To the Depths of My Heart

Monsters

The whole time Tom was recording data from the small NOAA boat he was given, his mind was somewhere else. Though he was aware enough to lower the cameras into the water and gather water samples to take back, he wondered about the woman the Coast Guard found. She'd lost consciousness shortly after she told him her name and never regained it while he was there. Granted, he was only on board long enough to get the needed reports from the ship's captain, but he hoped he could find out more of what she'd experienced before they took her away.

From the Coast Guard band on the boat's radio, he heard them call on-shore medics, instructing them to shield her from any media that may try to get a soundbite from her. He knew she was taken to a hospital for observation and treatment, but not which one. He hoped it was Gray's Harbor County General, not one of the outlying medical centers, only because it was closer. He didn't relish the prospect of possibly needing to drive the hour and a half to the next closest medical center.

By his third hour in on the investigative voyage, Tom was sure he'd gathered enough evidence to support the theory of a non-major earthquake. In his mind, it was a tremor, really, not large enough to warrant more than a footnote in the annals of seismic history. He instructed his captain to return to land, observing the water as the craft cut through it. Tom thought it odd that the water was still its same color - no anomalies that usually accompanied a boat breaking up - and there was no more detritus than the few pieces of wood and fiberglass that seemed concentrated in the once central area.

They returned to the dock and Tom disembarked, climbing out of the hull of the vessel and adjusting his clothing after he tossed the life vest he wore back into the boat. He stood on the dock and stared back out at the sea, unsure why, now, it made him uneasy. His mind ran with imaginings that he would have laughed at previously, filling his head with images of sirens and mermaids, creatures of the deep that were disproved by everything scientific. He felt it was because, while he knew the sea well in his beloved Hawaii, the continental side of the Pacific was a whole different animal. Its waters were not the azure blue he was used to, nor the waves calm and predictable. Here, he watched as tempests swirled, and could easily imagine their murky green waters as part of The Odyssey - certain this was where the Scylla and Charybdis loomed and ships were wrested by the arms of the Leviathan.

Davis was gone by the time he arrived at the office, much to his dismay. He'd looked forward to sharing the odd story with his boss, just to see what the old man's reaction would be. Instead, he passed by the darkened office and made his way to the lab to drop off the samples. There was a lab assistant that took the various vials and test tubes he'd collected, labelled them and had Tom sign them in on the daily sheet. She was one of the most droll, unenthusiastic individuals he'd ever met. "You don't enjoy working here much, do you?" he asked in an attempt to make the transaction easier on himself.

She took a deep breath and cast an apathetic stare at him for a moment. "It's a job," she replied, her voice in a complete monotone. "The only reason I'm here is because it pays for school."

"Really?" he asked, "What are you going to school for?"

"Marine biology." She rolled her eyes as though to say even that, as a career path, was not something that interested her. "My parents want me to follow in their footsteps," she finished with.

Tom chuckled. "A degree in that won't get you out of here."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "What do you mean?"

"I've got a Master's in it," he answered. "Been here a year and this is my very first field assignment."

For a moment, she looked halfway between impressed and sympathetic and he thought he'd found a kindred spirit. They sized each other up. She was younger than he, but not more than five years, attractive in the girl-next-door kind of way, had curly red hair that was pulled back into a messy bun and revealed her porceline skin smattered with a light dusting of freckles. Just when he considered that she might be a friend, or even possibly something more, she dashed his hopes. Her deep green eyes narrowed and she snorted, "Loser."