Mount Misery

by Angelo Peluso

  What made this altered species so much more of a potential hazard to humans than sharks was the frequency with which they came into contact with people. While their range was worldwide, they frequently remained in areas from Nova Scotia to Florida and readily mingled with bathers, swimmers, and surfers throughout their entire range. There are numerous annual encounters where fingers, ears, and toes are bitten, sometimes bitten completely off by juvenile fish of two to three pounds. Very often those instances were mistakenly attributed to small bluefish swimming in massive schools near inshore beaches. The sixty-, eighty-, and hundred-pound adult mutants were nothing less than brutal killers when they turned on to feed.

  When these killers were young, they would travel in small schools up and down the East Coast. One year when the school reached the popular beaches of the Garden State, it came upon an equally large school of small menhaden or bunker. They fed in a frenzied blitz, tearing, ripping, and shredding the prey. They fed until their stomachs were full and then regurgitated their kill, only to continue the feeding and killing spree. When the predators and their prey reached a popular New Jersey shore community, an unfortunate swimmer found herself in the midst of the frenzy. The fish mistook her silver earrings for the flashes made by fleeing bait. They tore indiscriminately at the earrings and succeeded in biting off the woman’s two ears. The carnage continued farther up the Jersey shore. At one point, the school moved in off-beach as panicked bunker leapt out of the water onto the sand to escape the snapping jaws of their pursuers. From within the chaotic fury, the creatures corralled the bunker in an attempt to prevent the prey from escaping. The killers jumped from the water, some landing well beyond the high water mark; jaws snapped, still trying to kill their victims, even as they themselves wriggled back to the safety of the ocean. Kill at all costs, even at the risk of being stranded on a beach and suffocating. Nowhere else in the natural world does that scenario play out in quite the same way.

  The massive body of creatures then traveled farther east and settled in for a while off Staten Island. There, they continued to ravage juvenile bunker and each other; these fish have no problem eating their own. The feeding chaos attracted the attention of sharks that moved into the fray. It was always the sharks that received public attention, allowing the mutants to sneak under the radar and remain unmolested by humans.

  As is consistent with the hierarchy of the food chain, the bigger fish and mammals eat smaller species. Predatory fish typically swim in schools of similarly sized specimens. This creates a level playing field with respect to feeding tendencies, and works to prevent cannibalism among equals, but some species like these killers will readily cannibalize those of their species lower on the size ladder. That was the situation offshore of the Gateway National Park in Brooklyn, New York. The mutants ravaged their smaller kin. Unlike the predation behavior of other species such as sailfish that employ a planned herding method to feed, an all-out feeding frenzy is pure chaotic madness with fish striking out at anything that moves. These freaks killed and fed upon their lesser relatives. They then regurgitated the fresh meal so they could continue to feed their insatiable appetites. Creatures like these are cursed with a wanton lust for slaughter. They are cannibals and they are merciless. The odds of human encounters are astronomically greater than the potential for meeting a shark. Therefore, the odds of humans being killed by a chance meeting with these mutant fish were also extraordinarily high. Their predatory behavior this summer along the north shore beaches of Long Island had already accounted for more deaths than nationwide shark attacks. These killers were only just getting started.

  CHAPTER 19

  “This damn place is always packed. Between the regulars and the holiday tourists, we’ll be lucky to find a parking spot.”

  “What do you expect?” Katie said. “They’ve got great burgers and the Yankees are playing the Red Sox. There probably isn’t a gin mill from Jersey to Maine that’s not stuffed to the gills right now.”

  “Look! There’s a guy stumbling to his car. Quick, step on it before that old lady in the beemer convertible beats us to the spot.”

  Katie hit the accelerator pedal and squealed into the parking space.

  “Grandma flipped you the bird.”

  “Boston fan.”

  “Better hope Grandma isn’t packin’ a Glock. You know how tough they can be!”

  Once inside Grumpies, the hostess ushered Katie and Nick to a small back room where the captain’s cabal was deep in discussion about the effects of ethanol on fuel injectors of the newer four-stroke engines. Captain Bassonet was in the middle of explaining that ethanol will eat your gas tank. “Throw up all the shit into the fuel injectors and stop you dead in your tracks. The guys at Sea Haul have been having a banner year towing disabled boats back to port.”

  Captain Valerie Russo was listening intently since she had just experienced a similar problem, but as she looked away from Bassonet, she spotted Katie. “How ya doin’ sista’? Been a long time. You’re looking good. Life must be treating you well. Who’s your sidekick?”

  “Hi. This is my business associate, Nick Tanner. He is the head ichthyologist at the marine fisheries bureau.”

  “Nice, a fish dude,” Valerie said.

  The group exchanged pleasantries and once Katie’s and Nick’s drinks arrived, Rick closed the door to the private room. “The nature of this discussion is not one we want out in public quite yet. Right, Katie?”

  “Have you told the group anything yet?”

  “Figured I’d wait for you to get here. You know, 007 stuff.”

  The group laughed a nervous laugh. They had heard all the rumors about the happenings in the Sound but nothing yet concrete or official, and they expected this meeting to enlighten them.

  “Thank you all for coming. I guess I should start by saying we have recently been challenged by a number of unusual events that have taken place in and around parts of the central Sound that have warranted investigation by the Marine Fisheries Bureau of Fish and Game and local police authorities. By all accounts, these happenings appear to be separate and distinct anomalies but there are also some very odd coincidences.”

  Katie knew she wouldn’t be able to bullshit this group one bit. They were too water savvy and collectively they knew the local marine species almost as well as she did.

  Captain Robinetti, the ex-school teacher, raised his hand. “Does this have anything to do with the recent deaths and disappearances we have been hearing about?”

  “It may. There is forensic evidence linking a few of those tragic events to some sort of marine animal species. Nick and I have evaluated whatever evidence has surfaced and there are some common threads and connections but we can’t at this point render a final opinion.”

  Valerie spoke next. “I’ve been up to my eyeballs in charters lately and have not been keeping up on current events. Maybe I’ve missed something. I read about the Smith’s Bay and Boulder Point deaths, but what else is going on out there?”

  “That’s probably a good place to start, Val, especially if others are not familiar with the total extent of recent developments. Less than a week ago, some body parts washed up on the beach in Smith’s Bay. That made the headlines and I’m sure all of you are aware of that incident. Farther east, we had two migrant workers and a couple dogs mysteriously disappear out by Plover Dunes. During that same period of time, there were a number of odd sightings and incidents taking place on the Sound. All I can tell you at this point is that it appears as if those situations may have involved a large, unknown species of fish or other creature.”

  “Are you saying that you think fish may have killed those folks, and that fish had something to do with the other disappearances?” Captain Bassonet said.

  “That is not an easy question to answer, Sandy. We’ve found bite marks but we do not know if those wounds were inflicted postmortem.”

  “This is some heavy shit,” Captain Sully interjected. “If you had to venture a guess, Katie, what kind of
fish would you say did it?”

  “The nature of the wounds and the bite profiles do not at all match those of any shark species. No marine mammal did this either.”

  Sully pressed. “Well then, what do those bite marks match?”

  Jack Connors was seated at the far end of the table directly facing Katie. He sensed a bit of tension brewing and joined the discussion. “Listen folks, I think I may have had a run in with whatever it is we are talking about here. About a week and a half before the first death, I spotted what I thought to be bluefin tuna chasing schools of false albacore out in the middle. To some of you younger captains that may seem a bit far-fetched but small bluefin have been known—on rare occasions—to briefly venture into the Sound. I tried to catch one but didn’t have any luck. Earlier this week, I encountered what appeared to be the same school of fish and accidentally hooked one that ate a twenty-pound bass I was reeling in. When all was said and done, I landed only ten pounds of fish. The bass was bitten in half.”

  “Sounds like sharks to me,” young Captain Marrone chimed in.

  “As I said,” Katie replied, “we are pretty sure it wasn’t a shark.”

  “And as I asked before,” Sully repeated, “How do you know that? What do the bite marks match?”

  Katie was in a bit of a box. Nick once again took the reins and fielded the question.

  “Sully, Katie and I have done extensive work on the limited bite evidence available to us. We’ve excluded entire classes of fish that would have had the physical attributes and temperament to engage in this type of unusual and violent behavior. All the usual suspects have been eliminated, even some of the tropical species that may have ventured up north on warmer ocean currents. We know that no striped bass is biting a person in two. I have been around fish all my life and have studied them in the world’s five oceans and I can tell you what didn’t do this. Where Katie and I are struggling a bit right now is with what actually did. Odds are it is some fish-like creature.”

  “I have to partner up with Sully here,” Captain Robinetti said. “It would seem to me that unless we are looking at a totally new species of fish, the bite marks have to match to something we know. And if you aren’t considering some tropical visitor then whatever did this has to be indigenous to the area. Right?”

  Katie answered, “Al, you are perfectly correct. We do have an idea. But it is a far-fetched one and not yet provable. That is where we need your help to get further evidence. Based on the computer modeling Nick and I did of the bite marks, the closest species match is to some form of aberrant fish.”

  “So you are telling us that some weirdo fish may be responsible for two deaths and unknown disappearances?” Captain Robinetti shook his head in disbelief.

  “That ain’t far-fetched, that’s far out,” Sully added.

  “As I said, we don’t know for sure but the configuration of the jaws, teeth, and bite marks all point to a species that we can’t identify.”

  “Not for nothing, Katie, but are we talking about normal-sized fish or some super-sized version?” Sandy Bassonet said.

  “This is where things get real sticky, folks, and what I’m about to say may be beyond comprehension but it’s what Nick and I have been struggling with. If our calculations of the bite marks are correct and if the killers are indeed some kind of fish, then the fish that attacked the Smith’s Bay man ranged in size from sixty to one hundred pounds. But I have to stress, we really don’t know what these creature are.”

  The room went dead silent at Katie’s revelation.

  “Sweet Jesus!” Sandy proclaimed, “I can’t get my head around that one. One-hundred-pound killer fish in the Sound? Holy shit! No need to be greedy, I’ll take a sixty. If I can bag one of those puppies that will be my ticket to guiding fame and fortune.”

  “Not so fast, Sandy,” Rick said. “We really need to keep this under wraps for now. This is speculation, not yet fact. If Katie and Nick are right, we could have panic on our hands all around Long Island. Something in the water could be killing people.”

  The group was too stunned to respond.

  Captain Joey Marrone finally spoke. “Listen, I haven’t been at this game as long as many of you have but I’ve caught my share of big fish since I started guiding. I have a ton of double-digit bass and bluefish to my credit and for many of my clients. Biggest bluefish were about twenty pounds. Those fish beat the shit out of us. Granted, I fish light tackle but blues that big can tear up tackle like they’re nothing more than play toys. How the hell are we supposed to catch one of these monster things for you to examine?”

  “Stand-up tuna gear,” Jack answered. “Or you might want to try some shark gear. This ain’t about sport, it’s about getting one of these things to the boat. And it ain’t going to be easy. Based on what I’ve seen, I may even consider a harpoon.”

  “Look, I don’t want anyone getting hurt in all this,” Katie said. “I really just need some extra eyes out there to see if we can ID one of these creatures. If we can get a piece of fin for DNA analysis that would be more than enough. A video would be great. And if one can be safely landed that would be the icing on the cake. I know Rick has a plan of attack that he wants to talk over with you so if there are no further questions, I’ll turn this over to him.”

  Al Robinetti raised his hand again. He wasn’t through grilling Katie.

  “Yes.”

  “I realize this isn’t an easy situation for you, but the pieces of this puzzle don’t fit. If we accept your suspicion that the killer may be a fish, are we talking one rogue fish, a few fish, or an entire school? And how the hell do fish in the Sound get to be as big as your estimates? We all know how ferocious even small bluefish can be. I can’t comprehend the thought of a school of some eighty-pound mutant and unknown species marauding its way through the Long Island Sound. They’d wreak more havoc than sharks or barracuda. That’s a tough pill to swallow.”

  “It is for me, too. But remember, our only solid evidence up to this point is a set of bite marks from one victim that appear to match the jaw configuration of a fish. The second victim had an entire arm severed. Were the culprits the same? We don’t know. We don’t even know if the other incidences and disappearances are even related. But what I can say is that whatever is doing this most likely has fins, and gills and swims.”

  Jack spoke. “I’ve seen them, whatever they are. They are big, they are fast, and they are smart. I say ‘they’ because what I’ve seen was more than one. I’m not saying a school of thousands of fish like we see with small cocktail blues but there surely were dozens of them. I don’t know, maybe even hundreds. There aren’t many creatures out there that can run down little tunny. I only know of a few. We’ve eliminated sharks and big bluefin tuna ain’t biting no human in half, so where does that leave us? I think between us we gotta try to get a profile of these things for Katie and Nick. It’s that simple.”

  Jack’s comments presented an ideal point for Rick to re-enter the discussion to present his game plan to the group.

  “I totally agree with you, Jack. Your collective experiences on the water will prove invaluable with all this. I also want to reinforce what Katie said: We don’t want anyone doing anything foolish that could result in an injury or worse. We believe we are dealing with a fish and each of us, me included, feels we can conquer anything that swims. That’s just the way fisherman are built. And you all know that is true. We are usually very well prepared for whatever it is we fish for, sharks and big game fish included. But the difference with this situation is that we don’t yet know what we are facing off against. We don’t know what they are capable of. Just imagine a pack of rogue tarpon with a mouth full of large, razor-sharp teeth and a real bad attitude. So the plan is really to observe and report. You don’t need to vary from your normal fishing patterns. I just want you to be aware of what we may be up against and to stay alert to any situations that might warrant further investigation.”

  “Am I hearing you right, Rick? You don’t w
ant us to catch one of these suckers?” Captain Bassonet asked.

  “I’m saying I don’t want you to put yourself in harm’s way to catch one until we know what the hell it is and how it behaves. If you do get one the end of your line, use all good judgment and caution. Jack’s already told us he hooked into one of these fish and couldn’t land it. That should be a warning to us all. A good photo at this point is as good as the fish itself. And as Katie said, a piece of fin for DNA analysis will tell all of the story we need to know, if it can be obtained safely.”

  “So what’s your plan, Captain?” Robinetti said.

  “The plan is simple defensive-zone coverage. Like in football. In your case, you patrol Eagles Neck to Sandhill Point. Don’t vary your typical game plan. Just be aware of your surroundings and the fact that the fish we are looking for might be in your zone. Chances are with all the bonito, albies, and small bluefish that are around to the west, these bad boys might pay you a visit.

  “That’s the drill, Al,” Rick continued. “I’ll make the rest of this short and sweet. Working from west to east, Joey, you cover the zone from Sandhill Point to Port Rosey Harbor; Valerie, you take it east from there to Plover Dunes; Sandy, you run the mid-range depths to the east and west of Mount Misery Ledge; Jack, you take the Middle Grounds and Stratford Shoal; Sully, your two party boats run their normal routes along the triangle from Can 11 to Can 9 and then out to the middle. Katie and I will be on my boat. Our plan is to play free safety and range throughout all the zones. We will keep in touch on the VHF, channel 68, since a lot of boats will be out this weekend and the chatter might be of value to us. We just might hear something revealing. You all know how much bullshit there is on 68. Guys just can’t wait to report a catch or a sighting. We can chat on channel 19, but if we need some privacy, use the cell phone. Just say, I got a heads up, and dial it down. Is everybody in? Any questions?”