He seemed to be enjoying their reaction.
F
orty minutes later, Camilla strained to see what lay around them. The darkness was almost absolute. She could hear the soft thump and splash of waves against the rocks on both sides. The noise of the engines was fading now, the running lights of the ship’s launch already out of sight. All around her, contestants stood huddled in the blackness. Too close. The skin on her arms tightened into goose bumps.
“I said I wasn’t a lawyer.” Mason’s voice came out of the darkness beside her.
“You said that contract looked clean,” Veronica said, a few feet to Camilla’s left. “I swear to God, if this is some kind of a joke, I’m going to sue the hell out of these people.” She shifted restlessly, the boards creaking under her feet.
“Well, there was a release of liability that we signed, too,” Mason said.
“Right. You know what?” Veronica’s iPhone lit Mason’s face. “You’re an idiot.”
The light reflected off his glasses. Camilla couldn’t see his eyes—only that he was grinning.
Veronica swept the phone around them like a flashlight. The glow revealed the faces of their fellow contestants, frozen in expressions of confusion and concern. They stood together in a tight cluster on the narrow stretch of dock.
Brent’s voice came from behind Camilla, over her shoulder.
“What about our bags?”
“They’re supposed to bring the bags tomorrow,” she said. Her voice sounded little-girl-lost to her, so she cleared her throat. “They probably need to inspect them first—make sure there isn’t anything the show rules don’t allow.”
A dim glimpse of pale foam roiling a few yards away. The breeze cut right through her dinner-party clothes. She pulled out her own iPhone. No signal.
Wonderful.
She crossed her arms about her chest, shivering. “Everybody, stay calm,” she said. “They’re just trying to disorient us—”
“The money.” Veronica’s phone lit Mason’s face again. Her voice was as harsh as ever. “What did it say about the money?”
“Guaranteed… I thought.” He lost his grin. “I wouldn’t have signed it, otherwise.”
Veronica lowered her iPhone.
Travis spoke. “Way I read it, it said as long as we don’t all manage to disqualify ourselves, one of us ten gets that five million.”
Sounds erupted with frightening suddenness from the surrounding darkness. Animal noises. Loud yelps, barks, moans. The sounds drowned out the crash of the waves. Camilla could hear deeper rumbles, too. They echoed off the rocks—the sounds of something very large. The other contestants pressed in tighter, everyone facing outward. The noises seemed dangerously close. Then the sounds faded away again. A few last yips and groans trailed into silence.
Now the press of tense bodies was silent, too. She could feel her fellow contestants all around her, frozen in place, listening intently. Her own eyes strained from their sockets, staring into the darkness. Oh god, this was such a mistake. Where the hell
were
they?
The wind shifted direction.
In the middle of the huddle, someone coughed. Then there was a small choking noise that ended in a stifled sob. Natalie, maybe?
Jordan spoke for all of them. Her voice shook.
“Oh my god. What is that fucking smell?”
Near Natural Bridges State Beach, Santa Cruz, California
H
eather Stevens stood in the living room of the Swanton Drive house she shared with Jacob Horowitz and Dmitry Kuznetsov, the other two members of her research team. Heather was struggling to come to grips with what the call from Karen, their director, meant.
“What do you mean,
not going
?” Jacob, the lead scientist, asked her. “As in not going
today
? Or not going
at all
?”
Heather realized she was still holding the phone. She put it down slowly. “Karen said next season we could—”
“
Next season?
No, that makes no sense.” Jacob stared at her, rubbing his beard. “It took us eight fucking months to get the grants approved for
this
season.” His eyes blinked rapidly behind his glasses, showing the same confusion that Heather felt. “Besides,” he said, “all our gear is already in the van, checked and loaded. How can she pull this crap at the last minute?”
“Karen didn’t really give me a reason.”
Jacob’s face turned red. “Two goddamn weeks a year—that’s all we ever get out there, and now we don’t even get
that
?”
He slammed the lid of his laptop shut, shaking the small kitchen table. The waterproof tracking unit that he had been prepping rolled away. Heather caught it as it rolled off the edge, and put it back with the others. “Look, why don’t we take a minute to calm down?”
“This season is different.” He walked over to the window and stared into the blackness outside. “There’s something
going on
out there, Heather. Out at the island. The data from the old trackers shows it clearly: a convergence pattern we’ve never seen before. No one has. It’s a completely new behavior.”
Jacob’s jaw worked, and he pulled at the chest of his rumpled “UCSC Fighting Banana Slugs” sweatshirt. The last time Heather had seen him do that was two years ago, the night before his dissertation defense. Picking up her tea mug with both hands, she plopped down onto the couch. She looked down into the mug but found no answers there.
“We need to call Dmitry,” she said. “He took the van this afternoon. He might already be headed to the pier.”
“You do it,” Jacob said. “I’m thinking.”
Heather put down her tea and spread her hands. “Look, I don’t want to make excuses for Karen. This is messed up. But I know she’s dealing with a lot of pressure from the grants committee. Maybe the funding situation is worse than we know.”
“Like, how is that
my
fucking problem? Karen’s the director, not me. She’s supposed to be dealing with all that so we can concentrate on the science. What am I gonna do now, Heather? Put the study on hold until next year?”
“You should calm down.”
“
Fuck
your calm down. Let’s all go down to the Institute right now and catch her in person. She needs to tell me to my face why we’re getting thrown under the bus.”
• • •
A half hour later the three scientists stood in front of Karen’s office door. To Heather’s surprise, it was locked.
“She always used to work late.” Jacob ticked a fingertip against the brass plate on the door’s glass upper panel which read, “
Research Director, Santa Cruz Pelagic Institute
.” “Have you seen her working late even once since she became director? Because I sure haven’t,” he said. “She didn’t return your call, either. This is such bullshit.”
Dmitry, the third member of their team, laid a hand on Jacob’s shoulder. “She’s not here. Come, we go now, drop off van at lab. Tomorrow morning I buy you Starbucks, and we figure out what to do.”
Heather liked Dmitry. The short, stocky Russian was a thoughtful and meticulous scientist. But with his cheery grin, he was a center of calm rationality, too. That was something their team also needed, particularly at times like this.
“Inside every cloud is silver line,” Dmitry said. “Instead of going to island now, maybe we finish deep-water survey, then enjoy New Year’s with family, no?”
“Listen to him, Jacob. He’s right. We’ll be able to look at this with clearer heads tomorrow.” Heather pulled out her phone. “In the meantime, I’m going to get a hold of Karen’s admin, or someone from Raja’s team.
Somebody
has to know what’s going on.”
“I
see something moving out there.”
Lauren squinted and saw it again, flopping just at the edge of her vision: a faint gray shape in the blackness. She pointed it out to JT. “On the rocks.”
JT’s teeth and eyes gleamed white, next to her face. “I’m gonna go check it out,” he said, and started down the dock, headed toward land.
She stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Here, take this.”
“Don’t want it.” He handed the cell phone back. “Mess up my night vision.”
Lauren watched JT’s back disappear into the darkness. Several other phones lit up the small section of dock where the rest of the contestants stood. The nauseating stench came and went as the breeze shifted. It filled her sinuses, at times getting so bad it made her gag.
The animal noises rose around them again. That deep rumble came from nearby, beneath the other sounds, like liquid gargling in a giant plastic drainpipe. Her eyes met Travis’s. His grimace showed teeth.
You look pretty scared there, tough guy.
“Seals. Sea lions. That’s what you’re hearing.” Juan’s voice, coming out of the darkness behind them, was calm.
The beams from several phones swung in his direction, and Lauren could see him now. He stood at the edge of the dock a small distance away, his side to the rest of the group, arms crossed. He was looking down into the water.
“If you’ve been to Fisherman’s Wharf or Pier Thirty-nine,” he said, “then you’ve heard them before.”
She caught a flicker of amusement on Juan’s lips. Asshole was just standing there laughing at them. But she could make out individual seal yips and barks now amid the noisy din.
“Great,” she said, disgusted. “We’re standing around terrified by a few seals.” Her voice carried loudly. “What a bunch of losers.”
She turned and walked down the dock with forceful strides. “Let’s get going, people. Someone’s gotta be waiting for us up there, wondering why we haven’t shown up yet.” She could see only a few feet in front of her, but that was enough to find her footing on the rocky ground where the dock ended. Now, where was JT?
A deafening roar exploded out of the darkness right in front of her. Lauren froze. Before she could react, JT came flying toward her, arms waving wild circles, running all out. His eyes were huge with fear.
“Go!” he shouted into her face as he raced past her.
Lauren pivoted and sprinted after him. Another deep bellow exploded right behind her. It sounded angry. She risked a glimpse over her shoulder as she ran.
A massive wet shape surged across the rocky ground behind her, moving with terrifying speed, rippling up and down in a violent humping motion. It reared up behind her, taller than she was, and much, much wider.
Lauren’s belly clenched in terror. Oh Christ, what the hell was it?
Her feet pounded onto the boards of the dock. She whipped her head around again. It was almost on top of her now, the size of a minivan, its gray hide knotted into a cauliflower mass of scar tissue. She glimpsed an eye, red-veined with rage. Then, with a sideways jerk, the beast suddenly broke off the chase. It faded back into the darkness with another chest-rattling roar.
Lauren slowed her pace. The visible part of the dock remained empty behind her. Her heart was hammering. Her hands shook. Fucking JT! He had let that thing almost get her. She backed the rest of the way to join the others, staring fearfully at the shore.
“F
uck, fuck,
fuck!
” JT was bent almost double, his hands on his knees. His chest heaved violently, breaths whistling in and out. Camilla put a hand on his shoulder, but he shook it off.
“Christ!” Lauren looked frantically from face to face, her mouth opening and closing. “What was that thing?”
“A seal?” Mason called to Juan. “You think?”
To Camilla’s surprise, he was laughing.
Lauren took two angry steps and pushed Mason hard in the chest. He stumbled back and almost fell. She glared at him for a moment, but her hands were shaking. It looked as though she didn’t trust herself to speak. Then she stalked off.
JT straightened up and looked at Mason. “You find something about this funny, asshole?”
Mason seemed like he was about to say something more, but Camilla quickly took his arm. “I need to talk to you,” she said.
She led him away from JT’s angry stare. Then she put her fists on her hips and rounded on him. “What were you thinking? This isn’t a joke. There’s something dangerous out there.”
“There might be something out there, but trust me, it’s not likely any real danger.” Mason’s voice was calm, reasonable. “Think about it. Whatever it is, they put it there deliberately, to liven things up with a little drama.”
What he said made a lot of sense. It was even kind of obvious, in a way. Surprising that no one else had considered it.
“Let’s tell the others, then,” she said. “We need to get everybody calmed down before someone does something dumb.”
She started forward, but Mason gently held her back by the arm.
Behind his glasses, his eyes twinkled. “Or we can just keep quiet instead. See how long it takes them to figure it out for themselves.”
• • •
“No bars. I can’t get a signal, either.” Veronica sat on the dock next to Camilla, hugging her knees to her chest. The screen of her phone lit her face from below. The others were barely visible, sitting or reclining in twos and threes scattered about the dock.
“How about you?” Camilla turned to Jordan, sitting to her other side.
“Me, neither. Nothing,” she said. “I’ve got Verizon. Who do you have?”
“A T and T.”
A few hours had gone by. After a brief debate, everyone had agreed to wait until dawn, and see what the daylight brought. No one wanted to dare the darkness beyond the dock again. They had all settled in for a lengthy wait, doing their best to get comfortable despite the cold, the stomach-churning smell, and the sporadic chorus of animal barks and grunts.
Natalie lay on her back with her knees raised, staring at the sky. Her hands were tucked into her hoodie’s front pockets. Camilla reached out and tapped her on the foot. “Natalie?”
Natalie jerked her foot away. “What?”
“Does your cell phone work out here?”
Without getting up, Natalie pulled her hand out of her hoodie pocket, holding a phone. She tilted her chin forward, peering at the screen. “Nope.”
“What is it?”