She pulled at him. Shrugged: Where's my dad?
He shook his head. Shrugged, too. Don't know.
But his movements were hurried. He pointed over her shoulder.
A burst of bubbles flew from her regulator. A scream that seemed to come from everywhere in the directionless sounding board of the water.
He saw that the first creature to board the ship wore a wetsuit. It had the Nelson Chemical logo on one arm.
It was a woman.
He knew who it was.
He grabbed Sue.
Turned.
Knew there was no way they could get away.
Had to try.
AGONY
~^~^~^~^~
Cal swam.
He swam, for the first time, wholly with the current. Not trying to escape, but swimming straight for the pulsing globe that seemed to be the genesis of the danger, the pain that had fallen over all of them.
He had worried at first that the creatures, the dead bodies spurred to an obscene semblance of life, would swallow him up. But they parted around him. He traveled through them as they ran their strange run past him.
Toward Sue. Toward Tim.
Not my daughter. Not –
He passed Debi. He knew it was her. She turned to look at him.
Her eyes were gone. Chewed out by fish, perhaps. Or perhaps something more primal, more ancient, more ugly and far worse. Small tentacles shot out of them as he watched. Black masses that pulsed toward him for an instant, extending about ten inches past her eye sockets before receding into her skull.
Then she turned back in the direction they were all going. Back toward the Evermore.
But in the final moment, the last instant of her turn, he thought he saw something. Perhaps it was only his imagination – it probably was – but he thought he saw her expression change. A flitting instant of pleading, a request to help. If not a plea to save her, then a prayer to stop her.
I'm coming, baby. Gonna do my best.
He had buried his wife in the ground, seen his dead daughter buried in the horrible embrace of the deep. He would not lose his last daughter.
He had killed for her. What remained but to die for her, as well?
The things parted around him, and none cared that he held something clutched tightly to him.
He knew the head of Nelson Chem – he'd represented Deanna Nelson and Nelson Chemical itself in dozens of litigations and administrative hearings with the EPA over the years. He knew all Nelson's dealings.
All their projects.
All their dirty laundry.
All their contracts, private and secret.
He held the culmination of their most secret, most private of contracts in his hand.
And swum for the globe at the center of the dead.
Hold out, baby. Just hold out.
Something reached for him. Pulled out of the center of the globe of light, out of the center of the storm.
Touched him.
He began to shriek. Because it hurt.
Agony took him.
EYES
~^~^~^~^~
Sue wanted to stay. Wanted to look for her father. But terror stole her will. She had no idea where he was. And the dead had surrounded the boat. Had swarmed the white sand around them and were now leaping upward, reaching for them.
Dad.
He was gone.
She did not know where he was.
Where he could be.
She turned to Tim. He was struggling to hold the life raft.
She didn't bother trying to help him. She knew the current would never let them get away. Knew they had no chance.
She pulled the cord on the side of the raft.
It began to inflate.
She grabbed the side.
It pulled them up.
She felt something hook her foot.
Looked down.
Debi looked up at her with eyes empty and black.
DOWN
~^~^~^~^~
Too many things. Too many things at once.
Too many things.
Flying upward, toward the surface and the bends and death.
The current dragging them away, to who-knew-where.
And something holding onto them. Dragging them down.
Tim could only do something about one of those things. He pulled Sue higher, dragging her with his one free hand, pulling her as fast as he could. The raft was inflating slowly, the gas canister struggling against the pressure of the deep.
It gave them time.
He reached for the thing holding to Sue.
Slashed at it with his knife. Slashed again and again and again.
It fell away.
Now to worry about –
Something wrapped around his leg.
Not one of the dead. Not this time. It was something long, something that trailed into the depths of the snow globe, the blue-purple-black light that existed impossibly where no light should be. The thing – something like a tentacle, a greater version of the black strands Tim had seen on the dead – pulsed with that same light.
It began to pull him – them – down.
He hacked at it with the knife.
The strands of the tentacle parted.
Swallowed his knife.
Pulled it away.
Pulled him down.
Pulled them down.
CLOUD
~^~^~^~^~
Cal screamed. The flesh flayed off his body in the depths of the brightness. Then peeled from his muscles in long strips below the brightness, in the dark below the light, the black beneath the risen sand where something ancient and fell and eldritch hid from prying eyes.
He screamed.
He was dying.
He still held the canister he had taken from the Evermore.
With a last gasp he twisted the top off.
A gray cloud escaped.
A final project Nelson Chemical had been testing for the government.
A final bit of dirty laundry Cal had helped cover up. Not meant to mine gold from the sea, but to destroy the enemy's seas, to cow them into submission by destroying their ecosystems and their economies.
He had seen so many die.
And now he died himself.
NOTHING
~^~^~^~^~
Sue felt something wrap around her legs.
Then, just as fast as it held her, it fell away.
The light around them pulsed brightly. Even brighter. So bright she shut her eyes.
Then, abruptly, it grew weak.
Died.
She felt something pulling at her.
Looked down and saw the sand below literally disappearing. At first she didn't understand what it was, thought narcosis must have caused a complete shutdown of her senses. Thought a nitrogen bubble must have caused a stroke that was making her brain misfire.
Then she realized: she wasn't seeing the sand disappear, she was seeing it fall. Seeing it recede to its previous levels.
The sea began to pull at her, to yank her down. She threaded her arm through one of the safety ropes on the side of the now-inflated raft. Saw Tim do the same. With the other hand she managed to hold up her dive computer. Saw they existed in a strange state of homeostasis, the raft pulling them up at roughly the same speed the water was pulling them down.
No, the raft was pulling them up ever-so slightly faster.
They held to it all the way to the surface. It took just over two hours. They let go about twenty feet below, Tim lashing his go-home line to the side, both of them waiting until their last tanks were almost dry, then surfacing.
They pulled themselves onto the life raft.
She wept.
Tim tried to tell her that maybe her father made it. But she knew it was a lie. Knew he knew it, too.
And for some reason it was all right. She was weeping a goodbye, but it was not an angry one.
She had seen Debi. Horribly, awfully. But she knew.
She also knew that her father had something to
do with what happened at the end. He must. He wouldn't have just paddled off and left her.
The tears came, the tears went. She was dry, empty.
She turned to Tim.
"What are we going to tell the Navy?" she said.
He laughed. "First world problems, eh?" he said.
She laughed, too. It felt good.
The life raft had a canopy. They hid from the sun.
The only threat was sunburn. The only danger above.
There was nothing dangerous below.
FOREVER
~^~^~^~^~
The Navy ship was on the horizon.
Sue stood. Began to wave. Shouted until her voice cracked.
It turned.
Thank God. Thank you, God. Thank –
She froze.
"Tim."
He was waving, too. Shouting like her.
And like her, he froze when he saw it.
Something had popped to the surface.
A bit of green. A bill, so alien out here. A hundred dollars, just floating for the taking.
"Don't touch it," she said.
"I had no intention," said Tim.
They kept waving.
After a moment the money disappeared. Like the unwanted bait of a disappointed fisherman being reeled in after an unsuccessful day on the sea.
Or under it.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michaelbrent Collings is a full-time screenwriter and novelist. He has written numerous bestselling horror, thriller, sci-fi, and fantasy novels, including The Colony Saga, Strangers, Darkbound, Apparition, The Haunted, Hooked: A True Faerie Tale, and the bestselling YA series The Billy Saga.
Follow him through Twitter @mbcollings or on Facebook at facebook.com/MichaelbrentCollings.
NOVELS BY MICHAELBRENT COLLINGS
THE COLONY SAGA:
THE COLONY: GENESIS (The Colony, Vol. 1)
THE COLONY: RENEGADES (The Colony, Vol. 2)
THE COLONY: DESCENT (THE COLONY, VOL. 3)
THE COLONY: VELOCITY (THE COLONY, VOL. 4)
THE COLONY: SHIFT (THE COLONY, VOL. 5)
THE COLONY: BURIED (tHE COLONY, VOL. 6)
THE COLONY OMNIBUS
TWISTED
THIS DARKNESS LIGHT
CRIME SEEN
STRANGERS
DARKBOUND
BLOOD RELATIONS:
A GOOD MORMON GIRL MYSTERY
THE HAUNTED
APPARITION
THE LOON
MR. GRAY (aka THE MERIDIANS)
RUN
RISING FEARS
YOUNG ADULT AND
MIDDLE GRADE FICTION:
THE BILLY SAGA:
BILLY: MESSENGER OF POWERS (BOOK 1)
BILLY: SEEKER OF POWERS (BOOK 2)
BILLY: DESTROYER OF POWERS (BOOK 3)
THE COMPLETE BILLY SAGA (BOOKS 1-3)
THE RIDEALONG
HOOKED: A TRUE FAERIE TALE
KILLING TIME
The Deep 2015.06.23 Page 25
