by Alex Kava
Someone was slapping her to keep her awake. No, they were slapping off the scorpions that were still attached. Rolling her this way and that. It was too much. She couldn’t lift an arm—even a finger—to try to help. Nothing worked.
Her eyelids fluttered open only to see the leaves and clouds swirling above her. She was being swept up and she couldn’t hold on. So she closed her eyes again and tried to think of a cool breeze and the feel of ocean waves washing over her body again and again until her mind was somewhere else, where panic and fear and pain didn’t exist.
40
“SHE’S GOING INTO SHOCK,” Creed told Jason.
It was taking forever to get back to the house, back to his Jeep. He carried Maggie while Grace and Jason led the way. Jason held the GPS tracker.
Creed had punched in the coordinates and found a shortcut so they didn’t have to wind all the way around and backtrack the ground they had covered in their search. But the shortcut included woods so thick he had to slow down just to maneuver between trees.
Every time he stopped to catch his breath he heard Jason stomp and mutter something too garbled for Creed to understand. But he could guess what the young soldier’s frustration was about. He couldn’t help carry Maggie with only one arm.
Before they started, Creed had taken a photo of one of the scorpions he’d smashed and kept. He’d texted the picture to Hannah with the instructions: “Find out what kind this is ASAP. Need to know what to do. Multiple stings.”
Now he heard his phone ping, and Jason pulled it out of his pocket immediately.
“She needs to know if it’s Grace or one of us.”
But before Creed could answer, the kid was poking in the answer quickly. He operated the phone while holding the tracker, both in his one hand and without slowing his pace.
“Hey, I can walk on my own,” Maggie said into Creed’s shirt collar, but she didn’t move her head from his shoulder.
“Maybe, but not fast enough.”
“Are they poisonous?” she asked.
“We’re trying to find out.”
“She says you smashed it too hard,” Jason told him without looking up. “She can’t tell if there were stripes on its back.”
“I think there were stripes.”
Jason’s thumb went back to work.
Creed still couldn’t see the house or any of the outbuildings. To make matters worse, the sky continued to get darker. Grace kept looking back at him to make sure he was okay. He was relieved she hadn’t gotten stung. A bigger dog might be able to handle a scorpion sting, but Grace was sixteen pounds. Speaking of pounds, he shifted Maggie and noticed that she was slipping in and out of consciousness.
Shock, definitely shock.
He wanted to yell for Hannah to hurry. Come on, what the hell is it? Was he carrying a dead woman?
“She says most scorpions in Alabama and Florida don’t have venom that’s lethal.”
“These might not be local,” Creed said. “Tell her to send the photo to Dr. Avelyn.”
“What do you mean they might not be local?” Jason stopped in his tracks to look back at Creed.
“Think about it. Have you ever seen that many scorpions all in one place?”
“Son of a bitch.” And he started tapping and walking again.
Grace began barking and bounded off to the right, trying to lead them through an even thicker underbrush. Before Creed could tell her they weren’t searching anymore, he could see the roofline. Finally!
“Good girl, Grace.” Creed followed. To Jason he said, “Looks like Grace found a shorter cut.”
“She’s better than a GPS.”
It was the first time Creed had seen the kid actually smile or at least come close, because almost immediately he was frowning again and went back to staring at Creed’s cell phone, not wanting to miss Hannah’s next message.
Sheriff Holt and his deputy were waiting for them. They helped Creed fold Maggie into the passenger seat of his Jeep. Holt already had his SUV’s engine running and the top bar lights flashing. Maggie was conscious again and trying to shove away their help until she realized she couldn’t even buckle herself in. That’s when Creed noticed the backs of her hands were swollen. So was her neck.
“Jason,” he yelled as he swung open the liftgate and helped Grace get in. “What do you have for me? Anything?”
“Dr. Avelyn wants to know how long since the last sting.”
Creed glanced at his wristwatch.
“Do you know?” he asked Jason, because he had lost all track of time.
Jason scrolled the screen on Creed’s cell phone and said, “It’s been almost forty-five minutes since you texted the photo.” He scrolled back and punched in the answer.
Then both men waited. Sheriff Holt and his deputy were at their vehicle, ready to go.
“Pinchers are too big,” Jason read. “The bigger the pinchers, the less likely they’re lethal.”
“That’s it?” Creed shoved his fingers through his hair in frustration and only now noticed the swollen sting marks on the backs of his own hands. “That’s what she expects us to bank on?”
“Wait. She said she has some antivenin just in case.” Jason looked up at him. “Seriously? She has scorpion antivenin? Who the hell is Dr. Avelyn Parker?”
Creed heaved a sigh of relief and couldn’t stop from smiling. Then he finally said, “She’s my vet.”
41
JASON HAD OFFERED TO DRIVE Agent O’Dell’s rental car. Creed hadn’t wanted to bother with it but O’Dell had been conscious enough to argue and put up a fuss. All of her belongings were in the trunk. After several attempts at retrieving the keys from her daypack and Creed telling her they didn’t have time, Jason stepped over to her side of the Jeep and made the offer. Relief swept over her face and she struggled but handed him the pack through the window.
She looked bad, flush with fever and drenched in sweat, but he could see her shiver. Her eyes squinted, a bit unfocused, and Jason could tell she was fighting the pain. He had no idea what it felt like to be stung by a scorpion, let alone dozens of them. As a kid he’d found a wasps’ nest and was so fascinated by the honeycomb that he picked it up to go show his mom. He was stung three times before his mom rescued him. To hear her tell the story, it might as well have been dozens of stings. But he could still remember that just those three hurt like hell. He had no memory of pain from his arm being blown off. In fact, he didn’t even know it was gone until he woke up in a hospital bed.
Jason watched the sheriff’s SUV and Creed’s Jeep peel out, both kicking up mud and gravel. He waited for them to wind down the driveway out of sight before he wandered over to the rental. The Ford compact was wedged between a tree and the Montgomery County Crime Scene Unit van. None of the forensic team was anywhere to be seen, and he figured they were either on their way to recover the body from the tree or they were at the scene.
He stood in the middle of the yard and looked around and listened. It was so quiet, only a few birds calling to each other. There was no sign of the chaos that had taken place here. Nothing strewn around the lawn. No broken windows or splintered doorjambs.
No blood.
Maybe he was too used to seeing shelled-out buildings and ripped-up roadsides from IEDs. It would help if explosions would quit invading his sleep. His mom—that same brave woman who’d rescued him as a kid from wasps—told him he needed to stop thinking about all “that stuff” so much and to “think happy thoughts” instead. Pretty hard to do when every morning he reached for his toothbrush and was reminded that his frickin’ hand was gone.
So it was difficult to imagine such chaos happening without bombs exploding or people screaming. Without any blood.
Probably no one would understand, but, ironically, today he felt more alive than he had since he came home from Afghanista
n. Finding that woman’s body in the tree—that was nothing. Now, if the tree had been filled with pieces of her—that would be more like what he was used to seeing.
However, his adrenaline had really started pumping when he helped Creed pull Agent O’Dell out of that pit. Swatting away scorpions, tracking and finding the way back through the brush—suddenly he had a purpose again. He missed the urgency. He missed feeling a part of something bigger and more important than himself.
Jason knew Ryder Creed didn’t like him. He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t give a rat’s ass. He’d Googled Ryder Creed and couldn’t believe the guy was only twenty-nine years old and had been in Afghanistan. He sure as hell acted like an old man. But Creed was a marine. Jason was a ranger. Maybe it was that simple. Damned marines thought they were something special.
Jason knew the only reason Creed had brought him along today was because of Hannah. He’d overheard them talking. At least Creed was honest. Jason couldn’t figure out if Hannah just thought he was another lost soul at Segway House for her to save. He hated that—just the idea that someone would think he needed to be saved. Son of a bitch, he was the one who was supposed to be out saving people. He did not need saving.
He pointed the key fob at the rental car. He was going to hit the UNLOCK button when he noticed the door was already unlocked. He stopped in his tracks.
That didn’t feel right. Agent O’Dell didn’t seem like the type who would leave her vehicle’s doors unlocked, even in the middle of Nowhere, Alabama. It would be an instinctive habit for someone like her, in her profession.
Jason dropped to his hand and knees. Keeping three feet between himself and the car, he leaned down to look under the chassis. It was a habit from his own most recent profession. He leaned his shoulder into the mud as he scanned the entire length of the undercarriage for anything that might look like an explosive device.
Ordinarily he might consider this a bit over the top. He admitted he had some residual paranoia. Okay, a lot of paranoia. Hell, he couldn’t sit in a bar or a restaurant without knowing where all the exits were. He didn’t care about getting blown up again or some crazy asshole storming in and shooting up the joint. Dying didn’t scare him. Living did, especially if it included having another piece of himself hacked off.
Getting blown up once should be reason enough for a healthy dose of paranoia. But given the day’s events, what he was doing right now seemed totally appropriate. Even if there wasn’t anything attached to the undercarriage of the vehicle. Appropriate or not, as he pushed himself back to his feet, he was glad there was no one around to see him.
Agent O’Dell probably just forgot to lock the car doors. Simple as that.
Still, when Jason opened the driver’s door he did it slowly. He let the door click, and he pulled it open only an inch to make room for his fingers. Then with eagle eyes and trigger-sensitive fingertips—on the only hand he had left to blow off—he carefully caressed the rubber around the entire opening, searching for a thread of wire that didn’t belong.
Again, he found nothing.
This time he cursed and told himself, “Damn it, dude, you seriously need to lighten up.”
He shook his head and plucked his sunglasses from where they dangled on the neckline of his T-shirt. He shoved them back on, pulled the door open wide, and slid into the driver’s seat. He was still berating himself as he adjusted the seat when he noticed the burlap sack dislodge from underneath. It plopped down on the floorboard between his boots. Before he could lift either foot he saw the snake poke out and raise itself up three inches.
Jason had grown up camping in this area and knew how to distinguish a coral snake from the other colorful, but less deadly, snakes. There was a clever saying, and it ran through his head as he kept his feet motionless and felt the sweat dripping down his back.
“Red touches black, venom lack. Red touches yellow, kill a fellow.”
The snake started waving back and forth, as if checking out its surroundings, but Jason thought it looked like the tail, not the head, coming dangerously close to whipping the side of his boot.
He tried to focus and examine the colors. The tip of the tail had rings of black and yellow with no red. That was good. Couldn’t be a coral without red. But just when he thought he was in the clear, the snake pushed out several more inches. He could see a ring of red, thick with black spots, in the scales. Farther down, wiggling up out of the burlap, he saw a thick black ring and it was separated from the red by a thin yellow ring.
Red, yellow, black . . . His mind began to spin. What was the saying?
Without taking his eyes off the snake flitting its tail between his feet, he repeated the saying under his breath: “Red touches yellow, kill a fellow. Son of a bitch, I’m screwed.”
42
SOMEHOW JASON MANAGED TO SLIDE his cell phone from his back pocket without moving his feet or legs. He caught himself holding his breath as he counted the phone rings. He thought he had used up all his adrenaline but he could feel it kick into full force.
“Come on, pick up,” he whispered as he watched the snake’s tail go perfectly still, standing straight in the air. Could it hear his voice?
“This is Creed.”
Finally!
“What do you know about coral snakes?”
“You hardly ever see them. They pretty much keep to themselves.”
“There’s one in Agent O’Dell’s car.”
Silence.
“It’s on the floorboard between my feet,” Jason continued, keeping his tone low and even, despite the panic jumping around in his gut.
“You know for sure it’s a poisonous one?”
“Red touches yellow, kill a fellow.”
“Stay completely still.”
“Already doing that, man.”
“Coral snakes are usually shy and docile. That’s why you don’t see them much. They like to hide. They’ll only strike if they’re disturbed or feel threatened.”
“I’d say being stuffed into a burlap sack and shoved under the car seat might have disturbed this one.”
“Can you see its head?”
“No, I think it’s still in the sack. Its tail’s sticking out, waving around.”
“That’s good. They do that sometimes. It’s trying to fake you out.”
“Fake me out?” Jason had to swallow a laugh and keep still. His nerves were wound tight. “Can you call the forensic team?”
“You’re not gonna be able to wait for them.”
“You are not very reassuring.”
“Just stay calm. We can do this.”
Creed’s voice reminded Jason of his sergeant’s just before the IED went off.
“Easy for you to say. You’re not in the son-of-a-bitchin’ car.”
“Not really easy. I’m driving about seventy miles an hour with one hand on the wheel and in pouring rain.”
Rain. Damn!
No wonder Creed had told him he didn’t have time for the forensic team. If rain started battering down on the car, would the snake feel even more threatened? For the first time, Jason risked taking his eyes off the snake to glimpse up at the sky. Still overcast and dark.
“Corals don’t tend to be aggressive,” Creed said, “unless you step on them or pin them down. Then you’ve got a problem. They don’t just strike once, they’ll strike over and over again, rapidly in a sideways motion. And if they connect, they hang on.”
“You’re not making this better.”
“I just want you to be prepared. They might look small but they are the most virulent. All they have to do is attach to a piece of skin.”
“Still not helping.”
“Is there anything in the car—blanket, towel?”
Only then did Jason notice that Agent O’Dell had left a lightweight jacket on the passen
ger seat.
“A very thin jacket.”
“Good. Listen to me carefully, because you’re gonna need to put the phone down in order to use your hand.”
Jason hadn’t even thought about his new disadvantage. Suddenly he became acutely aware of everything. He could feel the wet back of his T-shirt sticking to the vinyl car seat. He gauged the tight space between his thighs and the steering wheel. He’d never be able to move quickly enough. It didn’t matter how many hands he had.
“Jason.” Creed’s voice brought him back to attention.
“Go ahead.”
“Is the snake’s head still in the bag?”
“I think so.”
“This is what you need to do. Drop the jacket over the opening of the bag. Then open your car door at the same time that you lift up your left foot. Bring that foot all the way up to the car seat.”
“How the hell—” He had to stop himself to lower his voice and grab hold of some composure. “My leg’s never going to fit.”
“Sure it will,” Creed told him as calmly as if he were asking him to try on a new pair of shoes. “The open door will give you more room. Just do all of this slowly. Then lift yourself and slide over to the other side of the car. You’ll have to decide when to bring up the other foot.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. I’m not jumping out the door?”
“Not that door. You’re going out the passenger door.”
Jason looked at the gearshift and console that separated the seats. There was too much to get over. He’d never be able to do it. The car was too small. He wasn’t a big guy, but how the hell could he drag and bang himself all the way to the other side and do it faster than a snake that could crawl up and at him in a matter of seconds?
“That’s your plan?” he asked Creed.
“You got a better one?”
That’s when the first raindrop hit the windshield.
43
THERE WASN’T A DAY THAT WENT BY that Jason didn’t think about—or have nightmares about—those 164 seconds that changed his life forever.