"Gonna make it," Ryan gasped, lips peeled back off his strong white teeth in a feral grin.
The raft was bobbing along steadily, now only a quarter mile or so off the beach ahead of them. Every yard of progress was harder than the one before as the swirling tide worked against their efforts. Some of the ropes were becoming loose, the drums rattling and banging against one another. Also, Ryan noticed that they were slowly settling deeper in the water, indicating that some of the chemical containers had tiny leaks.
Lori and Doc had both given up, tired out from paddling. Krysty, Jak and Donfil were all laboring, breath rasping, sweat-soaked. Only J.B. and Ryan kept up a steady stroke, plowing their way remorselessly north.
Away to their left and a little beyond them, Ryan had noticed some kind of disturbance of the sea. But the rise and fall of the long Atlantic rollers made it hard to see what was happening. There was some spray and tossing white water, and a horde of screaming black-capped gulls.
But the muscle-tearing effort of fighting against the pitching of the raft distracted him from trying to investigate the incident any further.
Two narrow promontories of jumbled granite boulders stuck out into the sea for a couple of hundred yards, sheltering the beach from the wind, giving an area of calmer water. Once they were within the horns Ryan relaxed a little, knowing they could almost glide in from there. The others also felt it, smiling at one another. Donfil spread himself across the cans, allowing his long arms to dangle into the sea, peering down.
"Very clear, the water," he said, voice lifted above the lapping of the waves on the nearby beach. "Must be thirty feet deep, but you can see nearly all the way to the bottom."
"Any buried treasure?" Doc asked, lifting himself on one elbow.
The Apache shook his head, his jet-black, shoulder-length hair trailing into the water. "No. Lot of sand and some rocks."
Doc was chirpier now that they were so close to safety. "I dabbled somewhat in ichthyology in my youth."
"You what?"
"Ichthyology."
"What's that, Doc?" Krysty asked.
He dabbed spray off his face. "It is, my dearest flame-headed lady, the study of big fishes that have little fishes to bite them. And little fishes, smaller fishes and so on, ad infinitum." He cackled with laughter at a joke that nobody understood.
"You read all 'bout fishes?" Jak asked. "How they kill?"
"Yes. I recall that these chilly waters off the northeastern states were particularly fruitful for the larger fish and mammals of the oceans."
"Sharks and whales? We had them not far from my ville when I was a boy," Ryan said. "Some big bastards, so the fishermen said. I never saw none of them that big."
"I never saw any," Krysty corrected.
"You haven't done that in an age," he complained, keeping the rough paddle dipping and pulling.
"Haven't needed to, lover." She smiled.
"This used to be a big center for the Yankee whaling industry when I was a shaver," Doc reminisced. "New England's bravest. Battling monster whales from cockleshell dories. All done now. They got hunted near to destruction. Right whales, blues, sperm whales. Lots of species, I'm ashamed to say. Man's inhumanity to his fellow creatures that... What was that?"
The raft tipped suddenly, sending solid water across its rough deck of bound timbers. As quickly as it had rocked, it became still again.
"See anything, Donfil?" Ryan asked, half standing, holding his hewn branch like a harpoon, hefted against any threat.
The shaman rolled over, water dripping in slow beads from his hair. Behind the glasses his eyes were invisible, but his voice was slow, and oddly, artificially calm.
"You asked if I saw anything, Ryan Cawdor?"
"Yeah. What?.."
"I saw grinning death, my brother. That iswhat I saw."
Krysty had one hand just on the edge of the raft, barely touching the surface of the icy waters. But she gave a sharp cry of shock as she felt something brush against her.
"What?" Ryan said.
"Gaia! Something very big, lover. Skin rough as sandpaper. But... Oh, so big."
"Fish," the Indian managed to say. "Bigger than any fish I ever heard of. Bigger than me. Bigger than this raft. Maybe bigger than the island. Moved slow on us, and I saw its eye look up and eat into my soul. Coldest deadest thing I ever saw."
"Where is it?"
Lori was standing, pointing ahead of them, where the calm water lapped toward the shelving beach, now mocking them from a hundred yards away.
"Saw the water move like folding in on itself," she said quietly.
"Big whales and sharks can be curious," Doc offered. "It's possible he's just nosing around us. Nothing better to do."
"Turning," Jak said, pistol drawn, the long barrel of his satin-finish .357 glittering in the cold sunlight as he pointed to their right.
"Get ready," Ryan warned.
"Holy..." Doc began, but the word was choked back in his throat.
It was another feigned attack, the creature swimming ponderously under the raft, its back scraping on the bottom of the chemical drums, making the whole thing rock from side to side. Ryan peered down at it, holding the G-12 ready in his hands, the control set on full-automatic. It wasn't an occasion to mess around with single shots.
"Maybe it'll fuck off," Lori said hopefully, voice an octave higher than usual with the tension.
"Maybe," Ryan agreed. "You're the damned expert, Doc. What d'you say?"
"I say it's some sort of mutie crossbreed monster, half Orcinus orca."
"What?"
"Killer whale. The black coloring and head shape show that."
"What's the other half?" J.B. asked, mini-Uzi in his right hand, eyes scanning the placid waters of the bay.
Doc cleared his throat nervously. "From the look of the rest of it and the way it rolled as it made its pass at us, I fear that it might be Carcharodon carcharias."
"What the hell is that?" Ryan asked. "Sounds like something you'd pick up in a frontier gaudy house, doesn't it?"
There was no answering smile. "That would be a blessing compared to this, Mr. Cawdor. Carcharodon carchariasis the proper name of the great white shark."
"A painted ship upon... upon... I forget what." Doc glanced at the still water.
Ryan had ordered them to stop paddling, guessing that the splashing might be attracting the beast. The raft was wallowing lower in the sea, the small waves kissing its sides, occasionally lapping clear over its top. The tide seemed to be turning, holding them in place. Not easing them in toward the shore. Not sucking them back toward the open Lantic Ocean.
More than ten minutes had trickled by, without any further sign of the monster whale-shark. All of them were trying to watch for it, but a light wind had sprung up, sending ruffling cat's-paws across the surface of the water, making it impossible to see below.
Ryan's finger was still tight on the trigger of the automatic caseless rifle. He was about to tell the other six to begin paddling again.
The creature came up almost directly beneath them, like a nuke exploding from its silo. The only hint of warning was the circling, wailing gulls.
Ryan's razor-honed reflexes saved him from being thrown off the raft. He and J.B. were the only two able to cling on; the other five were hurled into the frothing water.
Ryan glimpsed the little doll eye that stared blankly at him from inches away. There was an exhalation of stinking air and the gleam of row upon row of serrated teeth. The raft was pitched over, heeling vertically, then pulled back to the level by the weight of water in the leaking drums.