Ryan Lockwood - Below

Joe laughed. “Holy shit! That was awesome!”

“That’s why they’re called flying squid.” Val shook her head. “Remarkable, isn’t it?”

“Goddammit, Ari! Back to the net!” The large deckhand had ambled over to see what the commotion was all about, but hustled aft at his captain’s orders.

Joe said, “Damn, they’re huge.”

“These do look bigger than what I’m used to.”

The captain didn’t seem as interested. Joe noticed that the man was frowning. He figured out why a moment later, when a pair of squid erupted from the water almost simultaneously, leaving the water at about the same spot near the far side of the net. They gradually separated in a broad V as they lofted above the water, then splattered down into the ocean.

Only one landed back inside the net.

“Shit.” MacDonald shoved Joe out of the way and hurried to the net machinery. Joe could hear the motor grow quiet as the captain shut it down, but it was too late.

Another squid rocketed out of the water, almost straight into the air, and while it hung motionless over the net for a split second, several more broke free of the water in all directions.

“The shoal knows it’s been corralled. Some are trying to escape.” Val smiled broadly.

“Yeah, I can see—”

Thwump. Something struck the Centaur just above the waterline, but when Joe looked down it was already gone. He watched as the air became alive with a continuous display of jumbo flying squid erupting from the surface in the artificial light cast by the two vessels. The captain and his deckhands moved to stand beside Joe and Val and watch the show. The squid emerged as singles, pairs, even threesomes. Many were now hurtling through the air to land outside the perimeter of the net, where they immediately vanished into the deep, leaving faint tracers of bioluminescent light. The seemingly coordinated groups of squid blasting out of the ocean trailing ropes of water looked strangely similar to a water show Joe had once witnessed outside a Vegas casino.

Twenty feet away, a hefty projectile launched out of the water, directed at Joe and Val. He grabbed her shoulders and pushed her down just before the animal cleared the gunwale and sailed just over their heads. Water rained down on them as the flying squid finished its balletic flight with a graceless, resounding splatter of soft flesh on the wooden deck. They hurried over to the animal, which was the size of a short adult.

Joe said, “What do we do with it?”

“Just don’t touch its business end.”

The squid was huge and alien-looking, a flattened oddity of squirming meat, somehow alive. A stream of dark fluid jetted out of the squid and found Joe’s feet, covering them in watery ink.

“Nasty fucking things.”

“They’re just foreign, Joe. There’s nothing nasty about them.”

Joe stepped back from the squid as it struggled to return to the water, its tentacles writhing and mantle contorting. The big deckhand rushed past Joe and struck the squid near the eyes with a wooden club. He struck again, the swing ending with a smack that sounded like a palm striking skin. Val cried out and stepped toward him. He struck a final time before Val grabbed his wrist.

“Please. There’s no need for that.”

The big man retreated a few feet. The squid still moved, but barely.

Joe heard another thump against the side of the boat and looked at Val. He sensed that she too realized they couldn’t afford to stare at this ill-fated squid when others were still dangerously airborne. They dashed over to Captain MacDonald and the other deckhand, who stood near the boom supporting the net.

“They’re escaping, Captain!”

“Aye, is that what they’re doing, copper? I sure as shit know they’re goddammed escaping!”

“What can we do?”

“We give ’em more room.”

Joe watched as the captain and Tomás started to slowly run the net back out. The reason suddenly hit him—they wanted to add volume back to the space confining the shoal, so they wouldn’t feel so trapped. The squid continued to escape as they watched, despite their efforts. Joe figured that by the time they had enough net out to calm the shoal, half of its members would be long gone.

The captain cursed, and Joe heard the winch motor quiet. It had stopped peeling out line. Joe followed the captain’s gaze upward. At the tip of the sturdy steel boom, the line had coiled where it had tangled on its way out. They probably didn’t usually attempt to run the net out backward through the winch.

“Tomás! Free it up!”

The nimble deckhand was already running to the base of the boom. He straddled it and began pulling himself up to the top, where the net had tangled in the rollers.

“Is that safe, Captain?” Val asked.

It was a good question. The end of the boom, besides being fairly high over the hard wooden deck, looked like it might reach out past the stern—over the water. And the blackened metal looked dirty, almost greasy. Joe didn’t like the idea of anybody moving out over the squid inside the net, especially after his experience earlier, but MacDonald ignored Val’s question.

They all watched as the slender Mexican quickly reached the end of the elevated boom, then crossed his ankles to grip it. He leaned down and began jerking with both hands at the coils caught above the taut line. He was only there for a few moments when Joe saw the squid.

Suspended in the darkness behind Tomás was another of the airborne squid, clearly visible in the lights. It was impossibly high, much higher than any of the other flyers, its trajectory carrying it toward the boom. Joe opened his mouth to shout, but he was too late. He watched as the squid crashed into Tomás’s back.

The impact ripped the small man bodily from the boom, sending him tumbling off toward the deck twenty feet below. He jerked in midair, and Joe realized that his foot was hung up in a loop of loose rope, suspending him. The squid fell onto the stern, splatting loudly on the metal as it just missed the water inside the net. For a split second, Joe’s eyes met those of the panicked deckhand before his body twisted round once and his ankle came free. He plunged headfirst toward the squid on the stern and struck the edge of the deck with a disgusting thump. His limp body rolled off the boat into the dark water inside the net.

“Tommy!” The big deckhand called out in a thick accent, club still in hand, looking pitifully over the stern as his friend failed to surface. Even after the splash fully dissipated, all that was visible was a crowd of densely packed squid in the water. A squid squirted out of the water and away from the vessel, landing on a float at the edge of the net as it hit the water. MacDonald was hurrying to the far side of the boat.

Joe struggled with a range of emotions as the small man failed to surface. He turned to search for something he could extend to the deckhand and thought of the pole he had used to go after the camera. He realized it had probably floated off with the camera. “Val—see if you can find a pole, anything we can use to fish him out!”

“There was a dive light in the cabin.”

“What? No, we need—”

She rushed off without an explanation.

Joe could tell that Tomás was somewhere down in the compacted shoal, near the stern along the starboard side of the vessel, because the neat rows of squid were being disrupted by a disturbance beneath them. Somewhere down there, it appeared he might be struggling to surface. For a moment, Joe thought he saw the man’s hand.

“Dammit, Captain! He’s going to drown!” Joe turned to look for MacDonald, who was rushing back with a long pole, similar to the one Joe had lost—probably another gaff pole with the hook removed.