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“So,” Tom says finally, breaking the near-silence that had descended over the group in the last twenty minutes. “I didn’t know—I mean, was that normal? Is this normal whale behavior?”
Gerri stares at him, her gaze slightly unfocused without her glasses. “Well, I don’t know, Tom,” she says, not bothering to soften the condescending edge to her voice the way she usually does. “I’m gonna go ahead and say that no, I don’t think it was.”
A hunk of metal floats past their little lifeboat, followed by a cushion from one of the deck chairs. In the distance, the wrecked skeleton of the yacht bobs and continues to sink.
“This is insane,” Shiv says flatly. Her nose and cheeks are red and her hair a frizzled mess, eyes squinted against the heavy glare of the sun. “Where the fuck is the rescue team? The call—the distress call went through, right?”
“Connor said it went through, yeah,” Willa confirms. She’s shivering, but the salt in her hair has only given body and texture to the beachy waves. She alone looks supremely unconcerned.
Roman groans and slumps further against Gerri. “Wait, is that all we have to go on?” he demands. “Connor said so?” Gerri pats his arm reassuringly even as she struggles to hide her own alarm.
“I mean, it was kind of chaotic,” Willa retorts, annoyed. She flings out a hand in the direction the orcas had finally moved off in once the first lifeboat had been lowered, over an hour ago now.
They’d taken that lifeboat with them, but no one’s ready to talk about that.
Tom pipes up. “Greg also said—wait.” He cuts himself off, alarm flashing briefly across his face. “Was Greg in the first boat? I don’t—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Gerri advises. Beside her, Roman snorts.
“Hey, guys?” Karl asks from behind them, where he’s been steadily paddling for quite some time. “Not that—you know, it’s not that I mind, but I’m not quite the young man I used to be.” He forces a self-deprecating little laugh. “If anyone is available to, maybe, help with the steering here…”
Up towards the front, Frank grunts in agreement.
“Sorry,” Roman says, syrupy-sweet, “but my entire family just got attacked by like fifty killer whales and might all be dead, so I’m just a little traumatized here. I might faint, actually,” he adds, pressing a dramatic hand to his forehead. “You might need to give me mouth to mouth.” He addresses that last part to Gerri, whose wet dress clings to her and whose skin is cold but soft where he rests against her. She rolls her eyes, but her lips twitch.
“Um, hello?” Shiv says, waving a hand in front of Roman’s face. “Still right here. And it was my family, too.”
“And mine,” Tom adds solemnly, still looking mildly concerned that Greg may not have joined Logan, Kendall, and Connor in that first boat after all.
Then again—it may be for the best. The orcas had gone for that boat the second it hit the water and then pushed it between them like they were passing a soccer ball. By the time the rest of them had made it off the yacht, there was no sign of either the lifeboat or the Orca Army that had appeared out of nowhere while they were politely discussing blood sacrifices over breakfast.
Everything had happened very quickly after that.
“Of course,” Frank agrees sarcastically, sweat shining on his face. “Well, I’m very sorry for your trauma.” He shoves the oar into Tom’s lap without another word and collapses back against the side of the boat. Tom scowls, outraged and unmoving until Shiv elbows him and he reluctantly begins to paddle.
“Thanks,” Karl chimes in from the back, defeated. “Great. Thanks.”
They fall back into silence, broken only by the steady lap of water and the occasional bump of yacht debris against the boat. At one point Gerri’s glasses float by and Roman presents them to her with a flourish that makes her laugh quietly and puts a beaming smile on his face. Not long after that, the yacht itself finally disappears under the water with a sad little sigh.
“Oh, shit,” Shiv says an indeterminate amount of time later, jerking Willa from the light doze she’d fallen into. “I think—is that the rescue boat?”
“It’s about fucking time,” Roman grumps, the irritation in his words belied by the way his face collapses into relief. He straightens up, resting his elbows on his knees. “Shit-fucking-Jesus, after Gerri comfort-fucks me into oblivion and I sober up—” Gerri elbows him, hard, but seems distracted by the shape in the distance even as he rattles on— “I’m going to destroy every last one of these blubbery blimps. I’m gonna buy a beach house and wallpaper it with their skin, I’m gonna, fucking, start a whale-burger chain and bankrupt the animal-fucker groups and—”
“Um, guys?” Willa interjects hesitantly. “I don’t—I don’t think that’s a rescue boat.”
“What do you mean, it’s not the rescue boat?” Tom demands, sweaty hair plastered to his red forehead as he continues to paddle pathetically.
“I mean, I think it’s not the—”
“Fuck,” Frank breathes as the orcas come back into view.
They’re still a ways off. It’s a smaller group and they’re disorganized, now, jumping and dipping around each other but without the purposeful militaristic unison of before.
“What’s that?” Shiv asks hoarsely. “What are they doing?”
They’re leaping around almost playfully. Every few moments one of them tosses something into the air and another catches it before continuing the game.
“Maybe something from the yacht?” Karl suggests, picking up the oar he’d quietly dropped awhile ago and beginning to frantically paddle once more.
Gerri carefully wipes her glasses clean and puts them on. From this distance, it isn’t clear, but she thinks she can make out the grim shape of a bloated, headless—
She looks away, pulling Roman back towards her and away from the spectacle as the orcas continue to gleefully toss the body between them.
“Nothing to worry about,” she says calmly. “I think it’s just trash.”