The Darkness Drops

by Peter Clement

  He couldn’t see Yuri.

  And the first of the big waves would be on them in seconds.

  He jammed down his feet, caught traction, and struggled to stand, barely managing to stay upright in the three feet of rapidly moving current.

  “Remember, whatever you do, hold tight,” he yelled at Jade, turning to face the giant bearing down on him.

  It was a swell, not a breaker, and that gave him a chance.

  But he’d have to time his move perfectly.

  As it rose before him, the sun glinted off its crest like flecks of bone.

  The leading slope climbed to his chest, until the surge plucked him off his feet, carrying him backwards.

  He started to swim up the steepening face of the wave, his powerful stroke carrying him higher and higher, the massive hump of water still speeding him toward the cliffs. Up and up he went, doing the crawl, kicking and straining with all his force, head above water, yelling encouragement to Jade, feeling her holding on for dear life, all the while inching closer to the top.

  Until he was over it and catapulting down the wave’s backside, no longer traveling as fast in the direction of the cliffs.

  But already he was eyeing the second of the three waves. It had to be twice the height of the first.

  He swam toward it.

  It was fifty feet away when he felt its surge start to lift him, and once more he was being swept backwards at top speed.

  “Hang on, Jade,” he yelled.

  Her arms adjusted their grip.

  He started to swim up again.

  This climb seemed to take forever and drained even more of his strength. But up he went, inching ahead, sometimes feeling he was slipping backward, until, unable to go any farther, he yelled for Jade hold her breath, and plunged into the wave. Swimming across it in a dozen strokes, he emerged on the back side, and once more body surfed down the slope into the trough behind it.

  This time he turned to watch the water hit the cliffs at the head of the valley.

  Already the first big roller had reached them. It dashed itself to pieces, sending frothy fingers reaching halfway up the rock face, as if clawing and scratching for a handhold, then slipping back into the newly formed lake.

  Anyone caught in that would have been ground to a pulp.

  He turned back to meet the third and final surge, figuring he had the hang of riding them out.

  It looked to be the biggest of them all, and bore down on him at no less speed than the first two.

  “Okay, Jade, one more time--” He stopped himself.

  The current around him had suddenly changed. It slowed, then reversed, carrying him away from the cliffs toward the monster wave. It was the counter surge from the first ones hitting the cliff. Like surf returning into the ocean at a beach, it would slide under the rush of incoming water, initially holding it back, causing it to become all the more massive, then make it roll on itself.

  Already the monster was rearing higher, its bulk the size of a three-story building, until it teetered, about to crash down on him.

  “Another breath!” he screamed at Jade, and dove, this time heading as deep as he could go, setting out directly under the towering water, his only hope being to let it pass over his head before it broke. The water in his immediate vicinity darkened as the height of the roller peaked directly above him. The added pressure hurt his ears. He pinched his nose and forced air through his eustachian tubes, equalizing the forces at play. Jade wouldn’t know how to do that, and the pain must be excruciating. Afraid she might panic and let go, he grasped her arms, continuing to propel himself forward with just his legs.

  She began to struggle, and slipped free.

  He grabbed for her, missed, and tried again, but she was pulled just beyond his fingertips, disappearing into the murk around him.

  Frantically he thrashed about, trying to find her. But he was working blind, the silt and fading light making it impossible to see.

  He forced himself to go still, praying the undertow would carry them both in the same general direction.

  He waited, willing the light to return, which would mean the wave had passed.

  Nothing changed. It seemed minutes had lapsed, but he knew it couldn’t be that long.

  He counted the seconds to keep track of time. A kid her age ought to be able to hold her breath for half a minute.

  Unless she panicked

  . . . eight, nine, ten . . .

  Time crawled.

  If anything, the water got darker, the undertow stronger.

  He lost all sense of direction.

  Only the bubbles coming out his nose and mouth told him which way was up.

  . . . thirteen, fourteen, fifteen . . .

  Then the light cleared.

  Everything became a tan haze.

  And he was rising toward the surface with his bubbles.

  He broke surface on the back of the wave.

  No sign of Jade.

  He screamed her name, but with the thunder of the curl breaking on itself, couldn’t even hear his own voice.

  Then, through the back of the wave, its contents illuminated by the sunlight, he saw a dark shape being swept away from him, limp and unmoving.

  “Jade,” he screamed, and made for her.

  But the speed of the wave in its continued rush toward the cliffs was much too fast for him. The distance between them doubled over a matter of seconds.

  He trebled his stroke, and managed not to fall any farther behind, yet failed to gain any ground on her. He called out her name, all the while knowing she couldn’t hear him.

  His breathing grew uneven.

  In his frantic efforts to gain speed, he broke his rhythm, inhaling water instead of air, and choked.

  Still he wouldn’t quit.

  And in his head he maintained the count.

  ...thirty-nine, forty, forty-one...

  Then another smudge appeared beside her, more than twice her size.

  It enveloped her, and made a beeline in his direction.

  He’d reached forty-nine when Yuri surfaced out the back of the wave, clinging to Jade, and cascaded down the slope toward Terry.

  He might not plan or use logic worth shit, but he was a hell of a swimmer.

  In a dozen strokes they reached one another.

  “She’s not breathing,” he gasped, already supporting her face-up out of the water and giving her mouth-to-mouth respirations.

  Terry felt for a carotid pulse.

  Present, but slow. Much too slow.

  Chapter 32

  “She’s about to arrest,” Terry said.

  Yuri continued to seal her lips with his mouth and breathe air into her lungs. “Watch where we’re drifting...and keep us to the left,” he gasped between breaths.

  They sloshed about like rubber toys tossed in a bathtub. No more big waves were in sight, but a three-foot chop came at them from all directions as water rebounded around the basin. Yet they were definitely being pulled toward the left. “Where exactly do we head?” Terry shouted.

  “See the clefts?”

  He spotted three deep vertical cracks in the cliff face, but off to one side. “Got them.”

  “Steer us into...the farthest one.”

  Their oblique path seemed to be taking them closer to the center one. Grabbing hold of Yuri by the arm with one hand, and helping support Jade’s head above water with the other, he scissor kicked, managing to tow them a few feet sideways. He kept at it, moving laterally and gaining a body length at a time, but the grip of the current pulled them ever faster toward that center crevice.

  “What happens if we go through the middle opening?” he asked, having to raise his voice above the increasingly loud roar from that direction.

  “No hand holds,”

  He doubled the rate of his kicks.

  As he eyed his target, he began to appreciate the width of the rocky columns separating the entrance-ways to the chutes. They were bone crushers in their own right.


  He also checked Jade’s carotid pulse. It had picked up. “Heart rate’s faster. You’re bringing her back.”

  Yuri acknowledged the news with a wink, and kept breathing for her.

  They slipped into the shadow of the looming cliffs.

  The roar was nearly deafening now.

  “What do I look for once we’re inside?” Terry asked in a shout.

  “Three separate ladders . . . three chances . . . all set in stone . . . don’t miss the last . . .”

  Jades lifeless body suddenly jack-knifed at the waist,

  At first Terry thought it was a seizure.

  But water spurted out of her mouth, expelled from her airway by a spasm of choking. Her limbs began to stir, and she noisily sucked in a lungful of air on her own, only to convulse into more spasms of coughing.

  Terry clutched her to him. Most near-drowning victims struggled like hell when they woke up. Having lost her once, he wasn’t about to let it happen again.

  She laboriously drew in another lungful of air, her eyes flew open, she saw Terry, flicked a frightened glance at Yuri, and only then seemed to really see the water all around them. She began to flail with her arms and legs, as if trying to climb out of the waves.

  “Jade, it’s okay. We’ve got you!” Terry repeated his assurances over and over, tightening his grip on her.

  Finally she stopped fighting, and clung to him. Her mouth formed into a quivering circle, and the rest of her face bunched into an angry squint, but he couldn’t hear her cries above the thunderous rush of water up ahead.

  Yuri gestured to follow him, and struck out at a ninety-degree angle to the flow. If his wounds still bothered him, it didn’t show.

  Terry followed on his heels, one arm around Jade, the other propelling them in a powerful side stroke. Despite all his previous efforts, they were still abreast of the second opening. He also thought he must be hallucinating. The cliffs seemed to grow in stature as they got under them. Then he realized that a dropping water level had caused the effect, a reflection of the speed with which the current was exiting through the far end of the chutes.

  He redoubled his effort.

  Yuri hadn’t made much better progress despite having set a furious pace in doing the crawl. As they all bore down on the wedge of rock that separated the remaining two cataracts, its leading edge appeared jagged enough to slice them in two.

  But instead of pressing on, Yuri swam back to reach Terry, and latched onto his clothing. Synchronizing their strokes, the two men picked up speed in traversing the current and, pulling Jade with them, inched their way out of the collision course just in time.

  All three swirled into the steep-walled chasm.

  The gloom of the narrow slit lined with black rock made it impossible to see much, and they moved along so quickly, Terry despaired ever spotting the rungs of a ladder in time to grab one. But there was no slacking off in their struggle to reach the outer escarpment.

  Seconds later they were racing by stone so sheer and polished he couldn’t have hooked a fingernail in its surface, let alone found a handhold.

  Up ahead he saw what looked like a vertical stain but, as it flashed by, realized too late that it was the first ladder.

  He desperately peered ahead, trying to make out a similar mark in the murk.

  It came into view.

  He saw a flash of white flesh in the darkness as Yuri’s hand grabbed a rung.

  Terry reached for the same piece of metal, caught it, and felt the rest of his body stretched horizontal by the force of the stream. As he hung onto Jade with his other arm, water poured over his head and shoulders until his fingers started to slip on the rung.

  He tried to pull himself in, but the pull of the current was too strong.

  His fingers slipped a bit more.

  Yuri, already having climbed up a few rungs, reached down and fumbled to grab his clothing.

  Terry felt some of the strain go out of his arm as the man hauled him a few inches closer.

  He pulled as hard as he could himself, and gained a few more.

  Then his shirt tore.

  The water yanked Terry back to the full stretch of his arm where he again hung by his fingertips.

  Yuri made another grab for him.

  But the torrent ripped Terry off the bar, sending him and Jade once more plummeting downstream.

  He strained to see their next and final chance.

  Suddenly Yuri was by his side, marshaling him closer to the wall.

  He’d dived in after them.

  With three quick squeezes of his hand on Terry’s shoulder, he gave a heads up before the dark outline of the ladder loomed into view.

  Terry raised his arm at the ready.

  The rungs were in front of him in a blink.

  He struck at one, and held on.

  Yuri grabbed it as well, and gave Terry a helpful boost from below as both men struggled to haul themselves out of the water.

  Still holding tight to Jade, Terry had to do a one-armed climb, releasing the bar in hand to grab the next above it.

  Slowly but surely, a foot at a time, they ascended the ladder.

  Soon they were halfway up the crevice.

  Below them the torrents of water raced by, not slacking any in speed, but dropping in depth by the minute, like some giant horizontal toilet that had just been flushed.

  They were going to make it.

  It still being too noisy to speak, he grinned down at Yuri, and mouthed thank you.

  That boyish face with the flashing dark eyes grinned up at him, and winked.

  Then Jade’s scream pierced Terry’s eardrum, more like the pain from a high-pitched drill than an audible noise.

  He looked up at her face, and saw it wide with horror as she stared toward the entrance of the chasm.

  He swung around, still hanging on the ladder, and saw a fourth wave, mightier than the three previous combined, tumbling through the narrow space directly at them.

  He wedged himself and the girl into the upstream side of the ladder, and yelled down to Yuri to watch out. But he couldn’t hear his own voice, and neither did Yuri.

  A look of puzzlement crossed his cocksure expression, and he slowly turned toward the oncoming maelstrom of water and debris.

  Mostly foam and spray whipped by Terry and Jade.

  But when the water receded and he looked down, Yuri was gone.

  Chapter 33

  Holograph Projection Chamber

  Military Base 682, Research Division, Code name Dragon

  North Guangdong Province

  The heavy thump of helicopter rotors pulsed through the building like a heartbeat.

  “Dr. Chen?” a male voice said, accompanied by a tapping at the door.

  “Not now. I’m in the middle of something.” On a trial’s day, she was the go-to person who made sure protocols were followed when problems arose. Crimes against humanity must be committed by the book, if a bioweapons program is to prove scientifically reliable.

  “But it’s urgent, Dr. Chen. There’s a pilot outside who insists that our supervisor is here, not in Guangzhou. He won’t accept anything less than speaking to him personally.”

  She dared not open the door. A light show might hide the dead man’s remains, but nothing would cover the rancid stink of his having soiled himself. Already there’d been a few wrinkled noses when various other underlings had come knocking despite strict orders that she be left alone.

  “Just a minute.”

  She surveyed a bank of phones by the control panel, all with secured lines, some allowing communication overseas.

  More helicopters thudded overhead, their rotors pummeling the building to its foundations.

  She’d no choice but to ask her contact for help again, just like at Wells Beach. Her finger hovered over the dial pad, ready to punch in his private number. But in Maine, it had been the promise of what she might provide that secured his services. Now, once she delivered on that promise, her only guarantee that he’d d
o right for Jade--see her properly cared for--would be his word. She might trust Terry Ryder on that level, but not him. Nor would anybody else in Washington have much incentive to defy China should it claim that Jade had been kidnapped and must be returned. But if Beijing ever got hold of Jade, they’d use her to send a message--this is what happens to the children of traitors.

  She broke off the connection.

  Maybe there was one other person she could call.

  The pounding of still more arrivals reverberated through the walls as she dialed the Atlanta number. She had precious little time to pull this off. Normally obedient soldiers who’d always obeyed her without question would soon be reassailed with new claims by ever more pilots that their commander wasn’t in Guangzhou and the chief medical officer damn well better produce him.

  Wey Chen’s call to CDC’s hotline sent the evening shift scrambling to track down their director. “I’m sorry, Dr. Chen. Dr. Houston may be out on her nightly jog. But we’ll find her. Just give us fifteen minutes.”

  The noise of the helicopters continued to hammer overhead. This is taking too long, she thought, but quelled her panic, silently composing what she would say to Betty Houston once the woman came on the phone. They’d met at enough conferences over the years for Wey Chen to have read her practical side. Appeal to that, and there’d be a chance of winning her help.

  ...Loath me--I loath myself--but then do as Ryder did, and make a deal that could save over a billion lives. I’m not asking anything for me. Just Jade. You’d never knowingly hurt a child, but that’s what will happen to Jade if I don’t secure her protection before releasing the samples. And I’m out of time. So I’ll say just enough that, once you share it with Ryder, the two of you will find the hiding place--

  A foul aroma of marsh gas, rotting fish, and brine filled her nostrils.

  She recoiled from it.

  No! Not now. I must have a clear head to negotiate this right, for Jade’s sake...

  But the vengeance of conscience would not be denied, and the dimly lit chamber dissolved into a flashback of the fog-covered, tidal flat at Wells Beach. Swallowed up by the surreal immediacy of the hallucination, yet viewing herself from afar, Wey Chen is neck deep in the bracken water.