by Sean Black
Mimsy withdrew her elbow. Cressida felt immediate relief.
It proved short-lived as the same elbow crashed into her face. Cressida’s head snapped back from the impact, her grip weakening further. Mimsy’s hand clawed at her face, nails raking down her cheek, a finger poking into her eye.
Mimsy was strong. A lot stronger than she looked. And she had weight on her side.
Cressida knew she had to try a different approach. Go on the offensive. If she stayed like this, with Mimsy pressing down on her, clawing at her face and poking at her eyes, sooner or later she would be overpowered. It was only a matter of time.
Behind them, Lyle was still staggering about, drenched in blood.
Tilting her head down Cressida watched Mimsy’s free hand as it came up to take another finger jab into her eye.
If you want to fight dirty, we can do that.
As Mimsy’s finger slid up past her jawline, Cressida snapped at it. Her teeth closed around the end of Mimsy’s index finger. She bit down as hard as she could. She could taste blood, salty and strangely satisfying.
Mimsy tried to pull her finger out of Cressida’s mouth. Cressida kept her teeth clamped down, her incisors crunching into bone.
Mimsy moaned in pain.
Yeah, see how you like it.
The older woman’s other hand let go of the shotgun. She jammed the heel of her palm into Cressida’s septum, pushing her nose back up into her skull.
When that didn’t make Cressida open her mouth, Mimsy jabbed two fingers into her eye. It was enough for Cressida to loosen her grip on Mimsy’s trapped finger. It came away with the tip hanging off.
Cressida could see Lyle lumbering toward them. If he made it over to this side of the boat, they’d capsize. Nothing was surer.
Mimsy must have figured the same. “Stay where you are, Lyle!” she hollered at him.
Even with his entire body in total distress, something about Mimsy’s voice seemed to command his attention because he sat down suddenly on the other side of the boat. It tilted back, leveling out on the water.
Backed up against the side, Cressida tried to lower the barrel of the shotgun. If she could only get it angled, she could pull the trigger and this nightmare would be over. This part of it anyway.
Mimsy made a fresh lunge, pushing off with her feet, and diving down low. Her shoulder slammed into Cressida’s stomach, knocking the air from her lungs. Mimsy’s knee came and slammed into her bad leg.
The one-two shock of it made her lose her grip on the shotgun almost entirely. Mimsy peeled it from her, sat back, and brought it up, her finger on the trigger.
Cressida lay back, completely spent, no more energy left.
Mimsy had the shotgun aimed at the middle of her chest. They were both sucking in air in big gulps. It felt like the two bottles of water Cressida had drunk had sweated back out again in the struggle.
Lyle was rocking back and forth in a sitting position. His hand came up with a jagged fragment of jaw bone. His fingers closed round it. He raised it to his face as if he could just click it back into place.
Pushing off with one hand, Mimsy got slowly to her feet, her eyes never leaving Cressida. She shouldered her way past Lyle, seemingly unconcerned with his suffering, and hoisted herself back up into the pilot’s chair.
Cressida could only watch. Even if she’d had another lunge left in her, the distance was too great. Mimsy would pull the trigger before she had even made it halfway.
Back on her throne, Mimsy had the shotgun in one hand, while the other felt for the stick.
“Look what you done,” she said to Cressida, nodding at Lyle’s bloody face.
64
At the sound of the first shot, an egret took flight over the boat. Ty and RJ looked at each other.
Ty picked it out as probably a shotgun, the sound too low-range and sonorous to be a handgun or a small-caliber rifle.
“It sounded like it came from over there,” said Ty.
“It’s hard to tell out here,” said RJ. “The way sound travels, you can think someone’s behind you when they ain’t.”
“Let’s keep moving,” said Ty. “If they’re headed to where you think they are then we’re bound to run across them.”
RJ pressed down a little more firmly on the pedal, and pulled the stick back, the back end of the boat sweeping out as they cornered around a fresh stand of cypress. Ty stood at the bow, scanning as far ahead as the terrain allowed, which wasn’t very far.
When he saw anything directly ahead in the water, he called it back to RJ, who adjusted course. They kept moving like that for another two minutes, RJ pushing the boat as hard as he could without risking a fresh entanglement with the vegetation.
At one point they came up too fast on a fallen ash, almost fully submerged in the water. Ty saw it late, and RJ cleared it with inches to spare.
Neither man spoke about the shot they had heard. There was little point. They had no way of knowing what it signified until they caught up with the other airboat.
Then, from the swamp silence, a fresh shotgun blast. This one louder. Closer.
Ty glanced back, the two men sharing another moment of quiet dread. “Let’s keep going,” said Ty, another echo from his days in the Corps.
When all seems lost – keep. After. It.
65
Mimsy stepped delicately down from the pilot’s seat, a curl of heat still fresh at the tip of the shotgun. Her brow was furrowed, as if she was still weighing a decision in her mind.
Blood had pooled under the seats, oozing from one side of the craft.
Lyle lay splayed against the side, arms flung out in a gesture of surrender. What remained of his head lolled to one side. Blood oozed from a meaty black cavity near the center of his chest.
The slug had hit him almost square in the heart, tearing through his pectoral muscle, and shredding both atrial and ventricular chambers, killing him almost instantly.
Cressida sat balled up on the other side of the boat, only her bad leg extended. The oozing blood from Lyle’s wounds gathered at her heel.
“See?” said Mimsy. “See what you made me do?”
“I made you do that?”
“If you hadn’t shot him, I wouldn’t have had cause to put him out of his misery,” Mimsy said primly.
Cressida stared at her. Maybe the scariest thing of all about this woman was that she actually believed what she was saying. By murdering Lyle she had done what she had to.
As soon as Cressida had realized why she was aiming the gun at Lyle, she had said what he couldn’t. She had begged Mimsy to spare him.
“We can turn back. Go and get him help before he bleeds out,” she had said.
Mimsy had studied her for a long second. “You should have thought about that before you shot him. But don’t worry. At least you’ll have yourself some company.”
Lyle had been halfway to his knees, his hands clasped in a gesture of supplication when Mimsy had pulled the trigger, blowing him back against the side of the boat.
The woman was stone-cold psycho, thought Cressida. There was no depth to which she wouldn’t sink to get her way.
Mimsy snapped the shotgun open, and reloaded. It was an action so smooth that by the time Cressida realized what she was doing the window of opportunity to try again to take her down had gone. She exhaled, all but resigned now to how this was going to end. She knew she had to keep fighting. But knowing and doing were two different things, separated by an ocean of exhaustion, bruises and broken bones.
66
The airboat slowed. RJ stood up on the seat, one hand shielding his eyes against the sun as he scanned the area ahead.
“It’s up here somewhere.”
Ty bit back a smartass comment. There had been no other gunshot blasts since the second. But that was cold comfort.
One minute RJ had told him they were almost there, the next he seemed to have lost his bearings. It was beyond frustrating. However, expressing that would serve only to make ma
tters worse.
Patience was not Ty’s strong suit. But right now it was what he needed. If RJ couldn’t reorient himself, and bring them to this place the locals called the Devil’s Pond, whatever slim chance they had of finding Cressida would be gone.
67
Cressida watched Mimsy cut the engine, which allowed the boat to glide through the narrow approach that would lead them into the Devil’s Pond. Towering bald cypress trees, some more than seventy feet tall, lined a narrow, watery avenue. Grey-green tendrils of Spanish moss dripped from the lower branches to kiss the water.
The narrow channel opened into a huge pond. The sight of it made Cressida shiver, despite the overwhelming heat and humidity. The sinkhole, created by the collapse of an old salt dome cavern, had left an area of water around a hundred feet wide, and easily twice that length.
It was encircled on every side by smaller hat-stand cypresses. The Spanish moss that hung from those trees was thicker and whiter. As the bow of the airboat cleared the green layer of duckweed from the surface, Cressida caught a brief glimpse of the world beneath: crystal clear water that faded into darkness without revealing any bottom.
Skirting close to the trees on one side, a butterfly orchid revealed itself, then a cow-horn orchid, both yellow. They seemed to be scattered randomly. Rare. Precious. Delicate. A first glance wouldn’t reveal them. But once you’d spotted one, they were everywhere.
Cressida thought of the botany student who had stumbled over Carole Chabon’s remains out here, and another piece of the puzzle clicked into place for her. What else would bring a person to a place so remote and treacherous?
Beauty would be one reason. She peeked at Mimsy, sitting astride the pilot’s seat, the shotgun laid over her lap. Cruelty would be another.
Deep, sparkling water shadowed by trees. The wisps of Spanish moss that cascaded over the branches, like tinsel on a Christmas tree. The tiny flashes of perfectly rendered color from the orchids. It was a place that appeared ethereal, other-worldly.
There was something else, though. Another element of nature that was far less benign. Fauna rather than flora. Fauna that took the scene from dream-like and twisted it into nightmare.
Cressida had never before seen so many alligators in one place at the same time. Not in a zoo. Or a ’gator ranch. Or even on the Discovery Channel. She began counting them, and quickly gave up. Like the orchids, once you’d seen one, your eyes were immediately drawn to another, and then another. And the next place your eyes settled you saw two or three, sitting side by side.
Some lay at the edge of the water. Dozens floated in it, or swam lazily at the edges. Others, the majority, stayed near the trees, bellies resting on the huge gnarled stump roots visible just above the surface.
At the far end of the pond there was an island of bright red gumbo-limbo trees that lay in a broad curve extending out beyond the end of the sinkhole. A half-dozen smaller ’gators lay under the trees, ready to scuttle back into the forest behind them.
This was it, the place where Carole Chabon had been dumped, like so much garbage: a grisly Neverland of nature where no lost boy, or girl, could possibly survive.
The snap of the shotgun pulled Cressida from the place’s spell. Mimsy climbed down from the chair.
“Well, here we are,” she said to Cressida. “Isn’t this what you wanted to see? You know, for that story you planned on writing.”
Cressida brought her good knee up into her ribs, pulling her arms around it, and bundling into a near-fetal position. Her back was pressed into the side of the airboat. She was shaking uncontrollably. It was a primal panic that seemed to travel from the base of her skull all the way down her spine and into her limbs.
Right now she would have traded this for being back on top of that baking hot car, with only a couple of ’gators to contend with, rather than the hundreds that were here.
Mimsy stayed on the other side of the boat, lunging distance away from Cressida. Not that she had much lunge left in her. Perhaps if her leg hadn’t been broken . . .
“Okay, missy,” Mimsy began. “I’m going to need you to get Lyle overboard and into the water for me.”
Cressida looked at the dead man sprawled opposite her, his eyes as glassy as those of the ’gators. He was big. Quite literally a dead weight.
Even if she had wanted to, she wasn’t entirely sure how she would be able to get him over the side and into the water.
She didn’t move. She didn’t speak.
“Listen, I can’t exactly turn my back on you and do it myself. Otherwise I would,” Mimsy continued.
“I can’t.”
“No such thing as can’t. What you mean is you won’t.” Mimsy lifted the gun, tucking the stock into her shoulder. “You ever seen anyone who’s been shot in the gut? Not the heart, or the chest, like Lyle here was. The gut.”
Cressida shook her head.
“Didn’t think so. Well, allow me to educate you. It’s pain like no other. It’s slow too. Agonizing. You think you’ve experienced pain. You ain’t. Not when you’ve been shot in the stomach. All those nerve endings. Everything down there all mixing in together.”
“Maybe you should have been the writer,” said Cressida.
Mimsy’s brow furrowed. Her lips thinned. So did her eyes. “Get yourself up, get over here, and get him in the water.”
Cressida racked her brain for some way out of this that didn’t involve being shot in the stomach. She knew she had to close the distance between her and Mimsy.
She put her hand down to lever herself up, and fell back with a groan. Then she reached out to Mimsy.
“Help me up.”
Mimsy lowered the shotgun barrel and began to laugh. “Oh, boy, you must think I fell off the turnip truck. Maybe I could give you my gun to use as a stick. How about that?”
Cressida grimaced, reached back and grabbed the side of the boat. It had been worth a try. She levered herself up, like someone would if they kipped up onto their feet from the ground.
Keeping her weight on her good leg as far as she could, she hobbled over to Lyle. Mimsy stepped off to the end bow, making sure she stayed out of the way.
Cressida reached Lyle. She hunkered down, her broken leg splaying uselessly behind her. The coppery smell of his blood caught at the back of her throat, mixed with his body odor. Her stomach lurched. She pressed on, reaching under his arms, and trying to lift him up.
It was no use. She got him about an inch off the deck before the weight overcame her. She let him go again. “Keep going,” Mimsy barked at her.
She tried again, hooking her hands under his armpits and pulling him into her. She failed again. His body slumped back onto the deck.
It was no use. He was too heavy.
She turned back to Mimsy, her clothes soaked in the blood and gore of his wounds.
“Okay, get back there,” said Mimsy, gesturing to the stern with the shotgun barrel.
Cressida didn’t need asking twice. She hauled herself out of the way. When she had made it to the back of the craft, Mimsy put the shotgun down, but within reach, hooked her arms under Lyle as Cressida had done, then lifted the top half of him up and over the edge.
He stayed there as Mimsy stepped back and picked up the gun again. He was half in and half out of the boat. Slightly more in than out, his pelvic bone just above the lip.
“Okay,” said Mimsy. “You think you can manage it now that I’ve done the hard part for you?”
Cressida wasn’t sure what she was trying to prove. Was there a point to all this, other than making her last few moments as unpleasant as possible?
She sighed, and half stumbled, half limped back to Lyle. If she reached down, grabbed his legs and lifted them, gravity would take care of the rest.
Mimsy had the shotgun trained on her back as Cressida squatted and grasped Lyle’s thick calves, then moved her hand down to his ankles when she couldn’t get a grip. She heaved upwards. He started to move.
She said a prayer as he began t
o tumble, head first, over the side and into the pond.
The ’gators are in for one hell of a treat, she thought, as she felt a shove in her own back, lost her balance and began to follow the dead man over the side and into the water.
68
RJ was steering carefully through the narrow channel, the propeller turning just fast enough to keep the boat moving forward, when they heard the splash. It was followed, fractions of a second later, by another, and then a woman screaming, long and loud.
Then silence.
Ty, who was standing at the very apex of the bow, turned back to RJ. “Get this thing moving.”
Reluctantly, RJ pressed down on the gas pedal. The airboat lurched forward. At this speed, he risked losing control, and capsizing. He looked to Ty, and eased up on the pedal. Ty glared at him.
“I can’t go any faster,” said RJ.
“Try it,” Ty shot back, as the pond beckoned a hundred yards ahead of them and the distant sound of thrashing water reached them.
69
Cressida scrambled back toward the boat, the water taking the pressure from her bum leg, and allowing her to use the strength in her upper body, and good leg to kick out toward the side. Out of the corner of her eye she was aware of a long black shape slipping into the water on the other side of the pond.
She crawled forward, and tried to reach up to grab the fiberglass hull of the boat. In the deep water, with nothing to push off, it was hard to get up high enough to grab the lip.
Finally, after a couple of efforts and with splashes behind her, as more ’gators headed to investigate the commotion, she managed to get the fingertips of one hand onto the edge of the airboat. Like a mountaineer who’d lost his harness, she did her best to hang on, her forearms burning.
Reaching up with her other hand, she managed to get a better grip. Half an inch by half an inch she improved her position until her hands clamped over the lip. It would take another huge effort, but one more surge and she might be able to pull herself up and out of the water. Then she saw Mimsy’s face, looming over her, all teeth and gums. The same smug smile Cressida had come to despise. The butt of the shotgun came up over the edge and crashed down hard, slamming into the knuckles of her left hand with sufficient force that she heard the crunch of bone. Pain ripped its way down her hand and into her arm.