“This way,” said Drew, waving Brando over to the right.
“Where are we going?”
“The dock! That’s the last place I saw them.”
As soon as Brando knew where they were headed, he sped up. He passed Drew, but only for a moment.
“Oh no you don’t,” she called. She sped up and passed him back. She had longer legs, but was wearing flip-flops; he had shorter legs and sneakers. It was a pretty even race, and they were neck and neck when they reached the dock.
“Not here,” huffed Brando.
“Doesn’t look like it,” puffed Drew. The two launches bobbed on the little waves on either side of the dock. The last time she’d been here, the two men were in the larger one, using the radio. Both of them were empty now. The dock was deserted except for a family of three, sitting on their suitcases, waiting for the next boat.
“Should we ask ’em?” she said.
“You do it,” said Brando.
“You shy?” she said, and that did it. Brando marched right out onto the dock. She waited on the sand, catching her breath.
“They said they went that way,” he said, pointing down the walkway that led toward the far side of the island.
Drew nodded and then reached down and slipped off her flip-flops. Brando knew he was in trouble now. He took off running. For a good ten seconds, all he could see was the open path in front of him. Then he saw Drew coming into view out of the corner of his eye. He leaned forward and ran even harder, but it was no use. Once he saw the soles of her feet, he knew he had no chance. On the plus side: It took them no time at all to catch up with Bautista and Fulgham.
“There they are,” said Drew. She went from a run to a walk in the space of a few strides. Brando slammed on the brakes behind her and just avoided a collision.
Bautista and Fulgham were standing just off the walkway, looking out over the water. Now they looked over. Fulgham leaned in and whispered something to Bautista.
“Yes?” said Bautista.
After running flat out to find them, Drew and Brando suddenly realized that they had no idea what to say.
“Um,” said Brando.
Drew gave them a weak wave with the hand that wasn’t clutching her flip-flops. She felt a little dumb holding them, so she knelt down and put them back on.
“This isn’t really a good time,” said the deputy. That was putting it nicely. The island was too small and the boy had been gone for too long. The fact that they’d basically been chasing their own tails all day made it that much worse. “Do you have something to tell us?”
Drew pointed to Brando.
“Um,” he repeated.
“Something besides ‘um’?” said Fulgham.
Bautista was a little more patient. He’d just arrived, after all. “What’s your name?”
“Brando.”
“And you’re Davey’s brother?”
“Yeah.”
“And is there something you’d like to tell us?” He wasn’t, when it came right down to it, that much more patient.
“Um …”
Fulgham leaned over to say something else to Bautista. Before he could, Brando blurted out, “I knew Davey didn’t take the boat!”
Fulgham gave him a look somewhere between Now you tell me and Thanks for throwing me under the bus. But Bautista was more curious. “And how did you know that?” he said.
“Because he’s not like that.”
“Like what?”
“Davey, he doesn’t like, like, loud stuff.”
“No?”
“No. He, um, reads a lot, up in his room. Like a not-normal amount. And he took his book with him. His favorite one.”
“And he wouldn’t go to a busy place like Key West to read a book,” said Bautista.
It wasn’t really a question, so Brando didn’t answer. But Drew added, “And when I saw him, he was sitting under a tree and reading.”
“So he found a quiet spot here,” said Fulgham, the annoyance gone from his face.
“But then people start walking by,” said Bautista.
“And it’s not so quiet anymore,” said Fulgham. “So …”
“He goes to find somewhere that is.”
Bautista looked over at Brando and Drew. They both nodded: Yes, exactly.
“So, any ideas where he would find a place like that?” said Bautista.
“Whole island’s pretty quiet, especially at that hour,” said Fulgham.
“Yeah, but we’re talking alone-in-his-room quiet,” said Bautista. He turned to Brando. “You were all in the same room, right?”
“Yeah. He had the cot.” He wasn’t sure why he added that last part.
“Right, so he’s thirteen, crammed into a room with his whole family, wants some me time …”
“There’s a roof deck,” said Fulgham.
“I was up there, right after we got back,” said Drew. “He definitely wasn’t there.”
“Okay,” said Bautista, looking out at the band of sand between the walkway and the water. “What about the beach?”
“People there, too,” said Fulgham. “Morning walks on the beach … It’s a thing.”
“Right, right,” said Bautista. He’d forgotten about that; it wasn’t a thing in the Coast Guard.
Everyone was quiet for a few moments. The only sound came from the small waves and the gulls. Finally, Brando spoke up. “There’s a little beach,” he said.
“What do you mean?” said Bautista, but Fulgham already knew.
“Oooh yeah,” he said. “But you went there, right? Marco said —”
“Yeah,” admitted Brando. “We looked around a little.”
“And?”
Brando just shrugged.
“What are you … ?” said Bautista.
“Little beach, at the end of the island, kind of cut off,” Fulgham explained. “It’s definitely secluded. People can get a little carried away out there because —”
“Carried away?” said Bautista.
“I didn’t mean …”
Bautista looked over at Brando, then took another quick look over his shoulder at the water. “Think it’s worth a second look?”
Fulgham thought about it. It was a small beach, and it had already been searched. But searched by whom? An upset, untrained family and the hotel manager.
“Might as well,” he said.
Brando let out a long breath. Drew looked over at him. “I think this is good,” he said.
“Aces,” she replied.
They headed straight down the walkway. It wasn’t far, and in just a few minutes they’d navigated the narrow path and arrived on the little beach.
“This is nice,” said Drew.
Brando looked around. Everything was the same as this morning, except two ladies were sunbathing halfway down the sand. They looked up and saw two men in uniform and two kids in shorts.
“Is it okay to be here?” called one.
“There was no sign,” called the other. “Except for that.” She pointed to the sad little NO SW MM NG sign.
“No, no, you’re fine,” called the deputy.
The ladies dropped their heads and went back to catching rays. Bautista had missed the whole exchange. He was walking slowly across the sand and staring straight out at the water.
“Oh no,” he said.
“What?” said Fulgham, but then he saw it, too. “Son of a …”
“What?” said Brando. He looked out at the water, but all he saw was, well, water.
“Please tell me that’s not what I think it is,” said Bautista.
“No, I think it might be.”
Both men started jogging toward the water’s edge. Then they started running.
“What are they after?” said Drew.
“I don’t see anything,” said Brando.
“It’s not …” began Drew. She couldn’t bring herself to say a body, but Brando read the word in her silence.
“I don’t see anything!” he repeated.
&nbs
p; They took off at a run, too. It was no race this time. There was a bad feeling in the air, like they’d already lost. They caught up with Bautista and Fulgham at the edge of the water.
“Well, I guess we know why that sign’s there,” said Bautista.
“It’s completely inadequate,” said Fulgham. “Gonna write about eight citations.”
“Make it a dozen,” said Bautista. Then he began to walk out into the breaking waves, shoes, long blue pants, and all.
“What’s he doing?” said Drew.
Brando had no idea, and then he saw it. The water was higher and the waves were bigger than they’d been that morning. The larger ones tucked themselves into neat little barrels as they broke. They were bigger everywhere, except where they weren’t. Where the rip current was cutting them down. Bautista waded diagonally into the stretch of flatter water off to their left. The waves hitting his knees there were little more than bumps on the surface.
Drew saw it now, too. She watched as he waded out a few more steps. He stood still there for a moment, then quickly turned and headed back toward shore. He was a big, strong man, but she could see he was working hard. He was powering his way to shore.
Fulgham saw it, too, and walked toward the water to give him a hand.
“Stay there!” Bautista said. He grimaced and pulled his legs forward through the shallow water.
“The sea is pulling him,” said Brando.
Drew could hear the horror in his voice.
A few more powerful steps and Bautista broke free.
“Something must’ve shifted out there,” said Fulgham. “Think there’s a sandbar. If it’d been this bad for long, someone would’ve noticed.”
“I’m afraid someone might’ve,” said Bautista. He pulled a blocky device from a sheath on his belt. He pressed a button and got static back. “Akers, you copy?” he said. Brando remembered the Coast Guard man in the hotel office.
The big walkie-talkie crackled. “Yes, sir. This is Akers, over.”
“Yeah, I need you to get down to the boat and patch me through to Marathon, ASAP.”
“Now, sir?”
“Yes, now. Get it!”
“Roger that, sir. I’m gone!”
He turned to Brando and Drew. “Which one of you is the fastest runner?”
Brando pointed to Drew. It didn’t hurt his feelings or wound his pride. He was glad she was so fast. Right now, he wished she had wings.
She reached down and slipped off her flip-flops.
“Get back to the hotel and get everyone off those phones and back here. Lead them straight here, to this beach, yourself. I don’t want any more confusion today. I don’t want any more wrong turns.”
He cast his gaze around the edges of the beach. “We’re going to turn this place upside down,” he added, but Drew was already gone.
Davey had been bitten by a shark. It shouldn’t have been that surprising; he’d been surrounded by the things. But it was. It honestly kind of blew his mind.
It was a treacherous little nip. The blue shark had tried the direct approach and failed. So it approached slowly and cautiously on the second attempt. It wormed its slender body up through the water behind Davey and gave the back of his right calf a quick bite, just to see what sort of thing this was. Sharks don’t have hands, after all. If they want to know what something is, they bite it.
Two rows of sharp teeth punched through Davey’s skin, creating connect-the-dot half-moons on either side of his lower leg. Then the blue let go and quickly swam off. It didn’t clamp down hard and shake its head back and forth to tear off the meat. This was just a test. It knew there’d be plenty of time for feeding later.
That time had arrived. The blue cut in between the blacktips, emboldened by the blood in the water. The larger sharks swam farther apart and then back together, but they kept coming. They were all converging on Davey.
He pushed the mouth of the water cooler bottle below the surface, allowing some seawater to funnel in. The little fish that had been beneath it were long gone. They smelled the blood, too, and knew to get clear. The bottle sank lower as the sharks got closer. They were close enough to the surface that he didn’t need the bottle to see them. Plus, it was his only weapon.
The reality was overwhelming, so he tried to frame it as fantasy. He pretended that the blue was an orc and the blacktips were trolls. The bottle was his wizard staff and sword both. The blue arrived first, and he pushed the bottle forward. It was heavier now that it was partially filled.
BLEHNNK.
It was a slow, glancing blow. The plastic brushed against the shark’s gills. It recognized the thing from before, remembered the impact. It veered off to the side. The tip of its long, flat pectoral fin scraped the bottle as it went. And it didn’t go far.
Davey located the two blacktips and tried to square the bottle up between them. If they split up, he wouldn’t be able to block them both. He had to hope they wouldn’t. As he watched the midnight tips of their fins slice through the surface toward him, a new fin rose into sight.
It was fifteen, maybe twenty, feet behind the blacktips. It rose up through the water and kept rising. It was six inches high, then a foot. Davey’s eyes were weak, but a bat could’ve seen the massive shape moving toward him under that fin. This was no orc; the Uruk-hai had arrived.
The blacktips were almost on him. Reluctantly, he shifted his focus back to them. But they never arrived. They sensed the weight and power of the thing behind them. They were as big as pro athletes; the tiger shark was as big as a boat.
Davey wasn’t even surprised when the blacktips veered off and dove down. He knew by now that blacktips were a timid, curious sort of shark. He knew just by the fact that he was still alive.
But they knew what they were doing. They would wait for the scraps.
They were spread out across the beach. Brando and Drew were working the tree line like monkeys. Pamela had walked all the way to the edge of the beach on one side, and Tam had made it all the way to the other. Marco was pulling a garden rake across the sand in long rows. It wasn’t clear what he thought he’d find that way, but he was working hard at it. Sweat dripped from his forehead, and dark stains blossomed under the arms of his dress shirt.
The other hotel employee from the office was walking back and forth across the sand. Even the two sunbathers were doing their part, standing at the edge of the surf and looking out into the water. Deputy Fulgham stood nearby, shielding his eyes with his hand and scanning the horizon. “I should really go back to the launch and get my binoculars,” he said to Bautista.
Bautista wasn’t listening. He was talking to the Coast Guard station at Marathon. The one at Key West was closer, but he was stationed at Marathon. The radio in his hand had been patched through the more powerful one in his boat.
“I can’t confirm anything right now,” he was saying. “But that’s what it’s starting to look like.”
And then someone started shouting and everything else stopped. It was Brando. He knew how his brother squirreled things away. He’d seen it many times: money and keys hidden under a hat under a shirt under a towel at the lake; his glasses tucked behind the ladder leading up to a waterslide.
By the time Fulgham and Bautista arrived, Brando was already walking back out from the scrub brush at the edge of the beach. He was crying softly. He had a book in one hand and a pair of glasses in the other.
Drew didn’t know what to do and just stared at the glasses. Marco threw the rake down into the sand. Tam and Pamela converged from opposite sides of the beach at dead runs.
“Oh my God,” said Pamela.
“No,” said Tam. “No.”
But there was no denying it anymore, and the two went to pieces after that. Bautista raised the radio back to his mouth. He spoke loudly and clearly so that he could be heard above the sound of it all.
“Station Marathon, this is Lieutenant Commander Bautista. You read me?”
There was a burst of static and then the response: �
��Roger that. This is Coast Guard Marathon. I got ya, Beast.”
He took a deep breath in, pushed it out, and then pressed the button.
“What do we got in the air?”
* * *
Things happened fast after that. Above them, returning from an uneventful law enforcement patrol, an HC-144A Ocean Sentry radioed in. Lieutenant Commander Chris Abelson confirmed the surveillance plane’s position and received his new orders.
“Search and rescue,” he repeated. “Roger that.”
Up at Air Station Clearwater, Lieutenant Amy Vandiemas had the rotors of her MH-60T turning. She shouted back at one of her airmen to stop moving around. Then, in a practiced, even tone into her headset: “Flight controls are checked…. Instruments are checked…. All checked.” And the big helicopter lifted into the sky.
Back on the island, Fulgham was approaching the dock. His feet were as blurry as a hummingbird’s wings as he pounded down the walkway. Behind him, Drew and Brando were doing their best to keep up. It was very clear that Fulgham didn’t plan to wait.
Bautista was at the edge of the little beach, trying to reassure Tam and Pamela. “We’ll do everything we can,” he said.
His eyes scanned the water. Akers was bringing their boat around. Bautista could hear it coming now and waited impatiently for it to appear. Once it did, Bautista strode back out into the water. He grabbed the side and hauled himself aboard. Before his legs even cleared the gunwale, Akers pushed the throttle down.
The only reason Drew and Brando made it onto the police launch was that Deputy Fulgham had to navigate through the people waiting on the dock and then spend a few moments casting off the line. When Drew hopped aboard, he spent a few more moments telling her she really shouldn’t be there. During that time, Brando hopped aboard, too. The boat was already drifting away from the dock, and Fulgham gave up.
“Fine,” he said. “Just put those life jackets on and hold on tight!”
They snapped the vests on and hunkered down as he pegged the throttle. He honked his air horn twice as he zoomed past Captain Zeke’s fat-bottomed boat. He carved a wide white semicircle in the water as he swung the launch around and headed toward the far end of the island.
Surrounded by Sharks Page 12
