Bait: A Novel (15 page)

Ginger couldn’t believe her ears. “You expect us to swim through blood and
body parts
?”

“We’ll give the chum a wide berth,” said Felix. “Swim around it, head for the far side of the island. The sharks will be too attracted to the blood to give a shit about us for a little while.”

Ginger shook her head. “Either that or the chum appetizer will get them in the mood for a main course.”

The blond man dumped the rest of the bucket over the side, bits of Kenny mixed with blood and tuna spreading out over the water. The three survivors resumed their swim using breaststroke, heads above the water to monitor the situation, altering their route to avoid the chum. The Zodiac pulled away to a safe distance and waited. Soon Felix stopped, motioning for the other two to do the same. The first white-tipped fins broke the surface of the red water ahead of them.

“This is crazy,” Nash panted. “So unbelievably ridiculously fucking crazy—”

“Hey,” Felix snapped. “Save your energy.”

A muffled whine suddenly escaped Ginger’s throat, drawing the men’s attention. Her hand was clasped over her mouth, eyes bulging at something behind. They turned, both stifling a cry at the sight. Forty yards away the large fin of the tiger shark rode the waves, picking up speed on approach. Nash and Felix instinctively grabbed their daggers and held them under the water to fend off an attack. As it neared, Nash noticed that the fin wasn’t quite aimed at them. It was offset a few degrees, targeting something else.

“Try not to move much,” he whispered. “I don’t think it’s coming for us.”

The man-eater closed the distance quickly, drifting to their left. The three treaded water with minimal movement, noses just above the surface, watching the tiger shark cruise by less than five yards from their floating bodies. It ignored them completely, focusing strictly on the scent ahead, dwarfing them as it passed. The dorsal fin cut the water, sending ripples against their bobbing heads, the true power and capability of the creature becoming apparent to them all. Nash could see the faded stripes along its body below the surface, markings that gave the beast its name. That the creature had been bestowed with the names of two predators played on his mind. Such a title spoke volumes of its savagery.

And it’s looking for lunch,
Nash thought.

He felt the powerful tail push a current over his submerged body. The fin sped toward the blood and chum, diving just before reaching it. Felix let out a long shudder, his words escaping with a slow exhale of air.

“I think I just pissed myself.”

“I think we all did,” whispered Ginger.

They tucked their daggers away and continued on, trying to make as little disturbance as possible, beginning their wide berth of the blood and chum, noting every fin and tail that splashed and thrashed the surface. Both sections of Maria’s body bobbed in the water, shrinking as bits of her were eaten away.

Targeting the far end of the island added more than fifty yards to the swim, but the enticing safety of the beach caused their quiet advance to lapse. Felix was first, splashing more as he tried to pick up the pace. Ginger followed, churning the water frothy with her limbs. Nash winced at the commotion.

“Hey, stop, you guys.”

Neither of them stopped. In fact, they seemed to make more noise in light of his warning. The sharks would sense the distress soon, if they had not already. Nash shouted as loud as he dared.

“Hey! Quit making so much . . .”

He looked over his shoulder, the rest of his sentence falling down his throat and into the pit of his stomach. Maria’s remains were gone. Halfway between him and the chum was a white-tipped fin, moving curiously toward the sounds of splashing, ignoring the blood behind it. The shark was one of the last to turn up, missing out on the meal of Maria. It had gulped a few pathetic scraps in the water, but was growing disinterested in the lack of actual food in the blood cloud. Nash had no doubt this shark was coming straight for them.

“Guys, stop!”

Felix and Ginger finally heard. They looked back and saw the fin. Panic gripped Ginger and she resumed swimming, splashing louder than before.

“Wait! Don’t move, it will attract—”

Nash’s words fell on waterlogged ears. He looked to Felix and saw the man staring back, mouth hung slack with horror. Another fin, the pointed sail of the tiger, had broken the surface behind the first fin and was coming around in their direction.

“Fuck it!” shouted Felix. “Go, go,
go
!”

They pulled hard for land, heads down, taking breaths only when necessary, closing the distance. The incoming sharks closed their distance too. Three fins now followed, two white-tips and the tiger’s, gathering speed at the sound of thrashing in the water. Nash begged into the brine, promising himself that if he ever got back to the mainland, if he ever made it out alive, he would turn his damned life around, ask forgiveness from everyone he’d wronged, make amends to all that he’d hurt. All those loved ones that heroin had replaced, they’d be getting a phone call to say Nash was alive and well and wanted to see them again. He’d go to rehab. He’d go to church even. He’d be a new man, a good man, a changed man.

“We’re almost there!” cried Felix.

The tiger surged ahead, leading the others like an alpha in a pack of wolves. Felix and Nash found new strength and overtook Ginger. For every yard they gained, the sharks gained three. Nash looked down into the water. He could see the bottom fifteen feet below. Seconds later an escarpment of sand sprang up, cutting the depth to five feet even though they were still a considerable ways from shore.

Nash called to the others, “It’s starting to get shallow!”

Forty yards from the beach Nash stopped and stood in four feet of water. He whirled around in time to see the fins slip under one by one. Felix appeared at his right and both men braced for the sharks’ arrival. Ginger lagged behind, swimming in a breathless frenzy.

“Come on, Ginger!” Nash shouted
“Come on!”

The dorsal fin of the tiger shot up a body length behind her, lunging forward with marauding purpose. Ginger reached out and the men caught her by the wrists. They tried to pull her forward, watching the distorted image of the shark’s mouth open under water, a gaping black hole surrounded by sharp white.

“Save me—”

Seawater filled Ginger’s mouth. Crushing jaws closed over her left foot as Nash and Felix tried to wrench her out of reach. Her body went rigid with the bite, her gargled screams loud enough to make both men’s ears ring. The shark shook her violently, teeth tearing through ligaments and tendons, sawing down to her tibia, where they snapped the bone like a pencil. Nash watched it swallow her foot in one gluttonous gulp before pulling away.

“Oh, God . . . Ginger . . .”

The amputation was disturbingly clean, not at all ragged like Kenny’s had been. Bone and tissue peeked at him from the meat, making him think of raw chicken legs defrosting in a sink. Nash realized he was screaming louder than Ginger.

“Pull yourself together, Nash!” Felix bellowed. “Help me get her to shore!”

Felix pulled Ginger screaming on her back through the water, leaving Nash lagging behind, hanging on to her other arm. Ginger looked down, bewildered by her foot’s absence, not fully comprehending what had just happened. She turned pale, moaning aloud, trying to gather the energy to scream again as the realization sank in. Nash’s cries eclipsed hers.

“Felix! Here they come!”

The tiger was circling around for another attack, but the two white-tips it had been leading were now upon them. More commotion made it easy for the two smaller sharks to hone in and the spreading blood trail from Ginger’s fresh wound was practically a runway to her flesh. The water was shallow, three feet, but the depth was no deterrent. The white-tips came rushing through the sea side by side, making their assault in unison. The first white-tip went low, crashing into Ginger’s right calf from underneath. Her one foot kicked out and walloped it in the gills, discouraging the attack. Its teeth raked the skin of her thigh, but failed to find a grip before going wide.

The second white-tip was more on the mark, and far more determined. It broke the surface and went for Ginger’s left side, the point of its nose ramming her ribs before its jaws clamped over her tiny love handle. Nash reached over and brought his fist down like a hammer on the shark’s head. The white-tip held on, emboldened, shaking its head viciously as Ginger shrieked.

“Stab it!” Felix screamed. “Stab it, stab it, stab it!”

In his panic Nash had forgotten the weapon in his waistband. He snatched the dagger and raised it high above his head, pausing to target the monstrous snout. As he brought the dagger down the white-tip wrenched free a chunk of Ginger and pulled away. The wooden point missed the nose by inches, digging into Ginger’s gaping wound instead.

“Aw, Christ, man,” Felix wailed. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“F-f-fuck, I—I’m s-s-sorry,” Nash stammered, wrenching the dagger out.

Blood gushed from her gored side, spreading through the water in a trail that merged with the one flowing from her stump. Felix kept pulling, but Ginger’s hand was limp in his grasp. What little energy she had left was being used to power her weakening screams.

“Not far now, girl!” Felix shouted. “You stay with us, y’hear? You’re not allowed to die on me now!”

The tiger shark came fully around, racing inbound for a second helping, its fin and back high out of the shallow water. Felix grabbed his dagger and held it out. Nash copied, his breath coming in shaky gasps. He risked a glance at Felix.

“How do you suggest we stop this mother?”

Felix had no answer. The tiger rushed them, smashing Ginger with its flat nose and engulfing her hip and upper thigh in its maw. Both men brought their daggers down on its head. The skin was astonishingly thick, breaking off the tip of Nash’s dagger before it sank an inch. Felix’s strike did not fare much better. The shark jarred at the sting of the attack, but would not release. It wasn’t leaving without another mouthful.

Felix wrenched his dagger out of the skin and brought it down again near the eye, sinking it deeper than before. The shark shook Ginger savagely, sounds of breaking bone and tearing skin filling the air. Felix managed one more stab and the shark pulled away, taking Ginger’s footless leg with it and leaving a grotesque concave bite where her thigh once connected to her hip. Felix let out a cry of dismay and continued to pull Ginger toward the beach, Nash stumbling alongside. A white-tip fin rose quickly from the water on their right, blindsiding everyone, going unnoticed until it was upon them.

The first white-tip that had failed to get its pound of flesh rushed them defiantly in two feet of water. It lunged into Ginger’s bleeding side, jaws pressed against her rib cage, teeth locked in. Ginger’s cries hoarsened and withered. Felix released her and clasped his dagger in both hands, bringing it down hard on the flat of the shark’s head, sinking the point deep. It let go and rolled, thrashing wildly, exposing its underside.

“Bitch!” he shrieked. “You goddamn
bitch
!”

Nash took over and pulled Ginger to shore, glancing back as Felix grabbed the shark by the tail and dragged it through the shallows. When the bitch was beached in less than a foot of water, Felix dropped to his knees with his dagger and stabbed furiously.

“We ain’t so easy out of the water, are we?”

He struck again and again. The shark’s thrashing subsided, jaws opening and closing uselessly on water and air. Over twenty blood-trickling puncture marks were left on the white belly before Felix was finished. Nash stared in disbelief as he pulled Ginger onto the beach. He didn’t need to take her pulse to know she was already dead.

“Eat
that
!” roared Felix, pushing the twitching body of the white-tip out to deeper water where the other sharks waited.

Felix waded ashore, staggering with each step. Nash sat on the sand, sick and stunned, still holding on to Ginger’s hand. He caressed her flaccid fingers and looked over what remained. The missing leg was surreal. Nash was sure it had been the same one that cramped up on her. Intestinal tract spilled out of the hole in her side and coiled on the beach, where sand dusted it, resembling some hideous funnel cake.

“Ginger,” Nash whispered, tears welling. “I’m so sorry.”

Felix collapsed beside him, exhausted. He took one look at Ginger’s evisceration and puked. Nash looked on as the injured white-tip was attacked in a frenzy of cannibalism. He could think of no worse fate in this world than being eaten alive.

H
e could think of no worse fate than being eaten alive, and Greer had seen much savagery in his life. He saw it as the pinnacle of pain, perhaps the greatest fear among all humans, to be consumed by something higher on the food chain while fully awake, aware that you were being separated and digested, reduced to nothing more than meat for a monster.

“I don’t believe it,” Turk said, climbing back aboard the yacht. “He actually wasted that white-tip.”

Buchanan nodded as he secured the Zodiac to the stern. “That boy’s got balls the size of goddamn grapefruits.”

None of the four men applauded this time, although Felix’s show of force was most deserving. Greer and Reposo stood watching the sharks attack the crippled member of their shiver in the shallows. Empty beer bottles littered the deck; an ashtray stuffed with the burned remnants of cigars lay in the middle of them. Buchanan negotiated the litter and lay back down on the deck with his M107. He used the scope to survey the spot where Nash and Felix sat.

“Get good footage?” Greer asked.

Buchanan grinned. “That junkie bitch just made the highlight reel.”

Greer turned his attention to the survivors and waited. Felix and Nash did not move an inch. Buchanan redirected his scope to the commotion in the shallows where the sharks were finishing off the wounded white-tip. The white underside sank below the reddened waves. Circling fins followed it down.

“Didn’t see that one coming,” said Reposo. “Man beats shark.”

“Four down, two to go,” said Greer, lighting up another cigar. “You boys ready for the grand finale?”

“Hell yeah.” Turk chuckled. “I gotta say how impressed I was this time. These folks were no disappointment—”

“Ah, shit.”

They all turned to Buchanan, who was now pointing his M107 in a slightly different direction. Through the sniper scope he had seen something that no one else had. He glanced over his shoulder, at the cabin where the radio and radar were housed. Both of which hadn’t been properly monitored in the last hour.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “we may have a problem. . . .”