Darryl focused on a depth gauge. “Passing eighteen hundred feet. Should be touching down soon.”
They continued descending, until, two and a half minutes later, at a depth of exactly 2,102 feet, the sub lurched up and they landed on the ocean floor.
JASON SUDDENLY jerked to the left. What was that?
Inside the sub, Lisa jolted toward the same spot. “Did you see that, Darryl?”
“No.”
She flicked a switch. “Jason, did you see that?”
“Not well enough to make it out.” But he knew where it was, hiding in the darkness just beyond the range of the lights. And then it returned, swimming out of a black wall. A rattail fish, long and snakelike. Not what they’d come for, but it was good to confirm that life was actually here.
Lisa and Darryl watched as the foot-long fish swam right up to their window. It peered in curiously, looking right at Darryl. Lisa smiled. “I think he wants a date, Darryl.”
Darryl smirked. “He’s not the only one who wants one of those, is he, Soccer Mom?”
“What are you talking about?”
Darryl smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna tell.” He flipped a switch. “So, Mr. Aldridge, want to try out your sea legs?”
Jason turned on the platform. Looking very much like Neil Armstrong indeed, he wished he had a waterproofed American flag. “This is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
“Go get ‘em, Neil!” Darryl yelled happily inside his helmet.
Lisa watched him on the monitor. Be careful, she thought.
As if testing whether the sand could actually support his weight, Jason tentatively put one foot down. Then the other. He just stood for a moment, literally getting grounded. Then, for the first time in his life, Jason Aldridge walked on the seafloor. Boots clanking, the oxygen tube growing longer, he ambled to the front of the sub and peered in.
He reminded Darryl and Lisa of the rattail fish a moment ago.
Darryl flicked a switch. “Everything cool?”
“Great. Now let’s look around….” He thumped away, noticing a big brown rock the size of a pool table. As he walked closer, he spied a colony of foot-long pogonophora worms, several hundred writhing around on the rock like snakes, apparently feeding on greenish-brown algae. Many weren’t moving. He looked up and realized tiny, guppy-size fish were everywhere, floating belly-up. “GDV-4’s down here, guys.”
His eyes shifted beyond the light, to the darkness, and he wondered if anything else was hiding. Then he noticed movement near his feet. A kelp strand was just floating there. He picked it up. There were no visible bite marks, but the tips were dried out and brittle. It had been on the seafloor for some time. “We’re in the right neighborhood.”
He flipped on two tiny flashlights embedded in his hands, and a pair of miniature beams illuminated little circles on the sand. “Let’s see what’s here….” He walked toward the darkness. Then disappeared within it. All that remained was the air tube, slithering on the sand.
“YOU THINK he’s all right?”
“I’m sure he’s fine.” Through the viewing glass, Darryl eyed the air tube, taut now and sticking out of the black wall like a knife into cheese. “He’s a little stretched, but I’m sure he’s fine.”
Lisa checked a digital readout on the instrument panel. “It’s been nineteen minutes, Darryl.”
Darryl gave her a look and flipped a switch. “Jason, you all right out there?”
He waited. Two seconds ticked past, and there was no reply.
“Jason?”
Another two seconds ticked. Still nothing.
“Jason. Do you hear me? Is everything all right?”
“Yeah, guys, fine.”
Darryl and Lisa shook their heads.
Surrounded by darkness, Jason looked down at the sand. “Nothing’s here, but what we’re looking for is close.” A massive bird-shaped imprint was at his feet.
“It’s very, very close.” He scanned the watery blackness. “What do you say we go find it.”
CHAPTER 28
“HE’S A goddamn machine.” Two and a half hours had passed, and Darryl was stunned by Jason’s endurance. Sand, sand, and more sand, that was all there was down here. What’s the point? Darryl thought. He steered the tiny yellow sub over yet another stretch when Lisa leaned into the mike.
“Jason, you think we should come back and try another time?”
“No, but thanks for the encouragement, Lisa.” Little particles flowing past his helmet, Jason shook his head as the dark sand plain continued. The deep-sea desert indeed appeared to be endless, but what they were looking for was here. He could sense it. It was close. “Veer to the right a little.”
In the sub, Darryl turned to Lisa. “So… read any good books lately?”
“Your wife’s the reader, Darryl. Hey, you hungry?”
“Always. What do you got?”
From a denim pocketbook, she produced a tiny bag of pretzels. Darryl tore them open and ate a few. “Didn’t bring any sleeping pills, did ya?”
“I wish. We could be down here for days, huh?”
“Whatever. So what else is—”
“My God.” Jason’s stunned voice interrupted them. “They’re here. They’re really here.”
THE SUB hovered to a stop above a deep-sea graveyard of sorts. A fleet of white, winged skeletons, each the size of a small plane, stretched well beyond the range of the lights.
“Jesus.” In all his years in the ocean, Darryl Hollis had never seen anything like it. “How many do you think there are?”
Lisa shook her head. “I have no idea. What do you think, Jason?”
Looking down from a height of two stories, Jason shifted his eyes from one enormous skeleton to the next. “Can we get a closer look?”
They touched down on one of the few patches of sand not occupied by a skeleton, and Jason walked toward the closest specimen. Getting closer, he was amazed at how horrifying it looked, just a skeleton, the height of a coffee table at its deepest point.
He turned as a rattail fish swam toward it. Then through it, as if it were an underwater jungle gym, dodging in and out of ribs, eye sockets, then teeth. Jason stared at the teeth. My God, look at those things. They were as wide as champagne bottles at their base and as tall as soda cans, the tips as sharp as knife points. Jason tried picturing them in a living animal…. Then the fish swam off, and he remembered why they were here. “I don’t see any bodies, guys.”
In the sub, Darryl surveyed the darkness. “Let’s find one.”
“MY GOD, how many of these things are there?”
Lisa Barton was astounded. They’d been passing over skeletons for forty minutes and still hadn’t seen the end of them. One enormous winged frame after another passed under their cruising machine. She turned. “Any idea, Darryl?”
“One thousand four hundred and twenty-one so far,” Jason said from the intercom.
Lisa shook her head. “Big surprise. He’s been counting.”
Darryl chuckled then pointed at the glass. “Look, Soccer Mom. It’s snowing.”
“Hey, it really is.”
Small white flakes were indeed falling everywhere. “Snowstorms” occurred regularly in the depths, when spawning plants above emitted literally billions of seeds into the water.
Lisa glanced at the monitor. “See the snow, Jason?”
“Unfortunately.”
On the platform, he tried to ignore the white stuff flowing past his helmet. He didn’t want to lose count of the skeletons—1,422, 1,423, 1,424… He squinted inside his helmet, the snow thickening—1,425, 1,426, 1,427… It thickened further—1,428, 1,429… The sub turned slightly, and the snow blew right into him—1,430, 1,431… The snow began sticking to his face mask…. He tried wiping it away, but his hands couldn’t do it—1,432… or was that 1,431?… 1,432, 1,433, 1,434… The snow fell harder, a driving storm, and the skeletons began to merge—1,434, 1,435… The snow fell harder still…. And then he lost count. But not because of the snow.