Shark Island

by Chris Jameson

  Walter scoffed. “That I have. And I’ve seen every episode of Deadliest Catch. But those guys go out and freeze their balls off and risk their lives because it’s their livelihood. This is our day off, James. Our day off. And here we are, when at least half of the guys we know who were supposed to be out here working today probably decided to stay home.”

  “But only half. Which means half of ’em are out here with us.”

  Walter shot him a dark look. “Those guys are getting paid to be out here.”

  Jamie grinned. “Those guys are gonna be buying us drinks for years if we make a stand against Woods Hole on this. Massholes comin’ up to Maine for the summer are bad enough, but now they wanna send their Masshole marine life up here, too?”

  “Did you just say that?”

  “I said it. Okay, I know the seals and sharks are both migratory, Walter. I know that. But they’re screwing with the natural order of things and … look, we’ve been through this. You want to turn the boat around, go on and do it. But we’re already out here, so we might as well see if we can mess up their day.”

  Walter glanced sidelong at him. “We haven’t really talked about how we’re gonna do that. How far we’re willing to go.”

  “Yeah. I’ve been thinkin’ about that. I don’t really have an answer,” Jamie confessed. “If there’s some way to disrupt the seals, confuse them, I’m for it. But obviously we’re not doing anything we can go to jail for.”

  “We may be idiots, but we’re not stupid,” Walter said with half a smile.

  “Even if all we do is block their way, yell at them for a few minutes, shoot off a flare, we’ll still be heroes as far as I’m concerned. At least we gave enough of a damn to stand up for the rights of Maine fishermen.”

  “More than most of these assholes can say.”

  “I don’t see any other boats going our way,” Jamie agreed.

  They fell into a familiar companionable silence. They talked plenty, but there were also long stretches of quiet between them, particularly when they were on the water. Being out there, especially in the wind and rain, the tang of salt in the air, the spray of the ocean coating everything, made them feel more at home than either of them ever felt on land. If the Atlantic had been calmer and they’d had the time to cast a couple of lines out, maybe they would have had a couple of beers, damn the hour of the morning. Deeper into summer, maybe they’d have had a couple of pitchers of mai tais or something. But they had a job to do today, which made it a coffee day. Still, they didn’t need to talk. Their friendship didn’t require them to fill the silence.

  That was Jamie’s train of thought, anyway. Right before Walter broke the silence.

  “So what’s the story with Alice?”

  Jamie glanced at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I said. You’ve been mooning over her since your momma ejected you from her womb, but now all of a sudden you grew the balls to ask her out?”

  “I told you what happened, Walt. She kinda let me know she wouldn’t hate the idea of us going out for dinner sometime—”

  “And you didn’t faint?”

  “And I didn’t faint,” Jamie confirmed. “You were there. Just in case you forgot, given it happened as long ago as last night.”

  Seconds passed. The rain hit the windshield and the boat rode the swells, Walter guiding it masterfully. The engine moaned in conflict with the wind.

  Walter shot him that same studious, dubious glance. “So you’re gonna take her out?”

  “I said as much.” Jamie wished desperately that he hadn’t decided it was a coffee morning. “Y’know, I don’t stick my nose so deep into your business.”

  “Mostly because if we talk too long about my love life you’ve gotta contend with mental images of me sucking a dick or doing something even more exciting.”

  “So you like picturing me and Alice doing exciting things?”

  “Jesus. Forget I asked.”

  Silence again. Jamie decided to make another attempt at getting some more coffee, and this time he managed it without spilling any on himself. As he screwed the cap back on the thermos, kneeling in the wheelhouse, making sure his travel mug didn’t topple over, he saw Walter scrutinizing him further.

  “Okay, enough,” he said, rising to his feet just as the boat nosed through a swell. He stumbled a bit, caught himself, and nearly dropped his coffee. “Either you’ve finally realized just how deeply you love me or you’ve got something you want to say.”

  “Could be both,” Walter said, turning his attention back to the wheel and the churning sea. “But I’m familiar with the stench of you taking your boots off, which is a powerful argument against any romantic interest. Even if big hairy fishermen were my type. I like my men smarter and prettier than you.”

  “So you do have something you want to say.”

  “Guess I do.”

  Jamie didn’t reply, just sighed and rolled his eyes, sipped his coffee, and waited.

  “Be careful, that’s all,” Walter said at last.

  “Careful of what? If you’re telling me to wear protection—”

  “I’m being serious here, James.”

  “Okay.”

  “No joke. Alice is broken. I don’t mean she isn’t strong—most of the time broken people are the strongest. But her husband dying smashed her into little pieces. She’s brushed off every guy who’s shown an interest since, and you know there have been plenty.”

  Jamie stiffened. Tightened his hand on the coffee mug. “And now that she’s maybe ready for something new, you’re worried I’m gonna hurt her, break her some more?”

  Walter smiled, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “Naw, man. I mean, yes, of course, because Alice is a sweet woman and I’m fond of her. But you’re so in love with her that your heart’s been breaking a little bit every day since you met her, and now you’ve got a chance at making something with her. And I pray to every god that’s ever spurned my prayers that it works out. I’d love to see that. It’d be a beautiful thing. But a woman who’s hurt as long as she’s hurt, who’s finally starting to rebuild … she’s out of practice and liable to break a few things herself. She may decide she’s not ready after all, may decide she’ll never be ready, or maybe you’ll be her test drive, just see if she can handle it, and then someone else’ll come along. You’re my best friend, man. I don’t want to see you broken.”

  Jamie felt the air go out of him. He glanced at the floor, sipped his coffee.

  “Thanks, Walter.”

  “Sweet of me, I know, to give a damn.”

  “Yep.”

  Silence again, save for the engine and the wind and the rain and the sea.

  “We could go back to talking about me sucking dick.”

  “Not sure which conversation makes me more uncomfortable, but I do appreciate it.”

  Walter laughed softly. A couple of minutes passed without another word. They scanned the horizon ahead, watched the coasts of distant islands, expecting the Woods Hole boat to appear around one of them any moment.

  “Y’know,” Walter said, “there’s probably some beer in the cooler under the bench over there.”

  “Thank God.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Kat rested. She lay on her back on top of the watchtower, hating her closeness to the rusted surface but too exhausted to move. The rust made her feel dirty, even though it hadn’t touched any part of her skin except her hands. There were often spiderwebs hanging from the ceiling in her basement, and she had accidentally walked through them a dozen times. Invariably, she’d bat at the air around her head, bend, and shake out her hair, push her fingers through it, just to make sure she didn’t have a spider on her. Even when she had done all of that, her skin would crawl and she’d haunt herself with the conviction that somehow a spider had gotten inside her clothes, that it was on her, right now, and that it would bite her after she’d gone to bed or crawl into her mouth while she was sleeping. The closeness of the rust gave her the same creeping
feeling. She felt dirty, like she needed to strip off her clothes and shower.

  On her back, face turned to the rain, she uttered a soft and humorless laugh. A shower.

  “Good one, Kat,” she whispered to herself. Rain fell into her mouth as she spoke. The tiny drops of contact in that inviolable space made her think of spider’s legs, and she shuddered.

  Enough of that, she thought. Exhausted, she rolled over onto her knees and studied the platform. One partial wall remained. No roof—no real shelter, except a bit of a windbreak. The edges of that remaining wall had sharp corners, plenty of things to cut herself on. But Kat knew they were lucky to have this.

  She glanced over the side of the platform. From here, the broad swath of marine life made her breath catch in her throat. It was one thing to have seen all of these seals from the deck of the Thaumas, but from above, the extent of the herd seemed even more breathtaking. Based on the number of heads she saw, there were well over a thousand of them filling the channel between Bald Cap and Deeley Island and smaller numbers spreading around the rock the team had been stranded on.

  Kat tried not to see the fins. Instead, she stared at the spot where their boat had gone down, where Bergting had died, and wondered how deep it was. If not for the watchtower, that question would have been much more important, but still she tried to do some quick guesswork. Deep enough that the boat had vanished beneath the swells, but not very deep, she was sure. The middle of the channel would run deeper, but here at the edge of Bald Cap the boat couldn’t have sunk too far before it settled. Unless the current had dragged it, moved it.

  It doesn’t matter, she told herself. They’re going to come looking. And you’ve got the tower.

  She stood, the weight of her clothes nearly dragging her back to her knees. It had been foolish to climb wearing them. The weather gear had done a fine job keeping her dry when all they had to worry about was rain, but in the water, drowning, swimming for her life, it had nearly been her shroud. Soaked through, she’d come ashore so stunned that it hadn’t occurred to her to divest herself of the heavy things before she’d climbed up here. But now she could breathe. Now she had a moment to think.

  The coat came off first, so heavy that it felt like she’d grown an inch the moment she slid out of it. Her Woods Hole sweatshirt was already soaked, so the rain didn’t bother her at all. She started to unsnap her pants, but as she scuffed her foot across the platform and bits of rust flaked and smeared wetly under her heel she decided the protection provided by the durable fabric was worth the weight. She wore black yoga pants under the all-weather gear, and she didn’t want to climb down and back up in those.

  Huffing out a weary breath, she moved to the edge and knelt again, lay on her belly, and slid her legs off the platform. The smell of rust filled her nostrils. She grabbed the sharp edge of the broken wall, carefully. So carefully. This was the hard part. Her sweatshirt was soaked with rusty rainwater and she realized she’d been hasty in taking off her coat.

  Too late now.

  Kat jammed one knee in a space between the platform and its support beams, searching for purchase with her hanging foot. Her body began to slide. The toe of her boot scraped off something and panic thundered in her chest for a moment that felt like eternity. Then her boot slipped into the latticed trestlework beneath the platform and she exhaled. For a few seconds she stayed just where she was, happy not to be falling, but then she got moving again. The tide was coming in and they didn’t have time for her to freeze.

  Careful with her handholds, not wanting to cut herself on the rusted metal, she clambered down the tower. The structure seemed narrow, with very few places to rest comfortably before reaching the top, but they would have to figure it out. The wind gusted and she felt the tower swaying. It creaked and groaned with her weight and with the force of the wind. The remaining wall above her shook and rattled in the storm, but Kat told herself that this was not a new development. The thing looked ancient and fragile—even brittle—but it had stood out here for decades. It would be safe. It had to be safe.

  Kat forced herself to breathe evenly as she descended. The tower reminded her of the kind of thing she’d seen in state forests, where rangers would be stationed. Maybe forty feet high, it had horizontal beams at ten-foot intervals, holding the whole thing together. Each section—each layer of the trestlework cake—was a honeycomb of rusted latticework that made for uncomfortable footholds, but at least the crossbeams were there.

  The wind battered her, tried to push her off the tower, but she resisted even as the rain plastered her ponytail against her neck. One step at a time. One handhold at a time. Then her right foot came down on a slippery diagonal and her boot skidded to one side. She tightened her grip at the same moment the bar shifted, cracked, and gave way under her weight.

  She slammed against the tower, left foot finding a toehold just a moment later. Her fingers were so tight on the lattice above that she felt rust crunching into her skin. Someone down below called up to her, the first indication she had that they were watching her. She counted to five before she sagged backward and looked down. The diagonal hadn’t snapped—the bolts on one end had rusted through and it had given way.

  Fifteen feet from the ground, she clambered sideways until she reached a perch that seemed more reliable and then continued her descent. It seemed only a minute later that she reached the bottom, but before she could find comfort in the solid rock underfoot a wave crashed against Bald Cap. A thin inch of water foamed all the way to the base of the tower, washing against her boots.

  Kat looked up at Wolchko and Naomi and Captain N’Dour. She saw the grim certainty in their eyes, reflecting her own, and she turned away from them. They would be okay, she felt sure. She would make certain of it. Even Naomi, with her prosthetic, should be able to climb without assistance. It was Tye she worried about.

  Rosalie and Tye had been sitting together a couple of yards away. When the wave crashed over Bald Cap, the layer of surf rippling around them, Rosalie shot to her feet and turned in a circle, maybe thinking the sharks could come ashore in two inches of water. She knew better, of course, but Kat understood the kind of irrationality that fear could produce.

  “How’s it look up there?” Tye asked, glancing up at the platform.

  “Room for three on the platform. Maybe four, if they’re all standing.”

  Tye gave a tight nod, getting the message. Room for three, not four, because he wasn’t going to be able to cling to the side of the watchtower with a shark bite in his leg. Rosalie had wrapped it well enough to slow the bleeding, maybe even stop it, but if he made the climb to the platform there was no way he could dangle off the side of the tower. The angle and the pressure would keep him bleeding or start him bleeding again eventually. That’s if he even had the strength to hold on.

  “It’s all right,” Rosalie told him, crouching to squeeze his shoulder. “Three on the platform and three wedged into the trestle under it. The rest of us will takes turns on top. It’ll be fine. All we have to do is wait until someone comes to get us.”

  Kat narrowed her eyes. “Can you give me and Tye a minute?”

  Rosalie hesitated visibly. She worked for Kat, worked for the project, but she didn’t like being dismissed. Kat knew that and didn’t care. The protocol of the lab had gone down with the ship. Rosalie nodded once, then walked away without another word. Between the seals and the tower, she couldn’t go very far, but she crossed to the other side of the watchtower and found a bare few yards that the seals seemed to be avoiding. Rosalie stood and looked out at the dark, turbulent sea.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Tye said.

  Kat knelt by him. Another wave crashed up, surf sliding across Bald Cap.

  “They will send someone to check on us,” she said. “It’ll be hours yet. And when that someone comes, the sharks might attack their boat.”

  Tye cocked his head. “Come on. They could have gone on smashing at our hull for days and nothing would’ve happened. If th
at one hadn’t smashed in the propeller shaft, we’d still be afloat.”

  “I know you’re right. I just … the malice—”

  “Sharks don’t feel malice,” Tye said. “That’s a human trait.”

  “How can we really know that?”

  “It’s what we do. We’re supposed to know.”

  Kat shrugged. “We think we know. But we’re also the geniuses who worked out a way to use acoustics like catnip on seal herds and never bothered to consider that it might alter other marine life. We turned every shark in range of that signal into a hyperaggressive monster. We did this, Tye. The two of us and Eddie. Now Bergting’s dead because we didn’t think it through.”

  “It was an experiment,” Tye said, shuddering. “We were rushing, yeah, but even if we hadn’t been under pressure we might still have made the same mistake, never considered it. That’s cold comfort, I know, but let’s worry about recriminations after we get home.”

  Kat smiled sadly. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For not telling me it isn’t my fault.”

  Tye reached out—wincing as he moved his bandaged leg—and took her hand. “You think everything is your fault. I’m not going to waste my breath arguing. I have to save my strength for climbing the goddamned watchtower.”

  Kat’s smile went cold. She couldn’t help it as she drew her hand away.

  “Sorry,” Tye said quickly. “I didn’t mean to…”

  The wind howled around them and the rain pattered the rocks and the waves crashed, but it was awkwardness they were drowning in.

  “I need to ask you something,” she said.

  Tye’s face went slack, his eyes cold, as if he’d drawn a curtain to hide whatever might be in his heart. “You want to know what Naomi was talking about, the stuff about Rosalie having a secret.”

  “About you having a secret,” she corrected. “And Rosalie knowing where the bodies are buried. I believe in secrets, but not if they’re going to hurt me. Is this going to hurt me, Tye?”

  He reached both hands up to wipe the rain from his face and let out a huff of air before focusing his gaze on hers again.