Devil Sharks

by Chris Jameson

  He blinked. “Sami!”

  The surfboard rose and fell on a wave. Sami wasn’t on it.

  Alex heard her shout for him. He turned. Saw that she was all right, swimming for the board. Awash with relief for just an instant, he knew the shark would return in mere moments.

  Again he blinked, but this time there was blood in his eyes. He tasted it on his lips. The surfboard had cut his forehead and he was bleeding. Bleeding into the water.

  He almost stopped swimming. If he just gave up, let himself bleed, surely the shark would take him first. But fuck it, he wanted to live.

  “Go, Sami! I’ll race you!” he called, feeling closer to crazy than he ever had before.

  She’d almost reached the surfboard. He thought they could go side by side, keep distance between them. He could swim for shore, try like hell to make it there alive, and if the shark came back it would still go after him first. It would. It had to. Alex lowered his face into the water even as he swam, swished his head back and forth, letting his blood mix with the sea.

  His lungs burned. Every muscle in his neck and shoulders and back felt like it had suffered a thousand blows. The weariness hurt his bones, but the tautness of those muscles hurt so much more. He swam. He kicked with legs he could barely feel.

  He lifted his head—and heard the screaming.

  Turned … and saw Nalani. He’d thought the shrieking woman had been his wife. Instead, he saw his old friend clinging to half of the surfboard she’d gotten hold of. Even on the storm-darkened lagoon, with waves gone deep green and gray, her blood glistened a bright scarlet as it spread around her. Alex knew the second he saw that blood that Nalani’s screams might as well have come from a phantom. She clung to that broken surfboard, snapped in half by the same shark—Alex thought—that had knocked Sami off her board, and she kept screaming.

  Staring right at Alex.

  He plunged ahead, swimming hard, heading for shore. There were two fins in the water near Nalani, circling around her, moving to finish the job. Just that glimpse had been enough for him to know what had happened and what would happen next. Part of her—some piece of her body invisible from the surface—had already been removed. A leg, maybe both.

  Sickened by self-loathing, he tried to push Nalani’s staring eyes from his thoughts. As he swam, Nalani’s screams turned ragged and weak and then ceased entirely.

  Ahead of him, Sami shouted for him to swim. Alex obeyed.

  Nalani’s gaze would stay with him forever, but God help him, he wanted to live.

  CHAPTER 22

  Alliyah lay against the coral and waited for the shark to finish her.

  When Dev’s hands grabbed her wrists, it startled her so much that she tried to pull away. He swore at her. Down on his knees—the coral cutting his skin, drawing blood—he hauled her out of the water. He’d never been the strongest man, too thin, too wiry, but he dragged her out and across his lap like a parent intending to spank a child. The soft skin of her belly, the taut stomach she’d worked so hard for, scraped and bled. Alliyah barely felt it.

  “Oh, my God,” Dev said. “Alli. Oh, my God.”

  He kept repeating it, like a sample in some irritating club jam. Alliyah knew her chest still rose and fell, which meant she was still breathing. Which meant she was still alive. Her eyes were open, but she found herself unable to focus. The wounds in her back still throbbed, but the stabbing pain there had subsided. That must be a good sign, she thought. Though she knew it might also be a very, very bad one.

  “Alli,” Dev said again.

  She found herself on the verge of hating the nickname as much as she hated him.

  “Am I bitten?” she asked. “It got me, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah. It did.” His voice sounded almost as raspy and weak as her own. “The bite’s not that bad, though. We can bind it. Help’s coming.”

  The sting of the abrasions on her stomach hit her, then. She hissed through her teeth. Delayed reaction, she thought. If she’d had the energy, she would have laughed. Knife wounds in her back, fucking shark bite on her leg, and her biggest worry was the scrapes on her belly.

  Dev bundled her into his arms and lifted her. Alliyah wouldn’t have thought it possible, but he cradled her against his chest and carried her back the way he’d come. The wind buffeted them and he stumbled a little but kept going. With the merciless rain pouring down, Dev marched across the ridge. She didn’t have the strength or the will to look around, but she knew he was carrying her to the place where the two of them had been hiding when the smugglers arrived, trying to save their own asses.

  What she did notice, even with the numbness spreading through her and the weird, cottony swelling she felt inside her skull, was that this fragment of the atoll had gotten much smaller, even in these last few minutes. With the storm and the tide, there wasn’t much left of it.

  “Alli…,” Dev said, one last time.

  When he put her down, he was gentle as could be. Alliyah rolled on her side and watched him as he went and sat a few feet away. Once upon a time, he’d been full of confidence, a swaggering and charismatic husband. Now he put his head in his hands and sat in the rain with the tide coming in. She wondered, as consciousness crashed in and then rolled away like the waves around them, if what she witnessed in that moment was exhaustion or grief or sorrow.

  All of them, she realized. And more.

  Alliyah had seen the parts of Dev that he’d always kept hidden. All her life she’d heard variations on that old cliché that you never really knew a person until times got hard. Now it had turned out to be true, but she thought it had another wrinkle. Alliyah believed that Dev hadn’t really known himself until now, and that he didn’t like what he’d learned.

  She lay there and watched him until the first wave rolled up high enough to wash around her ankles, and then she closed her eyes.

  The rain kept falling.

  From somewhere nearby, Alliyah heard shouting, but there was nothing she could do to help. Nothing anyone could do.

  The next wave that crashed over her came not from the ocean, but from the darkness, and she let it carry her away.

  * * *

  Sami let the surfboard take her within twenty feet of the shore before her patience broke. She glanced over her shoulder, as she’d been doing over and over. One fin split the water off to her right, but in the storm and the waves there could be more—likely were more. Desperation drove her.

  Alex had kept swimming off to her left. She’d caught sight of him many times, but now, with her pulse racing and her breath caught in her throat, with the waves lifting and plunging her and the rain and wind, she didn’t see him.

  Wild, awful thoughts ripped through her. She caught a glimpse of someone onshore ahead of her and a flare of hope burst within her. Watching the shark, she tried to time its approach, wondering if she could make it.

  Sami couldn’t wait. She slipped off the board, nearly left it behind but grabbed hold of it, slid it over the surface as she waded for shore. Hip deep now, she picked the board up, carried it under her arm, and started running, struggling against the surf. Emerging, letting herself believe.

  The wave caught her, then. With the board under her arm, the wave knocked her down and she tumbled, smashed herself against the surfboard. She rolled, swallowing seawater, and slammed against the shore. The sandy bit of beach had long since been hidden by the tide. The ground here was hard. Sami cried out in pain, coughed up a bit of water—

  But then the wave receded and she found herself on land, one arm draped over the surfboard that she thought had probably saved her life. A shudder went through her and for a few seconds all she could think about was the fact that she was alive. Her whole body ached and her left elbow felt swollen, but the rain pelted her face and her shoes squelched with water and she roared at the sky in triumph.

  I’m alive.

  “Sami.”

  Shielding her eyes from the rain, she looked up. Sami wanted to think it was Alex standing o
ver her, but she knew her husband’s voice—the way he said her name—and this wasn’t him.

  “Dev,” she said.

  Alliyah’s husband stared at her. He stood with his arms crossed, almost hugging himself against the storm. His eyes were so wide she’d have thought he must be flying on one drug or another, but she had seen eyes like his before on people who hadn’t touched anything pharmaceutical. Dev was in shock.

  So are you, she thought.

  But the buzz of her victory, her survival, still raced through her veins like a drug of its own. Careful on the rocks, she levered herself up and stood. Dev didn’t offer her a hand, nor did he back up a step to give her room. He stared at her as if she were some sort of exotic bird whose presence he could not explain.

  “Where’s Alex?” she asked.

  Dev frowned. The question confused him, and that banished Sami’s feelings of triumph. She opened her mouth to ask again, then shook her head. Talking to this man would be pointless. The lights were on in Dev’s skull, but nobody was home.

  Shielding her eyes again, she glanced up and down the shore, and instantly spotted Alliyah. Sami cursed under her breath and rushed toward the woman, who lay curled on her side, almost fetal, a few feet from the edge of this fragment of atoll.

  “Alliyah,” she said, kneeling. “Alli?”

  Sami swore again. Alliyah’s breathing was shallow and her pulse was thin. Gently but swiftly, Sami examined the woman. It wasn’t difficult, under the circumstances. Alliyah wore a thin blue tank top and a peach bikini. She had one sandal on her left foot, but the right was bare and scraped all to hell. It was the least of her injuries. The shark bite on her right calf drew Sami’s attention first. The teeth marks were deep and ragged, bleeding, but not as badly as she’d have expected. The muscle and meat were still attached. The shark bite wouldn’t kill her.

  The wounds on her back would do that.

  “She shouldn’t even be here,” Sami said, more to herself than Dev. Alex had told her that the smugglers had murdered Alliyah. Obviously that wasn’t true, but how the woman had gotten here was a mystery.

  Sami glanced along the atoll’s ring toward the Coast Guard station. Even with the rain, fire still flickered inside its windows and thick smoke poured from inside the building. Had Dev gone over there and gotten her, managed to bring her back here before the channels between the fragments of the atoll—the volcano’s fangs—had gotten too deep?

  One look at Dev gave her an answer. Not a chance.

  Sami shot to her feet again, wincing at scrapes and aches but blessing every one of them for reminding her she was still alive.

  “Can you help her?” Dev asked, as if he’d just remembered Alliyah was there.

  “I’ll try,” Sami said, knowing how it would end. “But I need to find Alex.”

  “He’s not here,” Dev replied. So sure.

  Sami ignored him and started walking back the way she’d come. She glanced out at the water and saw a fin. Then a second and third. There might have been a fourth. They were swimming close to shore, lurking in the waves. Fuck you, she thought. Nothing you can do now.

  This fragment of Orchid Atoll had shrunk to a rough patch about eighty feet long and twenty feet wide. Whatever remnants might have remained of their picnic—if this had been the location of that picnic—had been washed away, with the exception of a single green towel. She thought it had belonged to Luisa, but Luisa wouldn’t be needing it anymore. The towel and the surfboard she’d washed up with were the only items in view, and there were certainly no other people. Not right here. But the atoll’s ring kept going.

  The rain turned the world gray. She’d walked about two-thirds of the way along the shore of this bit of land. Up ahead, she could see the gap between this part of the ring and the next. Waves crashed through it.

  Alex was on the other side.

  “Sami!” he shouted.

  She ran, grateful that she hadn’t kicked her shoes off in the water. Alex stood on the opposite side—fifty feet away. Maybe less.

  “Baby, I thought you were—” she started.

  “I’m not,” he said quickly. “Not yet.”

  He started into the water. Sami saw the shark before Alex did, but only a second before. He threw himself backward, scrambled to his feet, and stared at the enormous back of the monster as it slid slowly through the gap between them.

  Alex turned, just for a moment, and Sami realized immediately what he was looking at.

  A wave crashed behind him and washed right over the top of the little island he was on. If the tide rose any higher, if the storm got any worse, the spot where he was standing would be underwater. The sprit where Dev, Sami, and Alliyah were wasn’t just bigger, but slightly taller.

  “You can’t stay there!” Sami called to Alex.

  As if in reply, the shark swam back through the gap. A sentry, making its rounds. Only this time, a second one passed it going in the other direction. It surfaced, one black eye tracking her. The shark swam toward the spot where Sami stood. A wave swelled beneath it and Sami backed away. In her head she knew it couldn’t reach her, but in her gut the terror of sinking on the Kid Galahad and swimming to shore remained.

  She glanced back at Dev, but he’d sat down beside Alliyah, knees drawn up under him, staring out at the lagoon. A wave rolled up the coral ridge and lifted the surfboard and a dreadful tremor went through her.

  “Wait for me!” she shouted.

  Sami stumbled into the water, leaping above the highest wave. In seconds she was up to her waist in the surf, lunging for the board as the sea tried to steal it away. A glance across the water made her heart stop. How many fins had she counted in that moment? Six or seven, at least, probably more. Not counting the ones patrolling the pass where Alex stood waiting for her.

  She grabbed the surfboard and dragged it ashore.

  The time for fear had ended.

  Which didn’t mean she had any desire to be stupid. She needed something more than the surfboard. That deep pass wouldn’t get any narrower while she waited to see if the tide rose higher. She ran the surfboard over to Dev and dropped it onto the ground beside him.

  “Don’t let this get swept away.”

  She started past him, but he grabbed her wrist.

  “Help her,” Dev said. Still lost in shock, he glanced at Alliyah as if Sami needed reminding.

  And maybe she did.

  How much time did Alex have? She didn’t know the answer, but she couldn’t walk away from Dev and Alliyah without doing something. Working swiftly, she crouched and slipped Alliyah’s tank top off. The woman’s face contorted with pain and she groaned aloud.

  “What are you—” Dev began.

  “That’s a good sign,” Sami told him. And it might even have been true if they could have gotten her to a hospital right now, somewhere she could get an infusion to replace some of the blood she’d lost.

  The bite on Alliyah’s leg needed bandaging, but all they had was her tank top. Sami folded it longways.

  “Roll her onto her stomach.”

  As if in slow motion, Dev complied. Sami pressed the soaked cloth against the two stab wounds, then looked up at him.

  “You put your hands where mine are and you hold them here. Compression. She’s lost a ton of blood. Maybe you can stop her from losing more.”

  “There’s nothing else you can do?” Dev asked hopelessly.

  Sami stood up. He quickly replaced her hands with his own, pressing down on his wife’s wounds. Alliyah groaned again, and then Sami was gone. She hurried along the ridge to the edge of the fragment, staring at the Coast Guard station as she moved.

  The gap on this side was narrower but still wide. She could make a good third of the distance with a leap. A quick glance showed no sign of sharks and she didn’t want to give herself a moment to reconsider, so she backed up, got a running start, and hurled herself out over the channel. She plunged into the water. Her feet touched bottom and she pushed off, certain a shark must be
waiting for her.

  Then she was on the other side, crawling out. The ground was softer here, not as rough, and she set off running along the water’s edge toward the burning Coast Guard station.

  Sami hadn’t told Alex what she planned to do because she hadn’t wanted him to talk her out of it, but less than two minutes after she’d reached the structure she knew it had been a waste of time. The windows were shattered. Fire burned inside, smoke pouring out, charring the outer walls. The open door revealed the scene within—not an inferno now, but a tunnel of flickering shadows with fire coating the ceiling. The doors on either side of the corridor just inside were burning.

  Alex had told her the place was virtually empty, but she’d thought about the metal frames for the cots. Maybe she could break off a leg, use it as a weapon. She’d even considered the idea that she could bring back two, toss one across the waves to her husband.

  “Stupid,” she whispered to herself, backing away from the burning doorframe. “So stupid.”

  How much time had she wasted? How many waves had crashed over the spit of land where Alex waited? Sami hesitated another moment, wracking her brain, trying to find a way to save her husband that didn’t involve him swimming so far unprotected.

  She had nothing.

  Sami started running back. To her right were the trees she’d already passed more than once. A cluster of koa trees drew her attention. Several were broken, half-fallen, knocked over by one storm or another over the past few years. Thinking anything was better than nothing to show for her efforts, Sami grabbed hold of a thick branch, put her foot on the trunk of one of those fallen trees, and wrenched upward. The wood gave with the crack, and suddenly she was running back the way she’d come with a long, leafless tree branch whose splintered end seemed a halfway decent spear. She had no illusions she could kill a shark with a length of wood, but she needed something—anything—that would at least serve as a distraction.

  She’d wasted this time. She couldn’t go back empty-handed.