Black Tide

by Del Stone

  When the water was as deep as my chest, I told her to hang on and I hoisted myself onto the raft. It wobbled precariously and Heather clung rigidly to the deck spars. For a moment I thought it might go over altogether and I stopped moving until its motion settled. Heather was sucking in great, whistling gasps of air.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I whispered, hauling my feet onto the sloping deck. It was canted at about a 20-degree angle – I couldn’t figure out how to raise the back end of the raft without using another oil drum, which we didn’t have – but the slope wasn’t unmanageable. I hefted one of the ‘paddles’ and began to pole us out into the deeper water.

  A shadow fell across the sound. The leading edge of the thundercloud had swept across the sun. The wind picked up and the temperature began to fall. I began to see the occasional whitecap. We were in the storm’s outflow. It would be raining in a few minutes.

  ‘Ah, don’t you just love this Florida weather?’ I quipped, trying to inject as much levity into my voice without it sounding phoney. ‘If not, just stick around a few minutes. It’ll change.’ Heather glanced back and smiled nervously.

  ‘We’re almost to the channel,’ I wheezed. ‘See that buoy over there?’ I pointed to our left. ‘That marks the left-hand side of the channel. There’s a corresponding buoy on the other side – see it?’ She nodded yes, and then pointed quickly to a wooden latticework structure rising above the water a ways past the other buoy. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That’s a channel marker,’ I said. ‘It’s got a permanent light mounted on top. That helps the barge captains navigate at night, when the buoys are difficult to spot.’

  The sky darkened and the wind ratcheted up another notch. I sneaked a furtive glance at the north shore and saw our clear spot beginning to slide by to the right. I had forgotten about the damn current drawing toward the new pass in Navarre. But I didn’t think it would be a problem – if we entered the shallows west of where we wanted to go ashore we could simply walk back.

  ‘The channel is about a hundred yards wide – that’s about a football field in length. We paddle across that and we’re in the shallows. Then we get out and hoof it. No problem.’

  I was talking to her partly to keep her mind busy and away from this frightening thing we were doing, and partly to bolster my own confidence. The approaching storm appeared to be growing in ferocity. A dense skirt of heavy rain hung from its middle and as I looked, a snake’s tongue of lightning flicked at the distant ground, producing a boom of thunder that shook the raft.

  ‘Gonna get wet,’ she said, repeating my earlier statement.

  ‘That’s OK. This ship can take it.’

  ‘This ship – hey! What’s its name? You never gave it a name!’

  I started to answer the SS Minnow, borrowing from Scotty’s constant patter of Gilligan’s Island remarks. But I didn’t want to remind her of him; nor did I want to name our raft after a shipwreck. Titanic was out too. So I shouted over the wind, ‘It’s the Kon Tiki, set out on a voyage to prove that Western civilisation’s ancestors sailed to the new world from spoil islands in Santa Rosa Sound!’ The Kon Tiki was a successful expedition despite the prognostications of critics, and I felt the example would inspire Heather with confidence. I needed the confidence myself.

  ‘Ah, a reasonable hypothesis, Thor,’ she answered. ‘But how did our ancestors get to the spoil islands in the first place?’

  ‘Obviously they sailed from Egypt in papyrus rafts,’ I deadpanned.

  The first shot pellets of rain began to spack the water around us. My pole was no longer touching bottom, and I drew it up to begin paddling. I lay back on the dock and planted the board between my outstretched ankles, then began a sideways rowing motion. The raft began to turn to the left, its nose pointed west.

  ‘Shit. This isn’t working,’ I muttered. I pulled in the board and began easing my way to the front of the raft, trying to manoeuvre around Heather, who still rigidly clung to the planks. She looked at me uncertainly, and I composed a smile for her. I needed to pull us forward and keep the raft’s snout aimed at the opposite shore. I could only do that from the front.

  The current was stronger here, and waves were sloshing against the top of the barrel. The raft wallowed. I got to my knees and lifted the board over my head, then reached out into the water with it. I couldn’t get much of a pull because the backstroke of the oar was blocked by the outriggers. But it was enough to orient the raft toward the north again. For every metre shoreward, we seemed to drift 10 metres westward. That would put us into the shallows a good distance from the runway clearing. I pulled more strongly on the board but didn’t know how long I’d be able to keep this up. My back was already aching, and I was beginning to feel dizzy. You don’t get this kind of a workout standing in front of a classroom, or staring at slides of rodophyta.

  ‘Here comes the rain,’ Heather said quietly.

  You could see it advancing southward across the water, a vertical white sheet that turned the water to froth. Then I could hear it, that sickeningly familiar frying pan sound. For a horrible moment my mind recomposed the arrival of the mist, and I felt a sickening sense of déjà vu. What an awful thing it would be for us – worse than it already was – if this rain were contaminated with the negre toxin. I forced that thought from my mind.

  The rain suddenly sluiced over us in a freezing downpour. I think we both gasped simultaneously. The drops struck with the force of icy needles that drove through the skin to impale themselves in the bone. The horizon disappeared, the buoys disappeared, everything around us was swallowed by a maelstrom of hammering rain and wind and dark. My skin scrunched up into gooseflesh and that was not by temperature alone – waves had begun to wash over the front of the raft and I had no idea where we were going. I could only try to keep the raft pointed into the waves and hang on. Heather was crouched next to me and she said nothing. I was thankful for that. I could sense the terror in her, about to uncoil, and I think it would have been contagious.

  Suddenly the force of the rain redoubled and I literally could not see 10 feet ahead of me. People who don’t live in the South can’t grasp the violence of such cloudbursts. The rain becomes a solid object almost, a waterfall from the sky, the kind of rain that forces drivers to pull off the road and hope some daredevil doesn’t roar up from behind and rear-end them. The world had gone from muggy afternoon to freezing twilight in an instant. The raft was wobbling precariously and the waves were driving it to port, and I began to fear we would get turned around so that the whole thing might tip over. I bashed at the water with the board, wishing I had something lighter and wider that would create more drag. My shoulders had gone beyond aching to a kind of dull fire in the joints, and I could not breathe fast enough to feed my burning muscles. Lightning and thunder cracked across the sky and I could feel the force of the air booming against my skin. I can’t begin to imagine what Heather was feeling but she held on silently, enduring the onslaught, and seeing her inspired me to try harder. The storm will pass by in a few minutes, I told myself. The water will calm. We’ll make it across the channel. Then you can rest.

  The raft hit something.

  I couldn’t see what, but it was a solid jolt, not at all like the feel of waves against the oil drum. It staggered me for a moment and I nearly dropped the board. The water was still cluttered with debris though much of it had either washed ashore or drifted to the west. The raft turned grudgingly to starboard, back into the waves.

  I strained to see what was ahead of us.

  Then Heather moaned.

  A pallid hand was rising from the water, groping for the right outrigger.

  A shock of cold pulsed through me and for a moment I could not move. I could see the vague, amorphous outline of a shape in the water. Then others, ahead of the raft, to the left, then behind us. It was like gazing into a koi pond dark with algae and seeing a hint of luminous bodies squirming in the foul de
pths. I did not want to know what might rise to the surface.

  I still could not move.

  Heather was first to act. I’d brought two boards to use as paddles with the expectation that she might help in moving the raft, and she snatched hers up now and raised it clumsily over her head like a club. ‘No, no, no!’ she shouted angrily into the din and smashed a hand that was clawing at the deck. The hand disappeared in a sudden roil of dirty foam. I hefted my board as a head bobbed to the surface in front of the raft – it had been a man and was still comically dressed in a business suit, a pair of black-framed glasses perched jauntily on its nose, its lidless eyes staring blankly through the lenses. I swung the board and it connected solidly, knocking the thing’s head sideways, the glasses flying into the murky water. The thing began to spasm and sank.

  Heather called ‘Fred!’ and I turned to see one of the things scuttling up the back of the raft. I jabbed at it with my board and knocked it back into the water. Heather smacked at hands trying to grasp the deck, the spars, the outriggers – they were all around us. I could see their pale shapes beneath the surface, coming into focus as waves refracted the tiny bit of light that penetrated the downpour.

  ‘Keep fighting them!’ I screamed at Heather as I clubbed at flailing hands. ‘The storm’ll let up and they’ll be forced to go back down!’ but I was beginning to think that might not happen at all and it filled me with a rising sense of desperation. In the diminished sphere of visibility around the raft I could see scores of the things moving toward us and I did not see how anyone could hold them off before the light increased. If we could reach shallow water it’s possible we could jump off the raft and outrun them, but I simply couldn’t see how far across the channel we’d drifted.

  For the first time in my life as a scientist, I felt the urge to pray.

  Fingers wiggled up through the slats in the decking and I stomped them. A sepulchral face loomed in the froth to my right and I drove my board into it. My muscles roared and I began to feel my grip weakening. Heather screamed and I saw hands grabbing at her legs; she kicked and they let go.

  The raft shuddered again and I dropped to my knees. One of the things was trying to climb over the oil drum, its pale, lamprey-like fingers reaching and slipping on the metal. I smashed at it and the metal drum gonged loudly, and the thing dropped back into the water with a shriek.

  I could not breathe. My arms and my shoulders throbbed.

  I didn’t think I could go on.

  Ahead of us, a dark shape rose from the water, a darker blotch in the thundering rain. A light strobed through the gloom.

  The channel marker.

  Maybe 40 metres to the north and east of us. It marked the northern edge of the channel, beyond which the water became too shallow for most boats.

  Forty metres. That’s all we needed – another 40 metres.

  As Heather smashed at the things I began to row frantically, summoning every bit of energy I could from my aching muscles. I could feel my arms quivering. A cramp seized up my left shoulder, sending a bolt of pain down my spine. The board began to slip from my grasp. I experienced a momentary, desperate vision of our raft lurching down the main part of the channel as we battered at the things with diminishing strength until they swarmed over the sides and set upon us and pulled us down into the dark, deep water, and in that black moment I did the most foolish thing I have ever done in my life.

  ‘Keep them off me for a minute! I’m going to try something!’ I screamed at Heather. Her eyes bulged in terror.

  ‘No! Fred! Don’t …’

  I scuttled to the back of the raft and slipped into the water. I held on to that last dock timber and began to kick viciously. My legs were still strong and if I could propel us into the shallow water we might survive.

  At least Heather might.

  The raft swung satisfyingly to starboard and I could feel us moving. I could also feel hands grasping at my legs – I kicked at them as much as I kicked the water. Their touch was cold beyond description, not a human sensation at all but something more grotesquely primordial that reawakened ancient horrors of reptiles and multi-legged arthropods. I punched at them and kicked and Heather smashed the water around me as the creatures gathered en masse and rose to the surface. I glanced up to see how close we were to the channel marker and one of things had hoisted itself up the front of the raft. I shouted to Heather and she swung the board, catching the thing in the neck and knocking it onto the outrigger spar and then back into the sound. Icy fingers pulled at the waistband of my shorts and I slithered out of them as I continued to fight. I felt a face beneath my chest and I viciously jabbed my fingers into its eyes. They gave way with a sickening mushiness and the thing thrashed violently as it was swept in our wake.

  The foul sound water sloshed into my mouth and the rain pounded at me. I felt my legs beginning to weaken. A cold hand encircled my ankle and I kicked. Other hands clutched at my arms, or pulled at my briefs. I felt an instant of stark terror as something brushed at my privates, and I screamed to Heather to help me. She smacked the water around me. I could see no hint of terror in her expression; her jaw was set, her eyes narrowed, and she was working with a grim determination that struck me as oddly beautiful. In fact, I could not remember a moment, at any time, when she seemed more beautiful than as she struggled to save me. It was a beauty that transcended mere physical appearance, or love, or any of the human qualities we associate with beauty. It was a spiritual thing, and it gave me strength.

  The rain was beginning to slacken as I knew it would. I could see the channel marker. It was much closer now. I knew in that moment we would make it. I knew it.

  A strong hand gripped my arm and began to haul me down. I tried to punch but couldn’t connect. I tried to draw it up so I could kick at its body but it was stronger. I felt its teeth brushing against the flesh of my forearm and yanked as hard as I could. It bobbed to the surface next to me, to my left. A young man, so much like Scotty that for a heart-stopping moment I thought it was Scotty. But in a splinter of a second my frantic mind tabulated the differences: a fuller face and higher forehead; a ragged beard trimmed into what must have been a neat goatee; lank strands of hair hanging lower than the eyebrows; and a single diamond stud shining from a fat earlobe.

  Heather saw this and raised the board. She brought it down with a tremendous whack, and the board skated across its slick head and connected with my right shoulder.

  The pain dazzled me. I think I lost consciousness for a moment. My vision swam with bright spangles that dissolved into black splotches, and a pulse of nausea boiled out of my stomach as waves of pain crashed over me. Dimly I saw Heather bash at the thing with the board one more time and it let go.

  Then I let go.

  I simply could not hold on.

  Heather screamed, ‘Oh God!’ and I felt myself being carried away from the raft by a mob of cold touches and grasping fingers, pulling me beneath the surface into the warmer water below. The hissing of rain and waves became a watery echo and the wan light all but disappeared. It was not an entirely unpleasant sensation, and I think that was the moment I finally gave up, consigning myself to the fact I had truly failed and would suffer the consequences. I was too tired, and in too much pain, to resist any longer. I did not welcome what was about to happen but I accepted it, the way all living things must accept death when there is no other choice. My skin was bathed with a peculiar tingling as I awaited that first horrific bite.

  A blinding flash of light exploded through the murky depths.

  Simultaneously, a tremendous thud of sound shook the water.

  All around me the creatures began to burn. The water became a sizzling froth as the things combusted and writhed and shrieked in the airless void beneath the waves. Instantly I was free. I shot to the surface and drew in a huge gasp of air, then dropped below the surface and forced myself up again. It took me several breaths to get mys
elf oriented. I couldn’t see the raft, which had disappeared in the rain, but the channel marker was only a few metres ahead. One of the creosote-soaked posts was smoking.

  Lightning. It had been struck by lightning.

  I managed a feeble, one-armed breast stroke, which is all the energy I had remaining, and crossed the distance to the structure. A wooden ladder hung down into the water. A sign warned, ‘Property of the US Coast Guard. No trespassing!’ and never was a rebuke more welcoming. I hung there a moment, simply gathering my wits. Then, with my good arm wrapped around the rung, I hauled myself out of the stinking water.

  In the evening

  I did not know where to begin this story.

  I strike a match.

  I know where it will end.

  The storm moved out a few minutes after I reached the top of the channel marker. There, a light blinked somnolently, warning non-existent barges and boaters of the shallow water only a few metres north. The light and its batteries were housed in a nonconductive plastic manifold that protected it from the lightning. But its light was cold and vague, and I knew it would not be enough.

  The storm played itself out in a spreading veil of cirrus that began to unravel as the late afternoon sun burned through. Angled bars of light swept across the horizon. It was the stuff of church frescoes.

  By that time the pain in my shoulder had subsided to a dull throb. I don’t think any permanent damage was done – maybe some disturbance to the connective tissue, but no broken bones.

  When the rain let up I began searching for the raft. Finally I spotted it far off down the sound. It lay firmly in the westward current’s grasp. But I could not see Heather. My initial thought was the raft had swept into the shallow water north of the channel and she had jumped off to walk ashore – maybe not so much of a thought as a hope. Perhaps when I slipped from the raft the creatures followed me, abandoning her. Maybe they’d been destroyed by the lightning. I couldn’t know. But my hope was she’d made it to shore and was searching for help.