The Ocean Dark

89

Tori ran so fast she could barely keep her legs beneath her, and somehow Josh kept pace. His face had gone pale as the moon and he held his arm tight to his body as they careened down the hill together. Gravity seemed to give him the momentum and speed he needed, but how he kept his feet under him she had no idea. Voss dodged around trees and crashed through vegetation to Tori’s left. Up ahead, Alena Boudreau navigated with remarkable grace, alongside the lieutenant she’d heard called Stone, who carried David over one shoulder, sometimes running and sometimes staggering under the burden. Lieutenant Commander Sykes and the other surviving sailors — Mays and Crowley — ran a dozen yards ahead of them.

In the shadows of the trees and the thick tangles of brush, night had already fallen. A sliver of sunlight remained on the horizon ahead, but it could not reach those dark places. The last golden light of day splashed the island in broad swathes, and Tori aimed for those, darting from light into shadow and then into twilight again. Her face burned like it was on fire — blood rushing through her, flushing her skin — but from the back of her neck and all down her back, Tori felt cold. That was the chill of vulnerability, the icy weight of the creatures’ attention.

For they were there, in the shadows already. She caught a glimpse of sickly white as she sprinted from one splash of light to another, moving from a small slash of black rock, a narrow cave in the face of the hill. Only one of them, and only that cave, but there had to be others beginning to emerge.

No one screamed to run. They were long past such urgings, and fleeing for their lives now. Her breath came in gasps and gulps and her arms pumped at her sides. Branches whipped at her face and she brushed them aside, her focus alternating between Josh — whose every step brought a grunt of pain — and the horizon, where the sun seemed to melt into the darkness of the ocean, her skin prickling with awareness of the hunger that exuded from the island. And all along their path, the maddening song of the sirens began to rise from a whisper to a wail.

At the bottom of the hill, they hit a clearing of rock and scrub and Tori searched frantically for any sign of a cave, but saw none. From here she could see, through sparser trees ahead, the white sand of the beach and the indigo gleam and white foam of the water beyond. The sun only peeked over the edge of the world now, and she knew that, close as they were, they would never make it. The song rose, and she could picture the creatures in her mind, climbing out of their watery caves or slithering up onto shore.

They had seconds. A minute or two at most.

Josh faltered and nearly went sprawling. She reached out to grab his hand, but Voss beat her to it, pulling hard on Josh’s wrist.

“Run, goddammit!”

Tori didn’t know if the woman meant her or Josh, but she put on speed. Voss hauled Josh along beside her, shouting at him not to fall, to put one foot in front of the other.

Lieutenant Stone stumbled, and he and David Boudreau went sprawling. David cried out in pain at the impact on his bloody legs, but then Mays and Crowley were there, hoisting him up again. This time Crowley carried him, with Stone and Mays on either side, ready to take over if necessary. They weren’t going to leave anyone behind.

Alena kept pace with the sailors who were trying so hard to save her grandson’s life.

Left arm pinned to his side, Josh careened toward a ridge of black rock. He managed to plant his foot on it and spring forward. Tori felt sure he would trip and fall, but still he crashed forward.

Watching him, Tori stepped on a stone, twisted her ankle, threw out her arms for balance and tried to get her feet under her again, only to catch the toe of her boot on a root. She fell hard, rolling over twice, a third time, slamming her back against a ridge of stone.

In shadow.

To her right, the darkness had grown thick. The singsong voice of the sirens had taken on an almost taunting air and as she rolled to her knees and started to rise, she saw them in the trees — three of the creatures moving low to the ground, in the brush, out of the twilight. They slid toward her, too fast.

In the same moment, she realized the little light around her had become moonlight. The last of the sun had vanished into the ocean. Up at the top of the hill, the sirens would be swarming out of the volcanic shaft. They were close enough to hear the roar of the chopper’s rotors, out on the beach, maybe fifty yards away, but she would die here in the night’s shadows.

But Tori didn’t give up. She pistoned her legs, leaping to her feet, and turned to run.

“Get down!” Josh snapped.

Tori had no time to think. She dropped to her knees again just as Josh and Rachael Voss strode toward her with the righteous purpose that came with authority, guns raised. They had only pistols, not the Navy’s assault weapons, but they fired again and again, and the bullets tore the sirens apart.

It was all Josh had. He dropped the gun, swaying on his feet, and nearly fell. He would have, if Tori and Voss hadn’t been there to prop him up, and then they were nearly dragging him through fifty feet of sparse trees toward the beach.

Alena Boudreau went past them, headed the wrong way.

“What are you doing?” Voss shouted.

“Not leaving his gun behind!” Alena replied, snatching up Josh’s gun and then racing to keep up with them.

Then the hillside they had just descended came alive with white, undulating flesh — the sirens that had nearly taken them underground, at last giving chase. Alena and Voss fired in motion. Tori shouldered as much of Josh’s weight as she could, but Voss held him up as well, still managing to shoot at the things churning down the hill behind them.

“Let’s go!” Sykes called from up ahead, as if they were dragging their feet and not one hundred eighty pounds of bleeding FBI agent.

Then they burst out of the trees and onto soft sand that gave way beneath Tori’s boots, making it hard to run and even harder to drag Josh. Stone and Crowley had run ahead to the chopper, which waited on the beach with its door open. She saw Agent Nadeau leap out, beckoning and shouting, though his voice could not be heard over the chopper and the sirens. He helped them load David onto the helicopter.

Sykes and Mays and Gabe Rio had waited for them, and now all three of them raised guns to cover their race for the chopper. Tori saw something rise from the water and looked into the waves. They were there as well, emerging from the darkness of the deep water, rushing through the surf, mouths opening to reveal those needle teeth, faces split by rictus grins — as if the things could smile.

And they sang.

Mays fell under the onslaught from the water in seconds. He tried to shoot, tried to tear the creatures off, but arms and tentacle-like bodies wrapped around him, and the sailor went down amidst the teeth and the screaming melody of the sirens.

Gabe spun, took aim, and tore up the water and the sirens slithering from it in a hail of bullets. White flesh and splashes of dark ichor spattered the waves. Mays was already dead, but Gabe killed as many as he could and kept the line back.

Sykes and Crowley, who came back from the chopper to help, took aim at the creatures surging from the undergrowth and opened fire. Tori did not even turn to look. Her eyes were on the helicopter, on the open door, and she barely even saw the three men with their assault rifles now, two Navy heroes and one gun smuggler who seemed to have forgotten who he’d once been. And she realized that she had forgotten as well. The past didn’t matter anymore, only tomorrow. Only the next sunrise.

Nadeau rushed to meet them, and helped Tori and Voss half-drag and half-carry Josh the last dozen feet, and then they were scrambling into the back of the chopper. Nadeau and Voss slid Josh away from the door, their focus on their fellow agent, and that left Tori alone to reach for Alena’s hand, helping the woman in beside her. She went immediately to David and began to investigate his wounds, shouting for a med-kit.

Gabe and Crowley jumped onto the helicopter, but Sykes shouted something none of them could hear over the roar and kept firing into the dozens of creatures even as the chopper began to lift off. Only then did the lieutenant commander throw himself into the back of the helicopter. The gunfire ceased for a second or two, and then he and Crowley were both hanging out the door, firing again as they rose into the air.

Several of the leeches clung to the undercarriage and one crawled up the door on the other side of the chopper, but as they picked up speed and roared away from the shore, out over the dark water, they peeled away and tumbled into the sea.

Tori heard a voice, shouting, and looked up to see the pilot barking something into his headset, radioing the Hillstrom with the news. The first explosion came three seconds later, punching the air and rocking the chopper, propelling them toward the small cluster of ships a mile or two offshore. In the space of several heartbeats, hundreds of charges blew, spewing black stone and dust and chunks of earth into the air, lighting up the sky, and setting fire to the trees.

They were out of the caves. They’d have nowhere to go when the sun rose except into the water, and tomorrow morning, the extermination would begin. Those who weren’t crushed in collapsed caves or burned by the flames or the sun would have to be killed, and that would take time. Eventually, Alena’s people would destroy them all. Tori found comfort in that, and in the knowledge that when they finally killed the last of the creatures, she would be far, far from here.

She turned to look at Josh and saw that he had fallen unconscious at last, passed out in Rachael Voss’s lap. His partner stroked his hair, her own clothes stained with Josh’s blood, and Tori knew she was alone.

But alone didn’t scare her anymore.