Reef of Death (The Zone Unknown) Read online

  Closer, PC saw the propeller housings protruding from the tanklike body of the vehicle. There were external floodlights. Video and still camera mounts. Remote-controlled platforms and wire baskets were tucked between its long, robotic arms. Hydraulic pincers, claws, reached forward as it neared PC. He recognized it as a DSV, a deep submergence vehicle like the United States’ Alvin and the French Poseidon. He knew there were only eight or nine DSV’s of this size in the world.

  Dr. Ecenbarger had her own.

  She stared at PC from her seat in the pressurized cockpit—a plastic bubble that rose like a Cyclops eye from the titanium of the vehicle’s skin.

  “Yes, the three musketeers are alive,” Dr. Ecenbarger said into her mike. Her voice came through loud and clear on PC’s buddy phone channel. She appeared hellish, her head glowing from the cockpit’s interior of electronic screens and lighted dials. “We’ll see how you do when the big fish comes back—and it will.”

  One of the hydraulic arms shot out suddenly for PC’s throat. It missed and sank into the magnesium lode, crumbling a large chunk of it. PC tried swimming for the surface, but Dr. Ecenbarger extended two long robotic arms from the vehicle. They snapped, clawed, and rotated above his head. A fourth arm with a grasper moved forward and curled around his arm to hold him tight against the cliff.

  “Maruul! Wally!” PC yelled into his buddy phone. “Go for the top! Now!”

  Dr. Ecenbarger looked amused in her plastic cockpit. “I heard that.”

  Maruul and Wally slid out quickly from beneath the ledge and started swimming up the face of the chalk wall. Dr. Ecenbarger thrust the DSV’s arms out and upward to their fullest length.

  “No!” PC yelled.

  The claws cut into the cliff face above their heads. The doctor maneuvered the claws to force Maruul and Wally back down into the fissure.

  Dr. Ecenbarger smiled. “You’re all so white. So pure.”

  “Let them go,” PC said.

  The doctor threw a switch. A spinning drill telescoped out from the submersible, heading straight for PC. The robotic arm held him. He twisted, managed to swing his body horizontally to avoid the bore as it dug through into the cliff. The sudden motion scraped whole strips of the white clay off him. There were shallow bleeding cuts across his chest. He knew that if the fish came back, it would find him.

  “I’m having trouble breathing,” Maruul said. The battery in her buddy phone was drained and dying.

  Dr. Ecenbarger spoke into her mike. “Let me make you and Mr. Wallygong more comfortable.”

  She manipulated the hydraulic arms down to the mouth of the fissure. The claws entered, snapping like hedge clippers, to seek them out. Beneath the ledge, Wally scratched at the whiteness ahead of him and helped Maruul away from the straight thrusts of the probes.

  PC kicked at the steel limb restraining him. The effort consumed the last of his oxygen. He struggled to pull his arm loose as Ratboy and the stones in the shoot bag dug into his back.

  “Your friends are hiding,” Dr. Ecenbarger said. “We’re always prepared for that.” She hit a clutch in the cockpit.

  With his free hand, PC slid the shoot bag around to his chest. He watched as the top section of the DSV separated from the main body. It was flat, like a stingray, less than three feet across, with its own motor and hydraulic projections. A junior robot with a screaming saw as a nosepiece. A long, thick cable tethered it to the mother DSV, as it propelled itself to the fissure and began to pulverize everything it touched. It crawled in after Maruul and Wally like a scorpion.

  “Don’t!” PC shouted. The doctor laughed and stepped up the power to the robot. PC punched at the cliff. He felt something sharp cutting into his hand. A crust of whiteness broke from the edge of the silvery magnesium lode.

  The magnesium.

  PC’s hand moved across the cold metal. Magnesium that burns underwater, he thought. He heard Maruul’s voice. “IT’S GOING TO GET US!”

  Desperately, PC dug his free hand into the shoot bag. Dr. Ecenbarger smiled at his curious struggle. She watched him grab Ratboy and thrust the computer against the magnesium. Its thin black plastic shell broke. For a moment she thought a type of rapture of the deep had taken hold of his mind.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer. “Sorry, Ratboy,” he whispered under his breath as he yanked the guts out of the computer. He clutched a fist of wires and circuit boards. And its battery.

  Dr. Ecenbarger watched his actions and tried to understand. She was aware of the magnesium strip—the narrow lode of magnesium that led from the cliff to …

  to …

  She saw the battery sparking on the magnesium.

  NO, she began to think. Then she shouted the word at PC. She pulled back the hydraulic arm that had him pinioned against the cliff. She hoped it would make him stop, but it didn’t. With both hands free, he crashed the battery again into the silvery strip until it sparked.

  Brighter.

  Longer.

  Suddenly, a white fire flared on the surface of the magnesium. The metal was burning.

  Wildly.

  Intensely.

  The light from it was blinding, like a giant sparkler. At first, the fire began to spread along a narrow route, but then it traveled quickly along the sea bottom toward the drill tubes of the freighter. A smaller band of flames crawled up the band of magnesium toward the top of the cliff.

  Three minutes, twelve seconds … Three minutes, eleven seconds …

  Dr. Ecenbarger couldn’t think about the dynamite planted in the opal slab of the lava tube. Her only thought now was to extinguish the blazing fuse heading beneath her freighter. She knew her entire boat with its storehouse of magnesium was a massive floating bomb.

  She turned the junior robot around, made it retreat from the fissure. Maruul and Wally saw the glow of fire and followed the robot out of the fissure. PC swam toward them shouting, “Go up! Up!”

  Maruul and Wally kicked, rising like ghosts on the face of the cliff. PC stayed behind and turned in place, watching for the creature.

  He saw it:

  The massive shadow broke out from the undulating seaweed and headed for him. PC watched Dr. Ecenbarger’s arms flailing out to hit at levers in the cockpit. She sped the robot back toward its boarding niche on the DSV, its tether trailing like a macabre umbilical cord.

  PC locked hard after the robot. He managed to grasp it from the back and alter its course.

  The doctor screamed, “What are you doing?”

  He maneuvered the whirling saw at the front of the robot so it cut deeply into the cockpit. The plastic fractured around the doctor, water pouring in to trap her in her seat.

  “Now, Dr. Ecenbarger, you can be the Catch of the Day,” PC said.

  He let go of the robot and swam back to the cliff as the shadow of the fish fell over the DSV. The creature circled for a moment above the craft. It saw the struggling doctor.

  Smelled her.

  EEEEEEE. EEEE.

  It hurled itself downward.

  PC heard the doctor scream.

  Again.

  And again.

  The monster tore Dr. Ecenbarger loose from the cockpit like a bird of prey ripping a rodent from its hole.

  For a moment, it appeared to play with her.

  Savor her.

  It raked its teeth along her body, causing long, scarlet incisions. Finally, it bit her in half—snapping, chewing at her lower torso until it was reduced to a shredding of blood, muscle, and bowels. Finally, it disengaged its lower jaw and swallowed all of her.

  Wally and Maruul surfaced near a shallow ridge of the reef. They pulled themselves up onto a rock patch, saw the white-hot glow blazing in the deep. Men aboard the freighter saw the strip of fire heading for them. A siren screamed. Many of the men leaped overboard, shouting with terror as they tried to swim away.

  The magnesium link to the freighter flared like a fuse as the fire rushed up into the hull and its storage bi
ns. The explosion was huge. A blinding ball of white-hot fire rose high up into the sky and fractured into tremendous curving fingers of smoke. Black metal shards and debris fell everywhere. Maruul and Wally crouched until the deadly rain had stopped. There was nothing left of the freighter except a piece of burning hull.

  Maruul stared at the drop-off of the chalk wall. Waves pounded against the reef as she walked to its brink. Wally stood next to her, and together they stared down into the violent water.

  It seemed too long.

  Much too long.

  Finally, PC surfaced. At the sight of him, Maruul let out a cry of joy. Wally laughed. PC looked worn and exhausted as he swam toward them. They pulled him from the water. A smile broke out onto his face as he held high the shoot bag, with its fire opals blazing in the sun.

  “The dreaming is safe?” Wally asked. “Freighter detonator kaput before it could explode the wall of dreaming, eh?”

  “Yes,” PC said. “The dreaming is safe.”

  12

  HOME

  By eight o’clock the next morning, the fog had begun to retreat from the mooring station. PC had the skiff ready and idling. Maruul and Wally prepared the breakfast. Coffee. Toast. Leftover roast turtle. They had all had time to wash up and rest. The Coast Guard had stopped by the night before to make certain they were all right.

  “You saw the explosion?” Lt. Roessler asked. “Yes,” PC said. He told them about the death of his uncle on the reef. He kept it simple and called it a shark attack. There was no need to volunteer the details of what had really happened. No reason to tell the Coast Guard everything.

  The sun rose in the sky behind them as they raced across the reef toward Cape Tribulation. A school of dolphins appeared off the starboard of the skiff. They began to jump across the bow and race along beside them. PC saw the marina nestled at the foot of the mountains and rain forest. Closer, he noticed there was a crowd of Aborigine women on the beach near the docks.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Maruul saw a pair of familiar beat-up old vans and a rusted purple bus parked at the edge of the sand. She recognized the faces and bright-colored skirts of the women. A single Aboriginal man with intense eyes stepped down from the bus with a mob of kids. He wore checkered shorts and a bright-yellow shirt-vest. A rifle was slung over his shoulder.

  “It’s my father and my twenty-seven mothers,” Maruul said.

  “All of them?” PC asked.

  “Yes,” Maruul said. “One father, twenty-seven mothers, and thirty-two brothers and sisters. They got the message left at the trading post—the message about Arnhem.” Her family saw her and began waving as they ran along the beach toward the marina.

  “Lucky guy, your papa, eh,” Wally said. “Strong, too.”

  PC glided the skiff into its berth. He took the shoot bag out of his suitcase. Maruul lifted out the chunks of opal and cradled them in her arms. She looked into PC’s eyes, then turned to Wally. “Last night I dreamed PC and I were both arukas,” she said. “Could that be what we’re meant to be? Seekers?”

  “Yes,” Wally said. “You are both arukas.”

  Maruul smiled. She turned from PC and Wally and started to run toward her family. They saw her coming. They saw the happiness in her face and the crystals of fire cradled in her arms. Their faces exploded with life and her father let out a cheer. PC watched them embrace each other. He saw the laughter and love between them all. He thought of his own mother. His father. He thought of Grandma Helen standing in the vapors of burning pots. He found himself smiling. He would go home for a while, enjoy them—and show them what a real family should be.

  A preview of what’s next in

  if you dare…

  1

  EMERGENCE

  Jake heard the small mammal sounds erupting from the end of the high ramp where the vines swirled to form a cave. There came the flutter of wings, and the nightly emergence had begun: a blanket of glistening bats—hundreds of bats!—with bulldoglike ears and tiny, punched-in faces.

  Bats flying right at Jake.

  Jake called down from the canopy to his dad, on the jungle floor. “Send the sling up for me. Now, Dad,now.”

  He tried to escape, but it was too late. The wave of bats swelled and began to wash up over his legs. They bit at his ankles, small razor cuts from short, feeding jaws.

  “Help me! Dad!” he shrieked.

  Jake drew in air to scream. A living, furry scarf scampered up to cover his mouth. One of the bats tore at his lips, then shimmied its small hairy head and legs and wing tips inside of his mouth. He tried to yell as it crawled violently, deep into his throat.

  A small head.

  Biting inside him.

  Jake screaming. Screaming and praying and…

  “Wake up, young man. Excuse me. Wake up.”

  Jake Lefkovitz’s eyes snapped open. He realized that the flight attendant was shaking him by the shoulder.

  “Oh… sorry,” Jake said, bolting upright in his window seat on the M-80 jetliner.

  “Please put your seat back forward and make certain your safety belt is secure,” the flight attendant said. She smiled. “We’ll be landing in Manaus in twenty minutes.”

  Jake noticed that several of the passengers were staring at him. He knew he must have cried out. The remnants of the nightmare were like snakes turning in the back of his mind. “I dreamed my allowance got cut,” he announced, laughing and rapping his knuckles on his head like a clown.

  He knew he had stayed up too long the night before. For weeks, he’d spent hours at the New York Public Library reading like a demon everything he could get his hands on about bats and the Amazon. He’d read books and magazines from the Smithsonian. A colleague of his father’s had lent him videos and audiotapes from the Museum of Natural History. One was about batologists like his father, working high in the rain forest canopy of Brazil. The other was about the wildlife—capybaras, deadly anacondas. Army ants cutting a ten-foot swath through the jungle.

  On this trip, Jake was determined to prove himself to his dad, who thought Jake couldn’t take anything seriously. It was true that he had a reputation as a joker, that he liked a good laugh. Now he wanted to show he had grown up and changed—that he could be part of his father’s research team and act responsibly.

  Jake looked out the plane window as it circled low over Manaus, the capital of the Amazonas state. From the air it appeared to be an oasis of broad streets and plazas in the middle of a belt of greedy jungle—part of a lush wilderness territory as big as the United States. When the plane landed, the flight attendant kept her eye on him.

  “I’m okay,” Jake said. “I always yell in my sleep.”

  “How strange,” the flight attendant said.

  His face reddened. He covered his embarrassment with a wink as he got his overstuffed duffel bag, a heavy cardboard box bound with rope, and a big aluminum boom box down from a storage compartment. He put a small bag of peanut-butter cookies saved from the in-flight dinner into the duffel bag. Peanut-butter cookies had always been his favorite, and they had been, by far, the best thing about the meal. He lugged his carry-ons to the open doorway, where the heat socked him like a hammer.

  As he came down the stair ramp, it was easy for him to spot the guide his father had sent to meet him. A tiny, wrinkled man with waist-length gray hair waited alone on the tarmac.

  “Welcome to Manaus, Master Jake,” the man said as he extended his hand. “I’m Hanuma, your father’s foreman.”

  “Ciao,” Jake said, taking Hanuma’s thin, stiff hand and shaking it. “ ‘Ciao’ is Italian for hello and goodbye.”

  “I see.” Hanuma stared at him and took his hand back. “I have a taxi waiting to take us to the river dock,” he said, leading the way through the small, stifling, terminal and out an exit to the pickup area.

  Jake felt the tropic heat deep in his lungs now, and he remembered he was heading into a jungle where men perish. “Did you ever find the missing men from th
e expedition?” Jake asked.

  “No…”

  “It’s a little scary, isn’t it? When Dad called last week, he sounded really worried about them. Is it possible they just got bored and took off?”

  Hanuma grunted. “My workers do not take off,” he said. “The missing men are the main reason Dr. Lefkovitz didn’t want you to come out to the camp. He said you should stay in Manaus, and he can join you down here at the end of the month. See the Theatro. The museums. There will be time for a safe tour of the river before the rains come.”

  “No way,” Jake said. “I’m going back upriver with you guys. Dad’s been gone too long. If something weird is going on out at his camp, I don’t want him doing a disappearing act, too. Guys don’t just disappear from my dad’s expeditions. Even my mom’s worried and wants him to pack it in.”

  “Then why didn’t she come?”

  “Well, she’s with a law firm and is still busy clawing her way to the top. She lay around the house for a couple of decades, and now you can’t stop her. Last week her firm sent her to Tonga. I don’t even know where that is.”

  “That explains it,” Hanuma said.

  “What?”

  “Why you are in Manaus despite your father’s warning. You just do whatever you want.” Hanuma smiled, flashing a gold front tooth.

  “That was the old me,” Jake said. “Dad never let me get away with too much. You know how he wants things done his way. I think one of the reasons I’ve come down here is to let him know I found out he was usually right.”

  Hanuma glanced up toward the equatorial sun. “Ah, I understand you now. You want your father to see that you have learned to be wise and have courage. My seventeen sons and daughters were like you when they were young. Full of themselves. Maybe you will learn—as your father should have—that sometimes, in the Amazon,” he said seriously, “it is a fine thing if one can admit they are wrong. Or it can be ‘Ciao, baby’ forever.”