White Shark by Peter Benchley Page B

away.   He looked, but saw nothing, and tried to
articulate for himself what it was he had seen; movement, a change in the shape
of the water, as if something big was swimming just beneath the surface.   He kept looking, hoping to see the dorsal fin
of a dolphin or the shimmering shower caused by a school of feeding fish.
    Nothing.   He kept going,
walking slowly, stepping carefully among the wet rocks.
    He heard a sound behind him:   a splash, but a strange kind of splash, a
plopping splash, as if an animal had risen out of the water and submerged
again.   He turned and looked, and this
time he did see something — a ring of ripples spreading from a spot just
offshore.   There was a vague hump in the
surface of the water, but as he watched, he saw it disappear.
    He wondered if there were sea turtles
around here.   Or seals.   Whatever it was out there, he wanted to see
it.
    But again, there was nothing.   He walked another few yards and looked up to
gauge the terrain ahead.   The rocks on
this side of the island seemed to be smaller, more cluttered with debris.   There were pot buoys and big chunks of plastic
and...
    What was that?   Ten or fifteen yards away, something was
caught in the rocks, half in the water, half out.   An animal of some kind.   A dead animal.
    He walked closer and saw that it was a
deer, or the remains of a deer, for the corpse had been savaged, its flesh torn
and stripped.   There was no sickly smell
of rot, no gathering of flies, which told Max that the deer had not been dead
for long; this was a fresh kill.   He
couldn’t imagine what had done this to so large an animal.   Hunters?   He looked for bullet wounds in the body, but
saw none.
    He was about to turn away, when he saw
something in the head of the deer, something strange.   He stepped forward, bent down, reached
out.   His foot slipped; he flung out his
arms and tried to straighten up to regain his balance, but overcorrected and
fell backward into the water.
    The water wasn't deep, only three or four
feet, and Max quickly found footing on the loose gravel.   He stood up.
    Suddenly he sensed something behind him —
movement, a change in pressure, as if a mass of water was being shoved at
him.   He turned and saw the same vague
hump in the surface.   This time it was
moving toward him.
    He splashed water to try to frighten it
away, but it kept coming.
    A surge of panic washed over Max; he
turned back toward shore, leaned into the hip-deep water and paddled with his
hands.   He gained a yard, two yards, and
now he was scrambling up a slope on his hands and knees, scattering rocks and
gravel behind him.   He pushed with his
feet and reached for a handhold.   His
hand found the head of the deer, and he pulled.   Something sharp dug into his palm, cutting it, but he held on and kept
pulling.
    He reached the dry rocks, lurched to his
feet and ran.   He didn't stop until he
got to the top of the hill.   Gasping
ragged breaths that were more like sobs, he looked down at the water.   The hump had vanished, and rings of ripples
were fading from the glassy surface.
    Trembling from cold and fear, Max ran
toward the house.   He had covered half
the distance before he felt a stinging in his palm.   He looked at his hand and saw, protruding
from the fleshy bulb beneath his thumb, the thing that had cut him.
     
    *           *           *           *           *
     
    Chase looked up from his desk and saw Max
standing in the doorway, soaked from the shoulders down; a puddle was forming
on the floor around his sodden sneakers.   He was shivering.   His face was
gray, his lips nearly blue.   He looked
terrified.
    "Max!"   Chase jumped up from his desk, knocking his
chair back against the wall, and crossed the room.   "Are you okay?"
    Max nodded.
    Chase knelt down and began to unlace Max's
sneakers.   "What happened?   You fall off the rocks?"
    "A deer," Max said.
    "A deer?