CHAPTER ELEVEN - Ben
Myths and Gods
Reeves hoisted himself from the pool and sat on the edge, catching his breath. He lifted his goggles to his forehead and wiped an arm across his eyes. He checked the clock before he could stop himself. Forty minutes.
He reminded himself his time didn’t matter today. This was about getting back in the water. He refused to let it become a PTSD trigger.
Personal victories, he told himself.
Still, he should have been faster.
In the lane next to him, Bagh splashed to a stop and pulled off his goggles, panting.
“You good?”
“Yeah,” said Reeves. “Thanks.”
Their voices echoed in the empty building.
“Beer pong tonight. You in?”
Reeves could hardly imagine playing drinking games at the moment, but he said, “Maybe.”
“It’s okay, I get it. You’re afraid I’ll kick your ass again.”
He laughed. “I’m positive you’ll kick my ass, Bagh.”
“We could play something you’re good at. I don’t know, a game where you have to do math to make the other person take a shot?”
Reeves shook his head, grateful for the cause to smile.
Across the pool, the hum of the hot tub beckoned him. “I’m gonna hit the jets.”
He left Bagh to continue his laps—where he would most certainly do better than forty minutes.
Reeves peeled off his swim cap and was about to sink into the hundred-and-four-degree tub when he heard a distant ringing. He jogged carefully across the tiles to grab his phone.
“Hi, sir.”
“There you are,” said Officer Miller.
“Sorry. I was doing laps.”
“Running?”
“No.”
A pause.
“Swimming?” said Miller. When Reeves didn’t reply he said, “Jesus. Take a rest.”
“Yes, sir.”
Perhaps the officer had a point, given that Reeves had had to spend four terrifying hours treading among Perseus’ wreckage before anyone found him. But to Reeves, ten days was enough recovery time.
He sank into the hot tub with the phone pressed to his ear.
“Listen, you don’t have to do this anymore,” said Miller. “You can retire with a generous reward for your service.”
Retire? He wasn’t even thirty yet, and the man wanted him to retire?
“I appreciate it, sir, but I can’t accept. My entire team—” He ground his teeth. Saying it aloud sounded so matter-of-fact. No words could describe it properly. He drew a breath. “My team died because of me. And Larson’s.”
“There was nothing you could do.”
“I could have refused to let it happen.”
“You would have been disobeying orders. You had no choice.”
“Every action a man takes is a choice.”
Miller fell silent. Reeves shifted so the strongest jet hit his left shoulder blade.
He didn’t even mention the mass destruction the Gulf of Alaska would have undergone if all twenty torpedoes had launched. He had never been much of an environmentalist, but he couldn’t believe how close he had come to destroying an entire ecosystem. His kids—if he ever had any—would never have been able to see a whale, and it would have been his fault.
“We can’t fight the merman with depth charges,” said Reeves. “Not when he has a leviathan in his power.”
“We’ve got choppers and satellites tracking the thing until we figure out what to do.”
At least they were taking a more calculated approach. Still, it had taken a lot of wasted deaths for this to happen.
“Did you relay the message he gave me?” said Reeves.
The word ‘me’ was bitter on his tongue. He wished the merman had chosen someone else to deliver the message—one of his crew, who deserved to be alive instead of him.
“Every vessel is on its way to shore,” said Miller.
“What about the international ones?”
“Them, too.”
Reeves closed his eyes and leaned back. Good. Those lives, at least, he could save.
After a long silence, Miller sighed. “Look, why don’t you take a vacation somewhere. Go on one of those college cruises. You’ve been through a lot and need time to recover. Physically and mentally.”
Reeves drew a breath of chlorine-infused steam. After everything he’d been through, every award he’d received, they didn’t trust him.
“We have marine experts advising us over here,” said Miller, as if reading his thoughts. “Scientists. Biologists. As much as I hate to admit it, this is out of our expertise.”
“It’s not. You said yourself this is an act of terrorism.”
Miller hesitated. “The line is fuzzy.”
Officer Miller was right that Reeves was completely exhausted. In fact, he was too exhausted to argue any longer.
“All right. I’ll look into a vacation.”
“Good. I hear Dominican is real nice. My niece went there on spring break. She’s about your age.”
Reeves drove home from the pool in silence, not even allowing the radio to distract him. He would have to research Norse legend. He remembered reading about the Midgard Serpent as a teen, when he and his friends were on a fantasy role-playing campaign. He was a Paladin, back then. God, how things changed. How would sixteen-year-old Ben react, knowing he would live his dream and become a Team Chief in a few years’ time? Would he be proud to know the path he’d followed, the decisions he’d made?
The Midgard Serpent was one myth he would investigate, but other cultures must have had legends of sea monsters and serpents, too. One of them surely had information on how to kill it—or how the merman managed to gain control of it.
When Reeves got home, he defrosted the most generous portion of spaghetti he had and topped it with half a block of cheese. He then crossed to his bookshelf and pulled down the twice-opened King James Bible his grandma had given him. He would start his research here. He seemed to recall something about a leviathan in the Bible.
What’s gotten into you? said a voice in his head. A few near-death experiences and you’ve turned into a praying man who spends Friday night reading the Bible.
He pulled out a barstool, took a mouthful of spaghetti, and cracked the book open.
He didn’t care. He would keep praying. On the brink of whatever this was, he needed a god to turn to.