Horizons by Catherine Hart

Author:Catherine Hart [Hart, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Plane Crash, Stranded, Architect
Published: 1997-09-13T13:54:50+00:00

Chapter 16

The incoming tide was lapping at their feet by the time they roused themselves to dress again. As Kelly sloshed through the foamy surf to retrieve her shorts before they washed out to sea, a wad of seaweed twined about her leg. “Oh, yuck! I hate this slimy stuff.”

Tugging on his own pants, Zach laughed at her. “Just another delight of life on the beach. Why don’t you save it? Maybe once its cooked, it’ll taste like spinach.”

“So, who likes spinach?” she retorted smartly. She was standing on one foot, shaking the other and trying to dislodge the clinging mess when a knife-sharp pain shot through her calf. With a loud scream, Kelly fell to the sand.

In three running strides, Zach was at her side. He didn’t even have to ask what was wrong. Kelly was clutching her left leg, just below her knee, shouting, “Oh, God! It hurts! It hurts! What is it? Get it off me!”

Zach’s confusion turned to horror when he reached for Kelly’s leg. The greenish glob attached to her calf wasn’t seaweed at all. Zach’s best guess was that it was some sort of jellyfish, though it more resembled that revolting snotlike goo appropriately called “slime” that his nephews used to play with. The thing’s tentacles were hooked to Kelly’s flesh, and from her continued screams, it was evidently biting or stinging her.

Zach’s first instinct was to rip the creature off of her. His fingers were a scant inch from it when common sense asserted itself. He jerked back, seized Kelly’s foot instead, and turned her leg into the sand and began dragging it back and forth. Within seconds, the friction convinced the animal to release its hold. Before it could resume its attack, Zach quickly grabbed Kelly and hauled her farther up the beach, out of harm’s way.

“Don’t touch the wound, Kelly!” he ordered sharply, seeing she was trying to clutch at her injured calf. “You’ve been stung by a jellyfish, but it’s off now. Lie still. Let me look.”

“Oh, God, Zach!” she wailed. “Do something! It hurts so badly!”

“I know, love. I know. There are still some tentacles attached. Just keep your hands away, or you’ll likely get them stung, too.”

As would he, if he touched the tentacles which had come loose from the jellyfish and were still clinging to Kelly’s flesh. For a moment, he was stymied as to how to loosen them without causing her additional injury. Finally, for lack of anything more inventive, he daubed her entire calf with a thick paste of wet sand. Then, employing his pocket knife, he carefully scraped it away again, tentacles and all.

By now, Kelly was sobbing and trying to brush his hands back to make way for her own. He seized her wrists tightly, aborting the move. “Stop it, Kelly! I got it off. It’s going to be all right now. Just don’t rub or scratch at it, love. You’ll only irritate it all the more. And don’t thrash. You’ll grind sand in the wound.

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