Big Ass Shark

by Briar Lee Mitchell

  “Are you sure?” Delbert asked as he studied the image more closely.

  “About what? The eighty-feet-from-shore part? Yes, I am.”

  Fascinated now, Delbert moved closer to the white board. Part of the projected image splashed across his back. Two young women in the photo, clad in matching pink bikinis, covered his back. His white lab coat made the perfect projector screen.

  “Well, of course, the channel markers,” Delbert fumbled, “would have to be some ways out there . . . ”

  He appeared to be adding numbers up in his head, then, continued.

  “And, I believe I can see the shark’s back through the water with this combination of filters, so I can use the actual dimensions of the fin to come up with a more correct size instead of guessing using just what we can see above the water. Still some guesswork involved, though.”

  “Yes!” Peter exclaimed. “Bob, he said the same thing about not knowing how much of that fin was below water.”

  “Uh-huh,” Delbert muttered as he fiddled with his equations a bit more, and abruptly froze as he stared at the paper in his hands, then blurted out, “Oh, that’s silly!”

  Delbert dashed across the room, and retrieved a pad of paper, then sketched out the image and added numbers to it. He checked, then doubled-checked his work and turned towards Peter and his crew. The color appeared to drain from his face.

  “Doc?” Peter asked.

  “You okay dude?” Jethro and Hobart asked in unison.

  Delbert turned to face them, shock clearly etched on his features.

  “I can’t tell you how much fin is exposed,” he told them, “which would tell me exactly how long it is, because I don’t know how low it is in the water. We can’t see its back clearly here, but it is huge. The filters I just added show a little bit of where the back might be. We can see that, more than what your guy Pruitt would have been able to work with. That animal—that thing—would be forty to sixty feet long. That’s just a rough estimate, but it is an accurate range based on what I can see. I would stake my reputation on it.”

  “Fuck me,” Jethro and Hobart said simultaneously.

  Peter stared at him for the longest time, with his mouth hanging open, then, he danced wildly and happily in place as if he had just scored the winning touchdown in a championship football game.

  Chapter 9

  Barry and McGill were transfixed, staring intently at the footage that Misty had caught with her little pink camera. Misty couldn’t take it—reliving that horrifying encounter again—and had moved across the room, watching only bits and pieces of the movie with her hands half-covering her face.

  The movie ended, and Barry and McGill stared at the blank monitor.

  Barry, still holding the chair leg, looked down at it in horror then set it gently on a nearby chair. He wiped his hands on his jacket.

  McGill leapt up, knocking his chair over, and raced over to Misty’s tooth, still wrapped up in the plastic bag. He tore the plastic away and then held the tooth up in his hand, staring in amazement at it. Misty and Barry quietly came up behind him.

  McGill slowly turned the tooth around, then gasped and dropped it onto the tabletop.

  “Dear God!” he said.

  “What is it?” Barry asked. “Doc, you okay?”

  “Dr. McGill? What? What happened?” Misty cried, clearly upset with his behavior.

  “Barry, do you know what it is?” McGill asked, still staring down at the massive thing lying on the table. “The shark, I mean. Do you know what kind it is?”

  “A freak, isn’t it?” Barry asked, growing very concerned over his friends reaaction. “Some great white grew a little too big?”

  McGill placed Misty’s tooth and the great white’s tooth side by side on the table so they were both face up. He traced his fingers over a distinctive dark chevron shape at the root end of the bigger tooth.

  “You see this? This dark groove in the tooth here? It’s called the bourlette. Only one species of shark has this kind of bourlette, this chevron pattern in its teeth,” McGill told them. “It’s part of the structure that helps to root such a huge tooth into the jaw . . . ”

  “What kind of shark?” Barry interrupted him.

  “A Megalodon.”

  “A Mega-what?” Misty asked, as she sidled up closer to the table, becoming more intrigued again.

  “A Megalodon,” McGill said. “A Carcharocles Megalodon. They went extinct two to three million years ago, at the end of the Pliocene era.”

  “Well, apparently not,” Barry said cautiously. “I mean, if you’re sure that tooth is from a —”

  “I’m sure.”

  McGill turned to face Misty.

  “Do you realize what you’ve discovered?”

  She shook her head.

  McGill opened another drawer and pulled out an additional tooth. This one was nearly as big as Misty’s tooth, but it was black with deep cracks.

  He placed it next to Misty’s tooth. They were almost identical in size, and the black one had the same chevron-type pattern near the root. McGill tapped the fossilized tooth and then addressed Barry and Misty.

  “This tooth is about six million years old. I found it myself in a dried up creek bed in the Carolinas twelve years ago. The animal this came from was a Megalodon, and the Megalodon, well . . . let’s just say that if you were comparing aggression and out-and-out violence, it would make the T-Rex look like a pet Labrador.”

  “They were swimming around when there were dinosaurs?” Misty asked, her eyes growing ever wider.

  “No. Here. I’ll show you.” McGill hustled back over to his computer and rapidly typed in some commands on his keyboard calling up a colored global map with the label Miocene-Pliocene.

  “This beastie swam the seas when mammals first emerged. I used the T-Rex as an example of a huge, aggressive animal you might be familiar with, but no, they did not exist at the same time. The world this shark lived in, though, looked very similar to what it does today. The Mastodons and Moropus appeared, and saber-toothed tigers, giant sloths, and the largest land mammal of all, this rhinoceros, the Menoceras, in Asia—”

  “Man?” Barry interjected.

  “No, not yet,” McGill told him. “But he was on his way.”

  McGill opened more pictures showing animals from that time—enormous clawed, fanged, and furred beings that would easily tower over any mammal living on the earth today.

  The pictures dropped onto the map to show where those animals flourished at that time. The picture of the Megalodon appeared over the South Pacific.

  “We still have one more ice age to go before we start to show up,” McGill added.

  He hit another key on the keyboard and the map started to animate. Ice moved up and down from the poles and the water levels changed, dramatically reshaping the coastlines for all of the continents. The images of the animals changed to their modern evolved forms, or faded off the map indicating that they had become extinct, including the Megalodon.

  “So, the ice age killed this thing off?” Misty asked.

  “Mmmmm, that is one theory. No one really knows for sure. The ice age certainly wreaked havoc with a lot of species like this shark. Some theorize that the whales these things predominantly hunted were able to adapt to colder waters elsewhere on the planet—too cold for this shark. Others felt that killer whales were becoming more predominant, and hunted the Megalodon. There are several other theories, but again, no one specific cause can be cited.

  “But, they are not supposed to be here, that much we know. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then where has it been hiding?”

  McGill continued.

  “We know more about deep space than our own oceans. New animals and natural phenomenon are discovered every day. It’s only been the last hundred and fifty years or so that accurate observations about the sea have been made, but man has claimed that there are monsters out there for thousands of years.”

  McGill called up ano
ther photo of a bizarre looking shark, this one fifteen feet long, with an enormous head.

  “This is a Megamouth shark,” McGill went on. “This species was just discovered, and only by accident, in 1976. So you see, the ocean has many, many treasures yet to give us.”

  “Okay,” Barry countered, “but that was an undiscovered species. We knew about Megalodons. There are fossil records. It’s not like it just appeared out of nowhere like that shark.”

  “This is like the Coelacanth all over again, but bigger. A killing machine of massive proportions. These things ate whales, for God’s sake.”

  “What is a Coelacanth?” Misty asked.

  McGill called up another image on his computer of an odd looking fish with fleshy appendages.

  “This,” McGill said, “is a Coelacanth. They were thought to have gone extinct twenty-four million years ago, but there they are, clear as day, swimming around the Indian Ocean as we speak.”

  “I know about those,” Barry said. “They’re deep water fish. It’s not surprising that it took so long to find one, but a shark . . . that big . . . what do you think? That it’s living in deep water as well, like the Coelacanth, and this one she saw just happened to come to the surface for some weird reason?”

  McGill opened up an image of a spooky looking goblin shark and dragged it around on the desktop of his monitor until it was next to one of the images of the Megalodon. The Megalodon looked very similar to a great white shark, just much larger.

  “No, not at all,” McGill explained. “If that shark was living in really deep water, like the goblin shark here, it wouldn’t look like that anymore.”

  He pointed to the illustration of the Megalodon.

  “It wouldn’t be a Megalodon anymore,” McGill continued. “It would have evolved into a different shape, and would probably be blind or would have evolved large or fluorescent eyes. Pressure and absence of light does that. This thing, the Megalodon, is of the same ilk as the great white. It lives near the surface and probably follows the whale herds which are air breathing creatures. The ocean floor would not have enough food for a species as big as this fish.”

  McGill scrubbed through the shots from Misty’s footage until he found an image of the Megalodon, with its head poking up out of the water, looking at Misty. Its head, wider than a school bus, blocked out the horizon in the shot.

  “See the shark looking at her?” McGill said. “Great whites exhibit the same bizarre behavior.”

  “Creepy,” Barry said.

  “Yes,” McGill agreed. “To say the least. I’ve seen great whites do that myself. I was on board a ship near Baja a few years ago, and happened to look over the side just as one was coming up to look at me. They get curious too, you know, and want to get a good look at you. Once their head pops out of the water when they are looking up at you then gravity helps the jaws flop open, so you get that weird sharky grin. All teeth and nothing funny about it.

  “It’s disturbing,” Barry said.

  “Oh aye,” McGill added, “It is at that. I bit my tongue when I first saw one do that, but then, I just couldn’t take my eyes off of it until it fell back under the waves.”

  Misty wrapped her arms around herself and stared at the floor. Without looking up, she asked, “How come no one has seen one until now? This mega-what-ever-it-is. How come?”

  “Well,” McGill answered her, “supposedly some fishermen in Australia saw one in 1918. Said the damn thing looked like it was a hundred feet long, and was said to have a ghostly pale appearance. Not unlike the one you saw today.”

  “How do you account for that? The weird coloring?” Barry asked.

  “I can’t.”

  “It’s like a ghost,” Misty said.

  “Aye. A ghostie,” McGill commented wistfully, his Scottish accent adding a level of spookiness.

  To herself, still staring at the floor, Misty said, “Ghostie.”

  McGill examined the tooth again and pried some of the bloody tissue from the root, which he then carefully placed into a specimen cup and sealed with a lid.

  “This is amazing!” Barry exclaimed. “I’m going to have to notify the Coast Guard. The media will get wind of it, though. What a circus this is going to be. Every nut from here to Denmark is going to be out looking for this thing.”

  “And so far you, my dear,” McGill said to Misty, “are the only living witness. You’re going to be famous, you know. I’m going to have to contact my colleagues. Ho! Stimmson at Woods Hole is going to be positively pea green with envy when he hears about this. I’ll need to keep the tooth if that is alright with you.”

  “No,” Misty said.

  “No?” McGill sounded disappointed.

  “Why not?” Barry asked.

  “I just need to think about all of this for a while. So much has happened today,” she explained to them.

  “I guess I can understand that,” McGill agreed. “Can I at least photograph it? Would you mind that?”

  Misty agreed, so McGill got busy with a camera, shooting the tooth from several angles and setting up shots showing it side by side with the great white tooth and a ruler.

  Barry made his way over to Misty and said to her, quietly, “McGill is a good guy. The tooth is yours. He would give it back, you know . . . ”

  “I know. I just . . . guess I’m tired. Can you take me back to my place, please?”

  “Sure.”

  While Barry and Misty were engaged in their quiet conversation, McGill, just as quietly, keyed a few commands into his computer, then popped the disc from her camera out of the drive and brought it over to her. He then wrapped the tooth up and placed it back in the little cooler and handed that to her, as well.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Please let me know if you reconsider,” McGill told her. “This is an amazing find, you know. They don’t come any bigger, no pun intended.”

  “Thank you Dr. McGill. I’ll let you know as soon as I make up my mind.”

  “You know where to find me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks, doc,” Barry said to him, and he started to escort Misty towards the door. “I’ll call you a little later. We still have a lot of work to do, because, that creature is definitely out there.”

  “Oh yes, you’re absolutely right. I’m going to plan an expedition right now to look for her.”

  “Her?”

  “Aye, her.” McGill smiled mischievously.

  Chapter 10

  Peter moved rapidly towards the news van with his crew tagging along behind him. They had, at least, finally disposed of the bags of hideous fast food.

  “Do you know what we got here?” Peter asked them as he held up the flash drive containing the footage the boy shot on the beach that morning.

  “Footage of the fin of a supposedly big-assed shark?” Hobart asked.

  “Exactly! Supposedly. You know what we need to do now?”

  “Make it not supposedly?”

  “Right again! You boys are sharp tonight. And how do we make it not supposedly?”

  Hobart and Jethro exchanged a confused look.

  “Think! Thiiiiiiiink! I know you are capable of it because you were both able to make up your minds at that fine eatery we stopped at before we got here.”

  “Mmmmmm, yeah . . . . ” Jethro thought hard as he licked his lips.

  “Oh, wait!” Hobart exclaimed.

  “And?” Peter asked expectantly.

  “That girl! An eyewitness. The one who drove onto the beach. She saw the damned thing.”

  “Bingo!”

  “Oh, right,” Jethro was remembering. “Mary something or other . . . . ”

  Peter flipped open his notebook.

  “Misty. Misty Witlow. And we got her address from the report filed by those lifeguards we interviewed earlier today. Time to pay Ms. Witlow a visit, I think. We ride!”

  Peter turned and headed briskly for the van.

  Jethro and Hobart looked at each other.

 
“We ride? Seriously, who talks like that?” Jethro asked.

  Hobart just laughed and followed Peter.

  Chapter 11

  The sun had slipped almost completely below the horizon, and its last fiery rays lit up only the topmost floors of the high-rise buildings in Santa Monica. The tips of the waves, lacy with lighter foam, caught just enough light to make the ocean look like it was covered with magenta rose petals. The Ferris wheel on the famous pier, outlined with bright orange lights, rotated slowly, making it look like a huge orange that was having its delectable juices slowly squeezed out.

  The Molly G, a single-masted wooden schooner, traveled slowly, using its engine and not the sails, back to its mooring at the nearby marina. Brent Reed, tall and silver-haired, manned the tiller and guided the graceful ship home while his girlfriend, Melissa Kent, relaxed on the foredeck, enjoying the last bits of the sun’s rays.

  Their bulldog, Myron, slept next to her. He was wearing a doggie life preserver with a glowing red light on his back. He snored quietly, and Melissa reached down and gently tugged his ears, delighting in watching him curl his toes from her tender touch.

  As they sailed closer to the marina, the silhouettes of dozen of boats could be seen, lined up neatly across the water. A few had their lights on, as their owners were still on board.

  The Molly G’s engine coughed once, twice, then quit.

  “Damn,” Brent said.

  “Honey? What’s the problem?” Melissa asked.

  Brent stepped back towards the hood covering the engine.

  “Engine killed again.”

  “We’re close enough to shore, you want me to radio the harbor master? Get a tow in?”

  “Nah, let me fool with it for a bit. Those guys always charge an arm and a leg.”

  Melissa stood up, stretched her long, tanned legs, and made her way back to see if she could help Brent with the pesky engine. Myron rose as well and waddled after her. He stopped partway back and poked his head through the rope railing and growled at something in the water.