by Rick Chesler
“Great. Then take a seat please. Let’s try to get you off the bottom while it’s still light out.”
Coco opened the suite door, and stepped into the hallway.
“See you on the island a little later!” she called out before shutting the door.
Chapter 28
Coco stood outside the short vestibule to the suite—the escape pod—and listened to the sound of activating levers and machinery from behind a steel pressure shield that had dropped not long after she had exited the unit. The suite was disengaging from the main hotel. After a couple of minutes she heard one more loud clunking sound, and then nothing. The entire suite pod was separated from the hotel.
She took off down the main hallway at a trot toward the main lobby. As she ran, she looked up through the transparent ceiling, hoping to catch a glimpse of the pod on its way to the surface. She couldn’t see it, however, so kept on moving.
When she got the lobby everyone—White, Caesar, and a couple of staff along with a dozen or so trapped guests—were lined up against the far viewing wall. They peered out onto the reef, some pointing and shouting. Coco ran up to them, wondering if the megalodon had shown up again, attracted by the exterior lights.
As she found a place within the crowd and stepped up to the window, though, it immediately became apparent that there was no sea life causing the ruckus. Something artificial was out there—something lit up. At first she thought it might be Mick with the sub, but then the logical side of her brain took over, and she knew it was much too large to be the sub.
“...thought it floated?” she heard a woman ask.
Then it hit her. Thought it floated...She ran to White’s side. He was busy arguing, albeit in hushed tones, as usual, with the engineer, who shot a slightly annoyed glance at Coco as she walked up. Coco didn’t care.
“Is that the pod?” she said pressing in next to White as she stared out at the thing.
“Yes,” he returned before resuming his intense conversation with the Indian man.
Apparently something had gone wrong. The entire pod—one of the hotel suites—now lay on the coral reef, upright, as if it were a designed outbuilding of the hotel. But Coco knew it wasn’t. It lay just beyond the main swath of light from the hotel’s exterior bulbs, but the pod still had its own interior and exterior lighting, and Coco realized with a start that she could see into the pod—she could see the people inside pressing their faces against the wall, and looking back at them across the reef!
“What happened?” Coco tried a more direct approach to get information. White disagreed with something the engineer said, and turned away from him in frustration, now ready to talk to Coco.
“Apparently our crack engineering team,” White emphasized the words with sarcasm as he turned quickly to the Indian, and then back to Coco, “forgot that there would be furnishings and people inside the pod when it would be used in a real escape scenario, and so that extra weight was not in the original buoyancy calculations.”
The gravity of the situation took root for Coco as she gawked at the sunken hotel room. It had detached from the main building, but it didn’t float like they said it would! It was not a sub, it had no means of propulsion, and therefore was little more than a rock on the bottom. A hollow ball filled with air and people, and when that air ran out...
She watched the divers—there was the wife of the Egyptian man—waving at them through the window. Not waving like, oh, hi, over there, isn’t this fun? But waving in a panic state to try to get people’s attention for help. Coco was reminded of Hatem, the one to whom she had given the radio. She snatched the unit from her belt and checked to make sure it was on and set to the same channel she told him to use. All good.
She held up the radio and waved it above her head, hoping they could see it, and would get the idea that she wanted them to establish communications. She didn’t know if White and his engineer did or not—surely they knew they had a radio—but she didn’t much care, either. She had personally walked them into that pod, and told them everything would be okay. She was the last person from the hotel they had contact with.
Coco’s radio came to life in her hand. It was the Egyptian.
“Coco, this is Hatem, do you read me, over?”
White and the engineer glanced at the radio in Coco’s hand. Coco keyed the transmitter, and talked into it.
“Read you loud and clear, Hatem. It looks like there’s been a problem with the buoyancy system in the escape pod. I’m giving you to Mr. White for an update.”
She handed him the radio. Deal with it, bastard. Confront the people whose lives you are affecting with your stupid decisions. She was tired of cleaning up after his messes. It was obvious he didn’t want to talk to the pod, but with several of the guests watching him to see how he would respond, he had no choice. He stared at the radio for a second as if it was a foreign instrument to him, and then took it from Coco’s hand. Caesar said something softly to him, inaudible even to Coco, who was standing right next to them.
White looked out into the stationery escape pod while he spoke into the radio. “Hatem, I can confirm that there is indeed a buoyancy problem with the pod. I can assure you that my engineers are addressing the problem as we speak.”
To everyone’s surprise, the Egyptian man’s response was calm and collected, although they could hear many other people asking questions in the background of the transmission.
“Copy that, Mr. White. Standing by for further news, enjoying the view, over.” He waved at them across the reef.
Coco turned to White and the engineer. “How long will the air supply last in the pod?”
White deferred to the engineer, who gave a doubting look and a shrug as if to indicate that his response was only a guesstimate. “Six people inside...maybe four-to-six hours.”
“Can they open the hatch and scuba out?” Coco looked out to the pod, where it was getting difficult to see the shape of the actual pod except for the lights on the outside.
The engineer again appeared doubtful. “Perhaps they could open the hatch against the water pressure, but I’m not sure. We never tested that. But even if they could, water would immediately rush in with great force. I suppose it is possible, if they knew to wait out of the way of the main force of the water with their gear already on, but...” He shook his head as he stared out at the pod.
No one said anything for a moment as they stared at the pod, until the engineer broke the silence. “I think the best bet is to have divers from Topside scuba down and rig a lot of lift bags to the pod, it will rise to the surface where—“
The guests around them started to shout and point. Coco followed their fingers out to the left of the pod, where a mammoth, dark shape moved up on the reef.
Chapter 29
Mick closed his hand around the warm rubber of the Zodiac’s throttle as he revved the engine. In his other hand he held the boat’s radio transmitter. He had the volume cranked all the way up, and could just barely hear Coco’s stressed-out voice above the whine of his outboard.
“...not coming up, Mick. Pod sunk to the bottom...see something...worried.”
Mick yelled into the mic. “I’m almost to the hotel. I’ll give it a look, over!”
He dropped the transmitter, and focused on driving the boat. He needed to keep a sharp eye out for...for a lot of things, he realized. The pod...the divers from the pod in case they swam out somehow...the megalodon. Clarissa’s dolphin....He had told her he was jetting off to look for it, but Coco was right. He had to put human life first. The dolphin was like Clarissa’s pet, of course she wanted it looked after, but—
Mick slowed the boat as he eyed a darkish object bobbing in the waves about halfway between the hotel and the reef line. He’d just told Coco that he’d be coming to the hotel to look for the pod, but what if this object was somehow related to the pod? It wasn’t all that far away. Then he remembered what he had in the console, and slowed the boat to idle. He reached down and rummaged through the clutter
ed space beneath the steering wheel until he found what he was looking for: a pair of old marine binoculars.
He focused the glasses on the object he saw on the water. Focused some more, compensating for the bouncing boat....there! Mick recoiled as his brain processed the imagery his eyes conveyed to it.
A bloody dolphin—or half of one, to be more specific—rode the waves. Ragged meat bulged from the lower half of the dolphin, its head completely missing. Mick had seen dolphins that had been attacked by sharks before, and while it could be gruesome, he’d never seen anything like this. Usually there would be multiple smaller chunks removed from the body...but the entire upper torso and head? Unheard of.
Megalodon...
He thought of Coco and immediately picked up his radio.
#
Down in the hotel lobby, Coco pointed to the megalodon as it swept its colossal body across the reef toward the sunken escape pod. Looking up, she saw the outline of Mick’s Zodiac limned against the evening sky. She brought the radio to her lips.
“See your boat, Mick. You’re over the pod—and the megalodon—be careful!”
“Copy that. Thought that big-ass shark would be down here. I found half of Clarissa’s dolphin up here, too, over.”
No sooner had he completed his sentence than Clarissa followed the points of several shouting guests. A dolphin’s severed head drifted near the lobby window.
“Which half did you see up there?”
“The tail.”
“We just found the head down here.”
“Odd he didn’t actually eat it, isn’t it?”
Coco was thinking about this—it was odd—when the megalodon swooped into view in front of the lobby. Terrified screams filled the air as the guests ran herd-like away from the window. Coco was too riveted by the view to move. White and the engineer backed up a few steps, but also remained close to the window as the megalodon closed in.
Never had Coco seen firsthand such a massive, all-encompassing predatory maw. The jaws gaped wide, and she swore a small house could fit inside the beast’s mouth. It swam low and fast toward the hotel, giving them a perfect view of it head-on, the kind of view one can never forget. The kind of view Coco would never forget. Ragged rips of flesh trailed from several of the giant’s six-inch long teeth on the left side of its oral cavity, remnants of Clarissa’s dolphin.
Just as Coco was preparing to turn and run, expecting the prehistoric marauder to smash into the acrylic wall right in front of her, the oversized cartilaginous fish veered sharply to the right, a swirl of sediment billowing from the reef as its tail swiped past the viewing window.
“That was close,” White remarked.
“It didn’t miss, if that’s what you mean.” Coco still watched the fish’s progress with rapt attention as it hurtled out across the reef toward the pod, where the would-be escapees were plastered against the suite’s window, watching the apex predator with expressions of horror that reminded Coco of the faces she had witnessed in the tram tunnel—shortly before most of them died.
Coco’s radio crackled once again with Mick’s voice. “Coco, I think I see the pod, it’s down on the reef in front of the lobby main window, lights on, right?”
“That’s right. And—“
“And the shark is heading for it?”
“Yes, you can see that?”
“Yeah. Not sure what I can do for them, any ideas?”
Coco looked at White and the engineer who had also heard Mick. White looked at Caesar, who slowly shook his head, and stared out the window. “I’m sure they know not to try to open the hatch and scuba out of there now,” was all he said.
Coco raised the radio to her mouth. “Mick, maybe just zoom around up there, make some engine noise, draw it off of them?”
There was a pause while the shark closed the distance to the escape pod before Mick’s voice came back. “Copy that, Coco, I’ll give it a go.” They saw the plume of whitewater from the boat’s wake grow larger as Mick throttled up the engine, heading toward the edge of the reef, away from the pod’s position on the bottom.
Meanwhile, the shark accelerated as it approached the pod.
Chapter 30
“It’s charging the pod!” one of the guests shouted. Coco yelled into her radio.
“Hatem, brace yourselves, shark is ramming the pod! Get your scuba gear ready in case it breaches it!” Looking across the reef, it was mostly dark, and the colossal body of the great shark blocked the view into the escape pod window, so she couldn’t see what the people inside were doing, but then the Egyptian’s voice came back over the radio.
“Coco, we see it! It’s so big! Oh my…“
Whatever was happening, Hatem must have kept the transmitter keyed because Coco could hear the crunching impact when the shark collided with the escape pod’s outer window, followed quickly by the rising shouts of those inside.
Somehow cutting through the cacophony was Caesar’s voice, which was calm and matter-of-fact as it delivered bad news. “It moved the pod. Pushed it back.”
As Coco continued to watch, she verified that, indeed, the pod was now canted over onto one side as the rear portion of it rested on a coral outcropping. The humongous shark backed up, and moved into a forward turn, its two-story high tail moving almost the entire water column in the lagoon, top to bottom. It circled back toward the hotel lobby, where Coco, White, and the engineer were now the only three anywhere near the main window. Several of the other guests had left the lobby altogether, seeking safer ground, while those who remained hung back near the entrance, ready to turn tail if the shark got too aggressive.
The megalodon swept right past the lobby window, one of its serving plate sized eyes gazing vacantly into the hotel. White and the engineer unconsciously took a step back as it passed, but Coco stood her ground, fascinated and terrified at the same time. She pounded a fist on the glass as the mega-predator’s eye passed by her at her own eye level. She wasn’t sure why she did it—an act of frustration, maybe, or just to gauge the reaction of the animal—to see if a small gesture like that would have any effect on it.
It had an effect on the people in the room, but not the shark. “Stop, you’ll turn it on us!” White pleaded. A couple of the other guests agreed with him from their safe distance away. The megalodon, for its part, did not alter its course or behavior in any way, but continued swimming along the lobby window until it reached the end of it, and then turned out toward the escape pod once more.
“Coming at you again, Hatem,” Coco transmitted, before adding, “Faster this time!”
Undeniably, the megalodon called on a burst of acceleration she hadn’t seen before as it approached the wayward pod with its contingent of shell-shocked would-be escapees. Coco saw Mick’s Zodiac leave a soundless wake above as he traversed the area at high speed, hoping to distract the shark and draw it off. The animal continued its bull-rush unabated, however. Whether it knew boats weren’t a threat, or didn’t recognize them as anything whatsoever, Coco didn’t know, but at the moment it was fixated only on the pod. Even the hotel itself seemed to hold no interest for it. It was as if all of its primal instincts were homed in on the isolated, and therefore, vulnerable, oddity that had invaded the reef.
Coco brought a hand to her mouth in a gesture of nervous anticipation. Any hope she had that the rampaging oceanic mega-beast might choose not to hit the pod this time was quickly dispelled. This time when the megalodon crashed into the escape pod, the entire spherical structure was lifted off of the reef as if it were a football punted in slow motion. Coco watched as it tilted up on its side before hanging there over the coral. Inside she could see the six divers being tossed about like ragdolls. She radioed the Egyptian, but received no reply. She could only imagine that the radio must have been flung from his hand.
Even as the pod sat on its end, the megalodon showed no signs of letting up on its attack. It swam a tight circle, this time only traversing half the distance back to the hotel, and then immediately set
back on another beeline to its target, the loose pod. The guests behind Coco screamed again as the shark prepared to swim fast into the pod.
The fish came up at its target at an angle, its gargantuan snout hammering the top of the end-up pod, sending it toppling over like a domino so that it landed on its back, with the ceiling lying on the reef. Coco could see that the lights were still on inside the former suite—a good sign that the integrity of the walls hadn’t yet been breached—but the pod was farther away now, and difficult to look inside.
Farther away now...As she watched the pod drift and bounce across the reef away from the hotel, and the megalodon circle back around yet again, Coco felt a chill overcome her unlike any she’d ever experienced before. The shark was pushing the pod into the deeper water at the edge of the lagoon...toward the reef.
She watched as the pod took another hit from the living fossil, which sent it skidding across a contingent of brain corals at a random angle.
Toward the submarine canyon...
Coco tried radioing the pod again, without a reply. Again she saw Mick’s boat pass overhead, again without effect.
“What can we do? What can we do?” she implored White and the engineer, but they merely stood there, mouths agape, shaking their heads. There was nothing any of them could do except to watch, watch as the monstrous fish steamrolled into the pod over and over again, pushing it inexorably toward the edge of the reef.
“Why is it doing this?” someone cried.
“Is it...is it playing with that pod, like a cat with a toy?” White sputtered. They watched in horror as the predator battered the pod out to the very edge of the reef. It was visible to Coco now only as a dark object being jostled about the outer reef. Getting farther and farther away.
She felt helpless just standing there, unable to do anything but watch as the six people she was supposed to lead to safety went through absolute Hell on Earth. How frightening it must be for them, she considered, being tumbled about in a small enclosure underwater by a gigantic shark. Just like a hamster trapped in one of those plastic balls being batted about the floor by a housecat, Coco thought. Just like that. But sharks didn’t do that kind of thing for fun. Did they? Not as far as she knew. But then again, how much did anybody really know about megalodons?
