Jack Rogan - The Ocean Dark

“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.

Alena kept pace with Sykes and Paul Ridge, with the rest of the group following behind. All her life she had been active, and as she had aged she had done everything in her power to preserve herself. It had pleased her to defy the years, and often enough she had indulged that defiance in dalliances with younger men — sometimes much younger. Now she cared nothing for her appearance. All that mattered was the thousands of hours she had spent in the gym or the pool, the hundreds of hiking trips, the years of exploration in rough terrain.

In the dark, with the weight of the island pressing around her, Alena forged ahead, silently challenging the rest of the team to keep up with her. She worried about Agent Hart and the woman, Tori. The FBI man had slowed considerably — and who could blame him with a bullet wound in his shoulder — but with the tide rising and the daylight aboveground by now beginning to dim, at some point they might have to move faster. She feared what might happen to him then. If she could, she wanted to see every single one of them get out of this. But if that proved impossible, she would settle for as many as possible.

She didn’t want to die.

The fear would have engulfed her if she let it. Instead, she forced it down and back, so that it sat in a tight little ball at the base of her skull. She had lived a long and fascinating life, but she planned to continue doing so, and the years she’d already had would be no consolation to her if she died now, down here in the dark.

She waved the Maglite beam ahead of her, narrowing her gaze.

“Paul?”

Sykes looked at her, but Alena ignored him, stepping aside for Ridge to pass. All three of them trained lights on the tunnel ahead, where it split into two forks: a gentle left and a hard right. Upon quick perusal, it seemed the left fork narrowed but sloped upward, while the right widened and led down. Tumbles of black stone shards indicated that the right-hand tunnel might not be entirely stable.

We’re essentially inside a volcano , she chided herself. Nothing is stable .

“Which way?” she asked.

Ridge and Sykes both shone their lights first to the left and then the right. Sykes started off to the right a few feet while Ridge went left.