Shark Island

by Chris Jameson

  She caught the look on Rosalie’s face and something clicked in her head. A conversation between the research assistant and Tye, talk of a secret.

  “What are you hiding?” she asked.

  Rosalie scowled. “I don’t know what—”

  “You told Tye you knew his secret. That you knew where the bodies were buried. What were you talking about, then? Did you two do something to cause this? Did you want to tear Kat down for some reason, or did you—”

  “Whoa, now, hold the fuck on!” Rosalie snapped. “I get that you’re freaking out, girl, but you can’t just go accusing people of sabotage!”

  Tye paled. Looked like he was biting his tongue.

  “Then what did I hear? What’s this secret—”

  “Maybe you need to look up the definition of secret,” Rosalie sneered.

  Kat stepped between them. “That’s enough.” She took a breath. The way her gaze shifted, Naomi could see that the argument had gotten under her skin. But then Kat turned to focus on her. “Rosalie’s right. Accusing a scientist of sabotaging a project … you’ve got to be very careful. You could ruin careers that way.”

  “But—”

  “Naomi, listen to me. You’re not thinking straight,” Kat said. “Neither Tye nor Rosalie would do anything to purposely undermine this experiment. It wouldn’t just make me look bad. It would taint the efforts of the whole team and seriously impact our ability to get funding. It wouldn’t make any sense.”

  Boom.

  Wolchko cleared his throat. “You think I’m in on this conspiracy, too?”

  “Of course not,” Naomi replied.

  “I’d have to be,” he said. “I programmed the signal. I built the array. No way could anyone make changes to it without my knowing.” A frown of guilt creased his forehead. “If something’s gone wrong, it’s my fault.”

  “It’s not that simple, Eddie,” Kat said.

  Naomi shook her head. “Fine. Maybe nobody did it on purpose. But you’re wrong if you think it’s not simple.”

  She turned and marched toward the wheelhouse. Rosalie and Bergting saw where she was headed and went to intercept her.

  Boom. Boom.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Rosalie snapped.

  Naomi cocked her head back. “Turning it off. Which is what you should be doing.”

  Boom.

  She went to push past, but Rosalie grabbed her wrist. “Whoa, whoa. Dial it down, honey. You’re out of your depth here. Nobody touches the equipment without—”

  Naomi hit her. Hard. Closed fist. She knew how to throw a punch. Rosalie staggered and went down on one knee. Boom. Boom. Voices called out. Bergting swore and tried talking to Naomi as she rushed by, headed into the wheelhouse.

  Captain N’Dour blocked her way. “Mr. Bergting, please take the wheel,” he said, though he never took his eyes off Naomi.

  Bergting slipped by them both, took control of the boat, and Captain N’Dour held a hand up as if to forestall any argument from Naomi.

  Boom.

  “I know you’re frightened,” N’Dour said, his voice so gentle.

  From behind, Naomi heard Rosalie shouting. “Get your hands off me, Kat. I’m done with this bitch.”

  Naomi glanced back and saw Kat and Tye both holding Rosalie back. The woman’s nose had started to bleed. Naomi wasn’t sorry, but the sight of that blood gave her pause.

  Bump. Tilt.

  She stumbled a bit and Captain N’Dour grabbed her, bringing them closer together. His eyes searched hers.

  “Do not fear,” N’Dour said.

  Naomi laughed at that, staring at him as panic drained out of her. Boom. She flinched at this new impact, fought back the tears that fear threatened to wring from her.

  “We’re fine,” Captain N’Dour said, taking her hand in both of his. His skin felt leathery, somehow dry despite the water all around them. “You must listen to me and try to think. Just hear me. A hundred sharks could pound on this ship all day and night and we would be fine. The hull is too strong for them to hurt us.”

  His confidence soothed her. “Still. We should shut it off.”

  Boom. Boom. Boom. The frenzy in the water had grown more chaotic, the thunder of the sharks smashing at the hull even louder.

  Captain N’Dour looked past her to Kat, who stepped up beside Naomi now.

  “We’ll be done here in a couple of hours,” Kat said. “Then we shut it all down and go home. If you want to wait below or something, we won’t object. But we need to record this behavior from the sharks. It’s part of the research now and we can’t ignore—”

  Boom.

  Rosalie shuffled up beside Kat. Tye tried to stop her, but she shook him off. She wiped at her bloody nose.

  “We’ve got the data on the seals,” Rosalie said. “All of that we can post-game later. But if the sharks are reacting to the signal, we have to know that, and understand how. Which means we still have a job to do.”

  Boom. Boom.

  “Go below if you want. Or you can put that fear aside and do the job you came here to do.”

  Naomi breathed. Felt the rain. Glanced at the faces around her, each of them breaking away once they saw that she’d gotten herself under control. Tye went below, muttering something about the data. Rosalie and Bergting started making a circuit of the deck, talking quietly, maybe counting fins again. Wolchko seemed reluctant to leave Naomi alone, but after a moment’s hesitation he went into the wheelhouse.

  “You going to be all right?” Kat asked.

  Boom.

  Naomi glanced at Captain N’Dour and nodded. He knew his boat. He said they were safe.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “For making such a scene. I’m an ass.”

  “You’re scared. We get it,” Kat replied. “Look, I don’t know what you overheard.”

  Naomi met her gaze and realized Kat was curious. Even troubled. “You said they had as much to lose as you do. That they’d never—”

  “They wouldn’t. But I do wonder what that’s about.”

  Naomi got the sense there might be a hint of jealousy in Kat’s voice, but hadn’t she heard the part about Rosalie knowing where the bodies were buried? Whatever secret she had with Tye, it had to do with something more than sex or romance.

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  Kat gave Naomi’s arm a reassuring grip and then joined Wolchko, talking about how sharks hear, something about their brains, and wondering about the effects of modulating the existing signal. Wolchko started to argue, and that was the point when Naomi actually believed they might be all right.

  She leaned against the wheelhouse, the glass windows slick with rain. Three strikes in quick succession. The whole thing was insane, but if these scientists felt so at ease that they could stand there and debate marine acoustics she thought they really must be safe.

  A dozen feet away, her camera lay on the deck, shielded by the rain hood she’d been using. How hard had she dropped it? She started toward the camera, but Rosalie beat her to it. She’d been at the railing but now picked up the camera and turned it over in her hands, tugging at the hood.

  “Don’t,” Naomi said.

  Rosalie shot her a curious look. “Don’t what?”

  Naomi waited for her to smash it or throw it overboard. Instead, Rosalie handed the camera and hood to her.

  “Focus on the sharks. Get shots where we can gauge their size. This isn’t for The Globe; it’s for the project. Every bit of detail helps.”

  Naomi knitted her brows, not bothering to hide her surprise.

  Rosalie touched the darkening bruise on her face. “Oh, you’re worried about this? Don’t worry; you’ve got one coming. Let’s just say I owe you, and I’ll save it for later, when you’re done being useful.”

  She went to rejoin Bergting. Naomi watched them for a moment, saw the quiet approval on the first mate’s features, and then gave her camera a quick examination. Snapped a couple of photos. Wiped some rain off the casing, happy that the lens was clea
r.

  Boom.

  Unsteady on her feet, careful as the boat dipped and rolled, she moved around the railing. Naomi had no expertise in sharks, but they all had a sameness about them, so she thought they must all be Great Whites. They ranged in length from eight feet to as long as what must have been fifteen or sixteen feet, the latter of which was enormous. She photographed as many as she could, got the clearest shots that the storm and the sea and the rocking boat would allow.

  Working, thinking with her camera, she began to calm even further. The sharks were down there. She was up here.

  Boom. Boom. She snapped away, while nearby Tye and Kat had come out onto the deck and were talking about hyperaggression and primal triggers.

  With her camera, Naomi tracked one of the largest sharks, following it with her lens and moving down the railing to the rear of the boat. As the fin turned toward her, she forced herself to breathe, to watch it through her camera, to remember Captain N’Dour’s soothing words.

  The fin rushed straight for the rear of the boat. The stern, she reminded herself, leaning against the railing as she snapped photos of the shark knifing toward her. You call it the—

  The impact jolted her much harder than the others. It felt as if the deck had shifted beneath her, as if the shark had moved the boat. But as Naomi stumbled and grabbed hold of the railing it was the sound echoing in her head that scared her. Not a boom this time. This time, the collision had been a crash. Something had cracked and broken, giving way, and suddenly all of Captain N’Dour’s reassurances seemed like the worst lies.

  The stern dipped hard. Something came skittering along the deck and she saw it was an empty soda can. It rolled right under the railing and vanished into the churning water below. Naomi ratcheted herself up, hung the camera on its strap around her neck, and looked over the side … knowing what she would see. Dreading it. Needing to confirm it with her own eyes.

  Wolchko and Rosalie came running. The stern dipped again, hard, and Rosalie lost her footing. She slipped on the rain-slick deck and careened into the railing. Her elbow came down hard, something cracked, and when she hit the railing she cried out in pain. Naomi ignored her. They had bigger problems.

  A hole had opened at the back of the boat, deep under the waterline. Ocean poured in through a breach in the hull. Naomi saw it for a moment, the water rushing in, but the boat tipped farther, the ballast of the floodwater dragging the stern down harder. Deeper.

  “No, no. It can’t be!” Captain N’Dour said as he skidded along the deck toward them.

  The boat dipped into a trough, tipped hard to starboard, and the ocean splashed up onto the aft deck. For a moment the water seemed to drag on it, as if it wanted nothing more than to claim the Thaumas. N’Dour held on to the crane and the others to the railing. Up by the wheelhouse, Kat shouted as she fell, sliding across the deck before the next swell righted the boat. Naomi caught a glimpse of Bergting and Tye in the wheelhouse, shouting at each other.

  “How do we stop it?” Wolchko said, glaring at N’Dour even as he crouched to help Rosalie.

  Naomi felt numb. “You said this couldn’t happen.”

  N’Dour held on to the crane as the boat dipped farther. “The propeller shaft … it must’ve—”

  Another collision, a cracking sound beneath them, and Naomi felt something other than fear. As the boat tilted hard to stern and another trough came, the ocean crashed up onto the deck and washed over Rosalie, Naomi knew they were done, and what she felt was fury. Venom burned through her, a hatred of the sharks and of this project that had fueled their aggression.

  Wolchko dragged Rosalie to her feet as she cradled her left arm against her chest, possibly broken.

  “We have to shut it off,” Captain N’Dour said, beginning to turn toward the wheelhouse.

  Naomi barely heard the words. She pushed off the railing, climbing the slick incline of the deck, reckoning they had half a minute or less before the pitch would be too steep. She grabbed N’Dour, used him to pull forward, passed the crane, and shouted for Bergting. For Kat. For Tye.

  “Get closer!” Naomi called. “We’ve got to reach—”

  The rest of the sentence was swallowed by a loud crack belowdecks. Not a collision, not this time. Just the result of something else giving way, the settling of water in the belly of the boat. They listed hard to port again, the stern sinking deeper. She slipped, fell to her knees, stump hurting even more than her real knee.

  “Go, go, go!” Kat roared, waving her arm as she held on to the open door of the wheelhouse.

  For a moment Naomi thought she’d had the same thought, that Kat was calling for Bergting to aim the Thaumas at Bald Cap. But that wasn’t it at all. Kat pointed toward Bald Cap, gesturing violently so the rest of them would understand. Then she reached into the wheelhouse and grabbed the back of Tye’s raincoat, dragged him out onto the deck and toward the port side.

  Only then did Naomi really get it. The propeller had been staved in. Bergting could do nothing to get them closer. They were slowing down, sinking, listing hard, and subject to the whims of the storm and sea. They were foundering.

  They were going into the water one way or another. If they wanted to live, they were going to have to swim for it. And once they were in the water, they wouldn’t be alone.

  CHAPTER 23

  Hands gripped Naomi from behind, powerful hands that hoisted her to her feet on the canted deck. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe.

  “Swim,” Captain N’Dour said in her ear. “You must go.”

  Naomi took his hand, grasped it tight. “We go together.”

  Wolchko tried moving past them with Rosalie. He shouted to Bergting to shut down the signal, but that seemed such a small thing now. The ship would go down, the power would short, and it would be over. Naomi tried to tell him that.

  The ocean fell away beneath them, the trough so deep. She heard a pair of thudding impacts on the hull and then the stern slid beneath the water and the rising crest hurled itself against the starboard and they were all sliding. Falling. Naomi saw the railing rushing up toward her and knew bones would break, and she shouted at Captain N’Dour to jump.

  Together they launched themselves from the deck, fell over the side. Her camera flew beside her and clipped the railing, shattering on impact.

  Then she plunged into the sea and the water stole Captain N’Dour away, his fingers torn from her grasp. The breathless cold seized her, so sharp and sudden that it shut down her panic, drove conscious thought away so that she relied only on instinct. In the water, the prosthetic felt lighter than the rest of her, but it moved at her command as she kicked upward and breached the surface.

  Naomi looked up, expecting to see the Thaumas crashing down on top of her, but the ocean had changed its mind. The boat hadn’t capsized. Another massive wave threatened to topple it, but now the water concentrated on dragging it down from behind. Half the boat had vanished now, the crane gone below the surface.

  She heard screams and turned to see Wolchko swimming toward Rosalie.

  Seals barked from the rocky edge of Bald Cap, thirty feet away. Farther out, past the sinking boat, Naomi saw fins, and then she stopped thinking. Her brain blotted them out. Her eyes refused to see them. Shouts and barks and screams filled the air and the wind howled through the rusted lattice of the tower on Bald Cap, but she saw nothing more. She only swam, head down, salt water up her nose, body remembering early-morning swim meets in middle school, prosthetic leg not cooperating, slowing her pace. But she swam, heart thundering, and hating that leg. She swam.

  Behind her, a voice screamed itself ragged.

  Her good knee scraped stone. Her hand reached up, closed on a sharp edge, and then her foot found purchase under the water. The new leg couldn’t feel properly, but she jammed it forward, scraped against rocks until her boot caught and she had leverage with both legs. She climbed, dragged herself up onto the edges of Bald Cap, and turned as the shark surfaced, jaws wide, rows of yellow teeth smeared
with torn bits of seal skin and flesh.

  Naomi screamed and tucked her legs up against her chest, twisted away, and the shark careened against the rocks as it passed. She couldn’t breathe as she watched it. Only nine feet long. One of the small ones, she thought, and then laughed at the insanity of the thought. Laughed and then started to cry, one hand flying up to cover her mouth. To contain a sob. She mustered her strength, told herself crying would not help them, and felt a chill seize her insides again.

  Naomi heard shouts, whipped around, and saw Kat dragging Tye from the water. His pants were torn and Naomi saw blood on the stark white flesh of his right leg, but the leg remained. Captain N’Dour climbed out of the water after him, scrambling quickly, glancing over his shoulder at two fins that were slashing toward the tiny island.

  Several dozen seals had found rest on the rocky edges of the island. Naomi picked a path that would keep her as far from them as possible as she crept farther inland, onto the smooth stone that gave Bald Cap its name, and stood to scan the water. There, a quarter way round the island, Wolchko and Rosalie were clambering onto the rocks, avoiding more seals. Naomi exhaled. Rosalie still held her arm to her chest, but beyond that she and Wolchko were whole. Each alive and in one piece.

  A tremor went through Naomi.

  All except Bergting.

  “Peter!” N’Dour was shouting, stumbling as he moved to the edge of the island.

  Angry seals barked at him, but he moved between them, stood on the rocks where waves crashed and soaked him with their spray. Other seals crawled out of the water as the sharks swarmed around the sinking boat. Only the bow of the Thaumas still showed above water, from the wheelhouse to the prow.

  Bergting crouched on what would have been the wheelhouse’s windshield. One window had been shattered and he had something in his hand. A radio or a phone. Naomi’s heart leapt. Of all of them, only he had kept his focus on keeping everyone alive. They needed help, needed a rescue. Her own phone would be ruined, down in the pocket inside her pants, soaked in ocean water.

  “Peter, swim!” the captain called to him.

  The others began to shout as well, urging the man to abandon the ship, to swim before it was too late. But Naomi kept silent. She watched the sharks as they circled, focused now on the last of the ship as it slid under, vanishing by the foot. The time for Bergting to swim had passed.