Sole Chaos

by William Oday

  The nearest light was closer yet. So close she could make out some of the boat beneath it. It shot a beam of light out across the roiling ocean surface.

  The wave passed and she started down into the valley. This time was different though.

  The wave fell down a dozen feet at a steep angle. The table dropped and she was suddenly floating in the air.

  The restraint snapped tight and dragged her lower as the craft raced down the side. It arrived at the bottom and she slammed into it.

  Head first.

  Her forehead bounced off the hard plastic and snapped back. A rush of warmth shot through her neck. Like a pulse of hot blood.

  Emily reached around, hoping to find a strap to grab onto while her mind cleared. The tendons in her neck screamed. It felt like the back of her head had smacked into the center of her shoulder blades.

  Gravity pressed her down onto the tabletop as another wave lifted her higher and faster, like an express elevator.

  She fished for the whistle attached to the suit, found it, and started blowing as hard as she could.

  The lift ended and the descent began.

  Fast and furious and promising the end.

  The table with her on top fell down the side more than skidded.

  They both caught air and then hit. The impact dragged the leading edge under and the whole thing flipped through the air.

  They somersaulted end over end and hit the water heading in different directions.

  The strap securing it to her snapped as she slammed into the surface and went under.

  She spun a couple of times, righted herself, and kicked for the surface.

  Her head broke through and she sucked in a choking breath of air mixed with seawater.

  The sound of rushing water made her spin to the right.

  Just in time see the table top as it slammed into her face.

  The fury of the growing storm faded away.

  Emily floated.

  Away from the struggle. Toward a peaceful sleep.

  She took a slow breath of ice-cold water that somehow warmed her chest.

  She stared down at the blinking yellow light secured to the loop at her shoulder.

  Something about it was familiar.

  Something she couldn’t quite remember, but it made her happy all the same.

  45

  MARCO stood at the bow of the boat staring out into darkness. His customary fur scarf snuggled around his neck and quietly snuffling through a dream. He couldn’t have been more appreciative of the little weasel. It was nice to have someone watching your back in times like these.

  And the crankiness that he’d initially found so annoying had become one his favorite things about the little grouch.

  He absently stroked a finger beneath his jacket and the weasel rolled in place until his belly faced up. Marco obliged and rubbed it as he surveyed the scene.

  The thick haze above suffused and soaked up most of the light of the full moon. Just enough made it through to suggest the distant horizon, the line between water and sky where ancient mariners imagined ships would sail off the edge of the earth.

  Where were the boats that were supposed to be waiting for them? Had they continued on already?

  Marco tried not to think about the battle they’d left behind. Not knowing if Stuckey and the others escaped twisted his insides up.

  Had he made the right call?

  Or should they have gone back to help?

  The volume of gunshots shattering the air suggested Stuckey and the others hadn’t gotten away easily, if at all.

  A foul taste climbed up into his throat. The bile of his churning stomach. He swallowed it down and spat out the little that got into his mouth.

  The not knowing was the hardest part.

  And there was every likelihood that he would never know.

  Where were the stupid boats?

  He was supposed to lead these people and he couldn’t even find them. And what if they met up and everyone made it to the safety of the underground facility? What then? The island would be contaminated with dangerous radioactive fallout for how long?

  Chernobyl was still cordoned off by an exclusion zone. Nobody could live there. Some estimates said it would be uninhabitable for twenty thousand years. How long had it taken for them to allow even brief incursions?

  He couldn’t remember.

  But he did remember that it was still a no-go zone a long time later. Decades maybe?

  He took a deep breath of the briny air and let the chill fill his lungs. It helped. A little.

  He’d have to accept not knowing the fate of Stuckey and the others.

  That was bad enough. But there was worse. Something he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to let go. It would be a shadow that followed him to the grave.

  Emily.

  Where was she?

  Was she safe?

  Was she getting closer to finding out what happened to her grandmother?

  The second time he’d given his heart to a girl.

  The second time it had gotten crushed.

  And the fact that Emily didn’t explicitly reject him only made it worse. There was finality with Justine. She didn’t want him. There was nothing he could do about it.

  But Emily was different.

  They could’ve had a future together. As much as anyone could expect to have with the world like it was.

  But the fate of her grandmother took her away.

  Marco couldn’t blame her, not even when he wanted to. Family came first. The irony was that most people didn’t realize that back in the default everyday world.

  But now?

  Now that the world had been flushed down the toilet?

  The things that really mattered were as obvious as needing to breathe.

  Even the land he’d come to the island to save seemed distant and unimportant. His family’s land. But without his family, those sweeping vistas and swaying grasslands no longer mattered.

  None of it mattered without family.

  “Look over there!” a voice shouted over the whipping wind. A hand pointed off to the left.

  Marco looked and saw a light in the distance. The shape of the individual boats was impossible to see from here, but it had to be them. “Looks like it.”

  They motored closer until the individual silhouettes of the boats started to appear.

  Marco scanned the flotilla, his face full of wonder. There were at least twenty boats of every shape and size gathered together in a loose conglomeration.

  A voice echoed over the water. “About time! We were about to give up on you!”

  The man standing beside Marco laughed. “You’re lucky we made it! Someone’s got to keep this fleet from running aground!”

  Something off to the right in the distance caught Marco’s attention.

  A flashing light in the surrounding darkness.

  As he turned, it disappeared.

  Had he imagined it?

  He peered into the night.

  Nothing.

  He squinted, trying to see what lurked out in the unknown.

  There!

  It was on and steady now.

  “Someone’s in trouble out there!” Marco yelled over the wind.

  The captain saw it, too. He ran back toward the pilothouse. “Get that spotlight on and get us turned around!”

  The engines roared a few seconds later and the boat lurched to the right.

  A blinding light clicked on sending a solid beam of brightness shooting out over the pitching waves. It was getting rougher by the second. The light traced across the dark waves as the bow cut through the water.

  He waited for the distant light to reappear, but it was gone.

  Their boat slammed through incoming waves and sailed off departing ones. The spotlight swept back and forth through the pale haze of swirling mist.

  He scanned the surface, following the spotlight and the areas it illuminated.

  It swept over something and then snapped bac
k.

  There!

  A makeshift raft made of tied together lifejackets with what looked like a galley tabletop loosely hanging to the side. The spotlight kept it in focus as they drew closer.

  Now thirty feet away, the engines cut off and they drifted closer.

  Marco ran along the railing, leaning over looking down into the dark water.

  A man joined him with a life ring and a coil of rope. “See anything?”

  Marco skirted along the railing, looking everywhere. “No. Nothing.”

  Something caught his eye and he skidded to a stop on the slick deck. “Over here!”

  Yes. There below the surface! A yellow blinking emergency light. Too far down to see who or what it was attached to.

  Marco didn’t hesitate.

  Chief Stuckey had made him promise to protect these people. And he was going to do his best to fulfill that promise. Period.

  Marco ripped off his coat and the weasel along with it. He dropped both and climbed up onto the rail.

  Oscar tried to scurry up the side to reach him, but the smooth surface was too high so he slid back down.

  Marco sucked in a deep breath, and dove in. The cold water hit him and nearly made him cough out the stored air. He managed to keep his mouth clamped shut and started kicking and digging deeper.

  It seemed like minutes before he finally made it to the blinking light. He grabbed the shoulder of an orange survival suit and rolled the body over.

  His chest pinched tight. A spasm of pain.

  The flashing on and off, in and out of being, of a face he’d grown to love. Emily’s. Wide, unblinking eyes staring up at nothing. Skin pale and lifeless. Her mouth open as if she was about to say something.

  No!

  A surge of electric terror spiked through his veins. He hooked an arm around her chest and kicked for the surface some twenty feet away.

  A bank of bright lights above kicked on, bringing day to the night.

  Marco kicked his legs. His chest burned. He let the breath trickle out, knowing there wouldn’t be another to replace it if he gave up.

  No!

  A flash of movement out of the corner of his eye made him look in that direction.

  His heart stopped.

  The shock froze him for an instant.

  An enormous wedge-shaped head with gray skin above and lighter skin below.

  A shark.

  Bigger than any shark could possibly be. So large the back half of it vanished into the shadows beyond the light.

  A bottomless black eye peered at them as it glided by. A thick torso, wider than a semi-truck. A massive dorsal fin and eventually a muscular tail fin that thrust side to side.

  Marco’s brain unfroze and he kicked the rest of the way to the surface. His head broke through and he sucked in a desperate breath. The freezing air quenched the fire in his chest.

  Half a dozen people leaned out over the railing. Some shouting and pointing out at the water behind them. Others shouting for him to wrap the line around them both so they could be hauled up.

  Marco snatched up the line floating in the water and ran it behind his back. He pulled Emily into a hug and looped it around her. The muscles in his legs started cramping as he continued kicking to keep them both afloat. He tied off a knot to secure the rope.

  It cinched tight around them as the line drew taut. It cut under his arms and into his back as it lifted them up out of the water.

  “Faster!” someone above shouted. “It’s coming back!”

  46

  The deafening report of rifles shots split the air. Several people along the railing were firing into the water.

  “Oh my God!” someone shouted in horror.

  “Get them up!” someone else shouted.

  “It’s gotta be seventy feet long!”

  The rope jerked upward and Marco’s boots lifted out of the water. He hugged Emily’s lifeless body close, trying to block out the vision of enormous jaws cutting them both in half with a single bite.

  CRACK. CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.

  The intensity of the gunshots increased as the beast drew closer.

  Another heave and they got close enough to the railing where several people leaned over and grabbed hold of them.

  Oscar sailed through the air and landed on Marco’s shoulder. He sniffed Emily’s face as the emergency beacon blinked on and off.

  “Get them up! Now!”

  They were halfway over the railing when the shark rammed into the boat.

  Screams and the sharp crack of splintering wood.

  The metal railing bent and fell away and, for an instant, there was nothing but air. And then the feeling of going down a roller coaster as Marco and Emily dropped back into the icy water below.

  The string securing the emergency light to Emily’s suit snapped and it whirled away.

  The impact knocked Oscar away and he was gone. The rope looped around Marco’s arms drew tight, pinning them around Emily.

  Beams of bright light shot through the water as the boat rolled onto its side and the bank of lights plunged below the surface. A blinding halo lit up the surrounding water.

  A man caught in a heavy tangle of snarled railing clawed for the surface, but the weight of it pulled him down into the depths.

  Fragments of the boat littered the surface. Other bits of debris floated in the water below.

  People swam in all directions at once, each doing their best to survive the unfolding catastrophe.

  Marco fought to free his arms, but it was no use. The rope coiled around them held tight. His lungs began to burn as he gave up and kicked for the surface.

  They broke through and he gulped a breath.

  Emily’s head tilted to the side. Her eyes open and blank. No response.

  The boat lay on its side in the water. The lights from the other side blasted a column of glowing illumination up into the night air. The few people still on the boat clung to whatever they could to keep from falling into the water.

  Frantic limbs splashed and panicked voices screamed.

  “No!” someone yelled louder than the rest.

  “Swim! Go!”

  Marco kicked his feet to spin them around and saw the shadow rising from the depths.

  It cut through the light with jaws open and pale teeth reflecting white.

  A man struggling at the surface looked down into the water as the shark’s mouth swallowed him.

  The behemoth exploded out of the water in a fury of speed and death. It’s front half cleared the water before gravity pulled it back it down with a concussive splash that hit Marco’s ears before a wave rolled over his head. Water shot down his throat and he gagged.

  The shock of it all reached for him.

  With velvet gloves and promising an end to all the suffering. If only he’d let go. It would all be over soon.

  He might’ve accepted the offering if he’d been alone. If it was only his life hanging in the balance.

  But it wasn’t.

  He glanced at the bloodless face inches from his own. Almost like the fairy tale of sleeping beauty. Waiting to be kissed and brought back to life.

  Marco kicked to the surface again and coughed out a lungful of icy water. The water burned it was so cold. The adrenaline burned it was so hot.

  The boat screeched long and slow as the balance shifted. It started rolling over the rest of the way. There was no chance for it now. It was going down.

  The rope coiled around them jerked tight and dragged them under.

  He twisted around and followed the taut line to where it was caught on some mangled railing. There was a section near the middle of the line that had been cut and was frayed. He yanked back to break it, but the remaining fibers held.

  The boat continued to roll and the rope dragged them deeper as it went. It cut into his arms like a barbed wire python.

  The boat settled upside down, now with both banks of lights shining down into the depths.

  The tension on the rope eased and
Marco thought it had broken. He kicked for the surface and was immediately jerked to a stop. His lungs ached as the bubbles of his last breath bobbled up toward the deck of the upside down boat.

  Emily’s long straight hair floated in mesmerizing waves around her head. It was beautiful. Like black silk.

  Marco jerked at the rope again but couldn’t get the frayed part to fail. And there wasn’t enough line to get back to the surface for another breath.

  They were going to drown.

  If they didn’t get eaten first.

  He scanned the water and didn’t see the shark within the halo of glowing light. But there was an ocean of darkness beyond it and the beast would be back.

  Marco spotted the torn base of a railing column jutting up out of the deck nearby. The end jagged and sharp. He furiously kicked the water to swim them both to it. A few more coordinated kicks and he got the rope snagged onto the tip of the metal.

  He tried to get the sharp end further under the rope, but it cut through his shirt and sliced open his arm instead.

  Marco gritted his teeth and pushed again, angling the ragged blade through his flesh and finally into the rope.

  Writhing back and forth, he managed to saw through it until the last fibers split and the constraining coil let go.

  Fire blazed in his chest. His lungs burned to draw in life-sustaining air. He kicked and swam with one arm and held Emily with the other.

  His head broke the surface as his lungs gasped for air. He reached up for something to grab, but there was nothing but the smooth hull of the boat.

  A man laying on his belly across the spine of the broad hull reached down, but he was just beyond reach.

  “Be ready to grab her!” Marco shouted. He lifted her up which caused him to go under. He kicked with all his might as he pushed higher and sank lower.

  Her weight lifted and he made it back to the surface to see her being dragged up onto the hull.

  “They’re coming!” someone in the water nearby shouted.

  He glanced over and saw several other boats speeding over to help.

  If help was even possible.

  Dark movement below.

  He looked down and saw it. At the distant edge of the fading light.

  The monster from the depths.

  Charging up at them.