Bouncing the axe on his shoulder, he made a choice. It was forward motion, or no motion—either one would likely end in catastrophe for him. He would certainly die if he did nothing. He looked back one more time to the larger gator. It had moved partially onto dry land. Robert shot it the finger. “Fuck you.” His voice was low and steady, not revealing how amped up his nerves were.
The gator stared at him unflinching, unworried, and uncaring.
Turning his back in a show of bravado, Robert stepped into the water. One of the smaller gators moved toward him, giving him a fright, but it stopped fifteen feet away as if it was unsure whether to attack or not. He kept moving. The next patch of dry ground lay about thirty feet ahead.
The seven were much smaller than the giant sentinel behind him. He figured they were babies, or very young anyway. The largest was about three and a half feet long. At that size, they could still be deadly. The little anxious gator darted toward him again. As if picking up his vibe, the other three on his left moved closer, too.
It darted again. It was within striking distance now. His hand tensed on the axe handle. He reached the other side. The small alligator charged at him, and the other three followed its lead.
Robert stumbled and fell forward, one hand on dry land. Before he could pull free of the mud and get his feet to the bank, the alligator latched onto his shoe. The bite was ferocious, and Robert screamed. The teeth sank through the leather of his shoe and pierced his foot in what seemed a thousand places.
With no leverage, and caught off guard, the alligator pulled back and dragged Robert into the water. Three snapping snouts full of vicious teeth came for him. He punched one and hit another, but the third joined its cohort and grabbed his ankle. The three from the other side of the shallow were on their way, drawn by the frenzy of activity and screams in the water.
The skin on his ankle was torn away as he wrested his foot to the side. A slightly larger gator charged straight for his midsection and Robert brought the axe down on its head. It did not kill the thing. It was like the reptile from hell, grabbing the smaller one next to it, thrashing it out of the way and heading back in for the kill. Robert fought to get back to the bank. A snout shot out of the water at his arm and he flung himself in the other direction managing to save his arm, but the animal took a piece of skin with it.
Unable to dislodge his foot from the smaller alligator, Robert swung the axe at it. The bigger one lunged, hitting the axe and deflecting the blow. Slowly gaining ground, he pulled himself toward the dry patch of land ahead, still swinging the axe and punching at the gators. They were relentless and merciless in their attack. The one attached to his foot tried to roll. The pain made Robert scream as its teeth lodged deeper into his foot.
Suddenly enraged, he turned, sitting on his ass in six inches of water, and brought the axe down just behind the gator’s head. Its mouth flew open as the blade sank deep into its neck. Its teeth stuck in the leather of the shoe and the sole. Robert, feeling the release of pressure, pistoned his other foot into the mud and propelled himself back and away. He stood and brought the axe down again. The other small gators flurried around the now dead one with the shoe stuck in its snout.
The larger gator, however, was not deterred. It stalked toward him hissing. He stepped back and out of the water, feeling heavy and his body slightly numb. The gator followed him. Opening its mouth wide, hissing deep and loud, and lunged for him, raising up. Robert swung the axe sideways as if swinging a bat at a baseball and connected with the gator’s head near its eye. The reaction was instant and more violent than he anticipated.
Shaking its head side to side hard enough to bring its feet off the ground, the gator backed swiftly into the water with the blade and part of the metal plate stuck in its head. Blood poured from the wounds in wide gushes with each movement. Robert tried to pull the axe free, but the gator hit the water and began to roll in the mud, jerking him off his feet. His hand was tangled in the loop and he couldn’t get free.
The big alligator from the water bellowed and ran toward them. The smaller ones scattered, and Robert fought hard to free the blade. The larger gator immediately attacked the wounded one, viciously biting into its side and jerking side to side.
The blade slipped free and Robert tumbled face-first into the water, slipping on muddy ground. He scrambled to the little bank and clawed his way to the dry patch, shaken to his core. With his old wounds opened and the new ones sitting on his body like small fires, he screamed at the alligators. One long, rage and fear-filled scream that echoed.
The big gator spared him a look and hissed in retaliation, daring him to step close to the fresh kill. The smaller gators swarmed the dead like flies from a hellish fevered nightmare, tearing bits away and gulping them down.
He would have been lying if he said he had not somewhat enjoyed killing the bigger gator. There was a barbaric rage in him that needed the satisfaction of a kill. But the gator had not been the kill that would put that fire out. It only served to add fuel to it.
He turned toward the meandering madman’s path and limped along, heading toward the kill that would satisfy him most. The gator attack only added another reason to his already long list of reasons to have his revenge on those two low-brow, knuckle-dragging hicks at the gas station.
Twilight had fallen in the swamp. Thunder rolled in the distance, and a breeze wafted through the damp, hot air, ruffling the endless curtains of white moss ahead of him, like veiled spirits set aflutter by his presence.
Huffing, his lungs burning, his body aching, he put one foot in front of the other, trailing blood from the wounded one. He struggled in the darkness, mostly feeling his way along. Thankfully, there were no more dangerous encounters with the wildlife. The moon rose, breaking through the clouds every few minutes. Just another cold and indifferent eye staring at him, tracking his progress.
The thunder had closed in steadily, threatening a downpour.
“Just what this place needs…more water.” His voice cracked and his throat felt hot and dry as a desert wind.
When the first fat drops of rain began to pelt him, he moved to a large cypress and sat among its buttresses, lightly sheltered by the moss above. The rain was icy on his skin and soon, he shivered, and his flesh was covered with goosebumps. After ten minutes, he was numb to the chill and stood.
Moving from under the slight covering of moss, he held his head back and opened his mouth, letting the cool water run down his throat. He cleaned as much of the muck and blood off him as he could and started walking again, refreshed by the rain.
He was certain he would suffer infections from his many wounds. He had been doused and dipped in filthy swamp water, packed with mud, gnawed on by alligators, bitten by mosquitoes, and sullied by the germs of one genetically mutated hybrid monster. Yet he was still on his feet; still moving forward. His hate and determination fueled his movements. After the alligators, he had lost whatever fear lingered in him. After the monster in the bunker and the gators, there wasn’t much left in the world to be afraid of, in his opinion.
His father had always called him a puff and a sissy, said he would never be a real man. All because Robert refused to walk through the world like a badass—in other words, he refused to be a dick to every person he met as his father had always done. Robert backed down from physical fights, preferring to talk out the problem and try to come to a non-violent solution. He had always liked his face just as it was and saw no reason to willingly get it rearranged by some big-muscled, small-brained idiot who just wanted to fight for the sake of fighting.
He laughed at the thought. All his years, he had avoided having major damage done to his body by others, only to incur lifelong, and possibly disfiguring injuries in a matter of hours. He didn’t believe there was a single inch of his body that had not been damaged.
What would you think if you could see me now, old man? He wondered silently, still treading
lightly along in the rain.
The rain had started to puddle on the trail, and he used the axe as a temporary walking stick to stabilize his steps and take pressure off his gator-branded foot. He stopped twice, knelt, and drank from standing puddles. Each time, he had flashbacks to his first up close and personal meeting with an alligator. The puddles weren’t nearly large enough to hide a gator and he knew that. But it didn’t stop the sudden, violent flash memories or his body’s knee jerk reaction to them.
The rain didn’t slack and slow as he walked. Weather was different in Louisiana; just like everything else there, even how the weather behaved was foreign to him. He was walking, or rather limping along, coming down from his latest adrenaline high and feeling slightly nauseas, and the rain stopped. Just like somebody flipped a giant switch to the off position.
The clouds remained as thick and ominous as before the rain. Running a hand through his hair, he slicked it back away from his face. The knot on his forehead had grown and was still tender, but the bleeding had stopped. The cut in the center of it was raw and burned as he rubbed his face in an effort to clear more of the blood and dirt.
His right hand and wrist were badly bruised and swollen, but he kept his arm in the loop. He only hoped all the rain hadn’t loosened the tape. He lifted the business end and tweaked the blade. It seemed sturdy enough, but the way he planned on using it, it might break loose if the deeper layers of tape lost their adhesive lining to the water.
Another hour or so, as he gauged the time, he saw another small clearing ahead. The moonlight had little trouble casting its cold glow over the ground there. He could see smaller, skinnier trees, and it had been over an hour since he had seen the curtains of Spanish moss. As he neared the opening at the end of the path, he realized it was more than a little clearing. It was a wide spot on the side of the paved road. The ground was lighter not only because of the moonlight, but because the spot had a thick covering of gravel.
He didn’t burst out of the woods, as he thought he might. Rather, he stood just inside the tree line, eyeing the road as if it might only be an illusion, a mirage that would shimmer in the dim light and then disappear like fog when he neared it. That was pretty close to how he felt about it. Experience had taught him that just because you can see it doesn’t always mean you can reach it.
He squinted into the darkness, half-expecting to see the familiar X pattern of another chain link fence between him and the roadway. But his way seemed clear. Pushing the axe far out in front of him, he parted saplings and weeds, giving himself a better view.
The gray-black ribbon of road stretched far to the right, straight and, he thought beautiful. To the left, it met a curve and was blocked from view. There was no ambient glow of town lights in either direction. And he heard no vehicles.
Stepping through the part in the weeds, he stepped into the gravel. His shoe had stretched and was still sopping wet inside, but the sole protected his foot from the gravel.
“They might not be gator-proof, or even waterproof, but they’re good for something at least.” He wished he had the other, but it was probably dancing in the belly of an alligator and would be puked up somewhere in the swamp a couple weeks later. “I hope he chokes to death on it and the other gators eat him, too,” he grumbled under his breath, bringing his bare foot to rest in the gravel.
Surprisingly, the sharp edges had been worn off the rocks. There was no telling how long they’d been in that exact spot, though. The best he could tell, most things around there had been in the exact same place for eons. In his mind, the whole place was as stagnant as the swamp he’d nearly died in.
The few steps to the road hurt his foot like a mad bastard, but he made the pavement and looked up at the treetops silhouetted against the rainless clouds. It did not look familiar. There were no markers at the sides of the road, nothing to tell him where he had ended up.
For the first time since the facility, Robert consciously decided to turn to his right. It just felt right. Granted, nothing looked familiar, and he could obviously get lost even following a map, he simply knew the gas station was somewhere around one of the curves to his right. There was no visible curve in that direction; the road just ran straight until it faded out of sight completely, devoured by the darkness that he had come to associate with that part of the world. The darkness was unbroken by any false lights, as if it could not be pierced by something manmade, that would be too mundane, too boring for the Louisiana swampland.
After walking for another hour, or maybe three, he had lost the ability to judge the passing increments of time, and his childhood teachings about how to judge time and direction by the stars was so far in his past they were useless, also, the gas station was nowhere in sight. Without a watch, he assumed he had been walking about an hour just by the way his body ached, which was everywhere and in every part.
Stopping by the edge of the asphalt, he checked both directions and again, nothing was jumping out and screaming, ‘Hey! Remember me?’
An engine, a very loud muscle-car-sounding engine growled to life in the same direction he had been walking. The sound of that engine announced that there were indeed rednecks out and about at the late hour—their favorite time to get up to no-good, he thought. The driver dumped the clutch and the tires squealed for five seconds, then the engine resumed revving through gears as the sound faded.
He thought the sound of that engine was the best thing he had heard since ending up in the area, what was it, a day ago? Three? He didn’t know for sure; he just knew he had been there too long.
His limp disappeared a little as he headed farther down the road. In fact, when the flickering glow of the fluorescent came into view, most of his pains disappeared. It was the adrenaline, he knew, but enjoyed it, nevertheless. He hurried toward the disrupted glow of light and moved to the tree line, remaining completely hidden.
His heart thudded hard with every beat like a fist hitting against his ribs. The sound of voices drifted to him and his skin tried to crawl off. He had to fight the urge to turn around and look for telltale glow of the two-headed hybrid. The sound it had imitated was so similar to what he was hearing, though, that he finally did turn and quickly search the darkness for faintly coalescing lights in the shape of the monster.
Of course, there was nothing behind him except darkness and woods, but he felt better for having checked. How long, he wondered, will I be checking over my shoulder and behind doors for that fucking thing?
Easing forward, he heard rough laughter. The kind usually heard amongst a group of men who are usually swapping stories of bad shit they’ve done, or bad shit they plan to do. His dad had laughed like that more often than he cared to think about.
One time that stuck out in his memory in bold, colored strokes of red was the time his parents had been arguing, and his father had shoved his mother across the kitchen. Robert had been a toddler, but he distinctly recalled his mother pinwheeling her arms before crashing into the wall backwards and rag dolling on the floor, unconscious.
At the time he had not known the word ‘unconscious’, she had hit the wall hard and then lolled to the side when she went down, her hair covering her face. Robert had giggled, thinking she looked funny. Gripping his sippy cup, he had waddled to her and playfully pulled at her hair lying lankly over her face. She had fallen sideways. Even as a toddler, Robert had understood she was hurt, but he didn’t know what to do about it. His father had laughed, walked to the living room, and called him in there to watch television with him. He remembered going to his father and climbing into his lap. And being scared. That was the worst. He had been scared a lot of the time as a kid.
Years later, his father had been telling one of his redneck buddies about it at the hunting cabin, and Robert had heard that same rough laughter from him.
Moving in the shadows, he put the parking lot in his view. An old station wagon sat at the pumps. The hose ran from the pump to t
he tank but there was no one attending it. He heard the laughter again and looked toward the open garage.
The mechanic stood inside at the bumper of Robert’s car, hip propped easily against the trunk, something shiny in his hand. He tilted the shiny thing and it caught the light, sending up sparks of brightness as he did so.
My watch, he thought angrily. The son of a bitch has my fucking watch!
That watch had been a gift many years ago. It probably wasn’t worth as much as the mechanic thought, but the sentimental value was likened to that attached to one’s wedding ring, or heirloom passed down through the family.
Wanting to rush the mechanic and the two other men, but he knew that would be a bad idea. He couldn’t take on all three of them. And he still hadn’t spotted Mr. One-Eye, the attendant. He could have been lying in wait to ambush the two goons eyeing Robert’s watch.
Deciding to be like the big alligator in the water, he stealthily moved closer to the garage and found a soft spot in the grass to sit. He would watch from semi-comfort and strike when the time was perfect. He would not rush into it and fuck up the chance he had to get his revenge.
Chapter 12
Bib Overalls and Grease
One of the men went back to the station wagon and removed the nozzle, hanging it back in the holder. He spun the cap and slapped the cover closed before opening the driver door and leaning into the passenger seat. Robert couldn’t see what he was doing, but he hoped the guy was getting a gun so he could rob the mechanic, maybe even shoot him.
Trotting happily back toward the mechanic and the other man, the little prick held money in the air and whooped. Yeah, be happy, Robert thought. Be really happy about your little find. It’s not worth whatever he’s charging, you stupid little shit.
The guy handed the mechanic the stack of bills and in return, he took the watch and what Robert could only believe was his wedding band. Julie had the jeweler engrave the date of their wedding flanked by two intertwined hearts on the inside of their bands. Who the fuck puts that on the finger of another woman? He wondered.
S79 The Horror in the Swamp Page 16