CHAPTER 66
The sounds against the door had stopped. It was quiet again, except for everyone’s breathing.
“Maybe it left,” Ashley finally whispered.
Sturman said, “Maybe. But we need to move. Follow me.”
He turned and started swimming toward the construction tunnel, the light held above his head. Barbas tried to follow, towing Roxanne with him, but she was resisting in her panicked state. He stopped as he fought to calm her. Ashley lunged into the water directly behind Sturman, trying to keep her face above the water, the boy clinging to her shoulders.
Something slammed against the door. Something very heavy. The boy cried out.
“Oh, my God!” Roxanne shouted. “It’s here again!”
Ashley heard a splash behind her and looked back. Barbas had released Roxanne and dived in after the others. The metal door groaned and then made a popping sound as it bulged inward. The long board Sturman had braced against it snapped, and it burst inward, sending up a wave.
A huge tentacle burst from the wave and slammed into the low ceiling, then crashed back into the water. It found Roxanne. Winding around her, it thickened as it contracted, the coils swelling under the strain. Roxanne’s screams turned to a gurgling sound as blood erupted from her mouth and nose, spraying the ceiling.
The terrified boy tried to climb onto Ashley’s head and she went under. Water went up her nose. She opened her eyes underwater as she fought to loosen his grip on her hair. She saw Roxanne’s body moving sideways in the dim light, moving away from her. The thing was trying to pull her back through the doorway, but it was only opened partway, and her body wouldn’t fit. The arm jerked at Roxanne’s body several times, slamming her into the doorjamb until her crushed body finally disappeared into the rectangular hole.
Ashley felt her bladder go. She turned and kicked madly for the surface, her lungs burning. Then the boy’s grip in her hair was gone, and his weight left her.
She popped back up to the surface, gasping. She turned around to see what had happened to him. But the boy was still there. Sturman had swum back to them, and now held the sobbing child against one shoulder.
“Here.” He thrust the light into her hand. “You lead. I got the kid.”
She grabbed the light, and without looking back she kicked into the dark tunnel.
“What is that?” Ashley whispered.
Until now, the question had remained unspoken. Nobody seemed to want to accept what they’d seen inside the tank, the living thing pressing its enormous body against the tall glass, covering it. The thing that had shattered the tank, and killed Roxanne.
“An octopus,” Sturman said. His cowboy hat was gone, floating somewhere in the darkness.
“What do you mean? It’s too big. Nothing is that big.”
They stood in waist-deep water now, at the back end of the tunnel. Ashley was up against some tools submerged near them, where they leaned against the rough stone wall: a jackhammer, a few pickaxes. The light cast an eerie glow on the walls and ceiling, but barely penetrated the surface.
“How do you know what it was? Are you a scientist?” Barbas said.
“I know.”
Barbas said, “How did it get into my aquarium?”
“Good question.”
“Do you think it’s coming back?” Ashley said. “Can it get in here?”
“I don’t know,” Sturman said. “Probably.”
“Where’s my nana?” the boy said.
Sturman held him to his chest. He looked at Ashley, shook his head. She bit her lip and took a deep breath before answering.
“I don’t know, child. We’ll look for her later, okay?”
“I wanna go home.”
“I know you do. I know. Soon.”
She wondered if he knew she was lying.