by William Oday
His gaze scanned over them like livestock.
Marco tried to duck behind Stuckey, but the chief shifted to the side at exactly the wrong time.
Charlie’s eyes stopped and eyes locked on Marco. A twisted smile split his face. “I’ve got this town. And I’ve got each and every one of you.”
28
EMILY sat in the sand at her campsite with her hands inches away from the glowing coals of the fire. The sun had finally cleared the horizon and was starting to add some much-needed warmth of its own.
Her teeth chattered from the chill pervading her core. The night had been long and brutally cold. She’d managed to keep the fire going, but the gusting winds often sucked the warmth away as soon as it hinted at gathering.
She tried to swallow but it got caught halfway as her parched throat rubbed together like sandpaper.
She needed water.
Like never before.
Ironic since she was staring at an ocean full of it. Just not the kind her body needed.
During the weeks of filming Sole Survivor, she’d gone without a few different times. But not like this. After it warmed up more, she’d have to venture inland into the forest and pray she could find a water source. With the small mountains dominating the interior of the island, there was a good chance moving water was around somewhere.
What else?
The shelter needed improvement.
And some food would be nice.
A movement on the beach caught her eye.
It was the carcass of the mother orca. It had shifted a few feet down the beach.
High tide was coming in.
Another larger wave climbed up the beach, splashed over the inert body, and then pulled it a little further into the water.
A thought struck her and she jumped up.
Another wave pulled at the body as she sprinted over.
The orca was dead.
It was meat.
She had no idea what an orca tasted like. Probably not good. But it was meat and it was just sitting there.
Well, now inching back into the ocean with every receding wave.
She arrived as a larger wave rolled in, this one grabbed the body and sucked it out a dozen feet.
She should’ve thought of it earlier.
Emily yanked the kukri out of the sheath at her hip. Somehow, the knife her father had given her so long ago had made it through everything she’d been through. She slammed it into the orca. She leaned into it and pushed with all her strength. The blade bit down to the hilt.
Another wave came in and splashed over the orca, drenching her in the process.
She flinched as the icy water hit and spilled inside the half-worn survival suit. Her feet and legs were already starting to feel slow and heavy. The waterline up to her knees.
Emily climbed up on top of the carcass as another wave came in. As it sucked back out, the body moved with it. This time in deep enough water to break free of the sand underneath.
The body rolled to settle into a new equilibrium.
She scrambled up the side to stay on top. She accidentally let go of the kukri as she did. She made it to the top and spun around in a panic as she realized what she’d done.
The knife!
It was still there, stuck in the orca’s body. The handle bobbed in and out of the water as the carcass steadied.
She had to move fast.
She reached for the knife and the orca started to roll in that direction.
She jerked backward to stop the roll and keep herself from getting dunked in the bone-freezing water.
How was she going to get it then?
She dropped to her belly and laid across the orca’s white stomach, perpendicular to its length. She curled around it and kept as much of her lower half on other side as possible while also inching forward with arms outstretched.
The body lolled back and forth as waves swept by, but it appeared to be working. She stretched the final few inches and latched onto the hilt.
Yes!
A big wave crashed into the body, almost throwing her off into the water. She yanked the knife free and managed to hang on as the body rolled underneath.
The wave retreated, dragging the carcass deeper.
Emily looked around.
She was floating away from the beach!
She glanced back at the open ocean as the sound of splashing grabbed her attention.
A dark fin protruded from the water.
Was it the male coming back for his partner?
The fin rose into the air as the creature drew closer to the surface.
The thing was moving fast.
Right at her.
And then she noticed something else.
Something that froze the blood in her veins.
Something that stole the air from her lungs.
The fin.
It wasn’t the slender, graceful fin of an orca.
It was the blunt triangle shape of a shark fin.
Only this fin rose seven feet above the surface of the water.
29
The hideous fin sliced through the water like a sword, cleaving the surface and sending wakes rolling away at an angle. The creature underneath the fin turned into a dark shadow below the surface. Seeing it at such a glancing angle made it hard to judge the size, but that didn’t matter.
The thing was bigger than any shark that had lived in the last two million years could possibly be.
And yet there it was.
Coming at her like a torpedo of ravenous death.
Emily spun around and nearly doubled over in terror.
The beach!
It was so far away!
The inexorable pull of the tide had sucked her out faster than she’d realized. A rip tide maybe?
She squared up to launch herself into the water.
And another wave crashed in.
The carcass jerked and rolled underfoot.
She teetered over and fell face first into the water.
Sea water flooded into her suit. The cold stabbed her lungs and the air shot out. She somersaulted over and over under the water.
The sand below a dark shadow and the sky above a brighter haze, both spinning by like night and day on fast forward.
The movement slowed and she managed to orient herself to the light and surface several feet above. With her lungs prickling like cloth bags full of needles, she kicked off the bottom.
She broke the surface and gulped in a breath. The air helped, but the saltwater that joined it didn’t.
Hacking coughing doubled her over.
She kicked to stay afloat.
Another breath.
Choked down and burning like it was bits of shattered glass.
The enormous black carcass of the mother orca bobbed in the water a dozen feet away.
That shark was coming for it.
She had to get out of the water.
She was about to turn away when every shred of connection between her brain and body evaporated.
Motivation. Thought. Process. Movement.
They all stopped.
A frozen instant in time.
A shape rose above the half-submerged orca.
A form so terrifying that nothing could live in its shadow.
A thing that obliterated puny concepts like reason and logic.
Even the indomitable will to survive withered like a weed in the winter. It surrendered to the inevitable.
A broad triangular nose rose high into the air.
Jaws opened wide revealing staggering row upon row of razor teeth. A dozen feet across.
The thing that had taken a bite out of the orca.
Come back to finish the job.
Emily knew she should move. Swim for the beach.
Swim for her life.
But she couldn’t.
She couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything.
The beast was a god incarnate.
Death and destruction came with it.
&nbs
p; It came down upon the whale with a ferocious grace.
A killing machine operating as mother nature intended.
A design perfected over millions of years and once again unleashed.
The jaws bit down as the hulk crashed into the carcass.
A curtain of water slammed down onto Emily, driving her below the surface. Her back hit the hard bottom. She grunted through the pain that shot through her limbs.
But the worst was yet to come.
The light at the surface above turned to shadow.
The massive body of the mother orca rolled over on top of her, pinning her legs.
Crushing them into the sand.
She knew it would soon be over.
The smooth bulk curved out and above her. If it rolled a bit more, it would cover her completely. The weight would crush her skull like an egg. Her shattered ribs would puncture her heart and lungs.
She pushed her hands up against the dark skin, fighting to keep it from finishing her.
It was like holding your arms out after falling off a building. They wouldn’t stop the impact. The end still came.
The black bulk continued to roll, but then stopped as the tide sucked back out into deeper waters.
She screamed as the weight pinning her legs down like a mountain shifted. Bubbles of escaped air floated to the surface.
She briefly wondered if they carried the sound to the surface. If they popped and released her cries into the air.
Through the wavering blur of the moving water, she stared in horror.
The massive jaws again crashed into the body. Teeth larger than her hands tore into the skin and blubber. The weight pinning her down lifted as the shark jerked back and forth, ripping away a gargantuan chunk of flesh.
Clouds of red billowed through the water, quickly turning the translucent blue stinging her eyes into an opaque red.
The carcass slid away as the shark dragged it into deeper waters.
Emily’s chest started to expand and her mouth almost opened as her body demanded a breath. Just before her lips parted to inhale, she gritted her teeth together.
Wriggling and squirming, she broke free of the sand. She expected to find her legs pulped and useless, but was surprised to feel the muscles move and respond to instruction.
A wave swept through, tossing her end over end like dirty clothes in the washer.
When the spin cycle ended, she slowed to a stop and floated in an impenetrable red foam. Air and blood and water mixed in equal parts.
With no variance of light and dark to indicate where the surface might be.
It didn’t matter.
There was no time left anyway.
Her lungs demanded air.
An intake she could no longer deny.
Her body sucked in a breath and got only water.
Convulsing coughs wracked her middle as it hit her lungs.
The thick taste of metal and salt coated her tongue.
Still, she couldn’t give up.
It wasn’t in her nature.
The core of her deepest self didn’t know surrender.
If it had, she wouldn’t have survived all that came before.
The loss of her father.
The loss of her mother before that.
The loss of almost everything that kept a person strong enough to suffer through another day.
She had no quit.
So she kicked hard and dug her hands through the gore.
In what direction and for how long, she couldn’t think enough to know or care.
The struggle was deeper than that.
It was about the fight, and nothing else.
The red fog grew darker.
The impenetrable red bled to blue as her head broke the surface.
She heaved and vomit sprayed out and splashed back down.
A wave picked her up and she was too weak to resist.
Her knees banged into sand and dragged across the bottom as the incoming wave pushed her higher up onto the beach.
With what little strength remained, she dug her fingers into the sand and clawed forward.
Waiting and dreading for when the wave retreated and dragged her back and under.
The next thing she knew, something jabbed into her cheek. She blinked hard and lifted her head.
A broken and jagged seashell lodged into the sand with the point up.
She was on the beach. Above the water line.
Above the blood line.
The sand was coated red.
She was covered in the same.
She turned toward the ocean and stared in awe as the massive shark continued tearing the orca apart. A plume of crimson water emanated from the gory site, expanding toward the beach.
What was that thing?
She vomited again and a wave of weakness made her slump to the sand.
It could only be one thing.
Of all the prehistoric creatures that had captured her father’s attention, one held a particular fascination.
One that should’ve been extinct for two million years.
Megalodon.
The largest shark that ever lived.
One so large that it made a thirty foot long orca look tiny in comparison.
One that was apparently patrolling the waters around the island she was stranded on.
30
BOB tried to keep his mouth shut. He tried his best to keep from hurling back a biting reply.
“What? No answer?” Rome spat as much as said at him. The kid’s face was beet red from doing his half of their shared labor.
Half was perhaps underestimating it.
Bob wasn’t young and not remotely in the best shape of his life even before the near suicide drained him. He wasn’t in the kind of shape that made dragging a body several blocks an easy thing.
The body was the man CB had killed last night.
Killed like a normal person might step on a cockroach.
Throat sliced so deeply that only the exposed spinal column kept the head from detaching and rolling away.
Bob pulled on the cold bare foot in his hands, but the body didn’t budge.
Not until Rome put his back into doing the same with the foot he was holding did it continue to slide across the pavement. Rome took deep, heaving breaths as they continued.
Bob was spent.
As much from the preceding days as the effort of dragging the body.
That was the special something that CB had saved for him.
And dragging the revolting corpse so far was just half the punishment. Maybe less than half, but he only knew about the other part so far.
“That’s the one.”
Bob looked back at the guard strolling along behind them.
He pointed at the streetlight diagonally across the intersection. “Make sure it’s right in the middle of the road like he said. I’m not gonna get my butt chewed off for you two idiots. And speed it up already. I got better things to do than watch you mangle a dead guy.”
Rome glared at him. “It would go a lot faster if you lifted a finger to help.”
The man’s jaw twitched and his grip tightened around the battle rifle slung across his chest. “Careful. One pull of that finger would put a hole in your forehead.”
“We’ll do it,” Bob said and before it escalated. “Let’s get it over with. Come on, Rome.”
The stubborn teenager dropped the dead man’s leg. “What? You’re going to order me around, too? No. That’s not happening.”
Bob choked back another reply and settled for something more diplomatic. “I just want to get this over with, you idiot!”
Diplomacy wasn’t a skill he’d nurtured and it definitely wasn’t a personality trait.
“I’m the idiot?” If it was possible, Rome’s face turned a deeper shade of red. “You’re the reason my mother is dead. She wouldn’t have been at the police station if it wasn’t for you.”
“CB set the bomb off, Rome. He killed your mother. Not me.”
Their guard laughed. “You’re not killing anything, kid. Now, shut up! The both of you! You’re worse than a couple of bickering women!”
Rome turned to him and the snarl on his face made it clear that a debate raged inside him. Hot hatred on the one side versus a cold recognition of the deadly rifle on the other.
The stupid kid was going to get them both killed.
Bob reached over and tried to pull Rome back to the task. To focus that fury on something that would keep them alive, for a few more hours at least.
Rome jerked away. “Don’t touch me!”
The intervention had the intended effect though. The growing tension and a duel that was only going to end one way cut short.
Rome grabbed the corpse’s foot and hauled forward before Bob could help out.
The body slipped off the sidewalk and into the street. The head bounced off the curb and smacked the street with a sickening thump.
Bob hurried over to attempt to help, to add back the ten percent his maximum effort was adding to the task.
They got the body to the street post and dropped the legs like they were bags of dirt. The body deserved more respect, more consideration. But those were niceties cleaved away from society the day the bombs fell.
It was a new world.
A new world in the same way as when the Europeans brought savage domination to the indigenous peoples of the discovered lands.
Power was all that mattered.
Some had it.
Some didn’t.
Life was hard for those who didn’t.
The guard leaned against a wreck of a car. A black Pontiac Trans Am with a giant gold bird painted on the hood. Like the one the Bandit drove. Must’ve been someone’s pride and joy.
Now, it was a ruined relic from another age. The wheels were gone. The windshield shattered and curled inside hanging over the steering wheel. Bullet holes riddled the side facing them.
Someone must’ve used it for target practice.
That’s when Bob noticed the faded brown stain coating the front fender. A dried brown pool of crust covered the pavement below.
Target practice. But the bullseye hadn’t been the car.
The guard noticed Bob taking in the scene. “Yeah, a few days ago we ran into some moron trying to tow this thing away. He made the mistake of mouthing off and then drawing his weapon.” He shook his head and chuckled. “Dumb move. Got lit up like a Christmas tree.”
