Free Black Tide by Del Stone Page A

reached around to hold up his head.
    â€˜I’m thirsty!’ he shouted. Spit flew. I felt squeamish disgust as a fleck landed on my cheek.
    â€˜I’m thirsty!’ he whispered as I tilted the bottle and poured the water between his lips. I began to feel a crawling sensation of tension, knowing that something was about to happen.
    â€˜Thirsty thirsty thirsty –’ he chanted, shaking his head and spraying the inside of the tent with blood-tainted water. I rocked back on my heels and the bottle slipped from my fingers, the water gurgling out in languid gulps to pool in the tent bottom.
    â€˜Thirsty!’ DeVries whispered again and sat up, bending at the waist, a ventriloquist’s doll brought to sudden and horrible life. His eyes snapped open and they were as blank and blanched as boiled eggs. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
    His head rotated ever so slightly as he seemed to sense me, and some horrid recognition of appetite crept into his features, and at this moment I could swear a smile formed on those chapped and scorched lips so that I scrabbled away toward the opening in the tent. His hand flew out lightning fast, faster than I would have believed anybody in his condition could have moved, and he whispered, ‘I am thirsty’ and opened his mouth to reveal teeth that were coated with a kind of dark, clinging mucus that hung in snotty, glutinous strands as he grabbed my hair and began dragging me toward him.
    I shoved my palm directly into his chest and blurted, ‘Shit – shit – shit, he’s got me! Pull me out!’ and heard Scotty swear and rip open the flap to grab my arm. DeVries snarled and leaned in close, his teeth snapping as they sought hold of my flesh. I pushed with all my strength, made stronger by the electric current of terror burning through me, and held him away as he gibbered and writhed and struggled to bring me into his embrace. Scotty was hauling me back and now Heather had grabbed me around the waist, and slowly I began to slide toward the tent opening. DeVries uttered puppy-like whining noises and redoubled his efforts, and I felt my body going back inside, toward what I knew would be a certain and grotesque death. I used my free hand to punch him in the testicles – one, two, three times in rapid succession – and his only reaction was to let loose with an animal cry of rage and yank on my head with superhuman strength.
    â€˜Jesus Christ! Get him!’ Scotty yelled and Heather grunted, ‘I’m trying.’ I could smell the swampy, fetid stench of DeVries’ breath, and his skin rippled beneath my touch as though I were grasping a plastic bag filled with live eels. I shifted my grip from his chest to his throat and I could feel him trying to bend at the neck to get his teeth into my wrist.
    Scotty wrapped his arms around my chest and heaved a mighty heave and I heard a tearing sound, like a Velcro fastener being undone, and a swath of my hair ripped loose as the three of us tumbled out the opening. We stared at each other wildly – I’m not sure we understood what exactly had happened – when DeVries abruptly growled and launched himself from the tent.
    I threw myself out of his path and simultaneously jumped to my feet as he came at me. His arms were outstretched and his fingers hooked into claws, and as he sprinted toward me his flesh began to wrinkle and burn.
    I ran.
    He began screaming as he chased me down the beach, his voice gone beyond anything that sounded remotely human. I snatched a quick glance over my shoulder and saw that he was consumed by fire, a trail of greasy smoke unfurling behind him. His eyes had begun to smoulder and as I watched, they popped into blowtorches of flame.
    Still, he came after me.
    Mindlessly. Impervious to the fire, he came after me. I felt my chest heaving and my lungs burning, my lack of conditioning now a possibly fatal flaw. I moved out of the soft sand