Michael Bray - Feed

Tyler finished his drink, slid off his seat and left the bar, realising the slight beer buzz he had before he started talking to Nash had gone. He was now sober and had a head full of questions and speculation. First and foremost, he needed a drink. Just one. Just to calm the nerves.

Tyler didn’t read about the Megalodon, despite his intentions to do so. Instead, he had gotten drunk and let the demon within him roam free. The Friday morning he was supposed to meet Nash and Liam, he had woken as always on the floor of his motel room, head thundering, body filled with pain and regret at his actions. He had half-convinced himself that the whole story was just the ramblings of a drunk, perhaps a glimpse into his own future if he didn’t get control of his habit. The one thing that kept his interest was the gold. Sure enough, there was no guarantee that the bar he had been shown came from the Devil’s Triangle, but if it was a ruse, Nash was going to extreme lengths to make it seem real. As he dressed and dry swallowed aspirin to relieve the thunderstorm in his head, he supposed today would tell either way. He would go to the dock and see what happened. If there was no Nash or boat, he would move on with his life. He had learned not to try and predict too much of the future and since leaving his old life behind had become blasé about such things. Grabbing his sunglasses to protect him from his hangover, Tyler grabbed his backpack and set out to see what was going to happen next.

The heat of the day was brutal and made Tyler’s hangover feel even worse. His skin was soaked with sweat, and angry patches of perspiration had formed under the armpits and down the back of his navy polo shirt. Even so, he risked lifting the sunglasses and propping them on his forehead to look at the vessel in Dock 9.

The seventy-two-foot yacht bobbed in the azure waters, sunlight shimmering off its white hull. The windows to the wheelhouse were blacked out, the entire vessel screaming luxury. Across the bow, painted in pale blue was the ship’s name. The Sonnet . Tyler stared at it, squinting against the sun and watching Nash and Liam load supplies onto the boat.

Nash saw him and waved a scarred arm. ‘You made it.’

Tyler stood agape and thinking how Amy would have loved to have seen such a rare thing. He was lost for words. Nash saw it and laughed, fedora flapping in the breeze. ‘You thought I was full of shit, didn’t you?’ he said as he leaned on the rail around the stern of the boat.

‘Yeah, actually I did,’ Tyler replied.

‘Well, don’t just stand there, come on board. We’ve got work to do.’

Tyler tossed his bag onto the deck at the stern and climbed on board the boat. Everything felt surreal, from the gentle sway of the vessel in its berth to the slightly hops and booze smell coming off Nash as he sorted gear on the deck.

‘This must have been expensive.’

‘It was,’ Nash replied. ‘Like I said, I know a guy who didn’t ask too many questions. Told him it was for a fishing trip just to be safe.’

Tyler exhaled, doing another slow three-sixty as he took everything in. Nash chuckled as he handed a box of supplies to Liam. ‘You’re still struggling to take it all in, aren’t you?’

Tyler was caught off guard by the directness of the question and was spared having to answer by Nash’s laugh as he clapped him on the back. ‘Don’t worry about it, the story is pretty unbelievable, isn’t it?’

Tyler nodded, the growing feeling of unease in his gut becoming harder to ignore. Nash checked his watch, then squinted up at the sun. ‘Well, maybe we should be on our way. Weather looks clear at least, so that’s in our favour. I want to do this during daylight hours.’

Tyler nodded. Now he was standing on the boat and everything Nash had told him was turning out to be true, he couldn’t help but think about the shark story he had been told. He still didn’t think it was possible, but he knew the more time he spent with Nash and the closer they got to their destination, the idea would grow and fester in his mind.

‘Hey,’ Liam said, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a muscular forearm and then picking up another box of supplies. ‘Any chance of a little help here?’

‘Yeah, sorry,’ Tyler said, grabbing another one of the boxes and following Liam into the galley. Within the hour, they were underway, Nash piloting the boat, Liam engrossed in his phone, earphones in so he didn’t have to make conversation. Tyler stood out on the back deck by the transom, staring at the white wake left by the boat as it moved into deeper waters. As he watched the land receded into a hazy smudge on the horizon, he found himself thinking about the Megalodon, now only half sure it couldn’t be real.

The initial excitement had waned. The day was hot and sticky, and because of the hangover, the sun wasn’t something Tyler wanted to become too acquainted with, especially with the constant drone of the engine making his headache worse by the hour. Liam had disappeared below decks to his cabin to sleep, and so Tyler joined Nash at the wheel, watching the bow of the boat slice through the gorgeous blue waters. The wheelhouse was wood panelled. In addition to the controls to drive the boat, there were other devices propped on the console. A bank of CCTV monitors displayed blue standby screens. Beside these was a radar screen, their vessel marked in red in the centre of the display. To Nash’s right was the fish finder, its screen a kaleidoscope of ridges and valleys as the under-hull-mounted camera mapped the sea floor. Nash glanced at him as he entered the wheelhouse, then turned back towards the water.

‘How are you finding the trip? Been sick yet?’ Nash asked. He was like a different person now that he was away from the prying eyes of society. He had shed the hat and abundance of layers and was wearing knee-length cargo shorts, a loose white shirt and brown sandals. Tyler tried not to stare at the horrific map of scars on his body, the damage even more visible in the harsh light of day.

‘I’m good, I’ve managed to keep everything on board for now,’ he said, turning his attention back to the ocean.

Nash chuckled. ‘You’re lucky it’s smooth going. If the seas were rough and we were vaulting over six-foot swells, you might be saying something else.’

Tyler approached, standing beside Nash. ‘This looks like a lot of equipment.’

‘State of the art. The very best.’ He nodded towards the blue screened CCTV monitors. ‘Those are for the live drone feeds. When we reach the Devil’s Triangle, we’ll send down the remote control drones. They are attached to the surface by fibre-optic tethers, which was what you and Liam were bringing on board earlier. Because we don’t know what’s down there, the plan is to send those in first and scan the area to see what we’re dealing with.’

‘Yeah? I thought you were just going to put me on the end of a fishing line to bait your shark.’

Tyler meant it as a joke, but Nash wasn’t amused. ‘You didn’t do the research, did you?’ Nash said, staring straight ahead.

‘I… no. I didn’t.’

‘I thought not. If you did, you wouldn’t be so… relaxed.’

‘Look, I’m sorry, I don’t mean anything by it, it’s just… It’s a stretch.’

Nash shrugged. ‘I can’t blame you. Even my own son doesn’t believe it. Like you, he half-thinks I’m a crazy old man and half-thinks there might be some money to be made, so he tolerates my rambling.’

‘Look, it’s not—’

‘It doesn’t matter. People thinking like that isn’t new to me. You should prepare yourself though for me to be proved right. I’ve seen what’s down there, and I know what we have to potentially face.’