Posted by Thanatos on May 01, 2000 at 16:08:52:
Author's note:
I hesitated before posting this one, so soon after my 'Hitgirl' story that Sonya put up on FO this week. They have some situational similarities, but the motivation behind the two stories is entirely different, and it is coincidence that they are both up at the same time. I submitted the first pass at 'Hitgirl' in March (reworked from an even earlier story I posted last year on FF) and have only just completed this story.
Anyway, enough excuses; here it is. Take a deep breath; it's shark attack time...
CRASH DIVE (c) Thanatos Reborn 2000
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The Sunseeker 105 hardly swayed at its anchor off the Bahamas. Its vast bulk was hardly perturbed by the gentle swell, and it was well ballasted, to stay stable in the roughest seas.
Follow me now, while I take you on a guided tour of this vast yacht, the plaything of a multi-millionaire.
No, they cannot see us; they are busy getting ready for the evening, and we can flit at will through the doors and bulkheads.
The first thing you notice about the yacht is its enormous size; it dwarfs anything else in the sea. Even the biggest boats that you've ever seen moored at a marina are tiny minnows next to the 105.
There are three decks. The first deck, open to the sun and the sky, allows nearly twenty people to sit, or lounge, or just spread out and sunbathe, while under the covered bridge, three more can sit to the rear and the left of the Captain's chair, and two more to the right. The Captain sits in a large, elevated chair in front of a wide console that shows him radar, sonar and satellite navigation displays, and by his right hand are the throttle quadrants that control the twin M.A.N. diesels. A semi-spiral stair to the right of the Captain's chair takes you down to the Saloon.
You gasp as you walk in, and see what can be accomplished by modern British boat building at its best. The main Saloon, or stateroom, to the stern, is dominated by the huge wooden table, that can seat ten people in luxury for dinner, in front of an angled bar. To the other end of the huge room, twenty-four feet away, are twelve more seats arranged round two coffee tables. The sweet smell of wood and varnish fill your nose as you walk around, tracing your hand over the table, feeling the soft leather of the seats, and the evening sunshine streaming through the side windows illuminates the scene with a mellow warmth.
And there's more. You walk forward now, past the spiral stair, and come to the first of the huge double bedrooms that grace the boat. The room is bigger than most bedrooms in most houses, and spans the entire usable width of the hull, over eighteen feet. There is an en suite bathroom, with tiled floor, twin washbasins, and a huge shower.
A naked couple is having sex in the shower.
The water runs down their backs as their young tanned body of the male pounds into the gasping female, that he holds suspended in the air in front of him, her legs wrapped round his body. You watch his gluteal muscles contract with each powerful thrust, and the delighted gasp of his female partner as he drives his penis into her tight vagina. She approaches orgasm, and you watch as her fingernails draw lines of blood down his back, that mingles with the shower water and runs in red streaks down the drain.
You leave the gasps and groans behind, and head back to the spiral stair, and you descend to the accommodation deck. You don't need to see the serving galley on the other side of the boat that can cater for fifty people.
The accommodation deck, the lowest and longest of the three decks, is where the guests and crew sleep. Starting at the bow, there is a single bedroom, and then moving back, we find twin bedrooms either side, each with their own wardrobes. Shared shower rooms and toilets either side. Then the main galley, with seating for eight round a kitchen table one side, and a kitchen area big enough for a large house on the other.
Then behind the galley, two larger twin bedrooms either side, each with wardrobes and an en suite shower room.
The couples in here are getting ready for the evening. It is going to be a party; that much we can tell from the ultra-short slip dresses that are pulled over tanned shoulders and waists, and expensive, designer shirts casually thrust into pants. There are boxes scattered on the floor as new shoes are put on for their first outing.
Finally, at the rear of the accommodation deck, comes the master bedroom, and a double bed in the exact center, facing you. A double sofa under the portholes to starboard, and an office desk and chair to port. And behind all this, a huge walk-in wardrobe and a vast bathroom, with a double bath and separate toilet.
Inside the toilet, behind a locked door, a 30-year old female is sat on the toilet seat, hunched over something that she is doing. Her head bends closer, then she throws herself back and she smiles as she sprawls on the toilet seat, as she experiences the whole body orgasm that only the users can know.
You ponder the contrast between the two explosions of pleasure you have witnessed as you leave the twitching female and head back, into the engine bay, where the twin M.A.N. diesels crouch. These gigantic engines can power this leviathan of the seas forward at a speed that would embarrass many powerboats, and behind the engine room is the garage, with room for a water-ski boat to seat six, and two jet skis.
One hundred and five feet (over 32 meters) from bow to stern, and a cool six million Euros, fitted out like this. It can sleep thirteen in luxury, or more than twice that number in debauchery. You breathe in as you translate that into US Dollars, or Pounds, or Deutschmarks, or Australian Dollars. It is an incredible amount of money.
But it is an incredible boat.
The sun is going down now, and we fade back from our voyeuristic tour, and the people are getting ready for the party. Those that were on deck, or out water-skiing, are back in their cabins now, and exotic perfumes mingle with the scents of new clothes and new leather as they prepare for the evening.
Now the guests arrive, and two, no, three more boats arrive and moor close alongside, and they are large and impressive boats, but they are insignificant against this monster. They drop anchor and exchange shouted greetings, and as the tropical sun dips towards the horizon, they are ferried aboard, and the evening is filled with the clinking of glasses and high, excited laughter.
The huge yacht weighs anchor and, with a soft bubbling of its twin diesels, sets off on a leisurely tour of the island, and the hosts and their guests, nearly thirty of them, gather on the deck to watch the tropical sunset. Perhaps they see the Green Flash, or perhaps not, but there is a scattered cheer as the sun goes down, and black night descends like a cloak on the Caribbean.
The yacht's lights, which have been kept off for the sunset, come on now, and it moves off across the sea.
* * *
The yacht made a slow circuit of the island as the party got under way, keeping a respectful distance away from the land, but the police and coastguard had been well bribed for turning a blind eye this evening, and in any case they were heading out into International waters.
Alcohol was just for starters, and there was no need to hide in the bathrooms any more; laid out alongside the exotic canapés were an equally exotic selection of purified pharmaceuticals that were short circuits to intense pleasure and enhanced staying power. The women laughed and unconsciously moved their bodies to the pounding music that came from the speakers on deck and in the saloon, and the men's eyes stopped swiveling around and started to fixate on their partners, as the alcohol and the drugs and the music leaked into their brains.
The bedrooms had all been cleared and the doors left open for anyone that might want to use them, and the crew looked discreetly away as in twos and threes, guests and their partners stole away at intervals and disappeared into the rooms below.
* * *
It was much later, and the stars glittered in the tropical night, and it had become cooler, and most of the guests had retreated to the Saloon deck. Apart from two of the crew, there was no one on deck except for the couple that had been in the shower earlier. They were the last ones dancing on deck, and they held each other close, swaying to the music, pressing their hips against each other.
'Have you enjoyed yourself?' Marty asked his partner.
Teri smiled, and pushed a blue Viagra tablet into her partner's mouth and kissed him on the lips as it went down.
'Does that answer your question?' she grinned wickedly.
'Haven't you had enough already?' he laughed.
'I can never have enough,' she said fiercely, 'the shower was just for starters.' Teri stared up into his eyes, and Marty saw a predatory gleam in them that made him shiver slightly in the cooler air.
She took his hand.
'Come on, let's go below, there's something I want to show you.'
She led him up to the bridge, past the glowing consoles and the silent Captain, and she glanced at the position display before ducking down and leading him down the half-spiral. She went past the noise and the laughter of the Saloon deck, and down the full spiral, to the relative quiet of the accommodation deck.
'The forward rooms,' she indicated.
'Why? Isn't our cabin free?'
'Not last time I looked,' she grinned mischievously, 'I saw Kathryn and Denise going in there, and you know how long they will be in there!'
He laughed with her, and they went forward, and found the starboard bedroom unoccupied.
Teri barred the way.
'Wait here,' she commanded, 'I want to get changed, and show you something.'
Marty smiled in surprise and interest, and she closed the door. From inside, there was the noise of a wardrobe being opened, and something being unzipped. He tried the doors of the other two forward bedrooms while she changed, but they were all locked, and he stole into the galley and helped himself to a half-finished tray of canapés that was lying there.
He came back, carrying the tray and eating as he went.
'Are you ready yet?' he asked, leaning on the bulkhead and tapping on the door, 'I'm working up a huge appetite out here!' He popped another canapé into his mouth.
The door lock drew back in reply. He expected her to open the door, but there was just silence. She obviously wanted him to open the door, and a slow grin spread across his face.
Marty pushed the door open.
He stood still in complete surprise, still holding the tray of canapés. She was facing him, and she was dressed in a one-piece blue wetsuit that covered her in tight blue neoprene. Her feet were encased in blue dive boots, and her hands in blue dive gloves, and her exotic hairstyle had been tucked into a tight blue dive hood. A tank on her back and a dangling regulator completed the picture.
She wasn't smiling any more.
Her eyes were a cold ice blue, and in her gloved hands she held a small device with a radio antenna extended. She pressed it, then held it towards him so that he could see the big red figures of an LED display counting down:
9.... 8...
'The sex was good, Marty, it really was,' she said, in a dispassionate tone, and she pulled the dive mask onto her face, and wrapped her limbs round one of the compartment's grab rails.
4... 3... announced the numbers, falling towards zero and oblivion.
'Bye bye, Marty,' she said, and pressed her hands over where her ears were under her dive hood.
'No...' Marty began to say, but a light like a flashbulb lit the side of his face, and then his breath was driven from his lungs by a hammer blow that tore down the corridor.
The threesome that were entwined on the huge bed in the master bedroom, directly in front of the engine room bulkhead, died instantly, and the shock wave from the explosion tore up the corridor, hurling razor-sharp slivers of wood and glass reinforced plastic into Marty's body, knocking him clean off his feet and sending the metal tray spinning.
The door to the bedroom was wrenched half off its hinges.
Blood spattered wetly against the wrecked door.
On the deck above, the explosion had taken the rear of the saloon deck away, where ten people had been sitting. They had been torn into bloody ruin by the rocket of exploding metal, wood and plastic that burst up through the floor, followed by the Captain and the one remaining crewmember that had been standing on the aft deck when the explosion blew up through the saloon.
The blast from the explosion knocked over everyone in the boat, bursting most of their eardrums, and for now they lay on the floor, too disoriented to understand what had happened. One woman felt down to the bloody stump where her left leg had been, and felt the blood spurting from her severed artery before she fainted from shock.
Below the waterline, a huge hole had been punched out under the engine room, and water was fountaining in, flooding the stern compartments and the master bedroom.
The lighting flickered once and went out, plunging below decks into darkness, but was immediately replaced by the dim glow of the emergency lighting, powered by waterproof batteries away from the shattered engine room.
The boat was beginning to dip stern-first into the water.
In the forward bedroom, as far away as she could get from the explosion, Teri unwrapped herself from the grab rail and put the regulator into her mouth, and moved out into the corridor.
Marty gazed up at her, his eyes bloodshot and staring. Blood from his burst eardrums trickled down his head, and his hand clutched weakly at a piece of wood embedded in his chest. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out, just a feeble gasp for help.
She stepped over his struggling body just as the other doors to the bedrooms were being flung back, and naked men and women staggered out in a panicked daze.
Teri pulled out the pin on the cylindrical grenade that she held in her hand, and dropped it casually to the deck. There was a sharp crack, and a venomous hissing, and Teri involuntarily held her breath behind her mouthpiece as chlorine gas belched out, turning the air in the confined space poisonous in seconds.
'Oh, Jeesus!' one of the men cried, recognizing the smell, and he slammed the door to their cabin, barricading them in their tomb, but the others, too dazed to realize, breathed in the gas, and their faces contorted as it seared their lungs and they started coughing uncontrollably.
Marty, helpless on the floor, could only grope at the air in terror as the chlorine gas, heavier than air, rolled across to envelop him, and he writhed in silent agony, his legs flailing.
Teri went and stood over him. He seemed to be reaching up to her.
She leaned down and tore open his shirt, exposing his ruined chest, and located the key on its fine chain that hung round his neck, and yanked it backwards, snapping the chain. Marty's final stare was one of betrayal and despair as she stood up and carefully placed the key into the slate pocket of her suit.
The other victims were on their knees, clutching at their burning throats as Teri left them to their choking fate, and padded back towards the stern. She had to sidestep huge chunks of expensive wooden paneling that had been blown all the way up the corridor, and duck to get under a hand basin that was wedged solid across the passage. There was no need to check out the master bedroom or the two rooms alongside; there was no sign of movement from either room, and the water cascading from their smashed doors lapped at her booted feet as she climbed up the spiral stair to the ruin of the saloon.
As she climbed out and went into the wreck of the saloon deck, the first screaming was beginning. There were at least twelve survivors from the explosion that had torn out the aft half of the saloon, and they were recovering from the concussion, to the sight of water lapping in through the jagged hole in the floor. It was flowing in from the flooded master bedroom below, and the survivors' faces turned to seek the only way out, only to find Teri in her diving gear barring the only exit, at the highest point of the steepening floor.
Some of them started to wade through the sloshing water to her, screaming for help.
She drew her spear gun and carefully loaded it, locking the steel shaft home, and pointed it at the chest of the man that was nearest, and fired.
The spear scythed through his chest and out of his back in a bloody spray that sent him sliding back down the deck.
'Let us out - we're going to die!' one of the women screamed at Teri, unable to believe that someone was barring their way.
Teri calmly reloaded her spear gun, breathing steadily through her regulator.
'Please!' another male passenger begged, 'let us out! We'll all drown if you don't!'
'Listen to him!' yelled the first woman, 'please let us - AARGHH!'
The woman cried in pain as the steel spear tore through her at point-blank range and sent her crashing backwards down the sloping floor, her arms flailing.
'You evil bitch!' screamed another voice; 'You'll die in hell for this!'
And then it didn't matter anymore, because the flood of water became a deluge, and the men and women were pleading, crying and screaming to be let out, but the cascading, foaming water was almost up to the ceiling, and then all their mouths were upturned, gasping to get air.
They were going to drown in front of her.
She felt a guilty rush of excitement as the water rushed up and closed over her head, and for a moment, she could see nothing but a mass of bubbles.
Then, as the bubbles cleared, she was rewarded with the sight of all of them underwater, their faces contorted in terror, as they tried to hold their breath in the water that filled the interior of the boat. The most terrified let all their air out in one gasp, and inhaled water, suffocating swiftly as the glottis slammed shut in its reflex to water in the larynx. The women's tiny dresses clung tightly to their bodies as they struggled and kicked in their death agonies, and Teri watched, fascinated, as they turned over and over in the water, their mouths open, vainly trying to get air. Their chests heaved in spasms, their shoes falling off in their struggles, until one by one they succumbed, and floated unconscious in the water.
The better swimmers were holding their breath, and swam for the windows, and beat on them in desperation, using up their reserves of oxygen in a vain attempt to escape. One of them even swam towards her, determined to try to get past her.
Teri drew her dive knife.
His hands went straight for her regulator, as she knew they would, and she grabbed a wrist and threw him into an arm lock. They struggled for several delicious seconds, but she was breathing pure clean air, and his lungs were filling with carbon dioxide, and she didn't need to use the dive knife, she just had to hold onto him as his body jerked and twisted and his strength failed. Teri felt him spasm as he let go in his final enormity, and the water rushed into his mouth.
She drank in the scene in exquisite slow motion, feeling the slight plop as the water rushed into his windpipe, then the agonized convulsions as he suffocated, unable to inhale anything, even water, and he kicked and thrashed about, banging her against the walls and ceiling, her tank clanking against the metal fittings.
She released him, and realized that she was panting, and not just from the exertion; she was painfully aroused, and the sight of the remaining victims enduring their death throes was making it worse.
She made a big effort to get her breathing under control as she sheathed her dive knife; she didn't want to waste any air and she had to get to the deck. By now, the water was fountaining up and out of the staircase and into the bridge, and she had to pull herself hand over hand through the torrent and up the stairwell, and as she emerged, the water was washing over the edge of the main deck, and the boat was about to disappear below the surface.
She sat down in the Captain's chair, and held herself in it as water gushed in from all sides, engulfing the deck, the bridge, and the rails, gushing over her suit and closing over her head. She felt a sensual rush of pleasure as the beautiful, stricken yacht hesitated, then nosed over and fell into the deep like a diving aircraft, and she rode down with it as it died.
A thin stream of air bubbles came from the boat as it fell, as air pockets and lungs emptied.
Twenty feet, and the water around her went cold as they plunged through the thermocline, and Teri kept an eye on her depth gauge as the seconds ticked past and the falling boat settled into a steady fall, heading for the bottom.
Sixty feet, and something imploded deep inside the hull, and the falling boat shuddered in its fall. Teri held on.
One hundred feet, and she left the seat and floated away, out of the bridge, and held on to a rail.
One hundred and eighty feet, and she let go, and the boat fell away beneath her, shining like a ghost ship in the dark water.
Just in time. The boat crashed into the bottom with a tearing crunch, and settled down, falling over to one side as it settled on its keel. Some of the lights went out as bulbs imploded under the pressure and the shock of the landing.
Teri hovered above the boat, watching the circle of disturbed sand settle round it, and remained there, like a watching ghost, until the cloud had dispersed enough for her to see the outline of the boat again.
She clicked on her dive light and floated back down to the boat. Now she had to accomplish her mission, and at this depth there were only a few minutes before her air was used up.
She swam back into the bridge, and then down the stairwell, down into the lower accommodation deck, and made her way forward, back to the bedroom where she had pressed the detonator.
They were all dead.
Marty and the others looked back at her, their eyes rolled up, and their agonized expressions showed that they had died from the chlorine long before the water had closed over their bodies, and they were all on the floor of the boat, their lungs full of water.
Teri floated through the doorless entrance to the bedroom and located the second tank that she had hidden there, and exchanged the tanks quickly. Even with the fresh tank, she didn't have much time.
She swam back along the boat to the stairwell, and up one deck to the wrecked saloon, for the last time.
She ignored the floating, turning bodies, and went straight for the picture that was fastened to the forward wall of the saloon, and swung it aside. The safe behind it opened to Marty's key, and she extracted the documents inside it. There was a slim blue notebook, and what appeared to be some legal papers. Teri checked them briefly, then slipped them inside a plastic wallet that would allow them to be dried later, and placed them inside her suit before zipping it up again.
She carefully relocked the safe and swung the picture back.
Good. Fine so far.
A hand touched her shoulder.
Teri yelled into her regulator and whirled round in fright, and let out an involuntary scream.
Ten dead bodies floated, staring back at with their sightless eyes. They were all turned to look at her, and the nearest, its arms outstretched, had moved up to touch her.
Teri floundered in the water, and pressed herself back against the wall, taking deep breaths on her precious air.
Many of them were wide-eyed and staring, and their mouths were open, as if trying to take one last breath before the water suffocated them. Two of them had already settled to the bottom of the room, but the ones that had died last, the strongest ones, floated still. The women, graceful in death as in life, floated face down, with arms outstretched, their dresses spread round them, like strange angels in the gloom.
Then Teri saw that they were all still moving and turning in the faint currents that still swirled in the interior of the boat, and the moment vanished like smoke in the wind. Some were turned away now, and the woman that had touched her had rebounded and was rolling away again.
It had just been a quirk of fate that they had all been looking at her.
Just a quirk of fate.
She watched in declining fear as she reassured herself that it was nothing, and as her fear subsided, her arousal came. The terror at seeing all their faces, followed by the thrill of being alive and safe, and being surrounded by all the dead people, filled her with a sense of power and invulnerability. Her erectile tissues were red and turgid with the excess oxygen from diving at this depth, and almost against her own will, her body trembled inside the tight blue suit, her clitoris engorged and tingling, her nipples erect.
She had to do it, she had to. It was the chance of a lifetime, and she took it.
She moved out to touch one of them. It was a woman, her dress torn wide open in the blast, or during her death throes; Teri had no idea, but she hung there in the water, silent, staring, and Teri had to touch her.
Teri removed one of her dive gloves and gingerly touched the dead woman's face. The body recoiled slightly in the water, and the dead woman's hair moved like a mass of floating seaweed in the tide.
She was so beautiful in death, Teri thought, and wondered if her own death would ever be this graceful, or if anyone would ever see it like this, in the deeps of the sea, so perfect, so still.
So dead.
Teri pulled the dead woman down until she floated level with her, her blank eyes looking back at Teri.
Teri reached out with her hand and smoothed the dead girl's hair back, so that she could see the face.
She was very beautiful.
Teri's hand reached up and slowly unzipped her wetsuit, from the throat to her crotch, and as the tight material parted, exposing her breasts, the cold water gushed in. Her nipples jerked upright at the mild shock.
Teri pressed herself against the girl's body, and their breasts met, and Teri felt the coldness of the dead girl against her own body warmth.
She felt a rush of hot blood to her clitoris, and she wrapped her legs round the girl, pulling her closer.
Then she took a deep breath, spat out her regulator, and kissed the dead girl full on the lips.
She tasted of salt from the sea, and Teri thought that she would never forget that kiss on the bottom of the sea, lit by the dim emergency lamps, surrounded by the watching dead.
Teri let go, and retrieved her dangling regulator and took a deep breath, and consulted her dive watch.
Jesus Christ.
She had barely enough air left to make it to the surface. She zipped her suit back up and kicked away from the bodies. They bounced off each other in a slow ballet as she fled the cabin and burst from the bridge.
Then she saw the long, silver shadows gliding by in the middle distance, and her blood ran cold as she realized that the mangled bodies of the bomb victims had been leaving a thin plume of their blood trailing from the boat. Hardly visible to humans, but it was like a beacon to the sharks that infested these waters, and they had come in force.
They were circling round the boat, swimming in that sinister, unpredictable motion of theirs, and they rolled their cold, killing eyes as they swam past, sizing up their prey. They were getting excited; she knew enough about sharks to know that she was in deep trouble, and she looked again at her dive watch, figuring out compression stops in her head.
She was already in trouble, without the sharks; she had less than adequate air to make the surface, but she could miss out one of the earlier stops and hope for the best.
But the moment she left the safety of the boat, the sharks would be on her.
Her throat went dry as she realized she was staring death in the face.
She went through an agony of indecision.
Then the circling sharks shrank back, and something else appeared.
It was a huge Tiger shark, fully six meters long, and her terror went through the roof as it swam round the wreck. It opened and closed its jaw, tasting the invisible blood in the water, and the twin rows of teeth stood on end, readying for the kill.
And Teri's nerve snapped.
She kicked off the deck of the boat for the surface.
She had no fins on; they would have been an encumbrance during the sinking, and her legs flailed madly in her dive boots as she swam up towards the surface, a million miles away. Silver fish glittered in the surface waters, and sunlight played on the surface, and her eyes filled with tears at the thought of the life, and the air.
No, no, please, not this, not like this...
Something brushed past her, and she felt skin, like sandpaper, ripping against her suit, spinning her round.
She knew it was testing the prey, and that the next time it would be the kill.
She screamed in terror into her regulator, and swam in a frenzy for the surface, and the giant Tiger shark turned, sensing the distress of the prey, and the automatic killing reflexes clicked home in its brain, and it came for her.
Teri felt, rather than saw, it coming, and she looked forward in time to see its terrible bulk coming for her like an express train from hell. Its jaw opened wide, its teeth sprang outwards, and in the last seconds Teri drew her dive knife and held it forward in a vain attempt to beat it off...
The shark plunged into her between her splayed legs, ramming its snout almost up to her chest, and then two rows of razor-sharp teeth plunged into her, from in front and from behind. They sliced through the thin neoprene of her wetsuit as if it wasn't there, and she gave a shrill, gurgling cry as the teeth pierced her soft flesh to the bone. She felt her pelvis break in several short cracks as the crushing force of the shark's jaw closed on her abdomen, and her blood gushed out, filling her suit with a hot liquid sensation as her legs kicked uselessly on either side of its massive head.
The momentum of the attack carried her backward with the shark, and the dive knife spun away from her nerveless, twitching fingers, and then the shark opened its jaws slightly and rammed itself higher up her body, and bit down again. Her ribs collapsed, and the teeth sliced cleanly through her air hose, sending it whipping round as it spewed compressed air into the water, and she inhaled water.
She was dying now, drowning and dying from blood loss and shock. Her vision narrowed to a tunnel. Her arms thrashed feebly, and she shark started to worry at her, tossing her inert form from side to side as it tried to tear her limb from limb. She was still conscious, and her blood filled the water now, driving the shark into a killing frenzy. The shark's teeth scraped against her steel tank, and she was still alive and conscious, her vision going dark now, as her legs were severed at the hip and fell away, and her body started inching its way down, down, into the shark's esophagus.
Her last conscious sensation was the powerful swallowing action in the shark's mouth, as she started the terrible journey down into its stomach...
* * *
The giant shark gulped down Teri's inert body whole. Her head and arms trailed from its mouth as it shook them from side to side. Her air tank fell away once the shark bit through the straps holding it on, and the shark swallowed her in a few massive gulps, severing one of her arms, blood streaming into the water.
In moments, the smaller sharks were attacking her severed limbs, and a few minutes later Teri was just a bloody memory, obscured by feeding, thrashing sharks.
Her tank fell to the seabed, still venting compressed air from its severed hose, sending a stream of dancing bubbles up through the blood-obscured water.
Soon, it slowed, as the pressure inside the tank fell to that of the water outside.
Finally, with a last few bubbles, it stopped altogether.
* * *
They never found Teri's body, or the notebook containing the names, or the original copy of Marty's will that she had stolen.
In time, the other bodies were recovered and pieced together, and the story of the sinking was pieced together, from the moment when the bomb had been detonated to when they had found the boat on the seabed. They even managed to recover some fragments of the bomb victims.
They found out enough to know that a cold-blooded killer had stalked the ship after the bomb had gone off, but although they found her abandoned knife and tank, they never found her, and the sharks that prowl the seas tell no secrets.
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Thanatos@reborn.com