Vanguard | Post-Apocalyptic YA

Part 1: Big Fish, Little Fish

Yeah, I should have known it wasn't going to be that easy.

As soon as the beast is faced with an obstacle, it doesn't turn right or left, nor does it slow down. Instead, the giant Bluefin shoots straight up, taking a vertical trajectory towards the surface. I have about three seconds before it'll pull the line between us taut, dragging my vessel after it.

I totally waste all three of them.

I'm so surprised by what just happened that I sit at the controls dumbfounded. It's Ray who breaks me out of my stupor.

"Cut the line, Wilhelm!" he yells, but it's too late. My body's slammed backward into the seat, ramming the yoke against my chest as the craft tries to resist the pull. I shift the engines into reverse to counteract the acceleration, but they sputter ominously against the strain. To avoid stalling, I return them to normal propulsion and slowly increase speed. The numbers on my depth gauge decrease incrementally, quickly counting down from five hundred.

"Cut the line! Cut. The damn. Line!" Ray continues, but approaching three hundred feet, I'm still fully determined to take home this prize. Even as we pick up momentum, I feel like I can somehow prevail. Resisting didn't help, so I'm going to try to overtake him. I push the accelerator forward and watch the gauge. Meanwhile, the decreased pressure blurs my vision. 275 feet. 250 feet. 200 feet. 100 feet. The numbers get smaller quicker until I'm almost on him. I can see his beady little fish-eye practically goading me.

"Where are you at, Stingray?" I check in with my wingman, anticipating needing his help again soon.

"Caught in a rip, sir! I can be at your position in two."

Great. What am I supposed to do with this fish for two more minutes? We'll be breaking the surface in twenty seconds at this rate.

Left with no alternative, I reverse the engines again. Hopefully it'll buy enough time for Ray to catch-up. But neither the complete vertical position of my craft, nor how quickly I try to slow it down sit well with the Skipper. A total blackout in the cabin signals I've lost power and successfully stalled the engines. "Well, shit."

Even though I'm dead in the water, I keep ascending. My harpoon's still stuck in the tuna's back and he's on a mad dash toward freedom, which in this case is directly above us.

Above us. My God, he's taking me to the surface! While this realization sinks in, I'm wasting precious seconds that mean I'm getting dozens of feet closer to possible death!

Clink. I detach the line connecting me to the fish. I'm going to have to remember to thank the engineers who designed this thing for making that function completely mechanical, otherwise I'd be totally screwed. But even though I'm no longer tethered to the tuna, the Skipper keeps on rising. I look up through the glass canopy above me and watch as the light filtering through the ocean gets brighter and brighter. Checking my watch, I see it's three in the afternoon. Even without leaving my craft, I could get a lethal dose of radiation within ten minutes.

If I can last that long.

I'm already starting to feel the effects of not having a working air filtration system. Not only is it getting hot in the cabin, but also I'm now using a very limited supply of air. Awesome. I may get to choose which way I'll die: agony of suffocation or misery of radiation poisoning.

I always hoped one day I'd be able to feel the sun on my face and breathe fresh air, but this wasn't the way I had imagined. Not at the price of dying for it.