Ryan Lockwood - Below

As they hovered near the object, the one-eyed female detected a faint sound in the water. It was distant, only detectable for an instant in the blackness. Then it appeared again, and became stronger, and the deep vibrations gradually increased, pulsing through the water and into her soft body. The sounds vibrating against and through her now had become familiar. Like the leviathan slowly sinking before them, she now identified this new sound with many things. Food. Confinement. Stress. Danger. The explosion in the water had killed or maimed many in her shoal, some of which were consumed by other squid. Yet the sinking object in the water before them seemed to pose no immediate threat. It remained inert. And inside it, she could detect prey.

Her natural instincts had dulled. Confused, she had become more aggressive, sensing but not comprehending that something was wrong. Within her and other members of the shoal, parasites wormed past nerve fibers and around organs, interfering with the natural impulses and rhythms that drove their hosts. The shoal was weakening, its efforts to capture prey less successful, its attacks less coordinated. Its members had eaten little over the past two nights, and had become increasingly cannibalistic to feed their relentless metabolisms.

She was hungry. Now free from confinement, she was motivated by a single purpose.

To feed.

Her shoal had become uncharacteristically scattered. Once a tight collective of a thousand members gathered far below the surface, it was now composed of small groups and individuals spaced widely in the black water around the submerged object. Alongside her scarred sister, trailing several others also circling the object, the one-eyed female moved slowly, struggling to keep up. She sensed conflicting signals pass through her body. That something was wrong inside her, her focus uncertain. Several smaller members of her group had noticed this, and had become aggressive toward her already, sensing her weakness. They were all hungry. Always hungry.

Two squid moved toward her and followed her closely, watching. But they kept their distance from her and her equally imposing sister.

As she propelled herself in a slow circle near the lower fringe of the others moving around her, she was unaware that her own parasitic infestation was very advanced. Her organs were heavily impacted now. But she was still alive. Like all living things, she would not yield willingly to her death. And to survive, she needed to feed.

As she turned her broad fins to redirect her body, her black, bulbous eye caught a sudden change in the water column. A variance in the dark water. Her fins stopped fluttering. Her mantle stopped pumping seawater. There, ahead of her, she saw it again. A small, moving light within the massive object.

Light… and life.

M aria raced surely over the dark swells to intercept the sinking seiner. At twenty-five knots, she was quickly closing the distance. Sturman scanned the darkness from her flying bridge, a cigarette burning between his teeth, ashes whirling down against his shirt and into the night wind. The sea had calmed considerably from earlier in the day, but was still far from flat. He could see almost nothing ahead of him, even with a spotlight trained on the small waves off the bow.

Under the circumstances, he had made the dangerous decision to go full throttle. Although there was some risk of a collision out here at night, running aground was an impossibility. It was thousands of feet deep here.

He tossed the cigarette over the side and tried to call Val. No answer. As he drove farther into the dark channel, he fought to push aside distracting thoughts. Thoughts about Joe, and the guilt that came with what Val had told him. Thoughts about Maria. Now they were both gone. But right now Val needed him.

Bud sat beside Sturman, his head thrust out over the side, nose sniffing the cool night air rushing past the bridge, short ears laid back. Sturman looked at his watch. Val had called him twenty minutes ago. The GPS on his dash indicated that he had just over a mile to his destination—at least to the coordinates Val had hurriedly given him. Could the seiner still be afloat, after so much time had passed? Maybe another vessel had been out night fishing and had already come to her aid. Val had put out a mayday on the VHF before calling his phone, but she didn’t know if anyone had received it.

As he tried for a second time to raise the Coast Guard on his own radio, Maria crashed furiously into a trough, sending spray down the sides of the hull. If there was a response on the radio, he couldn’t hear it over the wind and the roar of the straining engine.

As the “distance to next” figure on his marine GPS passed under a thousand feet, he pulled back on the throttle, slowing to ten knots. With his spotlight, he scanned the swells and troughs off the bow. If he had arrived too late, there might be nothing but floating debris. Hell, out here, in the dark, he’d be lucky to find anything if the vessel had gone under. He tried Val on the phone but again got only her voice mail.

Sturman swore and struck the helm with his fist, then snatched his hat off his head and threw it onto the dash. Bud licked at his arm. Sturman was sweating despite the cool air on his face.

The GPS beeped to indicate that he was nearing his destination. 307 feet. 292 feet. He slowed the boat to five knots, sweeping the darkness left and right with the spotlight. He reached the coordinates and slowly passed the location where the vessel had been. Nothing. He felt sick to his stomach.

The boat should have moved some to the east, which would mean it would be past the coordinates Val had given him. He veered left and covered a few hundred feet, then turned ninety degrees and steered back toward his original heading. He motored past the GPS coordinates again and continued southeast for a minute. Nothing. Wait. Off the starboard—something white. He spun the helm. Floating junk. A water bottle, some other trash. A life preserver. There. He saw a boat bobbing on the waves, and held the spotlight on it.

It was only a small fishing skiff, obviously the seiner’s. He approached and saw that it was empty. He began to pass it, but something told him to bring it with him. He ran Maria alongside the skiff, striking its hull with a loud thud, and quickly tied it to a cleat on the stern before resuming the search, skiff in tow.

Thirty seconds later, as he continued to move in an eastward search line, he looked back to his right and caught something in the beam of his searchlight. A hundred or so feet away, pointing up out of the water, were part of a large boom and the smooth, grey edge of a bow. He had passed the seiner in the darkness. He spun the helm to starboard and eased back on the throttle as he approached.

“Val!”

He eased back further on the gas to lessen the engine noise, but there was no response. Think, Will.

Sturman idled near the sinking seiner, scanning the water for survivors or objects that could damage the boat’s propeller. A collection of yellow floats crowded together near the vessel, marking the top of a massive fishing net. Something red in the beam of light caught his eye. A dive flag. They went under. Of course. They had to be underwater, inside the vessel, where they would be safe from the shoal. But for how long?

Somehow the seiner was still on the surface. There had to be a pocket of air trapped in the forward hull that was preventing it from sinking, but it wouldn’t be long before the rest went under. A rivet or hatch or seam on the old boat would give, and then it would be a matter of seconds. Val and the others had to be hiding in or near the hull, where they could find some protection from the shoal. Sturman remembered the six large lights mounted to the outside of his boat, still in place from the nighttime excursions with Val. Although they had used the lights to attract the shoal before, she had explained once that the squid wouldn’t want to get too close to the blinding beams. Maybe the lamps would scare off the shoal now, if it was close to the surface.