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wheeling and screeching far out toward the horizon, probably attracted by a
shoal moving just out of her sight. Mildred watched them for a few moments,
seeing them
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diving, most emerging with silver fish glistening in their beaks.
She stood, the small tight plaits of black hair dripping water down her cheeks
and neck.
"Oh, sweet Jesus," she whispered, the light westerly breeze snatching away her
words so that she scarcely heard them. "Help me, Lord. For I'm alone."
Doc's head broke the surface, his white mane pasted to his narrow skull,
making him look like a bewildered and bewigged goat.
"No sign!" he bellowed, but the woman couldn't make out whether it was a
question or a statement. But she shook her head anyway, holding her hands
wide.
Then Krysty's bright red hair emerged into the sunshine. "Didn't take enough
breath. Others gone back down into the redoubt. Don't worry, Mildred. That's
where he'll be. Didn't want to make the dive."
She and Doc swam to the rocks and pulled themselves from the sea, both
watching with Mildred for the first person with good news of Michael's safety.
"That's got to be a full minute," the black woman stated. "Got to be."
"He'll be& " Doc began, striving for a note of reassurance, the sentence dying
stillborn as Dean, J.B. and Ryan appeared from the cavernous redoubt.
With no sign of Michael.
"Hadn't gone back out. Swam through and the stone& stone floor was dry." Ryan
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started toward the rocks. "Must've cramped up, I guess."
"Unless something took him," Dean called. "Maybe a great white shark."
It was possible.
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"About ninety percent of shark attacks take place in less than five feet of
water,"
Mildred said.
They were all out of the sea, staring around at the gently undulating waves.
The flock of gulls had disappeared away into the north.
"Oh, Gaia!" Krysty's voice was harsh with shock. She stood, pointed toward the
western horizon, her face frozen. "Look out there!"
There was a massive eruption about three hundred yards from them. White froth
and a burst of spray soared into the sky. All that they could make out,
writhing at the core of the thrashing disturbance, was a giant, sinuous shape.
"The mighty serpent, Uroboros!" Doc exclaimed. "By the three Kennedys, the
seventh seal has been opened and the horrors of the grave released."
"Sea snake," Ryan said. "And " He broke off as the creature crashed back into
the water again, rolling to reveal, for the first time, its hideous head.
And the limp body of Michael Brother clasped in its blunt, hoglike jaws.
"Hundred feet long if the bastard's an inch," J.B. said quietly.
"He's not dead! He's waving to us." Dean turned to the others, frantic for
them to share his sudden belief that Michael still lived.
"No, son," Doc said, laying a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Just the movement
of that serpent's head, shaking him. Like Ahab returned, enmeshed with his
great white nemesis, to beckon to us to all join him on his last long dive."
The monstrous mutie sea snake was moving back and forth, its coils rippling
through the white-crested waves. Its body was fully as thick as a stout man's
waist, its head a good six feet in length. Its eyes were protected by hoods of
bone, and its teeth glinted in the sunlight.
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"Can't you shoot it," Krysty asked, "with the big hunting rifle?"
"No point. Even a long 7.62 mm is only going to seem like a pinprick."
"He's dead?"
Ryan shrugged. "No way of knowing. If he had a good breath before he jumped in
with you, then he could've held it long enough to& well, to have some kind of
chance of being alive. For another minute or so, when that long fucker goes
back under the sea."
"Sharks," Mildred announced.
They could all see what looked like a dozen or more dorsal fins, slicing at
high speed from around the point of the coast, heading directly toward the
serpent. But the water was so disturbed by the monster that it was impossible
to make anything out with clarity.
"Even if he's still living, they'll finish any chance for him." J.B. shook his
head.
"Shame. There were some real good things about the kid."
The great sea snake, looking like some nightmare from a prehistoric past, was
still coiling, its head held high with the limp body dangling from its jaws.
It seemed oblivious of the fast approach of the group of sharks, almost
flaunting its helpless victim to the group on the piled debris.
Ryan was holding the Steyr, a small part of his mind considering whether it
was worth trying a shot at the serpent's eye. But it would probably make it
clamp its teeth shut on the teenager, or drop him so that the sharks picked up
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the meat.
The range was well within his capabilities, but the mutie creature was moving
so fast, surrounded by a veil of sparkling spray, that it was impossible.
Mildred had also drawn her Czech target pistol, thinking along the same lines.
She'd won a silver medal at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 in the free-shooting,
and the AKR 551, adapted to take the Smith Wesson .38 round, was as good a
&
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blaster as you could get.
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