Hungry Darkness: A Deep Sea Thriller (8 page)

Chapter Sixteen

According to Emanuel, octopodes are territorial animals despite the fact that most species regularly change dens. The marine biologist had started rambling after Gabe asked him if he had an idea of what would be a good place to start looking for the beast. The scientist hadn’t shut his mouth since.

“We should definitely head to the reefs near Giant Cave. I’d bet that’s where this octopus is hiding. Think about it. True, it has been spotted here and there, but not by many people. An animal of that size would cause quite a stir if he was active or visible during the daytime. Also, the sun’s about to go down, and that’s when he’ll be most active. If we can be already there when he decides to go get some food, then we won’t really have to wait long before we’re face-to-face with him.”

To Gabe, Emanuel’s words were more or less like the sound of the boats engines; he knew it was there, but his attention was elsewhere.

The closer they got to Giant Cave, the smaller Gabe thought his boat was. Gabe owned a 1999 31' Fountain Center Console Fishing Boat with a couple of 275 Mercury Verado motors in the back. It was more than he needed and certainly more than he could afford, but he’d been lucky. The last time he decided to buy a newer boat, he found a listing that he was sure was a scam, but he called anyway. Turns out it was not a scam, but no one else had called thinking that it was. The man who owned the boat was about to get a divorce and wanted to sell as many things as he could and send the money to his girlfriend in Florida. He ended up giving the boat to Gabe for $20,000. Gabe knew that was the first and last time something like that would happen to him.

While the boat always felt good under Gabe’s feet, now he couldn’t stop imagining the whole thing being crushed with the three of them inside. Also, the two men sitting on the boat with him would soon have shotguns in their hands, and Gabe was starting to realize how bad his plan really was.

They reached the reef near Giant Cave and dropped anchor. Emanuel placed a hand on Gabe’s shoulder.

“Time to get in the water, man,” said Emanuel.

“What? No, I have some crabs in the…”

“This octopus won’t show for some tiny crabs, Gabe. I told you, you have to turn yourself into the bait. You don’t have to be in the water for long. Just jump in, splash around a bit, and come back. For some reason, this octopus likes to hunt near the surface. I could give you a three-hour presentation on why that’s absolutely bonkers, but we don’t have that much time.”

Gabe looked at Emanuel. He was serious. Martin was sitting near the bow, his dark eyes shifting back and forth between the water and the two men.

Getting in the water was the last thing Gabe wanted to do, but he knew it had to be done. Although he understood the necessity for it, he was also very aware of the fact that he was not even remotely interested in playing hero. He was going to jump in the water, splash around, and climb back onboard before the last few drops caused by his splashing were done falling back into the ocean.

“Martin and I are going to be right there with you.”

“That’s okay, just don’t point your guns at me unless you actually see something coming for me, deal?”

“Deal,” said Emanuel with a smile that was very much out of place. 

Chapter Seventeen

The water was tepid. The sun looked like a radioactive orange that was being submerged in black ink. The two men who were supposed to take care of Gabe the short time he was going to spend in the water looked like schoolboys who had been caught looking at porn during class.

Gabe looked at the two pairs of eyes that kept jumping from him to the water and sent up a silent prayer to a god he’d stopped believing in a decade before.

“The time is perfect. Get in there, and do your thing,” said Emanuel.

Instead of thinking, which surely would lead to chickening out, Gabe jumped into the water.

As a diver, Gabe knew that the world underneath the surface of the ocean was mysterious and dangerous. He knew that while many alpinists had reached the top of Everest, no one had reached the bottom of the ocean. At that moment, with his feet moving around in the water and his hands splashing around with a desperation he didn’t have to fake, he could somehow feel the immensity of the world underneath him and his own insignificance in relation to it.

Then his right hand shot out and grabbed the boat.

“What are you doing? You can’t get in just yet, man. Splash around some more!”

For a second, Gabe thought Emanuel was joking. Then he looked at his face and realized the marine biologist was serious.

“How long do you want me down here? I’m not really happy feeling like a flapping chunk of bait.”

“Not much longer. Twilight is when these guys come out. We only need you in there long enough to make sure this octopus knows we’re here. Usually they hide in their dens and wait for prey to get close, but he has been going up to boats, so it seems like he either hears boats or senses their presence.”

Gabe had never wanted to kill anyone as bad as he wanted to kill Emanuel right then. He grabbed the aluminum ladder with both hands and climbed onboard.

“If that’s your theory, then we can just leave the fucking motors running!”

Emanuel’s eyes opened wide. Gabe was right. Putting him in the water had been as dangerous as it had been unnecessary.

“Listen, Gabe, I’m really sorry I…”

“Guys!” Martin’s voice reached them and made them turn around.

“I just saw something!”

Emanuel and Gabe ran to where Martin was sitting. They looked at the water next to the boat. The sun was covering the water with glare. They couldn’t see much.

“What did you see?”

“No idea. It was big and dark. I just saw this shadow go by under the boat.”

Gabe knew it was time to get the shotgun.

Chapter Eighteen

The second Gabe’s right hand wrapped around the shotgun’s barrel, Emanuel’s voice erupted. Gabe turned around, feeling like someone had just dumped a bucket of ice-cold water on his head. The tightening in his skull and around his neck and chest was something he hadn’t felt in a very long time.

Emanuel and Martin were looking at the water, their bodies bent over starboard. Gabe imagined a giant arm coming out of the water and knocking them into the ocean. It made him put a shell into the chamber and get out of the cockpit.

“You guys see anything?” Gabe asked.

“Just a large shape, like Martin said. I think it’s studying us. Remember what I told you: the octopus is the brain of the ocean. With the size of this beast’s brain, I’m afraid he might even know we’re up to no good.”

Just as he had done at his lab, Emanuel was turning the octopus into a brilliant creature with unlimited powers. Gabe opted to ignore that because in his head, he wanted it to be nothing more than a soft, overgrown animal that could easily be blown to pieces by the gun in his hands.

Gabe had almost reached the two men bent over his boat when Martin jumped back so hard he fell on his ass.

“Holy shit…”

Emanuel’s words were too long. It sounded like he had split holy into two different words. Gabe reached him and looked at the side of the boat. A round, pinkish bulge with brown spots was moving along the side of the boat like a huge tongue. A wave a reddish brown seemed to wash over it.

“Wow! I wonder how many millions of cromatophores this thing has. You see that flash of red? We know next to nothing about the way an octopus uses colors to communicate, but I’m pretty sure that meant it’s either hungry or mad. I’ve seen…”

“Fuck!”

Martin’s scream made them turn around. They saw him lift his shotgun and fire. The sound pierced their ears and left a continuous ringing in its wake. Gabe watched a chunk of his starboard go up in an explosion of white.

“There was a tentacle there!” said Martin, his voice a trembling mess.

“I told you not to shoot my boat!”

“Stop it, guys. We need to keep our eye on the octopus. Maybe it was distracting us with one arm while he used the other to sneak up on us. I told you this was a smart animal. Also, remember that it can shed an arm and keep going, so we want to focus on shooting him where it matters, which means not on the arms. Aim for the eyes. We’re…we’re gonna have to let him climb into the boat if we want to have a clear shot at his head.”

“We have to go back. It’s too big. My son was right.”

“We can’t go back now,” said Gabe. “We need to finish this thing. Your son could be his next meal if we don’t.”

Anger flashed in Martin’s eyes. Gabe saw it as clearly as he’d seen the red flashing across the octopus’s arm. Then, as quickly as it’d come, it vanished. Martin knew Gabe was right.

“We should get in the cockpit and stomp around. He already knows we’re here.”

Emanuel looked over starboard again. The arm was gone.

“I hope your shot only scared him a bit. If he decides to move on to something else, our chances of killing him…”

“He’s still around,” said Martin, who was now making his way to the cockpit. ‘”I just saw the same shadow I saw earlier move off the port quarter.”

No one spoke again. They all moved to the cockpit which, sitting in the middle of the beam, was the point in the boat that put the most distance between them and the water.

Emanuel started stomping his feet.

“What the hell are you doing?” Gabe asked, feeling annoyed and confused, both of which were exacerbated by the fear he was feeling.

“I’m letting the octopus know we’re still here. He’s already proved he’s curious, so I’m just giving him more reason to come up and take a look.”

The stomping went on for a few minutes. It was obvious Emanuel was getting tired of it. Gabe didn’t want to say anything, but with each passing minute he became more convinced that they had missed their chance and wouldn’t get another one. He was trying to keep the call he’d have to give Suarez out of his head. What was worse, he felt that any new deaths would be partly his fault. Then Emanuel raised his right hand and pointed at starboard.

‘There!”

The tip of an arm was just reaching over the side of the boat. It moved carefully, but it didn’t seem to hesitate about pushing forward.

Martin pumped another shell into the chamber. The metallic clack cracked the silence they were all immersed in and made Gabe realize he was holding his breath.

“Don’t shoot, Martin. Remember that we need to let it get much closer.”

The fisherman looked at Emanuel with wide eyes. His forehead was covered with beads of sweat despite the breeze. He nodded, but it was a half-assed nod. It made Gabe wonder if he would start shooting soon and if that would ruin this second chance.

The three men stood in the cockpit as close as if they were stuck in a crowded elevator. They watched as the massive arm reached over the side of the boat and started moving along like a jerky snake. A few suckers made a loud popping sound as they let go of the boat’s floor to move forward.

“There’s a second arm near the bow,” said Emanuel, his voice low as if he was communicating a secret.

Gabe and Martin looked at the bow despite the fact that their brains were telling them to keep their eyes glued to the approaching arm.

The second arm was moving much faster than the first. In fact, its movements were so different from the appendage they’d been looking at a few seconds ago that Gabe wondered if it belonged to a different creature. The arm crossed the bow and seemed to hug that part of the boat. Gabe wondered if the octopus wanted to sink them that way.

By the time the third arm appeared, this one only a few feet from the tree-trunk-sized arm that was now reaching the elevated floor of the cockpit, Emanuel spoke.

“Get ready. We should see his head popping up any minute now. There’s no way those arms can keep appearing without the octopus they’re attached to.”

Emanuel was wrong.

The two arms kept coming.

The three men moved away from the probing appendages, slowly walking backwards toward port.

“It’s too big! The head is till underwater!” said Martin. 

Then, as if to prove him wrong, a large, round mass appeared off starboard. The sun had almost dipped entirely into the horizon and the piece of octopus they could see appeared only as a round darkness.

Gabe raised his shotgun and click-clacked a round into the chamber. Emanuel did the same. Martin was already aiming at the beast.

“Hold your fire, man. We want to see its eyes before we start shooting.”

Gabe looked at Martin. The shotgun was shaking in his hands. 

By the time the fifth arm appeared on board, Gabe was ready to start shooting at the round mass which now stood at least four feet over starboard. They had to hit something vital if they all landed shot inside that roundness.

“I think we should…”

“Not yet! Look at the bottom. That’s a piece of mantle. He’s trying to get in. He’ll be over the side soon. Then we shoot.”

The seconds that passed seemed like an eternity. The octopus’s head grew and grew. The boat tipped to starboard. Gabe was sure it would keep tipping until they were all in the water. Finally, the head dropped inside the boat.

Martin’s shotgun went off first. The flash illuminated the beast. Two dark eyes were looking at them from atop a brownish mass with touches of dark green that was almost the size of a small car.

Gabe squeezed his trigger a second later. He saw an explosion coming from the top left part of the octopus’s head. He had expected it to deflate, to show it’d been hurt. None of that happened. Emanuel’s blast went off almost simultaneously with Martin’s second. Then Martin’s disappeared with a scream.

Gabe looked at the place the skinny fisherman had been occupying and saw nothing. Then he looked down and saw Martin was being dragged by his left calf. The fisherman yelled and dropped his gun to try to stop himself from being pulled out of the boat. Gabe heard the shotgun clatter and instantly knew that had been a bad move. He took two steps toward the screaming man, aimed at the arm a few feet away from the leg, and pulled the trigger. He heard Emanuel’s shotgun go off once more. 

The arm exploded. Martin moved back. The half of the arm that was still attached to the octopus pulled back, leaving a streak of blue blood behind it. Gabe looked at the hole the shot had left on his boat. His fear was suddenly drowned by anger.

Emanuel squeezed off another shot. Gabe turned to look at him. Then he saw him go down just like Martin had.

Behind Gabe, Martin shot at the retreating arm.

Emanuel didn’t let his gun go. He aimed at the head of the monster and pulled the trigger. There was only a loud click. He was out of ammunition.

Each man had three shells in the shotgun. Martin and Emanuel had more in their pockets. Gabe had nothing but dampness in his.

Gabe moved closer to the octopus and aimed his last shot at the middle of its head. He squeezed the trigger and felt the gun kick. Another chunk of octopus flesh exploded into the air.

Emanuel was trying to pull a shell out of his pocket, but it wasn’t happening.

Gabe moved toward the cockpit. The bag with the ammo was under the captain’s chair.

Emanuel started screaming.

Martin had managed to reload. His shotgun went off again. Gabe didn’t know what he was shooting at, but he didn’t have time to take a look. He reached the bag and unzipped it. The boxes of shells had opened. The ammunition was loose and moving around in the bag. He grabbed two shells and quickly used his thumb to push them into the gun.

He got up and looked at where Emanuel had been a few seconds ago. The man was gone. Then Gabe saw an arm disappearing under the beast’s head. He pumped the shotgun and moved toward the head.

The octopus had shifted its position. It looked like he was trying to turn around and return to the water. Gabe stepped to its left and extended his right arm to get a shot closer to the shiny black eyes.

The shotgun went off. It pushed Gabe’s arm toward the sky. Something hit Gabe from behind and knocked him down. He heard Martin scream and shoot again. He turned that way. Martin was two and half feet off the boat. A massive arm was wrapped around him, moving back toward the water. There was a loud crunch and the fisherman’s legs kicked out. Then he was still.

Gabe stood up. The octopus had pulled its head halfway up the side of the boat. He had to make a move before it disappeared underwater.

Something splashed loudly behind him.

He pumped his last round into the chamber and took four steps toward the head. Instead of extending his arm again, Gabe got next to the octopus, pressed the shotgun into the gaping hole left by his previous shot, and squeezed the trigger once more.

The dome where the octopus’s last working eye remained exploded. Blue blood and pieces of slimy flesh rained down on him. Momentum carried the octopus over the side of the boat. It splashed down on the water and floated there, not moving.

Gabe looked down and saw Emanuel’s upper torso. Only it’s right arm was still attached to it. Right below the chest, there was only gore and a piece of the man’s spine jutting out below a few shattered ribs.

Gabe looked to the side, bent over, and vomited. Then he looked back. Martin wasn’t in the boat. He heard no splashing around.

The shotgun clattered against the floor. Gabe wiped his mouth, stood up straight, and looked around.

He couldn’t make out too many details in the encroaching darkness, but the boat was covered in red and blue blood. Miraculously, the hole on the floor wasn’t gushing water.
Gabe grabbed Emanuel’s remaining arm and pushed his torso into the ocean. The octopus was still there, floating a few inches below the water and not moving. Then he picked up his shotgun and looked for Emanuel’s gun. Martin’s wasn’t in the boat. Gabe threw the guns into the ocean and looked out at the last red line above the horizon.

It was time to go home. He hated navigating the reef at night, but the boat had the equipment to ensure he’d make it home if he paid attention to it and didn’t try to hurry.

Gabe walked to cockpit and turned on his motors. The black water at the back of the boat started churning. He had to focus on getting home, but all he could think about were the unknown hungry things living in the impenetrable liquid darkness that surrounded him.

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