Devil Sharks

by Chris Jameson

  Alex watched the shark knifing through the water. “I don’t know, maybe it’ll make him feel better. After all, he was worried about us being alone out here.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Isko knew death must be close. He sensed it nearby, looming in the shadowed corners where the nighttime darkness seemed painted even blacker. Sweat beaded on his forehead and along his arms and he felt the fevered flush in his cheeks. Even with the breeze that snuck through the broken window and whispered along the floor, he could not cool down, could not catch his breath. His eyelids drooped and he drifted off into a gray nothing.

  Blinking awake, he inhaled sharply, as if for a moment he had stopped breathing. And maybe he had. Death had tried to steal upon him while he’d slept. As he opened his eyes, a swarm of black dots fled toward the edges of his vision. Like death, they’d crept in while he’d slept, dark little spots of brain death, but now they hid themselves away as if to keep the truth from him.

  He frowned, eyes slitted, heavy enough that he knew he might fall unconscious again at any moment. A scent had reached him, a smell of flowers that reminded him of his little girl. Dalisay liked to make rings of flowers, to choose the most vividly colored blossoms and knit them together into chains she’d hang all over their small, neat home. Sometimes she’d put one on her head as a crown. Sometimes she’d do the same to her daddy to make him the King.

  And she’d smile, his Dalisay.

  Isko tried to say her name, but it came out a croak. He wetted his lips with what little saliva remained on his tongue, thirstier than he’d ever been. His stomach had become a tight, aching ball. He shivered, the fever giving him a chill in spite of the heat trapped inside the room. He thought of his wife, cleared his throat, and managed her name.

  “Tala.”

  His eyes damp with tears, he shifted, hugging himself as he tried to fight the sudden chill. The stink of blood filled his nostrils and his torn pants stuck to the drying crimson puddle on the floor. His leg had been mostly numb, but now pain spiked up along the bone and he gasped and went rigid, trying to ride it out. But the darkness swallowed him again, just as if he’d sunk into the sea and never made it to shore.

  In the dreamless sea of his fevered unconscious, death swam nearer. In the shadows of his mind, it had rows of sharp, gleaming teeth and merciless black eyes. Somewhere down deep, lost in that fever, he prayed for death to be swift.

  CHAPTER 7

  Alliyah stood at the bow of the Kid Galahad and wondered how the footsteps of her life had led to this place. Eighteen months ago, she’d walked out on her husband. After years of offering him noncommittal assurances that yes, she would like to be a mother someday, the guilt of her lies had become overwhelming. Unconsciously at first, but later very much on purpose, she’d built an icy distance between them, punctuated by a two-week affair with a corporate attorney she’d met at the gym. The sex had been furious and intense. No one else had ever made her come hard enough to pass out. She’d told Dev the truth in order to enrage him so that he would leave her, although she’d secretly feared his forgiveness.

  It turned out she’d had nothing to fear. The plan to drive Dev away had worked perfectly, and it had torn her apart. With their house still echoing the shouts and the slam of the door, panic and regret had flooded through her. She’d never screwed the lawyer again—never talked to him again, even switched gyms to avoid it. Instead, she’d tracked down a therapist she hadn’t seen in years. When she’d received a text from Dev saying he intended to file for divorce and asking if she’d agree to a mediator, she’d broken down completely.

  I owe you the truth, she’d texted him.

  Isn’t the truth what broke us? he’d replied.

  Yes. But not the way you think.

  To her surprise, he’d reluctantly agreed to come by the house. She made coffee. Only coffee. A meal would have frightened him away, and she didn’t feel like she deserved the sort of forgiveness that him sitting down to a meal with her would indicate. Over coffee, she told him that she didn’t want to be a mother. Part of her wanted to burst into tears, as if she ought to be flushed with shame over her disinterest in bearing children, but she found that her only shame came from what she’d done to avoid this confession. Saying it out loud, saying it to Dev, helped her focus in a way she never had before.

  “Why did you never—” he began.

  “It didn’t start as a lie,” she’d interrupted. “I always thought the idea would grow on me, that I just wasn’t ready, but someday I would be. But years went by and I realized that somewhere along the way, going along with the idea that we’d have kids one day had become a lie. I hated how it made me feel, every time we talked about it, every time you’d get that look in your eyes. I knew how much you wanted to be a father—”

  “I wanted to be your husband more.”

  That had silenced her. Alliyah had stared at him, fiddling with her coffee mug, knowing the coffee had started to go cold and she’d only taken one sip.

  “You deserved the life you’d imagined for yourself,” she’d said quietly.

  Dev had gone quiet, too, then. He’d rocked back in his chair—the same chair he always sat in when they had breakfast or dinner together—and stared at the ceiling for what seemed an eternity. Then he’d tilted his chair back down, lifted his mug, and drained the rest of his coffee. Sliding the chair back, he’d set the mug down and stared at her.

  “It’s too late for me to have the life I imagined. You destroyed that.”

  “Dev—”

  “You abandoned me emotionally long before you cheated.”

  “I—”

  He’d stood up from his chair, coffee mug forgotten on the table. He’d looked tired; she remembered that now. Weary and thinner than usual, his clothing rumpled, but he had also seemed more like the man she’d married than he had in years. Even then, she’d realized that probably had more to do with her perception than it did with reality, but in the moment she saw him with utter clarity.

  “I’m going,” he’d said. “But I’m not going far. I can’t see past betrayal right now, Alli. But I know the person I used to love is under there somewhere, and I’m willing to give you a little time to find her.”

  Two months later, dancing around each other like boxers before the first punch is thrown, they’d gone out for dinner together. A date, which had seemed absurd, except that it had led them here. Their close friends knew, and their families, of course. Dev’s family had never been happy with him marrying a Pakistani woman in the first place, and after what she’d done they were furious. He’d never told them that she didn’t want children; that would have driven them over the edge. It turned out that Dev could imagine a life without kids. It saddened him, but he could imagine it.

  Still, nothing was certain between them. None of the people on this trip were privy to their secrets, and Alliyah had no intention of sharing them. Coming to Hawaii had felt to her like the final piece of the puzzle of repairing their life together, and she had no intention of dredging up painful memories. Dev seemed on the same page. He’d been enthusiastic about the trip from the beginning, wanted to know her friends from college better. Even the fact that a lifetime ago she had briefly dated Alex seemed to amuse him. In a month or a year or five years, Dev might decide he had made a mistake, that he couldn’t really forgive her or that in the end having children was more important to him than having her.

  For now, though, they were in paradise.

  * * *

  They were practically on top of Orchid Atoll before Sami spotted it, and even then what her eye picked out was a landmass at least fifteen miles distant. Fortunately for them all, Harry and Gabe knew what they were doing. Had she been piloting the boat, they’d have grounded themselves on the outer rim. The boat banked south and slowed. Gabe lowered the sails and Harry used the purring engine to glide them through the largest of the openings in the atoll’s ring.

  Someone stepped up beside her at the railing. “Vanishing beauty.”


  Sami glanced to her left and saw it was Nalani who’d spoken. Without James, which seemed strange. The pair had been almost inseparable since Sami had first laid eyes on them. She reminded herself not to make assumptions. Maybe Nalani and James often ranged apart—what did any of them really know about one another except what they’d learned in the past day or so? Even these old friends were having to learn who they were now.

  “Vanishing how?”

  Nalani shrugged. “Sea level. The larger part of the ring there, with the building on it? That’ll stick around longer. The rest of it will be gone, probably in our lifetimes. Maybe sooner than we think.”

  The atoll was already not what Sami had imagined. She’d thought the ring would be mostly unbroken, but instead the circle of land had numerous breaches in it. As they sailed inside the ring—six or seven miles from side to side—she couldn’t make out much of the distant edges, but Harry navigated toward the western rim, and though there were long stretches here and there, the breaks were frequent, the water flowing in and out as if each piece of the shattered ring was an island unto itself.

  They sailed toward the single significant landmass on the rim. Trees and flowers grew there, as if a piece of the paradise of the tropics had broken off and been forgotten out here, hundreds of miles from the nearest fragment of civilization. A small gray two-story building sat in the center of an open space in the midst of this, as unwelcome as Dorothy’s house dropping from the sky into Oz. Featureless except for its rooftop radio tower, the building had a familiar utilitarian drabness that screamed of governmental lack of imagination.

  “Must be the Coast Guard station,” Sami said.

  Nalani laughed. “Nothing else out here.”

  She wasn’t wrong, but Sami loved the isolation. Out on the water she’d begun to have a breathless feeling of wild vulnerability that both frightened and excited her. Now that she saw the Coast Guard station, she wished that she could erase it. With the tropical eruption of color represented by the trees and flowers on the largest part of the atoll, the man-made thing marred the land-and-seascape. Still, there was something wonderful—something she’d never experienced in her life—about being so far from everything and everyone except this boat and the people on it. They were sailing at the edge of the world, and all the troubles of life at home had been cut away. They were untethered, and she loved it.

  Alex slid up beside her at the railing. Others joined them, until finally Harry arrived, having left Gabe to pilot them toward the Coast Guard station.

  “A hundred feet deep,” Harry intoned, as if he’d dug beneath the water himself. “And look how clear the water is. In my father’s letters, he wrote about spearfishing in the water here. He said it was so clear they could have caught the fish by hand if they’d been fast enough.”

  Sami put her arm around Alex. “God, it’s so blue.”

  “Sapphire,” Nalani said. “I love the way the sun flares in the water.”

  Sami stared down into the water. A fish zipped past, and it was true, the water was perfectly clear, but only near the surface. Toward the beach and the rocks, where the water grew shallower, it was clear as glass … but out here they could see only so far before the Pacific blue turned deeper and darker. A beautiful mystery.

  “Okay, it’s my nature to give Harry shit,” Alex said, “and I know we have a lot of Hawaii to see. But this little stopover may turn out to be the best part of the trip. It’s breathtaking out here.”

  “Why, you old romantic,” Harry said with a grin.

  The two shared a truly amicable moment, and for a second Sami had an idea of what it might have been like when they were younger, in their early days at college, when their similarities had been more important than their differences.

  “Has this place really been abandoned since they closed the Coast Guard station?” Sami asked.

  “Most people don’t even know it’s here,” Nalani replied. “I’m sure there are day-trippers and sojourners who’ve come out this way over the years—”

  “But not many,” Harry said, beaming as he gazed at the shore. “One thing’s for sure; nobody’s lived here in that long.”

  The engine hummed a bit louder and Harry glanced back at the wheelhouse. He gave a wave and then shot them an excited look. “Time to weigh anchor.”

  He rushed off, leaving Sami and Alex, Nalani and Nils, Dev and Alliyah, all gathered at the railing.

  “Our own private paradise,” Dev said quietly.

  Alliyah put her arm around him. “Damn, I needed this.”

  Sami smiled, leaning her head on Alex’s shoulder. “We all did.”

  Nils shot them a mischievous look. “Patrick and I just want to know if there’ll be skinny-dipping.”

  Alex shook his head. “Some things never change.”

  Nils laughed and rushed off, presumably to find his husband.

  “Is he serious?” Sami asked.

  “You’ve seen his abs,” Alliyah said. “Nils is always looking for a reason to strip.”

  Moments later, the anchor splashed into the water. A little shiver of excitement went through Sami and she turned and kissed her husband. Grinning, she leaned in to whisper into his ear, soft and intimate, the words only for him.

  “I love you. And I’m so glad we came.”

  Alex kissed her forehead. She thought he might have said something in return, but then Harry cried out to them.

  “Grab your gear and get ready!” Harry shouted. “All ashore that’s going ashore!”

  CHAPTER 8

  It took three trips for all of them to go ashore, although all turned out to be minus two bodies. Despite Nils’s talk of skinny-dipping, he and Patrick decided to stay on board, taking advantage of the opportunity for some private time on the luxury sailing ship. As Patrick had put it, “The wine is already on board, and the deck won’t get sand all over my ass.” Nobody begrudged them the desire for time alone. On the contrary, when they’d announced they were staying on the Kid Galahad Alex had felt a twinge of envy, wishing he’d thought of it first even though he knew it would have been the wrong move. Harry had taken no offense to Nils and Patrick’s decision, but if Alex and Sami had done it their host would definitely have felt slighted. Alex wished he didn’t have to take diplomacy into consideration, but the history was complicated. Some of the tension had finally started to bleed out of the atmosphere between himself and Harry, and for everyone’s sake—including his own—Alex wanted that to continue.

  Alcohol was helping.

  Cat lay sprawled on a thick woven beach blanket, big mirrored sunglasses covering her eyes as she took a puff on a joint that had appeared in her hand as if by magic. She’d shared it around at first but now seemed to be relishing it with the passion of a connoisseur. Luisa sat beside her on the blanket with a cold beer between her legs. The rest of them were arranged along a twenty-foot stretch of beach. Alliyah and Dev, Nalani and James, Alex and Sami. On the raised table of rock Gabe had brushed sand away and spread out a red-and-white-checked picnic blanket.

  “Come on, folks,” Gabe announced. “All of this food isn’t going to eat itself.”

  “Damn, man,” Alex said, “how much can you fit in one basket?”

  “He’s a magician,” Dev declared.

  “There’s more than one basket,” Gabe replied. “You guys helped carry it. Or have you already had too many beers to remember that?”

  “Amateurs,” Harry sniffed. He lay propped against another stone nearby, this one jutting from the sand, the surf rippling and frothing around its base. On a green towel between his legs was a small cooler from which he’d produced an enormous pineapple, which he now proceeded to carve up with a wickedly sharp blade.

  Alex had to hand it to them: Dev wasn’t wrong. These two men, one a sailor at heart and the other an elitist prick trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong, were more than they seemed. They had navigated the boat and sailed it here, and by the time they’d dropped anchor they’d had a picnic
prepared for the entire group consisting of vegetable wraps, sushi, an exquisite chicken salad, and a selection of fresh fruits. Three separate coolers of beer and wine had also come ashore.

  “I know you’re all getting spoiled by all the fresh pineapple,” Harry called, “but who wants some?”

  “Are you kidding?” Sami said. “I might stay forever just for that.”

  Alex chuckled. It felt good, like the carefree potential of this journey had finally begun to settle in. He glanced around again at the people arrayed on the shore, old friends and their mates. They’d lost one of their own when Derek had taken his own life, but the rest of them were not just alive; they were thriving. Cat had softened a bit in the decade since college. Nalani’s hippy husband, James, had a bit of flab on him. Dev had a few gray hairs already. But as far as Alex could see, they were all healthy. It struck him in that moment how lucky they all truly were. Cat wore cutoffs and a bright peach tank top, but the other women all wore bikinis of vibrant color and varying style, some more daring than others. Dev wore a shorter suit than the other men, stylish and with a younger vibe. Harry had a red floral Hawaiian shirt, threadbare and unbuttoned, like he’d gone to the beach or to sea a hundred times and the fabric had been bleached by the sun and salt.

  “I know we keep saying it, but this really is paradise,” Alex said aloud.

  Only when he caught Sami, Harry, and several of the others looking at him did he realize the words had traveled from his thoughts to his lips.

  “It is,” Sami agreed.

  Alex glanced at Harry, who lifted one corner of his mouth in what seemed a rueful smile, an expression that took into account the tension that had lingered between them, and the friendship they’d once had.

  Sami tapped Alex’s arm. She had her eyes closed now, reclining in the sun, but she’d put out a hand to nudge him. “How about some of that pineapple, baby?”

  “I live to serve.” He climbed to his feet and strode over to Harry, who had produced a sleeve of blue Solo cups and was putting sliced-up pineapple into several of them.