White Shark (34 page)
Authors: Peter Benchley
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Mystery, #Suspense, #Thriller, #Horror
She dropped the film into the pocket of
her skirt and started to run.
She knew Max would be there, he wouldn’t
have gotten impatient and gone off on his own to look for film; she was sure he
trusted her as much as she trusted him, liked her as much as she liked
him.
It had never occurred to her to
wonder why she liked him more than other boys she knew, for she wasn't an
analytical person, she was an accepting person.
She took every day as it came, knowing there'd be something new in it
and something old, something good and something bad.
She just liked
him, that
was all, and when he went away — as he would, for nothing was forever, her
fever had taught her that — she would continue to like him.
If he came back, that would be good; if he
didn't, that would be too bad.
At least
she would have had someone to like a lot for a period of time, and that was
better than not having had someone to like a lot.
For the moment, all she wanted to do was
get the film to him and see his face light up when she gave it to him, and to
watch his amazement at all the carryings-on of the Blessing.
She vaulted a fence, traversed a yard,
vaulted the fence on the other side and dashed down a back street.
She turned a corner, squirmed between some
garbage cans and crossed an alley.
She
was only a block away from
Street
drums in her ears.
The street she was on was narrow.
Cars were parked on both sides, except in
front of an open garage.
As she neared
the garage, she smelled a strange odor — salty and rotten-sweet — and saw a
trickle of green liquid seeping from the garage into the gutter.
She slowed, for the garage belonged to
friends of her parents, and if the liquid seeping into the street was something
important — fuel oil or sewage, something that might suggest an emergency — she
should find the people at the Blessing and tell them.
She bent down and sniffed the fluid.
It was like nothing she had ever
smelled.
As she straightened up, she
looked into the dark garage and saw a huge pool of it, and as she looked, more
drops fell.
No question, something was
broken and dripping.
She stepped into the garage.
*
*
*
*
*
Hanging like a giant bat, it sucked air
into its lungs, and felt life return to its tissues.
Suddenly it smelled prey, heard it.
It willed its eyes to roll forward, and
looked down.
*
*
*
*
*
if a great animal had taken a giant breath.
Unable to hear, unable to see in the dark recesses of the garage, she felt
a spasm of fear.
She turned and ran.
*
*
*
*
*
The creature's arms twitched, the long
webbed fingers of its huge hands flexed; it straightened its legs and
somersaulted to the floor.
This prey was
small and fragile... an easy
catch
, an easy kill.
But as it hit the floor, its legs, too
weak from bearing too little weight for too long, buckled, and the creature
tumbled onto its side.
It pushed with
its arms, raising itself into a crouch, and moved awkwardly toward the light.
The prey was gone.
It roared in frustration and fury, a
guttural, mucous growl.
Then, abruptly,
it sensed danger, recognized the possibility that it might be pursued.
It knew it must flee.
But it did not know where to seek safety.
It had no choice:
it had to return to the world it knew.
It moved out of the shadows and onto the
street.
It had no recollection of how it had
gotten here or of what route to take for its return.
Surrounded by buildings, it could not see the
sea, but it could smell it, and it followed its nose toward the scent of salt.
It had traveled for less than a minute
when, from close behind, it heard a sound it recognized as signaling
aggression.
It wheeled to face the
threat.
A large animal covered with black hair was
crouched in a dark space between buildings.
The hair on its neck had risen, its lips were drawn back, exposing long
white teeth, and its shoulders hunched over the large muscles of its
forelegs.
A rumbling noise came from its
throat.
The creature appraised the animal,
thinking less about food than about flight.
It sensed that the animal would to permit flight, that it was intent on
attacking.
So the creature took a stride toward the
animal.
The animal sprang, teeth bared, claws
extended.
The creature caught it in midleap and
drove its steel teeth deep into the animal's throat.
Immediately the rumbling noise changed to a
whine, and then to silence, as the creature held the animal and let it die.
When it was dead, the creature flung it to
the pavement, knelt beside it and slit the animal's belly with its claws.
It reached into the warm body and tore away
the entrails.
The it
continued toward the safety of the sea.
36
"Stop worrying, Max," Chase
said.
"From the sound of it, the
band's gonna turn the corner up there in about ten seconds, so relax and enjoy
the show.
She'll find you."
"But not where I said I'd be,"
said Max.
"I shouldn't have—"
"Hey, Max, what have you got going
here?
"
Chase grinned.
"You wouldn't by any chance—
"
He
stopped
when he felt Amanda dig her elbow into his ribs.
"She'll find you, Max," Amanda
said, putting an arm around his shoulders, "and she'll understand.
Really."
Max had been following the parade,
trailing the Saint Bernard, when he had glanced
a the
space between two shorefront houses and seen Amanda and his father cruising
slowly by in the Institute's Mako.
He
had sprinted down to the rocks and waved, and Chase had nosed the boat ashore
and urged Max
to
jump
aboard.
They had rafted the Mako to a
sport-fisherman tied up at one of the commercial docks, and stepped ashore to
await the parade.
The bishop appeared first, followed by his
entourage and the drum majorettes.
As
the first of the musicians turned the corner and entered the straightaway to
the dock, the band struck up the "Colonel Bogie" march.
Max looked down at his empty camera.
"I've got one," Amanda said, and
she pulled a tiny camera from her pocket.
"I'll make copies for you."
Roland Gibson made his way through the
crowd behind Chase and stopped beside him.
The police chief's uniform was freshly pressed, his shoes shined.
"Two thousand tourists, Simon," he
said, smiling.
"And you wanted me
to cancel it."
"I'll grant you," said
Chase.
"But it's not over yet.
When are you letting Puckett out of
jail?"
"As soon as the
last visitor leaves his last dollar... around six o'clock.
Then you can
hear all about Rusty's monster."
The radio on Gibson's belt crackled, and a
voice said, "Chief..."
Gibson unhooked the radio, spoke into it,
listened,
then
said softly, "Shit."
"What's up?" asked Chase.
"Tommy didn't say, just said there
was something I should see."
Gibson
replaced the radio and stepped out onto the dock.
"See you later."
All of a sudden Chase heard, behind him
and over the blare of the approaching trombones, Max's voice shouting, "
He turned and saw Max sprinting along the
edge of the crowd toward a barefoot girl in a blue dress who was running beside
the band as fast as he could.
Max and the girl met; the girl was
trembling, and Max was reaching for her, to calm her.
As Chase drew near, he heard the girl try to
speak, but all that came out of her mouth were incoherent sounds.
Her hands fluttered like hummingbirds before
Max's face, and Max was shaking his head and saying, "Slower, slower."
"What's she saying?
"
Chase asked.
"I can't tell," Max said.
Amanda came up beside Chase, knelt down,
took
hands in hers and said, "Are you hurt?"
"Scared?"
"Of what?"
"Something,"
"Something big."
Then Chase heard his name being
called.
He looked up and saw Gibson
beckoning to him from the end of the dock.
"Be right back," he said to Amanda.
Gibson's face was grim with anger.
"Something just killed Corky
Thibodeaux's guard dog, Buster," he said.
"Tore out his throat and gutted him, right up on
Tommy found this."
He held out his hand, and Chase saw a
stainless steel tooth.
Two of its edges
were serrated, and there were tiny barbed hooks on each end of the third,
thicker side.
Chase's breath stopped; he stared at the
tooth.
Then he looked up at Gibson and
said, "It's here, Rollie.
It's come
ashore."
37
It entered the water at the same place it
had emerged — it saw its own tracks in the sand — and, staying in the shelter
of the boulders, made its way slowly down the sloping mud bottom until it was
immersed up to its shoulders.
It emptied its lungs of air, ducked
underwater and, as its brain told it to do, generated motion in its gill flaps,
opened its mouth, expanded its trachea and breathed in.
It choked.
It sprang instantly to the surface,
gasping and coughing.
Pain seared its
lungs and knotted the muscles in its abdomen.
Enervated and off balance, it slipped and
began to sink.
Water seeped into its
gill slits, and again it choked and gagged.
It reached for an outcropping on one of the boulders, grabbed it and
clung, wheezing, until at last its lungs were clear.
Twice more it tried to submerge, following
each step of the ancient program.
Twice
more it failed.
It did not know what had happened, or why,
for its brain could not ask
itself
such questions and
thus could provide no answers.
It knew
only that it could no longer exist underwater, that survival depended on
breathing air.
But it also sensed that it could not
survive among the air-breathing things.
If it could not live underwater, still it
would have to live
in
water.
It drew a breath of air, clamped its gill
slits closed and ducked down.
This time
it did not choke.
It could see, for the
lenses surrounding its eyes were intact, and it could move.
Tentatively, it swam forward.
But when it attempted to dive, it noticed
a difference:
diving was no longer
simple, fluid, natural; diving had become difficult, and a pressure within drew
it up toward the air.
