by Hunter Shea
The female anchor, Maisy Goodfellow, had been a staple of the morning airwaves. The middle-aged Inuit still had her striking good looks, though her body had gotten noticeably matronly over the years.
“Engineers from American Oil Industries are currently assessing the damage done to the platform’s supports. All operations have been put on hold until they can confirm that the structure hasn’t been compromised. It’s estimated that upwards of three hundred killer whales descended on the oil rig in the early hours of the morning. After using their bodies to ram the supports for several hours, they suddenly stopped, heading west, away from the AOI’s oil rig. No word yet on what attracted them in the first place.”
Her partner du jour, a silver haired man who had been transferred from some station in the lower forty-eight shook his head at Maisy.
“Three hundred killer whales,” he said in his polished anchor voice, which sounded about as insincere as it could possibly get. “That doesn’t seem possible.”
Maisy Goodfellow looked genuinely rattled. “We hope to have a marine biologist on during the eight o’clock hour. Hopefully they can shed some light on this truly strange behavior.” Before they could segue to a commercial, she said just above a whisper, “I can’t imagine what the people on that rig must have been feeling.”
Silver hair went into phony smile mode, looked into the camera and announced, “After the break, why bacon can actually be good for you. And we’ll have a follow up story on the single mother of quintuplets and her quest to find the man who left her a mother of multiples. Spend your morning with us.”
Jamel dug into the chair’s cushion to find the remote. He just caught the tail end of the same story on a national news program. This one had a video of the oil rig, but it could have been old or stock footage for all he knew.
Running across the cold floor in bare feet, he grabbed his laptop and sat on the bed. A quick search pulled up a whole page of stories about the latest orca attack. Details were sketchy this early on. He suspected AOI was doing its best to keep things quiet.
“I’ll bet one of your employees on the rig spilled the beans.”
Living in Alaska, he was well versed in the oil industry, especially its lure of good money for honest work. In just a few months stint, a man could make enough to keep him in jerky and beer for two years.
Networks paid good money, too, especially for stories that built on previous ones.
Scrolling through the different websites, Jamel spotted one from some news organization he never heard of (must be Portuguese, he thought) that had some actual pictures. They weren’t the best quality, but good enough to make out what was going on.
One showed two small killer whales on their backs, their white bellies exposed to the sun. Blood looked to be spilling from the head of one. Another shot caught the incredible number of spouts in the distance. It was grainy as hell, but terrifying.
How could there be so many?
Jamel didn’t even think there were that many killer whales alive in the whole world. Weren’t they an endangered species?
Reaching for a pad of paper and a pen, he made a note to do some research on killer whales. What he knew about them could fill a shot glass.
He sure as hell was motivated to learn about them now.
Two more pictures showed the chaos on the deck of the rig.
In one of them, a man and woman stood close to one another, staring daggers at the men walking away.
“You look familiar.”
Opening another window, Jamel went to his bookmarks folder and clicked the link to the story about the killer whale attack at the marine park in Spain.
Coming out of the park were the same man and woman. They were identified as Chet Clarke and Rosario Benitez, a marine biologist and his assistant from the U.S. who had come to be present for the birth of a new calf. Naturally, that birth never happened.
“But something else was born there,” Jamel said, forgetting to blink.
Two seemingly targeted attacks in the same sector of the world.
Nah, that couldn’t be a coincidence.
He headed to the kitchen to fire up a pot of coffee. Then he sat down at what he liked to call his command center, which was just a corner of his living room with his desktop computer that he’d built himself and stacks of books and bursting file folders.
This is where he did most of his research on a topic that had gotten its hooks in him ten years ago. It was the reason he’d come to live in Alaska in the first place. Hell, he’d basically lived undercover for two years, though he didn’t work for any spy agency. His mother used to chide him that he would get his ass into hot water for prying into people’s business. He couldn’t help being born with a burning curiosity. The problem really came when he dug too deep into things, and then exposed his findings to anyone who would listen to him.
It was borderline cute when he was little, but now, as an adult keeping tabs on things his and other governments desperately wanted to keep secret, it could be deadly.
But the world was changing, and the veils of secrecy were dropping one by one.
There was definitely something going on when it came to the sea. The prehistoric chimera fish, or ghost sharks, that had exploded from their frozen methane prison in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean a few years ago had shown the world that man didn’t know everything. Dinosaurs may not walk the Earth (or perhaps they did), but they did still exist in the murky depths of our oceans.
Then there was the whole revelation at Loch Ness, where a horde of strange creatures had been slain when they rose up to attack everyone on land and water. The monster was real, and it was unlike anything anyone had ever dreamed. Scientists were still studying the bodies and attempting to classify the strange creatures.
However, despite whistle blowers like WikiLeaks, twenty-four hour news cycles, revelations of unexplainable creatures and a steady stream of information, there were still dark parts of the globe. Jamel was going to shine the light onto them, no matter what it took.
Killer whales were no strangers to mankind, but their escalating violent behavior appeared to him to be a tipping of the hand by a shadow force intent in preying on man’s newfound fear of what lurks beneath the waters.
Keep everyone afraid, Jamel thought.
It was the mindset of all terrorists.
And now that fear was spreading all the way to Europe, just as he knew it would.
Except he’d never planned for this.
Chapter Thirteen
It took some convincing with the executive vice president of AOI’s European operations, but he eventually relented and had his men retrieve one of the orca corpses. Convincing actually meant Ivan threatening to tell the whole world that his men shot and killed baby orcas. No matter how justified it may have been, the world would come crashing down on AOI if word got out, and they didn’t want that.
For a while there while Ivan was shouting at the man, Chet worried that the bespectacled executive would simply have the Spaniard tossed overboard. Stakes were high. What was one life compared to billions of dollars that could potentially be lost?
You’re getting jaded in your old age, Chet admonished himself.
Chet, Rosario and Ivan had to go down to the whale, as there was no way to bring it up to the main deck. Together, they did what they could with the tools they had at their disposal. Flocks of seagulls cawed incessantly overhead, waiting for the humans to be done with the carcass.
Mostly they gathered blood and tissue samples, along with a sizeable chunk of the orca’s brain. When they were finished, the scavenger birds lit upon the baby whale, tearing it to bits as it floated away from the rig.
By the time they made it back topside, there was a non-disclosure agreement waiting for them. They were to report any findings to AOI, but not talk to anyone about what had happened. Basically, they had never been there.
“I have to have this analyzed by my marine tech,” Ivan grumbled, indicating the pile of bags at their
feet.
The executive, with Rafferty by his side, took out his tablet and said, “I’ll need their name and address so I can have a document sent to them as well.”
As much as Chet wanted to tell the man to cram his NDA up his one-percenter ass, he knew they weren’t getting off this rig without signing. They stepped away from the oil men to discuss.
“I’m too tired to argue,” Rosario said.
“That’s exactly what he counted on,” Ivan said.
Chet rolled his neck, bones cracking. “I agree, but I also don’t want to spend the rest of my life out here.”
“They can’t kidnap us,” Ivan said.
They looked back at Rafferty and his men. One of them had found his rifle again. He made a big point out of casually looking at it, lovingly running his hand along the stock.
“No, they can do much worse,” Chet said. “I think this time, we gotta let the Wookie win.”
“I fucking hate this,” Ivan said with a sneer that would have made Elvis envious.
Chet patted his back. “Live to fight another day.”
The moment they signed their NDAs, they were helped into a waiting helicopter along with their sample bags. Expecting to have to fly coach back to Spain, they were surprised when they were escorted onto the same private jet. And this time, there was top shelf booze made available to them. Ivan was more than happy to take advantage of some Glenmorangie Pride 1981 single malt scotch.
“How much is a bottle of this stuff worth?” he asked the pretty flight attendant.
“I believe a little over four thousand U.S.,” she replied.
“It’s worth every penny,” he said, settling into the plush leather seat.
Rosario declined a drink while Chet asked for a simple beer.
“I already feel like a whore,” Rosario said.
Ivan knocked back the scotch, shaking his glass for more. “Don’t knock whores. If they keep off the drugs, they can live like queens.”
By the time the plane reached altitude, all three of them had fallen asleep.
Chet hadn’t realized until they’d gotten back to the hotel that he’d left his cell phone behind. He checked to see a slew of messages. There were the usual from his mother and his friend Mike. And then there were a bunch of calls from a number and area code he didn’t recognize.
Moving over to voicemail, the computerized female voice announced, “You have ten new messages.”
“And no desire to listen to a single one of them.”
He plugged it in to charge and left it on the desk.
He slipped down to the hotel’s gift shop and bought a thermometer. He hadn’t felt sick or feverish since being on the jet headed toward the oil rig, but he wanted to be sure. Knowing he looked silly sitting in the lobby with a thermometer in his mouth, he did it just the same.
“Normal,” he said, reading where the mercury had stopped. “Not that anything has been normal.”
The episodes of panic were nothing more than the one-two punch of stress and exhaustion. Chet was pretty sure no one would admonish him for it. They didn’t know what the hell they were dealing with here. It could be anything.
But it’s not a virus that can jump from orcas to man, he reminded himself.
What worried him most was that if he got panicky, a man who was a professional, what would become of others? A mass panic could be on the horizon, and that might end up being worse than the enraged orcas.
Stepping back into the room, he looked into the open bathroom door.
Rosario had stripped off all her clothes and was running the shower. God, even after living through the nightmare of the past few days, she looked gorgeous. The nap on the plane had done him some good. He felt a definite tightening of his boxers.
“I need to wash everything off me,” she said.
Down boy, he ordered his crotch.
“Keep the water on when you’re done,” he said.
He knew they reeked of dead orca based on the looks they had gotten from people in the airport and hotel. Chet had sadly become used to it.
A weak smile played at the corners of Rosario’s full lips. “I don’t know. I think it’s best if we conserve water.”
She turned to step into the shower. The sight of her firm ass had Chet out of his clothes in record time.
Under a scalding hot spray, they ground against one another as if fucking were the only way to exorcise the madness and death that had entered their lives. By the time they were done, the water had gone cold and they were red and tender in more places than they could count.
When his cell phone rang at three in the morning, Chet snapped wide awake.
So did Rosario.
“Who is it?” she asked, trying to look over his shoulder at the phone.
Chet had expected it to be Ivan again. Thankfully, it wasn’t.
“It’s someone from The Dolphin Experience in Fort Meyers. Guess they have a job for me. You’d think they could call at a decent hour.”
Rosario crashed back into the pillows. “They don’t know you’re in Spain. It’s nine in the morning there.”
“Oh, yeah. I keep forgetting the time zones. My brain is fried.”
He was tempted to swipe the call into voicemail.
Going against his better, exhausted judgment, he answered instead.
“Hello, this is Chet.”
“Thank God,” the woman replied, breathing heavily into the phone. “Chet, it’s Ann-Marie Smalls from The Dolphin Experience.”
Chet sat up straighter. “What’s going on? You sound upset.”
“We…we just had an incident. One of our trainers went in to feed Naala and, well…he was attacked.”
“Is he all right?”
A line of sweat broke out along Chet’s spine.
He’d delivered Naala eight years ago. Her parents had since passed away. Chet had always had a special affection for Naala, who was one of the most tender, loving orcas he’d ever encountered.
Of all the orcas in the world, he’d never expect something like this to happen with Naala. Never.
If she wasn’t impervious to whatever was happening to the orca population, none of them were.
“He’s dead. The moment he stepped onto the platform, Naala jumped up and grabbed him. By the time we got there, he…he…he was in two pieces.”
Ann-Marie sounded on the brink of tears.
“We can’t even get him out of the water, Chet. Naala, she’s gone crazy. You should see her. We tried to tranquilize her, but kept missing. We’ve run out of supplies.”
Rosario, sensing more shit was hitting the fan, was now up and leaning against Chet so she could hear the other end of the line.
Chet thought he’d be numb to news like this by now, but he was wrong. “I’ll call Ocean World and have them send over Robert, discreetly, of course. He’ll be able to get Naala down.”
The Dolphin Experience and Ocean World were rivals, but considering what was going on lately, Chet was pretty sure Robert, their full time marine biologist, wouldn’t flinch at trying to help.
Jesus, Chet thought, what if Ocean World was experiencing the same thing? What if all of the orcas in all the parks have suddenly gone mad, just like the orcas at the oil rig? What the fuck is behind all of this? Some kind of pandemic? A change in the Earth’s electromagnetic field? Radiation from space?
Nothing seemed too ludicrous at this point.
“Chet, is there any chance you can get here soon?” Ann-Marie asked.
He sighed, exasperated and helpless. “I’m in Barcelona right now. I’ll start looking for flights home, but it’s going to take some time.”
“You weren’t there for the incident at Marine Paradise, were you?”
“That, and more. I’ll tell you when I see you. Just hold tight. Do not let anyone near Naala’s tank other than Robert.”
“I won’t.”
Chet hung up and called Ocean World. He got ahold of Barry Zucco, whom he’d known for going on ten years.
Barry was in no better shape than Ann-Marie. By the time Chet disconnected the call, he felt hollowed out.
Rosario gripped his arm. “Chet, what’s going on?”
“It’s happening in Ocean World, too. Their two orcas have flipped out. Luckily, no one was hurt. But they’re displaying aggressive behavior. They’ll send Robert to The Dolphin Experience when and if he can get their situation under control.”
His fingers clenched so hard, it hurt. Or it should have if he wasn’t feeling as if he were having an out of body experience.
“How?” she sputtered.
“I have to make a call.”
Going to his contacts file, he hit call on the number for Green Gardens in Connecticut, the only other park on the east coast that had a captive orca. After several transfers, he finally got the park’s chief of operations on the line.
It was a big relief to hear that their orca, Keanu, was fine. Chet explained what had happened in Florida and made the man promise to cancel the day’s shows and keep all personnel clear of Keanu’s tank.
When he was done, he ran across the room and fired up his laptop, looking for flights to Florida. Rosario started packing before putting on her clothes.
Chet’s heart was in his throat, fearing that this was just the beginning of something far, far worse to come.
Chapter Fourteen
The last minute flight from Barcelona to Orlando was expensive, but Chet didn’t care. Marine Paradise had already agreed to pay for his flight home, which had been scheduled for the following day. Chet didn’t mind paying the extra fee. He was desperate to get to Florida.
They landed thirteen hours and several time zone changes later. He and Rosario had made it a point to grab as much sleep and eat as much terrible food on the plane as possible so they were somewhat refreshed as they deplaned.
Stepping out of Orlando International Airport to get a taxi, Rosario fanned her face. “Why do people choose to live here? It’s literally hotter than hell.”
“They stay indoors with their air conditioners from late May until late September. Although, if you’re on blood thinners, this place is paradise.”
