Devil Sharks

by Chris Jameson

  Then she heard Dev swear, and saw his fingers dance away as he withdrew his hand.

  Alliyah felt the pressure of the shark’s motion, felt the displacement of water—a third current to join the clash of the other two. And she saw the despair and surrender in her husband’s eyes.

  She lunged for Dev. Pain stabbed at her, but she twisted in the water and yanked her legs forward in an attempt to dodge. The shark’s teeth raked her left leg and for a moment it tugged her along with it. Alliyah screamed and reached out again, lunging for the coral ridge. Her hand passed through nothing and she glanced over her shoulder, saw the fin moving toward her again, the water rippling around it.

  Again she lunged. Her hand caught rough coral. Her knee struck it beneath the water. Her toes caught on the shifting sand of the bottom.

  She felt the shark approaching again. She only had a moment, but it was all she’d need. With a desperate cry, she grabbed hold with both hands and hauled herself from the churning water … or tried to. Pain shrieked from the wounds on her back and when she put weight on her right leg, where the shark’s teeth had been at her, a fresh, bright wave of agony slammed through her. Her grip slipped. The pain consumed her. Darkness flowed in at the edges of her vision and she hung there, unable to drag herself from the water.

  Alliyah didn’t want to die, but she knew the shark didn’t care.

  CHAPTER 21

  Alex crouched with Sami and Nalani, all three of them holding on to the railing. They’d been watching in silence while Cat ferried the others to dry land. Soaked by the rain, Sami had started shivering and Alex put an arm around her. On his left side, Nalani began to sob quietly, her body wracked with grief, so he put his other arm around her and held both women close to him. It wasn’t his nature to show that kind of physical affection to anyone other than his wife, but there was nothing natural about this moment. Sami reached in front of him and took Nalani’s hand. That wasn’t her nature, either, but Nalani had watched her husband murdered today, and here they were. Just the three of them left. Sinking. Drowning in a fucking nightmare.

  They heard the screaming. Alex squinted and lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the rain. He stared into the gray veil of the storm and tried to make out the individual shapes on the dinghy. They could still hear the motor, but above its dentist’s drill whine came shouts of fear and anger.

  “Luisa,” Sami said. “What the hell is she doing?”

  But it wasn’t just Luisa. The screams shifted into something else, a plaintive, terrified surrender to fate.

  Alex leaned out, peering, trying to get a better view.

  “Jesus,” Nalani whispered, because her eyesight was better than his. “They’re capsized.”

  Neither Alex nor Sami said a word. What could they do from here? Alex knew all three of them were thinking the same thing, sharing the same clashing worries. Fear for their friends, and fear for themselves. As the screaming rose to a shriek and then faltered to nothing but echoes, Alex kissed Sami on the temple, then rested his head against hers.

  “What are we going to do?” Nalani asked.

  Alex didn’t reply. He glanced over at Isko, who still lay against the railing. The water had come up over the edge of the deck. A wave washed along the boat, splashed the three of them, and engulfed Isko completely for a moment. He gasped loudly as it passed, sputtering, his hands flailing in front of his face as if fighting off a monster in his sleep, or the specter of death come to claim him.

  “First thing we’re going to do is move Isko,” Alex said.

  Nalani flinched. “What?”

  Sami nodded. “No, he’s right.” She extricated herself from his embrace and pushed up from the railing.

  Nalani lowered her head for a second, but then she exhaled loudly and levered herself up. Alex rose as well. It was difficult and awkward. The way the boat lay in the water, canted so far over that the edge of the deck rested just below the surface, they were stepping in the water in the V between the deck and the railing. The time had come for them to move, no matter what else happened.

  The sharks were there, of course. Alex could see several fins rising and falling in the waves and the rain. How many were there? He had no idea, but certainly far more than the three he’d initially seen. Sharks had killed Cat and the others—friends he’d never see again—but there were still fins near the boat.

  “Watch it,” Sami said.

  Alex glanced back to see one of the sharks coming at them now, gliding silently up beside the submerged edge of the deck. Nalani cried out as all three of them lifted their feet, holding themselves up using both railing and deck. The shark raised its head and opened its jaws and slid the corner of its maw along that corner of the deck, dreadful but impassive, as if it knew their time was running out and merely wanted to remind them that it knew.

  When they reached Isko, Alex was startled by the brightness of the dying man’s eyes. Copper brown, they glistened as he looked at them. Isko thanked them again and again, in both their language and his own, as they tied him up in the soaked-through blanket beneath him and began the arduous task of shifting him up the slanted deck toward the cockpit. Alex couldn’t help thinking how much simpler this would have been if Isko had had the courtesy to just die. An ugly thought. He knew that. But it didn’t go away.

  They formed a sort of chain. Alex lay on the deck and Sami crawled up it, using her husband for leverage. Nalani dragged and slid Isko in his blanket until he was beside Alex, then helped Alex shift the dying man further. Soon Nalani crawled up until she was above Sami. She managed to grab hold of the ruined cockpit doorframe, and soon, awkwardly and accompanied by grunts and cursing, they had gotten Isko just inside the cockpit. The shattered glass of its windows remained scattered on the deck, and inside the water had flooded the cabin so completely that it had begun to rise into the cockpit, too. Soon it would even flood the wheelhouse. But they were away from the waves for the moment. Away from the sharks.

  “How much time will this buy us?” Sami asked.

  Nalani laughed. It was a hollow sound. A pragmatic, giving-up sort of sound. “Not long enough for the Coast Guard to get here. Not even until tonight.”

  Alex looked out at the storm. The sky had gone so dark that it seemed as if night had already fallen, but Nalani was right. Somewhere beyond the rain and the black clouds, the sun was still out.

  Sami and Nalani moved Isko around inside the cockpit so that he was resting against the wall. The boat had tilted so much that the wall lay at a forty-degree angle. Nalani started to untie the blanket around Isko and the man glanced over at Alex, his head lolling. His breathing had turned quite shallow.

  “What the hell you doing, friend?” Isko asked.

  Alex frowned. “Staying alive.”

  Isko rolled his head, gazing up at Sami and Nalani. They were all propped at odd angles inside the sinking funhouse that the Kid Galahad had become.

  The dying man smiled. “Pretty ladies. Is the man stupid or just stubborn?”

  “The man’s trying to save you,” Nalani said. “So are we.”

  Soft, dry laughter floated inside the cockpit, a strange counterpoint to the rain and the slosh of the water that still bubbled up from the cabin.

  Isko narrowed his eyes. He took Sami’s hand. “What about you, Doctor? You still trying to save my life?”

  Alex saw the way Sami shifted her gaze, the way she looked at him without really looking, and they all knew the answer.

  “She knows,” Isko said. “I’m already dead.”

  The truth made Alex wince. But he couldn’t argue. Now that they were inside the cockpit, even with the wind gusting through the broken windows, the smell of Isko’s rotting leg made him want to retch.

  “What do you expect us to do?” Alex asked. “Swim? What about the sharks?”

  Isko rolled his eyes. He sighed.

  “I made it,” he said. “Could be you will, too. Probably not all of you, but—”

  The boat gave a sudden l
urch, as if some invisible hand had been holding it up and had now grown tired of the effort. The water bubbling up from the cabin began to flow. An air pocket hissed and spat like the spout of a whale and then they were going down.

  “Shit. Oh, shit!” Nalani yelled. Her eyes were wild as she glanced around, unsure which way to flee.

  Alex made a choice. “Up!”

  They were moving even before he shouted. The boat had tipped nearly sideways, but now it began to slip backward, the stern sinking fast. They dragged Isko up the steps into the wheelhouse, but the water came up fast after them. Something had given way. This was the end.

  Inside the wheelhouse, Alex grabbed hold of the wheel, got a foot on it, and boosted himself up so that he could grab hold of the frame of the broken windshield. His heart hammered in his chest. All he could think about was being trapped in the wheelhouse or the boat flipping and trapping him beneath it, dragging him down. The screams of his friends were still ringing in his ears and the horror of the sharks felt visceral and real, as if their teeth had torn at his skin as well … and yet in this moment the idea of drowning, of being unable to breathe until desperation forced him to open his mouth underwater, to suck the ocean into his lungs … the pressure in his chest … that seemed so much worse.

  He climbed out through the broken window, perched on the edges of the frame, and reached his hand back through, expecting to see Sami right behind him. Instead, it was Nalani who took his hand. Alex knitted his brow. Grunting with effort, he lifted her toward him. Nalani got her upper body over the upper edge of the window frame and dragged herself out of the wheelhouse.

  Alex ducked his head back in, holding on with one hand. His heart thrummed so fast that it felt like it might vibrate out of his chest. The water rushed into the wheelhouse, filling it quickly, no longer just from below but also from the sides. The aft end of the boat plunged deeper into the water and the ocean swept in.

  In the churning water, Sami had her arm around Isko. She tried to keep him afloat as she swam toward the broken windshield, one arm across his chest.

  “Sami, goddamn it, leave him!” Alex shouted. “Tasha needs you!”

  She ignored him. Dragged herself through the water with Isko weighing her down. The man himself had told them to leave him there, and they all knew death would come to collect him today, that the reaper waited impatiently to claim him. Yet still she tried.

  Nalani grabbed at his leg.

  Alex whipped around, wide-eyed. “Jump. Swim as fast as you can.”

  Beyond her, he saw one of the surfboards that had been secured on deck. It had come free and now floated forty feet from the sinking boat. Nalani saw where he was looking and she didn’t hesitate. The time had passed for courtesy or recrimination. There were fins nearby. Alex couldn’t see them in this moment—this eternal slow-motion torture—but they were there. Each of them had to do what they could to survive.

  Nalani swam for the surfboard.

  Alex braced himself across the frame of the broken windshield and reached down inside the wheelhouse. Sami caught his hand, lifted by the rising water. Alex pulled, but Isko had caught himself on something. The wheel? Some other navigation instrument? It might have been his leg or the blanket.

  “No!” Sami said as the boat plunged.

  Alex reached past her, trying to get to Isko, to free whatever had snagged. Then he saw the man’s face, awake and aware, and followed the path of his arm in the water to see that Isko had grabbed hold of the wheel and wouldn’t let go. He knew Sami would die if she tried to get him all the way to shore, that neither of them had a chance with the added burden.

  Sami must have seen, too. Or at least seen the look on his face.

  She released him. The boat began to list to one side again, almost rolling as it went under, and Alex held on to Sami’s hand as the Kid Galahad vanished beneath them. They felt the drag of it sinking, as if the lagoon yearned to claim them along with the boat. Alex let go of Sami’s hand and they both swam, pulling away from that suction, and in moments the drag subsided.

  Debris popped to the surface, even as the storm-whipped waves rolled through the lagoon. A cooler bobbed up. Hats and beer bottles and a single, cork-heeled, woman’s shoe. Something white fluttered and spread under the water. One of the sails had become partially unleashed and billowed like one of the ghosts of the deep.

  Rain lashed at Alex’s face. He wiped his eyes and glanced around for Nalani. He saw no sign of her.

  “There,” Sami said. “Alex, look!”

  A surfboard. His heart clenched, but he saw quickly that this yellow-and-blue-patterned board was not the one Nalani had swum for.

  Sami had already started toward it. Alex swam behind her, glancing around with every extension of his arms, every kick of his feet. Down in the waves, it was difficult to get a broad view, but as one of those swells lifted him high he saw two fins, one of which was not far off at all, and then he stopped looking. It didn’t matter where the sharks were. It only mattered that they were in the lagoon—and he and Sami were in the water with them. Isko was forgotten. For a few seconds, while they were swimming toward the surfboard, even Nalani was forgotten.

  Alex reached the surfboard first. He threw one arm over it, then held it in place for his wife.

  “Get on.”

  Sami shot him a reproachful glare. “Alex—”

  “We don’t have time to fight over it. I’m a stronger swimmer. There’s only room for one of us. Get on.”

  Sami couldn’t argue with the truth. The waves lifted them and crashed them down again. Just floating out here was exhausting. She dragged herself onto the board and put her arms into the water, starting to paddle. Alex grabbed the rear of the surfboard and started kicking for his life. Together they’d make good speed.

  “Do you see Nalani? Or anyone onshore?” he asked.

  Sami muttered something he couldn’t hear. A wave rose beneath him and he had to lift his head to keep it out of his eyes. She started paddling more to the left and he had to trust in her, knowing she must have spotted the nearest land.

  A strange calm descended on him. He lowered his head and put all of his strength into swimming, just kicking his legs under the water, powering the surfboard forward. So many had died already, but Sami remained alive. Somehow, she was still breathing—still whole—and he intended to keep her that way. Alex kicked his legs, fighting the swells and the rain and the wind, turning himself into her motor. That felt good to him. It felt fine. He wanted to survive this, he truly did, but if he could just get Sami to shore, he didn’t really care what happened to himself.

  “If I don’t make it—” he began.

  “Shut up!”

  “Listen to me. If I don’t make it, don’t ever let Tasha forget how much her daddy…” He faltered, unable to get the words out.

  “I won’t,” Sami promised. “I swear, I won’t. And the same goes for me.”

  Alex swam harder. Heart pumping, legs kicking, he started to make the kinds of promises that junkies and soldiers and shipwrecked sailors had always made, the desperate prayers to any deity within hailing distance, vowing to give his own life, or to worship God—anyone’s god who would answer—for eternity, as long as Sami got out of this alive.

  Then Sami started to scream.

  The water itself seemed to fight him. He kept kicking but pulled himself up a bit onto the back of the surfboard, trying to look around. Trying to hear the words in the midst of her screams. Although, of course, he knew what she must be screaming about, and the moment he dragged himself up he caught a glimpse of the shark off to their left, slightly ahead and knifing through the lagoon on a diagonal course that would surely intercept them.

  Alex wanted to unravel. A part of him had frayed so much from all the fear and horror of this day that it wanted to completely come apart. But he looked past Sami’s head and saw how far they’d come while he’d put everything else out of his mind. Much farther than he’d expected. Farther, if he was being ho
nest with himself, than he’d expected them to make it. Some of the sharks must still have been busy with Cat and Luisa and Nils and Patrick. They were all dead, he knew, and each of them had torn a piece of his heart out. Their blood would still be in the water. Whatever remained of their bodies—limbs and torsos—would still be in the lagoon. The sharks had been trained to eat human flesh and they must be doing that, even now. The blood would be there, in the water, still clouding around heads and legs, blossoming out of those wounds.

  Buying us time, he thought.

  But not this shark. Not the one arrowing toward them. Alex took one last glance at the shore—so close, now. Less than sixty yards, he figured.

  “Whatever happens, keep paddling!” he shouted, and he bent his head to the task again, kicking his legs. Sami’s motor, propelling her forward on that surfboard.

  “No!” she shouted. “What are you doing? Turn around!” For a moment she started paddling off course.

  “And go where?” Alex shouted, spitting saltwater, his throat parched. “Head for shore!”

  Sami bent to her task just as he had. She’d never been religious—not really—but he heard her praying loudly now. The prayers turned into nothing but calling Jesus’s name over and over. Alex felt his legs, wondered if he might be bleeding in the water. He felt the vulnerability of his belly and thighs and calves and feet, exposed and tender. Enraged by his own fear, he gritted his teeth and kicked harder.

  Come and get me, he thought. It would give Sami time. If his blood spread out here, if the shark focused on tearing him apart, she might reach the shore without being attacked.

  Then he felt it, right there. Beneath him. In front of them.

  It rushed at the surface, struck the underside of Sami’s surfboard. The rear of the board smashed Alex’s forehead and he felt his grip release. The shark passed him so close that its thrashing body thudded against his chest. He closed his eyes, disoriented, the blow to his forehead enough to put his lights out for a second or two.