Shark Beach

by Chris Jameson

  Rashad grabbed her arm. “Don’t be stupid!”

  “Look around you. This is our shot.”

  “No, we can—”

  Emma shook her arm loose. She took one step then leaped out over the water—or she would have if not for Rashad. He tried to grab hold of her, to stop her from jumping, and he caught her by the shoulder just enough that Emma fell back, struck the rusty hull, and bounced the last twenty feet into the undulating waves. As she fell, she heard Rashad yelp and caught a glance of him tumbling after her before she plunged into the water.

  The instant she surfaced, Emma was swimming. Terror filled her, so deeply she felt it in her veins. In her bones. Her heart pounded rapid fire, but she rode that rhythm as she swam. She knew some people might have been paralyzed by the fear that burned inside her now, but for Emma it was fuel. Her terror blinded her to anything but the need to reach her mother.

  Behind her, Rashad called her name. She could hear him swimming too. Splashing. She hoped that he would make it, but she couldn’t slow down now. He had saved her earlier, but there was nothing she could do now to return the favor. Not when her feet couldn’t even touch the ground.

  She could only swim.

  * * *

  Jesse saw how fast the sharks were coming, but he jumped into the water anyway. Captain Len’s sightseeing boat shifted farther away, dragging on the bottom, but the boat didn’t matter anymore. All he cared about was his father.

  Anger boiled inside him. Anger at Captain Len, but also rage at Mr. Scully. It had been his idea to come out here. He’d fucked up and gotten himself stabbed. Jesse hated himself for thinking it. He knew Mr. Scully had just been trying to save Kelsey, and he had saved Jesse, too. But now Jesse saw the desperate worry in his father’s eyes, saw the effort as he half-supported and half-propelled Rick Scully toward the sand.

  But, God, the sharks were so fast. It didn’t even look right, watching them—like it was something unnatural, not meant for his eyes to interpret.

  On the sand of North Captiva, against the backdrop of those bare, skeletal trees, Kelsey tried to follow Jesse into the water, but Paola held her back. The woman hugged Kelsey and little Emilio against her, and Jesse was grateful. He wouldn’t be able to help his father if either of those kids fell into the water. His dad would insist he help someone less capable. Now, of course, that someone was Matti Hautala himself.

  “Dad!” Jesse called.

  Matti halfway dragged Rick toward Jesse. The tide rushed in, the current ripping along the shore. The shifting of the sinking boat created the unsettling illusion that the water rose even faster, but Jesse didn’t need anything else to amp up his heart rate. He wiped sea spray and salt from his eyes, tasting the salt on his lips, and grabbed hold of Rick as his father practically shoved the man into his arms.

  “Hurry!” his father barked.

  Jesse didn’t need to be told. The sharks raced toward them as if someone had fired a starter pistol. Their fins sheared through the water with unnatural speed. Jesse felt Mr. Scully’s weight on him, felt the way his father helped propel the other man forward, and bent to put his own strength into it. The shore could only have been twenty feet away. Probably less. But alarm bells sounded in Jesse’s mind, because he had always been good at the kind of math that allowed him to gauge things like speed, spatial relationships, and how animals responded to one another. These sharks weren’t stalking them or trying to cordon them off—they were simply on the attack—but they were huge and ruthless, and they were moving too fast.

  Way too fast.

  Jesse felt warmth in the water and thought at first that his father or Mr. Scully had pissed in the Gulf, but then he caught the scent of blood and realized it came from Rick Scully’s wound. The sharks were coming for Rick, and as he drove himself harder, digging his feet into the sandy bottom and tried to get the man to shore, he felt the temptation to leave his father’s friend behind. Mr. Scully had always been kind to him—

  But I don’t want to die!

  The thought spiked through him, a primal instinct, but Jesse’s love for his father took over. He wouldn’t leave his dad alone with Rick. Not even with the sharks closing in.

  * * *

  Rick collapsed in the water. Darkness pooled at the edges of his vision and the sound of the surf receded. His daughter’s shouts from the shore dimmed to a murmur. He could feel Matti and Jesse at his sides, felt himself give way so that he hung from them like a puppet, lifeless and empty. Matti said something, the words muffled, and dragged Rick up to keep him from drowning.

  “Dad!” Jesse cried. “They’re coming! They’re—”

  “Get ashore!” Matti shouted.

  In the back of his mind, where his thoughts were still somewhat coherent, Rick thought about bravery. He wanted to tell Matti and Jesse to leave him behind, knowing the sharks were there, just beyond reach. He could feel them closing in as if their teeth were inches from tearing at his flesh, and perhaps they were. They all needed to get to safe place, to work together, but staying behind to help Rick might kill both Hautalas, father and son. He ought to have the courage to shake loose from their grip, to let them go on without the burden he’d become. But he simply didn’t have that kind of courage, and he never had.

  “Jesse, go!” Matti commanded. “Get to shore, dammit!”

  Rick pistoned himself up so he could stand tall in the water, and then he saw the sharks coming in. Too close. Jesse had been breathing hard, face flushed, rushing for the sand, but now he must have seen the way his elders were looking beyond him and he turned.

  The kid froze.

  Rick felt the moment it happened. The nearest shark seemed to lunge, twisting toward them, crossing twenty yards in an eyeblink. Matti dumped Rick onto Jesse, pushing all of his weight on the boy, and he shouted as he dove into the water between Jesse and the shark.

  So close to the beach. To the sand, and safety. So close to where Kelsey, Paola, and Emilio stood on the sand, crying out for them.

  “Dad!” Jesse roared, trying to untangle himself from Rick’s arms, from the weight and responsibility his father had just foisted on him.

  A wave struck Rick and Jesse from behind, and Rick had no choice but to hold on tight and let the water push them toward shore. Ten feet away now. The water turned instantly shallow, but Jesse strained against Rick’s grip, screaming and trying to go back for his father.

  Matti faced the shark as if he could dodge in one direction or the other. He stood with shoulders hunched, a human shield between his son and those small black eyes, those rows of gruesome teeth. Rick had no illusion that Matti faced the shark for him—this was the act of a father, the kind of man he had always wished to be. On shore, the others screamed. In the water, Jesse turned and tried to hurl himself back toward his father, but Rick could not allow that. Though pain raged through him like fever, and though blood loss sapped him of strength and stole away his connection to his own limbs, Rick put his shoulder down and mustered the last of his will, plowing into Jesse.

  Matti laid hands on the shark, grabbed hold and tried to turn its snout away. The killer whipped its head right and left, plunged in and drove Matti off his feet. One hand dragged at the shark’s left eye, puncturing it, clawing it out, but the other hand tried to grab at the monster’s jaws and vanished inside those teeth.

  As the shark drove him under, only twenty feet from shore, Matti began to scream.

  So did his son.

  The water frothed red and white as the shark thrashed. It twisted and rolled, determined that its prey would not escape. Rick saw the moment that Matti stopped moving, his limbs going limp. By then, his one visible arm seemed much too far away from his legs, as if the middle of him had been shredded.

  Jesse screamed at him. Rick practically carried him, firefighter-style, and deposited the young man onto the sand. Paola held her crying toddler as she knelt to comfort Jesse. Kelsey rushed to Rick, even as he collapsed, blood still seeping from his knife wounds.

&nbs
p; All of them were grieving. All of them were broken. Shattered, and in shock. But they were alive. They were safe.

  Rick might be dying, but he and Matti had done this much at least. They’d kept the children safe.

  That’s what fathers do, he thought as regret seeped into his heart. He hoped to live to be a better father, but if this was his last act, it would have to be good enough.

  CHAPTER 17

  Jenn stayed in the water as long as she could. She squeezed her arm, forcing out more blood and letting it dapple the water. Each drop became its own small cloud for an instant before the sea claimed it, diluted it, turned it invisible. But Jenn knew her blood would not vanish from the sharks’ senses. The killers had caught the scent in the water, and they were coming for her.

  Corinne had waded in up to her shoulders. Emma swam toward her, the two calling out to each other, and now Corinne began to swim as well. The college kid, Rashad, swam awkwardly, painfully, after Emma, but the third shark remained out there in the deep, and it sped after him, fin vanishing under the surface.

  The other two sharks sliced toward Jenn, rushing at the shore as if they had no fear of beaching themselves on the sand. She backed up several paces, so that the waves crashed around her hips, but she knew she was still in too deep. Sharks like these could skim into the shallows in spite of their size, and they had already proven how aggressive they were.

  “Get out of the water, Mrs. Hautala!” Deputy Hayes called.

  Jenn glanced toward her. The woman had her gun out, but it hung by her side. What the hell was she intending to do with that? The sharks weren’t drug dealers or something; they weren’t going to respond to threats.

  “Come on!” the deputy said, stepping into the water, shoes and all. A wave splashed around her knees, soaking through her trousers. “Don’t be stupid.”

  Stupid, Jenn thought. They were trying to save the lives of children.

  She felt a tightening in her chest. Her blood kept dripping as she backed several steps closer to shore, and then several more. She no longer squeezed her arm, as if that would cut off the summons she had bled into the water, but she knew better.

  She tried not to think about her own son, or her husband, trusting that wherever they were, they were safe.

  Corinne and Emma swam toward each other but they had not quite met when Jenn knew she had no choice. She turned and ran for shore, lifting her knees high as she stomped over the waves and onto the sand, much to Deputy Hayes’s obvious relief.

  She had bought them as much time as she could.

  But as the two sharks swam through the water where she’d spilled her blood, Jenn felt the awful certainty that it would not be enough.

  * * *

  As Emma reached her mother, she heard a helicopter flying overhead. Hope flared inside her—were they here to help? Could someone shoot sharks from the air the way they did wolves in Alaska, or would the water make that impossible? She felt stupid because she didn’t know, and then the helicopter started to veer away, heading back across the narrow island, and she felt angry instead.

  “Oh my God,” her mother said. “Emma!”

  Her mom touched her face, tried to hug her there in the water, just for a moment.

  “Go, Mom,” Emma grunted, heart pounding. “We gotta swim.”

  It was as if her mother had lost her mind for a second or two, the relief of being together making her forget the danger they were in. But now her eyes narrowed with a fierce determination Emma had seen in her mother before. It was one of the reasons Emma loved her. Her mother put a hand on her back and gave her a shove to get them both moving, and then they were swimming.

  “Mom,” Emma huffed as she swam. Water sprayed her face, and she squinted against the salt. “Mrs. Hautala.”

  “I see,” her mother said, breathing just as hard.

  On the shore, Jenn Hautala waved her arms back and forth and then pointed into the water, where two shark fins had turned away from the beach and were swimming in a lazy, serpentine pattern back out toward the shipwreck.

  As Emma swam, she watched the fins begin to turn in her direction.

  “Oh no,” she said. “Mom—”

  “Swim, honey. Just swim!”

  Emma bent her head forward. She kicked her feet and turned in the water, stretching into a sidestroke. Her muscles ached and her arms were so tired, but the thing that gnawed at her was the knowledge that she was going to die. Maybe there in the water, but otherwise up on the beach, bleeding out as her mother screamed and Mrs. Hautala called 911. No way would she make it to the sand in time. Her mother was a much stronger swimmer and Emma had already been swimming, already been terrified. Every cell in her body seemed to grow wearier by the moment, weighed down with lead.

  On the beach, Deputy Hayes and Mrs. Hautala shouted for them to hurry, and Emma hated them both in that moment. What did they think, that Emma and her mom were not swimming as fast as they could? Not trying to outrace the sharks?

  The sharks.

  Emma turned back over, took a breath, and submerged. Hand over hand, she swam as fast and as far as she could with her whole head underwater. The sharks were there, slashing diagonally across the water now, closing fast. The flutter in her heart became a silent scream.

  Then the scream had a voice.

  Just ahead, Emma’s mother turned to glance backward, contorted in the water. Emma did the same, but even as she turned she knew what sight would present itself. The moment she had reached her mother, all of her thoughts had been for her, and she’d forgotten all about Rashad.

  Emma glanced back.

  She thought of Lot’s wife, from that Bible story. God had told her not to look back when fleeing the destruction of the sinful city of Sodom, but she had been unable to resist. The moment she’d glanced back, she had been turned to a pillar of salt. A statue. Emma felt just as paralyzed now as she watched Rashad tread water, smashing at the sea with his hands, frantically trying to keep the third shark away from him. Blood frothed on the rippling crests of the waves around him, and Emma knew he’d been bitten.

  “Swim!” she shouted at him.

  Rashad turned to look at her with wide, hopeless eyes filled with grief she would remember her entire life. Behind him, the shark’s fin broke the water like a blade stabbing at the sky, and then the monster struck him from below and dragged him down beneath the waves.

  Emma kept swimming.

  “Honey—” her mother began.

  “I know!” she rasped.

  Her feet touched bottom. She glanced at the other two sharks, but one of them had peeled off to swim toward whatever remained of Rashad, the blood in the water too much of a lure. That left one continued to head toward them, picking up speed now, its path knife-blade straight, not the meandering, predatory stalking they had indulged in before.

  Emma and her mother swam. From the corner of her eye, Emma saw the fin coming closer. The beach waited for them only twenty feet away, and Emma thought the cruelest part of her death would be how close she came to making it to the sand. The sun glared down on her, and she wanted to surrender.

  But her mother slowed down, holding her side and breathing sharply through her teeth.

  “Mom?”

  “Just go!” Corinne Scully replied. “Don’t worry about me. Swim!”

  Emma swam. But they weren’t going to make it. The shark moved so swiftly. Emma fancied she could actually hear the fin cutting through the water. She turned away now, unwilling to watch her death come for her.

  The water came up to her ribs. She stood and pushed through the waves, running in slow motion. But it felt as if the Gulf wanted to give her up, drag her back, sacrifice her to the rows of teeth in that shark’s mouth.

  Her mother grabbed her arm and yanked her close, lifted her and hurled her out of the way. As Emma hit the water, she saw the shark closing in on her mom. She sputtered, staggered, found herself only knee deep now and less than fifteen feet from shore. Her mother tried to follow, that sam
e look of determination on her face, but then the shark struck.

  “Mom!” Emma shouted, terror stabbing into her heart.

  Twisting away, fighting the pull of those jaws, Corinne screamed in pain as she somehow yanked free.

  The air cracked. A gunshot echoed across the water. Emma looked over to see Deputy Hayes thigh deep in the water, aiming her gun with both hands. The deputy fired again and again. Bullets punched through the shark’s thick hide, its own blood seeping out, and the beast turned out to sea, swimming away.

  Emma plunged back toward her mom. Jenn reached Corinne only moments after Emma, and together the two of them half-dragged her from the surf. Her left leg had been torn up, blood spilling along her calf and ankle.

  “Lay her down,” Deputy Hayes said. “We’ve got to hurry or she’ll bleed to death.”

  Only moments before, Emma had feared this very same thing happening to her. Now she stood back and watched as the two women lay her mother down on the sand.

  In the waves, two sharks continued circling, as if waiting for them to dare enter the water again. The shipwreck continued to vanish beneath the Gulf, perhaps a dozen feet of its stern all that remained above water.

  Of the shark Deputy Hayes had shot, there was no sign.

  As Emma watched her mother bleed, saw her face contort with pain, she felt too empty and weary to cry.

  She knew she would never go into the ocean again.

  CHAPTER 18

  When Kevin heard the helicopter coming back, he gripped Tyler’s hand and practically yanked him to his feet. They were on the west side of Buck Key, tucked in the thick tangles of mangrove trees, but the sun shone brightly on the water that separated them from Captiva. Kevin had been staring at the houses across Roosevelt Channel with a longing he had never felt before—not because he needed some million-dollar island getaway but because he just wanted to be on dry land. Safe with other people.

  Sharks had been swimming in the channel ever since he and Tyler had made their way over here. Before they had come, he had done a bit of research on Captiva and had read nothing about sharks, but there they were, aggressive and plentiful. He had spotted at least three at one point, but there was no telling how many were out there.