Feeding Time

California Coast

Propelled by the supple movement of its great tail, the female glided in silence through the depths.  Despite its prodigious size, nature had endowed the Megalodon, it most supreme hunter, for speed.  From the tip of its blunt triangular snout, the muscular body tapered back, allowing it to soar through the water with minimal resistance.  Beyond the vertical gill slits were the creature's massive horizontal pectoral fins, which worked like the ailerons of a jet fighter, controlling the creature's roll, yaw, and pitch.  Pelvic fins maintained the shark's elevation, while the ominous seven-foot dorsal fin, a gracefully curving sail, held the creature steady as it moved through the sea.

Propelling the Megalodon through its environment was its powerful caudal, or tail, fin, at the base of which was the muscular peduncle, twice as wide as it was deep, which served as a keel, adding stability and strength to the tail.  Just ahead of the caudal fin were two smaller fins; a secondary dorsal fin and an anal fin.  These slight protrusions increased laminar flow across the predator's tail, helping to diminish drag further.

Even the Megalodon's skin contributed to its hydrodynamics.  Made up of sharp scales, or denticles, the skin channeled the flow of water, decreasing drag while allowing the fish to move silently through its environment.

Cruising just above stall speed, the female continued its journey north along the California coastline.  Snakelike movements of its head allowed water to flow through grapefruit-size troughs along the underside of its conical snout.  Entering the nostrils, the seawater passed into the nasal cavity, coming in contact with a series of lamellae that allowed it to detect even the smallest traces of chemical odor in the water.

The predator rose through the thermocline, picking up the scent of it prey.

*        *        *        *        *

The humpback pod remained close to the surface, swimming in majestic up-and-down movements created by their colossal horizontal flukes.  Every so often, a forty-ton cow would breach, exhaling a towering spout of moist air before sucking in a  breath through twin nasal blowholes.

Haunting groans and squeals echoed beneath the waves as the pod communicated with its own.  Having detected the powerful scent of the advancing hunter, the whales closed ranks, mothers nudging their young closer to the surface.

It was not long before the wolf entered the arena to circle the flock.  Sensory cells peppered beneath the shark's snout detected the faint electrical fields generated by the whales' beating hearts and swimming muscles.  The hunter quickly targeted the young, moving in for the kill.

Walls of heaving blubber crashed down upon the charging female's snout.  The inexperienced hunter veered away, then darted back into the fray.  Pushing its nose through the surging behemoths, the shark attempted to latch its teeth into the nearest calf.  The cows turned upon the intruder, attempting to ward off the shark with head butts and powerful slaps from their flukes.

The Megalodon retreated, then circled again.

*        *        *        *        *

Half Moon Bay Beach

18 miles south of San Francisco

Ken Berk finished setting up the lounge chair for his wife, Emily, who was busy applying sunblock to the faces and shoulders of their three young children.

"You can play by the water but don't go in," she warned.

"But it's hot, Mommy," the youngest complained.

"Daddy will take you in later."

"Daddy's reading his newspaper," Ken said, lying back in his lounge chair.  "Hey, guys, look at all the whales in the water."

Broad lead-gray backs rolled across the churning surface eighty yards offshore.

*        *        *        *        *

The Megalodon closed again, this time approaching from beneath the fleeing pod.  The hunter targeted one of the calves and accelerated, barreling its way through a sea of foam and slapping flukes.  Unable to reach the calf, the frustrated predator snapped its jaws upon the enormous tail of a sixty-eight-thousand-pound cow.

Dragged back from the surging pod, the humpback cow groaned, twisting in ponderous contortions to reach its calf, which was floundering alone along the surface.

The Megalodon shook its head like a dog engaged in a tug-of-war, grinding its serrated teeth through the whale's muscular tail in seconds.  Blood gushed from the mutilated appendage.  The distressed whale moaned in agony.  Propelling itself with canoe-size flippers, the adult struggled to the surface, attempting to nudge her calf into shallower waters, even as it bled to death.

The Megalodon followed the blood trail.  The hunter rolled sideways, propelling itself along the surface, then opened its mouth and inhaled the trail of blood into its gullet until its jaws clamped down on the remains of the fluke.

Writhing in its death throes, the dying mammal lurched forward, repeatedly pushing its offspring to shore.

*        *        *        *        *

"Daddy, can you carry me out to pet the whales, too?"

The child's voice startled Ken from his catnap.  "What?  Honey, what did you say?"

"It's not fair.  Michael's petting them."

Ken sat up to see his twelve-year old wadding out into chest-deep water.  "Oh, shit . . . Michael!  Michael, get back here!"

Ken ran into the ocean and grabbed the boy around the waist.

"Dad, wait, the baby's stuck—"

Ken watched the stranded fourteen-foot creature struggle to free itself.  The enormous head of its mother bobbed up and down from behind, as if trying to reach its young.

Ken felt a surge of undertow pull on his legs.  "Okay, Mike, here's the deal.  I'll try to help her, but I want you to stay onshore with your mother."  Ken carried his son into shallower waters, then waded back out in water up to his chest.  Hesitantly he reached out and touched the calf along its pectoral fin as he eyed the larger cow, straining to reach its offspring thirty feet back.

Ken pulled on the fin, quickly losing his balance.  "What the hell am I doing? I can't do this myself."

The mother raised its head, contorting her upper torso.

"Okay, I'm trying!"  Ken looked into the calf's huge brownish-red eye.  He placed both hands against the side of the animal's head and pushed, slipping as the undertow gripped him again.

A woman in her early twenties and her two male companions joined him.  "Hold on, man, we'll give you a hand."  Together they began pushing the struggling calf away from the sandy bottom.

"Hey, buddy, are you bleeding?"

"Huh?"  Ken looked at his chest, which was covered in blood.  "Oh, shit—"

"No, it's coming from the mother," the woman pointed out.

The cow's mammoth head rose out of the water and let out a deep moan.

Behind the beast, something was battering the surface waters, spraying great froths of lather in all directions.

*        *        *        *        *

The Megalodon snaked its way along the sloping sandy bottom, straining to reach its prey.  Twisting sideways, a pectoral fin slapping above the waves, the hunter bit down on the whale's bleeding muscular peduncle and attempted to drag the beached behemoth, tail first, back out to sea.

*        *        *        *        *

Ken's feet slipped away from the bottom as the powerful undertow dragged him into deeper water.

"Hey, man, can you tell if the calf's fluke is free?"

"Its fluke?  You mean its tail?" Ken asked.  Cautiously he moved behind the calf.  "I can't see a damn thing, the tail's submerged."  Feeling the undertow pulling him into deeper water, he dove forward, swimming hard against the current while trying to stay clear of the adult humpback thrashing ten feet behind him.

*        *        *        *        *

The Megalodon registered the vibrations of the new life-form.  Releasing the cow, it flailed along the surface in twenty feet of water, its nostrils snorting the surface like a mad bull.

*        *        *        *        *

Ken looked up to see the two men abandon the calf, pulling their female companion into shallow water.  Back on the beach, two dozen onlookers were waving frantically.  He saw his wife—heard her scream.

A wave of fear tingled through his stomach.

He turned to look over his shoulder, allowing the current to drag him backward another five feet.

"Oh my fucking God—"

The freakish great white thrust its head forward, snapping its jaws ten feet behind him.

Ken lunged forward and swam against the powerful undertow.

The Megalodon's sickle-shaped tail slapped the surface, its garage-size head twisting to and fro.

Exhausted, the out-of-shape forty-year-old was forced to rest, barely able to raise his arms.  As he drifted backward, his left foot made contact with something that felt like sandpaper.

"Oh, shit—"

Adrenaline surging through his body, Ken dove forward and swam with all his strength, keeping his head underwater to streamline his upper torso as he distanced himself from the creature's snout.  Swimming blindly, he rammed his head against the side of the calf, gasping as he came up for air.  Pushing off the stranded whale with two feet, he dove forward, managing to catch an incoming swell.

A pair of arms reached out for him.  He swam through them, continuing until his chest literally scraped along the bottom.  Then he stood, the world spinning, as he staggered onto the beach and collapsed next to his sobbing wife and children.

The adult humpback reared up onto its flippers, lifting its head above the waves.  In its final moment of life, the beast managed to trumpet its death call, an agonizing exhalation of pink spray.

A hushed crowd of onlookers watched in awe as an imposing pale white dorsal fin, streaked with smears of scarlet foam, zigzagged across the surface.  The monstrous shark slammed into the submerged carcass of its dying prey, the exposed upper lobe of its crescent moon-shaped tail thrashing wildly about, dousing the mutilated whale with its own innards.

Ken shivered, his heart beating rapidly, as he watched the tortured mammal being towed backward into the sea, its head disappearing beneath a pool of blood.