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Looking from the Depths

When It came, only she heard Its call

By Stephen A. RoddewigPublished about a year ago 8 min read
1
Looking from the Depths
Photo by Ray Fragapane on Unsplash

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. It had been a favorite place for all these months. Or was it years? Time had less meaning when the seasons stuttered to a halt and the routines fell by the wayside.

She gazed out at the barren trees and yellow grass. Beyond, the horizon was the same pale pink it always was. Not quite dawn, not quite dusk. Even the temperature didn’t shift anymore. Hot, warm, cold, cool: all meant the same now. Many things had lost their definition since It had first awoken.

That day never left her thoughts. When she could focus on her surroundings, like the dust coating the stove or the bone-dry sink, it still lingered at the back of her skull. When no distractions could be found, it filled her vision. In these memories lay her only ties back to her previous self. A self who had a name, an identity, and a purpose.

Then Carey Lake had served on the U.S. Navy destroyer Pershing as a chief signal officer. Their mission was to investigate an unidentified sound picked up on deep-water microphones off the tip of South America. Based on its profile, the anomaly was nicknamed the “Bloop.”

Unknown to all but the highest-ranking crewmen, these sounds had started after the Soviet submarine K-222 had sunk in the same area several months before. It was assumed the original sound was a result of air escaping the doomed vessel, and subsequent sounds were the last watertight compartments failing after days holding back the relentless pressure on the bottom. The classified version of their mission was to confirm K-222’s position and survey the seabed for a future recovery operation.

As the gray ships moved across the frigid sub-Antarctic waves, they blasted the seabed with high-frequency sonar, mapping every crater, ridge, valley, and boulder while they searched for the telltale straight lines of a man-made object. Before they found the Russian wreck, however, their scanners picked up something else.

Instead of the long, cylindrical shape of a derelict sub, it was round, nearly a perfect circle. Moreover, it was wider than the largest known submarine in any navy.

These readings were confirmed on a second pass by multiple signal operators. The officers were at a loss. Had they discovered some kind of Soviet submarine base? If so, why base it so far away from the United States and its NATO allies?

It was decided to deploy the towed submersible they had brought to survey K-222’s wreck site, equipped with cameras that could see miles through the water. Since it was unmanned, the cameras would take rapid captures while the ship pulled the photo pod through the water.

Carey had been one of several signal officers assigned to review the hundreds of photos taken of the anomaly site, many still wet from the processing lab.

She still recalled staring at one photo that appeared to show nothing. No variation in pattern, just complete black. She had seen several of these in a row and was starting to wonder if the camera had malfunctioned. Flicking the blank photo away, she found another black capture. Except one edge show a splotch of gray.

Intrigued, she moved to the next photo. The gray splotch was now fully in view. It stared back at her.

An eye was staring up at the camera from all those hundreds of meters below.

Then the call had come from the radio room. Passive sonar had detected a mass lifting off the seabed and moving toward the surface.

Carey had moved to the deck, watching as the sea parted at the stern of Pershing. The mass of blackness emerged between the frothing waves. It did not send tidal waves rushing over the Navy ships. Instead, It seemed to draw the vessels closer as it rose into the sky.

Over the ship’s loudspeaker, Captain Leopeld ordered “Battle stations. Prepare to attack!”

His words of bravado served as a counterpoint to the screams as several of the deck crew dove into the icy sea, terror robbing them of all sense save to escape. The shock of the freezing water meant many did not surface after the initial dive.

Those that remained aboard struggled to control their own fear and follow orders. Pershing swung around to present her side to the being and bring more of her guns to bear. Despite the commotion of sailors scrambling across the deck and relaying orders, Carey remained still in their midst. Her hearing dimmed despite the bark of the destroyer’s main cannon and the rumbling of several auxiliary guns. The slashing breeze and salt spray no longer burned her skin.

Looking back, she recognized this numbness as the first moment of the new world. It started with Its link to her formed through the photograph, and soon the feelings of all of humanity would be gone. Those that survived long enough would find their will to live draining away as all sensation left their bodies in this waking death.

Through this link, it now spoke to her as the ship’s cannon thundered and missiles screeched into it. A day will come. A day when I need you. Await my call.

So she had taken command of Pershing when the rest of its crew was pulled into its maw. As the destroyer steamed away from the ghost ships that had once made up the task force, she ignored the radio calls from fleet headquarters in San Diego demanding to know why all communications had ceased. Their questions would soon be answered.

Within days, the structures that had once formed society had collapsed. Governments at all levels had ceased to exist, now lacking leaders, bureaucrats, and resources to do anything to stop It. Cities lay bare. Without operators, power plants, water facilities, and all other utilities ceased functioning.

In a last-ditch effort, the remaining generals within the Pentagon and the Kremlin issued orders to the surviving nuclear silo commanders to launch their missiles. The ICBMs, once the most potent weapon on Earth, did nothing against It. Instead, it only served to flesh out these last few rats with stars on their shoulders as it followed the command signals to their bunkers and hideouts.

Far too late, the survivors had realized It used energy signatures to hunt them. Staying underground minimized the chances their own body heat would give them away. But radio signals were an arrow pointing back to the source.

Those few with this awareness and the resources to hide had gone to ground now.

A day will come. A day when I need you.

That day had come, and now Carey honored her word.

She flipped on the radio transponder, watching the dials flicker as the machine warmed up. A minute later it was ready. She lifted the microphone.

“Hello? Is anyone out there?”

After a few minutes of nothing but crackling through the speakers, she tried again.

“Please, anyone. I’ve been alone for so long. I just need to hear another voice.”

Silence.

When It had come, it hadn’t only robbed the Earth of its seasons. It had robbed the inhabitants of all feeling. Hunger and thirst were long distant memories. So were joy, grief, love, anger, pain, and all the other emotions.

She knew she should feel something for doing this as she spoke into the microphone again, broadcasting her plaintive cries into the airwaves. The word might have been shame. It had been so long that she was starting to lose any grasp on these alien feelings, and the words used to identify them lost their meaning as well.

She was a moment away from turning off the transponder when something new came from the speakers. Fumbling with the knobs, she tuned the frequency.

“...yes, hello? Are you still there?”

“Yes. Thank you. I need to hear your voice right now.”

A moment later, the static-laden voice responded. “No, no. This is dangerous. I shouldn’t be talking with you.”

“No, wait, please,” she begged. “Just a little longer.”

After a long pause, the person replied. “Okay, fine. But only a few— wait, it’s getting darker. No. No, no, no. It’s here. You—”

The transmission cut out, leaving only stray crackles.

Soon, the few remaining would grow wiser, she knew. She would have to go out into the gray world and find them. Someday there would be no one else left but her. And him.

She turned from the radio to the pale figure on the bed. Long ago, he had been Jalil, her husband. Just as she had once been Carey. Now he was a still shape except for the occasional rise and fall of his chest.

Looking down at him—or resting her hand on his forehead like she was doing now—stoked the only feeling anymore. A slight flicker in her chest, a candle’s flame where there used to be a furnace. Still, when she could touch but not feel, breathe but not smell, eat but not taste, this tiny warmth was the only sensation she now knew. Even its pale imitation of former passion made her feel.

Feel almost human again.

It had promised her to keep them both. To spare him of the near-constant pain of his former life and to preserve her from hunger, thirst, and the other needs no longer fulfilled in this world perpetually stuck between night and day. So long as she made good on their deal.

When the day came when she could no longer fulfill the bargain, she supposed it would not matter what happened to her. It could devour them. Absorb and meld them into a being with a conscience greater than the combined minds of the species it had swallowed.

Or It could leave them, the last two of a kind wiped from the universe. Over time, she would grow thinner and he would grow stiller, until eventually it would be no different than if they had joined with It.

Until that day, she would serve.

supernatural
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About the Creator

Stephen A. Roddewig

A Bloody Business is now live! More details.

Writing the adventures of Dick Winchester, a modern gangland comedy set just across the river from Washington, D.C.

Proud member of the Horror Writers Association 🐦‍⬛

StephenARoddewig.com

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