Shark Beach

by Chris Jameson

  Corinne couldn’t breathe. Her girl was there, right in front of her, a hundred yards of frothing ocean away, and she couldn’t help. The boat seemed to have sunk much further in the past few minutes.

  “Fine,” Corinne said, turning to Deputy Hayes. “Call someone. Get a boat out here. But do it fast or it won’t matter anymore.”

  She watched the sharks swimming. Much farther out, she thought she could distinguish the shape of another one. Corinne prayed this one would be a dolphin, but she feared everything was a predator now. Her memory flashed to the moment when she’d panicked, thinking a dolphin was a shark. Everyone had teased her, and even she had laughed, knowing how ridiculous she had looked. That memory didn’t seem funny anymore.

  “Hurry,” she said again, watching her daughter, so close across the water, and yet impossibly far.

  She heard Deputy Hayes on the radio, her voice urgent, but between the hurricane and closing the beaches, the whole area was in crisis. There were miles upon miles of beaches to patrol. Many people were in need of help. But only one was her child.

  * * *

  Rick felt the world stop the moment Kelsey made the jump.

  He froze, hating himself for being wounded, for not being able to do this for her. Her arms pinwheeled as she took air, leaping from the deck of the sightseeing boat. Her legs pedaled at nothing, as if she rode an invisible bicycle. Her leap carried her farther than he’d imagined, but she plunged into the water nearly twenty feet from shore.

  Too far, he thought. His voice caught in his throat. He wanted to scream her name, tell her to swim, to hurry, to oh-my-god-get-out-of-the-water. The pain in his side, where Captain Len’s knife had gone in, flared up as if he’d been stabbed anew, but Rick dragged himself closer to the railing, got up on his feet.

  Matti clutched his arm.

  Jesse shouted for Kelsey to swim, to hurry, and she shouted back at him without turning around, sassy as ever. She didn’t like being told what to do, his girl. But Matti had grabbed Rick’s arm for a reason, and he saw it now—the first of the sharks carving its way through the water with breathtaking speed.

  Paola’s little boy, Emilio, cheered for her, but Rick lifted a shaking hand up to cover his own mouth, trapping the words inside. They had all agreed to this plan, all agreed Kelsey would go first, just in case the sharks could anticipate it after the first person had made it to the island. The others would have an easier time of it. They could even throw Emilio, hurl him ashore, but Kelsey was too big for that. She would have to go first.

  And she had never been a great swimmer.

  Rick covered his mouth, eyes wide, as he watched his daughter’s pitiful attempt to swim that distance. He should have gotten her more lessons, made her a stronger swimmer. He should have done so many things.

  Jesse and Paola and little Emilio yelled for her, their voices frantic now. Even the little boy could see what it meant, the shark’s speed and Kelsey’s slowness. Matti did not shout. He stood tall, put his arm around Rick, and waited. He was a good friend.

  Ten feet from shore, Kelsey stood up.

  Thigh deep.

  She’d kept swimming when the water was shallow enough for her to touch the bottom.

  Matti shouted, “Run, Kelsey! Get out of the—”

  But he didn’t need to finish. Rick’s girl may not have been a strong swimmer, but she had always been fast on her feet. She bolted for the sand even as the shark skidded into the shallows behind her, so close that it slid on its belly in an attempt to take her. Kelsey splashed out of the water and turned. With a fiery rage etched on her face, and blood dripping from the cut along her jawline, she flashed her middle finger at the shark as it skidded back into deeper water.

  Jesse and Matti and Emilio cheered. Paola clapped her hands.

  Rick grinned, despite the pain and the blood seeping from his side, and when he tried to call out his pride to his daughter, he sobbed instead. Just once. His girl was safe. Corinne and Emma would never have forgiven him if anything had happened to Kelsey. He would never have forgiven himself.

  Matti and Jesse had torn up a hooded sweatshirt they’d found on the boat and tied it around Rick’s waist, padding the knife wounds as much as possible. The bleeding had not stopped, but it had slowed. Pain radiated from there and seemed to burrow down to his bones, throbbing in his skull and his teeth and the bottoms of his feet, nowhere near the wound itself. His whole body seemed to be sounding the alarm with a chorus of pain. He wished he could tell it to shut the hell up, that he was well aware how badly he needed help. But his body wasn’t listening. His body was freaking the fuck out.

  “All right, get moving,” he said. “Jesse, you’re next.”

  Matti nodded to his son. Jesse gave them a little salute and stepped to the edge of the deck. He watched the sharks, waiting patiently. Rick knew the sharks could not possibly have the brain power to figure out exactly what was going on, but still he worried they would notice Jesse standing there, that they would see the rhythm in this escape plan.

  Jesse took a running start and jumped off the deck. He landed in the water about a dozen feet from shore, splashed down, and lurched forward. Kelsey threw her arms around him, and for several seconds the two embraced. Rick let out a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding.

  Matti turned to Paola and Emilio. “You ready, Mom?”

  The little boy looked at his mother. Paola embraced him, kissed his forehead, whispered something in his ear and then turned him around and gave him a nudge. Emilio marched across the deck like a little soldier and presented himself to Matti. The boat shifted a little, rose and fell with a swell, but it remained stuck on the sand bar beneath the water.

  “Ready?” Matti asked again, down on one knee this time, eye to eye with Emilio.

  “Ready,” the boy confirmed.

  The sharks were coming. Both of them. But they had just turned toward that passage between boat and shore, and Rick figured they had enough time. Just enough. The boat lifted again and a frisson of alarm went through him. If they drifted away, without a motor, with holes in the hull, they were dead.

  “Do it!” Rick said. “Hurry.”

  Matti called to Jesse, walked with Emilio to the edge of the deck, lifted the little boy into his arms. He hooked one arm around Emilio’s chest and held onto the back of his belt with the other, took one step backward, swung the boy back, and then tossed him with as much strength as he could muster. A grunt of effort burst from Matti’s lips.

  Emilio cried out, flailing in the air. He wasn’t going to make it.

  Jesse ran back into the water as the sharks rushed in. Emilio stood up, waist deep and crying loudly. Jesse snatched him up under his arm like a football and made it easily to shore.

  The boat rose on a swell and began to skid along the bottom and for a moment Rick felt it float free of the sandbar. He felt the flutter of fear in his chest and glanced at Matti, who nodded to say that he’d noticed as well.

  Paola stood on the edge of the deck. She hesitated, waiting as the sharks circled. This time they did not swim quite so far away, as if they had recognized their error. The moment she saw them turning, fins slicing away from the island as if synchronized and then beginning to reverse direction, she clasped her hands together in a moment of prayer, kissed her fingertips, and held her hand up toward the heavens. She took three steps back, then ran and jumped.

  She hit the water almost as far from shore as Kelsey had. Jesse rushed in to help her, but Paola didn’t need his help. Rick marveled at how quickly she scrambled to close the distance between herself and the shore, and she stumbled out onto the sand when the sharks were still more than twenty feet away.

  The next wave lifted the boat completely off the sandbar. Despite the holes in its hull that kept it from floating, the strength of the tide rocked the boat forward and then slid it sideways and backward, dragging it out. As the wave subsided, they came to rest again, but were now another dozen feet farther from North Captiva.

&n
bsp; Matti went down on one knee beside Rick. “Come on, brother. Let’s move.”

  Rick put an arm around him and together, the two men stood. The motion sent a wave of fresh pain radiating through Rick’s side and he felt a renewed trickle of blood. He blinked, trying to clear the black spots that swam in his eyes, and he knew he had nearly passed out.

  “Matti…” he said, sagging against his friend.

  “Don’t start,” Matti said. “You can make this.”

  Rick hissed air in through his teeth and fought the pain long enough to grab Matti’s face with both hands. He forced Matti to look him in the eye.

  “I’m not going to—”

  “Fuck you,” Matti said. “You time it right, you’ll be fine.”

  “You’re wasting time. You know that’s not true.” Rick gave him a gentle shove toward the edge of the deck, enough to cause himself more pain. He grimaced as he stared at his friend. “Boat’s gonna sink now. You help Kelsey, okay? When you get back, tell Emma and Corinne I knew I’d been an asshole, and I wish I’d had time to make it up to them.”

  “Rick—”

  “Tell them!”

  The others shouted from the shore. Kelsey screamed for her father. Jesse shouted for Matti to hurry, that they were getting too far away.

  “We’re both going,” Matti said, grabbing a fistful of Rick’s shirt and dragging him, staggering, toward the edge of the deck. “If the sharks are too fast, I’ll abandon you, but you’ve got to at least give yourself a chance. You owe your girls that much.”

  Rick felt sick. He wasn’t sure if that twist of nausea came from guilt or pain, but he fought it off. Matti was right. He didn’t want his little girl to watch him die, but he didn’t want her to watch him give up, either.

  “Kelsey!” he shouted. “Don’t look!”

  Even from offshore he could make out the defiant expression on her face, but then Jesse put a hand on her shoulder and she nodded and turned away, wiping at tears in her eyes.

  “We jump together,” Matti said.

  Rick wanted to refuse. Matti had always been a good man and this determination not to leave him behind was typical, but also deeply stupid. On the beach, with the tide coming in, Kelsey cried out for him to jump, to swim.

  “Now, Daddy!” she called. “The sharks are swimming away!”

  He leaned his weight on Matti, unable to look at Kelsey. It had been so long since she had called him “Daddy.” His love for her fractured his heart. He owed it to Matti to refuse his help, owed it to Jesse and Jenn, because all that Matti’s heroics would accomplish would be for the two of them to die together.

  “Come on, man. Wake the fuck up!” Matti snapped.

  Rick nodded. Steeled himself. Let the pain from his side wash over him, ignored the smell of his own blood. “Go.”

  Together, they stumbled the three paces to the edge of the deck. Matti had an arm around his waist, as if he were Superman and he thought he could fly Rick to shore. Rick forced his body to forget its trauma, to forget the knife wounds. He roared in pain as he launched himself from the deck. He clutched at his wound as they hit the water. The salt stung his wound as he pushed his head above water and gasped in agony.

  His blood clouded around him.

  Matti grabbed his hand and tugged, trying to get him moving. “Swim!’

  Rick tried. With one arm, he clawed at the water. He kicked his legs, and he made some progress, but it was slow. Far too slow.

  Off to his right, he could see the nearest shark prowling the shore. Its fin slashed across the water, picking up speed, and then it sank beneath the surface. Rick heard shouting. He kept trying to paddle. Matti grabbed him around the waist and flailed, trying to get the two of them to shore.

  On the sand, Kelsey stood hugging little Emilio.

  His little girl seemed so far away.

  CHAPTER 16

  Jenn had watched Emma Scully grow up. She hadn’t been around during the girl’s infancy—she and Matti hadn’t known the Scullys that long—but it had been years. Long enough to create family bonds where no blood relation existed. Jenn felt about Emma the way she would about a niece. Her son and the Scully girls could barely recall life without one another in it. No matter what kind of distance had grown between Corinne and Rick, and as a result between the Hautalas and the Scullys, that shared history remained.

  She couldn’t just stand and wait. Couldn’t just stand and watch while the tide dragged that old Civil War hulk out to sea, sinking Emma along with it.

  Up the beach, Corinne paced in the shallows. She barked at Deputy Hayes, emotions brittle, demanding to know when a boat would show up to rescue her daughter and that college kid, Rashad, who was on the verge of sinking with her. While Deputy Hayes made promises that were undermined by the fear in her eyes, the ship vanished farther into the water. Only a twenty-foot arc of its metal spine still showed above water. They were out of time. The police might be sending a boat out, but unless it showed up in that very moment, Emma and Rashad were going to end up in the water.

  The sharks had tightened their circle. They still swam around the wreck, but now it seemed calculated and more ominous than ever.

  Corinne shouted and then she shoved Deputy Hayes away from her. The deputy raised her voice, and actually put her hand on the butt of her gun. That was the moment Jenn realized how insane the situation had become. They had very little time to waste, and pacing frantically on the beach wasn’t going to help anyone.

  She watched the sharks make another pass, scanned the water for boats, and then she decided.

  Jenn turned and ran south along the beach, scanning the sand as she went. Corinne shouted after her, wanting to know what she was doing, but Jenn didn’t slow down. She couldn’t afford to have Corinne talk her out of this. She ran twenty yards. Forty yards. Fifty yards, and then she saw an enormous clamshell, cracked in half and at least a quarter-inch thick.

  She stooped, snatched up the broken shell, and then waded into the water. With Corinne still calling after her, Jenn cut a diagonal path through the shallows, moving even farther away from Corinne and Deputy Hayes. As she did, the deputy began to join in, demanding to know what she was up to. Jenn ignored them until they started walking toward her.

  “No!” she shouted, turning toward the other women, holding up a hand to make sure they came no closer. “Just wait a minute! I’m going to distract them.”

  “Don’t be stupid!” Deputy Hayes called.

  “We’re not just going to wait for them to die!” Jenn called back.

  Corinne looked confused, and Jenn understood that. Corinne’s life had given her the good fortune to never know what it felt like to go to extremes. She’d never really had to. But Jenn knew what that felt like, and she was prepared to take those extreme measures when necessary. Like now.

  “Get ready, Corinne!” she called.

  In that moment the wind seemed to die, and Jenn could feel the sun full on her face, the heat baking into her skin. She let out a long breath, then inhaled sharply as she used the broken shell to slash her left arm. She tried to keep silent, but in the last moments of that cut she let out a cry of pain that startled a pair of gulls who’d been hunting bugs on the sand a few yards away. The birds took flight as Jenn stalked deeper into the water, continuing to shift away from Corinne.

  “Oh my God. What are you doing?” Deputy Hayes said, jogging along the beach toward her.

  Jenn ignored her. She turned to look at Corinne as she knelt down in the water. The Gulf was always warm, sometimes even hot, but she shivered with an unexpected chill as her blood seeped into the water around her.

  The first of the two sharks curved away from the sinking wreck and began swimming toward her. Come on, come on, come on, Jenn thought, breathing through the pain and hoping it hadn’t been for nothing.

  “You’re out of your mind!” Deputy Hayes said, standing on the shore.

  But Jenn saw the second shark begin to follow the first, and she pressed her eyes cl
osed, telling herself not to be afraid. That the beach wasn’t far away, and she could make it in time—as long as she wasn’t stupid. As long as she didn’t wait too long.

  Both fins sped toward her.

  “Go!” she shouted. “Corinne, do it!”

  “This won’t work!” Deputy Hayes said. “Those kids are going to—”

  “Shut the hell up!” Jenn snapped. “Help us, dammit!”

  The deputy flinched as if she’d been struck, but then Jenn didn’t have the attention to give her. She had to focus on the sharks. The two predators had split off, the fins gaining distance from each other even as they closed the distance on her, like lions pacing an antelope, wondering which way it would run but certain to kill it in the end.

  Corinne plunged into the water. “Emma! Jump right now!” She waved her arms. “Both of you, do it now! It’s the only way!”

  Jenn watched the figures of Emma and Rashad, out on top of that sinking wreck, and silently urged them to have the courage to save themselves. Corinne was right—this would be their only chance.

  * * *

  At this distance, Emma couldn’t see what Mrs. Hautala had done, but somehow she’d drawn the sharks away. They were headed right for her, which meant that for a matter of a few minutes she and Rashad were no longer waiting for the old wreck to finish sinking. The sharks had eaten whatever they were going to eat of Marianna, and now they wanted something more. These weren’t like any sharks she’d ever heard of. They seemed more interested in killing than in eating, as if their only instinct was to destroy.

  They were not going away.

  If she was still out on the water when the wreck finished sinking, she would die.

  “Emma!” her mother screamed as she waded toward the wreck. “Go now! Now!”

  She would have expected to hear fear in her mother’s voice—anguish and hesitation. Instead, what she heard was ice and steel. As Emma watched, her mother dove forward and began to swim out to meet her.

  Emma braced herself to jump.