Reef of Death (The Zone Unknown) Read online

  “PC!” she shouted in a burst of bubbles.

  Her vision blurred. The vision of Wally and PC was spotty, moving in and out of focus. Her hands struck out to cup the water, to draw her body ahead. Instead, her fingers felt more slime.

  Spooky slime.

  Jelly.

  Shimmering disks the size of dinner plates flowed past her as if she were passing through an aquatic asteroid field. Jellyfish. Her nails ripped into them as they slid across her face. She gasped, managed to scream again—a muted, frustrated sound and blast of bubbles that almost made her lose her breathing tube.

  Wally saw Maruul coming fast at them. He grabbed the octopus and yanked it off her with a single, brisk motion. PC helped swat the globs of jelly from her hair and face. “Sorry,” Wally kept saying. “Sorry, jellyfish. Sorry, octopus.” The panicked octopus fled into the darkness beneath a ledge.

  Wally turned PC’s attention back to eating the clam.

  LOOK BEHIND YOU, a warning ran through Maruul’s mind. She turned as a huge, living slab rose suddenly. It soared, an immense black-and-white form shooting up from a pit.

  High.

  Higher.

  She screamed. PC and Wally looked up from the clam. They saw Maruul framed against a giant manta ray as it chased after a cloud of plankton on the surface.

  PC smiled. He knew it wasn’t a carnivore. Maruul saw the manta’s wide mouth and gill strainers. It took her a moment longer to realize it was harmless. Finally, she laughed with PC and Wally at her fear.

  Wally moved them on through a forest of towering seaweed that swayed in the current. PC noticed a sparkle, a small object shining brightly from deep in the weeds. He tapped Maruul’s leg to signal her he was taking a detour, then swam on.

  The glittery object was ahead, appearing and disappearing with the motion of the seaweed. His hands separated the weeds like a wet, sticky drapery.

  An earring.

  A silver earring in the shape of a snake. It was suspended from the remains of an ear on a dark, half-eaten human head. Suddenly, the mouth of Arnhem’s face opened as though the skull was alive. A fat, green eel rolled out like vomit. PC screamed, bubbles exploding from his mask. He let go of the seaweed, and it closed on the rotting death mask.

  PC saw Maruul swimming toward him. “What?” she motioned. PC fought to gain control. His heart was pounding, and he felt sick to his stomach.

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  Maruul saw the look in PC’s eyes, knew that what he had seen was something she shouldn’t know about.

  PC signaled Wally and Maruul into a huddle. “We need to get aboard the freighter. We’ve got to know what they’re up to.”

  “How?”Maruul asked.

  The light around them began to pulse. They looked up, saw several sea snakes swimming near the surface. Wally smiled. “Sea snakes are poisonous, but only curious. They like silver trim on dive masks. Follow me.”

  Wally took off kicking, thrusting upward, with PC and Maruul behind him. They crashed through the blinding curtain of volcanic gases. Wally was the first to reach the surface. The Anemone’s boarding platform was less than a hundred feet off. He struck out for it, shouting, “Help! Snakes! Help!”Maruul and PC surfaced and caught on to Wally’s idea quickly.

  “Snakes! Help!” they all kept screaming, trying to sound truly frightened, as they swam toward the freighter. Suddenly, there were sharp, startling sounds.

  Loud.

  Earsplitting.

  Gunfire.

  Maruul and Wally looked up to the railing of the freighter. Six, seven rifles were being fired, shot after shot, raining lead down into the water behind them.

  The last shot had been fired by a tall Caucasian woman. She was barefoot, with a skimpy top and blue, long, slit skirt. PC grabbed the edge of the raft and pulled himself up onto the platform. He slid his tank and mask off and shook the water from his hair.

  The woman walked down the freighter’s crudely rigged boarding ramp, her arms animated like a praying mantis’s. “Hello,” she said, slinging her still-smoking rifle over her shoulder. “Is anyone hurt?”

  “No,” PC said. “Thanks.”

  “Nasty things, those sea snakes.” The woman spoke with a German accent. “I take a swim every morning, and they’re always pestering me. You only have to hit one of them, and the others are content for a while devouring it.” She gave a wide smile. “I’m Dr. Ecenbarger.”

  “These are my friends Maruul and Mr. Wallygong,” PC said. “I’m Peter McPhee. Everyone calls me PC.”

  “Well, hello, PC McPhee.” She laughed and shook their hands. “Welcome to the Anemone. We were just finishing lunch. Is that your diving skiff anchored near the reef?”

  “It’s my uncle’s.”

  “Oh, is he still down?”

  “No,” PC said. “He couldn’t make it. He’s fixing a kayak at his mooring platform.”

  Dr. Ecenbarger thought for a moment. “Oh, yes. I’ve seen a platform north of here.”

  “Uncle’s expecting us to bring him back a reef lobster or bass for lunch.”

  “I see,” she said. “This isn’t exactly the safest place to sport dive, is it?” Dr. Ecenbarger laughed again. “You must all be exhausted. Come aboard. Have something to drink and eat with us.”

  PC looked at Maruul, then Wally. Dr. Ecenbarger watched them as they stripped off their wet suits. PC kept the shoot bag strapped on his back as they followed her up the boarding ramp.

  “What are we looking for on this barge?” Maruul whispered.

  “I don’t know,” PC said.

  “Something fishy, eh,” Wally said, and gave them both a wink.

  On deck several servants surrounded them. They took the doctor’s rifle, then moved like curious, efficient phantoms to dry the visitors with towels. They gave Maruul a robe and offered sandals.

  “We’re lucky to meet so many new friends today,” Dr. Ecenbarger said. Two men in Coast Guard whites relaxed their rifles. A third, an officer, put his pistol away and approached Maruul. “I’m Lt. Roessler. You’re the young lady who lost her brother out here last week, aren’t you?”

  PC stepped between Lt. Roessler and Maruul to field his questions. “That’s right, she is,” PC said.

  The officer turned his gaze onto him. “Terrible accident. Our boat was the one that found her in the kayak. We took her to the mainland. I’m sorry we never found the boy.”

  Maruul’s eyes started to fill with tears, but she got control of herself. She carefully began to examine each face aboard the freighter. She remembered what Wally had said—that someone from her clan was aboard. Someone who knew her village’s secrets.

  Dr. Ecenbarger pointed to a buffet of sandwiches, fruit, and drinks. “Please, everyone, help yourselves. You must be starving from the dive.”

  “We’re not hungry,” Maruul said.

  PC began to check out all the equipment visible on the main deck. “The Anemone’s a research ship?” he asked the doctor.

  “Yes. A bit of a scientific smorgasbord, I’m happy to say,” Dr. Ecenbarger said. “We have a few marine biologists. I’m a geologist, myself.”

  She tilted her head so each strand of her bobbed hair trickled one by one to the left, reforming perfectly. “The Australian government allows us to take small samples from the vents and look into the biology and chemistry of the mounds. In return, we share our results with their scientists. We’ve done the same thing in Kalimantan—that’s Borneo—and the Malay Archipelago.” She spotted the shoot bag on PC’s back. “You dive with a computer?”

  “Sometimes. I get bored on a dive waiting for the others to finish,” PC said. He flashed her a big grin. “I like playing games.”

  Dr. Ecenbarger grinned back. “What a coincidence. I love playing games too.” She hesitated, as though selecting exactly what game she intended to play at the moment. “And you’re very lucky. Lt. Roessler’s newly appointed to our local Coast Guard station.”

  “Transferred
from Darwin,” Lt. Roessler said. “Perth the year before.”

  “He’s requested a tour of my ship,” Dr. Ecenbarger said. “You and your friends must join us. Would you like that?”

  “Yeah,” PC said. “We’d like that a lot.”

  Two Asian women appeared from nowhere, flanked the doctor, and helped her slip on a white lab smock and pair of high-heeled shoes. She led the way inside the ship and down a steep metal staircase. Lt. Roessler and his men followed. PC and Maruul joined them as a handful of bare-chested crewmen closed in behind them like well-trained Dobermans. Wally trailed, humming.

  “You may have noticed we’ve got a topmast on deck to hold some wind instruments, our navigation antennae, and radar,” Dr. Ecenbarger said, leading them along a hallway.

  “What’s the portable crane doing topside?” PC asked.

  Dr. Ecenbarger’s head swiveled like an alert insect’s. She stared at PC as though really seeing him for the first time.

  “I didn’t notice one,” Lt. Roessler said.

  “What kind of big sample chunks do you lug up with that?” PC pressed.

  Dr. Ecenbarger forced her smile. “We don’t use the crane. It was a gift to us in Indonesia. We accepted it because we didn’t want to insult the government.” She stopped at an open doorway. “This is the staging bay. Our water-sampling system and chromatographic equipment. It’s all terribly antiquated, but it’s all we can afford just now.”

  “What are the high-pitched sounds we hear coming from your freighter?” Maruul wanted to know.

  “Sounds from the Anemone?”Dr. Ecenbarger look surprised.

  “Yes,” Wally said. He gave Lt. Roessler a playful poke in the ribs to get his attention.”My nephew and I hear strange sounds many times when we dive near freighter, eh.”

  Dr. Ecenbarger saw curiosity spark Lt. Roessler’s eyes. “It’s the small thruster motors on our hull,” she explained. “They hold the boat’s position in deep water.”

  “No,” PC said, enjoying the doctor’s discomfort in front of the Coast Guardsmen. “We heard louder sounds than any thruster motors—shrieking—like an industrial drill.”

  “In that case I don’t know.” She shot Lt. Roessler a look of amusement. “Unless, of course, you’re hearing a siren, the kind the ancient Greeks believed in—part woman, part bird—whose songs lured sailors to their deaths on the rocks.” Lt. Roessler laughed with her as she led everyone into a cavernous room at the center of the ship.

  A dozen technicians were working with crude microscopes, outdated balances, and setups of titration tubes and retorts. “This is our main lab and specimen room,” Dr. Ecenbarger said. There were shelves of yellowing dead snakes, fish, and lizards crammed into gallon jars of formaldehyde.

  Maruul noticed a wall of curtains behind her. She tried to signal Wally to drop back and explore the area with her, but he was busy snooping through one lab cabinet after the next.

  The doctor pressed a button, and a computerized sketch of the Anemone appeared on several screens throughout the room. The drawing became crudely animated, with red pointers and flashing labels—indicating the crew’s quarters, galleys, staterooms, and storerooms.

  “As you can see,” Dr. Ecenbarger said, “my vessel is an open CD.”

  Maruul slowly opened the first set of curtains behind her. She saw a mass of bug legs and waving antennae protruding from a screened cage. The screen held back hundreds and hundreds of giant winged cockroaches, their six-inch backs glistening. A creamy fluid oozed from their abdomens. She screamed and yanked her hands back.

  Everyone turned to look at her.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “African cockroaches,” Dr. Ecenbarger explained. “Some of our specimens are alive. We use them for tests with the microbes we’re finding in the sea vents.”

  During the commotion, PC moved stealthily to a computer in a rear corner. He slid Ratboy out of its shoot bag, turned it on, and connected its RF cable to a free port on the ship’s computer.

  Dr. Ecenbarger’s attention was on Lt. Roessler. “Imagine. Life existing at six hundred and eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit! Isn’t that exciting?”

  “There’s gold in the vents, too, isn’t there?” Lt. Roessler asked.

  “Only traces of precious metals,” Dr. Ecenbarger said.

  “Ha!” Wally blurted out, like a rude child. The Coast Guardsmen turned to Wally for an explanation. He pretended he only had to sneeze.

  HA-CHOO!

  “One of the undersea towers is huge.” The doctor moved on quickly. “Our divers have nicknamed it ‘Gargantua.’ We’ve done analyses on the minuscule samples of rock the government allows us to take. There are richer quantities of copper and zinc, but the ability to commercially mine any minerals is twenty years away.”

  Wally saw what PC was up to and moved to the other side of the room. “Doctor! Doctor!” he called out. “Do you have lizards? I smell big lizards, eh, eh. I get dizzy. And a rash! I’m getting a rash now, eh! Where are the lizards?” His shouting got everyone’s attention, as PC’s fingers quickly punched the keyboard and began downloading the Anemone’s files. Dr. Ecenbarger rushed over to Wally and spoke to him like he was deaf. “Mr. Wallygong, we have no live lizards. No lizards aboard whatsoever.…”

  Maruul moved farther along the wall. She flung open another curtain.

  At first the cage looked empty, so she stepped closer. Slowly, she became aware of a chattering sound and a fluttering of wings. Maruul glanced down. A mob of hungry black bats was pressed against the bottom of the cage trying to bite her feet.

  Dr. Ecenbarger continued to speak over Maruul’s latest shrieks. She signaled a heavily muscled guard toward Maruul. “We were given the bats in Bombay. We take pride in keeping our specimens alive as long as possible. Gibraltar presented us with extraordinary primates. They were more difficult to sustain.”

  “Do you ever cut up monkeys?” Wally asked innocently.

  “Why do you ask a question like that?” Lt. Roessler wanted to know.

  The doctor’s thin red lips twitched, then fixed themselves into a grin as she stared at Wally. “No, we don’t cut up monkeys,” she said, “Unless it’s an autopsy and we need to know why they’ve died.”

  PC unhooked Ratboy and turned his attention to what the technicians were doing. They might be using a lot of authentic laboratory equipment—Erlenmeyer flasks, centrifuges, metric weights, lots of gizmos—but something was wrong. They all looked like they were faking experiments. It was as if they were putting on some sort of a show.

  What PC decided was real was the shrewdness in Dr. Ecenbarger’s eyes. PC looked at Maruul. We’re running out of time, he thought.

  PC went to Maruul’s side and guided her back along the curtains and away from the muscled guard. They both looked over to where they’d last seen Wally.

  “Where is he?” Maruul whispered.

  “He’s gone,” PC said, puzzled.

  They noticed Dr. Ecenbarger’s eyes shooting about and knew she too was concerned with what had happened to Wally Wallygong. She started winding up for the Coast Guardsmen. “Volcanic vents like the ones here at the Great Barrier Reef were long considered geological and biological wastelands. Instead, we are finding they will one day be of enormous value.”

  She took Lt. Roessler’s arm. As she started to lead everyone out, PC noticed a curtain moving. A breeze had come from somewhere. Another door or a porthole had been opened. He slid the curtains aside, expecting to catch sight of Wally.

  Maruul shuddered. PC slipped his hand over her mouth to stifle her scream. The bodies of several large baboons, their mouths snarling in rage at their death, hovered over them like monstrous angels. They floated in yellow fluid inside a glass cylinder.

  But Maruul had seen something else, too. A figure—not Wally—dressed in animal skins and wearing a necklace of crocodile teeth. The dark man looked familiar to Maruul as he ran away down a hallway and disappeared.

  “Keep moving. You follow
doctor’s tour.” The muscle-bound guard prodded them and pulled the curtains shut again.

  “Sure,” PC said. It was his turn to fake a smile. He glanced back at the cage of bats. Suddenly, he let his foot fly out and kicked open the latch. The front of the cage sprang down. Hundreds upon hundreds of shrieking, furious bats flew out.

  The guard shouted and grabbed at the air. There was the sound of breaking wings.

  Dr. Ecenbarger heard the shouting, left her Coast Guard guests, and hurried back into the lab. She saw the cloud of raging, maddened bats attacking her flailing guard. For a moment she was confused. Then she realized that PC and Maruul were gone. Her face contorted with rage. She closed the door and began screaming at the guard.

  “You idiot! You stupid idiot!”

  7

  SHAMAN

  “That was my village’s holy man!” Maruul said, running with PC down the hallway where the man with the crocodile necklace had disappeared.

  “What you might call a medicine man or a shaman.”

  “I thought some corporation henchmen cut his heart out?”

  “They cut out somebody’s heart.”

  PC dragged Maruul through a doorway following the sound of the fleeing footsteps. “He knew about the map?”

  “Yes.”

  They could hear men running behind them, searching for them. The passageway came to an end. There were two doors. PC flipped open Ratboy, brought up the layout of the Anemone, and pointed to the screen. “I think we’re here.” The door on the right was locked. The left one pushed open easily. PC hesitated.

  “What’s the matter?” Maruul said.

  “According to this blueprint, there isn’t supposed to be a left door.”

  “So?”

  “It means there’s a lot more on this tub of tin than meets the eye.”

  They went through the left door and ran down a flight of stairs. There was another passageway. Steel sheeting, cables, and spikes were strewn about the length of the hallway. Suddenly, the lights went out.