The Trench

by Steve Alten

  Jonas’s heart thundered in his chest.

  “What is it?” Terry whispered, lying on her back, her eyes closed.

  Jonas took her hand and held it tight as the glow materialized into the demonic face of his worst nightmare.

  The pod rose up through the hydrothermal layer, spinning wildly in the swirling current. Jonas began hyperventilating.

  Clearing the hydrothermal layer, the pod ascended through near freezing waters. More than six miles of ocean still remained above their heads.

  Jonas knew what was coming, and yet he had to look. One last time—one horrible last time—he had to stare death in the face. He squeezed Terry’s hand and waited for the luminous triangular head to appear—just as it had eleven years before—just as it had in his dreams a hundred times since.

  “Terry, I love you—”

  A faint glow pushed through the swirling debris below, growing larger. The shape took form, the unearthly light illuminating Terry’s features to a gray silhouette.

  Jonas trembled, a knot of fear tightening in his stomach.

  Terry held on to him as she turned to stare into the depths.

  In deathly silence the face of the Megalodon rose out from the mist, its ghostly white skin frightening against the pitch blackness. The demonic grin cracked open, a cavernous mouth revealing the stretch of dark gums, supporting rows of serrated triangular teeth.

  Jonas fought to draw a breath. Terrified, yet unable to turn away, he stared at the cathedral-like gullet, the upper jaw hyperextending away from the widening maw.

  A blur flashed to his right. He turned—shocked to see the adult Kronosaurus charging at the pod, its terrible jaws opening.

  Jonas and Terry screamed as the carnivore’s mouth slammed shut atop the LEXAN cylinder. A grisly grating sound filled their ears as the ovoid pod was ground between the reptile’s tongue and the roof of its mouth.

  Jonas grabbed Terry and held on as their world went topsy-turvy.

  The female pliosaur swam away with her prey but could not swallow it whole. Stretching its savage jaws, the Kronosaurus attempted to reposition the slippery sub between its upper and lower fangs in order to bite it in half.

  Jonas and Terry held each other desperately, their eyes squeezed tight, waiting to die, as the pod turned in the pliosaur’s gaping maw.

  Jonas opened his eyes to see a faint glow, the luminescent light illuminating the razor-sharp pointed Kronosaurus teeth enveloping them on all sides.

  Suddenly the escape pod spun out of the reptile’s mouth.

  Jonas watched in disbelief as Angel lunged forward, snapping her immense jaws over the elongated mouth of the stunned pliosaur.

  “Yes! Yes! YES!”

  The Kronosaur’s lower torso flailed wildly as Angel’s immense jaws crushed the crocodilelike head in a smothering embrace.

  The pliosaur’s dark blood gushed from the shark’s clenched jaw. A sickening crunch of bone as the luminous predator splintered the Kronosaur’s skull.

  Angel paused to eye the escape pod rising away.

  Jonas’s heart pounded wildly, praying the female would not give chase. For a long moment he stared into the cataract-gray eye. Let us go, Angel, let us go . . .

  To his relief, the shark turned, descending back into the Trench, the dead Kronosaur still held firmly within its jaws. With a final flick of its caudal fin, it was gone.

  Once more, they were enveloped in darkness.

  Jonas choked back tears of joy. He hugged his wife as the escape pod continued to rise.

  * * *

  Jonas lay on his back, Terry nuzzled safely in his arms, her head on his chest. Staring into the ceiling of black sea above, he felt totally at peace. For the first time in eleven years, he was no longer afraid. For the first time, he felt he had a future.

  Blackness gradually turned to purple, and then to deep blue.

  Terry stirred. He stroked her ebony hair. She drifted back to sleep.

  With a powerful whoosh, the pod burst forth from the sea, bobbing on the surface.

  Terry sat up, gazing into a scarlet sunset as if waking from a long sleep. She smiled, kissing her husband, nuzzling his neck.

  Jonas pushed her aside just long enough to activate the emergency distress beacon.

  Ten minutes later, the William Beebe appeared on the darkening horizon. An orange Zodiac was quickly lowered into the sea, Masao and Mac climbing on board.

  “De profundis,” Terry whispered, laying her head back on his chest.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Benedict had it inscribed on his submersibles. It means: out of the depths. For so long, my only thought, my only obsession, was to escape from the Trench. I was so scared, always surrounded by death.” She leaned over him, smiling. “You saved me, Jonas, you pulled my soul out of the depths. When I saw your face, I felt like my prayers had finally been answered.”

  “Mine too,” Jonas whispered, gazing into her eyes.

  “Mine too.”

  Epilogue

  The great fish glided through the rising plumes of warm water, her alabaster skin casting an incandescent glow upon rows of billowing chimney stacks. Somewhere ahead lurked the surviving offspring of the adult Kronosaurus the shark had ravaged months earlier. But as the Megalodon neared the edge of the vent field, she was seized by an involuntary spasm that caused her to break from her course.

  Thick dorsal muscles contorted, locking Angel’s back in a rigid arch that constrained her movements, forcing her to swim in tight circles. Within moments her abdomen began quivering, overcome by a series of monstrous contractions.

  Angel stopped swimming, her oviduct widening. Then, with an agonizing push, a completely formed, twelve-foot, one-thousand-pound male pup was expelled from its mother’s womb.

  With rapid movements of its tail, the young hunter accelerated past its parent and disappeared into the pitch-black gorge. Moments later, a second male was birthed; this one, at nine feet, slightly smaller than its sibling. The pup darted away from its mother’s outstretched jaws, following its brother to the north.

  It took the exhausted female more than a dozen strokes of her caudal fin before forward momentum could be reestablished. In an instant she was tracking the two male pups through the abyss, intent on killing the very life she had birthed.

  Registering the vibrations of their pursuing parent, the pups swam faster, gradually distancing themselves from each other as they darted among black smokers and clusters of tube worms. For the newborn predators, survival now depended upon their ability to avoid their insatiate mother, as well as the wrathful packs of Kronosaurs.

  Unable to catch the faster pups, the female slowed, opening her mouth wide as she struggled to breathe in the oxygen-poor environment. Although she had become used to existence in the shallows, nature had condemned her species to the warm waters of the gorge. The huntress would remain there—provided her hunger could be satiated.

  Angel resumed her southerly course, homing in on the young Kronosaur. One day, perhaps, the predator would kill off the last of these pliosaurs, ending forever the abyssal food chain that had sustained her kind for more than one hundred thousand years. On that day, nature’s greatest killing machine would be forced to return to the surface, driven by primal instincts to survive—guided by memories of flesh and blood and bone.