“Holy shit,” Bryce said, the first tendrils of panic slipping into his voice. “They look fucking burned!”
“Let’s keep going,” Eva said, already swimming ahead, feeling a recurrence of nausea twist in her belly.
When they reached the far end, Mike and Stacy were waiting.
The other couple stood on the rocks, which Eva noticed was an archipelago of sorts, a series of rocks surrounded by sand on all sides, the closest about a dozen feet between the waterline. The gaps between the humped brown stones varied from a few feet to a few inches, the jagged line random as a roll of dice.
Eva called out across the water. “Is there room for us?”
“Plenty,” Mike said, smiling weakly. But Eva noticed Stacy wore a frown, one that was leaning toward a scowl, as if the idea of sharing was not something she’d agreed upon.
“What happened?” Bryce asked. They’d moved closer, but not close enough to where they’d be standing on the sand, even underwater.
“Not sure,” Mike said, turning to look at what remained of Terry and Karyn. “I got within a few feet, and I don’t know man, it looked like the sand … hell … it looked like the sand was alive.”
Bryce looked at Eva. “You have your sandals?
“Holding them,” she said with a gasp, a mouthful of saltwater slipping into her mouth. She coughed and spat it out, ignored Bryce’s concerned look. She was feeling the burn in her muscles from ten straight minutes of swimming and treading water.
“You wanna do this?”
“Well,” she said, her lungs also beginning to strain. “It’s either that or sink. I doubt I could swim to the boat now.”
“I could help you ….”
“Bryce, fuck it, come on.”
She began to swim toward shore, done having languid chats while her muscles cried for mercy. When she was shallow enough, she slipped both sandals on beneath the water, and dropped her legs into the mucky seafloor.
Oh, sweet relief, she thought, but her good vibes were cut short as her feet sank into the wet sand. Bryce came up next to her, and they both stepped cautiously forward, aiming for the rocks.
“Try to keep your feet off the sand. Your skin, I mean.”
Eva was disheartened to see that Mike wasn’t watching them as much as he was watching the sand between the lapping waves and the rocks. Looking for movement, for the things that had laid waste to good old Terry from Jersey and Karyn with a “Y”.
As Bryce and Eva emerged, dripping, from the sea, they both took a moment to study the stretch between them and the stones. Eva didn’t notice any movement, saw nothing strange crawling around or on top of the bright sand.
“You guys will be fine, but I wouldn’t dawdle too much,” Mike said.
Eva agreed, and they walked across the beach, hand-in-hand, until they stepped gratefully onto the rocks.
Once atop one of the large, rounded stones, Eva looked down at her feet, her legs, and saw nothing untoward. There was a fine mist of sand on her toes, her heel, but nothing moved, nothing turned her skin black or made her want to scream out in agony.
Not yet.
She saw Bryce doing his own inspection before looking at her and nodding.
“Well, this sucks,” Eva said, and appreciated Mike chuckling at her shitty attempt at levity.
“It does at that.”
Then, as one, they all turned to study the blackened corpses, this time with a more studious disposition.
“So, you think something…what? Bit them?”
“Infested them. Some strain of sand fleas, sand lice, whatever they’re called,” Mike said, shrugging. “It isn’t that uncommon and, well, I’ve heard horror stories. I mean, me and Stacy do a lot of traveling, sometimes to some pretty remote places.”
“Maybe,” Bryce said. “But come on … look at them.”
“I know, I know. This is totally fucked. I have no idea what ….”
“HELLO!”
A booming voice interrupted Mike’s thought, and they all turned to see Manu standing at the bow of his boat, having seemingly appeared from nowhere.
Was he hiding? Eva thought, trying not to get carried away, overly paranoid. Sleeping, more likely.
Mike waved back but dropped his arm when he saw the big smile on Manu’s face, the expression blatant even from seventy-five feet away.
“I see you’ve discovered my friends!” he yelled across the water, and then laughed as if it was a hilarious prank, a joke they’d all be laughing at later, perhaps while eating charred boar off a spit at the infamous Manu Luau to which, Eva recalled, they’d all been invited.
A chill went up her spine at Manu’s choice of words, and her defensive, sardonic inner-wit scurried away, leaving a void of empty fear behind. My friends?
Bryce said softly, “What the hell ….”
“Please, come pick us up!” Mike yelled.
“I don’t think so!” Manu called back. “The blood gets them stirred up, you know. Can you see?” He pointed in the direction of the couple, and their eyes followed.
