The Devil's Syndicate

by Chris Draper

  “You're a fucking lunatic.” Hawk managed to spit out.

  But Byron continued: “And I feel nothing but pity for you, genuine pity. Your existence, your life up to this point, will all become erased. You're about to become extinct Hawk.”

  Dottie had heard Hawk's cries and came to with a start. Disoriented for a second she forgot where she was, and then a feeling of total dread came over her and she remembered. She raised herself up, looked back over her shoulder and saw Byron on top of Hawk, his back to her, and Byron's rifle tossed on the ground behind him. Her head was still sore from being hit with the rifle and she felt a bump on her head the size of a watermelon.

  Slowly with her mind still fuzzy, she crawled towards the rifle 3 feet in front of her. When she reached it she grabbed it quickly, stood up and brought the rifle to her chin, aimed the barrel at Byron and pulled the trigger. Nothing. She tried again, this time panicking. A harsh click as the gun’s hammer thrust forward but did not fire. Byron had heard the click, turned his head around and threw his head back with laughter.

  “Out of bullets baby.” He said then got off Hawk and started coming towards her. She shrieked, tried swatting at Byron with the rifle but he swatted it away and shoved her to the ground. A second later he was on top of her with his hands clasped tightly around her throat. He flexed his arms and felt the power going through his hands, Dottie choked and struggled to breath against Byron's grip but the more she struggled the harder he pushed. It felt like her wind pipe was being crushed into the back of her throat.

  Hawk, barely conscious, became aware that Byron was no longer on top of him. He felt down with his hands, and grasped the knife stuck into his chest. He felt the handle and figured it must have been shoved at least half an inch into his sternum. There was a lot of blood coming from the wound and he wasn't sure if he should leave it or yank it out. With great effort he raised his head, Byron was on top of Dottie now, strangling her, and he could see her kicking out her feet as the life drained from her body. He looked to the left, saw the flashlight’s beam shining the ground around him, remembered about his own gun, then looked up above him to the right and saw his rifle where it had fallen before.

  He put his hands around the handle of the knife and gritted his teeth as he slowly withdrew it from his chest. He could feel the blood spurt out as soon as the knife was removed and noticed he had saliva running down his mouth from wincing from the pain.

  Worried he would go into shock soon, he used his right hand to cleave at the ground above him, working his way towards his rifle, while covering the knife wound with his left hand. The pain in his right shoulder was absent now, possibly replaced from the pain in his chest, and he focused on reaching for the wooden end of the rifle a foot ahead. When he thought he was close, he swatted at the wooden handle and his fingers just scrapped the end of it. Frustrated, he dug his right elbow into the ground and pulled up his body the rest of the way. When he was there he took up the rifle, stood up on shaky knees and held himself against a nearby tree, then holding the rifle in his left hand fired off a shot that tore through Byron's back.

  Byron yelled once, got up from Dottie and turned around to face Hawk, his eyes flashing with hatred and he took one step, two, his arms outstretched in front of him and Hawk loaded another round – but then he let out a soft whimper, seemed to be grabbing at nothing, fell over onto the wet mud, shook a little, then lay still.

  Hawk took a deep breathe, fell backwards onto a tree and slumped down against it. Dottie was bent over, coughing, trying to bring more air into her lungs, her face completely soaked in red. Slowly Hawk pulled himself up, stumbled over to where she was and she immediately threw her arms around him, digging her face into his jacket whimpering.

  “Oh my God...my God.” She was saying between sobs. “I've never been so scared.”

  “I know.” Hawk said with a throat of phlegm. “But it's all over now.”

  They stayed that way a few seconds then Hawk helped her to her feet, leaning on her a little for support.

  “I've been stabbed...bad. Need to get back...right away or will bleed...everywhere.”

  “Let's go.” She said looking at his wound when she suddenly let go of him and ran back to where they had been.

  “Where are you going?” Hawk called out.

  “The keys!” She cried. “We need them for the communications room, remember?”

  “Right.” Hawk said, almost whispering.

  Byron's body was still where he'd fallen and when she saw him there she felt her skin start to crawl. What if he wasn't dead this time? She gulped, edged fearfully close to his body, one step at a time, waiting for him to suddenly spring up and grab her. She got within an inch of him, and still he lay there, eyes closed and mouth slightly agape, so she picked up a stick on the ground and poked him once, twice. He didn't move. She breathed a sigh of relief, muttered something about being stupid, then knelt down next to the body and searched around in his jacket pocket.

  Her hand brushed against something hard and she heard the metallic clink of keys, then she pulled them out and held them up triumphantly. “Found them!”

  Hawk had managed to wander over, was standing near her. “Okay good, let's start heading back.”

  Dottie stood up to go and started to turn when she felt something cold and wet clamp around her ankle. She let out a scream, looked down in horror and saw Byron had grabbed her. He was digging his dirty fingernails into the flesh of her ankle and she cried out in pain as it started to draw blood. She yelled for Hawk to help her and he shone the flashlight in her direction, confused for a moment just what the panic was about until a rustle in the bushes off to the right caught his attention. Quickly he darted the light's beam towards the sound and saw some bushes moving frantically about six feet away. There was something in there, something large, charging straight towards them like a rocket ship and his eyes widened when he saw it was.

  “We gotta get out of here!” Hawk yelled and with a hard tug pulled Dottie out of Byron's grasp and flung her over his shoulder. The pain in his sternum shot up through his body as he ran and he winced but still he went on, only looking back once to make sure what he saw hadn't decided to follow them.

  “What is it?” Dottie screamed. “What's back there?”

  But Hawk didn't answer her, instead he kept his eyes forward, watching as the flashlight's beams punctured through the endless darkness, and listening as the first bloodcurdling screams erupted from somewhere behind him.

  Byron knew what it was even before they'd reached him. He'd heard the patter of their slimy feet on the muddy ground, had sensed their presence in the darkness as they lingered closeby, ancient beings of the Everglades that had existed there long before he had. In a brief flash of lightning he had seen their teeth, rows and rows of sharpened weapons built upon sturdy jaws that could easily crack open the shell of a turtle. Then he'd felt the dampness of their rough hides slither across his face and he'd heard the first snarl of the beasts as they readied themselves to eat him alive.

  Crocodiles. Drawn by the scent of his blood and the protection the forest offered from the storm. They'd found him lying there, and like an injured doe he was helpless to do anything about it. They were at his sides now and he tried to squirm away. Failed. Tried to cock his head to get a better look at his murderers, but all he saw was thick darkness everywhere. And then he let out a cry as the first sets of teeth clamped into his shoulder, separating bone from flesh in one motion, and in the next few flashes of lightning he saw the horror of it all unfold around him as the last seconds of his life wound down. He opened his mouth to scream one last time as the green monsters took him over.

  25

  Hawk and Dottie had pushed through the Everglades, had made it back to the compound and then collapsed on a bed in one of the spare rooms, each exhausted from the day's events. Outside the window Hawk could hear that the storm had died down, and it seemed like the Everglades was holding its breath as an eerie silence descended over
the entire forest. They had managed to make it back over some large rocks down stream that went over the river, her body thrown over his shoulder most of the way until he couldn't support her weight anymore, and then it was her supporting him as they stumbled onward, like two figures marooned in a green wasteland.

  Miraculously the generator that supplied the compound with power hadn't been hit during the storm and the lights were still on when they got inside. They'd reached the building completely drained, and hadn't even had the energy to unlock the door to the communications room to try and contact an outside source. Hawk had said it could wait until later, when they were both more rested, as he wasn't even sure he could formulate a full sentence in his present condition. His head throbbed wildly and his entire body had seemed to become a fortress of aches and pains. Dottie had stitched up his shoulder and chest wounds with some leftover bandages and had also treated them with some saline solution they had found stashed underneath the sink in the kitchen. She’d also managed to build a sling for his arm but sooner or later Hawk knew the bullet would have to come out – and it would have to be sooner unless he wanted the wound to become infected.

  They hadn't said anything to each other since getting back to the compound except once when Dottie had asked Hawk how it was possible Byron had survived the gunshot. What could he say? He'd told her something along the lines that sometimes revenge was a powerful thing, that it could keep a man alive well past his prime. But did he really believe that? Or was he just churning out some Freudian nonsense to try and satisfy his own disbelief? Hawk had seen men shot before, with just about every gun one could imagine, with just about every modern calibre in just about every part of the body, yet he'd never seen anyone survive a pointe blank shot from a hunting rifle. That was enough power to take out almost any living creature and his lack of an explanation for Byron's reanimation left him completely mystified. Perhaps he had been wearing a bulletproof vest or maybe the round hadn't penetrated as deeply as he thought. He thought about it a little longer, then decided to file it away in some memory bank, promising himself to look into it further later on.

  After a little while he felt the throbbing in his head lessen, looked over at Dottie laying on her side and shook her awake.

  “I'm going to go try and contact someone now on that radio.” He said pushing himself up with one arm. “Are you going to stay here?”

  She nodded sleepily, her blonde hair dishevelled, tossed over her eyes like a veil. “Please get someone to come as soon as possible. I want to go home.”

  “I'll try my best.”

  Hawk got up, stumbled down the hall to radio room, and when he got there plunged the large key into the lock and yanked the door open. It creaked loudly as he pulled it open all the way and stared into a dark room with some faint green and red blinking lights. He felt around the wall until his hand brushed a table lamp and he found the knob and switched it on. He was in a small room with a radio console taking up the entire wall in front of him. In another corner sat a separate generator providing power to the wall console that Hawk quickly switched on. To the right of the generator was a small table with a lamp and a manual on top – he picked up the manual and saw it was instructions on how to use the console, with some writing in blue pen with arrows pointing to many of the directions. He sat down on a stool in front of the console, opened the book and looked at a quickstart guide on how to use the system. Although his knowledge of radio technology was slim, he guessed that the console was probably at least 20 years old. He'd taken a small communications course in his cadet days and in it he'd learned basic communications theory as well as the history of radio throughout the twentieth century. Although the communications system was old Hawk was sure that someone in the local police force would be able to pick up the call on their radios.

  Staring down at this device though he felt like he could have been in an alien spaceship – rows and rows of dials filled up a large wooden panel about 4 feet in length and on the top he saw analog outputs marked with numbers that started at 1 and ended at 20. Each of these outputs had a light underneath and some of the lights were flashing green, while others were flashing red and a few were not flashing at all. On either side of the console were two large speakers attached to the wall of the building and tossed aimlessly on top of the console was a radio receiver with a wire that attached back into the system. He picked up the receiver, pressed a button on the side and spoke into the speaker:

  “Hello, mayday, can anyone hear me out there?”

  Silence. He waited another minute then skimmed through the manual, adjusted a few knobs on the console and set one of the dials to a new channel.

  “Mayday, mayday, this is a distress call. I'm in need of immediate assistance. Please respond if you can hear me. Over.”

  He bent over the board and rubbed the sides of his temples with his hands. His headache was starting to return and now that he was awake the pain in his shoulder was beginning again as well. He was starting to get frustrated. Surely someone must be monitoring one of these channels. Although the room he was in had no windows, he could hear the wind outside whistling around the walls, a low-pitched howl that crept through the empty compound like a ghostly whisper.

  “One last time.”

  Again he tried another dial. A new channel. Crossed his fingers.

  “This is an emergency. I need immediate assistance. If anyone is out there listening please reply. Over.”

  He waited again for a few seconds, but the eagerness he'd first felt had evaporated and now he just felt tired again. He sighed, stood up and flicked off the light to the room, then went to leave when something caught his attention. He heard some static coming from the speakers and heard the unmistakable sound of a voice coming through the other end. He rushed back in and fumbled around on the console for the volume control until he found it and cranked it up as loud as it would go.

  A static voice filled the room, “Hello, this is State Trooper Brandon Voight receiving your transmission. What's the issue? Over.”

  Hawk spoke slowly into the receiver, “We have an emergency situation at a location in the Florida Everglades. We're about 40 miles North West of a small village called Imokalee by the river. We have many dead here and some wounded. Please send help right away. Over.”

  The line was silent for a few seconds and Hawk was worried the message hadn't gone through so he added, “Are you there?”

  “Yes I am here.” Voight said. “You don't know where you are?”

  “No but I know we are about an hour's drive inwards from highway 27. I know there's a road that leads here from there close to an abandoned laundry mat.”

  “Are you indoors?”

  “Yes we're inside an old building that looks like a large factory. It's hidden by bush but if you keep a good look out once you get past Imokalee you might be able to find us.”

  “Okay, it's going to be a little hard getting there until the rest of this storm clears out. There's been a lot of damage around the area and we're having trouble getting through to many areas. We might not be able to get there until morning. Are you okay to sit tight until then?”

  “Yes I think we can manage until then.” Hawk said. “But please try to get here as soon as you can.”

  “Will do.”

  “Over and out.” Hawk said and put the receiver down.

  He headed back to the room, using the walls of the hallway to balance himself. When he got there Dottie was still laying on her side on the cot and he lay back down beside her with his head resting on his free arm, staring up at the ceiling. Dottie yawned and stretched out her arms, purring like a cat just springing to life after a long nap, then sat up looking at Hawk with her head cradled on one hand, her eyes looking at him searchingly.

  “What happened?”

  “I got a hold of a State Trooper. They said that there's been a lot of damage from the storm but they'll be here as soon as they can. Probably by the morning.”

  “Will they know where to
find us?”

  “I gave him some instructions on where we are. All we can do now is keep our fingers crossed and hope they'll know where to look."

  “What will you tell them?”

  “The truth.” He said. “They're gonna find out sooner or later anyway. I'll tell them everything that's happened.”

  “Which means...” She began with uncertainty in her voice. Hawk looked at her, waiting for her to finish. “Which means the news will probably run a story on it all won't they?”

  “That's something you're going to have to prepare yourself for. There may be interviews, articles – even your photo could be out there.”

  “I know.” She said taking a deep breath and Hawk could hear the courage in her voice when she continued. “This was something I've thought of many times since being here. What would happen if the world were to find out about all of this.”

  “How does that make you feel?”

  “I don't think I have much choice.” She said with a small chuckle. “Who knows, maybe I could pen a good book about this someday and become famous.” They shared a laugh together then she went on. “But seriously, even if it means a bit of publicity for the next while, I'd take that over being stuck here forever.”

  “I'm glad you'll be okay with it.” Hawk said. “When the police get here they'll be asking a lot of questions, they'll want to know everything.”

  “And you,” She asked inquiringly. “What will you do when all of this blows over?”

  “Oh I think after all of this is over I'm going to take a nice long break, maybe do some fishing. Really take things easy for awhile. My arm's gonna need to heal up too.”

  They both looked down at his arm in the sling and Dottie asked, “How does it feel?”

  “Sort of like my arm got put through a meat grinder.” He said with a grin. “But I'll be okay. What goes in must come out, and I'm going to have it taken out as soon as we get back to Miami.”