Fathomless

by Greig Beck

  “And potatoes, fried and covered in salt and pepper.” Greg closed his eyes. “And a pitcher of beer big enough to bathe in.” He turned to Abby. “Join me?”

  “Only if you’re also having pie – pecan, with cream.” She smiled dreamily, but then her face screwed into a grimace. “God, I’m still starving.”

  Jack snorted. “That makes two of us. I think Valery should have packed some fishing rods.”

  Cate looked out over the water. “I wonder where they are now.” She turned back to Jack. “Do you think he’s still alive… Valery?”

  Jack shrugged, looking away. “You saw what happened to Yegor.”

  Cate nodded slowly.

  Jack sipped some water, and then dabbed at his mouth, ensuring any remaining drops were smeared on his lips and not wiped away. “Okay everyone, here’s where we row again – do I need to beat the drums so we all stay in rhythm?” He grinned.

  “Sure, as long as you avoid ramming speed; I’m beat already,” Greg said, lifting an oar but then jerking his hand away to look at his palm. “Shit. Blisters.”

  “Welcome to the club.” Cate held up her hand showing Greg the dime sized holes in the skin, before going back to putting the remaining empty tins into the plastic bag they came from. She spotted the one Greg had flung over the side. It still bobbed lazily, now just half a dozen feet from the boat. She reached out with her paddle.

  Greg scoffed. “Seriously?”

  “Yes, seriously. This is pristine water, and suddenly one of the first people to explore it decides to throw his trash in it.”

  Greg gave her a lopsided grin. “Ah, you did see that crane wreckage a few miles back, huh?”

  Cate ignored him, and dipped the paddle in the water, pulling it back towards her, and causing the can to spin and bob closer. She reached out again, extending her arm, just able to hold the oar straight as it suddenly dropped to tip the edge of the tin, filling it, and causing it to sink.

  “Damn.” She leant over, holding her flashlight up and watching the silver tin sink, its inside reflecting her light back as it got smaller and less distinct the lower it went. It surprised her, as even though the water was oil dark, it must have been clear as glass, as she could still see the glinting dot of the tin, now a good fifty feet down.

  The huge shadow torpedoed past underneath them, causing her to jerk back so fast she fell into the bottom of the raft, with her heart hammering.

  “Easy back there, you’ll tip us over,” Jack said from over his shoulder.

  Cate tried to speak, but she felt light-headed from the shock, and all she could do is point.

  Abby rose slightly, staring at her. “Ja... Jack…”

  Jack turned just as the raft gently lifted from the surge beneath them. His lips were pressed tight as his gaze went from Cate to the dark water. He sat higher, spinning left and right, and then pointed with his paddle.

  “To the shoreline, there, quickly now.”

  “What is it?” Greg started to paddle slowly, but then looked back to see Cate’s waxen face.

  Cate jumped to her knees and began to paddle furiously. “Down there… big.”

  Greg looked over the side, and frowned. “There’s noth…”

  As Cate watched, his mouth dropped open and he pointed. She followed his arm. A dorsal fin rose from the water. Higher and higher, until it topped out at about ten feet.

  “Shit – there’s two of them.” Greg’s voice was high.

  The four rafters pulled hard, but all of their heads were turned as they watched the things glide in tandem through the water.

  Cate felt her gorge rise from fear. But knew sharks were solitary hunters. If there were two of the things then maybe, just maybe, it meant they were something else entirely.

  Jack stopped paddling to watch the water for a few seconds. He grimaced and shook his head. “Bad news – that’s not a second fin – it’s all part of the same creature, and a goddamned big one.”

  Cate immediately knew he was right. “Shit. Tail fluke.” She didn’t bother looking, but instead dug her oar in deep, as they headed to the rock shelf more than five hundred feet in the distance.

  The fin circled them and then tilted, angling away slightly. Cate imagined the huge, black soulless eye now staring up at them. She knew it saw them a lot better than they saw it. Its closest living relative, the Great White, could see in near complete darkness and in light. It was also one of the few aquatic animals that saw perfectly well above water.

  Then twin fins started to sink, finishing with a flick of the tail as it dived.

  “It’s gone,” Greg said, and then giggled a little manically. “We don’t look that interesting – too small.”

  “No, it’s just gone deep,” Jack said. “Keep paddling.”

  “Shit – shit – shit.” Cate cursed in time with her paddle digging into the water. Her muscles screamed but nothing else mattered.

  Greg’s paddling was getting erratic. “My hands are bleeding.”

  “Just, paddle, you sonofabitch,” Cate rasped back at the young man. “Don’t think about anything else.”

  The four dug and pulled, dug and pulled, eating up the yards between them and the island-like outcrop of rock in the distance.

  Jack started muttering. “Keep… going.” He suddenly reached for one of the flashlights in the bottom of the raft, flicked it on, and then flung it a few feet out to the side of them. It sank quickly, the dot of yellow light falling away into the depths… and then, it simply vanished as if it had been switched off, or swallowed.

  “Coming up!” Jack yelled without turning.

  Cate felt her scalp tingle, and had an urgent need to urinate. She knew she was going into prey-shock – the state some creatures enter as they are about to be attacked by a large predator. She gritted her teeth, hard, and prayed.

  The explosion was like being on top of a bomb. They were lifted in the air, and Cate’s stomach flipped as they rose higher and higher. Each of them was slammed back into the bottom of the raft, as the colossal Carcharodon Megalodon erupted from the water beneath them. Its huge jaws were opened and extended forward, but perhaps as Jack had hoped, the light descending had distracted it just enough, to throw off its aim by a few feet.

  They were suddenly thirty feet in the air, balancing on the snout. The open maw was just to the rear of them, with their tiny raft threatening to fall in. Cate smelled the age old stink of the massive sea creature as they balanced momentarily at the apogee – it was probably only for a few slices of a second, but time seemed to have slowed as they teetered in space, just inches separating life and a bloody gruesome death.

  The massive creature fell back to the sea. The raft, being light, hung in the air for another second before it, too, began to drop.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t stay upright, and flipped on the way down. The turning raft allowed the occupants to see the titanic beast below them as it splashed back into the dark water – it was massively powerful, with jaws big enough to swallow a horse, and though they could only see the front half, this alone was a good thirty feet, meaning the beast was easily double that.

  It is death itself, Cate thought morbidly. The dinner plate sized eyes had rolled back for the attack, but now they rolled down exposing the dark orbs. The shark thumped back into the water, creating a massive depression that quickly crashed closed, and geysered back up to meet them.

  Cate struck the warm water, went under, and immediately panicked, clawing back to the surface, and only just managing to stop herself from sucking in a deep breath to scream her fear while under the water.

  She breached, gasped and spluttered, and immediately heard Jack screaming for them to swim and swim hard. He pointed to the cliffs and the small jutting island that stuck out about three hundred feet from them.

  Jack was a strong swimmer, and was moving fast, even though he pushed Abby before him. Cate followed, and she heard Greg coming up beside her, and already thrashing like the devil was on his tail – which i
n a way, it was.

  The raft was now back on the water, and amazingly still afloat. It was a few dozen feet out to the front and side of them, and she was tempted to divert to it, as it was nearer.

  Suicide, she thought. The raft had already proved to be no safe haven. She put her head down and swam. She opened her eyes in the water but could see nothing, so shut them tight. She concentrated on maintaining her stroke, slicing through the water, even though her legs wanted to blur and thrash.

  Little more than a couple of laps in an Olympic swimming pool, she kept telling herself over and over, so as to leave no room to think about the leviathan she knew was undoubtedly circling beneath them.

  Stroke-stroke-stroke, breathe, repeat. Swimming in clothing and shoes was hard, and she felt she was simply staying in the same spot. She lifted her head to suck in a deeper breath and saw from the corner of her eye, their raft explode – really explode, as the Megalodon rose up, and its jaws extended forward and over it, and then dragged it back down to vanish completely.

  Two hundred feet, just two hundred more feet, that’s all. How many strokes? She concentrated on the math, counting them off, guessing how far each one took her. Maybe sixty, maybe seventy, tops – I can do this.

  Jack and Abby were just ahead of her, but keeping pace. Cate knew Jack could have been on the rock ledge by now, but instead, he swam-pushed Abby, thinking of others before himself. She wanted to tell him to move away, as all together they presented a much bigger target, and therefore a more attractive meal.

  Cate heard Greg splutter behind her, and she quickly switched to backstroke for a few seconds to check on him. Greg was a few dozen feet back, and falling behind. In the weaker light of the beam from her forehead light, she saw him look up and cough-grin at her.

  He swam with his head up. “I’m – cough – coming.”

  Her light cast a shimmering path back towards him, but coming into the range of the light was a lump in the water. Further back, something cut the surface, rising higher and higher – the tip of a dorsal fin.

  “Swim!” Her voice echoed back at them, as she knew that even though the fin was forty or so feet from him, that would mean the head was…

  A black mountain rose up behind her friend, and then surged forward, a cavernous maw already open that was edged in the cruelest teeth she had ever seen in her life. It closed and sank. One minute Greg had been there, and the next he was simply… gone.

  “Greg!” She screamed his name. “Greg!” She was treading water, and had stopped swimming and without even realizing it, stopped thinking. Insanely, she took a few strokes back to where he had been. “Oh god, no.”

  “Move! For god’s sake swim, Cate!” Jack’s voice cut through to her.

  “Wha…” She thrashed, panicking, feeling like her body was short-circuiting as she tried to move, anywhere. She was grabbed then. An arm wrapped around her shoulders and neck. She shrieked involuntarily, until she realized Jack had come back to get her. He started to swim, lifeguard style, towards the lip of the island ledge. Cate felt herself go loose. She couldn’t take her eyes from the water, even if she wanted to.

  I’m in shock.

  In what seemed another few seconds, he and Abby, were roughly hauling her up onto the slick rocks, and then kept dragging her until she was twenty feet back from the water’s edge.

  She felt sick, and couldn’t control the racking sobs that started in her gut and welled up to make her back and head throb. “Oh god no.” She pounded the slick stone beneath her. “Fucking, fuck, fuck…” She sobbed and looked back out over the oil-dark water. As she watched, something rose, huge, and only a few feet from the edge of the rock.

  “Jesus Christ.” Jack grabbed her shoulders and even though they were twenty feet from the water, he hauled her backwards as the thing loomed over them.

  The Megalodon shark sank slowly, but it had wanted to see them, perhaps even count them, if that mechanism was possible within its crude brain.

  “It’s still there,” Abby said softly.

  “We’re trapped.” Cate watched the monster slide back into the water with barely a ripple.

  “We’re alive,” Jack said crouching, and wiping hair back off her face.

  “No we’re not.” She lay down trembling. She knew what Jack said wasn’t true for all of them. Cate stared up into the darkness. Her body felt like it wanted to shut down.

  * * *

  Cate lay there on the slick stone for ages, just staring up into a black sky that wasn’t a sky at all. It ended only several hundred feet somewhere up there in the dark. From the corner of her eye she could see Jack, squatting with his elbows on his knees, just staring out over the stygian water. He still had the compass, one of the small items he had in his pockets. Everything else was gone.

  She sat forward; every muscle in her body ached, and her shoulders and back actually felt like something might be damaged inside. She held her head in her hands.

  “Hey there.” Jack had turned to her. “You okay?”

  “No. I feel like shit. We’re lost, shipwrecked, and Greg’s dead.” She knew she sounded bitter, and hated it. “Do you know the last thing I said to him?” She laughed sourly. “I called him a sonofabitch.”

  He nodded. “Yep, I heard.” He sucked in a deep breath. “So what?”

  “I made him come down here. I killed him.” She felt it coming then, rising up within her. A sense of blackness so heavy it overwhelmed her. Cate threw herself forward to vomit what little contents she had in her stomach. She couldn’t stop the tears.

  “I’m an asshole.” She pressed her forehead against the stone. Jack grabbed her then, holding her close. She felt his strength, smelled his sweat, and clung to him. She knew she needed him. Probably always had, but now more than ever.

  “You’re the bravest, smartest, most beautiful woman in the world. You had nothing to do with that.” He hugged her tighter for a moment, and then eased her back, staring into her face. “Take a breath. You’re here, and I’m here. For me, it’s my lucky day.”

  She closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. “I’m okay.” She used both hands to push the wet hair back off her face, and looked at him, managing a weak smile. “See? I’m good to go again.”

  “Good.” Jack looked back out at the water. “Because we can’t stay here.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh yes we can. I’d rather die here than go back into that fucking water.”

  Abby came and sat with them. She hugged her knees. “I’m not either.”

  “I know, I know. I don’t really want to either. But guys, we aren’t that far away from Heceta Island.” Jack lifted an arm, pointing out to the left of them. “The cliffs along here seem to curve in the right direction, we try and follow them, staying out of the water where we can – rock hopping.” He looked down at his hands for a moment, before turning back to her with his head tilted. “But I’m not going to bullshit you; where we can’t, we’ll need to wade, and maybe, we’ll have to swim some.”

  Cate flicked her hand at him. “No fucking way, Jack. I’m not going back in that water, end of story.” She turned away from him, her beam illuminating the slick rock next to her. At the shelf edge something like a foot-long cross between a crab and a lobster, all spiky legs and eyes on stalks was levering itself from the water to sit staring and waving long feelers in their direction.

  “That’s dinner sorted,” Jack said.

  “Great.” Abby’s nose wrinkled.

  Cate just shook her head, determined not to allow him to placate her. She kept staring at the large crustacean as it moved past a round rock – too round. Cate frowned, squinting. She got to her feet, carefully moving around the spiny creature.

  “Piss off.”

  The thing’s eyestalks just seemed to prick higher as it watched her. She carefully crouched at the object, dug her fingers under it, and lifted – it was light, not solid. She turned it over in her hands, and then quickly started to rip away some of the weed and mollusks that
had built up on its surface. Remnants of yellow paint began to show through.

  “What is it?” Jack asked.

  “I think, it’s…” She grabbed and flicked away more weed and shells. The engraved letters were still there: Jim Granger, Foreman.

  She sat down heavily, shaking, feeling like she wanted to laugh hysterically.

  “It’s a helmet.” Cate held it up briefly. “Jim Granger’s.”

  “Your grandfather’s?” Jack came and sat beside her, and threw an arm over her shoulder.

  “This place…” She stared down at the ancient hard hat in her hands. “No one gets away.” She sniffed at her runny nose. Sorry Granma Violet, maybe he did meet the devil this time after all, she thought as she screwed her eyes shut, feeling the tears squeeze out again.

  “I can’t go back in the water, Jack.”

  Beside her, Jack sighed. “Cate… Cate.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes still burning.

  He smiled sadly. “Turn your light off.”

  She looked at him for a few seconds, but then shrugged and did as he asked.

  “Abby, yours too.” Abby’s went out, and then Jack did the same with his.

  The darkness was absolute. “See this?” There was nothing but Jack’s disembodied voice.

  “Our batteries will last another six to eight hours… and we’ve lost all our spares.” He left the comment hanging.

  Cate turned her light back on, and sighed. She began to chuckle, shaking her head, not wanting to fully let the implications sink in.

  Jack went on. “I’ve done cave diving many times. But there was this one time, when we were diving into a newly-discovered sinkhole in the Amazon. There were three of us. We were eight hundred feet in when our batteries began to fade, and then die. They must have soaked up some moisture on trip way down; corrosion ate them from the inside out. Anyway, the thing was, when you’re in a cave and the lights go out, it’s not pretty.” He snorted softly. “You can’t see the hand in front of your face.” He looked at Cate, his mouth momentarily set in a hard line. “Then you start to see things.”