Prehistoric Beasts And Where To Fight Them

by Hugo Navikov

  The grinding of the cables running securely through the ship was followed by a sequence of events that lasted two seconds, if that: the metal hull indented slightly, then buckled altogether, the boat capsizing not in the direction of the dinosaur but toward the side that buckled first. This meant the boat whirled and capsized, throwing some off the craft entirely, then finished the circuit with the boat right-side up again. Those who weren’t thrown off—mariners and crew in cabins or who somehow were able to hang onto something—didn’t stay safe for long, however; as soon as the nauseating spin was done, the hull crumpled and the entire vessel was pulled under the water as if by the Kraken.

  Those who held on or who had been protected in their cabins on the ROAR! boat died in one of the following ways, depending on how long breath could be held, or scuba gear grabbed, or air bubbles existing nearby:

  1. Drowning.

  2. Survivors of #1: Hypothermia.

  3. Survivors of #2: Pressure sickness.

  4. Survivors of #3: Crushing. (Well, not “crushing” per se: At depths below about 300 meters, incompressible seawater meets the incompressible water of a human body and its organs. Something’s gotta give, as Ella Fitzgerald said, and it did—the air in the unfortunate longest-lasting survivors got compressed and thus lungs collapsed, sinuses collapsed, and everything else relying on uncompressed oxygen failed.)

  5. No one survived #4.

  ***

  The ROAR! Network didn’t do the live broadcast; as Nigel had tried to get through to Jeffrey, there was no time to set up the infrastructure. But, as usual with the angling celeb, Jeffrey got at least some version of what he wanted: connections were made—both literally and figuratively—and the Internet got every horror as it happened.

  The night after registration for The Bentneus Prize, Mickey got the very posh hotel’s Wi-Fi going, and both Sean Muir and he watched the footage again and again in the two-bed suite. After a while absorbing the information and pondering how his theories about the deep-sea dinosaurs might help provide them with a plan of action, Sean said, “Our job just got a lot easier and a heck of a lot harder.”

  “Oh, good Christ, I don’t know if I want to hear the second part.”

  Sean smile-laughed, something between Tell me about it and You definitely don’t, ha ha, El Oh El. “Mick, how many times has there ever been a report about a creature bigger than a whale coming up to the surface and eating boats?”

  “Moby Dick?”

  “That was a whale. Also, that was fiction.”

  “Heh, right. All I can think of is old-school sailors—like thousands-of-years-ago sailors—sharing stories about the Kraken and Greek water things that would lead a boat to dash against the rocks, or grab it and pull it right under.”

  “So, nothing. No sketching on a bit of scrimshaw. No inscribed urns. Nothing other than traditional representations of dragons or serpents. Nothing like what we—what millions of people—have seen twice now, a leviathan’s leviathan rushing from the depths to destroy and then diving back to the bottom.”

  “I been on the water a long time, Sean, heard lots of stories, old and new. Nothing like that. And nobody would bother telling a story like that—it’s not believable enough to scare anybody. A giant shark, sure, but the size of this thing? It wouldn’t even make a good joke.”

  Sean nodded. “Exactly. No one has ever seen this, not even once. It’s not even been talked about in a cautionary tale or as a legend. There were marine lizards millions of years ago, basically water-dwelling dinosaurs, yes. But they went extinct 64 million years before upright apes climbed down from the trees.”

  “All right. This is unprecedented is what you’re saying.”

  “Essentially, yes. But now we see evidence that leads us to conclude that some sea dinosaurs—predators, in fact—adapted to the cooling oceans by going incrementally deeper each year, maybe each century, eating what there was to eat at that depth. I bet that in the middle-lower depths, past the euphotic zone, where photosynthesis stops, they ate each other, too. But then things were getting too cold even in the middle depths, where it was warmer than it is now but not what the dinosaurs would have felt comfortable in.

  “But these predators, I mean the creatures’ adapting descendants, sharpened by millions of years of evolution to detect slight differences in water temperature that indicate prey in the area, may have sensed something warm below. Far below. This is the basest speculation made from precious little data, but I believe that’s when they found the hydrothermal events.”

  Mickey smirked and said, “I don’t think you’re gonna get much disagreement with your theories these days, boss.”

  “Ha, yeah, well, there’s a billion reasons for all of us to hope they’re on the right track,” he said. “Here’s what I’m saying, though: It might have taken a million years, it might have taken tens of millions of years, but eventually the dinosaurs we’ve seen—Liopleurodon, Mosasaurus, Megalodon—adapted to the extreme depths. Even so, their genetic memory of thermophilia—”

  “They like heat,” Mickey interrupted before Sean spent time explaining the word.

  “Exactly. So, they were drawn down here by their predisposition to warmth, and this was made possible by the glacial adaptations ending in completely altered physiognomies. And even that’s weird, because, other than albinism, their exterior appearance has changed little from what we would expect to see on an actual marine lizard of that time.”

  “This is cool—amazing, mind-blowing—and I’m no evolutionary theorist or whatever, but why did they go down to the bottom? There must have been food enough at that middle depth for them to be there for a long-ass time.”

  “Yes, that’s the billion-dollar question, isn’t it? Even twenty years ago, I don’t think we would have had an answer to that. But since the discovery of hydrothermal vents and the mass of chemosynthetic life that surrounds them for miles, we can answer it. The predators, which I’d be willing to bet are as rare as tigers and other exclusively carnivorous animals in the territory they roam, eat every kind of sea life that populates these vents. Because the prey runs along seams of tectonic plates, it forms a line that these new species of dinosaurs can move along as they need to.”

  “The things at the vents would have to grow pretty damn fast to keep a bunch of, basically, ginormous sharks fed,” Mickey said, impressed with himself for seeing that.

  “Yes! That would have to be true for any of this theory to hold together, and in fact, thanks to ROVs and some history-making dives of humans in submersibles, we know it to be true. The incredibly active and nutrient-rich environment that these tube worms and their brethren grow in is a riot of organic chemicals. In the heat of the vents, it’s almost like a bag of popcorn; an immense amount of life bursts forth just from the organic material being exposed to high temperatures.”

  “‘The Popcorn Cooker of Life.’ That would make a good title for your next paper.”

  “Our next one, Mick. That is, if I’m not rotting in some hole for the rest of my life for child molestation. I doubt they give molesters the freedom to do research and publish.”

  “I want to say that Bentneus must have been kidding, but I’ve been working with Jake for a number of years now. He wasn’t kidding.”

  “Yup.” There was a long silence in the room, the only exception the hum of the air conditioning protecting them from the humidity of Guam. “But that’s our, my, life situation now. No way out but through.”

  “That’s like … Zen, man. Deep.”

  “You’d be surprised the things you learn in prison.”

  “I hope I never hear them.”

  “I hope that, too. Because, especially in solitary, you hear all of it again and again and again. In your head, I mean.”

  “No offense, boss, but you’re creeping me out,” Mickey said, feeling like an invisible hand was squeezing his stomach to make the contents blow from his mouth.

  “Yeah, sorry, jeez. This has been a really big adjustment o
ver the past what, thirty-six hours?” He looked for a clock and spotted the red numerals on the alarm clock radio. “It’s past midnight?”

  Mickey laughed and said, “Yeah, it’s been a slog, hasn’t it?”

  “I need to get a watch.”

  “Don’t you worry. The North Koreans, Jeffrey Plaid, all that’s put off outfitting the boats … and you. Tomorrow is shopping day.”

  They shared a laugh, but then Mickey said, “Wait, was that the easy part or the hard part? And … what was it, exactly? That they exist, and we can make scientific sense? So we’re not fighting totally unknown monsters—we know we’re going up against prehistoric beasts?”

  “Well, that is a good thing. I mean, we’re essentially dealing with cryptids here. They look like dinosaurs, and there is zero doubt in my mind that they are the adapted descendants of the marine lizards, the predatory dinosaurs, whose names we’re using for convenience.”

  “I get that, but hell, if it looks like a predatory dinosaur, got jaws full of teeth like a predatory dinosaur, eats everything like a predatory dinosaur—”

  “My point is that it’s good we have some idea of what these things are, at least. But Mick, listen—they’re hollow inside, or just about, from what we’ve seen. It makes sense, since the pressure would be equalized if the animal was filled with water, but this is a physiology we know nothing about.”

  Mickey rubbed his eyes. “I’m hittin’ the wall here, boss. So there’s no good news or bad news?”

  “No, I’m sorry, Mick, I’m still processing what we saw happen to Jeffrey Plaid, what his cameras picked up while they were inside the creature. Here’s what I’m trying to say: Now that what we’re calling Gigadon has come to the surface, feeling the warmth of the water up here … it’s remembering, Mickey. With Bentneus, it was a one-time thing, never to be repeated. This rare monster crept out of its lair and followed the heat of Jake’s sub.

  “But it happened again when Plaid sent down an ROV specifically designed to give off enormous amounts of heat. When they hit the rockets to make a trail of warm water to the surface, Gigadon remembered and followed right behind, not doing the tentative circling like it had beneath Ocean Victory. No, it remembered what this meant and again came to the surface, and fed on the organic life there, spitting out the metal or plastic or whatever since its system apparently can’t digest that. But it pulled that network boat right under and, I’m sure, snatched up every organic item—the crew on the boat—that it could right after it released those shark cages.”

  “Goddamn, Sean, I’m begging you: get to the point. The monster remembered coming up. Okay, agreed. So good or bad?”

  “That’s the thing—it’s both.”

  Mick momentarily forgot his weariness. “If you stop there, I’m sorry, but I swear to God I’m gonna smother you with a pillow as soon as you fall asleep.”

  Sean laughed and said, “It’s good because it’ll be a heck of a lot easier to kill this thing if it comes to us on the surface than if we had to go down to the bottom of Challenger Deep to do it. We’re a canned snack down there—if we could even get down there for the third time in history.”

  “And it’s bad because …”

  “It’s bad because Gigadon knows and remembers that there’s an ‘up here,’ full of heartier fare than tube worms. It might need to be led up by a heat source, but it might not. If it doesn’t need ‘hot bait,’ if you get me, it could attack at any time. We’ve seen it consume only smaller nonorganic items—submersibles, shark cages—but with a mouth like that it could suck down a Navy destroyer.”

  Mickey blinked, comprehension dawning at last. “So, even on the surface, we don’t kill it first, we’re a goddamn canned snack up here, too.”

  “Sweet dreams,” Sean said with an ironic smirk and lay down.

  Mickey shook his head, wryly smiling as well as he turned off the lamp. “Muir, if I was you tonight, I’d sleep with one eye open, ya rat bastard.”

  ***

  At 10 in the morning—sharp, like according to the atomic clocks buried beneath mountains in Colorado—an extremely shiny limousine pulled up to the hotel, as Bentneus had told Mickey Luch to be ready for.

  “Whoa,” Sean said. “At this rate, I’ll be sitting in a Bentley before the day is out.” He nodded thanks to the doorman who opened the door for them and slipped inside. The interior made the shiny and sleek exterior look like the front of a crack house. He settled in and felt like he was being gently massaged by a giant with Palmolive-soft hands.

  Mickey slid in as well, and the door shut. The limo started moving immediately without a word to or from the driver, whom they couldn’t actually see behind the black partition. At Sean’s quizzical expression, Mickey chuckled and said, “Don’t worry—the driver’s got instructions as specific as ours. No need to distract him with how nice the limo is or anything. Believe me, he knows. Besides, if you really need him, just open or close the partition with that window toggle.”

  Sean considered doing it just to do it, but restrained himself. This wasn’t a vacation, as much as it may have felt like one. “So where is Mister Bentneus’s silent driver taking us?”

  “Oh, this limo doesn’t belong to Jake, and the driver doesn’t work for our mutual friend, either. This is from the … store, I guess you could call it? … that we’re going shopping at. Ocean Vengeance is already there, outfitted with the basics. The sales liaison, a Mister Abu al Khayr, will let us know what else we can put on her.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a native Guamanian name. Kind of has an, I dunno … Middle Eastern ring to it.”

  “You think?” Mickey said with lips pursing into a smile.

  “Okay, so I’m getting a watch. I know that. What other equipment are we getting? Weapons for the boats?”

  “That’s the biggie. You’ll have Sea Legs and Sharkasm, but also there’s an armed boat called Iceberg, which, again, has the basics but which we’re gonna load up with anything and everything we want.”

  “Iceberg?”

  Mickey smiled, knowing what he was about to tell Sean was extremely stupid, but it was what it was, and he said, “Anything that runs into it is gonna get sunk.”

  “Oh, gawd. So, we’ve got our command and launch ship, our science ship, although we’re doing ‘accidental science’ at best … do we have a communications ship? Tell me it’s The Moaning Mermaid, that would be nice closure.”

  “Yeah, no, it’s a sleek new thing Bentneus outfitted for this mission. Or, I mean, he designed it and got it outfitted with 3D cameras and satellite whatsits and the like. He christened it, um, the I Spit on Your Grave. I think his mind is slipping from all that fake blood and air, honestly.”

  “No, I get it. He’ll take Gigadon being killed 30,000 feet below the surface, but what he really wants is for it to come up into the light, where it can be killed in high-definition and glorious 3D. He wants to ‘spit on its grave’ by capturing its death on film forever.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think let’s just call it Spit.”

  “Yeah.”

  The limo stopped, and, a moment later, Mickey’s door and Sean’s door were opened practically simultaneously. A man in a limo driver’s outfit—leather gloves, service cap, dark sunglasses, black suit, white shirt, black tie—was at Mickey’s door; and a sharply dressed man—well-cut gray suit, open-collared shirt that probably cost more than the average American family earned in a week, gold aviator sunglasses, and those shoes that have tassels on them—of indeterminate race was at Sean’s door.

  “Welcome to War-Mart,” the (Israeli? Arab? Tanned Russian?) gray-suited man said to both of them once Mickey came around to Sean’s side. His smile was as warm as any greeter’s at Saks or Neiman Marcus, and why not? He had a warehouse full of deadly tech goodies, and probably a rhino-stopping semiautomatic pistol tucked into a holster right under that slick jacket.

  “Glad to be here,” Sean said, and shook the man’s hand, as did Mickey, who had a grin of
excitement on his face that proved infectious to their host.

  “Very good,” he said through a little laugh. “My name is Abu al Khayr.”

  “Your English is very good.”

  “It should be. I’m from Bay Ridge, in Brooklyn!” Abu al Khayr shouted with a laugh; Sean and Mickey joined in. They couldn’t believe they hadn’t picked up the New York in the Arab’s voice. “Anyway, I feel the excitement coming off you guys, right? Now come on inside and let’s pick out your dinosaur killers.”

  ***

  “I feel like James Bond being led around by Q,” Sean said.

  Mickey couldn’t even speak, he was so overwhelmed.

  The equipment wasn’t how they expected, piled on industrial-strength shelving to be found by inventory number, taken down, and examined. No, the War-Mart “warehouse” was more like a showroom, or maybe like the highest-end wristwatch boutique in a mall on the Las Vegas Strip. There was stacked shelving all along the outskirts of the room, but in the minimalist main space, weapons and gadgets abounded—with, unbelievably, a full replica of Ocean Vengeance in the very middle. Its ports and connections were all clearly labeled with Arial Black numerals on white cardstock, so Sean and Mickey could see where and in what quantity the toys could be added to the sub.

  This had all the sleekness of an Arab presentation floor. Their new friend, Abu al Khayr, may have been born on the Fourth of July twenty feet from Abe’s statue in the Lincoln Memorial; but Sean and Mickey both knew this was an operation by Arab-as-Arab-can-be Middle East gunrunners, who were probably watching their every move on security camera at that moment.

  But Muslim, Christian, Hindu, B’nai B’rith, Rastafarian—it didn’t matter. Religion was left at the door at War-Mart. It didn’t matter to the arms dealers whom one was pointing the missiles at, as long as buyers paid top dollar for what they used. Guam was an American territory, to be sure, so gunrunning must have been frowned upon, at least technically. But what could be more American than arming all sides of a conflict, no matter how many sides there were?