Gary John Suskind trudged forward ahead of Matty, dragging the construction-sign orange kayak across the top of the swamp. It was hard work for Gary, who had never been accused of being strong, or hardy for that matter. He’d broken three manicured nails on his right hand already and knew Madame Teresa up on Tavernier would be most upset that he’d treated her immaculate work with such … debasement. And, to beat it all, he’d put an inch long gash in his left thigh scraping up against a broken limb of one of the God-forsaken spidery trees that threatened to trip him with every step. He’d have to look into some micro-stitches for that. It wouldn’t do to have an unsightly scar marring his buttery tan skin. His Instagram followers would drop off by the thousands. He sighed inwardly. A small price to pay to get close to his infatuation.
He suspected that Matty wasn’t gay, but without direct confirmation of the fact, he proceeded to woo him with lunch dates, innocuous gifts, and outdoor excursions like this one. In a kayak, there would be ample opportunity to squeeze his thighs around Matty and maybe a chance to fake a fall from the boat and grab him around the chest. Hmmm, wonder if the boy would give me mouth-to-mouth if I should happen to drown? Gary thought. He resolved to keep his options open. Suddenly, with a splash, he was knee deep in a watery void in the ground. He squealed more effeminately than he intended and lurched sideways. The kayak kept him from going under, but he was now sopping wet.
“You okay up there?” Matty called from behind him.
Gary slapped on a smile. “Oh, yeah. All good. Just getting kinda deep up here. Maybe we should get in now.”
“Whatever you say.”
Gary pulled himself up into the back of the kayak and Matty tumbled into the front. The kayak rocked violently back and forth until Gary, who tried in vain to counteract Matty’s motion, lost his balance and splashed out into the marsh.
Despite his best efforts, Gary John Suskind went under. The brown, soupy swamp swallowed him and he thrashed violently, unable to tell which way was up. And then the hands wrapped around his upper arms. He realized with relief that Matty had reached in and grabbed him. His head broke the surface and he gasped. Matty was laughing and doing nothing to hide the fact. Gary’s instinct was to feel hurt and dejected, but then thought better of it. He imagined this was how guy pals would react in this situation. He faked a chuckle with all the authenticity of a silicone injected Playgirl model.
“Help me up, ya big lug.” He winced hearing himself try to fake hetero-speak.
But Matty didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he didn’t care.
Matty pulled hard on Gary’s arms and as he cleared the side of the kayak, he lost his balance and tumbled down on top of Matty. For one rainbow bathed second, he was in Matty’s arms. The fire burned inside him and before he could stop himself, he smashed his lips to Matteo’s voluminous Italian mouth. He tried to force his tongue in to seal the kiss, but Matty’s teeth were clenched tight.
Gary—not realizing that he’d closed his eyes in the embrace—opened them to find Matty staring wide-eyed back. It wasn’t a stare of adoration or infatuation. No, this didn’t remind Gary of a soft-focus movie sequence with Dream Weaver echoing in the background. No, this felt more like the shocking twist scene in The Crying Game. Matty shoved hard, throwing Gary off of his chest. His friend’s face was a red splotched, mangled mess of shock, embarrassment, and—worst of all—rage.
“What the shit was that all about?” Matty growled.
“I … I’m sorry. I just—”
Gary John Suskind was interrupted by a thump that shook the kayak violently. He wondered if somehow they’d gotten caught in a current and had run aground. But scanning through the dappled sun-streaks shining into the shadowy, mangrove canopy around them, he saw no sign of anything they could’ve hit.
“I asked you a question, fairy boy.” Matty’s rage was evident in his voice.
Gary raised his hands. “Now, hold on just a second, Matty. I didn’t mean any harm. It’s just that we have such a good time together that I—”
This time, something slammed into the kayak so hard it tipped up on its side. Matty finally noticed they were under attack. The prehistoric, log-like skin of a gator slid past them in a froth.
“Holy shit,” Matty said, his feet scraping hard and pushing him back into the kayak. “What the hell is that?”
Gary would’ve answered, but he was in shock. Even while flailing about trying to keep his body in the boat, he knew what had hit them this time. Alligator mississippiensis or the American Alligator. Looking for all the world like a knotty log come to life in a blur of motion, it had slammed into their boat. Gary didn’t know much about them, but he hadn’t heard of them attacking people very often. They were usually lazier than the tourists and liked to bake in the sun just as much, if not more. Most likely, they had gotten too close to its gator hole, or maybe even its nest and it was defending its turf.
When the kayak hit the water again, Gary fell down into the boat smacking his left arm so hard, he wondered if he’d broken it. Matty, however, fell backward and with his weight unexpectedly throwing him toward the opposite side, he fell overboard. The splash seemed impossibly simultaneous with the gator jerking its broad head around to see what had caused it. Before Gary could scream, the creature lunged at the noise.
In a strange, but cogent moment of bravery, Gary launched himself toward the water, preparing to kick the alligator with his borrowed patent-leather camouflage boots—clearly not made for this endeavor—until it swam away. The churning whirlpool of blood blossoming in the vortex where Matty had gone under, instantly turned his valiant effort into a terrifying regret. The alligator’s head crashed above the surface and in the split-second before Gary entered the water, to his horror, he saw a severed hand in its mouth.
2
Running Behind
Gary was bumped and thumped and turned over several times under the water. His lungs burned as he held his breath desperately trying to make sense of what was happening. A hazy light snaked down through the murky water and Gary decided that moving toward the beam was as good a choice as he had right now. A better choice than inviting Matty out for a kayak ride, that much was certain. He kicked hard and one of the stylish boots he’d borrowed from Kandy—real name Ken—slipped off his foot and sank. His stockinged foot thrashed hard and he began to make slow, but sure headway toward the surface.
The prehistoric animal was still swirling around him in a blur making the underwater scene look like that maniacal boat ride in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. And then the gator crashed into him from underneath. The force hit him like a rocket and thrust him up so quickly that his stomach lurched and he vomited. Luckily, he was still underwater when his breakfast of baked peach almond oatmeal exploded out of his mouth. With the alligator beneath him, he broke through the surface and was thrown ten feet like a rag doll. He slammed into a branchy tree and grabbed tightly with both hands. He gripped the reddish-gray bark and scaled the tree as fast as he could, the gator snapping at his heels. He kicked off the second of his borrowed boots and scrambled into a crook about twelve feet off the surface of the churning swamp below. The alligator lunged at him snapping its ferocious mouth, but for the time being, it appeared he had climbed high enough to stymie the animal’s attack.
He laughed hard at the beast, flipping him the finger. He cackled until he was hoarse watching as the alligator flung himself up at him over and over. The way it was acting, he was now certain that the super-pissed gator was indeed actually a she and that he and Matty had stumbled onto a nest or something. He wasn’t even sure if alligators laid eggs or had babies, but either way, this one was out to kill the outside threat to its offspring. It snapped its jaws at him and Gary was disgusted to see the hand—Matty’s hand—flopping about between its teeth in a gruesome mess of bubblegum flesh. The sun broke through the canopy and glinted on something in the alligator’s mouth. Gary realized it was a ring on his friend’s now detached hand.
“
You got what you want, asshole,” Gary yelled. “Get the hell out of here and let me go.”
He realized that he was crying now, tears of anger and terror mixed together with a fit of something bordering on hysteria. Finally, the alligator seemed to tire of threatening the creature in the tree and he went back to destroying the kayak. Gary watched the gator chomp on the bright orange boat, tearing pieces of it off and flinging them hard to and fro. And of all the strange things to enter someone’s mind at a time when survival had become an uncertainty, Gary wondered what the hell he was thinking when he borrowed the kayak and invited his friend for a morning ride. If only that rich, white, sanctimonious bastard had taken the care to lock up his boat. None of this would’ve happened if the hermitous writer man had just stored his glorified canoe somewhere other than propped up against the pylons under his house.
Gary yelled a curse word that he rarely used as loud as he could. He regretted that instantly as the alligator looked up from his kayak destruction and lunged at him one more time. Gary repeated the four letter word over and over, howling in the empty heat of the swamp at the menacing creature snapping its dingy yellow, razor sharp teeth at him. The gator was close enough now that he could see the ring clearly stuck on a finger—maybe a pinky—dangling out of the corner of its mouth. The family crest sparkled in the dusky shafts of sunlight that created a prison of beams around him.
He croaked out a sob, not so much out of sorrow for losing his friend, but at what might become of him if Matty’s father ever found out his role in his son’s demise. As the gator’s attack waned and the dark gray-green beast slunk away into the swamp, he wondered what might be worse—eaten by an alligator, or wearing concrete shoes.
Two miles away, Chad Harrison’s fully attached fingers clicked across his keyboard in a blaze of fury. He laughed out loud as he finished his piece. This article was sure to break the Keys News editor’s blue pen. He scrolled back up to the title: Hang ‘Em From The Banyans - Ending Tourism In The Keys. He knew fans of his Cap Wayfarer column would love it and the mail would support him, even if the editor did not. Eat your heart out Malcolm Gladwell.
He saved the file and clicked over to a new, much longer document, took a deep breath, read the last few lines, and added the words THE END. to the bottom. His latest Florida fiction novel was complete and would go to the proofers at Manatee Press and they would mangle it, send it back to him with a garish cover, and then after a long and laborious fight, they would restore it to its original form and publish it.
Chad knew what his fans wanted and he would give it to them, editors of the world bedamned. He closed the lid of his laptop and gazed out from his screened in porch. The waves were softly rolling and the high tide glittered in the afternoon sun. Normally, he wouldn’t go out at this hour due to the sweltering heat, but it had been oddly cool for a late August morning.
“Babe, I think I’m gonna go for a quick row,” he called over his shoulder.
His new—just-beyond-teenage—girlfriend of two weeks didn’t say anything. She was probably still passed out from too many strawberry daiquiris and subsequent viewings of the latest Justin Bieber concert footage splashing around on YouTube or Snapchat or whatever social app was hot this week. He frequently called her “babe” not out of endearment, but because he often forgot her name, or confused her name with a previous girlfriend. It escaped him now as he was leaving the house. Was it Lindsay, or Buffy, or maybe Chantel? Eh, who cares.
Chad didn’t care much if she stuck around long, but she was a deliciously taut, toned roll in the sack and he hadn’t had much of that since Linda had packed up and left last year. He shrugged his shoulders and trotted down the steps to the scruffy sand of his beachfront backyard. Being a New York Times bestselling author did have perks, and his oversized bungalow on Islamorada was certainly one of them. It wasn’t the beach often photographed for postcards and airbrushed on cheap Hanes t-shirts, but more of an interruption of the ocean for a bit of grainy, weedy, rocky sand with razor sharp bits that would slice a city-slicker’s arches to ribbons. Chad wasn’t a true outdoorsman, but he did enjoy the occasional dip into the wilderness around the key.
He pulled the factory distressed Blind Melon shirt he bought at the Dolphin Mall in the Hot Topic store over his head and tossed it aside. He clapped his hands together and then realized something was missing.
“Where the hell is my kayak?” he asked no one as he flip-flopped from pylon to pylon searching for the missing boat.
3
The Good Work
Troy Clint Bodean stretched his back which snapped and popped like a nearly finished, microwaved bag of popcorn. An odd shiver ran down his spine. Odd because it was August in the Keys and it was usually as hot and humid as a stale, sweat-soaked sauna. He shook the sleep off as he pulled himself up and peeled back the blanket he’d borrowed from the old guy—Stan Wachowski from Minnesota—currently inhabiting the brown and yellow trailer in slot 03. A retired insurance salesman whose wife had left him for a younger, more aggressive used car salesman, Stan had sold his Buick, bought a trailer and decided to head south—away from his whore of a wife and away from the frigid hell of the Land of 10,000 Lakes. The only thing he’d kept from his busted marriage was the afghan his wife had knitted presumably between hot car salesman sex sessions. Troy tossed the blanket off, unrolled the sweat-stained t-shirt he’d used as a pillow, and tugged it over his head. His shadow on the ground told him his hair was a moppy mess. What else is new?
Folding the blanket into a neat square, he limped his way back to the trailer to return it to Stan, but found the door locked and no sign of the man. Maybe the old fella had found a similarly exiled divorcee or an innocent young maid to share his trailer. Troy laid the blanket on the metal folding steps that lead up to the door and walked to the edge of the water just ten feet past the end of the trailer. The gentle waves here weren’t a postcard of azure or aquamarine, but more of a blue, gray, and beige mixture—like a watercolor painting made with a dirty brush. Palm trees swayed over the top of a thatch-covered pavilion with a circular cement picnic table underneath. One of the half-moon shaped benches was broken in two and reminded Troy of something he once read about a lion on a cracked altar in a fantasy land hidden in a wardrobe.
He plopped down on the bench that was still intact and rocked his spine back and forth easing the aching muscles from his night spent sleeping under the stars. The gentle breeze blew past him and the smell of salt and fish guts oddly made his stomach growl. But, given that he’d spent his last bit of cash on a bag of beef jerky and a bottle of water at the Quickie Mart beside the last Greyhound bus station, he wasn’t sure he could do anything to tame his hunger. A seagull screeched and he glanced up toward the sound. An early morning spray of sunlight glowed on a pink piece of paper stapled to one of the tiki hut’s support poles. Two of the staples had given up and the flier now flapped lazily back and forth. He couldn’t make out much through his bleary vision except the bold words scrawled in permanent marker at the top:
NOW HIRING.
He stood and the bench he was sitting on wobbled, fell over, and cracked, much the same as the other one. Guess it’s time to move on, he thought. He shrugged and walked over to the pole. Holding the bottom of the paper, he read the details. Something about a maintenance man for a tennis club. He shivered as he recalled the time he’d spent up in Key Biscayne. Dang, that had been a hell of a ride. He almost walked away but the last three sentences caught his attention.
PAY IN CASH.
ROOM AND BOARD ON PREMISES INCLUDED.
START IMMEDIATELY.
Bingo.
Only problem was, the job was on Islamorada, maybe fifteen miles away. Sure, he could walk it, but there were some pretty fascist rules about hitchhiking in the Keys and he wasn’t sure he had it in him to trek across the long bridges that looked so cool in pictures. His eye caught a bike wheel turning slowly from the back of Stan Wachowski’s trailer. The glittering green multi-speed bicy
cle hung on a rack behind a pink one that had a distinctly feminine look to it. He was sure before he checked that the green one would prove to be locked fast to the rack, but the pink one would be unchained and free. He was right.
"Sorry, Stan," he thought, spinning the back wheel of the Pepto Bismol colored ten-speed.
Figuring the pink bike had probably belonged to Stan’s ex-wife, Troy hoped the old man wouldn’t miss it much, and might even wish it good riddance.
As he lifted the bike from its perch on the rear of the trailer, he noticed an odd smell, rank and rancid. He shrugged it off, there were a lot of fish guts baking in the sun over at the marina. Troy never noticed the body unceremoniously shoved under the back axle of the trailer as he pedaled away—a body with sixty-nine strange three-holed lacerations that another Kampground visitor from Wyoming would say reminded him of spur marks as it was dragged from its hiding place.
The cool morning he had enjoyed at the Key Largo Kampground & Marina had hazed away into a late afternoon sauna. Eleven miles down US-1, he was soaked to the bone with sweat on the outside and dry as a bone on the inside. His tongue was thick and sticky and he felt like his throat was closing in on itself. As he approached The Laura Quinn Wild Bird Sanctuary, a cramp took hold of his right calf and wouldn’t let go. He nearly crashed the pink ten-speed as he limped off the side of the highway toward the shade of the sanctuary. The ramshackle entrance of the place looked to be cobbled together from mismatched and repurposed lumber, much of which showed visible signs of rot. Troy’s front wheel thumped along the warped and weathered planks that formed a boardwalk of sorts under the canopy of dense, rangy mangroves.
The Complete Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Collection Page 134