Josh Bazell - Beat the Reaper - A Novel

Also, strangely, there was an amphitheater off in the distance. You could see its aluminum bleachers from below.

“What is this, a sewage plant?” I asked. I couldn’t even tell where we were in relation to the parking lot.

“Not even close,” Skinflick said. He walked straight for the largest building. Denise and Lisa were still pulling their shoes on, and they cursed as they hopped after him.

By the time we all caught up, Skinflick was at an entranceway that stuck out of the building. And he had a key .

When he opened the door there was a blast of warm air like an exhalation. It smelled like ocean. Like ocean concentrated.

In the beam of Skinflick’s flashlight, we could see a hallway that followed the curve of the exterior wall. The place looked like the inside of a submarine: metal pipes freshly painted blue and wet cement, with a lot of dials and a couple of tanks of some sort. “Shut the door behind you,” Skinflick said as he started through it. The sea smell was far more intense than it had been on the beach.

I said, “Skinflick, are we in the Aquarium?”

“Sort of,” Skinflick said. He waited for me to close the door.

“What do you mean, sort of?”

“It’s kind of a back door,” he said.

The hall ended, and a flight of yellow metal stairs took its place, continuing up along the inside of the wall until the darkness and the curvature of the building made it vanish.

“It smells disgusting in here,” Lisa said.

“I think it smells like pussy,” Denise said. She was into it now, joining Skinflick in his whacked-out mood. She took his hand and started pulling him up the stairs.

It didn’t smell like pussy. It smelled like the front of a cave that had a giant sleeping in it.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Lisa said.

Denise looked down at her and put a finger to her lips. “Shh. Pietro will take care of you.” To me she turned her fingers into a “V” and flicked her tongue out through them. Then she and Skinflick clanked up out of sight, though we could still see their flashlight moving up the curve of the wall.

“Fuck,” Lisa said.

“We can stay here if you want,” I said to her.

“Yeah, right.” She looked back along the hall, which was now consumed by darkness. She pushed her sweat-lank hair off her face. “Will you go first?” she said.

“Sure.” I started up the stairs.

It soon became completely dark, and as I slowed she came up close behind me and held on around my waist. She had very solid arms. Just as it started to turn me on, though, my foot clawed air, and I realized we were at the top.

“Denise!” Lisa hissed.

“Through here,” Denise said. Her voice was throaty, and echoey. Lisa and I followed it through a low arched hallway, trying not to bang our heads, and suddenly we could see again, even though Skinflick had his flashlight off. Because the room into which we emerged had skylights in the ceiling.

“Room” might be the wrong word, but whatever it was, it was huge and hexagonal, and the grated metal catwalk we were on ran all the way around it like a balcony, leaving an open space in the center that was maybe thirty feet across.

Five feet below the catwalk, not just in the center but also below the grate we were standing on, there was water. Water glinting from the skylights but otherwise pure black.

We were above a giant water tank.

The whole fucking building was a water tank.

Skinflick and Denise were leaning over the railing, he behind her with his arms around her. “What do you think?” he said.

“What is this place?” I asked him. It sounded like a church.

“The shark tank.”

“The one with the chest from the Andrea Doria in it?”

“Yeah, but that’s been gone for years.”

I was amazed. I’d seen the shark tank from below, through the glass, a dozen times, though not since I was a child. But from that side the Aquarium had seemed like one large indoor space. And now I realized that that was an illusion, allowed by the tunnel-like hallways that ran between the freestanding tanks.

The largest of the tanks was the one we were now above. I remembered it as a vortex of giant, nightmare animals circling past the glass with dead eyes, not needing to visibly propel themselves. In the center of the tank, on the sand, had been the treasure chest from the Andrea Doria .

“What happened to the chest from the Andrea Doria ?” I said.

“Some dipshit opened it live on national TV. Before you got cable.”

“No shit. What was in it?”

“What do you think was in it? They let it sit on the bottom of a shark tank the whole time we were kids. It was filled with mud.”

Lisa cleared her throat. “Are there sharks in there now?” she said.

“Lisa, it’s a shark tank,” Denise said.

Skinflick turned his Maglite back on and pointed it down at the surface. It mostly just reflected back up.

“Can we turn on the lights?” I said. There were heavy arc lamps clipped to support beams running just under the skylights.

Skinflick flicked the flashlight beam over them, then clicked it off. “I don’t think so. They’re on a timer.”

Lisa looked down at her feet. “Is this thing sturdy?” she said.

Skinflick jumped up and pounded his feet down on the grate, making it ring out and vibrate.

“Feels sturdy,” he said.

“Thank you, Adam,” Lisa said. “Now I’m going to vomit.”

“It gets better,” Skinflick said. He led the way around the ledge, past an open, freestanding metal closet that had bunched up wetsuits and a couple of scuba tanks in it. To a segment of grating that didn’t have a railing, just a yellow nylon rope. He unhooked one end of the rope.

“Adam, what are you doing?” Denise said.

I stepped back. It was instinctive—you couldn’t look at that section of ledge without thinking of falling in.

“I’m lowering the ramp,” Skinflick said.

The ramp was folded back up onto the grate. Skinflick lifted it and let it drop out over the water.

The booming clang as the ramp bounced into place—not horizontally but pointed down toward the water, at a forty-five-degree angle—lasted forever, and the vibrating deck felt like it was going to hurl us into the water.

“Look, there’s wetsuits,” Skinflick said. “Anyone want to go for a swim?”

No one said anything.

“No?” he said. “Well I’m going to put my foot in.” Then he actually started to step out onto the ramp.

“Adam, don’t!” Denise shouted.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Lisa said.

I said, “Skinflick. Get the fuck away from that thing.” I was gearing up to grab him, but even getting near the section without a railing was frightening.

Skinflick lowered himself to his ass and started crab-walking down toward the end of the ramp. “Somebody take my hand,” he said. “It’s too scary.”

“No way,” I said.

“I’ll do it,” Denise said. She went and lay down by the top of the ramp, and reached one hand down to Skinflick. Then she had to look away. He took hold of it and started to work his foot over the edge.

“Skinflick, don’t do it,” I said.

He grunted. There was a good ten inches of space between the end of the ramp and the surface of the water, so reaching it with his foot while retaining hold of Denise’s hand required him to fully stretch out.

He kicked the toe of one shoe in the water, then pulled his foot back onto the ramp. “See?” he said. “No big deal.”

Almost instantly there was an explosion in the water where his foot had been, then another one. In seconds the whole surface was roiling with enormous, slimy bodies. They looked like giant snakes sliding over each other in a bucket.