If Odessa hadn’t already spat out her air, she sure would have then. She jerked back, nearly sucking in a mouthful of water, only remembering just at the last moment where she was. Then raw need overtook her and she reached for the regulator.
Two deep breaths.
She reached up to feel for a pulse on Nico’s neck. There was none.
She checked the gauge on the tank. It was as full as it had been when they’d left him.
Why hadn’t he used it? The air was flowing fine.
‘Triss,’ Odessa thought to the darkness, hoping for a reply, but none came.
What had gone wrong? There were about a million things that could have. Fatigue, panic, hyperventilation, nitrogen narcosis. If only one of them had stayed with him. If only they had never come here at all.
Odessa pushed the thoughts from her mind. There would be time for what ifs later, if she was lucky.
She backed out of the tunnel, carefully taking the air tanks with her. When she reached the edge of the abyss she took the time to organise her gear. Then she switched off her lights and looked up. Did she wait to see if the goblin was coming or did she start her ascent now?
A loud beep from her wrist grabbed her attention. She glanced down, confused. She’d attached her heart rate monitor to Rhys. She could still hear it, in fact, just, down there in the darkness, if she listened really carefully. But this louder beep came from her backup watch, the one with the tiny camera. The beep was to let her know the battery was low, low because she’d left the camera on record. She reached to switch it off and then hesitated. If she was going to die here maybe having her last moments be on film wouldn’t be so bad. Someone might find her body and see what happened. But she needed to be silent. Her diversion wouldn’t work otherwise. She switched the camera off.
The surface was just there and taking Rhys’s Rovex had been the right decision. It was blood infused and it worked even for her, by reading the exact amount of dissolved nitrogen in her blood. It told her exactly how long she needed to wait to make it to the surface alive. Just as long as she didn’t get eaten first.
Why hadn’t Hoot’s appeared? Or Triss? Surely they weren’t still fighting.
Better to move now then.
But just as Odessa was about to exit the smaller tunnel, a dark shape dashed out from a side tunnel up above and blocked out the sun.
From her hiding place, Odessa could just make out its shape. It wasn’t Triss. That was for sure. If it was Hoots, she’d stretched. Her arms and legs, as bony as they were, now looked downright skeletal. And between her fingers and her toes, there was a sort of webbing. From this angle only her shadow could be seen and she looked sort of frog like just sitting there in the water, waiting. Waiting for what?
But then suddenly she moved.
Odessa could have sworn her heart stopped as grandma Hoots dove right past her, and down into the inky abyss in pursuit of what she would soon realise was just a beeping watch. Hopefully it was deep enough to buy Odessa some time.
Odessa took her chance. She began her ascent as quietly and quickly as she could.
It took her barely a minute to reach the 6 metre mark. This was where it got hard.
She pressed herself in close against the wall, trying to blend in with the plants. Her bright blue hair probably made that impossible. She checked the watch.
Her gaze shifted between the lure of the sparkling surface, just out of reach, and the monster-containing darkness below.
Several times she thought she glimpsed a flash of greenish-white but each time it turned out to be just her imagination.
She moved silently up to 3 metres. Still over half the decompression time remained. She could feel her heart beating in her chest like a ticking clock.
She just had to get to the surface.
She knew that wasn’t true. The surface wasn’t safe either but she pretended like it was. Just like she did when she was climbing. Just one more hold, one more hill, one more adventure.
Until all of a sudden there had been too many.
She counted the seconds with no one but herself for company and the sun mocking her from only metres away.
Just a few more minutes.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
What was that beeping sound?
Odessa froze. It was familiar.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
It was getting closer.
She looked at her watch. 2 minutes remained. Did she have 2 minutes left?
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Beep.Beep.Beep.
1 minute 40 seconds.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
1 minute 20 seconds.
She could see the sky.
BEEP.BEEP.BEEP.
1 minute.
Down below a small white circle got larger.
50 seconds.
Odessa checked her residual nitrogen levels.
Fuck it! She was going up.
40 seconds.
BEEPBEEPBEEP
Odessa pulled herself out of the water without sparing a look back.
She tugged the regulator from her mouth and breathed one glorious breath of fresh surface air. Off came her flippers, BCD, and tanks. She didn’t bother with the wetsuit or harness. The hot sun blinded her and almost gave her pause. The campsite looked so serene, undisturbed, as if the last couple of hours had never happened.
Odessa bypassed the satellite phone. It took too long and Hoots was on her tail. She went straight for the 4x4. But where were the keys?
Her gaze landed on her tool kit in the back. Fuck the keys. It would take too long to search for them. You didn’t need keys when you had a handy set of wire cutters. Using a flat-headed screwdriver, Odessa ripped out the ignition. Then she stripped back the wires, scratched away the outer layer, and twisted them together.
“Come on.”
The engine roared to life as she risked a glance back at the pool. Too quick to really tell how much time she had.
She jumped in the driver’s seat and lifted off the handbrake. A moment later she was away.
This was the wrong vehicle for fast driving but Odessa did her best. She came close to tipping it at one corner. The whole vehicle lifted up on two wheels for one terrifying second before crashing back down on four again. She forced herself to take a deep shaky breath and slow down after that.
Every few seconds she’d check the rear view mirror.
She’d gone about half way down the hill when she saw it come sprinting around a corner. It looked like Hoots again, normal height, naked and wrinkly, and considerably less green, but moving fast, faster than a lady that looked that old had any right to move.
“Shit!”
She was gradually gaining too.
Odessa took the next corner and lost sight of her.
The next three corners were tight. She had no way of knowing how close that thing was.
Once more, Odessa nearly flipped the vehicle. That was when she decided to put her seatbelt on and floor it.
At the next corner she took a short cut, cutting across the inner bend. There was a slight camber there at least so she manged to keep all four wheels on the ground this time.
She spotted yet another gap between trees and gave the engine everything it had. Greenery hit the front bumper and was quickly sucked under. She bounced and bumped and flew over fern-covered mounds and small logs, not once lifting her foot. The engine screamed.
She glanced back. The trees here were opening up as she got closer to the town, but she could no longer see any sign of grandma. She half expected something to drop down upon her from above. She could see buildings up ahead.
Another turn, then two more. She took these last few slower, not wanting to crash when she was so close.
Then she was out in the open. Houses surrounding her. White picket fences and kids playing kickball in one yard. On another porch a couple of ladies appeared to be enjoying a few glasses of lemonade together. She sped right past the dirty looks they gave her. All of them unsuspecting what danger followed. She wanted to yell at them to run but she didn’t want to stop. She wanted to live. And there was a darker reason too, some small part of her that knew other people would make the perfect diversion. She’d often joked that the best way to outrun a bear was to run faster than the person next to you. That joke didn’t seem quite so funny anymore now she was living it.
Riftgate was a small town and Odessa hit the main street in no time at all. She pulled into a park and switched off the engine and for a moment she just sat there, her heart pounding.
All around her were more people. It seemed like the whole town was out doing their shopping, laughing, chatting, strolling slowly in the sun, having a grand old time. It didn’t feel right. This peacefulness so close to the nightmare, a nightmare that wasn’t over.
The monster was still out there.
She should feel safe here in town, with all these people around, but she didn’t. Civilisation was an illusion. She was half expecting a giant long-legged web-footed goblin grandma to come stampeding through the middle of town, destroying buildings and people, but she never came. Everything nearby seemed normal, overwhelmingly calm. But still, Odessa’s heart couldn’t stop beating. How did one decompress from something like this?
She spotted a police station half way down the street. That got her moving again. She sprinted so fast toward it that she nearly bowled an old man over.
“Watch it!” He cried as she shook his fist at her.
Odessa ignored him.
She pushed open the police station door and stopped panting in front of the reception.
A young blonde guy with an undercut barely glanced up from behind the reception desk.
“I need... I need help,” Odessa told him between breaths.
He still didn’t look at her. He merely held up one finger.
“One moment.”
Odessa looked at him in disbelief then she tried again. “Please, my friends are hurt or dead or... please there was this monster and it...”
The receptionist held up the finger again which stopped Odessa talking. This time he did look up at her.
“Your issue is important to us. If you could please be patient someone will be able to help you soon.”
“But it’s an emergency!” Odessa cried. She leaned forward over the front desk to see what he was doing that was so much more important. “And you’re just reading.”
“Mam, I would like to finish this chapter, and then I will deal with whatever problem it is you think you have. This will also give you time to calm down. Being calm improves a person’s ability to effectively communicate their issues. They’ve done studies on it.”
“I... that is not how this works. That is not how any of this is supposed to work!”
“Mam, please stop yelling,” he replied in a slow, calm, tone. “If you need something to do you can fill out these forms while you wait.” He handed her a clipboard with a paper questionnaire on it.
Odessa threw the clipboard violently off to the side. “What is wrong with you? People are dead! There is a man-eating monster in the bush. It could come rampaging on in here at any moment.”
“I doubt it,” the boy mumbled as he started reading his book again.”
“What?!” Odessa was about to yell at him again when an older man, very tall with dark hair and golden-brown eyes stepped into the reception area.
“It’s alright Callum, I’ve got this one.”
Callum shrugged and remarked in a bored tone, “The inspector will see you now.”
Odessa glared daggers at him.
The inspector smiled politely at her and took her by the arm. “Did you say something about a monster?”
He led her down the hall to a small dark room with one window that looked out toward a fern-covered bank. Odessa kept glancing nervously out toward it. She rubbed an ache in her shoulder absently and shivered.
A second man joined them, this one more rounded, with fair thinning hair. He had a notepad.
“So,” the first inspector started, “Why don’t you start from the beginning.”
Odessa told him everything while the second inspector took notes.
When she was done the first inspector leaned back with a sigh and looked thoughtful. The note-taker continued his note-taking with a frown.
Thinking they didn’t believe her Odessa pulled her back-up watch off her wrist and slapped it on the table.
“Look, you want proof? I got it all on video. There’s a camera in this watch. I just need to connect it up to a computer and then I can show you.”
The inspector frowned. “Is that everything you have? No other footage?”
Odessa nodded, desperate for them to believe her.
“Good,” the inspector remarked. He glanced at the note-taker who nodded in reply.
The inspector took the watch off the table and stood up. Then he dropped the watch on the ground and he stamped his boot down on it hard, crushing all the evidence Odessa had of everything that had happened to a million pieces.