Chapter Three

 

After a few hours of steering south and charting my estimated position by my speed on an outdated map of the coast, I surfaced for fresh air. Standing with my feet in the rungs of the ladder, I opened the hatch on top of the sub and heaved it open; my arms were sore, from heavy lifting the last few days and from tension as I’d sat at the controls the last few hours. Water sloshed off of the hatch and salty droplets sprayed my face as I emerged, the warm breeze smelled clear and clean and I could see shoreline in the distance, nothing but blue waves and white froth and the gold reflections of the early evening sun on the other side.

I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich out of plastic wrap, chugged water and just breathed deep the sea air, let it inflate my lungs, and then exhaled, letting tension go. It might be the last time I saw the sun. The thought made my heart start to rattle, but I kept breathing, cleared my mind. I was scared that I might die, but I took in the sight, the smell, the feeling, absorbed the moment and felt truly right, righteous in what I was doing. There was nothing else to do. I ducked back inside, sealed the hatch, returned to the captain’s chair.

A few more hours, a few hundred more miles with the water getting darker and more suffocating around me. My tension grew, the longer I sat behind the wheel, the less I could see into the ocean around me. Soon, my spotlights were only reaching a few feet out in front. I had to slow my pace to keep from colliding headfirst into something, as buildings were beginning to appear; I had come up on the outskirts of Los Angeles, to what was once the coast.

Some squat buildings had survived, little one and two-story shops and restaurants, plenty of others had been crushed by skyscrapers collapsing in the shift, like a prolonged earthquake just shaking them until their supports snapped and cement crumbled, steel bent, jagged pieces sticking out of crooked, gnarled buildings and a thick carpet of glass twinkling under my lights as I drifted over and between it all.

My measurements were only approximate; I had to find some sign to tell me where I was.

It took nearly an hour of aimless drifting before a green sign on a pole reflected white letters back to me. Pulling out my paper map, I found my location. My brain on autopilot, I immediately set to finding the way home via the interstate, before realizing my mistake and huffing angrily. I rested my eyes a moment, I breathed, I reminded myself that I was not in a car, heading home to make dinner, ask the girls about their day, about school, give the girls a bath, tuck the girls in for bed, have a glass of wine and enjoy the quiet hour before I turned into bed, myself. I was in a submarine. I could cut across most of Los Angeles as the bird flies, or as the fish swims, without worrying about evening traffic. I was going home to fetch my daughter’s bodies, so they could be buried, so they would not be eaten.

I tilted the sub upward, getting over the tops of the buildings that were left standing. I cruised southeast, picking up speed and keeping my eyes peeled, staring into the black distance until my vision blurred. Some minutes I propelled through the water, thinking that the tiny flecks of white that were reflecting my light and zooming past the windshield were like stars outside of the Millennium Falcon as it jumped to light speed.

My lights fell on a white wall and my arms yanked back on the controls. My foot slammed down on an imaginary brake pedal. Letting off the throttle meant that the submarine slowed very little in the seconds before impact, I pinched my eyes shut and braced myself by grabbing the shelf on which my controls were mounted; still the force flung me forward over it, I cracked my forehead hard on the metal, my ribs jammed the edge of the shelf.

My eyes opened to catch sight of the white wall of rock rushing past my windshield which was miraculously unbroken. It was no wall at all, it was the creature speeding away. Its massive two-fluked tail sliced through the water and the water rippling sent my sub tumbling, I hit a wall, bounced, hit another wall, felt a crack of a rib, turning head over feet. Finally the spinning stopped, the sub stabilized, right-side-up, and I was laid out flat, gasping for breath with swirling pain closing in all around me once the shock lost its hold.

I had enough sense to reach up for the controls, fumbling for the light switch for a moment and finally pushing it. Darkness descended. I found the engine shutoff next, it was chugging along, sounding distressed, and then it was silent except for the gentle swish of water moving past the sub’s walls, the crunch as the vehicle settled down onto the gravel and broken glass of the new seafloor.

“Fuck,” I muttered to myself. “Fuck me.”

That thing had no eyes, I was certain. It hadn’t seen me coming, maybe it had some kind of sonar or maybe it detected my movements, the whir of the engine or some other way and came to investigate, or maybe it was just sniffing out bodies nearby and some little bug had bumped into it. A bug I was, to that thing. My little submarine could not have put a dent in that thing’s side at full speed, couldn’t have really hurt it. Certainly not like it hurt me.

Every breath was painful, even just laying still in the silent darkness for what must have been an hour. I had to give that thing plenty of time to swim away, to go and find a meal or investigate a Navy ship further off the coast. I would stay closer to the bottom, even if it meant that I had to travel slower.

When I rolled over and hauled myself up, a groan tore itself out of me. I bit my lip and silenced myself as I settled into the captain’s chair once again. I’d had worse. I had a long way to go, still.

My air was beginning to feel a bit warm, smell stale and sweaty when I came upon familiar streets. I had plenty of time before I would have reason to be concerned, would need to resurface once I had the girls’ bodies, anyway, to put them in the chest freezer. In the back of my mind, I had known that would be part of the night, but really considering it made me let up on the throttle. If I hadn’t lost my mind already, then cradling my daughters’ surely bloated and nibbled on bodies, smelling their rot would do it.

I am going insane tonight, I thought, and repeated it like a mantra as I pushed forward and the sub picked up speed. I am going insane tonight. Maybe insanity would be bliss. It would have to be more peaceful than endless grief.

At least an hour to our old neighborhood. The kids always wanted to go into the city. Astrid was old enough to know that we didn’t really live in LA, even if we said that we did, and had begun to call our area ‘the suburbs’. Josie copied everything her big sister did, I might as well have had twins. They griped -and I had loved my updated apartment in the heart of downtown, when it was just me and Astrid- but I wanted them to have a yard where they could grow and get dirt on their bare feet.

My mind had wandered as my hands steered the chugging submarine toward home, having to rise to clear some buildings and debris and lowering again as soon as I did. I knew that I had to focus, keep my eyes peeled. The ring of spotlights on the top of my craft did not illuminate enough water, the windshield did not provide an unobstructed view; the creature could come from the side, or come up behind me. The sub might not survive another hit.

I stayed low. Before long I was damp with sweat, my arms were shaking as I held the controls out in front of me. Whether it was the night’s tension, the approaching horror of handling my children’s bodies, or the past week’s insomnia, stress, grief finally taking its toll, I couldn’t know. My eyes were bleary, too. I reached up to rub them, feeling static behind my lids and demanding their compliance for a few more hours.

I was on our old block. Streets were familiar, soon I was passing houses I recognized, our neighbors. I puttered past cars parked forever on our sunken street. One had a bloated, wilting white face like a melted ice cream cone still in the driver’s seat; had he run for the car when the rumbling started? Had he had a heart attack inside, or had his seat belt been stuck, door gotten jammed, and trapped him inside when the water washed over this place?

The house next door to ours had its second level caved in. Ours was a ranch style, orange brick and white stucco. As I finally came face to face with my home, it looked like I could walk in the front door and my girls would come running to greet me. Only a few brown clay shingles had fallen from the roof, the front windows were shattered, and their glass scattered on the turf. I had not considered, in all of my planning, how I would get inside the house. I hoped the sub could fit through the big bay window in the living room. If not, then the integrity of the house had to be compromised, after a week underwater. I could hit it hard from above.

I steered slowly and carefully around the building, taking down the wooden fence between our yard and the neighbor’s, uprooting posts and cement from softened ground. Dirt stirred up from the new seafloor and briefly obscured my vision. I held my position as best I could, but the wall of the submarine scraped along the wall of my house, sending rasping echoes around my narrow chamber. The sediment particles cleared from the water around me, and I made it to the picture window, also shattered.

Jagged chunks remained in the frame. The wooden floors of my living room shined under my lights, and my body arrested the sub’s movements before I had decided to. I stayed there, struggling with tiny adjustments to the controls to keep the machine level, without hitting the ground or drifting upward. My heart was suddenly in my throat, my eyes were flooding with warmth and my nose was prickling. I could hardly breathe.

I couldn’t even shut my eyes to meditate, I just had to grip the controls harder and steer myself in. My gasping breaths hurt my chest and I was crying, trying not to sob, gritting my teeth and seething, feeling saliva flick out onto my chin. I had to go in, or I never would. Waiting would only make it worse. My air was stale, my sweat was warm under my armpits and across the top of my back, dripping down my spine, making me feel even warmer and damper and worse. Of course I knew it wouldn’t be a basket of roses, but I hadn’t imagined just how bad it all could feel.

Inside my living room. Demolishing the ceiling fan, with the blades drifting down around me. I went high because of the furniture, but when I scraped the ceiling, and white powder clouded my view once again, my hands automatically course corrected downward and I landed on the wooden coffee table, smashing it to bits. The couch got shoved out of the way, surely gouging its legs into my lovely, wooden floors, but that hardly mattered anymore. I was fighting my way through the living room, to the narrow hallway which would prove an even bigger problem.

If I fit at all, there would be impact involved. The plaster of the walls would be crumbling into the water all around, a thick cloud. My view would be impaired, and the doorway to the girls’ room would be even narrower, I’d need to break through a few inches of wall. If I didn’t have momentum, I could easily become wedged at any of several points. But a big enough knock could dislodge something in the engine, I could be stranded and have to abandon the mission, swim for the surface. If I made it, I would surely be picked up by a Navy ship or caught once I reached the shore, there would be questions, maybe federal charges. If I didn’t go to prison, I would certainly be monitored and never have another chance.

Controls forward, the sub surged into the hallway and bounced off each wall in succession, gouging chunks out and filling the water all around with clouds of white. I both hear and feel the impact of crushing my little hall table, the mostly decorative, green, glass cake dish surely shattering and shards drifting in my wake. The engine whirred, struggling, my progress slowed, momentum robbed in each impact, I could see the end of the hallway and the open doorway to the bigger bedroom the girls shared. I jerked the controls and the propellor spun me and gave a new burst of speed that shot me through its archway; one final crunch and I broke free into the room.

My heart still thudding in my chest was the only indication I had that I was still alive. My extremities felt cold, heavy. I didn’t want to look inside the room, but my eyes would not shut. Pastel pink walls, white dressers and a white vanity table with the mirror still somehow intact. I locked on it; I don’t know if I thought that my children’s dead bodies would turn me to stone if I looked at them directly, or if -because it was all reversed- the room inside the mirror looked like it belonged to somebody else.

The girls’ bunk beds were empty, their covers tossed to the floor, stirring gently as water was displaced with my intrusion as though they were swaying in a summer breeze. Manipulating the submarine to inch closer to the mirror, the angle changed and more of the ceiling came into view, and there they were, floating. White bodies in white nightgowns, with dark plumes of hair fanning out and waving.

I felt my lip quiver, my eyes pinch shut. Bile surged up my throat, burning its way out and I heaved on the metal floor at my feet. The revulsion spread out from my stomach to my slumping shoulders, my weak arms, my trembling hands holding my hair back. But as my vomit stopped, my shivers dissolved, I sat back and I felt clearer headed than I had in days. I had to do it. I was their mother, and nobody else was going to take care of them, if I didn’t. It was almost over.

I spun the sub around. Looking at my girls through my own eyes, angling the sub upward and activating the mechanical arms which were held close to the body to protect them. I had to keep one hand on the steering mechanism at a time, while with the other I maneuvered the arm slowly out, nudging Astrid’s body first down off of the ceiling. It bobbed back up before I could get the machine’s prongs around it; its putrefaction floating it, gases being released by her decay wanting to bring her up for the birds.

Lake Superior never gives up its dead; but this is the Pacific.

I knocked into the ceiling, brought her down, rotated the two pinching mechanisms skillfully and getting them around her abdomen, then sliding them closed. That was Astrid, my first baby, secured. I could almost feel the squishiness of her flesh, her coldness, through the metal. But I was bringing her home.

Josie was smaller. It took three tries, nudging her down from the ceiling, accidentally scraping it with the mechanical arm’s two claws, rotating them and inserting them into the space around her, closing them as gently but firmly as I could on her rounder, more childlike belly. It deflated under my claws. A few bubbles of some trapped gas rushed out of her mouth. I shuddered.

That was both of my girls, secured. I found myself speaking, out loud, as if they could hear me. As if they were the ones who needed comforting, when really, it was me. “It’s okay. Mommy’s here. Mommy’s got you.” I caught my breath, pressed a hand on my chest to try to soothe the aching muscles, so tight they felt ready to snap. While I was still inside the sunken house, I felt relatively shielded from what lurked in the sea surrounding Los Angeles. But I still had a long way to go, back to safety.

First, I should break for the surface, pull my girls from the water and load them into the freezer. It would feel disgusting, but they would be safer inside, and the cold would keep them from breaking down any further. It was for them. Actually, first I had to make it back down that narrow hallway without getting stuck. I tucked Astrid and Josie as close to the body of the submarine as I could, praying the mechanical arms would hold, and surged forward.