Hotel Megalodon: A Deep Sea Thriller (21 page)

Chapter 40

The first shot didn’t seem to do anything. Coco couldn’t even tell if it had hit the shark, but it didn’t hit the eye, or she would have seen a reaction. She hadn’t been expecting the recoil, either, which most likely ruined her aim. As it was, the shark continued to extend its prodigious bulk up and out of the water toward Coco, perched on the sub.

She fired again, this time prepared for the gun to jump in her hand as she pulled the trigger. She saw the megalodon’s flesh pucker just beneath the eyeball, but the great fish did not alter its prey assault. Suddenly the submersible shifted in the water, and she had to regain her balance and take aim again. Another shot, another miss, or at least another ineffective hit.

She had to hit the eye, but a moving target the size of a dinner plate, at night from a moving platform, was not an easy proposition even for an experienced shooter, which Coco was not. She was going to have get lucky, she knew, but she told herself she could do it nonetheless.

She recalled her father’s words, long ago in Hawaii: “You create your own luck. Luck favors the prepared...” silly things like that. I sure created my own luck this time, Dad, she thought. But she did have knowledge. She did have skills. She wouldn’t have made it this far if it weren’t for that. She willed herself to calm down, take a deep breath, and focus. She would be able to get off one more shot before the beast-monster was upon her.

Suddenly the sub’s external floodlights activated, bathing the shark in high intensity light. Ah, much better, Coco thought. She could see the target that much easier now. She didn’t dare take her eyes off the incoming shark to glance into the cabin to see what Mick was doing, but he must have woken up enough to flip on the lights, knowing it would help her. He could probably hear the muffled sound of the shots from inside. Looking at the shark, she could now see a bullet hole oozing a trickle of blood between the eye and the nostril. So one of her shots had at least hit the animal.

But none of that changed the fact that the megalodon was upon her now, its monolithic head rising above the sub, above Coco, a primeval force lit by the moon and driven by raw instincts alone. She tracked the eye with the gun barrel, actually waiting for the eye to drop lower before taking her shot. She had no idea how many rounds were in the gun, either, but she hoped with everything she had for just one more, because that was all she would have time to get off, anyway.

Coco cursed her active mind, for somewhere in the back of it a pessimistic voice nagged,
Even if you do hit the eye, it might not stop it. Even blind in one eye it might continue to charge, and it’s not like it could all of a sudden stop its forward momentum anyway, even if it wanted to.

She would have to banish the voice with the sound of a bullet firing. The megalodon was at the apex of its leap now, hanging there suspended for an ephemeral instant in which the beauty and rawness of the South Pacific volcanic islands served as a backdrop for all of the shark’s primordial glory.

Falling back down...falling back down....falling... back...down....

Coco was ready for the shark’s drop, at once tracking its gravity-driven movement with the gun, and balancing herself on the upturned submersible as it rocked in the swells. Then the saucer-sized eye presented itself as a viable target. When it was perhaps six feet above Coco’s head, she knew all of the variables had aligned in such a way that it was now or never—this was it. The opportunity for a shot at the eyeball would not get better than this.

She squeezed the trigger and delighted in the resulting pulpy explosion of black, fishy retinal matter, some of which splattered her in the face, while more of it splashed over the sub’s bubble dome. The megalodon fell onto part of the sub itself, canting it precipitously to the right, causing Coco to have to drop the gun in order to hold on and save herself from being pitched into the water. Then the marauding leviathan snapped its gargantuan jaws in her direction, ragged bits of flesh—some of it no doubt human—hanging from its putrid oral cavity. She kicked off a support strut with one leg, raising herself out of the water.

Fortunately enough, the shark’s thrashing had this time righted the sub, putting it back on an even keel and making it that much easier for her to hold on behind the bubble dome.
Luck favors the prepared...

The gigantic shark, now undoubtedly blind in one eye, rolled away on the surface, at least temporarily abandoning its pursuit of prey. Coco would like to think permanently, but she couldn’t count on that, would not count on it. And then she heard what to her was the most beautiful sound in the world—the mechanical hum of the sub’s thrusters activating.

She shot a glance into the cabin, and saw Mick looking back at her, mouthing the words “Hold on!” while his right hand worked the thruster control joystick. The sub began to move toward the beach, at an angle at first, but then more directly as it gathered momentum and Mick guided it into a turn toward the island.

Coco solidified her hold atop the sub. No way was she going to fall off now.
C’mon, Mick, beach this puppy!
She looked back, and saw the shark still rolling about on the surface, churning the water like a naval warfare submarine. The submersible, a slow, clunky boat on the surface, churned its way toward the tropical beach.

The huge shark was gaining and gaining fast. Mick kept the sub aimed for the island at full speed, but it wasn’t remotely enough. The megalodon was simply too fast. Coco watched in terror as the cave-like mouth raised once again from the water and drew nearer. She was calculating which side to jump off to give her the best chance at survival, when suddenly the shark fell back. She waited for it to barrel ahead, but farther back it stayed. She swiveled around, saw the progress they had made toward the beach, and then understood.

The water became shallower the closer to the beach they came. The megalodon was unable to come any closer to land without risk of beaching itself. Coco held a fleeting hope that it had in fact done just that—gotten stuck on the shallow reef, unable to move back into water deep enough for it to swim in—but as she watched, it wrenched its massively proportioned frame off of the coral and into some decent water once again.
No such luck.

But the little submersible could still operate, and Mick continued to propel it toward the beach. To Coco the soft hiss of the craft’s steel runners scraping over the wet sand as it skidded up onto the beach was the sweetest sound she had ever heard.

Chapter 41

Coco and Mick embraced by the side of the sub. Then they stood there on the beach, staring out at the lagoon. The
Carcharadon megalodon
had disappeared from sight once again. Nevertheless, a most disturbing sight greeted them in the water. A glowing haze of orange was clearly visible beneath the water’s surface, and it took Coco a few moments to realize that it was not some exotic algal bloom or animal spawning event...it was the hotel.

On fire.

Underwater.

“Mick, all those people are still trapped in the tower. We have to do something.”

“What can we do?”

At that moment they heard the rustle of leaves as someone came running down the path leading to the beach. A pair of engineers ran out onto the sand, one of them yelling into a radio as he went, “It
is
a fire. There’s a fire down there!”

Coco approached them. Their eyes grew wide as they realized who she was, standing there dripping water onto the sand. How did you get out?” they asked her. She told them about Mick using the torch from the sub and her swimming out of the flooded fitness center.

“What’s happening there—in the tower? Our sensors showed that the fire suppression system—ceiling sprinklers—has been activated, but doesn’t seem to have pressure. That probably means that the main water pipe has been ruptured.”

Coco nodded. “Listen. Everyone still alive down there was in the second floor of the tower when I left. What can we do to get them out of there?”

Albert Johnson looked at them with a look of grave seriousness. “We’ve been working on the escape pod system. The entire third floor of the west tower is an escape pod. If they could get up there, I’d say their best shot at survival, with a fire down there, is to let us activate it.”

“And hope it works this time?” Mick shot back.

“What else can we do?” the other engineer said defensively.

“He’s right,” Coco said. “They can’t have more than a few minutes—maybe thirty at most—left down there, even without the fire. We have to do something right now.”

The engineers’ radio crackled, and they heard some technical information delivered in a frantic tone. Coco watched as both of the men’s faces fell with the news.

“What is it?” she prompted as they looked out at the dull orange glow beneath the lagoon’s surface, shaking their heads.

“Good news is that the escape pod appears to be one hundred percent operational after our quick-fix earlier this evening. Bad news is we just confirmed via radio report from Mr. White that they just started taking hits again from that shark. He said it stopped for a while, but just now started again.”

Coco and Mick exchanged glances. Coco said, “We drew it off when we escaped in the sub. It followed us almost all the way in to the beach, until it was too shallow for it to swim anymore.”

“It must have gone back to the hotel after it couldn’t get us,” Mick added.

One of the engineers looked like he was about to literally tear his hair out. He shook his head back and forth rapidly while he pulled at it. “If we put people in that pod, and the shark rams it...” He shook his head, leaving the sentence unfinished.

“It’s already in pretty precarious shape as it is,” Al said. “We managed to patch it together, but it
still
needs one more fix applied,
and
it can’t take
any
more damage. We won’t be able to fix it in time if we have to start over.”

Coco was staring at the beached sub, its dome hatch still open from when Mick had popped it and stepped out. When she spoke, her words were so quiet the men almost didn’t hear her.

“I’ll draw it off in the sub.”

Mick and the two engineers looked at Coco like she had a death wish.

“I can do it,” she reiterated. “I’ll need full batteries and fresh oxygen cylinders, though.” She looked at Mick.

“How soon can we turn her around for another dive, a deep one?”

Chapter 42

Coco slid into the sub’s pilot seat, taking comfort in the cozy confines with which she was so familiar. Mick untethered the sub from the dock, and she guided the craft out into the lagoon. She wasn’t looking forward to the solo night dive, but she was the last hope of those innocent—and not so innocent—people still trapped in the hotel.

She knew what must be done. The geeks had worked out some iffy techno-fix that nonetheless represented the best hope to get the tower escape pod working. All they needed was for Coco to draw off the megalodon.

She took the sub into a dive as soon as it was deep enough, not wanting the shark to be able to hit her from below and behind, as an apex predator like the megalodon preferred. She checked the compass. Not being able to see beyond the cones of light the sub provided meant that she would use navigational aids to keep her on course. She would need all of the sub’s precious power and air reserves to pull off her planned objective.

It terrified Coco to look for the shark like this. With the sub’s light field representing the extent of her field of vision, by the time she saw the megalodon it would be mere feet away from the sub. Then there was the hotel. Even when knowing its location and expecting to see it coming up, she had to be careful about the building itself appearing suddenly in front of her fragile craft.

The tower lobby appeared in the halogen lights as a water-filled greenhouse, with sections of the glass still intact, but the entire structure flooded within.

She knew she would find the dinosaur-shark close by somewhere on the hotel’s perimeter. All she had to do was follow the hotel around, and she would encounter it. She began tracing the structure’s contours with the sub, working her way from the destroyed lobby tower to the compromised, but still standing tower on the opposite end.

Occasionally she glanced inside the hotel—really looked in there, carefully—searching for people who may still be imprisoned in this part of the hotel rather than in the remaining tower. She didn’t think the hotel staff, including herself, would be able to deal with it if she did sight someone still stranded in one of the few remaining air pockets in this part of the complex, but thankfully she didn’t see anyone.

Including the shark. So far the megalodon had either been staying out of reach of the sub’s halogens, or else was still on the other side of the hotel. She would find out soon enough, for up ahead, according to her compass reading and the way the hotel structure angled out, was the west tower. The tower that right now contained a drama playing out inside as that scoundrel James White attempted to channel whatever valuable resources still remained in his favor.

#

Inside the tower, White had finally gotten the upper hand on the Arab while half of this floor burned, a couple of the men battling it with a single fire extinguisher grabbed off a wall, and rerouted water from a burst pipe dangling overhead. The floor was wet everywhere, pooling over the first level which was already flooded and pressure sealed off. Now the second floor was filling. Most of the other guests were still trying to figure out a way out for themselves, while White and the sheik had reignited their fight after Coco had absconded with the gun. White was about to try and land a right hook to the Arab’s jaw, when his radio blared with his engineer’s voice topside.

“James, James—this is Al, do you read me?”

Both fighters silently agreed to a break between rounds in order for White to answer the radio. They all wanted out of here now, and hearing someone from Topside was a welcome intrusion.

Out of breath, he held down the Talk button and replied, “I copy, Al. I know you guys have been working on it, and now tell me you’ve got a solution? We’ve got a big fire in here, and lots of flooding, over.”

“I know. James, tell me about the tower...first floor flooded and sealed, right?”

“Right.”

“Is the third floor also on fire?”

White looked toward the spiral staircase in the center of the room that led both up and down. It spewed orange flame. “Can’t really tell, because the stairwell is on fire. Could be just the stairs; could be flame shooting down from the whole third floor on fire, I don’t know.”

“Okay, we need you to confirm for us if you can get up there.”

“To three?” White’s face screwed up into an angry red ball.

“Yes, to the fitness complex on three. That whole floor makes up one large escape pod.”

“I thought those were—“

“We’ve been working on it all afternoon, and think we have a fix.”

“You
think
you have a fix?”

An exasperated sigh shot from the radio’s speaker. “Mr., White, work with me here. You’re on fire down there. This is the only way we can think of to get you out right now. If you know of any other ways let me know.”

The ensuing silence told him that he did not. The engineer continued.

“There’s no fire suppression sprinklers in the stairwell itself, but we’ll activate the ones on three right now, okay? Are you ready to get a man up there?”

“I’ll go,” White said, seeing that the Arab was already eyeing the stairs. “Go ahead, activate them.”

“Some of them may be on already, but this will be forcing them all on in every area. Start running. Sprinklers on in three...two...”

White made a dash for the two guys battling the fire on their floor. He yelled to the one with the extinguisher to follow him, and together they ran to the stairwell, some of the other tourists looking on with curiosity born of fear.

When they reached the opening through which the stairway ran floor-to-ceiling, they saw a spot fire burning about four steps up. It appeared to be contained, and not tongues of flame shooting down from the floor above. White directed the guy with the extinguisher to smother it out. He doused it, and then the two men stood and watched the smoke dissipate.

White had just stepped onto the spiral stairwell when he heard cries of terror from the second floor.

“It’s coming back!”

The man with the fire extinguisher dropped the now empty red cylinder, and looked back to the source of the yelling.

“Screw it, come on!” White took off up the steps, leaving the amateur firefighter on the second floor. He wound around the steps as fast as he could while still maintaining the ability to stop on a dime should he be confronted with a wall of flame. But, although warmer and smokier, there were no actual flames on this floor.

White shook his head at the ridiculousness of this area: the Fitness Complex and Tiki Juice Bar. That’s what his investors had wanted him to do with this section. It was nothing but a tiki-themed health bar overlooking the coral reef from thirty feet, the lagoon’s surface only a few feet up. Workout while you look down on the reef. A massive tribal tiki statue, carved from a single, massive log, stared down at White with a menacing grin from the ceiling. Plush couches, bean bags, and throw pillows, now soaked, randomly encircled the room.

Now what the hell is everybody screaming about...
White walked toward the west edge of the circular room, straining to see outside into the dark water. Most of the tower’s external lights had stopped working or had been ripped away altogether. But then he saw one—or a set of them, it looked like—stabbing through the gloomy 3D inner space. Moving, so they couldn’t be part of the hotel. He watched as it drew nearer the complex, down one level, but already angled up in a shallow ascent.

The sub. What the Hell was it doing here? Must be that Mick dork who banged every woman on the island looking for Coco, like she was the special one for him or something. Made him want to puke. That reminded him. He scooped up his walkie, and yapped into it for Al.

“Okay, I’m on Floor Three. No fire in here, was just a spot fire on the stairs that we put out. But all the smoke from Floor 2 is rising up here.”

His employee’s voice came back fast and furious. “Okay, get everybody up there now, James, you got that? Now! We’ll start the procedure. It takes a few minutes.”

White was about to give a reply when he saw a shape materialize behind the sub that dwarfed the underwater vehicle. Gliding. Menacing.

#

Coco rounded the west tower, cringing as she saw the orange glow still burning in the middle of it. It was still on fire. She looked around for the megalodon, but apparently it was keeping its distance, nowhere to be seen.

Were the people inside on the third floor yet, in the escape pod?

Coco decided that she would both get closer to the tower, as well as ascend to the third floor to get a better look at what was happening inside. She maneuvered the sub accordingly, taking care not to come into contact with the tower’s glass wall. She looked inside as long as she dared, and saw a hellish scene of destruction, of flame, cascading water, what looked like a fight in progress...she had to turn away in order to keep the sub following the curvature of the tower.

Time to get a look at the third floor. She didn’t see how anything in the hotel could possibly function, but that was the engineers’ problem, not hers. She would carry out the plan they had worked out.

So where was the shark? Glancing out to her left, to the edge of the sub’s spotlights, she saw only an empty dark void. Without the tower’s external lights working, the submersible provided the only light. She looked below, too, to see if the enormous creature was prowling the reef floor, but she saw nothing in that direction either.

As she passed the ceiling of the second floor, she turned her attention back to the inside of the tower. No fire up here. That was good. And no major flooding yet, either. It was definitely wet in there, and getting wetter, but the topside geeks might have a chance after all. Everyone was still down on the second floor, though, she thought, wondering what was taking them so long to get up there. Then she saw movement, and realized she was looking at White. She saw him stop and look in her direction, and he froze, seeming to be transfixed with a look of horrified fascination.

The she saw him raise his arm and point her way. Was he pointing her out to someone she hadn’t seen yet?
No, he’s pointing at you. Pointing
for
you, for you to see something...
Coco whirled around in the pilot seat.

Thar she blows.

Behind her, level with her at the same depth, came the megalodon.

Game on.

She flicked the halogens off and on at White to let him know she saw him before turning the sub sharply away from the tower. As soon as she straightened out and verified with the compass that she was on a course out to the edge of the reef, she grabbed the radio transmitter.

“Topside, topside, this is
Triton-1
. Target has been engaged. I repeat: target engaged. Heading for the drop-off now. Oh, and I think I just saw Mr. White on the third floor; looks like he’s the only one up there so far, looks bad on the second, over.”

The reply was immediate. “Copy, that Coco. Good work. The rest of them are trooping up into the pod now. We’ll let you know when we launch it, then again when it’s been recovered. Good luck down there. Out.”

Coco looked back and saw the megalodon trailing the sub, very close behind, almost nose to tail. Good. She hadn’t been sure what she would do if it stayed by the hotel. Aggravate it into a chase, she guessed, but it decided to give chase on its own. So far, anyway. It wasn’t what she would call an aggressive chase, for a predatory fish. It swam almost lazily. Coco realized that the little sub is so slow and cumbersome in the water compared to a shark, that the megalodon might even find it difficult or uncomfortable to maintain such a slow speed. Perhaps it would become irritated, and swallow her entire sub whole at any moment?

Coco eased the thrusters up to top speed, and left the hotel behind, shooting across the reef to the drop-off.