Shark Beach

by Chris Jameson

  “Fuck that. We can paddle leisurely inside Buck Key. Winner takes all.”

  “Winner? What are we racing for, again? Normal people do not race kayaks.”

  Kevin dug in with his paddle. A few feet off to the south, a pair of fish jumped out of the water. “Who wants to be normal? And as for why we’re out here … to get away from your friends.”

  “You love my friends! And they’re your friends, too.”

  “Love is a strong word. I like Rashad and Simone, but Nadia and Marianna get on my nerves.”

  “You never told me that.”

  Kevin laughed. “You don’t listen.”

  Tyler resisted the urge to defend his friends further. No matter how loyal he might be to them, the stress of the past couple of days had put too much pressure on them. Going on vacation with them in the first place had taken some persuading, but the way the tension and awkwardness had grown in the midst of the storm and its aftermath, Tyler had seized the opportunity to do something alone with his boyfriend.

  Up ahead, Buck Key Preserve seemed like a tangled, impenetrable jungle. Mangrove trees grew at strange curves and odd angles, as if they had their own minds and had spread and twined their branches with the purpose of preventing human beings from moving amongst them. Tyler scanned the mangroves for some hint of the entrance into the river that would take them to the lagoon at the center. The trees created an illusion that hid the entrance, but one of the inlets revealed itself to be more than a curve in the key’s perimeter.

  “There it is,” he said.

  Kevin didn’t reply. Tyler felt a flicker of alarm and turned to check on his boyfriend, just as Kevin used his paddle to sweep a blast of water into his face. Tyler sputtered and swore, lost his momentum and the rhythm of his stroke, but Kevin had kept pace the entire time and now his kayak sped past, overtaking Tyler yet again.

  “Oh, you son of a bitch.” Tyler bent his back into it, chasing after him. “That is so not fair.”

  “We never established rules of conduct!”

  Tyler fell silent, but his smile widened as he redoubled his effort. They followed the opening in the trees, where the inlet turned into a winding river that would lead to the broad Braynerd Bayou. They’d paddle across it, then to the narrow, winding path on the other side. The current had already exhausted Tyler, but he comforted himself with the fact that they would have its strength behind them on the way back. Otherwise he would have surrendered now.

  Halfway along that winding river trail, he kept his breathing even as he came abreast of Kevin again. He could not help thinking how much more fun they would have had on this trip if they had come alone. He loved his friends, but this vacation had hammered home that there was a limit to how much group time he was capable of enjoying before people began to get on his nerves.

  As the nose of his kayak edged ahead of Kevin’s, he saw something from the corner of his eye. In a fraction of a second, his brain interpreted it as a storm-felled tree jutting up out of the water, but then it struck the side of his kayak and he realized the dark shape beneath the water had moved.

  The kayak tipped. Tyler got halfway through a shouted profanity before he plunged into the water. He swallowed salt water, started to choke as he kicked his legs, and surfaced. Coughing, hacking, he glanced around for his kayak and saw the paddle floating nearby. The kayak bobbed and drifted, already swiftly carried back the way he had come, twenty feet away. Twenty-five. He coughed again, and water sprayed from his lips. Frustrated, he swam after the paddle, though he had no further use for it without his kayak.

  As his hand closed around the paddle, he realized he hadn’t seen the downed tree, and now he glanced around for it. Part of a thick branch had been visible above the water, but now he found no sign of it, and when he scanned the edge of the mangroves on both sides, he saw no broken trunk, no felled tree.

  Confused and angry, it took him a moment to hear Kevin crying his name.

  When Tyler turned toward him, all of his questions vanished. A fin had broken the surface and now carved through it, circling around behind Kevin’s kayak. Kevin whipped his head back and forth, torn between staring at the shark and shouting for Tyler to swim.

  “Goddammit, Ty! Swim for the trees!” Kevin screamed as he started paddling furiously, bent over, panicked and flailing.

  Tyler inhaled sharply, frozen for a moment with the impossibility of that shark. It couldn’t have been real. This could not have been happening, and yet it was, and he turned and swam. All the tightness in his muscles vanished. His weak arms found new strength as fear fueled him. The stories he had always heard about sharks not attacking humans whispered in the back of his mind like ghosts, but those whispers didn’t take into account the fact that this shark had just knocked him out of his fucking kayak and all he could think about was the fact that sharks had rows of teeth that would grow back if they fell out or were torn out eating prey. He didn’t want to be the grist stuck in some shark’s teeth, and so he kicked his legs and his arms turned to limp spaghetti, but he kept swimming.

  His left hand struck rough bark. He popped his head up to see the dense shadows of the mangroves only inches in front of him. Tyler grabbed the branches of two skinny, gnarled mangroves, and a dozen tiny tree crabs showered down on top of him. One crawled along his right hand while he hoisted himself out of the water, scrambling into the copse of trees. His back and legs and shoulders scraped against the trees, but he hurled himself into the strange, tangled cage of mangroves. Beneath him, water and reedy moss were the closest thing to land. A few more feet and there was actual ground, soft and spongy, and vanishing as the tide rose.

  He heard Kevin screaming his name and turned to see the second kayak gliding into the trees, empty of any passenger. The mangroves blocked his view and he hung above the water, twisted around and spotted Kevin just a few feet from the trees, hip deep, wielding his paddle like a baseball bat as the shark sped toward him.

  Tyler screamed his name and dropped back into water, taking two steps toward him.

  Kevin jabbed the paddle into the water, maybe aiming for an eye, but the shark smashed it aside and lunged at him.

  Tyler froze as he saw Kevin go under.

  Blood churned up behind the shark, and then it turned toward him. Tyler snapped back into action, turned, and clambered once more into the mangroves, where he slumped like a cut-string puppet and whispered his boyfriend’s name. Sorrow carved into his chest and he felt hollow, so torn by shock that he could not even cry.

  When he heard the splash, and the grunt, he turned. In disbelief, he watched Kevin pull himself from the water and climb into the mangroves just a dozen feet away. The shark sped through the current, ripping through the space Kevin had occupied only seconds before.

  “Oh, my God,” Tyler said, staring at him. “I thought…”

  Breathless, Kevin nodded. Then he winced in pain, his face contorting, and Tyler saw the torn flesh of his left thigh and the blood that trickled into the water.

  Out in the channel, the second kayak drifted quickly after the first.

  They were safe, for now. But Kevin was bleeding badly, and they were stuck here, with no way back.

  Mangrove tree crabs scuttled along his arms and shoulders, but Tyler hardly noticed them as he made his way through the branches toward Kevin. They were alive, and right now that was the only thing that mattered.

  * * *

  Matti Hautala saw it all unfold. Just as he and Rick jumped into the water, wading toward the screaming women and the dark-red stain spreading on the waves, Captain Len shoved Jesse off the boat. He heard Jesse cry out, heard Kelsey shout, and then saw his son plunge into the water. Fear lit up his mind with electric clarity. One of the three women who’d been traveling together had been attacked by a shark—killed by a shark, because nobody lost that much blood and lived. Two fins carved the water, circling ominously, and then both submerged as if they had planned their attack. Which was impossible, wasn’t it?

  “Rick
!” Matti shouted. “The boat!”

  He didn’t wait for his friend to put it all together. Instead, he grabbed Rick by the wrist and tugged him toward the boat, even as the engine roared and Captain Len started turning out toward open water. The husband, Ernie, stood waist deep in the water looking a bit like a confused sumo wrestler. Ernie didn’t see the third shark breach the shallows behind him, but Matti caught sight of the fin and pointed, shouting for him to get out of the water.

  But the big man was a stranger, and Matti could not afford to spare him more than a moment’s thought. Jesse had plunged into water too deep for him to stand. The boat began to pull away, and Matti saw Kelsey standing on the deck with Ernie’s wife and son, all of them confused and scared, but they were going to have to be Rick’s problem.

  Matti had to reach his son.

  His heart hammered in his chest and a terrible dread began to choke him. He and Jenn had talked many times about what they would sacrifice for their son, and they had agreed that nothing held more importance than Jesse’s life and freedom and happiness. If their house had caught fire and he could only save one of them, Jenn had told him it had better be Jesse, and Matti felt the same way.

  His son.

  He felt the presence of the sharks. As he plunged deeper into the water, he knew the two that had submerged might be anywhere, but it didn’t matter. If they killed him, and that gave Jesse precious minutes to reach the shore, he would gladly surrender himself. None of it made any sense to him—sharks simply did not behave this way. The world had made them the villains of the sea, painted by urban myth and pop culture as killing machines whose hunger never waned, but Matti knew that was an illusion. Sharks were predators, but humans were not their usual prey, and they were creatures of instinct, not malice.

  And yet … a woman was dead, the sharks were near, and his son was in the water. Logic and reason seemed a luxury he could not afford.

  Off to his left, the big man shrieked in pain and then his voice cut off. Matti glanced in that direction and saw Ernie on his side, face halfway under water, one arm being tugged into the surf. A wave crashed over him and the big man’s face vanished, followed by the rest of him. One arm thrust up and then hammered back down, trying to fight off the shark, but a cloud of blood spread around him.

  Cold certainty gripped Matti. These were no ordinary sharks. They were vicious, savage, swift, and starving. They were grim with dark purpose, hunting instead of casually feeding. As one of the other two women screamed, he knew they were all going to die.

  Then he saw Jesse burst from the water. For a heartbeat, Matti stared at him, searching for that blood cloud on the water that would say he’d been bitten. Instead, Jesse stretched into an Olympic-speed swim, striking out for the turning boat. The motor roared and it began to pick up speed, but Jesse caught hold of one of the bumpers hanging by a rope on the port side, even as Rick reached the back of the boat and grabbed the ladder.

  Matti saw a shark swim across the boat’s path. Knowing Jesse would be safe, he considered making a break for the shore of Cayo Costa. Then he remembered Captain Len pushing his son into the water, and he recalled that little Kelsey was on that boat, and he hurled himself forward, swimming hard. If the boat had already begun to pick up speed, he would have had no chance at all, but Captain Len had turned her around, aiming the bow toward Captiva, and those precious seconds were everything. Matti had taught Jesse how to swim—both had been competitive swimmers, a generation apart—and he stretched into his stroke, aiming to cut across the boat’s path.

  Gasping, he plowed through a wave, kicked and lunged and angled his body so that when he reached out, his fingers slid across the smooth side of the boat as it picked up speed, roaring by him. Matti felt a scream building, a primal fear for his boy that hooked deep into his chest and made him kick into one last ferocious effort. As the rear of the boat slipped past, he surged toward the ladder. His fingers grazed it, caught onto a step. He barely held on, but then he got his other hand on the ladder.

  With a deep, ragged breath, Matti hugged the metal steps in relief. He heard shouts on the deck and pulled himself upward. He climbed high enough to see across the deck—to make out Ernie’s wife and son—and he spotted Rick and Jesse outside the wheelhouse, facing off against Captain Len, who had Kelsey in a one-armed chokehold. They were all shouting, but over the engine Matti could not hear a word.

  He climbed higher.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw movement, as a shark burst from the water. Its jaws tore off the bottom half of the ladder, ripping metal and cracking fiberglass as it scraped past. Matti hurled himself backward onto the deck so the twisted metal would not snag him. The mother and her son only huddled more tightly together and stared at Rick as he rose to his feet.

  Matti scanned for the shark. He spotted a fin further out, not the one that had nearly gotten him.

  Behind him, Kelsey screamed. Rick and Jesse brayed threats at the captain.

  To starboard, a shark surfaced. The boat picked up more speed, but the shark cut so swiftly through the water that the boat barely seemed to be moving. He thought it would pace the boat the way dolphins did, but the shark arrowed straight at them. Matti tracked the fin, waited for it to submerge, as it surely must.

  But the shark struck the hull head-on, full speed.

  The shouting on board stopped. Even Rick, his daughter still in the hands of a stranger, turned at the sound of the collision. The boat rocked. It tilted slightly to starboard. Matti went to the railing and hung over, staring down at the hull. Fiberglass had spider-webbed all along the starboard side. He knew that was impossible, that no shark had the strength or speed to do that kind of damage, but he could not deny the cracked fiberglass … or the sound the collision had made, like wood splintering.

  The boat listed a bit further, even as the motor careened them across the waves.

  When a second shark struck, from the port side, Matti was not even surprised.

  Shaken, enveloped in the surreal strangeness of it all, he turned and started straight toward the wheelhouse. The woman hugged her little boy and asked him questions, but Matti barely heard them. He had been a pacifist his whole life, but he knew how to fight if it came to that.

  Something cracked on the side of the boat. The fiberglass splintering further, he figured, as the boat took on water.

  But Captain Len needed to be dealt with before Kelsey got hurt. Captain Len, who had pushed Matti’s son into the water filled with impossibly strong man-eating sharks.

  Fucking Captain Len.

  CHAPTER 12

  Emma felt like the world had turned upside down, but it was only the shipwreck. Voices drifted and slid across the interior surfaces like ghostly moans inside a haunted house. Just Rashad and Marianna, she knew, but it still gave her a chill. There was something so strange and otherworldly about being inside the broken vessel, as if she had just smashed her way inside someone’s tomb, and she supposed that in a way that was precisely what all three of them were doing—not breaking in, perhaps, but certainly trespassing.

  The ship rocked slightly, and with each large wave outside water rushed into the lowest parts of the wreck. At this angle, what had once been a wall had become the floor. She ducked her head slightly as she walked, wary of rusty doors that hung open above her. The water rushed in again and the boat rocked, and it all sounded to her as if the wreck were one enormous iron lung, breathing in and out.

  Emma felt a frisson of fear run through her, or perhaps that was excitement. She found she could barely tell the difference between the two. Fascination prickled the little hairs on her arms as she walked away from the daylight streaming in behind her and stepped carefully around a door in the floor-that-had-been-a-wall. At an iron stairwell that went off to her right but would once have led upward inside the ship, she paused to listen for voices, wondering which way Rashad and Marianna had gone. The sounds bounced off the walls, difficult to pinpoint, but after a few moments she realized they had g
one through the stairwell, so she followed. With the ship at this angle, Emma only had to walk alongside the steps and then duck way down to creep through the doorway.

  Inside the next level—what would have been the deck above where she’d entered—the light had dimmed dramatically. In a yellowing gloom, she spotted dark figures farther along the corridor and a glow from someone’s cell phone. She stumbled a bit on something affixed to the wall beneath her feet, but with the creak and tilt and hush of the water ebbing and flowing inside the wreck, her little noise did not attract attention from Rashad or Marianna.

  “This is so eerie,” Rashad said, his voice slithering back along the corridor, echoing off the walls and the water underfoot. It seemed disembodied, as if the words came from somewhere other than those two dark figures.

  Emma thought of a dozen horror movies she’d seen and then smiled to herself. There were no ghosts or demons or curses inside this old, rusted hulk, but from his words, it was obvious Rashad was just as creeped out by the wreck as she was.

  “Don’t be a wimp,” Marianna told him, her voice also disembodied and far away. “You’ll never do something this cool in your life. Think about it. This boat has been at the bottom of the Gulf for a century and a half. Nobody’s been in here except us and a lot of fish in all that time. There’s no telling what we could find in here. Civil War secrets. Nineteenth-century whiskey. Confederate Army gold.”

  Emma decided she liked Marianna. Her own thoughts had been running along the same path. Her heartbeat had quickened and she found herself glancing back and forth, wanting to take in every inch of this piece of history. It seemed in that moment that she had spent her entire life just drifting through the world with no real purpose and no passion. For the first time, she felt ignited, desperate to learn more, to see more, to discover, and Emma wondered if this was what it felt like when a spark caught fire. Her mother had often talked about that feeling, when you realize that something is more than an interest … it’s a calling.