Gripping her makeshift spear, Sami ran through the rain, hoping her husband would still be there.
CHAPTER 23
The little stretch of rock where Alex had dragged himself out of the water had been shrinking ever since. The tide kept rising, the water washing over the stone beneath his feet. He stood on the highest point, but his personal island didn’t have much variation in elevation, and even in the troughs between waves he was mostly surrounded by water. The only thing keeping the sharks away was how shallow it was. Even in the gray of the storm, with the gloom of the rain, he could see through the rippling surf. Two steps away from him, the water was only a few inches deep. Four steps, it dropped to perhaps nine inches, and deeper the farther out he went. When a big wave crashed in, he had to crouch and tense himself against it every time to make sure he didn’t get swept off his perch. That would be bad. Probably fatal.
The sharks were waiting. Alex told himself that was insane, that the sharks had brains the size of walnuts or something and they couldn’t possibly be smart enough to really be waiting for him, but he wondered how much of that was true. They were predators, after all. Predators that had learned to see humans as prey. The cut on Alex’s forehead had bled into the water and they had followed him, nearly killed him. Only Nalani’s death had distracted them long enough for him—and for Sami—to reach the rocky fangs of the atoll.
Now they circled. He’d counted at least eight or nine out in the lagoon, but there were three here paying special attention to him. They swam in a kind of pattern as if guarding their prey, waiting for a wave to knock him into the deeper water or for the storm surge to drive the tide even higher.
A wave crashed in. He crouched again, one knee on the ground. The wave smashed against him and he scrambled a bit, shifting his hands to catch himself. When the wave subsided, the tide seemed higher to him. It couldn’t have risen with just that one wave, but now he noticed it.
Yes. Definitely still rising.
Still on one knee, crouched there with his hands on the rock, nearly half a foot of water rushing around his legs and forearms, he knew the end had come. He would have to swim for it again. The last time, he had barely made it. Now he had fifty or sixty feet to go—twenty yards. He could do that in thirty seconds if he got a running start and dove. Alex wouldn’t be in the water long at all. He had to risk it.
Another wave crashed in. He waited as it swept over him, went down on both knees to hold on, and then he was up again, counting fins. One, two … where was the third one? Shit, he couldn’t see it. Had the shark gone underwater? Even if he spotted it, how could he be certain there were only three nearby?
He couldn’t.
But he couldn’t wait.
Alex took a deep breath. He spotted another huge wave rolling in, and decided he wasn’t going to wait, but when he glanced at the nearest fragment of the atoll he saw that Sami had returned. In the rain, he could barely make her out. She had that same surfboard—he saw that much—and she called out to him as she hurried toward him.
“No. Sami, wait!” he called.
Shit. The wave was nearly on him before he remembered it and knelt down, trying to dig his fingers into the rock to hold on. Alex held his breath. Water shot up his nose as he scrambled sideways, losing his grip. It lifted him, started to sweep him away. His heart thundered in panic as he reached down, scrabbling at the rock beneath the wave, and caught enough of a grip to slow himself until the wave subsided.
“Alex, come on!” Sami shouted, as if he’d been playing instead of trying to save himself. He’d have laughed if he’d been capable of it.
He sprang to his feet again. The wind gusted hard, but he fought against it, closed his eyes to the rain and the oncoming waves, and he stopped worrying about counting fins. One more wave like that and he’d be in the water anyway, and nowhere near the one piece of hard ground that might still save his life.
“Meet me halfway!” Sami called.
Then she dove. He’d seen her rushing toward the end of that spit of land, but now she had surrendered her safety for him. Alex had wanted to be ready, had wanted to get a good running, splashing start. But Sami had already gone into the water and they were out of time. He took three staggering steps and hurled himself forward, reaching his arms out toward the surfboard—toward his wife.
He plunged into the water just as another wave crashed over him. Alex ducked his head under, fought the powerful current beneath the wave, and rose up again. The surfboard had been dragged nearly sideways, but he saw Sami swimming toward him even as she tried to get the surfboard stretched out between them again.
“Get on, damn it!” he snapped.
She ignored him, and only then did he see the dark length of something in her hand. Something metal, he thought, before realizing it was nothing more than a broken branch. Fifteen feet apart, they swam toward each other. The surfboard filled six of those feet, and as the water began to rise with another oncoming wave Alex lunged and kicked and crossed half that distance, grabbing hold of the other end of the surfboard.
He had a moment to meet Sami’s gaze, a moment for them both to feel the strength of that connection, and then the wave crashed over them. They had to kick and grip to keep the surfboard from being carried away, and when the wave had passed they were nearer to Sami’s side, both swimming hard, trying to get back to yet another vanishing fragment of the atoll.
Twenty feet from the coral ridge. Fifteen feet. Alex caught up, the surfboard turning so that it was between them. He thought about letting go, but he had no idea if they’d need it, and he liked that for the moment it connected him to his wife. He thought about Sami, about what she’d done—how she’d gotten that branch, which she clearly intended as a weapon. The only trees were by the Coast Guard station. She’d gone back there, trying to find a way to save him. He hadn’t brought her out here, it had been a joint decision for them to come, but he knew that she had done it for him. A free first-class Hawaiian vacation had its allure, but she had wanted him to put old resentments behind him. That was the real reason she’d been so eager to make the trip.
Ten feet from the coral ridge. He started swimming harder, kicking his feet, holding the surfboard with one hand.
When the shark surfaced behind him, he jerked to the right. It clamped its jaws down onto the surfboard instead of his arm. But it caught part of his left hand—the one holding the board—in that bite. Alex roared with pain. He tried to pull away, but his ruined hand had been caught in the shark’s teeth, pinned against the board as the shark bit down, thrashing its body, trying to bite through the surfboard. He saw his blood stain the board, saw the water wash it away, saw it bloom around them. The moment stretched, the space of seconds seeming to expand to an eternity. Bone crunched and tendons tore and he felt it all. Pain turned to fury and ferocity and Alex used his other fist to pound on the shark’s nose, then smash its dull black eye, tempted to try forcing its jaws open but—even in agony—knowing better.
Something gave in his hand, shark’s teeth tearing, severing, breaking, and he threw his head back and screamed.
A wave came in, and Sami rode with it. She let the swell carry her up, pushing the board beneath her. Alex saw it happen, closed his eyes against the wave even as he roared again. When he opened his eyes, the shark had pulled away. The spear that Sami had made jutted from its left eye as it submerged, fin barely visible.
“Swim,” Sami said. “Jesus Christ, Alex … swim!”
He stared at his blood in the water, and the gleaming, dark nub of flesh that floated for a moment just beneath the surface before the current swept it away and it began to sink. His left hand had been mangled. His third and fourth fingers were gone—one with his wedding ring—and he’d just seen one of those fingers sinking into the water. His hand throbbed. In the water, he saw pale bone in the ragged flesh and his blood trailed around him.
Then Sami had him by the arm. He met her eyes.
“Get out of the water, honey.”
Then his right hand touched the coral, just beneath the water, and he scrambled up the ridge, pulling himself out. Sami climbed out right beside him. Numb with shock, Alex turned around and saw two fins passing in opposite directions, the surfboard rolling on the water between them as another wave crashed through the gap. A round edge of the board had been bitten clean through. It floated out of the gap—
Only it wasn’t a gap anymore, was it? The fragment of the ring he’d been standing on had vanished completely. The next one along jutted out like some kind of monument, but it was well over a hundred yards farther around the ring.
Alex smelled his own blood. He inhaled deeply, letting it clear his head. The pain sang through the bones of his arm, throbbing deeply.
Sami took his wrist and lifted the hand.
“Hold this up,” she said, turning his chin so that he was staring into her eyes. “I’ll bind it. I can stop the bleeding.”
Alex took a deep breath. Even the wind and rain hurt his ruined hand, but he managed a grimace that he’d intended as a smile.
“I have faith in you, Dr. Simmons,” he said. “Also, I’d like to sit down now.”
Sami smiled thinly, nodding, still visibly shaken herself. “Me too. But not just yet. Come with me.”
Together they started walking across the thin coral ridge. At the far end, Alex saw Dev cradling Alliyah in his lap, but nearer than that a soaking-wet green towel lay on what seemed the highest part of the ridge. The towel was all that remained of their picnic earlier that day.
It seemed only right that if Alex was to manage to live until morning it would be that remnant of paradise that saved him.
* * *
Alliyah felt Dev there. She couldn’t open her eyes, but she heard his voice. He whispered to her for a while, with the wind blowing. She could hear the waves and she wondered if it was still raining, because she couldn’t feel the rain anymore.
Quietly, somehow so far away, she heard Dev singing softly to her. An old song, a lullaby. He’d often sung it to himself in the shower, and though he had always said it would be her decision whether they had children or not, she had known when he sang this lullaby that he wanted a child to hold.
She hated him.
For a while, she could feel his arms around her. Could feel his body warm beneath her. Knew that he cradled her. Felt a kiss upon her forehead.
She hated him.
He sang, and he whispered, and he told her everything would be all right, until at last she couldn’t feel his arms on her anymore. Until, at last, she couldn’t hear him anymore.
She loved him.
* * *
Dev looked down at Alliyah as he felt her body relax, felt all the pain and tension leave her. As her head began to loll backward, he propped her up, resettled her so that her head leaned against his chest. Her shallow, reedy breathing had stopped, but he started the lullaby over from the beginning, wondering if somewhere she might still be able to hear.
He hated her.
Dev pushed damp strands of hair out of her face and kissed her forehead, and then continued the song, quietly, holding her a bit more tightly now that he knew his embrace could not hurt her.
He hated her.
Dev had let her down. He’d betrayed her faith in him and his own in himself. Now, at the end, he’d been unable to save her or do anything to help, but at least he could do this. Alliyah deserved this much, at least. He could sit and wait with her through the storm and the long night, sit and wait for the tide to go out. Most of her friends had been lost in the lagoon, nothing left of them, but he could see to it that she made it home.
He loved her.
And he sang to her.
And the wind blew.
* * *
Sami didn’t bother Dev. She saw it happen, sensed it from the way Alliyah’s hands drooped at her sides and the way Dev held her more tightly. Sami and Alex were there, so at least Dev wasn’t alone, but she wasn’t going to disturb him.
“How’s it look?” she asked Alex.
He held up his ruined hand. She had torn the green towel into broad strips, using one as a tourniquet to get the blood to stop flowing. Another she’d tied around the mangled hand. Already she’d had to replace that second strip with a third, but now the tourniquet seemed to be working. Alex held the hand up, resting it across his chest. Sami knew that a great deal depended on time, now. The towel had not been dry or clean. The risk of infection was much higher than she’d like. But the blood had started to crust where his missing fingers had been torn away. If she could release the tourniquet now and then to keep the hand from becoming necrotic, and if he didn’t get an infection, she thought they would be okay. That they would make it until morning, or until the Coast Guard came to collect them, whichever happened first.
They would get home to Tasha.
If the tide didn’t rise any higher.
If the storm didn’t get any worse.
If the waves didn’t knock them off the little bit of ridge that was all that remained of this fragment of the ring.
“You think you’ll live?” she asked Alex, smiling.
“I think we will,” he replied, his good arm around her.
They leaned against each other and they watched the lagoon. Watched the sharks.
It seemed to her that the rain had let up a little. That the wind had lessened. That the sharks had begun to lose interest.
Maybe, she thought. Just maybe.
It was her new favorite word.
Also by Chris Jameson
SHARK ISLAND
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHRIS JAMESON has been a bouncer, a liquor retailer, an assistant hockey coach, a drama teacher, and an office drone. Summers on Cape Cod have given him a healthy respect for ocean predators. He lives near the coast of Massachusetts, but doesn’t spend a lot of time in the water. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Also by Chris Jameson
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
DEVIL SHARKS
Copyright © 2018 Daring Greatly Corporation.
Illustration by Jerry Todd; boat © De Visu/Shutterstock.com; islands © TravnikovStudio/Shutterstock.com; shark © Chris Harvey/Shutterstock.com; sunrise © Excellent Backgrounds/Shutterstock.com
All rights reserved.
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on address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
www.stmartins.com
eISBN: 978-1-250-13957-3
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St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / July 2018
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Devil Sharks Page 22
