Apex Predator Thriller Series Collection (Including the blockbuster new shark park thriller, Salechii)

by Carolyn McCray

  Rising, he positioned himself into downward dog, watching the ocean upside down. Perhaps this was the best position to sort through the events of the prior day.

  * * *

  Nick was lagging behind the film crew who were acting like this was some kind of sprint. Through the bay windows, Nick watched the hurricane blow with all its might. There weren’t really all that many trees left to bend. They appeared to have all been uprooted in the wicked storm. Being at ground level, you could really feel the hurricane whereas below the water it was really just a low hum in the background.

  Up here, the winds were high pitched, shrieking like a horror film in stereo.

  Which begged the question, Nick thought all of the boats had been destroyed. And there was no way he was going back out onto that ocean. Not again. So how exactly was Jack getting them out to the reef? Nick knew it wasn’t far. Salechii had been built just a few feet north of the international Great Barrier Reef preserve.

  Somewhere along the way, Nick had learned that Callum had done so for a variety of reasons. One was so that all of the coral creatures could cross-pollinate with their natural reef cousins. Ingenious really.

  So the reef wasn’t far, but Nick wasn’t about to swim it.

  Then Jack opened up a door that led to a diving lagoon. Like he said, he wasn’t swimming it.

  Jack, no matter what a twat he was, was prepared. He pulled off a tarp to reveal half a dozen of the enclosed jet skis. “I believe the American word is ‘Ta-da!’”

  Okay, those were pretty damned rad. Nick had coveted one since he saw the robots using one with the Great White shark. Of course it had gone on to be swallowed by a shark, but then also spit out by the shark due to a series of electrical plates hidden under the engine.

  Like he said. Rad.

  “Ready to fire up one of these babies?”

  Completely aware of the cameras on him, Nick gave his best rakish grin and said, “Hell, yah!”

  Jack opened up the pod and let Nick straddle the jet ski. It was pretty wide which meant it must have pretty big engine. He wondered how many cc’s it was? As Jack lowered the acrylic bubble over him, Nick revved the engine. Oh yah. He liked the sound of that.

  Once his pod cover was secure, one of the crew pushed him into the water. He hit with a splash. At first the jet ski tipped over, then self-righted. Yah, Nick was pretty sure it was worth getting up this early. He revved the engine again and this time he shot forward so quickly that he had to grip the engine with his knees to keep himself from being knocked over backward. That would not have been the best footage.

  Jack came up alongside him, looking like he’d been riding in one of these souped up jet skis since he was an infant.

  “Last one there buys the beers!” Jack said as he hit the throttle, streaking past Nick.

  Oh no, he didn’t. Nick was not about to buy a round for these ruffians. Making sure he had a tight grip, Nick punched the throttle and nearly caught up with Jack. The sea flowed around them as they made their way to the reef. The rest of the crew was far behind, apparently not quite the speed freaks that Nick and Jack were.

  This was simply amazing. He had to do a movie with the sleds. Renny Harlin had been begging him to do a movie with him. Nick felt Renny would know how to shape a movie around these babies. Hell, plenty of blockbusters had been based on ideas far sketchier. Nick should know, he’d starred in most of them.

  Jack beat him by a hair to the outer reef. Crap, Nick was going to have to buy. His concern faded as he took in the enormity of the reef.

  Sure Salechii was a beautiful park, but it was no Great Barrier Reef. Callum had done his best to have all of the colors and vibrancy of the reef, but it was how tall? Thirty, maybe forty feet? The Great Barrier Reef was nearly three stories tall. It was massive and teeming with life.

  Fish flocked in schools all around them. The nearly silent electric engines of the jet skis didn’t fluster them a bit. Crabs crawled all over the reef, their bright red shells making them look like the clowns of the ocean.

  Damn it, if Jack hadn’t been right… again.

  More slowly they moved out, heading parallel to the reef, soaking up every square inch of the beauty. The film crew finally caught up with them. The main camera swung around in front of them to catch their reactions to the reef.

  Nick wasn’t a bit embarrassed that he was slack jawed with amazement.

  Anyone would be.

  The dimensions alone were staggering.

  “Remember where the shock button is,” Jack prompted. “This many fish out, there will be a lot of sharks hunting too.”

  Nick gulped. With so much peace and beauty around, it was easy to forget about the predators.

  It was always the predators you tried to forget about.

  He hoped that Nami was fast asleep and didn’t have to watch this.

  CHAPTER 11

  Callum ran his fingers through his hair. He hadn’t had time to brush it or even take a shower. The QX ahead of him was walking double time on his knuckles, his tail waving back and forth, adding more stability to his gait which forced Callum to trot to the control room.

  As he entered, his eyes scanned the monitors. The cyclone was passing over as expected. No surprises there. It had been downgraded to a level four. Usually once a cyclone gave out it did it fairly quickly. Callum expected it would only be a level three by this afternoon.

  So the cyclone did not seem to warrant the emergency wake up call. Just the thing you wanted on your second day of official operations.

  His eye caught Shalie’s. What was she doing here?

  “What’s wrong?”

  She frowned. This was bad then.

  “The maintenance QXs went to check on the jet skis this morning and found the bay empty.”

  “Empty?” that couldn’t be. There were six of them in there. “Are we sure another group of robots didn’t take them out?”

  But Callum already knew the answer. The robots would never breach protocol like that. Even with their new-found mortality. For safety concerns there were always to be three units available for rescue and containment. With none, they were vulnerable.

  “I would have been absolutely certain my robots didn’t do it,” Shalie stated, “Even if the security cameras didn’t show this…”

  On screen Jack and his crew along with Nick Flack helped themselves to the jet skis. “What the hell were they thinking?”

  Shalie flipped to another screen split into six. They showed the on-board camera feeds.

  “It looks like they took them out on a joy ride to the reef.”

  “The reef?” Callum spat out. No, no, no. But, of course, Jack would take his movie star friend out to the reef. Unfortunately the reef was protected within the Marine Preservation, which had very strict rules regarding any mechanized equipment near the reef. Jack and his posse were in violation of at least a dozen regulations.

  If the Queensland government found out about this, Salechii could be slapped with millions of dollars in fines or even shut down.

  “I figured you’d should be the one to read them the riot act,” Shalie said.

  Should be? Or wanted to was more like it. He nodded to her to have her turn on the broadcast microphone.

  “To all those now in illegal position of Salechii’s property, I demand that you return to the park at once.”

  They were recording this so he wanted the government to know that he had absolutely nothing to do with the criminal trespass on the reef.

  “Calm down, toppie,” Jack laughed. “We’ll be back within the hour. I just need to get a little more footage.”

  Footage? Crap. Visual proof of their encroachment of the preserve. Could this get any worse?

  “Callum,” Nick said, “I’m sorry, I had no idea.”

  “Or more likely you didn’t bother to ask,” Callum shot back. He was really getting tired of the Hollywood and television stars thinking they owned the place. “Turn around now.”

  He watc
hed as Nick did just that. The rest of the crew, not so much.

  Then out of the corner of his eye, he saw a glint on the screen. “Watch out!”

  * * *

  Nick didn’t even see it coming. He was bowled over by a shark. Luckily the plastic shell held. He hit the accelerator and shot forward even as the jet ski tried to right itself.

  “Whoa, mate!” Jack yelled into the speakers. “That’s a bull shark that is!”

  Great. Nick didn’t need to know that.

  Unfortunately when he couldn’t get to sleep last night he had watched the park’s educational channel. Well, one of them. They had like five. No Cinemax at night, but a whole channel about kelp and plankton.

  Well, he’d watched the shark one so he knew that bull sharks were the Great White’s more aggressive cousin. Whatever they lacked in bulk, which wasn’t much, they more than made up for in brutality. As a matter of fact most scientists believed that over half of the fatal attacks attributed to Great Whites were actually bull sharks.

  Wobbling away, Nick watched as the bull shark turned for another attack. There was no way he could outrun it.

  “The electrical switch!” Jack yelled.

  Nick took his hand off the accelerator and held it over the large red button on the center of the jet ski’s console. It felt wrong to just sit here like a duck, waiting for the attack, but with a bull shark on your tail, there was nothing else you could do really.

  He waited. Three. Two. One. The bull shark banged into the bottom of the sled. Nick hit the button. He could feel the electricity pour from the battery to the undercarriage. The bull shark let go, shaking his head, looking in pain.

  However this only seemed to piss the creature off. Instead of backing away, the shark came at him again. Nick hit him with the shock again to the same result. A royally pissed off shark.

  “Any other bright ideas?” Nick asked as the shark came in for a third attack. Nick, rather unfortunately knew that there were documented cases of sustained bull shark attacks on whales that lasted over an hour. The bull shark was a patient yet persistent predator.

  This time, the shark learned and avoided the undercarriage and slammed into the side of Nick’s vehicle, grinding it against the coral reef.

  A small crab waved and snapped his claws at him.

  Trust me, dude, I’d rather not be here either.

  The shell held. It was scraped the hell up but it held. The shark finally broke off, allowing Nick to maneuver away from the reef.

  Their only luck was that bull sharks were usually lone predators, not hunting in packs like the Hammerheadss did.

  “Holy --” Jack shouted before he too was slammed by a bull shark.

  Usually, meant usually. There were times when bull sharks paired up and hunted as a team.

  And of course that was what was happening today as Nick’s sled got hit again, slamming him into the gritty coral, scraping anemones and starfish off the rock.

  * * *

  Callum couldn’t watch. Not the shark attack, that he was used to, but the destruction of the reef. The pair of media stars had now moved on from breaking regulations to shattering international law. Heads were going to roll for this.

  “There must be something we can do,” Shalie moaned next to him.

  But she knew as well as he did there was nothing they could do. The boats were all gone. The helicopter had flown off on its own and every Jet Ski they owned was out at the reef. And as quickly as the QXs moved, they could never get out there in time, if they would even agree to do so.

  The bull shark finally let up and Nick turned the jet ski out toward the open ocean. That was about the best thing he could have done. Jack pulled up next to him and they both hit the accelerator. They zipped ahead of the bull sharks, but the predators were strong swimmers. They gave chase.

  Once a bull shark set his eye on prey, he seldom gave up. The jet skis were amazingly fortified vehicles, but to make up for all that security plus the added weight of the batteries, the one thing they had traded off was speed. And Nick’s vehicle was lagging due to the energy drain of the multiple zaps.

  Never had they thought that one of the jet skis would need to out run a bull shark in open water.

  Which was not great news for the men as the sharks started to catch up. One rammed Jack from the back, setting his jet ski into a spin. He knocked into Nick who then spun as well. In that brief moment in time, the sharks overtook the jet skis, knocking into them, keeping them off balance.

  The jet skis were well fortified, however they weren’t built to take a sustained attack from hungry, angry bull sharks. It wouldn’t be long.

  “Do something,” Shalie begged.

  But what? They only had film crew out there. Not a one of them was a trained shark handler. Hell, they weren’t even all that good at handling the jet skis. If only he were out there or even Dillon, then they might have a chance.

  To have so many jet skis out there and no hope.

  Wait. Wasn’t there something to numbers? Maybe they weren’t skilled, but there were many of them.

  “Camera men, you are going to have to enter the fray,” Callum said. It was the only way.

  “Say what?” one of them replied.

  “You’ve got to distract the sharks while Nick and Jack get away.”

  There was no answer. Callum worried that the cameramen would allow their subjects to die rather than risk their own skins.

  Then one of the other jet skis careened into the attack, whacking one of the sharks in the tail. The beast, livid, turned giving chase to the new prey. Another cameraman banged into the head of the other shark, distracting it from Nick.

  CHAPTER 12

  Nick knew he wouldn’t get another chance. This was it. He revved the engine, pulling away from the sharks, heading toward the park. In the distance Nick could make out the two jet skis who had less than brave cameramen, streaking back to the park. He was determined to be right behind them. Jack was at his side, giving him a run for his money.

  Then he heard a scream. He looked behind him. The sharks had maneuvered so that the two cameramen who had helped out, were now forced together, their acrylic shields grinding into one another.

  “We can’t get out!” one shouted.

  Nick turned his sled around. He couldn’t let those men die for him.

  “Come on, Jack, we outnumber them!”

  But Jack kept heading toward the park.

  Nick couldn’t wait for Jack’s conscious to chime in, he turned hard, heading back to the sharks and their new prey.

  Closing his eyes, Nick punched into the nearest shark. The beast turned, snapping his sharp teeth.

  “We’re filming this,” Callum said into the speakers. Why would that matter to Nick? Then he realized the statement wasn’t meant for him, it was meant for Jack.

  Just as the shark turned on Nick’s sled, Jack made a sweeping turn. Nick’s battering ram act had freed the crewmembers but the sharks weren’t exactly slacking. One turned, coming straight for Nick.

  Only at the last second did Jack swoop in, taking the blunt of the attack. Nick gunned it, turning hard, hitting the shark in the tail. It spun him around, away from Jack and the others.

  “Go, go, go!” Jack yelled.

  They finally had a window and Nick took it. The four of them sped away from the sharks. The park wasn’t far. Could they out run them?

  Looking over his shoulder at the pursuing sharks, Nick thought they could. Okay, he hoped they could.

  * * *

  They weren’t going to make it, Callum thought. The bull sharks were both sprinters and long distance swimmers. This was their life and the jet skis just didn’t have the power under the hood to out distance them.

  “Get ready to open the gates,” Callum ordered as he turned away from the screens.

  “The forward grotto can’t hold bull sharks,” Shalie stated.

  “They won’t get that far,” Callum replied, grabbing a rifle off the rack as he hurried
up to topside.

  “What do you mean?” Shalie asked.

  Callum didn’t have time to explain his plan to Shalie. Hell, he didn’t even have time to think about his plan. He just had to do his plan.

  He raced down the corridor, striking for the forward hatch. Dillon ran out of a side passage.

  “Dad, what’s going on?”

  Callum couldn’t spare the breath to tell him. Behind him Shalie ran, panting, explaining to Dillon.

  “Jack and Nick took all the jet skis out and now are trying to out run two bull sharks.”

  Callum could hear the disbelief in his son’s reply. “Out run a bull shark? Are they crazy?”

  “I think they’re desperate,” Shalie explained quite accurately.

  Opening the hatch, Callum could feel the tug of the wind. Even though it wasn’t a level five cyclone, it was still a cyclone with winds over a hundred miles an hour. Callum gripped the railing as he climbed the stairs up to the upper wall.

  “Get ready,” he shouted into his walkie-talkie.

  Once on the wall, he had to hold onto the side as he made his way to the Seagate. The first two jet skis were approaching, They had nearly surfaced. Their plastic shields breaking the water. He could see the look of abject fear in their faces even through the pelting rain.

  “Open it!” Callum ordered.

  The large steel gate squealed as it swung open. Callum wiped his face as he one-armed raised the rifle to his eye. He had to stabilize the muzzle of the rifle on the seawall. The horizon came into sharp focus.

  The other four jet skis were nearly here as well, only they had two bull sharks right on their tail. Every once in a while, one of them would try to take a bite.

  “Do not use your electrical charge, under any circumstances,” Callum said into his mic. “Save your batteries.”

  They needed the speed more than they needed to piss off the sharks any more.

  “That rifle is never going to penetrate their skull cavity,” Dillon said next to him.

  “You are right, son, but I’m not shooting for their heads. I just need to bloody them.”

  “Why?” Shalie asked, but Dillon nodded.