Black Tide

by Del Stone

  I heard a loud knocking sound, as if a piece of timber had been dropped inside the boat. It was a loud thunk against the fibreglass bottom. I heard DeVries shout, ‘Hey –’ and his voice cut off abruptly. Then I could hear him shouting, ‘No! No! No!’ and at the same time Scotty exclaiming, ‘What the hell!’ and then DeVries began to scream. It was a high, ululating wail of panic and pain, the scream of somebody whose life was about to end. The Evinrude suddenly howled and there was a loud splashing, and another thunk. The spotlight spun away from me, out of my sight, and for a moment I couldn’t see anything – just purplish, flickering blotches as my eyes readjusted to the dark. Scotty came scrambling back to us and snatched the flashlight from Heather. He whispered hoarsely, ‘Something’s got him!’ and the hair on the back of my neck stood up, the way it would if lightning were about to strike.

  Something. Not someone. Something.

  I stumbled down the beach. Scotty had gone ahead of me at a dead run. The boat was spinning in a tight circle, its engine screaming, the throttle wide open. A plume of spray fanned out behind it, glowing a sickish tobacco brown in the gyrating light of the searchlight. Off to the side I could see two figures struggling.

  It was DeVries, and what looked like a man. Why had Scotty used the word something? an inner voice questioned. It was clearly a man. Perhaps he was a fellow survivor, like us, clinging to some of the flotsam drifting down to the sound. He’d heard the boat and had swum to the sound. Scotty was in the water, up to his calves, when I caught up to him. I yelled, ‘You get DeVries! I’ll see if I can get the boat!’

  I had no idea how I’d accomplish that – the boat was spinning at a maddening speed. Behind us I could hear Heather screaming, ‘Watch the prop! Don’t get near the prop!’ She didn’t have to tell me that. I’d seen what a prop could do to a man’s leg and had no intention of being chopped to bits. Maybe if I could get inside the circle and chop the throttle on one of the boat’s passes …

  Scotty was wading out to DeVries, who was screaming, ‘GET OFF! GET OFF!’ A sweep of the searchlight revealed a hideous indigo stain in the water around the two as they struggled – what was the maniac doing to him? He appeared to be clinging to DeVries, his face buried in the crook between DeVries’ shoulder and neck; I could see only that. The froth they were throwing up concealed everything else.

  The boat’s arc began to widen, and it headed for DeVries and his attacker. Scotty hesitated. Heather was at the beach now, and she screamed, ‘Scotteee! Get out of the way!’ just as the boat struck the two men. You could hear the awful, meaty burr of the prop as it ripped into flesh. The boat jerked to the right with a loud BRRRWAP, straightened, and charged toward the middle of the sound, out into the night. Scotty shouted, ‘Son of a bitch!’ and began jumping in the water after the boat, then saw the futility of the chase and stopped.

  The man struggling with DeVries had stood up. His back was arched, and his mouth was open. No sound came out. He took a single, whooping gasp, then battened on DeVries again. I heard myself snarl, ‘Goddammit’ and I went splashing to them. Scotty came in from the side. We reached them simultaneously.

  ‘What are you fucking doing!’ Scotty screamed and looped his arm around the man, pulling him off DeVries. He wouldn’t let go. Scotty jerked once, twice, and I grabbed DeVries and hauled in the opposite direction. I heard an awful sucking sound – and then the tearing of flesh.

  I caught DeVries as he started to go under, hooking my arm around his neck and hauling up. I still had the flashlight. I aimed it into his face.

  His eyes were rolled back in the sockets. They looked yellowish in the light, yellow as hundred-year-old ivory. They circled in the sockets and settled on me for a moment, and you could see the insane fear. I moved the light lower, and when I did the damage that had been inflicted on DeVries came into terrible focus. A semi-circular chunk of flesh had been torn from his throat, and blood was oozing in a sickening flow that pulsed in syncopation with his heartbeat. I could see the torn flesh, the glistening muscle, the ragged tissue – I had only a brief glimpse of these things and my stomach heaved. For the third time that day I thought I might vomit. But then something even more incredible began to happen. The flesh began to bubble, then fry, and smoke poured from the wound.

  I heard someone shouting something. I couldn’t think. My brain was numb, as if Novocaine had been injected directly into my cerebellum. The words soaked through this gauzy layer of incomprehension only slowly – ‘… me –’ and then with greater clarity, ‘Help me!’ and I turned the light on Scotty.

  He was struggling with the man. I aimed the flashlight directly in the man’s face.

  It was beyond description.

  The face was a ruin of melted skin. From the forehead to his blood-soaked T-shirt there was nothing but wrinkled, scalded flesh, a bloodless white, the colour of undersea creatures that had never seen the light. And his eyes – utterly devoid of colour, no iris, no pupil, nothing but slick, pearly balls. As abruptly as I took this in the man’s flesh began to smoke, and then his eyes literally exploded, like old-fashioned flashbulbs, and the sockets emitted ferocious jets of blue-tinted flames. Everywhere the light travelled across the man, its skin erupted in swaths of blackened ruin that burst into flame. It arched its back again, its eyes burning like two flares, and cut loose with a sound that had never been uttered by a human being. It fell howling into the water.

  Scotty staggered back, gulping. The man … no, the thing, scuttled along the sandy bottom like a Callinectes sapidus – forgive me – a blue crab, leaving a trail of swirling sediment in its wake.

  We both stood there a moment, breathing hard, neither of us believing what we had just seen. Heather was shrieking from the shore, ‘What’s happening? What’s happening?’ and the piercing hysteria of her voice seemed to galvanise us. I knelt down and got DeVries into my arms. Scotty staggered over, lifted an arm over his shoulder, and between the two of us we were able to get him up and headed for shore.

  Behind us, we heard more furtive splashing.

  ‘For God’s sake shine the light!’ Scotty yelled at Heather, his voice a couple of octaves higher than I’d heard so far. She aimed it directly at us, and I shouted, ‘No! Out there!’ and pointed at the sound. She swept the beam across the water and a tumult of splashing arose. The sound reminded me of alligators that had been lurking at the surface suddenly diving below.

  We got DeVries to the shore. His feet were dragging behind him. He moaned softly as we laid him on the sand, and when Heather saw his wound she sucked in a shocked breath and muttered, ‘Oh dear God,’ and ran back to the tents. A moment later she returned with one of her T-shirts and the first aid kit. We had to hold his head up as she folded the T-shirt and pressed it into the wound. It was instantly soaked with blood.

  DeVries took a ragged breath and tried to say something, but choked. He gargled and blood leaked from the side of his mouth. Finally, in a coarse whisper he said, ‘Sorry. Sorry. The boat.’ In the distance we could still hear the Evinrude whining as it crossed the sound in an all-out dash.

  ‘I wanted to come sooner but they’re not letting anyone in.’

  I could barely hear him and leaned in close. ‘Do you know what happened?’

  ‘Some – some kind of poison gas,’ he gurgled. His lips were becoming thin and pale, like a hypothermia victim’s. ‘For 30 miles inland between here and Navarre, everybody’s … everybody’s …’

  ‘Oh Christ, they’re all dead,’ Scotty muttered darkly and turned away.

  ‘Not dead!’ DeVries gasped. His body began to tremble. We needed a fire.

  ‘Not dead, not dead, not dead – different.’

  ‘Like that man back there?’ I prompted.

  ‘They’re everywhere. When the sun went down, they came out.’

  Scotty gazed nervously out over the sound.

  ‘What in God’s name is he talking about?
’ Heather said, pressing the T-shirt into the wound.

  I hunkered down closer to DeVries. ‘Does anybody know what’s happened?’ I asked gently. ‘What kind of poison it was? The changes in the people? Does anybody know what’s going on?’

  DeVries shook his head. His skin was losing its colour, becoming livid and hard, almost statue-like. The irises were shrinking. The T-shirt was sopping with blood and it was pooling in the sand around his neck.

  He said, ‘I’m very thirsty. Do you have some water?’

  Heather went to fetch a bottle. Scotty was sweeping his flashlight across the water’s surface. He turned it to DeVries and the man’s face began to smoulder. ‘Get that off him!’ I snarled and Scotty whipped the beam away as DeVries cried out weakly. Scotty hissed, ‘Jesus! It’s happening to him, too.’ DeVries began thrashing his head from side to side and moaned loudly, ‘Oh God. So thirsty! Please!’

  At that moment, Heather screamed. It was a sound I never want to hear again.

  Scotty leapt to his feet and aimed the flashlight at her.

  I saw people.

  Some were merely standing in place, staring dumbly, their blind eyes somehow seeing. Others were shambling across the lone dune, crashing through the paniculata in a noisy advance. Others were creeping stealthily out of the water, crouched like stalking creatures about to scramble and pounce. My first impression was that this resembled a scene from one of the old Revell monster models I used to build as a boy, of zombies staggering through a graveyard to set upon a hapless mourner. There was a peculiar, indescribably horrible quality to it all – the creatures seemed at once thoughtless and driven by single-minded purpose, if such a thing was possible. My mind averted from the idea of what that purpose could be.

  Scotty swept his flashlight across the horde and their bodies burst into flame. You could hear the flesh sizzling, and a barely audible wail arose, as if they were shrieking in the supersonics. A man at the very top of the dune went up like a torch and nearly galloped down the opposite dune face and hurled himself into the water. The others scattered and began to do likewise. They stumbled over each other as they scrambled into the water, to vanish beneath the surface in a roiling of bubbles and smoke.

  Heather was sobbing, ‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ and all I could think of was to get up and go comfort her. It was all I could think to do. I dropped to my knees beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

  ‘C’mon. It’s all right,’ I said lamely. We both knew it wasn’t, but again, I couldn’t think of anything else to say or do. She tittered, but it was the nervous sound of a person whose wits were tripping on the edge of an abyss.

  ‘C’mon. Let’s see if we can get DeVries to drink something.’ She had a plastic bottle of water clutched in her right hand. I thought it might burst, she was squeezing it so tightly. But she got up and we made our way back to Scotty and DeVries. Scotty was standing quietly, staring down at the man.

  He lay on the sand, barely moving.

  ‘We should get rid of him,’ Scotty finally said. I couldn’t see his face, but his voice was low and evenly modulated, the sound of a man in complete and deadly control of his faculties. The cold-bloodedness of that statement produced an instant flash of anger in me, and I snarled back at him. ‘This is the man who came to save our butts, and you just want to ‘get rid of him’? Are you out of your mind?’

  ‘We should throw him in the water. Get rid of him.’

  ‘You mean kill him?’

  ‘He’s as good as dead,’ Scotty sighed heavily. ‘We should get rid of him.’

  ‘He’s not dead. He’s hurt and he needs our help.’

  ‘Before he becomes one of them,’ Scotty said quietly. ‘We should get rid of him.’

  I let go of Heather’s shoulder and jumped up. I smacked Scotty in his skinny chest with an open palm, knocking him back a step. ‘This man is injured and he needs our help!’ I screamed at him. He just stood there, staring. ‘We don’t have any idea how this poison works – it – it could be that only the tissue around the bite is affected.’

  ‘I’m going to get rid of him,’ Scotty said flatly.

  ‘The hell you are,’ I answered. ‘I’m in charge here and you’ll do what I damn well tell you.’

  ‘Get out of my way,’ he said.

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t give a damn what you want. You try to hurt that man and I’ll …’

  ‘Just stop!’ Heather screamed, her voice warbling up the scale. ‘I can’t stand it – just stop –’ and then the issue was settled for us.

  Something grabbed my ankle.

  I could feel a cold, unearthly circlet of pressure as fingers slithered around the bone. The skin felt slimy and cool, and my mind instantly composed an image of something old and pale and horribly desperate that had crawled from the deepest parts of the ocean and would take me back there with it unless I resisted. I yanked my leg once, twice, and freed myself from its grip. Scotty stepped in with the flashlight and aimed it downward.

  I had only a second to take in what lay before us: A little girl, her bloodless skin made all the whiter by the black plaster of hair that framed her thin, vulpine face, had scuttled through the shallows unseen and was about to bite me. She jerked her head up at us and centred those blank yet seeing eyes on me, and then she smiled, an act suggestive of an insidious animal cunning, as if she were being driven by equal parts need and pleasure. Her face instantly folded in on itself in a black ruin, like newsprint put to a flame, and the eyes ruptured fire. A cloud of acrid smoke boiled into the night sky and the girl – what had once been a girl – began to grunt and writhe on the beach as her body immolated. Scotty played the beam over and across the body, and everywhere the light struck, the flesh burned. The hands began to beat rapidly against the sand, and the feet kicked out, throwing up clods of sand. Then it began to convulse.

  Scotty kept at it with the light.

  The clothes caught fire then, and the flames went from a barely visible blue to bright yellow and orange, and a perimeter of light went up around us. From about the island you could hear splashing and other sounds of turmoil beneath the water’s surface, and to my shame I admit I shifted a little closer to the burning body to protect myself from what I knew was lurking out there, in the dark.

  Heather had moved over to stand with Scotty. He had his arm around her, but there was no challenge in the gesture.

  We stood there, as the body burned.

  Later, we huddled at the top of the dune.

  Each of us had a flashlight, but we had decided to use only one at a time. Scotty was sweeping his beam in a circle, aiming at the water just off the shore. A few times the light had found one of the people, or things, whatever they could be called, attempting to creep ashore. But mostly what we saw were their eyes, staring just above the surface. The light caught them for only a moment before they jerked back below the surface. But it was enough to make your flesh want to crawl off the bone. More times than I can count I had been driving back from some field study like this, tired and sunburned and ready for a shower and something more civilised than military meal packets to eat, and had spotted animals crossing the road at night, opossums, raccoons, deer, and other wild creatures. They would stop and stare into the headlights, and their eyes would throw back a particular wavelength so that they seemed to be glowing with an internal radiance, strange greens and shades of magenta. But these creatures reflected only blue, a cold, dead blue. Odd. And frightening.

  DeVries moaned once, then lay quietly. The bleeding had all but stopped. For some reason I did not take that as a hopeful sign.

  After a lengthy silence, we began to talk. If you could call it that.

  ‘So, Fred, any theories since the last time I asked,’ Heather started.

  ‘Jesus. I don’t know.’

  ‘What’s happened to these people?’ Scotty asked.

 
‘Don’t know. It’s … it’s unprecedented. I can’t think of a rational explanation. But the man who figures it out will win the Nobel for biology – biology, chemistry, voodoo – you name it.’

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ Heather asked, her tone almost accusing. I was the college professor, the scientist. I suppose I should have had a working thesis by now.

  So I speculated. ‘In many ways the reaction resembles an allergy …’

  ‘An allergic reaction that’s contagious?’

  I threw up my hands helplessly. ‘I don’t think it’s a pathogen, like a virus or a bacteria. Maybe a prion. Or a chemical reaction of some kind.’

  ‘A communicable chemical reaction.’

  ‘Something – I don’t know what – but something is causing the body to metabolise …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  We sat quietly for a moment.

  ‘What do they want?’ Heather asked.

  I sighed. I didn’t want to say the words ‘I don’t know’ again, but it seemed inescapable.

  ‘They’re vampires,’ Scotty said, swinging the flashlight beam around us.

  I snorted. Tired and frightened as I was, I still could not escape the irritating grate of his nonsensical ideas. ‘I think it’s safe to say they won’t turn into bats and suck our blood.’

  ‘OK, Professor. What are they? Zombies?’

  ‘I’m not up on my contemporary horror lore but I wouldn’t call them that, either.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ he sneered. ‘How can they live under the water? How come they want to eat us?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about what motivates movie zombies to seek out human flesh …’

  ‘Brains,’ Scotty said.

  ‘In that case you’ve got nothing to worry about.’

  ‘You’ve been saving up all night for that one, haven’t you, Professor?’

  ‘Well what do they want?’ Heather cut in.

  I shrugged. ‘I really can’t hazard a guess. It could be anything. Some component of our blood …’