Shark.

The fear that gripped her was so total, so primal that she was literally paralyzed, frozen with her knees tucked up into her chest as if she could make all of her body beneath the surface of the water disappear. She couldn't see anything. Where was it? Maybe they're wrong, she thought.

Then she saw it. Eleven feet long, though it looked like fifty, the snub-nosed and stocky bull shark was heading right for her. The water was so clear she could see its cold, tiny eyes. It didn't even look real.

She wanted more than anything to haul ass, to get away, but she couldn't seem to make her muscles obey her.
In the extremity of her terror, she felt warm urine leak from her body into the salt water around her.

Can it smell me, she wondered? Maybe if I remain still...

She squeezed her eyes shut and waited to die. What happened was so unbelievable that she could not wrap her mind around what she was seeing. Just as the shark had circled around for a second pass, a man burst up out of the water beside it, gripping it by the fin and sinking a huge knife into its muscular gray back.

What the hell kind of scuba gear is that, Lindy wondered? She frowned at her savior's white facemask. It looked like a hockey mask. And that wasn't a wetsuit. They were raggedy, regular clothes; dull dark pants and a rough work shirt like a janitor might wear. But despite his oddball taste in beachwear, the guy was locked in a furious battle with the enormous bull shark. It had clamped its jaws around one arm and shook it furiously, but it didn't stop the guy from hacking into the shark, splitting open its snout and Slashing at its gills. They rolled over and over together, plunging the masked man into the water again and again. He jammed the knife into the shark's pale underbelly and the surf turned red with blood and warm gore, splashing Lindy's face. Soft loops of floating intestine brushed against her and she felt sure she was going to puke or pass out, but she still could not seem to make herself move. All she could do was watch, horrified, as the masked man gripped the shark's lower jaw, seemingly unmindful of the razor sharp teeth that dug into his palm, and ripped the entire jaw free from the shark's head.

Mortally wounded, the shark sank, twitching to the sandy bottom. The man turned to Lindy and she could see that during the furious battle, they had floated close enough to the shore for him to stand with his head and shoulders above the water. He looked at her with his masked face cocked slightly to one side and the bloody shark jaw clenched in his hand. Gory tatters of flesh hung from the jaw as he held it out to her, like some kind of weird offering

Chapter 20, Friday the 13th: The Jason Strain