Dark Waters

by Lucas Pederson

  She doesn’t know what it is. Maybe even Miles wouldn’t know. But she figures it’s another mutation. Has to be, actually. There’s no other explanation of the creature scratching on her door.

  After a few minutes, it’s obvious the thing can’t get through and Emma gains her feet. She leans against the wall, letting vertigo do its thing. Once the world rights itself, she turns and makes her way to the office. The sounds of the scratching follow her.

  Once in the office, she shuts the door and locks it, then collapses into her chair. She stares at the black screen of her computer monitor for a long time, before an idea creeps up in her mind.

  She turns the computer on and goes to the stored surveillance footage. She’s not exactly sure how long she’s been out, but maybe an hour or so. So, she taps the footage from about two hours ago.

  For the first hour, there’s nothing. Then, at the one hour-twenty mark, the black vehicle she saw earlier pulls up to the parking lot lamp. Two men, one big and burly looking, the other shorter and skinny, haul Miles out of the backseat of the vehicle. Here, she pauses the video and zooms in, trying to catch anything she can use to figure out Miles’ possible location.

  The larger man is bald with what appears to be either a white or blond beard. He’s dressed head to toe in black. No patches or anything signifying military involvement. Mercenaries, then?

  The smaller man, with his darker skin and thin build reveals much of the same. All black clothing, nothing more.

  Whoever these guys are, they know what they’re doing.

  She zooms out a bit and touches PLAY. A scene she has already seen rolls out. The two men carry Miles to a black, inflatable boat where another man waits. Here, the lighting is worse, but Emma pauses the video again and zooms in.

  The third man, it’s hard to tell much of anything except…

  “It’s a woman,” Emma whispers to the empty office. The more she zooms in, the more it becomes fact. The person in the boat is a tall, well built woman and she nearly single-handedly hauls Miles – not a small man – into the boat.

  “Jesus,” she mutters, zooming in some more.

  She’s about to close the video when something catches her eye. Not with the woman, but the boat. A single word printed on the side, barely readable.

  A smile spreads along her face. “Bingo.”

  The word is: SOUTHBOUND

  Emma turns off the computer and hurries to the shop where Miles keeps his guns. The guns are in a metal cage with the biggest, ugliest lock she’s ever seen. The thing is massive and there’s no way she can break through it with an ax. A blowtorch will take too long. But…

  The cage is like a bunch of chain-link fences welded together. Not incredibly thick either.

  Taking no more time thinking, Emma finds an old ax in the far corner of the shop Miles used last year to cut up some wood during an odd cold snap that drifted into the area. The wood heated the shop and office nicely.

  Now she hefts the ax and walks to the cage. Her heart sinks a little. If she hits the chain-link cage, won’t the ax just bounce off? It…

  Her gaze happens on something leaning against the concrete wall near the cage. Emma blinks, lowers the ax and moves toward the object. It’s about a yard long and—

  She drops the ax. It makes a heavy clank on the cement floor.

  “Thank you military agent dudes for distracting him,” she whispers and picks up the black plastic gun case, grinning.

  She places the case on a nearby worktable and opens it. The gun is the same one Miles used to kill that thing – whatever it was – earlier. She forgets what it’s called, and she has only shot a gun twice in her life, but damn it, she needs something, right?

  After a few minutes of figuring out how to eject the damn magazine, she checks the bullet situation. As far as she can tell it’s full. Or at least has enough to take out two guys and a woman anyway. But what if there’s more than three…?

  She shakes her head. No time to worry about that now.

  Another minute to teach herself where the safety is on the rifle, then she storms to the front door. The mutation, or whatever it is, is still scratching. Emma debates about just shooting through the door, then decides to avoid the creature altogether and returns to the shop. Her car is around the back. So, if she exits the shop door and hauls ass, maybe she can get to it before the creature realizes she’s outside.

  Unless there’s more than one now…

  Emma opens the walk-in shop door and steps outside.

  The night is quiet, save for the rhythmic sea lapping at the beach and dock. There’s a slight breeze now, when earlier there was nothing. All the briny, salty smells of the Middle Pacific tumble into her. Almost like a wet Hell. Or something.

  There aren’t any creatures around and the parking lot is empty. She rushes around the building to where her car, an old thing from god knows when, and got in. She turns the ignition and the beast grumbles to life. One good thing about having a nearly ancient car…no one wants to steal it. Har-har.

  Southbound. She knows exactly where and what that is and speeds toward it, heart a chattering mess in her chest.

  CHAPTER 7

  “What the shit is this?” Miles walks around the bulky tank-like thing, shaking his head. He stops and looks at Jenna. “Have you seen how big that monster is? It’d swallow us whole in this thing.”

  Jenna smiles. “That was actually part of the plan. Like a deadly pill. We’d rip out of it, killing the damn thing.”

  Geri, standing away from them says, “You would not be able to do that. Jörmungandr, her flesh is stronger than anything the earth or man can invent. You would be trapped inside of her until you all died.”

  Jenna sighs, nods. “And thanks to your…input, we will have to kill it a different way.”

  Geri shrugs. “Might as well do it right the first time.”

  Miles slaps a hand on the thick metaled thing, which is no larger than a school bus. “What weaponry does this bastard wield?”

  To this, Jenna glances away, obviously in thought, before she says, “Laser rounds. Sonic torpedoes, which shoot two, three times faster than traditional.” She gives the tank-like thing a once-over. “Admiral Wade called it a STAV.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  Jenna finally returns his gaze. “Submersible Tank Artillery Vehicle.”

  “Kinky,” he says and steps away from the damn thing. “But, unless this thing has delayed laser bursts, we can’t use it.” He points at Geri. “I need to attach that tooth to one of them, if it’s equipped.”

  Unlike normal lasers, a delayed laser burst has a bullet-shaped cover. Once the burst surges, the bullet cover shoots out first at over two hundred miles per hour. It’s this cover Miles wants to attach the tooth on. But only as a just in case situation. His main goal is to find Mike, if he’s out there.

  Jenna shrugs. “I’m not sure if the bursts are equipped. Ma will know.”

  “How long before she’s set to wake up?”

  “In about an hour, I think,” Jenna says.

  He nods, not wanting to wait, but needing to.

  “I’m going to get some fresh air, then,” Miles says. “Need to let my brain breathe a bit.”

  Jenna smiles. “Always the thoughtful one.”

  Miles pffsts. “I’m just trying not to puke right now.” He leaves both women, quickly finds a door to the outside and, once in the salty breeze, shuts the door behind him.

  The cloying air only adds to his nausea. He bends over the rails and spurts vomit into the sea.

  Two things pop into his mind then. 1) He is at the abandoned Southbound warehouse judging by the fish and sunrise logo engraved in the railing, and 2) How the hell is he going to find Mike in all that open ocean?

  There is no answer to the question, however. All he knows is he needs to at least try. Mike is the only family he has.

  Once the sick toiling in his gut eases he walks down the narrow walkway, rusting metal creaking under his wei
ght, and to the crumbling remains of the parking lot.

  Southbound used to be the epicenter of commercial fishing. Beyond the warehouse is a massive pier and docks for fishermen to unload their hauls. The warehouse then prepared and stored the fish for transportation to various markets as far as Iowa.

  Then the sea levels rose. The earthquakes happened, and the world fell off the nutwagon in Crazytown. The fish were still out there, but with more and more monsters slithering out of the fathoms, the populations are dwindling rapidly, making fishing both hazardous and slim to nothing. After a few of the larger commercial boats were capsized due to some monster or another…fishing just stopped all over the Pacific.

  The Atlantic still has a good fish trade, but he heard that too is now dwindling.

  Earth is dying, giving way to monsters both on land and in the sea. The time of man is depleting.

  After a while of walking around and gathering himself, Miles goes back inside the warehouse. It still has that fishy smell, though it’s only a faint stench under all the rust. Jenna and Geri are still standing by the STAV, the tank-like sub thing Wade sent them.

  Geri grunts and sits on an old, dust laden crate. It groans under her meager weight but holds. She eyes him as he approaches. Those icy, cool blue eyes. Her withered lips curl in what he assumes is a smile.

  “You do not believe in any god, do you.” Not a question. Geri’s gaze holds his attention.

  “Not really.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugs. “Would a god let my parents die by a werewolf?”

  “Werewolf?” Jenna asks. “What—”

  “A hybrid mutant,” Miles says. “But to me, it was a werewolf.”

  “You are referring to the Christian God, I assume?” Geri asks.

  He nods, not liking where this is going.

  She also nods and leans forward a bit, the crate groaning. “That one is a young god and still exists. She has not fallen.”

  Miles frowns. “She?”

  Geri grins. “The original texts were rewritten to replace SHE with HE in the early days of Christianity.”

  “Okay. Whatever. So why didn’t she stop that thing from killing my parents? Why is she letting the world turn into a cesspool? For a merciful god, she’s not very merciful.”

  Again, Geri grunts, blue eyes glittering under the yellow light of old bulbs. “Tell me, how would your mind be after you created the modern version of humanity, thinking it will be the greatest evolution since the older gods fell. You give these modern humans everything. Intelligence, talents, art, everything. You give them awareness and self-worth and will. You love these beings. They are your children. Every single one of them and, for a time, they are well behaved children. Oh, there are a few bad ones, but you take care of them easily. Then…suddenly…your children begin turning on you. They forget about you. They replace you with false gods. They fall in love with Lucifer, her brother, that lunatic. They don’t believe in you anymore. And for years, you try to convince them otherwise. You try to show them you are watching and you love them. All of them. You try, and they deny you. Your own children. And so, over the centuries, you watch them kill each other in your name and not in your name and just because they want to kill. You want to intervene, but to what purpose? Why stop these beings when there’s no stopping them? And you’ve worked so hard at creating them and fashioning them to yourself, your children, annihilating them is out of the question. Even if you think it might be best, you can’t kill your own children. Not all of them because some of them are true to you. Some still believe and love you. A mother cannot hurt her own babies. Not a sane one. And so…you watch and cry and slowly begin drifting into madness.”

  Geri sighs. “Then you try creating a better human on another planet, but it’s not the same. No matter how much more advanced, they are nearly emotionless beings, even if they all love you. So, you abandon them. You return to Earth and see what it has become and you drift away, slipping through different dimensions and not caring about anything. You just drift and forget who you are. You are not a mother. You are not a god. You are nothing. And you drift into oblivion.”

  Miles, all of this still sinking in, glances at Jenna, who frowns at the old woman.

  Finally, Jenna says, “So…our god just gave up on us? And, if he is a she, then what about Jesus?”

  Geri, for once, gives a warm smile. A grandmotherly smile. “My dear, she did not give up. She has merely gone mad from all that has happened and languishes through dimensions.” She chuckles. “Jesus Christ was her final, true miracle. She is a god and gave Mary the child. That is why Mary was still a virgin. A male god would have had to insert himself, no matter how powerful. Jesus was supposed to be the one who served as proof of her existence.”

  To this, neither Miles or Jenna say anything. If Jenna is like Miles, he can’t think of anything to say. It’s so different from what he’s been taught.

  Miles, still not so sure he believes in the god, but from Geri, he at least might understand why God isn’t present anymore, even if she is still around. It’s hard to swallow, but makes a bit of sense, he supposes.

  “The old gods,” Geri says, not looking at either him or Jenna. “They were the vengeful ones. They were the hateful and despicable ones, even Odin and Zeus. You know they were brothers? Odin was Zeus’ older brother, but the histories do not recognize this because Odin is Norse and Zeus is Greek. This was actually a decision to split their children. From the evidence I have gathered, they actually got along. They loved each other. But they did not care for humanity much. They were arrogant gods. Boasting in their powers. Only a rare few, all the demigods, in fact, they loved. Hercules, Perseus, Sæmingr, Bragi. These are just a few of the many those two spawned as demigods.”

  Miles sighs. “So, you’re saying we’re fucked going up against this creature?” He needs to change the subject because the talk of gods is getting irritating.

  Geri blinks. “Jörmungandr is not a full god. It is the offspring of gods and gained god status, though is not a true god.”

  “But I thought it was a god?” Miles frowns.

  “She is. Though not as you might see one.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  Geri stands from the crate, dusts off her backside and looks at him. “She can be killed by a human. No matter how tough she is…she can be killed by a mortal with the right instincts. She is a monster god, much like that old leviathan a couple years ago.”

  “And the only way to for sure kill her,” Jenna says, “is to stab her in the eye with that tooth in your pocket?”

  “According to my research, yes.”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  Geri looks away from both of them. “Then we shall all die out there.”

  There are no words. Miles, for one, cannot think of anything to say that hasn’t already been said and he’s done with asking questions for now.

  “The old gods died,” Geri says, “and their monsters live.”

  Not really sure what to do, Miles nods. He’s about to tell them they should begin getting the gear ready, when a soft voice floats through the air.

  “Well, there he is. Miles Fucking Raine.”

  He turns, though it takes him a moment to see the small woman standing beside a rusted-out fish counting machine. She blends in so well. Which makes her one of the deadliest of his old team.

  He manages a weak smile. “Hey Sylvi.”

  She steps away from the machine and Miles sees her fully and, for once, all there. The woman has a knack for not showing all of herself to anyone. She’s known to hide herself near or behind things. As is her nature.

  Sylvi, back in the day, was his assassin. The one he sent in to dispatch guards, mostly.

  Judging by how she acts now, she’s still as deadly as ever.

  “Don’t hey me,” she spouts. “This is all bullshit.”

  He shakes his head. “What’s bullshit?”

  “You being here,” she says. “You’r
e not in Dagger Point anymore, remember?”

  Taking a line from Admiral Wade, he says, “I’m always a Dagger Point.”

  The woman chuckles humorlessly. “Yeah? Because the first thing I remember is you just leaving without a word. None of us have even talked to you for three years.”

  “I didn’t know how to get a hold of you,” he says. Not a lie. He had wanted to contact his old team many times, mainly just to chat, but didn’t have their numbers or physical or email addresses.

  Sylvi rolls her eyes. “Yeah. That’s what Jenna kept saying.”

  “It’s true,” Miles says, making sure there’s at least a crate of machine between them at all times. He’s seen how quickly she can kill a man. Especially with that sword of hers.

  Her gray eyes survey him up and down. “I heard you’re a charter protector.”

  “Something like that,” he says and wishes he had a gun. A knife. Anything. His hand keeps drifting toward his belt.

  Finally, Jenna intervenes. “Have a nice nap, Sylvi?”

  The Dagger Point’s main assassin sighs, sits on another wooden crate and says, “Meh. Ma kept talking in her sleep.”

  Miles smiles. “She still does that, huh?”

  Sylvi shoots a cold glare at him. “What do you care?”

  “Sylv,” Jenna says. “He had his reasons for leaving. You know that.”

  The woman shrugs. “We all have our reasons, but he could’ve at least said good-bye.”

  Despite the tense atmosphere, Miles can’t help but feel a bit of pride.

  He trained Sylvi in tactical warfare. When she passed the Seals training camps, she was at the top of her class for combat. Coming from a strict Chinese martial arts background aided by her father, Chang Bo, Sylvi already knew how to kill a person before she decided to enter the Seals program. The only thing she hadn’t known was how to use guns and to be stealthy. The stealthy part she took to much better than the gun thing, though. In the years that passed, Miles only saw her use a gun once.

  Sylvi prefers her sword and knives.