From below, p.38
From Below, page 38
Roy made a sound somewhere between a groan and a cry. Cove let herself drift away from the open door, frowning as she tried to understand what she was looking at.
The form was made of bodies. The realization hit her like a slap, and she bit her tongue to prevent herself from making any additional noise. Layer upon layer of the stiff, discolored corpses had clumped together to form the mockery of a tree. Their limbs wove between each other, clinging, to create the effect of rippling whorls of wood. There had to be more than a hundred of them.
And there, in the formation’s center, was Aidan.
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The growth of interwoven bodies swayed. They were a map of washed-out colors, streaks of gray fabrics and gray patterns and gray skin. They clung to each other so tightly that it was impossible to see where one ended and another began.
And trapped in the shape’s center was a shimmering flash of black.
Gray skin spread over it. Gray arms coiling over the dive suit’s shoulder. Gray legs cinched across the waist. The suit’s lower half was no longer visible, embedded thoroughly inside the mass. Fingers pressed into the helmet’s reflective sheen, blotting out whatever was beneath.
“Aidan!” Roy lunged forward, then immediately pulled back again. The tower of merging forms began twisting at his voice. They squirmed, the limbs pulling tight, burrowing further into each other. The dark dive suit sank inches deeper into the mass. It threatened to vanish from sight altogether.
“Don’t move,” Vanna snapped. She reached one hand toward her companions, holding them in place.
Cove’s ears rang as her fear grew to overwhelming levels. Aidan hung limp. Part of his arms were still visible, but they weren’t moving.
Too late…you were too late…if only you’d noticed he was missing sooner…if only you’d gone to apologize an hour earlier…
She was going to scream.
The mass writhed in languid, sluggish rhythms. Cove’s light began to flicker as it traced over the pillar of coiling flesh. Like a hallucination. Like a monster from a fevered dream. No longer individuals but a tumorous growth taking root in the ship’s deepest level.
Aidan’s head twitched. The movement was subtle but sharp. The fingers holding his face in place tightened, drawing him an inch deeper.
“He’s still there,” Cove managed, but she could barely hear her own voice.
Roy took a sharp breath. Cove gripped his forearm to hold him still. She didn’t know if Aidan had seen them. One of his hands rose, the glove breaking out from the pillar that was slowly absorbing him. It spasmed.
A sickly moan escaped Vanna. The sound sent chills flooding down Cove’s spine. She was used to Vanna being calm, firm, unemotional. The pure dread flooding that sound sent her heart into palpitations.
Vanna launched away from them, swimming furiously toward the mass. Cove made to follow her before Vanna’s gasping, barking words cut her movements short. “Don’t follow! Stay where you are!”
“What—”
“He’s suffocating.”
One of Aidan’s hands twitched again. A reflexive action, not conscious. No other part of him could move.
The howling screams were building in Cove’s chest. She kicked closer, one hand still holding Roy’s forearm to prevent him from doing anything rash. “What are you—”
“Getting him air.” Vanna was already pulling the spare canister around from her side. Her voice was cracking. “It’s going to absorb me too. I’ll let it. But you have to find a way to get us out.”
Aidan’s hand spasmed once more. The movement was weaker. His mask had almost entirely disappeared under layers of sprawling fingers.
Vanna hit the mass. It responded instantly; the nearest bodies writhed inward, pulling away from her. Vanna didn’t give it any ground though; one hand dug between the whorls of flesh, searching for the edges to Aidan’s mask.
The growth swelled then. Hands broke away from the form. They wrapped across Vanna’s shoulders. More spread around her legs. She didn’t fight them. They began to suck her in, the sharp black dive suit vanishing in painful increments. Vanna’s gasp was audible through the communications unit. Cove could only imagine how viciously they must have been squeezing her.
Please. Aidan was almost gone. Only the edges of his glove and a sliver of the mask were visible. The static in her communications unit was growing worse. In her peripheral vision, Cove was aware of dark shapes gradually moving into the room. They floated, their arms wrapped across torsos, legs hanging limp beneath them, and their heads tilted up, facing the mass. They drew in from every shadowed corner of the boiler room, emerging through the open doorways and from between and inside the massive furnaces. One of the dark forms grazed Cove’s shoulder as it moved past. The bones in its neck cracked as its head slowly rotated to fix milky eyes on her. Cove held still, her teeth clenched, her heart ready to explode as it continued on, toward the conglomerate.
And at last, Vanna spoke.
“He’s got air.” And then softer, tinged with dread, “Don’t leave us.”
Cove let her eyes close for a second, the relief burning the inside of her chest. “We won’t.” Not in a thousand years.
Neither Vanna nor Aidan were visible any longer. More bodies merged with the slowly writhing growth. They were pressed thick, backs to the room, resolute as they struggled to burrow deeper into their own formation.
She needed to get her divers out. And soon.
They don’t like light.
Her headlight was already fading. At her side, Roy leaned forward, straining to see into the mass, as his own lamp blinked.
Cove pulled her two waterproof flares out of her belt and used one to tap Roy’s side to get his attention.
“We’ll swim above and drop them,” she said.
He nodded, retrieving his own flares. The lights were bright, but they didn’t last long. They would have a very limited window to work through.
“Vanna, one minute. Don’t let Aidan fall.” Cove pushed forward, adjusting her buoyancy to carry her closer to the ceiling. There was a gap of about twelve feet between the mass and the twisting metal pipes above. It should be enough, Cove hoped. If they miscalculated—if she and Roy were drawn into the coiling flesh—she didn’t think they would ever come out again.
The gray pillar writhed as she moved nearer, as though it wanted to retreat from her. Cove took advantage of that, kicking her feet to carry her up. She waited until she and Roy were nearly on top of it before preparing the flares.
They were rated to burn for fifteen minutes near the surface, but the increased pressure would force them to consume themselves much, much faster. They couldn’t afford to mess up their timing.
“Drop them on three.” Cove pulled on a tab, lighting the first of her flares. Vivid hissing red lights burst out of its end, the sparks spiraling away into the clouded water.
Movement came from below her. The mass shifted down, sinking toward the floor.
Good. They don’t like it. This might just be enough—
The gray form abruptly twisted and then surged upward again. Fast. Faster than Cove had anticipated the interlocked bodies could move. The space between her and the squirming mass halved in just a second, and she had a sharp moment of clarity: they were aiming to crush her and Roy into the metal-studded ceiling. She choked on her own voice. “Three!”
Roy made a faint gasping noise as he threw his two flares downward at the same moment Cove dropped one of hers. The heavy water slowed their momentum to a crawl. Instead of dropping into the twisting mass, they simply drifted, slowly rotating in the water.
The bodies were still rising though, rushing upward to meet them. The flare glanced off one of the bodies, and Cove felt a surge of panic.
They’re all facing inward, protecting their faces. The light can’t hurt them if they can’t see it.
Then, like ripples passing through unsteady water, a disturbance raced outward from the mass. The clinging, clutching limbs began to break apart: a hideous three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle collapsing on itself.
The closest bodies were almost upon Cove. She reached her hands down in defense, and a mottled back hit her gloves. They didn’t keep rising though. They spread apart, like a bubble bursting, their limbs separating from each other as the bodies writhed.
In their center was a blazing red flame. Vanna, crushed on all sides, had managed to light her own flare. She hunched around Aidan, one arm pinning him to her side, the flare held above their face masks.
The swelling mass was still fighting to keep itself whole. The twisting, gray figures reached back to one another, clutching and pulling as they tried to clump together again. The three flares Cove and Roy had dropped tumbled between the newly created gaps in the form, bouncing off twitching arms and illuminating a hundred slack-jawed faces.
Already the flares were starting to die. The depths were unforgiving to them; Vanna’s had burned half through. In another half minute, it would be gone entirely.
“Fast,” Cove yelled, and struck her final flare as she dove.
Bodies pulled away from her as she cut through the formation like a knife. She kept the flame ahead of herself, lighting her way, its tip pointed toward any and every distorted face that tried to block her path.
Vanna’s flare spluttered as it neared the end of its life. She dropped it and instead stretched her hand up.
Cove caught her around the wrist and hauled. Roy followed at her back, using his headlight and his spare flashlight like dual swords to cut through the mass. The final clinging bodies released Vanna’s and Aidan’s legs as the flares spiraled past them.
Go, go, go. Her legs kicked furiously. She forced herself to breathe, even when her throat threatened to close over. The swelling mass of bodies was trying to reform…and reform over them. A net of the bodies spread above, slowly knitting together, limbs locking around each other as they pulled tight.
There was a small gap. Cove aimed for it. Her final flare was almost gone, but she reached it forward, piercing through the clumping, writhing bodies.
Her torso made it through, but then Vanna pulled on her hand. The bodies were sealing around them, tightening impossibly to hold them inside.
Roy snarled as he jammed his hands into two of the closest faces. He pushed, shoving them back, like tearing a hole through the fleshy net even as it tried to constrict around them. Crackling bones rang through the cold water, and then the hole was open again, and Roy was hauling them out.
Cove didn’t let herself so much as slow but continued pulling upward, toward the narrow metal doors that marked where the walkways had once existed.
Not the door we came through. They’ve sealed the other exit. We need another way—
Shapes continued moving across her periphery. More of the figures drifting in from every corner, converging on them. The silt made it nearly impossible to see, but Cove thought she glimpsed the outline of a door on the opposite wall from where they’d entered. She aimed for it.
Behind her, Roy discarded the flashlight he’d been using, dead already. He came up alongside Vanna, with Aidan positioned between them, and hooked his arms around the boy. Aidan still hadn’t moved. His legs trailed limply behind him, and his head bumped against his chest with every movement. Between them, Vanna and Roy held him upright and pulled him forward, leaving Cove to lead.
She hit the door and fought to get it open. It shuddered as it groaned inward. Cove moved to force it wider but then saw how close the dead had come to catching up to them.
The bodies climbed over each other. Their stiff, creaking fingers blindly dug into their companions as they crawled up, closer and closer to the door. Cove made a sharp noise and pulled away, her back pressed to the hallway’s metal wall as she tried to make room for the other divers. Roy shifted through the narrow door first, grunting as the metal scraped his shoulder. He pulled Aidan in after him, and Vanna, silent as a wraith, slipped through.
Cove shoved on the door. Slowed by the water, it wouldn’t close as quickly as she wanted. Hands hit against its other side. She pressed one foot into the wall to gain leverage and pushed. The door grated home.
There are no locks. It won’t take them long to get through.
The drowned figures were slow. Stiffened by age and the cold, they were sluggish to react, and that was Cove’s only real advantage. She couldn’t hide from them and she couldn’t fight them. Her sole hope was to move and move fast—and keep moving until they were outside the ship and beyond reach.
Vanna and Roy had paused, waiting for her, and she hissed, “Go.”
She wasn’t certain they heard through the drowning static, but at least they understood her gesture. Moving in an awkward single file with Aidan held between them, they navigated the tight crew hallway.
Stairs will be a good sign. Doors into the passenger quarters even better. The only thing we want to avoid is becoming backed into a room with no other exit.
It was a real risk in the crew-manned levels. Cove’s light was growing weak. Vanna used her handheld flashlight to substitute for her own headlight. The static became heavier with every passing second, and when a voice bubbled up from beneath, Cove had to strain to hear it.
“Do you have a location?” Hestie called. Her voice shook as she raised it to be heard over the static. “Do you know where you are?”
“Near the boiler room,” Cove replied. “We have Aidan. We’re trying to get out. As soon as I can identify an area, I’ll—”
Her voice cut off. The hallway ended ahead. A dark doorway gaped, seeming to swallow their lights even as they strained to look inside.
They had very little choice. Already, clicking, cracking sounds behind them told Cove that the figures had found their way through the door. There were no other exits. They had to go through, whether they wanted to or not.
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Roy passed Aidan back to Vanna and approached first. He moved cautiously, his broad shoulders hunched as he slipped through the unfamiliar opening. His headlight flickered, dimming alarmingly. Vanna cast one look back at Cove, then, with a brief nod, followed Roy.
We can’t afford a dead end. Cove’s heart thundered in her throat as she followed her team through the open doorway.
Her eyes took a second to adjust. The room was littered with long wood dining tables. They had been thrown loose by the sinking and now piled up like driftwood around the walls. Chairs toppled over and through them, the legs forming an unsettling patchwork of shadows in their conflicting lights. The furniture’s design was utilitarian, broad and solid, with very little effort put into make it appealing.
“We’re in the crew mess hall,” Cove said for Hestie’s benefit. “There should be at least one other way out. We just need to—”
Roy raised a hand, pointing at the opposite wall. There was the exit Cove needed. It was barely visible beneath the furniture that had piled in front of it.
She grit her teeth. We can’t go back. No other choice.
Vanna had read her thoughts. She gently released Aidan, letting him drift to the floor, before pushing forward and reaching into the barricade. They were going to have to dig their way out.
Cove tried not to look too closely at Aidan as she passed him. Vanna said she’d gotten the boy air in time, but he still hadn’t moved, and that terrified her. There was nothing she could do for him inside the Arcadia though; she could only fight to get him to the surface as quickly as possible and hope it would be enough.
She struggled to drag one of the chairs free. The room had relatively little sediment. That was a blessing for their visibility, but also a bad sign: sediment came from openings to the ocean. They had to be some distance from the exits if the mess hall was this clear.
Roy wrenched a table back, his gasps cutting through the static as he fought to unjam it. Cove put her shoulder into it, scraping it free. It rang out against the floor as it rolled aside.
They had managed to form a gap near the ceiling. Cove rose, clambering across the furniture as she tried to widen it. She caught a glimpse through the door. The other side seemed clear. She pulled at a chair, rattling it to unlock it from the jam, then tossed it back to where Vanna caught it.
Her fading light caught something dark on the opposite wall. Words, scrawled messily, almost frantically:
THEY HEAR YOUR WHISPERS
Cove set her jaw. “This should be enough,” she said. “Lift Aidan.”
As she reached down to take Aidan’s shoulders and draw him through the gap, something sleek grazed across the leg she’d braced against a table. Cove’s breath stuttered. Fingers curled from between the wood piles. Buried far down, pinned beneath the furniture, a cool, off-white eye regarded her.
Cove leaned back, pulling herself and Aidan through the narrow opening. As she drifted back toward the clear ground on the other side, she said, “Come through quickly. There’s something under the furniture.”
Roy muttered a swear word and barreled after her so quickly that he sent a loose chair skittering into the hall. He caught up with Cove and took Aidan’s other side, and she pretended she couldn’t feel him shivering through his suit.
They waited just long enough to ensure Vanna was through safely, then Cove pushed onward. An open door to her right revealed one of the crew’s rooms: bunks stacked against every wall, fitting as many of the sailors into the space as possible.
Then, to the left, another entrance opened into the kitchens.
Good. The kitchens would be close to the passenger areas. Cove’s heart was starting to ache from the strain. Her light flickered out entirely for a second before returning weaker than it had been before.
She pushed into the kitchens. Unlike other areas in the ship, most of the fixings had been bolted into the walls and ceiling. A chaos of pans and shattered plates lined the floor. The passageways between the benches were narrow, but at their other side, an open door teased the edges of a set of metal stairs leading up.
