Shark Island Page 23

  Wolchko rose and fell on the churning sea, frozen with uncertainty. If he climbed, he’d fall. If he left his position, he’d die. If he stayed where he was—

  Thud.

  The shout that came from his lips belonged not to the adult man, the scientist. It came from the boy he’d once been, for whom real fear had seemed so much nearer, so much more intimate, as close as the nearest shadow. Wolchko spun and stared at the shark as it strained against the lattice, its head thrusting through a hole just under the water like a dog snarling at the end of its chain.

  Another thud struck the south side of the tower and the whole structure clanged. Rust drifted down from inside, falling on his head like tainted snow. That shark kept moving, the fin curving away from the tower, maybe circling around for another run. Wolchko bled into the water and the tower squealed as if it were sobbing, the high keening wail of a dying thing.

  Then Wolchko saw the circling fin turn back toward the tower … out to the east, so that now it arrowed straight for the gaping open wound in the structure. A swell rolled past and Wolchko sank into a trough. His boots hit the rock of Bald Cap for just an instant before the water began to rise again, and in that same instant he saw the real size of the hole in the tower’s eastern face. And the shark came on.

  “Eddie? Eddie, get out of the water!” Rosalie shouted from above. “Is that you down there? You have to—”

  Wolchko climbed. Hand over hand. Boots searching for purchase, slipping and then catching. The tower slanted inward on all sides, making him climb an angle that dragged on him, as if the ocean itself wanted to pull him off the metal. He would fall. No question of if, only when. Seconds, he thought. Wolchko flashed back to childhood jungle gyms as he dragged himself through the diamond-shaped opening, awkwardly, all elbows and knees. Even as a boy he had not been agile, and boyhood had been so long ago.

  He heard the rush of water being dispersed and risked a glance back through, into the interior of the tower. The shark surfaced as it smashed through the hole, its bulk knocking aside a rusty bar that hung from one last bolt.

  When Wolchko screamed it wasn’t the little boy he’d been doing the screaming. It was the man. The man who’d lived and loved and struggled to understand the world but now knew, above all, that he didn’t want to leave it. His upper body was on the outside of the tower, his lower body still only halfway through the lattice. He reached up, grabbed bars he couldn’t even see, and slid his hips and legs free. The shark had lunged from the water and it smashed into the lattice in the very spot his legs had been a moment before. Wolchko lost his footing, lost the grip of his right hand, and hung only from his left as the shark’s snout raked downward and it crashed back into the water, inside the tower. Trapped in that cage, for at least a few moments.

  Wolchko regained his footing, reached up to climb.

  His hand grabbed nothing but air.

  The sound of rending metal enveloped him as he felt himself toppling forward. Tye and Rosalie screamed, but Wolchko didn’t look up. He clung to the lattice and rode it down. The tower fell slowly, so slowly, buoyed by the water. It crashed into the sea, coming to rest on Bald Cap. The rocky island remained underwater, but only five or six feet now. Wolchko found himself on top of the metal lattice and he stood carefully, wind and rain slashing at him.

  “Rosalie?” he called. “Tye?”

  The platform jutted out over the edge of Bald Cap. The fallen tower slanted into the water. The remaining wall fragment had submerged completely. The bottom of the tower had been four feet wider than the top, where it supported the platform, so Wolchko retreated toward the rear of the fallen structure. Like the arm of a crane, it reached out from where he stood, narrowing, the water washing over the far end. Wolchko stood eight feet above the water, but as a swell rolled toward him his breath caught in his throat. The water washed over the entire fallen tower, covering everything to his ankles for a moment before subsiding. He glanced around, saw the circling fins, and knew. Eight feet wouldn’t be nearly enough.

  “Eddie?” a voice called, and then he saw Rosalie dragging herself up onto the fallen tower. Tye lay behind her in the water, holding on to the lattice. “Help me!”

  Wolchko hurried as best he could, boots slipping on rust as the water washed over the tower again. He stared down, knowing not all of these bars were safe, afraid one would snap and his leg would go through. When he looked up, he found himself eye to eye with Rosalie, who pleaded with him to help.

  “Come on, Tye,” Wolchko said, kneeling painfully on the lattice. “Up you go.”

  Together, he and Rosalie maneuvered Tye out of the water and got him onto his feet. Tye mumbled thanks, but he’d lost so much blood that he could barely keep his head up and Wolchko and Rosalie had to stop him from stepping down into the open spaces underfoot.

  “Eddie, what are we supposed to do?” Rosalie asked, but he knew this woman. She wasn’t expecting a rescue. She just needed to know she wasn’t alone.

  The crash came from beneath them. Rosalie shouted more in fury than in fear, past the point of terror. Wolchko stumbled and lost his grip on Tye. He tried to hold on, tried to save the other man, but instead they both pitched forward. Wolchko smashed face-first onto the rusty lattice and found himself staring down into the dark cage of the fallen tower, where the fourteen-foot Great White had become trapped. It lunged upward, smashing itself against the lattice, fin poking up through one of the holes. It thrashed sideways and the whole tower shifted, turned, skidded along the sunken rocks of Bald Cap.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Rosalie said, on her hands and knees, just trying to hold on.

  Tye’s left arm hung down inside the cage. His right knee had bent and slid through. Wolchko didn’t think. He didn’t feel. He just grabbed hold of Tye and started to drag him. The other man’s leg caught at a strange angle, but Wolchko kept pulling, fighting that resistance. Rosalie helped him, but this time when they pulled, Tye’s eyes went wide with pain and he fought them, twisted and turned, and slipped down inside the trestlework. He fell into the water as Rosalie screamed and reached down into the fallen tower to try to grab for him. Wolchko wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her back, forced her to walk, stumbling, up to the higher end of the tower.

  Through the lattice, they could hear Tye shouting weakly. The shark thrashed harder, furious because Tye had fallen behind it and the monster had been hemmed in by the sides of the tower. It tried to turn, tried to smash the lattice on either side, but it couldn’t reach Tye. Not as long as it stayed where it was. Behind it, behind Tye, was the platform, which closed off that end of the tower. But ahead of it, where the tower had been fastened to the rock face of Bald Cap, the cage yawned wide open.

  The shark began to move forward, toward freedom. Toward a place where it could turn itself around. In the water, injured and disoriented and weak from blood loss, Tye began to cry out for someone to help him.

  “Climb out!” Wolchko shouted. “Just pull yourself out, crawl through, and get up on top!”

  Tye didn’t reply at first. Rosalie started back the way they’d come, but Wolchko grabbed her firmly by the arm and yanked her back. She stumbled and slipped off the bars and her leg shot through a hole, but he stopped her, hauled her up with both hands.

  “Let me go!” she snapped, knocking his hands away.

  Over the wind and the sea, they heard Tye reply at last.

  “Kat?” he called out, voice thin and reedy. “Is that you?”

  Rosalie’s eyes widened and she turned to stare at Wolchko, seeking silent confirmation that they’d both heard the voice, that they both knew what it meant. Tye had become so disoriented now that he no longer remembered that the sharks had already taken the woman he loved. Wolchko thought of his Antonia and he knew what she would have said now, knew she would have demanded that he go back down along the fallen tower and try to fish Tye up out through the lattice, get him out of the water.

  “We can’t just leave him,” Rosalie said, eyes implo
ring.

  Wolchko swore softly. “All right.” He jabbed a finger in her direction. “But you stay here. Keep the high ground. If they hit it again, hold on for—”

  Rosalie scowled. “Fuck that. I may not be brave, but I’m no little kid. He’s my friend.”

  Wolchko glanced back to see the shark had turned and now arrowed straight for the open end of the fallen tower. For a heartbeat he closed his eyes, kissed the tips of his fingers, and offered that kiss up to the sky, to Antonia, wherever she might be. When he opened his eyes, Rosalie had already started moving quickly along the tower, picking her steps carefully. Up ahead, Tye called out for Kat again, and Wolchko wondered if Kat could hear him, if her spirit might not be far away at all, if she’d stayed, knowing Tye wouldn’t be far behind. As Wolchko started after Rosalie, the thought unsettled him, but it warmed him as well, made him wonder if Antonia’s spirit might also be near. Knowing her, being in love with her, was the only thing in his life that had ever made him believe there might be life after death.

  His boots splashed into the water as a swell washed over the fallen tower. A glance back and he saw the huge fin rushing at the tower opening. Rosalie knelt down in the water, cried out as the current forced her to hold on to avoid being washed away. Wolchko dropped to his knees beside her and stared down into the water, knowing Tye was underwater now, that for a few seconds he would be drowning.

  The swell subsided. A trough dropped the water level all the way down to bare rock. Something thrashed inside the tower and Wolchko didn’t have to look back to know it would be the shark, momentarily drowning in air the same way Tye had been in the water a second ago.

  “Now!” Rosalie shouted at him.

  They both thrust their arms down through the openings in the lattice, shouting Tye’s name. Wolchko saw him, hunched over on hands and knees, coughing up seawater. He roared the man’s name again as the water level began to even out. Tye put out his arms to keep himself afloat.

  “Goddammit, stand up and reach for us or you’re dead!” Rosalie shouted.

  To Wolchko’s astonishment, Tye did precisely that. His head snapped back, his eyes clear and alert, and he rocketed to his feet, grabbed both of their hands, and let them hoist him up. He grabbed the crossbars as the water level rose inside the fallen tower. Rosalie snapped at him and at Wolchko, and together they got Tye up inside the lattice. His head and shoulders were out, his hands and arms giving him leverage as he started to hoist himself up.

  The shark took him then. Ripped him so hard on its way toward the dead end of the tower that the crisscross rusty bars caught his upper body by the armpits and his lower body was torn away. Tye didn’t have time to scream. His face went slack and his eyes flat and dull. Blood and offal filled the water and Rosalie screamed and scrambled on hands and knees back the way they’d come, moving in swift horror toward the higher end of the fallen tower. Wolchko knelt there, unable even to retreat. He could only stare at Tye’s dead face, knowing that below his rib cage there was nothing left of him.

  Then the shark hit the platform from inside the tower, crashed into it so hard that the tower slid scraping along the rock. The shark began to thrash again, twisting and seizing in the water, trapped in that case for at least a few moments. The rusty bars jumped and shook and Wolchko started to back away, moving toward Rosalie.

  He didn’t see the second shark before it crashed into the platform end, turning the tower on the rocks like a compass needle. Rosalie shouted for him to hold on, but he knew that much. A swell rose and washed over the fallen tower and he saw a shark rising with it, coming toward him, and he closed his eyes as it skidded against the tower, smashing against it, passing within two feet of him but unable to get its teeth into his flesh.

  Another struck the back of the tower and it shook again, scraped again, and he felt the tower begin to slide, as if it might just slide right off Bald Cap and into the channel. Rosalie cried a prayer. Wolchko held on and wondered just how close his Antonia must be now.

  CHAPTER 45

  Naomi’s chest burned and her eyes felt as if they would burst from her skull. Everything inside her screamed at her to swim for the surface. She fought the temptation to open her mouth, to try to breathe the sea into her lungs, and yet somehow at the same time her throat felt closed, as if no air or water could ever enter there again.

  The salt had stopped stinging her eyes, but even with them wide open she could see very little down in the murk. Surfaces and shapes guided her and her hands. She had hold of the lip of metal that ran around the roof of the wheelhouse and she used it to anchor herself. The cold had flayed her to the bones, but she kept moving, dragged herself down through the shattered windshield of the wheelhouse.

  She felt the impact, felt the familiar tug, and air bubbled from her lips as she let out the leading edge of a scream underwater. Then she clamped her lips shut and fought. Whipping her head around even as she held on to the broken windshield frame, she saw the shark clamped on to her leg and her eyes were wider than ever, panic searing through her, blackness eroding the edges of her vision as her brain began to suffer from oxygen deprivation. Again. It was happening again. The shark jerked its head back and forth and she should have been bleeding, should have been shrieking, should have been dying. Except this shark hadn’t been the first. Its jaws were clamped down on her prosthetic leg, sawing at something it didn’t want.

  Naomi felt something give way, saw the prosthetic twist into a mangled thing, and knew she had to fight. She tightened her grip on the windshield frame and pulled, twisted her hips, and kicked with her good leg and tried to tear herself loose.

  Something huge filled the left side of her peripheral vision and she knew she was about to die, that this shark would get flesh and bone and blood from her. But then she glanced back to see it wasn’t a shark at all, but a man. The fisherman, Walter.

  And his knife.

  Walter punched his blade through the shark’s eye and its jaws opened. Released, out of air, Naomi rocketed through the shattered windshield, grabbed hold of the wheel, and maneuvered herself around so she was facing the control panel.

  She didn’t even have to look for the box Rosalie had described. Airtight, it floated there, anchored to the panel by long cables. Her fingers closed around it, and she pulled with all the strength remaining in her.

  The blackness at the edges of her vision closed in. Her chest began to heave, her body to seize, and then she couldn’t stop herself. She opened her mouth and let the ocean in.

  She barely felt the hand that grabbed at her shirt and began to haul her toward the surface. Toward air.

  CHAPTER 46

  On his hands and knees on the fallen tower, Wolchko saw the swell rising, saw the water washing over the metalwork, and he held his breath and closed his eyes, wondering. As the current dragged at him, he felt his knees slide out from under him. His fingers clutched at the rusted bars and he counted to five, after which the swell had passed.

  “Eddie, get up!” Rosalie said.

  Wolchko lay on his face and belly, fully stretched out by the passing swell. But Rosalie was right. They had to be at the highest point. The tide had begun to go out, the storm surge dropping. The tower had been skidding along the rocks, but the lattice had caught on an outcropping or something, been snagged there. The sharks would smash it off; he felt confident of that. But how soon? If the tower would just stay caught on the rocks long enough for the water to recede from Bald Cap, they’d be safe. They’d live.

  “Eddie!” Rosalie called. “Get up!”

  But her voice was different now. Confused.

  Wolchko glanced up at her, saw her gaze drifting along the horizon, and followed it. He rose to his knees and saw a Great White—as big as any they’d seen—passing right by them, only a dozen or so feet away. It kept going northward without turning, without circling back. When it submerged, its fin vanishing into the water, it seemed to stay its course. Away.

  Other fins were nearby, but they al
so seemed to be shifting direction. For so long they had been circling the sunken boat with such ominous intent that it was easy to see the break in the pattern.

  Even the seals began to disperse. And Wolchko knew it wasn’t the sharks’ hunting pattern that had broken but the signal. His signal. Even with all of the blood that had been spilled in the water, the sharks were leaving.

  They’d had their fill.

  He stood and began staggering up the incline of the fallen tower, careful not to fall through, thinking of Kat and Tye and Captain N’Dour and Bergting and Naomi—damn it, Naomi—and then he heard a splash behind him. Rosalie shouted and pointed and Wolchko knew it had been too good to be true. Just a trick of his imagination, a tortured hope. He knew the sharks were turning around, coming back to finish them.

  Then he heard Walter’s voice.

  “Hey, you assholes, I could use a little help here!”

  Wolchko stared in astonishment as Walter swam toward the rusted tower, dragging Naomi with him. She looked unconscious or dead, and that snapped Wolchko out of his momentary paralysis. Sharks had tried to kill her once. If they could save her, if he could help to save her, maybe he could learn to live with the horror their experiment had caused.

  Maybe.

  “Here! Over here and we’ll drag her out!” Rosalie called.

  Then Wolchko and Rosalie were on their knees again, just like with Tye, only this time there was no more blood. No more screaming. They lifted Naomi from the water and then Wolchko helped Walter climb up onto the broken tower as Rosalie began CPR. It took only a few breaths and two pumps of her chest before Naomi coughed seawater, head lolling sideways as she choked and coughed and let it spill out of her.