Megatooth: A Deep Sea Thriller Read online

  Then there was a rushing sound of water as its body broke the surface. Emily saw its grey hide, its long body and—

  Suddenly, the silence that fell over the boat was not one of awe. It was the sort of silence that often came with bad news. It was heavy and unexpected.

  What was breaking the surface of the water was not a blue whale. Instead, it was a shark. Only, that couldn’t be right because sharks didn’t grow to be this big. This was a shark the size of a blue whale—hell, probably even bigger than a blue whale. And that sort of thing just didn’t exist.

  It made a slight turn of its body, almost making a U-shape as the upper half of its body came out of the water and then fell back in. As it dove back into the water, Emily caught just the briefest glimpse if its mouth. Even only barely opened, it was cavernous.

  She took a step back, a sound rising up in her throat. She was finally able to give that noise a shape and formed a word with it. “Cliff...?”

  “What the hell was that?” Zoe asked.

  “Looked like a shark,” Cliff said. “But there’s no way in hell a shark could grow to that size.”

  As that comment fell on their ears, the boat rocked slightly from the wake the splash of the thing has caused. Emily couldn’t take her eyes off of the sea, afraid the thing would breach again, closer to the boat this time.

  Steve spoke up from beside her. His voice was tinged with fear. She didn’t think much of Steve but she had to admit—she had never seen or heard him in a state of fear. Hearing it now made the entire situation somehow worse.

  “Where’d it go?” Steve asked.

  Emily heard the slight movements of Cliff moving around in the bridge over their heads. She pictured him checking the depth finder and looking quickly back out to the water. After a few moments, he responded with relief in his voice.

  “It’s heading back down below,” he called back. “And it’s moving fast.”

  “Good,” Zoe said. “But still…what the hell was it?”

  Emily turned her head away from the water now, looking up to Cliff and hoping he had a satisfactory answer. But the fear and almost boy-like awe in his eyes did nothing but make her more nervous than before.

  “It was a shark,” he said. “I saw it, you saw it, we all saw it. It was without a doubt the biggest one I’ve ever seen, but it was a shark.”

  “That’s impossible,” Emily said, looking hopelessly up at him. “That thing was bigger than any whale I’ve ever seen, let alone a shark.”

  “Yeah,” Steve said, “but how many whales have you actually seen?”

  It was a good point, but it still infuriated her. She didn’t bother with a response because it was embarrassing to admit that she had never seen one—only on television and in magazines.

  “Don’t be a smartass,” Cliff said. “And besides…she’s right. There’s no shark I’ve ever seen or even heard of that is that big. And that’s why you’d smell the faint scent of urine emanating from me if you were to come up to the bridge right now. That thing was a monster. It was a—”

  He stopped here, his eyes quickly glancing away from his crew of three below and back to the depth finder and his other instrumentation in the bridge.

  “What is it?” Emily asked.

  “It’s coming back up,” Cliff said. It sounded like someone had punched him in the throat.

  “What?” Zoe bellowed.

  “What?” Steve said, his voice near panic now.

  “Shit,” Cliff said. His voice was shaky and breaking. “It’s coming back up and it’s going to be close. Hold on to something!”

  There was a terrifying moment when Emily didn’t think her legs were going to work. The idea of a shark of that size was impossible and made her think of nightmares she had on occasion where she was stranded at sea, knowing there was some monstrous leviathan waiting in the depths below her. Oddly, that dream had spurred her dreams of a possible career involving the ocean. She wanted to understand the depths and the enormity of it all.

  She felt like she was asleep right then, waiting to be stirred awake as the fear reached its peak.

  But no…the only thing that snapped her out of it was Zoe brushing by her to hold on to a metal pole that ran along the length of the central cabin. Steve was looking at her and she could see that he was torn between running for whatever cover there might be or to stay with her to see if she was okay. She nearly felt something for him in that moment. Maybe there was something more than some obsessive crush he had for her. If he was willing to stand by her in the midst of this and put himself in harm’s way for her, what did that say about him?

  She never got the chance to find out, though. Her legs decided to work and she followed Zoe, holding on to the metal bar. It was a lame plan, but the alternative was going inside and cowering and that seemed one thousand times worse.

  The boat fell into dead silence and it allowed Emily to hear it. The damned thing was moving so fast to the surface that she could hear it moving through the water even before it breached.

  And then it broke the surface in an explosion of water. The entire front of the boat was covered in water as the shark breached less than ten feet away from the left side of the boat. Emily screamed but it was drowned out by Zoe’s shout of terror, as well as the thunderous noise the water made as it struck the boat. Through the water, Emily could see just enough of the shark to tell that it was arcing in its jump, aiming towards them.

  It was going to hit them—just barely, but that would be more than enough to do some serious damage. Still screaming, the water cascading down around them in buckets so forceful that it was hard enough to push her back, the shark came down. When it did, she saw its face and truly understood its true size. It was at least three times as large as Cliff’s rented boat and just the portion of its head that she could see through the torrent of water was going to likely be enough to destroy the boat.

  When it hit the side of The Gull, the entire vessel surged hard to the right. Emily felt it tilt just as the cracking sounds filled the world. Something under her feet trembled and she nearly lost her footing. Beside her, Zoe was slipping as the boat teetered to the right. Emily knew the tilt wasn’t nearly strong enough to tip them, but the sounds of destruction from the right were getting worse.

  She dared a glance and saw that while the shark had not managed to sink its massive jaws into the boat, it had done enough damage by simply throwing its weight into it.

  The rails up front were gone and the floor on which she now stood was splintered and jagged. She could see one of the cabins below through the hole in the floor. It was quickly filling with sea water.

  “Get your asses up here now!” Cliff demanded from his perch in the bridge.

  Emily turned to do just that and nearly collided with Steve. He was soaked and looked horrified but his attention was solely on her for the moment.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her.

  “Yeah.”

  He took her hand and there was nothing possessive about it. It felt safe and Emily didn’t bother to dwell on that. Together, they ran to the right, fighting the tilt of the boat and the surge of water that had made the deck slippery. Along the starboard side, they found Zoe already heading for the cabin entrance, leaning against the wall of the cabin’s exterior to keep from sliding.

  They slipped a bit as they made their way to the cabin entrance. Inside, most everything had been thrown to the floor; the shelves were knocked loose, depositing food and electronics in piles at their feet. Something down below by their living quarters was making a dim sort of alarm noise but it was drowned out by the cabin taking on water.

  They raced up the stairs to the bridge, again having to fight against the tilt of the boat. Emily hoped it was her imagination, but she thought it had gotten worse in the fifteen seconds or so it had taken them to move from the front of the boat to the stairs leading to the bridge.

  In the bridge, Cliff seemed to be doing several things at once. He was holding the receiver to the
CB radio and fiddling with the controls with one hand. With his other hand, he seemed to be attempting to make corrections to a piece of instrumentation that Emily had never seen before. All she knew was that everything up here was in disarray and nothing looked promising. She also saw that Cliff’s eyes kept darting back to the depth finder and he looked very pale.

  “How screwed are we?” Zoe asked.

  “Royally,” Cliff said, on the verge of tears. “I can’t hear a damned thing on the radio. I’ve sent out a distress signal but at the rate we’re taking on water, it won’t matter. The boat will go under in less than fifteen minutes.”

  “What can we do?” Steve asked.

  “There’s a life raft under one of the benches in the central room below. But given what just tore a hole in this boat, I don’t really care much for that idea. But it might be the only option we have available to us.”

  “So what do we—” Emily said, but was interrupted.

  “It’s coming back again,” Cliff said, his eyes once again on the depth finder. Looking at the screen, he dropped the radio’s receiver. It dangled from its cord like some poor beheaded animal.

  “Where?” Steve asked.

  “Dead ahead,” Cliff said, pointing to the depth finder with a trembling finger. “And it’s not coming up this time…now it’s coming straight ahead, like a torpedo.”

  They huddled nervously around the depth finder. Emily felt herself wanting to cry but wouldn’t allow it. She was already starting to shake and, she was surprised to find, still holding Steve’s hand. More than that, she was gripping it tightly for some sort of reassurance.

  “How far away is it?” Zoe asked.

  “About a hundred meters and closing fast,” Cliff said. “It must have swam back a few hundred feet just to pick up speed.”

  “Is there anything we can do?” Steve asked.

  Cliff shook his head and there was a new sense of calm on his face. Emily thought it was a meager sort of acceptance. Still, he tried the radio again, pressing the receiver.

  “Anyone out there, come in! We’re being attacked by a shark…a big shark and…we need help. Our position is—”

  He was interrupted by a massive creaking sound and then a popping noise that, to Emily, sounded like a tree being snapped in half. The boat seemed to buckle and the tilt increased by about ten degrees.

  “Was that it?” Emily asked. “Did it just hit us?”

  “No,” Cliff said. He pointed to the depth finder and said, “It’s still forty meters out. That was just the boat. We’re taking on water very fast. If this thing doesn’t tear the boat apart, we’ll have water coming up the stairs in less than five minutes.” He paused here, gulped while looking at the depth finder, and said: “Twenty meters.”

  “What the hell do we do?” Steve asked.

  “Hold tight and pray.”

  “I don’t pray,” Zoe said.

  “Learn,” Cliff said. “Ten meters, eight…”

  Emily looked to the front of the boat and saw the shape of it through the glass. It was still underwater, but barely. Its fin had breached and tore through the water like a knife. And God help them, it looked nearly as big as the boat. It was coming at them just like Cliff had said: like a torpedo, tearing through the water.

  She let out a moan and then the world seemed to fall away all around her. The boat was shaken violently, followed by an enormous explosion of wood and glass. She felt herself being thrown backwards, her grip on Steve’s hand released as she slammed into something hard. She could make no sense of anything; she tumbled and struck hard objects at every turn. Something soft and wet hit her in the head and she was pretty sure she felt someone’s hand brush against her arm. Then all of that was gone and she felt herself falling. She barely saw the entire front of the bridge—glass, walls, and Cliff’s instrumentation panel—come crashing forward before she felt herself falling backwards into impossible emptiness.

  It’s the stairs to the main area, she thought. I’m falling down the stairs and—

  Then there was water everywhere and something hard struck her leg. She tried to cry out but when she did, warm salt water filled her mouth. She lashed out with her arms and legs, panicking rather than swimming, taking a while to understand that somehow, in less than five seconds, she had gone from standing in the bridge, to being underwater.

  Something massive passed by her on the left. She didn’t see it in the commotion of wood, debris, and water, but the force of its passing spun her like a top. It took that brush with the thing that had destroyed the boat to snap her out of her frantic state. She went still for a moment and looked at the destruction all around her. Bits of wood were everywhere, as were random poles, pipes and other assorted debris. Salt water stung her eyes. It was all very murky but she could still make out most of her surroundings.

  Above her, she saw a leg kicking for the surface and that seemed like a marvelous idea. She did the same just as she started to feel her chest tightening from lack of air. She swam for the surface, already certain that it would do nothing more than delay the inevitable.

  Somewhere out there, that monstrosity was surely looping back around to gulp down the morsels that it had just knocked out of the boat.

  7

  She came up to the surface, took in a huge gulp of air, and used it to scream. The boat has been reduced to a few large chunks of material and smaller splintered fragments. To her right, bobbing in the wake of the enormous shark, she could see what appeared to be the starboard side of the boat, rapidly sinking. Somewhere behind her, she heard Zoe screaming.

  Emily turned in that direction, treading water that was littered with the ruins of a boat that had been mostly whole less than a minute ago. She saw Zoe clambering on top of a chunk of the boat’s siding roughly the size of a twin bed. Emily looked frantically around but saw no sign of Cliff or Steve.

  She then cast her eyes a little further out beyond the wreckage and debris. She recalled seeing that massive fin breaking the water; if she saw it now, she felt that she might very well freeze in fear. She’d drown or let the thing devour her. Maybe it would be over quick. Drowning couldn’t really be that bad, could it?

  As she searched for that imminent sign of death, she saw another person come up from underwater, gasping for breath. It was Cliff, roughly twenty feet away from her. He had surfaced near what looked like a steel drum from the boat’s inner workings. The right side of his face was covered in blood and his eyes were drawn wide open. He looked like a madman as he swam furiously towards her.

  Seeing him move with such purpose finally unlocked whatever primal need was buried within her as well. She turned and started swimming for the same plank Zoe was now resting on. Seeing that Emily was headed her way, Zoe leaned forward a bit and extended her hand. Emily swam as fast as she could, waiting for a razor-like sensation to envelop her at any moment as the shark tore into her. To hell with that, she thought. I saw the mouth on that thing. If it wanted, it could just swallow me whole and not even get its teeth dirty in the process. It would be like swallowing a pill. I’d still be alive when it swallowed me.

  This made her swim faster and she was reaching for Zoe’s hand within a few seconds. They worked together quickly, easily pulling Emily up onto the plank. Now that she was on it, Emily saw that it was a large portion of the main deck—the same deck they had been standing on when Cliff had first pointed out the location of what he thought was a sperm whale.

  Zoe was shuddering beside her, and Emily could relate. While she was not visibly shaking, she felt something taking place inside of her. Her heart was thrumming and her head felt swimmy. She also felt like she might puke at any given moment.

  She looked back out to Cliff from her unsteady perch. He was swimming slowly now. His head seemed to be spouting blood and he looked to be favoring his right shoulder. She saw his blood gushing out into the water and knew that it was bad news. They might as well have set out a welcome mat for the shark.

  She looked around f
or anything to push in Cliff’s direction although she knew it would be useless; the water was too tumultuous to float anything over to him.

  As she looked around, she saw the hull along the back of the boat where the engine was located. It bobbed up and down almost comically about ten feet away from her. She nearly looked right past it but then saw Steve. He was sitting inside of it, pushed almost against the engine and looking out like a scared child from under their covers at night.

  Feeling a bit of relief rise up inside of her because they had all managed to survive, Emily looked back out to Cliff.

  Her sense of relief was immediately obliterated.

  Coming up fast beside him was a massive shape rising out of the water. By the time her eyes had properly seen it, the top half of the shark’s head surfaced, its massive jaws springing open.

  Cliff started to scream. It was a high-pitched shout that barely broke over the roar of the ocean before it abruptly stopped. Emily watched it happen in a frozen state of fear from her place on the plank. There was nothing violent or bloody about it at all. Cliff was simply there one minute and gone the next. Although the large mouth of the shark fully encompassed Cliff’s floating body, it was so large that it didn’t so much as dirty its teeth when it closed its jaws over him and swallowed him whole.

  Zoe had seen this happen, too. Emily felt the younger girl next to her. She was shuddering and drawing in deep breaths. Seeing the stark terror on Zoe’s face triggered something in Emily. She felt her nerves loosen and her brain was firing on all synapses all of a sudden.

  No, she had never seen a shark up close before but she knew a great deal about them. She tried to draw up all of that knowledge and focus on it…not only to keep her mind from letting the fear in, but also in the hopes of keeping the rest of them alive.

  She slowly reached over, careful not to cause their plank to tilt one way or the other, and slowly placed a hand on Zoe’s shoulder. In that touch, Emily could feel a great tension as something started to build inside of her. A scream, Emily thought.