by Bill Schutt
Thankfully, the point was just as quickly rendered moot when her technician arrived with the sampling equipment she’d called for. It resembled a coil of thin rope with a series of hinge-topped cans arranged along its length.
Private McQueen shot her a puzzled look. “Ma’am, someone get hitched during the flight?”
“Hardly,” Nesbitt responded, unable to resist a short laugh.
Peterson cleared his throat. “Private, this device allows us to sample the water at different depths. It’s weighted, so we just lower one end down.”
He held one of the cans out to McQueen. “When you want a sample, you give this second line a tug—the cans spring open. Pull it again—they close.”
Peterson’s audience was clearly interested and Nesbitt took a moment to do her own appraisal—of McQueen. Decent looking, if on the scrawny side, she thought, but definitely too young.
“How far down can you go?” the private asked.
“We can sample every ten feet. Six cans, so sixty feet,” Peterson replied, glancing up to see Nesbitt standing by, arms folded.
She shot Peterson a look that left little room for interpretation: Finish your lesson and get on with my work.
Private McQueen seemed to be reading her body language just as clearly and so quickly moved to the starboard side blister, where he apparently found a spot of dirt that needed removing from the Plexiglas.
“I’m going up to speak to the captain,” Nesbitt told Peterson. “Bring those samples forward when you’re done.”
Before leaving, she gave the crewman a quick nod. “Private McQueen,” she said, then departed.
Private Terence McQueen watched the woman leave, his face expressing amusement at the fact that polishing the Plexiglas wasn’t nearly so much of a chore as listening to her order guys around. Waiting until she was out of earshot, he stepped over to where her latest punching bag was carefully lowering his sampling device over the side.
The private gestured down into the water. “Long cord but a short leash, huh, pally?”
The man shrugged his shoulders but said nothing.
“She is some tomato, though,” McQueen followed up, his remark eliciting the same lack of response.
The private scratched his scalp, watching Peterson slowly play out more and more of the line, until finally, he stopped. Apparently the deepest sampling can had reached bottom.
“Got it—with room to spare,” Peterson said.
McQueen had begun to make another smart-assed comment when the cord suddenly shot through Peterson’s fingers. The man yelled in pain as the last of the sampling cans smashed his hand and the remainder of the line whipped out through the blister hatch like a maddened snake.
“Holy shit!” McQueen called. “What was that?”
He turned to Peterson for an answer but the man said nothing. Wearing a dazed expression, he simply stared down at his broken hand and bloodied fingers. Then suddenly, Peterson seemed to snap out of it—as if puzzled that the sampler was gone. On unsteady legs, the wounded man leaned out the blister window, peering down into the red water.
McQueen reached out an arm. “Hey, pally, I wouldn’t—”
In a blur of motion, Peterson was yanked through the opening, his body seeming to fold backward at an impossible angle before disappearing from view. The sickening crunch of flesh on metal left no doubt, for anyone who heard it, that the man was dead in an instant. During the next moment, the entire plane shuddered as if a truck had driven into it. Then, just as quickly, the cabin became eerily still.
McQueen sprang toward the open blister hatch and unlocked the .50-caliber Browning from its muzzle-down position. He yanked back the handle of the slide grip assembly twice, aimed the barrel downward, and fired off a long volley—the water churning red as the heavy-caliber bullets tore into it.
When the rest of the crew arrived several seconds later, they found Private Terence McQueen wild-eyed and still squeezing the trigger, even after the belt that once held 250 cartridges had been expended.
A mesmerized Alexi Chernov watched the attack on the seaplane through his periscope, but he was still unsure exactly what he had seen. At first the creature—and one of his few certainties was that it was some sort of animal—resembled the water from which it had emerged. Then it seemed to melt into the black background of the plane itself—its arms becoming briefly visible against the open section of the bubble-shaped window. Of course, there was also the bloody rag doll Alexi knew had been a living crew member only moments before—the body dragged below with the beast as it disappeared with almost no splash. This is what happened to the trawler crew, Alexi thought. This is what will happen to me if—
Trying not to hyperventilate, Alexi Chernov steered the mini-sub into a hard turn and set a course toward the rendezvous point. The fact that he would arrive a day earlier than his brother mattered nothing. His only thoughts concerned the creature—and a voice in his head that would not go away.
It has seen you, Alexi. It has seen you.
As Cousteau steered their boat toward the cockpit of the Catalina, Mac and Yanni were greeted with the unexpected sight of the “eyeball” turret gun tracking their advance.
“You in the boat,” came a shout from the copilot’s side window, “hold it right there! Raise your hands and identify yourself.”
“Captain R. J. MacCready, U.S. Army!” he called out. “And Lieutenant Jacques Cousteau, French Navy. Yanni Thorne, American civilian!”
“Special agent,” Yanni muttered, scratching her fingernails on the gunwale.
MacCready recognized the rhythm of her nails instantly, from the tape recording and the disarticulated tentacle. It amused him that, even after someone had fired a blister gun down to empty in obvious panic, and even with a turret gun now aimed at them, some part of Yanni’s mind was still seeking out patterns. Some part of her, he reminded himself with a grin, was always a bit spooky.
“Permission to come aboard,” Mac called, and after a thirty-second delay the starboard blister window slid open and a familiar figure appeared, waving for them to approach.
Mac and Yanni exchanged looks before Mac gestured for Cousteau to bring the boat alongside, and tie up.
Stepping into the Catalina, Mac was not surprised by the sight of a diminutive ex-colleague who seemed to be running the show. Harbinger of chaos, as always. The deck was littered with spent .50-caliber cartridges, as if he’d stumbled into a war zone.
The pilot barely acknowledged their entrance into what had already been a cramped cabin. He was questioning a young blond crew member.
“One more time, McQueen,” he said. “What did you see?”
“I’m tellin’ ya, sir, I don’t know what it was,” the man said. “He was just standin’ there when something came up— Then it came in and—”
“Was it a tentacle?” Mac asked, and everyone in the cabin turned toward the questioner. “Like an octopus arm?”
“Yeah,” McQueen said. “Like that, thick as your thigh—only changing and real fast.”
“Go on, Private,” Mac said.
“Well, the guy was leaning out, just leaning out ’cause he lost his sampling gear. And then it was on him. It was on his whole head and he disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“He was all gone, all gone,” McQueen said, his eyes wild. “He just disappeared.”
Now the pilot shook his head, and Mac could see that the private’s story had just stepped over the credibility line. “Giant tentacles? You absolutely sure of that?”
“I know what I seen,” McQueen told Mac, before turning toward the pilot. “Sir.”
Trying to de-escalate the situation, Yanni moved over to the waist blister. She took a cautionary peek outside before running her fingers across the bottom portion of the frame—which appeared to have been bent outward. Then she held up her hand for the others to see. “Look familiar, Jacques?” she asked.
The Frenchman watched as the curious-looking substance dripped s
lowly from her fingers. He spoke a single word.
The pilot shot Cousteau a confused look, so Mac stepped in. “Captain, I think you need to get this bird to shore ASAP.”
But instead of responding, the flight officer turned to Nesbitt. She is running the show, Mac thought, watching as she flashed the pilot a short nod.
Without another word, the man turned away and headed for the cockpit.
Nesbitt raised an eyebrow and smiled at MacCready. “I know, ‘This is going to be an interesting story,’ right?”
Mac, however, stepped past her and unlocked the starboard-side Browning. “Yeah, actually, I was thinking more in terms of ‘Somebody’d better get behind a fresh nine yards on that other fifty-cal until we get the hell outa here.’”
As R. J. MacCready slammed back the bolt and swung the Browning’s muzzle outward, he could have sworn that he heard Yanni snicker—just before Cousteau unlashed his boat and one of the Catalina’s engines began winding up for a flightless run across the lagoon.
Alexi Chernov had chosen the most promising escape route he could think of and was pushing the mini-sub at full speed when he felt a jolt. Although the engine was still running, all forward motion came to an abrupt and jarring halt.
Now he could feel the boat move sideways—not violently—but the unnaturalness of the shift sent an electric shiver down his spine. Peering out one of the two roughly face-width view ports, he caught a blur of movement before a black mass slapped against the thick Plexiglas. His head snapped toward the second port and he recoiled as the world outside the sub was extinguished.
As instinct took over, Alexi backed off on the throttle and almost immediately felt the sub come free. The view ports were cleared as well. After performing a quick mental calculation, he simultaneously gunned the engine and turned the boat hard to port. Now his plan was simple: a desperate run for the nearest shallows—as fast as the engines would allow. There he could drive toward a rock-scraping grounding if necessary, and if by then any of the creatures were still holding on, he could scrape and pound them as well.
“Two more minutes should do it,” he told himself, a sliver of optimism rapidly transforming into the real possibility that he would not be forced to flood and destroy the technological marvel his superiors had entrusted to him.
Approaching the shallows, Alexi maintained speed, hoping the horrific events were far behind him now, like a bad dream. He was wondering if the creatures had caused any damage when a succession of dull bumps from below gave him a start. Through both portholes, ivory-white boulders and little oases of kelp were rising toward him—and the subsurface landscape was moving by a little too fast. Almost immediately he felt embarrassed. Pounding against rocks already, he thought, letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He hoped to simply ground her and flee, not to smash headlong into some ancient volcanic boulder. I need to—
A short series of sharp clanging sounds from the stern degenerated quickly into the whine of a straining engine, more sharp clangs, and then a sickening silence. A string of suction cups glided over the starboard view port as three more clangs from astern stopped all control of the propeller. Alexi prided himself on having achieved such skillful handling of these machines that through the controls alone he could feel what was happening along the outer hull the way a dolphin feels through its own skin. He glanced toward the moon pool hatch and knew there was probably very little hope there. No fewer than three of the creatures had followed him. They had jammed something hard and rocklike between the ring-shaped prop guard and the propeller itself.
How did they do that? Where did—
A new sound cut the questions short. The scratching seemed to come simultaneously from everywhere—as if a thousand crabs were working their claws against the outside of the hull in synchrony.
“You crippled my sub!” he called out, shocked at the sound of his own voice. “But how? You’re only fucking animals!”
Though Alexi Chernov had been trained not to hyperventilate in the tight confines of the sub, the sympathetic division of his autonomic nervous system had been in training for more than a million years longer—and his fight-or-flight responses took control without consultation.
Knowing that the boat had reached the shallows, Alexi flung his bedding from the hatch over the moon pool. Cranking down the outer dive collar, he hastily prepared the cabin for emergency egress—just in case he saw an opportunity to escape. The scratching reached a maddening level and the pilot turned toward the bow, where fist-sized suction cups were attaching themselves to each of the view ports. He watched, somehow fascinated, as they undulated against the Plexiglas, seeming to feel around the ports with thoughtful intensity.
No wasted movement, Alexi thought, reminded of something he’d seen as a boy. Like a starfish engulfing a clam—forcing its way inside to get at the—
The thought was interrupted by a new pattern of intense scratching and clicking. The vibration was coming up through the moon pool’s steel hatch, and he reasoned that it—they—were figuring out how to unlock or peel open the lid.
Alexi shimmied slowly away from the portal and sat back, resigned now to watch what was unfolding. They’ll probably come in through that hatch.
Two loud cracks, one immediately following the other, drew his attention toward the bow, just in time to hear (and worse, to understand) the pair of dull thuds that accompanied the extraction of the Plexiglas viewports. But instead of twin torrents of water blasting into the cabin, what entered was a massive inpouring of flesh.
Chernov’s last conscious thoughts were more of astonishment and regret than fear. It seemed impossible that such large bodies coming through such small openings could take shape so quickly. And while there was a certainty of imminent death, there was no awareness of pain. There was only a regret that his loved ones would never know that for him those last seconds were like watching it all happen to someone else. Alexi Chernov knew they would always imagine it being much worse for him than it actually was.
The creatures that had invaded the mini-sub expanded to fill nearly half of the flooding cabin.
They embraced their prey. And having decided to share it, they waited for all movement to cease.
Only then did they enter it.
Only then did they feed.
5.33 Million b.c.
The Lost World of Mediterranean Canyon
A new animal was rising to the ranks of sentience upon the planet. The cephalopod that had attacked Proud One’s clan was only one among so many increasingly self-aware species, evolving in such diverse places, that if Mac and his friends had been equipped with the ultimate paleontological tool—a time machine—it might have seemed to them that nature was trying in every way possible to create intelligent life.
The ancestral Kraken huddled beneath the surface of the great salt marsh, watching, waiting, analyzing. On the world above, a new enemy was approaching from the highlands in the south. They moved among the reeds and trees as if they owned the earth—hair-covered bipeds—with sharp teeth and thick, muscular claws.
During a night raid on the biped intruders, one of the three sub-adults involved in the attack had been severely wounded. In addition to losing an eye, the little male had suffered severe damage to the myriad of nerves involved in salt and oxygen regulation. Normally these combined abilities allowed the smallest members of the lair to go landward and ascend nimbly into the trees. But presently the wounds rendered prolonged survival impossible. Even at a distance of several body lengths, even against the background noise of the undersea world, it was impossible not to feel the vibrations from all three of the little male’s hearts failing.
One of the adults cut a long, long strip of still-warm red growth from a rock. But the wounded male refused to eat. Most of his limbs were turning pale, yet he still possessed enough strength to flash his caretaker a rotating zebra pattern that communicated a calm resignation to life’s end.
Nearby, the smoky hot water from seven min
eral towers had turned the subsurface lair into a red garden. The day’s first faint shafts of sunlight were stabbing down through spaces between scarlet billows when the caretaker reached out a limb and discovered that the child’s hearts had finally stopped.
As she retreated from the corpse, another member of the disastrous nighttime scouting party slid in beside her. The skin on one side of his body, though gouged and scratched, shifted from a rock-mimicking pattern to figures so precisely geometric as to dance somewhere between mathematics and art, to become linguistic. The caregiver read the tapestry of lines and shapes as if it were a written code.
The general message conveyed included blushes of anger over a contradiction: the trespassers from the south were food, and yet the scouts had been bitten and partly devoured by food.
With the exception of Proud One’s troop and the dialect of the Stone-throwers, nothing upon the planet could be adequately compared with the detailed communications now passing between the two cephalopods. Their skin shimmered in a million points of light, as if adorned with a cloak of microscopic gems. The colors included opal red, tanzanite blue, sapphire yellow, and celestine white. The adult understood that she was to follow the juvenile to the place toward which their attackers were migrating—to the reeds at the edge of the marsh, where the hopping snails lived.
He led her directly to a system of canals that extended deep into the plain of moss and reeds. They swam past stands of trees on either side, and among the reeds roamed herds of kangaroo-like mollusks. None of them had a chance of reaching the continents above, or surviving in the highlands long enough to enter the fossil record. In another five million years, the deep Mediterranean world was fated to become so utterly lost to history that the very rays of sunlight now being caught by the canal’s surface and reflected back into space would be scattered far beyond the Andromeda galaxy.
Like the intruding bonobo lineage, the road the cephalopods followed had been long and hard. After the great Mediterranean dry-out, during a period in which all the waters of the Nile poured down terraced cliffs many times wider, and two miles higher, than Niagara, the caretaker’s ancestors were confined increasingly to a sea at the new river’s end, just south of Crete. All around them, with the weight of the entire Mediterranean removed by the dry-out, vast regions of the seafloor had bobbed upward. Sometimes the rise amounted to hundreds of feet, carrying Crete and Santorini with it. Here and there, pieces of earth’s crust stretched and cracked open, bringing forth springs of warm volcanic water. In a few rare and isolated places around the Devil’s Hole, the springs drew an intensely symbiotic microbe from within the earth.
