Meg: Hell's Aquarium (61 page)

Cruising at sixteen knots, displacing over 300,000 tons, the eleven-hundred-foot-long supertanker
Mogamigawa
races past its dormant sister ship, its  titanic wake actually dragging the
Tonga
a quarter of a mile to the east as its vast keel excavates a vacuous channel across the surface of the Pacific—

—plucking the lab, the Abyss Glider, the fishing nets, the mosasaur carcass, and the two interlocked predators off the sea bottom with its prodigious suction, inhaling them into its keel.

Centrifugal force pins David and Kaylie to the floor as the lab spins wildly in the darkness, their arms interlocked around the hatch’s wheel house.

Dong!

The titanium sphere bashes against the supertanker’s reinforced steel hull. Kaylie twists open the wheel until a sliver of blue water rushes in and becomes a raging waterfall that tears open the hatch. The sphere bounces against the keel twice more before the flooding lab is spit sideways beyond the propeller shaft and rapidly sinks.

Gripping her unconscious companion in a headlock, Kaylie drags David out the open hatch into the roaring Pacific. The lab falls away beneath them as they are suddenly rocketed to the surface by the drag from the passing tanker.

Kaylie gasps a life-giving lungful of air then shakes David . . . no response. Cradling his head, she breathes into his mouth until his blue complexion pales and he coughs up seawater.

She floats on her back, positioning the back of his head between her breasts. Rain beats down upon them, the sky billowing with thunder clouds.

Simply seeing daylight again makes her giddy. “David, lay back and breathe. Just breathe, baby.”

He gasps several breaths, opening his eyes against the blinding downpour. The feeling slowly returns to his limbs. “How?”

“A miracle.”

“My father?”

“I . . . I don’t know.”

He lifts his head away from her chest and treads water, the two of them searching the surface, unable to see beyond the nearest swells.

The
Tonga
’s stern looms a hundred yards away. Something massive is being hauled out of the water alongside the tanker. The creature’s body is tangled within a fishing net, its tail free, slapping the side of the ship.

A shiver shoots down David’s spine. “Angel . . .”

Fiesal bin Rashidi bounds across the
Tonga
catwalk to confront his engineer, Brian Suits in tow. “Who gave the orders for the
Mogamigawa
to pass us? Answer me!”

“I did.” Mac joins them. “Told them I was you. Must’ve sounded like an asshole on the radio because they believed me.”

“Captain, have this man removed from my ship. Let the Taylors rot in the depths—”

“There!” Monty is at the port rail, searching the sea through a pair of binoculars. “Two survivors. Looks like David and Kaylie!”

Brian Suits takes Monty’s glasses and confirms the sighting. He activates his walkie-talkie. “Captain Gober, we have two survivors in the water one hundred yards due west. Unhitch the trawler and pick them up.”

“Yes, sir.”

“No! You will contact the
Mogamigawa
and order their return. Then empty the net of this abomination and find the liopleurodon!”

“Yes, sir . . . right after we pick up my two pilots. Mackreides, get to the trawler. See to it that my orders are carried out.”

“You got it.”

“There it is!” Monty points below, where an immense dark-backed creature is circling beneath the thrashing Megalodon.

Fiesal bin Rashidi rushes to the rail, gawking at the beast. “Incredible. Engineer, ready your nets!”

As he watches, the pliosaur submerges.

“David, there. I see your father’s escape pod.” Kaylie points in the direction of the
Tonga
. Forty yards away, a small acrylic escape pod is rising and falling with the swells.

They swim out to the buoyant sphere, Kaylie on one side, David the other, the two of them using the remains of the
AG III
’s shredded wings as a flotation device.

Pressing his face to the night glass, David peers inside.

His father is strapped halfway in his harness. He is not moving.

“Dad!” David bangs his hand repeatedly against the dense cockpit. “Dad, can you hear me?”

“David . . .” Kaylie points to the tanker.

He looks up to witness the liopleurodon in mid-leap, the creature’s immense head rising thirty feet  above the surface as the pliosaur’s monstrous jaws slam shut along the base of Angel’s flicking tail.

Angel convulses in the net, blood spraying in all directions. The liopleurodon remains suspended halfway out of the water, her jowls clenched tight. Twisting like a crocodile, the monster’s sheer weight forces her teeth to tear through the Meg’s thick band of muscle and cartilage.

Angel heaves upward in spasms as her entire caudal fin is torn from her body.

The liopleurodon plunges back into the sea. Blood gushes from the Meg’s mortal wound, spraying the side of the tanker, pooling along the surface.

Kaylie looks down at her chest, already covered in oily blood. Amazed that the current could spread Angel’s remains so quickly, she turns, shocked to find the mosasaur’s shredded carcass floating beside her. In a sudden panic, she kicks both legs, churning up a pink froth as she tries to climb atop the Abyss Glider’s escape pod.

David’s face is pressed against the cockpit glass, he can see his father stirring inside! Overjoyed, he looks up at Kaylie, a smile on his face—

—his expression turning to horror, fear bursting through every pore of his body as the impossibly large crocodilian mouth rises from below, the jaws opening to snatch the mosasaur remains—

—Kaylie along with it!

The girl wheezes as the breath is driven from her chest, the dagger-like teeth impaling her. She looks at David, bewildered, then disappears beneath the crimson-frothed surf.

David bellows a blood-curdling scream, pounding his fists against the escape pod’s glass, rousing his father. And then his tortured mind simply shuts down and he passes out.

Lying in the bottom of the cockpit, Jonas opens his eyes in time to witness Kaylie as she’s dragged underwater and devoured. He turns away only to see his son’s pale face sinking underwater.

Jonas activates the emergency escape hatch. Blows the lid off the cockpit. Lunging over the side, he grabs David by his hair and hauls his inert body into the open sphere.

The pod swirls like a giant teacup, caught within the current generated by the liopleurodon’s moving mass. The monster circles just below the surface, gauging the floating object.

The trawler bears down upon them. Standing in the bow, Ibrahim Al Hashemi fires the harpoon gun, the lance and its tracking device shooting through air and sea before burying itself deep within the creature’s broad back.

The liopleurodon submerges, returning to the deep with the mosasaur’s remains.

Mac rushes to the trawler’s bow and looks down. Jonas is hugging his unconscious son to his chest, his face pale and distraught.

“J.T.? Is David okay?”

“He’s alive. I’m not sure if he’ll ever be okay again.”

Epilogue

Monterey, California

Two months later . . .

Though he is only forty-six, Tim Schulte’s hair is almost completely gray, an occupational hazard common among psychiatrists. Opening the door to his office, he ushers his patient in from the waiting room.

David Taylor is wearing a white tee-shirt and faded jeans, a double-wide 49ers sweatband over his right wrist. His brown hair is long and unkempt, hanging below his shoulders. He collapses in the leather easy chair, staring at Schulte’s diplomas. His almond eyes are vacant, hovering above dark circles.

“So? You’ve been on the new meds a week. Are you sleeping any better?”

“No.”

Schulte scribbles a note on his legal pad. “Let’s give them another week. Adjusting one’s brain chemistry takes time. And the night terrors . . . do you still wake up screaming?”

“Yes.”

“Every night?”

“Unless I’m drunk.”

“And how often does that happen?”

“Every night.”

“A bit excessive, don’t you think?”

“Adjusting one’s brain chemistry takes time.”

“David, therapy means very little unless you’re a willing participant.”

David says nothing. Stares out the window.

“Your mother mentioned to me that you and Monty moved into an apartment together. He’s the bi-polar fellow.”

“Is that a problem?”

“You tell me.”

“He babbles and I scream. We make a nice couple.”

“And the two of you get drunk together.” The psychiatrist waits for a response but gets nothing. “I understand your father’s been in touch with Kaylie’s parents. He said they wanted to meet you. It could be a good thing. Sharing grief can sometimes ease one’s sorrow.”

David’s eyes pan slowly across the room, locking in on Dr. Schulte’s. “Sorrow’s a funny thing. There’s the sorrow one feels when a loved one dies, say, of cancer; that’s a pretty bad sorrow. You feel empty inside. You share that grief with others. Eventually you move on. Then there’s a different kind of sorrow . . . like, say, I shove a gun in your wife’s mouth and blow her head into a million pieces. That sorrow’s a little trickier to deal with.

“Basically, you have three options. The first is to take the easy way out.” David pulls back the 49ers sweatband, revealing the three red, swollen wounds on the inside of his wrist, the slashes stitched together. “That option only works until you think about the repercussions, that you’re pulling your family into the same hell hole you’re wallowing in. Then it’s not so cool. The second option is to go numb while you talk about shit with professional sorrow sharers like yourself, as if anything said in this room’s going to change a thing.”

“And the third option?”

He stares at the psychiatrist’s blue eyes, his expression stone.

David stands to leave, pausing at the door. “This’ll be our last session. Me and Monty, we’re going away for a while. Call it a business trip.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea? You’ve only been out of the hospital three weeks.”

“Yeah, well, it beats the other two options. See you in my dreams.”

With a final wave, he walks out the door.

Juan de Fuca Strait
Vancouver Island, British Columbia

The northwest coastline of British Columbia stretches nearly seventeen thousand miles, incorporating countless islands, inlets, and bays. Vancouver Island is British Columbia’s largest island, separated from the mainland by the Strait of Juan de Fuca, a narrow waterway that connects Puget Sound and the Georgia Strait to the Pacific Ocean. Marine life is abundant in these nutrient-rich waters, which serve as feeding grounds for both local and migrating populations of humpback, orca, gray, and minke whales. For saltwater fishermen, the deep waters off Vancouver Island are home to Chinook and coho salmon, rockfish, lingcod, and the giant halibut—the major carnivore fish of the Pacific Northwest.

Now, a new species of carnivore has made this oceanic waterway its home.

The orca are transients, all of the resident killer whales having mysteriously vacated the area weeks earlier. There are six whales in the pod: two mature females, two calves, a juvenile male, and a thirty-foot, twelve-thousand-pound bull. They have been moving at a steady pace all day. Now they have slowed with the night to feed.

The big male is uneasy. Vocalizing frequently, it scans the dark sea using its echolocation as it leads the others toward their next meal.

The kill is fresh, the gray whale bleeding badly as it floats in the current. The females feed first, their three-inch conical teeth ravaging great bites from the bloated carcass, their young feeding off the scraps.

The male senses something large moving along the bottom. The creature circling below is longer than the bull and three times its girth. Slapping its fluke against the surface, the male sets the pod back in formation—

—as the second predator appears, closing fast.

One of the females leads the pod to the north, the other guards the calves. The juvenile male takes up the rear, the bull moving beneath the pod to discourage any attack from below.