The Shore (Leisure Fiction)

'No!'

Kit let go of Steve's arm and pushed forward. 'Stella, don't.'

'Get back, damn you, Kit.' He grabbed her. They stood close enough to hear the creature's grunting breath. The boy's head lolled in their direction, mouth slack.

Kit saw the breaker first...and moaned. With a spitting snarl, the creature clutched the boy to its breasts as the huge swell struck the edge of the pier. Frothing white, it crashed over the creature's head, and the monster screamed once, a very human cry of despair. An instant later, the water struck Steve and Kit, and the cascade staggered them backward, reaching blindly for one another. Bracing himself around a piling, he caught her arm. An instant of wrenching pain then, gasping, they sprawled on the broken dock...alone.

There was no sign of Perry, no sign of what had been his sister.

From across the heaving waves drifted the terrified wail of a small boy.

With leaden arms, Steve crawled forward.

'...no...' Kit writhed toward him.

His head jerked in her direction.

'...don't...'

For an instant, hopeless longing clouded his face as he gazed at her. Then he slipped off the edge.

'You can't save him!' She clambered to the shattered brink. 'No! Somebody, help me! It doesn't end like this!' Waves seethed, swelled even higher, plunging at her. 'I won't let it end like this.' She forced the shout through her tortured throat. 'Where are you?' Salt stung painfully at her. 'Steve, swim to me!' Coughing and sobbing, she grabbed onto an upright post and hung out over the jagged boards. 'Come to my voice!'

Angry grayness rushed around her. In the boiling madness, a pale area bulged. A head emerged. Shoulders.

'Here!'

It thrashed wildly.

'Steve! Come...!'

The creature faced her from the water.

'No!'

The eyes were full of terror.

Almost before she could think, Kit had stretched out her hand.

The water rolled massively, the satin muscles of the sea protuberant with force. The wave heaved toward the pier.

The mountain of water pounded down.

Trying to wrap herself around the post, Kit felt herself torn away, rolled. Her lungs filled with frigid seawater.

Something stopped her movement. She choked, flailing as the breaker receded into foam. Another wave exploded. The whole pier lurched as rafters cracked, and she squirmed away, tremors of wood rattling through her bones.

She couldn't stand, could barely crawl, but she turned her head toward a hint of movement.

The legs twitched. At the end of a shattered piling, the monster hung, impaled through the chest and abdomen. A long splinter of pointed wood extended through the stomach, and crimson fluid gushed away in the foam. A black cavity spurted where the face had been.

She watched a log lurch in the water, rolling closer on the next wave. It struck, smashed one of the hanging arms to grisly fragments.

Spray pummeled her. She crawled away across the planks. Beneath her, the pier shuddered, groaning loudly, and her teeth rattled in her head.

On all fours, she teetered back across the rocking surface, water sucking at her arms and legs. She started across the gap too quickly.

And dropped.

She hung, a nail spearing her palm. Saltwater and splinters rained from her clothing. Grunting, she pulled herself across the beam. At last, she collapsed on sodden wood.

From this more solid remnant of the pier, she surveyed the world. Black shale glistened where sand had been, and the shattered boulders seemed to roll as waves seethed up around them. Below the boards, thunder murmured. All gone. The surf seemed to whisper. Dead. Drowned. Waves stretched onto the nearer streets, swamping the ruined cottages, claiming them.

I'm probably in shock. Somehow, she didn't feel cold anymore. I have to get down from here, out of this. Have to find shelter.

The sheath of water rushed forward, a sudden rift exposing bedrock until the tear smoothed shut. Something floated.

Suddenly, impossibly, she moved. She dashed along the boards, leapt. The icy splash shocked a hiss from her. Liquid weight dragged at her, and she choked, waves closing above her face as a fluid whirlwind gripped her. Her arms pushed against a current almost black with sediment, and her foot struck something solid. Then her boots found gravel, squirming and shifting, and she climbed a sunken hill until water lapped at her waist. Pushing forward, she shuddered into knee-deep water, stumbled faster as a wave struck from behind, lifting her.

One leg drawn back as though in flight, the man's body bent with the movement of the water, the child's white hands locked about his neck. The boy's head stayed bowed as though in supplication, and both their faces lay beneath the surface.

'No!' She threw herself headlong, twisting them into the air with all her strength. 'Not now.' She clutched at Steve. 'You can't be dead.' Another wave tumbled them away from her, but the man's arms somehow stayed around the boy. Frantic, she caught at Steve's jacket with both hands. Dead weight dragged her down, and she rose sputtering. She tugged Steve's hair, his clothes. His head lolled back; limbs flailed stiffly. Sobbing, she towed them through the shallows while the sky went black again. A wave swept her legs, and the wind thrust upward, blowing caps of foam into quills that twisted across the coruscating surface.

Sudden rain whipped them.

The storm! Lightning burst in the choppy water. Is it coming back for the kill? Thunder detonated, and the tears on her face mingled with salt spray. She could barely shift their bodies now, and pain screamed in her arms and shoulders. collapse going to Somehow, she dragged and shoved them toward the shattered remnants of a concrete pillar beneath the pier. can't

Exhausted, she cowered behind it, gasping as the water rose. A muscle in her back spasmed. A chunk of cement stairway led nowhere but to a broken ledge. I can't stop shaking. Step by torturous step, she heaved them upward, groaning while the tide climbed after them, until the boy sprawled limply on a ledge, his eyes closed as though in sleep, and she got both hands beneath the man's arms and dragged him on, scraped him on. Her boots made squishy sounds that echoed under the pilings.

In the water too long. With a sob, she fell upon him. Both of them. She shivered hard. Mouth-to-mouth. Trembling with exhaustion, she leaned forward. have to try

Steve never moved, his mouth hard and cold. She thought she felt a pulse in his neck. Or was it just an echo of the thunder? Something warm slid on her cheek, tears or blood, she couldn't tell.

The boy lay on his back, staring up at her.

XXXI

Milky light rippled across the floor. In an effort to get the place warm, she'd burned everything she could think of, both in the Franklin stove and in the bedroom fireplace, newspapers and paperbacks, even hunks of the banister from the stairwell. The last of her grandmother's old kitchen chairs was smoldering now, and heat wavered from the stove in the living room. She warmed her hands, muttering. Pulling the terry cloth robe closed, she limped haltingly into the kitchen. Under the robe, she wore a wool sweater, and under the slippers she wore two pairs of sweat socks, but the kitchen floor still felt like ice.