Barracuda

Copyright 2008 by Mike Monahan

All rights reserved.

Published by Mike Monahan at Smashwords

Available in print at Amazon.com.

This book is dedicated to my mother, Barbara,
my brother Thomas, and my good friend Eddie Dolan. They inspired
and encouraged me to complete this project. They are always in my
thoughts.

I wish to thank my dive buddy Henry Fine for
allowing me to use his barracuda picture for the book cover, and
Timmy Collins for reading my manuscript with an open mind and
giving me his valuable input.

I also wish to thank Leah Fretwell for giving
me permission to include part of her research for the preface and
the Bikini website for its informative content.

I am compelled to thank my good friend
Thunder for loaning me his ancient laptop on which this story was
created.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
incidents, and places are the product of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

“We forget that the water cycle and the life
cycle are one.”

Jacques Cousteau

PREFACE

The history of nuclear testing covers a
period of over sixty years. The United States conducted 1,054
nuclear tests between 1945 and 1992 at the Trinity site in the New
Mexico desert and at the Nevada test site. A majority of the
tests—839—were underground.

The vast majority—929—were conducted at the
Nevada test site, while 108 more were conducted at various sites in
the Pacific. Of the Pacific tests, forty-three were done at
Eniwetok, twenty-three at Bikini Atoll, twenty-four at Christmas
Island, and twelve at Johnston Island.

1

She swam swiftly and purposely. Something inside
her told her that she had to go to a certain location and mate. The
instinct was so overwhelming that she could not ignore it. During
this migration, she would forego eating until her copulation was
complete. Such a maternal drive is common in nature and varies from
species to species.

Although she had an inherent duty, she swam
warily. She felt a strange yet unseen presence in the waters she
had entered. This was her second mating season, and she had
expected the shallow waters to be warmer—but not
this
warm,
and she wondered what was causing that tingling sensation.

Her species didn’t begin mating until they were
two years old, and she had grown to full size during her three
years in the ocean. Her natural feeding grounds abounded in healthy
prey, enabling her to develop great hunting skills. She knew she
was larger and stronger than many of her kind, so she didn’t hunt
in schools or packs like the others did. Still, with her hormones
in overdrive, she felt trepidation. Something was not right.

As she entered the lagoon, she immediately felt
another rise in the water’s temperature. Then she noticed how few
fish there were compared to her previous visit. This lagoon had
once been a haven for numerous species of fish; last year her kind
had feasted heartily after mating.

Suddenly, a large predator appeared from below,
rushing at her in attack mode. She easily eluded the attack with a
few quick flicks of her tail, and the large predator swam away
erratically. This confused her. She remained at full alert,
observing her enemy. Then she saw a school of the predator’s own
species approaching from deep inside the lagoon. Without
provocation, the school attacked the erratically swimming
beast.

In a matter of minutes, the carnage was over,
and smaller fish were treated to scraps as the school swam off to
prowl in the confines of the lagoon. She had never known that
species to attack her kind or be cannibalistic. She also noticed
that the fish snapping up the scraps were very odd-looking. She
recognized the various breeds, but many had unusual growths on
their bodies. Others were much larger than the species she was used
to seeing, while some bore extra fins, eyes, and other appendages.
This lagoon was filled with such aberrant behavior that it was
quickly becoming identified to her as a potentially dangerous place
for spawning.

Her instinct warned her to leave the shallows of
this lagoon and seek out another area. She did not feel safe here,
but her need to mate had become stronger. The full moon would rise
any day now, and her eggs were ready to be released. She had to
find a mate and a safe haven where she could procreate.

Instinct drove her to swim across another
expanse of blue water to a different section of the lagoon. Once
again, she felt the strange tingling and warmer-than-usual water.
She also observed more deformed fish. Swimming into this lagoon,
she noticed a huge object that was not a reef, although it had many
orifices like one. Schools of large predators also patrolled this
lagoon, so she sought refuge inside this unusual structure.

The upper layer of this reef had enormous
compartments with huge entrances and exits. These would not suffice
since predators could enter and exit at will. While searching for a
smaller, safer compartment at the lower levels, she met a potential
mate. He spotted her searching and swam to her. Then, after a brief
courtship ritual, he led her back to a small cave-like opening.

He had already built a small nest while waiting
for a suitable mate to arrive. He was smaller than she was, so he
easily squeezed into the opening that led to the nest area below,
while she had difficulty entering. The mating took place that night
when the full moon arrived. Their species was rather direct and not
flamboyant about spawning, as opposed to other species that had
elaborate rituals including spectacular dances and colorful
displays of fins that could last for days.

She lay in the shelter, simply exhausted from
her long trip to this mating place. She had absolutely no maternal
instinct and would return to her reef as soon as she rested. Her
eggs were on their own as soon as she departed.

It was nighttime, and she was sleeping when she
first felt the shudder. The whole edifice that surrounded her began
to shake and crumble. It only lasted a minute, but that was long
enough for her entrance to become blocked. She was sealed in an
underwater tomb. There were many smaller apertures surrounding her,
but they were too tight for her to swim through to escape.

Luckily for her, the large predators chased
smaller prey into her structure. While the smaller prey sought
shelter, they inadvertently swam into her lair. Although she was
trapped, she was able to feed herself well, and she simply adapted
to life in the huge cavern.

The strange prison seemed to stretch for a great
distance, and it had multiple levels of extraordinary lofty rooms.
Each day, she explored different sections of her new world and
hunted well. But as time went on, the tingling sensation worsened,
and she became more and more lethargic. Unlike other members of her
species, she was able to watch the progress of her hatchlings. One
in particular caught her attention. It grew faster and was hungrier
and more aggressive than the others. As time went on, this
offspring turned cannibal and ate its siblings one by one until it
was the only one left.

This barbaric act didn’t matter much to her.
Hers was a world of survival of the fittest. On days when she had
more energy, she followed It as It cruised throughout the interior
of the system that entrapped them. It was small enough to exit at
numerous points but seemed to instinctively know that danger lurked
outside. She marveled at the speed and agility It possessed while
hunting. It had an uncanny ability to change the color of its body,
using a dozen different shades and patterns, giving it an
incredible edge. Soon It was swimming throughout the structure on
its own.

The strange reef that entombed them was so big
that It would be gone exploring and feeding for days on end. One
day, when It returned to the nest, she saw a bone-chilling look in
Its eyes—the last thing she saw before It consumed her. It grew to
become nearly twice the size of Its mother and soon was unable to
leave the confines of the metal grotto just like her. But as it
turned out, there was no need to leave. It was the top predator in
a reef full of food. It mutated so that It could actually lay eggs
and fertilize them Itself, a common development in certain species
when breeding females were absent.

It used the same nest as Its mother to bring
other juveniles into the world, and the cold-blooded acts of
cannibalism and patricide continued incessantly for years. Each
generation produced bigger, faster, and more aggressive offspring
content to live unmolested in the giant subterranean passage. It
was never seen except by the hapless victims that served as Its
nourishment. It was a trapped, unknown monster, constantly growing
and evolving generation after generation.

2

Mick O’Shaughnessy was in a deep sleep when the
alarm of the clock radio woke him. He groggily sat up to Louis
Armstrong singing “What a Wonderful World.” When the song ended,
the DJ announced that it was six a.m. on a bright, sunny Monday
morning in October.

Before he could turn off the alarm, a red tabby
cat bounded across the bed.

“Good morning, Mr. McGillicuddy,”
O’Shaughnessy—Micko to his friends—said as he stroked the cat’s
furry head. The cat purred so loudly that it sounded like a
motorboat.

Micko stretched and punched the snooze button on
the alarm clock. He needed just five more minutes of sleep, but Mr.
McGillicuddy had other ideas. The tabby rubbed his nose and head in
Micko’s face until he exploded, “All right, you furry Irish rat!
I’ll get up and feed you!”

It took him a few minutes to struggle out from
between the sheets as his feline companion sat expectantly at the
foot of the bed. Then he walked gingerly into the spotless kitchen,
placed fresh water in a bright green bowel, and opened a can of
Nine Lives Mackerel.

Micko loved this cat, which had been his
companion for eighteen years. Mr. McGillicuddy had outlasted his
master’s two failed marriages and been with him through his entire
time on the force.
People should be this loyal
, he
thought.

He rented half a house from Joe Galvati, his
landlord. Joe was a ninety-year-old gent who lived to tend to his
garden. He had the most gorgeous garden in the neighborhood, and he
was quite proud of it. He had lost his wife to a heart attack
several years earlier, and then the garden became his obsession.
The master gardener loved to give his huge tomatoes to his favorite
neighbors. He would proudly proclaim, “I grew these with my own two
hands!”

Joe lived downstairs, and Micko lived on the
second floor of a sprawling two-bedroom apartment complete with a
huge eat-in kitchen and a large outdoor veranda. Micko loved the
veranda and ate most of his meals out there, where he had an
unencumbered view of all his neighbors’ flower gardens.

Now, he was trying to decide if he should shower
first and then enjoy a cup of coffee on the terrace or just sit
with the coffee first and wake up.

He was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes
when the alarm once again sounded, kicking on the morning news. Not
wishing to hear anything bad, he scurried into the bathroom to
begin his daily hygiene routine with a hot shower. The coffee would
wait.

While the warm water splashed about his head and
body, he wondered what the department doctor would have to say at
their eight o’clock meeting. It had been nine months since he was
wounded in a line-of-duty shooting, and his leg had been slow to
heal. He looked down at the injured leg and slowly rubbed
antiseptic soap onto the large scab that had formed where the
bullet had entered. There was no exit wound to worry about because
the bullet had been spent after it shattered his tibia bone.

The doctor in the emergency room had removed the
nine-millimeter and given it to Micko as a souvenir. The cast had
been off for a week, but he still hobbled on his weakened leg.
Looking down at it, he could see how much thinner it was compared
to his left leg. The doctor called this “muscle atrophy.” Micko’s
right leg had withered from a lack of exercise and fresh air. In
this case, the atrophy was due to the lack of use after nine months
in a cast that ran from his toes to his hip. A healthy exercise
regime would correct this condition when he was able to lose the
cane and walk on his own.

Micko couldn’t wait to get back into shape, but
he still had reservations about hastily returning to work. The
trauma of the shooting had left him with a strange feeling of
insecurity and a great loss of confidence. He was the most
aggressive member of his homicide team, but he was now plagued by
short bouts of depression and became madly emotional when watching
movies.