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TheIsabellahad been traveling at a leisurely pace and slowed rapidly, but it wasn’t fast enough to keep them from overrunning the initial target.
The sharp turn of the rudder allowed them to avoid hitting it head-on, but whatever it was bumped alongside and scraped down the edge of the hull. The impact was muted and soft. It certainly didn’t feel like the type of blow to cause much damage. Another impact on the other side was even softer, though it was followed by a deeper thud as they hit something else head-on.
Traveling on momentum only, they coasted through a section of water filled with obstructions floating just beneath the surface.
Gamay left the bridge, rushing down to the main deck to get a closer look. As she reached the rail, a gray conglomeration of sludge drifted by. It was soft-edged, bulky, and organic in appearance. A similar-looking glob slid in behind it, this one with a skeletonized fin sticking out of it. She recognized the bones stretching forth like fingers in a ghostly, elongated hand.
As theIsabellanudged the mass of organic matter, it rolled over, revealing itself to be the carcass of a whale. Its skin was bulging and distended like the flesh of the shark they’d seen below.
The ship came to a stop beside it, but as Gamay looked ahead she spied other dead whales, along with dead seabirds floating in piles of shredded feathers, upended fish heads, and other things so badly decomposed she couldn’t guess what they once had been.
The lazy swells moved the dead creatures up, down, and around in a macabre dance. The sea between them was a jaundiced yellow color that looked more like pollution or pus than seawater.
Looking around, Gamay counted the remnants of nearly thirty humpback whales, along with dozens of sharks and hundreds of fish and birds that had come to scavenge on the dead animals. It was only a guess, but she imagined the massacre had begun with the whales and then extended to the creatures that came to feed on them, which left them trapped in the same web of death. A web theIsabellahad now sailed into the middle of.
—
Gamay returned to the bridge, sobered by what she’d seen. Mass deaths in nature usually meant toxins, poisons, or released clouds of gas. “We need to back away from here,” she said calmly.
“You’ll get no argument from me,” the captain said.
“Do it slowly,” she suggested. “Try not to stir anything up.”
The captain ordered the engines back one-quarter, and after a brief hesitation, as if stuck in the mud, theIsabellabegan retreating from the aquatic graveyard.
A mile upwind of the site, the captain looked at Gamay. “Far enough?”
“I would think so,” she said.
The captain ordered the helmsmen to stop the retreat and hold their position. “Now what?”
“Now,” Gamay said with some trepidation in her voice, “we get in the water, take some samples, and try to figure out what happened here.”
Chapter 23
TheIsabella’s small submersible was theoretically large enough for two people, but not when one of those individuals was six foot eight. As a result, Paul stayed behind, while Gamay and Chantel strapped themselves into the tiny seats inside.
With the pressure test completed and all systems go, they were lifted over the side by the ship’s crane and lowered into the water. Cutting the cord, they dove to thirty feet, mostly to smooth out the ride and prevent the sub from wallowing in the swells.
Chantel appeared a bit nervous as the waters closed in around them and rose up over the top of the viewport.
“First time in a submersible?” Gamay asked.
“Third, actually,” Chantel said. “But I honestly prefer diving. This is a bit claustrophobic.”
“I actually prefer diving myself,” Gamay insisted, “but until we’ve figured out what skeletonized those whales, I figure we should keep a suit of armor around ourselves.”
“Do you think we’re in any danger?”
“Only of bumping our heads,” she joked, reaching up and rapping her knuckles on the overhead panel. “But we have to assume there issome form of rapidly reproducing pathogen out there. Maybe a flesh-eating bacteria or some type of fast-spreading parasite. The kind of things I’d rather not expose my skin to.”
By now they were underway. With only a half mile between their position and the tangled web of dead animals, they would arrive over the dive site in a short minute.
“Lights on,” Chantel said. “Cameras recording. Vacuum system ready to retrieve samples.”
Gamay acknowledged her and stared out the viewport until a gray mass came into view. The animals were less recognizable than they’d been only a few hours before. The whale skeletons were breaking down as their musculature was consumed, and the sharks were being reduced to teeth and jaws hanging from what was left of their cartilage.
Gamay spoke into the microphone, reporting back to the ship. “Biomass further degraded. I’ve never seen anything consumed so quickly before. Not even lunch when Kurt and Joe show up hungry. We’re going to grab some samples before the buffet table is cleaned out.”