Wildlife - A Dark Thriller

by Menapace, Jeff

“What the hell is going on?” Russ asked.

  The sound of the boat motor was growing stronger now. They were coming back.

  Chapter 35

  They hurried towards another group of cypress trees and hid behind them, speaking in whispers.

  “They’re desperate,” Ethan insisted. “They’re circling back because they think they missed us.”

  “Coming back without lights?” Russ said.

  “They know if we can see the lights, we can see them—they’re desperate,” Ethan said again. “Too bad their boat motor still gives them away.”

  The antithesis of the deus ex machina stepped in, Ethan’s classic jinx far too tempting for it not to…

  The boat motor stopped.

  ***

  The boat drifting silently in the river, Harlon steadied his rifle, eye pressed to his scope. His own personal green-lit world offered so many options. They were well-hid behind the cypress trees, but not that well. He could see limbs. No heads, but limbs. And that was good. It gave him an excuse to have a little fun without Mama catching on. Can’t get a bead on their heads, Mama— best wound ’em first, slow ’em down. She wanted Ethan alive, after all, didn’t she?

  A grin grew below his scope. He contemplated many limbs…

  ***

  “Why did it stop?” Vicky whispered.

  Ethan touched Vicky’s shoulder. She looked at the boy and Ethan placed an index finger to his lips, gesturing for her to be quiet.

  All of them huddled close together, backs pressed tight to the cypress trees. The urge to poke one’s head out and peek was maddening.

  Would they see anything anyway? Vicky wondered. The moonlight was weak in their current locale. And that meant it was weak for them too, didn’t it? The psychos were on the river, out in the open, periodically illuminated under the moon the more they drifted, right? If anyone was getting spotted in the dark it would be the psychos. Ethan was right; they were desperate. Let them drift on by. Let the psychos drift on by, back to their psycho home, to their hopefully-bled-to-death psycho brother and son.

  She wanted to look. A quick peek. If the psychos were far enough down the river, they could move again. Vicky needed no reminder on the pitfalls of staying put for too long, out here in the Everglades; the nightmarish things of which those that “lurk” might do.

  “We need to move,” Vicky whispered.

  All heads turned to her. Not one face agreed.

  “Let me at least look,” she said. “If they’re far enough down the river, we can move. Ethan, you said it yourself; we don’t want to stay put for very long.”

  Ethan shook his head, pressed a finger to his lips again, frowning this time.

  Vicky splayed her hands. “You said we shouldn’t stay put.”

  A sudden explosion echoed in the forest, and one of Vicky’s splayed hands disappeared.

  ***

  The moment Vicky Burk splayed her right hand, Harlon zeroed in. “Gonna have to pull Russ’ pecker with your left from now on, lady.”

  ***

  Vicky did not scream. She did not even wince. She merely blinked at the now-jetting stump on her right wrist as though wondering where her hand had gone.

  Liz did scream. Russ too. All of them, except Vicky.

  And then the explosion of a second bullet. A third. A fourth. Their lethal trajectory whistling by and thumping into the surrounding cypress trees, presenting only two terrifying prospects: run and hope you don’t get shot, or stay and hope you don’t get shot.

  Ethan and Noah made the choice for Liz. They hoisted her up and fled. Liz screamed in protest, wanting to stay with her wounded mother, but Ethan and Noah dragged her away, desperate to find stronger cover.

  Russ leapt towards his wife. He gripped her right arm by the elbow, the jetting stump on her wrist merciless in expulsion. Russ could only stare at the wound helplessly; it had been so sudden, so extreme. Where to even begin? Tie it off. Just like Liz’s wound—tie it off. That was something. With what though? He had no belt. And then he flashed on Vicky’s insistence he wear shoes and socks today, despite Russ’ desire for sandals. Shoes and socks because who knew what might be crawling around out there, she’d said. He’d eventually agreed, and now, as he quickly removed his shoe to get to his sock, Russ felt an intense surge of anger towards the world; their predicament was apparently not severe enough as is, it needed a grave-pissing bit of irony to boot.

  As Russ stripped off his sock and quickly put his shoe back on his bare foot, Vicky’s shock began to fade. Her eyes had never left her wrist since the injury, but the once look of confusion and wonder at something possibly too horrific to comprehend, something too instantaneous in it amputation to initially feel, now seemed as though it was becoming something very real.

  Her hand was gone.

  And when Russ had finally gotten his sock tied tight around Vicky’s forearm (his thumb complained constantly, but this only angered and spurred him on) and went to cinch it tight, Vicky finally screamed. And as if the grave-pisser still had a little left in his bladder, Russ was then forced to grab his wounded wife and drag her to the ground where he clamped a desperate hand over her mouth, begging her to keep quiet.

  Run and hope you don’t get shot, or stay and hope you don’t get shot, he thought again. No, that was wrong, wasn’t it? They’d shot Vicky with precision; they knew exactly where they were. They could continue to drift in the boat, get a better view—how they were managing that view in the dark, Russ didn’t know—and then they would shoot again.

  The two terrifying prospects were different now: run and hope you don’t get shot, or stay and wait to get shot.

  They ran.

  Chapter 36

  Liz had resisted the entire way, desperate to get back to her mother and father. Ethan and Noah only continued to pull—sometimes drag—her along, insisting that if they did not keep moving, they were dead.

  When Liz managed to pull free from the smaller Noah and throw herself to the ground in protest, the brothers had no choice but to stop and attend to her.

  “How the hell could you leave my mother and father!? My mother!? She’s probably bleeding to death. Did you see her hand!? Or—” She winced at what would have been a dark and clever quip in some fictional circumstance “NOT!?”

  “Elizabeth,” Ethan said, as calmly and quietly as he could, “if we didn’t keep moving, we’d all be dead. Now, I know that your folks are hurt and pinned behind those trees, and we are going to go back for them—just not the same way we came.”

  Liz wiped away angry tears. “What do you mean?”

  “Harlon and Ida know which way we went; we go back that same way and we might as well be wearing bull’s-eyes.”

  “How could you just leave them there?” she asked again, shaking her head. “You just said if we didn’t run we’d be dead. How does that logic not apply to my parents too?”

  Ethan’s manner was apologetic, yet their predicament demanded curtness. He spoke with a marriage of the two. “It doesn’t. My first instinct was to run and to take you with us on account of your leg. You were there, you saw how crazy it was, how fast it all happened. There was no time for thinking, just doing.” He stopped for a beat and let out a long, cathartic sigh. “Now, what’s done is done—you wanna yell at me some more, or start heading back to your folks?”

  Liz slammed a frustrated fist into the dirt next to her. She then extended that same fist upward as an open hand. “Help me up.”

  Chapter 37

  Russ and Vicky Burk ran as best they could under their conditions. It was dark, they were deep in the Everglades, and Vicky Burk was missing her right hand—a wound that continued to pulse her life’s blood with each passing minute, despite Russ’ attempt at tying it off below the wrist. His daughter’s wound had been a bullet hole to the calf. It was serious, and his daughter had lost a good deal of blood, but they’d tied that off as well, and done an admirable enough job to stem some of the bleeding so that she could soldier on.


  Vicky’s fucking hand was gone. How the hell did you stem that? Russ had no clue; his medical training came from TV and movies and the odd conversation with doctor friends at parties. As grim as it was for him to admit, his first thought after tying off the wound was to cauterize the stump. Actually set fire to his wife’s wrist and let it cook. And then a second—worse?—thought was that if he did set fire to his wife’s wrist, the light would give their position away. God, help them.

  Vicky finally insisted they stop. Russ spotted a sizeable plot of vegetation by the shoreline and guided his wife towards it. They sat in the damp earth, huddled together, Russ periodically looking out onto the river, hoping beyond hope that the moon’s reflection on the river’s dark surface would not soon ripple from the motion of an incoming boat…unless of course it was someone else.

  Someone else.

  How would he know if it was? Simple, dummy—they would have lights, right? Make more noise? The Roys had been as cunning and as calculating as any predator out here—turning off their lights, switching off their boat motor, not allowing its prey to know their whereabouts. But a fisherman, or a boat of locals, or—of course!—Sam’s employer! Why the hell hadn’t he considered it before? It was late—surely they would have noted him and his crew overdue by now. They could be out searching this very moment. Perhaps not one boat but two, or three! This was the friggin’ Everglades, after all. Sam was experienced, but in such a vast and unpredictable locale, could you ever be too sure? Especially with passengers to account for?

  Yes, they were out looking for them. Russ was sure of it.

  And then, as though spoken from some vindictive part of his psyche, he could actually hear the thought in his ear: So are the Roys…

  “Russ?”

  Russ broke his daze and turned to his wife. “What is it, honey?”

  “I’m okay now. Let’s keep going.”

  Russ marveled at his wife’s strength. How many would curl into a fetal ball and succumb? If Russ knew his wife—and he did, inside and out, top to bottom—she would make it home, get a robotic hand, return, and choke the living shit out of the Roys with it.

  As much as his wife’s resolve provided Russ with his own necessary jolt of tenacity, he now questioned Ethan’s earlier advice about constantly moving—because no one had ever mentioned the idea of hiding and waiting for Sam’s employer to begin their search. Perhaps that was the best course of action? Find a safe spot and wait for the cavalry?

  The vindictive psyche spoke uninvited once again: Safe spot? What the hell do you know about a safe spot out here!? Only a moment ago you conceded to your options being forced on you: run and hope you don’t get shot; or stay and wait to get shot. What the hell has changed?

  “Sweetheart,” he said. “Sweetheart, suppose we stay here and hide? Sam’s employer has got to be looking for us by now, right?”

  Vicky looked at Russ. Her eyes were glassy, sickly. Her skin, cruelly heightened by the moonlight, was terribly pale. “We can’t hide…” she said, “from anything…” She trailed off as though dozing.

  Russ frowned. “What do you mean? Honey, what do you mean?”

  She sighed, her voice taking on a dreamy quality. “If we hide, something will find us.” Then, like a battered fighter pleading on his stool: “We need to keep going.”

  “But, honey,” he began with a humorless and painful chuckle, “do you know the way? I don’t know where Liz and those boys are. We sure as hell can’t call out to them…”

  Vicky rolled onto her side as though preparing to take a nap, her words contradicting her actions. “We need to keep moving.” The bloodied stump on her wrist, stemmed slightly by Russ’ sock, seemed to begin pumping anew and with more strength. It seeped into the earth on which she now laid her head.

  Was she fading? Christ, the very idea they hide and wait while his wife lay horribly bleeding. Moron! Their options had not changed; they were, in fact, more resolute than ever, given the extent of Vicky’s wounds. They had to keep moving and hope they didn’t get shot. If they spotted Sam’s employer en route? Oh happy fucking day. Russ would sound the trumpets, get them home safe, buy his wife that robotic hand, and return to choke the piss out of these crazy sons of bitches in prison.

  “Sweetheart,” Russ said, crawling towards his fetal wife. “Sweetheart, come on.” He nudged her shoulder and she moaned. It was a moan he’d heard countless times before when he tried to stir her from the couch at home. The memory singed him and he felt physically sick at his vindictive side’s notion that he might never get the chance to do that again.

  “Sweetheart,” he said with more urgency, rocking her harder, eventually rolling her over to face him.

  She opened her eyes.

  Russ sighed with relief.

  “We need to move,” she said in the dreamy voice again, the fighter wanting to keep fighting.

  “I know, honey. We’re going right now.”

  Russ crouched into a catcher’s stance. He placed his good hand under his wife’s head to help guide her upright, but went no further. His body froze, rigid with a fear he thought incapable of climbing new heights. A few feet from Vicky’s dozing head sat something that had been there the entire time, inexplicably going unnoticed despite its enormity, its serpent body lying in coiled wait.

  Chapter 38

  Vicky looked at her husband. His face, his body, it all seemed to seize up at once.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Russ did not reply. Did not even look at her. His eyes were fixed beyond his wife, at something behind her.

  Vicky turned to see, and Russ gripped his wife’s neck hard enough to cease all movement instantly, enough for her to give a small cry.

  “What are you—?”

  He gripped harder, silencing her save for another pained whimper. When her eyes looked up at him to complain, he did not meet her gaze, could not meet her gaze, for he believed that taking his eyes off of it would be tantamount to inviting the python to attack, that they were weak prey, backing down.

  “Shhhhhh…” Russ said, his eyes never leaving the giant snake, his tone that of a man who was afraid anything above a calculated whisper might trigger a sound-sensitive alarm. “Listen to me, Vicky. I want you to slowly—very slowly—start to get up. But at no time, do I want you to turn around, do you understand?”

  Russ, hand still cradling his wife’s head, felt her neck stiffen.

  “Why?” she whispered, taking tonal cues from his voice.

  Russ watched the snake intently as he spoke, its seemingly lifeless black eyes catching the moonlight and staring back into his as though it knew he was the weaker of the two, that it was only a matter of time until it decided when their fate should come.

  “Because I said so,” Russ decided to say. “Once again: very slowly, I want you to start to get up. At no time do I want you to turn around, okay? Vicky?”

  Vicky nodded.

  If he was capable, Russ would have exhaled.

  Vicky began to get up, slowly and methodically, just as Russ had asked. She did not look behind her.

  The python moved.

  It did not attack, merely moved a few exploratory inches forward. Russ could not help but flinch away. Vicky turned and looked, and stared into the face of the giant python that was no more than two feet from her nose. She shrieked and flew backwards as though propelled by some unseen force, colliding into Russ, knocking him over, scurrying to her feet, running anywhere that was away.

  She ran to the river’s edge…where her shrieking had alerted Ida and Harlon Roy to her precise whereabouts.

  Where Ida and Harlon Roy then blinded and thus momentarily froze her with light.

  Where Harlon had forsaken his rifle in favor of Sam’s crossbow, firing the grappling hook and propelling it over and behind Vicky, only to immediately drop the crossbow and grip the hook’s rope, jerking it towards him, the iron claw jumping and catching Vicky in the back, all four prongs spearing her flesh, snaring her. Har
lon grinned and pulled, dragging Vicky into the shallows of the river towards their boat.

  Russ arrived on the scene and cried out, charging into the shallows after his wife. He managed a two-handed grip on one of her ankles and held on with impossible strength.

  Harlon continued to grin as he pulled, Vicky screaming in agony as the tug of war between the two men only served to dig the iron hooks deeper into her back. Russ felt his bad hand beginning to give, the anesthetizing effects of the adrenaline ideal for pain, yet useless to a tool that was broken. His bad hand gave out and he screamed with unbearable helplessness as he held on to her ankle with his one good hand for less than a second before Harlon tugged harder, pulling Vicky into deeper water, eventually hoisting her onto the boat.

  “Look at what I caught, Russ!” Harlon said, one hand around Vicky’s waist, the other under her chin, Ida Roy flashing a spotlight on it all, allowing Russ to see with horrifying clarity.

  Vicky’s screams were moans now, her injuries draining her by the second. “She’s still a floppin’, Russ. Never let it be said I’m a man who don’t show mercy.” Harlon wrenched Vicky’s neck to one side, snapping it easily. He let go and she dropped to the boat’s floor like dead meat. Harlon brushed his hands together. “Mercy kill, that was. You’re welcome.”

  Russ dove into the water, insane with rage, determined to reach the boat and kill and kill and kill.

  Harlon turned to Ida. “Gotta admire his spirit, don’t you, Mama?”

  Ida laughed.

  Russ reached the edge of the boat, crying, screaming, babbling incomprehensible hate. He tried pulling himself onboard. Harlon calmly took hold of his rifle, butt-first.

  “Sorry, Russ. I’d like to end it for you, I would. The guilt you must feel for not being able to save your wife must be rough indeed. But we’re fixin’ to do some fishing for the rest of your group, you see—and we need us some live bait.”