Extinct

by Charles Wilson

  “At the risk of getting us back to where we were a few minutes ago,” he started.

  She faced back toward him.

  He nodded toward her ring. “Now that I know that doesn’t mean anything, I wouldn’t mind maybe taking you out to dinner.”

  He quickly held his hands up in front of him. “A simple no will suffice.”

  “I’d love to, really,” she said easily. “But I’m going to stay close to Paul for awhile.… Maybe another time.”

  “We can take him along.”

  “You have to be kidding.”

  “About what?” Paul said as he stepped to his mother’s side. He had two packs of gum in his hand. Neither of them were opened, but he was chewing something.

  “I said I’d like to take you and your mother out to dinner tonight—if you’d like to go.”

  Paul smiled broadly.

  Carolyn frowned, but only half-heartedly.

  “Mother?” Paul asked.

  She closed her eyes and nodded.

  Paul smiled again.

  “Eight o’clock?” Alan asked.

  “Seven,” she said. “Paul has to be in bed by ten.”

  Paul frowned.

  Alan’s cellular phone rang.

  He grinned as he pulled it from inside his coat. “Ho wondering if I’ve found a boat yet.” He unfolded the phone and lifted it to his ear.

  “Hello.”

  “Alan, I have to have my baby back to bury. Please help me find him.” Then Julie started sobbing uncontrollably.

  “Alan.” It was a different voice—Barry’s. “Alan, I apologize. They’ve stopped … they’ve stopped dragging with all but one boat.” His voice was about to break, too. “Julie can’t bear to think that we might not find … I … I apologize, Alan. I’m sorry.” Alan heard the receiver placed back onto its cradle. He hadn’t said a word.

  Carolyn’s eyes were on his expression. “It was Julie,” he said. “They’ve stopped.…” He looked at Paul, listening.

  Then the waitress set Paul’s chicken sandwich in front of him. “Be careful,” she said, “the french fries are hot.” Alan looked at the plate. The waitress repeated her warning as she set his order on the table. Outside the window the sunlight shone brightly down on the pool, glistening off the water. Warming its water. He didn’t like what he was thinking. He came to his feet.

  “I’ll call you later,” he said to Carolyn. He patted Paul on the head and said, “You be ready by seven now—I’ll see you then.”

  He looked back at Carolyn again.

  “I’ll call you,” he repeated, and walked toward the front of the restaurant.

  CHAPTER 7

  Alan stopped at the riverbank. Only the Mako remained on the water, as Barry had said. The two firemen in the craft were slouched, obviously tired, one of them leaning on his hand and looking off through the marsh as he smoked a cigarette. They were only going through the motions of dragging now. What they were really doing was waiting. It had already been a little over twenty-four hours since the boys had disappeared. It couldn’t be much longer until the warm water would do the job everybody knew it would finally do and the bodies would come floating to the top. Unless they were snagged on something.

  And if that was the case, it would quickly reach the point that there wouldn’t be any bodies worth recovering—at least that their parents would be able to face.

  That was the thought that had passed through his mind as the waitress had warned about the french fries and the sunlight had glistened off the pool outside the restaurant window. He thought of Julie’s sad voice again, how Barry sounded. He kept staring at the water. It was so damn murky. Only two divers from the search-and-rescue units had gone down. They could have easily been within a few feet of the bodies and had no chance at all of glimpsing them.

  But the fish would have no such problems in finding them. And the turtles. Especially one turtle …

  He had been diving in Norfork Lake in north Arkansas a few miles from the Missouri border. A storm had passed through the area only a couple of days before and the visibility wasn’t much over five feet. Swimming near the bottom, he had almost blundered into an alligator snapping turtle as big as a pickup-truck tire, the creature’s feet lightly touching the bottom, its long neck thrust forward and its jaws gaping, big enough to ingest a softball, its eyes staring up at him.

  Small turtles and fish would go after the eyes and ears and lips first, the soft parts of the bodies. Yet as horrible as that thought was, a mortician could mold the lips and ears back and close the eyes. But a snapping turtle like he had seen at Norfork.… And the Pascagoula River and marsh swarmed with the big turtles, with their ridged backs and wide, hooked beaks giving them the appearance of prehistoric monsters. One of them, given only a little time to work on a body, would leave behind a carnage that nobody could fix—that no mother or father could stand to see.

  He punched a number into his cellular phone and lifted it to his ear.

  When a voice answered he said, “Bert, this is Alan. I’m going to need some help—some volunteers who can dive.”

  * * *

  The Coast Guard forty-one’s bow threw spray out to both sides, the craft both plowing through the swells and riding up and down with their motion at the same time. Petty Officer Matt Rhiner stood at the flying bridge atop the main structure at the center of the boat. He held a radio mike in one hand and the giant tooth in the other. Only twenty minutes earlier he had reported the damage done to the sunken speedboat, and twice had been asked to repeat the dimensions and condition of the tooth. Now he had been contacted again and asked to stand by. As he waited, he watched the swells building in front of the forty-one. Some of the waves were starting to lose their tops to whitecaps. He looked at the clouds rushing toward the craft. The forty-one suddenly yawed to the left and he had to grab for the front of the bridge to keep his balance. He looked at the young woman at the wheel. She only glanced at him from the corner of her eyes. “Sorry,” she mumbled. She held both hands on the wheel now.

  “Stand by,” came over the VHF radio, “for Admiral Kendrick.”

  Admiral? Rhiner was taken aback.

  “Petty Officer Rhiner.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This is Admiral Kendrick. I understand you have something unusual on board. I wanted to hear it for myself. Close to seven inches in slant-height?”

  “Yes, sir; roughly six and three quarters by the ruler.”

  “An indentation in the center of the base; the tooth overall nearly heart-shaped, you reported?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve seen a White Shark tooth; a lot like that except for the indentation and its being so much larger, sir.”

  “Still smooth to the touch? Dark in color?”

  “Off-white, sir, maybe a light beige.”

  “Well make certain you hang onto it son; I have an old friend that’s going to be quite interested in it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Out.”

  Seaman Rowella Brunt grimaced as another hard swell bore into the forty-one’s bow at a quarter angle, but she held the boat straight.

  “Good job, Seaman,” Rhiner said.

  “Thank you.”

  He nodded his reply. His gaze went to the tooth again. This time he also thought of the dark shadow that had passed over him, and a chill swept across his shoulders.

  * * *

  It took less than an hour for the volunteers to assemble after Alan made his calls. Two friends who had gone to college with him and owned their own businesses in the area, two off-duty deputies from the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department, three off-duty highway patrolmen, Carolyn’s father, and two neighbors living along the river and a man one of them had brought with him had responded. A dozen of them in all—enough to form a tight line sixty to seventy feet wide across the bottom. In repeatedly moving back and forth from one side of the channel to the other, they could cover better than the length of two football fields in ten or so passes—more than enoug
h area in which to find the boys, even if their bodies had drifted a distance before settling to the bottom.

  Actually, there was one more man prepared to dive. But Alan knew there was no way he was going to let him go down.

  He looked at Dustin’s father. In a pair of swimming trunks and standing with the three similarly clad highway patrol volunteers, his hand rested limply on an air tank propped upright on the ground beside him as he stared at the water. Carolyn stood a few feet behind him, watching him with a deep sadness apparent in her face. Alan walked toward him.

  Barry’s face came around to his. “Barry, this isn’t something you need to be doing.”

  “Julie’s going crazy.”

  “I know. But we have enough help to cover the bottom. We’ll…”—looking at the pain in Barry’s face, Alan had to take a breath—“we’ll find them.”

  “I have to help,” Barry said. “I told her I would.”

  “Then you mark the side of our passes each time we come back to the bank—make certain we don’t leave a gap.”

  “Alan, I want to dive with—”

  “Barry, with you in the water, everybody is going to be thinking about you finding them—how you’re going to react. They wouldn’t be concentrating on what they’re doing.”

  “Maybe he’s right,” one of the patrolmen said in a soft voice.

  Barry looked at the man and then, without another word and leaving his tank propped where it sat, turned and walked into the trees toward Julie. There wasn’t any reason for him to wait by the bank. Barry knew nobody was needed to mark the passes.

  Alan slipped his tank up around his shoulder to his back. The others did the same. Carolyn’s father, his wide chest matted with a thick layer of graying hair, finished buckling his tank’s backpack around his waist and lifted a coil of nylon rope from the ground.

  Alan spoke in a voice low enough it wouldn’t reach up through the trees. “With them down there twenty-four hours now, I don’t know how they’re going to look. Whoever does find them, knock on your tank with your knife. We’ll come to the sound. If they look too bad, a couple of us need to come back and try to prepare their parents before we bring them up.”

  “Not me,” a voice said in an equally low tone. Alan looked to his right at the youngest of the men, a lean, tanned blond in his mid-twenties. Alan didn’t know him personally, but knew his first name was Donald. He was the one who had come with a neighbor of Julie’s and Barry’s. “I couldn’t handle that,” Donald added.

  Carolyn’s father said, “I’ll do it if it comes down to it, son.” He handed the young man an end of the rope and the other men moved to form a fine. He walked in front of them, each of them catching onto the rope at four- to five-foot intervals. Alan stepped to the middle of the line, caught the rope as one of the deputies moved down the line to make way for him, and they started forward.

  At the very edge of the water the flippers were slipped on.

  “Ready?” Alan asked.

  Everybody nodded. Alan pulled his mask down over his face and fitted his mouthpiece into place. The firemen in the Mako looked toward the bank as the line of men stepped ankle-deep into the water. At their next step, water came to their knees.

  Another yard, and the bottom fell away.

  * * *

  Like diving in a cup of warm tea, Alan thought—the visibility was less than a couple of feet and cast with a brown murkiness at that. He felt the unseen tugs on the rope until each diver settled at the same depth. He leaned forward, having to lower his faceplate almost to the muddy bottom before it came into view.

  A few feet farther and he leveled off and, moving at not much more than a crawl, inched slowly in the direction of the middle of the channel.

  An eighteen-wheeler tire mostly buried in the mud materialized behind the slowly flowing, larger particles of sediment floating past his mask. The tire had been something the grappling hooks had missed. He passed over it. An out-of-sight diver to his right slowed, pulling the line in that direction, and Alan waited until the pressure eased, then inched forward again.

  A glimpse of white ahead of him. He pulled himself closer to the object and found it to be a short section of plastic pipe.

  He moved across it. Holding the rope in one hand, he found it easiest to progress at the slow pace forced on him by pushing off the mud with his other hand rather than using his flippers. He looked to the right and left, saw only the murky water stretching out inches from him, quickly becoming a solid brown curtain cutting off all visibility in a close-in circle all around him. It was as if he were at the center of a deep earthen well, cut off from sunlight from above, the water closest to him seeming to glow dimly with its own light. He slowly pulled his body forward.

  * * *

  Carolyn watched the circles of bubbles spaced a few feet apart, one circle sometimes lagging behind the others. At times a circle moved a couple of feet ahead of the line before pausing for the rest of the circles of bubbles to catch up. The men had been down for several minutes and weren’t even a tenth of the way across the channel. On the river’s far side, the firemen ran the bow of the Mako onto a mudflat. As they did, a heron suddenly flapped up from the tall water grass ahead of the boat and turned back over the marsh toward the Interstate 10 bridge in the distance.

  Carolyn looked back at the bubbles. The line was stopped once more, waiting for a circle to catch up. With each of the divers having only one tank apiece she knew they weren’t going to be able to cover even half the area Alan had hoped.

  * * *

  Alan felt the string move across his wrist before he saw it—a nylon line the same brown color as the water. A trot line—with short strings hung with sharp, barbed hooks every few inches along its length. When first set out the hooks would have been baited with balls of stinking cheese or minnows to attract the big catfish in the river.

  Had the search-and-rescue divers noted it? If a swimmer hung one of the razor-sharp hooks in his leg, he couldn’t break the strong nylon with his hands. The only way to escape back to the surface would be to yank the hook’s barbs, flesh and all, from his leg. And if a swimmer was hooked, he wouldn’t have much time to make up his mind to endure such pain before he grew dizzy from lack of oxygen and then would no longer have the strength to pull the hook through his flesh. Wondering if the line was still anchored to the far side of the channel, Alan pulled on it. It came easily toward him. Easily, he thought. No resistance from bodies hung somewhere along its length.

  Still pulling in the line, carefully avoiding each hook as it came into view, at the same time he had to keep moving forward to keep up with the other divers. Then, from out of the brown darkness one string trailed backward with something on its end. A catfish head, he saw, as it came closer to his hand, its body missing behind its ribbed, circular gills.

  As the head slowly passed by his fingers, he noted its gaped mouth was large enough to place both his fists inside the jaws. The fish had been at least thirty pounds. The men who had set the line had caught it, but the turtles had reaped the benefits. The line still came easily. He released it and pulled himself forward to keep from holding the others back.

  Clank!

  Alan’s head jerked toward the knife clanging against a scuba tank. The rope went slack in that direction.

  Clank! Clank!

  He kicked his flippers toward the sound. He immediately lost all bearing with his surroundings—and slowed to keep from crashing into another diver responding to the sounds.

  Clank! Clank! Clank!

  The sounds came from above now.

  And ceased altogether.

  Alan broke the surface. Four other faces already bobbed behind their face masks. One of them, the young blond named Donald, held his hand out of the water and stared at his closed fist. The rest of the divers broke the surface.

  The one closest to Donald suddenly twisted his face away from the clenched fist and vomited a yellow stream of liquid into the water.

  Alan saw it now.r />
  In Donald’s closed fist were two long, blue fingers extending from what was left of the hand of one of the teenagers.

  “I … I…,” Donald tried to say. “I felt it under my hand. It moved. I thought it moved.…” He shook his head in dismay. “I … God,” he said.

  * * *

  On the bank, Carolyn’s eyes had knitted at the vomiting of one of the divers. She saw Alan look in her direction and past her. Julie was coming down through the trees; Barry, holding her by the arm, appeared to be trying to stop her.

  All the divers stared at the couple. The men started toward the bank. The blond kept holding his fist out of the water, as if he clutched something he didn’t want to get wet.

  Julie stared at the divers looking at her. “No,” she said.

  The divers neared the bank.

  “No,” Julie said again. Beside her, Barry’s eyes narrowed as he tried to see.

  The divers came out of the water to the bank. The young blond seemed to hesitate, lagging behind, then came up beside the others.

  He looked toward Julie and Barry.

  Skip’s parents came a few feet behind them.

  “No,” Julie said.

  Alan kicked his flippers off, shrugged his tank to the ground and hurried toward her. Barry suddenly collapsed to his knees, and started sobbing. Carolyn saw what the blond held. Oh, God, no!

  “NO!” Julie screamed, “NO! NO!”

  “NOOOOOO!”

  CHAPTER 8

  An ambulance backed into Carolyn’s driveway for the bodies. The attendants stepped outside with body bags, but stopped as they saw Mr. Herald standing a few feet away with the partial palm and two fingers wrapped in a handkerchief. The driver went back inside the ambulance and brought out a plastic garbage bag. He inserted what there was in the bottom of the bag and gently folded it into a square.

  As the ambulance drove out of the drive and Mr. Herald walked toward the house, Alan held open the front door. Mr. Herald looked at him but didn’t speak as he passed him and went inside the house. Alan stepped inside, closing the door behind him. Jonas “Pop” Stark, the Jackson County Sheriff, spoke on the telephone that sat on the coffee table. A heavy man with a gruff voice, he wore gray slacks and a blue sports coat over a beige shirt unbuttoned at the collar, and kept fidgeting with the collar. He nodded at something that was said over the phone, replaced the receiver, and came across the carpet.