Megatooth: A Deep Sea Thriller Read online

  Apparently, Steve wasn’t going to be stopped by such matters, though. She watched as he stepped to the edge and in the shades of night and the weak lights coming from the boat as well as the emergency light on the raft, she could see a new sort of determination in his face.

  “Steve, are you sure—?”

  He didn’t bother with a response, not so much as a nod. He leaped off of the edge of the boat. His aim was great, as he headed directly for the raft, but his poise was not. He missed a clear landing by about two feet. His chest struck the outer edge of the raft and he bounced off, into the water. Emily was there at once, reaching out for him.

  He grabbed her forearm and she pulled at once. When he was partially up, Steve caught on to the nylon straps around the raft’s edge and pulled himself the rest of the way in. He slid over the edge of the raft and collapsed inside.

  “Did it work?” Emily asked.

  “I think so,” he said.

  “Well then where the hell is he?”

  His frown said all that Emily needed to know. She looked back towards the boat and was surprised that they had seen it as any sort of safety. It was within just a few feet of sinking entirely and looked incredibly fragile.

  “What do you think we should do?” Steve asked.

  “I have no idea,” Emily said. “If he’s not about by now, then he’s—”

  The boat made a creaking noise loud enough to drown out her voice. This was followed by a snapping sound that must have caused serious structural damage; the boat rolled over ninety degrees and then started sinking at an angle.

  “Oh God,” Emily said. She wasn’t sure what she was more distressed about—that the entire crew that had tried to kill them was now dead or that they were once again stranded out here in the sea.

  “I think…” Steve said, but he closed his mouth and looked nearly embarrassed.

  “What?”

  “I think we’ll be okay if we just stay quiet. Maybe if his plan worked, that thing is dead, you know?”

  She nodded her head but she wasn’t so sure. She had seen that hate and determination in that monster’s dark eyes. To think that it had gone underwater to attack the rovers and would never again come to the surface was too much to hope for. Still, there was something to be said for Steve’s brand of hope. It was calming, even in the face of uncertainty. She could do that…she could just lay here in the raft until they were rescued or swallowed whole by the megalodon. At this point, either one was fine with her. She just wanted this to be over.

  “Emily?”

  “Yeah?” she replied, feeling that she might be on the verge of crying again but finding it hard to muster up the strength to do so.

  “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  “No,” she said, although she did have a vague memory of being trapped underwater, in the basket attached to the cable as the weight of it all had pulled her down. She couldn’t help but wonder if things might have been better if the diver had not rescued her. At least death was a certainty. Being here, stranded at sea in the midst of a dark and cloudy night and not knowing if the megalodon was dead was somehow worse than death.

  “You know more about the ocean than I do,” Steve said. “What do we do now?”

  “I don’t know anything about rescuing stranded people at sea,” she said, a little bitterly. “I think Carl was right before…we just have to wait to see if the Coast Guard comes back out to—”

  A crashing sound from behind them cut her off and they both turned around screaming. There was water in that sound and Emily knew what it was at once. Even before her eyes took it in and saw the remainder of Carl’s boat get dismantled, she knew.

  It was the megalodon.

  They turned just in time to see it breach, tearing through what remained of Carl’s boat. It came up with tremendous force but there was something off about the way it moved. Once it was out of the water, it seemed to give up. Where it had come up out of the water like a rocket before, it now seemed to simply pop up and the crash back down.

  It settled back into the water in a thrashing motion, as if it was hell-bent on making sure every single scrap of the boat was pummeled. Emily thought it looked a little like a child throwing a temper tantrum. She watched as it splashed and dipped and breached almost lazily among the wreckage.

  That’s when she actually took the time to look at the creature itself and not the destruction it was causing.

  There were two enormous gouges along its head on the right side. One ran from the tip of its snout all the way down and around to the soft underside of its upper stomach. There was another one along its right fin but she was unable to see the complete damage, as much of it remained underwater. But it was the larger one along its head that seemed to be the worst of all. It was easily two feet wide and of a length that was hidden by the water. It came across the beast’s eye, opening that black orb of evil even wider.

  “His plan worked,” Steve said quietly.

  Emily nodded, slowly sitting back against the soft side of the raft. She knew that the helicopter pilot’s blood was all around them but she didn’t care in that moment. She watched the shark as it slowed its fit. It remained there in the midst of the debris for a while, going under for a moment and then coming back up. It was clearly out of sorts and in pain. It was odd, but seeing it in such a vulnerable state made it look even larger to Emily.

  She reached out for Steve and took him by the arm as they watched the megalodon take one final plunge underwater. It made its movements slowly, flicking its tail almost playfully as it retreated under the water and out of sight.

  They sat together, Emily’s arm hooked through Steve’s, as the small white emergency light at the head of the raft flashed into the dark like a dying star.

  21

  She saw the monster coming out of the water, its teeth like rows of glinting razors in its cavernous mouth. It roared when it surfaced and then it came directly for them. The menace was back in its eyes—even the one that had been shredded by Carl’s rovers—and as Emily looked into that one good eye, she shared some sort of psychic connection with it.

  I’m gonna get you now, bitch, it told her. You’re not going to get away from me this time.

  When it opened its mouth, she saw Zoe inside. Her face was a tattered mess of blood and skin. Muscle peeked through and when she smiled at her, maggots and worms wriggled out.

  “You just let it eat me…”

  She screamed.

  The raft seemed to shudder around them and as the scream started to die in her throat, she heard Steve’s voice. She was resting against him and he was cradling her. “Calm down,” he told her. “You’re okay. It was just a dream.”

  “I fell asleep?” she asked, surprised.

  “Yeah.”

  “How long?”

  Steve shrugged. “Twenty minutes, maybe. It’s okay. Go back to sleep.”

  “No. I’m sorry. No…no sleep.”

  But God, she was tired.

  She shook her head, finding the idea of sleeping in the midst of something like this ridiculous. She wasn’t sure how the hell she had managed to fall asleep in the first place, considering everything she had just endured. She stared to the flickering little white light on the front of the raft and it seemed to hypnotize her. She thought of how the shark had looked when it had surfaced that last time. It had to be dead, right? It had nearly been torn to pieces. Or had the night and her exhausted state made it look worse than it had actually been?

  She zoned out, slipping into a state between awake and asleep. She wondered if it was the trauma of it all, the horror of what she had seen and—

  “Hey,” Steve said.

  “Huh?”

  “Look.”

  She blinked, realizing that she had nearly fallen asleep again despite her attempts to stay somewhat alert. The raft bobbed along the ocean, rocked by its eternal arms. She wondered if solid ground would ever feel quite right beneath her feet again.

  “What am I looking
at?” she asked.

  “Right there,” Steve said, pointing up and to the left.

  Emily looked up, squinting into the darkness of the sky. More clouds were gathered, probably bringing more rain. But the clouds weren’t what Steve was pointing to. He was pointing to the light up there, the light that was growing larger by the second.

  She sat up slowly, her eyes never leaving it. Within another ten seconds, she could hear a sound accompanying the light. It was a sound she’d heard in the last few hours—a sound she had mistakenly thought was the sound of being rescued.

  She watched the light get closer, not taking her eyes away from it until she saw the clear shape of a helicopter form behind it. Further behind it, another light had appeared. She supposed that given the alarming nature of what had happened to the other crew, the Coast Guard had sent out two crews this time, just to be safe.

  “We’re going to be okay,” Steve said. He was crying a bit and hearing it warmed Emily’s heart.

  Still, as the helicopter started to hover directly over them and a large white spotlight was beamed down towards them, she still feared that she’d see that massive dorsal fin at any moment. Maybe it had been playing dead this whole time, waiting for a sense of hope in the humans it had been tormenting.

  But there was no fin in the water around them. Even the remnants of the boats that they had both been on and seen destroyed were faint shapes in the water, left behind by the raft.

  Emily watched a cable slowly descend from the helicopter and finally allowed herself to cry again. She wept into Steve’s shoulder and did not stop until she felt the solid but shaky floor of the helicopter beneath her feet.

  22

  Four days later

  Emily had been shocked to find that through everything that had happened in Carl’s boat, Steve had suffered a broken left hand and a slight fracture in his left shoulder. Despite those things, he had done everything he could to help her and she had never noticed him favoring either of those injuries.

  She had been informed of this when she’d been looked over in the hospital in Honolulu. Aside from a scratch on her right forearm and a migraine that seemed to not want to go away, she had come out of the whole ordeal relatively unscathed. She’d been cleared within twelve hours and had gone down to check on Steve.

  Those first twenty-four hours after being rescued now felt like some extended episode of the horrors they had encountered out at sea. Emily tried to look back on them without feeling detached as they rode together in a cab to the airport. They were holding hands and she had no idea what that meant. She didn’t see them going on any dates or anything when they got back home but—well, they had endured something horrific together and she knew that he had saved her life on at least two occasions. She was close to him in a way that she had never been close to a man before. She was not naïve enough to think it was love, but it made her feel secure, nonetheless.

  The cab pulled up to the central airport entrance and they stepped out together. They walked inside and when the small group of people started coming towards them with cameras, it made no sense to Emily at first. But then the first of them started to ask questions—then a second and a third. It was not a massive crowd of reporters, but it was enough to be annoying. Emily had not been expecting such a crowd. She had been warned by one of the policemen that had guarded them at the hospital that some reporters had been snooping around, but Emily had never expected anything like this.

  “What was it like to be face to face with a creature that most assumed to be nothing more than legend?” one woman asked.

  “What can you tell me about the Coast Guard rescue?” asked another.

  “Is there a blossoming romance between the two of you in the wake of this tragedy?”

  “Will you ever go out onto a boat again?”

  “Were you romantically involved with Cliff Zinsser?”

  Emily thought about answering their questions but was simply not up for it. The idea of educating the public about a monster that was very much still alive when everyone that knew about it assumed it to be extinct was enticing. But at the same time, she was not ready to relive the horrors she’d witnessed. Not yet, anyway.

  Steve gave her a look and nodded to her. She had no idea what he was trying to communicate so he took a stand that, quite frankly, impressed her.

  He looked to them as sternly as he could, his hand in a cast and his shoulder braced with a sling. With the week or so of stubble on his face, he looked like a different person than the young man that had boarded a rented boat called The Gull six days ago mainly to spend time with a girl he had a massive crush on. Just by looking at him, you could tell that he had lived through something tragic.

  “I’ll answer your questions,” he said in a loud and clear voice, “but please let Emily sit out. We’ve been through a lot. We’re tired and out of sorts. Agreed?”

  There was a chorus of agreement. Cameras angled to get a better shot of Steve and several microphones were thrust in front of him. Emily tiptoes away from it all, squeezing out the back of the group and ignoring the few questions people tried to hit her with despite their agreement with Steve.

  She sat down against the far wall, watching people come and go. Some were in a hurry and others took their time. Some were alone, talking on cellphones, and others were in groups, scampering towards the food court or the baggage claim. It was amazing to her than none of these people knew about the prehistoric monster than now lay dead on the ocean floor thanks to Carl’s quick thinking and classified machinery. They would live their lives not knowing about it, unless that caught some of Steve’s answers on television.

  After about fifteen minutes, Steve left the reporters, much to their chagrin. A few tried following him, but Steve then started to use expletives that seemed to keep them at bay. Emily took his hand again—rather proudly this time—and they headed for their gate.

  When they arrived there, a single man began to approach them. There was a look of recognition in his eyes, but Emily had no idea who he was. He was an older man that looked joyful but a bit tired. Another reporter, probably.

  “Are you Emily Nevins and Steve Locke?” the man asked.

  “Who’s asking?” Steve answered.

  “My name is Corban Lyle,” the man answered. “I worked with Cliff Zinsser quite a bit.”

  “I recognize the name,” Emily said. “You did a lot of work with monk seals, right?”

  “Yes. And I was, of course, very upset to hear about your ordeal.”

  There was a silence between them that Emily felt getting awkward right away. “So why are you here?” she asked.

  “I was on the islands anyway, doing research on the preservation of monk seals and had to take this opportunity.”

  “Just to meet us?” Steve asked. “You’re no better than the reporters.”

  “No…more than that,” Corban said. “See, there are other areas on the oceans where there have been significant rises in the number of sperm and blue whale deaths. There is a particular area of interest off the coast of Papa New Guinea. Given the nature of the wounds, it is suspected that they are being killed by some unknown predator.”

  Emily felt that old familiar fear rising up but she pushed it down with unexpected anger. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Well…if it’s…something like what you two have just faced…there is no one else on the planet that could give us insights into such a monster. You know how it moves, how it feeds, how it attacks.”

  “And?” Steve asked.

  “Well,” Corban said, looking to Emily with hope in his eyes. “What would your thoughts be on providing some information to those that need to know?”

  “My thoughts?” Emily asked.

  “Yes?”

  “My thoughts are that you should leave it alone and let it eat.” She saw those menacing black eyes in her mind, starting into her as if it could smell her fear. “Leave it alone and let nature run its course.”

  “But surely
, you—”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Lyle. My condolences for the loss of your friend.”

  “Yes, you too,” Corban said, disappointed.

  Emily took Steve by the hand again and headed for their gate.

  The End

  Read on for a free sample of K-Rex: A Dinosaur Thriller

  Chapter 1

  The water in the stream was crisp, clear. It wasn’t much deeper than two feet. The rocks and sand below were visible. There wasn’t much of a current. The most dangerous aspect was the slippery rocks. Barefoot, the man let his toes curl over whatever he stood on for balance. His back hurt most. Standing bent forward for hours took a toll. He stood and stretched every few minutes. The pain hit the lower back. The muscles twisted into knots. The heat and humidity didn’t help. If he were under the canopy, it wouldn’t be as hot. Thankfully, a splash from the stream now and then cooled him off.

  The jungle was alive around him. As the sun set, it would get louder. The chimps and bonobos shouted back and forth, working themselves up. The grunts and screams became more high-pitched and aggravated. That was normal. Owls hooted. Branches snapped now and then. The lions and hyenas were out, but they stepped carefully. It wasn’t them breaking twigs.

  Where the stream turned, and became slightly swifter, he panned for coltan. He swirled water and sand around, letting them drain leaving only chunks of minerals for picking through. He wore a canvas bag over his shoulder, and filled it with the coltan found. He kept the bag close. The militia robbed him often, or paid rates less than what the dig was worth. Either way, he and his family lost out. It didn’t stop him, and although annoyed, he didn’t let the theft make him angry. There was plenty of coltan. He could make up the lost money just adding extra working hours to his day.