Black Tide by Del Stone Read Free Book Online Page B

hangars.’
    Scotty stiffened and he started to get up. I had the feeling he was defending Heather’s point of view more than simply arguing for a solution, but either way he was angry again, angry like he’d been the moment Heather had seen the mist. He was halfway out of his crouch when he froze and cocked an ear. Heather looked down-sound. Then I heard it too.
    A boat motor.
    The sound was strangely incongruous in the deafening silence, but it was the first human sound we’d heard all afternoon, apart from the screaming and our own squabbling. We all stood up. I flipped on the flashlight and began waving it frantically. Heather scrambled back to the tents to fetch her flashlight. Scotty jumped up and down, waving his hands idiotically and shouting, ‘HERE! HERE!’ as if the person on the boat could see him in the inky darkness, or hear his voice over the sound of the motor.
    Heather rejoined us and aimed her flashlight beam into the sound. Suddenly, I could see it. The red and green running lights of a boat. The operator had a small spotlight swinging to and fro across the water. The beam stood out like the ray from a Martian war machine, peeling back the dark. Suddenly, it blinded us.
    â€˜HERE!’ Scotty shrieked, cavorting maniacally. ‘YEAH, MAN! RIGHT HERE!’
    The boat turned in our direction. Relief gushed out of me. Heather latched on to my arm and laid her head against my shoulder and sighed. I wanted to put my arm around her shoulder and gather her in, but I couldn’t; she wouldn’t let go. Scotty turned around, glimpsed us, started to turn back, then slowly turned around again. Heather let go.
    â€˜I’d better start packing our stuff.’
    I watched her head back to the tents, and when I turned back, Scotty was still staring, his eyes slitted now and measuring me. I think for a moment he actually felt threatened. But then he turned and resumed waving to the approaching boat.
    As the boat came closer it assumed the familiar shape of DeVries’ Boston Whaler. I felt a surge of gratitude for the man – that he’d remembered us out here and had thought to come rescue us in the wake of whatever disaster had befallen Fort Walton Beach. I wanted off this island. I wanted to be back in my classroom, among my colleagues, and mired within the mundane concerns of school and life. I wanted no part of this ecological catastrophe – and that’s what I’d come to believe happened here. It wasn’t a nerve gas spill or a chemical discharge. It was an emission by an unknown phytoplankton that caused a violent reaction in vascular organisms. I was convinced of that. When I returned to Gainesville, someone among us would sit down and analyse the samples I’d collected and come to a reasonable conclusion in the blessed light of rationality. But right now, out here in the superheated dark, with a carpet of death floating by, I only wanted to be home.
    I went to help Heather pack. She was neatly unpegging the tents and brushing sand from the nylon.
    â€˜No,’ I told her. ‘Leave ’em. Just get the equipment and the samples.’
    â€˜Fred?’ she frowned at me. ‘This stuff is expensive.’
    â€˜I don’t care. The sooner we’re on that boat and heading back to civilisation the better I’ll feel.’
    She offered me a sly smile. ‘I thought you were looking forward to a long weekend of obsessing over red tide.’
    â€˜That was before this – and Scotty.’
    She stopped and frowned hard this time, turning to look up sternly. Her voice dropped to a husky whisper. ‘What does Scotty have to do with anything …’
    â€˜He’s a jerk,’ I whispered back. ‘He contradicts everything I say …’
    â€˜I think you’re just jealous,’ she cut in with what I knew was feigned petulance.
    â€˜He makes me feel old.’
    She rolled her eyes. ‘You’re not