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S
turman woke with a start, out of a dream. He had heard something. He lay in the darkness, straining to hear anything—if someone had boarded his vessel, perhaps—but he heard nothing. He looked down at the floor and saw Bud asleep there. They were alone on
Maria.
He must have been dreaming.

He sat up and looked at the clock. One in the morning. Why the hell had he woken? He rolled onto his side, away from the clock, and tried to focus on the gentle motion of the waves rocking the boat. Instead, his mind went directly to Valerie Martell.

He knew what he needed to do now, but he also knew he needed to be patient. He had called her earlier to explain how he felt, to apologize if he could. He would offer to help them out when he heard back from her, if she was still in the area. He had made dinner and whistled afterward as he washed the dishes, feeling better than he had in a long time. Sleep had been impossible at first. He had tried reading, but in his excitement it had taken him more than an hour to finally drift out of consciousness. Now he was wide awake again.

He left the cabin to relieve himself in the cool night air and looked out over the calm, starlit waters of the harbor. He returned to his bunk and gave Bud a pat on the head before pulling his blankets up over him. As he began to drift off again, he thought he heard something again. Was he hearing things? No, there it was again—his cell phone this time. Was something wrong with his father? Nobody called this late unless it was an emergency.

He jumped out of his bunk inside the darkened cabin and hurried through the door to the galley. Where was the damn phone? As it rang the fourth and final time, he found it on the portside bench in the main cabin and grabbed it, looking at the glowing screen. Val.

His heart leapt as he flipped open the phone. “Val, I’ve been thinking about you. Is everything all right?”

“Will, I hope you’re close. We’re in trouble.”

 

 

“Karl, there’s no time to argue. Put on the gear.”

“But Valerie—”

“Dammit, Karl, you don’t have a choice. You know I’m right. Sturman or someone else might find us out here, but this ship is going down. This is our best chance.” She had given Sturman their coordinates over the phone, but she didn’t know if he was close enough to reach them in time. He was coming from Gull Harbor, no more than ten miles away, but by the time he got the boat running, out of the harbor, and across the dark channel . . .

“If we just put on life jackets, we can stay on the surface—”

“Karl! Listen to me. I
know
these animals. We’ll be safer near the structure of the boat than on the surface out in open water. The longer we can stay with the boat, the better our chances.”

“But when the boat sinks—”

“When it sinks, we’ll have to fend for ourselves on the surface. At least with scuba gear on we won’t drown if the ship pulls us down with her.”

After the explosion, Val and Karl had stumbled out into the smoke on deck to find that the dynamite had somehow exploded directly against the
Centaur
’s hull. What was left of Ari had been sprayed in a crimson mess across the area where he had stood moments before, just above where the dynamite had detonated. The captain had been nowhere in sight.

In spite of the death around her, what bothered Val the most was the steady sound of rushing water. The gaping hole in the side of the seiner had gradually become visible as the smoke cleared. It extended from below the waterline to as high up as the starboard gunwale.

“Valerie, if we can get to the skiff, we will be safe there.”

She looked out toward the small boat, its gray hull barely visible in the darkness a hundred yards or so from the seiner as it drifted away toward the mainland. The cleat to which it had been tied had been destroyed in the explosion, but the skiff had somehow survived, propelled across the waves away from the larger boat. In the moments of panic as they had searched for the captain, it had floated too far away to risk swimming to retrieve it.

“How the hell are you going to get to the skiff, Karl? It’s even farther away than before.”

“I do not know.”

“If you want to swim out to it, be my guest. I’ll wait for you here.”

“But you know I cannot swim. That is not funny.”

“You don’t need to be able to swim to use scuba gear, dammit! This is your only choice. You’re a fucking marine scientist, for Christ’s sake! You can go into the goddamn ocean!”

Val took a deep breath. The air still smelled slightly of sulfur.

Karl picked up a dive mask and turned it over in his hands. “How will we protect ourselves?”

“The squid shouldn’t be able to seriously injure us, as long as they can’t drag us into deeper water and we stay near the wreckage. We’ll hold on to anything floating if they try to pull us down. And we can try to keep them at a distance with our dive lights.” She wondered if their lights would be bright enough to actually deter the shoal.

“They will still bite us,
ja
?”

“Maybe. But they aren’t like sharks. The damage they can inflict with their beaks is limited. The real threat is that they could overwhelm us and drown us. If we hurry up instead of talking about it, we might actually survive.” She took another deep breath and tried to stay calm. She touched the arm of the gangly scientist, and in her most soothing voice said, “Karl, I’m scared, too, but you have to trust me, okay? This is what we need to do.”

He breathed out and nodded. “
Ja
. Okay, Valerie.”

“Let’s get moving, then.”

Karl sat and forced his arms into a scuba vest to which she had already affixed a heavy tank and regulator. She continued talking to him as he prepared to go under.

“So why can’t you swim, big guy? Never been in water too deep for you to stand?” She forced a laugh and stood on her tiptoes as he stood up next to her. He didn’t laugh, but at least he was moving.

“My father was a fisherman. Where we are from, it is considered bad luck for a fisherman to learn to swim. If you do not trust in your boat, she will sink, so you prove your faith by not learning to swim.”

“Are you kidding me?” Val shook her head. “How could you become a scientist if you grew up so superstitious, with—”

She felt water on her feet. The first waves were now washing over the main deck and had begun pouring down into the seiner’s hold, sounding like a small waterfall as they rushed into the empty chamber. The
Centaur
would go down soon. If they could just manage to stay on it for ten more minutes . . .

Fins in hand, they moved up the steps toward the elevated wheelhouse, the highest point on the boat, and stopped just outside it. They watched quietly as the water rose to the top step and began to flood inside. The sound of water running to fill the hull had now stopped. Val stepped into the confined space of the wheelhouse, but Karl hesitated below her on the wheelhouse steps, water up to his knees, his eyes wide.

“We will at least tether ourselves to the boat,
ja
?”

“We can’t, Karl. We’d go down with it.” She reached for his hand. “Come on. We’ll stay in here as long as we can. Once she starts to go down, just get away as fast as possible and make for the surface. Maybe we can swim to the skiff.”

There was a loud bursting noise as the relentless seawater forced a pocket of air out of the bowels of the vessel. It wouldn’t be long now.

 

 

Prey.
The splashes and movement could mean there was food entering the water.

The one-eyed female, closer to the surface than most in the shoal, moved through the water beside her badly scarred sister. They had retreated from the harsh glare as the massive object began to sink. Now, as its blinding lights suddenly disappeared, they returned to its hulking form. And the possible prey within.

As they hovered near the object, the one-eyed female detected a faint sound in the water. It was distant, only detectable for an instant in the blackness. Then it appeared again, and became stronger, and the deep vibrations gradually increased, pulsing through the water and into her soft body. The sounds vibrating against and through her now had become familiar. Like the leviathan slowly sinking before them, she now identified this new sound with many things.
Food. Confinement. Stress. Danger.
The explosion in the water had killed or maimed many in her shoal, some of which were consumed by other squid. Yet the sinking object in the water before them seemed to pose no immediate threat. It remained inert. And inside it, she could detect prey.

Her natural instincts had dulled. Confused, she had become more aggressive, sensing but not comprehending that something was wrong. Within her and other members of the shoal, parasites wormed past nerve fibers and around organs, interfering with the natural impulses and rhythms that drove their hosts. The shoal was weakening, its efforts to capture prey less successful, its attacks less coordinated. Its members had eaten little over the past two nights, and had become increasingly cannibalistic to feed their relentless metabolisms.

She was hungry. Now free from confinement, she was motivated by a single purpose.

To feed.

Her shoal had become uncharacteristically scattered. Once a tight collective of a thousand members gathered far below the surface, it was now composed of small groups and individuals spaced widely in the black water around the submerged object. Alongside her scarred sister, trailing several others also circling the object, the one-eyed female moved slowly, struggling to keep up. She sensed conflicting signals pass through her body. That something was wrong inside her, her focus uncertain. Several smaller members of her group had noticed this, and had become aggressive toward her already, sensing her weakness. They were all hungry. Always hungry.

Two squid moved toward her and followed her closely, watching. But they kept their distance from her and her equally imposing sister.

As she propelled herself in a slow circle near the lower fringe of the others moving around her, she was unaware that her own parasitic infestation was very advanced. Her organs were heavily impacted now. But she was still alive. Like all living things, she would not yield willingly to her death. And to survive, she needed to feed.

As she turned her broad fins to redirect her body, her black, bulbous eye caught a sudden change in the water column. A variance in the dark water. Her fins stopped fluttering. Her mantle stopped pumping seawater. There, ahead of her, she saw it again. A small, moving light within the massive object.

Light . . . and life.

M
aria
raced surely over the dark swells to intercept the sinking seiner. At twenty-five knots, she was quickly closing the distance. Sturman scanned the darkness from her flying bridge, a cigarette burning between his teeth, ashes whirling down against his shirt and into the night wind. The sea had calmed considerably from earlier in the day, but was still far from flat. He could see almost nothing ahead of him, even with a spotlight trained on the small waves off the bow.

Under the circumstances, he had made the dangerous decision to go full throttle. Although there was some risk of a collision out here at night, running aground was an impossibility. It was thousands of feet deep here.

He tossed the cigarette over the side and tried to call Val. No answer. As he drove farther into the dark channel, he fought to push aside distracting thoughts. Thoughts about Joe, and the guilt that came with what Val had told him. Thoughts about Maria. Now they were both gone. But right now Val needed him.

Bud sat beside Sturman, his head thrust out over the side, nose sniffing the cool night air rushing past the bridge, short ears laid back. Sturman looked at his watch. Val had called him twenty minutes ago. The GPS on his dash indicated that he had just over a mile to his destination—at least to the coordinates Val had hurriedly given him. Could the seiner still be afloat, after so much time had passed? Maybe another vessel had been out night fishing and had already come to her aid. Val had put out a mayday on the VHF before calling his phone, but she didn’t know if anyone had received it.

As he tried for a second time to raise the Coast Guard on his own radio,
Maria
crashed furiously into a trough, sending spray down the sides of the hull. If there was a response on the radio, he couldn’t hear it over the wind and the roar of the straining engine.

As the “distance to next” figure on his marine GPS passed under a thousand feet, he pulled back on the throttle, slowing to ten knots. With his spotlight, he scanned the swells and troughs off the bow. If he had arrived too late, there might be nothing but floating debris. Hell, out here, in the dark, he’d be lucky to find anything if the vessel had gone under. He tried Val on the phone but again got only her voice mail.

Sturman swore and struck the helm with his fist, then snatched his hat off his head and threw it onto the dash. Bud licked at his arm. Sturman was sweating despite the cool air on his face.

The GPS beeped to indicate that he was nearing his destination.
307 feet. 292 feet.
He slowed the boat to five knots, sweeping the darkness left and right with the spotlight. He reached the coordinates and slowly passed the location where the vessel had been. Nothing. He felt sick to his stomach.

The boat should have moved some to the east, which would mean it would be past the coordinates Val had given him. He veered left and covered a few hundred feet, then turned ninety degrees and steered back toward his original heading. He motored past the GPS coordinates again and continued southeast for a minute. Nothing.
Wait.
Off the starboard—something white. He spun the helm. Floating junk. A water bottle, some other trash. A life preserver.
There.
He saw a boat bobbing on the waves, and held the spotlight on it.

It was only a small fishing skiff, obviously the seiner’s. He approached and saw that it was empty. He began to pass it, but something told him to bring it with him. He ran
Maria
alongside the skiff, striking its hull with a loud thud, and quickly tied it to a cleat on the stern before resuming the search, skiff in tow.

Thirty seconds later, as he continued to move in an eastward search line, he looked back to his right and caught something in the beam of his searchlight. A hundred or so feet away, pointing up out of the water, were part of a large boom and the smooth, grey edge of a bow. He had passed the seiner in the darkness. He spun the helm to starboard and eased back on the throttle as he approached.

“Val!”

He eased back further on the gas to lessen the engine noise, but there was no response.
Think, Will.

Sturman idled near the sinking seiner, scanning the water for survivors or objects that could damage the boat’s propeller. A collection of yellow floats crowded together near the vessel, marking the top of a massive fishing net. Something red in the beam of light caught his eye. A dive flag.
They went under. Of course.
They had to be underwater, inside the vessel, where they would be safe from the shoal. But for how long?

Somehow the seiner was still on the surface. There had to be a pocket of air trapped in the forward hull that was preventing it from sinking, but it wouldn’t be long before the rest went under. A rivet or hatch or seam on the old boat would give, and then it would be a matter of seconds. Val and the others had to be hiding in or near the hull, where they could find some protection from the shoal. Sturman remembered the six large lights mounted to the outside of his boat, still in place from the nighttime excursions with Val. Although they had used the lights to attract the shoal before, she had explained once that the squid wouldn’t want to get too close to the blinding beams. Maybe the lamps would scare off the shoal now, if it was close to the surface.

He flipped the lights on. The surrounding ocean went from black to deep blue in the patch of artificial daylight. In it, more flotsam appeared on the surface. Sturman’s gaze paused on an object bobbing in the swells near the sinking boat. A body, floating face-down. Sturman’s heart lurched, but when he trained the light on the inert figure he saw that it was not Val. This was an older person, probably a man, with a mess of wet, graying hair moving in the surge.

He nosed
Maria
slowly toward the body, avoiding the masses of netting just below the surface. As Sturman neared, he saw several large, submerged shapes around the floating figure retreat as the lights reached them. Squid. A dark cloud in the water around the corpse gradually became bloodred as the light touched it. Bone showed on the man’s limbs, where flesh had already been devoured. Sturman spat into the water.

“You sons of bitches.”

He turned the helm away with a mixture of revulsion and anger and fear. There was nothing to be done. This man was already dead.

He needed to find Val.