by Tim Waggoner
“What if I won’t let you?”
Her fear began to grow once more, quickly overtaking and surpassing her anger. There was a teasing tone in his voice, but his eyes were utterly without humor. She wasn’t a match for him physically, and she didn’t know any self-defense techniques. There was nothing she could do to stop him from attacking and raping her if he wanted. And when he was finished, if he didn’t want her to talk about what had happened, he could strangle her and throw her overboard as a treat for the red-finned shark. He’d make up some kind of bullshit story about how she’d fallen into the water on her own and vanished beneath the waves. There was a decent chance he’d get away with her murder.
She couldn’t stay here. Better to jump into the water and risk the shark.
Part of her wondered if she was letting her fear get the best of her. Just because a guy grabbed your tits didn’t mean he wanted to kill you. But she couldn’t control her fear any longer. She’d been date raped in high school by her best friend’s brother, and being in this situation now, trapped on the water with Phil, was dredging up emotions she’d felt then. Shame, disgust, anger, self-blame, and with them came a new emotion, an overpowering need to protect herself, no matter what.
She stood, the motion making the skiff shimmy alarmingly. Phil grabbed the sides of the boat in an attempt to steady it.
“What the hell are you doing? Do you want to capsize us?”
She ignored him and prepared to dive into the water, but then she caught sight of the shark once more. In the time they’d been arguing, it had drawn nearer to the skiff, and now it was only a few yards away, red-veined fin slicing through the water’s surface like a razor. Had the shark been attracted by their yelling? Were sharks lured by sound? She had no idea, and right then it didn’t matter why it had approached the skiff. It only mattered that it was there.
She hesitated, reluctant to enter the water with the shark so close. Plus, she was only an adequate swimmer. Now that some of her initial panic was dying down, she wasn’t confident she’d be able to make it all the way to shore even if the shark hadn’t been there.
Phil looked toward the shark’s fin, then he stood and took hold of her shoulders.
“Don’t do it! I know what I did was an asshole move, but it’s not worth risking your life over. I promise I won’t do anything else to freak you out if you just sit –”
The skiff shuddered as it struck something, the impact knocking both Nancy and Phil off balance. Nancy fell into the boat, but Phil pitched over the side, arms waving in a futile attempt to regain his balance and stop his fall. At first Nancy thought the shark had rammed the skiff, but when she didn’t hear a splash, she realized Phil hadn’t gone into the water. As she pushed herself into a sitting position, she smelled a strong coppery odor that made her think of a pile of old pennies.
She looked in the direction Phil had fallen and saw him lying face up against the uneven dark-red surface of . . . She didn’t know exactly what it was. She recognized it as the strange object she’d seen earlier, the one she’d dismissed as an optical illusion.
We must’ve drifted toward it, she thought. But then another far more disturbing thought came to her. Or it drifted toward us. Whatever it was, it was big. Her previous estimate of its size had been conservative. It was more like a football field and a half long, maybe even two fields. She couldn’t get a sense of the entire thing from her vantage point in the skiff, but she had the sense it was irregularly shaped but more or less circular. It rose several feet above the water, but it bobbed up and down, causing water to flow over its surface.
Almost as if it’s trying to keep itself moist, she thought.
Her initial impression that the object resembled a gigantic scab was reinforced by seeing it up close. And now that she was sitting up and looking directly at it, the coppery smell was overwhelming. There was something about it that made her stomach turn, and she felt hot bile splash the back of her throat.
Phil didn’t seem to have been injured by his fall – and part of her was disappointed by this – but he made no move to get up. She was tempted to start the skiff’s engine and return to shore, leaving him here, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. He might have been a scumbag, but that didn’t mean he deserved to be stranded. The skiff had floated away from the gigantic scab after bumping into it, and Nancy used an oar to bring the boat back to the edge where Phil had fallen.
She reached out her hand.
“Come on. I’ll help you get in,” she said.
But he didn’t move.
Rivulets of sea water washed over him as the island – because that’s what it seemed like to her, an island made of a billion scabs – bobbed up and down. He spat out the water that flowed into his mouth and coughed. She then realized that he was struggling, muscles straining, as if something was holding him to the surface of Scab Island and he was desperately trying to break free.
“Are you stuck?”
She felt stupid asking this question, but it was all she could think to say.
“Yeah, it’s like this fucking thing is made of glue.”
He gritted his teeth and strained again, trying to pull free, but he couldn’t budge.
“Maybe if I climbed over there, I could –”
“Don’t! You’ll just end up getting caught too. See if you can get a signal and call someone. The town sheriff or the fucking Coast Guard. Anyone. Maybe they can –”
He screamed then, so loud and strong that Nancy screamed too out of reflex. His body began bending in the middle, head and feet moving toward each other, and she heard the horrible sound of his spine cracking. She didn’t think it was possible for his scream to get any louder, but it did, and then the air was split by a sharp crack as his spine broke. He was folded almost in two now, his arms and legs still stuck in the island’s scab-like substance which stretched upward as he was pulled downward. And then, with a sudden wet schlurp sound, Phil was pulled inside the thing and was gone. The surface reformed to cover the hole left by his passage, and within seconds it was as if nothing had happened.
For several moments, Nancy could only stare at the spot where Phil had disappeared. A thought slowly formed in her mind and forced its way through her shock and disbelief to the forefront of her consciousness.
It’s not an island. Whatever it is, it’s alive, and it just ate Phil.
This was followed by another thought, one that nearly made her break into hysterical laughter.
I should tell Inez about this. Who needs special effects when there’s a real monster to film?
The skiff had begun drifting away from the . . . the Mass once more, and Nancy’s mental paralysis broke. All she wanted to do was get away from this fucking thing before it could do to her what it had done to Phil.
She’d never piloted a boat before, but she’d watched Phil do it, and she was highly motivated. She got the engine started and within moments she was racing toward shore. The prow of the skiff slapped the waves as it headed toward land, and she knew she was probably going too fast, but she couldn’t make herself slow down. She wanted off the ocean now, and once she was back on land, she’d never go out onto the water again. Fuck Inez, fuck Hollywood. She’d move back home to Indiana, find some boring job, and think about going to grad school.
Salt spray washed over her face, making it hard to see. She squinted to keep the stinging water out of her eyes, but it only helped a little. She figured she was about halfway to shore when she saw the shark leap out of the water in front of her. She didn’t have time to react, let alone alter the skiff’s course, and she could only watch as the shark – completely out of the water now – opened its mouth wide. As the maw of double-rowed serrated teeth came toward her, she saw that the shark’s white belly was shot through with crimson veins. More than that, she saw something like an umbilical cord – dark-red and two inches around – was attached to its tail and trailed down into the water.
That’s weird, she thought, and then the shark slammed into her, sank it
s teeth into her shoulders, and bore her body beneath the water as the now empty skiff continued onward.
She didn’t see the boat slow because there was no one left to work the throttle, and she didn’t see the other shark fins break the surface, more than a dozen, all of them covered with crimson veins.
* * * * *
The Mass absorbed its twin meals with swift efficiency, reducing flesh, organs, and bone to an easily digestible chemical slurry. Small tunnels opened to allow Nancy and Phil’s clothing to pass through the Mass’ underside, and the not-food was carried away by the ocean current. The Mass could not taste its food, but it felt a sense of satisfaction at being fed. The hunting was good in these waters, so it would remain here, for a time at least, and see what else it could find to eat.
CHAPTER TWO
“Do you really think it’s possible that a species of prehistoric monster has somehow survived to the present day?”
“I do.”
A man and a woman walked on the beach close to the water’s edge. Waves rolled gently into shore and seagulls drifted lazily over the sand, searching for any edible scraps they could find. The man was tall and thin, in his late sixties, with a head of startlingly white hair and a neatly trimmed goatee the same shade. He wore a pair of wireframe glasses behind which lay intense, almost icy blue eyes. It was sunny out, but the man wore a long-sleeved black pullover, a pair of dark blue slacks, and black dress shoes that were ill-suited to walking on sand. The woman was shorter than the man by a foot and a half, and younger by thirty years. Her black hair was short, and she wore a white bikini top and cut-off jeans. Her body was toned and muscular, her breasts large, and the bottoms of her ass cheeks protruded from her shorts. Her feet were bare, and she had no trouble negotiating the sand.
“You must remember that these creatures are not monsters,” the man said in a professorial voice. “They are merely animals. Amazing animals, yes, but still part of the natural world. Are they dangerous? Of course, but no more so than any other large predator. So long as we do not venture into the water, we have nothing to fear. In water, they are the masters, but we rule the land.”
The woman opened her mouth to reply, but before she could speak, a large form burst out of the water near them. It was a huge reptilian beast, with an elongated snout, mouth filled with sharp white teeth, and black eyes gleaming with ravenous hunger. The pliosaur lunged toward the woman, and she raised her hands in a feeble attempt to shield herself and released an ear-splitting shriek. The man reached for her, intending to grab hold of her arm and pull her backward, but as fast as the beast was moving, it appeared he had little chance of saving her.
Then the pliosaur jerked violently and a sound like an explosive blast of flatulence came from somewhere deep inside it.
The man’s shoulders slumped and he let out a deep sigh.
“Seriously?”
“Damn it! Cut! Cut!”
A stocky man with a shaved head and soul patch on his chin walked briskly toward the man and woman – and the now immobile pliosaur. He wore white shorts, sandals, and a black T-shirt that had the words Devourer from the Deep printed across the chest in red letters designed to look like they were dripping blood. He ignored the man and woman and went straight toward the pliosaur which remained statue-still.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!” He turned away from the pliosaur and called out, “Enrique! Get your ass over here! Everyone else, take fifteen. Hell, take a goddamned half hour.”
A rail-thin man with a curly black hair came running across the sand toward the pliosaur. He too wore a Devourer from the Deep T-shirt. The camera and boom mike operators lowered their equipment and stepped away from the two actors.
Jarrod Drayton – the older man in the black pullover – reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes and came up empty. Had he forgotten them? Frowning, he turned to look for his assistant, Tasha, and nearly jumped when he saw the twenty-something girl standing less than a foot away. He hadn’t heard her approach; it was as if she’d materialized out of thin air. She held an unlit cigarette in one hand, a lighter in the other.
“Darling, you are a certified treasure,” he said, smiling.
Tasha grinned as he took the cigarette. He leaned forward and she lit it for him, and then he leaned back, drew in a double lungful of smoke, and breathed it out through his nostrils in a slow, contented sigh.
“Thank you, love. That was just what I needed.”
Tamara Young, who a moment ago had looked terrified at the prospect of being eaten by a prehistoric monster, wrinkled her nose in disgust. She stepped back several feet and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Good thing we’re not shooting any kissing scenes today. I don’t like making out with guys who taste like ashtrays.”
Jarrod – who loathed being called Jere – was tempted to blow smoke into her face, but he resisted the juvenile impulse.
One good thing about dying, he thought. I don’t have to worry about lung cancer.
Tasha flinched as if she’d been struck.
“Are you all right?” Jarrod asked.
She gave him a shaky smile.
“I’m fine. Got a speck of sand or something in my eye, that’s all.” She rubbed her left eye as if to illustrate her point.
Jarrod might never have been what some would term a serious actor. He’d never been nominated for an Oscar, Emmy, or even a People’s Choice Award. He specialized in horror movies, the schlockier the better. But he knew a lousy performance when he saw it. Tasha had lied about her eyes, he was almost certain of it, but he didn’t know why.
Tasha Bates was in her early twenties – although she looked like a teenager. She was petite, which added to the impression she was still a child. She had short, straight brown hair, a round face with delicate features, and she was tan from spending so much time in the sun. Like the rest of the crew – such as they were – she wore a Devourer from the Deep T-shirt, along with a pair of what he thought were too-short jeans shorts. She was barefoot, which made negotiating the sandy beach easier.
“Anything else you need, Mr. Drayton?” Tasha asked.
“Call me Jarrod.” He’d told her this at least a hundred times already during this shoot, but it was the one thing she couldn’t seem to bring herself to do. “And no, thank you. Unless I miss my guess, we’ll hang around here for a while waiting for our ‘Devourer’ to be fixed, and when that doesn’t happen, Inez will call it a day and dismiss us.”
“Fucking cheap-ass practical effects,” Tony Jennings muttered. The camera operator, an African-American man in his forties, was a seasoned veteran of a hundred Z-grade motion pictures, and because of this, he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind. Jarrod liked this about him very much.
“I like the dinosaur,” Nina Ichatri said. “I think it looks cool.”
Nina was of Indian descent and about a decade younger than Tony, still young enough not to be jaded. Jarrod found her charming.
Jarrod thought the dinosaur looked about as realistic as Tamara’s fake breasts, which was to say not very. He’d seen images of the creatures that had attacked the island of Las Dagas. The whole damn world had. They were magnificent animals, kind of like short-tailed crocodiles with flippers instead of legs. Their pliosaur looked like a generic monster: dragon head filled with oversized fangs, beady eyes, rounded back, body covered in black rubber hide. No personality at all. The thing was currently positioned in the water just offshore, where Enrique Stone – the film’s special effects man – stood up to his waist in the water, opening a rubber-covered metal panel so he could get a look inside the machine.
“You really think Inez will end early?” Tamara asked.
Jarrod took another drag of his cigarette and nodded.
“I’ve been making films since the late seventies. I can smell a mini-disaster on a production from a mile away.”
Halfway up the beach, Saul was conferring with Boyd Campbell, the screenwriter, and Inez had walked over to join them. Jarrod nodded
in their direction.
“How much do you want to wager that Saul and Inez are trying to convince poor Boyd to rewrite some scenes in case Enrique can’t get the star of this picture functional any time soon?”
Boyd was in his thirties and looked to Jarrod like the Platonian ideal of a hungry young screenwriter. Tall, thin, unkempt brown hair, mustache and goatee, and black-framed hipster glasses straight out of the 1950’s. He looked like a giant next to Inez, who stood a couple inches shorter than five feet. She was in her sixties, had fiery red hair that matched her disposition, and wore too much makeup and jewelry. She had a habit of speaking too loudly, and Jarrod didn’t know if this was one of the techniques she used to intimidate people or if she was simply hard of hearing.
Standing off to the side not far from Nina and Tony, were a man and a woman wearing the same costumes as Jarrod and Tamara. Pete and Shari Dawson did double duty on this production. They both had small parts in the film and also did all the stunts. Pete, who was decades younger than Jarrod, looked ridiculous in his wig and fake beard. Shari was closer to Tamara’s age, and her wig didn’t look too bad. She was more athletically built than Tamara – both Shari and Pete kept themselves in excellent shape – but her natural breasts were far smaller than Tamara’s store-bought ones. Jarrod doubted the audience this film was aimed at would notice the difference during the action scenes, and if they did, they’d likely just laugh. Movies like these were always covert comedies as far as Jarrod was concerned.
The crew for Devourer from the Deep was so small, it made guerilla filmmaking look bloated and overbudget. Lean and efficient were the words Inez used to describe how she liked to work. Cheap was Jarrod’s preferred descriptor, followed by tacky. But there was sun on his face, an ocean breeze in his hair, and while he might not be performing Shakespeare, he was still working at the craft he loved. Being here definitely beat sitting in his home in Thousand Oaks feeling depressed and drinking himself into oblivion, so all in all, he couldn’t complain. Except for the whole dying thing, that is.
