Escape from New Alcatraz

Depth: 3.3 kilometers.

Distance from New Alcatraz: 900 meters.

Time since loss of contact: 27 hours, 43 minutes.

I squeeze the grip on my M4 carbine. The on-board submarine computer sounds deeper than Barry White. I try to ignore it. All I can think about is the safety of my platoon.

This is unlike any mission we’ve ever been on. Technically, the place we’re going to doesn’t exist. The US government set it up in international waters, outside of official jurisdiction. It was touted as the world’s first functional underwater prison, designed for the most hardened criminals. Completely off-the-grid with its own nuclear power source and 3D fabricators for food, clothing, weapons, and other supplies.

Once you’re there, you never have to leave. And good luck trying to.

Distance: 500 meters.

New Alcatraz comes up on the monitors. The glass dome covering the facility looks rather beautiful. The wipers used to clean the algae are operating, so the place must still have some electricity. No sunlight penetrates this far down into the ocean. The only lights I see come from inside the prison.

“What do you think happened, Commander Park?” Dax asks.

He spins around in the pilot’s seat. A sheen of sweat covers his forehead, and he’s not even wearing full body armor like the rest of us. It must take a toll piloting a sub like this one.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I say.

Distance: 100 meters.

There’s another submarine docked in the moon pool. That must have been the last prisoner transport before contact was lost. Something got in there that shouldn’t have.

Docking sequence initiated…

When I started out as a private, all I could think about was being the one that yelled out the orders. But now that I’m the one in charge, I wish I could turn the clock back. Because now I’m the one that has to go into New Alcatraz first. I inhale a deep breath and exhale slowly.

Docked in Bay 2.

“Let’s go,” I say.

The bulkhead door opens. We enter the processing center. There’s an enclosed space in the middle of the room with windows where the guards would sit. We’re the only ones here. One of the doorways out of the room is locked. Another has been left ajar. My heart almost jumps out of my chest as we creep across the room…

Nothing is waiting for us around the corner. We walk into a wide-open space. The circular tables make me think that this is the mess hall. Most of the chairs are set on top of the tables, but some of them have been knocked to the floor. The place looks like it should on any normal day.

Except for the puddle of red on the floor.

“Son of a bitch.”

The acids in my stomach churn. There was a struggle of some sort, but there aren’t any remains or body parts on the ground. Just the blood.

“Stick together,” I say.

We cross the room and head to the staircase on the side of the panopticon-shaped prison. I feel like I’m walking on egg shells with each step that I take. The moment that we reach the second floor, an alert from the submarine AI comes through on our com link.

Bacteriological agent detected. Exercise caution.

My insides sink to the bottom of my chest. That would explain quite a bit. One of the prisoners must have come down with something and infected everybody else. But apart from rabies, I can’t think of any disease that would cause somebody to go berserk and take over the facility. And wouldn’t the officers screen all the prisoners before putting them on the transport sub and bringing them down here?

Levels Two through Six house the prison cells. There are streaks of blood scattered on the ground without any remains to speak of. It’s as if the corpses disappeared or something. The further we go inside the facility, the sicker I feel. I’m not even behind bars, and I feel like I’m a prisoner in here.

Commander, this is Dax. Do you read?

“What is it?” I say into the com.

Sir… there are… well… fish in the moon pool. They jumped out of the water and now they’re just sitting on the dock.

My mouth falls open. That is not something that I need to know about right now. Dax does not have the best timing.

“Is that all?”

No, sir. I’ve also been picking up something on the sonar. Something big is circling the outside of the facility. You might want to hurry it up in there. Don’t want to stay any longer than we have to.

“Roger that. One more floor to check.”

The last place to explore is the confinement level at the top of the facility. We go up a final flight of stairs, moving at a snail’s pace.

I can hear the breathing before we exit the stairwell. It doesn’t sound like a noise that a human is capable of emitting. It sounds guttural. Animalistic. Depraved.

The prisoners are all standing in place with their hands at their sides. In this prison, the inmates wear white jumpsuits. Most of them are covered in blood. For some reason, it makes me think of a red and white candy cane.

“FREEZE! HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!”

None of the inmates move. Their heads are slumped forward. They stand as still as statues.

“PUT YOUR HANDS UP!”

One of the prisoners turns around to face me. His black eyes lock on to mine. His mouth droops open.

“You! What happened here?” I ask.

He points to one of the solitary confinement units. Blood is caked into his hand.

“The guards were annoying us… we took over… gave them a taste of their own medicine… now we own the place.”

That’s when I notice a thumping noise coming from the unit. Somebody’s pounding on the door, trying to get out.

“Put your hands behind your-”

I can’t even finish the command before the inmate leaps forward and tackles me to the ground. The impact knocks the breath out of my lungs. My gun clatters away. Boy, he is stronger than he looks. I feel every ounce of his weight on me. He bares his teeth like some wild animal. Red spittle shoots out of his mouth and sticks to my helmet.

Instinct takes over. I headbutt him and push him off. The other inmates snap out of their trance. They surge towards us. Guns discharge. The popping sound hammers against my eardrums. Some of the inmates collapse to the ground. The others don’t seem to notice that they’ve been riddled with bullets. They run into us like a football team executing a play. I sidestep one of them and plant a bullet into the face of another. Still, they keep coming like a pack of wolves.

A scream rips the air apart. I almost jump out of my combat boots. One of my brothers lies sprawled on the ground. His black helmet rolls across the floor. An inmate has his face planted in his neck. A puddle of blood flows out from his body.

“GET OFF HIM!”

I barrel across the confinement area. Using the heel of my boot, I kick the inmate onto his back before emptying a mag into him.

“SPLINTER! ARE YOU OKAY?”

His face is as white as a sheet. A chunk of his neck is missing, body armor and all. He’s not going to make it. My breath catches in my throat.

Everything seems to happen on fast-forward. Another scream, more bullets, a horrendous chomping sound. In less than thirty seconds, half of my platoon is dead. Only four of us remain.

“FALL BACK!”

We scamper back down the stairs. I never leave any of my teammates behind, dead or alive. But this is beyond hope. At this rate, we’ll all get infected. We’re outnumbered ten to one. The only thing we can do now is escape.

I almost trip over my feet as we sprint past the cells on Level Six. The inmates pound their fists on the white cell doors as they chase us down the hall. A blanket of sweat covers my body. It’s hotter than hell in the body armor. My lungs scream in protest.

“HERE! TAKE THIS!”

K-9 throws a grenade at the inmates. I shoot forward and cover my head with my hands. Seconds later, an explosion rocks the entire facility. I feel myself lifted into the air. Pieces of shrapnel shoot out in all directions. The prison cells sway in front of me. I definitely have a concussion.

“Well… fuck that…” I say. “Quick thinking, K-9.”

“That was insane,” K-9 says. “What’s wrong with them? Those prisoners went crazy…”

“I don’t know. Some kind of sickness or something…” I say.

A big chunk of the staircase is missing, cutting us off from the horde of infected. They growl at us from their perch on the floor above. I collapse to the ground in exhaustion. I wrench my helmet off and toss it aside.

“You know, the guards are still stuck up there in the confinement cells,” K-9 says. “How do you think we’re supposed to get them out?”

Before I can answer, I notice a crack on the glass dome overhead. It looks like a spiderweb.

“Oh shit…”

A trickle of water breaks through the glass. The trickle turns into a gusher. Water flows down through the opening in the center of the floor and falls straight down to the ground level. Soon, the whole fucking dome is going to be flooded.

“RUN!” I shout.

It sounds like we’re next to Niagara Falls. Water splashes around with each step we take. I hear a shattering noise above us. The hole in the glass widens. Soon, the whole fucking thing will cave in.

I look over the balcony down to the ground level. The water looks taller than me now. There’s no way we’ll make it in time.

“Guys! We have to jump! The water should be deep enough now!”

I throw my rifle away and step onto the railing in front of the balcony. It seems like I’m on top of Mt. Everest looking down. My head swims.

“You sure we can make that?” K-9 says.

“Come on!”

I force myself to take a step. For a moment, I feel weightless. Then I fall into the abyss. The floors of the facility rush past me. I keep my body as straight as a pencil. The water rises up to greet me. I close my eyes…

SHOOM!

The moment I hit the water, I kick my feet in front of me so that my body levels out and stays parallel with the floor. Fortunately, our body armor works underwater. I’m still able to breathe. I swim back up to the surface and see the rest of the platoon jump in after me. The water is almost up to the second floor now.

“Everybody okay?” I ask.

“I think I broke my butt bone,” K-9 says.

“Good. Let’s go.”

We go back under and swim through the processing center towards the entrance to the facility. The double doors prevent the moon pool from filling up with water. I gasp in relief at the sight of the submarine waiting for us.

Commander… do… a… on… when…

My com starts to crackle. It must have gotten damaged in the fall. I can barely make out what Dax is saying.

“Dax, can you hear me? Come in… do you copy?”

That’s when I notice the colony of fish swimming around the sub. At first, I think that they’re barracudas, except for two things. The first is that they have wings at their sides. Some of the fish jump out of the water and soar over the dock before going back in. My jaw detaches from my mouth as I watch them fly through the moon pool.

The second thing is that barracudas don’t have razor-sharp teeth. These fish do.

“What the hell…”

I have no time to react as one of the fish jumps out of the water and shoots toward K-9. It latches right onto his chest and hangs erect off of him.

“Holy shit! Get this thing off!”

He tries swatting at the fish. It keeps its death-grip on him. I unsheathe my army knife, grab the fish by the tail, and slice it in half. Finally, it comes loose. Then two more fish jump out of the water and take its place. One of them bites into K-9’s neck. A stream of blood shoots through the air.

Soon, the fish shoot out of the water at us like bullets. It’s a deluge. K-9 is literally knocked off his feet and sent flying backwards. I slice through as many as I can, but each one I kill is replaced fivefold.

COMMANDER! GET OUT OF THERE! WE’VE GOT INCOMING!

Now the com decides to work. I ignore Dax and try to find K-9. I can’t even see him under the horde of fish. I make a move towards him only to have the rest of the platoon wrestle me back to the submarine and in through the bulkhead door.

“NO! STOP IT! WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING! LET ME GO!”

Everybody else knows that it’s too late. I want to scream as loudly as I can but my voice escapes me. Crimson blood covers the dock. The fish continue to enter the moon pool. Some are even stuck to the submarine now.

“Strap yourselves in!” Dax says. “We’re leaving!”

The nuclear engine hums to life. A blanket of monitors flickers on in front of us, showing feeds from different cameras attached to the ship.

All systems operational… proximity alert… switching to stealth mode…

The lights dim throughout the submarine and are replaced by a red glow. I hold my breath. Nobody says a word. We’re going to have to be dead silent if we want to slip by whatever’s waiting for us…

Suddenly, there’s a pounding noise from outside. It sounds like somebody’s banging on the bulkhead door. I take off my seatbelt, bolt out of my chair, and look through the glass dome on the door.

“Oh no… no no no no…”

It’s K-9. He’s just like the inmates now. Infected. Blood drips from his mouth. He bangs his head against the door over and over again. My stomach feels like it’s about to expel its contents. He must have contracted the disease from the fish in the moon pool.

The sub starts to descend. We leave K-9 and the rest of the infected behind. Darkness covers the camera feeds. Outside of New Alcatraz, there are no other sources of light nearby.

“How far away are we from the nearest port?” I whisper.

“19 km,” Dax says.

“Have them get a medical team ready for when we arrive,” I say. “Because we’re going right back in there and-”

The submarine lurches to the right. Something pushes against it from outside. My seatbelt digs into my chest. A siren blares.

WARNING! PROXIMITY ALERT!

“Dax! What the hell is going on?”

I needn’t have asked him. I can see them on the camera next to the radio antenna.

The infected fish. Thousands and thousands of them. Acting together as a single predator. The submarine is their prey.

“Get us out of this!” I say.

“Can’t… there’s too many of them,” Dax says. “I can’t steer this fucking thing!”

We’re doing donuts underwater. It’s almost impossible to believe that something so small could have so much power. None of our weapons work against a threat like this. We’ve got to do something. If we crash into the seafloor or a cliff, we won’t make it.

One of the cameras shows a plume of smoke erupting from a crevice in the ground. There must be some sort of volcanic activity nearby. There’s no way the fish could survive that heat. An idea takes shape in my mind…

“Dax! Head to that subduction zone over there!”

“Sir, we’ll be killed! The submarine can’t withstand those temperatures!”

“It’s our only shot! We’ve got to get them off! Do it!”

Dax shoves the joystick forward. I almost fall backwards as the sub shoots ahead. Fire belches out of the fissure in the seafloor. Time to use our surroundings to our advantage.

WARNING! EXCESSIVE HEAT! TEMPERATURE CRITICAL! STRUCTURAL FAILURE IMMINENT!

The alert falls on deaf ears. We’re going too fast. It’s impossible to change course. The dot on the sonar follows us right into hell. The fish won’t let us go. It’s as if they know that there are healthy hosts inside of the submarine for them to transmit their disease. We go right over the subduction zone.

Fire shoots up around us. I feel the rumble of the Earth below. The submarine rattles like a child playing with a toy. Every single camera feed turns white. It seems like the fire goes on for hours.

TEMPERATURE CRITICAL! ABANDON SHIP!

There’s nowhere else for us to go. This is a real trial by fire. I send a pray up to whatever God may be there in the sky.

“Commander! I think I’m getting control back!” Dax says. “The fish are dying!”

The fire diminishes from one of the cameras. Then another. Eventually, we make it out of the subduction zone. The submarine holds up. The fish float in the water behind us. None of them are moving. They’ve been charred to a crisp.

I collapse back into my seat. It actually worked. We made it out in one piece.

“Holy shit,” I say. “That was insane. I don’t think we’ll be seeing them around again.”

“Maybe next time they should stick with an aboveground prison,” Dax says.