Chapter 32
Bubbles brush my cheek. For a moment, I’m suspended there, watching them escape from the side of my mouth, drifting up. The back of my head throbs. All I know is that I’m under the water.
And there are sharks all around me.
Fear travels like a flood down my veins, pooling into my heart with a violent gushing surge. My panic makes it hard to think, and my throat and chest are already starting to burn.
I tilt my head up. It’s so dark under the water, it’s hard to even see the surface. My body begins to rise, and I scramble frantically for the surface, arms thrashing. Then I see it. Blood dripping down my wrist and elbow.
Sharks can smell a drop of blood a mile away…
I grab my wrist as I rise, clapping my free hand around it, trying desperately to stem the blood flow.
Don’t splash.
My chin breaks the surface, and I gasp for breath, ignoring the searing pain in my ribs as I suck in breath after breath.
I tread water painfully, hand still wrapped tight on my wrist, making my movements as small as possible.
My eyes dart around the surface and my breath catches in my throat. Oh my God. Where’s the boat?
I bite my lip to keep from crying out as I frantically scan the surface for the Reel Easy. I replay the last moment before Luke pushed me off. I didn’t fall far from the boat. I couldn’t have. I twist my body carefully, trying not to make any large movements.
And something brushes my left foot.
I go completely still, heart smashing against my rib cage.
Shut up, I tell my heart. They’ll hear it!
My body is sinking, my chin dropping below the water. I reach out instinctively, pushing at the water so I don’t drop below the surface.
Be still. Breathe!
My lips and chin shake so badly, it’s hard to snatch a breath. My breathing is raspy, terrified, my muscles tense and tight.
Find the boat!
Find the fucking boat!
I’m looking over my shoulder, desperately scanning the surface, when the first hit comes.
I don’t even have time to cry out as I’m thrown off-balance, cheek hitting the water, arms and legs pirouetting.
The impact knocks the wind out of me, emptying my lungs, leaving me numb with shock.
I hang there, dazed, shaking my head as if to clear it.
It comes to me in fragments.
The cold. Water filling my ears. A ringing in my head. Bubbles everywhere. Blood dripping down the cuff of my wrist. The dark, the dark.
And something else. I go completely still, peering down through the water.
There’s something below me. Circling.
A shadow in the water.
If a shark is in attack mode, try to fend it off with your hands. Strike at the most sensitive parts…the eyes or gills.
I thrust my arms out in front of me, and the blood drips onto the surface. I spin in a frantic circle. The boat. My only hope is getting back to the Reel Easy. I can’t think about Luke. Can’t think about anything else but getting out of the water.
I squint hard and see the faint outline of the boat twenty meters away, the skull and crossbones of the Reel Easy flag flapping softly in the wind.
I surge forward, freestyling as fast as I can, terrified Luke will gun the engine and leave me here.
But the boat isn’t moving. It’s drifting in the current, eerily silent.
Get to the boat. Get to the boat.
But what if Luke’s pulled the boarding ladder up?
It happened before on the Deep Sea. It must have been summer because the sky was bright and blue and endless.
And hot. I wanted to ask if we’d be going home soon, but I wasn’t dumb enough to speak when Dad was fishing.
So, I lowered myself over the side and jumped in.
But when I rose up to the surface, Heath’s anxious face peered over the side.
Just cooling off, I called out. I’m coming back in now.
Dad snorted, raised an eyebrow. How you gonna get back in?
I treaded water, confused. I’d thought I’d haul myself up the stern of the boat, near the outboard. Wordlessly, I swam to the back and tried to pull myself up.
I couldn’t.
Freeboard, Heath told me later. The term for the height of the boat in the water. Ours is two and a half meters, Min. If you jump off, there’s no way to get back on…
My legs start cramping. I grab at my left calf. My hand is so numb that I can’t even feel it, and it’s too far to swim to shore.
I race for the boat, swimming as fast as I can.
I’m halfway there when something grazes my left knee.
I lash out, thrusting my fists under the water, kicking hard.
My foot connects with something solid. I kick again, harder.
Water rushes into my mouth. I choke on it, spitting it up, hitting and kicking the whole time.
I duck my head under, throwing punches, striking left, then right, exhaling with effort, a stream of bubbles escaping my mouth.
They stir the water up, like someone’s blowing smoke in my face, and I can’t see a damn thing.
My arms are floating up near my chin, lost in the bubbles, aching with the effort of striking through the cement-like water.
For a moment, everything goes still. My mind slows, my lungs empty. Then the water begins to clear. It happens so slow and so damn quick. My head is tilted back, watching the little bubbles float up, up, up to the surface, like vapor floating up to a dark sky.
Something tugs at my chest, like it’s gripping both sides of my heart in its cold fists.
It’s here. It’s here.
Some things you’re just not supposed to see. Some things are so horrific, your brain goes slow with the shock of trying to process it.
Like this.
Like this thing.
This is what my family have spent a lifetime hunting. It charges out of the deep, so fast, too fast. My mind is numb, slow with terror.
Death. It looks like death.
Flat black eyes stare through me, like it sees only my bones, flesh. And wants them. Wants them all.
The world stops. Torpedo-shaped body. The words are dredged from the back of my mind. It’s huge, shockingly huge. Bigger than the whole sky and ocean put together. It’s covered in scars, running down its pointed snout, stretching under its chin. Angry. Red. Gouge marks.
And its mouth is a conveyor belt of teeth.
Its wide-open mouth.
Sharks rip their prey into mouth-sized pieces…and swallow them whole.
I scream, the sound ricocheting through my ears and the water. I push both arms out in front of me, curl them into stupid fists, and start swinging.
Closer, closer.
Two arm lengths away.
It’s not stopping. It’s not stopping.
I feel like I’m paused at a pedestrian crossing, and the car in front of me won’t slow down.
It’s hurtling forward, closer, closer. I swing my right fist as hard as I can, and it flinches away, my fingers skimming the rough surface of its cold skin.
I pull back as it charges past my face, sinking lower in the water.
Heart pounding so hard, my entire face is numb.
Get to the boat!
I resurface noisily, scrambling to the Reel Easy, my arms so heavy that it’s hard to lift them. But it’s closer, so close I can see the aluminum hull glinting in the dark.
I slap my fist against the side of the hull, tilting my head all the way back, trying to scan the boat for Luke. But I can’t see up over the side. I can’t see shit.
Where’s the ladder? Where’s the ladder?
I tread water beside the boat, legs and arms growing heavier as the fin cuts through the water, straight at me.
There!
I lunge for the boarding ladder, gripping the rail and hauling myself out. I scramble up the stairs, pulling my feet up, darting glances over my shoulder as the fin ducks below the surface.
I collapse in the boat, heart roaring in my ears.
The Reel Easy is dead silent. I peer at the skipper’s chair.
Luke.
I clamp a hand to my ribs, breathing slow and shallow. Luke is slumped in the chair, my knife stuck in his chest.