Liopleurodon King of the Carnivores

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Liopleurodon King of the Carnivores Page 10

by Michael Zucker

Horrified by what he has just witnessed, Hal lunges forward and grabs a hold of a shard of glass that had broken off of a window when the mast fell. Preferring to kill himself than be eaten alive, Hal prepares to slice the glass shard through his own wrist. At the last possible moment, the Liopleurodon’s massive jaws explode from the water again and bite down on Hal’s legs.

  Hal screams as his body is lifted into the air by his legs. He turns around as much as he can and stabs the glass shard into the Liopleurodon’s mouth. In pain, the pliosaur swings her head one way and then swings it back, releasing Hal’s body at the last possible moment. He is thrown through the air, his life extinguished when he crashes through the metal bridge.

  The two surviving crewmen struggle below the deck. They will both drown as the boat sinks to the bottom of the ocean. The Liopleurodon swims away, having killed a total of eight people.

  Chapter 24

  Cage Diving

  Larry John has always loved sharks. It was an early obsession, which began when Larry first saw a hammerhead shark in an aquarium when he was seven years old. Since his father was a marine biologist, Larry’s obsession flourished. His father allowed him to touch many harmless shark species, but it was never enough. Larry wanted to see to the most dangerous sharks up close. Larry wanted to go cage diving. However, his father knew those sharks were unpredictable and prohibited Larry to dive with them. However, now twenty-three years old, and out of college, no one can stop Larry from fulfilling his dream.

  …

  For a thousand dollars, Larry has hired a man named Rafael with his boat to take him cage diving. Rafael has taken dozens of people cage diving, and he knows all the best spots to go to. Rafael’s motor boat is solid at eighteen feet long. His steel cage is seven feet tall.

  Larry and Rafael leave at seven o’clock in the morning. Now almost noon, Rafael finally stops the boat. He turns to Larry and says, “Okay, this is the diving spot. I will chum the waters. I suggest that you get ready with your equipment. Everything should be ready within an hour.”

  Larry nods as he heads below deck. He takes off his shirt before he puts on his wet suit and he heads up on deck. He then puts on his buoyancy vest, his flippers, and all of his other equipment. After checking everything, he finds Rafael who is tossing in a bucket of fish blood and pieces. The cage is already in the water.

  Rafael then turns and grabs a whole fish. “These are baits. While it is the chum that attracts the sharks, it will be the bait that will keep them around.” He tosses the fish into the water. “Everything is ready. You may go into the cage when you wish.”

  Larry nods. He walks to the edge of the boat and stares at the cage. It is not very large, and for the first time, his nerves settle in. Larry takes a deep breath, and jumps in feet first! He gets a chill when he enters the water. He takes a breath from the regulator. While he has done this many times before, he is always amazed by the feeling of breathing underwater.

  After Larry closes the top of the cage, he checks to make sure that he has his underwater camera. He wants to make sure that he gets good pictures of the sharks. Larry looks up, and sees the red blood at the surface of the water. It gives him chills. The only way that I’ll see them, is with that.

  Larry waits over three hours. Finally, he sees something coming from a great distance away. It is the same color as the water, making it almost invisible, but Larry knows what it is. A blue shark.

  The blue shark is twelve feet long, and is lean and muscular at the same time. It is graceful as it swims closer. The blue shark closes in on one of the baits, and its jaws come out of its mouth as it bites down. The shark’s triangular teeth sink in, slicing a chunk of flesh off by thrashing its head from side to side.

  Larry takes amazing pictures of the blue shark feeding. Blue sharks usually eat fish and squid, but are willing to eat anything edible. Suddenly, Larry sees something out of the corner of his eye. It is a fourteen-foot-long tiger shark. The blue shark makes space for the larger predator. Tiger sharks are known for eating virtually anything. When one’s stomach was examined, birds, sea turtles, and even license plates were found inside.

  Larry watches the tiger shark intently as its brilliant stripes gleam from sun light above. He notices a dark shape below him. It is a twenty-one foot long great white shark. Larry is beyond amazement as he sees his favorite shark rise from the depths. The great white is larger than the other sharks. It is able to swallow a bait whole.

  The great white shark has the third most powerful jaws of any living animal behind the crocodile and hippopotamus. The shark comes closer to the cage. Its black eyes watch Larry, who is taking pictures with his underwater camera. The shark nears only centimeters from the cage. It is so close that Larry can touch it. He decides to do so.

  He lightly touches the shark’s nose. When it is so close, Larry notices the shark appears almost gentle. People are wrong about these animals. They are not monsters.

  The shark pulls its head back. Larry is shocked. Did the great white really just get scared from me touching it? Suddenly, an enormous reptilian creature comes up from below and grabs the shark within its monstrous jaws. What the hell is that? The monster is far larger than all three sharks combined. The tiger and blue sharks escape in time, but the great white is crushed.

  The monster’s green eye watches the cage as she swallows the great white. Larry tries to open the top of the cage, but he is too late. It opens its jaws and grabs the small cage within its mouth. The monster swings its head with its powerful neck. The cage is torn loose from the boat. The sheer power pulls the boat as well.

  …

  Rafael is enjoying the peace and quiet on deck. He reads a magazine, smokes a cigar, when he is thrown from his chair. Rafael slams into the side of the boat. He strikes his head and is knocked unconscious.

  …

  Larry is trapped in the cage, which is in the monster’s crocodilian jaws. The monster presses down with seventy thousand pounds of force. The cage is steel, so it does not flatten immediately. Instead, it is slowly folding like a tin can. The bars are forced into different directions. Larry desperately looks for a way to escape. He sees that the pressure has forced two bars to form an opening that may be large enough for him to slide through. He pushes with all of his might, and finally escapes!

  Larry angles himself upwards and swims at a hasty pace. There’s no point of getting away from that monster if it means that I die from rising too quickly, Larry decides. Finally, he grabs a hold of the boat and pulls himself up. He knows that at any moment, the monster can grab the boat and kill him.

  But it doesn’t chase him. Larry is able to get the controls, and returns to shore safely.

  …

  Larry lives, but is mentally scarred from the experience. He realizes how lucky he is, but is unaware of the reason he survived. The truth is that he survived because the Liopleurodon is preoccupied. It is time to give birth.

  Chapter 25

  Birth

  The Liopleurodon has returned to the shallow waters. She is in the shallows where she shall give birth to her three, five-ton offspring. Here, the juvenile Liopleurodon will be safe from their parent and will grow to enormous sizes. Once they reach maturity, the juveniles will swim out to deeper oceans where they will hunt enormous marine mammals such as whales.

  …

  The female Liopleurodon uses its massive flippers to balance herself fifteen feet above the seabed. Giving birth to five-ton children is not easy, and it is taking its toll on the pliosaur. She continues to push her first child out. After several minutes, the tail and rear flippers begin to appear.

  Sea reptiles that give birth to live offspring release them tail-first. If they did not, then their children would drown. Ten minutes later, the lower half of the baby female’s body is free, struggling to escape from its mother.

  Finally, with one great push, the first juvenile Liopleurodon is released into the ocean. The first offspring is the smallest of the triplets; it is only ten feet lon
g. Shaking its head back and forth, the baby female instinctively knows to swim away from her mother. When she is fifty feet away, the juvenile begins to swim to the surface. She takes her first few breaths of air and swims back down to hide.

  The mother continues to push, her second child is on the way. This baby pliosaur is the largest of all the offspring, taking the most energy to push. After half an hour, the fifteen foot long Liopleurodon is free from its mother. She has small, needle like teeth present from the first moment of birth. The red stripes going down her back are exceptionally bright, unlike the fading stripes of her mother.

  Within the mother’s womb, this fifteen foot long juvenile was dominant. She has not known fear of another creature. Then, she turns and sees her mother with her green eyes, who is thirty times heavier than the child. The juvenile panics, and like its smaller sibling, swims to the surface to breathe before trying to get a safe distance from its mother.

  The mother Liopleurodon is exhausted, but she still has one final baby to give birth to. Still weak from giving birth to two large offspring already, the mother uses all her remaining strength as she pushes out her final child. At thirteen feet long, the final juvenile is of moderate size, in between its fifteen-foot-long big sister and the ten-foot-long little sister.

  It takes over an hour for the juvenile to escape from its mother’s womb. She takes advantage of its mother’s weakened state and quickly swims to the surface to breathe.

  The mother has used a tremendous amount of energy giving birth. She needs to regain her lost calories as quickly as possible. If she does not eat soon, she will die. The mother looks up at the surface, and sees her final offspring breathing. In an instant, her instincts change from mother… to predator.

  She angles her skull upward and begins rocketing towards her daughter, jaws open. She is ready to sink her teeth into her child, who suddenly realizes what is about to happen. The juvenile turns quickly, barely escaping death from her mother. The adult explodes through the surface, like she did when she attacked the Ophthalmosaurus over one hundred and fifty-five million years ago.

  The juvenile swims towards the sea bed, its faster mother following close behind. The adult opens her massive jaws and bites down on the juvenile’s tail. Struggling, the child swings its five-ton mass back and forth, until her tail rips loose.

  The juvenile is severely hurt, but not mortally injured. She swims towards a coral reef. A trail of blood pours from the juvenile’s rear. The mother swallows her child’s tail, but it is not enough. If she wishes to survive, she will have to devour the rest of her offspring.

  …

  The juvenile Liopleurodon is swimming in between two gigantic mountains of coral. She knows that her mother has not left the area, but is too large to enter the coral reef. The juvenile will buy time, and wait until her mother has to go to the surface to breath.

  The young Liopleurodon continues to explore the reef. She spots an orange and white clown fish, and lunges towards her small victim. She sinks her needle like teeth into the fish, and swallows it whole. While she has escaped from her mother, the blood from her wound has attracted another predator.

  The nineteen-foot-long great white shark is larger than the juvenile Liopleurodon. Since the shark does not know what the pliosaur is, she decides to go in for a test bite. This is a behavior sharks use when they want to find out if an object is edible or not. It is equivalent to a human using the ability to examine objects with their fingers.

  The shark launches a surprise attack, jaws attacking as it bites down on the juvenile Liopleurodon’s rear left flipper. The great white’s razor teeth slice through flesh and bites off a piece of bone. Now having its rear flipper injured as well, the Liopleurodon panics and shoots up from the reef.

  The great white follows, but isn’t as fast as the small pliosaur. Trying to escape from the shark, the juvenile doesn’t notice its mother launching its own attack… biting down on the child’s rear right flipper!

  Now having neither rear flipper to propel herself forward, the juvenile struggles as she sinks. The great white continues to swim closer towards its prey, but pulls back and retreats once it senses the adult Liopleurodon. The Liopleurodon bites down on its offspring, braking its ribs, spine, and neck all in one devastating bite.

  Blood begins to poor from the juvenile’s mouth. The mother swallows her dead child whole. Now having regained some of her lost calories, she will swim out to deeper oceans to begin hunting larger marine mammals once again.

  The mother Liopleurodon killing her own offspring, though cruel, is done in order to survive.

  …

  Two hours later, the great white has left the coral reef, still looking for prey. Its ampullae of Lorenzini detects movement close by, and the shark begins to swing its head back and forth, searching for the animal. What the shark doesn’t know is that the animal is secretly stalking it.

  The fifteen foot-long juvenile Liopleurodon lunges at the shark, and bites down on the great white’s tail. Despite being smaller than the nineteen-foot-long predatory fish, the Liopleurodon is a risk taker in the competition for food.

  The great white panics, and begins thrashing its tail as hard as possible. But the Liopleurodon’s teeth puncture the shark’s cartilage and have taken a hold. The shark thrashes its tail again, and this time the Liopleurodon is forced to release its adversary.

  The shark quickly turns and lunges at the Liopleurodon, but the young pliosaur is very agile and dodges the attack. She launches herself forward and bites down on the great white’s tail again. The shark begins thrashing its tail again, but this time the Liopleurodon uses the great white’s momentum to her advantage.

  She swings her own body the other way. Rip! The Liopleurodon tears the shark’s tail from the rest of its body. The young pliosaur swims off with her prize while the shark’s upper body sinks to the ocean floor.

  Chapter 26

  Balcony

  Kelsey is asleep in her hotel room. Shawn is sleeping next to her. When Shawn begins to roll to lay on his right side, he accidently wakes Kelsey. She groans as she opens her eyes. She wipes some of her blonde hair away from her face, and sits up. Kelsey turns to Shawn, who is still asleep. She looks at the clock: 11:30 p.m.

  When Kelsey lies back down and closes her eyes, trying to fall back asleep, she suddenly hears knocking on her door. Who the hell could that be? She gets up and opens the door. Luke is standing in the hallway. “Luke, do you know that time it is?”

  “I know it’s late, but we need to talk. Do you have a minute?” he asks.

  Kelsey nods and replies, “Yes, but try to be quiet. Shawn’s already asleep.”

  Luke feels a twinge of jealousy, and says, “Doesn’t he have his own room?”

  Avoiding the truth, Kelsey says, “I’ll get us a couple of water bottles. Why don’t you wait for me on the balcony?”

  Luke thinks for a moment. He grits his teeth at the thought. Damn you, Shawn. He nods as he opens the screen door and steps outside. The cold air gives Luke a chill down his spine. If I want Kelsey, I have to fight for her. I also need to see what she knows about the traitor.

  A minute later, Kelsey comes outside and hands Luke a water bottle. “Thanks,” he says as he unscrews the cap and takes a sip.

  Kelsey nods. She unscrews her own water bottle. “Okay, what was so important that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”

  Where to begin? Luke thinks. “I want to start by apologizing for how I acted at your lecture. It was wrong of me to jump forward and contradict you on something of such little importance. You know how personal the subject is for me… and I reacted poorly. I’m sorry.”

  Kelsey rolls her eyes. “Please Luke; do you know how much has happened since then? We all owe you our lives for warning Will during the helicopter fiasco. And don’t even get me started about how brave you were by putting the tracking device on the Liopleurodon’s neck. I could never see Shawn doing anything like that.”

  “Can I ask you a per
sonal question?”

  Kelsey nods. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Luke thinks of how to word it best: “What do you see in Shawn. I mean, why do you think he is so special?”

  Kelsey sighs. “Honestly, I don’t know anymore. I mean, it was fun at first. When we started dating two years ago, he was kind… and even a little romantic. But recently, he’s been getting obnoxious… almost cruel.”

  “Then why don’t you just break up with him?”

  “It’s not that simple! I mean… he proposed.”

  Luke swallows a mouthful of water down the wrong pipe upon hearing this news. He coughs for a few moments.

  “Are you okay?” Kelsey asks.

  “He proposed?” Luke demands to know.

  “Well… yeah,” Kelsey answers awkwardly.

  “What did you tell him?” Luke asks. Please God, don’t let her have said yes.

  “I told him that I’d think about it. He had caught me off guard. Plus, this isn’t exactly the best time for him to have proposed, you know? We are in the middle of hunting a monster!”

  This is my chance to see if she knows anything about the traitor. Wait a second; Hawkins said not to tell anyone. Then again… she could be useful.

  “Kelsey, Hawkins and I are beginning to think that there is a traitor in the team.”

  Kelsey looks surprised. “I don’t understand. What exactly do you mean by ‘traitor?’”

  “We believe that there is someone who doesn’t want the Liopleurodon to die. In fact, we believe that they may be willing to go as far as to sabotage our attempts and manipulate circumstances to save it.”

  Kelsey is shocked. “Are… are you serious?” Luke nods. “I had no idea. I promise you that it is not me.”

 

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