Chapter 28
Twenty Eight
Sloane
We ran.
The spiral ramp blurred under our feet as we pushed toward the top level, where the maintenance hatch sat above the main tank. My lungs burned, and my legs threatened to buckle with every stride, but stopping meant dying.
Behind us, the aquarium had come alive with the dead.
Their moans filled the corridors, a low, competing chorus that bounced off glass and concrete until it sounded like the building itself was groaning.
Heavy footsteps echoed from somewhere below, the slap of feet on the tile, the crack of a body hitting a railing.
They poured through the lower levels like water finding cracks, filling every hallway we’d just abandoned.
Jeff ran right behind me, his breathing ragged and harsh. Ethan slightly ahead, sneakers squeaking on the wet ramp, arms pumping.
The moaning got louder; they’d found the ramp.
“Faster!” Jeff shouted.
I pushed harder, legs screaming, lungs on fire.
Ethan rounded the curve ahead of me, and I caught a glimpse of movement below—three, four, five figures stumbling onto the bottom of the ramp.
Their silhouettes lurched against the blue glow of the tanks behind them.
One of them moved faster than the others, its head snapping upward, locking onto the sound of our footsteps.
It started climbing.
“There!” I shouted, pointing ahead.
The hatch.
I grabbed the heavy metal handle and yanked. It screeched open on rusted hinges, cold salty air rushing up from the water below. The smell of the ocean hit my face, and for one second the world narrowed to that single opening—the way out, the only way out.
“Go!”
Ethan didn’t hesitate. He swung his legs over the edge, stood up on the ledge inside the tank, looked down once at the dark water fifteen feet below, and dropped.
Splash.
Jeff climbed onto the rim. Below us, halfway up the ramp now, the fast one scrambled on all fours—a woman in a shredded hospital gown, her jaw hanging loose, fingers clawing the concrete as she hauled herself upward with terrifying speed.
“Jeff—NOW!”
He dropped. Disappeared into the dark blue.
I grabbed the hatch and braced against the ledge, started pulling it shut.
That’s when the first one reached me.
A hand—gray, swollen, missing two fingers—shot through the narrowing gap and almost seized my forearm. The thing behind the door snarled—a wet, guttural sound that didn’t belong in any human throat—and shoved its face into the opening. Milky eyes. Broken teeth snapping inches from my wrist.
I screamed and slammed the hatch against its arm.
Once.
Twice.
Bone cracked on the third hit. The hand turned limp, fingers twitching, and I kicked it free and drove the hatch shut. The thick seal clanged into place.
Something slammed against the other side immediately, and again. The metal shuddered in its frame.
My whole body shook.
More impacts hit the hatch. The dead piling against it, drawn by noise, by smell, by whatever broken instinct drove them toward the living. The metal held, but the sound of their fists and skulls hammering the other side filled the space above the tank like a drum circle from hell.
I forced my fingers open and dropped.
The water swallowed me whole—cold, heavy, tasting of salt and metal.
It closed over my head, and for one disorienting second, the world became perfectly, mercifully silent.
No moaning or banging, only the muffled rush of water and the thunder of my own heartbeat in my ears.
I kicked hard and broke the surface, gasping.
Jeff and Ethan already treaded water nearby, both breathing hard, both staring up at the hatch above us where the muffled pounding continued—relentless, furious.
“Are you okay?” Jeff asked sharply, his eyes dropping to my arm.
“Yeah,” I said quickly. “No bite.”
He held my gaze for one hard second, nodded.
The tank stretched around us—massive from the inside. Blue light filtered down from above. The walls curved away in every direction: glass and water and shadow. Below us, Frank circled slowly.
Ethan stared downward as he paddled. “That’s… the turtle?”
“Frank,” I said.
The loudspeaker crackled overhead, cutting through the echo of the tank.
“Sloane!”
Callan’s voice. Strained. Urgent.
My heart seized.
“Sloane—swim for the ladder! Get the boat started!”
Behind his voice, I could hear other sounds bleeding through the PA system. Banging. Glass breaking. The distant shriek of something no longer human echoed through whatever corridor he stood in.
He wasn’t safe, either.
“I’m opening the tide gate, but I can’t release the holding tank until the boat clears the channel!”
Jeff already looked toward the far side of the tank where the maintenance ladder led down to the quarantine channel.
Then Callan’s voice came again. Quieter. The chaos behind him was still audible, but he spoke through it as if it didn’t exist—as if he’d decided this mattered more.
“I can’t leave Frank.”
My throat closed.
Of course he couldn’t.
I looked down at the old turtle gliding beneath us.
Of course, he couldn’t leave him.
I swallowed hard and forced myself to focus.
“This is going to go fast,” I said, looking between Jeff and Ethan.
They stared back at me, treading water, waiting.
“When he opens the hatch, the current will pull everything toward the quarantine channel.”
Jeff nodded grimly. “Undertow.”
“Exactly. When the water drops, hold your breath. Don’t fight the current—ride it through.”
Ethan swallowed. His face had gone white, but his jaw was set. “Okay.”
Above us, the pounding on the maintenance hatch intensified. A new sound joined it—the screech of metal bending. They were working on the hinges.
“We need to go now,” Jeff said, his voice low and deadly calm.
The PA crackled one last time. Somewhere deep in the building, machinery groaned to life—a low, shuddering vibration that traveled through the water.
The tank shifted.
A tug at my legs, subtle at first but becoming insistent, the water surged.
It roared through unseen below, and the level dropped so suddenly my stomach lurched into my throat.
The surface tilted violently, currents colliding from every direction.
The whole massive body of water reorganized itself around the gate opening beneath us, and the pull became savage—dragging at my legs, my torso, spinning me sideways.
“Here we go!” I shouted.
The current hit like a freight train.
Water rushed downward and sideways simultaneously, dragging us toward the channel. Ethan’s eyes went wide—one sharp, gasping breath—and the surge swallowed him. Jeff reached for his son, but the current ripped them apart, pulling them in the same direction but separately, tumbling, helpless.
Above us, through the churning surface, I caught one last glimpse of the maintenance hatch.
Gray fingers pushed through the gap.
I filled my lungs and went under.
* * *
Nothing but water.
Cold. Violent. Absolute.
The current dragged us through the dark tunnels beneath the tank—concrete walls rushing past in the blackness.
My shoulder clipped something hard, and pain exploded down my arm.
I tumbled, spun, and lost all sense of direction.
My lungs screamed for air. My ears roared with the force of thousands of gallons funneling through passages never designed for human bodies.
Something brushed my leg—large, smooth, moving with purpose.
Frank.
The old turtle swept past me in the dark, riding the current like he’d done this a thousand times, his massive shell displacing water in a way that actually pulled me forward, into his wake, through the worst of the turbulence.
Then—
Light.
We burst upward into the open air.
I broke the surface with a ragged, tearing gasp. Coughed saltwater. Blinked against the sudden brightness.
The quarantine holding tank.
We’d made it.
Jeff surfaced beside me, sputtering, blood running from a cut above his eye where he’d hit something in the tunnel. Ethan popped up a few feet away, already coughing, already turning toward the ladder bolted to the concrete wall.
Alive. All three of us. Alive.
“Swim!” I shouted, my voice destroyed. “We have to clear the channel so he can open the tank!”
We fought the remaining current and pushed toward the ladder. My arms had gone to dead weight, but adrenaline overrode everything—every ache, every torn muscle, every thought that wasn’t move, move, move.
Behind us, back through the tunnel we’d just been dragged through, something echoed.
Splashing.
Not the current. Not Frank.
Something else had come through after us.
Jeff heard it too. His head snapped toward the tunnel opening.
“They’re in the water,” he said. Flat. Factual. Terrified.
“GO!” I screamed.
Ethan reached the ladder first. He grabbed the metal rungs and climbed—fast, frantic, water streaming off him. By the time I reached it, he’d already cleared the top and sprinted across the concrete toward the boat.
I grabbed the first rung. Started climbing.
Below me, in the quarantine tank, a shape surfaced in the tunnel opening.
Gray. Bloated. One arm missing below the elbow.
It didn’t swim. It thrashed—jerking and flailing in the current, mouth working open and shut, milky eyes rolling until they found me on the ladder.
Another surfaced behind it.
Then a third.
“Climb!” Jeff roared from below me on the ladder.
I climbed. Rung over rung, arms shaking, fingers slipping on wet metal. I hauled myself over the top and collapsed onto the concrete. Jeff came up right behind me, grabbed my arm, and dragged me to my feet.
The engine roared to life.
The deep, shuddering rumble of the SS Mariner filled the holding pool and echoed off the concrete walls.
Ethan stood at the helm, both hands white-knuckling the throttle, soaking wet and shaking—but ready.
Good kid. Incredible kid.