Black Tide by Del Stone Page A

out. He took a single, whooping gasp, then battened on DeVries again. I heard myself snarl, ‘Goddammit’ and I went splashing to them. Scotty came in from the side. We reached them simultaneously.
    â€˜What are you fucking doing!’ Scotty screamed and looped his arm around the man, pulling him off DeVries. He wouldn’t let go. Scotty jerked once, twice, and I grabbed DeVries and hauled in the opposite direction. I heard an awful sucking sound – and then the tearing of flesh.
    I caught DeVries as he started to go under, hooking my arm around his neck and hauling up. I still had the flashlight. I aimed it into his face.
    His eyes were rolled back in the sockets. They looked yellowish in the light, yellow as hundred-year-old ivory. They circled in the sockets and settled on me for a moment, and you could see the insane fear. I moved the light lower, and when I did the damage that had been inflicted on DeVries came into terrible focus. A semi-circular chunk of flesh had been torn from his throat, and blood was oozing in a sickening flow that pulsed in syncopation with his heartbeat. I could see the torn flesh, the glistening muscle, the ragged tissue – I had only a brief glimpse of these things and my stomach heaved. For the third time that day I thought I might vomit. But then something even more incredible began to happen. The flesh began to bubble, then fry, and smoke poured from the wound.
    I heard someone shouting something. I couldn’t think. My brain was numb, as if Novocaine had been injected directly into my cerebellum. The words soaked through this gauzy layer of incomprehension only slowly – ‘… me –’ and then with greater clarity, ‘Help me!’ and I turned the light on Scotty.
    He was struggling with the man. I aimed the flashlight directly in the man’s face.
    It was beyond description.
    The face was a ruin of melted skin. From the forehead to his blood-soaked T-shirt there was nothing but wrinkled, scalded flesh, a bloodless white, the colour of undersea creatures that had never seen the light. And his eyes – utterly devoid of colour, no iris, no pupil, nothing but slick, pearly balls. As abruptly as I took this in the man’s flesh began to smoke, and then his eyes literally exploded, like old-fashioned flashbulbs, and the sockets emitted ferocious jets of blue-tinted flames. Everywhere the light travelled across the man, its skin erupted in swaths of blackened ruin that burst into flame. It arched its back again, its eyes burning like two flares, and cut loose with a sound that had never been uttered by a human being. It fell howling into the water.
    Scotty staggered back, gulping. The man … no, the thing , scuttled along the sandy bottom like a Callinectes sapidus – forgive me – a blue crab, leaving a trail of swirling sediment in its wake.
    We both stood there a moment, breathing hard, neither of us believing what we had just seen. Heather was shrieking from the shore, ‘What’s happening? What’s happening?’ and the piercing hysteria of her voice seemed to galvanise us. I knelt down and got DeVries into my arms. Scotty staggered over, lifted an arm over his shoulder, and between the two of us we were able to get him up and headed for shore.
    Behind us, we heard more furtive splashing.
    â€˜For God’s sake shine the light!’ Scotty yelled at Heather, his voice a couple of octaves higher than I’d heard so far. She aimed it directly at us, and I shouted, ‘No! Out there!’ and pointed at the sound. She swept the beam across the water and a tumult of splashing arose. The sound reminded me of alligators that had been lurking at the surface suddenly diving below.
    We got DeVries to the shore. His feet were dragging behind him. He moaned softly as we laid him on the sand, and when Heather saw his wound she sucked in a shocked breath and muttered, ‘Oh dear God,’ and ran back to