Galapagos Below

by D. J. Goodman

  “The water’s not deep enough here that I’ll need them,” Maria said.

  “Maybe not, but I thought you could use them as a weapon if nothing else. Big or not, that thing probably wouldn’t enjoy burning hot magnesium against its skin.”

  “Fair enough. What else do you have?”

  Cindy pulled out a large knife in a sheath, along with a complicated strap. She put it around Maria’s thigh as Maria hooked on the flairs. “If you have to go close quarters against that thing, you’re probably screwed, but just in case.”

  “And then this,” Simon said, holding out a harpoon gun. “So hopefully you don’t have to get close at all.”

  Maria couldn’t help but notice that no one was talking about not harming Call It George anymore. They all wanted to conserve this creature if they could, but when forced to choose between it and Kevin, there really wasn’t any choice.

  Cindy helped put the scuba tank on Maria’s back as Monica led Ted over to them. He looked shell-shocked and was shivering like hell, but there didn’t appear to be any permanent physical damage.

  “Ted, did you see anything that could help me?” Maria asked. “Anything at all?”

  “It tried to eat me,” Ted whispered.

  “I guess that’s a no. Okay, everything ready?” she asked as she put on her goggles.

  “As ready as it can be,” Cindy said. “How about you?”

  Maria grabbed onto the railing and prepared to flip over the side. “Yep. I’m…”

  Maria froze.

  Oh God, she thought. Not now. I can’t freeze up now. She looked down at the water, seeing the quick blurs of shapes underneath the clear blue water, and while her logical brain told her there was nothing there but fish, her instinctual half told her that every single unknown shape was something enormous, something that had been waiting for her. Maybe Call It George, maybe Teddy Bear. She’d spilled her blood in the water before and now everything in the ocean with teeth wanted to finish her.

  If I go into that water, I will never come back out, Maria thought.

  “Maria?” Monica said. “Maria, you need to breath regularly.”

  I can’t. I can’t do this. Someone else has to go.

  Except they had already wasted too much time. She was the only one suited up and ready to go.

  If I go in, my rebreather won’t work right. Water will fill my lungs. I’ll sink. I’ll die. Scavengers will nip the flesh off my corpse.

  She wouldn’t die. She’d done this hundreds of times. She was a pro. No one else on the Cameron had the same level of diving experience.

  I can’t, though. I won’t. No one can make me.

  No, no one could make her if she refused. But then, if he really was somehow alive, the man she loved would die for real.

  There’s a hole, she thought.

  “She can’t do it,” Monica said. “Someone else needs to…”

  “No,” Maria said, surprised by the volume of her voice. “There’s a hole.”

  “Huh?” Cindy asked.

  “There’s a hole, there’s a hole, there’s a hole at the bottom of the sea.”

  “Okay I think she’s losing it,” Simon said.

  “There’s a log, there’s a log, there’s a log in the hole at the bottom of the sea.”

  “No, wait, I think I know what she’s doing,” Monica said. “See? She’s calming down.”

  “There’s a branch, there’s a branch, there’s a branch on the log in the hole at the bottom of the sea.”

  With that, Maria put the rebreather in her mouth, made sure she had a tight grip on the harpoon gun, and then flipped over the railing into the water.

  The temperature of the water was a shock to her system despite the wetsuit. She hadn’t been in it for so long, after all, that she’d almost forgotten the sensation. It threatened to seep into her mind and make her panic, but she continued the mantra in her mind.

  There’s a twig, there’s a twig, there’s a twig on the branch on the log in the hole at the bottom of the sea.

  As long as she kept up the mental litany, she thought she could control the impulses to panic. Right. So all she needed to do was hum a half-forgotten song from her childhood while she tried to save her boyfriend from a sea monster deep below the surface. Easy, right?

  Actually, she realized, this wasn’t that much harder than the last dive she’d done. Of course, the last dive had ended with her minus a leg, so maybe she should stop comparing them while she was ahead.

  There’s a frog, there’s a frog, there’s a frog on the twig on the branch on the log in the hole at the bottom of the sea.

  At this point, she was pretty sure she had the song completely wrong, but it seemed to be doing the trick. She allowed herself to sink in the ocean and acclimate to being back in what she used to consider her home. She wasn’t sure if it would ever truly be that home ever again, but she could try.

  The world beneath her teemed with life, and it brought her further comfort that she could identify almost everything she saw. Anchovies, Moorish idols, yellow-tailed surgeonfish. Some distance off, she thought she could see a spotted eagle ray. The sea floor was a labyrinth of volcanic rocks covered in coral and algae. And everything around it was blue. So blue. A blue so deep it made the eyes hurt.

  Oh right, she thought. I do belong here. She lost her place in the song, but she made no effort to find it. She thought she was okay again, at least for now.

  She had no idea how long it took her to acclimate, but it felt too long. Tick-tock, after all. She dove deeper, still trying to get used to the bizarre sensation of being propelled by only one leg. The joints in the prosthetic were specially designed to mimic the motion of swimming and only that motion, so when she moved her stump, the prosthetic filled in the rest of the movements. Maria kept listing slightly to one side or the other, either forgetting or overcompensating for the prosthetic’s help. As she dove lower and reached the bottom, though, she thought she had enough of a hang of it that she could function. Of course, if she got into a sticky situation, all bets were off.

  And she was pretty positive that she would get into a sticky situation.

  Maria hadn’t entered the water with any other plan than Save Kevin. Now that she was here, she began to work the problem. Call It George lived here. It never appeared to venture from this part of the island. So logic dictated that it had to have a home here. Now, the ten million dollar question was, if she were an enormous mutant carnivorous sea turtle, where would she live?

  In a hole at the bottom of the sea, she thought idly, then chided herself for being stupid.

  She saw something resting in the algae and swam for a closer look. The item in front of her was so mangled that at first she couldn’t identify it. Then her mind pieced it together and recognized it as Ted’s camera. Looking up, she figured she was just a little landward from where the Zodiac had gone under, so this might just be the closest thing she would get to a breadcrumb trail. She continued in the direction of the island, stopping only once to freeze up as a white-tipped reef shark passed by.

  There’s a tail, there’s a tail, there’s a tail on the frog on the twig on the branch on the log in the hole at the bottom of the sea.

  The shark was smaller than the ones that attacked her, and she wouldn’t have registered to it as food, but nonetheless, she felt better when it was gone on its business. Assuming she got out of today’s adventure in one piece (unlike last time, ha-fricking-ha), she was going to need to confront that phobia. It wouldn’t do her any good to be a marine biologist that couldn’t get near even the smallest shark.

  As soon as she was close enough to see the base of the island itself underwater, it became obvious where she needed to go. While none had ever been discovered on the surface of the island, Maria now found herself facing an enormous underwater lava tube. The resulting cave disappeared back into the volcanic rock, and the sides looked like they had been worn smooth by something repeatedly passing in and out.

  Well I’
ll be damned, Maria thought. There really is a hole at the bottom of the sea. But if I find Call It George down there with a giant mutant frog, I’m calling shenanigans.

  If there was any doubt that this was the right place, Maria found the DNA collection prod just outside the entrance. Kevin’s in there. And he’s probably already turtle food. Hardly a pleasant image, but she needed to prepare herself for the worst. That was the most likely scenario, after all, unless she wanted to give any credence at all to Simon’s logic.

  If Simon’s right, then this whole thing is going to end with me giving Kevin a big damn kiss while something explodes for no reason nearby, and neither of us will be bothered to look at it. A tempting scenario, but unrealistic.

  So all she needed to do now was blindly enter the underwater cave that almost certainly held a giant creature capable of eating her in one bite. She wished she could say this was the craziest thing she had ever done, but it wasn’t. The flares seemed like good thinking now, though. She took one from her belt and lit it. It would make her a target, but probably not much more than if she went in fumbling blindly. This way, if something saw her, she would at least see it back before it killed her.

  Cautiously, she swam into the cave, trying to remain hyper-alert for anything that might put her in danger. The flare didn’t penetrate too far into the darkness, but it was enough to know that the cave system was deep, probably going far into the heart of the rock below the island. The marine biologist in her sensed something off about the cave, but it took her a few seconds to realize what. The cave appeared to be completely devoid of life. There were no fish swimming in here, no benthic organisms like sea stars or mollusks crawling on the floor, not even any of the prolific green algae that she had seen all over outside the cave.

  Probably because something ate it all, Maria thought.

  Actually, no. She realized that wasn’t true the deeper she went. The main lava tube remained unnaturally smooth and devoid of life, but she began to see a few side tunnels, many of them too small even for Maria to fit through, that did have the occasional creature crawling around. Those had to be the areas that Call It George was too small to get in.

  She felt a thrum in the water, like a percussion wave hitting her from something farther down the tunnel. No, not a percussion wave. Actual water pressure pushing her back.

  Something was coming down the tunnel. Something large enough to take up the majority of the space and displace the water.

  Call It George had to be coming.

  She looked quickly behind her, gauging the distance between her and the entrance to see if she had enough time to get out. She wasn’t sure that she did. When she looked forward again, she thought she could see something moving down there, something very large, but it wasn’t quite close enough for the flare to illuminate it. It didn’t appear to be moving too quickly. Maybe the light intruding on its domain confused it. Whatever the reason, Maria didn’t want to make the assumption that it would stay that slow. She’d seen already how fast Call It George could move when it wanted to.

  The side tunnels. There had to be one big enough for her to squeeze through. Even if it didn’t lead anywhere, maybe it would be enough for her to hide in while the creature passed. As the water continued to push against her, she frantically swam to the nearest wall, looking for any nook or cranny big enough to take her.

  Something moaned. Something big. It was almost like a hooting noise, somewhere between a massive bird chirp and a whale song. In all the time Maria had spent studying marine biology, she’d never heard anything remotely like it. When she heard it again it was louder, closer.

  Maria looked back down the tunnel. She thought she saw something gleaming in the flare light. Eyes? Yes, she decided. Eyes. Very, very large eyes.

  Her whole body wanted to freeze. She again remembered Teddy Bear coming for her. She remembered the way she had actually needed to ride the shark’s dorsal fin, her life depending on her ability to not let go. Somewhere in her mind, a part of her whispered to just give in the impulse to stay put, to let the creature come from her, to have it release her from the cycle of mental anguish that had begun months ago in the Sea of Cortez. Who knows? Had the circumstances been different, she might have even given in. But a different image popped up in her mind—Kevin, not as she had seen him minutes ago as the Zodiac had folded over him, but him sitting by her bedside in the hospital, her right hand covered by both of his, his fingers gently stroking her skin as she cried herself to sleep over the loss of her leg.

  Kevin had been that for her. No one else, not even her family, had been there as much as he was. Now, she needed to be that guiding, saving presence for him.

  There. A tunnel curved off to the side near the top, its angle in the stone hiding it until she had turned almost all the way around. While it was smaller than the main tunnel, it still looked more likely to fit her, complete with scuba tank, than anything else she’d seen. The haunting chirp grew louder, but she didn’t dare take the time to look down the tunnel and see the sound’s maker. She kicked as hard as she could for the side tunnel, letting go of the flare in an effort to give her an extra limb with which to swim. She could have made better time if she dropped the harpoon gun as well, but if this didn’t work, she had a feeling she might need it in short order.

  Maria went into the side tunnel, the sides close enough that she bumped her scuba tank, but she fit. Behind her, the flare gave faint illumination as it dropped to the lava tube’s floor.

  Then the light vanished as something enormous blocked the side-tunnel’s entrance.

  She stopped, pressing her hands against either side of the tunnel to keep the ebb and flow of the water from slamming her around. She was breathing heavily, which was a no-no given her limited oxygen. Maria held herself there, trying to force her racing heart to calm down as she waited for the thing blocking the entrance below her to swim past.

  It took her nearly half a minute before she realized that her visitor wasn’t going anywhere.

  Call It George is still there, she thought. It’s waiting for me. It knows I’m here. She figured that, even without any light, she would know when it was gone by the suction of water as it passed, but that didn’t happen. After a few more seconds of pulling courage up deep from her inner well, she let go of the wall with one hand and fumbled at her belt for another flare. She would have cursed, if she’d been able to open up her mouth, as one came off her belt and almost slipped through her fingers. She got a hold of it at the last moment, though, then ignited it to look down at whatever was blocking her way.

  All she saw beneath her was a single, giant black eye.

  She almost dropped the flare in shock. The creature convulsed and blinked at the sudden intrusion of light, and for several seconds, a massive, rough eyelid closed over it. Then, slowly, it opened it again, but only part way. If Maria were to assign human emotions to the creature, she would say it looked wary.

  It didn’t move, though. She just floated in the tunnel, looking down while Call It George stared up. They were stuck in the world’s most uneven staring contest.

  Maria suddenly remembered that she had a small camera strapped to her head. Oh man, Merchant is going to loooooooove this. Assuming I actually get out of here.

  The bizarreness of the situation amused her for a moment before certain inconsistencies dawned on her. The eye below took almost the entire entrance of this side tunnel. But she could have sworn that Call It George hadn’t been this big when she’d seen it take Kevin and Ted earlier. The scale wasn’t right. Either her initial impressions of the creature had been mistaken, or…

  Maria dreaded the other possibility, but she didn’t want to jump to conclusions. She needed more information, more data. And maybe she could start gathering it as soon as Call It George swam on.

  The creature blinked a few times, probably deciding that Maria wasn’t enough of a morsel to continue waiting for, and the eye slowly moved from view. Even as it moved, though, Maria again realized she�
�d miscalculated the thing’s size. The rest of the head slid past, and then its neck… and more of its neck… and more…

  When the movement of scaly flesh stopped, Maria’s best guess said that she’d seen something like fifty or sixty feet worth of the creature. And there was still more down the tunnel. Not only that, but the creature still blocked her way out.

  Call It George was huge, bigger than any living creature she had ever personally witnessed. And it wasn’t letting her out.

  She expected herself to panic, but a strange calm came over her. All that was human about her wanted to recoil in revulsion at something fully capable of gulping her down purely by accident. The marine biologist in her, though, could only think of one word, over and over, with nothing else possibly describing the creature below her.

  Beautiful.

  With that thought, she looked up at the lava tube around her. It appeared to go on and twist away into the darkness, going deeper into the island.

  With down no longer an option, she went up.

  16

  There were a couple of times where Maria was concerned the tunnel was too narrow to accommodate her, but she managed to squeeze by each time. At each of these squeeze points, she noted that the black volcanic rock was slightly smoother than in others, similar but not quite the same to the way the main tunnel had been worn down. Something had been through here at some point, although the tunnel didn’t look like anything used it much anymore. That only furthered her theory, but she still didn’t want to commit to it.

  The side tunnel didn’t go for long before it opened up and, to Maria’s amazement, came out on a cavern that wasn’t completely underwater. She broke the surface and treaded water for a moment, trying to get her bearings. The flare she’d been using was on its last legs, so she let it go and pulled out another. There’d been four on the belt, so after this she only had one left. It meant she was running out of time to find any sign of Kevin, unless she wanted to continue by fumbling around in the darkness.