Mega #02 Baja Blood (32 page)

“Um, so where does that leave me?” Mike asked. “You all know where you stand, but what about me?”

“You have a bullseye on you still,” Ballantine said. “And with your new limbs, I figure you’d be safer and more useful here on the Beowulf III.”

“Welcome to Team Grendel,” Thorne said, offering his hand.

Mike hesitated then shook it.

“Thanks,” Mike said.

“You say that now,” Gunnar smiled. “But you haven’t spent enough time with these idiots to know how wrong you are.”

“Exactly what monsters are we talking about?” Shane asked.

All eyes fell on Ballantine.

“You’ll find out in a couple weeks,” Ballantine said. “When we reach our next destination.”

“Which is where?” Kinsey asked. “And I really hope there’s a GAP outlet there, because you’re looking at what clothes I own. And I’m wearing my only pair of underwear.”

“We know,” Max frowned.

“Fuck off,” Kinsey said.

“We’ll get everyone outfitted before too long,” Ballantine said. “Just give me a day or so to make all the arrangements. Until then, and until we reach the point of our next mission, I advise you rest up and then start training.”

“Good idea,” Thorne said. “What else is there?”

“Nothing,” Ballantine said. “For now, at least. Relax on deck and enjoy yourselves. Next port will be in Panama, so we have some time to work everything out.”

“Panama?” Darren asked. “We’re going south?”

“That we are,” Ballantine said. “But I’m not going to discuss it right now.” He nodded to Thorne. “Commander?”

“Team Grendel is dismissed,” Thorne said. Everyone sat there for a second. “Get the fuck out, people.”

They didn’t have to be told a third time.

***

“So...”

“So...”

Kinsey and Darren looked at each other as they sat on the observation deck, the starry night sky above them.

“Looks like we’ll be sort of living together again,” Darren said, turning his eyes from his ex-wife and out to the calm of the Pacific Ocean. “Kinda.”

Kinsey rolled her eyes. “We’ll have our own quarters, so not really even kinda.”

“I guess,” Darren said. “But it’s the closest we’ll be since before the divorce.”

“Yeah,” Kinsey nodded. “True.”

“You cool with that?” Darren asked. “I am, by the way.”

“I don’t know,” Kinsey said. “I haven’t really had time to process much of what’s going on. I guess we have time to work it out, though.” Kinsey’s face broke into a big grin. “And I can help you with your cocaine dependence and road to sobriety.”

“I’m not addicted to cocaine,” Darren snapped.

“That’s what every junkie says,” Kinsey replied, smiling even wider.

“You’re liking this, aren’t you?” Darren asked, smiling also.

“A little,” Kinsey said. “You seen my cousins since the meeting?”

“Up there,” Darren said, pointing to the crow’s nest. “They’re smoking the rest of their joints in one sitting.”

“Why the hell would they do that?” Kinsey asked.

“Smoke out the old and bring in the new,” Darren said.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“Not a clue,” Darren laughed. “I think they were six joints in when they came up with it.”

“We should probably get them down before they fall down,” Kinsey sighed.

“Nah, Lucy’s up there with them as designated thinker,” Darren said.

“The woman with a serious concussion is doing their thinking for them?” Kinsey asked. “Yeah, what could go wrong?”

“No shit,” Darren replied. “I think part of it is so they smoke it all now and it’s not around you. Those cousins love you more than weed, ‘Sey.”

They sat there in silence for a long while.

“You ever going to forgive me for fucking us up?” Darren asked, finally breaking the silence. He reached out and took Kinsey’s hand. She didn’t pull it away. “I know you don’t have any reason you should. But if you do that would be cool.”

“We’ll see,” Kinsey responded.

Again, more silence, this time hand in hand.

“Have you seen Max?” Darby asked, making them both jump as they turned their heads and found her standing behind their chairs.

“How long have you been there?” Kinsey asked.

“The whole time,” Darby said then that small smile of her’s crept across her lips. “Kidding. Just got here.”

“Max is up there getting blitzed to high heaven,” Darren said.

“Hmmm,” Darby said. She nodded at them then went and climbed up to the crow’s nest.

“You think she’s going to kick his ass?” Darren asked.

“I don’t think that’s her intention,” Kinsey said.

“I can’t even guess what a woman like that’s intentions are,” Darren said.

“I can,” Kinsey smiled.

She took her hand from Darren’s and stood up, stretching her arms high into the night.

“I’m turning in,” she said. “Sleep well, ‘Ren.”

“You too, ‘Sey,” Darren said. “Need some company?”

“Not yet,” Kinsey said as she walked to the steps. She looked at him for a few seconds then sighed. “But maybe at some point.” Then she laughed. “If we live to that point.”

“Okay,” Darren said. “Night.”

“Night.”

He watched her leave the observation deck then looked back across the dark waters.

“If we live,” he said. “One can only hope.”

There was laughter from above, and Darren was very surprised to realize that it was Darby. Then someone shouted, “Ow!” and he wasn’t too surprised anymore.

“Yeah,” he chuckled to himself. “If we live...”

The End

Read on for a free sample of Predator X

My idea for the Mega series, and Team Grendel, has always been to combine the fun of the old Clive Cussler novels with the camp of today’s SyFy Channel sea monster movies. With Mega 2: Baja Blood I have upped the monster shark count, as well as the body count, and made sure there was plenty of fun, excitement, horror, and intrigue. Playing with Team Grendel has been a blast and I intend to keep them fighting monsters of all sorts for many novels to come. I hope you as a reader get my intentions and know that the Mega novels will never be about science reality, but instead about adventure fun.

Hooyah!

Cheers,

Jake Bible

April 2014

Jake Bible
lives in Asheville, NC with his wife and two kids.

A professional writer since 2009, Jake has a record of innovation, invention and creativity. Novelist, short story writer, independent screenwriter, podcaster, and inventor of the Drabble Novel, Jake is able to switch between or mash-up genres with ease to create new and exciting storyscapes that have captivated and built an audience of thousands.

He is the author of the bestselling Z-Burbia series for Severed Press as well as the Apex Trilogy (DEAD MECH, The Americans, Metal and Ash).

Find him at jakebible.com. Join him on Twitter and Facebook.

Chapter One

They say there are no true wildernesses left to explore. You talk to those extreme survival types and they even mock places like Antarctica as for mere novices.  Maybe they’re right about that. I mean, you can take a five star cruise to see the penguins nowadays. But they’re wrong about the wilderness thing. They are there; they’re just a bastard to get to. We know less about our oceans than we do about the moon, but that’s a wealth of knowledge compared to what we know about the deep places of the Earth. That’s where the cool kids hang out. In caves.

I
’m not a cool kid. I’m a sedimentologist, and that’s about as glamorous as it sounds. But I do like caves. So when we were fracking for shale gas on the Tuvan border and we broke through to a vast subterranean network of caves, I was amongst the first to volunteer to go down and have a look.

Training was pretty brutal. The guys who run it don
’t piss about, and they can’t. One false move and you’re dead. It really is as simple as that. I thought about dropping out lots of times, but curiosity is a strange beast. It’s more powerful than terror, for one thing. Let’s just say a thousand bad decisions in various horror movies all of a sudden make a great deal of sense to me.

I wanted to be in the Alpha team, to be one of the first to experience things, but I
’m a scientist, not a survivalist. They picked the team best suited to sort out the route, and at first, things seemed to be going pretty well. They sent us back information via a set of radio relays and basic video feed: some tight spots, but nothing insurmountable. Then we got a tantalising hint of something new, something we totally didn’t expect – a huge inland sea, cut off from the surface for millennia. That did it. I knew I had to get down there.

But after that
– nothing.

We still don
’t know what happened to the Alpha team, but we’re going to find out.

* * * * *

Caves are sacred places. They’re a bit like churches, or libraries. You don’t shout. Part of that is for safety reasons - loud sounds have a nasty habit of dislodging rocks, which in turn bang into other rocks, and before you know it you’re crushed by a hundred tons of the stuff – but a bigger reason is to do with the atmosphere. It’s heavy. Not like hippy-heavy-maaan, but like actually, physically heavy. It can be hard to breathe down here. Thank the Lord (or at least those lovely technicians at the Fujiyama Corporation, anyway) for inventing a decent kinetic two-for-one air filtration and light system. Because that’s the other thing about caves. They’re dark.  Like pitch black, can’t see your hand in front of your face dark. There’s no light down here. Light has never been down here. But that doesn’t mean life isn’t.

That came as quite a surprise.  We were expecting to find some traces of life, you know, algae and the like, but the sheer number of species
– all of them new to science, or so we expect – is staggering. It’s a shame they’re all of the fucking terrifying kind – spiders, centipedes, weird worms with mouths full of hooks and other such nasties – but it really does go to show you that life will indeed find a way.

“
For Chrissakes, Meg!” A voice hisses out of the darkness. I look up, pen in hand. It's Marcus, hassling me again. Now there’s a surprise. “You’re always fucking writing. We have cameras to record this shit. You don’t need to scribble.”

He grins. He might sound like a total arsehole, but Marcus is okay once you get used to him. He
’s part of the survival team. He was supposed to join the Alpha team, but injury kept him out of that gig, and as much as he protests, I think he’s pretty glad it kept him off that team, considering everything.

We
’ve been here for a couple of hours now. There’s a bastard chimney to traverse, and Nik and Janos wanted to go first. Of course, Alpha team have already rigged it, but they’re both aware we’re not all experts at this, so they’re going first, just in case.

I
’m beginning to feel a bit concerned. We’ve had to wait about before, but never for this long. I find myself peering into the never-ending darkness of the pit ahead, trying to figure out if that’s the dim-light of their kinetic torches, or just my eyes giving up and my brain filling in the gaps.

Even Marcus is quiet now. Fi has her eyes closed
– how can she sleep like that? It took me ages to acclimate. I suppose she’s had more experience. Brendan, on the other hand, is like me, scribbling away, noting everything down. If anything, he’s even worse. It’s a cave ecologist’s wet dream down here. I think if we discover one more new species, he might explode.

Small echoes filter up from below. Even though I know it
’s only Nick and Janos returning, my heart jitters. No one talks about it, but it's obvious the disappearance of Alpha Team is on everyone’s mind. No one knows what happened to them. We’re hoping someone just dropped the equipment... but why then have they not returned? No. Not going to think about that. Not yet. Not until –

I screw my eyes up and swallow hard. Why am I even thinking about this? Just concentrate on what you
’re doing. There’s enough to worry about without all of… that.

A figure pops its head over the edge of the ridge: Janos. He looks pretty grim, but that doesn
’t worry me. He always looks pretty grim in a Hollywood hard-man kind of way. When I first met him, I half expected him to speak in tired clichés and demand people make his day, but in reality, he's a serious man who only really speaks when necessary.

“
Nikolai has stayed below to steady the rope,” he says. It sounds like a funeral announcement. “The going isn’t easy, but it is still better than we expected.” He turns to Marcus. “You should go first, then one of the scientists, then Fiona, and then the other scientist. I shall go last.” With that, he nods and settles himself on the edge of the chimney. He knows no one will argue with him, not about this. Janos might be a miserable son of a bitch sometimes, but he has an instinct about caves we’ve all learned to trust.

Marcus agrees to go first, and then volunteers me.
“I ain’t gonna stare at Brendan’s arse all the way down,” he grins. I used to be bothered by his banter, but not now. He’s harmless.

My stomach swoops as Janos helps me manoeuvre myself over the edge. Apart from Marcus
’s headlamp ten feet below me, there is no light - I might as well be stepping off into the infinite. Janos shows me my hand holds, and I’m off, using the carefully placed guide ropes to help me down.

Janos wasn
’t kidding. This is, without a doubt, a bitch of a climb. Below me, I can hear Marcus muttering under his breath. I rarely see his headlamp head-on when I glance down – I guess his joke about preferring my arse over Brendan’s has long been forgotten now he’s worrying about where to put his feet.

My legs are screaming at me. I
’m fitter than I’ve ever been, but it doesn’t matter, every climb is a punishment. You’d also think going down would be easier, but it isn’t. Going up means, you know where you’re going. Down? That’s largely guesswork, or so it feels.

I take in a deep breath and pause for a moment before I unclip my safety harness to transfer it to the next series of ropes. This is the bit I always hate, the bit I never think I
’ll ever get used to. Even though it takes but a second, I can’t help but shake the feeling that it would only take a second to slip. I only let my breath go when I snap the D-ring closed and give it a tug. Safe again. Well, safer.

I glance up. Three little lights dance above me as the others join in the descent.  The air tastes strange down here, cold and metallic. The walls are dry. We
’re too deep for ground water, and so the prelim reports of an inland sea came as a huge surprise – I mean, how the hell did it form if it hadn’t percolated through the rock? But that’s the exciting thing. It didn’t percolate.

It
’s always been here.

I continue to edge my way down, my belly now fizzing. I can
’t help but wonder if we’re close. We’re mostly using guesswork – we have the Alpha team’s marks to follow and that is basically that. GPS doesn’t work down here – the rock is too thick and there’s a background level of radiation that, whilst harmless to us (pretty much; I wouldn’t want to spend months down here if I wanted to have kids at some point), it messes with most of our electrical equipment, which kind of unnerves me.

“
Okay, we’re nearing the bottom now,” Marcus calls up. Good. My arms have joined my legs in a rendition of The Screaming Chorus, and I’m just about ready to let go.

“
Hit bottom!”  Another call, followed by a furious whisper that travels far easier in the dead air. “Where the fuck is Nik?”

My stomach sinks. We
’re nearing our goal – and to where Alpha team vanished. The last thing our collective nerves need is to lose a team member of our own. 

I scramble down the last 10 feet, trying to concentrate on what I am doing but failing miserably. My fingers slip and I slide down the last 5 feet, scraping my hands.  Only the thick material of my survival suit protects my knees. I hit the bottom far faster than intended, and my legs crumple under me.

Marcus is nowhere to be seen.

A black dread seizes me. First Nik, then Marcus
– what next?

Fi lands next to me as I find my feet. She doesn
’t seem all that concerned that Nik and Marcus have all but disappeared. Instead, she stalks off into the gloom and ducks her head down.

“
Nik?” she says.

“
Yep!” comes the answer.

“
Tight?”

“
Yep.”

Fi grins. 
“Good.”

Rather than cheer me, this exchange makes my stomach sink even further.  The guys haven
’t disappeared, they’ve just gone to investigate the route, which seems to end in a blank cliff face.

Until you notice the crack at the bottom, that is.

Cavers call them ‘flatteners’. I call them nightmares, and I don’t mean that as in ‘difficult’. I mean 'nightmares' as in ‘tit-shrivelling terrifying’. They are the one aspect of caves I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully cope with, and if it wasn’t for the potential of something truly awe-inspiring on the other side, I don’t think I could do it.

Brendan and Janos have now joined us. Fi strips off her pack and pushes it into the crack. She then lies flat and wriggles underneath. That
’s why they’re called ‘flatteners’, by the way, because that’s the only way you can get through them – flat on your stomach.

Brendan goes next. He might not have the survival credentials the others do, but he has far more experience dealing with flatteners, and caves in general, than I do. He strips his pack and off he wriggles. I feel my heart clamber up into my throat and I swallow convulsively. I am not going to panic. It
’s safe. Four other people have gone before me, and they’re okay. So no panicking.

I slowly pull off my backpack and sink to the floor. I
’m feeling light headed now, like I’ve had one bevvy too many. I push my pack forward and fight down the urge to grab the top of my head to stop it from floating off.

“
Are you all right?”

Janos is kneeling beside me, looking concerned. He places a steady hand on my back. 
“I shall be there with you. Do not worry. I shall not let you get stuck.”

His sincerity helps. I
’m still on the verge of hyperventilating when I lie down and peer into the pitch-black of the crack, but Janos’ presence keeps me from losing it completely. He might be a bit of a killjoy most of the time, but right now, I am grateful for him, for his steadiness, for his seriousness. Marcus would joke; Fi would gloat; Nik would shrug, but Janos? Janos will keep me safe. Plus, he’s like twice my size, and if he thinks he can squeeze through this gap, then it should be a cake walk for me.

“
Remember,” he says, cutting through my rising panic. “Do not touch anything Nik has sprayed yellow. Keep breathing and keep going forwards. You will be fine.”

I take in a deep breath and stretch out into the flattener, pushing my pack ahead of me. I twist my head so my hard hat doesn
’t get wedged, cringing when I hear the scrape of rock against plastic. I inch forwards, focusing on my back. Behind me, a sudden flare of light tells me Janos has joined me. He taps my boot.