She could tell from the way she was shifted about that the terrain was irregular. In the distance, birds chirped, oblivious to what was happening to her. She imagined them stopping briefly at the sound of the gunshot that would end her life and then picking up again a few seconds later as though it had meant nothing. Or maybe Roy planned to strangle her, which wouldn’t disturb the birds at all.
She heard the rustle of weeds and felt them brush her face at the same time that she became aware of a moist algal odor. The terrain seemed to grow unstable and she could feel whoever was carrying her struggling to keep his balance. His footsteps now had a hollow sound.
She was dropped—not onto hard dirt, but a piece of hard wood—a boat seat. The chirping birds now seemed happy for her. Roy wasn’t going to kill her, at least not right now.
The boat continued to rock as whoever had been carrying her went back onto shore. A few seconds later, she heard the truck being started and then it drove away. She’d begun to think they’d all left her, when she heard the rustle of weeds. Accompanied by the sound of scuffling, the boat began to rock again. It shuddered as something hit down hard.
The boat rocked and hollow footsteps came toward her. Her blindfold was stripped away. In the glare of light so bright she could barely keep her eyes open, she saw Roy standing over her. He pulled the tape from her mouth and removed the headband gagging her. Squinting from the light, Kit leaned to the side to see around him.
She was sitting in the stern of a boat with three other seats. In the second from the small one in the bow, Teddy sat facing forward, still blindfolded.
“Where’s Larry?” she croaked, sounding like Janis Joplin after a two-hour set.
“He took the truck back up the road so if anyone finds it, the swamp won’t be the first place they think we went.”
“How about taking off Teddy’s blindfold and gag, too?”
“He’ll probably just use the opportunity to show us how angry he is.”
“Isn’t he entitled?”
“So we’re back to the concept of fair play. Listen to me.” He leaned down and squeezed Kit’s chin between his fingers.
“Fair play exists only in prep school mottoes and crocheted onto doilies. It’s a myth. Stop pretending it isn’t.”
He let her go and turned his back.
She considered throwing herself at him, then realized all it would accomplish would be to tip them both into the brown water, where he would simply scramble to shore and she’d drown.
After his tirade about fair play, Kit was surprised to see him remove Teddy’s blindfold and gag.
“Angry?” Teddy said, his voice only slightly more normal than Kit’s. “You bet. The word doesn’t do justice to my feelings about you. We need a new word for that. And you’re wrong about fair play. You’ll realize that before this is over and you’re on the other side of things.”
“Sounds more like retribution than fair play,” Roy said.
“Don’t talk to him,” Kit said. “He’s enjoying it.”
“I was rather,” Roy admitted, straddling the seat between Kit and Teddy so he could see both of them. Kit saw on the front seat a couple of books Roy had brought.
They sat without talking, waiting for Larry’s return, the only sounds the distant chirping birds, until high above them, a shrill kee-you, kee-you signaled the arrival of a red shouldered hawk. It circled twice, then flew away on wings that made Kit hugely envious.
A short time later, well before Larry himself appeared, Kit heard the sputter of the police scanner, faint at first, then louder. Larry’s head and shoulders came into view over the tall grass lining the bank. He dipped to one side and a flat piece of metal sailed over the swamp, hit the water, and sank—the truck’s license plate, Kit assumed.
There followed some rearranging, during which Kit was moved to the next seat up and Larry took her position in the stern, along with the scanner, which he put on the seat. Roy passed Larry a long pole, then put a canoe paddle in the boat. He pushed the boat away from the bank and hopped in.
Using the paddle, he turned the boat around and consulted a piece of paper from his shirt pocket. He brought the bow in line with a point he’d apparently determined from his map and motioned for Larry to get to work with the pole.
They were in an open stretch of water decorated with clots of floating duckweed, but soon entered a mass of water hyacinths that pressed against the boat, slowing their progress toward the cypress forest thirty yards away.
Some minutes later, they passed to the left of a grotesquely shaped cypress tree ten feet thick but only thirty feet tall and entered a world that, despite the circumstances, Kit found eerily beautiful.
The cypress trees were massive, their thick trunks forming great fluted wedges rising from the water, so close together the sun could find its way through only in patches, backlighting the gray shrouds of Spanish moss flourishing in the branches. Scattered between the trees were walls of cypress knees four feet high, woody stalagmites that together with the trees divided the water into a myriad of intimate rooms.
“Turn off that radio,” Roy said. “If there’s anybody else in here, I don’t want us announcing ourselves.”
Roy consulted his map, then pointed to a gap between trees. The boat moved forward.
As they penetrated deeper into the forest, the water changed from tan to black. To be in the midst of such beauty and at the same time be in fear for your life seemed positively surreal. Adding to this incongruity was the comfortable air temperature and the absence of mosquitoes, as if this were some kind of ultimate ride at a demented Disney World where the price for the experience was death.
They picked their way between trees for perhaps thirty minutes, seeing no wildlife along the way. Then, as they passed a knot of cypress knees, a bird with a bright orange head and beak landed on the knees and burst into song, programmed no doubt by the engineer who’d designed the ride.
A few minutes later, they were all startled by a drumming sound, as though someone was hitting one of the trees with a stick. This proved to be only a black woodpecker with a bright red topknot and a startling white stripe down the side of its head.
Then they came to the snakes—gray, thick-bodied, evil— two or three on nearly every clump of cypress knees and sometimes coiled on the lowest branches of the trees. Kit wasn’t the only one disturbed by them.
“Roy . . . I don’t like it in here,” Larry whined.
“They’re not poisonous,” Roy said.
“He’s lying,” Teddy said. “If one of them bites you, you’ll be dead in five minutes.”
Kit thought Teddy was just saying that to get Larry even more upset, but it did the same for her.
Roy looked at Teddy. “It’s very difficult to talk without a tongue. One more comment and you’ll see that for yourself.”
Kit continued to watch for snakes long after they’d been left behind, until she saw a peculiar scalloped membrane sticking out of the water a few yards ahead. When they drew near, the water erupted and they were all soaked as a spike-nosed garfish nearly as long as the boat headed for the bottom.
BROUSSARD WAS ONCE MORE on the plains, but all that remained of the immense buffalo herd were a few pitiful groups standing in twos and threes, their heads bowed, too listless even to feed. The great black stallion was breathing hard and bloody foam bubbled from his nose and mouth.
David Seymour stood beside Broussard’s bed, silently cursing the virus consuming the old pathologist. It had taken him like a raging forest fire that had leapt the medical firebreaks they’d put down as though they weren’t there. Now, he was in multiple organ failure. And, simply put, he was going to die.
ROY HELD UP A cautioning hand and ordered quiet with his finger to his lips. Larry eased up on the pole. Roy used the paddle to change their direction and signaled for Larry to move the boat forward.
Roy guided them into a position where the stern was flanked on the right by a string of tall cypress knees and the bow
by a huge tree trunk. He signaled again for quiet and motioned for Larry to grab the cypress knees.
Leaving his seat and moving carefully in a crouch to where Teddy was sitting, Roy whispered, “There’s an old man ahead of us fishing from a small boat. I don’t want to kill him, but I will if he sees us. So if you two don’t want his death on your heads, keep quiet. And you”—he motioned to Kit and Larry—“bend down.”
Kit considered her options. Maybe the old man had a gun, too, and wouldn’t be so easy to kill. He surely knew the forest better than Roy, and his smaller boat would give him better mobility. And this might be her last chance.
But if Roy did kill him because of something she did . . . No. She couldn’t take that. She bent down and hoped Teddy had made the same decision.
She listened hard for some sign of the old man’s approach and finally heard something plop into the water not far off. All was quiet for a few minutes and then she heard the old man’s bait break water and another plop as he tried a new place.
Then it grew quiet.
Seconds ticked into minutes. Wondering if he’d gone, she decided to sneak a look. She rose slowly, until her eyes cleared the wall of cypress knees blocking her view.
And there he was—not twenty feet away, looking right at her—a grizzled old man in a dirty yellow cap and a checkered shirt, his mouth slightly open, showing an expanse of bare gum line.
Cursing her curiosity, she ducked behind the cypress wall and held her breath. Roy had his pistol ready.
But there was no shout from the old man, no greeting, no accusations, no questions. Soon, Kit heard another plop, farther away than last time.
Roy peeked from behind the tree, looked back at the others in the boat, and nodded, making a gesture that the old man was moving off in a different direction.
Eventually, they resumed their own trip.
After a time, Larry said something Kit, too, was thinking. “I’m thirsty.”
“Unless you want to drink swamp water, there’s nothing I can do about it,” Roy said. “There’ll be water at the shack.”
“How much longer?”
“We’re about halfway.”
“Jesus, it’s far.”
“That was the idea.”
As the day wore on, the temperature climbed a bit. If you were merely riding in a boat, it was still comfortable, but Roy and Larry both began to sweat. Larry bore his discomfort silently and did not speak again until they saw a large ball of what appeared to be caviar floating a few feet from the boat.
“What the devil’s that?” He lifted his pole from the water, got a short grip on it, and sent the tip toward the ball.
When the pole made contact, the caviar exploded into a wiggling mass, part of which came up the pole with incredible speed. And Kit saw what they were—fat black-bodied ants.
Larry watched them running toward him as though he was hypnotized.
Then the first wave reached his hands. Screaming in pain, he dropped the pole in the water and began dancing and slapping at the ants, which were now seething up his arms. This set the boat rocking so violently, Kit lost her balance and tumbled to one side, nearly taking a header into the water.
Hanging precariously over the side, she tried to throw herself in the opposite direction, but, bound as she was, she could get no leverage.
The boat dipped again and she felt her legs lifting. She was going over. . . .
22
Seeing they were about to lose Kit, Teddy threw himself at her feet, pinning them against the seat. Then Larry jumped out of the boat. He went under in a mass of bubbles.
Despite her close call, Kit had the presence of mind to hope he couldn’t swim. But his head popped to the surface and he grabbed for the boat.
Roy scrambled past Teddy and Kit and helped Larry in.
“They were so fast,” Larry complained. He looked at his hands, which were pocked with white welts. “Look what they did to me.”
“You shouldn’t touch things you don’t understand,” Roy said. He glanced at the ant colony and saw that it had been pushed a safe distance away by all the ripples Larry had caused. He pointed to the pole floating nearby. “Pick up your pole and let’s get moving.”
“The radio,” Larry said. “It’s gone.”
“When you don’t think before you act, bad things happen,” Roy said.
They reached their destination an hour later. It was nothing but a shabby corrugated-metal box on stilts. Though Kit would have preferred room service at the Hilton and a nice bed with the covers turned down and a mint on the pillow, the shack looked mighty good.
Roy tied the boat up at a rickety ladder leading to a dock that was equally suspect and told Larry to wait there until he had a look around. He climbed the ladder, walked to the front door, and opened the padlock securing it. He then went inside.
While they all waited for him to return, a small lizard the same color as the weathered dock came out from a crack between one of the pilings and a stringer and studied them with evident curiosity. Roy’s footsteps when he emerged from the shack and returned to the boat sent it back into hiding.
“The place has been ransacked,” Roy said flatly. “They got in through a broken window. Most of the food is gone, but they left the water and a few cans of beans. They also took the propane tank for the stove.”
“We can’t stay here without food,” Larry said.
“Not for long, but we can get by tonight. We’ll figure out what to do in the morning. Let’s get them inside.”
Roy carried Teddy into the shack on his shoulder. Larry did the same with Kit. They were deposited on an artificial brick floor, next to the sink in a room whose walls were paneled in rough-cut cypress. Against the wall to Kit and Teddy’s right was the gas stove, with pale images on the cypress above it the only evidence of the pots and pans that had once hung there. Next to the stove was the broken window. There were two metal cots with thin bare mattresses in the room, one on each side of the front door, which was directly opposite Kit. To her left, a blanket bearing an Indian design curtained off a small alcove. Through the crack where the blanket didn’t touch the door frame, Kit saw a raised platform with a hole cut in it—the toilet, obviously open to the water below. A circular table and four chairs that looked as though they might have been made during the Crusades sat in the L formed by the sink and stove. Kit could see a gallon jug of water, a kerosene lamp, and three cans of beans on the table.
Larry grabbed the jug, unscrewed the cap, and tilted it to his lips.
“Give them some water, then get the glass from that window cleaned up,” Roy said, motioning to the shards scattered over the linoleum.
“I’m hungry.”
“Do what I say.”
Roy went out the door, leaving it standing open. He walked onto the dock and studied their surroundings.
Larry brought the water jug to Kit.
“You want some of this?”
Right now, there was nothing Kit wanted more, but she wasn’t going to beg. “Roy said give it to us. So don’t play games.”
“You think I do everything Roy says?”
“Like a trained gopher.” It wasn’t smart to antagonize them, she knew, but it was all she could do.
Hearing Roy’s footsteps as he headed back to the shack, Larry put the jug to Kit’s lips and tilted it acutely, giving her more than she could handle, so the excess ran down her chin, soaking her blouse.
“I’m gonna enjoy killing you,” Larry said.
He moved over, put the jug to Teddy’s lips, and did the same to him.
Roy came inside with the two books he’d brought and glanced their way. Ignoring what Larry was doing, he went to one of the beds and put the books on the floor beside it. Then he lay down and closed his eyes, hands folded on his chest. His expression when he’d looked at Kit and Teddy had been as stony as always, but there was something in his manner that made Kit believe he’d reached a decision out on the dock. He had, she feared, lost interest
in them.
Larry set about gathering up the broken glass and throwing it out the window. When he finished, he went over to Roy.
“The glass is all cleaned up.”
Without opening his eyes, Roy said, “Make sure they’re not sitting on any or have any in their hands.”
Larry went over to Kit first and rolled her onto her side. He inspected her hands and did the same with Teddy. He then went back to his brother.
“Now can I eat?”
“Go ahead.”
Larry found a can opener and a spoon in a drawer by the sink. He opened a can of beans, dropped into one of the chairs, and dug in. Seeing Kit and Teddy watching, he paused, his spoon halfway to his mouth. “Roy didn’t say to give you any.”
Larry finished the can and took a long drink from the water jug. He eyed another can but left it alone. He stood, fished the gun from his pocket, and sat down again.
He popped the cylinder and shook the bullets into his hand. Snapping the cylinder back in place, he pointed the gun at Kit and pulled the trigger. He shifted his attention to Teddy and did the same thing.
Satisfied that the gun was still functional after going into the water with him, he reloaded, got up, and put it on the unoccupied bed before going through the rest of the drawers in the sink cabinet.
He brought a deck of cards back to the table and began a game of solitaire.
After a while, he got up, looked behind the Indian blanket, and went into the alcove, where his activities there couldn’t be ignored. Kit felt the call herself but found the bathroom situation so repulsive, she was able to resist it.
“You okay?” Teddy whispered.
She wanted to be strong and optimistic, but she was so tired of being dirty and sore and thirsty and tied up that she couldn’t help saying, “Not really.”
“It’s going to be okay, I promise. Just hold on a while longer.”
She nodded listlessly.
Somehow, she managed to doze off. When she woke, Larry was asleep on one bed and Roy was sitting on the other reading the Ed McBain book. He glanced at her, then went back to his reading. Through the open door, it appeared dusk was falling. She looked back at Roy, who seemed fully absorbed in his book and had no intention of reading it aloud.
Louisiana Fever Page 23