Aaron Elkins - Old Bones

"That’s the main body of the tide," Claire said without expression. "It will be here in a few minutes. We’ll have to run for the Mont."

"But how will we see the quicksand?" Ray asked, sounding more curious than frightened. "Won’t we step into it?"

"If we do, it won’t hurt us so long as we keep our heads and stay together. It won’t suck you under the way it does in the movies, but it grabs at you and holds you for the tide. But if you don’t struggle, if you throw yourself flat when you feel yourself caught, someone else can pull you out." She made an effort to smile. "Most of the time. I think now we’d better try to get back."

"Forget that‘try’ business," John said. "Let’s just do it."

They scrambled down the dune and sloshed forward at a steady jog through calm, ankle-deep water, trying to catch up with the advancing rim of the tide and get to dry sand, but by the time they got to where the rim had been, it had rolled another five hundred feet forward, and the water was up to their calves. Behind them, the roaring was wilder, the wind stronger, the sky a scowling, turbid gray. John and Gideon were breathing hard, Claire and Ray panting. Their shoes, filled with water, were like weights, but impossible to do without on account of the pebbles and shells. The lamb in Gideon’s stomach was no longer so delightful.

All the same, things were better than they might have been. No one had stepped in quicksand, and they were already over halfway to the Mont. Unless the speed of the tide increased, they were likely to make it all the way, encountering nothing worse than a soaking.

They pushed on, and in five more minutes they had reached the area of sloping sand that leads up to the base of the Mont. Exhilarated and laughing, they made a show of stepping over the crawling, inch-high verge of water onto dry land. On the North Tower a few watchers were shouting and waving. John grinned and clasped his hands over his head, boxer-style, which seemed to confuse them.

"Now that," Raymond said as they moved on up the slope in shoes that squished water at each step, "is what I call adventure. Outracing the tide of Mont St. Michel! Just as in Vercel! I never imagined it would happen to me." He grinned happily, clear-eyed and breathless. "Not that I’m sorry it’s over."

It was a long way from over. Instead of continuing to slope smoothly upward the sandy floor dipped, and in a few more moments they found themselves on the edge of a six-foot-high bank, looking down into a shallow, brown, fast-moving stream. They were no more than a hundred yards from the rocky base of the Mont.

"Where the hell did that come from?" John said, his brows pulled together. "We didn’t cross that when we came out."

"It was dry before," Claire said bleakly. "This isn’t a river, it’s the tide. It flows in over the lowest ground first, then spreads. There are new channels every day. We’d better get across quickly."

Ray seemed puzzled by her gravity. "It doesn’t really look too difficult. It can’t be more than a dozen feet wide, and I think it’s only about two feet d-"

He was cut off by a new sound, different from the cataract-roar behind them; a strange, sibilant grumble that was coming unmistakably and rapidly closer. They looked anxiously towards it, and in a few seconds a thick surge of dark water, almost as high as the banks of the stream, rolled heavily down it at their feet, pushing an edging of dirty yellow foam and bits of driftwood and plastic before it. When it had passed, hissing, the water in the stream rocked back and forth and then subsided restlessly, like water in a bathtub. But it didn’t subside all the way.

"It’s gone up almost a foot," Gideon said grimly, telling them what he knew they knew. It was also flowing faster, with little swells and eddies where there had been none before.

"We are going to get wet, aren’t we?" a subdued but undaunted Ray murmured. "Well, the first thing we need is a sensible tactical plan-"

But John, as Gideon well knew, was not big on tactical plans. "We’ll make a chain," he said tersely. "I go in first. Then Claire gives me her hand, then you grab hers, Doc, then Ray grabs yours." He moved to the edge of the bank.

"John, wait-" Claire said.

But he was already sliding feet-first into the stream, riding down the crumbling bank on the seat of his pants. "Well, it’s not too cold, anyway." He rocked slightly as his feet hit bottom. The water level was up to his hips. "But watch out; the current’s stronger than it looks." He held a hand up to them. "Let’s go. Doc, can you sort of pass Claire down to me?"

In not much more than a minute they had worked their way across without mishap. John, who tended to see himself as captain of the ship at times like this, stayed in the water until he had handed everyone out.

Then, as Gideon knelt to give him a hand up, there was another hissing, grumbling prelude, and another dark tidal surge, much larger this time, like a ship’s wake, boiled angrily down the stream. It slammed into John as he tried to clamber up, ripping his hand out of Gideon’s and carrying him on its crest for twenty feet, like so much Styrofoam, before flinging him carelessly aside, leaving him to claw himself to a stop against the opposite bank, the one from which they had come.

"I’m fine, I’m fine!" he shouted, streaming and spluttering, but he flopped and stumbled before he could right himself. "Boy, the flow’s getting stronger by the second."

And higher, Gideon noticed. The water now swirled above John’s waist, billowing out his ski jacket. The next surge would have it up to his armpits. "Come on, John, it’s rising. Do you need help?"

"Nah, I’m okay. I’m-"

He froze, open-mouthed, with an expression that Gideon, a native Californian, had always associated with the first startling tremor of an earthquake: a puzzled, listening sort of expression, as if you couldn’t quite make yourself believe that the dependable old earth had actually lurched beneath you. No matter how many earthquakes you’d been through, that first incredulous reaction was the same.

Only there hadn’t been an earthquake.

"Quicksand?" Gideon asked urgently.

"I think so," John said. "My foot’s-I can’t-"

"Oh, my God," Claire said. "John, don’t try to move!"

He managed a laugh. "Who can move?" But he pulled against the bank anyway, to no avail. The edges crumbled under his fingers and slid in tiny avalanches into the stream. He shook his head and looked up at them. "What do we do now, folks?"

"We get you out," Gideon said. "How deep are you caught?"

"I don’t know." He bent, holding his face above the surface while he explored below with his hand. A stray wavelet lapped at his mouth and made him cough. No, not a stray wavelet. The water level had climbed another inch. Gideon fidgeted uneasily. He had no doubts about being able to rescue his friend, but John Lau helpless and dependent was an unnatural and disturbing phenomenon.

"Just above the ankles," John called above the rapid gurgle of the stream and the deeper roar in the background. He wobbled in the current’s pull and tried to steady himself by propping one arm against the bank. There were more avalanches of sand.

"That’s not too bad," Claire said to Gideon. "We should be able to pull him out."

"We need something he can grab hold of," Ray said, distracted enough to let the terminal preposition stand.

Claire nodded. She was the only one in a long coat and she quickly stripped it off and handed it to Gideon. She shivered as a burst of raw, wet wind plastered her silky dress to her thin frame. Quickly Ray peeled off his mackintosh and put it over her shoulders.

Gideon took Claire’s coat but shook his head. "No way. It won’t reach from the bank," he said quietly. "I’m going in and pull him out."