Pressure

by Brian Keene

  He’s scared, Jessamine realized.

  DeMatteis swayed on the balls of his feet as the ship rolled again. When the reporters began to all shout questions at him simultaneously, he held up his hands for quiet. When he spoke, it was without his usual charm or sarcasm.

  “I’m going to give a short statement, and that’s all. I’m not—I repeat—not taking questions. When I’m done, I’m going to ask all of you to clear this area. We have an emergency situation. Approximately two minutes ago, Carrie Anderson and Peter Scofield reported some problems with their equipment.”

  “Just like everything else on this tug,” Jessamine whispered.

  “They’re currently about one hundred eighty meters below the surface. Their communications array has now shorted and the oxygen monitor is on the fritz. The … the seals on both of their oxygen tanks appear to be compromised. I would remind everyone that Carrie Anderson is one of the most experienced free divers in the world—”

  “What about Peter Scofield?” Jennifer elbowed her way past Jessamine and Khem. “Can they make it to the surface from that depth without their equipment?”

  Scowling, DeMatteis shot Jennifer a withering glance, and then pretended he hadn’t heard the question. Jessamine felt a sudden and overwhelming urge to go hug the old man.

  “I would caution all of you that…”

  DeMatteis broke off as the commotion increased behind him. Researchers began to shout, as their monitors went crazy. An alarm blared overhead, echoing throughout the ship. Then a second alarm began to wail in unison. Crew members rushed to the port side. Some members of the press began to follow them, but DeMatteis yelled at them to get back. Then, distracted by a colleague, he turned his attention away from the reporters. Jennifer and her crew charged ahead.

  Jessamine glanced at Khem.

  “I’m following you,” he said.

  “Is your camera still working?”

  He nodded. “For now, at least. Let’s make the most of that while we can.”

  Jessamine pushed forward, weaving her way between other members of the press. Khem stayed right behind her, filming everything with his camera, which almost seemed to be an extension of him.

  The alarms stopped blaring. For one brief moment, everything fell silent.

  Jessamine and Khem made it once more to the front of the crowd just as the commotion began anew. There, lying on the deck in a pool of water, was Carrie Anderson. She was curled into the fetal position and appeared to be unconscious and unresponsive. Freed of her suit and gear, her exposed skin was covered with an ugly red rash, and judging by the discoloration on her thighs, she’d lost control of her bowels during her rapid ascent.

  Several crew members crouched next to her in concern. Jessamine heard one of them mutter about “the bends.” Then a scientist shouted at the team to call for a helicopter and to get the hyperbaric chamber ready.

  “Hopefully the hyperbaric chamber’s not malfunctioning like everything else,” Khem murmured.

  Jessamine turned to him, realized that he had zoomed in on Carrie, and put her hand in front of the lens.

  “No,” she said. “Give her some dignity. Let’s go over to the rail. We’ve got a story to report.”

  “Is she okay?” Hank asked as the three of them retreated starboard. “What’s going on?”

  “News,” Jessamine replied. “News is what’s going on. Do we have a connection yet?”

  “Not yet. The damn uplink is still on the fritz.”

  “Shit … okay. Let’s go ahead and tape anyway. We’ll send it later. And somebody track Julio down.”

  “Speak of the devil and I shall appear,” Julio said, maneuvering between reporters and crew. “You look fine, by the way. I think we can get by with just a quick touch up.”

  Jessamine waited patiently while Julio expertly attended to her hair and makeup. When he was finished, she nodded at Khem and Hank, indicating she was ready. The two of them both signaled their confirmation.

  “Get the moon in the background,” Hank told Khem. “That will make for a nice shot.”

  “I’ve got it. Kind of cloudy, though. I need better lighting.”

  “You want to light the moon?”

  As Jessamine approached the railing, Hank and Khem’s bickering faded into background noise. As a journalist, she’d trained herself to sort through information she was hearing, focusing on what was useful and disregarding the unimportant. She did that now, and heard several reporters inquiring about Peter Scofield’s status. None of the research team responded to their shouted demands.

  Jessamine realized that her seasickness had finally subsided. The research vessel was no longer swaying.

  “There we go,” Hank said. “Look at that, Khem. Perfect lighting. Somebody up there must like us.”

  The clouds cooperated with the shot, sliding across the night sky, and the almost-full moon shone down upon a dark ocean that had suddenly gone completely still.

  Peter Scofield never resurfaced.

  TWO

  If you didn’t look too closely, Carrie Anderson decided, then it was easy to pretend that the end of the world wasn’t possibly due at any time now.

  Cured of the bends, she had just been freshly released from a small hospital in Chemin Grenier, a village of about twelve thousand souls located in Mauritius’s Savanne District. Well, perhaps released wasn’t the most correct terminology. Left early, against doctor’s orders was probably more apt. She hadn’t even waited to inform her superiors at Alpinus Biofutures, whom she was currently under contract with as a freelancer. Although, that really didn’t matter, since she was sure the hospital staff would notify them for her in short order.

  The day was warm, the sky clear and crystalline blue, and the town bustled with people. A public transportation bus chortled down the street, belching exhaust. Impatient drivers honked their horns behind it. A group of older men sat outside a tiny sidewalk café, eating cheap seafood and listening to a football game—or soccer, as she thought of it—on an even cheaper transistor radio that looked like it had probably been new during the Nixon administration. The match was FC Dodo versus Garrison, judging by the snatch of the broadcast Carrie overheard. It had taken Carrie many years to think of soccer and football as the same game, rather than the Americanized version of football that she’d grown up watching with her father. One of the men wore an immaculately cleaned and pressed Toshan Gunness jersey. For a moment, she thought of her father and the various New England Patriots apparel he’d worn over the years.

  The men good-naturedly ribbed each other in Creole, but stopped to stare at Carrie as she passed them by. Carrie didn’t notice, still lost in thoughts of her own. Memories of her father always made her smile.

  Reggae music rumbled from a nearby coffee shop. A few doors down, competing Sega music blasted from a corner bar, along with the sounds of dancing, clapping, and raucous laughter. Carrie paused in front of the doorway, considering for a moment, but then moved on, seeking some place quieter. The last thing she wanted right now was to be surrounded by a crowd.

  She passed a bicycle shop and saw customers inside. Likewise a bakery, bookstore, and pharmacy. None of the businesses were closed or shuttered. Within a block, she walked by a mandir, a mosque, and a church. None of their doors were boarded over. A signboard outside the Village Council chambers was plastered with flyers advertising upcoming events. For a country that was facing the mounting possibility of a forced, mandatory evacuation, the people of Mauritius didn’t seem to care. Or perhaps this was just their way of dealing with it. Maybe they chose to face it by pretending that life was still going on, as normal.

  Carrie thought that she could almost like it here. Smiling, she inhaled deeply through her nose, trying to get rid of the smell of the hospital, which still seemed to linger about her. She smelled flowers and food. Her stomach grumbled.

  Then she thought of Peter, and her mood soured again. She shivered, despite the tropical heat.

  The events of the
last three days were still a jumbled blur, but she decided to focus on them, so as not to think about Peter. Not yet. She would have to, at some point, because there were things she needed to do, but first, she needed time to consider her next moves carefully. She had experienced something during this last dive—she wasn’t sure what. A hallucination, perhaps? She was no stranger to the sense of euphoria that came with free diving. Being that far down, with no scuba gear, was very much like what being in outer space must feel like. But this had been different. She hadn’t been free diving, for one thing. She’d had the protection of state-of-the-art diving gear. And when the sensation had overcome her, it wasn’t euphoria she had felt. It was …

  No. She wasn’t ready to go there yet. She needed to plan first.

  And she also needed a drink. Or more likely, several of them.

  She remembered the equipment malfunctioning. Of course it had. That had been the one constant on this expedition—everything that could go wrong, had gone wrong, especially when it came to electronic gear. Such mechanical failures had been the reason she and Peter had attempted such a dangerous dive in the first place. Her memories were more confused in the moments after that—just snatches, really. A jumbled mess of images and impressions and sounds. She remembered freeing herself from her tank and gear, and making for the surface, managing to save her own life with her ascension-breathing techniques, but because she experienced compression so suddenly, she’d gotten quite a case of the bends. She didn’t remember blacking out, but it must have happened after she’d surfaced. She had snatches of memories in the moments after that—the severe itching she’d felt all over her skin, being brought out of the water and placed in the hyperbaric chamber, (which, thankfully, was one piece of equipment that had not malfunctioned), the dim awareness that she’d soiled herself, concerned faces of colleagues whose names she couldn’t remember as she drifted in and out of consciousness, the numbness in her arms, legs, and tongue, and a brutal pain in her lower back—all symptoms of decompression sickness.

  The next thing she remembered was waking up in the hospital, alive, thanks to her skills as a free diver, and her ability to hold her breath until resurfacing. And, she supposed, the doctors and the EMTs.

  Peter wasn’t a free diver and the monitors had lost track of him as he descended deeper into the trench.

  She’d learned yesterday that he was missing and presumed dead.

  Carrie thought that was a safe assumption.

  After walking a few more blocks, she found a quiet bar nestled between two apartment buildings. It was dimly lit, even in the daylight, and didn’t echo of music or laughter or fighting. Deciding to try her luck, Carrie stepped inside and paused for a moment, letting her eyes adjust. When they did, she saw that the establishment was nearly empty, save for a drowsy-looking bartender with a thick, graying mustache, and an even sleepier-looking patron nursing a drink at the end of the bar.

  The customer seemed lost in his own morose thoughts, and didn’t look up as she wove her way around a series of rickety, beer-stained tables and chairs, and approached the bar. The bartender smiled and nodded. Carrie was about to try her Creole, a language she spoke minimally at best, but felt relieved when he greeted her in English.

  “What can I get you?”

  “What do you have on tap?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Ti La Biere, Flying Dodo, Stella Pils, Black Eagle … oh, and Phoenix Fresh Lemon, which is fruity.”

  Carrie made a face. “Got anything that I don’t need a little umbrella with? Maybe a nice Weizen Bock?”

  The bartender grinned. “Flying Dodo Mean Wheat Bock.”

  Carrie hesitated, not sure if what he had just said was a mistranslation or just an oddly named beer.

  “I’m sorry. Are you saying that Flying Dodo means Wheat Bock?”

  The bartender’s smile grew broader. “No, that’s the name of the beer. Flying Dodo Mean Wheat Bock. It’s delicious, and has a mean kick.”

  “Sounds perfect. One of those, and a shot of whiskey, please. Can I run a tab?”

  Nodding, the bartender drew her beer, topping the glass off nicely. He placed the beer in front of her, returned with a shot glass of whiskey, and expertly picked up that she wasn’t in the mood for conversation. He checked on his other customer and then returned to his stool behind the bar. Carrie downed the shot and then chased it with a sip of the beer. It was cold and delicious and tasted like happiness. Carrie made a mental note to tip him well.

  She pulled out her phone and was pleased to see she had service. Whatever the reason for the electronic malfunctions onboard the Novak and its surrounding flotilla, her cell seemed to be working fine here on land. She tapped the app for her e-mail and frowned in frustration when she saw that she had over two hundred new messages. She scanned the senders and subject lines, weeding out the obvious interview requests and best wishes from well-meaning strangers, and focused instead on friends and family. All of them were concerned about her. The incident had been all over the news. Rather than e-mailing each of them separately, she decided to post a message on Facebook.

  As a public figure, Carrie had two Facebook accounts. One was a Carrie Anderson page that the public could “Like” and comment on. The other was a private profile she’d created under the pseudonym Jojo Anderson, which was in no way connected to her public page. She kept the friends list on her private profile confined strictly to family members, current friends, and trusted peers. She logged into the private account and checked the news feed. Her sister, Rachel, had posted pictures from her home in Boston—Rachel, her husband Chris, and their two sons, playing in what looked like about two feet of snow. They were bundled up—hats, coats, scarves, and gloves. One of the pictures showed them building a snowman. Another showed their dog, Timber, pulling the kids on a sled. It seemed strange to Carrie that while she was here, sweating and sunburned, her sister was back home dealing with temperatures in the twenties and a mound of snow. But then again, it also seemed strange to her that Rachel was married, and a mom. Carrie still thought of Rachel as her little sister. It seemed inconceivable they were now both in their thirties, with lives of their own. And Rachel with a family …

  She spotted a slightly older post on Rachel’s timeline—a picture of their father, posted a week ago on his birthday. The caption read: “We miss you, Pops. Happy 60th!” Carrie had spent that day out at sea, trying not to think about it. Their father had been killed in an automobile accident on rain-slicked roads when Carrie was a sophomore in college and Rachel was finishing high school. And their mother, gone two years next May to cancer. Things had not ended well for Carrie and her mother. It had begun when Carrie was a teenager, and her father’s death had only increased the gulf between them. Her mother had always thought Carrie was headstrong, stubborn, and unnecessarily reckless by pursuing such a dangerous career, if she could call it that. Even early on, when Carrie’s aptitude for diving had first manifested, her mother had been less than supportive. That had remained so as years went by and Carrie began to train. She’d always viewed Carrie’s free diving as nothing more than a phase, like dying her hair pink or listening to Morrissey—something that Carrie would eventually grow out of, before settling down with a husband like Rachel had done. Carrie was pretty sure her diving would have been received differently if she were a son instead. Though her mother insisted that she truly wanted the best for Carrie, seeing her so restless and (in her mother’s mind) unhappy as a young woman, troubled her. Her mother thought that, because Rachel had found happiness by settling down with a nice young man, Carrie would do the same. All she had to do was find the right guy …

  Her mother had wanted more grandchildren, while Carrie had just wanted her mother to be proud of her. Just once.

  Then, her mother had died, leaving both of them wanting and unfulfilled.

  She sat the phone down on the bar beside her, finished her beer in one long gulp, and caught the bartender’s attention.

  “Two more of those, ple
ase?”

  “Of course. Coming right up.”

  She posted a quick update, letting everyone know she was out of the hospital and assuring them she was okay. She waited a few minutes, responded to a few comments, and then closed the app. Sighing, Carrie picked up her glass and took another deep draught.

  Damn it, Mom …

  There was a bustle of noise from the doorway. The bartender looked up, and Carrie judged by his expression that this was far more traffic than he was normally accustomed to at this time of day. She half-turned on her stool, and saw four people entering the bar. One was a paunchy, middle-aged, balding white man dressed in a rumpled pair of shorts and a shirt that had never been introduced to an iron. A taller, thinner white man in his late twenties followed. Unlike his companion, he was immaculately dressed, with crisp, creased khakis and an eye-catching Hawaiian shirt. The third customer was a young Indian man with beautiful eyes that immediately caught Carrie’s attention. But then her gaze was drawn to the video camera the man was holding. This was no mere tourist, taping his vacation for posterity. The camera was a professional-grade rig, just like the one the reporters had carried onboard the Novak. Lastly, a woman entered the bar. Carrie recognized her luxuriant red hair and creamy complexion right away—Jessamine Wheatley of CBS News.

  The four of them paused, letting their eyes adjust to the dim light. Spying her, they conferred amongst themselves for a brief moment. Then, the two white guys pulled out chairs and sat down at a table while Jessamine and the cameraman approached her cautiously, as if Carrie were a tiger and they were two timid mice.

  Carrie drained her second shot of whiskey and slammed the glass down on the bar, not hard enough to shatter it, but loud enough to make her displeasure known. The bartender, picking up on the tension, eyed the two women as if they were gunfighters. Carrie had a sudden, bizarre image of him ducking beneath the bar as gunshots rang out, like in an old western movie. The only thing missing was a piano player and a set of swinging doors. Despite her annoyance, she grinned at the thought.