White Shark (37 page)

They did nothing, only squatted in the bushes.

The bird noises had stopped, and the squirrel sounds.

It moved slowly to its left, until it had a clear path
toward them.
 
It would take them easily,
first one then the other, and drag them back to its den.

The fat one first.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

"What was that?
"
Chester
said.

"What was what?"

"A noise, back of us."

Toby turned and looked, but saw only bushes.
 
"Forget it," he said.
 
"We're the hunters here, you think
something's
gonna sneak up on
us?
"

"I hate woods,"
Chester
said.
 
"I
...
Toby!
"

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

The fat one had seen it, was looking at it,
pointing
at it, making a noise.

It sprang from the underbrush, took two swift strides
and was upon the fat one.
 
It dug one set
of claws deep into the fat one's chest, the other into his scalp and eyes, bent
his head back and, with its teeth, ripped at its throat.

The fat one died quickly.

It turned to the other.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

"Oh God... oh Jesus... oh God... oh
Jesus..."

Toby staggered backward.
 
Something had
Chester
, something huge and grayish white,
and blood was flying everywhere because... oh God, oh Jesus... the thing was
eating
him!

Toby's back struck the trunk of the tree.

Now the thing was turning toward him.
 
It had yellowish hair and steel teeth and
eyes as white as cue balls, and it was bigger than Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Toby jerked the crossbow up and held it in front of
him, and he tried to say something but no words came out.
 
He pulled the trigger.

The crossbow bucked as the graphite bolt flew from its
slot.
 
He saw the bolt hit the thing and
sink in, and there was a little squirt of what looked like blood.

But the thing kept coming.

Moaning in terror, Toby dropped the crossbow, wheeled
around the tree trunk and ran.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

It felt a burning sensation in its side, below its
ribs, and it looked down and saw something protruding from its flesh.
 
It wrapped a hand around the thing, pulled it
from its flesh and cast it away.

It was not badly wounded, none of its vital functions
were impaired, but the pain slowed and distracted it.
 
It stopped and watched the human blunder away
through the bushes.
 
It returned to the
fat one, intent on dragging him back to its den.

Then, for the first time, it experienced
foresight:
 
the other human might come
back, return to hunt it.
 
With others.
 
It was
in
danger,
it would have to make a plan.

It sat down against the big tree, willing its brain to
work, to project, to sort, to innovate.

Its main priorities were clear:
 
to staunch the flow of blood, to
survive.
 
From the floor of the forest it
gathered leaves, and moss from the trunk of the tree, and it crushed them and
packed them into the wound.

To nourish itself, it used its claws to cut strips of
flesh from the fat one; it consumed them.
 
It ate as much as it felt it needed,
then
forced itself to eat more, until it sensed that another bite would trigger
regurgitation.

Now, it knew, it must escape, and find a different,
safer place.

It arose and walked to where the trees ended at the
shoreline.
 
It stood in the shelter of
the trees, to be sure it was alone,
then
it entered
the water.

It could not submerge, but it could swim; it could not
feed in the sea any longer, but it could survive until it reached different
land.

As it had become aware of its past, now it was
beginning to fathom a future.

41

The sea was flat, there wasn't enough
breeze
even to raise ripples, so the Mako rose quickly to a
plane and cut through the glassy surface at forty miles an hour.

"I wonder who came up with the ten grand,"
Tall Man shouted over the scream of the outboard motor.

"Some TV producer, probably," Chase answered
from the helm.

"Well, they better hope to hell they don't raise
that critter."

A single boat was anchored in the deep channel
southwest of
Block Island
; though it was still
a quarter of a mile away, Chase recognized it instantly.
 
"That's Sammy's boat," he
said.
 
"White with a blue stripe...
tuna tower... outriggers."

The sun was behind them, lowering in the western
sky.
 
Tall Man shaded his eyes and
squinted.
 
"They got two ass-kicker
marlin rigs off the stern," he said.
 
"Wire lines.
 
Only a couple
guys in the cockpit."

"Is one of them Puckett?"

"Yeah."
 
Tall Man
paused, looking.
 
"The other's a big
dude, big as me.
 
Looks
like he's cradling an AK-47."

"Cradling," Chase said, "not
aiming."

"Not yet."

Chase kept a hundred yards from the bigger boat as he
passed it.
 
He saw no other crewmen, no
cameras, no sound gear.
 
"They're
not making a movie," he said.
 
"They're hunting."
 
He
swung the Mako around, took it out of gear and let it drift up alongside the
fishing boat.

Puckett leaned over the side and shouted, "Beat
it, Chase!
 
Every time I get a break, you
find a way to fuck it up.
 
A man's got a
right to earn a living."

"Not by slaughtering dolphins, he doesn't,"
Chase said.
 
"You're looking to
spend a lot of years in a little room all by your lonesome."

"You don't know shit."
 
Puckett reached into his pocket, brought out
a paper and waved it.
 
"These
dolphins died of a virus, them and a dozen others.
 
We bought ‘em from a lab in Mystic."

Chase hesitated.
 
What Puckett said was possible, it even made sense.
 
Over the past few years, hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of dolphins of several species had washed up on shores of the
eastern seaboard, dead from viruses whose origins remained a mystery.
 
Pollution was presumed to be the catalyst,
but what kind of pollution — sewage, agricultural runoff, oil or chemical waste
— no one seemed to know.

"So what're you doing, then, you and
Rambo?"
 
Chase gestured at the huge
man holding the assault rifle across his chest.
 
Before Puckett could answer, Chase felt Tall Man nudge him and look up,
and he saw a video camera mounted on the lip of the fishing boat's flying
bridge.
 
It was moving, tracking them as
they slid by in the Mako.

"Fishing for great whites, what else?" said
Puckett.
 
"A good white-shark jaw
can fetch five grand, easy."

'Don't bullshit me, Rusty, I know what—"

The man with the rifle said, "We have broken no
law.
 
That is all that need concern
you."

"No, what concerns me is, I know what you think
you're looking for, but you don't have the faintest idea what—"

Suddenly, from a loudspeaker mounted somewhere above
the cockpit came a disembodied voice, gravelly, unnatural — almost mechanical
sounding — heavily accented and shouting, "Rudi!
 
Get in here!"

The man passed the rifle to Puckett, turned and
entered the cabin.

Chase's Mako had drifted past the anchored boat, and
Chase reversed the motor and backed up until the two boats were once again side
by side.

Puckett held the rifle at his waist, pointed at them.

"Put the gun away, Rusty," Tall Man
said.
 
"You're up to your eyeballs in
shit already."

"Stuff a cork in it, Geronimo," said
Puckett.

The man returned from the cabin.
 
"Throw me a line," he said.
 
"Come aboard."

"Why?" said Chase.

The loudspeaker boomed, "You!"

Chase looked up at the video camera and pointed to
himself.

"Yes, you.
 
You say you
know what we are doing?"

"I'm afraid so," said Chase.

"Come inside... please... you and your
friend.
 
I think we need each other, you
and I."

42

The cabin was dark; the glass in the doors was tinted,
and curtains had been pulled across the windows.
 
It was chilly, too, air-conditioned and
dehumidified.

As their pupils adjusted to the dark, Chase and Tall
Man saw that all the furniture had been removed from the cabin and replaced
with what looked like a portable intensive-care unit.
 
In the center of the room was a motorized
wheelchair, and in it sat a man.
 
A
rubber tube led from a digital monitor through a hanging bottle and into the
veins in the crook of one of the man's elbows.
 
His other hand held the end of a hose attached to a tank of oxygen.
 
Behind him were more machines, including an
electrocardiograph and a sphygmomanometer, and on the overhead in front of him
was a television monitor showing a color image of the stern of the boat.

The man was old, certainly, but how old was impossible
to tell, for his head was shaved and he wore sunglasses.
 
The breadth of his shoulders suggested that
he had once been large but had shriveled; a blanket covered him from knees to
chest.

The man raised the hand holding the oxygen hose,
nudged aside the folds of a yellow ascot and pressed the hose to his
throat.
 
His chest expanded as he filled
his lungs.

Then he spoke, and Chase was startled to hear the
words come not from him but from a box behind him, an amplifier of some kind.

"Where is he?"

"He," Chase thought, what ‘he?’
 
"I don't know," he said.
 
"Now
you
tell
me
:
 
what
is... it?"

Again the man touched the hose to his throat, and
again he spoke.
 
Once he was a man.
 
He became a great experiment.
 
By now, there is no way to know.
 
A mutant, perhaps.
 
A predator, definitely.
 
He will not stop killing; that is what he was
made to do."

"By who?
 
And what makes
you think you—"

"I know what he needs.
 
If I can deceive him into..."
 
The man slumped, he had run out of breath; he
waited, as if to regain the strength to breathe.

"What d’you mean he was an experiment?
"
Tall Man said.
 
"What kind of experiment?"

The man took a breath.
 
"Sit down," he said, and he gestured at the open deck by the
door.

Chase glanced up at the television monitor and saw
Puckett ladling fish guts and blood into the sea.
 
The other man, Rudi, was sitting on the stern
with the rifle in his lap.

The old man said, "If he comes, Rudi will shoot
him."