siebalt replied.

“Yes, sir.”

“Get it out of there, then, and fast.”

Sarah nodded her head in agreement, though no one had bothered to ask her. As long as the thing posed no more threat than a weak twitch here and there, they needed to get it out of the container and into the room that had been set aside for her in the sick bay — no windows, no sunlight, metal and leather restraints. And the faster the better.

She watched as four more sailors slung their weapons over their shoulders and stepped into the container, and others stepped up to take their places, weapons trained on the black, shapeless lump on the floor. The four grabbed the body bag, wary but quick, hefted it off the ground with little visible effort, and hustled it out of the container. Sarah knew some light must still filter through the bag, and the creature — CMA-3, specimen one, as she now thought of it — began to twitch more vigorously. But the gas had not yet worn off enough for it to do more than that.

“Hurry,” she called to them.

A path opened up among the sailors and two more raced through the opening carrying a long board between them — the kind of backboard that the medics would use if a member of the crew fell and broke his back or needed to be immobilized for some reason. They set it down and, as soon as the others had placed the body-bagged creature onto the backboard, began to strap the creature into place.

Sarah’s fear began to give way to scientific curiosity and a kind of fevered elation that came over her only once in a very great while. No one in the modern world had ever studied one of these things up close. She would be the first to look at its cells under a microscope, the first to examine its physiology, the first to open one up and discover its organs and biological systems, what made it tick.

Her mind started racing ahead to the workspace she had been given and she realized that she needed a real camera array, some kind of setup rigged in there to properly record the procedure both on video and in still pictures.

She turned toward Captain Siebalt just as a figure darted through the ranks of the sailors, a black woman in oversized clothes, her hair tied back in a springy, overflowing ponytail. Angela Tyree, one of the survivors from the Antoinette—it had to be, given the lack of uniform. Sarah had known she was on board, ready to be transported to dry land, but she had never seen the woman before.

And Angie Tyree had a gun.

As the two sailors who had strapped it down moved around to lift the backboard, the woman took aim and pulled the trigger. She fired as she walked, once, twice, a third time. The two sailors jumped away, dropping the backboard, which struck the deck at an angle before falling flat.

The screech that came from the siren sounded nothing like music to Sarah. This was not a song, but a death cry. Angie fired twice more as the thing thrashed against the body bag and the backboard’s restraints. It tore easily through the bag, letting in the sunlight, and Sarah Ernst watched in amazement as smoke started to rise from inside the bag. Flesh sizzled and crackled and popped and then tiny flames fanned to life and began to burn the openings in the bag.

It happened in seconds.

At least half of the weapons on the deck of the Hillstrom swung toward Angie Tyree. Tears streamed down the woman’s face, glistening on her perfect dark skin. Her eyes were wide with panic and fear. Perhaps it was a reaction to the guns pointed at her, an instinctive thing, but Angie lifted her pistol in a shaking hand as though to defend herself with it.

“No!” Sarah shouted, seeing it coming.

But the gunfire drowned out her voice. Three quick shots, making Angie dance. Then the woman fell to the deck, her gun clattering a few feet away, blood pooling around her and streaming away in narrow rivulets as though eager to abandon ship.

“Oh, my God!” Sarah shouted. She might have repeated it — her mouth seemed still to be moving when she clapped a hand over it.

In horror, she turned away from the dying woman and saw the siren and the backboard rippling with flames. The body bag burned away, exposing more of its flesh. She watched as it blackened and crisped. A sailor ran over with a fire extinguisher, which put out the flames for a moment. But as soon as he stopped spraying the foam onto the corpse, it started to sizzle again and the fire came up from under its skin. Now they could only watch as it burnt away to cinder and ash and the Caribbean breeze across the deck swirled and eddied it away.

“We have to get another one,” Sarah said, looking around numbly until her gaze found Captain Siebalt. “We need another.”

But the captain did not reply, and she realized why. They had already blown up the Antoinette. So if they were to capture another, they would have to go down into the sea to find one, and no one would risk that — at least, not today.

Whatever the Boudreaus faced in the caves under the island, there was now nothing that Sarah Ernst could do to aid them, no weakness in the creatures she could report, no data. No last-minute rescue. A feeling of helplessness engulfed her, and she turned away from the scene. Instead, she walked to the railing and looked out at the ocean.

For those on the island, and those below it, the handful of daylight hours must have been racing past. If Alena and David and Paul Ridge did not make it back, she would be the senior member of the team. But either way, if they survived or not, she knew she would resign upon her return.

Sarah no longer wanted to know things that other biologists did not. She would let someone else explore the world’s secrets. Someone who, like her younger self, did not know better yet.

She broke down then, wiping at her tears and wondering if anyone watching her would see the way her shoulders shook as she cried. Wondering, but no longer caring.

As Angie lay on the deck, too tired even to blink, the sun burning her eyes, a figure loomed above her. Silhouetted against the sky, Agent Plausky looked down upon her with a terrible sadness etched on his face. He looked so sorry that it broke her heart.

He talked, but she could not make out the words. Her hearing seemed muffled, or maybe just numb, which would go along with the rest of her. Her body felt cold and though it ached in those places where she imagined the bullets had struck, she would not have described it as pain. Just a kind of emptiness, as if, in those places, she had already died.

Angie smiled at Plausky, though she could not be sure if her lips formed the smile properly. She hoped so. It made her glad to know that someone cared. Where she had hit him with the coffeepot, a red, swollen patch would soon turn a series of bruised colors, but he would be all right. Angie regretted having hurt him, but not very much. She had done what needed doing. She had overcome the fear that would otherwise have chased her into her grave; she had killed the monster.

Now she would sleep forever, but without nightmares. And that was all right.

She lifted a hand toward Plausky, wishing she could have formed the words to explain it all to him. And then she died.