by Rick Chesler
Coco perked up at this. Marine biologists, especially young ones, were not highly paid. “How much?”
“Ten percent.”
Coco took another drink, and said nothing.
“Okay, okay. Twenty-five percent. But seriously, the Board would never approve more—“
“Deal!”
She set the rest of her mai tai down on the bar with a clack, and extended her hand. White was surprised at how quickly she’d moved, given the alcohol. He gripped her hand, and pumped it. “Deal,” he echoed. Then, after a beat, “Welcome back.”
“Glad to be back. So when do I start?”
“I need you to start now.”
Coco pushed the drink back, indicating she was done with it. “Okay, what do you need me to do?”
He explained how he needed her to scuba dive from the hotel to shore with any scuba certified guests or employees who wanted to go.
“Okay, but I can’t dive drunk, Mr. White. No matter what. I don’t know what your opinion of me really is, but there are two things in this world that I’ll never do. I don’t drive drunk, and I don’t dive drunk. Megalodon or no megalodon.”
White put on his best understanding expression. “Of course. I’m not asking you to do that, or to step out of your comfort zone. Go take a nap for a while in one of the staff rooms. You have to scuba to leave the hotel at some point anyway, right? So all I’m asking is that when you do, you take with you anybody who is certified who says they’d like to go.”
White smiled, more to himself than outwardly. Coco’s buzz was actually working to his advantage. He didn’t mind slowing down the timetable. What a perfect excuse to tell Cimmaron! She’s drunk! Can’t dive right now! Guess that means we’ll just have to delay the dog and pony show with the reporters for a little while longer...
Suddenly the bar patrons nearest the window began to scream.
Chapter 21
“What is it? What’s wrong?” White asked.
Coco was worried some other part of the hotel’s infrastructure was now in trouble, but then followed the gazes of those nearest the window.
Oliver’s head drifted past the Wet Bar’s main viewing window, trailing a cloud of dull red blood. A school of small fish nibbled and pecked at the grouper’s open innards.
“Oliver’s been cut in half,” Coco said to White. Around them some of the patrons uttered words such as “disgusting” and “how morbid.” A few began to walk away.
White leaned over the bar to Aiden, waving for his attention. It wasn’t to order a drink.
“Do we have shades or shutters that can be pulled down?”
The bartender held his hands up in a gesture of helplessness. “None were ever installed. They talked about it once, because believe it or not it does get pretty sunny in here around three or four, but they were never put in.”
White clasped a hand to his forehead. Another thing that was talked about, but never implemented. Figures. He turned to his marine biologist instead.
“Coco, now that you’re back on staff, can you explain to the people that what we’re seeing is just part of the food chain, the circle of life and all that shit you know about?”
She frowned at her boss. “You know damn well by now that it’s almost certainly not a normal act of predation.”
White’s face lit up, seizing on a loophole in her words. “Almost certainly. So it could be. Big shark, but not one of the dinosaur ones, okay? People can’t handle that. Just go with it. Please.” He leaned in closer to her when he saw Aiden and a couple of patrons as well taking more interest in their conversation. “We’ve got to keep everybody calm.”
Coco shrugged and stood. She reached up, and rang the brass bell over the bar. When she had everyone’s attention, she addressed them with an authoritative demeanor.
“People, people, listen up, please! It looks like our friend Oliver the grouper has been eaten by a large shark. As you know, the Triton Undersea Resort is not an aquarium. This is the real ocean, true nature and wildlife on display 24/7 for those of us lucky enough to have the chance to stay down here.”
Too late she realized the oversight in her choice of words, and she braced herself for the barrage of smartass remarks that weren’t long in coming.
“Lucky enough to still be alive down here at any rate!” one man said, eliciting a round of nervous laughter.
“Dumb enough to stay down here,” said another.
Coco glanced at White to see if he would use this as an opportunity to update on the hotel’s emergency status, but he remained silent, so she went on. “That reminds me. I’ll be leading a scuba group out of the hotel, and up to the beach. I’ll be going around trying to round up those who are interested. Spread the word, please.” Immediately hands went up with questions. Coco waved them down.
“This is for certified scuba divers only, who want to leave the hotel. All scuba gear will be provided so long as you show me the C-card. Meet me at the dive shop in...” She paused, wondering exactly how long it would take for the booze she’d already consumed to wear off. “...two hours.”
A flurry of conversation broke out among the guests. “I’ll be there,” one man called out.
“Me too,” said another. A man and wife argued, apparently over the fact that he was certified, but she was not. She urged him not to leave her down here without him, and he replied that he may be able to help fix the situation. The woman started to cry at that point, and Coco left White to placate her.
As she approached the woman, a dark shadow dampened the light in the underwater room. Most of the guests didn’t notice or pay attention to it, but Coco and the other staff knew it wasn’t a usual occurrence. Coco’s blood ran cold as she looked up and out the window. Suddenly the underside of a fish so enormous it looked at first to be a large boat passed overhead. But no. As much as Coco wanted for that to be true, she knew what it was.
The megalodon had returned.
“What was that?” Coco was almost relieved to hear White ask the question. It would finally give her a chance to explain what she knew, to let him see her side of things. She looked away from the monstrous fish as it arced away from the Wet Bar and locked eyes with her boss.
“I’ve been telling you what I think it is, sir. I know you don’t want me to scare anyone, so let’s just say...it starts with an ‘M’.”
“More bullshit about a prehistoric shark?”
Coco gave him a look to kill.
“Don’t say it,” White pre-empted her. “Mega-what’s’ it?”
“Yes. Carcharadon megalodon. That thing out there is not a boat, a whale, a whale shark, or a submarine. It’s a megalodon.”
“Great white shark?” White practically begged.
Coco shook her head, and widened her eyes, as if to get across to him that he still wasn’t getting it, or still wasn’t playing ball, or both. “It’s many times too large for that. It’s the exact right size for an adult female megalodon according to the documented, peer reviewed fossil record.”
White threw his hands up, aware people were looking at him, but unable to contain his frustration any longer. “How is that possible? Can you please tell me that? That an animal supposedly extinct for millions of years is now swimming roughshod over my hotel?”
It was Coco’s turn to be frustrated. “I don’t know! If I knew that I would be a superstar biologist. I’m not. I’m just reacting to what I observed. Everything I know tells me that’s what it is. Maybe it survived all these eons living in the deep sea, eating giant squid and whale carcasses that rain down from above.”
“So why come up now, then?” White’s face was red, angry. Angry at a primal monstrosity that was rapidly destroying his career, something that was both a terrible threat, and a conundrum which he did not understand.
Coco tipped her head back and shrugged. “Of course, I can’t possibly know that yet, Mr. White. But if I had to guess, maybe...” She stared out the window, where light passed freely to the bottom once again.
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe the construction of the hotel disturbed it somehow. Altered its natural patterns?”
“Oh Christ. There’s nothing we can do about it then, if that’s the case, isn’t it?”
Behind her she heard Aiden tell a customer that he was sorry, but the bar was out of whiskey, would he like something else?
“Short of figuring out which of its patterns was disturbed and how, and then restoring the conditions that favored that behavior in the first place, no, I’m afraid not.”
White gave her a hard stare. “You sound quite smug. Does it please you to see me in such a difficult position?”
She gave him a critical stare, one that let him know that perhaps she was rethinking her decision to rejoin the staff. “Of course not! What do you want me to do when you ask my opinion about what’s out there, about what I saw with my own eyes? Lie?” She raised her voice on the last word of the sentence, drawing multiple stares from the clientele, including the man who had just been denied his drink of choice.
That man, a wealthy Texas oil investor, approached White and Coco, drawn in to the scent of conflict like a shark to chum.
“I say there, you two work here, don’t you?” White bristled at being put on the same level as Coco, but handled it well, smiling and extending a hand. Right now he wished he did only work here instead of being in charge of running the place. What a clusterfuck. But he was deep in it now—quite literally—and so he’d have to play it by ear. He’d gotten himself into this mess, and he could get himself out of it.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Bradenton, is it?”
The man looked taken aback that White knew his name. Apparently he hadn’t looked too closely at any of the promotional materials sent out. Too busy to care, probably.
“That’s correct. Listen, can I ask you a question?” He went on without waiting for a response. “What in the Hell is going on down here?”
He was met with two blank stares. Others were looking on, eager to hear the answer. But his line of inquiry was not what it seemed.
“Running out of whiskey on the first day? Say what?”
White smiled sheepishly, and looked down at the floor—some kind of fancy marble with embedded fossils of fish and shells and sea stars—before looking back up at the Texan.
“On behalf of the bar, my good Sir, I apologize profusely. I’ll have our staff double-check our inventory, and make sure to notify you as soon as some whiskey becomes available. You have my word on that.”
The oilman beamed. “That’s all a man can ask for. Meanwhile, let’s hope you don’t run out of beer...” He turned and raised a finger in Aiden’s direction. “Barkeep!”
White pulled Coco off to one side. “Can you have some coffee or something and try to get some of these people out of here? I’m not asking you to do anything stupid, okay? Just do what you can to speed things up, that’s all I ask. Have a Red Bull or something, can you?”
She leveled a stare at him, nodding slowly at the end of it.
“If we’re not out of those, too.”
A flurry of activity broke the awkward pause that followed. Chairs tipping over, feet stampeding. The room, darkening.
Coco looked over toward the window in time to see its full fury. The megalodon, barreling toward the Wet Bar like the world’s largest torpedo, unadorned fury aimed at all of them.
Chapter 22
The impact took the form of a frightening crunching sound followed by extensive spider webbing of the acrylic that made up the Wet Bar’s main viewing window.
“It’s attacking us!” a woman yelled before turning and running.
James White was immediately transported back in time to the planning meetings for the hotel’s developers, where the question of glass strength had been raised. A breach in the integrity of the acrylic was unheard of, they’d assured him. The engineers had promptly assuaged all fears with mind-numbing numerical responses about crush depth and thickness and pounds of pressure per square inch, the bottom line of which was this: nothing, not the water depth on the reef, not someone pounding on the acrylic from the outside with a hammer, not an earthquake—nothing—could affect the integrity of that miracle plastic glass.
A Carcharadon megalodon hadn’t been part of that equation, however.
Now, only one thing was paramount: evacuate the room to avoid more deaths. And his marine biologist, as usual, was one step ahead of him. Coco jumped onto the bar, cupped her hands around her mouth, and yelled to the panicked crowd. “Everybody out of the bar! This way!” She pointed out through the restaurant into the main thoroughfare, then turned to White.
“I read that the different rooms of the hotel can be sealed off as a safety feature in the event of a pressure breach. Is that true?”
White nodded, still not quite believing he was living through this nightmare scenario. In a million years, he’d never have guessed that he’d be putting the emergency procedures to the test during opening weekend. It was unfathomable, and yet, as he took in the dribbles of water making their way down the inside of the bar window, he accepted that it was also very, very real.
“That’s right, people, come this way, please!” White began ushering guests toward the exit. He yelled over to Tricia, urging her to assist the guests out into the hallway. Most of them did not need any additional encouragement. A couple had their smartphones aimed at the window, taking video. The shark had again disappeared from view, but Coco feared it was making another of its wide turns before coming back.
Aiden jumped over the bar, and assisted in guiding patrons toward the exit. One man took advantage of the unattended bar and jumped behind it, hurriedly pouring himself a drink before he too, evacuated. Then the room darkened again, sending up a chorus of screams from the people who now knew what it meant.
Coco reached the restaurant lobby first, asking Trish if there was a control panel to seal it off from the rest of the hotel. She received a blank look in return, asked her to assist the stampeding guests into the hallway and away from the restaurant, and then ran over to James White, eyeballing the radio clipped to his belt.
“I don’t see a control panel here. How do we seal it off?”
“There’s a Main Control Room, separate from the one for the train.” He raised his walkie-talkie to his mouth. Numerous people approached him with questions, but Coco fended them off, answering their questions while directing them outside as White talked on the radio.
“Caesar, come in!” He repeated himself two more times before Caesar’s voice blasted through the radio.
“No good news on the new tunnel yet, boss.”
“This isn’t about that. New problem. Need you to get to Main Controls and seal off the restaurant, over.”
A beat went by, and then Caesar returned, “You mean activate the pressure seal to compartmentalize the restaurant, Sir?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean; do it now.”
“Has there been a breach?”
Even Coco had to roll her eyes at the question. She was gaining a tiny bit of appreciation for what White had to deal with on a day-to-day basis, although she suspected that this situation was mostly his fault.
“Yes, Caesar, there has been a serious breach; water is coming into the Wet Bar after the shark rammed the main viewing window, over.”
“I am on my way to the control room now, Sir. Standby, I need to confirm everyone is out of the restaurant before I seal it off, over.”
“Copy that, waiting for your call.” He glanced back toward the window, and saw water running across the floor now. “Please hurry, Caesar. If the window goes...”
Coco studied his face as she imagined what he must be thinking of: the thick rush of water that would invade the hotel if that window were to completely give way, sweeping all of them into the hallway. Those who weren’t crushed by the sheer force of the seawater impacting their bodies or throwing them into hard objects would perish by drowning...
His eyes focused on hers,
ejecting them from their mutual reverie. But what he said next was not what she expected.
“Coco, I know you think this is all my fault. I’m doing what I can to fix it. I need your help.”
His directness blindsided her, but her reflexes were sharp, honed by her recent life-or-death scuba experience where she had made a series of successful split-second decisions that had saved her life and those of others.
“This is your place. Of course, it’s your fault. If it had been successful you would have taken the credit for that, right?”
The question hung in the air with the shouts of the escaping patrons. It was a harsh barb, she knew that, but nothing compared to the way those people had died in that tunnel out there. He slitted his eyes as he looked at her, but said nothing. A man with a red scratch across his forehead walked up to White.
“Which way do we go?”
White herded him off to the right, then turned back to Coco. “Now is not the time to analyze how this happened, okay? Now is the time to get these people to safety. Can you do a last sweep of the restaurant, and make sure no one else is in there?” Coco gave him a hard stare, and wordlessly turned back into the restaurant, the floor of which was now slick with water.
No sooner had she gone back inside, when White’s radio crackled again with Casesar’s voice. He immediately reached for the volume knob and turned it down.
Chapter 23
Too late, Coco realized that she should have Aiden with her. He knew the bar better than anyone. Looking back toward the restaurant entrance, though, she could not see him. He was with most of the others who had been escorted out into the hall and to the right, toward the main lobby. She was on her own in here to do a sweep of the place, and make sure no one else was left behind before the entire restaurant area was sealed off...
Suddenly the ramifications of this decision struck her, and struck her hard. Once again, she had let White goad her into doing something incredibly stupid. She climbed up onto the bar, and jumped behind it. There was no one back here, passed out from too much liquor curled up in a ball somewhere. These weren’t those kind of people. This wasn’t some roadside trucker bar. More likely some baron of industry with zero situational awareness was conducting a transaction huddled over his smartphone at a corner table.
