ZOMBIE SHARK HIGHWAY

CHAPTER 8

Happy Friday!

Here we go, Chapter 8. Confession - this was one of my favourite chapters to write. If you missed the previous chapters, you can find them all here.

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Chapter 8

Kayla tucked her feet beneath her, sitting on the wicker bench of her grandfather Bo's screen porch. After eight exhausting hours of questions and waiting and questions and cameras, Officer Howe finally called Bo to pick her up from the station. Kayla stared out at the other trailers in the park, lined up in front of her, her tear stained eyes blurring their yellow lights into long, rainbow flecked stars. Her brain felt like mush. She'd remembered the events of the day over and over and over for Officer Howe. She was burned out now, too exhausted to even think, let alone cry.

Cry for Mike and Sarah who wouldn't come home to their parents tonight.

Cry for Dad.

Whatever happened to him.

Kayla tried not to think about it. Because she could guess.

Dad was dead.

Kayla pulled Bo's housecoat up around her ears and chin. It smelled like cigarettes, just like him. She could hear him now, clearing his throat while he watched The Simpsons. He hated The Simpsons. But everything else on TV was some kind of police drama and Kayla suspected he'd decided she'd had enough of police for one day. He was right about that. When he'd driven her home, Bo didn't say much. Robbie -- Officer Howe -- had told him everything he needed to know.

"You gotta be hungry," Bo'd said on the drive home.

Kayla just shook her head and that was that. Neither of them said anything more.

Kayla looked over at the bowl of noodle soup cooling on the wicker table beside her, a peanut butter and jam sandwich with the crusts removed balancing on the rim. Bo wasn't much for cooking. Still, this was more of an effort than she'd ever seen him make, fussing over crust and cooking the soup on the stove in a pot instead of in the microwave. He was worried. Worried about Dad.

But Kayla wasn't worried. Her father was dead and that's all there was to it.

How he died -- she knew Robbie wasn't convinced.

"It's not that I don't believe you, Kay." He'd separated all of them when they came bursting into the station -- Kayla, Maddie, Joey and Justin. And interviewed them each in turn. When the time came to talk to Kayla, he left Robbie at the door and put on his Officer Howe hat.

"I'm just trying to get a handle on what happened."

"Didn't Justin tell you what happened?" said Kayla.

"I want you to tell me, Kay."

Kay. All of the people who worked with her dad called her Kay. It was familiar. It was a part of their history -- barbecues and hockey games and bring your daughter to work days. And Officer Howe was using it as a tool. Kayla knew how it worked, she was the Sheriff's daughter after all. Establish a rapport. That's the first thing you do when you interview a witness.

Kayla felt sick.

Witness.

What had she even witnessed? "I don't know...How can I even--"

"Let's start with what you were doing there."

Kayla shook her head. She'd almost forgotten the whole stupid reason for going out to Highway 3. "Justin and Joey wanted to steal some teeth."

Robbie watched her, his eyes narrowed, his pen held ready on a blank pad of paper.

"You know," she said, "from the sharks that washed up on the highway."

Robbie nodded.

She knew Officer Howe wouldn't say much. He was trained not to. Kayla was supposed to do the talking. She sighed and stretched her arms out in front of her, trying to ease the cramping between her shoulder blades.

"When we got there, the sharks were gone. There were three cruisers, looked abandoned. I recognized Dad's." She ran her fingers through her tangled hair, pulling it out of her eyes. "Some of the others-- "

"Which others?" asked Robbie.

"Maddie, Joey," she said. "Sarah and Mike." She bit her lip. Sarah and Mike had been alive then. It was hard to know they weren't anymore. "They ran to the water to swim."

"And where were you?"

"On the beach, with Justin. We just watched them and that's when I noticed these tracks in the sand. Like big swish marks leading to the water." Kayla swallowed. "That's where I saw the leg." She shivered then, hating the next part. "That's when they came back."

"Who came back?"

"The sharks."

Robbie frowned at her. "What do you mean, came back?"

It was Kayla's turn to frown. "What do you mean what do I mean?"

"Came back from where?"

"Wherever they went!" She didn't understand what he was asking. She'd been as clear as she could be. She knew how it must have sounded to Robbie. It sounded crazy to her. But what did he want her to do? Lie? Come up with something that made more sense to him? "I'm not asking you to believe me," she snapped. "I'm just telling you what I saw."

Robbie put up his hand. "I'm not discounting what you saw, Kay. I'm just trying to make sure I'm understanding you right. When you say, 'they came back', you mean the sharks had been there before?"

"Yes! Last night, weren't you listening?"

"The sharks from the night before?"

Kayla glared at him. That's what she'd been saying. And he knew it.

"Kayla," he said, "those sharks were dead."

Kayla leaned back in her seat, folding her arms around herself. Her face felt warm. They certainly had looked dead. "Well obviously not," she said quietly.

"What makes you so sure these were the same sharks?"

Kayla said nothing, focused on the memory of the beasts rising up out of the white water, the way they thrashed onto the sand. "The eyes," she said, and they were all she could see then. White, milky orbs -- seeing and unseeing all at once. "They had white eyes. The same eyes."

Sitting on Bo's porch, Kayla remembered the way Robbie Howe's forehead crinkled, his mind working to decide what to say. The only reason he hadn't wrestled her into a straightjacket was because they still couldn't find her dad or the other officers that had gone out to Highway 3. And when Robbie sent Officer White and Doyle to investigate, they found the cars, found the blood. But no sharks. And no Dad.

So Robbie had no choice but to listen. Listen while Kayla talked, endlessly. And then she waited. Waited while he spoke to the others. Then made her talk some more, going over the same details again and again.

Then Robbie Howe brought out the camera.

"Why do I need to say it again?" Kayla said, her throat raspy from talking too much.

"It's just to help us with the investigation, Kay."

Kay again. She'd wanted to scream at him, tell him to go to hell. She'd told him enough times that he should've had it memorized. But she didn't. Instead, she sighed and gave Officer Howe what he asked for. "The sharks came up out of the water..."

When she finally finished what felt like the hundredth re-telling of what she'd seen that day, Kayla couldn't be sure Robbie Howe believed a word of it. She wasn't sure she even believed it anymore.

She remembered sitting on the thin green couch in the interview room, waiting for Bo to pick her up while Robbie and Trudy frantically made phone calls. Detectives were on their way from Moncton. And Justin was sitting somewhere, alone just like she was. She wanted to talk to him. Ask him what he told Robbie. Just talk about what happened, really. She'd been over it so many times and she was starting to feel confused, starting to worry it was all in her head. She needed him to tell her that he saw it too. To confirm that he'd been there, with her. They'd been through it together.

But Robbie Howe told her not to talk about it. Especially with Justin and the others. "People experience things differently, Kay. What one of you remembers isn't going to be the same as what the other one remembers. They can influence what you think happened and you can influence them, which will make things difficult for me to do my job. So don't talk about it."

But Kayla couldn't have talked to Justin even if she wanted to. From the window by the couch she could see Justin's parents when they arrived, worried faces. They whisked him away before Kayla had a chance to say anything.

But Justin saw her through the window.

He didn't look like the Justin Heard she knew. His skin was pale and haggard, his eyes swollen and red. Had he been crying?

He jerked towards her, but stopped. She half expected him to grin -- that maddening smirk that was signature Justin Heard -- but he didn't. His puffy eyes just held hers, asking her something. Probably all the same questions she had for him, she guessed.

Kayla rubbed her knees, the cold air on the trailer porch seeping beneath her skin as she tried not to think about Justin. About that look he gave her in the police station.

It wanted something from her.

And now they couldn't talk to each other.

They'd never said much before Robbie Howe forbade it with the hammer of the law. After all of this, Kayla suspected she and Justin Heard would probably never speak again.

Kayla picked at a couple fraying edges on the wicker armrest of Bo's bench.

Did it even matter though? Dad was gone. What else was there?

Bo cleared his smoke-phlegmed throat somewhere inside.

All she had left was Bo.

Kayla hugged herself, expecting to cry but her body refused to do it. She was just too tired. Everywhere. Tomorrow would be just as exhausting. Bo would be an even bigger mess, his anxiety growing the longer they went without hearing anything on Dad. The Moncton detectives would probably have more questions. And Kayla would have to talk about the whole ordeal again. By herself. And at some point, she'd have to start thinking about her life without her father.

Tomorrow would come. There was no avoiding it.

She might as well be ready.

Heaving herself off the bench, Kayla opened the trailer door.

"Kayla?"

She turned back, and she could see him through the screen of the porch, feet crunching on the gravel road.

Justin Heard.

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Thanks so much for reading another chapter of Zombie Shark Highway! I hope you’re enjoying the story - I always love to hear from readers so if you have burning questions about the threat of zombie sharks coming for your coastal city, lake front town, creak side suburb, definitely share it in the comments!

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New chapters coming next week!