Megalodon In Paradise

by Hunter Shea

  Ravenous.

  Delirious.

  ***

  Ollie was surprised when Lenny broke free from his grasp and ran alongside him to the other door. They trudged through ankle deep water. Pretty soon, it would reach their calves. He caught a glimpse of water running from a crack in a wall.

  It was more like a mini waterfall.

  “Feeling better?” he asked Lenny.

  “For the moment. Funny how dudes coming in blazing with guns will get your ass moving.”

  Ollie wrapped his hand around the doorknob and pulled.

  It didn’t budge.

  Lenny thumped the door with his remaining fist. “Guys, it’s us.”

  Ollie was about to join in, his heart hovering somewhere near his tonsils, when it felt as if a bomb went off under the lab. They ended up on their asses.

  “What the hell was that?” Lenny said, holding onto his bad arm.

  “That seems to be the question of the day.”

  A series of concussions got them scrambling back to their feet. Ollie pounded the door with the butt of the rifle.

  He knew what was making the lab quake. The last time he’d heard that sound was when he was dangling from the top of the tank.

  “Open the fucking door!” he shouted, no longer concerned whether the men in the next room heard him.

  “Hold on,” he heard Tara say.

  There was a dull scraping coming from the other side. He took a quick look behind them to make sure they hadn’t been followed . . . yet.

  Maybe that little shockwave got them to rethink going any further.

  God knows, if he didn’t have to join his friends, he’d have no desire to go in the next room.

  The door was yanked wide open. Lenny nearly spilled into the room. Lae managed to catch his fall.

  A wave of relief swept over Tara’s face.

  She pulled Ollie inside. “I didn’t think…”

  He held her face in his hands. “I wouldn’t have either. We don’t have long. Those guys are going to head in here eventually.”

  “He shot one of them,” Lenny said.

  “You what?” Tara said.

  “Just trying to even the odds.”

  The shark slammed into the side of the tank. A chunk of concrete crashed to the floor next to Marco, waking him from his fugue. He rolled away from the tank.

  “Where’s Steven and Heidi?” Ollie asked.

  Tara spun around, eyes searching. “Heidi? Heidi, where are you?”

  “Mr. Steven went to find a way into another room or a way out,” Lae said. The poor woman looked like she was ready to pass out. She’d lived her whole life in the Marshall Islands without having her life threatened seven ways to Sunday.

  At least until Ollie and the Americans had come along.

  Ollie arced his flashlight around the lab. The shark continued to beat itself against the tank.

  Wherever he went, something very bad was desperately pounding to get at them. Ollie had to restrain himself from firing impotently into the side of tank. As if that would deter the shark.

  Lenny grabbed onto his shoulder, causing the flashlight’s beam to pivot upward.

  “Heidi!”

  Was that really Heidi?

  She didn’t even look human anymore. Her skin was as dark as a pool of oil, her body bloated to twice its size. If not for her clothes, he never would have mistaken the terrifying creature for Steven’s once-gorgeous wife.

  Her blood-red eyes caught his gaze for a second before she continued climbing up the ladder. It was like looking into the eyes of a demon.

  “What the fuck is happening to her?” Marco spluttered.

  Lenny looked down at his right arm, unable to hold back the look of fear.

  “Heidi, you can’t go up there. It’s unstable,” Ollie said. He knew that more than any of them.

  He grabbed the nearest rung and took a tentative step.

  “Don’t!” Heidi shrieked, glaring down at him.

  The shark thumped right near them. The ladder shifted, part of it breaking loose from the tank. Ollie held on, chest pressed to the tank, thinking he could feel the vibration of the enormous shark churning the water through his ribcage.

  “You’re sick,” Tara pleaded. “Please, come back down. You’re only going to hurt yourself.”

  “There’s nothing you can do for me,” Heidi said.

  Tara kept her flashlight trained on Heidi. Ollie cringed when he saw a tear leak from her eye. It was deep red and thick as ketchup.

  “You don’t know that,” Tara said. “Look at Lenny. He’s okay.”

  Ollie carefully climbed closer to Heidi.

  “Maybe for now. It’s inside him.” She looked down at Ollie and resumed climbing. “You all have to go. Don’t let Steven come back for me.”

  Despite her condition, she was moving pretty quickly. Ollie watched helplessly as she put some distance between them, the shark refusing to let them forget it was dangerously close.

  She suddenly stopped, head thrown back, and started to wail.

  “Oh God! Oh God! Oh my fucking God!”

  Bile as black as bat wings spilled from her mouth. Ollie had to let go of the rung with one hand so he could angle away from the stream of toxic porridge. He cast a quick look at the ground to make sure Tara avoided the mess. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw her jump clear.

  “I’m melting inside!”

  The door jounced on its hinges.

  Lenny shouted, “They’re here!”

  Can we catch a goddamn break? Ollie cursed.

  “Heidi, I need you to come with me right away. We don’t have a second to waste,” Ollie said.

  She took a flashlight from her pocket. “You have to leave me here. I’m dying. It hurts so bad, Ollie. Give me this one last thing before I go. Maybe I can save my husband and all of you.”

  A bullet poked through the door and into the tank. That only seemed to agitate the shark. The ladder made a ball-shrinking groan.

  “Now go,” Heidi said. “Take care of Steven for me.”

  There was no time to negotiate with her. Those guys were going to shoot their way in any second now.

  Ollie scrambled down the ladder, glad to be away from the shark.

  He grabbed Tara’s arm. “We have to go.”

  “Not without Heidi.”

  “We have no choice.”

  More bullets punched the corroded metal door.

  Lae and Lenny didn’t need any further provocation. They hustled past Ollie and Tara. “Come on,” Lenny said.

  Tara looked up at Heidi who had stopped trying to get up the ladder. Heidi gave a feeble wave. She was a nightmarish vision perched on the side of the tank.

  Marco took her other arm.

  “Now it’s my turn to carry you,” he said, his busted nose and mouth making him sound like an entirely different person.

  Together, he and Ollie practically dragged her to the other end of the lab where they found an open door. Lenny and Lae had waited for them before entering the next room.

  The shark went berserk. Huge chunks of the tank broke off.

  Ollie heard the escalating fire and the door collapse.

  He asked God to please let Heidi know how sorry he was.

  What’s going to happen to Steven when we tell him?

  Like everything else today, it wasn’t going to be pretty.

  ***

  Nacho’s rage was making him reckless.

  The interior of the abandoned building was dark as night and they didn’t come prepared with flashlights, other than the one Bami had swiped from the bungalow before it was blown to splinters by the storm. The bastards squirreled away in here had a high-powered weapon. They could be hiding anywhere.

  He didn’t give two shits. He continued screaming at his men, urging them to plow through the next door. They were going to be an unstoppable force, just like that impossibly enormous shark.

  Mofongo put his hand to the rusty knob.

&nbs
p; “No, you idiot,” Nacho grumbled. “We need to put the fear of God into them. Like this.”

  Nacho pulled the trigger, riddling the door with holes until it blew apart.

  ***

  Heidi almost lost her tenuous grip on the ladder’s rung when the door exploded. It didn’t help that the shark was doing its best to smash the tank to little bits and pieces.

  The burning in her organs was blinding. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to will back the pain. She ground her teeth so hard, they popped, the sound reminding her of her days back in grammar school when they used to stomp on empty juice boxes.

  Oddly enough, the decimation of her teeth wasn’t painful at all. At least not in comparison to what was happening to the rest of her body.

  Opening her eyes, she saw the men spill into the lab.

  There were five of them – wet, filthy and looking exceedingly pissed.

  Her heart stopped for a moment, restarting erratically. It stole her breath.

  Hold out for just a little more.

  “Guys, they’re here!” she shouted as loud as she could.

  Five heads tilted her way.

  Good. She wanted their full attention.

  It looked like there was only one flashlight between them. Even better.

  “Don’t go out the hatch without me,” she said, resuming her climb.

  Taking a quick peek, she was encouraged to see one of the men take to the ladder. He had a deep scar that bisected his forehead. He looked like the storm had given him his first shower in months.

  The damn shark chose that moment to throw itself against the tank. He stopped climbing.

  She continued to pretend she was talking to her friends. At least, they might have become her friends if there’d been time.

  “I’m almost there. I’ll need someone to help me up.”

  The man went back to climbing. Once he got further up the tank, he was joined by another. Heidi continued all the way to the top, grunting as she heaved herself onto the broken platform.

  She dropped to her knees, another wave of nausea producing a torrent of burning liquid she was careful not to let cascade down the ladder. She didn’t want to discourage them from following her.

  How much more can I take? Come on you bastards. Hurry the hell up!

  Heidi staggered to her feet, standing by the lip of the tank. She didn’t dare flash the light onto the surface. Despite the horrible creature she’d become, she was terrified to behold the shark. She’d be with it soon enough. There were no extra points for bravery for looking your death in the eye.

  “Hurry, they’re almost here,” she said, but her voice was weak. There was no way it could be heard over the commotion in the tank.

  She leaned her hip against the tank, each stuttering breath feeling as if it would be her last.

  The man with the scarred head popped into view. He jumped up quickly, aiming his gun at her.

  She didn’t have the strength to feign surprise or fear. She just kept her flashlight pointed at him, luring him closer.

  The second man appeared and that was it.

  There was no worrying about that now.

  Heidi’s inflamed stomach dropped. She’d hoped to get them all to follow her.

  “Where the fuck is your friend with the gun, puta?” Scar Head spat.

  They couldn’t see her, what she had become. She was grateful for that. She wanted them up here, not fleeing for their sanity.

  She thought of Steven and the life they had just started to build with one another. There was so much ahead of them. They could have lived a life they’d never even dared to dream about.

  “It would have been wonderful,” she croaked.

  “What did you say?”

  Heidi felt something give way in her core. It was like going down a steep drop on the roller coaster, only this time, she felt everything inside her collapse into her bowels.

  She leaned over the lip of the tank, balanced on her liquefying side.

  Black sludge dripped from her mouth, nose, eyes and ears into the water.

  The moment it hit the water, the shark went into a frenzy.

  Heidi took her last breath, running into the void and away from the pain.

  ***

  The woman, if that’s what she truly was, was surely dead. He’d never seen anything like it. Nacho wondered if perhaps he had died when they first hit the beach, for surely this was hell.

  Cambuulo whispered, “Monster.”

  Nacho was inclined to agree with him. The melting, blackened corpse was a far cry from human.

  The catwalk swayed violently as something stirred within the tank.

  Nacho and Cambuulo lost their balance. It was like standing on the edge of a great geyser.

  They didn’t need to see to know that something enormous was barreling up the guts of whatever this thing was. When it broke to the top, they were able to make out something gigantic and gray swallow up the woman and her flashlight.

  With it came a spray of water more powerful than a jet from a fire hose. It hit them hard, spilling them across the creaky catwalk and over the edge.

  They screamed all the way down.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Ollie’s hand was crushed by Tara’s when they heard all hell break loose in the tank room. The door they’d closed behind them bent in the middle. Water splashed around the edges.

  It was as if a dam had burst in the other room.

  “I think that tank just bit the dust,” Ollie said, moving them away from the door.

  He cursed his choice of words. It was crass, especially considering Heidi had been there when it happened.

  “Heidi,” Marco muttered, mirroring his thoughts. “I never meant for any of this to happen. You have to believe me.”

  Ollie said, “I do, Marco. I do.”

  His friend looked so helpless, he couldn’t call up the rage he’d felt for him just moments before.

  This particular section of the lab was remarkable for its complete emptiness. There wasn’t a stick of rotted furniture or scrap of paper. The military had cleared it of everything but the stagnant air.

  Whatever secrets had been created here, they did their damnedest to keep it unknown.

  “Steven!” Ollie called out.

  The low-ceilinged room was as wide as it was long. He could imagine a setup like Mission Control in here at one time.

  His voice echoed back to him.

  “Where the hell can he be?”

  “There has to be a way out,” Lenny said. He was looking pale. Then again, they all were. Fear had drawn all of their blood to their vital organs, fight or flight in total control.

  “He wouldn’t just leave Heidi behind,” Tara said.

  “No, he wouldn’t,” Ollie said. “Which means he must be on to something and not very far. We have to keep going and hope we run into him. I don’t know how much longer that door is going to hold.”

  The only good thing was the hope that all the smugglers had been killed when the tank burst.

  “Mr. Lenny, you’re bleeding,” Lae said. She shined her light on his bandages.

  “The skin must be rupturing,” Tara said. “It’s no wonder with everything that you’ve gone through.”

  What no one dared mention, including Lenny, was the color of the blood staining the bandage.

  It was the same cancerous black that had leaked from Heidi.

  “We can rewrap it later,” Ollie said, not sure if that would do any good.

  Marco took off his shirt and tossed it to Tara. “You can use this.”

  They just started to run when a tremendous bang sounded behind them. Ollie flinched as something whizzed past his left side. It clanged ahead of him in the dark distance.

  He looked back.

  The door had broken and shot forward like a bullet from a gun, the water being the gunpowder. A deluge raced behind it, foamy water churning toward them.

  “Go, go, go!” Ollie screamed.

  “Marco!
” Tara shouted.

  When Ollie turned, his legs went weak.

  The bottom half of Marco was still standing. The rest of him from the middle of his stomach up was gone.

  The door had sliced him clean in half.

  This time, Ollie’s legs did go out. He splashed into the water, his face going under long enough to suck in a salty lungful.

  Tara pulled him up by the back of his collar.

  His chest hitched as he coughed up the water, desperate for air.

  “Are you hurt?” she shouted.

  It took him a second to process the question. Yes, he was hurt, in more ways than he could count. He thought of the possibility that Marco’s blood and internal juices had been mixed with the briny water that had invaded his mouth, nose and lungs. It took what little willpower he had left not to throw up.

  He could only nod at Tara.

  “Then move your ass,” she commanded, not letting go as she ran.

  Ollie was grateful he couldn’t see much of the water boiling around them. What if he caught a glimpse of Marco’s torso? Or a limb? Or his head? How much more would it take to shatter him? To shatter all of them until they simply couldn’t go on?

  He kept running.

  Forward momentum was easy to maintain as the tide propelled them onward whether they liked it or not.

  “In here!” he heard Lenny shout.

  A pair of double doors swung wide open as the current pounded against them. Ollie and Tara caught up to Lenny and Lae as they spilled into what looked to have once been a storage room.

  “Up there, Mr. Ollie,” Lae said, pointing to an open window just above their heads. Sheets of rain blew inside.

  For once, luck was on their side. Sturdy looking crates lay scattered everywhere. In an instant, he knew Steven had been here, since several of them had been stacked under the window.

  “He really left her,” Ollie said, briefly wondering if there was a way Heidi could have survived the explosion of the tank and was still clinging to life.

  “Ladies first,” Lenny said, helping Lae step onto the first crate.

  “You go before me,” Tara said. “I’ll be right behind you in case you lose your balance.”

  He didn’t look to have the strength to argue.

  “I’ll try not to fall,” he said, wincing when his stump nudged the edge of a crate.

  Ollie guarded their backs. The water continued to rush in and was now up to his chest. At this rate, it would be over his nose in seconds, not minutes.