The Treasure Hunters

After three long weeks at sea searching for cod Jack just needed some time to relax a while; he should’ve known better. He’d only come inside to escape the cold and have a quiet drink in his favourite pub here in the Shetland Islands, a little haven called The Crooked Leg.

"Hey come on! Don’t you want to be rich Captain?" Charlie is his usual over the top self but Jack himself would confess that for a change this time he was interested, "Okay, okay calm down. I didn’t say I aint joining you, just tell me again about this fail safe plan."

Charlie Ferguson, a fairly useful deckhand who Jack had used on and off for the past ten years looks around the pub making sure no one is listening. "I found her, the HMS Incredible, that Royal Navy Destroyer which went missing at the end the Second World War. Come on Captain you’ve heard those stories as much as I have." He gulps down his pint and double checks for prying eyes and ears. "If I go and report it then the Navy will just motor on in and take it all. They’ve searched for it for years and years. You know what they say is in those holds don’t you? Gold! All the gold we took back from the Nazis, crates and crates of the bloody stuff. We just need to go down there and take some of it for ourselves!"

It sure was a tempting offer; Jack was barely breaking even these days. His old trawler "Molly" was just about ready to be turned into scrap and maybe its Captain was too. "So tell me Charlie how the hell did you find it?"

He sniggers to himself "You know me, could never read maps too good. I was out checking some sites with Ian McLean for his scuba diving school, we were supposed to be out at the Brent coral reefs but somehow I got us about four miles off target. That’s when we saw it, only about a hundred feet down, barely visible under the sand and crustaceans but I tell you it’s definitely her."

Swallowing down the last of his sweet stout Jack gets closer and asks "Sounds good but just one thing puzzles me Charlie, why involve me, it seems that that you and Ian have got it all sorted by yourselves?"

"Your boat Captain. We will need lifting gear, a damn big hold and it may well take a few days to find the gold and then get it out so we need something that’s stable and comfortable. But the most important thing is that I trust you; you are a good honest man. That’s what I need with this much gold involved."

"That’s good to hear Charlie, well you can count me in but just having the three of us is not enough to do this safely. We can get out there okay but getting the stuff up just wont be feasible, it needs two in the water and two on deck, we will need at least one more."

Charlie only has to think for a few seconds, "Ians brother Stuart, he’s also an expert diver and a good man as well. That’s the four of us sorted then, we need to go at first light." He stands up and with no further talking or even a simple goodbye he turns and heads off towards the door.

Jack leaves shortly afterwards, time for an early night he decides. He has a feeling he will need it.

Bang! Bang! Jack is woken by someone banging on wheelhouse door; he looks out his window and sees it’s still the middle of the night. He gets himself to the door and finds the three shapes of his fellow bounty hunters. "What in hells name is going on now?" he screams at them to make sure they see his ire. "Sorry Captain" mumbles an embarrassed looking Charlie as he bundles by and dumps his bags on the floor "we just can’t wait any longer, come on let’s just get going now please."

Jack can’t help but laugh out loud. "I see the need for gold has made the need for sleep disappear" but the other three don’t get it, they just want him to get moving.

A quick radio call to the Harbour Masters Office and "Molly" gets the okay to leave and whilst still under the night sky she heads off into the cold vastness of the North Sea. This trusty old workhorse makes slow but steady headway and with the help of some fairly quiet seas they arrive at their destination in just under twelve hours.

Whilst they put on their wetsuits Jack tries his best to temper their greedy enthusiasm "Okay guys we have only about three hours of daylight left. We will go down now and try and locate the gold but we can’t try to get anything out until tomorrow, we need a full days worth of light up here. Everyone understand?" He is not surprised to find he barely gets a grunt out of them in reply.

Splash! They dive into the cold sea; Ian is in front with a guide rope attached to his belt which he will tie off at their destination to make the journey back and forth a little easier. On the trip down Jack soon remembers why he doesn’t go diving much, the darkness is overwhelming him. He can’t see more than a couple of feet in front of himself apart from where the thin beams of their torches point, a fear of the unseen and the unknown cuts right through him.

Now they see it, not really the ship but the vast shape it makes on the sea bed; as Charlie had said it’s covered in over fifty years of sand and silt. Stuart takes over now and points towards the bow of the ship, where the hatches for the main holds are. Just as they get almost on top of them they feel it, a huge surge in the water around them, something just swam past, shit, and it was something frigging big.

Spinning around to face each other they seem to be hoping someone has an answer. Ian pulls up from his belt his pen and marker board, "What the hell was that?" he frantically scribbles down. They are still looking at each other and then out into the deep darkness but all they can see, even with the torchlight, is each others eyes, all which are wide open and full of fear. Ian starts to scribble away again "Come on, lets get moving before whatever that was comes back." As soon as he flashes the board he is off, swimming as fast as he can down towards their prize and just as quickly the rest of them follow.

Standing on the bow they frantically search through the silt trying to find the hatches to the hold, their feet and hands wiping away the years as if they can almost smell the gold below. Suddenly Jack feels the vibrations under his feet, as he looks up he sees Charlie banging away on the metal deck; he’s found it. "Thank Christ for that" thinks Jack. Looking around all he knows is that he needs to get away, away from the vast openness of his surroundings.

With a great deal of effort they manage to pull open the large double doors and as one they peer deep into the darkness below. Stuart attaches another rope to the deck and chucks the free end down into the hold and without even looking at the others he jumps down and in a couple of seconds is out of sight. Seems he just can’t wait.

As they land at the bottom of the first hold Charlie points out a different direction for each of them and then holds up his ten fingers, he is telling them they are splitting up and meeting back here in ten minutes. Jack sets off through the first heavy door and once more come across an empty hold. As his search continues he finds the second and third rooms are also empty. He can’t believe what is going on here, where the hell is all the promised gold. All he can see at first in this hold are some holes in the hull which go directly outside; they are circular and about a foot wide. He stops in his tracks; he sees something. There are some crates in the corner of this third room, they are smashed up and it looks like their contents are lying on the floor.

As he gets close he sees a few two foot long rods of silvery-white metal strewn across the floor; he doesn’t recognise them but he knows it sure isn’t gold. Then he sees the writing on the boxes- Pu/94 and alarm bells start to ring; Crap! He knows exactly what that means from his chemistry lessons at school- it’s frigging radioactive Plutonium that’s lying around! The navy weren’t so damn interested in finding this wreck for its gold it was this damn stuff they were after, it must have been when Britain was trying to make its first nuclear bombs.

He gets back to the drop in point as fast as he can and he finds the others already waiting for him. Grabbing Ians board and pen he starts to try and explain what he found but it’s too late- it’s now that it decides to attack.

The water around them almost explodes with the rapid movement, a massive eight foot long Conger Eel fires in from the room where Jack had just came from.

Almost faster than the eye can see it attacks Charlie, its oversized bulbous silver head snapping and chomping away on his victim. In only a second or two a huge red cloud appears above Charlie as his life is bitten away. No one goes to help him; they are all frozen right where they stand.

As the first continues to feast on the twitching body another two of the beasts enter the chamber and slowly circle the others, Jack can see their bodies more closely now. They are colored a dark silver instead of the normal black except for the masses of rotting sores and infected skin which cover their whole bodies, the only things purely black are their huge lifeless eyes. It seems that by making this ship their home the radiation may have given this family far increased size but it has also destroyed their flesh. Ian makes a dart for safety up the guide rope but the two new eels are soon upon him, each one grabs an arm and with a few vicious twists his limbs are ripped off and downed in a single gulp. Blood sprays out from Ians sockets like some sort of octopus spray and he looks over at Jack in utter disbelief until the eels return to finish their new meal.

Whilst they are all feeding away Jack take his chance and heads off to the room to his left; he leaves Stuart to fend for himself. As soon as he gets inside he pushes the heavy door shut just in time as one of the eels appears at the small circular window in the door, looking right at him. Jack can see through this opening that Stuart does not get away, the first one has got a grip of him by the shoulder, it doesn’t appear to be eating him and in fact it seems to be only holding him in place. Jack then sees why, the other two come over and start to merrily feast upon him, the Alpha male is looking after his family, making sure they all feed well today.

Two long hours of peering through that window pass before Jack sees them lose interest in the remains of the bodies and also in him. They swim back off towards the room with the Plutonium, back to their home with their rotten bellies full of Jacks friends. He checks his air gauge, less than fifteen minutes left; he has got to make his move now. One last check confirms that they are not in the room so the heavy door is pushed opened slowly inch by inch and he takes a nervous first step out.

His shaking hands grab the first guide rope and he begin to pull himself up, foot by foot he rises too scared to even look back until he is out in the open, out into the open sea. Squinting into the darkness he can see no movement so he swims across to the main rope, his lifeline to get the hell out of here and he grabs it. Then he feels it, the water all around him is swirling. They have followed him out. The three of them are circling, almost toying with him as they wait to strike.

The lead conger comes slowly over to Jack, its head a couple of inches from his face. He looks deep into its cavernous mouth; look at its rows of razor sharp teeth with their gaps filled with the flesh of his friends. Then he looks into its black eyes, they reflect his masked face, and it feels like a reflection of his soul. Then it attacks.

Two weeks later the trawler "Rathlin Island" comes across the anchored "Molly". They find no one aboard but the scuba gear is missing. The captain decides to send a couple of his men down the depths to see what’s happened.

It seems the eels will be feeding again today.