Mega 3: When Giants Collide (Mega Series) Read online

  Then chomp, they were gone, and crushed by a jaw that barely felt their soft, malleable bodies. What was flesh to a monster built to shred steel? It was almost like air, as it had less substance than the water that flowed through its gills and breathed oxygen into its bloodstream, but flesh was delicious.

  The shark wanted more. It wanted to eat all of the flailing nuggets of candy that floated this way and that, caught in the pull of the ship that had started to sink quickly. The flesh morsels, the not even close to bite sized treats, filled the water, but the shark ignored them, knowing they weren’t going anywhere without its permission.

  Its senses could hear and feel the screams and movements of the people still trapped inside the ship. It wanted to taste their panic and fear, to devour it all in huge, gulping bites.

  The shark came about and rammed the cutter once more, taking most of the bow off. The seawater rushed in to fill the open hold and more men were flushed from the gash in the ship’s side. The beast ignored the men that were forced out into the open water, it wanted the ones that refused to come meet it, and it wanted the ones that hid and fled from its might.

  Men scrambled to climb above the water level that was quickly filling the ship. They grabbed at ladders and the extended hands of their shipmates, but it made no difference as the shark wedged its way inside the torn open bow. The monster was relentless, its hunger insatiable. Men were cut in half; their bodies almost pinched shut from the incredible force of the shark’s jaws. Torn into bits by sawing teeth or crushed completely by more than ten tons of pressure per square inch, the men that could not escape the beast were turned into bloody flesh confetti.

  In minutes, the cutter was sunk. The shark withdrew and let the steel carcass slip into the dark waters below. It had grown bored with the dead and dying men. It wanted to hunt, to find, to feed on fresh terror.

  It turned its attention to the next fleeing ship and rocketed through the water towards a new target for its bloodlust.

  ***

  Men fought each other for space on the few, and feeble, lifeboats that the pirate cutter had. Two lifeboats that held eight men each, with a crew of twenty-four, did not make for good survival math. Words were exchanged, then blows, and then weapons were drawn.

  Gunfire punctuated the humid South Pacific air as men that had been friends and allies just minutes before turned into bitter enemies. AK-47s, 9mm, .45s, and even .22s were emptied above deck, and below, sending blood across the sun warped boards and dripping off the sides of the ship, down into the water that held nothing but certain death.

  The captain tried to get order restored as he shouted down at the fighting men from the hatch of the bridge, but a stray bullet hit his temple and he fell back, unconscious. The First Mate took the captain’s incapacitation as a chance to abandon ship himself and he wasted no time stepping over the bleeding and dazed man to get to the ladder that led down to the deck below.

  The First Mate only made it a couple of rungs before his legs were shredded by automatic gunfire. The slugs ripped into his calves and thighs, tearing flesh and shattering bone. He screamed as he lost his grip on the ladder and fell fifteen feet towards a pile of corpses below. His spine snapped as he hit and all the breath was knocked out of him. His scream was choked off as everything from his chest down went numb.

  The First Mate could hear the crew battling each other, but he couldn’t turn his head to see the chaos and bloodshed. All he could do was stare straight up at the blue sky above and pray that the shark would pass them by.

  As the ship began to jolt and shudder, the First Mate knew his prayer had fallen on deaf ears. No deity above was looking down on his plight, ready to offer a holy hand of saving grace. There was no heavenly salvation coming for him or any of the crew.

  The ship was lost to a demon. A devil of the sea that he had laughed at when he’d been told it was part of the plan to chase down and dispose of the vessel called Beowulf III. Who would believe that a monster shark of such proportions could be real? What fool would buy into an obvious fear tactic designed to keep the Somalis and Mexicans in line? He hadn’t considered himself a fool then and had scoffed at the idea of such a thing, but as he lay paralyzed on a pile of dead bodies, he knew how wrong he had been.

  More gunfire, more screaming, more shouting. All about the First Mate, men killed and men died. Blood and brains splattered his face and he tried to cry out, but he didn’t have the strength to do even that. A body collapsed across him and the little strength he did have was crushed from him. With the weight of the dead man on his chest, the small amount of air he had been able to take in was slowly squeezed from his lungs.

  He gasped and tried to fight against the slow suffocation, but neither his arms nor legs would obey. All he could do was shake his head from side to side in a futile effort of his defiance of death, but death was inevitable. There was no escaping the fate that the sea had brought him.

  His mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, in a pitiful imitation of a fish out of water. His last thought was how sad it was he would die like a worthless fish, instead of a proud man.

  ***

  The captain of the second cutter put his hand to his head then pulled it away and stared dumbly at the blood that coated his palm. He knew he was in trouble, and that there was something horrifying happening to his ship, but he couldn’t pull his thoughts together to figure out what it was.

  He tried standing, but his legs were wobbly and he only managed to get to his hands and knees and crawl to the bridge’s hatch. The far off sounds of panic and cruelty filtered into his dazed mind and he reached for the thought that would tell him what the trouble was.

  Gunfire. Were they under attack?

  The ship rocked to port and he gripped the edge of the hatch to keep from collapsing. The world outside the bridge tilted at an angle that he knew wasn’t right. To be tilted that way there would need to be a storm and high seas, but he could tell there was barely a cloud in the sky, even if the sky was listing to the side.

  A man climbed the ladder to the bridge and saw the captain there in his confused and bloody state, then disappeared back down the ladder.

  “Wait!” the captain yelled. “You! Man! Come back here!”

  He knew the face he had seen, but he couldn’t place the name. He tried to think, but he realized he couldn’t remember any names at that moment. His mind was a clump of pained fuzz and he struggled to reach through that fuzz for something solid to hang onto.

  His ship. He was captain of his ship. The ship he was on, the ship that was tilted, the ship that was under attack.

  There! The shipwas under attack!

  That truth stuck with him and he forced his legs to obey and pulled himself up until he was standing once again in the hatch of the bridge. His eyes focused on the brutality on the deck below. Men were killing each other without thought. He could see them lash out with their fists, with knives, with machetes. They turned in a bloody dance of pure animal violence, slashing into anyone that came near them.

  “Stop!” the captain shouted. “Stop this!”

  If the ship was under attack then the men needed to be at their stations, ready to defend it. They shouldn’t have been fighting amongst themselves like hyenas approaching carrion.

  “STOP!” he roared then winced at the daggers of pain that pierced his brain.

  There was a loud splash and he turned his attention to the port side of the ship. Because of the way the ship was listing, he had a perfect view of one of the lifeboats as it floated on the small waves, filled with angry, shouting men that continued to fight even though they had escaped the sinking ship and found safety.

  Safety from what? From what were they fleeing and why was the ship sinking?

  The captain stepped from the bridge, stumbled, and slid his way to the railing. He held on tight, using all of his strength to keep from tumbling over as the ship continued to tilt. Far off, he saw other ships and memories started to come back to him slowly. Those sh
ips were his allies, he knew that. They were part of a flotilla that had been in pursuit of another ship.

  Was that where the attack came from? Was the ship they pursued firing on them?

  He listened, but other than the gunfire from down on the deck, which had slackened to almost nothing, he didn’t hear any sounds of artillery or battle. If there was a ship attacking then it was no longer firing on them.

  His eyes were drawn back to the lifeboat and the squabbling men that filled it. Then it all changed. Everything came back in a rush of horrendous violence as the lifeboat was lifted into the air by jaws that should not have existed.

  The captain screamed and lost his grip on the railing as he watched the lifeboat crushed completely in one bite. The men in the boat no longer screamed at each other, but screamed at what held them in its teeth.

  Without his grip on the railing, the captain slipped between the bars and tumbled to the tilted deck. He landed hard, but didn’t feel anything break. He would have been thankful for that if his mind had had room for thoughts beyond the nightmare that was before him. He watched as the lifeboat was crushed with such violence that men and vessel joined together into one homogenous bite of wood and bone. Blood sprayed from the creature’s mouth as it turned in the air and fell back into the water. Over a hundred feet of massive shark slammed into the small waves and then was lost below the surface.

  The monster’s impact created a massive wave that washed up over the side of the sinking ship’s deck. The captain struggled to keep ahold of anything he could, almost thinking he’d succeeded until he realized he held a severed arm and not someone offering him safety. The wave took him over the side of the ship and out into the open water. He screamed for help, screamed for someone to throw him a lifeline, screamed for someone to have the sense to drop the other lifeboat and rescue him.

  He had thought his cries had been answered when he looked past the stern of his doomed ship and saw the last lifeboat there, filled with men paddling as hard and fast as they could towards another cutter far in the distance.

  “Here!” the captain shouted. “I’m here!”

  It made no difference. With a blink of his eye it was all over. The lifeboat met the same fate as the first. The captain stared in fear and awe as the men and boat were lifted even higher than the first. The jaws nearly swallowed them whole, only having to open one more time for a second bite before all were lost.

  “No,” the captain whispered, “no.”

  He treaded water, surrounded by shattered wood and broken bodies. Corpses bobbed up and down, some like face down logs, others like buoys, upright and stoic against the waves. The ocean was no longer a bright blue, but a deep crimson. The small waves splashed against his face and he spat the salty water from his mouth, knowing that the taste was doubly so because of all the blood.

  So much blood.

  Realization hit him and he panicked, his head turning this way and that as he tried to catch sight of the beast that he knew had to be below him somewhere. Where there was blood, there were sharks, or at least one shark. The captain had no illusions that any other sea creature was anywhere even remotely close to the carnage. They would have fled before the beast like rats from a, well,sinking ship.

  The ship. The sinking ship next to him. That energized his stunned mind and body. If he was caught in the pull of the ship he’d be sucked underwater and there would be nothing he could do about it. His only hope for escape was to swim as hard and fast as he could.

  He could hear the sound of men screaming as they fell from the ship and were plunged into the deadly water, but he ignored the sounds and kept swimming. No longer was he captain, but just a man trying to survive. He thought that maybe, just maybe, if he put distance between himself, the blood, and corpses that the shark would forget about him and instead focus on easy pickings.

  The impact against his legs told him he was stupid for having any hope in the face of such horror. There was a brief flash of pain then nothing. He stopped swimming and reached below the water to feel what the problem was. It became quickly apparent that the problem was he no longer had legs.

  His eyes went wide as he saw the giant shark swimming past him. It rose slightly and its back raked against the stumps of his thighs. The pain was excruciating. The shark’s barbed, sandpaper skin shredded the open wounds of his legs and the captain could see his life smear across the monster’s back before it was washed free by the animal’s passage.

  “Go away!” was all he could think to shout. “Leave me to die!”

  The shark would not. Its dorsal fin slammed into the captain’s back and he cried out as his shirt was basically torn from his body. He spun about, his arms still trying to keep him above the surface, and saw the tail coming right for him. He had no time to react as the tail fin whipped one way then back, crushing his face and chest.

  He flew backwards, lifted out of the water from the impact, and then came crashing down so hard that every rib in his body broke free from his spine. His shoulders separated from their sockets and his neck snapped. Agony filled his body and the captain despaired that he hadn’t been granted the mercy of a swift death from the horrible break. Instead, he was forced to endure pain that no man could withstand without succumbing to madness.

  Madness was where he went.

  The laughter bubbled up from his throat, barely above a whisper since he had no strength to produce much more. He rasped out a cackle and his eyes looked up to see wisps of clouds floating by. It had been such a beautiful day.

  He had no last thoughts before the horrible mouth closed around him. He had no time to think any before he was crushed between the teeth that were as large as his head.

  ***

  Lake tried to get the Desert Eagle out and up in time, but he barely had a hold on the grip before the fist connected with his face. He crashed against the B3’s wheel and felt the ship start to turn to starboard.

  Ballantine grabbed Tank Top from behind and pulled him away from Lake. He was able to duck as the mercenary whipped about and sent a fist flying at his head. Ballantine did not waste the opportunity and dropped to a knee then landed a solid shot to Tank Top’s groin. The man grunted and fell to his knee so that he and Ballantine were eye to eye.

  “Good thing you only lost your cock and not your balls,” Ballantine grinned.

  “Fuck you,” Tank Top hissed.

  “This is bigger than us,” Ballantine said just before slamming his forehead into Tank Top’s nose. “We won’t survive that monster if we don’t band together. It’s too late for it to be called off.”

  Tank Top collapsed backwards, but used the momentum to roll his legs up over his head and come up on his knees a few feet away. He jumped to his feet, glanced at the M4 that lay between himself and Ballantine, then dove.

  Ballantine dove as well and covered the carbine with his body. Tank Top landed on top of him then pushed up and started to hammer at the back of his head. Ballantine tried to get his hands underneath him so he could get some leverage to get free from the man, but each blow sapped more and more strength form his body.

  “Hey!” Lake yelled. “Get off my boss!”

  Tank Top turned his head just in time to see the sole of Lake’s boot come crashing against his face. His already broken nose was turned into a shattered pulp and he choked and gagged as he fell off Ballantine. Blood filled his throat and he struggled to breathe.

  “Yeah,” Lake sneered, “how’s that feel?”

  He closed on the man and kicked out again, but Tank Top grabbed his foot and twisted as hard as he could. Lake was spun about and was sent falling to the floor with a cry escaping his lips as he felt the cartilage in his knee tear and tendons snap. Then he was silent as his head slammed into the floor.

  Tank Top scurried backwards like a crab until his back hit a wall then he reached up and pulled himself to his feet. He stood there, a wobbly, bloody mess, and raised his fists.

  “Get up, you fuck,” he slurred at Ballantine. “Come
on. We finish this.”

  “There’s nothing to finish, idiot,” Ballantine said as he gripped one of the control consoles and slowly got himself to his feet. “The danger has just begun. Did you think I was really running from you?”

  Ballantine pointed out the windows of the bridge at the insanity and destruction being rained down on the flotilla.

  “You think a bunch of jackass mercs like you scare me when there’s that thing in the water?” Ballantine laughed. “Not now. You are nothing compared to Protocol Fifty-four.”

  “Protocol Fifty-four? You did this? ” Tank Top said. “Then you brought this on yourself. That is your end out there, not mine.”

  “It’s all of our ends!” Ballantine shouted. “That creature could give ten shits who or what it eats now! It has no way to know friend from foe because it has no friends! You think because the company is paying you that the beast sees you as a co-worker? Are you completely out of fucking your mind?”

  Tank Top started to reply then closed his mouth and turned his attention to the destruction that surrounded the B3 and Monkey Balls. All that was left out there was a sinking cutter and a fleeing one. If the ship that fled managed to get away then that left only the B3 and Monkey Balls as targets.

  “I was told that the thing wouldn’t attack my ship,” Tank Top said. “That the MB gave off a signal that shielded it from the shark, telling the thing to pass us by.”

  Ballantine just stared at the muscled man.

  “My god, you’re stupid. How did I miss that when I first hired you?” Ballantine said finally. “How in God’s name could you believe that? You’re a professional, Jason, so think like one. Put the pieces together.”

  Ballantine watched the thoughts flit across the man’s face and sighed.

  “Okay, we don’t have time for you to work it all out,” he said, “this is how it is, alright? The company hired you to track me down. They let the Somalis and the cartels follow. Why? So when it all went down it would look like it was a battle between criminals. An easy explanation that maritime and governmental authorities wouldn’t think much of. None of us, including you, were meant to survive.”