Extinct

by Charles Wilson

  “Alan.” Fred’s voice was almost a whisper.

  The shape came around a bend past the far side of the bridge. Dark, low in the water, it came silently toward them. Fred scrambled out of the channel. San-hi stepped rapidly to the rear. The mud sucked at his heels and he splashed backward onto his hips. He turned while still on the ground and scurried deeper into the grass on his hands and knees. Fred passed Alan.

  Silently, into the dark shadows under the bridge, it came.

  “It’s a boat,” Fred cried out.

  The scream came toward them, short and abrupt.

  Alan heard Fred fall backward into the water behind him.

  A light flashed on, blinding them.

  “It’s friggin’ people,” an amazed voice said. “What’n hell?” The light cut off. “You damn near scared me to death,” the voice added. The boat glided out of the shadows beneath the bridge. “What’n hell are you all doing, anyway?”

  As Alan’s eyes adjusted rapidly back to the dark he saw that the man speaking was short and stocky and stood at the bow of the boat. In the stern, a thinner man lowered the shotgun he had pointed toward the grass.

  San-hi splashed into the water and thrashed toward the boat. In a moment he was lunging up over its side. “Easy, boy,” the stocky man said as the boat rocked violently, “you’ll turn us over. What’n hell happened to your all’s boat?”

  “My daughter’s back behind us,” Fred said as he sloshed toward the boat.

  The man flashed his light up the channel. “Near the river,” Fred said. “We have to get back to her.”

  Alan reached the bow. “Where’s the landing where you came in?” he asked.

  “A mile back.”

  “We have to get to a telephone.”

  * * *

  Sheriff Stark’s graying brown hair whipped in the wind. Mosquitoes, gnats, and a constantly varying variety of water bugs burst against the boat’s windshield.

  Deputy Fairley suddenly pulled the throttle back and turned the bow of the boat toward the aluminum craft floating upside down at the side of the river.

  As they drew alongside it, Stark saw the other small boat, floating a few feet behind the first one. They both had circular lines of indentations dug into their metal.

  Stark shook his head. “How many kids did you say Mr. Herald had with him?”

  “Do you mind if we go back in now, Sheriff?” Fairley asked. “I … uh, my wife didn’t like me coming out here. With, uh … you know, with this thing.…” He smiled feebly. “You know how scared women get.”

  * * *

  The younger blond slapped at a mosquito. A large flying insect, humming as loud as a horsefly, kept flitting around Edward’s head, causing him to duck back and forth as if he were slipping punches. Out of the tall grass a hundred feet to the boat’s side, a shrill shriek, turned ragged and dying at its end, caused Carolyn’s blood to rush cold. She took a deep breath. It was silly, she knew, but what had scared her most since Alan and her father had pushed the boat into the grass was the short, thick water moccasin that had swum past in the channel behind the craft. One thing she liked about being a charter-boat captain was that you could be any place on saltwater and know it was unlikely you would ever see snakes. That was the one thing that had scared her ever since she was a little child and been lying back in the bathtub at her grandmother’s house in Laurel and had looked up to see a snake draped across the top of the curtain rod. She shivered at remembering the incident.

  A splash sounded behind the rear of the boat.

  “Mrs. Haines,” the older blond said, looking across his shoulder. “You hear that?”

  She tried to force a comforting smile, and nodded.

  Then she did hear it, a faint sound coming from the direction of the river. The blond stood and looked out over the side of the boat. The other boys were coming to their feet.

  A motor.

  The sound steadily grew louder, an outboard motor revved to full power.

  Down the channel they saw the light sweeping past on the river.

  “Hey!” Carolyn shouted as loud as she could. “Here!”

  The boys started yelling at the top of their lungs. They were jumping up and down and waving their arms.

  “Look this way, damn it,” she said under her breath.

  But what good would it do if they did? With her boat a hundred yards from the river, if it could be seen at all in the dark it would only look like a clump of grass sticking out in the narrow channel, or a drift hung on the bank. She was angry for a moment, feeling intentionally hurt by those speeding past and not coming her way. Then she thought about the shark in the river with the boat, its occupants completely unaware. And she was suddenly angry with them no more.

  * * *

  Douglas directed the watertight flood lamp’s broad beam on the upturned hull of the doctors’ boat as Broderick floated prone above it. They both wore helmetlike facemasks now, complete with microphones and earphones. Broderick lowered his head for a closer look, and ran his hand down through one of the long slashes.

  A small brightly colored fish swam by Broderick’s faceplate as he raised his head to look at an even bigger slash a couple of feet from his hand.

  “Er,” was all he said. It came out metallic sounding through his mouthpiece.

  “Errr,” again.

  Then he began talking to himself: “An incomplete semicircular pattern of linear slashes with irregularities measuring up to zero point eight.… And I mean zero point eight feet, not centimeters.… Feet, that’s right.” And he nodded his head knowingly to himself. It had to be to himself because he wasn’t looking at Douglas.

  “Suggestive of angled tooth imprints from maxillary ridge…,” he started again, and nodded knowingly once more.

  “Suggestive, hell,” he suddenly said.

  And without ever looking at Douglas, Broderick turned and swam up out of the light, kicking his flippers rapidly.

  * * *

  Sheriff Stark stared at the small dock behind Carolyn’s house. A black Labrador stood in the yard a few feet short of the water.

  “They haven’t come back, either,” he said.

  Deputy Fairley swallowed to clear his dry throat. “Sheriff, my wife is really going to be worried.”

  He smiled feebly as Stark looked at him. “Okay,” Stark said, “go ahead, get out.” He jabbed his index finger toward the dock. “Go on,” he said.

  “No, that’s okay, Sheriff, we’ll be going in now and—”

  “Go on,” Stark repeated. “I have enough on my mind without worrying about you.”

  Fairley appeared reluctant from the look on his face, but he nevertheless hopped over the side of the boat onto the rough cypress boards of the dock. He smiled feebly again at Stark. “I’m, uh … going to get her straightened out,” he said. “This won’t happen again.”

  The Labrador barked.

  Fairley looked over his shoulder at the dog, but the animal wasn’t looking at him. Instead she was staring out at the water past Stark and the boat.

  Stark turned the wheel away from the dock and pushed the throttle forward.

  The Labrador’s now frenetic barking was lost in the sound of the boat speeding upriver in the direction of the beaver dam.

  * * *

  The two men hopped out of their boat onto the bank and ran after Alan, sprinting barefooted toward their pickup. He swung into the passenger seat as the stocky man slid behind the steering wheel. San-hi, Fred, and the other man jumped into the truck bed. Its wheels throwing mud out behind it, the truck spun away from the water and up a narrow gravel road.

  * * *

  Nearly thirty minutes had passed since they had last heard the sound of the motorboat, but now it was coming back down the river. “Mrs. Haines,” the older blond said in a low voice.

  Moments later the craft’s light came into view.

  “Mrs. Haines,” the older blond said again.

  The light was turning in their direction.
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  The boys started jumping up and down and cheering.

  The boat came rapidly toward them, then Sheriff Stark cut the throttle back and the boat coasted slowly in their direction.

  “I’m there,” he said over his radio. Now he counted the children standing looking back at him. “Tell Alan and Mr. Herald they’re all okay. I’m…”

  Then he had to stop speaking to keep from crying.

  CHAPTER 24

  Carolyn felt a chill sweep across her back as Sheriff Stark’s boat sped out of the narrow channel running through the marsh grass and turned up the river. Paul pushed closer to her side. She tightened her arm around his shoulder and felt herself subconsciously leaning away from the side of the craft.

  Its big motor revved to full speed, they raced up the channel toward her house.

  * * *

  The deputy’s cruiser, its blue lights flashing, braked to a stop in Carolyn’s drive. Alan sprang out of the car and hurried ahead of Fred and San-hi toward the side of the house.

  * * *

  Deputy Fairley had come out of the wicker chair on the patio at the sound of the Sheriff’s boat roaring up the river. A cruiser had braked to a stop in front of the house. Now an ambulance, the glow from its flashing red lights reflecting through the trees along the river, sped up the street, and Alan and the others hurried into the backyard.

  * * *

  Stark didn’t pull back on the speedboat’s throttle until he was within thirty feet of the dock. The craft settled into the water at the last moment and, its bow pushing a rolling wave of water out in front of it, scraped hard against the side of the dock.

  Fairley saw the children and smiled in relief. And then the boys were scrambling over the boat’s side onto the bobbing cypress.

  Alan and San-hi reached for Armon at the same time, but the stocky boy hopped from the boat and, holding his burned arm against his chest, hurried past them onto the grass. Fred took Paul from Carolyn’s arms and she came out of the boat behind them. Stark turned toward Alan.

  “I said only bull sharks come up into freshwater, Alan, and you agreed with me. White sharks don’t.”

  “That’s right,” Alan said. “They don’t.” He walked to Armon and San-hi, looked at the fluid-soaked T-shirt wrapped around Armon’s burned hand and forearm, and slipped his arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Come on,” he said, nodding toward the two ambulance attendants coming down across the yard toward the water.

  Two more deputy’s cruisers were stopping in front of the house now. Fairley looked at Stark, and the Sheriff frowned, and Fairley dropped his gaze to the ground.

  Stark hurried past Fairley to catch up to Alan and walked by his side. “Alan, what do you mean, ‘That’s right?’ Carolyn said it was a white. What else could it be but a white and be twenty-five feet long?”

  “There might be a precedent.”

  “Precedent, hell, what do you mean?”

  The attendants took charge of Armon, leading him toward the corner of the house. Alan looked at the deputies and Fred walking with the other boys in that direction. The younger blond suddenly started crying. Paul, walking across the patio toward the kitchen door, looked at the boy and back at Alan, then stepped inside the house ahead of Carolyn.

  “Alan,” Stark said, “will you answer my damn question—what precedent?”

  Alan looked toward Stark as they walked toward the house. “I don’t remember the exact date, Jonas. It was around 1916 or ’17. A white took two victims off the coast of New Jersey, but it also traveled twenty miles up a creek. Around South Amboy. It killed a ten-year-old and a young man and mangled a third boy before it went back into the ocean. Everyone then was wondering about a white coming up into freshwater, too. But it was July, the same as now. It had been especially dry. The creek would have been low. From rainfall records back then, scientists now think it’s likely the ocean had run inland, leaving the creek highly brackish, maybe even containing more saltwater than fresh.”

  Stark looked toward the river as he stopped on the patio. “Okay,” he said. “It’s brackish up into the marshes, as far as the Interstate bridge at least. But not more saltwater than fresh. And not brackish past here to the dam, anyway. But I believe it got those two fishermen. It damn sure got their boat. After it ran out of brackish water, could it have just kept going upriver? I mean it’s not like freshwater’s poisonous or something to it—it just doesn’t prefer it, does it? Right?”

  “That’s all I can tell you, Jonas. Other than for that one incident I don’t know of any other time a white has come up a river, brackish or otherwise.” Alan opened the door and stepped into the kitchen, and Stark came in behind him.

  “Could there be two of them, Alan? Because if there isn’t, you not only have a white coming up the river, but leaving the river to attack Mr. Fraizer in the Sound and then coming back here again.”

  Before Alan could respond, Stark said, “But it couldn’t be two, because if it was it would not only be just two, but two big ones. But, hell, there can’t be two that size. Both of them here at the same time. It has to be just the one. Right?”

  “You want another guess?” Alan asked.

  “There couldn’t be,” Stark repeated. “Not two here at the same time when there hasn’t even been one in years. Damn sure not two of them twenty-five feet long. It’s just that the son of a bitch is roaming.”

  Stark looked back toward the kitchen door, as if he could see through it to the river. “And now we have the problem of finding it in this crap you can’t see through. If it was outside the Barrier Islands.… Hell, about anywhere else anywhere along the Gulf Coast its size would play against it. We could spot it with a plane. Hell, from a boat that got within a hundred feet of it as big a shadow as it would leave. But even if it goes back out of the river again, the Sound is so damn silted, too, that you can’t see a couple of feet through it.… Hell, it could be four or five feet under the surface and we wouldn’t be able to see it.”

  As Stark quit talking he looked up at the kitchen cabinets. “You think she’d mind?” he asked in a calmer voice than he had been using.

  Alan shook his head and Stark opened a cabinet and then a second one, finding the glasses he was looking for and lifting one from the shelf.

  “Twenty-five feet,” he mused as he stepped to the sink. He filled the glass with water, drank half of it at one time, then looked back at Alan.

  “Twenty-five feet?” he said again.

  Though the size was unusual when compared to the normal size of whites seen off the coasts of North America, one that size wasn’t out of the question, Alan knew. The biggest white ever caught off North America was thirty feet long, caught off California in the late 1800’s. And, more recently, in Cuba, not that far away from the Gulf in particular, a twenty-one-foot specimen had not only been caught but photographed and weighed as well, topping out at over three and a half tons.

  What did make Alan wonder, though, was the white’s rolling in the shallow channel, obviously trying to push away the small section of grass to get to Fred and the kids. The only similarity he could think of were the killer whales that had been seen using the weight of their great bodies to come up up on the edges of sections of floating ice and tip them to slide their helpless prey into the water. But a shark?

  “I need to call the Coast Guard,” Stark said, and walked toward the living room. “All they’ll do, though, is warn boaters. If it’s going to be caught, it’ll be up to us. And when you stop and think about it, we’re going to have to do it the same way they did in the Middle Ages, with a long line, a big hook, and a chunk of meat. That’s modern technology for you, isn’t it? And what if the son of a bitch decides he doesn’t want to bite?”

  Alan walked to the front of the living room and looked out a window as the ambulance drove out of the driveway. A deputy’s cruiser, the children filling its seats, pulled out onto the street behind the ambulance. Fairley walked toward the house and Alan opened the door for him.


  “Mr. Herald said to tell his daughter he was going in the ambulance with the boy who was burned,” Fairley said.

  Alan nodded. Fairley looked toward the Sheriff, speaking on the telephone to the Coast Guard. Stark looked back at him then turned his face back into the receiver.

  Fairley turned back toward the last cruiser parked in the drive. Alan shut the door as Carolyn came out of the hallway. “Paul went to sleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow,” she said.

  Stark replaced the telephone receiver and walked toward them. “If we’re going to have a chance to catch it, we’re going to need all the boats we can get,” he said.

  Carolyn nodded. “I’ll have the Intuitive here in the morning.”

  “I’ll get something for bait tonight,” Stark said. “Somewhere.” He glanced at his watch and walked toward the door. When he opened it, he looked back at Carolyn. “The earlier the better.”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll get ahold of the other captains tonight, too,” he said. He stood there a moment longer, seemed to be thinking about something. He looked back at them. “Hell, I hated Jaws anyway,” he said, and stepped outside.

  Alan walked to the window and watched Stark walk toward the cruiser with Fairley standing by the driver’s door. As they backed out of the driveway, the cruiser’s lights shined on the Jeep, illuminating the gaily wrapped presents sitting on the rear seat.

  “I’m going to get her a present, too,” Carolyn said as she stepped up beside him. “If she hadn’t started calling around about you and let Stark know we hadn’t come back from the dam yet, I would have been out there for another hour before you could have found a boat and gotten back to us. I don’t think I could have taken five more minutes.”

  She glanced at her watch. “I’m going to call Mother and have her come stay with Paul. I might as well go after the Intuitive now. By the time I would get to sleep it would be time to get up and go after it, anyway. Alan…” She looked a little sheepish. “I know this is silly, but would you mind going with me? Bringing it back by myself is going to make me…” She shrugged.