Dark Cay

by Douglas Pratt

  Nodding, Loggins waved his hands at the three people standing on the boardwalk. Staring desperately at his little girl, Travis was perched on his knees like he was pleading for mercy. Lily’s fingers gripped the wooden rail.

  “What is it you want, Mr. Gordon?” Loggins asked.

  “Get her down,” I ordered.

  The man’s eyes turned to Loggins. He gestured for him to wait.

  “It would seem that we have no leverage if we do that,” Loggins noted.

  “The way it seems,” I remarked, “is you run the risk of me shooting you either way. I can assure you that if he drops her, I will.”

  “Mr. Loggins,” Travis croaked, “please. I’ll get you your money.”

  “My money doesn’t mean anything!” Loggins screamed, his face turning bright red. “I don’t want the damned money. You dared to steal from me.”

  His eyes flared as they turned to me. “To come at me like this. I can crush you. I will crush you.”

  Loggins looked down at Porter before glancing back at me. “Pathetic shits. Use your bullets on us instead of trying to save the girl.”

  He ordered the Ranger, “Drop her.”

  Travis sprang forward. Instinct or adrenaline. Maybe some otherworldly fatherly power. Whatever it was, the broken man flew up and hit the Ranger. His shoulder drove into the man’s side, lifting him skywards. The wooden railing cracked loudly.

  My feet and hands scrambled as I pulled myself out of the water as the trio fell into the throng of alligators. Blake’s 9 mm was lying on the deck. With a brand-new magazine. Scooping it up, I rose to my feet.

  The gators werecharging for the fresh prey. I fired at one lunging for Lily. Whether the bullets were hurting the beasts, I didn’t know. It was like some screwed up carnival game. Instead of bashing the mole as it popped up, I was shooting the alligators.

  “Move, Lily!” My voice rose over the gunfire.

  The girl crawled to her feet, and the Ranger grabbed her leg to pull himself up. The next round tore his arm away and knocked him back. A large mouth clamped down on his shoulder when he came back. The howl was drowned out by two more gunshots. Two smaller ones submerged with clouds of blood roiling in the water.

  Lily pulled Travis toward the walkway. My .45 was empty, so the next four rounds came from the 9 mm. If I took a second to think rather than run on pure reaction, I’d feel pretty shitty about shooting alligators that weren’t doing anything that wasn’t in their nature.

  Travis screamed as a pair of jaws came up from under him and latched onto his leg. The barrel of the gun flashed, and the bullet found its target, the bulbous black eye. The jaws remained clenched around his calf, and I reached down and pulled him onto the boardwalk. The alligator, a four-footer, writhed about still clinging to him, and Lily tried to pull it off.

  “Wait,” I implored. “You’ll tear his leg off.”

  Glancing back, I winced as the feeding frenzy ensued. Small ones scampered over larger beasts to snatch a bite or two of the Ranger. The dead alligators were fair game, too, as their brothers and sisters began shredding them.

  For the first time, I realized that Loggins was gone. He sacrificed his man, knowing that I’d try to save Lily.

  “We have to get him to the hospital,” I observed.

  Porter moaned and writhed on the deck. The alligator flopped onto the boardwalk,its body still twitching in death, the muscles in its jaws loosening in death. Below Porter’s knee looked like ground hamburger. The razor-sharp teeth mutilated his calf.

  Grabbing Blake’s corpse, I dragged him toward Porter before ripping his shirt. Using the strips of cloth, I created a tourniquet, staunching off the blood loss.

  “This is going to hurt,” I assured him as I tightened the makeshift bandage around the mangled leg until the cloth seemed to cut into the flesh. It was barely decent field medic work, but I prayed it would slow the blood loss.

  He gritted his teeth, inhaling sharply.

  “Chase!” Lily shrieked in my ear.

  My head popped up. Her eyes were wide, and I turned around to see a colossal alligator pulling itself up onto the boardwalk. The reptile turned toward us and took two steps. The thing was at least 13 feet long, and it looked ready to swallow any one of us.

  What I know about alligators is pretty minimal. Some tidbits of information rattled around in my brain. Something about alligators being able to outrun a human on the land; maybe that was an urban legend. Perhaps it wasn’t true. The last thing I wanted to do was test the theory. I raised the 9 mm, preparing to fire if it charged.

  The beast took three or four quick steps, and I squeezed the trigger. The gator twisted when the bullet hit its skin. The scaly flesh in front of its eyes ripped open, and the animal hissed loudly.

  “We gotta move!” I shouted, lifting Travis Porter upon my shoulder. Thrusting the 9 mm into Lily’s hand, I commanded, “Don’t use all the ammo.” Travis hung across my shoulders in a traditional fireman’s carry.

  Lily fired another shot. Whether it hit the alligator or not, there was another loud hissing.

  “Just run,” I urged her. “Stay in front of me.”

  Running down the wooden walkway, I couldn’t chance a look back without fear of stepping off the boardwalk. There wasn’t any sound of claws scratching against the wood behind me. Slowing down, I turned around to check when the overhead lights blinked out.

  Going from stadium lights to total darkness left me seeing only the lingering spots in my vision.

  “Wait, Lily,” I ordered in a hushed tone. The brain has a tendency to revert to some setting when the lights go out. Darkness automatically causes us to lower the volume.

  There was a sound in the distance, coming from where we had just been. Amplified by the inability to see what it was–a sort of grunt and grinding noise followed by a splash. Suspecting what became of the giant reptile, I needed a few seconds to regroup.

  Lowering Travis, I asked, “Can you stand?”

  “I’ll try,” he whispered weakly. Lily sidled up beside me and wrapped her arm around her father. When she had his weight, I took the 9 mm from her.

  “What was that sound?” she questioned under her breath.

  “I’m guessing our big friend took Blake home for dinner.”

  Lily cringed in the dark. “Ugh.”

  “Better him than us,” I pointed out.

  Travis was muttering under his breath. He’d lost a lot of blood over the last few days; he was fading on us. We needed to get him some medical attention before it was too late.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  Lights bounced around ahead of us. Putting my hand on Lily, I stopped her from moving.

  We were about to get company.

  34

  There were two beams of light swooping around sporadically; the two men from the house. Loggins made it back to his base and sent out the reinforcements. The cavalry wasn’t much, but it would slow me down while Loggins fled the property.

  Travis was still hanging in there, but for how long?

  “Lily, you have to get him out of here,” I explained in a hushed tone. “When you come out of the swamp, go right. You can cross through the orange grove. The driveway is over there. You have to get him to the street. Find the closest house and call an ambulance.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Keep them away from you. When you get to the driveway, you’ll be exposed, but I don’t think your dad can make another trek through the woods. Stay on the gravel but avoid anyone else.”

  Her fingers touched my arm in the dark. I squeezed her hand to assure her before I headed toward the bobbing beams.

  In my head, there was an attempt to count how many rounds I shot from Blake’s 9 mm. Lily used one. I lost count, though, when I was firing into the pile of gators. Six, maybe eight. I had more than enough for the job, but when it started, I wanted to make enough noise to draw the other two away from Lily.

  My skin was caked with mud from my roll
in the swamp. Climbing off the boardwalk suddenly seemed like a worse idea than before. We had just loosed thirty or more alligators that had been corralled. I wasn’t sure if they would all make a run for it, or would the feeding frenzy keep them there for a few minutes.

  Groaning in my head, I splashed off the walkway into knee-deep water. The vision of Travis’s mangled calf made me nervous. I didn’t like the thought that something might slip up behind me. Plus, the behemoth that dragged Blake away was out there. Hopefully, it was enjoying a snack and not looking for more to eat.

  Moving through wetlands in stealth involved minimal movement. My feet barely lifted off the bottom, and each step had to move through the water. Sloshing water would give away my location the same way the beams of light signaled me to my prey.

  Something told me that these two weren’t of the same ilk as Blake’s other men. The Rangers that I had encountered so far had a certain amount of training. Not enough, but at least some. These guys had no systemic way to their search. It was just a beeline toward the walkway because that’s where Loggins sent them. Rangers weren’t the brightest in the bunch, but they weren’t going to walk a straight line into a bear’s den.

  The flashlights were the other giveaway. A soldier wouldn’t give up their location like that. The lights were there to allay their fears, but they were of no help. The eyes would stay focused on the beam of light. If they caught me in one, for a split second, they would have eyes on me. It was more of an encouragement for me. Flashlights meant that they weren’t equipped with night-vision.

  Emerging from the swamp, I stayed crouched along the brush that seemed to hold back the wetlands from crawling into the groves of citrus. A beam of light swung along the tree line. The second was focused on the start of the boardwalk. He was waiting on us to just walk into his light.

  The source of the beam closest to me was a little over a hundred feet from me. The light swept toward me, and I waited. It would have been easy to drop him from where I stood. But the second guy wouldn’t know where I was. That wasn’t going to work for me. If there happened to be more than these two idiots, they needed to converge on me so that Lily and Travis could escape the jungle.

  The light washed across me. Too fast for him to distinguish me from the surroundings. The mud and leaves stuck to me turned me into every other stump and bush. My lips pursed, releasing a high-pitched whistle. A trick I’d used hunting in Arkansas. The sound was almost natural but just off enough to cause a buck to raise up to assess the situation. Or, in this instance, an idiot to train his light on the noise.

  The light flashed in my eyes, but I was already squinting–the sights of the 9 mm already on target. I squeezed the trigger twice. The beam of light shot up into the sky before landing on the ground. I heard the body fall. The second light bounced around as its bearer ran toward his fallen comrade.

  No point in watching. Staying low, I sprinted through the dark toward the edge of the grove. The second man was too busy running to look for any movement. Leaning against a tree, I watched until the circle of light centered on the dead man.

  “Shit!” he exclaimed. He glanced around nervously, aiming a gun into the darkness.

  The 9 mm flashed in the dark, and the flashlight dropped. The two beams of light shone in different directions like spotlights aimed randomly.

  Back in a crouched run, I made my way to the lights of the house. If there was anyone else in the dark, they were smarter than those two. I didn’t intend on giving them as easy a target. Rounding the trees like a pinball ricocheting along its random path, I worked my way through the dark–pausing every few seconds to let my ears try to focus. I was positive that I was alone out here. The house lay ahead. If Loggins was holed up in there, I planned to drag him out by his hair.

  The wooden stairs leading up to the porch had six small LED lights illuminating each step. The porch was dark, the only light slipping through the Venetian blinds inside the window.

  Moving up the steps slowly, I waited after each one for something. A creak of wood. A squeak of the door. Even the chirping crickets had taken refuge. A wood-framed screen door separated the thick, white-washed door. Putting my back against the wall just left of the door, I grasped the handle and gently pulled it open, letting it swing wide.

  The echo from the squeal of the spring was drowned out by a thundering boom. Diving away from the blast, I tucked my body inward and rolled in a somersault on my back. My left hand pushed me up off the porch, landing me on my feet in a twisted stance.

  The shotgun blast ripped a tight hole in the wood door. Had I been standing in front of it, the hole would have turned my torso into something resembling Travis’s leg. The all-too-familiar chunk sounded as the shooter ejected a spent shell from the chamber, replacing it automatically with another.

  The door swung open, and I inched my way back. From this distance, I could put three rounds into whoever held the shotgun before they could aim. Unfortunately, based on the damage I saw and heard, the shooter didn’t need to aim. Depending on the barrel of the weapon, most shotguns only need to be pointed in the right direction. The blast felt like a 12 gauge, and it wasn’t loaded with birdshot. It was a tactical load, designed for the most damage. The door took the brunt of the first shot, but there wasn’t anything bigger than a wooden rocking chair on the porch to shield me.

  Three seconds passed without any movement. Five. Ten. They weren’t coming out, knowing I would take the first shot. I wasn’t going in, knowing that even if I got the kill shot, there was no way to avoid the blast from their cannon–something of a stalemate.

  My eyes locked on the door, but I was aware of the window over my left shoulder. Sliding my feet back, I wrapped my hand around one of the spindles on the back of the rocking chair. Judging the weight, I decided it wasn’t too heavy to work. Momentum. It would need momentum. And about a second to get out of the radius that the 12 gauge could hit.

  Pushing off my right foot, I spun around–my arm lifting the rocking chair off the porch and flung it into the window. The glass shattered, but I kept moving. Three steps after I released it, the chair sent me over the porch railing behind me; the shotgun exploded as I collided with the wet grass.

  Scrambling up against the house, I inhaled. Most shotguns hold three shells. I still hadn’t been able to see who or what was shooting at me. Even if they emptied the gun, reloading shotgun shells was relatively easy and quick.

  All of that meant, staying in the same spot wasn’t going to be the healthiest option. There hadn’t been a rush of footsteps in the house. There was only one person left. Loggins. He wasn’t combat trained, and a shotgun doesn’t require much. It’s the ultimate point and shoot weapon, at least from the hand-held varieties.

  Moving toward the back of the house, I stayed in the dark. He couldn’t watch every entrance. The only way to avoid the scary end of his gun was to take him from behind.

  Right now, he was operating on fear. His protective layer of men was peeled back. He’d have to rely on his own instinct. Something that made him a killer in business or from the other end of a phone. Here in the practical world, he wasn’t going to be in control. The shotgun was giving him an illusion of power.

  The back door of the house was simple–a wooden door leading out. The handle didn’t budge. Once I kicked in the door, he’d know I was inside. Everything had to be fast. Stay hidden. Cause confusion. Keep him turning.

  My left foot hit the door just below the handle. Driving it up, put all the force into the wood so that it pushed the latch up. The frame splintered as the door swung open.

  The door led into a mudroom attached to the darkened kitchen. Sliding on the marble floor, I took cover behind an island. Two open entrances were on opposite sides of the kitchen. I moved through the nearest opening into a serving room.

  The house was sturdy, but still, tiny vibrations through the foundation indicated something was moving. Crouched on the balls of my feet, I attempted to make no sounds as I stalked into th
e dining room.

  Loggins was on the other side of the wall. The house was giving up his location. He wasn’t being heavy-footed, but it still creaked ever so quietly.

  Was he listening for me? I imagined him staring down the barrel of the shotgun into the kitchen, wondering where I was. His finger was quivering.

  My fingers wrapped around a silver coffee urn resting on the buffet. Hurling it high through the serving room, I turned. My feet scurried as the clang resounded through the house. The blast of the shotgun gave me another second to advance through a hallway at the bottom of a stairway, flanking him.

  The familiar chunk followed by the sound of the spent shell hitting the marble floor. Reloading.

  Coming around the corner, I saw the woman from the porch peering into the kitchen.

  No Loggins; he left the woman. Or was he still here?

  “Don’t move,” I ordered her.

  Her elbows relaxed, and the barrel lowered.

  “Where’s Loggins?”

  “Gone,” the woman answered.

  Some resolution passed over her. There was half a second notice before she rotated around to raise the barrel. Some suicidal, loyal-to-the-end effort. Some devotion to Joe Loggins. There wasn’t more than the split second to wonder. The 9 mm boomed, and the woman collapsed onto her side. A pool of blood crawled out from her torso.

  Turning toward the front door, a mass came out of the shadow screaming. The old farmer tackled me before I had a solid footing. My feet lifted off the ground, and he slammed me into the banister. Twisted, hand-carved spindles cracked.

  Driving my elbow around, I caught him in the chin. The angle was wrong. He was behind me. Thick arms wrapped around my neck; the sticky smell of blood came off him. He was strangling me with a bullet wound in his shoulder.

  There was a brief curse that flashed through my mind. Damned old man strength. He was going to win out after years of tossing hay bales and feed bags, wrestling pigs and sheep, and hunting alligators. I thought of the old man at Bahia Mar. Take 25 years off him, and he’d have the same grit.