Hennessey, Part Eight
Hunted
Hennessey’s pups lurched like coals in her belly. Her muscles generated tremendous body heat with every tail stroke. Intricate loops in her blood vessels jealously kept this heat inside her, flouting the sucking cold of the water. So, her pups were constantly bathed in the warmth of her exertions.
Large, warm blooded sharks like Hennessey struggled with live birthing in open water – she feared the shock that would hit her pups if their small bodies were born into frigid water. She herself could haunt such cold waters, her bulk and metabolism could keep her warm for a while. But her pups would be born without her mass or ability to traverse long distances and find warm water. So, she had to find a stable cocoon of warmth for her pups to be born – far from the cold-water seals she was just feeding on. Now that her hunting instinct was calmed by food, she could turn back south and find the warm cove her pups required.
She left the broken spar of rock housing the big seals, and struck out for the original rookery - where the small seals swam. Beyond that rookery, she knew a string of shallow sandy coves – lagoons almost, bathwater warm - stretching to the south that could be the warm water coves she needed.
It was a short journey for such an ocean sojourner, especially with the metabolic glow of a full stomach. Within a day’s travel she retraced her path along the ocean highway. Arriving unerringly at Seal Rocks, she expected to find the small sharks and small seals that she’d so recently left…and then expected that she would move south to some warm nursery bay. Easy.
But Seal Rocks was not the same. The seals were all hauled up on the beach, frightened by a shallow-water frenzy. The young sharks raced from one side of the rookery to the other. Not hunting, just racing. They had been jolted from their normal behavior by some overwhelming stimulus. They had been jolted from thier normal behavior by a smell.
Hennessey stopped. She sensed liver and blood and oil in the water - a heavy olfactory burden that crept up on her. Slick smells of fish oil and metallic blood in the water trapped her in a sensory prison. Caution was vital in her heavy state, so close to the end, but that sanguine aroma quickly empowered the bloodiest portions of her nature.
She spun, very much like the younger sharks were doing, swimming a frantic tight circle trying to triangulate the origin of the smell. The direction of the scent was not toward the seals at Seal Rocks. Instead it was toward the south and west – toward the beach.
Hennessey crept in this direction warily, moving away from Seal Rocks. The bloody smell reeked of danger but exerted a pull that she found irresistible, even though the warm water coves she needed for her pups were further to the south, along a different trajectory. The prospect of carnage in one direction and birthing security in another presented Hennessey with dilemmas her predator’s brain was ill-suited to resolve.
Halfway toward the beach from Seal Rocks, she sensed something else: a sound that increased slowly, a coarse pounding in the water. Human machines, present in numbers. Little by little she approached a ring of human noises. Soon the din rose to such a pitch that it became a vicious pounding of floating engines. Bloody chum served as stage dressing for an opera of violence.
Other sharks swirled, just as confused, equally trapped, a congregation of terrible risk. Under the deadly circle of boats, frantic sharks churned and twisted and snapped at floating scraps. They snapped at each other or at insubstantial clouds of blood, their senses burning with the chemical intensity ignited from above. The blood was so thick that it was more than a smell now; it hung in the sea like a shrieking fog, commanding an attack.
The boats that circled above, dumping blood into the water, were looking for her. They’d gathered after Hennessey’s boogie board attack, having seen her from the beach, ignited by a raging, wrong idea that they had to protect their beach from a violent monster. Driven by the subsequent social media storm that drove a spiral of violence, the boats coaxed sharks to the surface with a lie of liquid chum, and then shot them dead.
Hennessey circled, trying to resist. She circled again, pulled toward the southern shores and safety - away from this melee. She circled again, now pulled toward the center, finding even higher concentrations of chum. Overlain on the melee and the chum were the sounds of explosions, and the smell of fresh shark blood. Something was killing her kind.
The circle of death flared every reflex Hennessey had, and all at once she arrowed towards the overpowering scent. She bulled between the other crazed sharks, thrashing the sea into froth. Frantic to attack the source of this chemical insult, she charged towards the boats and the guns. Heedless of the danger.