Until his face grated on sand, he didn’t even realize he was vacating the water. Muscles fueled by high-octane adrenaline, driven by survival instincts he didn’t even know he possessed, had propelled him like a speedboat through the water and onto the beach.
Cheryl!
Terror, already twined like crawling ivy about his spine, clenched him in razors from rectum to just back of his eyes. He screamed her name, sweeping the dark waters for some sign. Where was she? Surely if something had happened to her he’d have heard her scream. Wouldn’t he? Or had he been in too much of a panic?
When he failed to find her bobbing silhouette against the gray horizon, George tried to stand so he could see above the white surf. His leg wouldn’t hold him. Looking down, he saw why. The world spun, his stomach heaved, and the beach slapped him in the face like some irate lover.
• • •
... there was sand plastered to the side of his face, more packed in his ear, coating his lips, and sticking salt-bitter to his tongue and teeth. It took a second to realize he’d passed out. He sat up quickly—too quickly, for his head spun and black fingers pressed at the edges of his vision. He bowed his head into his sandy hands and simply held on, waiting for it to pass. When he thought he could maintain his flimsy hold on consciousness, he dared to raise his head and survey his situation.
It didn’t look as if he’d been out long. The moon was still where he remembered it and the tide, lapping dog-like at his bare feet, had neither advanced nor retreated. And, of course, he hadn’t bled to death. Yet.
He reached down to examine his wound, pulling aside the leg of his trousers. The pant leg was dangling by no more than a third of its original circumference, ragged and torn, wet with water and, darker, his blood. Beneath the rent cloth lay his pale flesh, likewise torn. There was so much fresh blood it was difficult to tell just how serious the wound was. Gripping his calf, he tried to feel out the extent of the wound. When he moved the muscle, the back of his leg sagged open in a wide, wet grin. Blood literally sprayed across the sand.
George gasped, felt the world spin again, but held on. The cut was deep. Within its obscene pinkness, he spotted the gleam of bone. In that instant, the expression bone deep took on a whole new meaning for him. The cut, like the tear in his pants, went almost the whole way around his leg.
He started to be sick, forced it back, gagged on bile and the taste of pennies in the back of his throat. The pain was starting now, tip-toeing forward on silent, stockinged feet; then, once it knew it’d been spotted, charging full speed, armed with knives, needles, and isopropyl alcohol. Open that cut up, my friend. We don’t want an infection, do we? Open that up, pin it back... there we go; now, let me pour in this alcohol. George screamed at the moon; it stared back silently, an unblinking, ambivalent eye.
Got to stop the bleeding. He unbuckled his belt and pulled it from around his waist. Where does one apply a tourniquet? He settled for just above the knee and pulled the belt as tight as he could. The pain seemed to be increasing exponentially.
Cheryl? He tried to stand again, managed to get up on his good knee from which he had a slightly better vantage point. The effort left bright firecrackers going off in the back of his head. The dark fingers were back, probing behind his eyeballs like exploratory surgeons.
No sign of Cheryl.
He fell back to the sand, leg and head throbbing in synch. He was having trouble focusing his eyes, but he thought he could see the Reliant where he’d parked it an eternity ago. It seemed miles away.
Just before he blacked out again, he wondered if it would be morning before someone found him. And if he’d still be alive by then.
• • •
“Doctor, he’s coming around.”
Midnight faded to gray, gray to white, and white to reality. George blinked several times, trying to focus on a golden sun hanging over his head. The sun rearranged and clarified itself to become the concerned face of a fat, blond nurse. A tall man in white joined her. There was a black serpent hung about his neck. A second later, the snake moved and transformed itself into a stethoscope.
George closed his eyes. So much white, it hurt. And the smell of this place was disturbingly familiar. Since his condition had been diagnosed, he’d spent enough time in places like this.
A hand settled softly on his shoulder. “Easy, Mr. Cooper. You’re in a hospital. You’ve had a rough night. Lost a lot of blood.”
“How—” George croaked. His throat felt scorched.
“Get him some ice,” the doctor said, presumably to the nurse. George didn’t open his eyes to check.
“Some kids found you this morning on the beach. My name is Doctor Fennimore. I just want you to rest. The nurse will bring you some ice. Suck on the ice; that’ll get your voice back in working order. There’s an officer waiting outside to speak with you, but I’ve told him he has to wait till you’ve—”
“No.” If there was to be any help at all for Cheryl, it had to be quick. He opened his eyes, forced them to focus.
“What is it, Mr. Cooper?”
“Cheryl.”
“Someone you want us to contact? We called your office at Fort Monmouth. They said—”
“Girl that... was with me last night.” He choked, struggling with the dryness that had taken up residence in his mouth. The nurse returned. The doctor took a cup from her hands and slipped George a piece of ice.
“Easy now. Suck on that ice. You say there was someone with you last night?”
George nodded.
“Nurse, go get that police sergeant.”
“Cheryl,” George repeated, realizing he couldn’t remember her last name. The ice was soothing his raw throat, numbing the pain, making it easier to talk. “Picked her up in the bar. Cavalier Hotel.”
“Easy now. Let’s wait for the officer so you only have to tell this story once.”
Sure, George thought, no hurry. Its just a beautiful young woman washed up somewhere dead. His mind flashed back involuntarily to the image of her pulling her blue dress off over her head.
Eventually they found the cop, a sour fellow who introduced himself as Sergeant Willis, no first name that he cared to share with George. George told Willis what he knew. Her first name was Cheryl, last name something that began with an M: Monroe, Moore, or something like that. He’d picked her up at the hotel bar and they’d gone for a midnight swim, something had tried to take his leg off, and he had swam fast as he could for the beach. End of story.
Willis made some quick phone calls. One to the Coast Guard to get them looking for Cheryl in the water. The other to his precinct to get some officers back out on the beach. There didn’t appear to be anything else he could do.
“Where was she when you were swimming to shore?” Willis asked when he’d finished with the phone.
George closed his eyes and felt shame spread like some volatile substance across his face. “Still in the water. I panicked. I thought she would follow.”
“Doesn’t appear she did,” Willis commented dryly.
An awkward silence followed in which Willis eased toward the door and, without comment, slipped out. George seemed not to even notice his departure. “What hit me?” he asked of no one in particular. “A shark?”
Doctor Fennimore stepped forward to answer. “We’re not sure, Mr. Cooper. I can tell you that it definitely wasn’t a shark. Your leg looks as if someone wrapped a piano wire about it and tightened down to the bone. Nothing living could have made a wound like that.”
“What did then?”
“My best guess is that you ran into some sort of floating garbage. Something sharp rolling about in the surf. An old timber with a hunk of metal embedded in it perhaps. You got your leg caught in it, twisted, and did all that damage.”
Bullshit, George thought. He was remembering the sounds he had heard just prior to the attack. That hadn’t been a drifting hunk of pier that slapped the surface of the water. Cheryl had even thought it was something living; she’d said dol
phin when he’d guessed shark.
“Mr. Cooper, we need to talk about your medical condition.” Fennimore’s tone indicated that he was talking about more than George’s leg.
“You mean the cancer.”
“Yes.” There was some relief in the doctor’s voice. He’d obviously been worried that George didn’t know. “Therapy isn’t helping?”
“The radiation.”
“Yes.”
“I haven’t been taking the treatments.” George chafed at having to explain this for the thousandth time. He cut straight to the punch line. “I want to die with some amount of dignity. And how I die is about the only say I have in the matter.”
Fennimore nodded solemnly, surprising George by accepting his decision. “I understand, Mr. Cooper.” A slight shrug of his shoulders. “Thoracic cancer is not something the medical profession has had much success with. You know it’s metastasized to your brain?”
“Six months to less than a year is what they told me a few weeks ago. Relax, Doctor. I know all about it.” George waved in a never-mind kind of gesture. “Tell me about my leg.”
“I can save it, but...”
“But it hardly seems necessary,” George supplied.
Fennimore looked away.
“Save my leg, Doctor. I want to walk through whatever time I’ve got left.”
• • •
It would be two weeks, and as many operations, before Doctor Fennimore released George. Two weeks in which the only trace of Cheryl to be found was the shoes she’d left in the rental car. Sergeant Willis checked at the Cavalier. No Cheryl M. had been registered that or any night within the past month. The bartender and waitress did remember seeing her leave with George. They corroborated his description of the missing redhead, but knew nothing about her. The waitress thought maybe she’d seen her in the bar once or twice before, but couldn’t remember who she might have been with. No one reported a missing redhead, no one found a body washed up on the beach, no one knew anything. Cheryl was a complete mystery.
The operations were to return some mobility to George’s leg. Whatever it was that had cut him had literally cut to the bone. A specialist was flown in from Boston to reconstruct the damaged muscles, tendons, and ligaments in George’s leg. The doctor put in long hours of surgery in which he gathered together and repaired the severed tissues. George would never walk without a metal leg brace or crutches again, but he would at least walk. And he got to keep the leg.
So, two weeks later, George left the hospital and returned to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. He tried to immerse himself in his work at the Advanced Weapons Laboratory, to forget that night in Virginia, to forget the woman he’d almost lost his virginity to, and to forget the thing that had come swift and silent through the water to ruin his leg.
But it plagued him.
He knew there was something in the water off Virginia Beach, something alive and innately evil. If it hadn’t been for Cheryl, he might have been able to, if not forget about it, at least put it behind him. There was a nagging voice that said Cheryl wasn’t dead, that she was somehow associated with whatever lurked in the water. But there was a stronger voice, one that set his heart to racing, that said she couldn’t possibly mean him harm and, if she was still alive, he wanted to finish what they’d started.
If not for the cancer he might have been too terrified to return. But what did he really have to lose? The more it went around in his head, the more he knew he had to do something or go crazy.
Walt Leeke, George’s supervisor, was an understanding man, but when George requested annual leave Walt was worried that George was abandoning his research projects, many of which were beyond the other engineers in the office. And everyone knew George’s time was limited. George assured Walt that he just needed time to get over the accident, just a little R & R as it were, and then everything would be back to normal. As a sign of good faith, George put in several fourteen-hour workdays. Working late into the night, George finished up several technical reports Walt had been asking for, documentation that would allow others to carry-on where George was fated to leave off. Pacified, Walt approved George’s request for a week of annual leave.
Virginia Beach. Just under 300 miles away. George drove this time, the rear end of his Nissan Maxima riding low under the weight of the items he’d borrowed over several late nights working at the lab. Interstate 95 took him around Philadelphia, down to Highway 13. Thirteen carried him south through Delaware to Cape Charles and then across Chesapeake Bay to Norfolk and Virginia Beach. He had no idea what, if anything, he’d find at the beach, but he was as ready for it as any man could be.
• • •
As he stumbled out of his rented Pontiac, Earl Youngblood thought what a hot night it was. Certainly hotter than he’d expected for Virginia, even if it was summertime. The car door banged sharply against the side of somebody’s Datsun (or did they call them Nissans now?) causing a good size chunk of the import’s gray paint to chip off into the darkness, but fuck it, weren’t nothing but one of them goddamn Jap cars anyhow. Earl thought he could see the owner, a scrawny little fellow way up the beach, mucking about in the surf with some kind of net. There was a little wagon nearby, loaded with what appeared to be Mason jars—kind of hard to tell at this distance. Some kinda geek ocean scientist, Earl decided. Long as the little geek kept his distance, Earl didn’t care what he did.
Cheryl Anne’s tight ass was already heading for the water, so he hurried. Still, he remembered to grab what was left of the twelve-pack out of the car. They’d been working at it, but half the cans remained in the carton. Earl’s daddy had taught him to never waste good beer.
Damn, but she was a fast little filly. “Wait up, darlin’,” he hollered at her retreating backside.
There were a few other things the old bastard had taught him that were worth remembering, like how to ride a horse even when it don’t wanna be rode, how to spotlight deer from a canoe along the North Canadian, how to find the good holes when noodlin’ for catfish, and never, ever turn down free pussy. But for the most part, Daddy’d been one worthless ass sonabitch, drunk on the couch damn near all of his adult life, beatin’ Mama when he wasn’t drunk (and sometimes when he was), and chasing every split-tail he saw. Earl hadn’t even much gave a damn when they shoveled the old bastard under. But damn, he’d had the right idea about that free pussy. Especially when it looked as nice as Cheryl Anne did. It was one thing to let it run your life, chasing after it to the extent that you’re never sober and can’t hold down a job (like Daddy), but there wasn’t nothin’ wrong with taking good poontain when it dropped in your lap.
“Hurry, Earl! The water’s great!” Her dress lay on the sand just short of where the waves washed up shallow. He cursed himself for having ducked in after the beer; she must have shucked the dress when his back was turned. No matter, he was gonna’ see it all in minute or two.
“Gonna’ be in the pink,” he laughed, using one of Daddy’s old phrases. Daddy’d had a hundred of ’em, one for every occasion.
Fumbling with his clothes, Earl followed her to the water, dropping most of the beer on the way. No big deal, he’d pick them up later. Afterwards. Stripped to his Fruit of the Looms, he waded into the surf, a beer can in each hand.
“Come on!” Cheryl called.
When he finally reached her, belly-button-deep in the dark waters of the Atlantic, she asked him if all Okies were as slow as he was.
“We do like to take our time, darlin,” he drawled, pouring the bible-belt accent on heavy because he suspected it turned her on. “’Fore the night’s over, I reckon as you’ll come to ’preciate that.”
She moved close, stealing one of his beers and letting it slip beneath the waves. She reached for the second can, but he pulled it back out of her reach.
“Tell me more about your horses, Earl. Tell me how you ride them.”
He stroked her hip, letting his hand trail over and down its smooth contour, beneath the sea, around her velvet thigh
and up between her legs. “First thing is to mount up, darlin’. Just grab the saddlehorn and wrap your legs around that old stallion.” He stroked her beneath the waves. “You know how to find the saddlehorn, don’t you, Cheryl Anne?”
She smiled and there was, springing forward like wildfire in that instant, something vicious back of her eyes, some predator that peeked out, sized him up, and decided then and there that he was prey.
Earl threw back his head and screamed. Something had indeed taken hold of his saddlehorn, but it wasn’t the loving embrace he’d expected. He felt the clean, cold bite of razors at his inner thighs—sharp, deep pain. Something heavy and cold, like the hand of a corpse, clamped over his genitals. Bleating like a castrated sheep, he lunged back in the suddenly boiling surf, voiding his bladder. The water about his waist churned a darker, thicker color, swirling syrup-heavy at the surface, flat black in the starlight.
Cheryl Anne licked her red lips and slipped, eel-like, beneath the surface.
Thrashing in the churning water, Earl struggled for the beach. He felt his underwear slip off his clenched buttocks, realizing that they couldn’t have done that unless the front of them was gone. There was excruciating pain radiating from his crotch and far too much warmth there. He was too terrified to look down. He knew he was whimpering and bellowing like a woman, something he’d never done before, not even the time a horse rolled on him and broke his leg in three places, but he had no inclination to stop.
Sand grated against his knees as he reached the shallows. He struggled to his feet and dived for the glistening shore, now only yards away. Something as cold and sharp as stainless steel wrapped whip-like around his ankles and jerked him off his feet. He sprawled face first into the sea, digging up handfuls of sand as he was dragged back into the deeper water. He struggled against the drag-line about his ankles, feeling it cut deep, but not caring, knowing only that he had to get away, had to get to shore, had to get out of the water or he was as good as dead.
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