Reef of Death

Hyperion Books

Chapter One

From the Deep

The creature swam in the blackness at the base of the reef, ganglia rising out of its head like glistening, dead eels. It moved gracefully between the white underwater cliff and a world of sulfurous mounds -- each the size of a football stadium The volcanic mounds had been violently exploded up through the ocean floor more than 50,000 years ago -- and they were still growing. Towering chimneys shot out minerals in jets of water hot enough to melt lead.

A young Aboriginal girl leaned over the edge of a sea kayak. The light from the noonday sun penetrated deep into the water and bounced off the chalk drop-off. The girl held a snorkeling mask pressed gently against the roll of the surface water. She could see down clearly, sixty, seventy feet, to where the bubbles from her brother Arnhem's scuba tank danced up through branches of huge gorgon fans and brain coral. Clownfish milled below the dark, muscular body of the young diver. He was searching today down near the end of light.

The girl wished she could talk to Arnhem. You have been down too long. Too deep. The air in your tank is nearly gone. There are only minutes left to look for the Secret.

Arnhem saw the kayak above him as a shim-mering, blue twig. He knew Maruul would be worried. He had hoped the treasure might be in a cave along the chalk cliff. Or that he would find a slab of pictographs carved into one of the mineral towers. He cleared water from his mask, and kept swimming with the bold, powerful strokes he had learned in the billabong on his tribe's homeland: a pond far away, beyond the mountains, where the water was fresh and his eyes never burned.

He lowered his head, thrust his rubber fins harder, and went deeper. He heard a shrill, mechanical scream.

EEEEEE. EEEE.

He believed that somewhere, nearby, a large motor had started.

EEEEEEEEE.

The creature heard the sound, too. It moved its huge tail and pushed water with its immense, powerful pectoral fins. It rose fast up through the hot darkness above the center mound. Its gut shook -- contracted -- pumped enzymes into its stomach. Through the gnarled sensory lobes on its back, the excited creature crudely understood the sound was its message to feast.

Arnhem found no treasure in the underwater Cliff. No mysterious drawings on a chilled, dead tower. Then the shadow, a roll of liquid night, exploded into sight beneath him. At first he was confused. He stared down as the huge specter lightened, grayed in its rush upward toward the light. Arnhem realized that something large, something alive and unthinkable, was swimming straight for him. He started kicking frantically for the surface.

The creature locked on its prey. It saw the boy kicking and could hear his rushed, panicked breathing. A second later, it was close enough to smell him.Terrified, Arnhem glanced down, saw the mouth of the tremendous fish open into a glowing slab of white teeth the size of daggers. He had been warned about great whites and their jaws that could bite -- and slice -- three hundred times harder than any animal, sharks that could devour seals, turtles, license plates. But the demon fish he saw now was beyond the crocodile fear of the bush swamps. Beyond the fear of death. Beyond time.

He kicked violently, thrusting himself up-ward. His sister saw his face twisted by terror. The huge, mutant fish was closing. She reached into the water. She prayed she could grab her brother's hands and pull him up into the sea kayak.

EEEEEEE. EEEE. EEEE.

Jaws snapped on Arnhem's torso like a vise. For a moment, he felt release, as though the wind had been knocked out of him. His arms stretched upward helplessly, his fingers clawing toward the sweet face of his sister. He saw her horror, her hand thrust down toward him. He felt himself shaken violently, then the pain as though a thousand needles were hammered into his stomach. The taste of blood filled his mouth. In his final second alive, he saw a long, red eel bursting out of his waist.

Maruul screamed. She saw Arnhem's intestines and legs fall away from him. A shudder racked her body and she began to choke uncontrollably. It had to be a dream, an impossible nightmare! The creature dove to follow the sinking limbs. It snapped at them as the girl saw Arnhem's torso float up to the surface, saw the white flash of spine and the circle of shredded, raw flesh.

The great fish rose again and seized what was left of the corpse. It closed its jaws and plunged down through a red cloud of blood, back toward the blackness of the deep.

Later, when they found the girl, she was shivering in the bottom of the kayak. Her body lay curled tight like a fetus.

She was still screaming.

Excerpted from Reef of Deathby Paul Zindel Copyright © 1999 by Paul Zindel. Excerpted by permission.
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