Andrew Stewart - We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep

Please!

“As below, so above!”

And then the cabin goes dark.

Just like that.

The main lights die, as do the consoles, the missile control. Auxiliary lights flash on.

Yellow lights spin now.

Warning lights for contamination.

This is no attack by the Topsiders.

The reactor.

“ Caplain, ” a crackling voice cries out over the squawk box, “ Reactor coolant line just failed—it’s overhea—”

The rest of the transmission is cut short by a thunderous resonance emanating from aft. From engineering. A shudder through the very vessel. Then a roar.

A wave of heat and toxic fume wash through the cabin, through the chapel.

“Stations!” Caplain Marston shouts. The men in the room scramble.

Looking through the hatch, to the far side of the chapel, I see the glow of red flame. In the chapel, a mass of rushing shadows and shapes. Lazlo is among them, but I can’t see him—I am hooked about the shoulder by a powerful, cinching grip. Marston has ensnared me with his long reach.

“What have you done?” he demands, long face before mine. Long hands grappling my neck.

“Nothing…” I try to say, but the words are choked from me.

“You were sent by Satan, weren’t you?” he says, eyes blazing, face bent into a sneer. “Sent to ruin us. To thwart God’s will!”

I can’t breathe—can’t even gasp for the tightness.

Another pronounced bang causes the entire vessel to shiver. Then the world suddenly tilts, pitches downward. The caplain releases his grip, is knocked off his balance, falls, slides down nearly the full length of the corridor.

I catch myself on the entryway to missile control. Many other brothers tumble past me, scrambling for a grip. Brother Andrew. Brother Ernesto. Marcus.

“ Dive planes aren’t responding! ” a voice calls out over the squawk.

The Leviathan cants severely to starboard. One of the trim tanks has failed.

We’re going down.

I begin scaling up the inclined corridor, gripping the bulkhead in order to pull myself through the hatchway into the chapel, which is a riot of shouting, a smoke-filled and dim chaos.

“Lazlo!” I call out.

Brother Callum swims into view, clinging to one of the missile tube hatches. “Brace yourself… we’re going…”

He is slammed suddenly into the bulkhead as the whole boat lurches, screeches. A deafening report of clashing metal.

Impact.

My grip is shaken from me. I’m knocked to the deck.

The Leviathan has struck bottom. Heavy. Hard. The Arafura Sea is shallow, though. Just like Adolphine said, we can’t be more than forty fathoms deep.

Now comes the unmistakable hiss of ruptured pipes followed by a roaring torrent coming from deck below. The hull has been breached.

The klaxon blares.

The hatch to engineering is closed, sealed. The only entry to the tunnel. The fate of the Forgotten is now sealed. How many souls will be lost?

The deck has leveled. I push through the smoke, the confusion, past faceless, lurking, coughing forms. Brother Peter? Brother Jenner? I stumble over a fallen figure. I cannot see who, only that the shape is too big to be Lazlo.

Finally, I see a familiar figure in the flashing yellow lights. Ephraim. He is bracing a small, thin shadowed person.

“Lazlo!” I embrace him, his thin, emaciated body, so tight, I feel the breath go out of him. I feel his arms close around me.

“Come on,” I say, pulling both him and Ephraim along, forward.

“Where can we go?” he asks, coughing.

“We’re going to ditch,” I say.

The escape trunk at the top of the balneary. That’s the only way off this ship. The only way to survive.

We’ve pushed through the crowd, past Brother Alban, Brother Henry, bent over, kneeling, praying.

“Come on!” I shout to them. “Come follow us!”

But they do not.

Behind us, a wrenching burst. A watery roar.

The bulkhead to engineering has breached.

Two of the missile tube access ports have blown at the far end of the compartment. Frothing, boiling water floods, washing away the wooden dais. Electronics sparking, components hissing angry steam.

“Hold on!” I say, anchoring myself and Lazlo against one of the missile tubes. Ephraim does the same. When the first rush of seawater gushes forward, it almost sweeps us away.

But this is the direction we must go. And fast.

“Come!” I shout, letting go my handhold, trying not to be sucked through the hatch. Bracing the edges of the entryway, I duck through, then swing around to catch Lazlo as he shoots in. Then Ephraim.

“We should seal the compartment!” Ephraim shouts.

But the force of the water is too great. I’ve lost my grip. The jetting current carries us down the corridor, past mission control, past the radio room, into the mess hall, where flailing bodies and debris have been pushed by the current. The hatchway to the balneary is just ahead, through the chaos of screams and choking and coughing. The water is up to our waists and rising.

I look back to find Lazlo still behind me, and Ephraim.

Lazlo’s hand is thin, slippery in the cold water, but still I pull him along, not letting go, grabbing pipes, cables, anything along the ceiling to grab to keep our heads above the fast-rising water.

“Follow us,” I shout, seeing Brother Dumas’s face in the near darkness. “A way out.”

But he doesn’t seem to hear. He is swimming aft, in the opposite direction, toward the ladder to the upper deck.

The Leviathan groans, squeals. A fresh influx of water tells me there’s been another hull breach.

We’re almost to the balneary hatchway when I hear Lazlo shriek behind me.

I spin around to find that he’s being pulled under, being pulled back. I struggle to keep my grip on his hand. It’s Marston, face bloodied. He’s latched onto Lazlo, is forcing his head beneath the water.

“I told you what I would do!” the old man spits, his chin only just above the rising, frothing seawater.

I fling myself at him, the tall man, trying to pull at his arm, grappling, scratching. But his grip is strong and his reach so long. He is both able to hold Lazlo under and keep me at a distance.

“Let him go!” I hear Ephraim shout. He’s tackled the caplain as well, has wrapped his arms around the older man’s neck.

This has surprised Marston. He loosens his grip. Lazlo surfaces, sputtering, gasping, blinded by the salty water. I reach out, pull him away from the caplain’s reach, push him through the hatchway to the balneary.

I see Ephraim still struggling with Marston, unable to overtake the man. The caplain is able to keep his nose and mouth just above the surface of the water, while Ephraim is not.

“Let him go!” I shout, about to swim into the fray once more when a sound like the tolling of the hammer against the hull but louder, deeper, rings out. The water level suddenly recedes. The Leviathan ’s position on the sea floor must be shifting, sliding. Marston and Ephraim are swept backward, downward. I cling to a pipe on the ceiling and reach out. Ephraim reaches for me but does not find my hand before he is sucked away.

The lights go completely out now. Batteries blown. Total darkness.

Chaos. Cacophony and darkness.

“Remy!” Lazlo calls out.

“Here,” I say, turning. If we’re going to survive, we have to leave now. I know it.

I hate it, but I know it.

The water level, momentarily lowered, is rising again, the torrent of cold seawater still spilling in through the breaches on this level, and now from above.

Into the balneary. I see two bodies floating, both facedown in the water. Both with shorn heads. Matching robes. They could be anyone. Any of the brothers.