Sligger Island Read online

  “Woooowwww,” Eaver said, awed by the sight. Her flashlight beam found ribbons of calcium on the rock walls, a white flowstone perimeter around the water, and green, gritty seawater. “It’s soooo cool in here.”

  “It’s enormous,” Mason observed. He was amazed that such a vast cavern could exist beneath the rocky exterior. There was no running water channel that could have eroded the rock over the centuries. Perhaps the small openings at the top had let enough rain water through to eventually wash the rock hollow, he concluded. Regardless of how the cavern had been created, it was impressive.

  Eaver turned her flashlight from the water to the adjacent shoreline. There seemed to be a narrow walkway along the water’s edge, a path that looked like something carved out with an ax or some other metal tool.

  “This doesn’t look natural,” said Eaver, frowning at the path under their feet. “This looks like something chipped away, man-made.”

  Looking closer, Mason had to agree. “It sure does. That’s weird. How could anybody get inside here to do that? We wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t played with the explosives.”

  Danny’s flashlight followed the path before them. As he raised the beam, the light caught something huge ahead. “What the hell..?” he muttered. “Is that a submarine?”

  Eaver aimed her flashlight in the same area to provide more illumination. Sure enough, about forty feet away, the nose of a rusty submarine was found in the light. “Holy crap,” she said, an excited grin stretching her face.

  The group worked their way closer, mindful of their footing on the slender pathway. Mason noted the rich smell of minerals in the cavern, almost sulfuric. For a second it reminded him of the distinct odor emitted by the sea monsters he faced a year ago, but he knew that could not be the case and he quickly dismissed the thought.

  Minutes later they reached the submarine. It looked to be about fifteen feet wide and a hundred and fifty feet long, extending almost to the mouth of the tunnel. It was small by submarine standards, but it filled the majority of the cavern. The steel craft was grounded against the rock, heeled at a slight tilt, a third of it below the water surface. The amount of rust covering its hull indicated it had been there for quite a long time.

  “This is awesome,” said Mitch. “We found an actual freakin’ submarine!”

  “We need to find a way inside,” Danny suggested. He looked for a means to climb atop the ship. Then he had Mitch hold his flashlight while he cautiously reached for holes in the hull.

  “Careful,” said Eaver. “You don’t want that rusty metal to cut you.”

  “I know, I know,” Danny groaned, mimicking an annoyed child. He pulled his way to the deck of the submarine, then reached down for his flashlight. Mitch flung it up to him.

  “See a way in?” asked Mason.

  Danny studied the deck, surprised to find it was layered in weathered teak wood. Within seconds he found an access hatch. And it was swung open. “Yeah, right over here. Come on up, guys.”

  Mason was eager to board the old ship, but he was also wary of the group’s safety. “Alright, but everybody remember. As the tide recedes, this thing may become more unstable. So walk carefully. And watch you don’t get cut by the old metal, we don’t want tetanus or anything.”

  An avid climber since childhood, Mason negotiated the hull with no trouble. Eaver gave her flashlight to Mitch and followed Mason’s path up the side. Then he tossed the light back to her, and he and Jesse brought up the rear.

  Danny aimed the flashlight down the hatch while the others gathered around. The light beam followed a steel ladder to a water-covered floor. He looked around the group. “Who’s first?”

  “It’s your find,” said Mason. “Unless you don’t want to.”

  “Of course I want to!” Danny replied excitedly. “I was just being polite.” He flipped the flashlight in his palm, so the beam would be facing down while he was on the ladder, and began his careful descent into the access hatch.

  When Danny got to the bottom, he was standing in a foot of seawater. As he moved the flashlight beam, he saw a compartment that was about six feet wide and just as high, about a dozen valve wheels and meters, and remains of wood paneling on the walls and ceiling. What was left of the wood was blackened; it looked like there had been a bad fire inside the submarine. He stepped forward while the rest of the group started climbing down behind him.

  The addition of Eaver’s flashlight painted a broader picture of the ship’s interior. It also helped find, to the shock of the explorers, several bodies floating in the far corner.

  “Oh my God!” said Eaver, her hand flying to her mouth.

  “Whoa,” Jesse added, affected by the sight. He shrank back.

  Danny and Mason moved closer through the shallow water. Danny’s light revealed that the bodies were burnt, like the rest of the ship. They were nothing but human skeletons, some of the bones charred. All the tissue that was once there had been picked clean by fish and other sea scavengers.

  “Check this out!” Eaver called out. Everybody turned their heads to see what she had discovered. Her light was pinned on a half-submerged metal chest. There was a Nazi swastika stamped into the steel.

  “Holy shit!” Mason exclaimed. “I think this is a German U-boat from World War II!”

  “Damn,” said Mitch. “That thing’s probably got some valuable historic stuff in it. We gotta open it.”

  “That’s easy enough,” noted Danny, his light showing a simple latch with no lock holding it secure. “Open it up.”

  Eaver reached down, worked the rusty latch apart with minimal effort, and raised the lid. She swung it completely open and it splashed some of the water behind the chest. “Oh wow,” she said.

  Inside was a tarnished pistol, a handful of iron cross medals, some other Nazi paraphernalia, and a book with German writing on the cover. Her fingers fumbled through the medallions and took hold of the book. She pulled it out to get a better look. The interior pages were filled with German handwriting.

  “That’s probably the ship’s log,” Mason wagered. “Take it with us, we’ll get someone to translate it for us back home.”

  They continued their exploration, heading toward the back of the U-boat. About twenty feet past the first chamber, they found themselves in what would normally have been the crew’s quarters. Corroded chains dangled from the ceiling, but the cots that they would normally be holding were gone. In their places were steel tables and laboratory equipment. An abundance of lab supplies – beakers, vials, scalpels, forceps, and microscopes – were scattered across the sunken floor. The group also spotted a crumpled door in the water covering the floor. It appeared to have come from the doorway just beyond.

  “Looks like it blew off its hinges,” Eaver remarked. Then she looked up to see that this room had also been ablaze. “That must be the engine room back there.”

  “Something went wrong,” said Mason, agreeing with her. “An engine blew, probably diesel everywhere, and a terrible fire took the whole sub.”

  Danny’s flashlight landed on a couple more dead crewmen. Their skeletons drifted in the salt water, one with a rusted chain necklace still around its neck. “Jesus,” he muttered. “What a horrible way to die.”

  “Don’t feel too bad for ‘em,” Mason pointed out. “They were Nazis, after all. And this looks like it was some kind of lab. It doesn’t take a genius to know that Nazis and scientific experiments add up to bad news.”

  “Hey, look at that,” said Eaver, her light aimed just next to the bodies. There was a sizable, white, plastic container, looking like a waste tank, with a large crack extending to its submerged base. Looking closer, the group could see a red medical cross and Japanese writing on the translucent container.

  “That looks like Japanese,” said Danny. “But what would they have to do with a Nazi laboratory?”

  “Nothing good,” Mitch replied. “Especially during World War II. They were both our enemy. Maybe they were working together to do some kind of
attack on us.”

  “Look,” Eaver announced, “I found where the water’s coming in from.” Two feet away from the plastic container, there was a substantial breach in the U-boat’s hull. Seawater had entered through the hole years ago, and had been stirring around the laboratory ever since.

  “Whatever was in that container, it’s empty now. Looks like it all drained out. If they put something bad in there, it went into the ocean.”

  Danny brought his flashlight back to the container. Through the milky, semi-transparent plastic he could see dried, burgundy-colored parts clinging to the inside wall.

  “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this,” Danny said. There was fear in his voice, and a smidge of panic. “I need to get out of here.”

  Mason concurred. “Yeah, this probably isn’t the healthiest place to be in.” He faced the rest of the group. “Let’s get out of this graveyard.”

  The others were happy to oblige. Nobody wanted to spend any more time inside the metal tomb. Carefully, they made their way back through the confining ship and to the ladder leading to the open hatch.

  After the group made their way down the hull and back to the cavern floor, they took a deep breath of the cleaner air. It was still thick and muggy, but fresher than the air inside the dead U-boat. It helped that they were near the mouth of the tunnel that led outside.

  The bright light coming through the small opening drew Eaver’s eyes. “Let’s see what’s just a little farther down.”

  “Sure,” said Mason. “Might as well check out the whole cave while we’re here.”

  Eaver led the others along the edge of the flowstone. They had almost gotten to the tail of the U-boat when the scent of sulfur became unusually strong. The odor caused Eaver to stop abruptly. She looked back at Mason, concern on her face. “Do you smell that?”

  Mason nodded, wearing the same uneasy expression. “I know that smell,” he said. “That’s not a good thing. Not good at all.” He studied the nearby water nervously, suddenly wishing they had brought the rifles into the cavern with them.

  Jesse shrugged at the odor of rotten eggs. “It’s just sulfur, dude.”

  “No,” said Mason. “This is a little different. I’ve gotta find where it’s coming from… I have to be sure.”

  He borrowed Eaver’s flashlight and scanned the rock around them. Following the stench, he stepped slowly along the water’s edge. It only took him a second to spot what he feared he would.

  There was a small crater, a few feet from the shoreline, containing its own shallow pool of seawater. Mason instantly recognized the greenish-yellow objects under the water. A wave of terror hit him as his fears were confirmed. These were the leathery, football-sized eggs of the deadly creatures they called sliggers.

  And the group had unknowingly wandered right into their lair.

  His voice at a whisper, Mason addressed the others. “We’re in a sligger nest. Everybody keep quiet.”

  “Jesus,” Eaver mouthed.

  “C’mon, everybody,” Mason instructed with urgency. “We gotta get the hell out of here.”

  CHAPTER 9

  The group rushed out of the cavern and made their way back to the beach. Once they were on the sand near the motorboat, they relaxed a little. They kept anxious eyes on the fissure up the hill, however, to make sure nothing had followed them out.

  “Alright,” said Mason, his heart still pounding, “we gotta get all our shit together and load up the boat. Like right now.”

  Jesse was panicked. “Were you serious? About what’s living in there? Those monsters that killed Mal and attacked the town last year?”

  Mason nodded emphatically. “Without a doubt. I was hoping I was wrong when I smelled that sulfur stink. But when I saw that damn egg pool…”

  “Couldn’t be from anything else?” Mitch asked hopefully.

  “Nope. Nothing else makes eggs that look like that. Remember, I saw those eggs up close when Marty and I went down under Pirate’s Point to blow it up. I’ll never forget what they look like.”

  Jesse was already stuffing the weapons and ammunition into the duffel bags. Danny and Eaver carried a cooler to the boat and tossed it over the bow. Jesse hurried the duffel bags to the shoreline and heaved them into the boat. Danny told everybody to jump aboard while he untied the mooring line, and then he and Mason pushed the craft off the sandy bottom. When it started to drift away from shore, Danny and Mason climbed inside.

  Danny started the engines and put the throttle in reverse. The twin outboard motors pulled the boat farther from the beach.

  “We’ve got to notify the proper authorities,” stated Mason. “Maybe the Coast Guard, I don’t know.”

  “We have to wait until we get closer to Sweetboro,” said Eaver, remembering that there was no signal for her phone to use.

  Danny turned the motorboat to face the ocean, then opened it up to start speeding away from the island. Mindful that the tide was starting to recede, he kept a sharp eye on the water ahead to avoid any protruding reefs.

  Mitch held tightly to the rail on the gunwale. He faced Mason, hungry for more information about the dreaded sea monsters that until now were thought dead. “So,” he said. “Do they really look like how you described ‘em on the news?”

  “Worse,” said Mason. “They’re something you never want to see in your life. A nightmare you can’t get out of your head.”

  Mitch’s curiosity was piqued. “Tell me.”

  “Dude, you have no idea.” Mason drew in a deep breath. “I mean, it’s like a creature with a body of an octopus, the head of – I don’t know – a Martian, and legs and tail like a gator. Their skin is dark green, and shiny. They have long, sharp teeth in this wide, horrible jaw. And their fucking eyes…”

  “Jesus,” said Eaver, shuddering at the memory of seeing the creatures’ bulbous, shiny, black orbs. “Like giant, black, dead eyes.”

  “The size of billiard balls,” Mason corroborated. “Like I said, a nightmare.”

  “Fuck,” was all Jesse could say.

  Just then the motorboat was rocked violently. The passengers bounced around a little in the boat, but were able to find something to hang onto.

  “Shit!” said Danny, realizing his boat had just struck one of the reefs. It felt like the stern had impacted with the underwater rock. The engine quickly sputtered and died while he tried to keep the boat on course.

  The vessel continued coasting through the ocean waves, the grip of the sea slowing it down and bringing it to an eventual stop.

  “Goddammit!” Danny bellowed. He was angry at himself for bungling the task of safely navigating the reefs. And now his boat was crippled. “Fuck!”

  “What happened?” Jesse whimpered, clenching his seat tightly.

  “We hit a reef,” admitted Danny, looking back. “Sorry, guys.”

  Then they could feel the boat sinking as water rushed into the ruptured fiberglass hull.

  “Oh-Jesus-oh-Jesus,” said Eaver, panicking. “We’re sinking!” She gripped Mason’s hand hard and searched his face for any reassurance. Instead she saw the same helpless alarm in his eyes that was overtaking her.

  Mason noticed the engines were smoking. He saw that one of the three gas cans had ruptured and was leaking, which was cause for alarm. The gasoline was running out onto the deck, and soaking the duffel bags containing the ammunition and explosives. Then something sparked, and Mason’s fears became horribly real when the stern instantly caught fire.

  “Shit!” he yelled. “Everybody get out! It’s gonna blow!”

  They had to abandon ship immediately. Mason grabbed Eaver and pulled her to her feet. He dove overboard with her, and the others did the same. Just as the group plunged into the ocean water, the boat exploded.

  An ear-splitting concussion ripped across the water as the boat disintegrated in a blinding fireball. Debris shot in every direction. The group stayed underwater for as long as their lungs would allow. Then they surfaced to draw breath again.

&
nbsp; “Jesus,” Danny sputtered, happy to see the others floating with him. “Is everyone okay?”

  “I think so,” said Eaver, the shock and adrenaline making it hard to tell if she was hurt.

  “Me too,” Mason declared, and Mitch and Jesse echoed the response.

  “Thank God,” whispered Danny, trying to control his breathing and slow his pounding heart. “Thank God.”

  While treading water, Mason’s mind was in a fog. He could barely comprehend his situation and what to do next. After a moment, his instinct to survive took over. Realizing they had no choice but to get back to the only land that was near, he stated the dreaded but obvious.

  “Come on,” he said, “we’ve gotta get back to the beach.”

  CHAPTER 10

  They were exhausted by the time they reached the shore, both physically and emotionally. It took more strength than their adrenaline would admit for them to swim a couple hundred yards back to the island. And the mental trauma of having just survived an explosion would be imprinted on their brains for the rest of their lives.

  Mason dragged himself out of the water and flopped down on the sand next to the others. After a moment to rest his heart and lungs, he turned to Eaver.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, reaching out and collecting her hand.

  “Yeah,” she panted. “Yeah, I will be. Jesus, Mason…” She began to sob as the weight of what happened took its toll.

  He rolled to his side and scooted closer, embracing her and holding her gently. “I know, sweetie, I know. Me too.”

  Danny sat up and stared blankly at the ocean. “My boat… I can’t believe it’s gone.”

  “And all our guns,” said Mitch. “That was about four thousand dollars worth of firearms and ammo.”

  “Well I’m sorry,” snorted Danny. “I’ll reimburse you if we ever get off this island!”