Big Ass Shark

by Briar Lee Mitchell

  “Dancy here. Yeah. Hey Barry. What’s up?”

  Barry, out on the pier and on the phone with the Coast Guard, wandered over to the trash can where Misty had tossed his cigarettes away. He pawed through the trash until he found one that wasn’t too badly broken, straightened it out as best he could, lit it, and inhaled the smoke with apparent gusto. Misty had found her way out to the upper veranda and watched him from the shadows.

  “Seriously, Mike, we got a situation here,” Barry continued. “You remember that shark sighting today? Yes. Exactly. At Merrill, that’s right. It panned out. She really saw a shark, but this is one big-assed shark.”

  “How big?”

  “Do me a favor and don’t laugh, okay?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Fifty to sixty feet. And it’s really pale in color, almost all white.”

  Dancy barked a loud laugh into the phone then asked him, “Whatcha’ smoking, bro?”

  “Cute! Geez, nothing at all. Trust me! This isn’t a joke, Mike. You can check with McGill. He does work for you guys when you get an attack, right? Well, he saw the same evidence I did. Something’s out there and it’s big. Just warning you guys. We got a big one out there, a really big one.”

  “Yeah. Okay, Barry. Got it. And white, yes? Like Moby Dick? I’ll let you know if something like that turns up. Right after I let Elvis know.”

  “Funny. Go ahead and talk to McGill. You guys need to be on the lookout for this thing. It looks like you have a busy evening over there, though.”

  “Yeah, a schooner went down coming into dock. Looking for survivors right now.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  ***

  Mike Dancy ended his call with Barry and peered out the window at an approaching Coast Guard cutter. He headed outside and helped them moor the ship to the dock. The crew quickly deployed the gangplank.

  Captain Sternberg started down the plank, escorting the two teens from the catamaran. The young girl still clutched Myron, who looked forlornly at Dancy as they walked by. Paramedics whisked them off to a waiting ambulance.

  “Evening, Captain Sternberg. Can you give me an update?” Dancy asked him.

  “Schooner sank out there. Something caved the hull in, apparently. Went down like a ton of pig iron in less than a minute. We’ll have to send divers down in the morning to have a look see at the wreck. The other cutters are still out there looking for survivors, but so far, nothing. These two kids were on a cat, which we’re towing in. They were right nearby when it happened.”

  “Did they see anything?”

  “The girl said she thought she saw a big fin of some kind,” the captain said, with a trace of amusement in his voice.

  Dancy looked over at the ambulance where the paramedics were still working on teens the. One of them had Myron on a gurney, toweling him dry.

  “A fin?”

  “Yeah. White she said.”

  “What? Ahhhh, lemme talk to her, okay?”

  “Be my guest.”

  ***

  Back on the pier, Barry finished his cigarette as he watched the Coast Guard cutters in the distance, crisscrossing the area where the Molly G went down. He knew he would have to call McGill in a little while and start to generate more heat about the shark. If it was still in the area, the Coast Guard was going to have to start taking some extraordinary measures to ensure the safety of the public.

  He headed back inside his house and saw Misty sitting on the steps, waiting for him.

  “Everything okay?” she asked.

  “Oh yeah. Just alerting the Coast Guard.”

  Barry walked into his bedroom, leaving the door open so he could keep chatting with Misty. He went through his closet, pulled out a large hockey shirt, and brought it out to her.

  “Here, you can use this.”

  She took the shirt from him and held it up in front of her.

  “This is great. Thank you. So, the Coast Guard is hunting the shark now?”

  “No, don’t think so. Don’t think they believed me. I have to get back in touch with McGill and get him to light a fire under them. Say, are you hungry?”

  “No, not so much. Just really tired. I think I’m going to try and go to sleep.”

  Barry headed into the kitchen and hunted for a fresh pack of smokes.

  “That sounds like a plan, Misty. Get some rest, and don’t worry, nothing is going to bother you here tonight.”

  With Barry’s hockey shirt in hand, Misty headed up to the loft and settled in for the night. She drifted off to sleep quickly. Barry headed out to the front porch and sat in a chair, getting comfortable. He lit up a cigarette and propped his feet up on the railing for the deck. As he enjoyed his cigarette, he sifted through the wild events of the day and watching the cutters in the distance, wondering if the huge white shark was somewhere nearby.

  In his mind’s eye, he imagined the thing smiling at him, with a hillbilly-like gap where the tooth had popped out. The image was funny, but only for a moment, until he thought about the implications of such a deadly and presumably extinct creature would have when the public became convinced of its existence.

  His thoughts then drifted to Misty, hopefully falling asleep upstairs. He felt sorry for her, for the terror she must have experienced earlier in the day. He felt terrified when he saw the beast on her video recording and could not even begin to imagine how terrifying it would have been to have faced it in real life. Those feelings of pity were soon replaced with admiration because of her extraordinary courage when she chose to warn the people at Merrill Point.

  She could have just run away, but she didn’t.

  Barry was realizing there was much more to Ms. Witlow than he originally thought.

  Chapter 15

  Misty dreamt she was flying fast, just above the sparkling waters of a sun-drenched ocean. Swooping along, she rose up and banked left, heading towards a lush, emerald green island, thick with palm trees, ferns, and exotic, colorful, and tropical foliage. The water was an extraordinary sapphire hue that ended in delicate, lacy foam which caressed a white sand beach, so flawless that it looked like silk.

  She hovered just over the waves, looking out over the dreamy island. The highly saturated colors were intoxicating.

  A brightly colored Tyrannosaurus rex walked out of the jungle, onto the sandy shore, and then gingerly stepped into the water. It waded out into the surf, towards the deeper water, and then began to swim. The enormous beast leaned forward into the waves, leading with his huge head and being propelled along, in almost lazy strokes, from its crocodile-like tail.

  Ghostie appeared out of the depths and attacked the Tyrannosaurus, who fought back but quickly lost the battle. The tranquil waters, so enthralling with their delicate shades of sapphire and green, were stirred up and quickly succumbed to a terrible crimson stain that spread in all directions. Another Tyrannosaurus appeared from the jungle and rushed toward the water, trying to save its mate. However, Ghostie rapidly circled back and forth, daring the dinosaur to enter the surf.

  The giant dinosaur bellowed so loudly that Misty was buffeted about as she hovered above the terrifying scene unfolding below her. The shore shifted from the massive weight of the beast pounding the ground. The sand bounced and pinged this way and that like dust on a drumhead.

  This second Tyrannosaurus entered the fray and was quickly being shredded by Ghostie as well. The carnage was terrifying.

  Moropus, Mastadons, and enormous Rhinoceros gathered on the beach, trumpeting calls to the dying Tyrannosaurs, but none of them dared to set foot in the water.

  The two Tyrannosaurs twitching bodies sank. Their blood, in a bright red gush, stained the water and left a ghostly ring of red on the shore where the waves washed up onto the delicate, pale sand. Dr. McGill, holding the Megalodon’s tooth on a crystal platter, floated into the scene on a large red easy chair that road the waves like an overinflated raft. It rode up and over the waves that were just starting to settle from the battle. Although the
water was calming down, the fat chair appeared in danger of tipping over with each swell it traversed.

  “You see, Misty,” he said jovially to her, “I told you. You are going to be famous.”

  She hovered just above him and watched him sail underneath her.

  As he floated around in the bloody water, terrifying goblin sharks poked their heads through the surface and thrust their fearsome jaws forward, biting chunks out of his chair.

  “Look out!” Misty yelled at him. “Get out of there!”

  Ghostie swam lazily in circles, then finally spotted McGill and headed towards him, scooping up goblin sharks as she went, crushing them in the corners of her mouth.

  “It’s going to get him!” Misty screamed.

  Oblivious to Ghostie, McGill continued to float around, happily paddling his feet and hands in the water. His chair listed badly to one side. Ghostie came up behind him, her jaws agape. Just before Ghostie could swallow him, she heard Barry calling her name.

  “Misty! Wake up! Misty!”

  He shook her gently, trying to rouse her from the terrible nightmare. She woke up and sat bolt upright on the futon, shaking and staring around with huge eyes. Sweat glistened on her brow and she grabbed hold of Barry, her breath coming in heaving, ragged sobs.

  “Misty. It’s okay, you’re okay.”

  He reached past her and turned a small light on. She stared in terror at him.

  “It was going to swallow him whole. It was killing the other sharks, it was . . . , ”

  “You had a bad dream.”

  “Oh my God. McGill was there, and Ghostie . . . ”

  “Ghostie?”

  “It’s what we call her. The shark. McGill came up with it.”

  “That figures.”

  “He told me I was going to be famous just before the shark ate him.”

  “Hmmm, well, McGill’s probably right about the famous part. If Ghostie put in that one appearance and you’re the only one who saw her, those things of yours will be worth a fortune. They’re worth a fortune now.”

  He pointed to her cooler with the flash drive sitting on top of it.

  “Oh yeah,” she chuckled nervously. “Wouldn’t that be something.”

  She let go of Barry and leaned back against the pillows.

  “You feeling better?” he asked.

  “Yes, but could you stay with me for a little while? At least until I fall asleep again?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Misty scooted over to make room for him. Barry lied down next to her, on top of the blankets, and let her nestle into the crook of his arm. He could feel that she was still trembling.

  Chapter 16

  Delbert, pale and shaking from a nasty hangover, stood next to his car while he watched a large private jet, with the Enomoto logo on its tail, taxi to the private terminal. Even though the air was dry with a cool breeze coming in off of the ocean, sweat beaded on his brow and upper lip.

  The jet slowed to a stop and the engines cut, then a boarding ladder was quickly pushed to the opening where the door had just been released. Riggs, who was tall, lean and extremely tanned, stepped quickly and surefooted down the stairs. The forty-eight-year-old wrangler, originally from Australia, had spent most of his life in Indonesia when his father, an oil executive, had been transferred there. Riggs had spent his whole life on or near the water, and had developed a fascination with sharks, especially when he had spent extended periods of time on some of the offshore oil rigs that his father helped design.

  As a young boy, about twelve years of age, he had witnessed a terrible accident on a rig. One of the workers slipped and fell some forty feet to the water below. At first, his accident had been a big joke to the other workers. They had laughed and teased him about his clumsiness as he swam towards a ladder that had been built onto the side of one of the enormous support legs, which disappeared into the dark water. They laughed and pelted him with garbage as he swam. The man who had fallen into the water was a rather clumsy swimmer and Riggs watched him struggle through the water, cursing at his situation and the way his fellow workers were treating him. The event had been a distraction from the boring, repetitive work, and everyone on the rig joined in the teasing and laughing until one of them spotted the fin.

  A large dark shape had appeared out of nowhere behind the man. His fellow workers shouted at him to swim faster, but he thought they were still teasing him, and trying to frighten him, so he ignored their warnings and stopped swimming to shout insults at them. Bobbing up and down in the water he raised his fist and shook it at them, then, he was yanked violently from below and disappeared under the water for a few seconds.

  When he had resurfaced, his screams were blood-curdling. The poor man tried to swim forward, but the shark had him by one leg and kept yanking him under until the leg tore free. The man continued trying to swim, bleeding profusely and with only one leg.

  A gun was produced by the foreman, who shot at the beast, but his aim was ridiculously bad, and he missed. Riggs stared in fascination and horror, unable to tear his eyes away from the pool of blood that spread out around the flailing man as the shark went at him again and again. His screams were like nothing Riggs had ever heard before, and he realized with shame and horror that he had urinated on himself as he watched the attack below.

  The shark, or perhaps it had been a second one, no one knew for sure, leapt up and grabbed the man by his head and pulled him under. He did not resurface. The sudden silence was more unnerving than the horrifying screams had been.

  Riggs continued to watch as the bloody pool slowly dissipated. Fins would pop up through the red slick from time to time, undoubtedly looking for more prey. He could not tear his eyes away, and his fascination with these animals was born. He spent years travelling the world, tracking down the largest, most aggressive of the species and entered their world to watch them, study them, and learn from them.

  To him they were amazing quarry that needed to be hunted and captured . . . or killed. They were the only creature he had ever encountered that killed with such beautiful brutality, and didn’t fear man.

  Riggs stepped onto the tarmac and headed over to Delbert, smiling, with his hand extended. He was followed by Haruki Sen, a fifty-year-old wiry man who saw Delbert but averted his eyes.

  “Hello, Riggs. Long time no see,” Delbert said, as he took the man’s hand.

  “Del. It has been a long time.”

  Haruki joined them, and Riggs introduced him.

  “This is Haruki, my right hand man.”

  Delbert eyed the Japanese man suspiciously but did not offer to shake hands. He knew about Haruki, and his heavy-handed—and often cruel—methods for helping to capture some of the more deadly exhibits in Arata’s theme park.

  The back of the jet opened up and Haruki moved off to supervise the offloading of their equipment. A truck with the Riker Institute name on its side moved into place. The first items being off loaded looked like large, metal floats.

  “What are those?” Delbert asked.

  “Portable, inflatable pontoons. Once we get those inflated, we’ll suspend a metal mesh beneath the shark and use that to tow it back to Tokyo.”

  “All the way across the Pacific? Are you serious?”

  “If that shark is as big as you say it is, it’ll be tricky and we’ll have to drug it to keep it from tearing up the mesh, but it should work. Arata’s got crews working ’round the clock to finish its tank.”

  “We gotta find it, first.”

  Riggs pointed at Haruki.

  “That’s what I brought him for.”

  Delbert studied Haruki a bit more closely, watching him oversee the removal of the equipment, and noticed some suspicious looking crates being offloaded. He made a mental note to check them out later, when Riggs wasn’t around.

  Chapter 17

  Barry lay sideways across the futon that Misty had been sleeping on. His ringing phone woke him up. He rolled over, careful not to disturb her, then saw his ho
ckey shirt folded neatly on the end of the bed with a note sitting on it that said Thank You!. Misty and her belongings were gone.

  “Rats!” Barry said as he stumbled downstairs to grab his phone out of the charger. “Hello?”

  “Our friends from the Coast Guard called me last night,” McGill told him through the phone.

  Barry smiled and shook his head as he navigated around the tiny kitchen, making coffee and seeing what might be edible for breakfast.

  “Yeah, good. I told them to call you.”

  “Seems a schooner went down last night. Not far from you, actually.”

  “I saw some commotion out there when I got back. What’s the story?”

  “Hull was caved in. Witness claims she thought she saw a rather large, white fin. No survivors from the wreck, except their dog.”

  “Oh boy, here we go.”

  “News stations from around the world have been calling me, calling the school. Calling everyone. Someone leaked something.”

  Barry looked up into the empty loft and wondered what Misty was up to.

  “Guess the circus is coming to town a little sooner than I thought.”

  “Exactly, and I need to get a jump on things. I’m shoving off in two hours, trying to keep ahead of the crowd. You with me? Just say yes.”

  “You know it! Any idea where you’re going to start looking?”

  “A few ideas. Nothing solid yet. She could be anywhere. Fish that big could swim two to three hundred miles in a day, easily.”

  “What about the Shark Attack Bureau?”

  “What about them?”

  “Might be a good place to start. If this fish is swimming around out there, they might have a record of an attack. Information coming from the bureau would be more useful than rumors which could be flying around the internet right now” Barry suggested.

  He held the phone away from his head as McGill barked out a loud laugh.