Nightmare Country (10 page)

“What?”

“Forgot your problem. Had to go talking kids.”

“That's okay, I forgot too.” Thad, lying on the shelf seat, looked down into the eyes of the man on the deck below him, and for an instant there was contact. Thad looked away.

“You're gonna be all right, Doc. Time's almost up. One of these days you're gonna start over. I wouldn't want me and mine to go through what you and yours have. But not everybody gets another chance.”

Thad felt oddly close to this man, who in many ways represented the macho bigot he despised.

“Your daddy, now—now that we have broached difficult subjects—he would have been interested in what happened to us this morning.”

Thad laughed, and every head in the boat turned toward him. “He would have told you that the currents and explosion or whatever we felt was caused by a flying saucer either leaving or entering an underwater space hangar, or that Atlantis is about to rise from beneath the sea. I take it you've read him.”

“Couple of his books is all. How do you know it wasn't a flying saucer landing or taking off? If Sue Ellen can believe in what she does on faith 'cause she doesn't have much in the way of facts, why can't your daddy believe in what he does? Probably got more facts than Sue Ellen does. What do you think it was?”

“Earth tremor of some kind.”

“Tremors usually mean a quake is coming, don't they?”

“Not always. Odds are we won't have any problems this afternoon.”

“Yeah. Probably never know what it was. Things like that irk the hell out of me.”

“Make good material for my father's books, though.”

“Dopes like me buy 'em to get explanations of the niggling little unexplainables so they'll stop niggling.”

Thad wanted to tell Bo Smith about the
Ambergris
. But he didn't.

It was decided that Harry Rothnel, the baker, should not dive that afternoon and risk another nosebleed, and that Aulalio would stay topside with him and Martha. Thad drew Eliseo Paz as his new dive partner.

The divers didn't trade so many jokes this afternoon as they perched on the edge of the boat, their feet in rubber fins on the shelf seat, and one by one threw themselves backward into the sea. The only quip was from Bo, when half the group was in the water. “Keep a sharp eye out for submerged space hangars and flying saucers, you turkeys. And don't forget Martha's body.”

“Now, who could forget Martha's body? Bo, you …”

Thad hit the water, tank first, and didn't hear the rest. The usual idiosyncrasies at the beginning of a dive—the little shock on impact with the alien medium, the slight hesitation as he was immersed that had no time to assert itself, the temptation to hold his breath instead of sucking in on the regulator. They'd agreed to stay close this time. Follow their one guide, Eliseo.

Thad was surprised at how close he was to the bottom, a barren area compared to that of the morning. The divers were grouping below, waiting for the rest to arrive. It must have been no more than thirty or forty feet. What would a sub be doing in so shallow a place?

The others were turning around in circles, nudging each other, shrugging in question-mark pantomime. Perhaps because there were no fish, nothing crawling along the bottom. As the last divers arrived, the sunlight departed. Even at that depth and in tropical waters, the chill was instant, clear water took on shadows, became murky.

Eliseo did the turning bit now, as if to get his bearings, and then rose above them to do it again. Thad sensed a question in Eliseo's posture too. But Stefano Paz's son finally straightened, regardless of the fact he was six feet from earth, and arched an arm with the exaggerated slowness of most rapid movements against water. He'd found a submarine. How do you kill a submarine at thirty feet?

It lay intact, instead of in pieces. Eliseo had to scrape sand from a patch of it to prove the giant wiener shape on the sea floor was made of metal. Others scraped. One pounded. The sound, even underwater, came back hollow. Divers rose away from it, looking down, then at the man on either side, then down again. Beneath the layer of sand the sub was surprisingly free of coral encrustation.

Eliseo rose to pivot, search the murky water with his eyes. Landmarks of some sort may have been destroyed in the turbulence of the morning. The phenomenon might have extended this far. Thad wished he had an intercom with his diving buddy.

The sub lay on its side, the bare outline of a conning tower shaped like a giant cigarette lighter under the sand. The ship seemed too small to hold the lives of men and their equipment within it. Were they still inside?

Thad recognized the ghoul in himself and turned back to Eliseo. The guide had gone off alone—exactly what he'd warned everyone else not to do. He motioned now for the others, and Thad was the first to reach him. Eliseo swam on, and then stopped, pointing down. Thad could see nothing but sand, no rocks, no debris, not even a dead fish. As if the area had been cleaned up for a beach. Eliseo spread his arms out and then down, shook his head, pointed down once more.

Some of the others wandered away from the sub and angled toward them.

The sea floor was slightly mounded, the sub lying far off to the side. Grains of sand trickled down the surface of the mound. Thad had seen this before, when crabs burrowed to escape detection, but he had never seen it occur in so many places at once.

What looked like a puff of dust from the center of the mound, some distance away, and sand particles began to tumble instead of trickle. The entire ocean floor seemed to tremble so imperceptibly that it took Thad a moment to realize it was moving.

10

More sand spilled over the sub. It moved slightly, as if being nudged. Thad was aware of the string of divers making their way toward him, of sand particles floating in the water instead of settling to the bottom, of Eliseo's arms waving in the soft, slow rhythm swimmers make underwater when they're trying to stay in one place.

But his consciousness concentrated on the sound and the increasing pressure against his face that forced his mask into bone, pushed his nose and jaw back, and drew the blood to his head. This gave him the feeling of suffocating, even though he still sucked in regular breaths from his regulator.

Sound filled the water, seemed to be one with the pressure. He couldn't liken it to anything he'd ever heard before. It wavered, became steady for a time, and resumed its wavering, a deep grating tone. The bulge below him became more pronounced. The diameter of the mound was larger than he'd thought. Dark gray patches appeared between sand ruffles now—shiny, moist-looking.

Approaching divers veered away. Eliseo tapped him on the shoulder, and the guide's fins rose to join the bubbles oozing from around the edges of the egg-shaped thing as it protruded more and more from the ocean floor and grew in size as it did so. It reminded Thad of a sightless eyeball, mammoth and dead.

He turned to follow Eliseo and the others, abstracted by the thought that either something had gone radically wrong with the world or he was in one of those fantastic dreams he'd been having. The location was not at the base of that ugly mountain, and he'd usually known he was dreaming before. Perhaps those were only the dreams he remembered. This absorption slowed him enough to allow him a quick glance over his shoulder, and what he saw turned him around completely.

Thad kicked back into the danger from which everyone else fled. This was probably just a dream. He'd awaken before things became fatal. If it wasn't, he'd never forgive himself for playing it safe after seeing that diver in trouble.

He considered trying to go through the egg-shaped gray mass still growing beneath him—just to test the dream theory. But he had time to admit he hadn't the nerve. He swam over it, one fin scraping the burgeoning surface. He was on the other side, where he'd seen a diver being pulled into the sand at the rim of the emerging … whatever it was, the diver's hands above his head, finned feet already disappearing in a suction of some kind between the sea floor and the rising … hulk? Thing? Alive? Machine? His mind balked at “space hangar.” Too Edward P. III. Too sensationalized, Devil's Triangle type of crap.

Thad found the diver's air tank, mask, and attached snorkel tumbling down a sand heap, making way for still more of the giant eye. No buoyancy vest, fins. No diver. Thad found the sound and the pressure unbearable, found tears mixing with blood inside his mask and himself rising to the surface, dragging the extra equipment and unable to see through the viscous cloud between his eyes and the mask window.

He screamed at himself to wake up, and was startled when he broke the surface. He couldn't seem to let go of the additional gear, as if it were a lifeline to a lost diver. A tugging sucked at him from beneath, and, finally dropping the other air tank, he paddled blindly away from the thing rising in the water. This was no dream. It was death. Thad was shocked to find it so recognizable.

Would he see Ricky again? Or was there anything of Ricky to see?

A wave, a force, something, propelled him into the air, knocked his mask ajar so he could see again, see the blood escaping on white water near his face as he plunged, defenseless. Drowning.

The regulator wrenched from his mouth, jerking loose teeth that had clamped around rubber tabs. He retreated into his mind. It was not filled with memories on parade to review his life, nor regret at its shortness, nor fear at its end. Merely shock. And anger that this should be happening. Rage.

Thad slammed into something hard. Within that something, the echo of the sound of his impact was the last sound he heard before even his rage gave way to nothing.

“Have we got everybody?”

“Just get us the hell out of here!”

“Can't count heads with everybody flying around so.”

“Engine working?”

“Where's Bo?” A woman's voice, next to his ear. She held him from behind. They were both being tossed about on the deck of the boat.

Martha Durwent. He was alive. He couldn't believe it.

“Throw the life preservers out. Maybe somebody'll catch one.”

“Where's Bo?” Martha screamed.

“Bo? You on board, Bo?”

“
Madre de Dios
…
clemencia … por favor
.”

“Aulalio, get this fuckin' tub moving!”

Thad doubled up in a choking spasm that ripped him from Martha's arms and sent him into the crevice under a shelf seat, where he became lodged but then skidded out again as water washed over the boat. He slid down the deck like the watermelons had done earlier, and into Don Bodecker. The salesman pressed a rough rope into Thad's hands, forced his fingers to clamp around it. “It's tied to a cleat.”

One arm of Don's wet suit was ripped almost off and hanging behind, but his exposed flesh looked unharmed.

The bow lunged into the air and a jumble of diving gear and Styrofoam coolers went overboard at the stern. Martha Durwent grabbed his ankle, her wet hair slicked against her head and shoulders. He pulled her up to where she could hang on to the line with him, just as the open boat nose-dived. Thad found himself staring at the giant gray eye. It swelled above an angry ocean and was outlined against the sky.

Clouds twisted in on themselves and then expanded, darkened. Lightning jagged in odd short bursts. Rain added to the swirling wet of the sea. Maybe Thad
had
died.

“I wouldn't be surprised if a flying saucer came out of that big eye over there,” he yelled at Martha, and had the urge to giggle, but not the strength. She twisted away from him, and he had to haul her back to the line. “Stay put.”

“Greg!”

But Greg Durwent went over the side. Martha turned limp against Thad, and he made the strength to keep them both attached to the rope. They rose again on a gigantic, endless swell, and Thad's stomach seemed to rush to his feet. Martha nearly broke loose from his exhausted grip.

Aulalio Paz slid backward on his stomach, eyes and mouth gaping, finger- and toenails digging into the deck like a startled cat's. He wrapped himself around Martha's legs.

“Grab the line, not her,” Thad screamed over the sea's hysteria. “Can't hold you both!”

They were all sliding down the rope, Thad's hands burning, his arm—threaded under Martha's armpits and across her chest—going numb before Aulalio got a hold on the rope and Thad felt the release of his weight. He inched himself and the woman higher up to give the guide more room as the dive boat crested the wave, bucked, and plunged.

The descent was brutal, life preservers flung out to the ends of their rope tethers and high into the air, shining an odd luminous white against the sooty, roiling sky. Aulalio rose too on the end of their line and pounded back into the deck, narrowly missing a corner of the air-tank container.

As they bottomed out in the deep of the trough, Thad could see huddled shapes around the deck but didn't have time to count them before salt water slammed over the side to sting the various scraped areas on his body and threatened once again to drown him.

He had no idea how long this torture lasted, nor exactly when the seas calmed, the sky cleared, and the squall was at an end. But eventually the sun grew hot and his skin sticky with dried salt water.

Men moved about, their wet suits patchy and shredded, blood oozing from scrapes. Dark swellings. One limped, another held an arm tightly with the other hand. Everyone peered over the side. Except Martha Durwent. She sat on the bench seat with her head in her hands. A drying blood trail ran from her hair, down her neck, and across the nipple of an exposed breast.

Other than the few air tanks still in their holes, the boat had emptied of gear. The crowded jumble of food containers, masks, fins—all had washed overboard. Harry-the-baker counted heads.

Thad pulled himself to his knees and then to his feet, stood swaying to look out over a sea still frothy white with grains of sand. No eyeball. No Styrofoam cooler tops floating on the surface. “How many?” he asked Harry.