The Ocean Dark

84

Gabe Rio knew he ought to be more afraid. Perhaps he had just gone numb — maybe Miguel’s death had done that — but he felt sure there must be something more to it. In a way, he was Orpheus, descending into the land of the dead, but the metaphor fell apart for him there, because he did not love Tori. He liked her all right, but she could never be his Eurydice. Once upon a time, Maya had been that important to him — she’d been his whole life — but he barely remembered being the man who had loved her that much.

And maybe that explained his numbness. Once upon a time, Gabe had been a man who loved the sea, and who would take any job as long as it put him aboard a ship. Maya had married that man, but over time, he had changed. Miguel had changed him. Viscaya had changed him. The discovery that Maya had not fallen in love with the young man he had been, but with the man she hoped to forge him into, had changed him. But that had been his life.

Yet all of that, the man he had been, Gabe had left behind when he stepped into this cave and began this descent. Maya, Miguel, Viscaya, the Antoinette, it was all the past now. When he emerged again, and finally left this island behind, that Gabe Rio would be gone and someone new would stand in his place. A second life waited for him, if he could survive to discover it.

His boot slipped on the ridge, snapping off a jagged bit of rock that skittered down into the dark crevice below. It must have plinked into the water, but he did not hear any splash. They had been down here for well over an hour, probably closer to two, and when he flashed his Maglite beam down into the gash below him, the water level had risen at least a dozen feet since they had begun moving through this fissure.

“I hate to bring this up,” he whispered to David Boudreau, who walked in front of him, “especially since I have no idea how the tide works on the levels down here. But are you sure we’re going the right way?”

David glanced back at him, stumbled a bit, then caught himself. The ridge they walked on consisted of vertical layers of rock, all of them jagged and uneven. Without shoes it would have been impossible to walk on, but the young Dr. Boudreau had problems even with his thick hiking boots. He might technically be the leader of the team, but how he justified carrying a gun but not giving Gabe one — even for self-defense — seemed a mystery.

“Lieutenant Stone has a compass,” David said. “You know this, Mr. Rio. Why are you asking? The fissure is taking us a bit west of our goal — the rough location of the grotto — but it’s got to open into some other cavern or tunnel eventually. Once it does, we’ll have to risk making some noise to see if we can intersect with the cave-in survivors, and then—”

“What if we can’t? I mean, why are you so sure that this fissure isn’t a dead end? It could lead nowhere. Even if it puts us in another tunnel, there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to find any intersection between their location and ours.”

David hesitated, flashed his Maglite in Gabe’s face, and then continued. “It’s a little late for questions like that, Gabe. We’re taking our chances because we can’t just abandon them down here.”

Gabe blinked, pissed off about the light in his eyes, but they adjusted back to the relative darkness almost immediately. He shook his head.

“I bring it up, asshole, because the water’s rising fast. We’re at the point of no return now. If we don’t find another way out up ahead, or run into them in the next few minutes, we’re going to drown down here.”

One of the sailors behind him cleared his throat. “You want to turn back, buddy, no one’s stopping you.”

“Exactly,” David said, without turning.

Gabe felt his nostrils flare but wouldn’t give in to anger. “I’m not turning back. I was just hoping you had more of a plan, or some reason to believe we’ll find another way out other than you being such an optimist.”

Neither of the two sailors behind Gabe spoke up this time, and neither did any of the people ahead of David — Crowley, Voss, and Lieutenant Stone. It seemed like they were all listening for his answer.

“My team’s geologist, Paul Ridge, fell into that grotto with my grandmother,” David said. “He wouldn’t have gone into that tunnel unless he thought he could find a way out. They would have stayed down there and hoped we could dig them out in time.”

“But Ridge is with them, not with us. You’re just guessing,” Gabe said.

“Yes.”

Gabe nodded to himself. “All right. Good to know.”

David glanced back to reply, but stumbled again. This time he went down, slamming his knee into the sharp rocks of the ridge. He swore and dropped the Maglite, which pinballed off the rocks before slipping down through the open crevice below. The light spun end over end and then splashed into the water. Gabe could see the beam’s glow diminish as the Maglite sank into the darkness.

“Shit,” David whispered.

The illumination from Gabe’s own flashlight played shadows across the young scientist’s face, exaggerating his haunted expression. Everyone else had frozen as well, waiting and listening, which Gabe thought a terrible idea. They needed to keep moving, and as fast as they could.

“Don’t sweat it,” he said. “We’ve been knocking stones loose the entire time we’ve been in here and it all slides down into—”

From the gash in the stone below them, he heard a second splash. He twisted around, shone his light in the faces of the two sailors who trailed him.

“What was that? You guys drop something, too?”

They both shook their heads, their expressions grim.

“Come on,” Voss called back to them, voice low. “Let’s move, right now.”

Crowley, in the lead, had already renewed his trek along the narrow ridge, left hand running over the smooth wall of the fissure, Maglite in his right. Voss and Stone followed. The instant David started forward again, Gabe hustled after him. He angled his flashlight ahead, trying to light David’s path so the loss of his Maglite wouldn’t end up slowing them all down.

All the while, he listened hard. Mostly what he heard were the scrapes of their soles against the ridge, the breathing of the men behind him, and his own heart thudding in his ears.

And then the singing began, soft but growing louder, echoing up through the open crevice below them. David faltered, but Gabe put out his free hand and shoved him forward.

“Fuck,” one of the sailors breathed behind him.

Ahead, Voss shot a quick glance over her shoulder, looking past Stone and David, trying to see his face. “Gabe, is that—”

“What do you think?” he rasped. “Go, for Christ’s sake. Go!”

Then they were running, stumbling, lights juddering wildly, flashing across walls and the fissure above them and the ridge below. Gabe felt flush, every nerve ending crackled, and as David stumbled again, he put his hands under the scientist’s arms and hoisted him up like a marionette, forcing him forward. Up ahead there were curses and guns cocked.

“Lieutenant,” Crowley called back to them, “we’re going up.”

A dozen steps later, Gabe saw what he meant, as the crevice narrowed and the ridge climbed, creating a path that took them up. Lights strobed ahead and Gabe saw what might have been a dead end.

The song rose in pitch and volume, beautiful and frantic, and now it echoed not just in the narrow space below but there in the fissure with them, bouncing off walls and corners in mad echoes that made finding the source impossible.

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, farther 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 at 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.