Hotel Megalodon: A Deep Sea Thriller (22 page)

Chapter 43

Faster. That’s what Coco willed the sub to do. When she had to slow down to navigate around a coral formation or stay within a particularly windy stretch of sandy path, the megalodon became more agitated. Once it even nudged the sub, eliciting a yelp from her in the pilot’s seat, but then it hung back once she hit a straightaway through the coral and got up to cruising speed again.
This shark wants me to keep moving. It’s like it’s escorting
me
away from the hotel instead of the other way around.

Then as she saw the coral growth thin out ever so slightly, and the ocean floor begin to slope downward, another thought struck her.
What if it’s just toying with me (with the sub), like a cat with a mouse before going in for the kill?
To her it seemed a very un-shark-like thing to do, but the very existence of this particular shark was unlikely, was it not? It shouldn’t even be here at all, much less let her lead it away from the hotel which had captured its interest, and back out to sea.

Every minute that passed by was a minute for the guests to be safely evacuated from the hotel, though, so she kept driving toward the drop-off, a megalodon on her tail. She remembered the GoPro camera she’d mounted behind her seat, facing backwards. Perfect! She’d bought it to mount from the top of the dome, and one of the managers had the idea to sell guests high definition movies of their sub dives, but in the end they decided the camera both invaded privacy and blocked the upward view somewhat, so they had nixed the idea. Not wanting to waste a perfectly good setup, however, Coco had mounted it discreetly behind the pilot seat facing backwards, so that at least it could be used for taking video behind the sub.

She reached back with one arm, and felt for the button she knew powered on the unit. Found it. “Smile Miss Megalodon, get ready to be the next viral video star!”

Then in the radio she heard the engineer’s voice at the same time as she saw the sandy cut that dropped off between the two coral shelves up ahead.

“Topside here—Coco, you read?”

“Copy. Almost to the drop-off. The big girl’s on my tail, over.”

“Be careful, Coco. We’ve got everybody into the escape pod now, and we’re preparing to jettison.”

“Pod gonna float this time, I hope?” Coco whipped her head around for a quick glance at the great shark. Still right there, but it paused to lash out at a small school of fish either not wary, or not caring enough, to have detected its presence. Either way, they paid the price as the monster fish decimated their ranks with a single open mouth gulp before falling in line behind the sub once again.

“It should work this time. I’ll be back in touch after we jettison it, over and out.”

“Copy. Out.” Coco let go of the transmitter with an air of finality that said, this is it.

She glided over the sandy entrance to the drop-off, the sub’s lights illuminating tracks in the sand that Coco guessed came from the first escape pod tumbling down the slope as it was pushed by the megalodon.

Pushed by the megalodon!

As soon as she had made the connection between the megalodon pushing the pod down through the drop-off, and the fact that the big shark was now right behind her sub, Coco was jolted in her pilot seat, whiplash style.

The massive megalodon had rammed her sub. It was shoving her down the drop-off the way it had done to the escape pod before her. Would she see it down there, the dead people’s faces plastered against the windows, waiting for help that would never come in time?

Her nemesis gave her little time to ponder that unpleasant scenario, though, because she saw the colossal snout nose ahead on her side of the bubble cabin, bashing the sub towards the right. The sandy trail narrowed considerably at the entrance to the canyon proper. So this is what the megalodon’s game was, Coco thought. It chases its prey down here, and then beats it up against the sides of the coral passage on the way down the deep sea canyon...where it did who knows what.

Suddenly Coco didn’t want to know. Whatever curiosity she once had had been quelled out of her by all of the deaths she’d witnessed. She couldn’t take it anymore. The sub couldn’t take much more either, she knew, so she got her mind back on task, and focused on driving the craft down the middle of the passage without hitting anything.

At least it was still following her, and closely, too. The gigantic fish barely fit in this narrow upper part of the canyon, yet it wedged and squirmed and wriggled itself down through it faster than the sub could go, bumping into her more often now, and harder, too. Then Coco flew off the cliff-like section that until now she’d seen, but never reached. A glance at the depth gauge showed her 100 feet. She was leaving the shallows. Below her yawned a serious chasm from which there was no outlet other than to come straight back up.

She squinted at the radio display.
Is this thing working?
What the hell was up with the tower escape pod already? She wanted to test the radio by asking the Topside crew what was going on, but the megalodon had other plans. The great fish suddenly took to the midwater, flying above the sub for a few seconds before launching itself back down on top of it.

Coco screamed in surprise and fright when the prehistoric monster’s white belly fell across the top of the dome bubble, its contours conforming to those of the sub. Was it keeping her from returning to the surface? Who was really leading who, here? She was no longer sure, but the longer the shark was away from the hotel, the better chance they would have to evacuate those still trapped inside.

Might as well keep following this down...

Coco followed the sandy shelf that constituted the drop-off, to its end. The depth gauge told her she had reached a depth of 200 feet. It was very dark down here. The glow of the sub’s instrument console provided the only light. At night she was totally dependent on the sub’s lights and instrumentation in order to navigate. Were she to have any kind of equipment failure down here...Coco forced herself not to think about it.
Just get it done.

She peered over the edge of the drop-off. Below her was sheer deep ocean; just a black void waiting to swallow her whole. She looked up at the megalodon. It was higher up now, apparently losing interest in her. She didn’t want to chase it up and down and all over the reef, but it seemed like its curiosity over the sub might be wearing thin. She wished she knew how much more time they needed, but the shark could reach the hotel from here in about three minutes if it really wanted to, so she thought of how to best keep it here.

She tried flashing the sub’s lights off and on in rapid succession. It did draw the mighty beast nearer for perhaps a minute, but then it rose even higher than before. Then she tried something else, something that scared her, but she was willing to do it if it worked. She turned the sub’s external lights off and kept them off, plunging her into near darkness. Looking up, she couldn’t really see the megalodon, but could tell it was moving by the way it became dark and then light again as it traversed across the available moonlight.

The megalodon was coming back down to investigate.

Then the radio burst with chatter, startling Coco from her fish watching. The voice of the engineer filled the cabin.

“Coco, you copy?”

She picked up the transmitter. “I copy, Topside. I’m over the drop-off now, depth 200 feet, with the megalodon in sight, over.”

“Be careful, Coco. Is it attacking you?”

“Not yet. A couple of love taps so far, that’s about it, over.”

She looked up and around for the shark, but couldn’t see it now. Consulting her depth gauge, she noted that she had dropped a little, her depth reading 225 feet.

“Good news is we have jettisoned the escape pod with everyone from the tower inside, and it is floating this time.”

Coco breathed a sigh of relief. “Is there bad news to go along with the good?”

“Nothing terrible, but the pod ejected a little more forcefully than we anticipated, and as soon as it hit the surface it was already halfway across the reef. We have two boats chasing it down to tow it to shore, with Mick driving one of them, but the wind picked up, and is pushing it pretty good out toward the edge of the reef, over.”

Coco felt a chill creep over her as she contemplated the turn of events. When the pod reached the edge of the reef, the megalodon would swim up to investigate it. Perhaps that’s what it had already started doing. She flipped on the sub’s external lights again.

Damn
. The massive fish was even higher up than before, swimming upward in lazy circles. The megalodon seemed to be attracted to movement, or perhaps to the electrical activity that went along with it. She needed to do something to get the shark interested again. The lights were already on again, and that wasn’t cutting it. She looked down into the darkness, and then activated the sub’s thrusters on high. The whiny revolutions of the electric motors were easily transmitted through the water to the shark’s sensory systems.

She craned her neck around, and watched the marine leviathan spiral into a steep dive. It was coming fast. She could level out, but she feared being rammed by the beastly fish at high speed. If she went straight down she would have more time.

She put the
Triton-1
into a deep dive.

Chapter 44

At around three hundred feet down it dawned on Coco that she was in great danger. By descending in a quirky corkscrew pattern and intermittently flashing the sub’s lights, she had been able to keep the megalodon’s interest. Perhaps a little too well. It was terrifying her now, staying just beyond the reach of the halogen floodlights, and then darting in to press its raggedy mouth up against the smooth bubble dome. Its jaws worked up and down as it attempted to sink its teeth into the smooth, curved surface, like a toddler trying to bite a whole apple.

It couldn’t do it, but that didn’t make it any less horrifying, watching those bloody gums wipe the sub’s dome from mere feet away. She wasn’t sure why it wanted to do it, either. It could probably swallow the sub whole. Perhaps it was used to delivering a crushing bite that sapped the lifeblood from its victims to make it easier to swallow, to go down its gullet without a fight.

And then a thought that was most troubling overtook her: what if she had lost radio contact with Topside? Normally the communication system was used from reef-to-shore; she’d never used it from such a significant depth. Still she descended, she noted with a worried glance at the depth gauge.

340 feet...

She scrambled for the radio, but the shark bumped the sub, hard this time, sending it careening to its port side, causing Coco’s hand to flip the switch for the sub’s grab-arm instead. She heard the mechanistic whirring noise as the arm moved....and then something most unexpected happened.

The end of the arm—now fitted with the acetylene torch, although it was not activated—grazed the megalodon’s skin on the underside of the mouth, or its “chin” if it had one. Coco flashed on the possibility that she could turn the torch on to burn the animal, and then just as quickly dismissed the idea. It would simply pull away when it felt the heat—it was not a way to kill it. It might even drive the shark back up to the reef, exactly where she didn’t want it to go.

But as she stared out at the primitive creature, expecting for it to bash the sub at any moment with its great head, Coco paused in wonderment. The megalodon was slowly moving so that the grab arm was rubbing under its mouth, and its movements became slower, more lethargic. Coco expected this to be a momentary fluke, but a minute later the shark was still exhibiting the same behavior.

The
behavior
...

That’s when it hit her that she had knowledge about this behavior, that she had seen it before, even if only from videos.
What was it called? Something that certain species of sharks did...makes them all sleepy and slow, like they’re doped up on something...

Coco racked her brain while adjusting the position of the manipulator arm when needed to massage the shark and keep it in its low energy state.

Tonic immobility. That’s it!
She recalled with stunned realization the information on tonic mobility she’d heard in class and in books. Some sharks, when upside-down and stroked in a certain way, became extremely lethargic and enter a semi-inebriated state. In this state, they do not swim or even move much at all; they float, eyes rolled half back in their heads, fins not moving, just hanging there in some kind of oceanic trance.

Exactly what the megalodon was doing now, Coco thought, watching it loll passively at the end of the sub’s remote arm. How long would this behavior last? She had no idea, but she made sure the grab-arm was in contact with the snout area, since that’s what seemed to send it into its trance-like state.

While she was doing this, the sub and the shark sank together like two oblivious dancers on a dark floor, spotlights providing the only illumination. She eyed the depth gauge again: now passing 400 feet. The little submersible was not rated for the deep sea, and its oxygen and carbon dioxide scrubbing system would not last that much longer. As if to underscore that fact a battery alarm sounded, a buzzing noise that Coco feared would wake the megalodon from its tonic trance.

But she kept falling while the big predator fell limply with her. She shut off the alarm, knowing it did nothing to fix the serious underlying problem: the sub’s batteries were running low, and when they ran out, it’s thrusters would no longer work, along with the cabin’s air circulation system, and carbon dioxide scrubbers.

She needed to begin the long ascent to the surface, or risk losing all power and sinking forever into the void. Yet the megalodon was still very much alive, just in a comatose condition. Was there a way for her to kill it? She tried to think of one but another alarm went off—low oxygen this time—and the huge shark stirred, momentarily coming out of its tonic immobility to right itself. Quickly Coco nudged it with the sub to return it to its upside-down orientation.

It worked; the creature slipped back into its unaware state, sinking with the sub into the deep ocean. This time, she watched it go while retreating in the opposite direction: up.