A Hard Death (37 page)

J
enner ran the length of the dock and dove, swimming out under inky water warm and thick as blood, away from the highway, away from the sea beyond it. He was swimming upstream, to the safety of the mangrove maze. He came up for air, a quick gasp before ducking underneath again. He'd have barely a minute before they reached the dock; the less wake he left, the safer he and Deb would be.

He came up again, now swimming to the shallows of the nearer tributary, the channel he'd told Deb to take. The broad river was fed by many smaller streams through the mangrove forest: in the shadows and smoke haze, the men following would have a tough time tracking them, particularly if their pursuers were in the big airboat.

He wondered how far upstream Deb had gone—she could go anywhere in the swamp with the kayak.

Light jerked out over the water from the dock. Jenner sank back under and pushed into the shallows, hiding among the cascading roots.

The beam skidded across the surface; they seemed to be sizing up the situation at the dock more than looking for him. He recognized Brodie and another man, heard their voices across the water.

“He got the Go-Devil!”

“It's slow, we'll catch up. Start up the airboat, and let's go.”

The engine coughed twice, then rose to a deep, humming roar. The beam of light skittered over the surface toward Jenner, then bounced away, and then the airboat was sliding across the surface; it picked up speed, heading downriver toward the highway bridge and the sea.

Jenner knew they'd soon realize he didn't have the swamp boat. He moved deeper into the mangroves. The tributary was shallow enough for him to stand, the water reaching his mid-chest. The smell was stale
and vegetal, the dark, muddy reek of rotting plants and brackish water, the air humid and sweat-salty under the thick canopy. The banks were not earth, but the hard, tangled roots of the trees, big knots of spindly rootlets leaping off the mangrove trunks to plunge into the water. Under the surface, the roots knit together into a wall as dense as the branches above; the going was slow and hard.

Jenner kept moving. Swimming was no easier—the dark waters looked still but were moving quickly, swollen with the rains; he found himself standing and walking, pushing forward into the stream, holding the mangrove roots like handles. He called out for Deb; by now, Brodie was far enough for it to be safe. In any case, even if they were just a hundred feet away, the cacophonous airboat engine would drown out all sound.

But there was no answer. He was moving deeper and deeper into the mangroves, the branches and leaves and mud and water slowly swallowing him. When he called her, the sound died out within a few feet, stifled by the thick baffle of the low canopy.

He'd kept the river to his right, but had now lost sight of it as he followed the channel. Particularly in her condition, how far could Deb have gone?

Jenner stopped, let his feet down, cupped his hands around his mouth to amplify the sound, and yelled her name again. He didn't know how far he'd come, how fast he'd been swimming and walking. He couldn't see the orange light of the burning farm, he couldn't even smell the fire in the trapped air of the swamp.

He should just stop. Stop and wait in the shadows, wait it out. Eventually the cops would come.

He just needed to find Deb first. The men in the airboat wouldn't keep looking downstream much longer.

F
ifteen minutes later, Jenner still hadn't found her. He was getting desperate. Where
was
she? The effort of forcing his way deeper into the swamp had been exhausting; sweat pouring down his face, his mouth parched and bitter, sunk to his chest in muddy water, nothing to drink.

He pressed forward. He felt the full burden of his fatigue now; when he shouted for Deb, his voice cracked and broke from the strain.

Light swung through the undergrowth, the brilliant white beam of a spotlight, diffracting through the maze of pale trunks and branches, the mangroves a shifting kaleidoscope of silver roots and black shadows. Now Jenner heard the low throb of the airboat as it came nearer.

He pulled up against the edge of the stream, in among the roots. The sound was louder now, the light brighter. The spotlight operator was moving it slowly, sending the beam through the mesh of mangroves, trying to pick him out.

Jenner lay against the roots, gasping, smelling the black fetid swamp mud, feeling moisture—sweat, water, he couldn't tell—trickling down his face.

It hadn't taken them long to turn around and come back to look for Deb and Jenner. He was exhausted now, his muscles burning, his joints on fire, his sodden clothes weighing a ton. He didn't know how much farther he could go.

The light moved past him, and as the airboat moved forward, he saw his channel through the mangrove forest taper and die two hundred yards upstream, the dense curtain of trunks and leaves sealing off his escape.

Deb must have taken the tributary on the far side of the river.

To reach her, Jenner would have to make his way back toward the dock, somehow get past the airboat, swim across the river, and head back up the tributary on the other side.

Impossible.

D
eb held still as the bright light cut through the mangroves. The airboat had moved up the river and was now much closer than she'd expected—fifty, sixty yards at most. She'd thought she'd moved far away from the river, but she saw now she'd been simply rowing parallel to it.

The airboat was idling, not moving forward, not moving back, hovering while the spotlight beam crept slowly through the undergrowth, picking its way through the stunted trees like a steel dental hook, poking in the crevices to winkle her out.

Why weren't they moving? They must have seen something—her silhouette, maybe, the yellow of the kayak.

The light crawled toward her. Deb made her mind up quickly.

She pressed her hand to her wounded side to brace it, then tipped to her right to roll the kayak. Her torso slipped into the water; she struggled to extract her legs, to kick out of the cockpit silently. The salt water screamed into her wounds, a red-hot poker jabbing into her flank.

She could barely stand. She pushed the kayak down, opened the front deck hatch, and dragged the little boat under until water flooded into the cockpit and hatch. She let the kayak half-fill, then shoved it over into the mangrove roots, wedging it there.

Then she swam out across the tributary, her eyes desperately searching for a hiding place in the thick wall of mangroves opposite.

From the river, the airboat searchlight was still combing the undergrowth.

Deb was almost halfway across when the airboat engine revved up loud, and the light swung around. The boat flew off back in the direction of the dock.

Had they given up? Were
they
on the run now, not her?

She let herself slow down, rolling onto her back to look up at the sky, her breathing easier. On her back, she could float better, let her arms do the work; it hurt less than when she kicked.

She let her neck tip back into the water, and as she did, she heard a high-pitched metallic grinding. She knew instantly: they'd doubled back into her tributary, and were now flying toward her at high speed.

She swam hard. Each time she came up for breath, the bright searchlight seemed to shoot a straight silver line right at her, right up the middle of the water from the airboat to her; no matter how hard she swam, it followed.

But it was an illusion of her focus; the searchlight operator hadn't spotted her, she had spotted the searchlight.

Afraid they'd catch her splashes, Deb dipped below the surface, tried to make herself go deeper, pulled herself under, clutched the submerged roots to hold herself down until her lungs were bursting. Finally, when she could take it no more, she let her mouth and nose break the surface.

They were a hundred yards downstream. The searchlight was now picking its way along the opposite bank. They
must
have seen the kayak earlier—they were looking right where she'd been.

She swam under the branches of a clump of young buttonwoods lodged among the mangroves. Deb clutched a thicker branch, and pulled herself up, gasping with pain as the muscles of her left side tightened to steady her. She rolled into the undergrowth, falling backward onto the branch-ribbed carpet of rotten leaves and roots and shrubs, wriggling until she was hidden by the dense boughs.

The airboat drew nearly level; she pressed her back down into the leaves in the shallow depression behind the buttonwoods.

There was the crack of a gunshot, then the airboat jumped forward, and there were two more quick shots as they pulled up on the kayak. There were two men on the boat, the older man on the stick, the younger one in the bows near the kayak; she'd seen neither before. The younger one tugged loosely at the kayak's yellow hull with the gaff in his left hand; he held a .45 in his right.

He put the gun down on the seat, stretched on the floor of the airboat to reach out and unsnag the kayak from the mangroves. The kayak bobbed free, then quickly sank.

He stood to speak to the older one, then sat back down behind the searchlight. The engine powered up again, and they crept slowly along the far bank, raking the dark trees with the light, hunting Deb like a heron hunting a frog.

She lay back. If she kept this position, they wouldn't see her; all she had to do was just keep still until they left.

She was safe.

Deb breathed slowly. She couldn't get comfortable, roots and branches prodding her back, each movement of her hips or shoulder twisting her wound.

She tried to distract herself by making a list of things that made her happy, but the fear kept cutting in, so she focused instead on each sensation she felt—the root under her left calf, the torn stump poking her back, the dull burn of her injuries when she moved. She told herself four or five minutes tops, and they'd move on: time would be tight for them, too. She just mustn't budge, or they'd see her.

Something moved across her leg.

In the dark, Deb couldn't see it, but she was sure she'd felt something. It wasn't just the scratch of a branch, or a fold in her clothing settling—something had actually moved across her leg.

Her breathing came faster. Light gilded the leaves around her as the airboat swung around and started searching her side of the river, moving closer to her hiding place.

There was more movement, a slow rustle, a light, twitching pressure as something else wriggled across her thigh.

Now there was one on her leg, and another inching along the skin of her flank, where her shirt had ridden up. She was afraid to touch it, afraid to see what it was.
It's too small to be a snake,
she told herself,
it's too small to be a snake
.

The light was close now, flooding the trees, a tungsten-bright dawn enveloping her. She had to hold still now—any movement, any jostle
of a branch and they'd spot her. She breathed in, and tried to ignore all the things slithering over her body. There was one under her shirt now, crawling up her belly; her wound burned at the thought of it moving across her stomach, attracted by blood, finding the hole, worming into the wound, penetrating her…

And then she heard it: a desultory, hollow clicking right next to her ear, so close it was like someone had leaned in to whisper to her, but had instead shaken a rattle.

The light grew brighter, and Deb let her head ease down to see she was lying in a nest of snakes. A fistful of newborns crawled over her stomach, her thighs, her legs: slender gray snakes, hours old, a hatched yellow pattern across their backs. And next to them, two feet from her head, was their mother: an Eastern diamondback rattler about five feet long, her belly grotesquely bloated with live young.

Deb didn't move, didn't flinch. Light poured through the buttonwoods; she saw the snake's tail lift slightly, saw the sequenced ripple of muscle as the big snake squeezed out a glistening, translucent egg sac. A stillborn fetal snake lay inside, coiled and immobile.

The hollow was bright as day. In the roar of the airboat engine, Deb stopped breathing. The newborn snakes on her belly and legs had stopped moving now; it's the warmth, she thought, they're attracted to my body heat.

The rattler's body shone in the light, shuddering with effort. A flap under her belly gaped as another little killer baby emerged, its narrow head squeezing obscenely out through the bloodied cleft. The body followed, seeping out onto the earth next to Deb; the baby snake, almost a foot long and fully venomous, quickly roused and pressed up against her.

The mother's swollen belly and tail twisted; the movement made an abortive rattle, the sound Deb had heard earlier. The big snake brushed dryly against Deb's shoulder as she slid to the aborted egg sac and began to tear open the sac, to eat the dead fetus.

The rattler seemed barely aware of Deb, but that would change if she tried to move. Rattlesnakes were brutally fast—she would coil and strike before Deb could even swing her legs out.

Deb had managed two rattlesnake victims in the Glades. The first man lived, but the second, a German tourist bitten when he left his campsite to pee, had taken hours to reach the ranger station. By the time he made it, his entire leg was glossy and boggy with liquid blood, bruised the color of eggplant. He'd died in the back of her Jeep on the way to the hospital.

Deb lay immobile, her lips not moving as she prayed.

B
rodie, up on the bench behind the airboat's stick, peered into the press of branches and leaves. The ranger had to be on this tributary; the other channel quickly dead-ended, and she wasn't on the river where they'd found the kayak. She'd have been paddling before they'd chased Jenner to the water; it was unlikely he'd have caught up with her, so where was he? Maybe they'd gone in different directions.

What had Jenner been looking for on the farm? They'd got out of the boat shed—why didn't they just run? Brodie needed to find him, learn just what the hell he was up to.

But they'd catch him all right. A man can move pretty easily through the mangroves on the water, but the forest was an impenetrable tangle of branch and root and sapling and shrub: no way could Jenner get through on foot. He had to stay on the water.

Brodie spat. He could've used Tony, but Tony wasn't there—fled or dead now, he figured.

He doubted the cops were already at the farm—he'd have heard the sirens, maybe seen them crossing the bridge over the channel. His money and his passport were already secure—Brodie could leave his rental car at the farm. The cops would be piecing burned flesh together for months, and they'd never know whether or not they'd found any bits of Mr. James Brodie of Mendocino, California.

As soon as they found Jenner, got him to talk, Brodie would be on his way. Get rid of Jenner; the girl, too, if they found her—she didn't matter so much, as she didn't know his name. Then kill Tarver.

It was all still doable. He could do it. He could get away free now—free and rich.

He pushed the stick forward and the airboat jumped a little, then
slipped downstream. He was surprised at how far back they'd come—the current was sliding them along.

Brodie turned and glanced downriver; the dock and boathouse were in sight.

And suddenly, so was Jenner—the unlucky bastard had chosen to move at just the wrong moment. He was creeping around the spit of forest that separated the river from the channel the girl had taken.

He said nothing to Tarver, and looked back at the bank in front of them, pretended to look for the girl. But he nudged the stick slightly forward, revved the engine, and let the airboat move faster.

Less than a minute later—a quick swooping turn, a couple of gunshots to show Jenner they'd spotted him—and they had him. Tarver dragged him up onto the boat, kicked him in the ribs to help him focus, and then, while he lay there winded, tied a noose of yellow nylon rope around his neck, tying the loose end to one of the seat stays.

Jenner lay on the floor of the boat, unable to move.