Exodus 2022 (29 page)

Because she felt curious? Inquisitive? Wanted to see a human environment?

No.

There’s another reason.
Joe felt sure of this.

She wanted to trade places with me for another reason. A more important reason.

He was absolutely certain of it. And equally certain that he had no idea what the reason was.

IT WASN’T THE GROTESQUE STATE
of Navarro’s head, or neck or body, that made Beck scream. Not the ribbons of rotting flesh trailing down her limbs, like streamers, or the flaccid muscles and tendons unspooling around her joints, separating from her skeleton.

It was the eyes.

Unlike her skin and muscles and skeleton, the eyes were intact.

The eyes were whole.

The eyes were alive. Bright, fierce, and seeing.

The eyes were looking right at him.

Only, they weren’t Navarro’s eyes.

These eyes were unlike anything Beck had ever seen before.

The eyes of a beast.

A monster.

The eyes were staring at him in the mirror. Studying him. Appraisingly, like a predator scrutinizing prey.

The eyes flared, brightening like cinders reborn, and Beck felt a stabbing pain in his chest.

He lunged for the exit, pants and belt twisted to one side, falling off his waist, wet with urine.

He shrieked again—something loud and rambling and incoherent—and someone was there. At the door. Coming in. Someone from the tiny airport. A worker in blue coveralls—a mechanic, perhaps—coming to use the men’s room.

Beck stumbled into the startled man’s arms, face pale, babbling like a baby, gesturing wildly.

The man stepped quickly back, bewildered, and his gaze swung to where Beck was pointing. Beck turned.

There
was
someone standing in the far stall.

A cleaning lady.

Dark skin. Plain features. Hispanic or South American.

A woman. Not Navarro. Not a monstrosity. Just a cleaning lady clutching a mop, looking terrified, wondering what on earth the big man was screaming about and why he was pointing at her. Wondering what she’d done and if she was going to get fired.

Beck gaped, pointed, and struggled to speak. Then he gave it up and shoved his way past the mechanic, pulling his pants up as he stumbled out of the room.

With a loud
bang
he plowed through the terminal’s double doors, weaving like a drunk toward the Erebus helicopter waiting outside.

BECK STRAPPED HIMSELF
into the seat next to Ring—or tried to.

His hands were shaking so violently he couldn’t find the clasps at first. He fumbled and struggled until the harness finally snapped together with a
click
.

Beck’s pilot, a man named Jeff Donaldson, turned to confirm that the boss was in his seat, and did a double take.

Beck’s face was albino-pale, and he looked like he’d aged ten years in the preceding hour.

Donaldson didn’t comment, just turned slowly back around, fiddled with some controls, said a couple of things to his copilot, and they took off.

Ring never so much as glanced at his boss.

Beck stank of urine—the front of his pants were soaked—but Ring was in his own world, tapping away on a laptop while balancing a tablet computer on the armrest, utterly oblivious to both Beck’s condition and to the sparkling labyrinth of the Puget Sound opening out below them as the Bell 412 shot forward into the summer haze.

“New developments on
Marauder
,” said Ring without turning.

Beck only half heard Ring’s words.

He fumbled with a storage compartment in the bulkhead. Removed a metal flask, took a swig, and fell back into his seat, sweating profusely, heart still beating a mile a minute.

Then he lurched forward, dropped the flask, and snatched a barf bag out of a different compartment. Just in time.

Chunks of half-digested food hit the bottom of the bag so hard it looked like it might burst.

Ring’s silo of concentration had been broken at last. He looked up—straight ahead—as if trying to get his bearings, then turned toward his boss and recoiled.

“What the hell?” he yelled over the roar of the helicopter. “Are you all right?”

Beck kept his mouth over the barf bag—long tendrils of putrid yellow spittle dangling from his lips and chin—and didn’t even attempt to respond.

Ring opened another compartment, found some wet wipes, and handed Beck the case.

Beck grunted, grabbed a handful of wipes, and swabbed his face and neck. He leaned back in his seat again and shut his eyes.

Ring was annoyed by the distraction and disgusted by the smells assaulting him now. Disgusted also by what he’d just seen. Watching Beck, he felt his own stomach flip, and he clutched the armrests of his seat. Then he turned and stared out the window—something he hardly ever did.

Beck sealed the barf bag and set it on the floor.

“What new developments?” Beck whispered, swabbing his face with another wipe and running it over his teeth.

Ring looked at him.

“You said there were new developments on
Marauder
. What are they?”

Ring nodded. “The tunnels are stabilizing. Settling.”

Beck said nothing.

“The pulse—the sound signature—was intermittent before. Winking on and off, as if the tunnel locations hadn’t been fixed. As if the tunnels couldn’t decide where to form.”

“And that’s different now?”

“Yes. We have three receivers in the Bering Sea. NOAA has hundreds up and down the coast. The sounds are stabilizing, no question about it. NOAA’s scientists are buzzing about it. Wondering what it means. Thought it was some sort of transient geothermal activity before. Something organic in origin, maybe. But the pulses are louder now. Settling down.

“NOAA, the Navy, they’re paying attention. Still attributing the sounds to natural phenomena but curious at the same time. It’s still an internal, arcane discussion, from the chatter I’m seeing, but it won’t stay that way much longer.”

“So what
does
it mean?”

“That Mia’s plan is unfolding. That something’s about to happen.”

Beck wanted to ask Ring to explain himself but guessed he’d get a complicated, opaque answer, so he didn’t bother. He didn’t have the strength. Instead he said, “You said
developments
, plural. What else?”

“One of the pulses is different. At least ten times louder than the others. If the tunnel is as big as the sound, it’s enormous.”

Ring lifted his tablet computer and showed it to Beck. A chart of the southern half of Vancouver Island filled the screen.

“Barclay Sound,” said Beck. “Close to shore. Can’t be that deep.”

“It’s not. Most life is near the surface, so few of the chambers will be very deep, once it starts.”

Once it starts?

Beck’s head ached, from the incident at the airport, from trying to follow Ring’s update, from everything.

He said, “I thought the chambers were deep. Thousands of feet.”

“Most of them are,” said Ring. But they’ll float up. Rise in the water column from the bathypelagic zone, where they are now, to the euphotic zone—between three hundred fifty meters and the surface. That’s my theory anyway.”

Beck said nothing.

“Remember the fibers on the exterior of the chamber? The phosphorescent strands running between the chamber and the seafloor?”

Beck shrugged. “I guess so.”

“When it starts, those strands—or tethers, if I’m right—will break and the tunnels will rise. Kind of like hot-air balloons lifting off from the ground. They won’t float all the way to the surface. Close, though, because that’s where all the life is.”

Beck didn’t ask Ring how he’d arrived at his theory. “Barclay Sound,” he said, instead, “is only a few hours from
Marauder
.”

“Yes,” said Ring. “My advice is to head there with all speed. If I’m right, we’re very close to the end.” He hesitated. “Or the beginning, depending on how you want to look at it.”

Beck sat quiet, too drained and uncomfortable to focus or think critically. He stared out the window, at the vast, shimmering waterway—the Strait of Juan de Fuca—spread out below them.

He felt calmer. Steadier. But his head still throbbed, and he kept getting whiffs of his own awful smell: sweat mixed with urine mixed with vomit. He couldn’t wait to get to
Marauder
and into a shower. He guessed they were thirty to forty minutes away.

Adrenaline gone, Beck felt suddenly very tired.

He settled back in his seat and slowly shut his eyes, then cried out and lurched forward, straining against his harness, vomit rising in his throat once more.

The copilot turned. Ring jumped.

“What is it?” Ring yelled. “What’s wrong?”

Beck didn’t respond, just sat there facing forward, shaking like a hypothermia victim.

“What happened?” Ring asked.

I saw the eyes again. The eyes living in Navarro’s decomposing skull.

Beck thought this, but didn’t say it. Didn’t have the will or the energy to try to explain it to Ring.

The eyes.

He’d settled back in his seat to rest, to sleep a few minutes. Barely leaned back, and they were there. Clear. Bright. Huge.

Orbs.

Eyes.

Windows to a particularly sick and twisted soul. Liquid and alive and full of fire they were, floating in a molten membrane that made them gleam and glint.

The eyes are with me now.

He could feel the presence—whatever it was—lurking. Waiting.

Waiting for him to lower his guard.

He didn’t dare rest again. Not now.

He sat there. Mouth dry. Hands shaking. Trying to think.

The eyes don’t belong in Navarro’s body. They’re not Navarro’s eyes.

He could feel the entity—the presence—close at hand. Closing in around him. Enveloping him in a putrid, smothering embrace.

The passenger cabin was empty, save for him and Ring. But
something
else was there. Something else. Something heavy and huge and foul. Something that could think and plan and see inside his head.

I’m losing my mind
, Beck thought.

He was a strong man. A fighting man. A man trained to perform and flourish in stressful conditions. He forced himself now to relax. To analyze what was going on.

If Ring was right, Stanton and the gillnetter and the Erebus divers had suffered their breakdowns as a result of physical contact with an orca whale. They’d touched a whale and sometime thereafter begun to hallucinate. To see things that didn’t exist.

He, on the other hand, had had no such contact.

Why am I hallucinating? Why am I having a breakdown in parallel with Stanton?

He thought about it.

Maybe it has nothing to do with Stanton. Maybe it’s some kind of latent PTSD.

He’d seen plenty of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, after all. Plenty of mayhem and death. He’d killed dozens of people. Been shot at hundreds of times.

Answers eluded him.

The only thing he knew for sure was that he wasn’t going to shut his eyes again. Not here. Not now.

Maybe in my cabin, with the door locked, but not here.

He didn’t want to see the eyes again. Eyes that burned. That could see inside him. That knew everything about him.

He wanted to avoid that at all costs.

He sat up straight in his seat and realized that Ring was staring at him. Not working. Not looking at his computers.

That’s a first
, thought Beck.
Ring idle. Ring staring at something besides a screen. This must be serious.

“What’s going on?” Ring asked. “Are you okay?”

After a long silence he said “Ring, why are we pursuing this?”

Ring didn’t respond.

Beck said, “We have a deployment starting soon on the Ivory Coast. A huge deployment. Why did we sidetrack here?”

Ring squinted at him, like he couldn’t quite grasp the question, like it was so ridiculous he didn’t know how to answer.

“Because we stumbled on something extraordinary. You know. A phenomenon. Something no one’s ever seen before.”

Beck stared out the window. “A phenomenon?”

“Yes,” said Ring. “Something unprecedented.”

Beck said without turning, “I can see
you
delaying a deployment for such a thing. But why would
I
do that?”

Ring considered it. “Because I made a compelling argument? Piqued your curiosity?”

Beck said nothing.

Ring’s logic was sound, but Beck didn’t think it was correct.

In fact he was
positive
it wasn’t correct.

Despite his stress and fatigue, he felt lucid. More awake and aware than he had in some time. Adrenaline, perhaps? He didn’t know.

Whatever the reason, the facts—the salient elements of his current situation—arranged themselves in his mind now like objects on a table.

I’m a soldier and a businessman.

I like fighting.

I like killing.

I like making money.

Lingering in one place to explore arcane scientific phenomena is not me. Not something Sheldon Beck would do.

Kate was right to question me. To question my motives.

So there it was.

The truth, stark and painful.

I’ve jeopardized the biggest contract in Erebus history and
squandered company resources.

Why?

Why?

He thought about it.

I’m hallucinating. Seeing and feeling things that aren’t real.

But maybe the hallucination’s not new. Maybe it’s been going on for weeks. Maybe I didn’t even realize it until now—when it’s really bad.

He thought some more.

Did something trigger a breakdown? Am I cracking up?

He tried to puzzle it out. Struggled to focus his mind, then gave up, exhausted.