by C. J. Waller
“Simple as that?”
“Yes. The colony doesn’t particularly want us to stay – and I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of this place.”
“For once, I agree,” Marcus says, and scrabbles for the rope. Before anyone can stop him, he’s halfway up, halfway towards freedom. Janos doesn’t move.
“Ladies first?”
The base of my skull buzzes. I don’t trust him, but that doesn’t matter. He wouldn’t dare try anything here. I know the truth of him, and so does the collective. Any false move from him and he’s dead.
I shoulder the crossbow and take the rope. Climbing it is a breeze. Now my nerves are calm. I can see it for what it truly is – a straight climb up with no obstacles. Quite why I couldn’t see that before, I don’t know. I was so ignorant back then. So very ignorant.
Janos follows me, but the collective doesn’t. I look down the well – my eyesight really is quite excellent now – and watch as Walker breaks down, liquefies and then forms back into the shapeless blob of matter that the colony prefers. A complication of ripples striate its surface and I know it is not interested in following us. A warm, trickling sensation runs down my spine. It doesn’t have to. Not now.
“What are we waiting for?” Marcus asks.
“Absolutely nothing,” I say.
All three of us race down to the clean up team’s boat. I can’t see any evidence of anyone waiting on the opposite shore – yet. They’re probably investigating the cave entrance, or something like that, but they will turn up. I pat the weapon that is slung over my shoulder. We will be ready for them.
One thing that does make me feel slightly uncomfortable is that Janos has done exactly the same. He has a crossbow too and I doubt he’d hesitate to use it. On anyone. Must keep an eye on him. A very close eye.
“Okay – how did they operate this thing?” Marcus breaks my chain of thought. He paws at the machine, turning knobs and flicking switches. Janos grunts and hunkers down to investigate. A loud hum springs into being and my head feels like it might explode.
“Turn it off!” I plead, clutching the back of my skull.
“Too loud,” Marcus agrees, and Janos turns a dial that lowers its intensity. It is still agonising, but it is bearable. The other two don’t seem to be bothered at all.
I hear a sound from the opposite bank. Movement. They heard the hum, and now they’re back. I duck down beside the boat. Marcus and Janos look bewildered at first, but they follow my lead nonetheless. Good job – a bolt whizzes through the air and strikes a rock that was directly behind Janos’s head only a split second before.
“How do they know it’s us and not the clean up team?” Marcus asks.
“Probably because the clean up team would have radioed in,” Janos replies. “They aren’t taking any chances. I would think that their team was expendable as ours, so they’ll shoot just to be safe rather than sorry.”
“Jesus fuck – what the hell have we got ourselves involved in?”
“You don’t want to know,” Janos says.
While the other two are chatting, I peek over the side of the boat. There are two figures, their heads barely visible as they hide behind boulders. I can’t really see them, but I can feel them. Their hearts beat wildly, which vibrates through the rock. I inch my crossbow up and over the side of the boat. I don’t look. I don’t need to look. I know where they are. I make a tiny adjustment to the right and pull the trigger. The bolt sails over the water and takes off the top of the hiding soldier’s head. I hear a bark of disgust from the other boulder and feel a thud as the body hits the floor. Now I can only sense one heartbeat, and it’s going batshit insane.
“Fucking hell, Megan!” Marcus says. “How did you do that?”
I shrug. What else can I do?
A voice floats over from the opposite bank. Again, I am struck by the complete absence of accent, so carefully orchestrated to promote complete anonymity.
“Stop!”
Hmm. Stop. Interesting.
“We didn’t fire the first shot,” I reply.
“Megan!” Janos hisses. “Let me deal with this.”
Let him deal with this? The traitor? I give him a disgusted look, but shut up nonetheless. If he thinks he can be useful, then great, let him be useful.
“I am standing up,” Janos announces, and I cannot help but mark the shift in his own accent. No longer thick and exotic, this is the voice of Janos the Professional. “I have no weapons. Hold your fire.”
He raises his hands to show he has nothing in them, and pauses. He takes in a deep breath. I know why – there is every chance the last of the clean up team is going to take his head off the moment he stand up. But, surely, he knows if he did that, I would do the same back?
Janos stands up in one swift, fluid motion. The moment hangs. No one breathes. When no shots are fired, he visibly relaxes.
“Where is everyone?” the voice barks.
“Dead,” Janos replies.
“By you?”
“No. By the Entity. It is in there. It can’t get out.”
Oh, Janos, you pretty little liar, you. Still, if it gets us out of this situation alive, I am not going to contradict you.
“The Entity? It’s real?”
“Yes. It is.”
“Why did you shoot Mendelsohn?”
“He shot first. It was self defence.”
There is a pause.
“Okay.”
And that’s it. With that one word, we’re expected to trust this man. He hasn’t offered us his name, and as far as we know, he killed Brendan – he certainly tried to shoot us just now – but we’re expected to trust him. It grates against me, barbed wire in my soul, but we have no choice.
Slowly, Marcus and I stand up. I lay my crossbow on the floor before doing so. I don’t want to, but I have to play along, be a part of this pantomime. The man opposite doesn’t move as we adjust the low-frequency noisemaker and push the boat into the shallows. There is no reaction when we lower it into the water and push off into deeper water.
For the first time in what feels like an age, a prickle of fear plays at the base of my spine. This time, it is far more primal, more instinctual than before. You can reason with another person. Reason means nothing to the reptilian brain of a pliosaur.
I can tell the others are having the same thoughts. Their apprehension makes the boat sing with vibrations. Then another, deeper, larger vibration joins them, separate from the machine that is supposed to keep it at bay. It is too primitive to register true emotion, too simple to have thoughts, but the jerkiness of its movements can only translate into one thing: anger.
I swivel my head slowly from side to side, systematically scanning the surface of the water. There are no ripples, nothing physical to read, but I know it’s there. I don’t know how, I just do. It was scared off once, repelled by the confusing cacophony. Not this time.
“It’s coming,” I whisper.
“What? It can’t. The machine-”
“Confuses it. That’s why it didn’t attack last time. This time, it won’t be stopped so easily.”
As if eager to prove my point, a huge dark shape explodes from our left, sending the boat reeling. Janos fights to save the oars as the pliosaur thrashes around, maddened by the machine. Its vast jaws gape, exposing six inch conical teeth, each one as thick as my wrist. It slaps its flippers down, making us grab the dinghy’s gunwale to stop ourselves from being washed overboard.
Then it charges.
Marcus screams like a girl. It's aiming for the source of its confusion, right next to him. I don’t wait for impact. Instead, I stand up and dive out the other side of the boat into the freezing water.
I can hear the others shouting my name, but I ignore them. The shore isn’t that far away. Behind me, there is a splintering crash and a high-pitched squeal – I can only guess that the low frequency emitter has finally succumbed to the assault. When the hum stops, I feel instantly sharper; my arms fizz, and I am abl
e to power myself through the water with the ease of an Olympic swimmer. I take only one, quick glance behind me to see the pliosaur chomping on the dinghy, Marcus still clinging to it. It throws it up into the air and then slams it back down again to drag it below the waves, Marcus and all.
I guess he was right. He really isn’t going to see his family again.
I keep going until I can feel rock under my feet. I stagger out of the water, but I am not shivering. Behind me, I hear more splashing. I glance around. It is Janos. He has also survived. I look past him to the lake’s surface. It still boils as the pliosaur finishes off the dinghy – and I guess, Marcus.
Janos gives me what I can only describe as a murderous look.
“You both survived?”
Accent or not, the last remaining member of the clean up team sounds surprised. I'd bet anything he was hoping the pliosaur would take us out.
“Not... all of…us,” Janos pants. It is then I realise I am barely breathing hard. “One perished.”
The man opposite smiles and whips up his crossbow.
“Wrong.”
Janos’s eyes widen. His mouth opens in anticipation to speak, but before any entreaty can leave it, the soldier fires. The bolt buries itself into his skull with a spray of blood and brain matter. As if shocked to find itself dead, Janos’s body stands to attention before slumping to the floor.
The soldier then turns to me. I smile. The fizz is back in my head and in my arms. I feel the vibration as his finger pulls the trigger. The bolt releases. I sway to one side.
It grazes my ear before burying itself in the rock face behind me.
“What the?” the soldier says.
“ 'What the' indeed,” I say before I reach out and grasp his neck. He looks pathetically surprised at the turn of events. Inside me, the colony surges forward, giving my grip strength a human should never possess. I crush his windpipe the way a small child might crush a drinking straw. He gurgles and flops at my feet.
Chapter Sixteen
And then there was one (of many).
There’s a commotion behind me. The tower, after aeons of lying dormant, is awakening. It doesn’t need to be here any more, not now that it has a way out. The colony has their way out. It flickers in and out of vision and in and out of reality. Around me, the rocks shake and I know it is time for me to go.
I pick up the radio that the last man standing carried. His tags declare him as Weimar. Weimar, really? Stupid name. I open my mouth and adjust my jaw, then depress the button.
“Leader to Base, do you read?” I say, in Wiemar’s voice.
Immediately, there is a reply.
“Base to Leader, we read. Any news?”
I can’t help but smile. Oh, what fun we shall have.
“Yes. No survivors. I am the last. All targets destroyed.”
“And the Entity?”
My smile widens.
“Safe and sound. Safe and sound.”
Well… you know what they say – if you can’t beat them, join them.
Or something like that.
The End
Read on for a free sample of Mega: A Deep Sea Thriller
Chapter One: Pirates
Saltwater sprayed Abshir’s face again and again, as the skiff sped across the choppy waves of the Indian Ocean, but he barely noticed the saline annoyance. His worry was what the water was doing to the AK-47 clutched in a grip that could crush rock. Only hours earlier, his father had placed the rifle in his hands, wishing him well on his first true run, as they stood on the deck of his father’s ship.
“You will do your tribe proud today,” Daacad Khalid Shimbir said as he handed the rifle over. “Keep ever watchful. Do you know what to ask?”
“Where is the control room? How many men are on this ship? Do you have weapons? Where are the weapons?” Abshir responded.
“That is good, that is good,” Daacad laughed, patting his son on the shoulder. “You leave a boy, but come back a man. What do you watch for, never turning your eye?”
“The horizon,” Abshir said. “I look for a ship. I yell when I see one.”
“And then you listen to Kaafi,” Daacad said, “you do what he says.”
“Yes,” Abshir nodded, “I will honor you, father.”
“Yes,” Daacad nodded, “you will.”
The wind turned and the waves came at the skiff from the other side, an occurrence the men expected. Kaafi, the oldest and most experienced at nineteen, looked back at Najiib who was manning the rudder. Only a year older than Abshir, Najiib had been on seven runs and was the best with the motor by far. He had a knack for reading the water and his smile told Kaafi that all was fine, even as the large raft started to rock dangerously to one side.
“Hold steady!” Tarabi shouted, the fourth and last member of the pirate raiding party. “Don’t you know how to steer?”
Najiib ignored him, as most did, and just looked ahead at the clear horizon. At seventeen, Tarabi was a monster and still growing. His neck was as thick as Abshir’s thigh, his arms and legs like small trees. His deep, black skin shined in the midday sun, showing the intense definition of his muscles. For a people that were primarily long and lanky, Tarabi was an anomaly; one that Daacad had wasted no time in recruiting. If he hadn’t, then one of the other tribal gangs would have. But Daacad had seen the intimidation potential of having a young man Tarabi’s size armed with an RPG-7 sitting in a skiff as they pulled alongside a target vessel.
“There!” Abshir said, his eyes catching sight of a vessel far off. “Do you see?”
Kaafi did see. He raised his binoculars and his lips peeled back in what others called his death grin; his ability to smile had left him years ago. “Good eyes. Container ship.”
“What flag?” Tarabi asked. “American? Is it American?”
To capture an American ship, or one with an American crew, was the ultimate goal. They could ransom the crew for three to four times the amount of a European crew. Although an American crew would mean possible interference by the US Navy, but that was something they were willing to risk. And why were they out in the Indian Ocean, miles from the coast of Somalia’s Puntland region, instead of up by the Gulf of Aden and the many more ships that traveled through there?
The Gulf of Aden had been over pirated and was patrolled by the international members of the Combined Task Forces and Operation Atalanta. Too many gangs had taken too many chances, ruining a good thing for everyone. This was why Daacad had always kept operations close to Hilweyne on the coast of the Mudug region of Somalia. It was hundreds of miles south of the gulf, and despite the highly public taking of the Maersk Alabama and subsequent killing of the pirates by US Navy SEALs in 2009, it had always been a lucrative territory. It presented its own issues such as erratic weather and choppier seas, but on the whole, it was an area pirates dreamed of. And Daacad had no plans on relinquishing a single bit of control.
Abshir thought of his father and about how proud he would be if they could pull off an attack his first time out. His clansmen and fellow pirates would hail him. It would be known that he was worthy to take over for his father when the time came.
The smile on Abshir’s face amused Kaafi, for he’d seen it many times on the faces of young, inexperienced pirates. He knew it would last until they got close to the ship. The size of the vessel would wipe that smile right off. And what they might be forced to do once on the ship, would keep that smile away permanently. His had never returned.
“You do not show fear,” Kaafi shouted at the young men, “you make them show fear. You make them wet themselves when we come aboard. The first one to resist gets hit.” Kaafi pantomimed with the butt of his own AK-47. “The second one to resist gets shot. Anyone with a weapon gets shot. Do not hesitate. Shoot. Aim for the belly. It may not kill them and their cries for mercy will keep the others in line. Do you hear what I say?”
They all nodded as adrenaline started to pump through their systems. The minutes it took to close in on the ship wer
e the longest minutes of Abshir’s life. The ship grew larger and larger as they grew closer. Once they were less than a couple hundred yards away, the ship’s claxons started to blare, warning the crew that an attack was coming.
The clock began to tick.
It was assumed someone from the ship would send out a distress call to the nearest Task Force vessel, but Daacad had already done his research and knew the closest vessel was more than four-hundred miles away. It would take that vessel a minimum of eight hours at flank speed to reach them. And they would have things well under control within eight hours. The plan was to hijack the ship, steam it close to Daacad’s mother ship where they’d take the ship’s crew, and exchange it for a full crew of his own. The container ship would be steamed down the Somali coast to a port that he controlled, while the crew would be taken back to his base in Hilweyne. The ship’s cargo would be sold and the crew would be ransomed.
His father’s plan in mind, Abshir’s finger twitched near the trigger of his AK-47. The container ship was massive and even if it held nothing but grains, it would be worth millions. The crew would be worth almost as much; as he spotted the German flag flying from a pole above what he assumed was the bridge. They wouldn’t fetch the same price as Americans, but close enough.
Najiib turned the skiff parallel with the container ship, making sure not to get caught in the wake of the massive boat. Kaafi raised a bullhorn to his mouth and announced, “You will stop! Stop this ship! You will be boarded! Do not resist or you will die! Do not touch your weapons, or you will all die!”
Far above, heads and faces peered over the side and Tarabi waved his RPG about, showing them that he could blow a hole in the hull of the ship if they did not comply. Many of the heads ducked back, but some still watched as Tarabi aimed the RPG at them and put his eye to the sight. That sent them scurrying back from the rail.
“Lower your ladders!” Kaafi ordered. “Do not make me ask again,” he looked over his shoulder at Tarabi, “or my friend will sink you!”
