Maxilla

Katie slathered sunscreen on. She was hot, even in her bikini. The breeze blowing over the boat did little to cool her. For a region where clouds wrapped the sky in navy-gray most the year, the dog days of summer could be real scorchers. She didn't even care about the water skiing any more. She just couldn't wait her turn to get in the water.

"Hey Nick!" Suzie swatted her boyfriend. "You're supposed to be spottin' Lara not ogling Katie."

"Who's ogling who? If you were spotting Lara, you wouldn't've noticed."

"So you admit it!"

Nick shrugged. "Who can blame me?"

"Us!" Suzie and Katie said in unison.

Suzie punched her man. "I swear, boys, right?"

Katie rolled her eyes by way of answer. Her boy was back on the farm outside Muskogee for the summer.

"Aw, but you love us." Nick struck a goofy pose and flexed his rather impressive biceps. Both the girls laughed.

Mark said, "Would one of you keep an eye out for Lara?" There might have been a touch of ire in his voice. He hadn't a body, or girlfriend, to match Nick's. His summertime popularity was at least partially due to his Father's boat.

Nick and Suzie continued their play while Katie turned her attention to Lara in time to see her jump the wake. The slap as her ski hit the lake was audible even from the boat. An impressive rooster tail fanned out behind Lara.

"Oh shit!" Katie leapt up. "Log!" Four or five feet of lumpy brown surfaced in the boat's boiling wake. Katie hadn't even felt the bump as the boat jetted over it. Lara's arc took her right into it.

Lara bobbled on her skies. Her fantail arced in crazy zig-zags. The ski lanyard went slack and then taunt. She recovered. Katie eased back down in her sweaty seat then Lara's ski caught an edge. She went down in a spectacular plume of water.

"Skier down," Katie said.

"Good one!" Nick hollered through cupped hands.

Lara bobbed to the surface shaking her fist but laughing. Mark put the boat into a tight turn. Nick reeled in the lanyard. Katie popped the compartment under her seat open and dug out her lifejacket. It was finally her turn.

A moment later Suzie asked, "Where's Lara?"

"She's right . . ." Katie glanced up from her task. Her blood stopped flowing. "Cut the engine."

Nick repeated Katie's whisper in a roar. Mark yanked back on the throttle and the boat sloughed off of plane. A wide wake billowed out from the boat.

Mark leaped up from behind the helm. "Did we run her over?" He sounded scared.

"No, she was way out there." Katie pointed. "See, there's -- there's her ski."

All four boaters squinted into the glare upon the water. Their own little private pocket of silence enveloped the boaters. Hummingbird heartbeats raced by.

Several dozen breath-strokes distant, Lara's life jacket propelled her from the water as though launched from a carnival cannon. Her scream of terror belonged in Friday the Thirteenth, Thirteen.

Mark gunned the boat. Nick and Katie staggered chest to breast. Suzie nearly went overboard.

Just as they reached the screaming girl, Lara jerked in the water and went under. A heartbeat later she breached the surface, wailed and went under again, a human bobber.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God." Suzie's litany marked time as the quartet searched the depths of the reservoir.

Nick rubbernecked from port to starboard and back again. Katie's knuckles whitened on the gunwale rail. Mark's expression went as featureless as the depths where Lara had disappeared. Suzie's continued chant voiced the only words that needed said.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God."

And, after far too many salvation pleas, Lara rocketed out of the water beside the boat. Katie grabbed and caught Lara. Nick wrapped his arms about both. Lara's downward plunge slammed Katie hard into the gunwale. Nick piled into her back.

The gravitational combat rocked the boat. A wave of water piled into Katie's face. Suzie screamed and clutched the port rail as the boat rose high onto its side.

The boat rolled port. Nick, Katie and Lara landed in a pile upon the deck. Katie bounced back to her feet and staggered wildly. She pitched against the starboard gunwale as the boat rocked back. She caught the rail just as head and shoulders began their slide towards the water.

As her face dipped towards the depths, a whiskered head rose from the waves. A maw more roomy than the trunk of a VW Bug opened wide to suck her in.

Katie's scream echoed Lara's. She threw herself backwards and the leviathan rose out of the water after her. Fortunately, its fin caught under the boat and knocked the whole vessel from its path as the gilled monstrosity crashed back into the water.

Mark slammed down on the throttle. Exhaust and water boiled from the engine. Katie was thrown into the motor-well as the boat rocketed away.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God."

"Where are you going?" Nick shouted at Mark. He jabbed a finger towards Orchard Point. "Boat ramp's that way!"

"The truck's at Perkin's."

"Fuck the truck! We need off the lake! "

"I'm not just leavin' the bo--"

"Guys, we should call someone." Katie waved vaguely at the other boaters, jet-skis and skiers scattered about the lake.

"Like who?" Mark said. "No one'll believe us?"

"Like an ambulance," Nick said. "Look at Lara's leg."

Katie looked, expecting to see it bitten off or worse. It wasn't. Rather, short nasty looking gouges were cut into her left leg. The gouges started just below the knee and nibbled all the way up to her crotch. Watery red ribbons painted legs so pale the might have never seen the sun's kiss. Lara shivered with a meat locker chill.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God."

Katie easily staunched the flow of blood with a towel. She and Nick laid Lara out on the deck and kicked Lara's legs up on a chair. All the while, their vessel closed upon the line waiting at Perkin's Park Boat-ramp.

Mark drove the boat up over the wake of another speedboat and caught air. For a heartbeat they hung airborne, while the prop whined, and then belly flopped back into the lake.

A mechanical clunk sounded and a jolt shot through the boat. The motor wailed to a fevered pitch as its gears stripped.

"Shit!" Mark slammed the throttle to zero. The motor wheezed out a cloud of exhaust and died. "Shit. Shit! Shit!"

Katie said, "Now what?"

"We call someone." Mark pushed his way aft and leaned over the motor. The prop was mangled where it had first bit into the water after their momentary flight. "Shit!"

Lara, who was no longer the color of wet calk, pushed herself up into a seat. "Yeah, we're not doing that."

"Hell yes we're doin' that. Wha' d' y' mean we're not doing that? The engine's toast!"

"The phones were in the cooler, right?"

"So?" Mark's word was a staccato bark.

"So." Lara pointed towards their fading wake. A plastic box bobbed a few times in the wave and then sank. "The cooler went airborne when we did."

"Well, shit."

"Yeah," Nick agreed.

"What do we do?" Lara said.

"We paddle."

"With that?" Katie pointed at an ungainly, beat up river boat ore with peeling paint. "There's only one."

Mark's shoulders drooped. "That does make it harder."

"Somebody will pick us up." Nick sounded confident. "We just need something with which to flag them down."

Katie looked about. Her buoyed hopes, swamped. North and east the water was blue. The boaters and jet-skis all stayed out that way. Here, the delta of Coyote Creek, a glorified irrigation ditch, turned the water a mucky mocha. She turned about a saw that the wind was pushing them towards a bank of mud and reeds.

"Guys?"

"What -- well, shit," Mark said.

"You say that a lot. You backed up or something?" Nick slapped Mark on the shoulder. "Buck up. It's a little mud. At least it's shore."

"A little mud. Yeah, well, have fun wading through it."

"Oh my God! What's that?" Suzie pointed back towards the lake.

The boat rocked as every turned to look. A vortex swirled momentarily before being swallowed by the water.

"What's what?"

"I thought I saw--"

A boom sounded that Katie felt through the balls of her feet. The boat rocked crazily as everyone grabbed for balance. A whirlpool swept along the side of the boat.

"Oh-my-God-oh-my-God-oh-my-God."

There was another crash that sat Katie down hard, on the gunwale. Nick nearly knocked her overboard. Mark caught her arm and hauled her back in.

"What the fuck is it?"

"Oh my God!"

"It's coming back!"

"Oh shit!"

Katie joined the chorus of screams as the starboard side of the boat rose in the air. The boat started to flip.

"Jump!" Nick bellowed.

Katie hit the lake several paces distant from the boat. The concussion of the boat's re-entry into its native element seemed a sonic boom while under. Disoriented, she clawed her way back to the surface of the irrigation ditch slurry.

Mark breached beside her. Lara, lifejacket still on, crawled at a panicked pace towards the reed choked shore.

Nick breath-stroked towards the overturned boat. "Suzie!"

Katie spotted red curls and what might have been a white bikini covered rump floating just beyond the sinking ship. Heart and horror caught her in a tug-o'-war.

Nick stroked faster. "Suzie!"

"You can't save her!" Mark yelled. He stroked a pace towards shore. "Not if that thing c--"

Something tough and rubbery slammed into Katie's thigh. A vortex dunked her and swallowed her scream. Mark jerked. He vanished mid word.

Nick overhauled Katie on the mad dash for shore. Lara, up to her crotch in mud, wildly urged them on. Terror suddenly painted its visage upon her face. She turned to flee. There was a mighty slurp and the mud held her.

A wave overtook Katie's frantic thrashings. For a heartbeat her foot caught on something and then she was being pounded and smashed by the same rubbery force that hit her earlier. She tumbled helplessly through the water churned mud.

Katie surfaced choking on water. A Volkswagen catfish thrashed in the mud as though a dog a slaughtering a cat. Lara was no longer where the fish wallowed.

"Katie!"

She whipped about in the water. Warmth massaged her bladder and for a moment she possessed the strength of an earthworm.

Not too far distant Nick had forged a trench through the reeds that was already beginning to backfill with muck. A few strokes brought Katie to the path. Nick caught her arm and pulled her to her feet in the muck and then turned and fought his way further into the swamp. Mud and wicker woven weeds gave way before their terror fueled strength. The earth gradually grew more stable.

When the mud was no more than knee deep the pair collapsed in a bed of reeds. Cuts and scratches stung every surface but mud wrestler's ointment staunched any bleeding.

"Are--" Gasp. "--we--" Wheeze. "--safe?" Gasp.

"Don't--" Gasp. "--know."

At Nick's word's Katie rolled to her knees on the wicker weed platform and crawled forward plowing a boardwalk through the cattail maze.

She plowed her path right to the mucky banks of a canal. Fifty paces wide. Mucky brown. Indeterminable depth. Beyond it, more reeds, a slight rise and then trees.

"Do we swim?" Katie's bladder weakened dangerously at the thought.

"Not a chance." Weariness blunted Nick's words. "The highway's that way. Can you hear it?"

She could. Moving with the speed of a sloth, they adjusted their path. Presently they came to a point in the reeds. Coyote Creek poured its chocolate-milk waters into the swamp under Highway 126. The main channel, the one they'd encountered earlier, wormed its way off towards the lake on the left. However, another canal paralleled the causeway.

"Hey. Help!" Nick jumped up and down while waving his arms. A whole gaggle of fishermen, from toddlers to grandmas perched upon the gravel foundation causeway. Parked cars lined guardrail above. A near endless catch of blue-gill tugged upon their lines only to fill their buckets.

Katie added her scream and her weary gymnastics. "Help!"

A few fishers pointed. Between distance, and passing traffic, communication could not be established.

Someone put in a canoe. They weren't really even off shore when the endless catch stopped. The water swirled violently and a sinkhole maw sucked the small boat half way in. With a violent thrash the monster cat splintered fiberglass and wood upon the water. The would-be-rescuer disappeared with a flexing of whiskers and gills.

Fishermen screamed. Women, grandpas and children scrambled over eachother up the causeway bank. The pop of small arms fire sounded. Annoyed more than hurt, the goliath catfish dived. The swirl of its wake moved away from the mass of terrified people and charged Nick and Katie.

"Go!" Nick shoved Katie away from him. "Go, go, go, go!" He dove to his right.

The mud clutched onto Katie's thighs with the might of the living dead as she dove left. But even it failed to hold back the might of terror. Katie belly flopped upon the surface just as the colossal fish plowed into the bank. Once more she was battered by the passing of the aqueous wrecking ball. She tumbled over its back and rolled down its slimed side. The trashing tail catapulted her several paces into the canal.

"Swim!" Nick screamed. He made an Olympic dash towards the far shore.

Stroke, stroke, breath. Stroke, stroke, breath. Miniature tsunami pushed her from behind. Stroke, stroke, breath. Katie choked as a wavelet broke over her face. Stroke, stroke--

There was an eruption of water to her right. The lake pulsed. Katie gulped a breath. "Nick!"

"Swim girl! Swim. Damn you, swim!" There was a loud crack and a bullet skipped off the water near the embattled fish. The riffle-man chambered another shell.

Katie swam. Two men skid down the gravel bank of the causeway towards her.

Ten stokes out, the water boiled to the right for the last time. Eight strokes out, one of the men coming for her shouldered a 12 gauge. Six strokes out the crowd upon the causeway began screaming at her. Five strokes out the rifle-man above fired again. Four strokes out the monster bow wake pushed at her. Three strokes out the man leaning over the water for her hand, blanched. Two strokes out, the water pulled back on her and her feet tangled with something fleshy. Ribs of teethy bone scratched at her thighs.

As shotgun blast. Katie felt the impact through the jaw of the fish. A man had her hand. One, two, three and four more blasts. Shells rained in the water. Above, the rifle cracked. Her shoulder popped and she came free of the water and the man that had hauled her in tossed her half way up the gravel slope. She hit the gravel, scrambled barefoot in the scree and then half a dozen hands reaching over the roadway guardrail had her.

Another crack of the rifle. The fish rammed the causeway with enough force Katie felt it through the feet blistering pavement. The gargantuan catfish, a yellowbelly, rolled, belly up.