Alligator Park (42 page)

And then I remember the
sports car, a mile down the road, hidden in the bushes. It all makes sense now.
It’s his. He left it there so he would have a clean getaway. A clean getaway in
case someone else shows up, someone he didn’t want to tangle with, someone like
Fargo. He could slink back into the woods, work his way back to the car, and
disappear with no one the wiser.

My mind races, what to do?

The gun, it’s in the glove
compartment. I’ll dash to my truck, lock the door, and drive to the police
station. If he tries to stop me, I’ll shoot him through the glass.

I turn and run, but before I
can complete two steps, my purse is snatched violently from my grasp. I glance
over my shoulder and see the strap snagged on the armrest of Will’s chair and
the contents spilling out all over the floor.

I watch in horror, as if in
slow motion, as the car keys fall through a gap in the boards.

“SHIT! SHIT-SHIT-SHIT!” 

I drop to my knees and try to
retrieve the keys, but it’s too late, they’re gone, and then Damon starts
running towards me. I scramble down the steps and run towards the dock.

I snap my head backwards to
see how close he is and then a strange thing happens; Damon observes me from
the porch with no apparent urgency to come after me! He must be feeling a sense
of complete control, amused by my desperate act of escape. My thoughts flash
back to that chilling night in the ladies room, how he whacked me in the mouth,
how he tore at my clothes, and how he feeds off the terror of his victims. It
was clear to me now; he had a strategy. He was the hunter, and I was the game!

I race across the shoreline,
but my dress shoes keep sinking into the sand, slowing me down. I tear them
off, throw them aside, and resume my escape barefoot.

I run onto the dock, jump
into Fargo’s airboat, and then unhook the ropes, allowing them to fall into the
water. I push against the dock with the oar, creating a gap between me and the
pier as the airboat floats away into the channel.

Damon dashes down
the steps and runs toward me as he grasps the notion I might actually get away.
Whatever plan he may have concocted, I’m
certain he’s determined to conclude it tonight. And then he’ll disappear, drift
back into anonymity, to work on his next victim. But I wasn’t about to let it
happen. If physical strength is the law of the jungle, it was intellect that enabled
humanoids to exert dominance over bigger and more powerful animals. Damon has
superior strength, there’s no denying it, but I have intellect, and with
nothing else to fall back upon, intellect would be my savior.

I rack my brain, desperately
trying to remember how to start the engine, the sequence Fargo taught me.

First, open the gas petcock.
Second, throttle at one-quarter. Third, close the choke halfway. Finally, turn
on the ignition.

I go through each step, one
at a time, exactly how Fargo told me to do it. Wah, wah, wah, goes the engine,
the propeller struggling to come to life, but it doesn’t catch. I try again.
Wah, wah, wah, a few pops, and then, a roar; the engine springs to life.

Okay, now, open choke all the
way, set the throttle to half, point the rudder in the opposite direction you
want to go.

I do all these things, just
as I saw it done before, and miraculously the airboat starts picking up speed.
I narrowly miss hitting some pylons but manage to maneuver the airboat into
clear water. As I pick up speed, I see Damon jump into the other airboat.

He doesn’t know what to do, I
think to myself optimistically. But suddenly, I see the propeller turning
slowly.

He’s trying to start it!

I ram the throttle to the
three-quarter mark causing the airboat to accelerate aggressively. The hull
dances across the surface of the water, scarcely making a ripple. I set a
course for the tribal hunting grounds, that special place no one but the
Indians know about.

I look back at Damon again.
He’s managed to get the engine started and the propeller is spinning rapidly. I
see him maneuver the airboat in my direction, but I’m clearly gaining on him.
Perhaps he doesn’t understand all the subtleties of piloting an airboat, or
perhaps he did something stupid like leaving the choke on, effectively choking
off engine power and squelching his ability to catch up to me.

I manage to put a couple of
miles between us, so now he’s nothing but a dot on the horizon. I head for the
tiny cove, the one where Fargo leaves the airboat while he’s hunting. Once I
get the boat hidden, it will appear to Damon that I just vanished off the face
of the earth. He’ll never figure out what happened to me and I’ll be safe. I
could wait him out for days, living off the stores of food and water Fargo
keeps hidden for emergencies, until he gets tired of waiting, or until he
presumes I’ve long since left the area. It was a perfect plan.

Damon is nowhere to be seen
so I begin the long wide sweep around the island and towards the tribal hunting
grounds. I reduce the throttle to one-half power slowing the airboat and
navigate closer to the shoreline. I maneuver the airboat to about a hundred
yards from the shoreline and slow it even more, searching desperately for the
little cove. It’s hidden so well no one would ever suspect it’s there, but
Fargo has shared with me the secret. I remember him telling me: “Look for three
towering slash pines about a quarter mile inland. The center one lines up
exactly with the cove.” He explained that these were planted more than a
century ago by the Seminoles for that very purpose when they were playing a
cat-and-mouse game with Federal troops. The U.S. Government had decreed that
Indians were to be relocated to Oklahoma, but the Seminoles had skillfully
outmaneuvered the troops with these clever little tricks. The markers are easy
to see from the water, but look so ordinary no one would ever suspect they are
anything more than just another random group of trees.

I locate the trees and ram
the front of the airboat under the dense canopy of bushes. Just beyond me is
the secret cove; I can see it clearly. The low-lying branches scrape along the
seat tops, but I keep the airboat going forward until so many branches push
against the propeller cage I can go no farther. Then I cut the motor.

The back end of the airboat
still juts out into the lake so I use the oar to push the branches aside and
around the engine just as Fargo had done. The long pole stored on the airboat,
used for pushing against the lake bottom, facilitates my efforts in getting the
airboat past the obstructions. But the work is strenuous, and I’m not as strong
as Fargo, and I’m making little progress.

And then I see it. It starts
out as a dot on the horizon, but gets bigger by the minute. I stare at the
growing dot in disbelief, but there’s no denying it; Damon has seen me!

I redouble my efforts to slip
past the branches, but with little success. I decide to abandon ship and slip
into the water. It’s about six feet deep at this point so I have no difficulty
swimming under the lower branches. As I get closer to the shoreline, I let my
feet drop down, feeling for the sandy bottom with my toes. The water is now just
above my waist, shallow enough to walk, so I stand up, and work my way to the bank.
My clothes are drenched, and weighing me down, but I persist, going as fast as
I can.

The distant buzz of Damon’s
airboat has now become a roar telling me he is very close. I can’t see anything
beyond the thick underbrush, and fortunately, I know he can’t see me either.

I dash down the trail towards
Fargo’s canoe. Once I launch myself in the canoe, and get past the first group
of Cypress, I will be safely beyond Damon’s reach. There’s only one canoe and
it would be suicide to attempt to swim after me. The swamp is not forgiving to
swimmers, especially after dark.

The sun is now low on the
horizon, and soon, the nocturnal world will come alive. Deadly creatures of all
types will crawl out of their hiding places and seek out a victim to feed their
hunger. I feel a sharp pain in my foot, a cactus or thorn, but I press on. There’s
no time to worry about it now.

Suddenly the sound of the
airboat stops. He’s here. Will he attempt to follow me, or will he give up? I
can’t take any chances, I must continue with my plan. I run even faster than
before. The canoe is now only a half-mile farther and I haven’t seen or heard
any evidence of Damon. Perhaps he gave up. Did that maze of tangled bushes dissuade
him?

I reach the clearing where Fargo
stores the canoe and proceed to pull it out of the underbrush. It’s
up-side-down, the way Fargo always stores it to keep out the rain. I struggle
to get it right-side-up and uncover the items hidden underneath. There’s a bow,
a quiver filled with arrows, his fish spear, two oars, and his leather pouch. I
toss the items into the canoe to keep them from Damon and then drag the boat
into the water.

I climb in, sit on the floor,
and push the oar against the soft sandy bottom, attempting to get the canoe away
from the bank and into deeper water.

And then he appears; Damon is
flying down the trail and heading right for me.

I redouble my efforts, paddle
frantically, try everything possible to get into ever deeper water. But Damon
is undeterred. He runs right into the waist-high water and grabs the end of the
canoe holding it firm.

“Rose, you’re leaving without
me?” he says, grinning like this was all a game.

I scramble for a weapon, grab
the fish spear, and then point it at his face.

“I’m not Rose.”

“Oh, but you are. You belong
to me now, and that’s the name I gave you.”

“I don’t belong to anyone,” I
say, pushing the spear closer to him.

“Rose, Rose. There’s no need
for this. I just want to be friends.”

“Is that why you killed Judy
Swass?”

“She wouldn’t be my friend.
Come on, let’s shake and forget the past,” he says, holding out his hand.

“Get away, or... ”

“Or what?”

He proceeds to drag the canoe
back to the shoreline. I put on a face of determination and point the spear
right at his neck.

“Back off, or I’ll do it.”

He stops, turns to face me.

“Do what? Are you going to
kill me? Do you have what it takes to kill a man, slide the spear into his
jugular, see the blood gush out, and watch him die? Could you do that? I don’t
think so.”

With lightning speed, he
grabs the shaft, grips it tightly. I tug on my end trying to snatch it back,
but his strength far exceeds mine. He glares at me with those horrible eyes,
evil eyes that delight in the pain of others. Eyes that feed on the terror of
his victims as he squeezes the life from their body. A chill envelops me. My
hands tremble. I feel my determination evaporate as my last bit of strength
subsides. I come to terms with the inevitable; he is going to kill me!

I reach deep into my soul,
into places I’ve never gone before. I’m not ready to die. I want a family, and
kids, and a career. I want my life to be useful. I want to make the world a
better place.

My thoughts fly back to my
undergrad coursework in human psychology. “Never reveal your mental condition
to your adversary; it gives him power,” the instructor used to say. “He will
attempt to wear you down, make the situation appear hopeless. And once you
acquiesce, he gains control and you will be putty in his hands.”

I know what I have to do. If
I can’t beat him physically, I will have to outsmart him.

I pull on the spear with
every ounce of strength I can muster. Back and forth we go, like it’s a game of
tug-of-war, causing the canoe to rock side to side. I lose my balance for an
instant and grab the gunwale for support. It’s the break he was waiting for. He
snatches the spear from my hand leaving me defenseless.

He points the
spear at my neck and then slowly, methodically, creeps along the outside of the
canoe. The metallic spear-point glistens in the rays of the dying sun. I
scramble backwards, crablike, on my hands and heels, to the extreme end of the
canoe. The razor-sharp point gets closer and I’m terrified. A quick thrust,
well positioned, would be all it takes to slice open my veins. It’s the thrill
he feeds on, the reason he is here, to see me beg for my life and then watch me
writhe in agony as I slowly bleed to death.

But as long as I
breathe, I won’t let it happen. I abruptly shift my weight over the side of the
canoe attempting to roll it over. The gunwale should deflect the spear and
create a barrier between us giving me precious moments to swim away. My
training with the swimming team taught me a few things, and I’m pretty sure I
would have the speed advantage over an amateur. But he thwarts my efforts. He
grabs the gunwale and grips it tightly using his superior strength to keep the
canoe steady. And then he just glares at me.

So here we are,
at a frozen impasse, staring at each other, me like a trapped mouse and he like
a cat waiting to pounce.

Suddenly he bursts out
laughing. To say I’m confused would be an understatement, but then he confuses
me even more. He takes the spear and snaps it in half across his knee.