They were looking at him.
CHAPTER 60
She saw something looking back at her through the flat, clear surface. Like the surface in the other lagoon. It was another of the unusual, sinewy prey.
Her arms worked independently to assess the tank, quickly wriggling into every corner, every nook, sending information back to her complex brain. The taste of prey was strong here, and concentrated near a platform of very shallow water. One arm tip slid up onto the platform, met with something moving, which moved away from her touch. She had tasted it. Flesh.
But she was not hungry.
The great octopus had pressed herself through the pipe, seeking the deep ocean. Seeking to return to the darkness, the quiet of her den. Yet she had merely entered another small, shallow lagoon. Was still confined, with bright daylight upon her, blinding her. And now the noise from above was even louder. The threat nearer.
She ignored the tank’s sea life, which darted away from her, and flattened her enormous body against the odd corals beside her, trying to mimic their colors and textures to conceal herself. But it was too bright here, and there was not enough room. She was too agitated to control her camouflage. The painful noise grew louder.
Whump. Whump. Whump. Whump.
The deep vibrations from above escalated, and the pain became unbearable. One of her arms, the one she had sent slithering up to taste the prey on the shallower flat above her, felt something lifting, moving upward. Over her.
She could not escape. She was in danger.
Her body expanded, filling with oxygenated seawater. Her skin blossomed in thick veins of red and brown, and her muscles tensed.
The huge octopus was no longer looking at Sturman. He watched in awe as the monstrosity pressed against the far side of the aquarium, somehow changing a moment later into the rigid rock itself. Its flesh took on the colors, the textures of the man-made reef. Despite his fear, he was entranced.
The creature paused momentarily, as if to hide. But then its body again began to change shape, bulging outward in places, caving in in others, and rapidly reverted back into a fluid, moving mass, thinning out its flesh into a great canopy that shadowed the lower portion of the tank. Like a massive sheet billowing free of a clothesline in the wind, the octopus’s webbed body undulated to the center of the tank, then stilled and sank. It pressed its body against the bottom, looking up. Distancing itself from the surface.
The helicopter. It was frightened by the sound of the helicopter.
Sturman remembered. The manta release, the helicopter. The capture team.
There were people in the tank, right now, gathered on the platform above the octopus, only their legs visible below the waterline. They probably had no idea what was moving right below them.
He pounded the glass with both palms, shouting. But they remained, only their legs visible, as the sound of the helicopter grew louder. Nobody ran. Of course, they wouldn’t. They would be facing the net right now, heads above water and eyes focused on the manta ray, or on the sky, and would see nothing below. Hear nothing, especially over the drone of the helicopter.
A shout came from off to his left, where the long staircase came down into the tunnel. He turned and saw motion in the shadows of the high-ceilinged corridor. A group of people. Ashley, her boss, and a few others, a few hundred feet away were moving toward him, from the stairwell. Leading them was one of the guards he’d seen before.
“No! What are you doing?” he shouted, waving his arms at them. “Go back!”
They kept coming. Apparently, they couldn’t hear him. Or they were ignoring him. And they clearly couldn’t see what was in the tank beside him.
He started toward them. The sound of the helicopter’s rotors thundered into the passageway now. He gestured madly, yelled, but still the small group approached the tank. They couldn’t see inside the glass from so far away, from such a sharp angle. With Ashley, Barbas, and the guard were the blond assistant and the heavyset resort worker, and running after them was a young boy with curly brown hair, chased by an older woman who appeared to be his grandmother.
Through the glass next to Sturman, past the waves on the surface, the net began rising out of the water. Even through the chop, within the net’s circular yellow outline, the diamond-shaped silhouette of the manta was visible as it passed through the waves. It disappeared as it rose into the air. The net moved out over the tank, directly over the octopus, the rotor wash of the roaring helicopter above it churning the water.
Suddenly, the octopus appeared to grow in size, swelling. It lifted off the bottom and moved toward the thick glass that separated them. Toward the others, now only thirty feet away.
“Run! Get out of here, goddammit!”
They ignored him again, but this time for a different reason. They had now seen it. First to scream was the heavyset woman in resort attire, followed by the grandmother.
Ashley’s eyes widened, and she covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, my Lord.”
“What is that?” the boy said.
The tunnel grew darker, as when the sun disappears behind a cloud. Sturman turned and looked back toward the aquarium. The great octopus was up against the glass, covering the smooth, clear surface.
The obstruction on the opposite side of the glass became more defined in the dim overhead lights. Pale shapes emerged. Dimpled circles, of all sizes, that were pressed against the glass inside the tank.
Suckers.
Like some massive, fluid fresco, alternating between wavy lines of flesh and rows of hundreds of the suckers, some as large as car tires, the bizarre image slid along the glass, obstructing the light outside. Changing shape. A few people murmured in awe.
In the middle of the glass, where the rows appeared to converge in a single dark point, a large blob of brownish-black flesh pressed forward against the glass. Symmetrical lines traced outward from the dark point, in a star-like pattern. The point began to expand, a dark circle materializing in the pulpy body. The circle, like some great pupil, began to dilate. It grew outward until it was bigger than all but the largest suckers. The dark spot changed shape. A huge, parrot-like beak, dark as onyx, slid free from a sphincter of muscle. And struck the glass.
Tap.
Sturman turned and grabbed Ashley’s arm. “Show’s over. We need to get out of here. Now.”
She looked at him, mouth agape. She appeared to be in shock.
“My God. Is anybody filming this?” Barbas asked. He laughed. “Amazing!”
His blond assistant obediently took out her smartphone and pointed it toward the octopus.
Tap-tap. The sound of the huge beak striking the glass was louder now.
“Don’t worry,” Barbas said. “This glass is shatterproof. It is unbreakable.”
But Sturman knew it wasn’t designed for this. He turned and spread his arms around the group, shoving them back from the glass, herding them back toward the distant exit. The grandmother clutched at her chest, dropped to her knee.
“Nana?” the boy said. “Nana, run!”
Sturman grabbed him by the arm. The boy fought as he dragged him away.
Tap. Harder now. The sound changed as the blows increased in force.
Rap-Rap–RAP.
Sturman heard a hissing sound. A stream of pressurized water spurted into the tunnel in front of them, through a narrow crack in the shatter-resistant glass.
As he struggled to drive the group toward the distant stairs, in unison they finally began to move of their own accord. But then another fire-hose stream of water erupted from the glass. It blasted across the tunnel, striking the blond woman and knocking her off her feet. Then another jet of water spilled out, near the others, shaped like a fan.
They weren’t going to reach the exit. And the closed double-doors behind them, farther down the tunnel, only continued deeper underground.
There was nowhere to go.
Outside, the small crowd cheered as the helicopter tilted forward and picked up speed, heading
out past the reef. The manta ray, suspended a hundred or so feet below it inside the circular net, looked as flat as a pancake. There was a distant rumble of thunder and Eric looked past the helicopter toward the east, where lightning flashed inside the dark clouds.
They had beaten the storm. It had gone well, and Eric was happy for the animal. In a minute, the pilot would lower it down into the waves and gently release it back into the wild.
Moments ago, right before the helicopter had started to rise with its cargo, the police officer had finally allowed Eric and the others waiting in the underground stairwell to exit the tunnel to watch the scene aboveground unfold. At that same moment, he’d heard shouting behind him and seen two guards rush up from below, looking upset—frightened, even—to find Barbas. As Eric had followed the larger group out of the tunnel, unable to stop as he was pushed along by those behind him, he’d glanced back in time to see Ashley turn and walk back down the stairs with Barbas and the guards.
“What is that?”
A round man next to Eric was tugging at his wife’s sleeve now, pointing down into the water inside the immense aquarium. The man’s wife shrugged him off, still watching the helicopter depart like everyone else.
“You don’t see that?” the man said to her. He turned to Eric. “Do you? Or am I seeing things?”
“See what?”
Eric looked where the man was pointing. He gazed down into the tank, past the small group of aquarists in wet suits on the ledge where they had held the manta in place. The exposed surface of the water was just below Eric, but the bottom was forty feet down, and the water was choppy from the helicopter, so it was like looking down at one of the island’s coral reefs from a boat.
Still, something did look odd.
Through the subsiding waves sloshing at the capture team’s midsections, in the much deeper water behind them, he saw a large shadow. A shape near the bottom, up against the high wall of glass that faced the underground tunnel. He couldn’t make out what he was seeing, through the refracted light and the choppy surface, but it appeared as though . . .
There.
Yes. It moved. The shape, much, much larger than the departed manta ray, had moved. The huge shape underwater was pulsing.
“You do see it!” the man said.
Eric pushed a few gawkers aside and hurried around the waist-high rock wall for a better vantage point. He hurried off the path into some greenery. He stopped right at the edge of the pool, next to a wire barrier built onto the rock wall to keep tourists from jumping into the tank. He placed his hand on the wires.
And with each pulse of the shape below, he felt something in the taut wires. A vibration. A pounding, in cadence, like somebody swinging a sledgehammer into a wall.
Suddenly, the air was filled with a tremendous whooshing sound. The water level in the tank began to visibly drop, as though it was an enormous bathtub and some great plug had been pulled below.
There was a tremendous crack, and Eric jumped backwards. The force of the moving water had separated a forty-foot-tall section of the wall from its mountings. In seconds, millions of gallons of roaring water plunged to displace the air in the tunnel beneath the tank. The crowd began to run away, screaming.
The six-inch-thick glass panel leaned over and stopped, tilted at an angle over the tank as water rushed around it. The massive, dark shape in the water moved. It slid under the leaning wall, forced through by the water flooding the tunnels.
Quickly, the water level in what had been the tank dropped two full stories below its previous level, leaving the fake corals inside exposed. There was another cracking sound. He looked at the far side of the aquarium, toward the natural rock that separated it from a small lagoon. A breach had now occurred there as well. More water was now pouring back into the tank from the other side, refilling it.
Where moments ago an aquarium had been, there was now only an extension of the lagoon. And the viewing tunnels had disappeared entirely under the surface, hidden by swirling, silt-laden water.
Ashley. Sturman.
They were down there. Eric turned and ran toward the underground stairwell.
CHAPTER 61
Val found what she’d been looking for. She lifted the amulet out of the bathroom drawer and looked at it. A leather pouch, shaped like a block-headed sperm whale, hung from the thong. She smelled it and winced, jerking it away. It too was making her feel ill. The smell was sweet, almost fruity.
Then she knew.
Ambergris. It smelled like the waxy secretion produced in the digestive systems of whales and used to make perfume. The Obeah woman had probably gotten a chunk from a dead whale, or a globule washed up on the beach. That explained why the pouch was shaped as it was.
She stared at it a moment. She wasn’t sure why, but something had compelled her to find it. She carried it back outside, to where she was working on her laptop and trying to catch up on e-mail. She dropped the amulet onto the table and sat down.
She thought about Sturman. Planning to go back home with Will made her anxious. What would happen when they got back to Monterey?
She heard a distant, high-pitched noise that might have been sirens. She strained to hear more, but there was nothing over the mounting breeze in the palms.
The bank of heavy approaching clouds hid the sun, but she’d seen the black dot of the arriving helicopter appear miles away as it crossed over the broad Tongue of the Ocean from New Providence, from Nassau, and finally reached Andros, descending and disappearing behind the distant towers at Oceanus. Several minutes later, the distant drone of the helicopter had grown louder, and she saw the black dot moving back out to sea. Presumably with the manta ray dangling below it. The operation must have been a success.
She stood and moved to the edge of the patio, looked down the coast of the island. She could see the towers of Oceanus in the distance. Then she heard it again: high-pitched wailing. Yes, they were sirens.
Oceanus looked peaceful from here. Maybe there had been a car accident—
She jumped as her cell phone rang. She turned and picked it up, looking at the display. Mack. She answered.
“Mack, hi. What’s going on? Did they release the—”
“Valerie, get down here. Now.”
“What? Has something happened?”
“There’s been some sort of accident. An aquarium tank collapsed. The big one. Flooded a tunnel, with people inside. I just left the casino a few minutes ago. I’m trying to get down there now.”
“Is Will all right? Eric?”
“I don’t know. I don’t see them anywhere. But people are hurt.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Get down here, Val.”
“How? I don’t have a car?”
“Find a way.”
“Mack, are you okay? Mack?”
But he’d hung up. She ran through the house, found her sandals, and burst out the front door. She paused, and rushed back to the patio. She grabbed the strange necklace and stuffed it into a pocket of her shorts. She found one of the rusty bicycles behind the house and jumped onto the torn seat. She pedaled furiously toward the highway.
CHAPTER 62
Eric stood, dripping water, beside a small crowd at the top of the flooded stairwell, looking helplessly into the dark water. He could only see five or six steps down, with the water stirred up and the lights in the submerged tunnel now shorted out. A woman’s body had just floated to the surface. She was a resort worker, in a turquoise shirt. Like the one Ashley was wearing.
“Oh, no.”
He moved toward her. But he quickly saw that it was not Ashley, and felt guilty at his relief. It was the heavier woman, and before he or anyone else could reach her body to fish it out he could tell by the massive head wounds that she was already gone.
When he’d first arrived at the stairwell, an old woman had miraculously popped up in the churning water, still alive but choking on water, wet strands of gray hair clinging to her ashen face. He had plunged down the steps
with a few other tourists and helped pull her out. Once up the stairs, she began to cry, talking about a missing grandson. She had been whisked away to an ambulance, seemingly having heart trouble.
Moments later, another person had floated up into the opening between the stairwell and the angled ceiling. That one had been facedown. He appeared to be one of the young resort guards. Others had helped fish out the man.
Eric looked over to where he was now splayed on the wet concrete twenty feet away, one arm flopped grotesquely off to the side as a young woman still stubbornly administered CPR to revive him. Eric knew it was probably too late.
He helped two other men fish out the heavyset woman’s body, and drag it irreverently up onto the cement by its arms, like some clubbed seal. Then he turned and looked at the pool. The underground tunnels appeared to be completely flooded. There was no way down there, where he was almost certain Ashley, Sturman, and many others had still been when the glass gave way. Even if there was a way down, something else was down there now.
The ruined tank had refilled, through the breach in the man-made wall that had previously separated the tank from a natural lagoon. These state-of-the-art aquariums had been built below sea level, utilizing the cay’s natural submarine caverns to create the incredible display. Seawater must have always remained in this cavity throughout the construction process, unless they had pumped it out at some point to complete the project. Now, with the hydrostatic pressure in the tank suddenly gone, the lower cement wall on the opposite side from the tunnels also had collapsed. Where the broad fissure had opened up, the surrounding rock had also come free, and jagged boulders the size of small cars had crashed down into the water in the tank.
A security guard arrived and began relaying the information to the local emergency services over his radio. He made Eric and the others move back from the stairwell as some semblance of order was established.
It didn’t matter. It had been too long now for anyone to make it out by holding their breath alone. He had to check the other exits to the tunnels, to see if anyone had come up alive there. He took a deep breath to calm himself, feeling hot despite his clothes being wet up to his chest. There was still hope.
What Lurks Beneath Page 26
