by Bill Crider
We both sat and listened. A bullfrog croaked. The mosquitoes hummed. Nothing else.
"Maybe we oughta go on back to the house," Fred said.
He was probably right, and we might have gone if we hadn't heard the noise again. It sounded more like a man who'd been kicked in the belly by a horse than anything.
"It's farther off now," Fred said. "You want to go see about it?"
"No," I said. "But I think we should, anyway. Just don't forget the rifle, and don't say anything like, 'You check over there, and I'll look down this way.'"
"What's that mean?"
"That's what they always say in movies like Alligator People right before someone gets hurt or killed. We don't want to get separated."
"You don't have to worry about that," Fred said. "I'll stick to you like a burr to a cat's tail." He started the Jeep. "Jeep won't go much further, though. We're gonna have to get out and walk in a minute."
We drove for about another quarter of a mile, and then the marshes and the trees put an end to the driving.
"I could prob'ly go just about anywhere in this Jeep," Fred said. "But it's too damn dark to take any chances. I don't want to puncture a tire or sink in over the axles. Even the Jeep won't pull out of a mess like that."
We got out and he retrieved the rifle, along with the flashlight we had used the previous night.
"Which way?" I said.
"I'd say straight ahead." He pointed with the light. "Like I said, it's hard to tell about sounds, but that's the way that would lead us over to where that dump was. Seems right to me that we'd find out where the sound's comin' from if we went that way."
I shrugged. "All right, why not? What's between us and the dump?"
He started walking, and I followed closely. "There's another big lake, biggest one on my property, but we'll skirt around the end of it. Have to go through some pretty marshy ground, but it ought to be solid enough to hold us. No quicksand, I hope."
"I hope so too," I said, fighting the urge to stop right there.
"Lots of dead trees," he said. "The ones that haven't fallen down yet. Don't know what happened. Some kinda blight. After that, some higher ground with lots of trees. Then some more marsh, and then the dump."
"How far is all that?"
"Mile or two."
What was a mile to an old runner like me? At least my knee was still holding up after my adventure with the truck. A good walk shouldn't bother it.
The night had gotten cloudy, and the darkness seemed almost like a solid presence. The humidity had come back and made the illusion of solidity even more real. I knew that we should be watching ourselves and keeping an eye out for whatever had made the noise, but it was all we could do to find a path over the marshy ground.
I thought I could see the shallow end of the lake, but I wasn't sure. The dark ground became the dark water, and it was hard to tell which one was which. Our feet occasionally sank into mud, and we pulled them out with a sucking sound.
"Should've brought our rubber boots," Fred said.
"I don't have any," I told him.
"Don't matter, then," he said.
Then I could see the dead trees sticking up on our right. They looked ghostly and pale in the darkness, as if there were something in their skeletons that gave off a faint glow. New growth, mostly thick bushes, had sprung up around them. The bushes were probably green, but they looked black in the darkness, like amorphous blobs gathered around the bases of the trees.
Fred stopped suddenly. "You hear somethin?" he said.
"Nothing but bugs and frogs," I said. "I thought I heard an owl a minute ago, though."
"That ain't what I heard," he said.
He stood there, sweeping the beam of the flashlight around. It passed over the bushes, which were green, all right, and over the branches of the dead trees, across the ground in front of us and out over the shallow water, which I could now recognize by the reflection of the light. I thought I caught sight of a pair of red eyes in the beam's passing, but I couldn't be sure.
"I don't see anything," I said.
"Me neither, but that don't mean there's nothin' there." He kept playing the light around.
"What did you hear?" I said.
"Don't know. Just a noise, but it didn't sound natural."
"Maybe it was nothing," I said.
"It was somethin', all right," he said, but after a minute or so of looking we still hadn't seen anything unusual.
"I guess I'm gettin' old," Fred said. "Let's go."
We started forward, but we got only about twenty feet before we both stopped. This time, I'd heard it too, the sound of metal on metal, a faint click that sounded as out of place in this setting as a violin solo would have done.
"The bushes," I said, and Fred shined the light over on them.
We still saw nothing unusual. There were just thick green bushes and dead white trees.
"We're missing something somewhere," I said. "Shine the light down a little lower."
This time, Fred put the light on the ground and we saw something immediately. Tire tracks, wide gouges in the earth that made deep ruts running back to the bushes.
I thought of a vehicle I'd had a recent encounter with, one whose tires were high and wide.
Then the bushes exploded, flying in all directions, or that's the way it looked to me at the time.
I suppose that first there was the sound of the truck's starter, and the noise of the rear tires spinning to find a grip in the mud, or maybe all those things happened at the same time. What I remember, though, is those bushes flying through the air and that black truck bearing down on us with Fred just standing there holding the flashlight right on it and those silver letters, FORD, shining in the light. Then the truck went through a puddle, and water flew up around those wide tires, catching the light beam and showering down like drops of gold.
About then my brain kicked back into gear.
"Get out of the way!" I yelled, throwing myself to one side and hoping Fred would do the same.
He was old, but he was quick. And the truck was far enough away to give him time.
He dropped the flashlight, though, and it lay on the ground, its beam still glowing but not helping a thing.
The truck swerved in my direction, and I got off my hands and knees, covered with mud and slime.
"Shoot!" I yelled to Fred. "Shoot!"
I had already gone through this bit with the truck once too often to suit me, and a silly scene from another movie popped into my head. I could see Peter Falk and Alan Arkin in The In-Laws and hear Falk telling Arkin to "Serpentine!"
Maybe that wasn't such a bad idea. I gave it a try.
I could hear the truck behind me, slurping through the mud, trying to get a bead on me. I was headed in the wrong direction, toward the lake, but I didn't want to turn back.
I heard the crack of Fred's rifle, but I heard no impact from the bullet. It was no wonder. Fred was shooting under almost impossible conditions.
Then I had a sobering thought. Now they knew who had the rifle. Whoever it was might go after Fred, but certainly not until I was out of the way. After all, I was practically helpless.
On the other hand, I found myself already sloshing around in water up over my ankles, and the truck behind me, while very tall, wasn't amphibious. If I could get out into deep water, I might have a chance.
The water would have to be very deep, though. I had a feeling that the driver of the truck would push it as far as he could.
When the water was up to my calves, the truck was only a few yards away. My shadow fled in front of me, and I felt like a rabbit spotlighted by an illegal hunter.
There were a couple more rifle cracks behind me, Fred shooting at the truck. I don't think he hit it.
Thick lily pad vines were wrapping themselves round my legs. I did a flat dive and tried swimming under the water. It was barely deep enough, but I thought I was covered. I swam straight ahead for about fifteen feet, then struck out at an angle to the
left, trying to get out of the truck's path.
When I came up for air, the truck had stopped. My little move had misled the driver, and the headlights were not pointing in my direction. I ducked back under and swam toward the truck. I had in mind a sneak attack, but it didn't work out exactly as I had planned.
I surfaced on the passenger side just as the door was closing. Someone had gotten out and dropped down into the water with me.
The truck began to back up.
The man in the water was just a dark shape, and the driver of the truck cut the wheels the wrong way, so that the headlight beams were pointing away from us. I slid back under the water and went for the shape's legs.
He probably thought an alligator had him. I know that's what I would have thought.
He tried stomping and kicking, and even in the roiling mud and water I could hear him yelling. I held on and got a good grip, trying to bring him down.
When he splashed into the water, I tried to get to his arms and pin them, but it was like fighting a windmill. He was churning the water, kicking and yelling as if he were in a battle to the death with a prehistoric monster. His fear must have been pumping adrenaline into his system by the quart.
Something splashed into the water not far from us, a serious splash, not the kind a frog could make even if he were the champion bullfrog of the year. There was something really big there.
I gave up trying to subdue the man and simply tried to pull him away, but I couldn't get a grip. He was thrashing around so much that there was nothing to hold, or at least nothing that would stay still long enough for me to get a grip on.
There was another huge splash nearby, and I saw the dark head of a gator, its jaws wide, break the water.
I was suddenly as scared as the man thrashing in the water, maybe even more scared. I wanted out of there, but I wanted to get the man out too. There were a lot of things I wanted to ask him.
I made one more grab and got hold of his belt. I started backing up as fast as I could, pulling him after me. The going was hard, and my ankle tangled in a lily pad stem. I fell back into the water, losing my hold on the belt.
When I got up and dashed the water out of my eyes, the man was screaming. The gator had been luckier than I had been and had managed to get a grip on his arm. I could see the dark head, the jaws clamped shut.
I found the belt and pulled again.
The gator pulled back. He was a lot stronger than I was. I was afraid that if I didn't let go, the man's arm would be chewed off. But if I did let go, the gator would drag the man away from me.
I pulled again, but it was no use. The belt slipped out of my hands, and the man slid across the water, screaming.
I stood there watching as he slipped below the surface of the lake, the screams abruptly changing to burbling and then being cut off altogether.
It was only then that I could hear the roaring of the truck engine and another rifle shot.
Well, hell, I thought. What was I supposed to do now?
One thing was for sure, and that was that I didn't owe the guy in the water a single thing. He hadn't gotten out of the truck to give me a Good Citizenship award, and Fred was my client, after all.
Still, Fred could take care of himself pretty well, and he had the gun. Or the rifle.
And I got a sick feeling deep down in my stomach when I thought about the man's arm in the alligator's mouth. He had been scared to begin with, and he must have wanted to stay in the truck. But whoever was in there had forced him out, and the instant I had wrapped my arms around his legs he had gone into a complete panic. The sheer terror he must have felt when the gator latched onto his arm was almost more than I could even begin to imagine.
So naturally I had to go after him, to try to do something for him, as hopeless as it seemed. I knew he would never have done the same for me, no matter who he was, but that didn't seem to matter.
I blundered forward in the water toward the spot where I thought he'd gone under. It was so dark that all the spots looked pretty much alike, black water covered by the darker circles of the lily pads. I fought my way through them, feeling in front of me with my outstretched arms, cold chills racing over me at the thought that one of them might wind up in those horrible teeth, which I thought I remembered from my reading were not made for chewing at all but for ripping and shredding.
Didn't gators drown their food, carry it off somewhere to rot and then swallow it whole before digesting it?
It was a disgusting thought, and when my arms rammed into a solid object, I jumped straight up out of the water.
It was the body of the man, lying quite still now.
I got the belt in my hand and pulled backward.
There was no resistance, and then the water boiled beside him and two gators exploded to the surface, thrashing the water to a silver froth around me. It was almost as if they were standing on their tails, and they had something in their mouths that they were fighting over, shaking their heads from side to side like dogs fighting over a bone.
It wasn't a bone. It was an arm, or what was left of one--not much more than a bone at that, most likely.
I tugged on the body with all my strength, moving backward with more speed than I would have thought possible, as the thrashing gators sank back under the water, which heaved around them as if others had come to join the fun and games.
In no time at all I was in the shallow water, and I could see the blood streaming out of the stump of the man's arm, leaving a black trail on the ripples. I knew that I had no time to stop and render aid. If I didn't get out of there at once, the blood might call up all the monsters of the deep, and even those that were fighting might decide that it would be more profitable to come after us than to continue chewing over a bare bone.
Finally I got to relatively dry ground, and hoping that I was far enough from danger, I tried to staunch the bleeding. I ripped off the man's belt and wrapped it as tightly around the stump of his arm as I could. There wasn't much room to operate. The arm was gone a few inches below the shoulder, and shreds of flesh and cloth hung loosely and wetly there.
When my heart had slowed down to about twice normal, the blood stopped rushing in my ears and I could hear more or less as usual again. Except for my ragged breathing and the splashing of the agitated gators, who apparently enjoyed a good fight among themselves, I couldn't hear a thing.
There was no sound of the truck, no sound of rifle fire, no sound at all.
I propped the man against a strong tuft of cat-tails and looked around. I could make out the trees standing there as dead as ever, their stark branches outlined against the black sky, but there was no sign of the truck, and there was no sign of Fred.
16
I kept looking from side to side until at last I saw the faint glow of the flashlight. I walked over to where it had been mashed into the soft ground by one of the tires on the truck. Being made of nearly indestructible plastic, it was still burning.
"That you, Truman?" Fred called from somewhere when I pulled the light from the mud.
"It's me," I said, looking around for him.
Off to my left the bushes began to shake, and Fred emerged from them carrying his rifle.
"Son of a bitch got away," he said. "Hell, it's only because I'm so damn old and slow. And I can't see worth a damn anymore, either."
His night vision was better than mine, but I didn't remind him.
"I got off six shots," he said. "Missed ever' damn time, I think. He was comin' right at me on two of 'em, and I missed anyhow. Then I couldn't get the shells out of my pocket and load the rifle, so I had to duck back into those bushes and hide. He thrashed 'em pretty good with that truck, but he didn't have a chance of findin' me." He paused for breath. "What happened to you?"
"I ran into the lake," I said. "He didn't get me, either, but he sent somebody after me."
"Who was it?"
"I don't know," I said. "Now that we've got the flashlight, why don't we go over there and take a look?"
>
I told Fred what had happened so that he wouldn't be too shocked at the sight of the arm, but the thought of it didn't bother him at all.
"Son of a bitch got what he deserved," was the way he put it, and I had to agree with him, though I still felt sorry for the man.
I was a little disoriented, and it took us a few minutes to find where I'd left him. When we got there I shined the light into his face.
It was Gene Ransome, and the light didn't bother him at all. He stared right into it with wide-open eyes. His low-growing hair was plastered to his forehead, and his mouth hung open.
He was as dead as the ghostly trees that stood behind us. The shock of the gator's attack and the loss of his arm and so much blood had been too much for him.
I told Fred who he was.
"I guess we'll find out now for sure who he is and who he's workin' for," Fred said. "Damn, I hate to have to drive that Jeep in here after him in the dark."
"We can leave him till morning," I said. "He won't mind a bit."
"Yeah, but there might not be much of him left by then, not if those gators come after him."
I hadn't thought of that. "You think that's likely?" I said.
"Could be. You can't predict 'em. Hell, you don't ever know what might be back in those trees and bushes. 'Coons might get at him. Turtles. Who knows what-all."
"I guess we should try to get him out of here then," I said. "You go get the Jeep. I'll stay here and keep everything off him until you get back."
"Hardly seems worth the trouble, somehow," Fred said, looking down at the dead man and shaking his head.
"We might need him for evidence," I said. "We want proof of what happened here tonight."
"All right, but I'm gonna need the flashlight. And if I sink down to China in that Jeep, you're gonna be here by yourself all night."
"I'll just have to chance it," I said, but I didn't like the thought of being alone with the body for any length of time. I thought I might be able to fight off a turtle, if it was a small one, but I wasn't too keen on the idea of fighting off an alligator.
"You can keep the rifle, though," Fred said. "I don't think whoever was in that truck will be after me. He headed off the other way."