“Boat!” she barked, glaring at Rosalie and Wolchko.
Rosalie fell silent. She and Wolchko both turned to stare at the thirty-foot fishing boat coming their way. Naomi heard a grunt and glanced over to see Tye clawing at the top of the platform.
“Shit,” she said, grabbing his hand, then reaching out to help haul him up. When she saw how much blood had soaked through the rags tied around his torn-up leg she felt that hideous dreamlike unreality envelop her again.
“There’s a boat coming,” she told him.
Tye blinked, his face alight with urgency. He looked more alive than she felt, despite his wound, the blood he’d lost, and the fact that he’d just seen a woman he’d once loved die ugly. Savage and bloody. Somehow he still had hope blazing in his eyes.
“Careful,” Naomi said. And maybe she meant it more than just one way. Yeah, the platform didn’t really have room for all four of them and Tye had to perch right on the edge and she had to shift over much closer to the ragged, sharp metal of the remaining wall and they all had to be damned careful up here. But in the back of her mind, in the flicker of something that tried to spark inside her, she felt sure she also meant something else.
“Do you see it, Tye?” Rosalie asked. “Oh my God, do you see it?”
The light in Tye’s eyes didn’t go out, but Naomi watched it diminish, watched his strength flag when he finally had a good look at the boat that was headed straight for them.
“I see it,” Tye said. “Question is, do any of you? That’s an old boat, private fishing. Maybe a Merritt or a Lyman. It’s got a wooden hull.”
Naomi felt her heart sink.
She turned and watched the boat, wondering who might be onboard. Wondering how they had known to come out here to Bald Cap. They were good people; she knew that. Whoever they were, they were coming to the rescue.
It seemed a terrible shame that she could only perch there on the tower and watch them die.
CHAPTER 38
Jamie crashed into the instrument panel, coffee cup flying. The windshield cracked from the impact on the hull. Walter throttled up, engine roaring to cover his swearing. Sitting in the corner off the wheelhouse, young Dorian hung his head, halfway between praying and hyperventilating.
“What the hell kinda shark hits like that?” Jamie snapped, feeling his forehead. His fingers came away sticky red and he realized it hadn’t been the shark smashing against the hull that had cracked the windshield—it had been his skull. “God damn—”
The next impact shifted the whole boat sideways, raised it up off the water like a car riding on two wheels. He heard a crash and the snap and splinter of rending wood and knew the shark had just stove in the side of the hull. Shuddering, thumping down on top of the shark itself, the fishing boat settled into the water, and immediately Jamie felt the drag below them, like Neptune had gotten his fingers up inside the wood and begun to slowly pull. Water had started pouring in, fighting their momentum, the ocean merciless. They didn’t belong out here, not as far as the sea was concerned. All the shark had done was strip them down, expose their frailty. Without a solid hull beneath them …
Jamie braced himself. “Hard to port, Walter. Hard to fucking port!”
“Got it—”
“I’m not ending up on that Tinkertoy tower, man. We’ve gotta make Deeley Island! We’ve gotta—”
Walter roared, nostrils flaring, lips curled back in rage. “I’m going, goddammit! You see me turning the wheel here? I’ve got the fucking helm and it’s under control, man. It’s under control!”
Jamie snapped his jaws shut. He tasted his own blood on his lips. He braced himself and nodded. “Sorry, brother.”
He saw the apology in Walter’s eyes, too. Regret and fear. What the hell had they gotten themselves into? When had sharks ever behaved this way? This was just not normal. What had stirred them up like this?
Off the starboard bow Jamie saw the tower, saw the people up on the platform, watching as the fishing boat began to turn toward Deeley, and all the air went out of him.
“Walter,” he said quietly, thinking he knew after all, thinking he had a damn good idea what had triggered the sharks to all turn psychotic.
The engine whined and choked and the boat hove lower in the water, the drag worsening. But he could see the trees of Deeley Island through the storm, a dark welcome, only four hundred yards or so away. He turned to look at Dorian, saw that the kid had given up praying, just hung his head and stared at the floor, braced against the wall, maybe trying to come to terms with his father being gone, maybe just patiently waiting to find out if they were all going to join the old man.
The next impact tore the hull wide open, smashing in planking, breaking boards in two. The shark shook its huge body, whipped its tail, trying to force itself inside the belly of the boat. Walter hung on as he went to his knees. His forehead bounced off the wheel, but he kept his grip. Jamie sprawled onto the floor of the wheelhouse and rolled halfway out onto the deck. Dorian had gone back to praying, but no longer silently. The kid was screaming to God now. Maybe God couldn’t hear him over the whining, coughing, dying engine and the further splintering of wood, or maybe God just didn’t give a shit.
“Oh, Jesus,” Jamie whispered to himself, maybe doing a little praying of his own. He dragged himself into the wheelhouse, the boat listing hard to starboard, the nose dipping so much that the next wave washed over the bow. The cracked half of the windshield shattered, water and glass sweeping around them.
Jamie tried to stand, but Dorian beat him to it. On his one good leg, the kid stood beside Walter at the helm, dragged Walt up to his feet, and threw the throttle all the way up. The engine screamed, moments away from its dying breath, choked with water. Jamie shouted at the kid, confused, but then he saw the way Walter perked up and nodded and took the wheel with determination.
They’d changed course again. The boat kept sinking, but now they were aimed back at the watchtower on Bald Cap. The shark kept thrusting itself into the boat’s guts. Jamie knew if he looked below he’d see it, and he didn’t dare for fear he’d piss himself.
He grabbed the radio, started barking into it, shouting for the harbor master—for anyone—to answer. They had to tell someone what the hell was going on here. He heard only static. Rain blew in through the shattered windshield and he looked out at the watchtower where Bald Cap used to be, thinking it looked almost as if it was leaning.
“We’ll never make it,” he said. “It’s too far!”
Dorian whipped around toward him. “Then we’ll get as close as we can!”
A hundred yards away. Eighty. Sixty.
A fresh rending of wood came from below and the boat suddenly bobbed up a few feet. Jamie turned to Walter, thoughts so chaotic and upside-down that for half a second he thought some miracle had taken place.
“There!” Dorian shouted, pointing.
The huge fin cruised right past them, around the fishing boat’s stern. There were others out there, much too close, but somehow Jamie understood then. The boat had bobbed upward because the shark had withdrawn. But it had been a plug in the side of the boat, and now that momentary bob of release from the shark’s weight was countered by the inrush of thousands of gallons of seawater.
Forty yards, and going down.
The prow went under. The engine choked out. A wave crashed over them and the boat nosed down in the water so fast Jamie thought he could feel the Atlantic swallowing them. A memory flickered through his mind, some kind of Greek myth he’d read in high school about a monster and a whirlpool. Another wave swamped them and water poured into the wheelhouse and then it shocked him to find that he was drowning. The ocean crashed onto him, filled his throat, stung his eyes, and Jamie felt his brain screaming denial. He lashed out, clawed his way upward even as the boat’s sinking dragged at him. His left arm struck someone and he latched on, dragging, making sure that if he made it to the surface he wouldn’t be alone.
Gasping, pissed off, lungs burning, he
burst from the water to discover he’d only been a few feet under. The aft railing of the boat had somehow reappeared above him. Walter’s precious wooden lady was going straight down—not supposed to happen this way—and Jamie saw the rear portion of the deck just a few feet in front of him. The railing sank toward him and for a second he just treaded water, too stunned to get out of the way.
A hand grabbed the back of his jacket and tugged hard, and he turned to see it was Walter. “Swim, you dumb son of a bitch!”
Jamie did, anger stoking higher within him. Walter’s fucking boat, his pride and joy, was going down right in front of their eyes, and for what? How did sharks do something like this?
Someone cried out and Jamie glanced over to see Dorian, hair plastered to his face, looking like a drowned rat. The kid was only a few feet from him and Jamie realized it had been Dorian whose arm he’d grabbed as he swam up out of the wheelhouse. Now the guy turned and started to swim toward the listing, rusting watchtower, which seemed like a damned good idea. Walter tugged Jamie, wanting him to do the same, but for a second all he could do was watch the boat vanishing into the water.
Then he heard what the kid was shouting. “They’re coming!” Over and over.
Of course they were. Oh shit, oh fuck, oh shit. Of course they were.
Walter shouted at Jamie, tried to drag at him again, but Jamie knocked his hands away. Jamie’s clothes were soaked through and weighing him down, dragging at him, and he sloughed off his jacket as he started swimming harder. Walter saw him moving and gave him a thumbs-up. Behind them, the last few feet of the fishing boat slipped into water and Jamie felt the pull of its sinking as water rushed in to fill the void where it had been. He ignored it, kept swimming. Rain whipped down at his eyes. Walter had gotten a little ways ahead of him, but the watchtower loomed closer, no more than twenty-five yards now.
Jamie didn’t look behind him. If he saw sharks there, saw the fins slicing the water, what could he have done? Not a damn thing. And anyway, there were sharks ahead, cruising around the tower on the prowl. A low laugh burbled up inside his chest, a manic sliver of lunacy that he fought against by just swimming. Swimming harder. His boots were full of water, each one an anchor beneath him, and he slowed for a second or two to kick them off, letting them sink into the channel. When he glanced up, the largest fin slid across a rising swell no more than fifteen yards away, and that laugh escaped his lips. In all his life he had never imagined there might come a time when he would swim toward a shark instead of away. It felt more than a little like suicide.
Walter had outpaced him, a dozen feet ahead now. But Dorian had youth and grief driving him and he clearly knew how to swim a hell of a lot better than these two middle-aged fishermen. The kid went for it, Olympic-style, as if he’d never been bitten at all, as if his face hadn’t gone deathly pale from losing so much blood already.
It must’ve been the blood that called to the sharks.
“Dorian!” Jamie roared, pulling back in the water. “Look out, kid; they’re—”
But what was he supposed to say? They’re coming? Dorian had been screaming that for the past minute. And where was he supposed to go? The only route they had to survival meant moving through the paths of the sharks orbiting the watchtower. Dorian’s leg had been bitten already, and he was still bleeding. A burst of rage flared inside Jamie and he struck out toward the kid, swimming on an intercept line, wondering if Dorian had yet seen the fin coming around from his right, almost stealthily, a silent killer. Walter shouted after Jamie, but he kept going. He’d been nineteen when his father had died and he’d never been the same again. Now this kid had seen his father torn apart, had survived being in the water and been dragged out to safety, scarred forever, grieving forever. And now this other shark was going to make forever turn into a quarter of an hour? Not on Jamie Counihan’s watch.
But the shark that took Dorian didn’t come from the kid’s right … it came from below. Jamie saw him jerk to a halt. Saw the kid’s eyes widen with realization and the crestfallen expression on his face, the disappointment when he understood that his life had ended so soon. So young. His lips moved and he mumbled something, some refusal or prayer or plea, but he didn’t scream. Then he was yanked down under the water, arms flailing over his head, and he was gone. One hand broke the surface again, but only for a moment, after which there was only blood.
Jamie stared at the spot where Dorian’s hand had reappeared.
Then Walter grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head back, twisted him around so they were eye to eye. “Are you deaf? Look!”
The shark he’d been trying to intercept, the one he thought would kill Dorian, had altered course, straight toward them. Jamie heard voices, understood they must be coming from the people on top of the watchtower, but he didn’t take the time to look. He turned and started swimming, wanted to scream at Walter, who’d backtracked a few yards to reach him. I’m bleeding, he would have said. My head is bleeding and it’s coming for me and what the hell is wrong with you? But he knew what Walter would have said. Even as his body remembered high school swim team, even as he put his face in the water and picked up the rhythm he needed, he could practically hear the words in Walter’s own voice. You’re my brother, he would’ve said, and that would be the truth.
Thirty feet from the tower, another fin surfaced, right in front of them. Jamie stopped swimming, turned in the water, he and Walter rising on a swell that crashed right through the tower’s trestlework and rolled toward Deeley Island. The shark that had been behind them, the one he knew would kill him, had vanished.
The fin ahead of them submerged again, sinking with the swell.
“Where did it go?” Jamie snapped.
Walter twisted himself around, trying to look down into the water, but with the storm and the dark sea there was no way he could have seen anything at all. And yet Jamie saw a terrible wisdom in that rough, familiar face.
“Come on, damn it!” Walter growled. “We’re almost there!”
The people on the tower urged them on, shouting for them to swim, to climb, and Jamie determined not to look around again. Several seals darted just beneath the surface, almost as if they were getting out of his way. Whitewater rippled around the legs of the tower, fifteen feet away. Ten feet. Five feet. When he heard Walter cry out, Jamie turned to his left and saw the shark breach, surging toward him fast … so much faster than he’d imagined it would be. Its jaws opened and he saw blood and torn strips of dark flesh, strings of sealskin, and he couldn’t help himself. He screamed. The thought of Dorian’s silent sadness broke his heart, but terror erupted from within, and he screamed.
Then Walter was there, again. There, as he’d always been.
But this time, he was too late.
Jamie roared in pain as the shark gripped his torso, dragging him sideways, ripping at him as it plunged him deeper. As he went under, his eyes locked on Walter’s.
“Swim, goddamn—” he tried to say.
Then there were no more words.
* * *
Alone in the sea, Walter kicked his legs and lunged up with a rising wave to grab hold of rusty diagonal bars. He had his fishing knife sheathed at his hip and all he could think about was what would have happened if he’d tried to use it, thought of it sooner. There were a lot of goddamn sharks and only one knife, but maybe it would have made the difference. Given Jamie that crucial minute.
Walter would always wonder. The knife felt like it weighed a hundred pounds.
Walter hauled himself out, cursing every beer he’d ever drunk, every order of French fries Jamie hadn’t finished, leaving him to pluck fries off of his best friend’s plate. He climbed, knowing just a few feet wouldn’t be enough, not with the swells and the rough seas, not with whatever had been done to these sharks to make them like this. Even as he climbed, one of the things rose from the water and seemed to reach for him. It scraped its hide against the rusty tower and Walter took one more step up, holding on for his life, staring
at the crashing sea as the monster slid away.
“Fuck you!” he screamed at the shark. At the seals. At the ocean and the storm and the people stranded with him on the tower. “Fuck you!”
He held the last word, listened to his own fury rolling out over the waves, carried by the wind, and he knew it was a lie. That it wasn’t fury at all, but agony.
His strength gave out and he hung there on the side of the tower, unable to climb. Eyes wide, he draped himself against the bars and stared at nothing. The last shark had come for him, and Jamie had put himself in the way. He’d chosen to put himself in the way.
“Oh, you asshole,” Walter whispered to himself, eyes filling with tears. “What the hell did you just do? My God, James. What did you do?”
From the ocean, there was no answer.
CHAPTER 39
Naomi lay on her belly on the platform and watched the fins gliding through the maelstrom. The seals were still there, all around Bald Cap, but the sharks seemed less interested in them now. Maybe their bellies were full to bursting, but she couldn’t stop the grim, insinuating voice that whispered in the back of her skull, telling her that the sharks were bored with seals. That the signal had done something to their brains besides making them hyperaggressive. That they were spiteful and pissed off and determined to get the people who’d eluded them so far. Naomi knew that was bullshit, that whatever Wolchko’s acoustic broadcast might be doing to them, it couldn’t make them any smarter. But it didn’t feel like bullshit. She couldn’t escape the sense of the sharks’ awareness of her, the certainty that they knew she and the others were still up here.
Malice, she thought. That’s the word. She felt their malice. Which was impossible, but as she watched the fins, the inexorable circling, the malignant intent of their presence, it simply felt true.
Shark Island Page 20
