Meg_A Novel of Deep Terror
Page 31
Gasping deep breaths, Jonas rested against the damaged chassis, making sure the igniter hose was still connected to the hydrogen tank. He must have been anatomically close to the Megalodon’s pectoral fins because he could feel the shark swimming, its side-to-side action orientating him to his surroundings. Turning to his left faced him forward in the direction of the Meg’s head, which meant the esophageal opening had to be close.
Using his light, he located the sphincter designed to prevent food from escaping the stomach.
The idea came to him in an instant. Slogging through the refuse, Jonas pocketed the tooth, then reached beneath the escape pod and gripped the mini-sub’s mechanical arm, using it as a handle to drag the Abyss Glider through the waist-deep muck to the esophageal valve.
Jonas tried to push his hand through to the other side but the muscle was far too strong, the seal too tight. He checked the pony bottle—only four minutes of air remained.
Somehow he had to pierce the gauntlet…
Reaching again for the Megalodon tooth, he used the serrated edges like a saw, the million-year-old fossil slicing surprisingly easily into the soft tissue.
· · ·
Terry surfaced, shocked to see the trawler drifting sixty feet away from her. Having relinquished her lifejacket, it was all she could do to free herself of the wet wool blanket and stay afloat.
Andre Dupont was yelling at her. “… engine is down, you have to swim!”
· · ·
Mac was halfway between the yacht and the fishing trawler when he saw the wave rolling toward him, the triangular white dorsal fin appearing a moment later.
He stopped swimming, the intense pounding in his chest accompanied by the deep vibrations of the Coast Guard helicopter approaching from the south.
“Okay, Lord, how’s this for a deal: You rescue my sorry ass and I promise to ease up on the booze.”
The wake rolled over Mac’s head. He floundered underwater, fighting through the powerful current—and then he was free.
· · ·
The Meg wasn’t interested in the small creature bleeding along the surface; it was obviously wounded and required little effort to devour. What had lured it back to the yacht was the sound of the Magnate’s pumps.
Shooting past Mac, the Megalodon circled the sinking ship.
Bud stood in the Magnate’s bow, the gun in one hand, a bottle of vodka in the other. He took a long draught, tossed the pint in the sea, then aimed at the towering fin and fired, blasting two bloody holes into the albino hide.
“How do you like that, shark? You want more? I’ve got two full clips; come and get it!” Holding the handgun steady with two hands, he fired round after round into the beast’s submerged back.
It took a few passes for the Megalodon’s senses to recognize the familiar pattern of electrical impulses discharged by the yacht. Associating the strange creature with the excruciating pain that had cost it its eyesight, the predator went deep, heading back to the fishing trawler.
Believing the monster was preparing to ram his yacht, Bud Harris panicked.
Drunk, depressed, and suddenly quite terrified of meeting the same horrible fate as his lover, the millionaire shoved the gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger, blasting the back of his head open like a ripe watermelon.
· · ·
Mac saw the returning wake and knew he was a dead man. “Okay, God, you win. How about this—no more sleeping with married women.”
He jumped as the harness fell on top of him. Looking up, he was amazed to see the rescue chopper’s silhouette hovering eighty feet overhead. Slipping his right arm in the harness, he frantically signaled to the crew to pull him out of the water.
He rose from the sea as the wake passed beneath him, his presence disappearing from the Megalodon’s senses.
A minute later he was helped inside the open bay doors into the helicopter.
A cute brunette in her mid-thirties stood by with a medical kit. “Lieutenant Phyllis Jelley, I’m a medic. It looks like you’ve been shot.”
“Feels like it too.”
“Lie down, please. Joe, I’ll need some towels and an antibiotic.”
“Is this a test?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re married, right?”
“Please sit down; you’re bleeding all over the cabin.”
“Maybe you’d better just leave the bullet in me.”
· · ·
Down to his last seconds of air, with the beam of his flashlight fading fast, Jonas struggled to complete the last side of the triangular incision. Bearing down on the fossil, he sawed through the tough muscle and pushed his hand through the opening, releasing a current of seawater.
Slogging through waist-deep refuse, he fought his way back to the tail section of the Abyss Glider and forcibly shoved the mini-sub’s nose into the hole, his effort aided by the slime coating the exterior of the craft. He managed to push the vessel halfway inside the severed muscle when everything started spinning.
You’re out of air. Get inside the pod before you black out.
He dropped to his knees and yanked open the hatch, crawling inside the glider as the Megalodon suddenly descended.
The Abyss Glider rolled into the shark’s esophagus clear up to its tail fin before jamming in place.
Jonas tore the mask from his face, sucking in deep breaths of air as he sealed the hatch. His bio-suit reeked of whale oil, the rubber shredding in his gloved hands from the prolonged exposure with the acidic stomach bile. Quickly, he climbed into the glider’s harness, then looked out the nosecone, shocked by the new view.
The Megalodon’s gullet was dark, save for a pair of fluttering deep blue gill slits and the beckoning sliver of daylight outside of the shark’s open mouth.
Jonas felt the mini-sub sliding backwards into the stomach as the Megalodon rose once more on a near-vertical ascent.
Reaching for the emergency lever, he ignited the hydrogen.
· · ·
The fishing trawler’s captain had just finished replacing the last of the engine’s shattered spark plugs when his first mate yelled out from his post at the fish finder.
“Skipper, it’s back! Four hundred and thirty feet and rising like a missile straight for our hull.”
“Restart engines—all ahead full.”
“What about the girl?”
· · ·
Terry Tanaka was twenty feet from the fishing trawler when the boat’s engines suddenly growled to life. Putting her head down in the water, she swam as hard as she could—her eyes widening underwater as a fireball ignited from the depths.
· · ·
The igniter switch sparked the remaining fuel in the Abyss Glider’s hydrogen tank, the flame in turn igniting the flammable whale oil within the Megalodon’s stomach.
Jonas held on as the mini-sub shot through the darkness like a bullet before coming to a sudden halt between the creature’s partially-opened jaws, the points of its upper and lower rows of teeth raking deep tracks in the escape pod’s thick Lexan glass.
A split-second later the female regurgitated the charred remains of its stomach, expelling the scorched organ and the Abyss Glider into the sea. The ballooning black mass burst into a bright crimson lake of blood.
“Thank you, God, thank you… ” His body trembled with relief as the pod continued to rise away from the dead beast, the numbers on his depth gauge dropping steadily.
Cold sweat dripped down his skull and the back of his neck. Jonas rolled over to look at the sun-drenched aqua-blue surface three hundred and twenty feet above him.
Then he noticed the deep grooves in the Lexan—the incisions created by the monster’s teeth were leaking seawater into the escape pod.
· · ·
The fishing trawler circled Terry, its captain forced by the crew of the Kiku to return. Alphonse DeMarco tossed her a life ring. She reached for it as gouts of blood began pooling around her body.
“Terry—”
“He’s still alive?”
“Get me a mask and snorkel.”
“Terry—”
“Just do it!”
DeMarco located a snorkel and mask and tossed them to her. She pulled the mask over her head, positioned the mouthpiece, and peered below.
· · ·
The escape pod’s ascent slowed as it took on water.
Below, the Megalodon continued sinking into the depths, trailing a river of blood. Jonas watched until the albino creature disappeared from view. He had escaped certain death twice, but to survive this day he still needed one more miracle.
Physically and mentally drained, lying in three inches of water, Jonas held his palms to as many leaks as he could. He stared helplessly at the depth gauge as it dropped below 270-feet, his mind calculating.
You’re rising about forty feet per minute with three inches of water, adding another inch every minute or so. Got to at least make it within a hundred feet of the surface before you abandon ship… a hundred and twenty feet at the most. If you lose ten feet of rise with every inch of water…
“I’m not going to make it.”
Twisting around to face the escape hatch, Jonas began breathing slowly and deeply, attempting to expand his lungs as much as he could. He removed his rubber boots, then, locating the face mask, he detached the empty pony bottle.
He glanced over his shoulder as the water rose past his chest.
One-ninety… one-eighty… one seventy…
The pod slowed, barely rising.
Don’t let it start to sink. Anticipate and get out quickly.
· · ·
“Terry, get out of the damn water now,” DeMarco demanded.
Terry ignored him, keeping her face down in the water, breathing through the snorkel. The Megalodon was dead, that she knew. But her heart told her that Jonas had survived.
Andre Dupont felt dazed and depressed. All his efforts to save the creature—the lobbying, the expense—all for naught. The greatest predator of all time… lost.
“I could have died today,” he whispered to himself. “For what? To save my killer? What would the Cousteau Society tell my wife and children? ‘Ah, Marie, you should be a proud widow. Andre died in the most noble of fashions, giving his life to feed an endangered species.’”
Dupont stood, stretching his sore back. The morning sun reflected sparks on the water.
That was when he sighted the fin.
“Hey… get the girl out of the water!”
· · ·
The bone-chilling Pacific reached Jonas’s chest, the additional weight slowing the mini-sub’s ascent to a crawl. He shivered in his bio-suit, afraid to move, then glanced at the depth gauge as the pod stopped rising.
One hundred and forty-two feet.
Inhaling a deep breath, he fixed the mask to his face and twisted open the rear hatch.
· · ·
The two-foot-tall dorsal fin circled the fishing trawler. Eleven men as one screamed for Terry to get out of the water.
“That’s a Great White,” yelled Philip Prousnitzer. “Terry, it’s homing in on the Meg’s blood, you need to come aboard!”
The trawler’s captain went below and returned with a shotgun. The dorsal fin circled the girl. The captain took aim.
Terry surface dived, disappearing below the waves.
The shark followed.
· · ·
It had taken precious seconds to pull himself free of the sinking pod. Starting toward the surface, he took long, easy strokes and kicks, counting backwards by three from a hundred and fifty. The pressure in his ears and sinus cavity was overwhelming, and he realized he could not pinch his nose to equalize while wearing the face mask.
Pulling it off, he squeezed his nostrils together and blew air into his cheeks, the pressure easing his pain.
By the time he reached a hundred and twenty feet, Jonas’s muscles felt like lead.
Just a walk in the park…
Eighty feet—he could no longer feel his legs.
Don’t… stop.
At fifty-eight feet, the periphery of his vision became clouded by darkness.
At thirty-three feet, Jonas Taylor lost consciousness.
· · ·
Terry grabbed her man by his right wrist as his body began slipping back into the depths. She kicked hard, pulling water with her left hand, using her right hand to pinch Jonas’s nose and keep his mouth clamped shut. She felt the shark circling closer and swam harder.
As her face broke the surface, Terry pulled Jonas’s head free of the ocean. His lips were blue and he wasn’t breathing. She attempted to level him out to blow a few precious mouthfuls of air into his mouth as the dorsal fin surfaced eight feet away, the juvenile predator over-stimulated by all the blood in the water.
The fishing boat shot past Terry, its trawl net scooping up the shark as it launched its attack on Jonas.
Terry waited anxiously for the boat to circle back. Ninety long seconds passed before it returned; Jonas’s pulse dangerously weak.
I’m losing him…
A minute later they were sprawled out on deck, Terry giving him more effective breaths without any results.
She pulled away as Jonas vomited a lungful of seawater. His blue complexion faded to white, then red.
Terry was teary-eyed and all smiles as he opened his eyes. “Are you all right?”
He nodded. “Just… a bad case of indigestion.”
He winced as invisible pins and needles stabbed his blood vessels.
“Jonas?”
“Nitrogen bubbles… ”
“Try not to move. We’re en route to the lagoon. We have a recompression chamber on site.”
· · ·
The young shark thrashed back and forth within the trawl net. Andre Dupont followed the captain into the pilothouse, attempting to reason with him. “Captain, you can’t kill it,” the Frenchman pleaded. “Great Whites are a protected species.”
“Look at my boat. She’s busted up. I’ll kill this fish, stuff it, and sell it to some tourist from New York for twenty thousand. You gonna give me that much, Frenchy?”
Dupont rolled his eyes. “Good luck in prison.”
Ten minutes later they arrived in the deep canyon waters located just outside the Tanaka Lagoon’s canal entry. The giant steel doors had been left open for the Kiku.
The trawler entered the canal.
· · ·
Jonas moaned, his head in Terry’s lap. Every joint in his body was on fire, his muscles consumed with stabbing pains. “How much farther?”
“We’re entering the canal. Medical personnel are waiting for us. We’ll have you in a hyperbaric chamber in three minutes.”
He looked up at her. “I love you.”
“And I love you.”
The pain increased; he was dizzy, nauseous. His felt as if the Megalodon’s teeth were biting down on his back.
“Let me sit up.”
Masao Tanaka was waiting by the north bleachers, his head heavily bandaged. Mac was there, too, leaning on crutches.
Terry saw her father and waved.
Tears of joy flowed down Masao’s cheeks as he waved back, grateful his daughter was safe.
Doubled over in pain, Jonas focused on what appeared to be a juvenile Great White being towed in a trawl net along the port side of the stern. The shark was small, seven feet long, weighing between three and four hundred pounds. It was struggling fiercely, twisting within the confines of the fishing net, the action serving to wash the dead Meg’s blood from the female pup’s hide.
Jesus… it’s an albino.
For a brief moment, man and beast regarded one another, the creature staring at Jonas with its soulless gray-blue eyes, Jonas marveling at the presence of the Megalodon offspring. He closed his eyes at the irony and smiled.
And then the pain became
overwhelming and the submersible pilot lost consciousness as two paramedics loaded him onto a gurney.
The Trench
If you are enjoying Steve Alten's Meg tales, there are more. Here's an excerpt from The Trench.
RETIRED NAVY DEEP-SEA PILOT Barry Leace wiped the sweat from his palms as he checked the depth indicator of the Proteus. Thirty-four thousand, seven hundred and eighteen feet. Nearly seven miles of water above their heads, sixteen thousand pounds per square inch of water pressure surrounding them.
Just stop thinking about it…
Barry glanced around the tight quarters of the four-man submersible. Racks of computer monitors, electronics, and a bewildering jungle of wires filled the pressurized hull. The watertight coffin barely had room for its crew.
Below the navigation console, team leader Ellis Richards and his assistant, Linda Heron, stared out through tiny portholes in the floor of the Proteus’s bow.
“See those animals with the furry green pelt?” Linda asked.
“Those are Pompeii worms, capable of withstanding temperature variations from twenty-two degrees all the way to eighty-one degrees Celsius. The hydrothermal vents supply sulfur for bacteria to live off, which in turn are digested by the tube worms—”
“Linda—”
“—which are a source of food to all sorts of bizarre-looking life-forms.”
“Linda, enough with the goddamn biology lesson,” Ellis said.
“Sorry.” Embarrassed, the petite geologist turned back to the porthole, cupping her hands around her eyes to eliminate glare.
Smiling to himself, the sub’s fourth crewman, Khali Habash, looked down from his control console at Linda. The girl loved to talk, especially when she was nervous, a quality the Arab never hesitated to exploit.
Khali’s real name was Arie Levy, a Jew born and raised in Syria. It had been nearly ten years since the day Arie had been recruited by Mossad, Israel’s covert intelligence agency. Since that time he had led a double life, spending half his time in Israel with his wife and three children, traveling around the Arab world and Russia the rest of the time, posing as a plasma physicist. It had taken four hard years of sacrifice for the agent to infiltrate Benedict Singer’s organization, but here he was, seven miles beneath the Pacific, about to learn secrets that could change humanity forever.