Black Tide Read Online Free Page A

little closer. It seemed higher, and had gathered much of the ambient light into itself, which were both effects produced by a shift in perspective. My earlier impression, that the mist was rising from the water, reasserted itself and I moved over to the place in the shallows where I’d stationed the flow meter. I waded slowly, so as not to disturb the algae. When I checked the readout I thought there had been a mistake or that the meter had malfunctioned, because the numbers were unbelievable. Earlier, when I’d taken my first reading, the flow had come in at a reasonable one metre per 90 seconds to the west. Now, the water was fairly clicking along at an astounding six metres per minute. That was greater than any flow rate recorded here, ever, and it certainly exceeded tidal inflow/outflow or the littoral currents that paralleled the shore.
    I knew then that what I was seeing was the new pass. The water must be roaring through the cut and out into the Gulf of Mexico. ‘Flushing action’ indeed.
    Heather started to say something, but Scotty hushed her urgently. He was bent over, his head turned sideways, and he seemed to be listening intently. A comical vision sprang to mind, that Scotty was mimicking a hearing technique of Native Americans who claimed they could press an ear to the ground and sense the approach of cavalry. I started to find a spot in the sand clear of oyster shells and kick my heel hard, just to put Scotty’s melodramatic scouting talents to the test, when he asked, ‘Don’t you hear it?’
    I knew I wouldn’t hear anything. I’d not seen the island earlier that morning, when Heather and Scotty could see it clearly. I didn’t expect my hearing would be in better shape than my vision. I knew this was one of Scotty’s nasty jokes, and I refused to bite.
    But then I did hear something.
    Bodies of water can produce odd acoustic effects, and at first I thought that’s what was happening. Maybe somebody on the mainland had tuned in a baseball game on the radio, or TV, and the audio feed was skipping across the water’s surface. Because what I could hear were crowd noises:
    Shouting.
    Cheering.
    The clash of musical instruments.
    Which … which …
    Which is not what I heard. Not really.
    What I refused to admit then, and what’s difficult for me to say now, is that I could hear something else.
    People screaming.
    As the brown wall moved resolutely down the sound, rising higher and higher, a sheer vertical cliff of mahogany mist, I could hear the sound more clearly. People on the mainland. Men and women – screaming. Not shouting, or cheering. People screaming in agony, the sound rising from the deepest recesses of the lungs and whistling from the back of the throat – the unrestrained screams of people who were in great pain, and people who were dying. Sometimes one scream would rise above the others, the notes fluttering skyward like ash from a bonfire, and then stop abruptly, leaving the imagination to fill in horrible details of the screamer’s fate. Suffused through this terrifying chorus were crashing sounds – horns hooting and then mysteriously going silent, tyres screeching, cars colliding with one another. An ambulance siren warbled to life and it did not move; there was no Doppler shift in the tone. I could see its driver in my mind’s eye, hunched over the wheel, writhing and dying, his eyes goggling like one of those squeeze doll toys and his tongue bulging, swollen and purpled, a blood-engorged sausage of tissue.
    â€˜Professor?’
    I could dimly hear Scotty and all the fire was gone from his voice. Now he was a frightened little boy calling for his daddy. I didn’t answer at first. I was remembering what DeVries had said on the trip out:
    I hear there’s something worse moving out of the bay.
    Something worse than red tide.
    Something that passed unnoticed, diluted and dispersed in the bay. But drawn