Natural Selection

by Dave Freedman

  “Well, I’m typing and analyzing everybody els—”

  “But are you actually doing any research yourself?”

  “Well . . . no.”

  Jason nodded. “Phil, you are doing a fantastic job, believe me. . . .”

  “But . . .”

  “But . . . you don’t have an ichthyology degree. Unfortunately, education makes a difference in this field, and all of us need that degree to make more . . . meaningful contributions. You know how hard I worked to get my degree, and believe me, Darryl, Monique, Craig, and Lisa worked hard as hell to get theirs, too. Would it be fair to them to just give you, or anyone, the same credit without having done all that work?”

  Phil looked up at the ceiling. “I take your point.”

  “Do you think it’s reasonable?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Phil, the last thing I want is for you to think I don’t appreciate everything you’re doing. I do. Your work is going to be invaluable in preparing my final report on this.”

  Phil nodded sadly. “Thanks, Jason. I appreciate that. Maybe I was getting a little ahead of myself.”

  “We OK, then?”

  “Yeah. Thanks, buddy.”

  Jason patted him on the back, and they joined the others on deck.

  They continued for miles, passing evergreens, evergreens, and more evergreens. Then, rounding a bend in the coastline, they saw it under the moon’s white gaze: a perfectly flat, quarter-mile-wide creek flowing right into the sea. They slowed down and Jason turned.

  “Turn on the spotlight, will you, Craig?”

  A big headlight went on, and Jason immediately noticed a wood sign staked into some tall, drooping grass. Painted yellow letters said REDWOOD INLET. He stared at it for a moment and noticed Darryl, arms crossed and eyeing the creek suspiciously. “You buy this conduit theory, Darryl? You actually think they’d swim inland?”

  Darryl didn’t answer at first. He simply studied the landscape. The flat moonlit water, the trees, how isolated it all was . . . This place felt right. “Yeah, Jason. I think they might.”

  “Craig, let’s anchor.” Jason didn’t even want to wait till morning. “I want to wire this thing right now.”

  LATER THAT night, they finished. Two yellow sonar buoys were bobbing in the ocean near the creek and two white radar guns were staked into its grassy banks.

  They awoke at seven the next morning. With the others up on deck, Jason and Lisa bumped into each other in the galley, and he quickly kissed her on the cheek. He seemed embarrassed by it; she thought it was adorable. When they arrived on deck, Craig immediately looked up from his monitors.

  “Still aren’t any readings here, Jason. What do you want to do?”

  Jason turned to Monique. “Did you say there are other creeks we should also wire?”

  “A little further south.”

  “There’s your answer, Craig.”

  Summers rose from the equipment. “I’ll turn us around, then.”

  As the Expedition began moving, they motored away with confidence. If anything entered Redwood Inlet, they’d know it—and right away.

  THOUGH NO one considered one additional possibility: What if something had entered Redwood Inlet already?

  CHAPTER 43

  AS THE boat’s vibrations disappeared, the four dozen predators didn’t move. They were perfectly still at the bottom of the muddy creek. Several hundred yards from the ocean, they hadn’t moved for two full days. They were physically uncomfortable here. The seafloor felt different. So did the water itself.

  They were strategically positioned behind a bend in the creek. Here, they couldn’t detect the two floating devices with their sonars, just as the devices couldn’t detect them. Their ampullae of Lorenzini had no such problems, however.

  The predators weren’t focused on the unseen equipment at the moment. They couldn’t focus on anything other than the smell. The smell was from the ocean, farther south and very deep, but potent nevertheless. It was the smell of blood. Far away, there was a fantastic amount of it, so much that every single animal here was salivating.

  THE SLAUGHTER of the great whites was complete. There was still enough blood to fill several Olympic-size swimming pools, but the meat was long since gone. The sharks, like the rays themselves, had been very hungry, and that hunger had been used against them. A school of more than eight hundred had been lured here, nearly four miles below the surface. Then they were ripped to pieces and devoured. Three dozen of the sharks had actually escaped, but then the smell of their very own blood had lured them back. Then they, too, had been eaten alive.

  Thousands of predators rested on the ocean floor, unseen. Most were of the younger generation. Their experiences at the surface were only a memory now, as was their migration. They had no plans to move. They’d found the place they’d been searching for.

  IN THE creek, one predator rose up and flapped toward the ocean. Then a second animal followed. Then a third and fourth. Then all except one. The smell of blood was too much to take. Against the leader, which didn’t budge, they moved en masse, their winged bodies flapping slowly in the darkened water, heading toward the bend and the two hanging devices beyond it.

  But then they stopped. The leader had just made a sound. A strange sound not designed to be heard in water. They all had the larynxes to produce the sound, but only the leader had learned how to do so while airborne. In the air, the sound would have been described as a roar, a rather terrifying one, but here, submerged and far less menacing, it was closer to a waterlogged truck horn. The others had blinked anyway.

  The leader rose, lifting its great body from the mud. The four dozen animals obediently turned away from the ocean and joined it anew.

  Unseen in the blackened freshwaters, they flapped inland. Most were tentative at best. Their instincts were in a dramatic state of flux, and they were physically and physiologically uncomfortable with what they were doing.

  The leader moved with purpose. Its instincts alone had been irreversibly altered. Even with the vast amounts of shark blood still in the depths, it no longer felt like it belonged there. The animal veered upward. It didn’t know where it was going exactly, but it knew one fact with absolutely certainty. The light was coming.

  It would never see the blackened depths of the sea again.

  CHAPTER 44

  “FINISHED.” CRAIG Summers nodded to himself. The fourth and final creek was wired. Sonar in the water, radar on land.

  Darryl Hollis doubted if it would turn up anything, however. This creek and the two others they’d just wired possessed relatively undesirable topographies: not straight but curved, narrower, and with considerably rougher waters. Redwood Inlet still felt right.

  It was early afternoon. Sweating in dappled sunlight, broken up by an onshore redwood, Craig knelt, checking the monitors. With a tiny joystick, he scanned the creeks one by one, scrolling up the coast. “Nothing . . . Nothing anywhere . . .”

  Behind him, Jason turned to Monique. “You really think this conduit theory plays out?”

  “I think it’s our best shot.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “Wait.”

  Jason paused. He hated waiting, despised it; it made his skin crawl. But then he glanced at Lisa. One look said it. This is what it means to trust someone. “OK. We wait.”

  THE BLACK eyes held still. Through the rippling water, the great staff of wood seemed to be almost moving, but the brain behind the eyes understood this was an illusion. The eyes shifted, moving up along the shaft, branchless for several hundred feet until a crown formed, topped off by a massive evergreen treetop.

  The eyes shifted, scanning the rest of the terrain. The predator couldn’t see the prey under the early-afternoon clouds, but it knew it was out there, scattered for miles.

  The hulking forms next to it sensed nothing. They didn’t even know there were trees. In a place they’d never been before, they were still uncomfortable. The water still didn’t feel right on thei
r thick skin.

  The leader’s eyes shifted as a seagull appeared.

  Hundreds of feet above Redwood Inlet, the bird glided lazily, looking right back at it, looking at all of them. They were a sight to behold, four dozen living hang gliders, perfectly still just beneath the creek’s flat surface.

  Comfortable here as the leader was, it knew instinctively that this was not the place. Not for its brethren anyway. They wouldn’t join it. Not here.

  It turned, swimming back toward the ocean, and the others eagerly followed.

  They swam for nearly an hour, a squadron of colossal, slow-moving bats.

  As they neared the sea, they paused. The devices floating just beyond the bend were still emitting their powerful signals.

  They swam forward, and two triangular shapes came into view, bobbing at the surface. The rays moved below and past them, entered the ocean, then hugged the jagged coastline until, again, the powerful signals disappeared. Then they continued north. This was not the place.

  “Son of a bitch. We just got a reading.”

  The others dashed toward Craig.

  Jason arrived first. “Where?”

  Somewhat mystified, Summers pointed. “That first inlet.”

  “Let’s get up there, Craig. Now.”

  Summers marched to the controls. As the boat started moving, Jason turned to Monique. “Maybe your conduit theory isn’t so theoretical after all.”

  Monique just eyed the blinking dot on the interactive map. “We’ll see.” Then they really started moving.

  CHAPTER 45

  A HEARTBEAT.

  The rays had been swimming alongside the towering mountain range for hours. Looming right over the sea, the mountains were black with silver flecks, had no vegetation at all, and were several thousand feet high. They were also dotted with caves. The creatures had passed hundreds of such caves, most of them small and well above the waterline.

  This cave was different. First was its size. It was massive, ten stories high, four lanes wide, and with a huge rock lip opening right into the ocean. But size alone wasn’t the reason they’d halted there. It was what this cave had inside it. A heartbeat.

  The creatures were ten feet below the surface, perfectly still.

  Except for the leader, they were still uncomfortable and knew instinctively that they didn’t need to be here. There was food in the depths.

  Still, they had detected the heartbeat, and now their predatory brains were curious. What did it belong to? The frequency was totally foreign.

  They didn’t move. Minutes passed. Then hours.

  The others gradually lost interest, but the leader remained focused. Its eyes didn’t leave the cave. As time passed, it began to find the space almost instinctively inviting. The towering hole was enormous, big enough to hold its own body, and totally devoid of light, just like the depths.

  It suddenly refocused. They all did.

  There was a light padding noise. Footsteps. Something was walking out of the cave.

  The creatures descended deeper into the dark water, instantly becoming invisible.

  Then an animal appeared, a shimmering vision beneath a bleak sky: a small figure covered with thick brown fur, a large, almost triangular head, and ambling forward on four legs. It was a bear cub, not more than a hundred pounds.

  The creatures watched it coldly.

  The cub wandered out of the enormous space and, for no apparent reason, rolled over and pawed at the air. Then it righted itself and hoofed to the very edge of the rocky lip. Apparently overheated, it playfully dipped a paw into the lightly breaking waves. It seemed fascinated by the moving water.

  The leader moved toward it—very slowly.

  The others didn’t budge. They focused on the cub.

  The bear didn’t notice the dark shape appear directly below it. Then it saw something huge and black rising incredibly fast. It didn’t have time to react.

  With a powerful thrust, the ray thundered out with lightning quickness. The great mouth snapped open, then slammed closed, catching the bear. As the giant body landed on the rock, smacking loudly, the bear screamed briefly then went silent. There was a sickly crunching sound, then the mouth opened and the lifeless little form spilled out. The creature quickly ate some of the meat and fur, then, with a violent head twist, flung what remained into the water, so the others could get a taste.

  But they weren’t there now. They were already hundreds of feet beneath the surface, on their way to more than twenty thousand. Their wings pumped quickly, propelling them downward. Their heartbeats had been beating faster for days, but now they were slowing. The darkness was returning. They were going home.

  The predator remained on the rock plateau. It would not follow them. Instinctively, it felt it wasn’t meant to follow at all but to do something else entirely.

  Flat on the rock, its massive form rose and fell unevenly. It was experiencing breathing problems, its lung not yet fully adapted to the air. The baseball-size eyes shifted, studying the surroundings: seagulls gliding overhead, a dozen crabs bathing in little puddles on the lip, the desolate mountains.

  Like a beached big-bellied airplane, it simply laid still and breathed. It wasn’t ready.

  CHAPTER 46

  “Jason, are you all right?!”

  In full scuba gear, their leader had just flung himself from the water, gasping for air.

  Jason was too winded to answer her, but Monique saw from the boat that he was OK. He just needed to catch his breath. She eyed the dark water nervously. But where were Darryl and Craig? Armed with harpoon guns, they’d joined Jason to check the waters near Redwood Inlet for any sign of the rays.

  Lisa sprinted up from below deck, her eyes wide. “My God, is he OK?”

  “He just needs to catch his breath; he’s fine.”

  Phil trotted out, visibly confused. “What the hell happened?”

  Monique shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  Darryl and Craig popped up, ripped off their masks, and swam toward Jason. Before they could even ask, he said through gasps that he was fine.

  Craig gently put a hand on his shoulder. “What happened?”

  He finally caught his breath. “I don’t know. You saw me; I was a hundred and eighty feet down, and somehow I had an empty tank.”

  Craig looked up at the boat, eyeing Monique, Lisa, and Phil. “I checked that tank myself.”

  Jason shook his head. “I’m fine; forget it. You guys see anything down there?”

  Neither said anything. They wanted to be sure he was really all right.

  “Guys, I’m fine. Did you see any sign of the rays?”

  They shook their heads.

  “I wonder where they went.”

  Craig looked around. “Maybe inland. Maybe further north. Who knows?”

  Jason certainly didn’t. The blinking black dot had only appeared on the interactive map for seconds and disappeared. “What do you think, Darryl?”

  Darryl slowly turned to the inlet then stared at it. “I think this inlet’s a perfect conduit, we just got a reading here, and we shouldn’t overcomplicate this.”

  “Meaning . . .” Jason eyed the flat water mass himself. “You want to check it out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s do it, then.”

  Minutes later, the Expedition motored into Redwood Inlet.

  As Lisa looked up at the looming trees, she couldn’t believe it. They were actually looking for the new species inland. She turned when Darryl came up from below deck—carrying something she hadn’t seen in some time. A rifle. Lisa’s stomach turned. She didn’t think Darryl had taken the weapon out to shoot at skeet.

  REDWOOD INLET went on and on. After forty minutes, they still couldn’t see the end of it.

  For reasons they couldn’t articulate, everyone was amazed by their new surroundings. It was just so quiet here, just table-flat water, towering redwoods, and silence. No one spoke. Even Phil wasn’t typing. They all just studied the strange lands
cape.

  Looking up, Darryl Hollis couldn’t get over the trees. Darryl had spent a great deal of his life in the woods and he’d never seen anything like them. Where Darryl was from, most trees were fifty, maybe eighty feet tall. Redwoods were absolutely massive by comparison, the height of thirty-five-story office buildings and as wide around as small water towers. He eyed a huge specimen growing right on the side of the bank. Moving his eyes up along the great shaft, he saw it was a perfectly clean piece of timber, literally not a single branch until twenty-five stories, where the crown began to grow.

  Sequoia sempervirens. That was the official term for coastal redwoods. Darryl had read it in a book once and for some reason the name had stayed with him. But books didn’t begin to do these natural skyscrapers justice. Many were more than two thousand years old, he knew, literally old enough to have seen Jesus. Alive now, yet alive when Jesus had been.

  Call your congressman, Darryl thought morosely, keep the damn logging companies away from these things. Only two hundred years ago, more than two million acres of the great old-growth trees had grown in this part of the country. Now 95 percent of them were gone. What had literally taken two thousand years to grow, an electric chain saw had cut down in twenty minutes.

  “Look at that.” Craig pointed as an elk calf trotted from the forest’s shadows and began drinking from the creek. They all just watched it. With dark hair on its front half, lighter hair in back, the calf was three feet tall and thirty-five pounds.

  Monique smiled cutely. “Isn’t he adorable, Darryl?”

  Darryl rolled his eyes. He was a trained hunter and had never seen any animal as “adorable.” But Monique loved little furry things. They seemed to go well with babies.

  Jason eyed the drinking calf with surprising dispassion. Nature was a dangerous place, and he tried to picture what one of the rays would see looking up at the animal from the water. There was only one possibility. Food.