Nick Cutter - The Deep

“Leave the dog, Doc. It’s safer right here.”

Luke agreed. “Stay, girl.”

LB regarded Luke worriedly—afraid he’d leave, the way everyone else had.

“I’ll be back. I promise.”

The dog didn’t seem very reassured, but obediently stood her ground.

THEY STEPPEDinto the tight passageway.

Luke shut the hatch behind him, and his ears popped. He immediately became aware of the oxygen quality: stale and cool, not unlike the ancient air in a subterranean cave.

They inched through the diseased trickle of light. The walls hugged their bodies lovingly; the metal seemed to breathe as they moved forward.

“How far do we go?” he asked.

Al grunted. “I dunno. I’ve never been in here.”

Luke could barely see his fingers in front of his face. The walls brushed his hips; the passage was tapering ahead of them but also, as he sensed it, behind them. He could almost hear the tunnel issuing sly snaps and crunches as it crimped, the steel folding like onionskin.

The air tasted horrible. Not just stale—infused with the taste of dead things. They could’ve been in the mouth of some enormous monster, picking their way along teeth hung with rotted meat. Adrenaline twined up from Luke’s feet; it crawled into his chest and forced his breath out in harsh, plosive pops.

“Fuckin’—what the…?” Al said.

“What is it?” said Luke.

“Dead end.”

Spiders crawled over the dome of his skull as a skittish panic rushed over him—an unaccountable fear that reminded him of being a child in Iowa, walking down a lonely country road at night as headlights bloomed over the curve of the earth behind him, conjuring an uneasiness that would linger until the car had passed, the red embers of its taillights dimming around a curve.

“It’s not a cave-in,” Al said. “The wall is sheer.” Her feet shuffled. “There’s space at the bottom. Back up, will you?”

The walls pushed at Luke’s spine—an adoring suction like the mouth of a hungry lover. He managed to clear enough space for Al to get down on all fours.

“There’s something down here,” Al said, knocking her fist around. “Same as a crawl-through, really, but it feels even smaller… an access chute, I’d say. Could be that the air passes through a series of filters or what-the-fuck above the chute. I don’t remember the schematics.”

“Can we get through it?”

“We’ll have to wriggle—and pray there’s no grate at the other end—but yeah… it’s doable. It’s the only way into the purification room.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. That I do remember from the schematics.”

“And there’s absolutely no other…?”

“Doc, hey. Not trying to be an asshole here, but this is it. No alternative.”

“Okay.” Luke vented a shaky breath. “Fine. Fine. ”

“I’d let you stay here, but I may need help,” she said. “My hand’s fucked.”

Luke exhaled heavily. “Go on. I’ll follow.”

Al’s body bumped into the tube. Her elbows and knees made no noise at all—it was as if she were crawling through a hole carved into a mountainside.

“You coming, Luke?”

He knelt. His knees and feet were pressed tightly together, the knobs of his anklebones touching. It felt as though the tunnel behind him was no longer an O, but had been crimped into a V: a pair of jaws closing by degrees, forcing him forward if he didn’t want to be crushed.

The air changed once again as he entered the chute: heavier, sickeningly moist. He worked his way forward on his belly, bucking his hips in a clumsy humping motion.

“Dig those moves,” he said, hoping the sound of his voice might drive away the onrushing panic. “Liquid hips, baby, liquid hips.”

The tube reduced his voice to a hysterical warble. After a few feet, his arms were pinned to his sides. He could barely move them, other than to spider-crawl his fingers along the inside of the chute. How the hell was Al managing to do the same with her broken mitt? She was smaller than Luke, more nimble. The tube was coated in a thin layer of oil, but instead of making it easier to move—as it did in the crawl-through chute—it had the opposite effect: Luke felt like an insect gummed on a strip of flypaper.

“Al? Hey, Al?”

When the reply finally arrived, it held a funny echo:

“Luke… uke… uke…”

He wriggled forward, his breath coming in hot gasps. He adopted a peristaltic wave, the way a maggot gets around: toes, then calves, then thighs, then ass, then hips; this movement netted a few inches at a go. Al grunted in exertion somewhere ahead. The chute tightened as Luke forged deeper into it. His nose raked the metal, which was pebbled with rough bumps—Luke envisioned a huge greasy tongue covered with diseased nodules.

It’s okay, okayokayokay . Even the voice in his head sounded hysterical now. Al’s made it through; you can bet she’s already waiting in the purification room. You just need to get a few more feet and you’ll be there, too.

And then? Well damn, he’d just have to turn around and do it all over again.

Don’t think about that. Just take it inch by inch .

His shoulders jammed.

Pushing with his heels did nothing—he was stuck, his body pinned. He couldn’t budge; his heels drummed a helpless tat-a-tat . His lungs constricted as darkness poured into them.

Was the chute shrinking? It pressed on the back of his skull with an insistent, menacing weight—it would keep pressing, slowly and remorselessly, until the bones of his face collapsed.

It’s a bend , Luke . Just a little bend in the tube, for God’s sake .

Suddenly he felt it: the chute was pressing into his right-hand side, but there was a little space on the left. Luke torqued his elbows and bucked his hips, squirming onto his side. His spine followed the bend of the tube now. He could breathe shallowly again.

He pushed against the chute with his feet, which slipped on its greasy coating. Incrementally, fighting for inches, he propelled his torso around the bend.

The air before his eyes burst with puffs of cottony light. Those puffs were a manifestation of exertion, panic, and a lack of breathable air—he was gasping now, the onset of a claustrophobic attack.

He’d never been prone to that. Crowded elevators and windowless rooms had never bothered him. But now he was eight miles underwater— Eight miles! Eight miles! his mind parroted idiotically—in a chute that felt like it was being compressed in a vise. The sea was held back by nothing more than a fragile shell. He heard, or believed he could hear, the subtlest creaks as the water exerted its bone-smashing force… except it wouldn’t smash his bones, would it? No, it would do something else entirely. He’d be crushed into a cube, like a car at a wrecking yard. It was highly unlikely that his body would be compressed into anything so neatly geometric, but that was the image his mind settled around.

Dap-dap-dap-dap-dap —those nightmare children dashing overhead, the bloated pads of their feet only an inch from his face now.

He wriggled his shoulders, clenched his fists, and inched onward. He was bathed in sick sweat; his thighs chafed. He couldn’t hinge his knees more than a few inches. His lungs burned, packed with hot rivets.

Why had he done this? How could he have been such a fool?

It was torturous to breathe—were his sinuses constricting? What if the chute narrowed until he couldn’t move another millimeter—what if he caught up to Al, who’d gotten stuck herself, his head butting her heels? What if she told him the exit was grated? Could they get out? Luke didn’t think so. Moving forward was hard enough; moving backward would be impossible. They would die in the chute like rats trapped in a heating duct.