From Below

by Darcy Coates

Then the voice rose, flooding his ears, filling his head, raw and battered with terror: “There are bodies in the walls.”

Humans were never intended to reach the depths they were seeking. The only way they had was through a century of trial and error, of pushing the limits, of countless deaths in search of a way down.

He had the horrible idea that, whatever they were trying to get away from, one man’s life was an acceptable loss to not lose speed.

It wasn’t a constant noise. It was elusive, arriving when you least expected it and fading again whenever you tried to listen closer.

Fitz had exposed a span of exterior hull four feet by five feet. And, inside, he had revealed a shriveled, twisted corpse.

It should be thrown overboard, they decided. Still, no one volunteered to move it. No one dared touch the shriveled remains, for fear of incurring the brunt of its curse.

A human is only human for as long as it’s alive.

The halls were only a shortcut for them; their true homes were inside the walls, and through the walls, they accessed any part of the ship they liked.

Layer upon layer of the stiff, discolored corpses had clumped together to form the mockery of a tree.