Michael Bray - Feed

‘We’re here,’ Nash said as he put the boat into neutral, letting it ebb with the gentle tide. They had been sailing for almost eight hours and the sun was starting to dip towards the horizon, turning the ocean into an expanse of fire. Nash walked out onto the rear deck, squinting against the sun as he surveyed the water. Tyler joined him. He had expected to see something. A marker or some other landmark to show that they were in the right place. He turned in a slow circle, scanning the waves, nervous that they were so far away from land.

‘It’s quiet,’ Tyler said as the boat creaked and swayed on the tide.

‘Yeah, nothing out here but us now.’

‘What are those?’ Tyler said, pointing at two rocky outcrops on the horizon.

‘Those islands I told you about on the map. See what I mean about them being too far away to be the cause of the sinking ships?’ Nash said. He was sweating, his eyes darting over the surface of the water.

Tyler walked to the stern, staring into the blue depths. Now he was there, everything seemed much more real. ‘Do you really think it’s down there?’

Nash grinned and joined Tyler at the stern. ‘Did some reading, I take it? Made you a believer now.’

‘I was talking about the gold, not the shark.’ He expected Nash to go into another one of his sermons, but he was too distracted. He was flexing his good hand as he stared at the water. ‘You know, I’ve been waiting to get to this stage for so long, and now that I’m here, I can’t stop shaking. Hopefully, we’ll find something otherwise, this will have been a very expensive wasted trip.’

Liam joined them on deck, already wearing his wetsuit. ‘You better get changed. We’re losing daylight.’

Tyler nodded, unable to hide the nerves that were setting in. Now, more than ever, he desperately wanted a few drinks. The inner demon was stirring and he wondered if Nash had brought any alcohol on board.

‘I’ll get the drones ready,’ Nash said. ‘The two of you will have to get them into the water for me, my arm…’ He trailed off, good hand still flexing with nerves.

Tyler felt like he was running on autopilot, somehow detached from reality. The closer he got to actually entering the water, the more aware he was that he didn’t know the people he was with and that he was trusting his life to strangers. He still couldn’t accept that there was a giant monster beneath the waves, and he had seen enough of Nash to know he was slightly unhinged. There was always the ‘what if’ though. After all, even crazy people were right sometimes and he couldn’t shake that off. With it in his mind, Tyler went below deck to change and maybe see if he could find a bottle of something to take the edge off his nerves.

II

Liam was lowering the last of the drones into the ocean as Tyler returned in his black and red wetsuit. It was a snug fit, his belly straining against the material. He had been unable to find any alcohol which had put him into a bad mood. It made him aware just how big a problem he had developed and knew he needed to fix it. Not yet, though, when there was so much stress about the pending dive. With the growing dark, the ocean no longer looked gorgeous and relaxing. Instead, it looked like the most inhospitable, uninviting place he had ever seen.

‘You okay there, big man? Not lost your nerve, have you?’

Tyler looked at Liam, wishing he had a little of the same cocky confidence. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Good, because we can’t afford any mistakes down there. For the record, I wanted to do this alone but my dad insisted we bring someone else in. Just do as I tell you and everything will be fine.’

‘Good luck giving me instructions under water,’ Tyler grunted, deciding he preferred the sulky, quiet version of Nash’s son. Liam shook his head and crossed the deck to the scuba gear, then stared at Tyler. ‘Come over here, let me teach you a little something.’

Ignoring the goading tone, Tyler joined Liam by the equipment. He glanced at Nash to see if he was going to say anything to his son, but he was preoccupied calibrating the underwater mantas, lost in the controls and array of screens in front of him.

‘Hey, you listening?’ Liam said.

‘Yeah, I’m listening.’

‘These are full-face scuba masks. They pull over your head like a hood and are vacuum sealed. Take a look.’ Liam handed Tyler the facemask. It was a black neoprene hood with the regulator built into the full-face Lexan mask. The rectangular window would give excellent views of the surrounding ocean, and calmed Tyler’s nerves a little at the thought of having to bite down on a regulator for the entire duration of the dive.

‘Nice, this is impressive.’

‘There’s a microphone and speaker inside so we’ll be able to communicate when we’re under. Air gauge will attach to your wrist as normal. Both air tanks are full, though, so I wouldn’t expect it to be a problem.’

Tyler looked out at the ever approaching night. ‘What about visibility? How will we see?’

Tyler pointed to the mask. ‘See there around the edge of the mask? High-power LED lights. Better than any handheld torch. Also, the boat has powerful lights underneath the hull. My dad will illuminate as far as he can from the surface. With both combined, we’ll see better than if we were in full daylight.’

‘And what if, uh, what if something goes wrong. If there is an emergency.’

‘You mean if you see the Meg?’

‘No, of course not,’ Tyler said, hoping his lie wasn’t too transparent.

Liam snorted. ‘We’ve got the Zodiac in the water by the boat. If you get into trouble down there or there are any other issues, we can be on it and away from the danger quick as you like. Good enough?’’

Tyler nodded. His nerves had already started to recede. He had gone from expecting a horrific, claustrophobic descent in near darkness to facing a well-lit comfortable swim to the seafloor to see if Nash was crazy or right about the gold.

‘You two ready?’ Nash asked, grinning at them as he activated the exterior lights on the boat, throwing an eerie blue-green halo around the hull.

‘Yeah,’ Tyler said, unsure if he believed it or not. He wasn’t about to show he was afraid. The beast called male pride kept his emotions hidden. ‘Let’s do it,’ he added, aware of how dry his throat was and wishing again for that drink. He watched as Liam pulled the neoprene mask over his head and did the same, his hearing muffled by the material against his ears. There was a strange sense of calm as he became isolated in his own bubble, the faceplate separating him from the world. He inhaled, the clean oxygen filtering into his mask.

‘Hey, can you hear me?’

Tyler looked to Liam, his electronic-filtered voice coming through a small speaker in the face panel of the mask. Tyler nodded, wishing he could slow his heart rate.

‘You need to speak so we can check we have reception,’ Liam said, the irritation unmistakeable.

‘Yeah, I hear you fine, uh, roger.’

‘Alright, I got you. You don’t need to say roger or over and out. Just talk normally.’

‘Alright, sorry.’

‘Forget it. Just a couple of things to run through before we go down. At the bottom edge of your facemask, do you see an LED strip going left to right, red graduating to blue?’

‘I see it,’ Tyler said.

‘Good. That’s your air gauge. Both tanks are full and we will be back to the surface before we get anywhere close to running out of air, but I thought it best to tell you what it was.’

‘Got it,’ Tyler said the tempo of his heart finally starting to slow to something resembling normality.

‘Dad, are you hearing us okay?’

‘Got you both loud and clear,’ Nash said over the speaker. Tyler could see him settled in at the control console for the drones, headset over his scarred skull. ‘Mantas have scanned the area and it’s clear. Nothing down there. I do see some wrecks down there though so you both might want to get into the water. Sooner the better.’