by Steve Alten
Sasha screamed.
The others looked at one another, unsure of what to do next.
Katey was the first to spot the fishing boat captain as he surfaced, gagging and flailing in a pool of his own blood. She was about to alert the others when the world suddenly went topsy-turvy—the boat above, the crimson sky below—and then she was floundering underwater and someone’s shoe was kicking her in the back of her head.
The swell restored a sense of direction as her face broke the surface and she saw Peter climbing up the ten-foot wall of basalt on her right.
She headed that way—and screamed as something grabbed hold of her from behind.
“Easy, babe, it’s me!” Sam swam her to the jagged rock face, which was actually a series of boulders. He wrapped his arms around one of them and held tight as Katey climbed his back and got onto his shoulders, Peter reaching down from his perch to help her up.
“Wait—”
Sam turned to find Sasha towing Kenny through the swirling whitewater. He was pale, and if he wasn’t dead he was certainly dying, but she refused to abandon him.
“Sasha, climb onto my shoulders—”
“Promise you won’t leave him.”
“Jesus—fine.” He grabbed the gurgling man by his shirt collar and held on as the girl scaled his back.
Somehow Sam managed to climb up to the others while dragging the boat owner’s gushing remains with him—only to be shocked when Kenny reached up and took Peter’s hand.
Straddling the top of the escarpment, the survivors looked below in stunned silence as the forty-five-foot long, twenty-five ton monster continued to attack the inverted submerged wreckage that three minutes earlier had been a boat.
Carmel, California
Jonas Taylor carried his clothing from his closet into the master bathroom, part of a routine that was now second nature. With Terry’s nurse camped out on their bedroom love seat watching Netflix, privacy was out of the question, so he changed in the bathroom and took naps downstairs in his home office, where he spent his days designing a next-generation Manta submersible.
He knew his kids and Mac were concerned about him, that he was blaming himself for Terry’s vegetative state. In truth, seeing the woman he loved in a comatose state unnerved him, bringing with it all the bad memories of her illness, and as the weeks turned to months, he found himself struggling to remember the good times they had shared. And so he took to ending each workday watching the sunset from his wife’s favorite spot on the beach behind their home, often not returning to the house until after midnight.
Jonas dressed quickly, conscious of the time. Today David was being featured in a behind-the-scenes media event intended to whet the public’s appetite for things to come at the Tanaka Institute as it attempted to compete with the tourism mecca known as Dubai-Land.
He heard the outer gate bell ring as he brushed his teeth.
Kelly Rollyson, one of Terry’s weekday nurses, knocked on the bathroom door. “Mr. Jonas, do you want me to get it?”
He rinsed out and spit. “No, it’s probably my driver. Tell him … Ah, never mind.” He slipped on his shoes and exited the bathroom, pausing at the hospital bed to kiss the frail figure on the cheek. Today was a big day for their son, but he knew his wife would not have approved of what David was going to attempt, or the direction he had taken with Luna over the last year.
“Kelly, I’ll be gone most of the afternoon; if you need to reach me, I’ll be on my cell phone.”
“Yes, Mr. Jonas.”
Mr. Jonas … No matter how many times he had corrected her, she still insisted on the “Mr.”
Heading down the hall, he opened the front door to leave—
—and was surprised to find a barrel-chested Asian gentleman waiting outside. He was in his early thirties, dressed in a blue surgeon’s scrubs and carrying a physician’s bag.
“I take it you’re not my driver.”
“Dr. Taylor, my name is Dr. Yun-Long Chi. I was sent by a great admirer of your work to help your wife.”
“What great admirer?”
“A man of influence who will make himself known at the appropriate time. As for me, I have successfully revived more than a dozen comatose patients. May I see your wife?”
“Uh, yeah … sure. I mean, if you came all the way from China.”
“Your admirer resides in China. I arrived this morning from Loxahatchee, Florida.”
“Florida? Exactly what kind of doctor are you?”
“I am a licensed acupuncture physician. I received my training in China and was taught by masters in the art of Eastern medicine.”
A ray of hope cut through the dark clouds of Jonas’s psyche as he led the man to the master bedroom.
“Kelly, this is Dr. Chi. He’s here to see Terry.”
The nurse looked up from the small sofa. “What’s he going to do to her?”
“I am going to attempt to awaken her.”
Dr. Chi spent the next thirty minutes examining Terry, checking her pulse, eyes, and meridian lines. When he was through, he opened his bag and removed two small bags of needles, a small plug-in power pack, and a larger bag filled with electrodes, then placed them on the bed tray.
“I studied Acupuncture Channel Theory under Dr. T. H. Huang. Upon examining your wife, I found an obstruction blocking the Governing Vessel, which connects with and nourishes the brain and spinal region and intersects the liver channel at the vertex. Qi deficiency in the Governing Vessel often causes a heavy sensation in the head, vertigo, and shaking. Using acupuncture, I am going to attempt to remove the blockage and return the flow of Qi energy to your wife’s brain.”
Jonas and the nurse watched as the acupuncturist used a small pronged device to embed wooden needles along Terry’s scalp and temples, switching to metal needles for her fingertips. Pinching the copper clips on each electrode, he connected the tips of the metal needles with the power pack and turned on the power.
“Doc … assuming this works … how long—”
“It could take several sessions a day for a few months, or it could happen much quicker. Every person is different.”
“And if she does awaken … will she be mentally impaired?”
Dr. Chi placed a thick palm on Jonas’s shoulder. “Have faith, my friend. It makes all the difference.”
Tanaka Institute
Monterey, California
The concrete deck separating the lagoon from the Meg Pen resembled something more akin to a Super Bowl telecast than an aquarium. News vans jammed the exits leading out to the northern parking lot, their camera crews jockeying for position topside around the circular tank. Most of the media were camped out three stories below in the gallery’s stadium-style seating, the hard bleachers having been replaced with the new recliner chairs found in movie theaters.
A podium had been set up for a question-and-answer session.
The star of the show circled lazily around her tank, mesmerizing her audience. Just over two years old, the surviving offspring of Lizzy had already equaled her mother’s forty-six-foot length and—at twenty-six tons—had easily surpassed her girth, even though she was only half her deceased parent’s age.
Why the huge disparity? David had a simple explanation—living space. Lizzy had shared the same tank with her four siblings; Luna had the Meg Pen all to herself. The bigger the aquarium, the larger the fish inside grew.
This afternoon, if all went well, she’d be occupying an even larger habitat—her grandmother’s former haunt.
* * *
The desire to move Luna had taken on a sense of urgency three months before, following a huge growth spurt that marked the shark’s adolescence. The tunnel connecting the Meg Pen with Angel’s lake-size bowl was only large enough to accommodate a young adult. Luna was growing so fast that David feared she’d soon be too big to squeeze through the accessway, and Mac wanted no part of attempting to lift a hundred-thousand-pound, seventy-foot adult Megalodon by crane—even if he could locate
one powerful enough to lift that much weight.
“Move her now while you can, kid. Otherwise she’s stuck.”
From that day on, the access way was kept open. The problem was that Angel’s lingering scent frightened Luna, the shark’s survival instincts preventing her from venturing through the connecting passage.
In an attempt to lure her out, David baited the tunnel’s lagoon-side exit with salmon while skipping the shark’s daily feedings. Six days later, Luna was visibly agitated, but still refused to enter the passage to eat.
On the seventh day, David donned a wetsuit, scuba gear, and a bright orange rubber-lined vest. After loading four freshly killed salmon into a burlap bag, he headed for the lagoon.
Monty intercepted him. “What are we doing?”
“I don’t know what ‘we’ are doing, but I’m going to swim through the tunnel and lure my pet into the lagoon before she’s too big to squeeze through.”
“Sorry … did you just refer to that monster as your pet?”
“That’s right. After feeding her every day, I’d say we have a connection. She knows me … she watches me whenever I’m in the gallery or up on deck. I’ve stood on the feeding platform with Luna spy-hopping as close as we are right now; it’s just a matter of time before she responds to my hand signals.”
“What I’m hearing is that it associates you with food, and that somehow tossing her said food gives you the confidence to swim down that passage despite the fact that it hasn’t fed in a week. And just to make it more challenging, you’ll be hauling a sack of dead salmon. Geez, Junior, I thought I was the one with the damaged brain.”
“Chill out. I’m crazy, but I’m not stupid.” David unzipped the rubber-lined vest, exposing a series of battery-powered electrodes.
“That tiny battery is going to stop Luna? Please…”
“Pay attention—Monty and you might learn something you’ll forget by tomorrow. All sharks possess highly sensitive electrical receptors beneath their snouts called ampullae of Lorenzini. These gel-filled sacs can detect electric currents in the water that are generated by their prey’s moving muscles, or the electrical discharge coming from a pounding heart. While these lower frequencies attract sharks, higher electrical waves hit the animal’s sensory array like a live wire, repelling even something as large as a Megalodon. If Luna gets aggressive, I’ll power up the device, which will generate an elliptical field that extends about eighty feet in all directions, leaving a nasty taste in her sensory organs.”
“How do you know it will work? Have you tested it?”
“Not on myself, but I rigged a smaller device to a live salmon and left it swimming around the tank for a day.”
“What happened to it?”
“Luna eventually ate it, but not until the battery died.”
Monty waited while David climbed over the lagoon’s guardrail and adjusted his fins and face mask before passing him the heavy burlap bag holding the salmon.
David gave him a thumbs-up and submerged in the 54-degree water—
—his departure sending Monty hustling to the supply shack to get a 15,000-volt bang stick and dive mask—just in case his friend had grossly miscalculated his place on Luna’s food chain.
David released air from his buoyancy control vest, the weight of the dead fish dropping him feetfirst along the algae-covered concrete wall. Nearly a decade had passed since the first and last time he had entered the lagoon in scuba gear. The memories of Angel came flooding back as he descended thirty feet to the mouth of the passageway, and for a long moment, he contemplated surfacing.
No wonder Luna’s spooked—hell, I’m spooked.
The tunnel was twenty-eight feet in diameter and sixty feet long. A soft azure light emanated at the end of the dark shaft. As he drew closer, he could see a shadow passing back and forth beyond the exit.
Luna can sense me coming.
He paused fifteen feet from the Meg Pen entrance, one hand gripping the burlap bag, the other poised over the controls to his electronic scrambler. From his vantage he could see that Luna was clearly agitated, her back arched.
Monty was right: I should have fed her first.…
Deciding it was best to turn back, he was about to reverse directions when the albino entered the passage.
David’s heart pounded hard enough that he wondered if it would crack a rib. The Megalodon’s head was so massive it filled his entire field of vision, its girth so wide it obscured the azure-blue aquarium. Barreling ahead, it was upon him so quickly that all he could do was squeeze his eyes shut, his muscles paralyzed in fear as he awaited death.
When the sharp teeth didn’t skewer his flesh from the bone, he opened his eyes to see the Meg’s nostrils inhaling his scent three feet from his facemask.
He realized it hadn’t stopped to smell him—its dorsal fin was chafing along the top of the tunnel, its pectoral fins pinched against the interior walls.
Move!
David shoved the bag of salmon at the Meg’s mouth and backstroked and kicked as hard and as fast as he could. He knew the immense creature could not turn around in the tight passage, that once he had lured it in it would have to continue until it entered the lagoon—that had been his plan all along.
Now he needed to reach the exit before Luna. Having torn apart the satchel of salmon, he watched the shark transform burlap and fish into pulp.
David had made it to the halfway point when he saw Luna attempt to turn around, only to realize it was trapped. Panic set in, causing the twenty-five-ton shark to bash its head from side to side while slapping its tail wall to wall, the action propelling it forward.
There was nowhere to hide, no place for David to escape to. As the furious beast lurched ahead, he grabbed on to its snout and held on—never realizing that the immediate area in front of the Meg’s bullet-shaped nose was a blind spot and that the shark couldn’t see him.
Enraged by the presence of its unseen challenger, Luna surged through the tunnel, the sudden rush of water tearing the dive mask from David’s face and depositing it around his neck. Unable to free up either hand to pinch his nose to breathe through his regulator, he could only hang on as the Meg shot through the last twenty-eight feet of tunnel, entering the former habitat of its deceased legacy.
Luna shook him loose and immediately circled back to attack, its back arched, the pink bands of its upper jaw jutting forward.
David powered on the electric vest, delivering a high-frequency charge that chased the Megalodon through sunlit curtains of gray-green water. Pinching his nose, he drew a mouthful of air from his regulator. Then he repositioned the mask over his eyes and nose and blew air forcefully out of his nostrils, expelling water from the upper portion of the rubber seal.
Hovering forty feet below the surface, he searched for Luna. She was circling, her left eye watching him, her back no longer arched.
David powered off the electronic device.
The Meg moved closer, reducing the distance between them with each pass until it stopped circling and approached, its cataract-gray left eye identifying him.
It was an extraordinary moment. Moving closer, David reached out with his right hand and allowed his palm to run across the Megalodon’s albino hide as it passed by.
If the creature felt it, she never responded. Instead, she circled back to the tunnel entrance and returned to her tank.
* * *
David was surrounded by cameramen as he made his way across the concrete deck in his wetsuit. He headed straight for the perimeter fence surrounding the Meg Pen, Monty waiting for him by the entrance.
“You sure about this, Junior?”
“She’s ready. Where’s Mac?”
“Standing by in the control room.” Monty spoke into his radio. “Uncle Mac, any last words you want to say to your godson?”
“Yes. There’s seven hundred and forty pounds of fish on the feeding platform. Make sure Luna eats all of it before you jump Snake River, Evel.”
David turned to
Monty, who shrugged. “Have you seen my father?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay, let’s do this.” David entered the gate and circled to the north side of the tank. Looking to his left, he saw Luna’s white dorsal fin break the surface, the Meg having been conditioned through reward and repetition.
The feeding platform resembled a high dive, its concrete base towering twenty feet, supporting a narrow walkway that extended fifteen feet over the azure-blue water. Anchored to the aluminum guardrail was the framework of a hydraulic lift, a winding track of steel cable that ran from the supply shack to the end of the feeding platform.
David ascended the circular stairwell and proceeded to the end of the short walkway, where a dozen freshly killed tuna were suspended by their tails from hooks rotating along the steel cable. Moving to the control console, David engaged the system, using a joystick to rotate the first fish into position along the conveyor belt.
Luna was already in position, her triangular head out of the water, her lower jaw opening and closing, her eyes fixed on David, the news cameras rolling.
“Luna … up!” His left arm rose above his head as his right index finger pressed the release button.
The Meg elevated twenty feet, its pectoral fins clearing the water as it snatched the eighty-five-pound fish in midair. Then it slipped silently back into the tank to a rousing applause.
Luna swallowed the snack as she circled the Meg Pen, giving the spectators in the gallery a show. Returning to its feeding spot, it awaited its trainer’s command.
Twenty minutes and eleven tunas later, David looked out from his perch at the expressions on the faces of the cheering members of the media. Most of the eyewitnesses were stunned. Having witnessed Angel’s pulse-pounding feeding ritual, few, if any, would have imagined one of these monsters could actually be trained. In the public’s mind, sharks were eating machines to be feared—especially the most fearsome species of the lot.
David smiled to himself. They haven’t seen anything yet.…
