Hotel Megalodon: A Deep Sea Thriller (15 page)

Coco glanced to her left through the clear wall that looked out on the reef. Definitely darker now. The sun was setting. She picked up her pace a little as they neared the suites. It would be nice to spend the night on land, she had to admit, but she had a job to do down here. And with Mick involved with Clarissa, spending the night on land was less attractive. It was hot and stuffy down here, though, and the people were testy. Understandably so, but still.
Get these people on this pod.

They reached the suites wing, and Coco found the Moon Jelly suite, the medusa form of a jellyfish etched into the door. As promised, the door was unlocked. She opened it, and held it open for the six divers who filed into the luxury suite with their scuba gear. Coco stood there for a moment before entering, listening down the long hallway for the sound of approaching footsteps. If there was an angry throng coming to demand entry to the pod, she’d rather know about it now.

Her ears were greeted with only silence, however, so she stepped into the suite, closed, locked, and double-checked the door. She took a deep breath, facing the closed door in case anyone was watching.
Stay calm. Be a leader. Be strong.
She wasn’t sure why she had to remind herself of that, but for whatever reason it made her feel better, so she did it.
It’s up to you to keep these people safe. Do it.

The divers were standing against the scenic window, looking out on the reef, where the exterior lights had just come on with the onset of evening. “Looks nice enough out there,” one of them remarked. Coco thought, but did not say:
Most sharks are nocturnal, and become more active at night
. Another answered how she was looking forward to staying in a regular hotel, and just scuba dive on the reef when she wanted to see it. “Amen to that,” another replied.

An intercom set into the wall near the door crackled with James White’s voice. Are you ready? Coco walked to the LED touchscreen, clicked an icon, and spoke into the microphone.

“All seven of us now inside the Moon Jelly suite—escape pod, that is—myself, and the six scuba divers.”

“Coco, I need you to stay behind in the hotel, if that’s all right with you. We’re short-staffed down here since we can’t do any shift changes, and people have to sleep some time.”

“No problem, Mr., White. I understand.”

“Caesar is going to come on now and explain to everyone what to expect, so be sure to gather them around the intercom, and turn up the volume, okay?”

“Will do.”

“When he’s done, let them know you’ll be staying in the hotel, and let yourself out.”

“Copy that.” Coco waved everyone over, and told them to listen to the instructions.

The Indian engineer’s voice came over the intercom. “None of you need to do anything, but I just want to tell you what to expect. Ideally, all of you should be in a sitting position. It should be a smooth ascent to the surface, but in case you encounter...turbulence...it is safer to be lower to the floor, okay? The pod is designed to float ceiling up, in the same orientation as it is now, but it...”

“But it’s untested,” Coco completed the sentence for him.

“Right.”

Coco looked back, and was glad to see the divers all taking seats of their own accord.

“It should be a slow but steady rise to the surface. When you reach the surface, one of our boat operators will be standing by in a small boat to tow the entire pod to the beach. Do not open the door yourself, wait for instructions. Coco, you have the walkie talkie?”

Coco felt along her belt. “Yes.”

“Please give it to someone in the pod so that they can communicate if necessary with Mick in the boat.” Coco designated Hatem as the one in charge of the radio. She briefly showed him how to use it, and then handed it to him.

She told the engineer over the intercom that they were ready.

“Great. Then take a seat please. Let’s try to get you off the bottom while it’s still light out.”

Coco opened the suite door, and stepped into the hallway.

“See you on the island a little later!” she called out before shutting the door.

Chapter 28

Coco stood outside the short vestibule to the suite—the escape pod—and listened to the sound of activating levers and machinery from behind a steel pressure shield that had dropped not long after she had exited the unit. The suite was disengaging from the main hotel. After a couple of minutes she heard one more loud clunking sound, and then nothing. The entire suite pod was separated from the hotel.

She took off down the main hallway at a trot toward the main lobby. As she ran, she looked up through the transparent ceiling, hoping to catch a glimpse of the pod on its way to the surface. She couldn’t see it, however, so kept on moving.

When she got the lobby everyone—White, Caesar, and a couple of staff along with a dozen or so trapped guests—were lined up against the far viewing wall. They peered out onto the reef, some pointing and shouting. Coco ran up to them, wondering if the megalodon had shown up again, attracted by the exterior lights.

As she found a place within the crowd and stepped up to the window, though, it immediately became apparent that there was no sea life causing the ruckus. Something artificial was out there—something lit up. At first she thought it might be Mick with the sub, but then the logical side of her brain took over, and she knew it was much too large to be the sub.

“...thought it floated?” she heard a woman ask.

Then it hit her.
Thought it floated...
She ran to White’s side. He was busy arguing, albeit in hushed tones, as usual, with the engineer, who shot a slightly annoyed glance at Coco as she walked up. Coco didn’t care.

“Is that the pod?” she said pressing in next to White as she stared out at the thing.

“Yes,” he returned before resuming his intense conversation with the Indian man.

Apparently something had gone wrong. The entire pod—one of the hotel suites—now lay on the coral reef, upright, as if it were a designed outbuilding of the hotel. But Coco knew it wasn’t. It lay just beyond the main swath of light from the hotel’s exterior bulbs, but the pod still had its own interior and exterior lighting, and Coco realized with a start that she could see into the pod—she could see the people inside pressing their faces against the wall, and looking back at them across the reef!

“What happened?” Coco tried a more direct approach to get information. White disagreed with something the engineer said, and turned away from him in frustration, now ready to talk to Coco.
“Apparently our
crack engineering team
,” White emphasized the words with sarcasm as he turned quickly to the Indian, and then back to Coco, “forgot that there would be furnishings and people inside the pod when it would be used in a real escape scenario, and so that extra weight was not in the original buoyancy calculations.”

The gravity of the situation took root for Coco as she gawked at the sunken hotel room. It had detached from the main building, but it didn’t float like they said it would! It was not a sub, it had no means of propulsion, and therefore was little more than a rock on the bottom. A hollow ball filled with air and people, and when that air ran out...

She watched the divers—there was the wife of the Egyptian man—waving at them through the window. Not waving like,
oh, hi, over there, isn’t this fun
? But waving in a panic state to try to get people’s attention for help. Coco was reminded of Hatem, the one to whom she had given the radio. She snatched the unit from her belt and checked to make sure it was on and set to the same channel she told him to use. All good.

She held up the radio and waved it above her head, hoping they could see it, and would get the idea that she wanted them to establish communications. She didn’t know if White and his engineer did or not—surely they knew they had a radio—but she didn’t much care, either. She had personally walked them into that pod, and told them everything would be okay. She was the last person from the hotel they had contact with.

Coco’s radio came to life in her hand. It was the Egyptian.

“Coco, this is Hatem, do you read me, over?”

White and the engineer glanced at the radio in Coco’s hand. Coco keyed the transmitter, and talked into it.

“Read you loud and clear, Hatem. It looks like there’s been a problem with the buoyancy system in the escape pod. I’m giving you to Mr. White for an update.”

She handed him the radio.
Deal with it, bastard
.
Confront the people whose lives you are affecting with your stupid decisions
. She was tired of cleaning up after his messes. It was obvious he didn’t want to talk to the pod, but with several of the guests watching him to see how he would respond, he had no choice. He stared at the radio for a second as if it was a foreign instrument to him, and then took it from Coco’s hand. Caesar said something softly to him, inaudible even to Coco, who was standing right next to them.

White looked out into the stationery escape pod while he spoke into the radio. “Hatem, I can confirm that there is indeed a buoyancy problem with the pod. I can assure you that my engineers are addressing the problem as we speak.”

To everyone’s surprise, the Egyptian man’s response was calm and collected, although they could hear many other people asking questions in the background of the transmission.

“Copy that, Mr. White. Standing by for further news, enjoying the view, over.” He waved at them across the reef.

Coco turned to White and the engineer. “How long will the air supply last in the pod?”

White deferred to the engineer, who gave a doubting look and a shrug as if to indicate that his response was only a guesstimate. “Six people inside...maybe four-to-six hours.”

“Can they open the hatch and scuba out?” Coco looked out to the pod, where it was getting difficult to see the shape of the actual pod except for the lights on the outside.

The engineer again appeared doubtful. “Perhaps they could open the hatch against the water pressure, but I’m not sure. We never tested that. But even if they could, water would immediately rush in with great force. I suppose it is possible, if they knew to wait out of the way of the main force of the water with their gear already on, but...” He shook his head as he stared out at the pod.

No one said anything for a moment as they stared at the pod, until the engineer broke the silence. “I think the best bet is to have divers from Topside scuba down and rig a lot of lift bags to the pod, it will rise to the surface where—“

The guests around them started to shout and point. Coco followed their fingers out to the left of the pod, where a mammoth, dark shape moved up on the reef.

Chapter 29

Mick closed his hand around the warm rubber of the Zodiac’s throttle as he revved the engine. In his other hand he held the boat’s radio transmitter. He had the volume cranked all the way up, and could just barely hear Coco’s stressed-out voice above the whine of his outboard.

“...not coming up, Mick. Pod sunk to the bottom...see something...worried.”

Mick yelled into the mic. “I’m almost to the hotel. I’ll give it a look, over!”

He dropped the transmitter, and focused on driving the boat. He needed to keep a sharp eye out for...for a lot of things, he realized. The pod...the divers from the pod in case they swam out somehow...the megalodon. Clarissa’s dolphin....He had told her he was jetting off to look for it, but Coco was right. He had to put human life first. The dolphin was like Clarissa’s pet, of course she wanted it looked after, but—

Mick slowed the boat as he eyed a darkish object bobbing in the waves about halfway between the hotel and the reef line. He’d just told Coco that he’d be coming to the hotel to look for the pod, but what if this object was somehow related to the pod? It wasn’t all that far away. Then he remembered what he had in the console, and slowed the boat to idle. He reached down and rummaged through the cluttered space beneath the steering wheel until he found what he was looking for: a pair of old marine binoculars.

He focused the glasses on the object he saw on the water. Focused some more, compensating for the bouncing boat....there! Mick recoiled as his brain processed the imagery his eyes conveyed to it.

A bloody dolphin—or half of one, to be more specific—rode the waves. Ragged meat bulged from the lower half of the dolphin, its head completely missing. Mick had seen dolphins that had been attacked by sharks before, and while it could be gruesome, he’d never seen anything like this. Usually there would be multiple smaller chunks removed from the body...but the entire upper torso and head? Unheard of.

Megalodon
...

He thought of Coco and immediately picked up his radio.

#

Down in the hotel lobby, Coco pointed to the megalodon as it swept its colossal body across the reef toward the sunken escape pod. Looking up, she saw the outline of Mick’s Zodiac limned against the evening sky. She brought the radio to her lips.

“See your boat, Mick. You’re over the pod—and the megalodon—be careful!”

“Copy that. Thought that big-ass shark would be down here. I found half of Clarissa’s dolphin up here, too, over.”

No sooner had he completed his sentence than Clarissa followed the points of several shouting guests. A dolphin’s severed head drifted near the lobby window.

“Which half did you see up there?”

“The tail.”

“We just found the head down here.”

“Odd he didn’t actually eat it, isn’t it?”

Coco was thinking about this—it
was
odd—when the megalodon swooped into view in front of the lobby. Terrified screams filled the air as the guests ran herd-like away from the window. Coco was too riveted by the view to move. White and the engineer backed up a few steps, but also remained close to the window as the megalodon closed in.

Never had Coco seen firsthand such a massive, all-encompassing predatory maw. The jaws gaped wide, and she swore a small house could fit inside the beast’s mouth. It swam low and fast toward the hotel, giving them a perfect view of it head-on, the kind of view one can never forget. The kind of view Coco would never forget. Ragged rips of flesh trailed from several of the giant’s six-inch long teeth on the left side of its oral cavity, remnants of Clarissa’s dolphin.

Just as Coco was preparing to turn and run, expecting the prehistoric marauder to smash into the acrylic wall right in front of her, the oversized cartilaginous fish veered sharply to the right, a swirl of sediment billowing from the reef as its tail swiped past the viewing window.

“That was close,” White remarked.

“It didn’t miss, if that’s what you mean.” Coco still watched the fish’s progress with rapt attention as it hurtled out across the reef toward the pod, where the would-be escapees were plastered against the suite’s window, watching the apex predator with expressions of horror that reminded Coco of the faces she had witnessed in the tram tunnel—shortly before most of them died.

Coco’s radio crackled once again with Mick’s voice. “Coco, I think I see the pod, it’s down on the reef in front of the lobby main window, lights on, right?”

“That’s right. And—“

“And the shark is heading for it?”

“Yes, you can see that?”

“Yeah. Not sure what I can do for them, any ideas?”

Coco looked at White and the engineer who had also heard Mick. White looked at Caesar, who slowly shook his head, and stared out the window. “I’m sure they know not to try to open the hatch and scuba out of there now,” was all he said.

Coco raised the radio to her mouth. “Mick, maybe just zoom around up there, make some engine noise, draw it off of them?”

There was a pause while the shark closed the distance to the escape pod before Mick’s voice came back. “Copy that, Coco, I’ll give it a go.” They saw the plume of whitewater from the boat’s wake grow larger as Mick throttled up the engine, heading toward the edge of the reef, away from the pod’s position on the bottom.

Meanwhile, the shark accelerated as it approached the pod.