The terrible shark kept gnawing at the swordfish until it was nothing more than a head and a skeleton held together by sinew and ligament. When the shark went after the head, the old man leaped up and speared it through the skull, pushing the harpoon deep into its braincase. The shark did not like it. It swam off; trying to throw the harpoon, but it could not. It was impaled and even its evil undead vitality could not save it from its punctured brain. It thrashed in the water, jumping up and down and spreading bits of its carrion tissue into the waves. It rolled over and over, but the harpoon was in deep. Finally, it slowed and rolled belly-up and did not move again.
That was the last the old man saw of it.
His great fish was ravaged. It did not matter. It had lived to a great age and died the way it wanted to die. The old man had killed it and it nearly killed him. Only one survived. The old man mourned its death, as he mourned the fact that he would only bring a head and bones into port. But that was fine. It was okay. For he carried the memory of the last great living fish within him. Though his belly might be empty, the memory nourished his soul.
He manned the tiller, thinking only of the awful throbbing in his arm and the wind that would carry him home. Oh, if the boy were only with him, he would tend to it as he always tended to such things. Had the boy been there, it would have been a different battle, but he did not let himself think about that.
The wind was good and merciful. It carried him into the harbor and he beached his skiff on the white sand of the dead island. He fell into the sand and sobbed at the memory of the fish, wondering if perhaps, it would have been better never to catch it. It was the last true dream he had. Now, he had nothing. He rose to his feet unsteadily, weary and aching. His belly was sick. His head was dizzy. He was too weak to tend to the sail or the wooden box that now had no harpoon to rest within it.
“Things like that no longer matter,” he told himself. “You’ll find now that, what was important before is trivial now.”
In his fatigued condition, the old man was not sure whether he had thought that or said it aloud. Again, it did not matter. He stumbled down the beach until he found his shack. He barely had the strength to get through the door and drop onto his bed. His eyes closed of their own volition.
When he woke, it was morning again. His eyes took in the day. He knew, rather than saw, that he was no longer alone. There was a shape in the dimness. It was watching him and he wondered how long it had been there.
“Who?” he said.
He felt no fear. After taking the fish, he did not feel things the way he once had. He had set out to do a thing, had accomplished it, and was content in that. Fear was no longer part of who he was.
“It is I!” said the voice.
The boy? But how? The boy was a dead thing stumbling up dead roads past houses where the dead decayed or stirred with grim appetite. This could not be the boy. Surely, it was another.
The old man blinked his eyes, felt a coldness inside him that was welcomed.
“The dead did not get me,” the boy said. “I walked with them as one of them and they did not know, so I was safe. They did not try to bite me, because I was a dead thing like them. I fooled them. Wasn’t that clever of me?”
The old man rose from the bed. “It was not just clever, but very brave.”
“I waited to come to you. Always the dead wished to come to the beach, but I led them away. Now, they are gone from the village and are many miles away. I saved you.”
“You did,” the old man said. “What a fine boy you are.”
As the old man advanced on him, the boy’s eyes filled with fear. “Oh no…oh, dear God, not you, too…”
Then the old man had him as he had had the fish. There had been remorse in killing the great fish. However, when it had stabbed him with its sword all that changed. The sickness had claimed him. He knew it and accepted it. The boy fought and the old man held him tighter as he bit into his throat, laying it open. The boy died trembling. The old man drank his blood and ate his flesh until he was bloated with it. When he had finished, the boy was a well-picked carcass.
The old man looked down at the remains and said, “What is this mess upon my floor?” He had no memory of it or of a great fish that he had caught.
These things did not concern him. He lay back down on the bed and thought about the boy, wondering what had become of him. Full and satisfied, he began to dream about the boy who had been his friend, but was now gone. After a time, he dreamed of Africa and the living dead men waiting on the shore. In his dream, he felt their hunger because it was part of him now.
—End—
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Dead Bait 3 Page 14
