bends.”
David knew there was no fear of the bends as Max accounted for every pound per square inch as they went, adjusting the pressure accordingly. The PSI gauge said they were fine, except for the speed. The captain was right about that; at their current rate of ascent, they could enter
He’d managed to slip his own mask on in the nick of time as one of the hatchlings slapped into him. Through the mask, he saw an intricate network of nerves and the pulsating blood inside this black sack of goop.
While the parent of this thing may have evolved to a complex creature capable of mimicking or using humans, the sacs had remained in stasis and as rudimentary organisms, however deadly they might be.
Jens had failed to get his suit sealed in time, which allowed one of the creatures entry through his mouth, and the others watched his throat bulge as the creature slipped down it like an enormous oyster, seeking safety and a ready food supply—every liquid in Steve’s body. Jens would become the carrier of this dread organism; he’d carry it to the surface in unholy conspiracy with it, unless stopped, and David had been through too much, to let that happen.
He had earlier, while at the controls, reprogrammed the airlock door, and now he was grateful that he had. Fiske was unmistakably infected, and David had his doubts about both Jens and Gambino as well. If he was correct, Will, Lou, and he faced certain death by infection. The image of Alandale’s body flashed through his mind.
Lena Gabio, Steve Jens, and Kyle Fiske needed to be isolated and now, but first he slammed the airlock HAZMAT lockout tray used for passing medicines, food, and water to a confined or quarantined person. David had lifted the two specimen nets, and now he shoved them into the HAZMAT tray to shoot them into the confined area to isolate them.
David then grabbed Fiske and shoved him into the airlock hatchway, the door knocking him dizzy. David then entered the airlock combination on the keypad and the hatchway whooshed open. He quickly tossed Fiske inside. He then did the same with Jens over Lena’s objections, but Will held her in check as he too objected.
David, working around the creature still probing his mask for entry to his suit and then his body, worked against every moral fiber in his being to take these necessary steps. All while Fiske pleaded, “Dave… don’t do this, David, David.”
“No time to take a vote!” he shouted to the others in the cabin, and with a swift hand on the controls, he jettisoned everyone and everything in the airlock out into the depths of the ocean, and the others, including Lou, watched Fiske and Jens implode along with the egg sacs that’d been jettisoned alongside them.
Will Bowman held a frozen stare on David. David shouted at him, “I had no damn choice, and you know it, Will! You saw those damnable things!”
“Who’s next, me? Lena? Lou?” shouted Bowman, angry, glaring.
David’s laser came up with lightning speed, and it fried one of the alien creatures still lurking in the cab as it came within inches of Bowman’s head, and Bowman, at first thinking David about to strike him, had raised his laser knife. But in the same instant, he saw that David was not out to strike him, so he lowered his knife and holstered it.
Lena let out with a sudden howl as if the killing of the thing that attacked Will had caused her pain, and she suddenly went for her laser knife to confront and challenge David’s authority here. She was already infected, David realized now, and she had been since entering the sub. He recalled her vital signs becoming so erratic, and her mantra about getting to the surface. David imagined that during the time she discovered the eggs and had placed them into her collectibles bag, one of them had gotten into her suit. How the thing had wormed its way into her suit without her imploding out there, he could only speculate; possibly through some sort of extended osmosis, having attached itself to the suit, and if this were possible, how long did he himself have before the damnable splat on his mask would find a way in?
He fired his laser through Lena’s mask and into brain as if in a reflex action and her head exploded within the helmet she wore, filled now with brain matter and superheated flesh. She never saw it coming, and she dropped across Will Bowman’s feet.
David shouted, “She’s infected, Will! Help me grab up this thing she’s become and throw it the hell outta here, now! Into the airlock chamber!”
“Where Fiske and Jens were pleading for you to help them, Will?” he asked, his face pinched in pain at what had occurred within the last few minutes.
Then Will froze up, his mouth behind the mask agape, eyes wide, terrified of David it appeared. David snatched off his mask at the realization that the thing on it was indeed working its way through to him, so in one smooth and speedy action, he snatched it off and into the HAZMAT lockout tray that sent the mask and it into the airlock. On the inside, the vile creature was still trying to ooze through the mask.
Fiske’s voice suddenly filled the cabin, and it sounded robotic as he pleaded with David from inside the airlock, crying out, “Don’t do this, Dave… Dave… please, Dave…” It was a recording now, one that Bowman has placed on replay. “You’re the killer here, Ingles—you!”
Bowman tried to get to the airlock controls to block his way and keep him from disposing of Lena’s body as he had the others. Poor Will had no idea what was happening, but his gesture proved hopeless when David suddenly held him at the point of his laser knife. One press on the handle and Bowman’s head could be rolling about the floor.
Bowman said through gritted teeth, “You bastard! How do we know you’re not one of these things?”
“I’m not allowing a single one of those eggs to the surface, Will. Not even the one residing inside you.”
Lou had his laser gun now at David’s exposed throat. “You put it down, now!” he demanded. “There’s been enough killing today!”
“You can’t allow Bowman back onto
“Enough! Enough! Put it down, David!” shouted Lou. “As for Will, perhaps he can be held in isolation and that thing cut out of him if it’s there at all! Now cease and desists! That’s an order, David.”
“Thousands gave their lives that this thing might go forever to the ocean bottom, and I won’t let the death of
No one moved.
“Step back and away from him, Will,” suggested Lou.
Bowman took a cautionary step back from David an inch at a time. “With the oxygen tanks so near,” he said, sounding like a reasonable man, “we all die, David, if another laser cutter is opened… well, we’ve been lucky so far.”
Lou Swigart, barely able to move after his exertion, reached out to David. “It’s in your hands, David. All of it. We live or we die, all of it, on you.”
“Davey Boy, please, be reasonable.” It was Bowman again; he now reached a hand out to David, offering to take charge of his laser knife.
Forbes’ voice warned again of their speed, shouting for reason.
“Be reasonable!” Lou added his voice.
David had been unable to be certain of just how many of those damnable eggs had exploded out at them, and it had been impossible to know how many had gotten onto and under the suits of the men sharing this tight space. Or how many had managed to find a human host.
He looked into Lou’s eyes for answers, for what to do and for a millisecond, he thought he saw a shadow cross the man’s brow, speeding past his eyelids.
“Slow the ship, David. Bring it to a reasonable speed.”
Reasonable, thought David. They are all asking me to be reasonable.
His gaze went from one to the other of those who’d survived going into
Then Lena’s mantra was repeated suddenly by Bowman. “Gotta get out of this tin can… gotta get to the surface. Gotta get real air.”
The desperation in Will’s voice recalled David’s reading about the two miner’s in that mine in Belfast—or
