Ryan Lockwood - Below

“Julie, I’m headed up front for a few minutes. Okay?” His yelling at her didn’t seem to be helping. He might as well paddle forward for a minute and see how his wife was doing. Maybe getting left alone would motivate Julie more.

He steered his sixteen-foot kayak through the calm darkness toward the lead swimmers and realized how tired he had become simply paddling a kayak. He looked at his watch. 4:47 . Dawn would be arriving soon.

As he passed widely around the German swimmers, he began to make out the lighter spot on the surface that was his wife, just ahead. As soon as he could see the white splashes from his wife’s strokes in the beam of the headlamp, his eyes widened. The splashes were much too big. Something was wrong.

“Lindsay! Is everything all right?”

Bob heard a loud splash as a crescent of water sprayed high into the air, catching the beam of his headlamp. The jet of water reminded him of a water fountain. But it was too difficult to see his wife in the dark water, which quickly absorbed the light cast by the small LEDs. He grunted as he drove his paddle into the water and sped toward his wife. He glanced down to make sure his radio was still around his neck, in case he had to call the charter boat. As he looked up again to make sure he wouldn’t run into Lindsay, fear and confusion poured into his veins.

His wife was gone.

The German swimmers were fast approaching, and even though Bob was dimly aware his kayak was in their path, he floated in place, staring down into the dark water where his wife had been and trying to control his heart.

To his right, there was a loud splash, and he heard his wife scream.

“Morning, sunshine.”

“Hey, Sturman,” Val muttered sleepily into her cell phone. She was sprawled out on her stomach in a mess of bedsheets on the hotel room’s firm mattress. “What time is it anyway? Don’t you know I sleep in on Saturdays?”

Sturman grunted. “It’s about six. I know you haven’t gotten much sleep yet, but I just got a disturbing phone call. We need to talk.”

Val yawned and rubbed her eyes. She had only been asleep for a few hours. Sturman never called her early in the morning, and had become more understanding as he realized that even on nights when they didn’t head out on the ocean, she stayed up very late out of habit. “Let me call you back in a minute.”

“All right. But hurry.”

After a trip to the bathroom, starting coffee, and putting on some clothes, she sat on the flower-print comforter at the edge of the bed and dialed Sturman’s phone from her cell. “Okay. I think I can pay attention now. So what’s going on?”

“Joe Montoya called me this morning. The sheriff ’s office picked up emergency transmissions from a charter boat up near Los Angeles that was helping some swimmers cross over from Catalina Island.”

“Swimmers? Crossing the channel? That’s over twenty miles, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. But pros do it every year. Anyway, these were no beginners.” Sturman paused. “They didn’t make it, though. One of them is apparently dead.”

“That’s horrible. Don’t tell me he was attacked—”

“She.”

Val stopped breathing. She suddenly understood the early phone call.

“We don’t need a transmitter, Doc. I’m pretty sure I know where the shoal went.”

“Did Montoya respond to the scene? Out in the channel?”

“No. He’s San Diego County. But he knows a few of the sheriffs up that way, and called one of them a few minutes before he called me. Witnesses said the swimmer was dragged under, at night. She completely disappeared, never resurfaced. Some guy in a kayak, who was there to provide support for his wife, actually had to watch her die.”

“My God.”

“Yeah. But the good news is he got a real good look at her attackers. And they weren’t sharks.”

“You’re telling me he saw a Humboldt squid attacking her?”

“He saw what sounds like several Humboldts kill her. There’s more, Doc. He beat the shit out of one of the bastards with his oar, and must have a pretty decent swing. He killed it.”

Val walked over to the window and spread the drapes, looking down over the huge Southern California interstate running past her hotel, just beginning to experience heavy traffic in the gray dawn. It was hard to take all this in, especially before having coffee. She moved to the steaming pot and tore open a packet of powdered cream.

“Did they recover the dead squid?”

“I guess so. The charter boat captain got back to them too late to help the one lady, but he managed to get the other swimmers on board and gaff the body of the dying squid. That’s one reason Montoya called me. He wants you to look at this thing right away.” He sighed. “Look, Doc, I think it’s time we accept what’s going on here.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean these squid are obviously still killing people, and the smartest thing we can do right now is figure out a way to stop them, not study them.”

“So you want to kill all of them. Is that it?”

“Damn right I do.”

“And how do you plan to do that? Have a lot of fishing buddies we can call? Maybe we can set up a big competition this weekend—”

“Goddammit! I don’t give a shit how we do it, but it needs to be done. Before anyone else dies. For Christ’s sake, these things are headed to the most crowded coastline in the state.”

“We still can’t even be sure this is the same shoal that… wait a minute. Of course. Sturman, how far away did this happen from San Diego?”

“A long way. Why?”

“Where?”

“The Catalina Channel. Or the San Pedro Channel, whatever it’s called—between Catalina Island and the mainland. A hundred miles or so north of here, maybe a hundred and fifty.”

“Right.”

“Hang on. How fast can these squid travel?”

She knew Sturman had caught on. “Not a hundred and fifty miles in a single day. I’m firing up my computer now to check the transmitter’s location, but we just attached it, what, thirty hours ago? There’s no way the individual we tagged traveled that far north in one night. On the other hand, the shoal that killed Steve Black and the other divers could easily have traveled that far by now, since they went missing over a week ago.”

“We tagged the wrong shoal, didn’t we?”

“Maybe. We might have been out chasing the wrong animals. Or maybe there’s more than one dangerous shoal. Either way, we’re clearly dealing with more than one group here.”

While the computer warmed up for a few minutes, Sturman suggested that they head north to rendezvous later with Joe Montoya. “He can provide us access to see the squid carcass.”

“That’s a good place to start. Okay… here it comes.”

Val had opened the mapping software on her laptop. After what seemed like forever, she downloaded the most recent reading from the satellite tag and plotted it on a map of Southern California.

“Well?” Sturman sounded impatient.

“Just like I thought. The transmitter is maybe a little farther north than where we tagged that guy, but it’s still near San Diego.” Val swore and set down the laptop before walking back over to the window. She had never been faced with anything like this. Her research was no longer the primary objective. “This still doesn’t seem possible.”

“What? That a shoal of Humboldt squid appears to have acquired a taste for humans? Look, why don’t you ride with Montoya up to Los Angeles? They’re putting the squid on ice at a police station in Long Beach until they can figure out what to do with it.”

“Okay. That sounds like a good idea. But what about you? Aren’t you coming?”