Devil Sharks

by Chris Jameson

  Harry squeezed Gabe’s hand, then nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he rose. “This was supposed to be a new beginning for me.”

  For me, Alex thought. Not for us. But he would never point out the word choice. Harry had done some soul-searching over the years. He wanted to be a better man. Alex wasn’t going to judge him for how far he might still have to go. At least he was trying.

  * * *

  Sami wiped her face with a damp cloth Alex had fetched from the cabin. He’d brought her a bottle of raspberry seltzer, cold from the fridge, and the moment she tipped the bottle to her lips she wanted to marry the man all over again. Relief trickled through her with that icy, fruity water and she sighed. Nothing had changed. Gabe would be in critical condition until they were able to get him to a mainland hospital, and even then she had no idea what the outcome might be. She wouldn’t be getting any sleep until then, so she knew she had a lot of coffee to look forward to. Coffee would definitely help. As the alcohol buzz started to wear off, it would keep her from getting a splitting headache. For now, though, she took another sip of her seltzer and kissed her husband.

  “You’re a good man,” she whispered. “When this is all over, I’ll show you just how good.”

  Alex kissed her back. He smiled sweetly, but then his expression soured. Sami turned to see what had wiped away his smile and found that Harry was staring at them. He’d been pacing back and forth beside Gabe while he waited for Patrick and Nils to prepare a clean bed and bring back a blanket with which to carry Gabe into the cabin.

  A whining buzz drew Sami’s attention, the dinghy returning with Cat at the throttle. Sami glanced again at Harry, but he’d started pacing again, so she left him to watch over Gabe and went to the railing. Alex stood beside her as Cat guided the dinghy up beside the Kid Galahad. She had Nalani and James with her, but no sign of Luisa.

  “Let’s move,” Cat said as James tied the dinghy off.

  “Do you need me to come down there?” Alex asked.

  “You’re better off on the deck,” Nalani said. “This guy is skinny as hell. James and I can lift him.”

  She was as good as her word. The slender, stinking, unshaven man whimpered and opened his eyes, but he didn’t fight as Nalani and James hoisted him from where he’d been stretched across the dinghy’s benches.

  “Where’s Luisa?” Sami asked as she and Alex hauled the injured man up onto the yacht.

  Cat glanced up. “Nalani and James met us at the Coast Guard station. They knew something had gone wrong and were checking it out. Luisa’s gone to tell Dev and Alliyah what’s going on. I’m headed out to get the three of them now.”

  Nalani climbed the ladder. James waited for her to reach the deck, holding on, not bothering to tie up the dinghy since Cat was leaving immediately.

  “Did you see the sharks?” Alex asked.

  “I keep trying to pretend they’re dolphins,” Cat replied as she turned up the throttle. From her thin smile, Sami couldn’t tell if she was joking. Then it didn’t matter, for the dinghy roared away without so much as a backward glance from its current pilot.

  As Alex gave James a hand up onto the deck, Sami crouched by the injured man. He looked as if he might be naturally slender, but she had no doubt he was also emaciated. The leg had been tied off for far too long to slow the bleeding, and now that Sami could tear aside the tatters of his trouser leg she saw that the skin was badly discolored. Part of the stench coming off him was the stink of that leg. It had been deprived of blood flow for so long that flesh had started to die. Whatever else happened to this guy, he was going to lose the leg.

  “Damn it,” she whispered.

  “His name’s Isko,” Nalani said, standing over them.

  Sami glanced up at her. “Sorry?”

  “He was conscious for a while. Or conscious enough to answer when I asked his name. Pretty sure he said ‘Isko.’”

  “Thanks. What about you?” Sami asked. “You okay?”

  Nalani gave a tiny nod, but now her attention was elsewhere. “Is Gabe gonna live?”

  Sami stood and turned her back so Harry wouldn’t hear. She kept her voice low, so not even an errant breeze could carry her words to him. “I think so. I hope so. If we were in port somewhere and could get to a hospital, I’d say almost certainly. But we’re a long way from port.”

  Nalani swore quietly.

  James slid past them. The boat bobbed on the water and the breeze blew, a chill in the air. Sami glanced into the distance and saw clouds far off. So strange to have the blue sky above and still see clouds.

  “Harry, brother, listen,” James said, “I’m sorry all this is happening, but I have to ask. Can you get us back?”

  “You too?” Harry sneered. “Yes, I’ll get you back. Gabe’s got a fucking hole in his head, but you don’t even ask about that. The first question is about yourselves.”

  Long seconds passed as everyone froze. The boat rocked. Awkwardness had paralyzed them all.

  It was Nalani who broke the silence. “That’s not fair.”

  Harry scoffed, rolling his eyes.

  Sami knew how upset he was. She saw in the set of his shoulders, in the weight he suddenly carried, that he blamed himself. If what he’d said was true, if Gabe truly was the only friend he had whose friendship he trusted, that had to make it even harder for Harry to bear. But his stomping around and glaring wouldn’t help anyone.

  “James, could you go below and see what’s taking Nils and Patrick so long? I want to get Gabe somewhere comfortable,” Sami said. She ought to have told Harry to get started on whatever preparations needed to be made to get them under way, but she knew he wasn’t in the frame of mind to listen. Not while Gabe remained out on the deck.

  She walked over to the medical kit, crouched and gathered items back into the case, and put the strap over her shoulder.

  “What are you doing?” Harry asked.

  Something in his voice froze her for a moment. Then, quite deliberately, she rose to her feet with the bag over her shoulder.

  “I’m going to examine the other patient. See what can be done for him. I’m probably going to have to—”

  She would have said amputate next. That was the word on her lips when Harry reached out and ripped the strap from her shoulder, tugged the whole medical kit away from her.

  “Hey!” Alex shouted, hands up, moving beside Sami. “There’s no call for—”

  “This is my boat,” Harry said coldly. “All of this shit … it’s mine. Every last bandage. You’re not giving that piece of garbage so much as an aspirin until you’ve done everything you can for Gabe. Maybe not even then.”

  Sami stood up to her full height and squared her shoulders. Her husband had served in the U.S. Army in Iraq, but Dr. Samantha Simmons had dealt with angry, grieving assholes of every stripe in the emergency room over the years. She might still be a bit unsteady on her feet thanks to the drinks Alliyah had mixed for her, but she didn’t need her husband to intervene.

  “I’ve done what I can for Gabe,” she said. “I’ll continue to do that. Whatever Isko—”

  “Fuck Isko!”

  “Whatever that poor, desperate son of a bitch did, you know circumstances had a lot more to do with it than malice,” Sami went on. “Look at him!”

  She gestured at Isko. His eyes had opened again, but he looked around slowly, head lolling, as if he saw things in the air that the rest of them couldn’t see. He was obviously delirious.

  “Gabe first,” Harry said.

  “She’s doing what she can, damn it,” Alex rasped.

  “I won’t leave the man untreated,” Sami said. “I won’t do that.”

  She reached for the medical kit. Harry slapped her hands away, stepped forward, and gave her a shove. In the same instant, a wave rolled beneath the boat, causing it to list enough that Sami—off-balance—toppled to the deck. She sprawled there, skidded a few inches, and hissed in pain when her elbow smashed down on the wood.

 
Alex had Harry around the throat a second later. “Motherfucker. You do not lay hands on my wife.”

  Sami cradled her elbow as she sat up. “Alex, don’t. I can speak for myself.”

  Harry broke his grip and threw a punch. Alex tried to dodge, but the blow still clipped his chin and he stumbled backward. The two of them started shouting and swearing at each other as Sami stood. Nalani tried to get between the two men and Harry shoved her away. Nalani careened across the deck and would have tripped over Gabe if she hadn’t jumped to avoid him.

  The masks of politeness and the effort to repair old friendships shattered simultaneously. Ten years of mutual resentment boiled to the surface. Sami didn’t need Alex to fight her battles, but what she saw unfolding now—this had been his fight all along.

  “Should’ve known you couldn’t change,” Alex said. “Never met an asshole as selfish as you. Even this, with Gabe … it’s not about him; it’s about you!”

  Harry swung a left, but Alex dodged it, stepped in, and tackled Harry to the deck. Alex hit him once, hard, before Harry got his hands around Alex’s throat and bucked upward, throwing him off. Wary, ready, they climbed to their feet, each man like a serpent rising from a snake charmer’s basket. Sami and Nalani looked for openings, tried to talk to them, but these two were beyond listening.

  “I’m selfish?” Harry said. “I brought you all halfway around the world, and I’m selfish?”

  “You didn’t do it for us,” Alex said. “You did it so you could come out here and say goodbye to your dad and pretend there were people still on this side of the grave who loved you.”

  Scuffling sounds off to her right made Sami turn. Made them all turn.

  Patrick, Nils, and James were there carrying a heavy blanket and the door to one of the staterooms. Sami understood immediately—they’d taken off the door to use as a backboard, a method of transporting Gabe the way medics would have. Now the door was forgotten, and so was Gabe. The three men stared at Harry and Alex.

  “Guys,” Nils said. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Harry feinted with his left, then delivered a punch that staggered Alex. Sami winced. She could feel the impact of knuckle to jaw, the clack of bones. Her own fury and impatience boiled over. She’d thought, mostly unconsciously, that boys would be boys, that the fight had been brewing for years, that it was unfortunate after old wounds seemed to be healing. She’d thought she ought to keep out of it, that it would end in a wrestling match on the deck and the others would pull them apart. But this was her husband, and she wasn’t going to just watch this violence, regardless of who might win. There were no winners here.

  “Alex, stop!” she called. “Let it go.”

  As she spoke, her husband blocked another punch, raised his fist to deliver one of his own, and hesitated. Even Harry hesitated. The others had been on the verge of jumping in, dragging them apart. For a moment, even the breeze blowing across the Kid Galahad’s deck seemed to pause.

  Then Isko began to shout, “Machii, no! Huwag! Maniwala ka sa akin. Mga Diyablo Pating ay nandyan sa ilalim.”

  Sami didn’t understand the words, but the man’s fear needed no translation. Disoriented, perhaps feverish, even hallucinating, he cried out in anguish and began to smash a fist down at his rotting leg.

  “Damn it!” Sami snapped. “Stop him. He’s lost way too much blood already.”

  She was thinking of surgery, of the possibility she’d have to amputate right here on the boat if she wanted to save his life. The calculus of that was racing through her head as she turned away from Alex and Harry and started toward Isko. If he tore open the shark bite, the decision might be taken away from her.

  “It’s Filipino,” Nalani said. “Tagalog. Something about—”

  Harry marched across the deck. Five strides brought him to Sami. He grabbed her by both arms and shook her. “Are you fucking kidding me?” With a grunt he shoved her backward, and she stumbled and fell on her ass; then he pointed a finger at her. “You can worry about this bastard after we’re sure Gabe will be okay. Not before. I’m not going to—”

  Alex grabbed him from behind, one arm around his throat, choking him. Harry clawed at his arm, shot an elbow back into his gut. Alex took the blow and held on.

  “Enough, goddamn it! Sami’s right. I’d like to knock your head off, but we’ve got to—”

  Harry slammed his head backward, his skull smashing Alex’s nose. Sami shouted and tried to scramble to her feet. Nalani and Patrick and Nils started moving in, everyone talking at once, hands reaching out as Alex stumbled away, blood streaming from his nose. Freed now, Harry turned. Nalani, and Patrick reached out for him, but he brushed their hands away and ran at Alex. Shoulder low, arms raised, he plowed into Alex and tried to tackle him to the deck. Bleeding, furious, Alex grappled with him. The two of them staggered together, careened toward the railing, smashed into it, and then toppled over the side.

  In the last sliver of an instant, Sami saw the realization light both men’s eyes. The melee ended in that heartbeat. Harry and Alex both tried to reach for the railing as they went over, and then they were gone.

  * * *

  Alex plunged into the water with his arms and legs flailing. He went under, sinking deep, and for a few seconds as his heart galloped in his chest and adrenaline surged through him he couldn’t tell which way was up. His eyes were pinched shut—he hated to open them in salt water, but now he forced himself. They stung and he blinked but turned his head around as he started to swim, thinking he must be clawing toward the surface, desperate for breath. The beating of his heart thumped inside his skull and he told himself to calm down, calm down, calm down. Think. Feel the water. Look for sunlight.

  Which way was up? He’d had a few beers and taken a few punches and his thoughts were fractured by anger and fear and chaos. He spun around again, forcing his eyes open wider.

  The sun glinted. The clear water refracted it, but now he could see shapes through the crystal blue—out of the shadow of the boat. Maybe the bottom? Rocks or fish or coral … did they have coral out here?

  Alex swam. His chest burned. He thought about Sami and Tasha and how badly he wanted them in his arms. The base of his skull ached as he held his breath and his lungs screamed for air. He broke the surface and gasped, drawing ragged breaths, heart still clamoring. Voices shouted from overhead, but he couldn’t respond, not even to lift a hand and wave. Not without more oxygen. His anger seeped out of him and now all he felt was despair. They’d had a few hours of paradise and it had turned into a shitshow. He hated Harry, but he felt bad for him, too.

  The boat, he thought. He needed to get out of the water. This childish bullshit was a distraction. They had real problems.

  Overhead, Sami shouted his name. Alex turned to see Harry, head above water, reaching for him with a face still carved by anguish and fury. Alex slapped his hands away, just done with it all. Still catching his breath, he swam for the ladder that still hung alongside the boat.

  “Motherfucker,” Harry grunted, swimming after him.

  Alex ignored him, stretching out, bending into the swim. Fifteen feet away now. He tasted blood on his lips and for half a second imagined it must be Harry’s. Then he remembered his nose, felt the ache, knew the copper tang came from his own blood.

  Something brushed against his leg under the water. A bump. At first he thought it must be Harry, but Harry swore at him again and Alex knew it couldn’t be him. Eight feet from the ladder he twisted in the water, glancing around, a terrible certainty catching in his throat.

  “Swim, Alex!” someone screamed above him. Not Sami. Maybe Patrick or James.

  Then Sami’s voice, much softer: “Oh, my God.”

  He kicked toward the ladder, glancing back as he did so. He’d hated Harry a moment before, but none of that mattered. He saw Harry’s face, and he saw the moment when his anger turned to surprise. Harry’s eyes went wide and his mouth gaped with the recognition of pain. He screamed and reached toward Alex, not i
n rage but for help. His whole body jerked once, and then he disappeared, yanked under the water.

  A cloud of blood blossomed beneath the surface.

  Alex’s fingers touched the ladder. He grabbed hold, glanced around, saw several fins, and knew he was fucked. He could practically feel their teeth on him as he climbed, dragging himself out of the sea. His left foot cleared the water, stepped on a rung, slid a little as he reached higher, and then his right foot came out, dripping wet.

  A shark thumped against the hull just below him, water splashing, its jaws just missing him. Alex stared into the water as its bulk swept past and he found himself saying a silent prayer of thanks.

  Sami shouted at him to climb. He glanced up and saw her waiting just above him, reaching a hand down. The others were along the railing. Some were shouting at him, but Nils and Nalani were staring in horror at the place where Harry had gone down, at the red fog moving beneath the water.

  Alex grabbed Sami’s hand, stunned to find himself alive, and climbed onto the deck.

  In the same moment, Harry bobbed to the surface. Screaming.

  They never saw the fin of the shark that dragged him back down.

  That was the last of him. The last sight. The last sound. His blood lingered, but it eddied and spread in the water and soon enough it would be diluted so completely that not even a trace of scarlet would remain.

  In Alex’s mind, however, that last scream would echo on and on. He knew he would remember it as long as he lived.

  CHAPTER 12

  Alliyah stood knee-deep in the surf, her mouth hanging open. Her breath came in short gasps and she barely noticed the tears that filled her eyes. Luisa had started to scream, her voice blotting out the shouts and cries out on the water, muffled by distance. Numb, hands shaking, Alliyah could only stare.

  Cat had beached the dinghy only moments before. She’d climbed out, claimed the beer Luisa had been drinking, and drained the rest of the bottle. They’d begun to gather the towels and coolers on the beach … until Dev had started swearing and pointing out to sea. Pointing at Harry’s boat.