CHAPTER 55
Dennis Gladwin refilled his cup with steaming black coffee and made his way across the still-dark resort. At a little before six a.m., it was damp and comfortably cool, the air smelling sweet and earthy. This time of day was always quiet, even at Oceanus. It was normally Dennis’s favorite time of day. But not today.
Mr. Barbas’s call had woken him a few hours ago. He’d been in a foul mood, having himself been awakened from his slumber by night-shift security. The Russian kid was missing, and the main outflow pipe for the resort’s network of aquariums had again become clogged, just as it had last week. Barbas had ordered him to hurry to his post. Dennis lived twenty minutes away from the resort, and had to hurry to get there by four.
Mr. Barbas had insisted that after poring over video footage and sending security personnel to look for Melnikov, Dennis was to pay particular attention to the water in Pirate’s Cove—the tank from which the manta would be removed. If silted, cloudy water was backing up to where visitors might see it, he’d been instructed to take action to keep all eyes away from the aquarium viewing areas. They might even need to postpone the manta relocation.
He understood the problem. News cameras would be at Oceanus today, and many guests also would be up early to watch the rare event. Nobody wanted the reporters or anyone else to start asking questions about why the tanks suddenly looked filthy, or if the health of the animals was impacted. A PR opportunity could suddenly turn into a PR nightmare.
As he neared the main aquariums, the handheld two-way radio clipped to Dennis’s chest harness crackled quietly as another guard sent a standard morning message to the security center. A shift change. Dennis adjusted the volume, turning it even lower. He passed a janitor on the lit path and said good morning to him, then turned off the main avenue onto a walkway that sloped downward. Underground, to the viewing tunnels. He’d start at Pirate’s Cove.
He descended the ramp into the underground tunnel, alone, the echo of his footsteps bouncing off the hewn rock walls. He reached the start of the viewing area for the resort’s largest tank. The first pane of glass was triangular in shape, starting in a point and then increasing in height to eight feet at the far end, where past a seam the next, taller viewing window began. A bit farther the thick panes of clear, shatter-resistant acrylic rose to many times his own height in the main viewing area. He sighed in relief. The water inside looked clear. Maybe the outflow pipe, which ran into the ocean, had cleared itself, or maybe maintenance had already somehow fixed the problem.
He waited there for a few minutes, sipping his coffee and watching schools of colorful fish move past. Soon, Spirit appeared at the edge of his field of view.
Dennis smiled and tapped the tank lightly as the huge ray neared, seeming to grow in size as he moved in front of Dennis. He was flat and diamond-shaped, with two hard, horn-shaped fins marking the sides of his gaping mouth. He swept slowly by, propelling himself with wing-like movements of his broad, triangular pectoral fins.
“Good morning, big fella. You ready to head back to sea?”
Ashley would be happy to see this ray go home. He remembered that when she’d been a little girl, back home in the Abacos, she’d always been interested in everything that swam in the ocean or crawled on the sand. And she always wanted to save everything, even the damn cats that kept killing off her neighbor’s chickens. He’d always figured she might go off to some university, to become a biologist maybe. Or some kind of activist. Then again, nobody from Two Finger Cay had ever gone to college.
Instead, they both worked here.
He needed to fly back home soon, hop the ferry to the cay. He hadn’t been back in a while, to see his grandkids. Too busy working. He rarely left Andros anymore.
He watched Spirit swim off, and then continued down the tunnel, past a darkened underground gift shop and a set of restrooms, toward the next big aquarium. He passed a trash bin and tossed in the empty foam coffee cup, then rounded a corner and spied the start of the exhibit.
Shark Alley also housed many of the aquarium’s largest fish—nurse sharks, reef sharks, groupers and the like. Just not the mantas, or the more aggressive hammerheads or sawfish, which each had their own tanks. Looking into the exhibit, he stopped when he stepped in a shallow puddle.
He looked down. The cement floor was drenched, and there was standing water in a few shallow depressions. Unless someone had been working down here, there was probably some sort of plumbing problem. Or the tank was leaking from above, where there was a narrow gap between the rock ceiling and the acrylic panes more than twenty feet above his head. Mr. Barbas would not be happy.
But he was relieved to see that, at least at first glance, the water in this tank also looked clear. He moved farther down, inspecting the acrylic panes, but didn’t see any cracks or leaks. It would take an incredible force to break the thick, shatterproof pane.
He paused as he reached the highest section of the wall. During the daytime, the gap above it allowed more light into the tunnels from the outside world, and offered ventilation. Here the thick imitation glass was streaked with dried salt water.
He could immediately see why. The tank was fuller than usual. Normally the waterline was a good foot below the upper rim of the clear acrylic, but now it was right at the top. Any small wave now would cause the water in the tank to splash over, to run down the outer face inside the underground viewing tunnel. It must have something to do with the clogged outflow pipe.
At least he knew now why the floor was all wet. He’d say something as soon as the aquarists arrived, which would be very soon since Spirit was departing this morning.
He looked into the tank, at the curved contours of artificial coral on the far wall, the structures rising in the center that mimicked features in a natural reef. The colors the fake corals added to the exhibit were hard to discern by the weak lights of the tank, without the sun overhead. A few small fish passed by. The water was clear, but something was wrong—
“Dennis, you there?”
Dennis flinched, and then lowered the volume of his handheld radio, realizing he’d accidentally turned the dial the wrong way just before he’d headed down into the tunnels.
“Yeah, I’m here,” he muttered. “Damn near gave me a heart attack, though.”
He lifted the radio out of the harness and pressed the talk button. “Ronnie, I copy. What’s going on?”
“Just talked to the boss man. Good news. Water’s flowing again.”
“Pipe’s not clogged no more?”
“That’s right, Pop.”
Dennis thought, Then why is the water level still so high?
Clogged, unclogged, clogged. Wait a few hours and the damn pipe would probably be clogged again. He lifted the radio back to his mouth. “Tanks One and Two look good, but the water level in Two is high. Headed to Three now.”
As he lowered the radio, a drip of water struck his forehead. He wiped it away. Now there’d be even more damn condensation down here. If they didn’t disinfect these subterranean tunnels as often as they did, there’d be mold everywhere.
“Copy,” Ronnie said. “You coming back by the booth first? Freshen your coffee?”
Dennis scrutinized the water inside the aquarium. “No. I’m gonna finish checking the other tank—”
He stopped. He realized what was bothering him about the tank.
They’re all gone.
“Stand by, Ronnie.”
Another drop of water struck the top of his head, but he ignored it, transfixed on the tank. He stepped toward the acrylic glass. The small fish were still in there, but this was the main shark tank. Those little fish were just in there for food.
But where were all the sharks? Where were all the bigger fish? The stingrays, and groupers?
He started to raise the radio to his mouth again. Paused. His memory wasn’t what it used to be. Had he forgotten to read something? An e-mail? Maybe they’d moved these sharks as part of the manta ray’s relocation today. Had someone already said something about that to him?
“Dennis, what’s going on?”
He scanned the water. Maybe the sharks simply were concealed behind the artificial coral formations. His eyes settled on one part of the rock wall, off to the side. It was much larger than he remembered, bulging outward too far, almost closing off the space between it and the fake glass. As if it had . . . grown.
As he stared at the rock, it moved. Swelled out even farther, in front of his eyes. He blinked. It was pulsing.
He took a step backwards. A small wave of water splashed over the top of the acrylic wall and ran down the outside, streaking the clear pane. He looked up, thought he saw something red moving above him, and then closed his eyes as buckets of water suddenly rained down on him. Was the glass cracking?
He turned to run, but immediately slammed into something that knocked the wind out of him. Thick and wet, it wrapped around his midsection.
Squeezed.
His radio clattered to the ground. On it, he heard Ronnie calling for him again.
In pain and confusion, he began to pound his fists on the wet mass enclosing his body. He heard his ribs crack, and his mouth opened in a silent scream, but there was no air in his lungs. He felt his feet lifting off the ground, and realized he was spinning in slow spirals as the fleshy, reddish mass continued to coil around him.