Ryan Lockwood - Below

She looked over at the darkened boat, very low and angled steeply in the water. She stopped breathing. His tether, rather than save him, would now drag him to his death.

Sturman’s dog suddenly barked from the skiff, twenty feet away, and Val looked over at the small boat. Its stern was much too low in the water. Of course . Sturman knew his own boat might go down. His lifeline was attached to the skiff, then—not Maria .

“Listen to me! We need to pull alongside that skiff right away. My friend is tethered to it.”

The portly man nodded and moved toward the helm. She looked around the boat. There were fishing rods, a gaff and a hand net tucked in the side, a few beer cans, and several ropes coiled on the deck, each running up to a cleat on the gunwale.

“Are there any flares on this boat?”

“What?”

“Any flares? Or waterproof dive lights? Dammit!” She didn’t know why she was even asking about the lights. She had no scuba gear and was in no shape to dive down again. She would probably pass out before she could even help him.

The skinny guy wrapped a bandage around her bleeding thigh, right over the neoprene, as his friend put their boat in gear and nosed it toward the skiff. The big man tied the skiff to their boat, then leapt into it. Sturman’s dog wagged his tail warily at the stranger, then saw Val and bounded onto the unfamiliar fishing boat and rushed to lick her face.

“We need to pull in the rope running off this boat,” she said. “My friend is connected to that line.” She stood, and a wave of weakness flooded through her. She again felt as though she might pass out. She blew out a deep breath and fought it, shaking her head, dimly aware Bud was still licking her.

“How much does your friend weigh, lady?” The heavyset man grunted, leaning over to pull in the line. “I can’t pull this rope in. There’s no way—there’s too much weight on the other end. The entire skiff’s about to freakin’ sink—shit!” The man suddenly fell backward in the skiff, clutching his hand.

The line running down from the skiff had suddenly grown even more taut. It skidded along the edge of the small vessel with an audible twang.

“Will.” She whispered his name. She knew it might already be too late. He had been down deep for some time, but she didn’t know how long. He couldn’t have much air left. But whether he was alive or not, they had to bring him up.

Val rose unsteadily, took a deep breath, and stepped onto the skiff. She rested her hand on its outboard motor to steady herself, fighting the overwhelming desire to simply crumple and pass out. Then it hit her. They could use simple physics. She looked around for a sturdy fulcrum, and spied the transom of the men’s fishing boat. It just might work.

She took another deep breath, braced her feet, and jerked the starter cord on the skiff.

The deep water around Sturman went completely black. So that was it, then. Maria had finally gone under.

He knew that his boat wasn’t going to keep the much larger vessel from sinking for long, and that she had been doomed as soon as he had affixed her anchor chain to the exposed boom of the seiner. All he could hope for now was that Val had made it safely to the skiff. She would take care of Bud.

The darkness disappeared for an instant as the shoal lit up, its members displaying an internal bioluminescence brought on by their agitation. In the flash of weak greenish light, Sturman saw sets of black eyes, symmetrical rows of suckers, a gnashing beak near his face. Then it was black again.

Even if he couldn’t see them anymore, he knew their intentions from the insistent squeezing, scraping, clawing, dragging. Though he was badly bruised from the attack, the shark suit had kept him relatively safe. Only one of the huge beasts had found a way through it in the darkness, parting his chain mail to dig into his side. Before he could fight it off with his knife, it had done considerable damage to his rib cage. He could feel warm blood seeping out through the wound.

The pressure on Sturman’s arm and shoulder surged as the throng of squid pulled downward in unison, and excruciating pain wracked his body. The shoal had already pulled him to the tether’s limits, gradually forcing the loop of rope around his waist to rise up his torso and almost to his neck, nearly strangling him. He had managed to free his neck by wrapping the tether around his wrist several times in a momentary slack of the line, but with the tension back on the line now there was no longer any way to free his hand. Not that it mattered. If he lost the tether, he was finished. He would be dragged down a few hundred feet in a matter of minutes without it.

The tension rose again, unrelenting and fast, and he screamed soundlessly into the black water as he felt his shoulder pop out of its socket. Blood mixed with the cold seawater in his mouth. He had bitten into his lips or tongue.

He might have let go of the rope at that moment, if he had been able. But his adrenaline steered him through the pain as his limp left arm stretched out above him, bearing the mass of what felt like a thousand pounds of squid suffocating him in the darkness.

His free right hand was still cramped from clutching the dive knife. He had lost the small weapon when his hand began to curl itself awkwardly into a cramp, and then quit working, no longer able to grip. He knew the titanium blade had found its mark many times, but there were simply too many of them. He used his right hand now to shield his mask and mouthpiece as the squid felt their way along his body, seeking an opening where they could feed.

He felt a huge volume of water swirl past him and he knew that Maria was headed past him on her way down. Over the whispery sounds of the squid’s chitinous teeth and beaks rasping on his steel armor, he heard loud but muffled pops and groans as his boat succumbed to the sea and moved past him, fading into the depths below.

Good-bye, Maria.

The line grew tighter once more, his torn shoulder ligaments and muscles screaming. He wasn’t sure if the squid were pulling him down so much as the line from the boat was pulling him in the opposite direction, but quickly the line became impossibly tight and his wrist twisted and stretched, adding to his agony. He was being torn apart under the weight of the shoal. He thought his arm might actually come off, could tear free of his body, as the line grew even more taut, the mass of squid clinging to him seeming to pull away in unison. He heard more than felt the bones in his wrist crack.

An unexpected calm washed through his body. He felt his muscles relax. He stopped struggling, his fear replaced by acceptance.

As he gradually felt his mind separate from his body, from the pain and fear, he wondered vaguely if what he was experiencing was the same sensation gazelles and other animals knew when they were in the jaws of a predator. When they had no hope of escape. He had read that prey animals sometimes simply died in those situations, before actually receiving a mortal wound.

A memory:

Hiking, in Colorado, with his father. He is twelve. They have come across a rare scene. They sit beneath a ponderosa pine, hidden by a low scrub of oak brush. They are silently watching a coyote kill a fawn. The fawn is simply lying there, panting, not resisting. There had been a brief chase and struggle, but now it almost looks as though the coyote is cradling its prey on the ground, the warm fawn comfortable, yielding to death.

A moment passes. The coyote looks down at the fawn and digs its teeth in, shaking the animal by its belly. It disembowels the silent fawn, and begins to eat it.