"The Beast of Trash Island" is a horror/suspense novella by Steve Metcalf. After completing graduate school, Steve lived in Northern California and worked on Stanford campus for a number of years. With these areas firmly planted in his mind, the author often sets his stories in the Bay Area. "Trash Island" is no different ... at least at the very beginning!
Chapter One, The Plan
THE MONDAY MORNING OF FINALS WEEK on Stanford campus—March 14th —was always a sight to behold. Students were flipping through notebooks while riding bikes to class. They had camped out all night on the Quad forming study circles under the moonlight. They woke up in random libraries, paperwork plastered to their faces with five hours’ worth of drool.
Graduate students, however, were a whole different breed. They were not lazy, but they had come to the realization that no job application would ever have the question: What was your GPA while you were getting your doctorate? Likely, they would work hard, but the stress would be more about the actual learning than what grade they might get.
Micah Barker and Edmund Shaw sat around the fountain—lovingly referred to as “the claw” - outside the bookstore that dominated White Plaza, near the center of the campus proper.
Both men were graduate students, although Micah already had an advanced degree in history. They met in a class on Non-Standard Documentary Filmmaking, shared a similar family background, and struck up an easy friendship.
“I’m thinking about financing a trip,” Micah said, leaning back against the stone wall. It was Spring in Northern California, which meant relatively cool weather. Micah was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. A black Columbia fleece jacket was draped around his broad shoulders. He was of mixed European descent with only a trace of an accent. The accent got thicker, however, when he was having dinner with his widower father, billionaire businessman Elias Barker.
“Yeah?” Edmund said. He was third generation American, but his family’s roots were in Egypt. “You making another movie?” Edmund, tall and thin, had jet black skin and an easy smile that comforted most people. He never mentioned his family business, but his parents owned mansions in numerous countries.
Micah’s smile was expansive.
“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe a movie. Maybe a documentary.”
He took a long pull from the oversized can of Arizona Iced Tea.
“Ever heard of the Pacific Garbage Vortex?” A blank stare from Edmund. “Trash Island? A swirling mass of plastic as big as Texas floating in the ocean?”
“No.”
“Yes,” Micah said, leaning forward. “The research is spurious at best, but there is some agreement that currents in the North Pacific Gyre have accumulated a mass of swirly nastiness. I say we grab some environmental sciences majors, write the whole thing off as an educational expense.”
“My dad has a yacht,” Edmund said. “Collecting dust in China Basin.”
“Why do you think I invited you to lunch?”
Edmund wadded up the empty Doritos bag and tossed it into the trashcan at the north end of the stone bench. He turned to look at Micah and didn’t say anything for a while.
“What?” Micah said. “You’re creepin’ me out, Eddie.”
After another few seconds, a toothy grin broke across Edmund Shaw’s face.
“You sounded like a TV commercial there a bit.” He paused. “Currents in the North Pacific Gyre have accumulated,” he said, imitating Micah’s voice while holding an exaggerated posture. “Dude. C’mon.”
Micah started laughing.
“What? You mean I can’t do research?”
Edmund shook his head, the smile never leaving his face.
“I’m just saying that it sounded a little rehearsed.”
Micah patted the chest pocket of his jacket.
“I reviewed my three-by-five index cards while you were taking a piss,” he said.
“Oh, sure. I’ve never known you to do an Internet search that didn’t ultimately lead to boobs,” Edmund said.
“Busted,” Micah said, still laughing. “A couple guys got into an OT discussion on a message board about....”
“Stop,” Edmund said. “I don’t even want to know the site. Let’s see your prospectus...and I certainly don’t mean that in a dirty way. I’ll just need to sell my dad on using the boat.”
“First, we’re going to need a couple scientists.”
* *
In the deli—one of the many restaurants that lined the plaza—James and Ai had finished lunch and were making idle chit-chat. They were both in Environmental Science 422, and the final started in 30 minutes. They didn’t want to add to the stress of sitting in a classroom for half an hour before a test.
“A buddy of mine started talking about Julia,” James said. “Starting asking me all of these questions.” James Bowers was a Midwestern stereotype—good grades, honest face, thick frame, hard worker. Like clockwork, he blushed every time he talked to Ai.
“About Julia?” Ai asked. “The ocean sounds?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Apparently it hit his Facebook feed and he was intrigued.”
Ai took a breath and leaned back in her chair.
“NOAA recorded strange ocean sounds for 15 seconds in early 1999,” Ai said, punctuated by scratching the tip of her nose. “They determined that it was an iceberg running aground.”
James nodded. “Conspiracy theories run amok on the Internet,” he said. “He’s now claiming that there’s a monster living in the north Pacific that makes these same sounds each year.”
Ai shrugged.
Ai Yamasaki was a Japanese national. Of average height and weight, she was a struggling student. Her parents had scraped and saved for years to have enough money to cover what her scholarships didn’t. She was brilliant, of course, but Stanford University was filled with brilliant students, many of whom didn’t have to eat Ramen noodles for lunch and dinner five days a week.
“It’s no joke that we have mapped less than ten percent of the ocean floor,” she said. “There’s just so much we don’t know.” She looked down at her watch and then back at James.
“Aw, shit,” he said. “Here comes trouble.”
Ai turned to follow his gaze. There were two men, one stocky and white, the other, tall and black, walking toward them. They were both smiling. And they were both looking right at James.
* *
“Ten days,” Micah said, gesturing around the table. “Two days there, six days of research, two days back. Simple.”
“Why?” Ai asked, ever the pragmatist. “You could schedule this for the summer. Have no rush. More time to plan.”
Micah and Edmund were friends and they had crossed paths with James in an industrial survey class a couple years ago. They had, all three, hung out a few times, but the friendship remained second tier. Ai and James had quickly become friends and study partners due to a shared degree course.
James was convinced that Ai simply liked to hang around and count the times that she made him blush.
As a response to the suggestion, Micah shrugged.
“I’m impulsive,” he said. “And a burgeoning documentarian. I get an idea and I immediately fear that someone’s going to beat me to the punch.” He put a hand on Edmund’s shoulder. “The timing is right. Edmund has access to his father’s yacht which is, as we speak, being stocked with a months’ worth of rations.”
“That’s right,” Edmund added. “Crew of eight.”
“How fast is she?” James asked. “You said two days there. That’s moving pretty quickly.”
It was Edmund’s turn to smile.
“The Aqua Tom is fast. She’s not top-twenty fast,” he said. “But she’ll pull 40 knots easy. We can make 2,000 miles in about 40 hours. Two days if we take our time.”
James was nodding. Accounts of the garbage vortex have been conflicting at best and, at worst, outright lies. It would be nice to put the debate to an end. He knew that Ai’s master’s thesis, Unbalanced Nature, could benefit from exploring this great unknown mass. The research alone could finally provide the clarity that many environmental groups find necessary.
“Crew of eight,” James repeated. “Four on, four off. We wouldn’t have to stop until we got there.” Edmund nodded in agreement. James pulled out his phone and opened the calendar.
“We’re all finished with finals tomorrow morning,” Micah said, winding up to the end of the hard sell. “We’ll leave two days from right now. Give you time to collect any gear you might need. Call loved ones. Change your original spring break plans.” He looked from Edmund to Ai to James. “What do you say? Chance of a lifetime?”
“What could go wrong?” Edmund asked, grinning from ear-to-ear.
It was supposed to be a humorous end to the conversation, but James wasn’t sold. He was leaning forward, elbow on the rough-hewn table, tapping the fingernail of his left index finger against his front teeth.
“Lots of things,” he said. “First. How do we even know where this trash vortex is? I’ve read articles that said the mass could be in three or four different locations. What if we miss? Second. We don’t have any sort of hypothesis. We’re not looking for anything. The best we could hope for is a massive data dump and sort out something interesting. What if there’s nothing interesting? We’ve wasted our time and your father’s money. Third.”
“Hang on, there, Jimmy,” Micah said. “You’re looking at this all wrong. Edmund is studying Experimental Fiction. I’m going to be a documentary filmmaker. You and Ai are in Environmental Sciences. This is a cool opportunity for us all to spread our wings a bit.” He paused to take a breath, and Edmund jumped in, a smile slowly taking over his face.
“You said yourself, James, that the garbage vortex hasn’t been properly studied. Maybe that’s really our goal. Get out there. Record as much data as possible. Maybe find something interesting. A week at sea. Free food.”
Micah winked at Ai and she smiled demurely, a light blush coming to her cheeks.
“I have the coordinates of the most likely location,” Micah said, adopting a serious tone. “Let’s get out there and see what we can find.”
“Okay,” Ai said, nodding. “Let’s do it.”
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