Hotel Megalodon: A Deep Sea Thriller (19 page)

Chapter 36

The Saudi sheik, a composed man of fifty-some-odd years of age decked out in full robes and headgear, had up until now remained quiet, his wife by his side even more so. Now, however, standing in the tower’s control room while James White conferred with his lone surviving technician, the guests’ legs sopping wet, with even the knowledgeable marine biologist standing around wondering what to do, he decided to make his voice heard. The billionaire cleared his throat forcefully and turned to White, interrupting his conversation.

“Excuse me, Mr, White.”

White continued speaking to the tech in hushed tones. “Mr. White! You will answer me when I speak to you!” The sheik raised his voice to a near yell that startled the property developer and the technician, both of whom bumped heads when they turned to look up at the angry Arab. White rubbed his temple while glaring at the tech for a second before addressing his irate client.

“Forgive me for not hearing you sooner, Abdullah bin Antoun, but I am in the middle of discussing possible solutions to our problems. Is there something I can do for you?”

The Saudi’s gaze was stern as his wife stood by his side. “Yes, Mr. White, there is. I have been most patient with you and your staff up to now, and that patience has not been rewarded. Things continue to worsen as time goes by. I demand that you tell me right now what you are doing to get us out of this hotel. When can we leave?”

A rumbling of agreement rippled through the room as the other guests crowded in to hear the exchange.

White snorted derisively, and swept a hand toward the dark sea beyond the tower glass. “If you’ve figured out how to walk through walls and breathe underwater, Abdullah, by all means, let us know. In the meantime, I’m working on a solution that actually obeys the known laws of physics, if that’s okay with Your Highness.”

White assumed a look of smug satisfaction as he looked over at the guests in turn, but none of them looked happy or impressed. In fact, they were beginning to look downright hostile toward White. But compared to the Sheik, they were compliant.

The Arab took a step closer to White, leaning down to put his face closer. “What exactly is the solution you are working on, Mr. White?”

“Right now, we’re attempting to reestablish communications with our Topside support.”

The Sheik made an expression that conveyed he was unimpressed. “That is all? Trying to reach other people to say ‘please help us’? There is nothing you yourself can do to get us out of here?” He shot White an accusatory stare.

White stood up, and looked the Arab in the eyes. “I’m open to suggestions. I’m not standing around in here for fun, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“You have no radio link to the outside?” What is that? He nodded to the walkie-talkie clipped to White’s belt. As the sheik became more accusatory, more direct, some of the other guests became uncomfortable. In the group of them ringed around the control station, a husband gently moved his wife back. Coco stood at the perimeter of the group as well, monitoring the situation carefully, one hand moving to her radio to make sure the volume was turned down lest Mick contact her and White hears it.

“This is a radio, it does have sporadic, limited contact with the outside, but is nowhere near as good as the hardwired intercom system we have with our Topside Engineering team on the island. We’re trying to get that working again so we can regain conferencing abilities and do some real brainstorming on our situation here.”

“Give me the radio.” The Arab extended his left hand.

“Pardon me?”

“You heard me, Mr. White. I said, Give. Me. The. Radio.” He over-enunciated each word for dramatic effect, then added, “I will not repeat myself again.”

White’s features took on a confused look. Dan Wang squinted briefly, and then buried his nose in his controls. Whether he was merely pretending to look busy in order to stay out of the fray, or was actually working on something, Coco didn’t know.

“I will not. I remind you, Mr. bin Antoun, that regardless of your stature in your home country, that while you are in this hotel or on this island you are a guest on my property.”

The sheik’s face cycled through several shades of red, settling on a beet color. “
Guest
? Is this how you treat your so-called guests? Look around. All of these people are suffering. And we are the ones who are still alive, Mr. White. It seems you fail to comprehend the gravity of our situation. Now, I will not repeat myself again! Give me the radio.”

“I will not. If you have a request, you may relay it to me and I will—“

White broke off mid-sentence as he laid eyes on the pistol that had materialized in the Arab’s hand. Pointed at his chest.

“I am at my wit’s end, Mr. White. You leave me no choice but to resort to the use of force. Hand over the radio to my wife.” He nudged his wife forward. She took a step toward White and extended a hand, her expression unreadable.

“What? Are you crazy? Put that thing down this instant!”

“You are the one who is crazy, Mr. White, if you think we will stand for your ineptitude any longer. I want that radio.”

“Who else in here is armed?” White yelled. He swiveled his head as he looked at his technician, at the guests, at Coco, not that he expected her to be armed, except for perhaps a dive knife. Nobody moved or spoke. The Arab’s gun remained trained on White’s heart.

“The radio, Mr., White. Please, let’s make this easy on everyone, shall we? Hand it to my wife, please.”

With obvious reluctance in the face of no other recourse, White very slowly handed the walkie-talkie to the Arab’s wife while the gun was trained on him.

“How did you get that thing here, anyway?” White wasn’t talking about the hotel itself. There were no security checks, an oversight he now regretted. He was referring to the fact that the sheik had flown internationally. He must have either checked his weapon disassembled the entire way, or else have purchased it upon arrival to Fiji’s main island, in the capital city. But it was no matter, since he had it, and it was aimed right at White. The sheik also seemed to recognize that it didn’t matter how he had got it here, for he ignored the question.

“What channel should I use to contact someone from...Topside,” the sheik said, recalling the term White had used. Then he seemed to have second thoughts because he started fiddling with the radio’s controls without waiting for an answer, looking up every couple of seconds through his gun sights.

“Channel 3,” White intoned. But the sheik waved his gun at him.

“Never you mind. I do not trust you to tell me the correct channel. I will scan them all.”

Coco raised an eyebrow in the Arab’s direction. He was an astute observer indeed. She wondered if he happened to be a naturally good judge of character, or if he knew something about White that she did not. Either way, she agreed with him.

Suddenly Mick’s voice burst into the room through the radio in the Arab’s hands. Coco was stunned for a moment, scared that somehow her radio volume had been turned up, but as she fumbled for and found the knob, she realized that it came from the radio in the sheik’s hand.

“...read me, over?” Mick finished.

The Arab raised the gun to White’s head. “You see. This is not channel 3, it is channel 8. You lied.”

“No, you’re not on a Topside channel. Mick is in the submersible now, so that’s an underwater channel.”

“Whatever, he is outside of this hellish fishbowl, that is good enough for me.”

Coco started to slink to the back of the gathering, wanting to take advantage of the argument to respond to Mick on her radio. Then she stopped herself. Why take any more time? She could lose him if she waited too long, and what did it matter anyway? White had a freaking gun trained on him. There was nothing he could do! Screw him, Coco thought, unclipping the radio from her belt, and turning it on.

She had just brought it to her mouth and pressed the transmitter button, when a mammoth form struck the floor-to-ceiling acrylic wall of the tower on their level.

Chapter 37

The megalodon slammed its gargantuan bulk into the side of the tower’s second floor. The guests screamed as water poured into the hotel along with big sections of plastic glass. A guest standing near his wife looked up too late, and was sliced across the neck by a lance-like shard. Blood ran from his open throat as he dropped to his knees. His wife was at his side, screaming for help, but now there was water pouring into the hotel, the shark was still just outside the window, and people were looking out for themselves.

Including White, who seized the opportunity to charge bin Antoun like a bull, lowering his head, and plowing into his gut while using his arm to fling the man’s gun hand up and away. The gun flew from his grasp, and clattered to the floor ten feet from White and the sheik.

Coco, who had never taken her eyes off White despite the crash, ran for the gun. She figured that as a staff member, she had more right than the guests to grab it. Better keep everyone safe by making sure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands, right? She thought it would be an easy grab, what with the megalodon causing a major leak into the place, and breach alarms going off, but at least two other people in addition to White and the sheik were attempting to gain control of the firearm as well.

One of them was Wang. Coco didn’t think he was particularly sympathetic to White—not enough to want to give the gun back to him, anyway; he probably just wanted to get control of it to avoid a shootout between the two fighting men, the same as Coco did. But she wasn’t one hundred percent sure. Maybe he would give it back to White. Or maybe he’d keep it for himself, but end up being just as much of a loose cannon as White? The safest thing for her was to be the one controlling the gun.

And then she experienced the underlying current of fear that swept through her consciousness as she dove headlong for the fallen firearm—that possession of the gun would matter not at all compared to the destruction and mayhem that the megalodon would continue to bring down upon them. She was tired of feeling out of control, though, and with the megalodon she had no control. With this gun, on the other hand, she at least had the chance to gain a small measure of influence over the people around her.

Coco felt the arm of a hotel guest—a woman, she registered with surprise—brush across the side of her face as both of them dove for the pistol. Coco extended her arm as far as it would go, and felt her fingertips brush against the metal.

She heard Mick’s voice shouting into his radio. She was in too much of a situation to focus on his words, but by the general urgency of his voice, she guessed that he’d seen what the megalodon had done to the tower. Coco pushed forward on the floor by digging her shoes into the carpet until she was able to close her hand around the weapon. She quickly slid it beneath her body, shielding it from would-be grabbers. The situation in the hotel was precarious, and there was no telling what a person might do to defend themselves and their family against threats real or perceived. Coco had enough to worry about with just the prehistoric predator and the hotel systems failures it caused, without having to add gun-toting psycho to the list.

She slithered away from the female guest, protecting the gun flat against her belly with both hands while she looked for the technician. Was Wang about to spring on her? No. There he was, jumping onto White and the sheik, trying to separate them. So he must be okay that I have the gun, Coco thought. He wasn’t trying to get it for himself, he just didn’t want White or the Arab to have it. The guest likewise seemed comfortable backing off once it was clear Coco had control of the weapon.

Coco felt something cold and wet on her head, and realized she’d moved under to where water poured in from high up on the broken wall. With a start, she saw the belly of the massive beast, its body so long that its head was somewhere out in the blackness beyond the reach of the exterior lights, some of which had been blacked out by the shark.

Piercing it all was Mick’s voice, still raging into the microphone of the sub’s radio, and coming out of the one the Arab had taken from White. Coco looked, and incredibly, that unit was still attached to the sheik’s belt. She didn’t need it, though, since she had her own. Mick’s voice was actually reaching her ears in a weird kind of stereo sound from close on her hip, to over on the floor of the wrestling Arab. She snagged the radio from her belt, and started transmitting while she watched Wang try to break up the fight, which was still on the floor.

“Mick, it’s me.”

“Coco! Get upstairs! I can get you out. Upstairs now!”

She looked to the middle of the room where a spiral staircase ran both up and down. The one that ran down, however, met with a steel plate—a horizontal pressure door—that sealed off the flooded dive locker. Up was the only way to go, and she was dismayed to see that some of the others also followed her gaze, and had, in fact, heard Mick’s directive. Nothing she could do about that, and now the megalodon was back for another pass, this time attacking the opposite side of the tower’s second level. The screaming began anew.

Coco moved past the fighting men and the control console, and made her way to the stairs. “On my way,” she said into the radio as she went. When she got to the stairway she had to walk around the circular ladder-like structure to gain the entrance point. She was startled to see about half a dozen people following her, zombie-like, fixing her with vacant-eyed stares and a hunger to trail anyone who might know something they didn’t; that would allow them to live a little longer.

“Be right back—going to check out the situation up top.” Coco jumped onto the stairs, and began taking them up without waiting for more questions. “Why? What’s up there? Can we come?” all echoed off her back as she ascended. The metal stairs were slick with seawater and she slipped and fell halfway up, saving herself from falling back the entire distance by grabbing the rail.

She got her first view of the third floor while still a few stairs up. It was dry. That was the main thing. The other thing was that she saw a pair of piercingly bright spotlights from outside shining in, and it dawned on her what they were.

“I see you, Mick! I’m in here!” She jumped from the stairs onto the flooring, and ran across the open floor to the window in front of the sub. She couldn’t see Mick inside the machine; the spots were like car high beams on steroids, blinding her when she looked at them.

“Your lights are too much, Mick, can you take it down a notch?”

In response the two halogen spotlights winked out, leaving only a weaker floodlight for Mick to navigate by.

“Much better, thanks.” Coco immediately directed her gaze upward. Mick was out there with the megalodon! Sure, he was in a submersible, but still—she recalled with a shiver how easily the brute of a fish had knocked her around while she piloted the machine on the coral slope. And this was at night, with the sub’s lights to attract it.

Now that she could see, Coco got her first look around the room. She’d actually never been to this part of the hotel, though she was well aware of its existence. She was standing in the hotel’s Fitness Complex, a grandiose term for a combination gym and tiki-themed juice bar. All around her stood state-of-the-art workout machines—free weights, elliptical trainers, stationary bikes, treadmills, rowing machines, and a few she wasn’t even familiar with. Above her the ceiling was acrylic, affording a view of the water above, and even the moon, casting its pale white light down to the reef.

“Coco, on the opposite side of the gym, next to the juice bar, is a restroom. Get to it, I’ll follow you there from outside, over.”

She wasn’t sure why he wanted her to go there, but with water now trickling down the stairs into the second level, and the sounds of pandemonium coming from down there, Coco didn’t ask questions. She threaded her way between the exercise machines until she reached the other side of the round room, where a wooden bar decked out with palm fronds to give it a tiki feel followed the curvature of the wall. Now silent juice machines lined the counter behind the bar, piles of lush fruits stacked for maximum presentation between them.

To the right, a closed door featuring unisex bathroom signage opened into a small alcove, the walls, floor, and ceiling of which were not made of clear material. Coco ran inside. Two stalls occupied the bathroom, with a pair of sinks opposite. She found the room to be oddly claustrophobic after the fishbowl experience the rest of the hotel offered.

She wasn’t here to use the facilities, though, so she cut her thoughts from wandering, and raised the radio. “Okay, Mick, I’m in the ladies room.”

“Copy that, I’m almost there. I—“He broke off the transmission.

Coco stared at a sign on the wall reading, ALL OF OUR WATER IS RECYCLED—PLEASE DON’T WASTE IT—while she replied, “What is it, Mick—what’s happening?”

“Our friend the dino-shark is bashing into the third floor windows now. Place is really flooding, second and third floors.”

Coco looked at the closed door separating her from the rest of the tower’s third floor. She willed her voice not to crack as she replied. “Is that why you wanted me to come in here, Mick? Because I don’t know if this little bathroom door will stand up to that kind of flood.”

“I’m hoping it will withstand the incoming water pressure long enough to equalize the force of the water coming in after I drill a hole into the bathroom.”

“Say again?”

“Coco. I don’t want to scare you. But unless you know of another way out, I think this is your best chance.”

“I don’t have a way out. What is my best chance?” Coco could hear the sound of water raining into the room outside the bathroom, cascading down the juice bar’s false tiki roof.

“I can—I
think
I can, anyway—burn a hole through the bathroom wall large enough for you to fit through.”

Coco thought about this for a couple of seconds, her blood quickly growing colder than that of the megalodon. “I see two huge problems with that, even if you can burn through. One: I don’t have any scuba stuff with me, Mick. Dive shop is flooded and behind pressure doors, and the one rig I did have with me outside of that was in the lobby, which is also long gone.”

“Copy that, Coco. You’re just going to have to hold your breath, swim out, and grab onto the sub, like a remora, remember? Then I can escort you to the surface. At least you’ll be starting from the high point on the third floor instead of the bottom.”

“I can swim to the surface faster than the sub can go.”

“Agreed, but the sub will give you some cover from Mr. Megalodon. Won’t be so exposed, swimming straight up through the water column.”

“True, I can see that. May as well hold on to the sub as long as I can, anyway, and bolt for the surface only if I run out of breath, right?”

“You got it.”

“Then there’s that pesky second problem I was thinking about.”

“Always thinking. That’s what I like about you.”

“Yeah, I can see you’re into the thinking type. The type who think about dolphins anyway.”

A beat, followed by, “Stay focused, Coco. We’ll talk about that, but right now we need to earn the chance. Get back to the problem.”

“You’re right. Okay, so the problem is that when you cut the hole and the seawater starts pouring in here, obviously I won’t be able to fight that incoming water, Mick.”

“Of course not.”

“I’ll have to dodge the incoming fire hose stream, and then wait until the entire bathroom fills with water above the level of the hole...”

“...which will equalize the pressure between inside the bathroom and outside in the lagoon, in theory allowing you to swim out.”

“Exactly, but only
if
this bathroom door holds.” She rapped on the wooden door with her knuckles. “If the door breaks off the hinges with the force of the water, then I won’t be able to get out through the hole. The ocean will just pour in until...” She couldn’t bring herself to say it.

“Right, well it’s already pouring in like that from the floor below you, so...”

Coco cradled her head in her hands with the understanding that her life—what was left of it, anyway— had, somehow, some way, taken a very drastic turn for the worse. Here she was, practically trapped in a bathroom on the bottom of a reef at night, with a
Carcharadon megalodon
circling the hotel and destroying it by the minute, and her only option to escape was to risk drowning or being instantly crushed by millions of gallons of water. How she regretted voluntarily coming back into the hotel after she had gotten back to the island.
Shouldn’t that whole train tunnel thing have been warning enough for you, stupid girl? You just had to come back for more, didn’t you?

She knocked her forehead against the wall a couple of times in complete frustration, not believing that her best shot at survival had come down to this. But as the cascade of water onto the floor in the gym outside the door reminded her, to simply remain inside the hotel was almost certain death. She couldn’t imagine drowning with that group of perfect strangers down there; no doubt all of them would be fighting and clawing each other tooth and nail until the very bitter end. She couldn’t help anyone stuck in here, either. That much was obvious.

“Coco? What’s it going to be? The shark is hanging out up above on my side now. If I’m going to try, I’d better get started.”