Read Online Black Tide by Del Stone - Free Book Online

all right,’ I said lamely. We both knew it wasn’t, but again, I couldn’t think of anything else to say or do. She tittered, but it was the nervous sound of a person whose wits were tripping on the edge of an abyss.
    â€˜C’mon. Let’s see if we can get DeVries to drink something.’ She had a plastic bottle of water clutched in her right hand. I thought it might burst, she was squeezing it so tightly. But she got up and we made our way back to Scotty and DeVries. Scotty was standing quietly, staring down at the man.
    He lay on the sand, barely moving.
    â€˜We should get rid of him,’ Scotty finally said. I couldn’t see his face, but his voice was low and evenly modulated, the sound of a man in complete and deadly control of his faculties. The cold-bloodedness of that statement produced an instant flash of anger in me, and I snarled back at him. ‘This is the man who came to save our butts, and you just want to ‘get rid of him’? Are you out of your mind?’
    â€˜We should throw him in the water. Get rid of him.’
    â€˜You mean kill him?’
    â€˜He’s as good as dead,’ Scotty sighed heavily. ‘We should get rid of him.’
    â€˜He’s not dead. He’s hurt and he needs our help.’
    â€˜Before he becomes one of them ,’ Scotty said quietly. ‘We should get rid of him.’
    I let go of Heather’s shoulder and jumped up. I smacked Scotty in his skinny chest with an open palm, knocking him back a step. ‘This man is injured and he needs our help!’ I screamed at him. He just stood there, staring. ‘We don’t have any idea how this poison works – it – it could be that only the tissue around the bite is affected.’
    â€˜I’m going to get rid of him,’ Scotty said flatly.
    â€˜The hell you are,’ I answered. ‘I’m in charge here and you’ll do what I damn well tell you.’
    â€˜Get out of my way,’ he said.
    I shook my head. ‘I don’t give a damn what you want. You try to hurt that man and I’ll …’
    â€˜Just stop !’ Heather screamed, her voice warbling up the scale. ‘I can’t stand it – just stop –’ and then the issue was settled for us.
    Something grabbed my ankle.
    I could feel a cold, unearthly circlet of pressure as fingers slithered around the bone. The skin felt slimy and cool, and my mind instantly composed an image of something old and pale and horribly desperate that had crawled from the deepest parts of the ocean and would take me back there with it unless I resisted. I yanked my leg once, twice, and freed myself from its grip. Scotty stepped in with the flashlight and aimed it downward.
    I had only a second to take in what lay before us: A little girl, her bloodless skin made all the whiter by the black plaster of hair that framed her thin, vulpine face, had scuttled through the shallows unseen and was about to bite me. She jerked her head up at us and centred those blank yet seeing eyes on me, and then she smiled, an act suggestive of an insidious animal cunning, as if she were being driven by equal parts need and pleasure. Her face instantly folded in on itself in a black ruin, like newsprint put to a flame, and the eyes ruptured fire. A cloud of acrid smoke boiled into the night sky and the girl – what had once been a girl – began to grunt and writhe on the beach as her body immolated. Scotty played the beam over and across the body, and everywhere the light struck, the flesh burned. The hands began to beat rapidly against the sand, and the feet kicked out, throwing up clods of sand. Then it began to convulse.
    Scotty kept at it with the light.
    The clothes caught fire then, and the flames went from a barely visible blue to bright yellow and orange, and a perimeter of light went up around us. From about the island you could hear splashing and other sounds of turmoil beneath the