Bait: A Novel

by Messum, J. Kent

  “Guys, stop!”

  Felix and Ginger finally heard. They looked back and saw the fin. Panic gripped Ginger and she resumed swimming, splashing louder than before.

  “Wait! Don’t move, it will attract—”

  Nash’s words fell on waterlogged ears. He looked to Felix and saw the man staring back, mouth hung slack with horror. Another fin, the pointed sail of the tiger, had broken the surface behind the first fin and was coming around in their direction.

  “Fuck it!” shouted Felix. “Go, go, go!”

  They pulled hard for land, heads down, taking breaths only when necessary, closing the distance. The incoming sharks closed their distance too. Three fins now followed, two white-tips and the tiger’s, gathering speed at the sound of thrashing in the water. Nash begged into the brine, promising himself that if he ever got back to the mainland, if he ever made it out alive, he would turn his damned life around, ask forgiveness from everyone he’d wronged, make amends to all that he’d hurt. All those loved ones that heroin had replaced, they’d be getting a phone call to say Nash was alive and well and wanted to see them again. He’d go to rehab. He’d go to church even. He’d be a new man, a good man, a changed man.

  “We’re almost there!” cried Felix.

  The tiger surged ahead, leading the others like an alpha in a pack of wolves. Felix and Nash found new strength and overtook Ginger. For every yard they gained, the sharks gained three. Nash looked down into the water. He could see the bottom fifteen feet below. Seconds later an escarpment of sand sprang up, cutting the depth to five feet even though they were still a considerable ways from shore.

  Nash called to the others, “It’s starting to get shallow!”

  Forty yards from the beach Nash stopped and stood in four feet of water. He whirled around in time to see the fins slip under one by one. Felix appeared at his right and both men braced for the sharks’ arrival. Ginger lagged behind, swimming in a breathless frenzy.

  “Come on, Ginger!” Nash shouted “Come on!”

  The dorsal fin of the tiger shot up a body length behind her, lunging forward with marauding purpose. Ginger reached out and the men caught her by the wrists. They tried to pull her forward, watching the distorted image of the shark’s mouth open under water, a gaping black hole surrounded by sharp white.

  “Save me—”

  Seawater filled Ginger’s mouth. Crushing jaws closed over her left foot as Nash and Felix tried to wrench her out of reach. Her body went rigid with the bite, her gargled screams loud enough to make both men’s ears ring. The shark shook her violently, teeth tearing through ligaments and tendons, sawing down to her tibia, where they snapped the bone like a pencil. Nash watched it swallow her foot in one gluttonous gulp before pulling away.

  “Oh, God . . . Ginger . . .”

  The amputation was disturbingly clean, not at all ragged like Kenny’s had been. Bone and tissue peeked at him from the meat, making him think of raw chicken legs defrosting in a sink. Nash realized he was screaming louder than Ginger.

  “Pull yourself together, Nash!” Felix bellowed. “Help me get her to shore!”

  Felix pulled Ginger screaming on her back through the water, leaving Nash lagging behind, hanging on to her other arm. Ginger looked down, bewildered by her foot’s absence, not fully comprehending what had just happened. She turned pale, moaning aloud, trying to gather the energy to scream again as the realization sank in. Nash’s cries eclipsed hers.

  “Felix! Here they come!”

  The tiger was circling around for another attack, but the two white-tips it had been leading were now upon them. More commotion made it easy for the two smaller sharks to hone in and the spreading blood trail from Ginger’s fresh wound was practically a runway to her flesh. The water was shallow, three feet, but the depth was no deterrent. The white-tips came rushing through the sea side by side, making their assault in unison. The first white-tip went low, crashing into Ginger’s right calf from underneath. Her one foot kicked out and walloped it in the gills, discouraging the attack. Its teeth raked the skin of her thigh, but failed to find a grip before going wide.

  The second white-tip was more on the mark, and far more determined. It broke the surface and went for Ginger’s left side, the point of its nose ramming her ribs before its jaws clamped over her tiny love handle. Nash reached over and brought his fist down like a hammer on the shark’s head. The white-tip held on, emboldened, shaking its head viciously as Ginger shrieked.

  “Stab it!” Felix screamed. “Stab it, stab it, stab it!”

  In his panic Nash had forgotten the weapon in his waistband. He snatched the dagger and raised it high above his head, pausing to target the monstrous snout. As he brought the dagger down the white-tip wrenched free a chunk of Ginger and pulled away. The wooden point missed the nose by inches, digging into Ginger’s gaping wound instead.

  “Aw, Christ, man,” Felix wailed. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “F-f-fuck, I—I’m s-s-sorry,” Nash stammered, wrenching the dagger out.

  Blood gushed from her gored side, spreading through the water in a trail that merged with the one flowing from her stump. Felix kept pulling, but Ginger’s hand was limp in his grasp. What little energy she had left was being used to power her weakening screams.

  “Not far now, girl!” Felix shouted. “You stay with us, y’hear? You’re not allowed to die on me now!”

  The tiger shark came fully around, racing inbound for a second helping, its fin and back high out of the shallow water. Felix grabbed his dagger and held it out. Nash copied, his breath coming in shaky gasps. He risked a glance at Felix.

  “How do you suggest we stop this mother?”

  Felix had no answer. The tiger rushed them, smashing Ginger with its flat nose and engulfing her hip and upper thigh in its maw. Both men brought their daggers down on its head. The skin was astonishingly thick, breaking off the tip of Nash’s dagger before it sank an inch. Felix’s strike did not fare much better. The shark jarred at the sting of the attack, but would not release. It wasn’t leaving without another mouthful.

  Felix wrenched his dagger out of the skin and brought it down again near the eye, sinking it deeper than before. The shark shook Ginger savagely, sounds of breaking bone and tearing skin filling the air. Felix managed one more stab and the shark pulled away, taking Ginger’s footless leg with it and leaving a grotesque concave bite where her thigh once connected to her hip. Felix let out a cry of dismay and continued to pull Ginger toward the beach, Nash stumbling alongside. A white-tip fin rose quickly from the water on their right, blindsiding everyone, going unnoticed until it was upon them.

  The first white-tip that had failed to get its pound of flesh rushed them defiantly in two feet of water. It lunged into Ginger’s bleeding side, jaws pressed against her rib cage, teeth locked in. Ginger’s cries hoarsened and withered. Felix released her and clasped his dagger in both hands, bringing it down hard on the flat of the shark’s head, sinking the point deep. It let go and rolled, thrashing wildly, exposing its underside.

  “Bitch!” he shrieked. “You goddamn bitch!”

  Nash took over and pulled Ginger to shore, glancing back as Felix grabbed the shark by the tail and dragged it through the shallows. When the bitch was beached in less than a foot of water, Felix dropped to his knees with his dagger and stabbed furiously.

  “We ain’t so easy out of the water, are we?”

  He struck again and again. The shark’s thrashing subsided, jaws opening and closing uselessly on water and air. Over twenty blood-trickling puncture marks were left on the white belly before Felix was finished. Nash stared in disbelief as he pulled Ginger onto the beach. He didn’t need to take her pulse to know she was already dead.

  “Eat that!” roared Felix, pushing the twitching body of the white-tip out to deeper water where the other sharks waited.

  Felix waded ash
ore, staggering with each step. Nash sat on the sand, sick and stunned, still holding on to Ginger’s hand. He caressed her flaccid fingers and looked over what remained. The missing leg was surreal. Nash was sure it had been the same one that cramped up on her. Intestinal tract spilled out of the hole in her side and coiled on the beach, where sand dusted it, resembling some hideous funnel cake.

  “Ginger,” Nash whispered, tears welling. “I’m so sorry.”

  Felix collapsed beside him, exhausted. He took one look at Ginger’s evisceration and puked. Nash looked on as the injured white-tip was attacked in a frenzy of cannibalism. He could think of no worse fate in this world than being eaten alive.

  Twenty-Four

  He could think of no worse fate than being eaten alive, and Greer had seen much savagery in his life. He saw it as the pinnacle of pain, perhaps the greatest fear among all humans, to be consumed by something higher on the food chain while fully awake, aware that you were being separated and digested, reduced to nothing more than meat for a monster.

  “I don’t believe it,” Turk said, climbing back aboard the yacht. “He actually wasted that white-tip.”

  Buchanan nodded as he secured the Zodiac to the stern. “That boy’s got balls the size of goddamn grapefruits.”

  None of the four men applauded this time, although Felix’s show of force was most deserving. Greer and Reposo stood watching the sharks attack the crippled member of their shiver in the shallows. Empty beer bottles littered the deck; an ashtray stuffed with the burned remnants of cigars lay in the middle of them. Buchanan negotiated the litter and lay back down on the deck with his M107. He used the scope to survey the spot where Nash and Felix sat.

  “Get good footage?” Greer asked.

  Buchanan grinned. “That junkie bitch just made the highlight reel.”

  Greer turned his attention to the survivors and waited. Felix and Nash did not move an inch. Buchanan redirected his scope to the commotion in the shallows where the sharks were finishing off the wounded white-tip. The white underside sank below the reddened waves. Circling fins followed it down.

  “Didn’t see that one coming,” said Reposo. “Man beats shark.”

  “Four down, two to go,” said Greer, lighting up another cigar. “You boys ready for the grand finale?”

  “Hell yeah.” Turk chuckled. “I gotta say how impressed I was this time. These folks were no disappointment—”

  “Ah, shit.”

  They all turned to Buchanan, who was now pointing his M107 in a slightly different direction. Through the sniper scope he had seen something that no one else had. He glanced over his shoulder, at the cabin where the radio and radar were housed. Both of which hadn’t been properly monitored in the last hour.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “we may have a problem. . . .”

  Twenty-Five

  “We got a little problem. . . .”

  Felix paused, gulping needed air. He took his eyes off the men on the boat just long enough to give Nash a look so unsettling that it made him shiver.

  “I think they’re just about done with us.”

  Nash believed it. They sat in silence, afraid to move in case it attracted any unwanted attention. Then something inside Nash reared its ugly head, making him twitch. He tried to ignore it, but it came again like a nervous tick.

  “Shit.”

  “What’s wrong?” Felix asked, but he already knew.

  The first niggling for heroin buzzed Nash’s brain stem, causing him to salivate. Drool escaped the corner of his mouth. He got to his feet, looking up and down the beach for the promised box. A thin, bare mast poked out over the top of the island’s central vegetation, inviting investigation. He left Felix and what was left of Ginger and trudged up the beach to the grass and bushes for a better look. Three things came into view. The first two he expected, but not the third.

  “Felix!” he yelled. “Get your ass over here!”

  Felix rocked his bulk off the sand and came running. His eyes fell first on a small sailboat pulled ashore and the trunk nearby. Then he saw what had Nash so excited. About a mile out in the open water was a large cabin cruiser, headed in their direction.

  “We’re making a break for that boat,” Felix said. “I ain’t staying here to see what those psychos have in store for us.”

  Felix ran to the sailboat, casting a glance at the trunk on the sand as he passed. Nash followed, but stopped at the box and flipped open the lid. Everything Nash expected to see was inside, including a new white envelope. Nash grabbed it.

  “Forget that,” Felix barked. “We’re not playing by their rules anymore.”

  Nash dropped the letter back into the box. “Fucking right we’re not.”

  “Grab some of those water bottles and get in the boat,” Felix said. “C’mon, make it quick now.”

  He paused, scratching a sudden prickly itch on his neck. Felix licked his dry lips at the thought of another snort of the delectable junk.

  “Wait, grab the fucking dope too.”

  Nash grabbed an armful of water bottles and threw them into the hull of the boat, then went back for the metal container. He flipped up the lid to make sure. A full pound of dope lay within.

  Shit, they weren’t lying, Nash thought.

  Nash looked again at the letter, suddenly tempted by its contents, intrigued by his tormentors’ track record for telling the truth. If this was supposed to be the end of the game, what was left to tell?

  . . . further instructions to retrieve something more for your troubles . . .

  “Hey!” Felix yelled. “Pull your head out of your ass!”

  Nash grabbed the letter again. “I think we should read this.”

  “Give me that.”

  Felix snatched the letter from Nash’s hands, elbowing him out of the way for his disobedience. Felix was in charge now. There would be no democracy between two people, no more delaying decisions.

  “I said leave it, Nash,” he snarled, throwing the letter back in the box.

  He grabbed Nash by the arm and pulled him stumbling toward the sailboat. They dragged the craft into the water, pointing the bow at the cabin cruiser off in the distance. Neither man knew a thing about sailing, but a pair of oars lay in the bottom of the boat. Rowing wasn’t rocket science. Nash and Felix jumped in and each pegged an oar into a pivot. They dug the blades into the water and pulled, calling on strength they didn’t even know they had. It wasn’t long before Felix paused and gave Nash a nudge.

  “I knew they wouldn’t let us go that easily,” Felix said, pointing.

  The motor yacht was coming around the tip of the island at full speed. Felix rowed harder, urging Nash to do the same. He looked over his shoulder at the approaching cabin cruiser. Closer, but not nearly close enough.

  “How far?” Nash wheezed.

  Felix demanded that he double his efforts. Their tormentors were gaining fast. Nash stood in the boat and turned in the direction of the cabin cruiser, holding on to the mast for support. He leaned out, waving a hand frantically, trying to attract attention.

  “Help!” he shouted. “Over here! Help us!”

  A thunderclap rang out, echoing over the water. Nash heard a whistle of air a millisecond before the .50-caliber round blew through his outstretched hand, decimating it in a red mess of shredded fingers and busted bone. He watched the debris fly off the starboard side and pepper the water.

  The thought came almost casually to his mind. You’ll never play the guitar again, Nash old boy.

  He didn’t scream. He didn’t even breathe. He simply stared at the remains of his hand floating on the waves.

  “Nash!” Felix cried.

  Nash sank to the gunwale, cradling his stump to his chest, his other arm slung around the mast. Blood spurted from his wrist, wetting his chest and running down his body into the bottom of the boat. Feli
x dropped to his knees, wrapping one big black arm around him and grabbing Nash’s slack jaw in his hand.

  “Stay with me, man,” he ordered. “We come too far now.”

  Nash looked almost catatonic. Felix knew he was going into shock, so he did the only thing he could think of. He grabbed the container of heroin and dumped out a pile of powder into his palm.

  “Here, buddy,” he said. “Take a big sniff.”

  He crammed his palm up against Nash’s nose. Nash inhaled, snorting and spluttering until he fell back with a giddy grin. His eyes went glassy over his dusted nostrils and lips as his burgeoning shock was temporarily sidelined.

  Another thunderclap rang out, sending a second round splintering through the hull at the waterline and leaving a ragged hole the size of a softball through which water poured. Felix ducked, pulling Nash lower into the boat. A third shot sounded and exploded through the mast, showering Felix’s side with sharp debris.

  “Fuck you!” he screamed. “Fuck all of you!”

  One more clap rang out, the shot whizzing harmlessly over the bow and into the water beyond. Quiet followed. Felix dared not even breathe. Wincing, he ran his fingers over the splinters embedded in his ribs. Dark blood surfaced around them and ran in thick trails down to his waistband. A minute passed before Felix dared to peek over the side of the boat. The yacht wasn’t coming for them anymore. It had turned and was heading back around the island. Felix looked over his shoulder and let out a loud, mad cackle. The cabin cruiser, alerted by the sound of gunshots, was picking up speed. Felix figured it would arrive in less than ten minutes.

  Bleeding profusely, he grabbed the oars with renewed vigor and pulled for safety, but their plight had worsened. His injuries, Nash rendered useless, and the fast-sinking sailboat tripled the difficulty. Blood and seawater washed around their ankles in the hull, rising quickly.