Only Human

“All stop,” Captain DiQuesto barked.

“All stop, Aye,” Lieutenant Commander Shepherd answered.

“Let’s see what’s on the T.V.,” DiQuesto said.

DiQuesto and Shepherd moved over to the monitor where Seaman Beaumont flipped switches and took hold of the joystick controlling the photonics mast.

DiQuesto’s stomach roiled, the stump at the end of her right arm itched and the heartburn she was already experiencing from the galley’s coffee festered in her chest.

She took a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly. The hook, which had served as her right hand for the past thirty-one years now moved to her neck and pulled the chain on which hung her dog tag and a large shark’s tooth. Kissing the tooth, she offered the prayer to St. Jude for lost items, and let the chain drop.

The screen lit up with the rust-colored sky. Black waves, slick with the greasy chunks that served as chum these days, like so much vomit dancing on the ocean’s surface, slapped the lens as Seaman Beaumont directed the camera first left then right then all the way around three-hundred sixty degrees.

“Sonar?” She asked.

“No contacts, Cap’n,” Seaman Johnston answered.

DiQuesto felt stomach acid skittering up her esophagus like a roach up a pipe. She wanted—no, needed a drink. Needed it like a starving man needed food. Like parched land needed water. Like the ocean needed sharks.

Her left hand massaged her breastbone to quell her heartburn, and she decided she’d settle on something to settle her stomach acid instead.

“Ben,” DiQuesto shouted. She felt a light tap on her right hip and looked down.

A boy of eight stood beside her. Ben wasn’t his real name. They had no idea what his real name was. He hadn’t spoken since they’d rescued him from the chum-line three weeks ago. Thrown overboard by one of the chum boats, DiQuesto imagined.

Finding Ben was the first time since the USS Devil Ray (Hunter Killer) had been repurposed and renamed to Remorse (Searcher Rescuer) that DiQuesto wondered if maybe all the Great Whites were indeed gone.

“Fetch me a cup of coffee—no…tea.” She rubbed her breastbone again. “Chamomile. With honey."

Ben threw a sloppy salute and turned for the hatchway.

DiQuesto stopped him. “Ben.”

The boy turned around to face her.

“You don’t have to salute me,” DiQuesto said in a softer tone.

Ben nodded as he saluted her again, then turned and darted through the hatch.

Shepherd watched the boy disappear then turned to DiQuesto. “Maybe Ben shouldn’t be allowed to roam the boat…unaccompanied.”

DiQuesto’s eyebrows raised in a question.

Shepherd said nothing.

And then DiQuesto sucked in a deep breath of realization at what Shepherd wasn’t saying. Some members of the crew were not only hating the boy but thinking of harming him.

She guessed it was only human after all. They’d all volunteered for this mission. They’d left their friends and families, believing a Great White was out there. Somewhere. And the Remorse would find him. It might take months, but they’d find him. That was three years ago.

And then they’d found the boy clinging to a piece of wood, paddling the water like an injured seal and not one sighting or sonar contact. The boy was a reminder of how desperately hopeless and wasteful this mission seemed to be. Friends and family had died or decided to move on. Intimacy sacrificed for immediacy. It was only human.

DiQuesto nodded at Shepherd who nodded back.

Ben came through the hatchway carrying a cup, setting it on the map table.

“You have the Conn, Mr. Shepherd,” DiQuesto said. “Take us down to six-hundred feet. All ahead full.” She looked at the boy. “Come on, Ben. Let’s get some fresh air.” She headed through the hatch.

Ben followed.

The crew said nothing. But all eyes followed the boy.

Shepherd cleared his throat.

Eyes snapped back to their duties.

Shepherd issued the orders.

DiQuesto stepped into her cabin, unbuttoning her uniform blouse.

Ben followed her in and shut the door.

“I think you should stay in my cabin from now on,” DiQuesto said, hanging her blouse on the back of her chair, then moving to the small mirror in her personal head. “With the door locked,” she said over her shoulder.

Ben said nothing.

DiQuesto ran her fingers through her once auburn hair now faded to gray. Studied the lines around her eyes. Ran her fingers over the skin loosening around her neck.

She saw the black triangle peeking just over the collar of her T-shirt. Running a finger over the tattoo, she gently pulled the collar down with her hook and gazed at the black silhouette of the Great White.

DiQuesto suddenly felt very constricted, as if the T-shirt were something living, tightening, like a boa constrictor. Cutting off her breath. She had to get it off her. She dragged the hook down through the fabric, letting it fall away.

DiQuesto wore no bra. She had no reason. Her entire torso resembled less a human and more a gnarled and scorched tree trunk. Tattooed across her bark of skin were the profiles of a dozen different species of shark.

The hairs on the back of her head prickled with the feeling she was being watched. Looking up she saw Ben’s reflection in the mirror staring at her.

The color drained from the boy’s sun-kissed skin as he saw her reflection staring at him staring at her. His head swiveled and his eyes darted as his entire body turned in a complete circle.

It would’ve been comical to DiQuesto if it hadn’t been for the rictus of absolute terror blazing on the boy’s face.

“It’s okay,” DiQuesto said in as soothing a tone as she could muster. She raised her hands in what she hoped was a placating gesture. “Shhh, it’s all right,” she cooed, dropping to her knees in front of the boy.

His body trembled violently like a flag in a gusty breeze.

DiQuesto put a hand and a hook on the boy’s shoulders.

Ben stood stock-still.

DiQuesto said, “You’re not in trouble.” She softened her tone. “I’m not going to hurt you, and I’m not going to allow anyone else to hurt you either.” She looked into his eyes. “Do you understand?”

Ben looked long into her eyes.

DiQuesto felt the boy’s body relax.

His eyes dropped down to the tattoos and then back up to her face.

She released him, rocking back on her haunches to put some space between them. Gesturing at the tattoos she said, “These are the species I’m responsible for extinguishing. This one,” she tapped the Great White silhouette, “was personal. Or at least I thought it was. I’ve come to realize I was in his house.”

Ben raised a hand and gestured to her torso.

She nodded, pursing her lips, suddenly feeling the urge to explain herself. Unburden herself. Maybe even absolve herself.

“One day, we decided that sharks had to go.” DiQuesto’s breathing sped up as she bit her lip. “I guess that’s only human right?” She looked into Ben’s eyes. “Domesticate. Or destroy. It’s what we’ve done to every species of animal, including human, who is already where we want to be.”

Ben’s eyes, like his face, were expressionless. He said nothing.

“We exterminated the sharks. All the sharks. Anywhere and everywhere. And then the reefs died. The fish died. The seas died. And then we,” she made an all-encompassing gesture, “all started to die.”

Ben said nothing.

DiQuesto laughed without humor. “That’s when we decided exterminating all the sharks wasn’t maybe such a good idea after all.”

DiQuesto watched Ben ponder all that she had said, watched as he came to a decision. He looked her in the eyes, pointed at the tattoo of the Great White on her chest, then pointed at himself and then to his temple.

Her jaw dropped. She tried to swallow but couldn’t. Her mouth had gone dry. Finally, she managed, “You know where there’s a Great White?” Her body began to tremble. “Are you sure?”

Ben nodded.

“Will you tell me?” DiQuesto asked, her voice sounding to her not like that of the skipper of a nuclear submarine but a little girl.

Ben looked from her tattoos to her face and shook his head.

DiQuesto stared at the boy in disbelief. The acid in her esophagus turned to ice and slid back down into her stomach.

“You have to tell me.” Her voice trembled as her left hand gripped his shoulder and her hook tore into the boy’s skin.

Ben cried out in pain.

“You have to tell me,” DiQuesto repeated, now shaking Ben, the hook sinking through muscle and gristle.

Ben shrieked in agony as hot slick blood poured over his chest.

And then all DiQuesto’s rage, remorse, frustration, crashed over her like a fifty-foot wave over a surfer. It pummeled her, knocking the wind from her lungs, blinding her eyes, deafening her ears. Her body jerked and convulsed. Then something hard struck her head, and her world went black.

She found herself unable to move when she finally swam back to consciousness. As her eyes fluttered open, they focused on a grim-faced Shepherd standing over.

He looked hard into her eyes before saying, “Welcome Back, Skipper.”

DiQuesto attempted to sit up.

Shepherd put a hand on her shoulder. “You’re restrained. We’re heading back to port. Your career, I’m not sad to say, is at an end.”

DiQuesto stared at her executive officer.

“I guess it was just luck I noticed you’d forgotten your teacup on the table and decided to bring it to you,” Shepherd said. “When I got to your cabin, both of you were covered in blood. You were unconscious.”

“Ben?” DiQuesto remembered grabbing him. Hooking him.

“He’ll be all right. Puncture wound in his shoulder, but it turned out most of the blood on him was yours.”

“Mine?” Diquesto asked, completely nonplussed.

Shepherd nodded. “Apparently you had a seizure. Pretty bad one, too. You’d given yourself several bad punctures as well. I guess you got Ben too when he was trying to help you.”

DiQuesto licked her lips. “Did he say anything? About what happened in my cabin I mean.”

Shepherd chuckled. “When’s that kid said anything?”

DiQuesto felt relief tainted with shame at what had happened in her cabin. Not the seizure, but what happened before the seizure. And what would’ve happened if she hadn’t had the seizure. Despite the restraints her body shivered violently.

“Why am I restrained?” DiQuesto asked.

“You’ve had several seizures. Bad. Corpsman thought it best.”

“And that’s why my career is over?”

Shepherd’s face split into a grin as wide as his home state of Texas. “We found a Great White.”

DiQuesto’s eyebrows reached her hairline.

“Two. Actually.” Shepherd beamed. “Male and a female. We’ve named them Adam and Eve.”

“You tell Command yet,” DiQuesto asked.

Shepherd shook his head. “We’ve been tracking them, waiting for you to wake up. Thought you should know first.”

DiQuesto nodded. She looked at the restraints.

Shepherd unfastened them and handed her back her hook.

“Thank you,” DiQuesto said as she swung the hook into Shepherd’s carotid artery.

Shepherd’s eyes asked the question he could not. Why?

“I’m sorry.” She eased him to the floor. “But I can’t allow us to advise anyone. I’ve thought long and hard about this. The only entity not part of the natural order of the world’s ecosystems are humans. Maybe we were once. But not anymore. Now we’re just takers. Just a plague.”

She stood. “Your death will be easier than anyone else’s on this boat. Or this world. I’m sorry, but it’s the best I can give you. Sharks will again hunt the world’s oceans. Humans won’t be around to see it.”

DiQuesto waited till the sheen of life faded from Shepherd’s eyes. Then she went to work.