Jeremy Robinson: Island 731

DeWinter stepped around her father wearing an expression that cycled between happy, terrified, and relief. “Oh my God, are you two okay? What were you thinking? That was awesome!”

“Fine,” Joliet said. “Better than fine. Look what we found.” She stepped aside, allowing the father-daughter team to see the dead, nearly limbless turtle.

DeWinter winced, then saw the pinched shell and gasped. “What is it?”

Hawkins was about to tease her, but the single fin and a severely deformed shell made it look like something alien. “Once upon a time, it was a loggerhead turtle.”

Jones leaned over the specimen, looking at it from all angles. “What happened to it?”

“Aside from becoming a meal for Jaws,” Hawkins said, “that’s what we need to find out.”

“Looks like it got into something,” Jones said, pointing to a band of red where the turtle’s constricted midsection came together.

“Nasty,” DeWinter said. “But this is actually a good thing, right? We’re here to find things like this.”

He felt horrible for it, but Hawkins agreed. Finding this deformed turtle was a very good thing, but as he looked down at the ruined creature, it certainly didn’t feel good. “Yeah, this is why we’re here. But I wish we weren’t.”

That wasn’t entirely true. He looked at Joliet. She met his eyes. They both smiled.

Silence lingered for a moment longer than Jones could bear. He cleared his throat. “I’ll go get a stretcher so we can move her.”

Hawkins turned toward him and saw DeWinter smiling like she knew something he didn’t. Does she? Joliet did spend a good amount of off-time with DeWinter. They were the only two women on board. Before Hawkins could dwell on the idea, a sea of frantic voices that sounded something like a gobble of frightened turkeys drowned out his thoughts. The rest of the crew had arrived, all asking questions and retelling their version of the story at once.

Hawkins heard Phil Bennett, the youngest crewmember on board, ask, “Should we try to kill that shark?”

It was a stupid question. The Magellan had been sent to research the Garbage Patch to help preserve the environment for creatures like the shark. That someone on board, even if he was a mechanic and not a conservationist, would ask that question revealed what an uphill battle cleaning up the Garbage Patch would be. The idea of killing a shark simply because it tried to eat someone made little sense to Hawkins, but he knew it made perfect sense to many people. The problem was, people were still terrified of the unknown, which included most everything in the ocean, and reacted to dangerous animals with violence. Humanity liked to think they were at the top of the food chain, but without modern weapons, people weren’t top dog, and being eaten was, and always had been, part of the gig. Animals ate people. People ate animals. A shark eating a human being was as natural as a twenty-piece serving of chicken nuggets, perhaps more so.

That was his take on the situation. He’d like to believe there was some kind of natural law that said sharks wouldn’t try to eat people, but he knew better. Even people ate other people when tradition, or desperation, required it. And those people weren’t hunted down and shot like crazed beasts. Sometimes they got movie deals.

Hawkins decided to ignore the question. Bennett was young and allowed to be stupid. The man who spoke next would have to cut the conversation short, either way.

“What in the name of St. Peter were you two thinking?” shouted a voice that parted the crew. Captain Jonathan Drake, a sixty-year-old man with the body of a forty-year-old professional wrestler stepped up to Hawkins. The crew encircling them stepped back when Drake crossed his arms over his chest, as though the man’s muscles produced some kind of invisible force field.

Hawkins and Joliet knew better than to reply right away. Engaging the captain when his hackles were raised never worked out well for his verbal sparring partner. Best to wait it out and offer an explanation when Drake’s face lost a few shades of red.

What Hawkins did do was take a single step to the side, revealing the deformed loggerhead turtle on the deck. Drake saw it immediately, but made no comment. He rubbed his square chin, scratching at the neatly trimmed white hair that framed his face and head. Drake wasn’t just the captain of the Magellan, he also believed in its mandate—to study the harmful effects humanity has on the planet’s oceans and try to affect change. The ramifications of the turtle’s state wouldn’t be lost on the man.

Joliet opened her mouth to speak, but Hawkins knew it was too soon. He placed his hand against hers. Her voice caught in her throat, but when he glanced at her she appeared more confused than angry, which is what he expected. They’d become friends over the past month at sea, but Joliet couldn’t stand to be told what to do. Only Drake got away with it, and sometimes not without a fight.

Drake turned to the bystanders and pointed to the four standing nearest the turtle. “You four. Take Stumpy here to the biolab.”

The four grumbled, but immediately began working out how to transport the creature. The biolab was on the main deck, so they wouldn’t need to go up or down any stairs, but the several-hundred-pound dead weight still wouldn’t be easy to move.

Drake turned his attention back to Hawkins and Joliet. He looked each of them in the eyes and said, “You two, wash up and come see me on the bridge in thirty. We need to talk.”

With that, Drake spun on his heels and stormed away. The man had let them off the hook without a public verbal beatdown, but Hawkins couldn’t help but feel he might have been better off staying in the water with the shark.

Hawkins washed himself clean in just over a minute. Showers were supposed to be brief while at sea, so he used the rest of his allocated five minutes to languish under the hot streams of water. The close encounter with the great white had bunched up the muscles on his back and the heat helped relieve the tension. As steam billowed around him in the small shower stall, he took a moment to reflect.

Today marked the third time in his life that he’d looked down the throat of an animal intent on sinking its teeth into him. The first had been as a child when he was attacked by a rabid raccoon. He’d been standing in his driveway, trying desperately to sink a basketball shot, but his seven-year-old arms weren’t up to the task. He first noticed the scrawny raccoon as it walked past him, in broad daylight, carrying a bagel pilfered from a neighbor’s trashcan. If not for a missed shot, the raccoon may have continued on its way, oblivious to Hawkins’s presence, but the ball landed just a few feet from the animal’s side.

The sharp thunk of the ball hitting the pavement had the same effect a hand grenade might have. The raccoon launched itself into the air, arms splayed, bagel twirling away. At some point during its twisting flight, the raccoon must have seen Hawkins because upon landing, it shrieked and launched toward him. If not for his father’s nearby minivan and Hawkins’s monkeylike climbing skills, the coon might have enjoyed a much fresher snack. But thanks to his father, armed with a broom and trashcan cover, Hawkins escaped unscathed. In some ways it was a good memory, since it was one of the few nice things his father did before deciding not to be his father anymore.

He wasn’t so lucky during his second confrontation with a hungry mammal. Hawkins ran his fingers over his bare chest. The four long scars had healed long ago, but still stung under his touch. Not from any physical pain. It had been five years since that dark day in the woods of Colorado, but the memory of that confrontation still felt fresh.