Rolling in the Deep (10 page)

All over the
Atargatis
, people—and mermaids—were dying.

Not all of the crewmen were armed, but enough were, and half a dozen mermaids had been shot and shoved over the side before the creatures learned to retreat from humans who held metal in their hands. One of the interns had been wielding Sonja Weinstein’s bone saw, brought aboard in case of large animal necropsy, and was able to slice a mermaid bilaterally before another ripped his head from his shoulders. Peter Harris would have been stunned by what the creature’s entrails and internal organs revealed about it. He might even have warned someone while there was still time. But alas, Peter Harris was already dead, pulled over the side by the mermaid that had taken his throat, his voice, and his life. He gave no warnings, he sounded no alarms; he told no one that the worst was yet to come.

Jill Hale died in a hallway, her body blocking the door to the deck long enough for three more mermaids to slither inside and turn the packed lounge she had been fleeing for into an abattoir.

Jonny Chen died on the deck when his gun ran out of bullets and the mermaids swarmed, reducing him to bloody pieces which they carried with them, one by one, as they dropped back into the sea.

David was heading for the engines, dispatched by Captain Seghers to find out why they weren’t moving yet, when he came around a corner and found three mermaids exchanging quick, furtive hand signals. He froze. Their signs were limited by the webs on their fingers, but he hadn’t spent his life speaking ASL without learning how to recognize other languages.

Maybe they were intelligent. Maybe there was a chance. He stomped the deck, causing all three mermaids to whip around and stare at him. Swallowing hard, he mimicked the signs he’d seen them making, hoping he wasn’t insulting their mothers or something.

The mermaids stared, and didn’t move. David began to think that this might work.

‘David,’ he signed, and pointed to himself. ‘David.’

One of the mermaids raised its hand and cautiously signed something, before pointing to its own chest.

David pointed to the mermaid and repeated the sign. Then he pointed to himself, and signed ‘David.’

The mermaid did the same. It couldn’t quite form the “v,” but what it managed was close enough to make it clear that it was trying to sign David’s name.

He nodded, hoping that the mermaids would put the same meaning on the gesture as he did. Then he repeated the sign he assumed was the first mermaid’s name, and pointed to the rail. The mermaids looked at him blankly. He made the sign again.

The mermaids turned back to one another, fingers moving too fast for him to follow. Then the mermaid he had been communicating with turned back to him. ‘David,’ it signed, followed by the sign for its own name. Then it pointed to the rail.

David nodded.

The mermaid looked as bewildered as it was possible for such a creature to look. It slithered cautiously toward him. David forced himself to remain perfectly still. He was getting through to the creatures. If he could just convince them to leave…

The mermaid lifted itself off the floor, somehow supporting its weight on its tail as it leaned forward, grabbed him, and then pitched over the rail. The two hit the water and vanished without a sound.

The other two mermaids turned back to each other. ‘Strange thing wanted to be eaten,’ signed the first. ‘Why?’

The other mermaid made a gesture indicating its indifference. Who knew why strange things did anything? They were delicious. That was all that mattered.

David drowned before he could be torn apart.

The engines finally roared fully to life some fifteen minutes after the assault on the ship began. Most of the crew had stopped answering their walkies. David hadn’t been seen since he left to check in with engineering. Captain Jovanie Seghers gripped the wheel, jaw clenched white, and hit the button for the intercom with her elbow.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are leaving,” she announced. “Stay where you are. We’re going home.”

Crammed into the back of the cabin, Kevin replayed his footage of the first mermaid’s attack over and over again, watching it through the viewfinder. Alexandra and Anne were pressed up against him, their own eyes on the screen. Curran had tried to confiscate the hard drive for “safe keeping” before Captain Seghers kicked him out, calling him a distraction and hence a danger.

Most of the screaming from outside had stopped. He was probably dead now. Somehow, none of the trio could bring themselves to be terribly upset on his behalf.

Alexandra frowned at the viewfinder. “Kevin, did you see any more of these things on the deck before we slammed the door?”

“About twenty,” he said grimly. “They took apart half my crew like they were made of paper.”

“Did they all look like this one?”

“I think so? I have footage, hang on.” He paused the film before fast-forwarding through jerky images. When he stopped, it was on a deck crawling with mermaids, all of them slithering through the slime trails created by their fellows.

Alexandra stared at the screen, cheeks growing slowly pale. Then, to the surprise of everyone around her, she began to laugh.

“You okay?” asked Anne, looking alarmed as Alexandra sank slowly down into a crouch, her hands pressed flat against her face.

“Two,” she moaned. “We’ve answered
two
questions about mermaids.”

“What?” Captain Seghers turned. “What is she laughing about?”

“Deep-sea fish frequently demonstrate extreme sexual dimorphism,” said Alexandra, not uncovering her face. “One female to dozens, even hundreds of males. They were taking the bodies over the rail. Why? They can’t eat them all. Can’t store food in the water. But they can feed them to something larger. Something they wanted to impress.”

The sea in front of the prow was getting lighter, as if something very bright and very large were rising out of the depths. Jovanie clenched her hands tight around the wheel, and watched it come. One by one, the others in the cabin straightened or turned away from their screens and came to join her, watching as the sea lit up like a second sun.

Only Alexandra kept her face covered the entire time.

Only Alexandra was fortunate enough to die without being forced to see.

The
Atargatis
was found by the
USS Danvers
six weeks later, floating without guidance some two hundred miles off its last known position. The window leading to the control room had been smashed from the outside, allowing the waves to damage the controls. There were no bodies found, either there or in the stretch of ocean where the ship had supposedly been anchored before the disaster.

The
USS Danvers
searched for three days, until her crew became uncomfortable, reporting strange lights in the water, and stranger noises in the night. They turned around and sailed for shore on the morning of the fourth day.

Leave the dark places in the sea for fools and explorers. The
USS Danvers
, unlike the
Atargatis
, was going home.