Raging Sea

by Michael Buckley

  “Hello.” I level the pistol at her face.

  “I’m sorry,” she blubbers. Fat tears rolls down her cheeks so quickly, I wonder if they’ve been waiting for this moment since I arrived. “Don’t kill me.”

  “Where are you keeping the others?”

  “Lyric, you can’t—”

  “I have friends and family in this camp, innocent people, Amy, and we’re going home.”

  “Your father is right there,” she says, pointing to a door across the hall.

  I push her against the wall and swipe the card on the sensor. The door opens with a heavy clank. Amy wasn’t lying. My father is on the floor. He’s lost some weight, but he’s not as bad as some of the people in this camp. He looks up at me, confused, like he’s not sure whether what he’s seeing is real or a delusion.

  “Lyric?”

  “Dad, can you walk?”

  He tries but gives up with a groan.

  I pull Amy into the room.

  “Help me get him on his feet. You’re going to be his crutch!” I shout.

  She does as she’s told.

  “Lyric, this is crazy,” my father says.

  “Crazy is all we’ve got,” I say, helping him into the hall.

  “Now, where’s Bex?” I demand.

  “Who?”

  “Rebecca Conrad!” I shout.

  “She’s upstairs.”

  “With the Alpha?” I demand.

  “No, they’re on the floor above that. They’re in the tank,” she explains.

  “The tank? What the hell is that?” I ask.

  Amy whimpers. “It’s on the top floor. I have nothing to do with it. I don’t work in that section.”

  She points down the hall to another exit sign. I suddenly realize how hard it’s going to be to get everyone out. There must be at least sixty adults, maybe even more, all as sick and weak as my father. Who knows what kind of state the Alpha are in, and then there’s their children. I don’t even know where they’re keeping them. We’ll never find them on our own.

  “You’re going to have to come with us,” I say to Amy. Her eyes drop down to the hypodermic needles on the floor. She’s considering going for one, jamming it into me, maybe knocking me out.

  “Lady, I don’t know if I can kill you, but I know I can shoot you. If you don’t help us, I’ll put a bullet into something you need. Now go!”

  She nods and, OMG—I’ve got a hostage.

  I unlock all the cells while my father leans on Amy. I don’t even bother to look inside the rooms. I don’t have time. I tell myself the best I can do for them is to let them out.

  “Are there soldiers on the other side of those doors?” I ask, pointing to the end of the hall.

  She nods, but before we can make a plan, the door behind us flies open and one of the prisoners I released appears. He’s the bearded one with the wild eyes, and like all the others, he’s filthy beyond belief. White foam forms in the corners of his mouth like a rabid dog.

  “I need a weapon,” he says to me.

  “I think those needles have something bad in them,” I say, pointing to the floor. “Stick Amy here with one if she tries to get away.”

  He scoops up a handful and nods.

  “I can do that,” he offers.

  We hurry down the hall, pounding on cell doors and telling everyone they are free. Along the way, my new sidekick tells me his name is Charles and he’s married to a Sirena named Melissa. They’ve got a daughter named Georgie, and he hasn’t seen either of them in two years.

  When all the doors are unlocked, we shove Amy through the double doors, and as she said, a soldier is on the other side. He’s sitting in front of a bank of video screens eating a bologna sandwich. He couldn’t be more unprepared for us. He fumbles for his rifle leaning against a file cabinet, but I’ve got my pistol in his face.

  “My friend needs to borrow your gun,” I say.

  The guard frowns.

  Charles pricks the side of Amy’s neck, and she sobs.

  “Darren, just give it to him!” she shrieks.

  Darren reaches over and timidly picks up his weapon, then hands it to Charles. Wild Eyes tosses his hypodermic needles into the corner, then swings the rifle around and aims it at Darren. I’m sure he’s going to shoot him, but instead he snatches the bologna sandwich and swallows the whole thing in three bites.

  “Darren, we’re not going to kill you,” my father explains, eyeballing Charles as he talks. “We’re not going to kill anyone. We need to open all the doors. You’ll be able to go home afterward, you’ll be able to get another sandwich. But if you don’t help us, I’m going to give my daughter permission to shoot you and we’ll just figure it out on our own. I’ve seen this kind of security before. I know there’s a master lock that releases everything. Where is it?”

  Darren gets up from his chair and crosses the room. There’s a metal box mounted on the wall. He opens it, inserts a key, then turns it with a click. Suddenly the air is alive with a piercing wail. Darren has sounded the alarm.

  Charles slams the butt of the rifle against Darren’s head and knocks him out. Amy lets out a little yelp and then starts to whimper.

  “Unlock the doors!” I shout at her.

  “I don’t know how! I swear. I’m just a nurse!”

  I have no idea if she’s being honest or not, but the alarm is freaking me out. We need to get away from here.

  “All right, take me to my friend and then my mother!”

  “I want my wife and daughter now!” Charles screams.

  I lean down and snatch Darren’s keycard off his chain, then hand it to Charles.

  “Find your kid,” I tell him. “Get her and all the children out of here. We’ll find your wife and meet you outside.”

  He nods eagerly, then runs to the elevator, swiping the keycard to activate it. When the doors slide open, he lets out a disappointed groan. I turn just in time to hear a gunshot and see him fall backwards.

  “Run!” I scream, and the three of us bolt through the doorway, only to find another flight of stairs. We climb them one by one, my father struggling but doing his personal best. Amy is really what’s slowing us down, with all her whimpering and shrieks.

  “Prisoners have escaped their rooms on Level Three. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill,” a voice booms through speakers on the walls. “All unarmed associates are to fall back to their secure locations. Security associates, please load your sidearms and turn your radios to channel eight for further instructions.”

  We’re almost up the steps when I hear a gunshot. The bullet ricochets off a wall, sending dust into my eyes. I howl, sure that the next one will hit me. There’s another shot, then another.

  We duck through a door onto a floor that looks much like the one below, more cells lining both sides of the hall. I hear men shouting in the stairwell and have to make a terrible choice. I can’t open them all in time.

  “Which one has my friend?” I demand, shoving the keycard into Amy’s trembling hands. She looks at it for a moment, then helps me take my father from her. She walks down the hall, and we follow closely until she stops at a door. She swipes the sensor, and the door opens. Standing in her own little yellow circle is my friend. When she sees me, her eyes fill with tears.

  “You are so kick-ass, Lyric Walker,” she says.

  “We have to hurry,” I beg. She lets my father wrap his arm around her shoulders, and together they do their best as they stagger down the hall. At the end is a door with an emergency alarm bar. Its alarm adds to the already piercing sirens. Still, we push through and slam the door behind us.

  “Lock it, Amy,” my father demands.

  Amy frowns but reaches into her pocket. She takes out her own set of keys, inserts one into the lock, and gives it a turn just as I hear banging on the other side.

  “They’re going to try to shoot their way in here,” my father says, and no sooner does he warn us than we hear a loud bang. “This door is steel, so it will buy us
a little time. We can’t waste it. We have to find your mother. You should leave me here.”

  “We tried that once,” I say, and drag him down another hallway. There’s a turn, then another. It’s a maze.

  “Where?” I demand, putting the gun to Amy’s head. I know she could help without me asking. I suppose it’s dumb of me to be irritated that she won’t take the initiative.

  She points forward, and we run through another set of doors and find an elevator.

  “Aren’t there stairs?” I ask.

  Amy shakes her head. “The elevators are the only way into the tank.”

  I’m dreading this, but I have no choice but to use it. I swipe the card on the sensor plate and wait until the elevator opens on our floor. I shove Amy in front of the elevator door in case a soldier with a happy trigger finger decides to shoot before looking. When it opens wide, Amy blubbers. We push her inside and step in ourselves. I search the buttons and find a P for penthouse. The doors close, and we slowly rise while a Muzak version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” plays. Yes, this place is truly that evil.

  “The Alphas are in there,” Amy cries when the doors swing open. “Just let me go. You don’t need me.”

  I can’t think of a reason to keep her, so I let her go, giving her a shove so that she falls to the floor of the elevator.

  “You suck,” I say, because I’m all out of quips, then watch her disappear when the doors close.

  When we turn, I find out why this place is called the tank. There are rows and rows of big water-filled tubes. Some are large enough to house many people. Inside them are Alpha, all in their undersea forms: gills and fins and tails and odd appendages. Scientists scurry about, taking readings and recording data. They don’t even realize we are here.

  I clear my throat.

  Suddenly, all the buzzing and work comes to a stop. The scientists see my gun and cry out in fear, alerting the whole room.

  “Get out. Every one of you,” I threaten. They scurry like rats fleeing the exposing light.

  “What is this place?” Bex asks.

  “This is the torture chamber,” I explain. I peer into each tank. There are Rusalka and Sirena and Nix. I see a Selkie and Tritons and Feige and even some creatures I’ve never seen before.

  “We need to find your mother,” my father says. “If she’s not hurt, she can help get us out of here. She’s a lot stronger than a normal person.”

  “Find Arcade, too,” Bex says.

  I leave her with my dad. Racing down the aisles, I realize the whole place is like a zoo. There are fourteen Ceto in a single tank, ranging from elderly to small children, bobbing up and down like transparent blobs. They’re very close to jellyfish, except for the pinkish heart that beats steadily and pumps black blood through millions of veins. One tank has three Sirena, two females and a male, covered in gorgeous scales that range from blue-green to red-pink. Their legs are gone and their long, muscular tails swing back and forth, but my mother isn’t among them.

  There are seven Nix crammed in one filthy tank. Their spindly arms and legs have transformed into gray fins lined with terrible spikes. I realize they look a bit like eels, with their yellow eyes. There are more Selkies, bloated and brown, with whisker-covered snouts. Their back legs are gone, replaced with tails, but their arms are still huge with rocky muscles.

  In one tank at the back of the room are five small creatures that at first appear to be octopuses, but on closer look, they have dozens and dozens of tentacles, and that’s pretty much it—no head, no eyes, no body—just tendrils lined with suckers, all whipping around in a frenzy and smacking against the glass. It’s the creepiest, most unnatural thing I have ever seen. They’re what nightmares are made of.

  I shake off the chill they’ve given me and turn down another aisle, searching tank after tank. I stop before a huge creature with charcoal-colored skin and a round, puffy body. It has quills sticking out of it and a foul expression on its big face.

  “Nathan.” I met him in the Alpha camp back home.

  The tank next to him contains three Feige with murky green skin. The one after that hosts something that looks an awful lot like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. There are others, some with skinny legs, others with claws like lobsters, and some that have huge shells on their backs. There are so many different kinds, it’s hard to process them all. Arcade told me there were other people in the ocean. Now I believe her.

  “My God.” I gasp when I come across the next tank. It’s filled with body parts: limbs, heads, hands, like some kind of nightmarish junk drawer where these bastards keep the stuff for which they don’t have a place.

  Some tanks have Alpha who look like they have been experimented on. They’re missing limbs, and their chests are split open from neck to naval, so their internal organs are exposed. There are some so wounded that it seems a miracle they are still alive. This is the horror show Terrance Lir warned me about, the one he swore he would die before going back to, but Tempest has Rochelle. I’m sure he’s here somewhere.

  “Lyric, you have to hurry!” Bex shouts to me.

  I turn a corner and finally find my mother. She looks intact, healthy and serene, like she’s taking a long bubble bath. Her mermaid tail swishes back and forth in the water. She’s more beautiful than I have ever seen her.

  “If they’ve hurt you—”

  “She’s never been touched, Lyric.”

  Donovan Spangler appears behind me with two armed guards. I turn and point the gun at him.

  “Let her out.”

  “There are a few specimens we have decided to keep as is, you know, in case we needed them as bargaining chips. Like her, for instance,” he says, gesturing behind me. “And, of course, this one.”

  I follow his gesture to another tank. Inside it floats a boy with golden hair and skin, his arms marred by scars, and a face that has visited my dreams almost every night since the last time I saw him.

  Fathom.

  I peer through the thick glass, suddenly wondering if I’m dreaming or, worse, hallucinating, and that Spangler actually broke me and this is all a delusion. I slam my hand against the tank until my knuckles split open and spill blood onto the floor.

  “Is he alive?” I ask.

  “Oh, yes,” Spangler says, smacking the tank himself. “In fact, he seems to prefer being in there.”

  Guards escort my father and Bex. They hobble toward us with guns pointed into their backs.

  Fathom opens his eyes, and he smiles at me. He says something, but I can’t make it out.

  “Miss Walker, I’d like to make you an offer. Just hear me out, and if you do, I’ll let your mother and your boyfriend out of these tanks. How does that sound? Just five minutes of your time?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  SPANGLER HAS AMY BRING MY FATHER A WHEELCHAIR. She’s jumpy and angry at the same time. I suspect she was hoping for a little sympathy after what she just went through. I’m too shocked and confused to enjoy her disappointment.

  Doyle meets us at the elevator. He gives me a pleading look, a Please, will you behave? expression I used to see on my parents’ faces when I was little. He won’t look at my father or Bex at all. He keeps his head down and escorts us out into a hallway until we enter an employee cafeteria. There are round tables and plastic chairs, a salad bar, and a soda machine. Everything is painted bright white. A rich and savory aroma wafts into my nose, and my stomach rumbles. I can see it’s having the same effect on Dad and Bex.

  Doyle leads us to a big table in the center.

  “What does he want?” my father asks Doyle.

  “He wants what we all want,” Doyle says as he points to me. “Her help. And if you’re smart, you’ll tell her to give it to him.”

  “Is that some kind of threat?” my father says. He tries to stand, but his face turns white. His ribs must be killing him, but he doesn’t cry out. He’s tough, and I’m sure he wants Doyle to see it.

  “It’s not a threat. It’s a plea for common sense.
I know you have done a great job with her, Leonard. She’s strong and smart and stubborn as hell. Right now she needs to make a good decision,” Doyle says as he takes a seat at the table next to us. “He’s not going to take no for an answer.”

  Spangler enters with his tablet in one hand and his smartphone in the other. He’s got a pair of fancy headphones some hip-hop guy invented strapped to his ears, and he’s talking about delivery dates and shipments. Whoever he’s talking to needs a lot of assurance, and Spangler seems to be a pro at appeasing fears. He makes promises and promises, then says that when the person he’s talking to arrives, he wants to take everyone out to dinner. When he’s done, he unplugs his headphones and pulls them down so they wrap around his neck.

  “Sorry about that. I’ve got a very nervous client on my hands,” he says, rolling his eyes as if we can sympathize.

  “You’re not with the military?” my father asks.

  Spangler chuckles like he’s listening to children.

  “Do you think the government could put together something like this? I mean, it’s nothing fancy, but the budget for half of this place would get lost in committee until the end of time. Congress would dither over which state got the tax breaks. I’m sure a small handful of them would raise a stink about the Constitution, and human rights issues—due process—you know how they can get. Anyway, all that haggling might be good for getting a bridge built, but it’s not very practical when the end of the world is on your doorstep. No, when they need something done and done quickly, they go with private enterprise.”