Ryan Lockwood - Below

Sturman woke with a start, out of a dream. He had heard something. He lay in the darkness, straining to hear anything—if someone had boarded his vessel, perhaps—but he heard nothing. He looked down at the floor and saw Bud asleep there. They were alone on Maria. He must have been dreaming.

He sat up and looked at the clock. One in the morning. Why the hell had he woken? He rolled onto his side, away from the clock, and tried to focus on the gentle motion of the waves rocking the boat. Instead, his mind went directly to Valerie Martell.

He knew what he needed to do now, but he also knew he needed to be patient. He had called her earlier to explain how he felt, to apologize if he could. He would offer to help them out when he heard back from her, if she was still in the area. He had made dinner and whistled afterward as he washed the dishes, feeling better than he had in a long time. Sleep had been impossible at first. He had tried reading, but in his excitement it had taken him more than an hour to finally drift out of consciousness. Now he was wide awake again.

He left the cabin to relieve himself in the cool night air and looked out over the calm, starlit waters of the harbor. He returned to his bunk and gave Bud a pat on the head before pulling his blankets up over him. As he began to drift off again, he thought he heard something again. Was he hearing things? No, there it was again—his cell phone this time. Was something wrong with his father? Nobody called this late unless it was an emergency.

He jumped out of his bunk inside the darkened cabin and hurried through the door to the galley. Where was the damn phone? As it rang the fourth and final time, he found it on the portside bench in the main cabin and grabbed it, looking at the glowing screen. Val.

His heart leapt as he flipped open the phone. “Val, I’ve been thinking about you. Is everything all right?”

“Will, I hope you’re close. We’re in trouble.”

“Karl, there’s no time to argue. Put on the gear.”

“But Valerie—”

“Dammit, Karl, you don’t have a choice. You know I’m right. Sturman or someone else might find us out here, but this ship is going down. This is our best chance.” She had given Sturman their coordinates over the phone, but she didn’t know if he was close enough to reach them in time. He was coming from Gull Harbor, no more than ten miles away, but by the time he got the boat running, out of the harbor, and across the dark channel…

“If we just put on life jackets, we can stay on the surface—”

“Karl! Listen to me. I know these animals. We’ll be safer near the structure of the boat than on the surface out in open water. The longer we can stay with the boat, the better our chances.”

“But when the boat sinks—”

“When it sinks, we’ll have to fend for ourselves on the surface. At least with scuba gear on we won’t drown if the ship pulls us down with her.”

After the explosion, Val and Karl had stumbled out into the smoke on deck to find that the dynamite had somehow exploded directly against the Centaur ’s hull. What was left of Ari had been sprayed in a crimson mess across the area where he had stood moments before, just above where the dynamite had detonated. The captain had been nowhere in sight.

In spite of the death around her, what bothered Val the most was the steady sound of rushing water. The gaping hole in the side of the seiner had gradually become visible as the smoke cleared. It extended from below the waterline to as high up as the starboard gunwale.

“Valerie, if we can get to the skiff, we will be safe there.”

She looked out toward the small boat, its gray hull barely visible in the darkness a hundred yards or so from the seiner as it drifted away toward the mainland. The cleat to which it had been tied had been destroyed in the explosion, but the skiff had somehow survived, propelled across the waves away from the larger boat. In the moments of panic as they had searched for the captain, it had floated too far away to risk swimming to retrieve it.

“How the hell are you going to get to the skiff, Karl? It’s even farther away than before.”

“I do not know.”

“If you want to swim out to it, be my guest. I’ll wait for you here.”

“But you know I cannot swim. That is not funny.”

“You don’t need to be able to swim to use scuba gear, dammit! This is your only choice. You’re a fucking marine scientist, for Christ’s sake! You can go into the goddamn ocean!”

Val took a deep breath. The air still smelled slightly of sulfur.

Karl picked up a dive mask and turned it over in his hands. “How will we protect ourselves?”

“The squid shouldn’t be able to seriously injure us, as long as they can’t drag us into deeper water and we stay near the wreckage. We’ll hold on to anything floating if they try to pull us down. And we can try to keep them at a distance with our dive lights.” She wondered if their lights would be bright enough to actually deter the shoal.

“They will still bite us, ja ?”

“Maybe. But they aren’t like sharks. The damage they can inflict with their beaks is limited. The real threat is that they could overwhelm us and drown us. If we hurry up instead of talking about it, we might actually survive.” She took another deep breath and tried to stay calm. She touched the arm of the gangly scientist, and in her most soothing voice said, “Karl, I’m scared, too, but you have to trust me, okay? This is what we need to do.”

He breathed out and nodded. “ Ja . Okay, Valerie.”

“Let’s get moving, then.”

Karl sat and forced his arms into a scuba vest to which she had already affixed a heavy tank and regulator. She continued talking to him as he prepared to go under.

“So why can’t you swim, big guy? Never been in water too deep for you to stand?” She forced a laugh and stood on her tiptoes as he stood up next to her. He didn’t laugh, but at least he was moving.

“My father was a fisherman. Where we are from, it is considered bad luck for a fisherman to learn to swim. If you do not trust in your boat, she will sink, so you prove your faith by not learning to swim.”

“Are you kidding me?” Val shook her head. “How could you become a scientist if you grew up so superstitious, with—”

She felt water on her feet. The first waves were now washing over the main deck and had begun pouring down into the seiner’s hold, sounding like a small waterfall as they rushed into the empty chamber. The Centaur would go down soon. If they could just manage to stay on it for ten more minutes…

Fins in hand, they moved up the steps toward the elevated wheelhouse, the highest point on the boat, and stopped just outside it. They watched quietly as the water rose to the top step and began to flood inside. The sound of water running to fill the hull had now stopped. Val stepped into the confined space of the wheelhouse, but Karl hesitated below her on the wheelhouse steps, water up to his knees, his eyes wide.

“We will at least tether ourselves to the boat, ja ?”

“We can’t, Karl. We’d go down with it.” She reached for his hand. “Come on. We’ll stay in here as long as we can. Once she starts to go down, just get away as fast as possible and make for the surface. Maybe we can swim to the skiff.”

There was a loud bursting noise as the relentless seawater forced a pocket of air out of the bowels of the vessel. It wouldn’t be long now.

Prey. The splashes and movement could mean there was food entering the water.

The one-eyed female, closer to the surface than most in the shoal, moved through the water beside her badly scarred sister. They had retreated from the harsh glare as the massive object began to sink. Now, as its blinding lights suddenly disappeared, they returned to its hulking form. And the possible prey within.