Leviathan, p.23
Leviathan, page 23
And following that thought, he sunk down another few inches, with the thing tugging now, like a dog holding a rope, and jerking it away.
Just before Eric blacked out he noticed movement from the corner of his eye. Eric turned slowly to see a massive eel at the waterline, its head as big as a large dog’s, and almost transparent dagger-like teeth all curving backward in its ugly mouth.
The eyes were round, unblinking, and focused on him. Perhaps this was a deal it had with the mollusk that had played out many times over the years – wait for something to become ensnared by the barnacles – the barnacle gets what it can drag into its burrow. But the eel gets the rest.
It slithered toward him, and the way its weird mouth was shaped made it look like it was smiling.
He pointed his small knife at it. “Fuck off,” he screamed.
It didn’t.
Eric began to cry and looked away as the long and glistening body snaked up out of the water.
***
The huge eel knotted and coiled on itself as it twisted the top half of Eric from the leg stuck in the hole. It then retreated quickly back below the water with its prize.
Eric’s left leg to the hip, was then tugged down into the barnacle’s burrow to be digested at its leisure. Now even more blood entered the water to add to the cloud seeping out into the dark depths.
CHAPTER 27
Jack and Cate sat in silence. Jack licked his dry lips and half turned. “How far do you think we’ve come?”
Cate looked up from the tiny screen. “Over a mile, easy. Maybe a mile and a half. That feel about right?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I guess.”
Cate looked around slowly. In the semi-darkness of the blue-lit environment, they couldn’t make out the shoreline, any shoreline, anymore, which was a risk as they had no navigational equipment onboard. Once they were out of sight of land, and with no landmarks or stars, they were sailing by intuition alone.
In addition, with no real sensory equipment, they had no idea how deep the water was beneath them. Or if there was anything bigger moving in the depths.
Perhaps that was a good thing, she thought. They were in a tiny, yellow tin can, in an underground sea, and they knew there were monsters here. Somewhere.
“Look,” she said, “nine o’clock.”
Jack turned to where she indicated and saw the small island. It was little more than a dark rocky growth rising about twenty feet from the water.
“Maybe the top of a mountain. Or even some sort of reef,” he replied. “We’d better keep our eyes peeled, because there might be others just at or below the waterline. Our proximity alert sensor isn’t long range, and I wouldn’t want to run aground on one of those.”
They continued for another thirty minutes and navigated around more of the rocky upthrustings.
“Wonder how big this place is?” she asked.
“Looks like it goes for miles and miles,” he replied. He looked over his shoulder. “Bad water . . . remember?”
“I do.” She nodded. “Now it makes sense. Where else are monsters going to hide, right?”
Jack nodded slowly. “Makes me wonder what else is in here.”
“Thank you, Jack.” She swatted the back of his head. “Thinking about that really settles my already frayed nerves.”
“Let’s have a quick look-see.” Jack pressed the button on the control panel and the canopy retracted. Immediately the humid air rushed in at them, and they inhaled its briny warmth. Except for the tiny whine of their motors and the gentle lap of water, it was near silent.
“It feels . . . unreal,” Cate said.
“A world within a world.” Jack half turned. “Where have I heard that before?”
“Sounds like something from Verne.”
“There’s another island. Tide must be low, or going lower, and exposing more of them.” Jack pointed. “Strange. Nothing on their surface at all.”
They went past the rocky outcrop breaching the water surface, and they saw it was just water-slicked black rock.
“There’s a bigger one, further out. Good place for us to beach for a while if we want to stretch our legs,” he said.
“I think I’d be happy to keep my legs cramped and get this over with.” Cate tilted her head back to look up at the twinkling blue lights in the dark ceiling, like sprays of tiny stars. “I feel like yelling to test the echo.”
“Please don’t.”
She grinned. “Don’t worry, I’m mad but not stupid.”
“And that’s why I love you.” He laughed as Cate reached forward to rub the back of his neck.
They cruised on for another few minutes across the still seawater. Before them, the blue lights reflected on the surface like tiny decorations. Cate could almost have enjoyed the ambience, and seen the lights as romantic, if not for where they were. Even the warmth was comfortable, and she found herself being lulled into a trance-like state.
Jack tilted his head to the side. “Hey.”
“What is it?” Cate blinked a few times, focusing again.
He eased back on the power and the small craft slowed. “Do you hear that?” He tilted his head again. “Listen.”
Cate sat forward and concentrated. Then she heard it. “Yeah. What is that? It sounds like a baby crying.”
Jack cut the engines and the submersible glided on in silence for a few moments. They were then able to judge where the noise was coming from.
“It’s coming from over there. I can see another of those islands. That big one. Let’s take a look.” Jack powered up the sub again and headed toward it.
As he did, the wash of something pushed the submersible sideways. Both he and Cate looked out to the dark sea but saw nothing.
They soon arrived at the small outcrop that was barely above the water level. Jack went completely around it and then slowed even more.
“There’s something on the island. Just up from the water.” Jack lifted in his seat a little. “I think . . .” He let out a breath. “Oh my God. You know how you just said it sounded like a baby crying? I think you were right.”
“I can’t see. What is it?” Cate tried to lift in her rear seat.
“It’s a baby, all right. But looks like a baby whale. A calf.” He turned and grinned at her.
“A whale calf?” Cate fully stood in her seat. “Oh yeah, I see it. Oh my god, it’s huge. It’s somehow beached itself.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go take a look.”
Jack glided the sub closer, and once again the wash of something gave them a little push in the dark water.
He looked over the side. “You know what usually follows whales and their calves? Especially when they’re in distress?” he asked. “Predators.”
“Yeah, and also their worried mothers,” Cate replied. “We take a look anyway.”
Jack eased the sub in closer to the rocks, and Cate jumped out onto a small, submerged ledge and walked up the rocks to the beached whale.
“It’s still damp. Lucky the atmosphere is humid.” She laid a hand on it. “Not been here long.” She ran her hand up toward its head and crouched next to the large blue eye. “Hi, baby. Don’t be scared.”
The whale calf was dark, almost black, but had speckles of white over the hide. It made a moaning noise, followed by some clicks and squeaks. As if in answer there came the sound of something like a waterfall from out in the darkness.
“Yeah, I’m guessing mama is out there somewhere. Watching us,” Jack said, looking out over the water. “Those pushes we felt. Maybe she wanted us to find her calf.”
Cate walked around the stranded animal. “This is amazing. It looks like a sperm whale calf, but it’s different. Very different. The jaw is huge. Look at the size of those teeth! And its musculature is very pronounced.” She looked up. “This could be a throwback, or . . .”
“Or what?” Jack was standing in the submersible as he tried to keep it close to the rocks without running aground.
“Or an actual remnant species called Livyatan Melvillei.” She placed both hands on it. “We’ve got to save it. And soon. It’ll dry out in a few hours, no matter how humid it is in here.”
“The calf must have tried to cross the reef and got itself beached by the tide.” He sat down. “What’s it lying on?”
Cate got lower. “Moss, thankfully. Soft.”
“Slippery?” he asked.
“Yeah, it is.” She stood. “Can we drag it?”
“We can try.” He reached under the console to grab a spare rope, tied it to a metal ring on the submersible and then tossed it to her.
Cate came closer and grabbed it. She walked quickly up the rocks and tied it around the strong tail.
“Ready?” he asked.
She gave him a thumbs-up.
“I’ll pull, you push.” He started the engine and put it in reverse.
The line tightened, and then lifted the whale’s tail out straight. The whale calf made a distressed noise like a sob, and from behind him out in the darkness, there came a thumping and waves buffeted the submersible.
“Easy, mama, just trying to help,” Jack said. “I think that’s what you wanted.”
Cate got to the front and put both hands against the bulbous forehead of the whale, she braced her feet. “Count of three, and two, and . . . onnnne!”
Jack lifted the rotations of the propellor and the sub churned water, throwing it forward. The whale calf screamed some more, but it slid a few feet toward the water.
“That’s it,” Cate yelled. “And again. Goooo!”
She yelled through her gritted teeth as she put everything into it this time, and the whale slid several feet, until it got to a lower set of rocks and slid into the water.
Cate quickly ran into the water and, chest deep, undid the rope from the calf’s tail. She then came to its front and threw water up over its head.
“There you go, baby.” She pushed it, and it headed out backward.
It looked like it was going to sink for a moment, but the tail moved, and it slowly maneuvered itself away from them and vanished into the dark water.
“Yes.” Cate raised a fist. “Our good deed for the day is done.”
She climbed back out of the water and stood on the shore of the dark pile of rocks for a few more minutes, scanning the water, before Jack called her back into the sub. She waded back out and climbed in, grinning ear to ear.
He reversed and they headed back out. He turned in his seat. “Feel better now?”
She nodded. “Yep. Now we’re assured of good luck. I can feel it.”
“I’ll take me a large serve of that luck stuff, thank you, ma’am,” he said.
Cate sighed, leaning back into her seat headrest. “Now, let’s get back to dragging a couple of dead bodies around a sunless sea at the bottom of the world.”
Jack smiled. “You make it sound so romantic.”
They continued dragging their lure for another twenty minutes then, all of a sudden, the submersible was gently pulled backward and turned slowly in the dark water.
“What. Was. That?” Jack whispered.
Cate snatched up the phone with the link to the camera. She swiveled the camera in its large bubble of light.
“Uh, nothing I can see.” She stared, her face illuminated by the tiny screen. “Our bait boys are still hanging there as creepy as ever.” She looked up. “If this is ever over –”
“When it’s over,” he interjected.
“When this is over, you can tell people we saved a rare species of whale. But let’s never mention that we did this thing with the dead bodies as bait, okay?”
“You got it.”
She was just lowering the device, when something went past the screen, and kept going past, and still kept going past.
Her eyes widened. And then the submersible stopped moving forward as it was pulled by the rope attached to the buoy and its package.
“Something’s there,” she whispered.
“What? You just said . . . C’mon, Cate, is something there or not?” Jack quickly looked left and right.
“I saw it pass by, I’m sure.” She glanced up at him. “But I don’t think it was a Megalodon. It was something else.” She looked up. “Oh no, do you think it could be the mama?”
“Oh great. So much for doing a good deed and it brings us good luck,” he said. “We’ve just dragged two dead bodies for miles, and instead of attracting one monster, we’ve caught the attention of another.”
“I forgot to mention that the Livyatan whales were a raptorial species. And super predators, who probably even took on Megalodon.” She grimaced.
From somewhere out on the dark sea there was the sound of water breaking, and then a wet huff, as if a geyser had erupted.
Both Cate and Jack turned to it but said nothing and just stared for several seconds.
“What do you want to do?” he asked softly.
“I don’t know.” She couldn’t decide if it was best to drop the bait and head back, as they might not have accomplished their primary task – to attract the huge shark that had been attacking them.
And then it hit.
The rope behind them went wire tight, and Cate yelled her surprise and looked down to see the tiny GoPro screen filled with the image of a large, black, and enormously battle-scarred hide. The creature was enormous.
The submersible began to be pulled backward and the buoys had already been tugged under.
“Shit. Release, release!” Jack yelled.
The submersible began to pick up speed and, with the canopy open, the immediate risk was that whatever had hold of the line was going to take them down with it.
Cate leaned far out over the side of the submersible and tried to unpick the knot from the ring on the skin of the submersible, but there was no slack for her to get her fingers under.
“Stupid,” she yelled at herself for not thinking of this obvious eventuality.
They’d just assumed they’d have time to release the rope before the Megalodon ran with the bait.
Jack spun in his seat, holding the dive knife that he still had strapped to his leg.
“Cut it!” he yelled.
She grabbed it from his hand and leaned out again to saw through the rope.
They felt the sub tilt. “It’s going down!” Jack yelled.
Cate sawed and cut furiously, and just as water started to come over the cabin compartment rim, she cut the rope enough for the rest to snap.
The line whipped away and vanished beneath the dark water, and the submersible immediately stopped its backslide.
“That’s it, closing canopy,” Jack said. Water already sloshed around their ankles as he punched the button, and the clear shield passed up and over their heads. “And getting the hell out of here. Diving now.” He turned the craft, pushing the stick forward as he powered downward.
Cate eased back into her chair and leaned her head back, feeling her heart race, and waiting for her breathing to return to normal.
“You see anything back there?” he asked.
She sat forward and noticed that the small screen she held in her lap showed that the lights on the buoy were still on, even though it was now deep below the surface.
She frowned down at the screen. She could see movement. “Wait a minute, yeah, I think . . .”
“Got something?” Jack asked.
“Whatever it was that grabbed the bait is still there.”
“There? Where is there?” He looked one way then the other. “Can’t see anything. All clear behind us?”
Cate spun around and looked out into the dark water behind them, trying to spot the buoy lights.
“Nothing following.” She lifted in her seat and tried to peer below them, looking over the edge at starboard, then changing to do the same at port.
Then she saw it.
“Oh shit, got something.”
She saw a dot of light out in the void of darkness.
“There’s either a tiny bio-lit creature out there below and to port side. Or that’s our bait buoy keeping pace with us.” She narrowed her eyes. “It’s maybe several hundred yards out.”
She looked back down at the screen. “Whatever has got our bait is big and dark, so not one of the corpse-pale Megalodons.” She frowned. “The camera is too close and the creature is too big to get a good look at it.”
“Well, if it took the bait, it’s a carnivore. And the camera was about twenty feet from the bait, so if it can’t capture any sort of perspective image, then that says to me it’s way too big to fuck with.” He turned the small u-shaped wheel. “If it’s at port, then we’re going to starboard.”
The small submersible turned in an arc in the water, and Jack pushed its speed to the limit. Without the drag of the bodies, he immediately got it up to about six knots.
Cate crabbed around in her seat, and watched the dot of light, which was now directly behind them.
“Still there?” Jack asked.
“Yep. Can’t tell yet whether it’s receding or keeping pace with us.”
“Keep watching it. And pray. I do not want that big sucker taking an interest in our little tin can,” Jack said. “Because this is as fast as we can go.”
“Will do.” Cate stayed twisted in her seat. After a moment she rested her chin on her fist. The light stayed constant. “What’s it doing? If the light is staying on, it means it’s not eating its prize, it’s just dragging it along.”
Minutes went by, and the light stayed exactly the same size. It shouldn’t have. By now, five minutes had passed, and they would have put a quarter mile between them and the thing. It should have been a speck, not that constant dot of light.
“Still there,” she whispered.
“Damn,” Jack said softly.
She frowned. Suddenly the light seemed to grow, and then it winked out.
She straightened. “Hey.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“It just sort of, went out.” She turned slowly trying to spot it.
“Did it fade, move suddenly, or did it just switch off?” Jack asked.
“Just went off. Suddenly,” Cate replied. “That’s good, right?”
