The shark bit down on the dolphin’s belly and both splashed back into the water and disappeared beneath frothy seawater and an explosion of red.
“What the hell is this?” Emma said, holding back her cries.
“Well, that’s something I been tryin’ to figure out myself,” Uncle Pete said. He rested his chin on Emma’s shoulder, and it took everything she had not to throw up or scream. “There’s places in the ocean where the currents collide. Kicks up a shit ton of plankton and the like from the bottom, yeah? Fish eat the plankton, bigger fish eat the little fish, and so on. What you get is a feeding frenzy, a fisherman’s goldmine.”
Emma had been holding her breath, and when Uncle Pete finally unpeeled himself from the back of her, stood beside her, his eyes on the ocean beyond, she gasped for air.
“What I figure is, those barnacles got kicked up from the bottom. A lot of shit down there we ain’t never seen before, you know it? Whatever they attach themselves to get mean, start killin’ anything that moves. There was so much fuckin’ life out here, them damn barnacles are thrivin’.
“I stumbled on this place by accident. Or fate. See, us Nance boys, we gotta special relationship with ol’ Poseidon down there. You ever heard of him, sugar plum?”
Emma didn’t answer, just held her scowl as she watched the sea life rip one another to bits.
“God of the sea. I figure he brought me out here somehow. Wanted me to know this place existed. It was the night I found out my brother was dead. See, Sean ran away from his destiny, thought he could escape it. But he’s dead, isn’t he. And I’m thinkin’ it was Poseidon that got him. Sean’s life, all of our lives, belong to the ocean.”
Uncle Pete turned so he was facing Emma, staring at her but not seeming to see her. Lost in his own head and mad thoughts. “I don’t know why I took the boat out that night, but I did. I don’t know why I brought my boy with me that night, but I did. And the ocean took him. As payment for Sean’s betrayal. That’s what I think. And here today, it all ends. The Nance legacy is over.”
“You’re fucking crazy,” Emma said.
“Crazy? Nah. I’m just a simple man who’s accepted his destiny.” He slapped Emma on the ass and pointed back out the window. “Now watch closely. You won’t wanna miss this.”
—11—
“Just give him a minute, Ben.” Gentry tried to pull his friend away from the bathroom door, but Ben shrugged him off, kicked it again.
“We don’t have a fucking minute! We need to put our heads together, figure some shit out!”
“Figure what out!” Gentry collapsed to the floor and shook his head. “We’re fucked, man. What the hell are we supposed to do? Clyde’s dead. Manuel’s dead. Your fucking uncle is holding Emma hostage, and if that shit isn’t enough… We’re surrounded by goddamn monsters!”
Gentry covered his face with both hands as he started to cry. He had never felt so helpless in his life, and no matter how many times he played it out in his head, he couldn’t figure how they would get out of this alive. With Emma up there with Uncle Pete, they couldn’t do anything to risk him hurting her.
We’re dead. We’re all dead.
When the hand wrapped around the back of Gentry’s neck and squeezed lightly, he damn near screamed.
“We’ll think of something,” Ben said. “We can’t just give up. That cocksucker is gonna pay. He…he fucking killed my brother, man. He killed him…”
Gentry was surprised to see tears welling up in Ben’s eyes then. Sure, Clyde was a dick, possibly on the verge of becoming a murderous one. But he was still Ben’s brother. The only family he had left besides his mother. And now he was dead.
“He said we would all tear each other apart,” Gentry said.
“What?” Ben wiped the tears from his eyes and sniffled.
“Pete. Before he dragged Emma off, he said we would tear each other apart. What do you think he meant by that?”
“What the fuck do you think, Gench? You saw what those…things did to Manuel. He was coming at us, man. That’s what he means. Those barnacles, they—”
The restroom door exploded out, wooden shards raining down on Gentry and Ben, splinters biting into their skin.
Gentry jumped to his feet, dragged Ben up with him.
Cobb had smashed through the door, lay on the floor among the wooden debris. The sweatshirt he was wearing was torn to shreds, only a few strips of fabric still clinging to him.
“Cobb…what the fuck, man?” Ben had started to step toward him, but Gentry quickly pulled him back.
“His arm. His fucking arm…”
From Cobb’s hand up to his shoulder was covered in barnacle shells, each one winking and clicking. The same black tentacles that had been writhing out of Manuel’s skin snaked out of Cobb’s as he climbed to his feet.
Cobb’s face was expressionless, his eyes closed, mouth hanging open. As the tentacles reached out, tightening and extending outward, Cobb took slow, clumsy steps toward Gentry and Ben. Something moved over his chest, shoulders, and neck, the skin red and irritated.
“Cobb…? Ah shit. Fuck!” Ben clung to Gentry’s arm as they both took steps backward. “Wake up, goddamnit!”
Cobb’s eyes burst open, and for a second, just a brief moment, Gentry thought he saw fear and confusion there. Like Cobb couldn’t control his actions and didn’t understand why.
Then Cobb’s mouth stretched open and a gull-like shriek screeched out of it. His eyes went hard, angry, and as the tentacles thrashed and the tips fanned out to clawed scoops, he ran at them.
“Run!” Gentry spun on his heels, sprinted toward the door, pulling Ben along with him. He didn’t turn to see how close Cobb was now, but could hear the pounding of his pursuing footsteps behind him.
Ben screamed just as Gentry got the door open and shoved through it. Ben had his head turned, staring at Cobb as he ran at them. Black liquid poured from Cobb’s mouth as he screeched and gurgled.
Gentry grabbed the back of Ben’s shirt, pulled as hard as he could. Ben stumbled back, landed hard on his back. Gentry slammed the door shut just as Cobb collided with it, the tentacles scraping against the wood and the square window, hitting it so hard it sounded like they were chipping away at it.
“Get me something to block the fucking door!” Gentry shouted, holding the door shut with both hands, propping a foot up against the wall.
Cobb pressed his face against the window and shrieked, coating the glass in black, bubbling fluid.
“Hurry the fuck up!”
Ben stumbled to his feet, darted off, and came back with one of the fishing poles. While Gentry held the door shut, Ben slid the pole into the handle, then jammed the butt of it into the space between the cabin wall and the cutting table.
There was a sound like a whale blowing water from its blowhole, and a white liquid splashed against the window, sizzled there, oozed down the glass slow like slime.
The sudden noise and splash startled Gentry, and he yelped and fell away from the door.
Cobb screeched again from inside, pushed up against the door. The fishing pole bowed, looked ready to snap, but it held. The door slammed into again, and it bent, but didn’t break.
“More,” Gentry said, jumping to his feet. “Grab another one! Come on!”
Gentry yanked another fishing pole out of its holster at the side of the boat, ran toward the door and jammed it in the same as the first. Ben brought a third and fourth, but they could only fit one more, and Ben tossed the other pole overboard, slammed his fist into the wall.
“This is fucked!”
Something landed on the other side of the boat just then. Hit the deck with a wet thud, then more moist thumping as whatever it was jumped and flopped on the wooden planked floor.
“Ben?” Gentry said.
“I don’t know…I don’t fucking know, man.”
They stepped away from the cabin door together, Cobb still shrieking and slamming against it from the other side, his tentacles still tearin
g into the wood. The glass continued to sizzle from the milky liquid that had splashed across it.
On the other side of the boat flopped a large blue fish, its tail encrusted with barnacles that knocked against the wood with every thrashing hop. It had a wide fin on its back, spiked, and when it spun in the air as it flopped some more, Gentry saw the long, sword-like snout.
“Is that a goddamn swordfish?” Ben said “You see that shit?”
“I’m looking right at it—”
From just beside Gentry, a colossal black and white head rose up out of the water as if growing from the surface of the sea. The Killer Whale rose up just far enough to get a look on deck, as if sizing up its meal. The second Gentry saw the eye, the barnacles clinging to the whale’s face opened up, tentacles bursting out like frog’s tongues aiming for flies.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Gentry jumped away from the edge of the boat, slammed into Ben.
“What? What?” Ben grabbed hold of the back of Gentry’s shirt and twisted the fabric like he was trying to wring it out.
As if responding to Ben’s question, something slammed into the boat again. As Gentry and Ben both went down, clinging to each other, both screaming, a wave of water towered over them before splashing down on them.
Gentry wasn’t ready for it, inhaled on accident. The salty water filled his belly, stung his eyes. When the water drained back into the ocean, and while Gentry gagged and coughed and tried to catch his breath, a cloud of misty water erupted into the air just in front of him.
“Having fun yet, boys?” the speaker above the cabin said, the words muffled because of the water in Gentry’s ears.
***
“What do you want?” Emma said after watching the Killer Whale slam its body into the side of the boat. She held her breath when the water hit Gentry and Ben, and didn’t exhale until she saw they were both still safe on deck, that neither had gone overboard. Those fucking whales—at least two of them—circled the boat, dipped underneath it, chomping other fish with its jaws as they went.
Uncle Pete sat in the captain’s chair, smoking another cigarette. Emma was damn near right between his legs, and every time she breathed, she thought she could taste the odor wafting off him.
“Want? It ain’t about what I want. Never was. I didn’t ever have no choice in this.” He picked up the hand radio, smiled as he spoke into it. “Having fun yet, boys?”
“Get us the fuck outta here. Please! I’ll do whatever the fuck you want me to, okay!” Emma clenched her teeth until her jaw burned, pulled her wrists against the ropes as hard as she could, ignoring the searing pain as she twisted her hands. “Ahhhh! Motherfucker!”
“What you think, girl? You thinkin’ that hairy gill between your legs is gonna get you and your friends outta this? That it? I don’t doubt a pretty little thing like you could use it to get what you want elsewhere. But out here? It’s as good as dead squid, sugar plumb.” He laughed, slapped his knee. “You offer that shit again, I’ll push a hook through it and toss you overboard, see what I can catch, you hear me?”
“So you wanna die too? You brought us all out here so you could watch your nephews get killed and then commit fucking suicide?” Blood stained the ropes now, dripped down Emma’s forearms. “Me and Gentry, we didn’t do shit to you. We don’t have anything to do with you or your fucked up family!”
Uncle Pete chuckled, blew smoke from his nostrils. With his eyes still on the ocean, he said, “You can thank my nephews for that one. You right about that. None of you had to die today. It was the Nance boys the ocean wanted, not any of y’all. If you woulda stayed on home, it wouldn’t have made a difference to me.”
“Then let us go. Just please let us go.”
Uncle Pete laughed hard then, took his eyes off the window and leaned down so his forehead was only inches away from Emma’s.
“Let you go, huh? What you thinkin’s gonna happen I do that, honey? You gonna straddle a magic dolphin all the way to shore? That it? The two of you gonna hitch a ride on a tortoise’s back?” He cackled and shook his head, took another puff off his cigarette.
“What about a lifeboat? Don’t you—”
“Nope. And even if I did, it’s too late now. The ocean’s hungry, darlin’. Who am I to deny it its meat?” He gave one final chuckle before reaching down, patting her on the head like a dog who just did a trick.“Now you hush up. I’m tryin’ to…”
Pete stood up off his chair so fast and suddenly that Emma screamed, flinched her face away from him. She had expected him to hit her, attack her, but his attention wasn’t on her. It was still facing the window, the ocean in front of him.
“Well look who’s back to join the party.”
***
Gentry kicked his feet to scoot his body back away from the edge of the boat. When his back hit the cabin wall, Cobb shrieked from the other side, the wood on the door now beginning to splinter. Cobb’s screams were becoming louder as the viscous slime ate away at the glass on the window, thinning it, a few tiny holes now visible.
Gentry heaved and spewed a bellyful of swallowed seawater onto the deck, now on his hands and knees. Once he caught his breath, he jumped to his feet, quickly scanned the deck for Ben.
Ben lay on his side toward the back of the boat, and for a moment Gentry feared the worst. That Ben would be dead, or worse yet, he would turn around to reveal the clusters of barnacles infesting his face and body.
“Ah, fuck me.” Ben rolled over to face Gentry, grimacing. His skin looked to be clear of the alien creatures, and Gentry quickly sprinted toward his friend and clung to him.
“Ben,” Gentry said. “We’re-we’re fucked, m-man. We’re so fucked out here.”
“That’s why we gotta go up there,” Ben said, pointing up toward the wheelhouse. “We can overpower that motherfucker. Me and you, Gentry.”
“He’s got Emma, man. We do that, he might hurt her. We can’t—”
“Fuck Emma! That bitch is just as bad as Clyde was, always has been. I know you got some fucking thing for her, Gench, but right now, it’s either we head up there or we die down here. Easy fucking decision!”
As bad as Gentry wanted to argue with Ben, tell him that Emma was nothing like Clyde, that she was a good person, that he was in love with her, he knew it was pointless. He knew Ben was right. They couldn’t just sit down there while Uncle Pete watched. They had to do something and they had to do it fast.
“All right. I say we just kick that fucking door down, and—”
Plop! Scraaaaape!
Gentry had his back to the noise, and when Ben’s eyes went wide, Gentry quickly turned, fists out in front of him.
He didn’t know what he was looking at, but when the thing rolled over he saw that it was a man. The man’s body seemed entirely covered in barnacles, like a living corral reef, and he stood up, tentacles flailing like mad from damn near every inch of him. What skin Gentry could see was pale and bloated-looking. Something on the front of the thing’s head moved, cracked open, and it wasn’t until the black liquid poured and splashed across the deck and a sputtering moan seeped out that Gentry realized it was the man’s mouth opening.
“Holy fucking shit…” Gentry grabbed hold of Ben’s arm, and Ben immediately clasped his hand. Gentry didn’t realize they were backing up until the backs of his thighs hit wood, and not a second later, something from just under him shrieked.
Climbing up the side of the boat was another man, both arms now a mess of writhing appendages and shell. No, this one had no arms at all, and once Gentry got a good look at it, he realized it was Manuel. The tentacles dug into the side of the boat, lifted Manuel higher and higher. He looked like a spider climbing a wall, and when his bulging, red eyes caught sight of Gentry and Ben, he shrieked again, climbed faster.
Just below him, a shark burst from the water, slammed its jaws just inches away from Manuel’s foot, then splashed back into the water. Tuna jumped, tentacles writhing from their bodies. A giant black tail broke the surface an
d slapped down, splashing the side of the boat and spraying water into Gentry’s face.
Gentry wiped the salt from his eyes, and when he looked back into the water beneath him, a pale face was staring back up at him.
Clyde?
Clyde’s head broke the surface, bobbed there for a moment. A cluster of tentacles thrashed from his throat and chin like a living, meat-eating beard. More of the barnacles were attached to his chest and stomach, and it was these that stabbed into the side of the boat and started pulling Clyde out of the water, climbing the wooden planks.
“Is that… Is that fucking Clyde?” Ben’s voice went up in pitch at the mention of his brother’s name.
“Go! Go go go go!” Gentry shoved Ben in the back, muscled him away from the three barnacle-coated monsters toward the metal stairs that led to the wheelhouse. Ben didn’t protest at all, started hauling ass up the steps, Gentry right behind him.
“Open the fucking door!” Ben bellowed, pounding his fists against the metal, kicking it. “Uncle Pete! Oh God, please let us in!”
Gentry didn’t waste his time begging, and started slamming his shoulder into the door as hard as he could, acknowledging the bursts of pain, but not letting them slow him any.
He chanced a look toward the deck, and Manuel was just pulling himself into the boat. The other man had been pursuing Gentry and Ben already, was damn near to the foot of the stairwell when he saw Manuel. His head split open again, and another gurgling screech flowed out of it, and the thing forgot about Gentry and Ben and went straight for Manuel.
Gentry only watched for a second as the man collided with Manuel, landed hard on top of him like a living boulder. His body exploded into movement as the countless barnacles opened up to spit out their threads. Manuel, now below the man, squealed, his own tendrils snaking out and scraping against the hard rock covering his attacker’s body.
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