Dahlen did not laugh and simply handed the makeshift spear to the U-Boat captain. “Yes. Like our ancestors. Your ancestors destroyed the Roman Empire – the greatest empire the world has ever seen, and far greater than I fear your Mister Hitler will accomplish. And mine? Mine were the Vikings, who plundered and massacred their way across the known world and beyond. Tell me, Captain and Mr Hertz. Can the descendants of Vikings and Goths stand up to one little sea monster? I say we can, even if it be Jörmungandr himself!”
Krauser was amused, and a little stirred by the man’s brief speech. He was right. They were in these waters because they were warriors of their people and they would not be brought low by a mere fish! He accepted the spear graciously. Dahlen handed one more to Hertz, and held the third for himself.
Hertz smiled wryly. “I think I still have faith in the deck gun, Mr Dahlen.”
Dahlen chuckled and hefted his spear. “I think we shall have to use whatever weapons are available to us.”
The three men turned quickly at a shout from the other side of the deck. It took them a moment to realise what was happening, as three of the crew jumped up and down, pointing and screaming ceaselessly.
“It’s back…” breathed Krauser. “This is the last time, friends.”
About five or six hundred metres out, a wake was visible in the water, and speeding towards them rapidly.
“It’s a torpedo…” whispered Hertz.
“Mr Hertz, do you really believe that yourself?” asked Dahlen, banging the butt of his spear on the deck and advancing towards the crew.
***
Five hundred metres out from U-616, the monster bore down upon its prey as it had done since birth. It was their shark. It was Krauser’s White Ghost and Dahlen’s Jörmungandr. To the sailors that had come before them, it was The Sea Monster. It was The Kraken. It was Carcharocles Megalodon. In its time it had sunk boats of steel, and galleons of wood. It had taken men in uniform, and it had taken men in furs. It had taken dolphin, walrus, shark and whale, in equal measure.
It hunted the submarine the same as it had hunted its prey for unmeasured years. It would debilitate, first of all - crushing the soft appendages - and then delivering a crushing blow to the ribcage of its prey. There its teeth would crush and rend and maul the organs within. The fish – be it metal or wood or meat – would flail and it would flounder and it would be consumed.
The shark had suffered many wounds, and it knew that it would suffer many more. Many years past, another sea monster - all scales and teeth, the spirit of a crocodile with the shape of an eel – had taken a chunk from its tail. A brave human, clad in bronze armor and a red crested helmet, had taken its eye with its spear. Both the sea monster and the brave human had been consumed eventually, and since then it had learned to take its time with any prey.
The boat had been chased for long enough now. He had taken some of its soldiers. He had cracked the puny fish’s dorsal fins, and smashed its ribs with its mammoth jaws.
It was – at last – time to feed.
-FIFTEEN-
Time seemed to slow down for Krauser, as he watched the Norwegian reach the crew. Dahlen pulled the men back and shoved them behind him, urging them to head towards the entrance hatch. The men staggered and stumbled away from the approaching shark, but Dahlen stood ready, his spear gripped in two hands, pointed towards his enemy. The wake of the shark came closer - two hundred metres, one fifty – until suddenly it sank from view.
Krauser ran over to his friend, and grabbed his arm. “It’s submerged. It means to attack us from below once more!”
Dahlen shook his head. “No. I have seen it do this before.”
“What do you mean?”
There was a deafening thunderclap, and Krauser felt the spray of the sea on him, as he turned to the source of the noise.
The shark – his White Ghost – had leapt out of the water in a vicious lunge towards them. It hadn’t entirely cleared the water, but he saw enough of it to finally truly appreciate its size. It wasn’t just huge, for “huge” was not the right word: it was colossal, gargantuan, even. It was not a shark so much as a prehistoric creature of nightmares taken the form of a hideous, stocky, scarred Great White. The leviathan’s one working black eye took in the U-616 dispassionately, and it landed on the deck with another thunderclap. Krauser lost his footing, went down hard on his backside, and found himself skidding and sliding towards the water. No! Not towards the water! Towards the mouth of the monster that had beached itself on his submarine!
The deck listed at a hard angle as the weight of the monster attempted to drag it under. Krauser managed to steady himself by grabbing a railing, but some of the crew were not so lucky. Two fell directly into the sea, and a third tumbled straight into the maw of the megalodon. His screams changed sharply in pitch from fear to agony as he fell side on into the teeth that then clamped down hard. When the mouth next opened, the man had been almost entirely bisected, held together by just his spine and several stringy pieces of gristle. Krauser vomited, and desperately tried to stand upright, using his spear as a makeshift crutch.
Dahlen let out a deadly war cry and thrust his knife tipped spear into the shark’s mouth. The knife sank deep into the gum line, causing a spurt of red blood to flow and mingle with the dead sailor’s. Twice, then thrice more he jabbed into the roof of the monster’s mouth. The shark exhaled a low grunt that stank like a fishmonger’s on a hot day, lifted its head up, and then sharply down again, crashing onto the submarine with all its weight. The submarine shuddered in the water, and tilted at an increasingly terrifying angle. Maintaining their footing was proving harder and harder for all of them.
The Norwegian had fallen onto his backside, and only managed to get back up again with Hertz’s assistance. Hertz had drawn his revolver and was pumping shot after shot into the shark’s face. The rocking of the boat and his nerves threw his aim off, however, and only one of the rounds hit, just above the thing’s eye, and they were rewarded with the sight of a chunk of flesh flying off.
Krauser yelled as they sensed the thing’s pain. He thought it exceptionally unlikely that they would be able to kill this thing, but if they hurt it enough, it was just possible that it could be driven off, in search of much easier prey. If they could persuade it to go off in search of an easier meal, they could make it out of here alive! He stepped back two paces and launched his knife-spear like a javelin. It arced high, and sank in by the massive dorsal fin. It had lodged in! He laughed loudly, and shouted his victory to Hertz and Dahlen. Dahlen launched his own, but his aim went much too high and the spear splashed into the water behind the shark.
Hertz threw his own spear to Krauser, urging him to take another shot, before turning to Dahlen. “Come with me. I have another idea.”
The shark thrashed left and right, in search of its attackers, and once again Krauser was forced to grab hold of a railing for stability. The shark headbutted up and down again, shaking the deck once more. Fearing for his life, Krauser screamed and threw his spear hard at the monster’s face. The knife point entered the jaw and knocked a tooth loose – but what was one tooth from that hell hole of death and destruction? The spear clattered sideways, and fell into the ocean.
The monster belched another gust of foul stench and had Krauser not already emptied his stomach he would have done so then. The creature’s breath stank of all the pain and misery this thing had ever caused. It was the gust of death from the Mariana Trench. It was beyond foulness.
Just as he prepared himself for the White Ghost to launch itself against him, it let out a sighing burp and slid back and into the ocean. The waves passed over it, and but for the death and destruction in its wake, it was as if it had never been there. Krauser shivered and shook with shock, hearing the blood rushing around his body, and feeling every ache and pain in his muscles (especially the bullet wound which had begun to throb once more). He felt partially deafened, as though his head had been held under ice cold water. Eventually, this feeli
ng began to subside, and he heard his name called from across the deck.
With what felt like an Olympic effort, he raised his head and turned to the deck gun, where Hertz and Dahlen had it ready to fire. Yes! He jogged across the slippery deck to his friends, and laughed. “Yes! Yes, this could work.”
Hertz nodded. “I think so, Captain. We just need…well, we just need a little bait.”
Dahlen hopped down from the firing seat and shook some water from his hair. “While you were down there earlier, Hertz and I did a dry run. I think we can actually hit it. Our bullets and knives are wounding it, but not deeply or severely enough. I think an eighty-eight millimetre shell might make a touch of difference, though.”
Krauser shivered. “So, you need me back there as bait?”
“No. I will go. It is yours and Hertz’s boat, and it is your gun. You should be the ones to kill this thing. My place is down in the front.”
“That’s lunacy!”
“It is not more lunacy than any of this, Captain. This shark has had ten chances or more to eat me; I do not think that this time will make any difference to my odds in the long run.”
The Norwegian man pulled a kitchen cleaver from his belt, and turned to go, when the captain called after him.
“Arild…be safe.”
“I will. You too, August.”
Hertz had hopped gleefully into the firing position. “Standing ready, Captain.”
Dahlen strode to the far end of the deck and, showing no signs of fear or disgust, picked up a hunk of half-chewed sailor and threw it into the ocean before stamping in the shallow waters a few times, shouting a challenge to the shark that hunted them.
“Do you think it’ll come?” asked Hertz.
“It’ll come. It’ll keep coming until we’re dead,” replied Krauser, coldly.
The deck suddenly shook beneath their feet, as the shark rose up from the port side. Dahlen screamed and ran towards it, ducking in and back again, swinging with his cleaver when he felt brave enough, though the blade was old and seemed to do little damage.
“Aim the deck gun, Mr Hertz!” shouted Krauser, above the clamour and cries of the battling Viking and sea monster. The deck gun slowly, painfully slowly, cranked into position and his brave second-in-command positioned the gun as best as he could. He was a commander of men, not a hands-on gunner; and although he knew the theory behind the attack, the theory he had learned did not extend to close quarters fighting with demon sharks.
“Ready?” shouted Krauser.
“Ready!”
“Take aim!”
“Aimed!”
“F-”
The shark jumped higher out of the water, lunging an extra six feet or so towards Dahlen. The Norwegian was taken by surprise and while he managed to avoid being caught in the monster’s jaws, he was caught full on by the side of its head. He fell hard on his back, the cleaver skittering away, and struck his head hard on the deck. Krauser screamed as he saw the man slide down the length of the deck to the stern, and into the cold, deadly water of the North Sea, disappearing with an ominous splash.
The shark seemed to smile cruelly, before sliding back off of the deck, and going in search of its prize.
Krauser screamed after it, but this had even less effect than the bullets had.
The U-616 was almost capsized in the water, their weapons were all useless, his men were dying, and the shark was still hungry.
-SIXTEEN-
Krauser acted without thinking, and ran across and down the tilting deck, diving into the water after Dahlen. Hertz screamed after him to stop, but he had never listened to the man before, so why should he start now? He just knew that it didn’t seem fair that Dahlen should perish this time; not when he had been through and survived so much. How could he have survived the sinking of the Freyr, and his own lifeboat, only to die now?
The shock of entering the ice cold water hit him like a punch to the chest. He felt his whole body momentarily seize up, and stiffen – refusing even to breathe or for his eyes to blink or his heart to beat. After this half a second long nightmare, he recovered a little, and ducked under the water, eyes wide open, desperate to see a sign of Dahlen.
What he saw instead, a mere six feet away from him, was his White Ghost.
It had to be at least thirty metres long, and it swam oh so slowly past him. He had to fight desperately to suppress a sob of pure terror as this antediluvian nightmare, this vile cousin of the Great White, slowly passed him in the dark blue of the ocean. He felt the motion as it pushed its bulk through the water and was buffeted in the underwater crosswinds of its passing.
It was the agonising slowness of its passing that got to him. The shark was not trying to fight him. The shark was not trying to chase him. The shark was not even trying to avoid him. He was insignificant to it. It did not fear him, hate him, want him or desire him. He was nothing to this creature that had patrolled these waters for god only knows how long or how far. He became aware of how small humanity was in the grand scheme of the history of the planet, and how little he meant even to that. He remembered thinking earlier in his bunk that in the grand scheme of the war he was merely an ash on the fire that consumed the world. In truth, the fire that consumed the world was no more than a spark – no, an ember – on the rock of history.
Alone, unarmed, bobbing in the ice cold waters of the North Sea, he was on the verge of tears.
When, after what seemed a lifetime, the tattered, scarred tail of the thing swam past his eyes, Krauser desperately came to the surface for air, gasping in two deep lungfuls of it, before quickly ducking under in search of Dahlen.
***
Johann Hertz skidded down the ladder into the control room, almost falling directly on top of Kleiner. Grabbing the engineer by the shirt, he screamed. “Are the ballast tanks functional?”
Kleiner went white under the mad glare of the officer. “What? Sir, that’s…that’s lunacy! You want us to go deeper into the water? With that thing? Sir, it’ll destroy us!”
“I don’t want us to dive. I want us to blow all the water out of the ballast tanks. Even if they’re empty, blow them again. I want to keep this boat as upright as possible. I’m taking command.”
“Captain Krauser?”
“Captain Krauser fell into the ocean with that thing.” Hertz paused and smiled. “I am in command of the U-616 now, Engineer Kleiner, and I want this boat ready and upright. That thing’s going to come in for another run at us, and when it does, I want to fire all torpedoes, and the deck gun. I don’t care how big and tough it is, it’s not big and tough enough to survive a salvo from the U-616.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll give the order right away,” muttered Kleiner, shaken by the news of the death of his captain.
Hertz dismissed the man and issued another order. “I want all forwards torpedo tubes locked and loaded. I’m going up top. I need two men with me. As soon as we catch sight of where that thing is, I want us taking aim and getting ready to blow it back to the Pleistocene Era.”
***
The surviving crew of the U-616 ran, carrying out Hertz’s order as quickly as possible. The news of Captain August Krauser’s death spread quickly, and some tears were shed, though they did not pause to grieve. They had a job to do, and the time to remember the good captain would come later.
The crew working the pumps moved at double time, cranking and pumping harder and faster than ever before, until they actually convinced themselves that they could feel the boat rising from the water; that they could – yes – they could feel the U-616 righting itself on its axis, so that it was as ready as it had ever been!
They convinced themselves that there was only one God given Hunter of the North Sea, and that it was the Kriegsmarine!
***
Hertz was startled in the control room by Dr Arnold. “Captain?”
“Yes, Doctor. What can I do for you?”
“I want to help. I have made all the injured as comfortable as possible, but I am now grow
ing restless. I’m not an engineer, but…there must be something I can do.”
“Yes. Do you own binoculars?”
The doctor was more than a little unnerved by the wide-eyed and manic stare of the Lieutenant Hertz, but knew better than to say anything. “Yes, I’m certain I can rustle up a pair.”
Hertz turned from him and continued reloading his revolver. “Good. Head up onto the deck when you have a pair. I’ll need as many eyes on the ocean as I can get. I’m heading up now, myself.”
Dr Arnold dashed off to find his binoculars, as Hertz clambered up onto the deck.
Hertz was amazed how much damage the shark had managed to do. Struts and railings were mangled and destroyed. Tooth indentations marred the length of the hull as it had tried to chew its way in to the submarine. He supposed that to the shark, the U-616 was just an especially belligerent shellfish. He posted one man to the aft, one to port and one to starboard and – when he arrived – the good doctor to the fore. Hertz himself stood by the deck gun, doing his best to look in all directions. He had three men ready and working the deck gun, knowing that should the shark approach from the sides, this would be their only means of defence.
***
Krauser was having to swim further and further from the U-616. Now he was far and away to the rear of the boat, and had lost all hope of ever finding Dahlen – his friend had to be either drowned or eaten. He was keen to get back to his submarine – and likely to wrestle command back from Hertz – but every time he had tried to swim back, he had ended up exhausted, struggling against a strong current – or he had had to freeze to avoid running directly into the shark again. He had read somewhere that sharks are able to hunt their prey by the motions they made while swimming, and he had no reason to suppose that this monster hunted by any other method.
Once he had actually felt the thing graze against him, and was sure that he had been detected. Its skin had felt rough, like a cat’s tongue, and covered with lumpy, bulbous scar tissue. What little damage they had caused the thing earlier with Dahlen’s makeshift spears seemed to have been shrugged off already. There was no sign of injury to the monster.
North Sea Hunters Page 8