“Why not?”
“It’s being on land, I think. It feels so good, I want to be awake, do something. Oh, I really wanted to eat. I had two sandwiches earlier. Your kitchen is great, I mean, great.” He’d been so shocked that he wasn’t alone that he’d babbled. Plus, he didn’t like seeing Sir Mallory this way, so down.
To his surprise, Sir Mallory turned to him with a slight grin. “You do have a rejuvenating spirit, don’t you?”
“What do you mean?” He was puzzled.
“You bounce back, I think some might say. You see the positive, you don’t let the hard things, the bad things change who you are. Do you know how rare that is?”
Will shook his head, wondering if he were really that way.
“I’m not surprised you made your way here, although I did lock the door behind me. Come here; stand by me and look down.”
Will did, and saw the smaller of the Megalodons, the second one they’d caught, the one who’d taken Nancy. It swam about fifty feet below the surface, idle, seemingly content, its dorsal fin inches from the surface. “Is it asleep?”
“It still has the drugs in its system. They will wear off tomorrow. Don’t worry, we have smaller doses if things get out of hand. And these walls, they are enforced with steel bars, all around.”
“Wow.”
“I’m pleased you approve.” He grinned. “You have a way about you. Something unusual, something so casual that being around you makes me feel young, free. Thank you.”
He didn’t know what to say, so he looked down at the Megalodon again, watching its swishing, giant white tail. Back and forth, so slowly, back and forth.
Its mouth with those teeth were below it, out of sight. Mouth closed? Most likely. Will knew it only opened its mouth when it fed. Knew it.
There were other, bigger fish swimming in the water enclosure, too. “What are those for?”
“We’ll feed them to the Megalodons. Freed the giants from the nets as soon as they were locked up. They haven’t come out of their stupors enough to feed, but they will. That’s the first thing they’ll do. We’ll be watching. There’s a deep underwater current into this cave, and we widened the bars enough for the natural habitat wildlife to come through for the Megalodons to feed on. And we’ll watch.” He pointed around the ceilings of the room. Cameras were mounted everywhere. Then he pointed below the water near the lights. More cameras. Underwater, special cameras.
He continued. “We have a study with monitors on the entire enclosure on the other side of the compound. It is always manned by two people, sometimes more.”
“Why?”
“Safety. These are deadly, ancient, and we know nothing of their methods or ways. We have to take utmost care or what happened to Nancy and Caleb might happen again.” His face fell. “I regret that. I won’t let it happen again.”
“You tried to stop her.”
He nodded, but stared down at the sedated Megalodon.
“Caleb was nowhere near you. That was just pure accident, the ocean, the force…”
“You’re right, I know you are. It still eats at me.” He looked at Will. “May I ask you a personal question?”
“Sure.”
“How did your mother die?”
He paused. Not what he expected. “She had a brain tumor. She died fast.”
“How old were you?”
“Two.”
“You don’t remember her at all?”
“No.”
He smiled. “Thank you for being so honest and forthcoming. I have one more question. Were your mother and father deeply in love?”
Will nodded his head, meeting Sir Mallory’s eyes. “Everyone tells me they were. Dad’s never dated anyone else.”
“To be so in love, both of you together. A team, comrades for life.” He patted Will’s head. “Now, before we freeze, let’s go to our bedchambers. Sleep is important. Dreams are a must. They cure everything, just like a glass of ice water.”
Chapter 9
Will’s belly rumbled so loudly that it woke him from his satin sheets and he bolted upright. He’d fallen asleep in his boating clothes. Better clean up fast so he could eat as soon as possible. He was even hungrier than the night before.
He had planned to go straight to the kitchen, but everybody was in the main black marble hall. Eating! There were three men in white coats serving them off of silver platters.
“Willie!” Ellen called, waving at him. She sat at the base of a huge flaming hearth Will hadn’t noticed the night before. Probably because it was made of black marble.
He joined her. “They bring it to me? Anything?”
“You’ll want everything.” She smiled, but her eyes didn’t match. Her cheeks were hollow.
Most sat in twos and threes, but Lady Katherine ate alone in a chair with one table.
The siblings ate in silence, Will wondering where his dad and Sir Mallory were.
At last, the pair of them emerged from the only door Will hadn’t probed the night before. Sir Mallory seemed distressed, and Will’s dad downright pissed.
“What is it?” Don Mack asked.
“Storm,” was all Will’s father said.
Sir Mallory waved his hands around. “No transmissions with the weather like this. We can’t get or send a signal.”
“How bad is the storm?” one of Nancy’s girls asked.
“It’ll last a few days, fierce and unyielding,” said Will’s dad.
Sir Mallory rested his hand on Will’s father’s shoulder. “We’ll wait it out. We’ve come a long way, all of us, from around the world. But, for now, I’d like to invite all of you to come see them, the Megalodons. They are more alert, and we expect them to start feeding in the next couple hours. Do come.” He glanced at Will’s dad, who rubbed his tired face. Will got the feeling his father still hadn’t slept.
Everybody rose at once, slipping on heavy coats, but Sir Mallory told them just normal cold weather clothing would be just fine. Will remembered how the enclosure had felt the night before, cool, not frigid like the raging storm outside. Sir Mallory must have some kind of heating system in place for it.
Sir Mallory’s people, Will’s father and crew, and Will and Ellen all filed through the wooden door with the brass doorknob and down the cave hall. Will couldn’t wait to see them again, excitement hitting him anew. He knew they’d all be safe from the monstrous sharks; he’d already seen the safety measures. Bars in the cave walls, for crying out loud.
Once all of them were in the enclosure, they lined up in the walkway, faces pointed down through the thick steel bars to the water. Daylight spilled in, dark and gloomy from the blizzard, from beyond the barred cave entrance. Will noticed the green-suited men at four different spots away from the rest of them in the enclosure, already having been there. They just wore their green suits now. Will thought they must be military. Each held a dart gun at the ready, loaded with zombie dust, Will assumed, just in case.
In case of what?
The two Megalodons swam in lazy circles around each other about thirty feet below the surface. They still seemed dazed to Will, but Sir Mallory had said it would be a couple hours before they were ready to begin feeding.
How much sea life would it take to feed both of these creatures? He couldn’t imagine there would ever be enough, but there were plenty of large fish in the water with them, seemingly unaware of the predators’ intentions whenever they stopped playing ring around the rosy.
Nobody spoke; they watched.
“I didn’t want to see them again,” Ellen said low in Will’s right ear.
“The danger is over,” he told her, confident.
“I don’t know how you can be so…so…so normal after last night. You saw what I saw. I tried to sleep, but kept waking up, seeing that poor woman with the red hair…and Caleb…” She turned her back on the sharks and put her head down.
“Hey, it’s okay.” Will tried to console her, putting a hand on her arm. “Last night was an accident, for bo
th Nancy and Caleb. No, it wasn’t supposed to happen that way, but it did, and we’re here, and this is just how it is. But nothing else bad is going to happen.”
She huffed and glared at him. “God, you sound like Dad. This happened and now we’re here and that’s that. No feelings, no thoughts, just look at the giant killer sharks.” She ran to the hall leading to the compound, leaving Will feeling stupid. He never knew the right thing to say.
“I still think we should keep the tetrodotoxin in their systems until the satellite signal comes back,” Will’s father said, breaking the hush of the group.
“Why the hell aren’t we?” Don Mack asked, his black, greasy hair a mess around his head. He hadn’t even bothered combing it when he left his room after sleeping, but such was Don Mack at his best.
“Too much tetrodotoxin might kill them. I explained this to Captain Miller,” Sir Mallory said. “They can asphyxiate and die if they are too sedated from the stuff. Their very hearts will stop.”
Lady Katherine pulled a camera out of her purse and started taking pictures of the sharks. “Now, my dear, we have your proof. On my camera.”
Sir Mallory put his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. “Tell me this doesn’t thrill you at least a little.”
Her mouth stayed tight as always, neither smiling nor frowning, making her impossible to read. “I’m just here because it was so important to you. I know we need the live feed, and I know they need to be active.”
“This is active enough,” Will’s father insisted, rubbing the black whip on his hip.
“They have to eat. Their sheer size! They must eat, and a lot, or they’ll grow weak, and fast,” Sir Mallory countered. “We have to at least let them get some normalcy back enough to feed. Captain Miller, you have been more than understanding, so I promise you that if they become too awfully aggressive, we’ll sedate them again. Just to a lesser degree than when we had to bring them to the island, to keep them from death.”
Will watched his father’s gaze following the bigger of the two giant sharks. He had circles under his brown eyes and hadn’t changed clothes at all in days. He usually took better care of himself on land, admittedly letting himself go a bit when he was sailing. It worried Will.
“Let’s go back,” said Lady Katherine. “I’m getting a chill and could use some tea. I’m sure we all could, don’t you think?”
“Yes, wonderful idea, Katty,” Sir Mallory said to her, and she turned and went the same way Ellen had gone, head held high, eyes cast down.
They all followed, Will leaving last with a glance around at the green-suited men and their dart guns. He hadn’t been ready to go, to stop watching the tamed monsters from an era long gone. They were true magic in a world where kids his age found magic in their fantasy video games.
Once in the main black marble room again, people settled down to rest and drink beverages of their choosing, brought to them from the men in white suits. Ellen was nowhere to be seen, and Will assumed she must have gone back to her room. He hated that the night before affected her so much. Couldn’t she see how amazing all this was, see past the misfortune and to the bigger picture?
He decided there wasn’t anything he could do at that point for Ellen, and he wanted to know what was behind the door he hadn’t checked out the night before. He approached it and knocked.
“Come on in,” a British accent called. James.
Will opened the door to a large, circular room full of monitors and tech equipment. James swiveled in his chair away from one screen showing a Megalodon circling and said, “Hello, young fellow. You’re a curious one. Sir Mallory told me you made it to the enclosure last night. Missed us in here, though. Did you shake the whole palace down but my nook of the woods?” Now that James wasn’t all covered up, Will saw he had red hair, pale skin, and a thin frame. He wore jeans and a sweater.
“How’d you know?”
“I’ve been in here since we arrived. Need a snooze soon, don’t you think?”
The other tech guy in the room yawned and said, “Double that. Kid, why don’t you take over for us?”
Will’s eyes widened. “I wouldn’t…I mean, I have no idea…”
They both chuckled. James said, “Just kidding, mate. Our relief duo should be taking over any minute. Why don’t you watch with them for a bit? Might learn something.”
Will doubted it. Machines weren’t his specialty, but come to think of it, Will didn’t have any specialties to speak of, anyway.
A man and a woman came in behind Will and the techies made jokes and traded shifts. Will faded out of the room and back to the main hall. Less people were there now. He didn’t see his father, so maybe his dad was actually getting sleep for the first time in three days. He hoped so. He wanted his dad to be in a better mood for this.
He felt awkward approaching any of the crew or Sir Mallory’s people, having never really talked to them before, and there was nobody in the room he could sit with to pass the time until the Megalodons fed. And that was certainly what he was waiting for.
Not even Don Mack showed his mug in the small group of people scattered around.
He wished he hadn’t ticked off Ellen.
Will sat by the fire and thought of what he could do. He knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to go watch the Megalodons regain their minds, even if it did take two hours. He could watch them forever. But in a room of adults, much different from the night before, he felt like he needed to ask permission to go to the enclosure. There simply was nobody to ask but Lady Katherine, and she made him uncomfortable. Still, the longer he sat by the fire thinking about how he was a few dozen yards away from prehistoric sharks, the more he got up the nerve to approach Lady Katherine.
She sat in the same small chair as earlier with a book. Will looked at the cover while waiting for her to notice him standing in front of her. It bore a red cardinal on a black background and the title She Walks Alone on it.
Just when he was losing his nerve, she said, “Yes?” without looking up. “What is it you need?”
“Ma’am, uh, Lady Katherine, can I go watch the Megalodons?”
She put her book facedown in her lap and squinted up at him. “My, you are tall for twelve. Jeffery sees himself in you, I assume, but I can’t imagine why.” She smiled. “He didn’t grow tall until he was fifteen, or so he says.”
Will fidgeted under her scrutiny, unsure if she was being nice or messing with him. He decided to wait and see what she said next, but she sat there staring for a long time. He kept his eyes down.
“No, you’re not really like him. You’re like your father.” She picked up the book with the cardinal on it and said, “I don’t see why not.”
“Wait, what do you mean?”
She put the book down again, tilted her head at him, and said, “Go on, watch the sharks. You need not my permission.” Back to the book.
He all but ran to the starfish-carved door and down the cave hall to the enclosure.
Once inside, the green-suited men all gave him nods, but none spoke to him. They kept alert eyes on the water.
Will sat down in front of the bars blocking him from the sharks and looked down into the water. They still swam in a yin-yang pattern with each other, but their tails seemed to swish with a little more fever. Their long, long white bodies arched and stretched around each other as though dancing a dance that should have been extinct with them. Will was mesmerized.
So enraptured was he that he forgot time, forgot about the deaths the night before, forgot the feeling that his father thought he was a weak kid who couldn’t sail without getting sick.
When the Megalodons swam higher in the water, Will thought nothing of it except to be enticed that he might see more details about them. They continued circling, but faster, tails whipping like storms every once in a while, making the surface of the water splash.
Will’s attention was pulled away when he noticed what looked like eight or nine huge fish swimming at lightning speed from the back of t
he enclosure to the bars at the entrance, skimming the surface and going around the Megalodons. But they were too slow.
The Megalodons had awakened.
The larger of the two lunged out of the circling formation, huge mouth gaping, giant teeth distorted by the disturbed waters. Its head came right out of the water, fish in its jaws, and Will fell back from the stench coming off its breath. It splashed back down into the water, blood spraying everywhere, including onto Will’s face. The smaller Megalodon took note; another thrust upward from this one, the foul odor filling the chamber when it clamped down on its prey at the surface. The fish stood no chance. It was demolished in a swallow. The shark didn’t even chew it.
Will sat back up, eyes wide with excitement, now ignoring the death scent that came with the creatures’ open maws. He watched as the pair decimated the small group of fish, and the lights in the water reflected red blood.
A green-suited man about forty yards away near the front of the enclosure yelled to the other men, “Be ready.”
Ready for what?
Those smaller fish really weren’t a meal for the giant aquatic beasts, and they became agitated, or so it seemed to Will. They swam all around now, to the front and then to the back, separate from one another. Will couldn’t keep up with them. They were feeding on deeper sea life, and the water just got redder, murkier, until Will couldn’t see the Megalodons at all anymore.
He stood up and leaned his forehead against the bars, looking hard into the water to see something, anything.
A long, thin white fin came up out of the blood-filled water, but beyond that, Will couldn’t see the rest of the beast. He held his breath, unable to move, unable to breathe as the fin came closer to him, not too fast, not too slow, red dripping down the perfect white. The surface of the water was ten feet lower than the base of the enclosure walkway, but the dorsal fin rose high into the enclosure, with light from the open side of the cave making it glisten and shine like a knife.
He was safe; the shark couldn’t get him behind these bars. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the same green-suited man coming toward him, but right then, the Megalodon whose fin had been coming surged out from under the surface of the bloody water, mouth gaping, jagged rows of sharp, huge teeth filling Will’s entire vision until the shark smashed into the bars right in front of Will.
Megalodon: Apex Predator Page 6