Matthew Silver and the Monster Hunters, Book One: The Darkest Waters

Chapter Seventeen

SilverCHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Day after day passed by, and soon, more than a month had gone by. On the weekends, we’d get together with Scott and Sandy to update each other. We met in the village a couple of times to wash off at a small inn and get a few meals of something other than canned meat, soup, or beans.

Scott and Sandy hadn’t found anything either. We were making slow progress down the loch. Every other day, we’d pack up our camps and move a little farther down the loch. That meant that we also had to move the transducers too, and diving into that cold water never got easier. We weren’t even close to the end of the loch, which didn’t help my spirits.

Only once more did we hear that strange whale call close to us, but like the last time, when we checked the sonar, it insisted that there wasn’t anything out there, and that there was something out there at the same time. Scott and Sandy reported the same anomaly, so we could only narrow it down to human error being the reason we’d missed whatever was out there. There was no other explanation.

During that time, we basically got nowhere in our search. The only worthwhile thing that happened, in my mind, was that Jay had managed to fix my phone. She told me that the next time I broke it, I’d have to pay her to fix it, which I argued didn’t make sense, since recruits don’t have money.

The whole search was an extremely frustrating process. Don’t get me wrong, I love a little down time, but I wasn’t in the mood to rest. Both Scott and I were having a lot more trouble than Sandy and Jay. We seemed to be the only ones who recognized the seriousness of the situation we were in. We couldn’t afford to waste any more time, and way to much time had already passed. Jay loved working with tech equipment, and Sandy was in her zone, being out in the wilderness for days, but Scott and I were anxious for a fight.

I felt like I was so close to finding something, but I couldn’t figure it out. The pressure began taking its toll on me, leaving me irritable and grumpy.

This was turning into a mission, the likes of which I had never experienced. Normally, we would’ve located and confirmed the monster’s existence weeks ago, but it kept eluding us. We couldn’t really do anything, but wait until we found it. We were stuck on phase one of a very long process, and when so much is resting on you, and time is a huge factor, you tend to get a little aggravated.

After another dinner of dehydrated meat, beans, and water that we’d filtered and purified, we sat by the smoldering campfire, watching the stars in the clear night sky. Back in the States with all the big city lights and pollution, there weren’t too many places where you could find unobstructed views of the stars. You hear about how amazing the sky is when all the stars are out, but trust me. You can’t comprehend it until you’ve seen it for yourself. I felt so tiny and insignificant. The stars were clustered by the billions, with sparkles of red, blue, and white, like our flag, scattered all over. I felt like I was under a dome of light. They all looked so tiny, but even the smallest pinprick of light was hundreds of times greater than our planet. It was humbling to think about. No matter how strong I’d was, I was only a speck of dust, floating around the universe. If the underground Virginia Sector had skies like this, I would’ve slept outside every single night.

We set out a blanket and rested on the grass, watching the star canopy roll by.

Jay turned onto her side, facing me. “I…”She stopped and took a deep breath. “I’ve been meaning to tell you something.”

“I know,”I said wryly. “I’ve been waiting for you to get around to it.”

“Just—Promise you won’t get mad!”