From below, p.28
From Below, page 28
The procession did not pause, and so neither did Harland. He set his burning eyes ahead, his feeble light joining the dozens of other glass jars raised around him, as they rounded the storage hold’s barriers to see the wall where it had begun.
Fitz worked at it. His clothes were in tatters. He’d neither changed nor washed them since leaving port. Tears ran down the sleeves where he’d scavenged fabric to patch his cracked hands. The threads at the seams were frayed, much like Fitz himself.
He used his makeshift crowbar to work at the hole he’d already created. The sharpened tip stabbed repeatedly at a seam on the external wall, where a black stain still showed where the corpse had once been pressed. Salt water gushed through the hole he’d formed.
The procession had come to a halt in a ring around him. Everywhere Harland looked were gray faces and dark, unfocused eyes. He felt as though he were in some type of slow, disquieting dream, the kind that wasn’t quite a nightmare, but regardless left him waking in damp sheets and with fear in his blood.
Metal shrieked as the seam was pried open. More water gushed onto the floor. The pools shifted with each swell they passed over, sometimes leaving the floor at Harland’s feet merely damp, sometimes splashing frothy water across his ankles.
Fitz staggered back from the wall, gasping. His body was drenched from the spray. Strands of hair hung glued to his face. Feral eyes glanced out from behind them, seeming neither conscious nor quite human; their cores appeared to Harland to be a sick tar black, with tiny pinpricks of light at their center. They flashed as they fixed on him.
“Harland…my lad.” Fitz stretched a hand toward him. The bandages around his fingers were bled through and hung in scraps. “I found the answer. There are others. So many others. But they hide deeper. We peeled back one layer of skin and found the first infection. But to purge the others, we must go farther. Peel back layer on layer, until the flesh is bare and the parasites are exposed to our lights. I will get them, my lad. Like this.”
He swung back to the wall, hurling his strength into the bar as he stabbed through the metal.
Harland felt strangely detached as he watched. Fitz’s mantra felt wrong to him. The water gushing through the widening hole was, in increments, rising across the floor. He couldn’t believe that there could be any more layers beyond that, despite what Fitz said.
But Fitz had been right before, hadn’t he? He’d found the blackened mummy. Maybe he knew something no one else did. Dark secrets, whispered into his ears during those hours he’d spent alone in the hold.
A dark shape shifted near the opposite wall. Captain Virgil’s imposing outline was hidden under the layers of shadows. He was flanked by four of his officers, their hands clasped behind their backs. They were his attack dogs. Focused, unthinking, scarcely breathing. They were contained but braced to lunge forward at a flick of their master’s wrist.
The captain regarded Fitz with something that bordered on curiosity. The past days had been harsh on him, as it had on all of them. His broad shoulders were still set, but he’d lost both color and fullness to his face. Dark patches marked around the edges of his eyes. As Harland watched, a trickle of shockingly vivid blood seeped from the corner of his nose. He swiped the back of his hand over it with the passionless irritation of a man brushing a fly away.
Fitz released a cry. The metal plate broke free on one side, lurching inward. The subtle flow of water turned into a deluge. It spread outward, coursing over Harland’s feet in frothy ripples.
“They’re here,” Fitz muttered, but his raspy voice was nearly impossible to hear beneath the thick rush of the ocean. “They’re here…they must be here…”
He tried to jab his metal bar through the gap, but the water pressure sent him staggering back. Fitz stopped in their loosely formed circle, doubled over, his face going slack as he drew gasping breaths.
Captain Virgil tilted his head a fraction. The officers at his side tensed, prepared for movement.
“It seems to me that the body in the walls served a vital purpose.” The captain’s skin might have turned papery and pale, but his voice still held the rigid quality that made the dull-eyed onlookers turn toward him. “It was required there to block the flow of water. In removing it, we created a weakness in our ship.”
Every face in the room focused on the captain, save for Fitz’s. Salt water dripped from his whiskers as he stared into the hole he’d formed, manic, utterly possessed. He showed no reaction to the words as the captain continued speaking.
“The body shall be replaced,” Virgil said. “Stock master Fitzwilliam has offered himself.”
The captain’s hand flicked up, and the four officers moved. Fitz barely had the breath to make a sound as they grasped his arms and dragged him forward, toward the chasm gushing water.
Harland’s body turned numb. Blood rushed through his ears as loud as the foaming waves. The jar slipped from his sweaty grip, and the swelling water at his feet flooded it and extinguished the flame. No one else seemed to notice.
He tried to move, even to raise his hands, but it was as though his free will had been stolen. He could do nothing except stand there, his jaw slack and his eyes staring, as his friend was forced into the jagged hole he’d carved.
43
The third dive
Aidan’s mouth gaped open, but no sounds came out. His throat had closed over so tightly that he couldn’t form even a whisper, let alone draw air.
The mottled, shriveled hand fastened around his wrist. The shroud slipped farther from around the corpse. A larger slice of its corrupted face became visible. The lips had pulled back from yellowed teeth, creating the impression that it was grinning at Aidan. Milky eyes were fixed on his face with more intensity than their blindness should have allowed.
He tried to squirm his hand free, but the grip was like a vise. The corpse tugged on him, dragging itself closer, the shroud slipping further.
Aidan’s mouth stretched wider, fighting to release the scream that echoed through his head, but he was choking on his own saliva.
Large arms gripped him from behind. Aidan shuddered, shocked into paralysis, before he glimpsed the form in his periphery. Sleek, dark dry suit material cloaked the arms. Gloved hands dug around his waist as Vanna found a grip.
She dragged him backward, away from the shrouded body. He was barely aware of her shallow, ragged breathing through the communication unit.
The corpse didn’t release its grip. As Aidan lurched backward, it was pulled in his wake, dragging the cloth in heavy billows behind it. The leering, skull-like grin fixated on him as its gray hair swirled. He choked on the lump in his throat as he fought to breathe.
Vanna released him. One hand planted on his shoulder to pull him backward in the same motion as she pushed herself forward. Then both of her gloved hands fastened on the corpse’s fingers, fighting for any give they might have, trying to dig the clutching hand free.
The pressure on Aidan’s forearm increased. A stuttering gasp filled his lungs as sparks flashed over his vision. He felt his very bones groan from the pressure as they were crushed to the edge of fracturing.
Vanna reached into her belt. Aidan was barely able to focus on a flash of metal as her dive knife rose and then plunged into the corpse’s forearm.
The blade embedded itself, slicing through skin and muscle. The grinning corpse showed no reaction. It was drawing itself closer to Aidan in increments, pulling his wrist toward its chest, its face angled up to meet his.
A second arm extended from the coils of off-white cloth. It was bony and seemed frozen into a fist, but it stretched forward regardless, moving to Aidan’s throat.
Vanna rolled away. Her fin came up and she kicked it into the reaching hand. The corpse rocked. A horrible crackling noise rose from the neck as its head snapped backward, then slowly drifted forward again, the blank white eyes unerringly coming down to fasten on Aidan’s own.
Another aching breath whistled through his constricted throat. Vanna still held the blade embedded in the corpse’s arm. She twisted it, wrenching it from side to side, and Aidan only realized what she was trying to do when splinters of cracked bones began floating from the wrist.
He closed his eyes and turned his head aside. Even through the muffling suit, he heard the crack as the hand was severed. The pressure on his arm instantly relaxed. Aidan grit his teeth as the severed hand slid off him. It floated on the edges of his peripheral vision, spiraling loosely, slowly descending to the floor.
The corpse didn’t stop. The shroud tangled around the lower half of its body as its staring, emaciated face drew closer to Aidan.
Vanna’s foot came up again. Her fin hit the corpse’s face, and for the second time, Aidan’s stomach turned at the sound of the crackling joints being moved in unnatural ways.
Slowed by the water’s resistance, Vanna’s kick hadn’t had as much power as she’d clearly wanted to give. It was enough to direct the corpse away from them though. The gray body bumped against the suspended nets, sending additional sediment flooding into the already clouded water.
“Cove. Roy.” Vanna shoved her knife back into her belt and then fixed her grip on Aidan’s arm as she pulled him away from the shrouded figure. “End the dive. Do you hear me? Leave the ship immediately by the nearest exit you can find.”
She’d been unnervingly silent when focused on the shrouded body. Now though, Aidan could hear the heavy undercurrent of fear in the sharply enunciated words.
His own panic rose as the other side of the communications units stayed silent. He might have expected objections from Roy and questions from Cove, but not this: the endless, faintly staticky quiet.
“I repeat, exit the dive immediately.” Vanna moved ahead of Aidan, her hand on his bruised and aching wrist as she pulled him toward the hold’s door. Her head moved on a swivel, and the harsh white beam from her headgear lit up the stacks of crates and seemingly endless amounts of white fabric bundled in every corner. “Cove. Roy. Please acknowledge.”
Still silence. Vanna’s movements drew to a sharp halt, and Aidan tilted his body back to keep from colliding with her.
The door existed as a dark arch ahead, its metal frame glaring in the lights and the space beyond forming a shadowy block. That darkness had been interrupted though. A long, shriveled arm reached across the opening, its pale-gray skin in sharp contrast to the darkness.
Vanna’s rebreather purged a rush of air as she began backing up. Movement came from their sides. Bundles of white writhed as disfigured limbs crept out of the shrouds.
The bodies around them were rising.
“Cove. Roy. Please acknowledge.”
Vanna’s words hung over Cove, echoing through the headset long after the static-filled voices had faded. She couldn’t reply.
Four bodies were suspended in the water ahead. Their clothes hung loosely, twisting into strange shapes in the eddies. Their arms were curled about their bodies. Their heads turned upward, directed toward the ceiling, while their feet hung nearly a foot above the floor.
They were in a room we passed. We created currents that pulled them out into the hallway. That must be what happened.
Even as she made that promise to herself, Cove wasn’t able to believe it. They hadn’t passed any other open doors. There was nowhere in the hallway that could have conceivably concealed one corpse, let alone four. It seemed impossible that the forms were now blocking their path back.
Nitrogen narcosis. Oxygen poisoning. Your dive computer’s clock malfunctioned and you’ve been at depths longer than you should have. You’re hallucinating.
The four forms were nearly twenty feet away, right on the edge of her light’s reach. At that distance, they appeared more shadow than human. And the darkness could very easily force a mind to concoct shapes to fill the void. It was plausible.
Except Cove knew she wasn’t alone in seeing them. Roy had turned rigid at her side.
If it hadn’t been for Roy, Cove might have actually approached the figures, intent on proving her theory. But she could feel the tension rolling off of her companion as his fight-or-flight instincts kicked in, and it sent her own pulse into a raging tempo that she couldn’t stop.
There must be an explanation. This must be some kind of mistake, or—
The first figure, the one closest to them, moved. Horrible clicking, cracking noises echoed along the hallway as the body rotated to face them, its head slowly lowering to fix them with heavy-lidded, sightless eyes.
Cove found Roy’s arm and shoved. His head jerked, as though he was coming back to life again.
They were all moving now. Bone-thin arms twitched in sharp, insect-like jolts as they unraveled from around the bodies. A mess of hair washed over the closest one’s face, obscuring its eyes, as its jaws creaked open.
The clicking sounds were growing louder, and Cove realized, with a tinge of disbelief, that the corpses were gaining on them. Their forms, which she had only glanced at the edges of her light even half a minute ago, were becoming clearer as they twitched through the murky water.
A noise came from the communications unit. A gasp. A hiss of pain from Vanna. Cove’s heart froze.
“Vanna. Aidan.” She kept her voice to a whisper, hoping that the sound wouldn’t reach the distant forms. “Are you safe?”
“Trying—” Another sharp noise from Vanna, the static rising to swell over her words. “Get out of the ship. Get out now. I can’t help you. Do you understand? You need to get out.”
“Yeah.” That was Roy, his voice hollow with shock, the words almost drowned out under the static. “I’m pretty sure we understand.”
The nearest body reached an arm toward them, fingers raking the water, and Cove knew it wasn’t just searching the water blindly: it could sense their presence.
The door beside them was the only one open that they’d found along that hallway. Without moving her eyes from the approaching figures, Cove felt for Roy’s shoulder and shoved him toward the dark opening. He shuddered at her touch, then pushed through the gap, leaving room for Cove to follow. The moment she passed through, Roy forced the door closed.
Its hinges set up a shrieking, scraping sound as they moved. Gently, Cove thought, but it was already too late; sediment rose from the motion, hanging heavy in the water.
“What is that?” Roy asked. “What kind of—”
Nitrogen narcosis. Shared delusions. Hallucinations.
None of them felt fully true to Cove. But what other explanation was there?
“Doesn’t matter. Whatever’s happening, we can figure that out later. Right now, we just need to get out.” She was already moving to the window, her steady voice belied the way her heart pounded out of control. “Vanna, Aidan, we’re a fair way from the door. Can you find the exit without assistance?”
“Working on it” was Vanna’s short reply. Static hissed at the edges of her audio.
Cove felt around the porthole’s seal. It was fused in place…not that it would have been much help either way. If she’d removed her tanks, Cove might have been just able to squirm through the opening, but it would be too narrow for Roy’s shoulders.
Think. If our intended path back is blocked by… Her mind shorted out as she tried to fit any kind of word into that space. If our path back is blocked, we’ll need an alternative.
The ship had dual hallways running its length, occasionally connected by intersecting halls. Cove and Roy were on the starboard side of the ship. If they kept following their path, they could eventually cross over to the port and use it to get back around to the set of stairs they’d been trying to reach. It was a circuitous route, but it at least meant they wouldn’t have to get any closer to the shapes blocking the hallway.
“Roy, we’re going around.” Cove pushed away from the window. Roy stood frozen, his fingers spread at his sides. He stared toward the wardrobe. The door was creeping open.
Don’t. Don’t think about it. Don’t dwell, or you’ll lose whatever’s left of your mind.
She shoved Roy’s shoulder, pushing him toward the door.
Outside, coming from the hallway, she could faintly make out the clicking sound of long-dead corpses.
44
Aidan’s eyes burned. He didn’t have the courage to blink. A trickle of sweat ran down his back, making him itch for a second before it was absorbed into the layers of wool.
Vanna was at his side. They’d wedged themselves in behind a row of crates. Through a gap in the stack, Aidan thought he could glimpse the path to the hold door. It seemed impossibly far away. He fixed his eyes on it, unwilling to look away for even a glance in case it somehow vanished in the gloom.
Something heavy and dark shifted past, blocking his view. He tried to squirm backward, but there was nowhere to go.
Vanna’s head moved in sharp jerks as she assessed their options. Her headlight glanced over sacks, ropes, and wood before coming to rest on the crate less than six inches ahead of her. The backwash was strong enough to illuminate her features, even through the smooth mask. So far underwater, her skin looked a sickly gray. Spots of perspiration dotted her cheeks.
The lights. They’re like a beacon, calling everything toward us.
Aidan’s hand twitched, but he repressed the movement. Switching the lights off wasn’t going to be any kind of solution. It would be as bad as being trapped in the silt-out again. They’d be blind.
Even as he thought that, the bulb in Vanna’s light dimmed a fraction before coming back to full strength.
The batteries should have all been fresh. Part of Vanna’s work was to check and recheck the equipment after every dive and he doubted someone with as much caving experience as her would leave the lights to chance. The bulb dimmed again, then came back once more. His stomach turned to knots.
Vanna tapped his wrist, then, barely moving her hand, indicated to her left. She’d decided on a route. Aidan, scarcely breathing, nodded once. Going left put them farther from the door. But he also couldn’t see the door any longer, since the dark silhouette had drifted across his view.
