Casey sent the submersible whirring backwards. The shark loomed large as she watched the strange fish fleeing. With a single sweep of the massive tail, the shark was on them again. The sub shuddered under the blow and tilted onto its side, the weight of the massive creature driving them down to the bottom again.
“Shit!” Casey yelled. Beside him, Aroha screamed as her head bounced off a steel panel in the tight space.
The shark released the sub and Casey worked the controls, bringing the machine back on an even keel.
“She’s coming back!” Aroha yelled.
In the swirling mess of dark water and disturbed silt, a red light blinked. Casey glanced at Aroha; she had one hand pressed against the rising lump on the side of her head.
“Grab the joysticks in front of you. Just hold it steady.”
Aroha looked confused, but did as he asked. Casey let go of the drive controls and seized a second set of smaller joysticks. He flicked the switches that activated the robotic arms used for collecting samples.
“Shiiiit!” Aroha yelled as the shark buffeted the sub again.
“Left hand forward, right hand back!” Casey shouted. Aroha twisted the drive controls and the sub turned sideways. The alpha shark slid past, a giant eye as dark as ebony stared at them as she went.
“Now, go forward, easy!” Casey ordered.
“What are you doing?” Aroha demanded.
“That red light, it’s the last bomb from the ship. It didn’t go off.”
“This is no time to be collecting evidence!” Aroha yelled and twisted the controls. The alpha shark’s mouth scraped over the Perspex window, leaving scratches in the hardened plastic.
“That explosive is counting down. Maybe the water pressure or something triggered it.”
“So let’s get out of here!” Aroha maneuvered the sub out of range as the shark bore down on them again.
“We can’t get away from this fucking thing. Either it will tear us open, or it will drag us down.”
Aroha wanted to tell Casey that the shark would realize they were inedible and would leave them alone. Why the creature hadn’t already swum off in search of a less-armored meal was something she couldn’t understand.
“Left… left… now straight, almost got it… Stop!” Casey watched intently as the mechanical arm reached out and the utility claw scraped over the orange casing of the bomb.
“How long?” Aroha asked, looking around for the shark.
“Uhhh… we’re good.” Casey blinked the salt water from his eyes. He could see the red numbers ticking over on the digital clock. Less than a minute until it blew them to pieces.
“Do you have it?” Aroha asked.
“Almost…”
“Christ, now I know how one of those horse things feels. You know, those Mexican ones.”
“A piñata?” Aroha would have laughed at the idea, but in the choking grip of terror, she could barely breathe. “Hold on, she’s trying again.”
Casey’s focus centered on the small square of orange resting on the silt. Aroha turned the submersible, but the shark was ready. Her cartilaginous skeleton twisted in a fraction of her body length and she rammed into the sub with the force of a runaway truck. The hull groaned, the skids grinding as they slid through the hard-packed silt.
“Goddamn bitch,” Aroha snarled.
“Shake her off,” Casey replied.
Aroha worked the controls, the submersible twisted and bounced in the grip of the shark’s teeth. She let go and the sub spun in a flat circle. Casey jerked the robotic arm upwards. As they swept past the alpha shark, he pushed the arm forward. The plastic box hit her in the side of the mouth. The shark tossed its head and the red counter vanished into the gaping crevasse of her dark mouth.
The shark bit down and jerked left and right. The robotic arm tore off and the sub bounced off the bottom.
“Get us out of here, eh?” Casey said. Aroha pushed the controls forward. With her thumbs working to adjust the angle of the dive planes, the propellers surged. The sub powered up into the darkness.
“Level out!” Casey shouted. “We have to ascend slowly.”
“Okay! Okay!” Aroha hunched over the controls, cringing as they waited for the destruction of the blast.
When the bomb detonated in the pulsing gullet of the alpha shark seven seconds later, the massive creature’s body exploded in a rapidly moving cloud of blood and raw meat.
The shockwave expanded in all directions, rippling through the water. When the blast hit the sub, the two occupants rattled like stones in a tin can. The submersible jerked like it had been kicked. The lights flickered, and for a moment, Aroha was sure the electric engine would die and they would sink to the bottom again.
Casey strained to look behind the sub. On the edge of the circle of light, a feeding frenzy tore through the remains of the alpha shark.
“Fuck…” Casey muttered.
“We good?” Aroha asked.
“Yeah… I think every shark in the Pacific is back there.” Casey sighed. “I think we are going to be okay.”
“You sure?” In the aftermath of the adrenaline, Aroha’s voice cracked.
“Hey, I’ll drive if you like. Take a break.” Casey worked the controls, adjusting pitch and speed, noting that the sub’s batteries were fully charged, maybe enough for the long drive back to shore.
“How long till we can surface?” Aroha asked.
“The sub interior is pressurized to the same depth we are. We need to decompress slowly. So two, maybe three days?” Casey adjusted the sub’s direction and pitch. By controlling the internal pressure, they could decompress slowly and reach the surface in about seventy-two hours.
“Can we survive that long?” Aroha asked.
“Sure, we have a recycling air system. Emergency rations, fresh water, and a toilet that will make you wish you’d held it.”
“Okay. So the sub is on autopilot?”
“Not really; it’s going in one direction at a steady, but very gradual rate of ascent. We just need to keep adjusting the atmospheric pressure every hour or so and keep an eye on each other for sign of decompression sickness. The good thing is by the time we surface, we should be within a few hundred yards of a New Zealand beach.”
“So what else do we do for what, three days?”
“I spy?”
Aroha giggled, a strange sound in close atmosphere. Moving carefully, she turned until she was kneeling on her narrow seat. She unzipped the drysuit and peeled it off her upper body. Casey felt his mouth go dry.
“Well, there is something we could do to pass the time,” Aroha breathed.
“Not much room,” Casey croaked.
Aroha finished stripping naked and slid over until she was kneeling across his lap. “You’ve never done it in the front seat of a car?”
Casey shrugged, his reply lost in the sudden warmth of her kiss.
CHAPTER 16
Caroline Bay, Timaru, Longitude 44° S, Latitude 171° W.
This early on a summer’s morning, the Caroline Bay Park was deserted. The few dog walkers patrolling the beach greeted each other as they passed. The plastic grocery bags they carried to collect their pet’s leavings gripped conscientiously in one hand.
Pausing to let her Shih Tzu, Mitzi, squat in the dark sand, Mildred Turnbull stared out at the waves. Something glinted out there in the early morning sun. Perhaps a kayak or maybe a whale? She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, Mitzi scratching the sand at the end of the leash.
The action of the waves pulsed as regular as a heartbeat. Mildred listened to the sea and felt the waves against the rhythm of her own heart. This daily meditation brought her closer to the earth and filled Mildred with a great sense of peace.
Mitzi jumped up and barked, dashing forward to the extent of her leash, growling and barking at the surf.
“Steady, Mitzi.” Mildred remained focused on her morning meditation. Just her and the waves.
Mitzi whined, straining against t
he leash. She bounced, barking and growling.
“Really, Mitzi?” Mildred opened her eyes. The reflection vanished behind the breakers and then appeared again. It wasn’t a kayak.
Moving closer, almost to the edge of the foaming residue left by each retreating wave, Mildred shaded her eyes and stared into the surf.
A strange craft crested an incoming wave, the propellers catching the air and whining with a surge in revolutions.
Mitzi barked in a frenzy, Mildred bent down and scooped her dog up. The small submarine churned the last wave and ran aground on the coarse sand.
A hatch cracked open and an unsteady hand emerged, waving carefully like a lizard’s tongue tasting the air.
Mildred stared in open-mouthed astonishment as a young woman wearing some kind of wetsuit crawled out through the hatch. She dropped to her knees in the surf. Sweeping her hair back, she looked up at the sky and laughed.
A man now crawled out of the submarine. He straightened up and stretched. The woman squealed as a wave washed over her hips. Standing up, they hugged, and arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, they stumbled onto the beach.
“Hi,” Aroha said, her voice rough after three days in the tiny sub.
“Good morning,” Mildred replied. Mitzi whined in greeting.
Casey reached out and lifted the sipper bottle of water from Mildred’s coat pocket. Without a word, he popped the top and tilted his head back, squirting water down his throat. When he stopped to gasp for air, Aroha almost snatched the bottle from his hand and drained the rest of it.
“Thank you,” Casey croaked. “Timaru?” He indicated the buildings beyond the beach.
“Yes. Who are you? Where have you come from?” Mildred asked the first of the hundred questions she could think of.
“That is a long story,” Aroha said. “One we would be happy to tell you over breakfast.”
“I… oh.” Mildred realized she was totally intrigued by the strange pair of castaways.
“We should contact the police,” Casey said.
“Yes, but breakfast first,” Aroha nodded. “I’m sorry. My name is Aroha, and this is Casey.”
“There’s a café not far from here. I enjoy a coffee there after my morning walk with Mitzi,” Mildred explained.
“Great. We can tell you a great story over coffee and breakfast.” Casey indicated that Mildred should lead the way.
Shaking her head, Mildred set Mitzi down and let the dog lead them on the familiar route to the café where a bowl of fresh water would be waiting.
THE END
Read on for a free sample of The Lusca
Chapter 1
I couldn’t make out what Shawn screamed. I could barely see the kid, with seawater flying up, down, everywhere. There had been nothing on the radar indicating a storm, and it hit so hard, so fast, that I had no idea if the captain even had a chance to call it in.
“Drew—Drew!” It sounded like Shawn was yelling my name over and over, but I couldn’t make it out for sure above the eerie, low-humming sound coming from the darkness and water all around. I had no time to dwell on this oddity. Everything about this was weird. I couldn’t focus on any one thing, or I’d stop trying to figure out what to do, how to fix this disaster.
Shawn waved his Bowie knife at me, then out at the sea. Another of the fishermen—I couldn’t make out which guy it was—rolled across the small fishing boat’s deck and into Shawn’s legs, puking black in the night as he went. As I called to them, lunged for them, they both went overboard into the valley of a deep Caribbean wave.
I hung over the railing for a moment, my own impenetrable sea legs considering sharing seasickness with the others still aboard I heard retching.
It was total and complete chaos in moments, when just before, the night sea had been as smooth as milk in the morning, and the sky so clear a child could navigate home to Mobile, Alabama.
I held on, and stared down where Shawn and the other guy had gone in, but the wave now rose.
I had to get out of there.
Not sure what else to do, I ran to the wheelhouse to see what the hell Captain Johan, the old Cajun spitfire who always cursed in French, was doing in there. Once on the bridge, I wiped saltwater out of my eyes, and pushed my straggly curls back from my forehead. The wheel spun wildly, with no Captain Johan there to assist.
Damn the man. Johan wasn’t the type to go down with his ship, but he should have been doing something.
I was just a fisherman, and in the last three minutes after all hell instantly broke loose, I’d tried to find my buddies, the usual guys I came out with. I’d run all over deck, if you could call it running. It was more like sliding and falling and skidding in vomit.
I’d seen a few guys, but the water poured over all of us so hard out there that once seen, a guy might not be seen again. I had wanted to find Jimmy, but it had been impossible.
I dashed to the wheel, and jerked to steer us toward the top of the giant wave, trying to get into it. The ship didn’t want to comply; I put more of my shoulders and hips into hauling the wheel to the right. I might as well have already been drowning, I held my breath so hard.
I really thought the wave that ate the kid was going to completely take us all out, but as the crest began to break, I cropped the wheel just strongly enough, and our boat went up and over, down, down.
I heard screams. Staring up through the glass, I could see the whole deck.
It looked like Little Jack and Samson starboard, and, from what I could make out, Little Jack was holding Samson back, like Samson wanted to jump over.
That was nuts!
I looked to the other side of the boat, where Samson’s eyes had locked as he wailed, pulling away from Little Jack, his mouth a dark gash.
We were in a wave valley again, but the other side of the boat tilted and the water rose up to near-deck level. What looked like shiny black eels, or giant slugs, slithered aboard, moving in jerks and ripples. There were four of them, and they must have been about three feet long each. Maybe a foot in diameter. The fronts and backs of their snaky bodies tapered to points on both ends.
Did they have heads? Faces? I couldn’t tell. The salty rainfall came on heavier than ever, with crashing waves so hard they cracked the wheelhouse glass. My view was gone.
I hopped out as fast as I could, making a beeline for the lifeboat. Whatever those things were, they’d made me feel like the whole sea was full of them, and my gut knew they wanted to eat me. It’s one of those feelings that, once you’ve had it—and I’d been attacked by a mad Pitbull as a kid—you never forget it. I had to get off this boat right away.
There were remnants of puke washing away on the deck where the lifeboat should have been.
“Goddamn it!” I couldn’t see for longer than a second no matter how many times I wiped water from my face, and fear fueled my frustration.
The balance of the wave valley was suddenly disrupted, and I felt the ship rise, rise high. I heard yells and screams of the men still aboard who I couldn’t see. It was simply too dark, the rain too heavy, and every unnatural light on the wildly tilting fishing boat was long gone.
What I did make out, just seconds before I dove overboard myself, was a long, thick…tentacle? Was that what it was? A tentacle with sharp-toothed mouths where suckers might have been…Those mouths, perfect circles when open. I saw some of them closing, it seemed, into small black dots in the silver flesh of the tentacle. It hovered over the ship, catching a moonbeam that happened through the storm, and the question of what rose the ship up to the level of the other high waves now burned in my brain. However, terror soon took any curiosity’s place as that long, monstrous thing came down, hard, across the deck, snapping the entire ship in two pieces like I could a toothpick in between my fingers.
My end of the boat tipped up as I yelped and jumped into the dark water. It sucked me down in the undertow of the wave, so I pinched my nose shut with my fingers, closed my eyes, and went with it. I had to wait unti
l the sea resurfaced me naturally. I was strong. I used to box heavyweights not too many years ago. I was not strong enough to swim in that wave. No way, nope.
When I did open my eyes, everything was pure black liquid, so I mostly kept them closed. It made me feel like I just didn’t want to see instead of couldn’t…that I just didn’t want to breathe, not that I couldn’t.
The wave current pushed me up higher. I could tell. My equilibrium was a little shaken, but that’s something a drowning man knows—up. I went completely limp, feeling weak as my hopes rose, and I finally broke the surface, gasping. I couldn’t see a damn thing.
But I felt something in the cool waters.
Against my ankle, my boot top and pant leg showed a little bit of flesh to something that could, indeed, see, and it slithered against my flesh. It felt like limp, cooked bacon, but cold, like the dead.
I called out. “Help!”
I felt it again, but this time it was against my thigh, wrapping around it. I yelled and jerked away, swimming from whatever the hell that had been. I thought of those eel things on the fishing boat and pumped my arms against the falling, flying stormy sea, to where, I didn’t care. Just had to get away from that rubbery, cold tendril of life that wanted me to warm it.
Just ahead, in the water, I saw bioluminescence…the surface of the ocean had a spot of light in it, glowing and greenish. I swam for it, not thinking about it. It was light, and light was good.
As I got closer, I heard yells and hollers here and there. I tried to call out again, but as I sucked in air to do it, one of the slithery things instantly wrapped around my ankle and yanked me under.
I struggled violently, anxiety and terror wiping my thoughts of anything like a plan. It kept pulling me down, until I slipped out of my boot and swam as hard as I could to the surface. My hand broke free to the air just as the slithery thing wrapped around my socked foot and squeezed with the strength of ten hands. That’s when I realized I wasn’t going to make it to the surface, not ever again.
Hell's Teeth: A Deep Sea Thriller Page 10