Ryan Lockwood - Below

Abruptly she felt something sharp pierce the side of her body, punctuated by the slam of a hard appendage into her organs. The prey was resisting. She only squeezed tighter, burrowing furiously into her assailant’s side, as the sharp pain again exploded against her body. The thing struck her again. And again.

Her tentacles loosened, her well-developed but impaired brain less focused on feeding. The sharp object struck her a final time, opening a wide gash in her side. Her eye twisted in its socket and she watched a nest of foreign worms drift out of her body into the black water, wriggling wildly as they found themselves in open water.

One of her sisters rushed in to attack the prey, crashing against her own body, and she finally lost her grip. Something was wrong. As she felt herself rapidly weaken, her urges began to focus on her own survival. Instinct told her to move down. Darkness. The deep . That was where she would be safe.

Directing her mantle away from the surface, she tried to force a jet of water out of her siphon. As her mantle squeezed to pressurize the water inside it for propulsion, most of it spurted out of the gaping holes in her body in a cloud of damaged flesh. Her body spun away at an angle, spiraling away from the mob of squid attacking the armored creature.

The prey was forgotten. There was only safety. Safety, and survival.

She tried to swim toward the deep, away from her frenzied siblings and the bright lights, but her body would not respond. Awkwardly, she managed to jet herself sideways, but her body turned again, sending her upward. Each pulse of water she tried to emit from her siphon somehow sent her in the wrong direction.

In the dark water, the female began to notice several members of her shoal hovering nearby. Among them was her badly scarred sister. They were looking at her as she spun aimlessly in the open water. Watching.

Waiting.

She was emitting another pulse of water when the first one struck.

The smaller squid seized the top of her mantle, well away from the dangers of her tentacles and beak. Normally she would have flung off this weaker member of the shoal and devoured it, but she was powerless. The squid ripped at her body, tearing into her. For a moment, her scarred sister hovered close to them as they struggled. Assessing. Then her body bloomed bright red, and she, too, attacked.

The one-eyed female felt her sister’s arms wrap around one of her fins. She tried to dig her tentacles into her, into any of the attackers, but her body was failing as her life fluids poured out of her damaged organs. With her remaining eye she watched a smaller sister use her beak and wrenching arms to tear through one of her tentacles before darting off with its prize.

Then the shoal engulfed her.

The seining net pressed down against Val’s head, forcing her deeper as it trailed the sinking vessel. Fighting panic, Val grabbed handfuls of the mesh and tried to push it aside, seeking an opening where she could maneuver around the gathered folds and make her way to the surface through open water. She could see almost nothing in the weak beam of the dive light.

Several meters below the surface, Val found the opening she was looking for. But her tank was caught in several strands of the netting, and she had no knife to cut them. There was only one option left. She tore off her BC vest and slid free of the entangled scuba tank, spitting the regulator out of her mouth and kicking through the net. Moments later she broke the surface.

The huge lights shining down from Maria forced her to squint as she looked around. Sturman’s boat was fifty feet away, farther away than she had imagined—and there was another problem. The boat was listing, the reason obvious to Val in an instant. Sturman had somehow attached his boat to the Centaur to prevent it from sinking to the bottom. He had bought time to save her.

Near Maria was the skiff from the seiner. Sturman’s dog stood with his paws on the edge of it as he barked at two men in a third, unfamiliar boat, this one much closer to her. She kicked hard for the new vessel, which appeared to be a recreational fishing boat. She splashed past the floating red dive flag she had deployed when she and Karl had gone down and reached the side of the boat. She stretched her arms up to two men leaning over the side. They looked at her in disbelief, but reached down anyway.

“Help me! Hurry!”

The two men grabbed her forearms, but before they could haul her out of the water she felt something grasp one of her legs. She cried out as the men tried to haul her out, the weight of something very heavy now clinging to her legs. She saw their eyes widen. One of the men released her wrist and turned away. He reappeared at the side a second later and swung an oar over her head. She heard a loud slap, and the squid released her. Val felt the men’s hands slide under her armpits and then the three of them spilled over the gunwale in a drenched heap on the deck of the fishing boat.

Val tried to speak but only managed a loud cough. The men fired questions at her, but she needed a second to process the situation.

“Christ! What the hell was that thing?”

“It’s okay, lady. You’re safe now.”

“We got your SOS. What the hell’s going on here, miss? Were you underwater this whole time?”

“Is that your boat? It’s sinking.”

“Jesus, what happened to your leg?”

She had been rescued by two middle-aged guys in a private fishing boat. They smelled like beer. Several rods rigged for tuna jutted out of holders in the stern. Exhausted, she tried to stand, but her left leg gave and she slipped on the wet wood. She decided to stay on her knees until she could adjust to being out of the water.

She yelled “Will!” and the men quit talking. She coughed, gagging up seawater. After a moment, she caught her breath. “Someone’s still down there.”

“You’re bleeding, lady. I’m going to find the first aid kit.”

Val looked at the bloody seawater pooling underneath her on the deck as one of the men ducked into the cabin of the boat. She remembered now that the shoal had attacked her earlier, before she had seen Sturman, and she realized that this was her own blood. As she stared at it, she felt itching in her elbows, a sign that she was going to suffer the effects of the bends from surfacing too quickly. She drew in a deep breath, fighting the faintness creeping over her, and grabbed the hand of the heavyset man still sitting with her on the wet deck.

“Forget about me, please! I’m all right. Listen. There’s a man still down there!”

“Down there? Are there more of those squid down there?”

“Yes.”

“How were you even down there? You don’t even have scuba gear on.”

“He does, though. Listen to me, dammit. We have to hurry!” She grabbed his arms and shook them, as much to rouse him as keep herself from losing consciousness. “Don’t you understand? They’re going to kill him!”

“What more do you want us to do, lady?”

She heard a loud crack and looked over at Maria. The stern of Sturman’s boat, the last part of her still above water, was now sliding under. Somehow he had affixed the massive seiner to his own boat so effectively that apparently they would go down together. The lights mounted on Maria winked out as she succumbed to the pull of the Centaur , and darkness fell over them.

Her mind raced as the other man returned and tore open the boat’s first aid kit. When she had last seen Sturman, just as he had released her, his face had disappeared in a swarm of squid. They had covered his body, his face, as the heavy shark suit dragged him down. But he couldn’t have sunk farther, because he was tethered to the surface. Tethered to Maria…