“I don’t know ….” He stopped, dumbfounded.
Karyn was crawling back onto the beach, leaving the water like an early stage of evolution, as if she were the first of their species to try for dry land. Her elbows dug into the wet sand as she army-crawled toward Terry, who lay flat on his back, twitching convulsively.
Karyn’s legs, in full view as they pulled free of the surf, were black and … shriveled.
Lifeless.
Eva could hear her loud, wet sobbing. By the time she made it to Terry’s body, his convulsions had stopped, and he lay very still.
Yeah, Eva thought, but his skin is still moving.
Karyn rested her body over Terry’s, and now Eva could easily see the large black splotches covering her back, her arms.
The woman’s legs were charcoal-colored and appeared to be diminishing. Evaporating.
As if being eaten.
Eva spun away and vomited into the sand. Bryce put a hand on her back. “It’s okay … It’ll be okay ….”
When she was finished, she wiped her mouth and looked back toward the couple. Both bodies had turned bumpy and black. Motionless.
The screaming, for now, had stopped.
“You guys!”
Bryce and Eva looked beyond the corpses to Mike, perched atop the line of stones a hundred feet away. Hearing him now was effortless.
“Stay off the beach!” he yelled, slowly articulating each word. “Swim to us over here! To the rocks! Put on your sandals!”
Stacy said something to him then and he turned to reply. She shook her head and he continued. “It’s in the sand! You hear me? They’re in the sand!”
Eva looked down at her feet. She was on the towel, but sand was blown across the fabric. I walked here barefoot. I slept on the towel … but my hand, my hair. Were they in the sand?
She looked at her hands, her legs. Looking for … what? She didn’t know. Everything seemed fine, but she brushed her skin clean anyway, tried to ignore the paranoid, phantom sensation of something crawling along her scalp like lice.
Bryce was doing the same, but Eva noticed that, unlike her, he was standing in the sand already, the bottoms of his feet buried in it.
“What’s he talking about?” Bryce said, his voice small and afraid.
“I don’t know, but get on the towel, babe. Where are the sandals?”
“By the bag.”
Which, Eva noticed, was buried in a bright patch of beach a few feet away. She leaned out, trying to keep her balance without having to put a hand down, and snagged the bag. She lifted it carefully, looking for signs of anything strange, keeping it at arms-length. She brought it closer and reached inside.
Unzipped … great. Whatever’s in the sand could have crawled inside.
She debated dumping the contents onto the towels but decided against it. If the bag was safe, she didn’t want all their things … contaminated … with whatever had blackened—eaten—the skin of Terry and Karyn.
She pulled the sandals free one-by-one, inspecting each as she did. She handed Bryce his, and he quickly slipped them onto his feet.
“Can’t imagine this is much protection,” he said, staring at the thin flip-flops. “But if it gets us to the water.”
“I don’t even know what the fuck we’re supposed to be avoiding.” Eva was surprised to feel tears run down her cheeks. “I mean … what’s going on? How are we going to stay off the sand … on a fucking beach?”
Her voice was raised but Bryce looked at her calmly, nodding along. “I know, it’s weird,” he said, his composed tone soothing. She felt a surge of love for him and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Sorry …” she said, but he shook his head.
“Don’t be. I’m fucking terrified. Now ….” He took a deep breath, let it out. “Should we do this? Are we walking or running?”
She looked to the edge of the water waiting beyond a thirty-foot stretch of beach. “I think we walk. Focus on keeping the sandals between us and … whatever. If we run, we’ll kick it all over ourselves.”
“Okay,” he said. “Ready?”
She clenched the sack tightly in one hand, gripped his elbow with the other. For a second, she wondered about bringing the towels.
Fuck that, she thought, and took a step into the sand.
Twenty steps later, they’d made it to the water without incident, both of them pushing into the sea until the bottom dropped away and they were forced to swim.
“Wonder what happened to Manu?” Bryce said, studying the boat anchored in the harbor. “You think we should go there instead? Might be safer.”
Eva eyed the boat but shook her head. “Let’s see what Mike has to say. I want to know what’s going on.”
“Okay,” Bryce agreed, and began swimming parallel to the beach.
When they were halfway, they both stopped, treading water, staring at the corpses—because there is no doubt about it, folks, those are CORPSES—from the supposed, relative safety of the water.
