Hot and exhausted, arms and legs scratched to hell from the mangroves, Kevin turned to Tyler and managed to smile. “We’re getting out of here.”
Tyler touched his face. “Sounds good to me.”
Kevin grabbed a thick mangrove that tilted toward the water. He hung out over the channel and began to wave his free hand in the air, waving the bright peach-colored T-shirt Tyler had been wearing. Tyler began to shout, holding onto a tree as he raised his hand to try to flag the chopper pilot.
“They can’t hear you,” Kevin told him.
“Screaming makes me feel better.”
Kevin laughed, and then they were both screaming. The helicopter flew low over the water, perhaps eighty feet up. The two of them shouted and waved. Kevin nearly lost his grip and fell in, but he managed to catch himself just in time, heart pounding.
The helicopter roared past and kept going, and all of his excitement drained away. He hung his head and lowered his peach banner.
“Look!” Tyler called.
Sweeping upward, the helicopter swung back around.
“They’ve seen us!” Kevin said.
“I’m not so sure.” Tyler pointed out at the water, where a shark swam down the center of Roosevelt Channel as if on patrol.
The helicopter dropped lower and seemed to hover above the shark, beginning to track its movements. Kevin raised the flag again and waved it, shouting, even though he knew there was no way the pilot or passengers on the helicopter could hear them.
Suddenly a boat came blasting along the channel at a speed far exceeding those posted, not caring about the wake or the danger to manatees in the area. It took Kevin a moment to make out the green writing on the side—Fish and Wildlife Commission: State Law Enforcement.
“What are they going to do? Tag it?” Tyler asked.
But when the boat slid up alongside the shark, matching its speed, and he saw two men with rifles move to the railing and take aim, Kevin knew they weren’t there to study the creature.
In spite of everything they’d suffered, when the men opened fire, he felt a sadness he could never have explained.
As the helicopter lifted and buzzed away, and the echoes of gunfire fading away, Kevin and Tyler began to wave and shout again. The people on the boat spotted them, and moments later, it roared toward their location in the mangroves.
“Thank God,” Tyler said, lacing his fingers in Kevin’s. “It’s over.”
“For us,” Kevin replied.
But as relieved as he was, he knew there were other sharks in the area, and as he thought about the screams of the kayakers they had been unable to save, he wondered how many sharks there were … and if there were others who would not be making it back to shore today.
* * *
Sheriff Reyes couldn’t help it—he closed his eyes and turned away. They had already killed two sharks beneath the Sanibel Causeway. Reports had come in that at least three others had been eliminated by State Fish and Wildlife officers. Now the hunters had used their deck-mounted harpoon gun to destroy a sixth, which meant they were only a fifth of the way through with their problem.
Reyes wanted to vomit.
“I hope you’re happy,” a voice said from behind him.
He took a deep, cleansing breath and looked out at the Gulf. The boat rode a swell, but as much as he hated being on the water, he had his sea legs by now. Sheriff Reyes turned to face the woman behind him. “Tali. You’ve got something to say?”
Her assistant, Philip, had gone below half an hour earlier, looking for a bucket to catch his vomit. Dr. Tali Rocco had stayed on deck. Reyes had watched her depression deepen, watched her flinch as the hunters had killed the first two sharks and hauled their remains on board long enough to carve out the things that didn’t belong in their brains—the things the military had paid the Institute to implant.
“You could have waited,” Tali said, her lips pressed into a thin, angry line. “That’s all I’m saying. We could have found a way to dial their aggression back down.”
Reyes felt his stomach roiling. He was tempted to go down below and get his own bucket. “Yeah? What about my aggression? You have a way to dial that down, too?”
Tali flinched. “Look, Sheriff—”
“No, Doctor,” he snarled. “People are dead. Human beings. We’re not even sure how many yet, but the reports I’m getting break my heart. Your fucking sharks killed more people than the hurricane did. Worse yet, they only did what they were designed to do, programmed to do, by you sick assholes.”
Tali paled, staring at him. She looked like she wanted to fight back, but couldn’t seem to find the words.
“What do you want us to do?” Reyes asked. “How many people should your monsters be able to kill before we stop them?”
Tali hesitated a moment before she nodded once and turned away. He knew the day had been difficult for her, but he could summon no sympathy at all.
In his pocket, his cell phone buzzed.
“Reyes,” he answered.
“Sheriff, it’s Wilkins. That cell phone you asked us to track? Pretty sure we’ve got its last known location on Cayo Costa.”
Reyes thanked him and ended the call. He glanced at Tali, then beyond her at the shark hunters, and decided they could keep an eye out for fins in the water on their way to Cayo Costa. It wouldn’t take long to check out, and at least for a few minutes, they wouldn’t be killing anything.
Maybe they’d get lucky and save some lives instead.
* * *
Jenn knelt in the sand on Corinne’s left, while Emma knelt on her right. Blood had soaked into the sand and the towel around Corinne’s leg, but the pain on her face had faded. She had slipped in and out of consciousness, but it was the blood loss that worried Jenn the most.
“Mrs. Hautala,” Emma said. “Do you think—”
She couldn’t finish asking her question. Her face contorted with worry as she glanced out at the water. A boat had appeared, off to the south, and it seemed to be headed their way. Deputy Hayes had arranged for an emergency evacuation, a boat that would take them to Lee Memorial Hospital on the mainland, and Jenn understood that it was urgent. She couldn’t send Emma alone with her mother in this condition, but the desire to stay right here and wait for Matti and Jesse to come back made her frantic inside.
“She’ll be okay, Emma,” Jenn said. She had no idea if this was the truth, but she couldn’t think of any version of the truth that would comfort the girl. “I’m going to stay with you both. We’ll get her to the hospital and they’ll take care of her.”
Emma nodded, but Jenn could see the girl’s hands trembling. Of course she trembled. She had seen people die horribly today, and now her mother was bleeding into the sand. No matter what else happened, she would be seeing the blood and violence of this day on the nightmare screen inside her head for the rest of her life. They both would, and Jenn hadn’t even seen much of it up close. It occurred to her what a strong, courageous person Emma had become, and she felt a sudden surge of pride in the girl.
Then she thought of Jesse, and her own fear spiked higher. Where was her son? Where was her husband? Emma’s father and little sister were still missing as well.
Jenn turned to look at Deputy Hayes, who stood a stone’s throw up the sand, talking to the spring-break girl Simone, whose friend had been killed in a shark attack earlier in the day. Hayes put a comforting hand on Simone’s shoulder. Three of the college girl’s friends had died today, and she was definitely going to need all the emotional support she could find. Jenn felt badly for her, but her sympathy withered in the shadow of her own fears.
“Deputy,” she called. “I’m going with them. I’ll leave you my number. Please call me as soon as you get word about the sightseeing boat. We need to know everyone’s okay.”
“I’ll call as soon as I know anything,” Deputy Hayes replied. “You have my word.”
Jenn turned to watch the boat glide up onto the sand fifty feet away. EMTs jumped out, splashed i
n the rippling water that foamed on the shore, and then raced toward them. Exhaling, Jenn stepped away from Corinne, then went around and shifted Emma backward to give the EMTs access to her mother.
“It’s going to be okay,” Jenn told Emma, taking her hand.
The girl squeezed her hand tightly. “How do you know?”
Jenn glanced at Deputy Hayes and the hollow-eyed Simone, and decided not to answer. The truth, of course, was that she didn’t know. She was an adult, a mother, and telling a fourteen-year-old girl that things were going to be okay was pure instinct.
“Mrs. Hautala,” Emma persisted. “How can you think it’s going to be okay?”
“I just do,” she lied.
Together, she and Emma watched the EMTs prep Corinne for transport, put her on a stretcher, and load her onto the boat. As Jenn climbed into the boat with Emma, and they set off across the waves toward the mainland, she began to tell herself things were going to be okay, just as she had told Emma.
It wouldn’t be very long before Deputy Hayes called to tell her just how wrong she had been. For Jenn Hautala, things were not going to be okay at all.
Not ever.
* * *
Rick wanted to black out. Jesse had surrendered his T-shirt, torn it into strips, and then he and Paola used it to bind the stab wound in Rick’s chest, but they could do nothing about the blood he had already lost. His head pounded as the sun beat down on them. The skeletal trees on North Captiva provided little shade, so Jesse and Kelsey sat close together, their bodies partly shielding Rick from the sun. The slash on her jawline had mostly stopped bleeding, but the cut looked wicked and would no doubt require stitches.
Kelsey had a hundred questions, wanted to hear that she was safe a dozen different ways, and needed reassurance that her mother and sister were also safe. Rick knew she must be afraid for them all, particularly after what she had just endured, and witnessed. She had watched sharks kill Jesse’s father, a man she’d known her whole life. A man who had always been so kind to her. But Rick had a feeling her questions were more for his sake than her own. She had to have seen how pale and he weak he was. Rick felt on the verge of slipping away into unconsciousness. His eyelids were heavy and he struggled to keep them open, and she would have seen that, too.
“Daddy!”
His eyes snapped open. “Yeah, honey. I’m still here.” He did his best to smile.
“Told you,” Jesse said quietly, holding nine-year-old Kelsey’s hand in his. “He’s okay.”
“He’s not okay,” Kelsey admonished him.
Rick forced his eyes to focus on Jesse. He saw the emotions warring on the young man’s face. His father had died to save him, and to save Rick. Grief must have been tearing him up inside, and it manifested in the way his shoulders sagged and in the pain that shone in his eyes. But Jesse still managed to give Kelsey a reassuring smile, to bump playfully against her.
“You calling me a liar?” he asked.
“No?” she said uncertainly. “I just—”
“I’m not okay,” Rick said weakly. “But I will be. Listen to Jesse, sweet girl. He’s in charge right now.”
Kelsey made a grumpy face and Rick felt his worries ease. If she could be that irritated with him, then for the moment her fears for him had abated. Now all he had to do was manage not to bleed to death before help came. If he died now, she would never forgive him.
“There!” a little voice shouted. “A boat!”
Rick glanced over. Little Emilio had been sitting with his mother, Paola, about twenty feet up the beach. Rick and Paola had spoken some, but they were all in shock and found they had little to say to one another. Paola had lost her husband, Ernie, and Emilio had lost his father. The two had been speaking in quiet Spanish, and sometimes in English, as the woman tried to find a way to explain to her son that, yes, his father had been killed by a shark. No, Daddy wouldn’t be coming home. Yes, it had been real, and the sharks were still out there. The mother and toddler had taken turns crying, and Rick had to fight not to cry as well. He was too weak for tears, and he didn’t want to scare Kelsey or shatter the brave front that Jesse had constructed.
“A boat!” Kelsey echoed.
With a grunt of pain, Rick struggled to sit up. Jesse and Kelsey helped him, and then he could see the large craft sailing toward them. It took him some time to make out the words on the side and to decipher the logo of the Sanibel Island Maritime Research Institute.
The boat began to slow, veering off course, turning slightly north.
“What are they doing?” Jesse asked, his voice angry and brittle. His father had died and Rick figured he must have known, consciously or subconsciously, that he would have to grow up quickly now.
“Hunting,” Paola said, pointing toward the boat.
It took a few seconds for Rick to identify the apparatus on the back of the boat. His eyes fluttered and darkness threatened to envelop him. Jesse put a hand on his shoulder to steady him.
“You still with us?” Jesse asked.
Kelsey whipped her head around to stare at her father, examining him intently.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Rick said, managing a weak smile to reassure her. He thought he glimpsed the real grief hiding inside Jesse in that moment, but the young man covered it up quickly.
“They’re going after the sharks,” Paola said.
“It’s like a gun,” little Emilio said.
The little boy was right. The apparatus mounted on the boat was some kind of harpoon gun. The boat plowed through the waves, then idled slowly, waiting for the nearest shark to come after them. When it did, the man controlling the harpoon gun fired it into the water, and the result raised a small, victorious cheer from several people on the boat.
Kelsey shuddered and turned to press her face against her father’s shoulder. When she glanced up at him, there were tears in her eyes.
“Hey, honey … no,” he said. “We’re going to be okay now. It’s over.”
“I know.”
He figured the fear and shock had just built up inside her and now that she could let it go, the relief had overwhelmed her.
But then she went on. “It’s just sad.”
“Sad how?”
Kelsey shot a guilty, apologetic look at Jesse. “I mean … I know the sharks were horrible. What they did … but it’s sad those people are killing them. They’re just animals, right? Weren’t they just doing what sharks do?”
Rick shifted and managed to get an arm around her. Pain jolted him, radiating from his wound, but he didn’t know what else to do for her. Rick had not been the best father—he knew that—but he also knew that even the world’s greatest father could not have erased the damage that had been done. It would take years. Perhaps a lifetime. He would give her all of the years he had left.
Beside them, Jesse cleared his throat. His gaze seemed hollow, but he sat up straight, putting on a brave face, perhaps thinking his father would have wanted that.
“This isn’t natural,” he said. “These sharks … they’ve been twisted somehow. Somebody did this.” His eyes narrowed and his expression turned darker. “And whoever it was, I hope to God someone makes them pay.”
Out on the waves, the research ship turned toward shore. Little Emilio broke away from his mother and raced down to the water, jumping up and down and waving his arms excitedly. Paola ran after him and scooped him up, staring in terror at the sea—but of the other sharks, for the moment, there was no sign.
* * *
When Corinne Scully woke from surgery, she found her family sitting around her. Her eyes opened slowly, her head heavy and her mouth dry. Pain throbbed in her leg, but dull and distant, as if the remnant of a dream.
Rick sat sprawled in a chair beside her hospital bed, pale and in a hospital gown himself, a hanging IV bag pumping fluid into his arm. Kelsey had a bandage on her face, along the left side of her jaw, but her eyes lit up when she noticed her mother was awake.
“Mom!” she cried happily,
rushing from the windowsill where she’d been perched. She hugged her mother hard, but she didn’t cry. Corinne hugged her back, and didn’t want to let go.
Over Kelsey’s shoulder, she saw Emma leaning against the wall. She’d had her cell phone in her hand, but now she let it dangle at her side, staring at her mother. After a moment, she stuffed her phone into her back pocket and came over to put a hand on her dad’s shoulder.
“You’re alive,” Emma observed.
Corinne almost laughed. “He took a chunk out of me, though,” she replied.
Rick reached out and took her hand. “You’re still with us. And Emma’s alive because of you.”
“My hero,” Emma said, with a slight smile, and none of the sarcasm she usually employed. She meant it, and Corinne fought to keep from crying.
Corinne squeezed Rick’s hand and looked around at her family. They were changed—all of them. Hardened by this, sharpened by it, perhaps a little more awake and aware of the dangers of the world. And to its gifts, as well.
Also by Chris Jameson
SHARK ISLAND
DEVIL SHARKS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHRIS JAMESON has been a bouncer, a liquor retailer, an assistant hockey coach, a drama teacher, and an office drone. Summers on Cape Cod have given him a healthy respect for ocean predators. He lives near the coast of Massachusetts, but doesn’t spend a lot of time in the water. You can sign up for email updates here.
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