"EFFIGIES" excerpt two

Unless you were licensed or happened to be a government sanctioned marine biologist with a special authorized permit, it was highly illegal to do what Clive Hanley was doing today. But that had never stopped him before and the financial rewards were well worth the risk involved. Although he despised the pompous Americans and their love of the expensive, eccentric, hardcore thrill and excess in general- their vast supply of cash was ‘red carpet welcome’ any day of the week.

He had collected ten thousand dollars cash today from Mister Bard Pennington - President of whatever the fuck company and his party of three guests and at twenty-five hundred a head, who gave a bloomin’ shit what their story was. Pennington nodded at him as he led his entourage aboard and Clive made sure all ten of his remaining teeth smiled back.

The dashing silver-haired sportsman Pennington had flown himself and a few important colleagues in his private jet to his South African residence when the first rumors of craziness began to circulate over in the States -and seemingly, the rest of the world after Pegasus One returned from Venus. His wife was strategically absent from the passenger list because while Bard took chances with his business, his life and his entertainment; it was not without picking his own poisons and pleasures. At this stage of their thirty year marriage, Veronica Pennington was all poison and no pleasure.

Maybe he’d been a little premature leaving the good old USA but better safe than sorry.

If the rampant rumors and reports were nothing serious and the airports reopened, he still appreciated the opportunity for another sexual romp of a vacation with his young, beautiful seductress Lara anyway.  However, if the escalating stories were true, the continent of Africa was virus free as it had not been represented on the Pegasus One mission like the United States, England, Russia, China and Japan. People in those respective countries were coming down with that dreaded space flu and many supposedly, were dying.  Even the U.S. president was sick and speculation was that it was the virus. But apparently Bonnie McMurray was still alive and that was a damn good thing. The woman was a helluva leader and maybe she’d get things back on track…if anyone could.

Meanwhile, he was thousands of miles from anywhere and South Africa had been locked down safe and sound under quarantine the day after his small group had arrived.

Bard also had more to think about now than just his own skin. Lara wasn’t showing yet with their child and she still took his breath away in her yellow, impressively sparse bikini. Furthermore, today he was out to make an impression of his own on his barely legal young girlfriend and his two subordinates with an excursion that had previously tested his own well known bravado tank. He couldn’t get enough of the new, better than cocaine adrenaline rush he’d found and even on the way out to the island, his anticipation boiled.

From the padded deck benches he looked up at the hand-painted sign that folded down into a fish cleaning table above the small captain’s cabin. The sign irritated him more with each charter he booked and Bard decided right then and there that he couldn’t look at it anymore. The sun was just breaking on the horizon and the wooden eyesore would become even more visible as it rose. When they got back to shore this afternoon, Pennington made it a point to buy the old, illiterate seadog a new one -just to not have to see this advertising debacle ever again.

“TERRIFYIN TOORS ABORD CLIVE’S JIVE…THE SCAREEST EXCURSHYUN IN THE WORLD!  SWIM WITH THE BIGGIST, MOST DANGERUS PREDATER ON EARTH …THE DEDLY GRATE WHITE SHARK! NO DIVIN EXREIENSE REKWIRED!”

Even Lara giggled at the old man’s writing as she sat next to Pennington in the craft. Across from the couple, two ghostly pale male employees that she worked with on the rare occasion when she actually showed up for work had napped a bit, lying out across the benches. It had been a long night of heavy clubbing and dancing with their boss and his girlfriend and neither felt well at 5:15 in the morning, but neither Mitch nor Owen would beg off and risk their budding young careers informing Pennington that they were too ill to dive.

Spring and Summer were the norm for entrepreneurs in the cage diving business and weren’t generally done in late October as the month brought with it dangerous storms and current changes. Clive on the other hand, would take you out anytime and with short notice if the money was right.

Bard had smelled the usual aroma of cheap alcohol on Clive the minute they’d boarded, but realistically…who else was he going to get to take them out?  He had tried the other licensed and regulated tours but they were stiff, boring and too safe in comparison. In other words, they just weren’t Clive worthy. The old man had a knack…no, a magic for finding absolutely enormous and aggressive white sharks at feeding time and the old bastard got you as close to the monsters as you could possibly hope for. Just what he needed -not only in order for him to make an impression, but to supply Bard with the Everest adrenaline fix he craved. They knew each other’s needs well.

Lara shared some of her man’s enthusiasm, squealing in delight when the boat passed around Dyer Island and she heard and then saw the thousands of seals frolicking about on Geyser Rock and in the inlet waters in their anticipation of a morning of fishing.  

“My God, look at them all! They are soooo cute! Bard this is wonderful!” she giggled, grabbing her camera from her purse with glee and snapping off several shots of the furry brown creatures.

Bard smiled at Lara and put his arm around her bare shoulders. “I knew you’d love it.”
           

“Yeah young lady… they’re cute as little lambs and just as tasty as lamb chops in the gullets of the big Pointers. The big dogs are out here this morning…I can smell ‘em.”

“You can’t smell sharks under water, there buddy,” a pale looking Owen corrected with a weak grin. Neither of the young men liked the smelly old bastard and Mitch laughed -but stopped abruptly when his stomach started to knot up again.

“Oh, I can smell ‘em just as easy as last night’s liquor coming out of your pores, alright college boy? Better check and see if you boys still have a pair hangin’ between yer’ legs because you’ll be smelling ‘em up close, REAL soon now.”

Lara gasped in horror as a seal calf was suddenly snatched from beside its mother by a huge, triangular shaped head of grey-white. The shaken woman turned away after catching a glimpse of powerful jaws as they latched onto the squealing seal and disappeared beneath the water in a bloody froth.

“See honey? Our good friend, Mister White Shark is here for his lamb chops,” the old dog snorted, slowing the craft down by shifting into neutral and dropping anchor. He stepped down from the wheel cabin above and nudged the feet of the sleeping men.

“Knock it off! She’s scared, you old…” Mitch started to say, but was cut off.

 “And it’s only gonna’ get scarier. The Pointer dinner bell starts ringing at first light. Are all my pretty young shark biscuits ready to rack off, suit up and shit their drawers this morning or are you two sickly gents going to sleep onboard with me all morning like a couple of teat sucking little girly girls while Miss Lara and Mister Pennington have all the fun?”

Neither had ever felt even close to this bad from a hangover before. Owen’s vision had blurred and he sat back down a moment to recollect his senses.

Mitch rose slowly, glaring at Clive with a mixture of hate and dizziness.  “Fuck you, old man,” he mumbled under his breath as he staggered over to join the couple. Pennington eyed Owen and the man reluctantly followed but began to cough incessantly and leaned his head over the side to spit.

“Don’t be puttin’ your cocky noggin too far overboard, Junior. These sharks… they hear. They see. You’re coughing up a bunch of smelly goo into their front yard and they see and hear you down there, ya’ know. I might also add that they’ve been known to jump clear out of the water.”

Owen saw a gigantic fin break the water about thirty feet from the aft and quickly brought his head aboard. Clive laughed at him and looked away and the twenty-something man gave the finger to his back.

“I didn’t pay for insubordinate jokes, Clive. Owen and Mitch are customers, just like I am. You’ll treat them respectfully.”

“Sorry, Mister Pennington… No disrespect intended. Just a little funnin’ with your boys.”

Clive’s cursed the man in his mind, which was already on to something else and his eyes followed suit, mesmerized by the big bouncing breasts in Lara’s bikini top as she made her way to the cage. Bard noticed and felt the need to remind the captain to back on the clock and turn on the oxygen tanks on board the boat.

“Diving or gawking today, Clive? Get us in the water.”

“Will do, sir. I just got a bit of somethin’ in me eye.”

Yeah Lara’s chest, you horny old bastard.

The old wooden boat was pretty rough on the eyes but moved at a pretty good clip, bringing them out to Seal Island from Cape Town in less than an hour. Most dives were regulated and only allowed two divers at a time in a cage. No such rules for The Jive and with this large a group it was easier to have the divers already inside the cage and then lower it into the water rather than have an accident where an amateur might miss the cage stepping down into it while in the water. As much as he hated Americans, Captain Clive didn’t want to see one get snatched up by one of the twin fifteen foot White Pointers that were frequenting the reef for the last month.

A horrifying, gruesome death…even for a tourist.

Once all four guests had entered and the cage door latched, he started the hoist motor and began lifting the heavy container of nervous humans. The gear teeth sounded like they needed oil badly, but it functioned well. The divers took note of the old man’s toothless grin as he pulled back on a rusty bar and they were now moving out over the bow and directly over the water.

Once they were lowered into the heavily chummed and baited sea, Pennington instructed his fellow divers to make sure that their masks were sealed tightly against their faces and to each take one of the air lines hooked on each corner of the shark cage. The oxygen lines were a nice touch and clipped directly into the masks. They were fed by a large main compressor, regulator and tanks aboard the diving boat- allowing for more elbow room and mobility inside for divers and their cameras. Who wouldn’t want photos or video of this terrifying adventure to amaze and impress their friends back home when they returned? If indeed there still was a ‘back home’ for them to return to.

The water was eerily calm today and visibility was decent for early Fall -maybe seventy-five feet-and the dark silhouettes moved curiously closer as soon as they were submerged.

No matter how many times he dove with Clive, Bard always experienced the same blind, knee buckling fear upon first entering the water with the huge predators. There was a terrifying few seconds where you couldn’t see them but you knew they were there, nonetheless. The first time they approached the cage or bumped against it, all you could do was feel awe, helplessness…and insignificance.

 The twin Whites circled leisurely, snatching up bits of squid and fish heads that Clive tossed over the side above them. Deceptively, it appeared as if they had no real interest in the large metal box, but Bard knew that these great beasts of the sea were aware of their every move. He looked around at his guests and saw a cloud of urine sifting up from one of the legs of his apprentice Owen Stanley’s baggy red trunks. Mitch looked absolutely paralyzed and Lara’s long, expensively manicured claws dug hard into the flesh of his well defined bicep, putting even more drops of blood into the water.

Clive felt more comfortable taking a nip –or several- now that the group was down below.

Stupid fuckin’ Americans! Jesus knew he’d never paid twenty-five hundred for a car; let alone cough that kind of money to spend a measly few hours with a fish big enough to eat one!

Sitting on a stool in front of the compressor with a smoldering cigar in his mouth, a bottle in one hand and a cheap shotgun balanced across his knees, the old captain spotted what had to be a two and a half ton, twenty foot-plusser come to join the two smaller Whites. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. It was obviously no mirage and by its gigantic, bulbous belly the mammoth fish was obviously a female ready to give birth very soon. As many times as Clive had been in these waters in his six plus decades on this earth, this female Pointer was the largest he’d ever seen!

Calmly, he pumped a shell into the gun’s chamber and chased it by sliding a full roll of quarters down its barrel.

The oversized handmade cage he’d built was strong as hell…but you just never know.

****

They had watched the old man bring his divers out before and knew him and his ritual well.

He was illegal, drank like a fish and never paid much attention to anything other than his watch and the settings and gages of the loud air compressor when he had divers down. Even if he reacted, the old drunk’s shotgun would be of little use if they kept at this range initially.

The two passengers in the small boat approached the larger diving craft with the illiterate hand painted sign displayed proudly over the captain’s cabin. Neither knew could read English and didn’t really need to speak or read to understand that were going take this craft, rob its bounty of rich tourists and kill them all.

The attractive young girl would die last, after they used her.

The first shot from one of their cheap but high powered rifles was delivered from a hundred yards away, but missed the captain by a half a foot. Instead, it took a chunk out of the bow rail and sliced cleanly through the thick anchor rope winched over it, putting Clive both on alert and adrift.

The Captain got to his feet amazingly quick for an old man and his shotgun boomed return fire at the assailants. “Eat this, ya’ fuckin’ Kaffir throwbacks!”

The weapon lacked sufficient range causing buckshot and ten dollars in change to scatter in the water well before it reached its intended target. 

They heard the gunfire above and the cage tilted slightly and began to move beneath the surface, giving those below anxiety. Bard waved a reassuring hand at his frantic cage mates and swam up to the top of the cage and hit the red ‘panic button’ mounted on the hatch door that Clive had rigged up in case of emergency below. It would illuminate a red light bulb located by the compressors on deck and then they’d just have to wait for the hoist to pull them up.

The cage drug along slowly through the salty water by the free floating boat and the movement - added to the reverberations of gunfire- aroused the huge Great Whites below.

Each of the twin sharks tried to bite at the cage and the divers were exposed to extreme, terrifying close-ups of multiple rows of inch and a half teeth. One of them after circling, rammed the drifting cage full force, putting a six inch dent in the side panel bars.

The collision caused Owen to bite through his mouthpiece and the air from above bubbled inside the cage, exciting the sharks even more. Bard reacted in haste, ripping off the torn rubber mouthpiece and shoving the airline directly into the anxious man’s mouth.

The pirates were clearly no marksman and the next shot pierced the tank beside the cussing captain causing the ash from Clive’s cigar to ignite both the oxygen and himself. As he screamed and thrashed in fiery, hellish agony trying to douse the flames a second tank exploded sending red shrapnel flying. When he was thrown back by the impact, his shotgun misfired and blew up the gasoline filled compressor.

The blasts had blown twin holes the size of manhole covers in the lower hull of Clive’s Jive and the group of drowning divers in the cage below were illuminated by the flames of the slowly sinking diving boat above them. The hoist had been severely damaged in the blast and the heavy homemade cage did not have adequate enough buoyancy attached up top to stay afloat.

As they swam to the top of the cage, the experienced diver Bard visually analyzed that without opening the hatch- their heads would still be submerged a foot or two underwater, making fresh air unobtainable.

 Pennington took a last breath and removed his own mouthpiece, motioning for Lara to do the same. The heat and cinder made its way quickly into the airlines, however fresh H2O did not and as the lines began to melt, those below began to panic, particularly Owen.

Mitch was also slow to react and his last breath was filled with the fumes of burning rubber, wood and ash. The terrified young man reacted violently, fighting and climbing over the others to escape the cage first- striking Bard in the forehead with his camera and using the other divers as a stairway to the escape hatch above them. He and Lara could only watch as the frenzied Owen and Mitch exhausted whatever air was left in their smoke damaged lungs, pounding and pulling frantically on the top hatch of the cage instead of patiently working the latch. 

Their panic movements and banging were enticing the swimming predators to become exceedingly aggressive. The mouths of the smaller sharks were as big as a small desk and they opened in unison in front of the cage –putting the divers in temporary darkness as they scraped against the metal bars –trying to chew their way to the food inside.

There was too much human activity and commotion inside the metal prison they were in and Bard saw the biggest of the predators approaching closer to the surface.

Owen obviously, did not or his scorched lungs had forced him to make a desperate choice. Once he left the temporary safety of the diving cage to make a try for the boat, the enormous shark above simply lowered its huge head and let the man swim into its gaping mouth. Even underwater, the divers could hear their friend cry out in bubbling red agony as the powerful jaws closed around his mid-section. As the water turned crimson -even after his lower half fell away- Owen’s feet continued to kick for a few brief seconds.  His lower torso drifted down to the waiting mouths of the smaller twins who made a brief, grotesque tug of war game out of it before each shark swam away satisfied with a leg.

The aft of the diving boat was now completely submerged and in a couple more minutes-when the craft sank- it would inevitably drag the cage down to the bottom of the ocean with it.

The black pirates seemed oblivious, continuing to stand with rifles in hand arguing, which one of them was responsible for this botched fiasco. Now they would have no bounty nor be able to upgrade from their small - barely ocean worthy- outboard and eighteen foot open bow.

Their boat rocked back and forth as they swore and pushed at each other and a large, curious mother came to have a look at the new disturbance in her domain.

Blinded because his best friend had kicked his mask off making his escape attempt, out of hope, out of air and full of seawater, Mitch suddenly stopped struggling and released his stranglehold on the bars. His weight belt carried his dead body down to the floor of the alloy prison.

Bard sadly witnessed the death of his other young mentee before quickly turning to Lara and seeing that her eyes were flickering and unfocused. His young pregnant girlfriend was fading fast from lack of oxygen and in a desperate, loving underwater kiss; he breathed whatever air remained in his own lungs into hers.

There were only seconds to live now and two options.

Sink or swim. Drown or likely be eaten alive.

A shiny metal object heavier than the boat debris and soot that tricked down on them clanged against the top of the cage and Pennington silently thanked the Maker for sending a ray of hope.

Although the plastic portions were melted into a plastic abstract mess and the metal components looked dinged up and black as coal -the cheap shotgun looked like it could possibly still be functional if the shells inside weren’t waterlogged yet.

Pennington felt himself fading out and pumped a shell into the chamber, silently praying that the gun would still work and he wouldn’t drown before getting a chance to find out.

Once the door was unlatched and opened again, one of the smaller twin White Pointers raced immediately for it –a piece of Owen’s flowered swimming trunks still hanging from its lower jaw - and received a face full of buckshot in an underwater explosion of triangle shaped teeth, blood and shark flesh.

Pennington pulled a sinking Lara back up to the top of the cage by the back of her neck but she was fiercely jerked from his grasp by…an obviously alive Mitch.

No, not alive. Just no longer dead. No air bubbles escaped from his seawater-filled lungs and those blank white orbs were definitely not the eyes of the living. His protégé had become one of the rumors that Bard thought he had escaped by leaving the states and before he could free the girl from the dead man’s grasp, Mitch lowered his mouth and tore off a large chunk of Lara’s calf. The immense pain of her flesh being ripped from her leg seemed to revive the drowning girl and the last of her air escaped in the bubbles of a muffled, underwater scream of terror and agony.

 Pennington pulled the shotgun up and aimed at the ghoulish animated corpse but a shark rammed the cage again and the weapon fell through one of the spaces between the bars.  Out of sheer protective reaction and instinct, Bard grabbed the dead man’s head and began beating it against the side of the cage before deciding quickly that he didn’t have the time or the strength to do battle. Giving the creature a weak final bash, Pennington began pushing the badly bleeding girl up through the open hatch.

Using all the air and strength he had left and ignoring the clawing, tearing and biting at his own mutilated legs until both of them were finally free of the hellish cage.

The pirates froze where they stood as a fish bigger than their dinghy surfaced and swam on the surface up to the back of their small boat. The mother white shark was quite interested in all the noise and both curious enough and hungry enough to give the object a taste. Opening and then closing its mammoth mouth, it gripped the vessel and shook, tearing the outboard motor right out of its mount at the aft of the small craft and dumping the screaming pirates into the sea.

Although the metal of the motor was not to her liking, she impulsively swallowed it whole.

The pirates paddled in heart pounding horror back to the boat and tried to scramble back inside. But the huge, ravenous White Pointer were much more familiar now with the sounds and distressed movements that prey make, just as were her pack mates. A smaller shark with half a face took the pirate farthest from the boat and carried him away shrieking in its disfigured mouth while its sibling made a series of passes by the other, tasting another piece of him with each swim-by.

Pennington and the girl focused on reaching the boat as there was nothing they could do anyway. The screaming man bled out before he could reach the dinghy and they were both bleeding pretty badly themselves. Not shark bites but from Mitch’s cannibal teeth.

 He silently thanked both the creator and the sharks for clearing the path for he and Lara to reach the empty, damaged boat.  But once safely inside, Bard loudly cursed them both for putting them through this torturous day in Hell.

 “You hang on, baby!” Bard exclaimed, quickly applying an impromptu tourniquet made from fishing mesh and line to Lara’s leg, “We’re going to make it out of this. We’re not that far out and the tide is rolling inland. We’ll make it shore and get to a hospital and...”

“L-Look out!” the terrified girl cried out, pointing at the stern and the two dead hands that were trying to pull a dead Mitch up into the small boat. His awkwardness and weight began tipping and rocking them and Pennington thought they might capsize…until the huge mother shark breached the sea, taking the entire Mitch creature deep into its seemingly bottomless stomach and splashing back down into the sea.

The tail of the great fish slapped against the pirate boat and cracked its hull while the sheer mass and water dispersal of the huge body swept against the side of the craft. A thin trickle of water seeped in from the leak while and secondary waves created by the diving body of the two and a half ton predator beside them threatened to capsize them once more.

But in a few moments, everything was eerily… silent.

After he’d bandaged up his girlfriend as best he could, he looked at the large bite-size chunks of his own flesh that were missing.

Squinting and scanning the horizon from the small boat, Pennington’s hope rose for a moment when he saw the hazy but unmistakable Table Mountain and its majestic gleam off in the distance.

They weren’t really THAT far from shore and if they didn’t sink or bleed to death, they might just survive this unspeakable horror and make it to a hospital in Capetown!

His optimism lowered significantly when he looked back at his girlfriend.

His beautiful young love looked awful.

Pennington took in her pale sweaty skin and dilated pupils and cringed. Lara’s head began to dip and he held it against him, stroking the wet, dark hair rolling down his chest. She coughed and some brown spew landed on his thigh. That’s when Bard noticed the blood flow from her leg had worsened and he tightened the improvised fishnet tourniquet above the gaping bite wound.

“Lara honey, you’ve got to hang on for me…for us and the baby. You and I are going to have some story to tell our son some day.”

The sleek, gargantuan Great White cruised silently away, already looking for her next meal and all sea life yielded in her sight.

She was truly the Queen of the Sea, the earth’s apex predator and the very top of the food chain. Twenty-two feet and two tons of deadly perfection personified swam with a grace and regality that belied its behemoth strength and ferocity.

It was almost heartrending that the young twin princes of the ocean nestled in her womb would never rule.

In fact, they would never see the amazing world outside their mother at all after the animated, dead remainders of Mitch and Owen finished devouring them.

****