North Sea Hunters

by Harmer-Barnes, Brad

  Could it…could it be a dinosaur itself? Some relic from the cretaceous era that had somehow survived the apocalypse of all its kind?

  Then, time seemed to rush to catch up with its momentary delay as, for the first time,the muscular, ghost grey length of its body rolled up from the depths. Krauser gasped as it soared through the surf; it had to be twenty five, even thirty metres in length, dwarfing that of the largest Great Whites he had ever heard tell of. Dinosaur, sea monster, mutation…that did not seem to matter. What mattered was that this thing was alive, hungry, and coming for them.

  “The goddamn thing is heading straight for us!” shouted Hertz. “Captain, we have to move!”

  Krauser was frozen as the shark barrelled straight for their submarine, travelling at an ungodly speed.

  Hertz grabbed him by the arm and pulled him, almost threw him, towards the hatch to the command room. “Captain! We have to move!”

  Krauser nodded, as if in a dream and had slid down the ladder into the command room before he realised what he was doing. “Turn this boat around, one hundred and eighty degrees, and get us out of here at once. Full speed!”

  A chorus of ayes and acknowledgments answered him, and he felt the diesel engines kick into life, as if the ship had been holding steady, like a car in gear, waiting for his command to drop the handbrake. Kleiner and Hertz slid down the ladder quickly after him, grabbing hold of rungs or pipes to stop themselves from falling as the U-616 began a rapid turn from a dead stop.

  “Did you see what it was doing?” demanded Krauser. “Is it still heading straight for us?”

  “It dove!” Kleiner shouted over the roar of the engines. The command room seemed impossibly noisy after the silent running of the previous half an hour or so. “It dropped out of sight about a hundred and fifty metres out from us, and then Hertz and I followed you down here. Captain…what are we going to do?”

  “We’re getting the hell out of here, Mr Kleiner. I’m not going to end up as fish food, and neither are you. And that’s an order.”

  “Aye aye, Captain.”

  The engineer turned to continue his work, and Krauser addressed his second in command. “Mr Hertz?”

  “Captain.”

  “Thank you for your assistance up on deck.”

  “Don’t mention it, Captain.”

  “You’re a good man, Mr Hertz. I’ll be putting in a letter of commendation and recommendation for your promotion when we return to shore.”

  Suddenly, they were thrown violently around as a grating shudder heralded the shark passing directly beneath them. Only their grip on struts, rungs and pipes prevented them from being thrown to the floor. “I think you mean if we return to shore, sir.”

  “Maintain full speed. We can outpace this thing.” He looked down at his sleeve, turned crimson from the reopened bullet wound. “Take charge, Mr Hertz. I need to report to Dr Arnold.”

  ***

  Krauser was having his wound stitched when Arnild Dahlen approached them. “Captain. I would like to apologise for what happened on the bridge earlier. I let my emotions get the better of me. I understand why you are doing what you are doing. I am sorry.”

  Krauser smiled, then hissed in pain as the doctor re-stitched his wound. “Apology accepted, Mr Dahlen.”

  They both froze as another rumble, like an underground train passing on the next platform heralded another sweeping pass of the shark. They all looked up, despite it clearly being on the starboard side, and Krauser remembered the depth charges. A few seconds passed before conversation continued.

  “I don’t know how we could hunt a shark anyway,” said the doctor. “We have torpedoes and the deck gun and anti-aircraft, for sure, but those are all best suited to static or slow moving targets at range. I dare say there wouldn’t be time for us to aim or calibrate the weapons. The shark would be on us before we knew it.”

  “I’ve arranged for some men to stand watch up top, and given them what weapons we could find,” said Krauser.

  “What do they have?” asked Dahlen, his stoic tone returned.

  “Not much.”

  ***

  Ensigns Sessler and Gerstner stood up on the deck, keeping watch for the monster that followed them. They had been kitted out with the finest weapons the captain could find them – Sessler held a revolver, and Gerstner the largest meat cleaver from the kitchen, neither of which filled them with any degree of security or confidence. Sessler watched the fore and starboard of the boat, Gerstner the aft and port. If they spotted anything, they were to shout down into the command room where they had seen it, so that the control room crew could decide which way to steer and what to do.

  “You see anything?” asked Sessler, lighting a cigarette. He was in his mid-twenties, dark and tall.

  Gertner was a much younger man, fair haired and small. Many suspected he was fifteen or sixteen, and had lied about his age to join up with the Kriegsmarine. “Nothing. How the hell are we supposed to see anything up here anyway?”

  “It’s just a shark. I don’t even know why we’re running.”

  “The Captain says it’s big.”

  “Oh, please. How big can it be?”

  -THIRTEEN-

  The boat rocked sharply, tilting on its axis, throwing the entire crew almost forty-five degrees to starboard. Instantly, all aboard knew what had attacked them.

  Krauser heard Sessler and Gerstner’s screams from the control room and kicked into action straight away. Grabbing his Mauser, he darted for the ladder up to the deck, climbing it in seconds. The sunlight and salt spray momentarily dazzled him when he emerged on deck, but he noticed the ungodly stench instantly. The smell of fish guts and the iron tinged stench of blood hit him like a brick wall. When at last his eyes adjusted to the brightness and he took in his surroundings, he saw Sessler – certainly dead - torn in half on the deck. Below the rib cage he was no more than a mess of strands of viscera and shards of bone. The screaming came from Gerstner, who was kneeling by the dead man, chewing his fist and rocking back and forth. Sessler’s blood, thinned by the sea water, was spreading around them both.

  Krauser ran to Gerstner and squatted beside him, gripping his shoulders. “Which side did it come from? Did you see it?”

  “It…it just…it rose up. I couldn’t do anything. There was a noise…I thought it was an explosion…then it was just…there. He fell…he slid to it…and it…”

  The captain pulled the man up and almost threw him toward the entrance hatch. “Go. Get below.”

  Sessler slid down the ladder, still gibbering to himself. Krauser was hot on his heels and about to follow when he heard a sound like a thunderclap, and felt the cold water wash over him. The deck tilted under his feet, and he had to grab hold of the barrel of the anti-aircraft gun to stand upright. He blinked, wiped the water from his eyes with his sleeve, and turned to face the shark.

  It was once again, attempting to climb up the side of the boat, tugging it on its axis. The jaws worked desperately trying to reach him, the teeth made even more horrific now by the pieces of Sessler and his uniform ground into paste between them. The leviathan made involuntary deep barking noises as it reached for him, oddly putting him in mind of the sighs and grunts of an old dog he had known on the farm he grew up on. Krauser wrapped one arm around a fixing, gripping it in his elbow, so that he could take his automatic pistol in both hands and fire precisely.

  The shark thrashed and shifted around, emitting its odd, breathy barking, and Krauser had the sense that the shark was looking for him with its one good eye. He took aim, and squeezed off three rounds in fast but smooth succession.

  He was rewarded by small puffs of red mist where the bullets struck the beast, but they made no impact on it. The shark thrashed, causing the deck to shake under his feet once more, pulling it forty-five degrees towards it, and he skidded on the sodden wood. He lost his grip on the strut and fell hard onto his backside, cracking his tailbone. He screamed as he slid down towards the vast, foetid maw, and knew hi
s time had come. The deck was a ramp to death.

  He screamed, took aim, and fired off three more shots from the Mauser, satisfaction of a sort filling him to see two of them strike it full on in the teeth, shattering bone. He was a mere two feet from the thing’s mouth when he stopped suddenly, his jacket caught on something.

  “Captain!” shouted Hertz, who had caught hold of the collar of his jacket. “Get below now!”

  Krauser was so close he could physically feel the air being pushed around by the monster’s desperate bites. He threw his pistol at the shark, watching it bounce harmlessly off the thing’s nose. With his hands now free he was able to get a grip on the planks of the deck and clamber backwards towards the hatch, Hertz desperately tugging him along all the while. At last he reached the hatch, and he felt himself pulled backwards through the bulkhead, both of them skidding down the ladder together. The boat rocked rapidly, righting itself as the shark disengaged the attack and swam off.

  Krauser and Hertz lay panting together for a while, until some of the men came to their aid and helped them to their feet.

  “Thank you, Mr Hertz. I would have died if not for you.”

  Hertz breathlessly snapped a salute. “It was nothing. That was very brave of you to rescue Gerstner, not to mention launch a full on attack on the shark.”

  Krauser doubled over, struggling to get his breath back, and suppressed the urge to vomit. “Where has it gone? What do we do?”

  Hertz took Krauser by the arm, his eyes manic. “Captain…I have to say that I agree with our Norwegian friend. We have to kill this thing, and we have to kill it now. If we don’t then who knows wh-”

  The shark took its opportunity when it could. Now charging the submarine directly side on from its starboard, it gripped the submarine in its jaws and wrenched it as hard as it could. The U-616 was rocked and thrown side to side and tossed in its jaws like a dog with a toy. Men screamed as they were suddenly thrown up, down and sideways in rapid succession. The monster’s teeth ground down hard and the hull screamed as if in pain.

  At last the shark loosened its bite and the boat skidded sideways in the water.

  There was a distant scream of metal, and a jet of sea water pulsed into the control room!

  “Breach!” screamed Kleiner, who hurried towards it with another engineer to assess the damage.

  “Torpedo loose!” came several screams along the length of the boat.

  Bells rung and men shouted. Krauser’s head rang. He put his hand to his forehead and it came away slick with blood. His vision swam. He supposed that this was how it had to end. His last thoughts were of his wife and unborn child.

  Dahlen splashed through the ankle deep water in the control room and pulled Hertz to his feet. “What do we do now?”

  “I…I don’t know. If this were a depth charge or a bombing run, I’d give the order to submerge, but there is nothing we can do. The attack comes from below the sea.”

  Dahlen shivered in the cold water and pulled Krauser up, throwing the captain’s arm over his shoulder to carry him out. “That is a bad head wound. We need to get him to the doctor.”

  Hertz slid under Krauser’s other arm to aid him. He shouted for the men to clear the way as they hurried to Dr Arnold’s station.

  “What would you do if we were being attacked by another submarine? Surely that is the same principle?”

  They fell sideways as the shark rammed them again. The hull physically buckled around them, and Dahlen caught a gush of sea water directly in the face. Hertz alerted the men to the new breach and continued carrying the captain to the doctor. “It’s not the same principle at all. Submarines are almost stationary when they attack. This monster is faster than we are. It can attack from all angles. It can smash us at close range. At close range all we have are knives and small arms fire.”

  They burst into the doctor’s station as the boat lurched sickeningly one more time. They kept their feet this time, but heard the bursting of steam pipes and screams of “Fire! Fire!” from the engine room.

  Dr Arnold was as white as a sheet. “What in god’s name is happening? Is it an airstrike?”

  “Shark attack, Dr Arnold,” replied Dahlen.

  “Shark? Your shark?”

  “Our shark.” He grunted, throwing Krauser onto a bed. “Is he dead?”

  Dr Arnold began a rapid examination of the captain. “No, not dead. Unconscious, though. Probably a concussion. He’ll need to rest up for some time. Leave him with me. Mr Hertz, you’re in command until such time as I deem our captain fit for duty.”

  “I know that, doctor. Please, do all you can for…wait…”

  “What is it?” asked Dahlen, getting his breath back from the laborious rush to the doctor’s station.

  “It’s stopped,” replied Hertz.

  The doctor and Dahlen turned their eyes skyward, listening. A minute passed, then two.

  “You’re right,” said the doctor, tying off a bandage he had quickly applied to Krauser’s head. “Does this mean we’re safe?”

  “No, doctor,” said Dahlen. “It just means that the shark is resting. Predators sometimes like to injure their prey, so that it tires itself out and they can follow it at their leisure, rather than expend all their energy in an all-out attack. Perhaps sharks do the same. It’s certainly how it brought down the Freyr.”

  Hertz nodded. “He’s right. What it means is that we have to take advantage of this time to repair our boat and prepare as many offensive capabilities as we can. Knives, guns, explosives, anything. We have to kill this thing before it kills us.”

  ***

  Captain Krauser’s eyes flickered open. He couldn’t quite focus on the room around him, and when he went to raise himself up on his elbows, a friendly hand pushed him down again.

  “You took a bump to the head, Captain,” came the familiar voice of Dr Arnold. “Hertz and Dahlen brought you here. How are you feeling?”

  “Like I have a katzenjammer.”

  Dr Arnold chuckled. “How is your vision?”

  “Foggy. Like I can’t quite focus. It blurs and then refocuses, blurs and refocuses.”

  “I suspect you have a concussion. You need to rest. Johann Hertz has taken command for the moment.”

  Krauser forcefully got himself out of bed, and shook his head lightly. “I’m sorry doctor, but I cannot leave my men now. I have to go find Hertz and get a damage report.”

  Arnold shrugged. “I suspect it will do no harm. Not now.”

  Krauser paused at the door, surprised to see the doctor so downbeat. “What do you mean?”

  “Captain, the U-616 is sinking.”

  -FOURTEEN-

  Krauser staggered his way through the cramped corridors of the submarine, buffeted by the men and assaulted by the heat. He finally made his way to the control room and walked directly into Hertz, stumbling back a step or two. The second in command caught him before he fell and steadied him. “Captain Krauser? I was not expecting you back on duty so soon.”

  Krauser blinked away the bleariness from his eyes. “Neither was I, but I don’t think this is a time that any of us can afford to spend resting. What are we dealing with?”

  “Captain, the situation is exceedingly dire. The hydroplanes are stuck, and one of them has even been sheared off completely. We can’t submerge; and even if we did, we couldn’t surface again.”

  Krauser swore. “That’s the last thing we need. That White Ghost is coming back, we have no weapons, and we can’t hide should a plane or a destroyer happen to chance upon us.”

  “White Ghost?”

  The Captain shrugged. “Just a name that came to me for it. It’s so old it’s not really grey anymore, you know? It looks faded and wraith like. It’s as if all the dead of the ocean had come together to make a ghost.”

  Hertz raised an eyebrow.

  “Cut me some slack, I’ve hit my head pretty hard. It doesn’t matter, anyway. So, we have no weapons and no way of hiding should we need to?”

&nb
sp; The older man nodded. “I’ve been talking to the men. We’ve been preparing a line of defence against the…White Ghost…and I’ll come to that in a moment. It’s just that there’s something more than the hydroplanes, sir.”

  Krauser braced himself. What could possibly be worse than the hydroplanes? “Go on.”

  “The hull is cracked down the port side. We’re taking in a lot of water. I’ve got the men working the pumps to try and bail us out but…it’s not going to work for long, sir.”

  Krauser sighed and nodded. “How fast can we go?”

  “I’d estimate we’re limping along at around five to seven knots, sir.”

  Krauser pulled a cigarette from his pocket and headed to the ladder. “Come join me on deck.”

  Simply getting out of the dark humidity of the submarine and standing up on the deck seemed to help in blowing the cobwebs from his brain. His vision still pulsed strangely every now and again like a bad hangover, but it was starting to fade. The deck was listing at a slight angle – not enough to make you lose your footing, but once you noticed it, it became impossible to ignore. Some of the men were attempting minor repairs to the anti-aircraft gun and some surface damage. After a couple of drags on his cigarette, he noticed Dahlen. The Norwegian man was sat cross legged by the deck gun, working on something in his lap.

  Dahlen didn’t notice Krauser and Hertz approaching, and it was only when Krauser gave him a playful nudge with his boot that he looked up. “Captain!” he smiled, “It is very good to see you up and about! How are you feeling?”

  Krauser smiled back. “I’ve been better, but I am better than I was when I first woke, thank you. What is that you are working on, my friend?”

  Dahlen clambered to his feet, and the two Germans saw that he was holding a length of steel pipe, about two metres long, around the end of which he had lashed a serrated knife that he had obviously looted from the kitchen. “Mr Hertz here said that there was a lack of weapons with which to fight off our shark. So, I improvised.”

  Krauser laughed. “I must say that I like your thinking, Mr Dahlen. Torpedoes and anti-aircraft weapons will do us no good, so here we must fight like our ancestors. Fishing with sticks and stones!”