Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

Out of water and flapping their fins, they were an awkward pair, like beached dolphins, but the moment they submerged they became free of weight as they expertly descended.

She knew she'd been right about the sediment here in their private little bay, for even in the protected area, hugged by natural barriers on two sides, the waves created a gray snowstorm before their eyes. It was impossible to see Jim's fins or his signals just ahead of her. She grabbed onto his left fin and held on, and he guided her. He was an accomplished diver, like herself, capable of navigating underwater with his compass alone. He'd obviously trained in dark water and night diving, as she had.

They weren't met with undersea life except for jagged coral reefs that seemed bent on reaching out to tear their suits. The current was swift and no fish would be foolish enough to be caught in it here. So they saw no other signs of life or light, save the brightness of the sun overhead, and even that was being slowly crushed as they ventured deeper and deeper.

A date with Jim Parry was a lot of things, but it was never dull, she told herself here.

He slowed ahead, the current tugging fiercely at his frame, turning him like a top. They'd both found the anchor line and were holding onto it for guidance and now dear life. She half hoped now that Jim saw what she saw, that it was more than foolish to go on, that it was deadly dangerous to be here. Still, he corkscrewed down, holding to the lifeline.

She'd let go of his fin once they'd found the line, holding to the line instead. She momentarily forgot her fright for herself and worried instead about Jim when a powerful wave overhead sent a monstrous current into her. The current forced her and the lifeline in one direction toward the coral bed and the rock outcroppings, slamming her into the volcanic base. She felt the rap against her air tank, knowing that it was dented badly by the sudden impact, the sound of the thud softened by the absorbing environment and her own labored breathing through the regulator in her mouth. She feared the next wave might send her skull into the bone-hard rock. But then she was swept in the opposite direction, toward the open ocean, the lifeline so stretched and with so much weight per ounce tugging at it, she feared it might snap. Somehow Jim had gone on, but she felt trapped between the incoming and outgoing current. She forced herself to tug for the bottom, follow Jim, get out of the influence of the run-out.

She used all her strength to do so, her body being whiplashed by the power of sea meeting land. But suddenly, she felt free of the hostile force that had so wanted her. She was below the current's sweep, and waiting anxiously for her, his one hand on the lifeline, the other extended and waving her on, was Parry, bubbles fleeing madly around him. He was on his knees in calmer water.

She realized that the satellite photo was correct. Here was a crevice created over eons of time by the forces of this watery world. They were in the vestibule and hopefully the repository created here by the constant wash of time.

It was a large area, perhaps the size of a Littie League baseball infield, handily, small enough that they could scan every inch to locate what they'd come for, //… if there was anything to find. The current was still strong here, pushing them about like corks, but it was not so stalwart that they could not maneuver, if they forced the issue. She'd dived in places where the current swept by like space and stars against the porthole of an airplane, seaweed and small fish caught up in it and passing by her mask at thirty, maybe forty miles an hour, and yet she had still slowly managed to make headway against the current to return to the diving boat, using a draw line as last resort. She'd been in such a dive off the coast of Key Largo at the John Pennekamp underwater Coral Reef State Park in the Florida Keys once, when the dive-master, an enormous whale of a man whose only interest, it seemed, was his next can of beer, had foolishly taken the party beyond the barrier reef into rough waters. It was not pleasant to dive under such conditions, and it took every ounce of energy, and most of the divers that day never got off the boat, finding themselves too sick to do anything other than puke over the side.

Jim motioned for her to follow the contours of the circular field they'd discovered in one direction while he explored the other. The clarity of the water was better here than above, for it was calmer. Still, the sediment at the bottom of the reservoir was in a constant swirl, disturbed by the current, moving back and forth like milky, dirty water in a washbasin. Yet if she worked at it, she could see through this thin cloud, which hung ghostlike over the bottom, to see teeming life darting about, rooted plants, seaweed and coral and volcanic stone. A course could be determined and followed. One thing was quite clear, with visibility so bad, they had to remain above the sandy floor, to keep their fins from swirling up the sediment even more.

As it was, they could barely see one another after a few feet of separation. Parry in fact looked like a ghost as he swam off in one direction, disappearing before her eyes. Being careful, picking her way along with great caution, fearful of swimming into a vortex, Jessica felt her stomach lurch at the thought that her last sight of Parry might have already occurred.

They were crazy to be here doing this…

She adjusted her weight and descended further, getting closer for the survey of the floor, wiping aside floating debris. She followed a zigzag pattern, but not for long. She was stopped instantly by an unusually large, ivory stone with smooth contours below the sea, lichen growing on its base. Mold had so painted it over as to make it one with the surroundings, save for the top, rubbed bare, fanned for all eternity by the current. She sensed something strange about this stone immediately. It appeared bonelike.

She descended, parting small schools of fish as she did so. Nearby a sea turtle played out its underwater ballet, so at ease was it here in the depths. It came so near she reached out to touch it, but it sped off just ahead of her fingertips, as if in a teasing and familiar dance it'd danced with mankind for generations.

Below, in the sand at the bottom, she was coming to rest over what appeared the unnatural formation, a mound amid an otherwise smooth surface. Just as her knees were about to touch bottom, a UFO-shaped portion of the sand lifted off and shot away, its eyes on its head, looking angry and ratlike as it sped off.

If fish could curse, the pancake flounder would have the vilest words to say, she thought.

Jim Parry, doing his own zigzagging probe, saw her kneeling there, causing a smokescreen of sediment to settle around her. He came gliding over, curious about her find, giving her the universal hand gesture for What? He looked great underwater, she thought while pointing to her discovery, fearful of embarrassment now should her treasure turn into nothing, a false alarm.

She dug in with her gloved hands at the conical cap of the mound, Jim lending his own powerful hands, each scooping away sediment around the base. In an instant which made them both draw back, Jessica came away with a human skull and the neck bone from which it had so easily detached. The unmistakable skeletal remains of the skull's owner protruded now, shoulder bones and spinal column looking like a macabre mockery of the living coral around it.

Even here and through her face mask, Jessica could tell from the size, heft, contour and jaw that it was the skull of a woman. It was partially shattered at the cranium, brittle, ready to cave in. The eye sockets stared ceaselessly back at the divers. Christ help me, she thought, it's my nightmare come true, like a damned premonition. Parry went to work uncovering more bones, discarding rocks and silt, until soon, it appeared they had a large cache of human bones.