Black Tide (6 page)

‘Who's to say
what
they do?' Scotty hissed. ‘They're the damn government, and the government lies all the time.'

‘Sure. And they've got a flying saucer hidden in one of their hangars.'

Scotty stiffened and he started to get up. I had the feeling he was defending Heather's point of view more than simply arguing for a solution, but either way he was angry again, angry like he'd been the moment Heather had seen the mist. He was halfway out of his crouch when he froze and cocked an ear. Heather looked down-sound. Then I heard it too.

A boat motor.

The sound was strangely incongruous in the deafening silence, but it was the first human sound we'd heard all afternoon, apart from the screaming and our own squabbling. We all stood up. I flipped on the flashlight and began waving it frantically. Heather scrambled back to the tents to fetch her flashlight. Scotty jumped up and down, waving his hands idiotically and shouting, ‘HERE! HERE!' as if the person on the boat could see him in the inky darkness, or hear his voice over the sound of the motor.

Heather rejoined us and aimed her flashlight beam into the sound. Suddenly, I could see it. The red and green running lights of a boat. The operator had a small spotlight swinging to and fro across the water. The beam stood out like the ray from a Martian war machine, peeling back the dark. Suddenly, it blinded us.

‘HERE!' Scotty shrieked, cavorting maniacally. ‘YEAH, MAN! RIGHT HERE!'

The boat turned in our direction. Relief gushed out of me. Heather latched on to my arm and laid her head against my shoulder and sighed. I wanted to put my arm around her shoulder and gather her in, but I couldn't; she wouldn't let go. Scotty turned around, glimpsed us, started to turn back, then slowly turned around again. Heather let go.

‘I'd better start packing our stuff.'

I watched her head back to the tents, and when I turned back, Scotty was still staring, his eyes slitted now and measuring me. I think for a moment he actually felt threatened. But then he turned and resumed waving to the approaching boat.

As the boat came closer it assumed the familiar shape of DeVries' Boston Whaler. I felt a surge of gratitude for the man – that he'd remembered us out here and had thought to come rescue us in the wake of whatever disaster had befallen Fort Walton Beach. I wanted off this island. I wanted to be back in my classroom, among my colleagues, and mired within the mundane concerns of school and life. I wanted no part of this ecological catastrophe – and that's what I'd come to believe happened here. It wasn't a nerve gas spill or a chemical discharge. It was an emission by an unknown phytoplankton that caused a violent reaction in vascular organisms. I was convinced of that. When I returned to Gainesville, someone among us would sit down and analyse the samples I'd collected and come to a reasonable conclusion in the blessed light of rationality. But right now, out here in the superheated dark, with a carpet of death floating by, I only wanted to be home.

I went to help Heather pack. She was neatly unpegging the tents and brushing sand from the nylon.

‘No,' I told her. ‘Leave 'em. Just get the equipment and the samples.'

‘Fred?' she frowned at me. ‘This stuff is expensive.'

‘I don't care. The sooner we're on that boat and heading back to civilisation the better I'll feel.'

She offered me a sly smile. ‘I thought you were looking forward to a long weekend of obsessing over red tide.'

‘That was before this – and Scotty.'

She stopped and frowned hard this time, turning to look up sternly. Her voice dropped to a husky whisper. ‘What does Scotty have to do with anything …'

‘He's a jerk,' I whispered back. ‘He contradicts everything I say …'

‘I think you're just jealous,' she cut in with what I knew was feigned petulance.

‘He makes me feel old.'

She rolled her eyes. ‘You're not exactly a candidate for the rocking chair,' she said, and I felt a little better. Then she continued, ‘Maybe for one of those three-toed canes, but definitely not a rocker.' She snickered and winked at me.

In the distance, over the burble of the Evinrude, I heard DeVries call out, ‘DOCTOR MILLERRRRR! ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?'

I stood up and got a shot of his searchlight, right in the eyes, which momentarily blinded me. That's why I wasn't able to see what happened next. I heard it first, but only after the spots cleared and my sight returned was I able to make out what was going on. I might have chosen to remain blind the rest of my life had I known what I would see.

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.