Chapter 7
I'd always hated swimming, hadn't I?
McKay thought for a while, not a little confused, wondering what might have prompted such an odd observation. Memory drifted back piecemeal: he remembered sudden deafening noise, darkness, the impact of water, trying to swim, twisting and turning helplessly carried along by the flood, trying to work out which way was up. He remembered something hitting his head, a burning in his lungs, his vision lightening from black to a swirling red before settling on a dull, unremarkable grey.
He coughed abruptly, wincing at the tightness that seemed to have settled somewhere deep in his chest, then inhaled. Oh, bad move. He coughed again, then retched. Instinct urged him from his prone position to roll onto his side as he spat out the foul tasting liquid that he figured he had at some point swallowed. He sat up, fighting back an unpleasant surge of vertigo and renewed pounding from his aching head to look around. It was not quite pitch black, he decided, but not far from it. A hint of luminescence painted solid planes that had to be walls, floor and ceiling, but it was sufficient to distinguish vertical from horizontal, if not enough to see by. He reached out and let his fingers trace faint luminescent lines down the nearby wall, noting the moisture there. A shiver ran through him and he hugged himself for warmth.
Oh God, I nearly drowned! Panic brought the rush of memory back full force: the endless flights of stairs leading downwards, deep into the City's sub-levels; finding the blocked door barring their way; Sheppard and his damned C-4; a moment's terrified realisation before the unstoppable wall of water slammed into them…
Sheppard! "Major!" he tried to shout, but it came out as little more than a strangled croak that dissolved into another bout of coughing. Fumbling hands pulled the canteen from its carry pouch and thumbed it open. He gargled, spat and finally drank a few gulps. "Major!" he tried again, slotting the canteen back in place. A cursory look round from his seated position revealed no light. There was not even a flicker that might have been from the flashlight he had carried with him, so he figured if it was nearby, it was apparently broken. He reached into an inner pocket of his vest, found the tiny penlight he had stashed there and switched it on.
The light was barely enough to read by, but it made him feel better and he felt a glimmer of amusement as he recognised the illogicality of it. The beam from the flashlight reached no more than ten or fifteen feet – all but useless for searching – so he listened instead. He heard the dripping of the water as it drained from the walls, and further off he could hear an occasional splash, receding into the distance.
"Major!" he yelled again, the word slowly echoing into silence down endless corridors stretching away from him. He listened again. The dripping continued, regular but gradually slowing in pace; the sound of distant splashing faded into inaudibility and was gone.
But there was something else. A moan? He turned, trying to work out where it had come from. The faintest sounds echoed deceptively in these corridors. He heard it again, close by, he was sure. The dim beam of his penlight picked out a lump on the floor of the passage. He crawled over towards it, grimacing at the slick feel on his hands of the stinking mud that covered the floor, left behind by the flood waters.
He neared the unmoving mud-covered figure. The darkness of the silt seemed to absorb whatever light hit it, so it revealed no more than the figure's outline. He hunkered down about ten feet away and studied it. To his gaze it looked wrong, twisted. McKay dreaded to think what terrible damage could have been inflicted on a human body to make it so misshapen. "Major!" he hissed urgently.
The figure made no move, no reply.
Worry for his friend's welfare overtook caution and he moved closer, close enough that even the dim light he had began to reveal details: details such as the fact that to his utter relief it was not Sheppard. Further examination convinced him it was not even human, it looked more like a big, pale-furred vaguely anthropomorphic otter.
He leaned forward to get a better look, his eyes taking in details of its shape. And while he was on the subject of details, were those teeth marks he saw cut into its belly…?
"Yeeargh!" McKay yelped in horror, unable to stop himself, and blanking the stab of pain from his ankle he rapidly crab scuttling backwards into the opposite wall. The penlight dropped into the mud leaving only a faint glow to reveal its location.
Echoes of McKay's cry faded off into the distance and silence took over once again. Finally, refusing to be scared off by a corpse, and deciding he needed light more than he needed to pander to his squeamishness, he scrabbled through the mud for the penlight and wiped the mud from it as best he could, grateful for the accuracy of the manufacturer's apparently not quite so hyperbolic claims of durability and water resistance.
"Rodney?" came a not too distant cry, soon accompanied by a lightening of the oppressive dark appearing from a side corridor.
"Major!" McKay called back in acknowledgement, deciding to attribute any slight shrillness in his voice to a perfectly understandable relief at the survival of his friend and colleague.
The light bobbed around the corner, for an instant dazzling McKay until its focus was quickly shifted to illuminate the ceiling overhead. "You okay, McKay?" Sheppard asked, his gaze going up and down the mud covered physicist, checking for any obvious injury.
McKay coughed and spat. "Oh, just peachy. Aside from having swallowed several gallons of foul, probably disease ridden water, found a disgusting, half eaten corpse and almost cracked my head open, I'm fine!"
In the glow of the flashlight attached to his P-90 Sheppard could see the glaze of blood covering one side of McKay's face, the red of the blood paler than the surround grime. Moving cautiously he reached into a pouch on his vest and pulled free a field dressing. "Better get that cut on your head cleaned up," he said casually, not wanting to further alarm the already jittery Canadian. "Any headache? Nausea? Double vision?"
Any answer McKay might have made was lost in a sudden bout of coughing that ended with him turning aside to spit out a gob of phlegm. Sheppard took the opportunity to pull out his canteen and splash some water over McKay's head, washing away the worst of the blood and mud, then wrapping the bandage around it.
"How bad?" McKay eventually managed.
Sheppard forced a reassuring smile. "Doesn't look too bad: not more than a shallow cut," he hedged. "I just don't want to risk it getting any dirtier than it has to."
"I guess that makes sense," McKay said, managing an abortive nod before the stab of pain in his head announced that sudden head movements were a bad idea. Sheppard saw the wince and mutely handed over two pills from the small bottle of Tylenol he carried. McKay took them and swallowed them dry.
"Rodney, you good to go?" the Major asked.
Using the wall as support, McKay carefully got to his feet, leaning against it for a few moments as the wave of nausea subsided. "I really hope after that little swim you still have the Naquada generator," he muttered.
"Oh yeah," Sheppard answered in return and started walking back toward the remains of the blocked door he had needed to use the C-4 to open. McKay hobbled after him, giving the otter creature's corpse a wide berth, though favouring it with a worried look at the size of the gaping wound on its belly.
"So, you think it's still down here?" he asked.
"Hm?"
"The thing with the teeth," McKay went on. "The really big teeth! From the state of it, that otter thing couldn't have died too long ago, so it makes sense that whatever it is might still be around."
"Hm," Sheppard replied with weary disinterest.
"What if it's amphibious?" he mused. "The dead thing was mammalian – I think – so maybe whatever killed it is too, and it doesn't need water to survive. Hey, it could still be down here with us!"
He waited for a reply, but none was forthcoming. Surprised by such a lack of response from a man who would normally have come back with some kind of snarky reply, McKay looked more closely at the figure in front of him. Sheppard's usually easy gait was now more of a hunched over trudge, and while the P-90 was held firmly in his right hand, instead of supporting it, the left arm was tucked in, pressing into his side.
While they backtracked to the torn remains that had been the blocked bulkhead door Sheppard had needed to use explosives to open, McKay noted with concern the noticeably unsteady way the Major walked. When they reached the bulkhead, he watched as Sheppard took a breath as if steeling himself before crouching down to climb through the hole in the centre that the blast and the subsequent out rush of water had left – though at the time neither had guessed the section might have been flooded. McKay noted the stiffness of his movements, heard the barely stifled gasp of pain, and concluded that Sheppard too had not escaped injury from the flood surge.
Sensing he was being watched, the Major looked up and saw the concerned if unspoken question in McKay's assessing gaze. "I bumped into one of the support pillars," he explained with a crooked, unconvincing grin. "Bruised a couple of ribs, that's all. I'll be okay."
If he heard McKay's answering snort of disbelief and muttered comments about the mule-headed stubbornness of certain Air Force Majors, he chose not to respond but instead lead the way further into the depths of the City.
o0o