Instinctively, Tusker ducked low and pushed off the inside of the hull, going deeper into the hold. As he did, he brushed past what he was sure was the other diver, caught his torch and swung it around. It was the dead naked body he’d seen on his first dive, now bloated and pale, floating freely around the confined space. The man’s features were unrecognizable now. The eyes had been eaten by something and the flesh was already soft and pocked with bite marks. Tusker wretched and pushed the body away, his hand sinking into the flesh of the stomach. Where was the other diver?

Then he saw him. A large man in a black dive suit was moving towards him, pulling hand over hand on some overhead pipes on the bulkhead. His lack of fins made him awkward and his feet pedaled uselessly against the water. But he was gaining ground on Tusker. A large knife flashed in his right hand. Tusker saw the man’s eyes behind the faceplate of the yellow Kirby-Morgan helmet. He gritted his teeth on his mouthpiece and kicked hard with his fins. The two men met in an awkward underwater dance, both of them thrashing, grabbing, and slashing. Their violence kicked up clouds of silt that hung suspended in the water, causing a complete whiteout.

Tusker’s mask was a foot from the other diver’s helmet and the two men made eye contact. Tusker dropped his torch and, with two hands, grasped the helmet on both sides and twisted, as if trying to unscrew the other man’s head from his body. The diver lurched away into the cloud, vanishing for a moment. Tusker regained his buoyancy and shone his torch around, but it was like using high-beam headlamps in a blizzard. Behind him he felt a tug, then heard a roar. He couldn’t breathe! His regulator hose had been cut and his double tanks were draining precious gas in a torrent of bubbles. Tusker again switched regulators, but he had to quickly shut off the valve of the severed hose or lose his gas. He reached back behind his head, feeling for the large knurled knob. In the dark, he was drifting down. Or was it up? He crashed into something hard and pinballed away from it, still fumbling for the valve. Finally, he found it and turned it one agonizing revolution at a time until the gushing became a hiss, then stopped.