by Jake Bible
He whipped his head up and swam as hard as he could for the sunlight that sparkled above. When he broke the surface, he gulped almost as much water as air, but just puked it back out and swam to the Beowulf II’s lifeboat. Above him, the other lifeboat was taking up the first shift of terrified men.
“Captain!” Mr. Ballantine shouted, from the Beowulf II’s lifeboat. “Here!”
Darren took the extended hand and was pulled up onto the lifeboat. He looked about at the faces that stared back at him.
“How many did we lose?” Darren asked.
“At least six,” Lake said.
Gunnar, Popeye, and Cougher nodded.
“Then we are on the next shift up,” Darren said, “if we last that long.”
***
Darby and Thorne climbed up into the crow’s nest and each picked up a RPG launcher.
“I want you to send it all the next time it comes up!” Thorne shouted. “You fire, reload and keep firing! This time we don’t miss!”
“You okay?” Max asked as he saw the state Darby was in. Her throat was nothing but black and purple skin, covered in bruises that were obviously finger shaped.
She nodded and turned towards the water.
“Cool,” Max said, “thank God.”
Darby gave him a quizzical look then smiled slightly. Just slightly. She was back to business before Max was even sure it had happened.
“Thank God,” Thorne said, “later today, we put our prayers in portable artillery.”
***
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” Cougher said as the fin appeared once more.
“I think a year gets taken off my life every time that fucker shows up,” Lake said.
Rockets fired from above and everyone watched them race to the water, right at the dorsal fin. Just before the impacts, the men ducked and covered their heads with their arms. Four almost simultaneous explosions sucked the oxygen right out of the air, and Darren felt his lungs fill with the stink of sulfur and copper. He gasped for air and found it a split second later.
“Blood!” Popeye shouted. “You hit it!”
A cheer went out from the lifeboats and from the deck above.
But Darren wasn’t convinced. There was blood in the water, more than there had been, but if even one of the RPGs had made a direct hit, there would have been shark steaks for everyone. He didn’t see shark steaks.
Then they heard it. A loud, deep banging noise. It reverberated around them, coming from everywhere.
“I was afraid of this,” Mr. Ballantine said, “the shark knows it is being threatened.”
“Ya think?” Lake said.
“I do,” Mr. Ballantine replied, ignoring the sarcasm, “it is hurt and is going to take out the threat.”
“Are you saying it knows the rockets came from the ship?” Darren asked. “Sharks aren’t that smart.”
“Sharks have been a top ocean predator for millions of years,” Mr. Ballantine said. “I may not know marine biology like you do, Mr. Chambers, but I know predators. They’re all smart. Every damn one of them.”
“He’s right,” Gunnar said, “and if this thing has been genetically programmed and altered, then who knows what it’s capable of?”
“It’s capable of making me piss in my pants,” Popeye said, “I’ll admit it.”
“Get in line,” Cougher said.
The banging sounded again and they all turned to look at the source.
“But why?” Darren asked. “It’s huge, but it’s not big enough to take out the ship. There’s no way.”
“Not quite accurate,” Mr. Ballantine said, “Gunnar is closer than he knows. The program included the possibility of actually designing the shark to go after key weaknesses in a ship. Such as the engines.”
“How the hell would it know where the engine room is?” Cougher asked.
“It knows,” Mr. Ballantine replied.
The other men began to cheer and cry out and Darren looked up to see the smaller lifeboat just above them.
“Climb in!” Kinsey yelled. “Hurry!”
“I’m not convinced the ship is the safest place,” Lake said. “Great.”
***
The room shuddered and Jennings stopped whacking at the pipe with the wrench. He had tried to uncouple the pipe at the junction point, but the pressure was too great, so he said screw it to finesse and began to beat the pipe with the heavy wrench. All he needed was for one pipe to come loose and vent the steam pressure that was building faster and faster.
But then the room began to shake and he stared in disbelief as the hull on the far side of the room started to buckle.
“What the fuck?” Jennings asked.
“Jesus,” Max said from the hatch, a RPG launcher in his hands, “Ballantine was right. The fucking thing is trying to get at the engines.”
“It’s what?” Jennings asked. “What’s getting at what?”
“Mega shark,” Lucy said from behind, “we pissed it off.”
“Why the fuck would you do that?” Jennings shouted. “That’s a fucking stupid thing to do!”
“We didn’t do it on purpose!” Max yelled back.
The ship shook as the shark rammed it again and then again.
“God damn,” Jennings said, “it must be huge.”
The hull buckled even more. Max put the launcher over his shoulder.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Jennings said.
“I’m going to fucking kill it if it breaks through!”
“You’ll kill us all!” Jennings yelled. “I’ve been down here ready to sacrifice myself to save all your asses and now you want to fucking blow a hole in the ship? Fuck you!”
“It’s coming in,” Max said, “and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. We can’t dive in and punch it out. The thing fucking swallows people whole, man!”
“So the ship is going down no matter what?” Jennings asked.
“Looks like it,” Max said.
“We’re fucked if we do and fucked if we don’t,” Lucy said. “At least if we kill it, we won’t have to deal with it coming after us as we all tread water.”
“Jesus,” Jennings said, “then if it’s all gone to shit anyway…”
He limped over to the engine controls and flipped every switch, pulled every lever, and turned every knob. All to full.
“Let’s do this right,” Jennings said. “Get everyone up top to the bow. They need to be ready, because when this goes, it’ll rip this ship apart. Life preservers, whatever rafts are ready, anything that’ll help people float and keep them from being sucked below.”
Max lowered the RPG. “Alright. Now we’re talking. Let’s go.”
“Nope,” Jennings said, “I’m still stuck here.”
“What do you mean?” Lucy asked. “It’ll blow without you.”
“It will,” Jennings said, “eventually.” He put his hand on a large lever by the side of the controls. “But this will make sure it blows when it’s supposed to. Someone has to stay here and time this right. When it comes through the hull, I’ll take it out.”
“Dear God,” Lucy said, “you are the bravest man ever.”
“No shit,” Max said and offered his hand. Jennings shook it quickly. Max slapped the RPG. “I’ll have this up top if it doesn’t work.”
“Good to know,” Jennings said. “Now get the fuck up top. This place is not going to be fun.” He looked at Lucy. “Remember that steam?”
“Yeah,” she nodded.
“It’s still coming,” Jennings said. He pulled his belt loose from his pants and wrapped his hand to the large lever. “Better go before it hits cooking temperature in here.”
Lucy and Max nodded and turned away, leaving Jennings to his continued fate of self-sacrifice.
***
“Put on whatever you can!” Kinsey yelled at the men. Even the pirates were dragged to the bow, their bonds cut so they stood a chance of survival. She didn’t agree with the choice, but her father insisted.<
br />
“We’re all in this together now,” Thorne had said, “might as well give them a shot at living. Then we’ll deal with them.”
She still didn’t agree, but she understood.
The small lifeboat had been dragged up on deck and the wounded, which included Shane, were put inside and strapped tight.
“You know if this capsizes, I’ll drown, right?” Shane said.
“If it capsizes, you’re totally fucked anyway, bro,” Max said. “How long do you think you can tread water?”
“All of thirty seconds,” Shane replied, “but they’d be my thirty seconds.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Lucy said.
“He never does,” Max replied.
“Sorry about Bobby,” Kinsey said as Darren stepped to her side and helped hand out life preservers and lifesavers.
“Thanks,” he nodded, “it still hasn’t sunk in.”
“It will,” Kinsey said. “When it does, I’ll be here.”
“Good,” Darren replied, “that’s good to know.”
“Touching,” Mr. Ballantine said. He looked at Darby. “You should be in the lifeboat.”
The ship shook and everyone stood stock still. It shook again and they all heard a distinctive groan.
“It’ll breach the hull any second,” Lake said, “from the sound of that metal stress.”
“Hey!” Cougher shouted from the bridge. “I have the Navy! The fucking US Navy is on the radio!”
Thorne sprinted from where he was helping and up the stairs to the bridge. He was gone for several minutes and everyone waited, each becoming hopeful for a brief second. When he returned the optimism level dropped considerably at the look on his face.
“There’s a destroyer due south,” Thorne said, “they’ve been authorized to come get us.”
“But…?” Kinsey asked.
“But they’re two hundred miles off,” Thorne said.
“Five hours,” Lake said, “it’ll take them five hours to get here.”
“Keep working!” Kinsey shouted, not letting the news sink in with anyone. “We have to stay alive for five hours! You hear that? Five hours, people!”
***
The steel buckled further and rivets popped, ricocheting about the engine room. Jennings cried out as one slammed into his leg and ripped his kneecap off. He only had one hand free and he clamped it to his leg, feeling the blood flow through his fingers. The hull buckled further and water started to spray in with all the pressure of the ocean behind it.
Jennings’s eyes were locked on the hull as he watched the steel begin to fold in on itself, letting in more and more water. He found himself holding his breath and he let it out and started to breathe deeply. Even though everything smelled of steel, salt, and diesel fumes, he wanted to taste it all in the last few minutes of his life.
But he didn’t get minutes.
The hull crumpled as the entire ship shook from the shark’s impact. It hammered at the ship, ramming it over and over. Jennings was waist deep in water when he saw teeth; teeth so big he didn’t know what he was seeing at first. The hull ripped apart and Jennings’s stared into the maw of a monster only known in nightmares. The ocean came at him fast and he didn’t hesitate. The water made it hard to pull the lever, but he put all of his weight on it and yanked.
It went down and the diesel engines that had started to sputter from the sea water, whined to a new pitch that made Jennings’s teeth vibrate. The shark must of felt the change, because it tried to back out of the hole it had made.
Jennings’s took a lung full of water, but managed to smile as a bright flash filled his vision; the last thing he ever saw.
***
Those on deck were thrown off their feet as fire erupted from pipes across the ship. The vessel began to pitch immediately, as the stern cracked off from the rest of the ship. Everyone grabbed what they could and braced themselves as the bow was lifted into the air; air that was filled with the sounds of metal ripping and people screaming.
“Hold on to each other!” Kinsey yelled. “Do not let go! Just hold on!”
Her words were lost in the chaos and she reached out to find Darren by her. His arms encircled her as the bow tilted higher and higher.
“Come on!” Thorne shouted from what would have been in front of them moments earlier, but was then above them as the ship sank fast. He hooked his arm through Darren’s and pulled hard, bringing the man and his daughter up to the railing that lined the bow. “Grab this!”
They each held onto the railing and watched the death about them. Men fell as they lost their grips on whatever they had tried to use to brace themselves. Their screams were cut short as they smacked into equipment, their bodies snapped in half, crushed, contorted.
Smoke billowed into the air and enveloped everyone, making them choke and gag. For a split second, Kinsey believed she’d die from asphyxiation, but the ocean breeze came along and spared her that indignity. She tried to peer through the smoke below her to see how fast they were sinking, but her eyes stung and watered and she couldn’t make out a thing.
Then the water hit and she was under.
She knew Darren and her father were close, but she couldn’t search for them; she had to get to the surface. That was her one duty, then she could worry about the ones she cared for. She looked up and saw the surface just within reach. The drag from the sinking ship pulled at her, but the life vest she had strapped around her chest countered that. With all her might, she reached for the light, the muscles in her arms burned and strained with the effort.
She surfaced to the sound of dozens of lungs gasping and filling with air. All about her, heads bobbed. The lifeboat with the wounded was dozens of yards away from her, but she didn’t care. It hadn’t been destroyed and she said a quick prayer of thanks for that. The Beowulf II’s lifeboat bobbed in the churning water in the opposite direction. She made the decision to head for it, along with many others, even though it had proved to be less than safe from the shark.
But the beast was dead, right? She thought. It had to be.
She got to the lifeboat and was helped up into it. It soon filled up inside as well as on top, and she quickly worried it would capsize, or just sink from the weight.
“Hey,” Max gasped, appearing at the hatch, “you made it.”
“Darren? My dad?” Kinsey asked.
“Up here,” Max said. “Lucy?”
“I don’t know,” Kinsey said. “Who else do you see?”
“Lake and Cougher,” Max replied, “but I can’t find Gunnar or Popeye. Or Ballantine.”
“Fuck,” Kinsey said.
***
“Hey,” Gunnar said as he slapped Popeye’s face, “you alive?”
“Huh?” Popeye muttered as he floated on his back next to Gunnar. They both had life preservers on and bobbed lazily in the water. “What?”
“Good,” Gunnar said, “we need to swim.”
Popeye came out of his daze and looked about, and then frowned.
“How the hell’d we get over here?” Popeye asked as he saw they were over a hundred yards from everyone else. Bodies floated about them in various states of dismemberment. “Ah, shit and shite.”
“We must have been pushed this far by a wave when the ship went down,” Gunnar said. “Can you swim? Are you hurt?”
“I think I can- Ow! Fuck!” Popeye cried out. “My leg!”
Gunnar took a deep breath and put his head under the water for a look. He didn’t like what he saw.
“What? How bad?” Popeye asked when Gunnar came back up.
“Not good,” Gunnar said, “you have a foot long hunk of steel sticking out of your thigh and you’re bleeding bad.”
“Can you get it,” Popeye said, “tie off my leg?”
“Jesus,” Gunnar replied, “maybe.”
“I ain’t swimming nowhere with that metal in me,” Popeye said. “So if you think you can’t do it, then just leave me, okay? No need for both of us to die, Doc.”
Gunnar pulled his life preserver up over his head.
“Hey! You’ll need that!” Popeye protested.
“I can’t dive under with it on,” Gunnar said. “You hang onto it. Maybe bite down on it. This will hurt.”
He pulled a strap from the preserver then dove under. He tied the strap tight above the wound then went back up for air. Popeye was screaming like a banshee.
“Oh, sweet Lord!” he yelled. “Thank God you’re done!”
“I’m not,” Gunnar said, “that was just the tourniquet.”
“No,” Popeye said, shaking his head, “Dear Lord, no.”
Gunnar dove again and wrapped his hands around the hunk of metal and pulled. It wouldn’t budge. He pulled at it over and over, but it was stuck tight. His lungs started to burn and he surfaced to gulp some air. Popeye, his head resting on Gunnar’s life preserver, was passed out. He decided he’d try one more time then leave the metal in. It was probably better if he did, but it would be hard for Popeye to swim and they needed to get to the lifeboats.
He filled his lungs then dove under one more time. The second he did, the air was forced from his lugs in a fit of panic.
“Oh, fuck,” he said when he came back up sputtering water.
Gunnar looked at the shadow that swam a dozen feet below them. Hunks of white flesh and blood started to pool about him and Popeye, adding to the human chum that they treaded in. Gunnar could see a huge, gaping divot was blasted in the beast. But it was still going.
“It fucking lives,” Gunnar said.
He turned towards the lifeboat and waved his arms over his head. Without the life preserver, his head went under and he splashed to the surface, coughing and gagging. He grabbed onto Popeye with one arm and waved the other.