by Mira Grant
He didn’t notice that they stopped preening as soon as he walked past them, or that some of them directed looks of frank disgust at his retreating back. He stopped to check one of the lines. A pretty black-haired girl in a green bikini withdrew a camera the size of a flash drive from under the skimpy fabric covering one breast and snapped a quick series of pictures, making sure her shots included as many of the other women as possible.
The redhead next to her gave her a quizzical look before asking, voice low, “Wife?”
The black-haired girl’s fingers tightened on her camera. “Yes.”
“Network,” said the redhead. “I set my cameras when we came aboard.”
“Nice,” said the first girl. She tucked the camera back into her bikini before offering her hand. “Elena.”
“Suzanne.”
“We looking at cancellation, or…?”
“Not yet.” Suzanne turned a predatory eye on Daniel, who had stopped again, this time to flirt with two actual bikini models. “The network’s concerned about reports of debauchery. They wanted someone to come on this trip and see how accurate they were. They hired me.”
“How did they know Daniel would pick you?”
“How did his wife know Daniel would pick you?”
“You saw the man behind the wheel when we boarded?” Elena nodded toward the cabin. Sunlight glinted off the windows, making it impossible to see inside. “He’s my brother. Technically, I’m along because I wanted the ride, not because Daniel wanted access to my sea chest.”
“Clever,” said Suzanne approvingly. “We’re not going to make problems for each other, are we?”
“Why should we?” Elena’s smile was quick and predatory, a shark cutting through calm waters. “We’re both getting paid. Your pictures don’t change mine. And the man’s an ass. Let’s take him down from every angle at once.”
Suzanne laughed. So did Elena. They were still laughing when there was a commotion from the side of the boat, a splash and a scream and the sound of bodies rushing toward the rail. Their heads snapped around, Elena half-rising from her deck chair before she realized what had happened.
Daniel was gone.
“Oh my God,” she said, in a tone of fascinated horror. “The narcissistic bastard knocked himself overboard.”
“Come on.” Suzanne grabbed her hand, dragging her toward the chaos. “I want pictures of this, and all my cameras are on the boat.”
There was no sign of Daniel when the pair reached the side. The sea was calm, giving no indication that it had just swallowed a man. Bikini models leaned over the rail, shouting and cursing, eyes scanning the horizon. Elena felt her stomach sink. She’d grown up in the Mariana Islands, born and raised on Guam, and she’d heard stories about this stretch of ocean.
How could I have been fool enough to take this job? she thought, turning to the cabin. Only fools sail where so many have been lost. She waved her arms frantically, hoping he would see her even though she couldn’t see him. They needed to turn around. They needed to get out of here.
Elena didn’t consider herself a superstitious person, but she would have had to be living under a rock not to have heard people whispering about what happened around the Mariana Trench when the sun was bright and the waters were still, when the fish had moved on and the things in the deeps grew hungry. There had been that mess a few years back, with a research vessel and the television network that showed all the Star Trek reruns. How she’d laughed at the thought of them being foolish enough to sail there, in the open waters where the bad things were.
She wasn’t laughing now.
She wasn’t laughing when the screams started behind her, high and shrill and terrified, or when she felt the touch of a hand—oddly long and spindly, covered in a cool, clammy film, like aloe gel was smeared across the skin—on the back of her ankle. Elena stopped waving her arms. She closed her eyes. If she couldn’t see it, it wouldn’t be real. That was the way the world worked, wasn’t it?
Her scream, when it came, was short and sharp and quickly ended. The boat began to move, her brother finally throwing it into gear, but it was too little, too late; his own scream soon joined the fading chorus.
The yacht rented by Daniel Butcher for his private entertainment was found three days later, drifting some eight hundred miles from its chartered destination. No survivors were ever found.
Neither were the bodies.
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