Deeper (38 page)

23

Want to know
what's right up there on the list of things that will fuck you up?
 
Try watching a man who is almost like
a brother get
torn to pieces before your eyes.

I didn't have
any choice in the matter.
 
I was looking
right at Charlie when the Deep Ones ripped into him, tearing and clawing and
biting.
 
For almost a full minute they
forgot about the rest of us and ripped Charlie apart.

Did Charlie
scream?
 
No.
 
He never made a sound, or if he did, I
couldn’t hear it over the noises coming from the frenzied demons.
 
As much as I wish I could say I ran to his
aid, I was frozen when it happened.
 
I
couldn’t have moved it I wanted to.
 
I'd
never been that horrified in my entire life.

Buddy wasn't
involved personally.
 
Maybe that's why he
didn't have the issues that I had or Diana for that matter.
 
While the two of us remained in our frozen
stages, he cut loose with both barrels, successfully stopping the Deep Ones
from taking the
Marianne
.

"Get your
fucking asses in gear!"
 
His voice
was hoarse and furious, but his face remained unsettlingly serene as he kept
firing away.

It was enough
to motivate me.
 
I picked up my automatic
and started firing again, hitting more than I missed.
 
I'd like to say that I was a damned fine
shot, but the truth is, there were just too many of them to make it hard to
find a target and hit it.

I moved closer
to Buddy and yelled to be heard over the sounds of the Deep Ones and the
automatic fire from the assault rifles.
 
"They're tearing us apart from below!"

He nodded and
looked away for a moment, grabbing clips and replacing the emptied cartridges with
new ammunition.
 
The air was cold enough
for us to see our breath, but the weapons he was using were hot enough to let
off steam.

"It's
rigged to go whenever you want it to, but the button is in the main
cabin."

"I push
that button and we're dead, you know that."

"Don't be
a dumb fuck.
 
We're dead either
way."

I wish I could
have argued the point with him, but, really, as far as I could tell we were
toast.
 
As I backed away from him and
moved toward the cabin, I could see Diana taking shots at the Deep Ones daring
the electrified barrier.
 
It was only a
matter of time before one or more of them decided to get all suicidal and
sacrifice life and limb to the cause of ripping down the rest of the hot wires
and then adding us to the menu of dead people.

I went inside
and flipped the switch that Buddy had added to the control panel.
 
The only thing it did for now was turn on
another red light, this one hidden under the panel.

It also armed
the explosives belowdecks.
 
At a guess,
it was somewhere close to five hundred pounds of plastic explosives, but what
the hell did I know?
 
I hadn't taken the
time to weight the stuff when we were carrying it on board.

I don't know
how much it cost Demetrius to load me up, but I knew before I asked that he'd
have no trouble at all footing the bill.
 
I was doing this for Belle, after all, and what man wouldn't want
payback against the bastards that took his daughter's life?

I grabbed a
few more assault rifles on the way back out to the deck, and the transmitter
that would detonate everything wired into the bottom of the boat.

Things had
gotten worse by the time I made it outside again.
 
True to my predictions, the Deep Ones had
decided to pull down more of the hot wires and now they were climbing all over
the place.
 
Far in the distance, I saw
the bank of fog that seemed to be the only sure sign that the ghosts were
around the area, and grimaced.
 
What good
were they if all they ever did was watch?
 
A few hundred ghostly sailors coming in to kick the crap out of the fish
men would have been nice, but instead I got a spectral cheering squad.

Diana was
about to get overrun and I moved in her direction.
 
I waited until I was next to her to begin
firing.
 
She grabbed one of the rifles
from my left shoulder and started shooting without bothering to check if I'd
turned off the safety.
 
I hadn't and that
mistake cost her.
 
One of the things let
out a roar that was loud enough to rattle my bones, and swatted her across the
chest.
 
If she hadn't been wearing armor
she'd have died right then.
 
Instead she
just staggered back and dropped her new weapon.

I killed the
thing, spraying half a clip of bullets into its body, and then I killed the two
behind it.
 
The another
or them got past my defenses and scraped its claws into my chest as it pushed
me.
 
If it had managed to catch me
properly it would have torn through my rib cage, but instead it only added to
the multitude of cuts I was already suffering.

Buddy was
there a second later.
 
I don't know if he
was trying to save me, or tying to get away from the swelling tide of the
things that had finally overtaken the
Marianne
,
but he was there and he was firing.
 
Contrary to what anyone believes or what
Hollywood
portrays, firing a weapon is hard
work.
 
One or two bullets and you're
fine, but a continuous flow of automatic fire is like doing push-ups for at
least the same amount of time and he'd been shooting at the damned tide of fish
men for what seemed like an eternity.
 
Every muscle that showed past his armor was corded and straining, and
the blank expression was gone from his face, replaced by the pain he had to be
feeling.

"Hit the
switch!
 
Hit the goddamned switch and
then dive for it!"
 
His voice was
strained and desperate.
 
He didn't want
to die on that boat and I didn't either to be perfectly honest.
 
I had unfinished business to take care of.

Diana was back
with us again and firing in a constant sweeping arc that lasted maybe seven
seconds.
 
The clip in her rifle was
emptied in that amount of time, and she'd cut a path into the Deep Ones' ranks.
 
It would have meant more to me if they
weren't already filling in the gaps, swarming over their fallen brethren.
 
I remembered what Ward said about them not
caring for their own kind except in a peripheral way and I had to wonder if
that was true, because sure as hell, they seemed to want us dead more than they
wanted to live.

I felt the
same way about them, so I listened to Buddy and hit the switch on the
detonator.

I looked at
Diana and hollered "MOVE!" right before I opened fire again, using
her example to try blasting a path through the fish men.
 
Then I ran as hard as I could,
screaming
the entire way, and dove over the side of the
Marianne
.

What I fully
expected to do was dive right into a whole bunch of the bastards below, and
that is exactly what happened.
 
The only
good news was that they weren't really expecting a frontal assault.
 
I guess they panicked, because when they saw
me coming down with Diana on one side and Buddy on the other, the ones directly
below us scattered.

They tried to
scatter at least.
 
I wound up landing on
a few of them, and instead of splashing into water deep enough to dive into, I
bounced off them and then into the shallow water of the Devil's Reef.

I didn't have
time to think about the fact that I'd parked the
Marianne
right above their cave entrance, right against the edge of
the stone outcropping.
 
For that matter,
I couldn’t even see the reef through the Deep Ones standing on it.
 
So it was blind luck that I'd landed on a
piece of ground and almost bashed myself senseless in the process.
 
I got to my feet and ran as hard as I could,
shivering
in the cold.

You know what
the problem with chivalry is?
 
You can't
really turn it off.
 
I headed back the
other way when I heard Diana screaming and spent precious seconds pulling her
from the water.
 
She was an athletic
woman, but she was also wearing a lot of now waterlogged body armor.
 
As soon as we were both up, we started
running again.
 
I knew what we were
running from, but I have no idea what was going through her head.

I looked back
at the
Marianne
and saw her
foundering.
 
She was sinking at a decent
pace and the Deep Ones crawling over her were adding to the damage, ripping
parts of the hull away and trashing anything they could get their hands on.

Buddy was
right behind me, staggered and winded, but still letting out an occasional
burst of gunfire at the fish men who had noticed us in all the chaos.

We ran.
 
It was all that was left to do.

And then the
night exploded behind us and took the
Marianne
and at least a hundred of the water demons with it.
 
The charges Buddy had set and that I had
detonated blew my crabbing boat into a ton of driftwood and sent a shock wave
powerful enough to knock all three of us through the air.
 
I know people talk about how life and death
moments seem to grow longer in recollection, but I was too busy curling myself
into a ball and screaming bloody murder to notice much of anything.
 
I was thrown around and bounced across the
Devil's Reef, the impacts so powerful that they rolled me end over end and it
was all I could do to keep my wits about me.
 
When I came to a stop I didn't try to move or open my eyes for several
seconds.
 
My head was ringing like a
church bell, and even though I knew I wasn't moving, everything around me was
trying to spin.

When I finally
moved, everything spun faster, but I knew I couldn't sit still for long.
 
There were too many of the Deep Ones around
for me to risk that.
 
I opened my eyes
and crawled to my hands and knees as I looked around.

There wasn't
much to see; the fog was too thick.
 
It
hadn't been there a moment before, but now it was as thick as the skin on cold
pea soup.
 
My head had stopped ringing;
the high humming tone came from my ears alone.
 
Still, I managed to stand up.
 
Every weapon I'd been carrying was gone, lost as I was thrown across the
black rock.
 
I saw Buddy lying facedown
on the ground, and heard him moan as he started to come to.

Then I heard
Diana scream, a wild, panicked yelp that was quickly lost in a wave of the fish
men's vile voices.
 
I knew it had to be
too late, even as I moved toward her voice, but I had to try.
 
The damned fog was so thick I couldn't see
more than shadows form five feet away.
 
By the time I finally made it to where I thought I'd heard her voice,
all I found was the remains of her body armor.
 
The flack vest and matching leggings were heavily shredded and torn from
her body.

Diana was
gone, and I never saw her again.

As I stood
there trying to absorb everything that had happened the Deep Ones kept up their
infernal croaking, the sounds growing louder and more frenzied.
 
I moved toward the edge of the reef, barely
aware of anything.
 
Somewhere behind me,
Buddy coughed a few times and then called out to me.

I didn’t
respond.
 
I was too busy watching what
should have been impossible.
 
The galleon
I'd seen torn to apart in a ghostly replay was right at the edge of the reef,
and I stared as the dead sailors form another era climbed down the sides and
set foot on solid ground.
 
They did not
pay me the least bit of attention as they moved across the land.
 
Instead, they moved toward the Deep Ones and
drew their weapons, muskets and swords alike, and engaged the enemy that had
killed them in the distant past.

I heard the
sounds of the renewed combat, but saw nothing through the fog.
 
Pity, really.
 
I would have liked to watch as the fish demons were slaughtered.

I was still
thinking about them when I fell flat on my face against the rocks and the
water.
 
I guess I was hurt a little more
than I first thought.

Have you ever
been whacked so hard that you could think but couldn't do much else?
 
Well, I have.
 
I was conscious enough to know that things were happening, but I
couldn’t move, and all the wishing in the world was not enough to open my eyes.

I know I was
carried up the side of the ghostly ship.
 
I know I was set down on the deck.
 
I heard the sounds of the returning sailors.
 
They moved grimly, with little or no celebration
for any victories they might have had in their battle.