Read Online Monstrum by Ann Christopher - Free Book Online Page A

know.”
    Something in his face loosens even as he continues to glare at me. “Detention for you, Bria Hunter. When we get back.”
    â€œDeal.” Some weird impulse makes me reach out and squeeze his arm, although whether I’m comforting him or myself is hard to say. “What happened to them, then?”
    He takes forever to answer, and when he does, his voice is hoarse as he speaks haltingly. “They . . . didn’t make it.”
    â€œThat’s not an answer,” I say sharply. “
Why
didn’t they make it?”
    Murphy raises a shaky hand and runs it over the back of his neck. Then he licks his lips and his jaws work, opening and closing his silent mouth. He looks up to the sky and then out at the sea.
    â€œSomething . . . got them. When they. . . hit the water. I think—”
    This isn’t making any sense to me, but maybe that’s because my brain has kicked into protective mode and is trying to buffer me.
“Something?”
    â€œSharks, okay?” Mike Smith interjects flatly. He hesitates, swiping the back of one hand over his lips, as though his remembered fear and horror have left a nasty taste he needs to wipe away. “The first group of us jumped in the water and made it into the raft, no problem. Then the last few hit the water, but before they could even start to doggie paddle over to the raft, they started screaming and getting sucked under. The water bubbled and went crazy, and the blood was—”
    Mike trails off, shakes his head and rubs his mouth again.
    â€œSharks?”
Gray asks dully, as though he’s testing the word out for the first time in his life. “As in
Jaws
?”
    â€œJaws?”
Mike snorts. “Yeah. Exactly like
Jaws
—”
    â€œOh, my God,” gasps Maggie.
    â€œâ€”if
Jaws
brought two or three of his hungriest buddies and they picked off the swimmers one by one,” Mike finishes, giving us a hard stare.
    There’s no need. Judging by the absolute stillness in both rafts and the frozen grimaces that seem to reflect my own alarm back to me, we all get the picture:
    If there are sharks in the water, our chances of surviving long enough to get rescued have just gone from poor to negligible.
    As if by unspoken signal, we all look to the water again, but it’s secretive and silent, with no sign of approaching dorsal fins or any other movement. So, for this second, at least, we’re safe.
    I’ll take that.
    No one speaks for a long time. Espi and her mother, I notice, have reunited in our raft and are pressed together cheek-to-cheek, holding each other tightly.
    Murphy clears his throat, and it sounds like a bullfrog is warming up to sing opera. “Well. You’d best take a look at Macy Sparks, there, hadn’t you, Mrs. Torres? You’re a nurse, if I recall?”
    â€œI am, indeed.”
    Mrs. Torres extricates herself from Espi and kneels on the floor to examine Macy with skilled hands and an efficiency that makes her gold watch glint. Macy’s groans, I realize, have ceased in the last several minutes. I hope she’s fully unconscious again. I can’t stand the thought of her being in pain, and it’s not like Mrs. Torres will be able to do anything for her, anyway, unless the rafts come equipped with portable MRI machines I haven’t seen yet.
    â€œAnd the rest of us,” Murphy says. “We’d best go through these bags and review our supplies, hadn’t we?”
    â€œ
Supplies
,” I echo, glaring at Gray. “Why didn’t
I
think of that?”
    After a quick glance at Murphy to make sure he’s looking elsewhere, Gray flashes his middle finger at me.
    I nearly grin as I reach for the nearest backpack, unspeakably relieved that we can cede authority and responsibility back to adults at last. My faith in them is ridiculous under the circumstances, though; I know that. They’re not going to be able to produce a rescue