Then she spasmed. A grimace passed over the face. As if just now she realized her error.
From the inside out the piranhas ate their way through her stomach, then to her other organs, finally reaching the skin. They tumbled out of her still open mouth.
Piranhas 2 – Sharks 0.
Callum made sure to keep even his toes out of the water. He had no illusions of what would happen to him if he went into the water. Now that he didn’t have a shark bearing down on him, Callum was able to get to his feet, standing on the bent antennae. He wobbled a bit, then righted himself.
This was going to be a rough morning.
* * *
Since the clanging stopped, Shalie stared out her binoculars towards where Shark Park should have been and technically still was, albeit under water.
Her arms were shaking she had been holding the heavy lens for so long, but she refused to lower them. Dillon stood next to her as vigilant as she was. However their goals were different.
She was watching for her robots and he was hoping against hope for his father. Shalie couldn’t follow him down that rabbit hole. She had to be reasonable for both of them.
“Sharks ahead!” the captain announced from the bridge.
You couldn’t tell it from the surface. The sharks must have been traveling, not hunting. Usually they only came up top if they anticipated prey on the surface. The drag on their dorsal fin slowed them otherwise. These were probably sharks from the park, moving out from the grounds to find better prey.
Shalie could imagine that Salechii was pretty well picked over.
“Whale shark!” the captain yelled.
Everyone leaned over the railing to see the shadow of Lebowski skim past.
“Do we have any brine shrimp?” Nami shouted up to the captain.
“The buckets aft!”
Shalie helped as they lifted the brine shrimp up and over the side. Lebowski surfaced, opening his enormous mouth, receiving his offering like the ocean king he was. Nami was able to reach out and pet his soft mouth.
“Have a good journey, boy,” Nami whispered just loud enough for Shalie to hear.
It was a bright spot of hope on an otherwise melancholy journey. She was just a little bit glad Lebowski was free. He deserved to be roaming the seas. Although as he gulped down the brine shrimp, Shalie wasn’t all together sure that the whale shark felt the same way. He rather enjoyed his treats.
“Oy! Ahead!” the captain shouted.
Regretting her momentary lapse of vigilance, Shalie forced her arms to raise the binoculars.
At first she couldn’t tell what the captain was talking about.
“Dad!” Dillon screamed. Was he hallucinating?
Then she saw it. The radio antennae was bent over and a figure stood on top of it. A human figure. It could only be one person. Callum.
She felt her chest collapse on itself. Suddenly she couldn’t breath. The binoculars fell from her hands, clanging on the deck. Her knees buckled and if it hadn’t been for Dillon she would have hit just as hard as her binoculars.
“It’s okay. It’s him. He’s alive,” Dillon reassured her.
A part of Shalie still refused to believe it. It couldn’t be. She’d convinced her heart he was gone. It had hollowed her out, but she’d done it. Now her chest felt too full, like it might burst at any moment.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed.
“Don’t be,” Dillon answered back. “I was the crazy one.”
Shalie felt a chuckle escape. Yes, yes he had been. The crazy right one. Thank goodness.
She allowed the teen to help her to her feet. Dillon handed her binoculars back.
“Um, guys, I wouldn’t celebrate too soon,” Nami said.
Shalie didn’t understand until she put the binoculars back to her eyes. All around Callum were sharks circling. They were about five meters out, but that distance could be covered in a flick of a tail. However it was odd. Why weren’t the sharks circling tighter?
Did it matter? It was a gift and Shalie was going to take it.
“Push it!” Dillon yelled to the captain.
“We’re already in the red!” the captain shouted back.
“I don’t care!” Dillon screamed. “Do it!”
Shalie didn’t blame him in the least. She’d go up there and hit the gas if she could. Callum needed them and he needed them now.
* * *
It seemed impossible but that was the sound of a boat’s engine straining in the distance. He couldn’t see it yet, but he could hear it. The sharks seemed to sense his impending rescue as well and began getting more aggressive, coming in closer to the roiling school of piranha. So far they had stayed just out of their little, but deadly mouths.
Then one of the Mako got braver and snatched a few piranha from the edge of the school. It gulped, then swam off. Callum watched closely. Apparently there weren’t enough of the tiny flesh eaters to get through the Mako’s stomach lining before the shark’s stomach acid got to them.
This was not good. Those piranha were his only line of defense.
Then a tiger shark ate a few. Soon the school was picked off. The white tipped shark was the first to break the piranha line and swim close to the antennae. Callum held on for his life.
The white tip bumped the metal with his tail. The antennae shook but held. The way the metal creaked and groaned though, it wouldn’t take much more punishment. It was meant to carry sound waves, not a full grown man.
And if that Mako came back around? He knew from personal experience exactly how high a Mako could jump out of the water. Callum didn’t stand a chance.
Then the shark turned, nearly in unison and split. Had the piranhas somehow come back?
Then he saw a sole dorsal fin. Gabby. The big girl had claimed her prize. None of the other sharks were going to challenge her.
She swam around the antennae in smaller and smaller circles. She was big and aggressive, but she was also cautious. She didn’t attack until she was sure she could win.
Finally her concentric path brought her close enough that Callum could count her scales. It was only a matter of moments now. This was it.
He sent a prayer up to heaven for God to protect his boy. And Shalie. To keep them safe since he no longer could.
Gabby came at him with her mouth wide open, lunging only at the last moment. Callum jumped, trying to keep out of reach, but her razor sharp teeth clamped down on his foot.
The appendage was there one moment, then gone, blood squirting out the next. He tried to grab the limb with his one good arm, unbalanced himself and fell, hitting his head against the metal.
The world swam. The pain was gone. The sound of the boat was gone. Everything was gone as the world turned black. Then a glint of silver filled his vision, then his vision was gone too.
* * *
“Dad!” Dillon screamed watching his father go under the water. He would have jumped off the boat right then and there if Shalie hadn’t held him back.
“You can’t, it’s a feeding frenzy out there.”
She was right. With his father’s blood in the water, the sharks had gone berserk. Small grey sharks that never would have the courage to swim near, let alone attack a Great White shark, were making runs at Gabby. Even from here, the water was red with blood. Mostly shark blood.
How could his father survive that? He watched in horror as a tiger shark was thrown into the air, then Gabby caught the shark and bit him in half. There were shark parts everywhere. Fins, gills, tails.
He caught hold of Nami’s hand. He might have to accept the inevitable now. It was so unfair. To find his father, then have him snatched from him.
“I believe I need assistance,” a mechanical voice announced behind them.
Dillon swung around to find a QX holding his father in metallic arms. One hand was holding off his father’s ankle to stop the stump from bleeding too badly.
“Dad!” Dillon screamed, not caring that he sounded like a little girl. He flung
himself to his unconscious father.
He didn’t believe the miracle until he felt his father’s heartbeat against his cheek. His dad was bleeding and pale, but alive. Alive.
“We need to get him inside and warmed up,” Shalie said. “And properly tourniquet that wound.”
Shalie sounded all business but Dillon noticed that tears were streaking down her face. Tears of joy mixed with tears of worry. She looked like she always did a crisis. Strong, working to solve the problem, shoving her emotions down so they didn’t cloud her judgment.
He wasn’t worried though. His dad was alive. He was here. They could fix anything else. Hadn’t Shalie learned that by now?
Dillon took his father from the QX, one of the robots swept out to sea that had come back home, he assumed and turned to carry his father down to the lower decks when Nick stepped in front of him.
“I can take him.”
Even though his father was mondo heavy, Dillon shook his head.
“I’ve got him.”
* * *
Callum dreamt of sharks and roses. His son and Gabby. The dreams were filled with terror and love. He couldn’t decide which was worse. He was dead. He had to be dead.
Gabby had him. And Great Whites did not let go. They did not give up.
Despite his doubt, Callum opened his eyes. There weren’t any cherubs or clouds. Instead there was a dank grey ceiling and a port window. The steady rumble of an engine recently overheated filled the room. The stench of dead fish hit his nose.
This better not be heaven, otherwise he was asking for a refund. Maybe God got confused and sent him to shark heaven instead.
His foot ached. The one that wasn’t there anymore. Callum didn’t freak out, he’d already been through this before. Phantom pain. The brain just couldn’t understand where the limb had gone.
Callum tugged up the sheet to see a bandaged stump on his right leg. That confirmed it then. He hadn’t dreamed it all. Gabby had gotten his foot. He’d hit his head. Then there weren’t any other memories except for the silver.
“He is awake,” a QX announced from the corner. Callum vaguely remembered seeing the robot before he passed out.
Then Shalie and Dillon rushed into the room. They couldn’t have been far.
“Dad!” Dillon gushed, then flew into Callum’s chest. He closed his one arm around his son. If he kept losing body parts like this, he wouldn’t be much good to anyone.
“Callum,” Shalie sobbed, hugging them both.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Callum tried to reassure them.
Both lifted their heads and looked at him funny.
“What?” he asked. “I’m good.”
“Dad?” Dillon asked. “Say that again.”
“I said, I’m good.”
What was wrong with them?
* * *
Shalie cocked her head. This was just too weird.
“Callum, say yes.”
“Da,” Callum said with a straight face.
“And no?”
“Nyet.”
You could see in his eyes he had no idea what was wrong.
“Honey,” Shalie said finding it off that this was the first time she had used that term of affection. “Callum, you are speaking in Russian.”
“Nyet,” was his answer.
“Sorry, but you are speaking Russian.”
Callum shook his head from side to side, but that didn’t change the facts.
“Dad, you’re speaking Russian, but you can understand us fine?”
“Da, min ye ga va reet paw an glee skee,” Callum shot back.
Shalie sat down on her heels. “I think he just said, yes, he understands and that he is speaking English.”
“How can this be?” Dillon asked.
Nick ducked into the small room. “It happens sometimes. People wake up from knocks on the head and speak a completely different language.”
“I don’t even think Dad knew Russian.”
Nami stepped forward. “It’s like in the Tuscan Sunset.”
Nick nodded even though Shalie didn’t have any idea what that meant. “And?” she asked.
“Oh ya,” Dillon said. “You didn’t see it. Anyway Nick saves a girl from a leopard attack, but gets knocked out and wakes up speaking only archaic Portuguese.”
“And that movie made money?” Shalie asked slightly shocked.
“Oh ya,” Nick said. “And I got a pity nomination from the Golden Globes out of it.”
Shalie nodded her head slowly, even though she really didn’t comprehend half of what was just said. She had heard of this syndrome before but thought it was just pseudoscience. Now with Callum in front of her, she was beginning to wonder.
Callum grabbed her, pulling her into a hug, kissing her on the neck. Okay, that she understood.
Dillon piled on.
Whatever was wrong, they could face it.
Together.
Shark Station Nyet – the sequel to Salechii
PROLOGUE
Captain Lieutenant Zoya Teterev ran, splashing in the knee-high water. The freezing water. The water that would kill her in a matter of minutes if she didn’t find refuge from it.
Red emergency lights flashed, strobing the steel walls with their burgundy glow. Sirens sounded, but they felt far off, like in a different universe.
Screams. Those sounded very close as they bounced off the walls. Clearly the security system had been breached. Bright red blood slicked the surface of the Arctic water. She had to close her eyes to the suffering behind her. To go back would be death. Although going forward did not in any way guarantee safety.
She slammed the hatch behind her, spinning the wheel until it locked. Zoya found this compartment to be only ankle deep in water. Had she found salvation?
Glancing out the porthole of the station she watched a dorsal fin skim by. Then another and another. The inner perimeter fences were clearly down. She gulped. She’d hoped it wasn’t that bad.
Her hand went to her hip, but once again she found it empty. Not knowing that disaster was about to rain down upon them, Zoya had gone to dinner with no side arm. What was the American term? They ate while Rome burned. Or in this case, while sharks attacked.
A large black eye studied her from the porthole as she studied it. Then with a powerful push of its tail, the shark moved away so quickly that she wondered if it had ever really been there.
Zoya was reminded of an old Russian proverb. “God does not give the butting cow horns.” But apparently God did give biting sharks teeth.
A Great White rammed the porthole glass, splitting it. A spider web of cracks radiated out from the central hit. The large shark could never fit into such a tiny hole, but if that window shattered, and it looked all the world like it was going to, that cold water would kill her nearly as well as any shark.
She ran to the back of the room and found the hatch. She spun the wheel hoping that the deeper she got into the station, the safer and drier she would find it.
Zoya felt the pressure just as she unlocked the hatch. There was a wall of water on the other side. She tried to lock the hatch but a shark rammed it from the other side.
Digging her heels into the steel grate, she tried to keep the door shut as water gushed in, but her efforts were futile. The next ram sent her sprawling backward, slamming into the floor. The Great White didn’t waste any time, turning on her side to fit her long, strong pectoral fins.
Water poured through the doorway, lifting Zoya off the floor until her toes could no longer find the steel grating. She knew the worst thing to do was to thrash, but it was the only way to keep her head above water.
The shark straightened out once in the room and that dorsal fin came straight at her. The camera they had placed on the shark’s head breached the water’s surface. The red light blinking, mocking Zoya. Recording everything, even her death.
As the shark charged, Zoya hoped her superiors thought their little experiment was a success.
CHAPTER 1
Callum walked down the long corridor of the Coast Guard’s C41T Seattle station command post. He’d gotten the call earlier this morning and even though he had insisted, in Russian of course, that this wasn’t a good day for him, they had still sent a helicopter to his house.
So here he was finding out what was so gosh darn important that it couldn’t wait until afternoon.
His titanium foot clicked slightly as he walked. He would have to have Tonaka adjust it once he got to the lab. If Callum lost too many other body parts to sharks, Dillon was going to start calling him the Bionic man. Although six million dollars didn’t even begin to cut it.
Today was a big day for his extended family. Quax was being transferred into a new body. Now, that didn’t happen just any day so Callum really wanted to get this over with. Since the destruction of Salechii, he had been in offices way too much. Lawyer’s offices. Government offices. Insurance offices.
The lawsuits had piled up. He was being sued personally for billions of dollars. He sighed. You couldn’t get blood from a turnip though. He had sunk every bit of his money into the Shark Park. His personal worth had gone down with the shark park.
He was concerned that now the Coast Guard was going to be piling on. The man on the phone had insisted this meeting was in no way regarding Salechii, but Callum had heard that before.
Callum knew that he was heading to the correct office when he found two coast guard officers, in full dress uniform, guarding the door at the end of the hall.
Wow, this must really be some meeting. Callum hoped it wouldn’t last too long. He really wanted to get back to the lab and be there for Quax’s re-birth.
He didn’t need to introduce himself, the guards waved him right in. Even with his foot clicking loudly.
Entering the office, Callum’s feet came to a complete halt. The man sitting at the desk was no Coast Guard commander, it was, if Callum was not mistaken the Secretary of the Navy. Two marines flanked him, apparently the Secretary’s bodyguards.
“Privet,” Callum heard himself say. Even after these months it was still strange to hear Russian come out of his mouth. After the blow to the head when he escaped the sinking Shark Park, Callum had awoken from his coma speaking only Russian. He’d not just lost his foot to Salechii, but his ability to speak English.
Apex Predator Thriller Series Collection (Including the blockbuster new shark park thriller, Salechii) Page 32
