by C. J. Waller
He thought about telling someone, but remembered Najiib’s words. If he mentioned a monster shark to anyone else, he’d never be allowed to go out on a run again. He could feel his pulse quicken and watched as the skiff pulled alongside the ship. The shadow continued underneath, lost below the ship.
“Ready, young Abshir?” Kaafi asked, making Abshir jump. “Relax. You have done your father proud.”
“Yes, thank you,” Abshir said.
Kaafi greeted the men that climbed up over the rail and pointed them towards the bridge so they could join Najiib. He then slapped Abshir on the back and pointed to the ladder dangling over the side to the skiff fifty feet below.
Abshir slung his rifle across his back and swung himself over the rail, placing his feet carefully on the ladder, terrified of what would happen if he fell. More than likely, he would snap his neck from the fall, but that was not what terrified him. What if he didn’t snap his neck? What if what was in the water got him?
He took a seat in the skiff and watched the gently rolling waves as he waited for Kaafi to join them. Once in his own seat, Kaafi gave the order, and the skiff turned and headed towards the mother ship.
“What are you looking at?” Kaafi finally asked, worried about the way Abshir stared at the water. “Do you see something?”
Unfortunately for Abshir, he did see something. He tried not to look too scared, but it was impossible to hide it from Kaafi. The man leaned past Abshir and looked into the water. Down below, many feet below he could see a shape.
“What is that?” he asked.
“You see it?” Abshir asked.
“Yes, of course, why wouldn’t I see it?” Kaafi asked. “It is huge. And fast.”
“Yes,” Abshir nodded. “Is it a shark?”
“Could be,” Kaafi said then looked harder. His death grin became an actual smile for the first time in years. “No, no, look!”
The shape began to surface, maybe thirty yards from the skiff.
“What is that?” Abshir asked. “That’s not a shark.”
“It’s a whale!” Kaafi laughed. “Look at it!”
The beast surfaced, shooting water fifty feet into the air from its blowhole, and then dove back down again. The men on the skiff all laughed and pointed, excited by such a rare sight.
“What kind of whale is it?” Abshir asked. “Did you see its mouth? Those teeth?”
The whale had opened its mouth briefly when it surfaced, and Abshir was shocked to see two full rows of teeth –one row on top, one row on the bottom- that looked like they were meant for more than eating krill.
“Yes,” Kaafi said, puzzled, “I have never seen a whale that big with teeth like that. I don’t know what kind it is.”
Abshir wished his father could see the creature, he knew a lot about sea life. Then he realized he had something that he could use. He pulled the iPhone from his pocket and turned the video camera on, aiming where the whale had last been.
“Where’d you get that?” Kaafi asked.
“Off the Second Engineer,” Abshir said. “Tarabi was jealous. I think he wanted it, but I found it first.”
“Good for you,” Kaafi said, his eyes scanning the surface of the water for signs of the whale. “There!”
Abshir turned the camera on and aimed it at where Kaafi was pointing. In just seconds, the whale surfaced again, but this time it breached and came up out of the water, half of its body visible as it twisted in the air and then fell back again. The wave it produced rolled towards the skiff and the men didn’t realize what was going to happen until it was too late.
The wave hit the side of the skiff, flipping it like a piece of paper. The men went flying into the water, their cries of surprise cut short as they went under. Abshir struggled to get back to the surface and was both happy and dismayed. Dismayed because he had lost his AK-47, but happy because he still clutched the iPhone. It hadn’t been the whale’s fault they had capsized. It wasn’t the men’s fault either, since none could have known there would be something so large in the water that day.
The skiff floated upside down and Abshir swam towards it. He reached it and crawled on top of the hull. He checked the phone and the case had kept it protected. The camera was still recording and he almost turned it off when he saw another shadow. Just below where Kaafi was swimming.
“Uh oh!” he shouted at Kaafi. “The whale is below you! Swim! Swim!”
Abshir wasn’t sure if the whale would attack a man, but the image of the huge mouth swallowing the Second Engineer’s corpse rushed to the forefront of his mind. And that image troubled him. It wasn’t the same as the whale. Sure, he was not an expert on sea life, but still he wasn’t stupid.
“Kaafi!” he yelled. “Hurry!”
The shadow was coming to the surface quickly, right at Kaafi.
“It won’t eat me,” Kaafi yelled, spitting sea water from his mouth, “I’m not whale food!”
And he was right, because the whale breached a good forty yards away. This time it didn’t roll and splash, but came up and quickly dove back down. When its tail was in the air, Abshir gasped.
Half of its tail had been bitten off. Abshir had no doubt about that, he could plainly see the gouges of teeth marks. But what could do that to a whale so big? His eyes fell on Kaafi and the man looked at Abshir, terrified, then down at the shadow that wasn’t a whale, and coming up at him.
The rest of the men had made it to the skiff and they all scrambled up onto it, yelling at each other not to make it roll and sink, while also yelling for Kaafi to swim. They saw the shadow as well.
Their yells ceased the second the shadow was a shadow no more and exploded from the water. Half of them screamed as Kaafi was swallowed almost whole. Almost. When the massive jaws bit down, his shoulders, neck, and head, went flying into the water, blood spreading everywhere.
“KAAFI!” Abshir shouted. “KAAFI!”
The thing fell back into the water and the men clutched at each other, their eyes scanning the waves, looking for signs of its return.
“What was that?” Daacad shouted, pulling his binoculars away from his face, as he stood on the deck of his ship. The men behind him stared out at the water, stunned. “Did any of you see that?”
“I do not believe it,” Tarabi said, “he was right.”
“Who was right?” Daacad asked. “Tarabi? Who was right? About what?” But the man didn’t respond. Daacad looked at the other men and rage filled his features. “Get us over there! Get us to that skiff!”
His order was relayed to the bridge and the ship began to turn and move across the water towards the overturned skiff. But it was too late. Daacad watched in horror as the thing surfaced again, this time lifting the entire skiff into the air and biting it in half. Men screamed, Daacad heard them crying for help, and he was positive one of the voices was his son’s.
“Faster!” Daacad yelled. “Faster!”
The creature had submerged again, and when they got to the wreckage of the skiff, it was nowhere to be seen. Daacad, careful not to sound panicked and lose face in front of his men, shouted orders left and right. The wreckage had spread across the water by the time they got there, so a net was tossed out in hopes of retrieving some of it and anyone left alive that possibly clutched to the shattered and splintered boards.
After three passes, all of the wreckage was retrieved, but not a single man. Not whole, at least. When the net was hauled to the ship’s deck and opened, an arm slid from under a snapped board. Tarabi was the first to see it, and what the arm’s hand held. He quickly picked it up and pocketed what he found, and then waved the arm at the others.
“This is all that’s left!” he shouted. “What happened?”
A blow to the back of his head knocked him to his knees, which was not an easy thing to do to a young man Tarabi’s size. He got up and spun around quickly, ready to fight, but stopped instantly, as he looked down into the eyes of Daacad.
“Give. Me. That,” Daacad snarled.
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sp; Tarabi handed the severed arm over like it was made of hot lead and stepped well out of Daacad’s reach. The leader of the pirate gang held the arm carefully, his eyes welling with tears. On the inside of the arm, close by the wrist, was a long, jagged scar. He knew that scar. It was from when his son was small and fell from a tree, catching his arm on a broken branch. A wave of anguish washed over him and it was his turn to fall to his knees.
No one on deck moved a muscle until their leader was done sobbing and crying over the loss of his son.
When Daacad was able to gather himself and get to his feet, he looked at Tarabi.
“I want to know what that was,” he said. “I will not rest until I do.”
Tarabi nodded, and then waited as the man turned away, still clutching the arm, and walked up and into the bridge. He shouted at the other men to get to work and they scattered even though some had seniority over Tarabi. When he was sure no one was watching, Tarabi slipped below. Everyone was on the upper deck, so he was alone when he pulled the iPhone from his pocket. Despite its time in the seawater, there was still blood on it, stuck in the crevices between the hard case and the outer protection of the foam.
He double-checked that he was alone, and then turned on the phone. The video app came up immediately and Tarabi played the last video shot. He watched it over and over, listening to the surprised voices of Kaafi and Abshir as they watched the whale breach. It was on the eighth or ninth viewing that he noticed it: a shadow in the water close by the whale. He could tell by the angle of the sun that the shadow was not from the whale itself, but something just as large under the water’s surface. The shark.
He briefly thought of taking the phone to Daacad and showing him the video, but decided against it. Daacad would take the phone from him and keep it for himself. Tarabi couldn’t stomach the thought of losing it, not even to his gang leader. It was an iPhone! No, he would keep it for himself. He’d only ever had a flip phone, so he wasn’t quite sure how it worked, but he knew a guy back in Hilweyne that would.
There was a lot of activity back in port when the pirate mother ship docked, and Tarabi pushed the phone from his mind as he helped unload the hostages and drove them to the gang’s compound on the far side of Hilweyne. They were locked up and hooded so Daacad could make a quick video demanding ransom, or the container ship’s crew would be executed.
Once the hostages were secured, and Daacad was gone to tell his wives of the loss of his son, Tarabi took his chance and slipped from the compound. He walked to his destination instead of driving, not wanting one of the gang’s vehicles to be spotted and recognized. When he reached his intended destination, a small, rundown hut, he knocked softly on the rickety door. A couple minutes went by and then a small child opened up.
“Tell your father that Tarabi is here,” Tarabi said. The child just stared. “Now! Go!”
The child scurried away and was replaced by an angry looking man.
“Tarabi, what is this? Why do you scare my son?” a tall, thin man asked, his black skin marred by pock marks and scars. “And why are you here so late?”
“I have this,” Tarabi said, pulling out the iPhone, his smile like a child’s at Christmas. “I found it today.”
“Give me that!” the man snapped, yanking the iPhone from Tarabi’s grip. He started flipping through the settings and checking the apps. “You fool, this can be traced! You are lucky I know how to turn that off.”
“Oh,” Tarabi said, his face flushed with embarrassment, “I did not know.”
“Leave it with me a couple of days and I’ll make sure it is safe to give back,” the man said. “It’ll be like new.” He caught site of the blood that Tarabi never wiped off, but didn’t say anything. He knew whom he was dealing with.
“A couple days? That long?” Tarabi said, disappointed.
“Yes, I am a busy man,” the man said, waving Tarabi off. “I will send one of my children to fetch you when it is ready. Now go away, you have disrupted my evening.”
Tarabi thought about showing the man how disruptive he could make the evening, but stopped himself. He really wanted that iPhone. He couldn’t wait to see the looks on the other men’s faces when he pulled it out for the first time. He’d make sure it was spotless then.
“Fine,” Tarabi said reluctantly, “two days. If I do not hear from you by then, I will come back, and I won’t knock.”
“Yes, yes, I understand,” the man said, “goodnight, Tarabi.”
The door shut and Tarabi stalked off, his shoulders hunched with slight defeat.
The man inside waited until he was sure Tarabi was gone, and then turned and hurried over to a work bench on the far wall of the hut. His wife and children watched him as he undraped the bench to reveal a bank of computer monitors in various states of repair and disrepair. He pulled a box out from under the bench and searched until he found the right cord, plugging it into a desktop tower.
“Finish eating,” the man commanded his family, and they all turned back to their almost forgotten meal, sneaking glances here and there, as the man worked.
He brought up a program similar to iTunes. After a couple of minutes, he’d stripped off and copied everything from the iPhone. He then set it to reset and put it aside as he looked at the files he’d obtained. He shook his head as he scanned through the pictures of a white man and his family, the ship he had worked on, and other various aspects of his life. He was about to delete the files, then saw one was not a still, but a video.
The video came to life and he had to turn the volume down on his computer as Abshir’s voice echoed about the hut. He didn’t even notice his family crowding around him as he watched the video again and again, stunned at what he saw.
Mega is available from Amazon here