Dave Freedman - Natural Selection

The leader rose, lifting its great body from the mud. The four dozen animals obediently turned away from the ocean and joined it anew.

Unseen in the blackened freshwaters, they flapped inland. Most were tentative at best. Their instincts were in a dramatic state of flux, and they were physically and physiologically uncomfortable with what they were doing.

The leader moved with purpose. Its instincts alone had been irreversibly altered. Even with the vast amounts of shark blood still in the depths, it no longer felt like it belonged there. The animal veered upward. It didn’t know where it was going exactly, but it knew one fact with absolutely certainty. The light was coming.

It would never see the blackened depths of the sea again.

“ FINISHED.” CRAIG Summers nodded to himself. The fourth and final creek was wired. Sonar in the water, radar on land.

Darryl Hollis doubted if it would turn up anything, however. This creek and the two others they’d just wired possessed relatively undesirable topographies: not straight but curved, narrower, and with considerably rougher waters. Redwood Inlet still felt right.

It was early afternoon. Sweating in dappled sunlight, broken up by an onshore redwood, Craig knelt, checking the monitors. With a tiny joystick, he scanned the creeks one by one, scrolling up the coast. “Nothing… Nothing anywhere…”

Behind him, Jason turned to Monique. “You really think this conduit theory plays out?”

“I think it’s our best shot.”

“What do we do now?”

“Wait.”

Jason paused. He hated waiting, despised it; it made his skin crawl. But then he glanced at Lisa. One look said it. This is what it means to trust someone. “OK. We wait.”

THE BLACK eyes held still. Through the rippling water, the great staff of wood seemed to be almost moving, but the brain behind the eyes understood this was an illusion. The eyes shifted, moving up along the shaft, branchless for several hundred feet until a crown formed, topped off by a massive evergreen treetop.

The eyes shifted, scanning the rest of the terrain. The predator couldn’t see the prey under the early-afternoon clouds, but it knew it was out there, scattered for miles.

The hulking forms next to it sensed nothing. They didn’t even know there were trees. In a place they’d never been before, they were still uncomfortable. The water still didn’t feel right on their thick skin.

The leader’s eyes shifted as a seagull appeared.

Hundreds of feet above Redwood Inlet, the bird glided lazily, looking right back at it, looking at all of them. They were a sight to behold, four dozen living hang gliders, perfectly still just beneath the creek’s flat surface.

Comfortable here as the leader was, it knew instinctively that this was not the place. Not for its brethren anyway. They wouldn’t join it. Not here.

It turned, swimming back toward the ocean, and the others eagerly followed.

They swam for nearly an hour, a squadron of colossal, slow-moving bats.

As they neared the sea, they paused. The devices floating just beyond the bend were still emitting their powerful signals.

They swam forward, and two triangular shapes came into view, bobbing at the surface. The rays moved below and past them, entered the ocean, then hugged the jagged coastline until, again, the powerful signals disappeared. Then they continued north. This was not the place.

“ Son of a bitch. We just got a reading.”

The others dashed toward Craig.

Jason arrived first. “Where?”

Somewhat mystified, Summers pointed. “That first inlet.”

“Let’s get up there, Craig. Now.”

Summers marched to the controls. As the boat started moving, Jason turned to Monique. “Maybe your conduit theory isn’t so theoretical after all.”

Monique just eyed the blinking dot on the interactive map. “We’ll see.” Then they really started moving.

AHEARTBEAT.

The rays had been swimming alongside the towering mountain range for hours. Looming right over the sea, the mountains were black with silver flecks, had no vegetation at all, and were several thousand feet high. They were also dotted with caves. The creatures had passed hundreds of such caves, most of them small and well above the waterline.

This cave was different. First was its size. It was massive, ten stories high, four lanes wide, and with a huge rock lip opening right into the ocean. But size alone wasn’t the reason they’d halted there. It was what this cave had inside it. A heartbeat.

The creatures were ten feet below the surface, perfectly still.

Except for the leader, they were still uncomfortable and knew instinctively that they didn’t need to be here. There was food in the depths.

Still, they had detected the heartbeat, and now their predatory brains were curious. What did it belong to? The frequency was totally foreign.

They didn’t move. Minutes passed. Then hours.

The others gradually lost interest, but the leader remained focused. Its eyes didn’t leave the cave. As time passed, it began to find the space almost instinctively inviting. The towering hole was enormous, big enough to hold its own body, and totally devoid of light, just like the depths.

It suddenly refocused. They all did.

There was a light padding noise. Footsteps. Something was walking out of the cave.

The creatures descended deeper into the dark water, instantly becoming invisible.

Then an animal appeared, a shimmering vision beneath a bleak sky: a small figure covered with thick brown fur, a large, almost triangular head, and ambling forward on four legs. It was a bear cub, not more than a hundred pounds.

The creatures watched it coldly.

The cub wandered out of the enormous space and, for no apparent reason, rolled over and pawed at the air. Then it righted itself and hoofed to the very edge of the rocky lip. Apparently overheated, it playfully dipped a paw into the lightly breaking waves. It seemed fascinated by the moving water.

The leader moved toward it—very slowly.

The others didn’t budge. They focused on the cub.

The bear didn’t notice the dark shape appear directly below it. Then it saw something huge and black rising incredibly fast. It didn’t have time to react.

With a powerful thrust, the ray thundered out with lightning quickness. The great mouth snapped open, then slammed closed, catching the bear. As the giant body landed on the rock, smacking loudly, the bear screamed briefly then went silent. There was a sickly crunching sound, then the mouth opened and the lifeless little form spilled out. The creature quickly ate some of the meat and fur, then, with a violent head twist, flung what remained into the water, so the others could get a taste.

But they weren’t there now. They were already hundreds of feet beneath the surface, on their way to more than twenty thousand. Their wings pumped quickly, propelling them downward. Their heartbeats had been beating faster for days, but now they were slowing. The darkness was returning. They were going home.

The predator remained on the rock plateau. It would not follow them. Instinctively, it felt it wasn’t meant to follow at all but to do something else entirely.

Flat on the rock, its massive form rose and fell unevenly. It was experiencing breathing problems, its lung not yet fully adapted to the air. The baseball-size eyes shifted, studying the surroundings: seagulls gliding overhead, a dozen crabs bathing in little puddles on the lip, the desolate mountains.

Like a beached big-bellied airplane, it simply laid still and breathed. It wasn’t ready.