by Taylor Brown
That morning, they’d unwound the mooring lines and shoved off from the dock, chugging seaward through the lower delta of the Altamaha River, passing mossy hummocks and miles of salt marsh. Here or there, a scummy sailboat or cabin cruiser lay heeled on the bank, holed or scuttled alongside the alligators and cypress knees. Once or twice, while standing at the rail, Malaya thought she heard strange birds cawing along the river, as if to bless or curse their passage.
They broke from the river and cruised north along the Intracoastal Waterway, passing the string of sea islands that buffered the coast. Over the years, these islands had been home to tribal chiefdoms and Spanish missions and colonial forts, to antebellum plantations and reclusive millionaires and communities of freed slaves. Some still harbored small, isolated populations of exotic animals marooned long ago. Wild horses, feral cattle, white deer imported from Europe for hunters. Malaya glassed the shorelines, searching the dunes and oaks beneath the falling dusk, as if strange beasts might reveal themselves.
Now they floated a mile off Yamacraw Island. It was five miles long, two miles wide. The beach was littered with the skeletal remains of fallen trees, gnarled and sun-bleached, like some prehistoric boneyard—the work of erosion, shifting sands. A row of beach houses lurched from the trees, warped strangely over shattered seawalls, their windows broken. To the north, a lighthouse peeked over the trees, the glass of the lantern room dusted over, the once-white catwalk greened with neglect. Somewhere in the trees sat the deserted hulk of a fifty-room hotel, set back several hundred yards from the beach, hosting who knew what forms of life.
The southern end of the island speared into a mile-long point of tidal sands, where great rafts of pelicans and other shorebirds congregated, picking over the remains of dead fish and horseshoe crabs. Gulls wheeled over the boat, expecting mounds of shrimp and other catch to come pouring from the nets. Behind them, a container ship floated against the seaward horizon, its running lights burning in the dusk. The foghorn bellowed across the water.
Anse lowered his binoculars.
“It’s time.”
They lowered a black rubber boat over the side of the trawler, followed by a rope ladder. Anse climbed down first, then Malaya, who handed him the oars. Tyler came last, dressed in heavy overalls and boots, her hair knotted beneath a black skullcap. They wore shortwave radios clipped to their vests, the rubber antennas sticking over their shoulders, and their bodies were strapped and webbed with flashlights and wire cutters, maps and glow sticks and flexi-cuffs. Malaya wore a double long-gun case slung over her shoulder. Tyler seated herself on the center thwart and slid the oars through the locks. Lope waved from the bridge of the trawler as Tyler dug the oars into the swells, heaving them away from the hull.
They were a thousand yards from shore when the drone passed overhead. A winged model, newly purchased, capable of staying aloft for hours. The breakers crashed over the outer sandbars and Malaya, riding in the bow, glanced back at Tyler. The veterinarian, facing backward as she rowed, had removed her pullover. Her muscles shone wide from the racerback of her overalls, almost winglike, her arms braided with power. Now Malaya turned back to shore, watching the shadow of the drone scamper over the dunes and into the trees.
She felt the leopard spots throbbing on her calf, the talons on her foot. She thought of her father and her grandfather. These men who lived inside her, roaming the tangled jungle of memory. She closed her eyes, imagining them swinging peacefully overhead, watching over her.
* * *
They came ashore before the row of abandoned beach houses, each hovering on a thin set of stilts. The concrete seawall had shattered and the high ground bled away, exposing the cement anchors of their pilings. French doors creaked on hinges. Porch stairs ended in midair. An in-ground swimming pool sat like a giant bowl in the sand. The house before them sagged hard at one corner, just short of toppling, while strange ribs and points of furniture jutted from the sands beneath the porch, half buried, like fragments from a shipwreck.
They splashed through the knee-deep surf and dragged the boat up the beach, the drier sands squeaking beneath the wet soles of their boots. Beneath the beach house, it was damp and cool, almost like a cave. They left the boat here, tied to a piling, and started down the beach, hiking through the pale skeletons of trees, the dull roar of wind and surf. The sun was nearly gone, a reddish flush. A disheveled boardwalk loomed before them. An old beach access. As planned, they stomped up the sand-ledged steps and took the boardwalk inland. Ghost crabs scuttled beneath the planks, and the dunes were stitched with the tracks of various animals. Birds, rabbits, feral pigs. Dry grasses and shrubs stood wind-raked, as if pointing them on.
At the tree line, Malaya paused, looking back over the dunes, sighting The Catbird Seat off the coast. The trawler glowed under the risen moon, a small white fortress on the swells. She felt a throb of recognition at the sight, like a remembered dream. Now the wind rose, skirling over the sand, and Malaya felt the weight of the case on her back. She knelt and unslung the burden and unzipped the long flap.
They set off into the forest, armed now, the trees murmuring overhead.
* * *
Lope stood in the wheelhouse, bent over his screen, watching the live feed from the drone. Three bodies, white with heat, winked in and out of the trees. Ahead of them, a narrow strip of pavement burned pale, still holding the day’s heat. A pair of deer seared across the path, ghostly, fleeing the humans crunching inland through the bush.
In shape, the island recalled a feather. The mainland lay across several miles of rivers and salt marsh, the cordgrass veined with blackwater creeks. No bridges or boats. Ancient tribes had inhabited the place, leaving rings of shucked oyster shells in their wake. Then came conquistadors and cotton planters and shipwrights who felled the hardwood timber of the island for the hulls of sailing ships, making room for ever more fields. When the plantations folded during the Civil War, the slaves stayed or fled from the mainland in stolen barques. For generations, they lived in near isolation from the rest of the country, speaking the creole language of the sea islands—Gullah—a fusion of English and African tongues.
Lope’s grandmother had been born, lived, and died on this island. Her bones were buried here. The only time he ever saw her on the mainland was the day of his father’s funeral. She came with a chorus of women who spoke only Gullah to one another, swilling scuppernong wine from a plastic jug. She was the grandmother who told stories of slaves striding into black rivers, enchained, flying free of their bonds. Lope hadn’t been out here since her death more than two decades ago. He hadn’t seen what had become of the place.
The remnants of a golf course slipped into view. Dogleg savannahs pocked with fairway bunkers and sand traps, the links weedy and overgrown. He saw oceanfront cottages with storm-felled limbs stabbing from their roofs, swimming pools covered in pond scum. Tennis courts like the cracked terrain of the moon. The hotel itself lay double-winged beneath the trees, massive, like the temple of some forgotten civilization. The developers had hoped to build a resort to rival Hilton Head or Sea Island or Kiawah—a haven for the well-heeled, who came ashore armed with racquets and golf clubs.
Deeper in the trees lay the manufactured housing of the resort staff. Singlewides arranged in once-orderly rows. They were canted and swollen now, their walls webbed with creeper vines and kudzu. Furry carpets of turf sprouted from their roofs. Lope shivered. A whole world without people, swallowed in a rising tide of jungle. It was as if the Rapture had come, sucking the souls from the place, and nature had run amok in their absence, multiplying with strangling vines and prowling things.
Lope watched for the marsh tackies his father had ridden as a boy—horses descended from the hoofstock of old Spanish garrisons. Small and sure-footed, with no fear of swamps and marshes. They’d been the preferred mounts of the Swamp Fox, Francis Marion, whose fighters struck like lightning from the swamplands, as well as the mounted beach patrols of World War II, who hunted remote shor
elines for Nazi U-boats. Gullah riders had raced them on the beach, levitating over their thundering haunches. Those horses were mostly gone now, preserved only in high-dollar paddocks and old photographs.
For a time Lope saw only trees, acre on acre. For all he knew, fantastical beasts glowed beneath their canopy, wild horses or feral hogs or big cats, but he saw no sign. He began to lose hope. There was nothing here but shell and bone. Even the ghosts had fled. Then, in the very middle of the island, far from the eyes of looters or campers or fishermen, the trees broke onto a small plot cut squarely from the forest.
A compound, arranged tidy and exact as a microchip.
There was a row of shipping containers and a greenhouse and a pair of generators that pulsed with heat. A flatboat on a trailer, a fat-tired ATV. A row of kennels with tin roofs, their long runs covered in camouflage netting. Now came a rectangular enclosure, vast and roofless, with a razor-wire fence. Lope could see dogs or wolves inside. He descended for a better look. Some of the canines lay curled in the grass, swaddled in their bushy tails, their shoulders bubbling and twitching in their sleep. One paced along the fence, pausing now and again to stare into the night, knife-eared, while another followed a scent-trail, nose prowling through the weeds.
The largest of the pack sat high atop a square shelter, watching the others. His tail swished slowly, softly, and his neck wore a jagged ruff. His body burned a snowy white beneath the thermal lens of the drone, though his fur could be jet black. Now the wolf lifted his nose toward the drone and swelled his chest. His mouth formed a small black O.
* * *
The first howl rose in the night, high and ghostly. Malaya froze mid-step, as if yanked at the end of a leash. So much pain in that sound, like the first wail of the damned. Now more of the cries, racing like banshees through the trees.
Wolves.
Malaya dropped to one knee, weapon up. The howls blew across her bones, goosing her skin. For all she knew, a pack had been loosed.
The radio crackled on Anse’s shoulder.
Lope’s voice: “You hear that?”
Anse didn’t answer at first. He stood upright, ear cocked, his double rifle cradled in one arm. With his free hand, he thumbed the chest pocket of his shirt.
The radio crackled again.
“Anse, you copy?”
The old jockey shivered awake. He cocked his chin to the mike.
“Roger, we heard them, all right. You got eyes on?”
“Yes, sir. Pack of six in an open-top enclosure. It’s eerie. Every last one of them’s got his nose in the air, like they know I’m up here watching.”
A shiver ran through Malaya.
Anse shook his head. His face looked hard in the night, battered. He thumbed the mike.
“Moon’s full. They’re howling it down, not you. You got a location for us?”
* * *
They moved single file through the woods, following the thin sinews of game trails. Slim corridors, hoof-worn paths. Woody vines snarled through the understory, threatening to trip them, while Spanish moss hung in curtains from the oaks. Barbed thickets of saw palmetto were everywhere, chafing and rattling.
Malaya carried her black carbine high against her chest. Her boots seemed too loud as they cracked twigs beneath her, crunched leaves and oyster shells. The ground felt dangerous, eager to give away their presence. The very night seemed to be listening, watching. Malaya felt exposed, more prey than predator. Now and again, she swung the carbine toward a crackle or crash in the outer dark. Tusked hogs, big as whiskey kegs, were known to roam here, and the dogfighter had heard tell of big cats kept on this island. Who knew if one was loose, or a wolf. Anse and Tyler seemed to feel it, too. When they knelt to take their bearings, Malaya could see it in their heaving chests and wide eyes.
They were not the apex predators here.
Soon the forest broke onto an unexpected meadow, a narrow savannah that wound and rolled through the trees. The grass was chest-high, thick enough to hide lions or leopards. Anse led them down a golf-cart path that ran along the fairway. Here or there, the heavy knees of oak roots had erupted through the pavement, and bright ferns stood from the gapes and fractures. They snaked around a pond carpeted with algae. A golf cart sat in the shallows, the front bumper bearing a tarnished nameplate: E-Z-GO. They passed sand traps sprouted with weeds and climbed the flat crown of the green. Anse pulled the stick from the hole and rubbed the flag between his fingers, slowly, like the shred of a fugitive’s shirt.
They clopped across the short arch of a cart bridge, the planks soggy and loose, and the path ran alongside a chain-link fence clumped with vines. Inside the enclosure, a drooping succession of tennis nets. A serving machine stood on a tripod, the hopper loaded with mildewed balls. Others lay about the courts, soggy and dark.
A thick reef of kudzu and ivy whelmed the clubhouse. Only the roof was visible. The hedges lining the porch had exploded with growth, wreathing the rails and balusters. Through gaps in the foliage, they could see filmy windows, broken panes. Shattered glass twinkled on the front steps, the entrance doors barely visible through the snarled morass of leaves and vines.
Anse rounded the corner of the building and jerked to a halt. There stood a lone pony, feeding from a bed of delicate ferns on the putting green. Malaya watched the animal over Anse’s shoulder. The horse’s legs were thin and tapered, black-stockinged beneath the dun barrel of her chest. Her tail, black as a feather duster, flicked her rump. Now she raised her head, ears perked, and Malaya saw the rubbery flare of her nostrils, catching a scent—them or something else.
The pony wheeled and fled into the night, as if chased.
* * *
Lope felt weightless, as if he floated high over the island himself, his heart making a delicate electric hum. His wingspan would be some seven feet, wide as a peace eagle’s, his long fingers riding the invisible currents of wind and pressure. He would steer with the long rudders of his feet.
He watched his companions moving across the island, their body heat winking now and again through the trees. Fear prodded him when, for long intervals, he couldn’t see them beneath the canopy. There was a burden in being the eye in the sky, he realized. A pressure. If he failed to alert them of a threat or gave the wrong directions, their fates would be on him. He thought of God looking down on the whole swarm of his creation and how he must not feel guilty when he didn’t slip them the right signs and they walked right into passing buses or abusive husbands, again and again, all over the place and every minute.
Beneath him, the pony swam into view.
A marsh tacky, her mane hanging dark over one shoulder. Her whole body was cocked rigid, her ears pricked, as if awaiting some signal. When she bolted for the woods, Lope scanned in the exact opposite direction. The vector led him back to the compound. The wolves were standing in a row along the fence now, pointed like arrows, as if directing him. He followed their pointed snouts, finding a circular arena shaped like a circus tent, domed with the thin silk of a giant cargo parachute. He’d noted the arena on his previous pass but not the heat blooms just visible through the canopy. There were two of them, shaped like giant scimitars, circling slowly inside the enclosure. Lope descended closer, trying to make out what they were. What order or species. His heart quickened as he neared, as if he could sense their heat on his cheeks. The wind was thumping the big top of silk. He was squinting, willing the animals to reveal themselves, when a gust peeled back the canopy.
His eyes went wide. A sharp stab of breath.
Lope keyed the radio mike. He sent his words, like a prayer, across the waves.
CHAPTER 26
TIGRESS
She circles Mosi. A long tongue of flame, ember-bright, her breath smoking in the night. She is longer than any lioness, her hips sharp and lean. Her huge paws dab the earth. Silent, almost. She’s a fire flickering behind a black forest of stripes. Her eyes are gold. Her lips pulled back, showing her teeth. She’s tasting him on the air.
; She is something Mosi knows and doesn’t know. A member, perhaps, of some distant pride. The wolves howl again and her ears swivel rearward, revealing their eyespots—a second pair of eyes, guarding her flank. So Mosi knows her pride must have been scattered long ago, cast across the earth. They must burn alone in jungle darks or mountain snows. A lone hunter, with no pride to watch her flank.
No mate.
Mosi’s heart drums loud, swelling his flesh. He circles, circles. A cloud crosses the moon, darkening the night. The fangs drip from her mouth, curved and sharp, and Mosi can see the golden length of his body reflected in her eyes. He can see the black mane about his neck, heavy as a wreath of wolves.
* * *
Horn sat high on his perch, a small platform built in the crown of the compound’s single oak tree. The big cats were circling inside the high fence of the arena, their tails long as whips, their muscles flexed jagged beneath their hides. Closer they circled.
Closer.
When, a week ago, he heard the lion roar across the grounds of Little Eden, he knew it was the one from the news. The King of Savannah. The mascot taken from the truck stop on the interstate. Fifty thousand dollars had been offered for the animal’s safe return, no questions asked. A king’s ransom. Such an amount moved his blood. He could take his pack west with such money, high into the mountains they deserved. Far from the hurricanes that worsened year after year, threatening to drive the ocean inland—a shallow sea, as in the days before men. When the lion roared a second time, his breath fled his chest, sucked out into the night. His whole body tightened. He could feel his calcified knuckles, the sharp blades of his shins. He was ready. He’d only come to Little Eden for a tiger. A sire, for Amba, so that he could carry a cub of hers into the West. So that her blood would still move across the earth.