The instant the beast came into range, Langston opened fire.
***
“I can’t control it,” Rob cried out. His face was red from fighting the controls, his hands slicked with sweat.
“What do you mean?” Nattie asked.
“I mean it’s not responding. They shot it, and now it’s not responding,” Rob replied, his voice strained from exertion.
“Well, we gave it our best shot,” Clarke answered, his eyes not on the dogfight, but on the submarine. He rose moments before firing on the island. By Clarke’s estimate, they were onto borrowed time.
“What do you mean?” Caroline asked. She started to turn, but never finished the motion.
The impact shook the bunker and cracked open the ceiling. With the main building levelled, they were exposed and vulnerable.
The explosion started as a whoosh of air being sucked out of the room. For a few moments, which felt like minutes, they could not breathe, and then it returned as a wind, rushing against them with a force that knocked Clarke to the floor.
The room fell apart around them, and the flames engulfed their bodies. While the bunker still shielded them from a large portion of the blast, it was not enough to save them. Clarke disappeared, his body torn apart by the force of the rushing wind. Nattie followed, the skin flying from her body as if being flailed by some invisible assailant. Blood sprayed in all directions in a firework of gore. She screamed and dropped to the floor, her body finally exploding, bursting like a swollen zit.
The flames followed, riding on the back of a rolling thunder clap, multiplied by a thousand.
Rob tried to move, to take Caroline into his arms, but instead, he watched her burn. Her body caught like a candle wick, and in the brief moment between her incineration, and his, he was forced to watch her body melt. Skin bubbled and peeled away while her eyes burst in an instant, like eggs hitting a hot pan.
His body caught a moment later, the flames blinding him before he followed Caroline’s fate.
Nothing was saved from the blast. The computers and equipment were destroyed, and the two other bodies that filled the bunker, those of Dennis Blankenstijn and the unconscious Gunner Sergeant Plummer, were reduced to nothing but ash, the same as their counterparts.
The walls of the bunker crumbled, the steel supports buckling and twisting as the heat of the blast melted them and their concrete coating.
Chapter 37
Sergeant How saw the explosion bloom before them as he followed the robosaurus. Langston had torn a hole in its flank as they passed within close range of one another. Since then, the change in the creature’s behaviour was great. It flew with purpose, as if the living side had taken control.
“We need to steer clear of the blast,” How called back to Langston. “Hold on.”
They made a tight turn and rose into a steep climb. Alarms began to ring in the cockpit and when they levelled off, How saw why. A dark cloud moved towards them from the central island.
“Holy shit,” he cried as the group of pteranodon’s flew closer. He counted six in all, four of which moved on the direction of the robosaurus.
“Take those things down,” How called just as Langston opened fire, the .50 calibre guns spewing death in all directions.
One of the creatures that headed towards the chopper exploded in a shower of blood and gore. Dipping down low, they turned and avoided the falling chunks of meat, which pelted the ocean like cannonballs.
Above the islands, the four pteranodons met the robosaurus head on. How was at a loss to explain why they attacked it, but attack they did, sweeping in on it in a group formation.
“Why is it not firing its weapons?” Langston asked, caught up in the fight and seemingly disappointed at the lack of action.
“Like I fucking know,” How growled back to him.
“Let’s swing around and come back at them from the other side,” How suggested, not waiting for the offer to be discussed.
Below them, the Langley limped away, its rear low in the water, the damage from the impact with the SeaHawk severe, but unlikely to stop them from regrouping with the carrier group.
The Anderson had disappeared, although they could make out the streaks of white foam left in the wake of the two torpedoes they had just fired.
***
“Captain, the creature is turning. Its speed is increasing, twenty-five knots, up from twenty,” the sonar technician called out.
Captain Defour turned. “Take us down,” he ordered and the submarine began to descend.
“Sir, still closing, speed twenty-seven knots. Time to impact is four minutes.”
“We need to act now,” XO Burke spoke in a quiet, but serious tone.
“Fire torpedoes, and increase out speed,” Defour called, cutting his XO off.
The submarine growled as the two MK-48 torpedoes sped away from the craft. The shallow depth made the sub rock harder that anybody anticipated and had the crew on the bridge reaching out to hold their balance.
The fish sped towards their target. The first struck head on with the charging aquatic dinosaur, blowing a hole through its head, spilling blood, bone, and brain into the water. The second buried itself in the flank of the twisted beast, ripping it apart from front flipper to rear limb, spilling guts and an endless stream of thick black-coloured intestines into the water.
“Direct hit, sir. The target is down,” the sonar technician advised. There was no cheering on the bridge this time.
“Very good. Let’s turn this thing around and head back to the Langley. They are going to need some assistance,” Captain Defour replied.
***
By the time How had circled around the smoking mass of burned-out ground that had been the third island, the robosaurus had taken care of three of the pteranodons that had attacked it and was busy dispatching of the fourth. The creature was clearly of their species, but its gargantuan size and the metalwork that covered so much of its body, including the robotic enhancements to its wings, made it a target; like the odd one out in the playground.
Its large beak opened, revealing rows of serrated teeth, each one several inches long. A single snap and it wrenched a wing from the pteranodon, which spiralled down into the ocean, spraying blood in all directions. The creature crashed into the sea, just as the torpedoes found their mark. Its screaming carcass splashed down in time with the eruption, making quite the spectacle.
In the time it took for the pteranodon to drop, the robosaurus charged. Its body was injured, blood dribbled from its wounds, while the severed section of helicopter blade still protruded from its gut.
The creature closed the gap on the chopper, its body impacting with the nose while its large metallic wings closed around either side. Everything went dark as its body blocked the windows.
Langston opened fire, sending a burst of .50 calibre lead into creature that attacked them like the giant squid attacking the Nautilus.
Sparks lit up the cabin as hot lead met reinforced metal. Holes appeared in the wing, and blood dripped through from where metal and flesh combined. Yet the robosaurus did not let go. Its beak broke through the cockpit windshield and pierced Sergeant How’s chest. His body tensed as the beak opened, slowly spreading the puncture wound.
How tried to scream but all that came out was blood, a thick torrent of copper-tainted liquid. How heard his ribs snap, one by one, as his chest was opened up like a heart patient on the operating table.
“Hey, motherfucker!” Langston screamed. He stood in the cockpit, a shotgun in his hands. He held the weapon low and gave a smile.
“I’m all out of bubble gum, bitch,” Langston laughed. He had always wanted to be able to use a one liner. He fired the shotgun and the creature’s face caved inwards. Blood and meat bubbled to the surface. Adjusting his aim, Langston fired once again, and the creature’s head exploded. Its beak jerked open in a spasm of death, and How’s chest burst. Fragments of rib flew through the air like throwing stars, peppering Langston with bone shr
apnel.
The creature fell away, pulling the chopper with it. The sudden change in pitch threw him forward and into the bloody mess that had been the robosaurus’s head.
The chopper spun several times as it fell, dropping out of the sky, pulled straight down by the weight of the robotic beast clamped onto its nose.
The aircraft crashed into the sea, at points between the Anderson and the Langley, the robosaurus disappearing along with it, sinking to the seabed.
When the dust settled, and the seas calmed, the two navy vessels sat still, both the worse for wear following their engagements, the wounds of battle fresh for all to see. Nobody understood what had happened, what they had seen, or what they had done. Nobody knew why, but all understood it was not their place to question it. They had received their orders, and they saw to it that they were completed.
The End
Read on for a free sample of Megalodon: Apex Predator
Prologue
The young boy stood on deck long after everyone had gone to sleep. He liked the rough seas and cold air of the Drake Passage. Even at the young age of ten, he was fascinated by experiencing actual exotic places in real life, and his father indulged his every whim.
The moon was near-full, stars bright and twinkling, and the boy could see the ocean lit up in magical silver and blue. He grasped the frigid handrails with bare hands and tried to see as far as he could into the night.
A slight, freezing breeze picked up, and the boy burrowed into his fur-lined leather jacket. On the wind, the boy could’ve sworn he smelled something like rotten fish parts. Specifically, the kind that already had bugs eating them, lying in the heat for days. But here, it was ice-cold.
Despite his thick coat, his arms brought a chill. He didn’t like that wind and the smell it carried. This wasn’t the ocean he knew. Then again, he had come here to experience a new sea. Right where the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans met, as far south on Earth as he could get. Maybe this was part of these waters, but the boy felt in his gut that smell wasn’t supposed to be there, and it especially wasn’t supposed to be so close and strong.
He wasn’t allowed to be out of bed in the middle of the night, and suddenly, he was so frightened that because he’d disobeyed, he was now going to be punished in a most awful way. Waves kicked up around the yacht and the boy’s tender stomach heaved. He puked right onto his hands, still grasping the icy handrail, as the boat shifted high and low in the now incredibly rough seas.
The boy heard yells, but when he tried to turn and run to the voices, his hands had frozen to the metal handrail. His vomit had stuck them stiff to the bar in moments in the sub-temperature Antarctic night.
“Dada!” he cried out, but his own voice was squeaky and weak. Nobody could have heard him. He turned to the handrail again, hearing more people onboard calling out. The boy yanked as hard as he could on his hands, but they wouldn’t budge. Panic gripped him hard as that god-awful smell hit him again, but this time, it was in a blast of warm air from seemingly nowhere.
The people on deck behind the boy silenced all at once, and he saw flashlights and torches turn in his direction. He started shaking all over, slowly, ever so slowly raising his head to see what the lights had fixed on.
The warm air blew again, bringing the dead scent. He stared right into the most enormous, gaping, pointed-toothed white mouth ever imagined by a boy in his most secret nightmares. Teeth so big they were the size of his arms. His whole body would fit four times over in that mouth…
He dropped his jaw and wailed, “Dada!” He yanked on his hands and freed three fingers, not caring a lick about the blood pouring out from under his grip.
The mouth came closer. It had seemed like it was right about to eat him, but the boy realized the beast was so huge that there was still distance between the boat and the creature. The mouth. The ever-so-sharp teeth. Its breath, so strong it made the icy air warm, and so putrid only death could be the beast’s insides.
He screamed now.
Arms grabbed him from behind. “Got you, son, now let go!” It was his dad. His dad would save him.
“My hands! They’re frozen to the rail!”
His dad wrapped his huge, gloved fingers around the boy’s bleeding hands and pried them off with a quick rip. The boy didn’t make a sound. His eyes stayed fixed on the beast bearing down on the boat from the water.
He let himself fall limp in his father’s strong hands, one arm under the boy’s tush and the other under his arms with his heavily beating heart pressed against his father’s own. His father dashed them across the swaying, rocking deck to the far side, back of the boat, away from the lifeboats and other people. The boy didn’t ask questions. His hands now ached and he peeked at them. The moonlight showed flesh torn from them in strips, and black blood soaked his palms and fingers. He’d left his father’s coat arms discolored from tops to elbows.
“What is it, Dada?” the boy whispered into his father’s ear.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know, but we have to get away from it.”
As they stood at the edge of the water, the boy couldn’t stand it, and looked over his father’s shoulder. He had to see how close the teeth were because the smell was worse than ever, and a burst of screams had risen up from behind them.
Now the boy saw the side of the thing, and it had to be some kind of great white shark. But it couldn’t be a great white. Great whites weren’t that big! The boy had seen them before. This thing was at least twice the size of one of those. Its gaping mouth rose high into the air above the boat, and it was as though it had neck bones because it turned its massive white head down to the deck, and the boy swore its teeth popped out of its mouth as it demolished the ship easily into a million pieces.
The boy flew off into the night sky and into the rough, freezing water, but his dada didn’t let go for an instant. His grip didn’t loosen in the slightest.
The boy couldn’t breathe once in the sea. He’d never felt cold like this, and it was as though he’d never be able to unclench his chest again to take another breath.
“Come on, son, we have to swim. We have to swim far and fast, so you climb on my back, wrap your arms under my armpits, and don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid, Dada.” His weak voice shook from the lie and the air finally leaking into his frozen body. His father shifted him to his back and he gripped his father under his arms as tightly as possible.
The boy had to look back. The screaming was too much. He’d met these people and sailed with them for a week now. They were dying, he wondered, weren’t they? That giant thing was killing them, eating them.
Or they were drowning.
He hoped that’s what it was.
His father swam and swam, but the boy kept smelling the rotted fish as his hands burned in the frigid salty sea. Was this happening? Could this be real? He had to look again.
The boat was in pieces. The boy saw people in the water, but no sign of the giant beast…until the boy noticed a long, pointed thin fin sticking out of the water. It was so huge that to the boy, it seemed like the creature was inches from him and his father, and he screamed without thought.
“Shh, now, son. Quiet.” His father’s voice was labored from the icy and frantic, desperate swim.
The boy kept looking over his father’s shoulder. He simply couldn’t take his eyes off that fin—and then the giant creature’s head came out of the water again. This time, the boy got a complete eyeful from the light of the bright moon.
Its pitch-black, gleaming eyes had to have been the size of cars each, and its awful mouth never seemed to close. The giant shark bent its strange head again, but instead of devouring a ship, it chowed down, hard, on passengers from the boat in quick, stabbing chomps. The boy finally closed his eyes right as he saw Ms. Engle, her shirt ripped off, disappear into the beast’s cavernous jaws, its head tilted up as though drinking her like a milkshake, and he heard her terrorized, pain-soaked but short-lived screams of horror as the gia
nt thing chewed her to pieces in a few short bites.
“Hold tighter,” the boy’s father said. “There’s a piece of the ship ahead. We have to get out of this freezing water, but keep quiet. I don’t know what that thing is, but we cannot draw any, and I mean any, attention to us whatsoever. Do you understand me?”
The boy kept his eyes closed, wishing he could plug his ears from the wails of the others from the ship being eaten and gored. He nodded against his dad’s neck.
It could have been hours or minutes, but the boy’s father got them to a piece of debris, hauling the boy out of the water before pulling himself up next to his son.
“You can open your eyes now,” he said softly.
The boy didn’t.
“They’re all gone, son. It’s just you and me.”
“And it?” His voice was as weak as a baby pup offering up its first whimper.
“It’s gone. I promise. Open your eyes.”
The boy opened one eye. The sea had settled, and there was more ship debris floating all around them. He closed his eye when he spied what looked like the captain’s arm, still in its skipper jacket, floating a few feet away.
“Don’t you realize what we have just seen?” his father whispered. A freezing wind answered him before he continued. “That—thing. It shouldn’t be here. Did you see its skin?”
He opened his eyes. The boy shook with adrenaline, fear, cold, and pain in his hands, but his father didn’t seem to notice. His eyes gleamed in the starlight settling over the freezing sea, and for a moment, the boy allowed his father’s enthusiasm to sink into him. He had just seen the unbelievable. Yes, he had.
But he had also seen Ms. Engle get chewed up alive by eight-inch shark teeth in a mouth big enough for four people.
His father continued. “The Megalodon. They were giant sharks, dinosaurs. Some say they were as big as sixty feet long. That one, that one was about forty feet, wouldn’t you say, son?”
Island Rampage: A Dinosaur Thriller Page 20
