Under Darkness (A Sci-Fi Thriller) (Scott Standalones Book 1) Read online

  But still, nothing happened.

  “Mel...?”

  * * *

  Beth stood on the living room balcony, peering down to the roiling water of the pool. “Hello? Are you ok—” Violent splashing and a muffled cry interrupted her.

  Beth’s pulse beat like a drum in her ears. The splashing ceased and the pool grew still.

  “Hello?” Beth tried again, but this time the darkness swallowed her voice without a peep.

  An overwhelming urge to run built up inside of her until she was bouncing on her toes. What had she seen? Who had been in the pool a minute ago? And why weren’t they answering?

  Beth’s imagination painted a pale, glistening silhouette swimming to the side of the pool, then climbing out, and padding off into the bushes on four legs.

  Four legs. Not two. A shiver shook Beth’s body. She wasn’t imagining things. Squinting into the jagged shadows of foliage around the pool, she tried to get a better look, but whatever it was, it was gone, and she had a bad feeling that whoever had been in the pool, they were gone now, too.

  Unable to stand it anymore, Beth turned and ran back inside. Her legs and hands shaking violently, she flicked the lock down and jumped into the far corner of the couch. Beth pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them with a pillow, watching the sliding glass doors with wide, unblinking eyes.

  Chapter 7

  Bill flipped the master circuit breaker with a noisy snap. “Nothing,” he sighed. Not that he’d expected otherwise. None of the individual breakers had been tripped, so flicking them all off and then on again wasn’t likely to help. Not only that, but Bill could clearly hear the generators at the Marriott droning away. The Koa Kai wasn’t the only place without power.

  “Now what?” Toby asked.

  “Now, we go to storage and get flashlights for the guests.”

  Toby nodded quickly. “Where’s that?”

  Bill frowned. “You’ve been working here for more than a year, and you don’t know where storage is?”

  “Man, I just teach the haole how to catch a wave. I don’t know where you stow your shit.”

  “Just follow me,” Bill grumbled, leading the way out of the electrical room with his flashlight. They emerged on the covered terrace running along the back of the main building. Bill shut the metal doors to the electrical room and headed toward the storage rooms.

  Toby kept pace beside him, determined not to get left alone. “Man, we need to get back inside,” he whispered.

  A muffled voice drifted through the flowering hedge beside them. Bill stopped to listen. It was a man, his voice coming from the direction of the pool. Bill couldn’t believe someone had gone out for a swim in the middle of all this.

  “Lolo buggah,” Toby muttered—crazy fool, Bill translated.

  Silence fell.

  “Come on,” Bill said, catching Toby’s elbow with his free hand to drag him along. Before they took more than two steps, a loud splash issued from the pool, followed by a scream and more splashing.

  Bill stopped cold, his ears straining, palms sweating, and heart rattling against his sternum. His thoughts raced, struggling to catch up.

  Silence condensed around them like a thick fog, stifling the sounds just as abruptly as they had begun.

  Toby began tugging insistently, trying to flee. “LESGO,” he whispered sharply.

  Bill resisted the urge to shine his flashlight in the direction of the pool and call out to whoever was down there.

  Instead, he flicked off his flashlight, and Toby quickly did the same. Bill hurried down the terrace to the Koa Kai’s only restaurant. Weaving through a maze of tables and chairs, Bill led them to the nearest set of doors and yanked one of them open. Toby squeezed by him in his hurry to get inside. Breathing hard, both of them spun around to peer through the doors and windows of the restaurant.

  “What the eff was that?” Toby whispered. The kid had no problem swearing, but a handful of words apparently violated the sacred code of his conservative Hawaiian upbringing. Bill had long and feebly hoped that his conservatism extended below the surface, but he didn’t have the guts to ask Beth about it. All he knew was that he took her to a clinic every month for a shot, just in case.

  “Maybe nothing,” Bill suggested as he flicked his flashlight back on and shone the beam through the glass. Fully half of the light bloomed on the surface, bouncing back to illuminate his own reflection. “It’s probably just some of the guests fooling around in the pool.”

  “No, brah, something is out there. Do you have any guns?”

  Seeing nothing outside, Bill turned to face Toby with a frown. “Guns? No. Why would I have guns at a resort?”

  “You gotta have something! Some kinda weapon, brah! Knives from the kitchen, at least!”

  “Through there,” Bill replied, nodding to the shadowy door that led there.

  Toby sighed. “Better than nothing. We better go get ‘em.”

  “You do that,” Bill replied. “I’m going to go back to the lobby.”

  “That’s lolo, braddah! We split up now, we gonna be make die dead.”

  Bill frowned. “Speak English, damn it.”

  “Okay, you’re crazy, and you gonna get us killed.”

  “The thing is, Toby, if there is something out there, and it isn’t human, butcher knives aren’t going to help, and it’s probably heard us already.”

  “So lock the doors, man.”

  “I don’t have the key, and besides, we left the doors in the lobby open when we went out, remember? Someone has to shut them.”

  Toby gaped at him. “Shit.”

  “Yeah, shit.”

  “All the more reason to get weapons! Knives are better than nothin, brah. Come on.”

  “Maybe.” Bill gave in with a nod. “All right, let’s see what we can find.”

  Chapter 8

  They hurried through the restaurant to the kitchen’s swinging door. Tables were strewn with plates of unfinished food, chairs pushed out, others knocked over and lying on the ground. They reached the kitchen door and pushed through into a warm, fragrant space, gleaming with stainless steel, and crowded with pots and pans full of food that sat cooling on the burners. Partially diced veggies lay abandoned on cutting boards, sharp knives gleaming beside them. Toby snatched the nearest one and held it up like a prized trophy. Then he pinned his flashlight under one arm and grabbed the handle of a frying pan. Flipping the food out on the stove, he handed it to Bill, who stared dubiously at the pan before swinging it around experimentally and drawing whooshing sounds from the air.

  “Where is everyone?” Toby asked, casting about quickly.

  “They saw that meteor land in the ocean. My guess is they fled up the stairs and elevators with all of the guests,” Bill explained. “They’re probably hiding with them in their rooms.”

  “So we’re alone down here?” Toby asked in fading whisper.

  “Yeah, I’d bet on that.”

  “Then we gotta go!”

  “Actually, I want to go take a look out by the pool.”

  Toby’s cheeks bulged with an incredulous reply, but Bill held up a hand to stop him before it could burst from his lips.

  “You can wait here if you want. I need to know what we’re dealing with. If anything.”

  “I’m out. I’ll see you at da room, brah.”

  Bill nodded. “Fine.”

  Toby followed him out of the kitchen, and then promptly darted left, heading for the doors that separated the restaurant from the lobby. Bill watched him go with a frown. He’d evidently forgotten about the lobby doors that they’d left open.

  They reached their respective exits at the same time. Bill stepped out into the premature night while Toby ran into the lobby. Sweeping his flashlight around the restaurant’s lanai, Bill found more half-finished meals and overturned chairs. Shadows slithered through it all, but there wasn’t anything lying in wait for him there, so he moved on, heading through a gap in the railing around the lanai and down a n
arrow, flower-lined path to the pool.

  Crickets and a gentle breeze tickling through the palms overhead were the only sounds. Now strangely absent was the droning roar of the Marriott’s generators.

  “Hello?” Bill called out as he neared the pool, more to scare something off than to actually get an answer.

  The bobbing beam of his flashlight revealed wet, gleaming puddles around the pool. Relief flooded through Bill, easing some of the tension in his chest. He’d been right. The commotion they’d heard had been some of the guests fooling around in the pool.

  But as he drew near to the pool, Bill saw that some of those puddles were too thick to be water; then he saw red smears around them, and his stride faltered. Sweeping his flashlight around, the beam flashed over the pool. The water was dark and cloudy with blood. Soggy chunks of meat floated around the ragged, three-limbed body of a naked man. His missing arm was nowhere in sight.

  Bill whirled around, frantically scanning the darkness with his flashlight. Shadows danced around bushes and trees. A watery, bloody trail led from one corner of the pool straight to the open doors of the lobby.

  Somewhere a door slid open, and Bill jumped with fright.

  “Hello?” a woman asked in a trembling voice. “Paul?”

  Bill swept his flashlight toward the sound of that voice and found a pretty young woman standing on the balcony of one of the garden suites, wearing nothing but a skimpy nightgown. Long brown hair cascaded over her shoulders.

  “Paul, is that you?”

  She wouldn’t be able to see him through the glare of his flashlight. Bill hoped Paul wasn’t the dead man in the pool. He was about to call out to her, to warn her to go inside and lock her door, when he heard a twig snap from the direction of the beach.

  Spinning around, Bill shined his flashlight in the direction of the sound. The beam illuminated a dense clump of red and pink ginger plants. “Go away!” he screamed.

  “Who are you talking to?” the woman asked.

  Something pale and glistening seemed to flow away from the green stalks of the ginger plants, down a grassy slope and out of sight.

  “Hello! Have you seen my husband? He was in the pool! Is he there with you?”

  Bill stared hard into the foliage, eyes burning with the need to blink. “Get inside!” he said.

  “What? Why?”

  They didn’t have time to stand around and argue. Snapping out of it, Bill sprinted around the pool, leaping over loungers to avoid the slick puddles of bloody water on the tiled surround. His still-bare feet hit the grass. The woman’s eyes grew round as he approached, and she scrambled back inside. The glass door slid shut in front of him just as he collided with it, his frying pan smacked the glass with a thunk, and a long, jagged crack appeared. The woman screamed and backed away.

  He tried yanking the door open, but it was locked. “Let me in, damn it!” Bill said, banging on the door with his flashlight. Hairs stood up on the back of his neck, and he whirled around, terror clawing inside of him at the thought of what might have followed him from the pool. Leaning against the sliding door, he shone his flashlight back the way he’d come and flicked the beam back and forth over grass, flowers, bushes, and pool loungers.

  “Whatever you are, you don’t want to mess with me!” Bill said in a loud voice.

  A metal railing shivered directly overhead, and Bill glanced up to see a dark shape clinging to the balcony above him. His heart seized in his chest, and his flashlight tracked swiftly up...

  Chapter 9

  The door behind Bill slid open, and he fell inside with a painful jolt that sent shooting pains ricocheting up his spine. His frying pan smacked the tiles, followed by the back of his head. The door slid shut just as quickly as it had opened, and then something heavy bounced off it with a loud thump and a shrill squeal like nails on a chalkboard.

  Bill sat up quickly, his head still spinning, and shone his flashlight through the cracked glass of the sliding door. There was nothing there.

  “Did you see it?” Bill asked, glancing up at the pretty young woman who had let him in.

  She quickly shook her head, her blue eyes wide and staring. “No, did you see my husband?”

  “Was he the one skinny-dipping in the pool?”

  “You did see him! Where is he?”

  Bill eased himself off the floor and regarded the woman before him. She had a young, pretty face, long dark hair, and glassy, hopeful blue eyes. He vaguely recognized her. She was the better half of one of the two honeymooner couples currently checked in at his resort. Her name came drifting back to mind. Bill was ashamed to admit that it was easier to remember the names of pretty female guests. “Melanie, right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Please, I have to know. Did you see Paul? Was the pool empty?”

  Bill grimaced, remembering the cloudy crimson water and the remains of the naked man floating there. He looked like he’d had a run-in with a shark. “I’m very sorry, but he’s dead.”

  “What? No...” she whimpered. Her voice caught and broke, and she crumpled to the floor, looking suddenly small and child-like. She looked up with tears streaming from her eyes. “How?”

  Bill hesitated. She didn’t need to know the details. “I don’t know.”

  “But then... how can you be sure that he’s dead?”

  “Trust me. He is.” Bill dropped to his haunches and set the frying pan down gently so he could place a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “I’m very sorry, Melanie.”

  “But... it’s just a satellite! Paul said that it was just—” She sobbed into her hands.

  “That’s what I thought, too...” Bill said, trailing off as his attention switched from the newly-wedded widow to the cracked glass of the patio door. He got up and walked over to examine it. There was a big, greasy smudge just above knee height, and a set of four, long scratches beside it. Claw marks? Tracing those furrows with his fingertips, Bill frowned. None of this made any sense.

  Even if aliens were invading, why blot out the sun? And why send down primitive monsters with claws and teeth for weapons instead of an army with guns? And why on Earth, would they choose to invade Kauai? Surely there were hundreds of better, more strategic targets.

  “He can’t be dead,” Melanie said in a dull voice.

  Bill turned to see her staring fixedly out the door, her sobs spent for the moment. Her cheeks gleamed in the reflected glow of his flashlight. She looked like she’d reached the first stage of grief: denial, but he didn’t have time for her to go through the others. He needed to go up and check on his daughter.

  “Listen, stay here, okay?” he said, hurrying by her on his way to the front door of the suite. “Keep the door locked, and don’t go out for any reason.”

  Just as he reached the door, something cold touched his arm. He flinched and recoiled from it, stumbling into the closet beside the door and throwing up his hands to defend himself.

  It was just Melanie. She’d followed him to the door.

  “Shit!” he hissed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get my daughter and go for help.”

  “I’m going with you,” she said.

  “It’s safer here,” he insisted.

  “The door is broken,” she said, thrusting out a hand to indicate the cracked glass of the sliding patio door. “And that thing out there knows we’re here. It could come back.”

  Bill hesitated. “Fine.” He nodded to the kitchenette. “Get yourself a knife or something.”

  Melanie darted into the kitchen and pulled a butcher knife from the wooden knife block on the counter. “What about you?” she asked. “Where’s that skillet?”

  Bill snorted. He’d be damned if he was going to die clutching a frying pan. Besides, if they were dealing with some kind of unintelligent or semi-intelligent monster, they might be able to scare it more easily than they could hurt it. Ducking into the kitchen, Bill rifled through one of the drawers until he found a barbecue lighter with a long stem. Then h
e went to check under the sink for the complimentary cleaning supplies he knew should be there. But the cabinet was empty. “Damn it, it’s not here!”

  “Looking for this?” Melanie asked, holding out a can of Lysol.

  “Yeah.” He took it with a tight smile and stuffed the lighter in his pocket before walking back to the front door. Gripping his flashlight under one arm, he grabbed the door handle. “Ready?” he asked.

  “Let’s go,” Melanie replied, holding her knife above her shoulder, ready to stab.

  Just before Bill could yank the door open, someone pounded on it urgently. “Who’s there?” he asked.

  No answer.

  He checked the peephole, but of course, he couldn’t see anything in the darkened hallway. “Identify yourself,” he demanded.

  The knocking returned, but softer, more distant. A door clicked open somewhere further down the hall.

  “Hello?” a man asked. “Hey, is anyone there?”

  Bill’s eye widened behind the peephole.

  “Who is it?” a woman added.

  “Just some stupid kid playing a prank,” the man replied.

  The door clicked shut, and just a few seconds after that, the screaming began.

  Chapter 10

  Beth sat on her bed under the covers with her knees drawn up to her chest, sweeping her flashlight obsessively between the window and the door. She’d heard the screams from the people in the pool; first the woman, then the man. And she’d heard other noises, too... pleading, shouting, and thumping sounds coming through the walls from neighboring rooms.

  Where were her dad and Toby? They’d been gone too long. What if something had happened to them and they weren’t coming back? What if—

  A muffled banging interrupted her thoughts. It sounded like someone was knocking at the door...

  Bang, bang, bang!

  Beth froze, terrified to leave the safety of her room. What if it was her dad and Toby? But her dad had a key so he could let himself in.

  Then she remembered drawing the brass chain across the door. They weren’t getting in like that.