MEG: Nightstalkers

by Steve Alten

  “Meaning in less than three kilometers we’ll hit a wall of ice.”

  “Brilliant.” Jonas veered to starboard as the whale attempted to bite the sub’s port wing. “The passage can’t just dead-end. Where’s that subglacial lake your whale was supposedly inhabiting?”

  “Lake Ellsworth … right.” Zach scanned his GPS system. “Crap. We’re too deep tae get a signal.”

  “Then take a guess!”

  “Okay, I’m guessing we’re too far west. Can ye head east?”

  “Not without being eaten.”

  “One kilometer until impact. Jonas, ignite the Valkyries!”

  Feeling for the control switch his engineer had duct-taped to the side of his console, Jonas powered up the lasers, the sudden heat and bright light chasing the whale from his port flank. He attempted to alter his course—only to see a wall of ice looming ahead.

  Both men let out a yell, Zach covering his face—

  The sub shook beneath them like a truck passing over train tracks, the Manta’s twin lasers transforming the gauntlet of ice into a melting stream of slush and water.

  Shocked to still be alive, Jonas reduced the sub’s speed, allowing the lasers more contact time to clear the way, easing the rough ride to a mild turbulence.

  A quick glance at the rear camera screen confirmed they had left the Miocene sperm whale behind.

  Jonas flipped the monitor the middle finger. “Screw you, Brute.”

  “Unfortunately Jonas, I think we’re the ones that are screwed. I have no clue where we are or how tae get back.”

  “No problem, we’ll just go up.”

  Zachary grabbed the joystick. “Don’t! Those Valkyries aren’t rockets. Ye’ll stall us and we’ll become stuck inside the glacier.”

  As if in response, the sub jammed against a rough patch of ice before lurching ahead another six feet, only to stall and lunge forward once more.

  Jonas turned to Zach, who shook his head. “The propulsion units are churning slush.”

  “What were they churning when they managed to take us all the way to Lake Vostok in your imaginary reality?”

  “That was different. We were moving through subglacial rivers, not solid ice.”

  The Manta stalled again. The whirring sound of propellers spinning against air caused both men to look at one another, their situation dire.

  Thirty seconds passed.

  Another two minutes.

  Jonas eased up on his foot pedals, afraid he would burn out the engines.

  With a sudden lurch, the propulsion units caught melt water. The Manta shot forward, chunks of ice bashing the exterior of the cockpit—parting to reveal a dark void.

  The stunned pilots let out a yell as the sub plunged twenty feet, free-falling nose-first through the air before plunging into a pitch-black alien sea.

  Zachary turned to Jonas, his face pale. “Congratulations, Magellan. Looks like ye found Lake Ellswood.”

  Vancouver Island, British Columbia

  Salish Sea

  Tim Rehm methodically arranged his video equipment on the wooden deck of the jetty. He attached a small video camera to a fifteen-foot reach pole, allowing him to film underwater from the safety of the dock. While it gave Tim real-time images that were displayed on his laptop, it did not have a night setting like his larger handheld unit.

  The buoy-cam had a nocturnal setting, but the weather was picking up, creating a three-foot chop that rendered the device useless. That left the remote camera he would strap to Tania’s left wrist and his larger handheld underwater camera, which he could also use for surface shots.

  He glanced at Tania, who was in her wet suit, seated in a lotus position. Preparing her lungs for her free dive, she was inhaling deep breaths through her nose, her abdomen ballooning outward with each steady inward gust before exhaling through her mouth.

  Tania had spent most of the afternoon trying to convince Tim to join her underwater, even if it was only to film her from beneath the pier. She assured him the remains of the dead humpback had been removed by the resort’s gardener, but that wasn’t quite enough to change his mind.

  Then why was he wearing his wet suit?

  Growing up on the New Jersey shore, Tim Rehm felt as at home in the water as Tania. He had been SCUBA diving since middle school and had encountered his share of sharks in the wild, but had never purposely put himself in harm’s way just for a quick thrill. His first experience cage-diving with great whites hadn’t been planned—he and Tania were attending a coaching clinic in San Francisco when his adventurous assistant convinced him to spend his one free day watching her cage-dive off the California coast.

  The next morning at 5:40 a.m., Tim found himself reluctantly boarding a dive boat at the Emeryville Marina in San Francisco Bay. Tania and her fellow adrenaline junkies had paid eight hundred dollars to spend the day cage-diving, Tim coughing up half that fee just to watch the action from the safety of the boat.

  The dive site was the Farallon Islands, a protected marine sanctuary located twenty-seven miles off the coast of San Francisco. Nicknamed “the Devil’s Teeth” by sailors, the waters off these craggy islands were home to whales, seals, and seabirds and—from late summer through the end of November—a population of great white sharks that migrated annually across the Pacific from Hawaii.

  An overpowering stench of sea lion excrement greeted them as their boat circled the rocky landmasses. The captain dropped anchor near Southeast Island, a place he proclaimed to be “a prime feeding spot.” He described the Farallon community of great whites as fourteen- to twenty-foot adults, the females easily distinguished from their male counterparts by their larger, bulkier girths.

  Four hours passed before the first shark was sighted—a surface kill sixty yards away that sent seal blood spurting into the gull-infested air. The first four divers—Tania among them—quickly scrambled into the submerged cage, where they remained for nearly an hour without a single encounter.

  And so it went for the rest of the afternoon. Being a protected wildlife preserve prevented the crew from using chum, forcing them to rely on fake rubber seals to attract the sharks, which the crew futilely dragged along the surface.

  Excluding an occasional splash in the distance, the sharks stayed away.

  By day’s end the passengers were cold and grumpy, ready to head in. The captain offered discounts on a future excursion, and then asked any observing passengers if they wanted to give the cage a final shot in exchange for their vouchers.

  Tim found himself donning a wet suit to join Tania on the last dive of the day.

  Following the captain’s instructions, he laid down on his belly along the bottom of the cage, the air line connected to his face mask a preferred alternative to wearing a bulky SCUBA tank. The water was a frigid fifty-four-degrees and murky, the sea seemingly void of life.

  A half hour passed. And then, incredibly, a large female rose majestically out of the mist directly beneath them to investigate the cage. The twenty-foot great white was as wide as Tim’s Buick Regal and probably outweighed the car by a good three hundred pounds. It circled the two humans for fifteen minutes, its aura overwhelming, its demeanor non-threatening.

  As darkness arrived the female moved off, disappearing into the murk with a final wave of its caudal fin—the predator’s appearance having forever altered the destinies of its two transformed onlookers.

  * * *

  Tim Rehm stared at the sea, its surface glittering with the golden reflections of the setting sun. He and Tania had bonded over their experience in the Farallons, each together and separately pursuing similar encounters with the sea’s apex predators. With his career limiting his free time, Tim still managed to fit in three to four cage-dives a year off the Jersey shore. Two summers ago, he had joined Tania for a cage-dive in Isla Guadalupe, a great white hot spot located a hundred and sixty miles off the coast of Baja, California.

  Tania had gone a different route. Accepting an offer of early retirement, she had moved
to Vancouver Island to commune with killer whales during the winter months, spending her summers in Mexico where she worked for Big Animals Expeditions, a company specializing in open water encounters with great whites.

  Now she was attempting the ultimate big animal encounter … and despite his fear, Tim found himself keeping his options open.

  Exhaling briskly, Tania stood up and offered him her left wrist to mount the remote camera. “Not too tight, I don’t want to cut off the circulation. The girls will be able to detect a throbbing pulse.”

  “The girls?” Tim strapped the camera to her forearm. “You make it sound like you’re spending the evening with your Mahjong group.”

  “Attitude is everything during these wildlife encounters. If you’re calm, the sharks feel no threat. So? Have you decided?”

  “For now, I’ll remain on the jetty … which is where you promised to stay until you got a good bead on these two … girls. What time did you say they’ve been showing up?”

  “Right around dusk. I think they may be feeding off Hornby Island.”

  The two divers wrapped themselves in their winter coats and sat on the bench, waiting for the sun to go down. As they watched, the sky over Texada Island turned bright crimson, fading to violet as the landmass gradually disappeared along the horizon.

  Tania gripped his arm, nodding to their left.

  Tim Rehm’s eyes widened. The albino Megalodon was spy-hopping thirty feet from the jetty, its triangular head poised above the waterline just below its gills slits, its gray-blue eye watching them.

  Reaching slowly for his handheld camera, Tim adjusted the night lens and began filming.

  “Hi there, beautiful. I have something for you.” Reaching into an ice chest with her gloved right hand, Tania removed a hunk of salmon by its tail. Whirling her arm, she flung the fish at the Meg, who caught it in its mouth.

  “Tim, did you get that?!”

  “Got it.”

  “What did I tell you? These sharks aren’t monsters, they were raised in captivity.” Reaching for her swim fins, she slipped them on over her rubber boots.

  “Tania, wait. Where’s Bela?”

  “I don’t see her. Can you find her on the underwater camcorder?”

  Grabbing his reach pole, he powered on the camera and slid it into the water, the herky-jerky live images playing on his laptop. He scanned the area around the jetty, but could not find the dark-backed Megalodon.

  Tania spit into her face mask. “Anything?”

  “No, but visibility’s only about ten to fifteen feet without a night-vision lens. Plus she’s mostly black.”

  “Her head’s white, so is her belly. You should be able to see that. If you can’t then she’s not around, which means now is the best time for me to get in the water with my girl Lizzy.”

  Using her rubber dive gloves, Tania grabbed another fish and tossed it high in the air at the albino shark. The Meg snapped at it but missed, the effort revealing a band of thick gums and razor-sharp triangular teeth.

  Tania sat on the edge of the dock. She positioned her mask over her eyes and nose, allowing the snorkel to dangle by her mouth. “Hand me another fish.”

  He reached into the chest and removed a twenty pound chunk of salmon, its severed insides dangling.

  Tania took it from him and tossed it in the water about fifteen feet from where she was sitting. “Come and get it, sweetheart.”

  Lizzy’s left eye followed the splash. As if beckoned, the Megalodon’s head slid beneath the dark waters and disappeared.

  Seconds later, the predator’s ivory hide emerged from the blackness twenty feet beneath the surface. As she swam past the jetty on her side, her mouth opened to swallow the fish.

  Tania waited until she passed, then slipped feetfirst into the sea.

  Tim positioned the reach pole underwater, his heart pounding in his chest. Glancing at the laptop’s monitor, he saw a flicker of white and aimed the camera for it, managing to film the Megalodon as it turned back toward the pier, moving slowly toward Tania.

  Tim’s legs shook as he stood by the edge of the jetty, filming the forty-six-foot creature as it passed beneath his friend, towing her in its wake.

  “Woo-hoo!” Tania waved as she was carried away from the dock and out to sea. Shoving her snorkel in her mouth, she sucked in a deep breath of air and surface dived.

  Tim scanned the dark waters, his pulse quickening. “Tania?” He aimed the reach pole, but the shark had moved out of range.

  He glanced at his wristwatch, the second hand sweeping past the six.

  Fifty seconds later an ivory dorsal fin surfaced thirty yards away, Tania holding on with her gloved right hand, waving at him with the left.

  “Holy shit! Holy fucking shit! You go, girl!” He reached for his handheld camera but by the time he had focused, the dorsal fin had slipped back beneath the waves.

  Tim grabbed his fins, hastily working them over his rubber boots. Stay beneath the pier behind the pilings. Get a few passing shots, then get out. Positioning his mask and snorkel, he inhaled a quick breath, hugged his underwater video camera to his chest and stepped off the pier.

  Tim sank six feet. Before he could surface, he kicked his way beneath the jetty, slipping behind a pair of wooden pilings, each support as thick as a telephone pole.

  As luck would have it, the tide was out, providing him with two feet of air space between the waterline and the underside of the jetty. Wrapping his legs around an algae-covered piling, he was able to remain underwater while breathing through the snorkel, safe and secure.

  Aiming the camera out to sea, he searched through the viewfinder for the albino shark. Come on, come on, where are you—there! Catching sight of the Meg’s tail he zoomed in, locating a pair of human legs dangling along the shark’s incredibly massive left flank. He stayed with the shot until they moved out of range.

  Amazing … fucking amazing. I’m underwater, filming a sixty-year-old woman being towed by a Megalodon. Using his right shoulder and the piling like a tripod, he repositioned the camera, readying himself for the shark’s next pass.

  With his mask pressed against the viewfinder, Tim Rehm never saw the albino head rising from the depths directly beneath him.

  Primal instinct caused him to suddenly jerk back as Bela gnawed on the piling. For a moment she remained stuck, until she shook her head, breaking off two of her razor-sharp lower teeth which remained embedded in the wood.

  Tim backed away, his heart feeling as if the organ was about to burst from his chest.

  Bela refused to be denied. Jamming her snout in the gap between two sets of pilings, she attempted to squeeze her way beneath the pier. When that didn’t work, she moved off.

  Tim watched the dark-backed Megalodon as it swam around the backside of the jetty. With a burst of speed it rammed the bottom of the pier, the sound of splintering wood sending the cameraman kicking and paddling his way through the corridor of pilings as he attempted to reach the shallows.

  A white glow filled his peripheral vision. Turning to his left he saw Lizzy and Tania. The Megalodon was swimming parallel to the jetty. His friend was waving—from inside the creature’s mouth!

  Tim gagged as he swallowed a mouthful of seawater. Tania was alive, her arms flailing wildly as Lizzy’s teeth kept her pinned within its jaws.

  He jumped at a resounding thud—followed by an ear-splitting crack as Bela broke through two rotting pilings, collapsing a twenty foot section of pier above his head.

  Dropping his camera, the strength training coach torpedoed through the water, stroking and kicking through the ten-foot-wide channel formed by the jetty’s wooden columns—never realizing the gaps between pairs of pilings were progressively widening as he drew closer to shore.

  Thirty yards from the beach … don’t stop!

  The blotch of white bloomed in his right eye’s peripheral vision, the scorching pain shooting through every nerve cell in his body as Bela’s hideous mouth shot sideways beneath the pier, plu
cking him from his escape route.

  For a fleeting moment lying somewhere between consciousness and death, Tim Rehm transformed into the twenty-foot female great white, soaring through the chilly waters off the Farallon Islands.

  Bela shook her mammoth head, chasing his soul into another existence.

  Lizzy waited for her sibling to join her at the end of the pier. Their prey had stopped thrashing, but the kills were fresh and the pups were still too young to be particular.

  Descending into the depths, the albino predator and her pigmented twin followed the Georgia Strait to the deep waters off Hornby Island, where their surviving young waited to be fed.

  28

  Lake Ellsworth, 2.1 Miles Beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet

  West Antarctica

  Jonas Taylor shut down the two Valkyrie lasers and brought the Manta to the surface. Zachary quickly switched the sonar from active to passive.

  Enveloped in a primordial darkness, the two men simply stared out the cockpit in silence, the sub bobbing gently in waters made olive-green by the night glass.

  And then, as they watched, random flashes ignited like puffs of lightning concealed in a cloud bank—each bioluminescent burst from the frozen heavens beckoning a response from the lake’s surface until the silhouette of the lost world revealed itself to its mesmerized guests.

  The lake was six miles long—an inverted S-shaped topographic hollow with two small landmasses that rose several hundred feet. The ice sheet which pressed against Lake Ellsworth was convex, sagging over the middle of the waterway, where it came to within twenty feet of meeting its surface waters. From here the ceiling gradually tapered back until it reached four to five stories along the periphery, where it buckled against the eastern wall.

  An underwater light flashed close by. Curious, Jonas descended the sub, expecting to find a bioluminescent fish. Instead he discovered a pair of plant-like objects, each the size and shape of a surfboard, the anterior surface of which held several rows of barbed suction pads. These objects were not free-floating, they were attached to the underside of the ice sheet by long, vine-like appendages that dangled to the surface in pairs.