by Edward Lee
“Can you give me some examples?”
“Some redneck carves his girlfriend’s initials in an endangered species of palm tree, or tears up a replanted tropical hillock with his dirt-bike, stuff like that. Oh, and fishing. You’ll get your bearings soon enough, but the east end of the island is made up of three spurs that branch off the main stretch. On the middle spur there’s a pretty big freshwater lake that’s stocked with endangered fish. So every now and then the rednecks from south St. Pete sneak out and try to rip us off. The lake’s one of the off-compound areas you’ll have to keep an eye on.”
So far, sounds good, Clare thought. But she wouldn’t be presumptuous; Dellin clearly wanted her for the job, but she still had to meet the manager of the clinic, and regardless of Dellin’s influence, she knew that a bad impression could jeopardize the whole thing. She looked down at herself and realized quite bluntly, I look like a pile of crap. My clothes are dirty and crumpled, and I stink. If the boss of the place sees me like this, he’ll boot my butt right back out the door, probably with a clothespin on his nose.
“I really need to get cleaned up before I meet the boss,” she peeped. “I want you to know that I don’t always look like this.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Dellin said for the third or forth time. “There’s a shower and locker room at the clinic. You can get cleaned up and put on a security uniform. You’ll look fine.”
She sighed in relief. She still had a multitude of questions but now the scenery was sideswiping her focus. The island’s main stretch seemed to exist in perfect symmetry: the perfectly straight road, the perfectly straight run-off gullies, then perfectly straight rows of palm trees. “Now, check this out,” Dellin said and smiled at her. He turned left, onto a well-leveled dirt road, and stopped.
Clare caught her breath. The road—again, a perfect straight line—seemed to bore into the forest, a virtual tunnel through a dense tropical woodland of hundred-foot-tall palm trees and Australian pines. The two trees marking the entrance were joined at the very tops by sprawling leafy vines and Spanish moss, like a natural archway. One moment the sun was beating down on them hard, but then next…the car moved slowly into a cool quiet dimness, a scape of unblemished nature unlike anything Clare had ever seen.
“Some sight, huh?”
“Yeah,” Clare agreed. “Just a little bit prettier than Bum Row in downtown St. Petersburg.”
“In this park there’s a little slice of every natural geographical example in the state of Florida, and almost every example of fauna and flora. Working here is almost like being on vacation seven days a week.”
“I see what you mean,” she said, “but—”
She couldn’t quell the sudden shot of pessimism. All those months in the shelter or sleeping under bridges and waiting for the hand-out truck had imbued her like a stain that wouldn’t come out. “I have to tell you, Dellin. I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth but this is all too good to be true.”
Dellin glanced at her, smiling. “Or maybe you just deserve something good for a change.”
Clare sat back in the breeze. Yeah. Maybe I really do…
— | — | —
Chapter Three
(I)
Essentially, Kari Ann no longer possessed the mind of a human being. All she was running on now were her nerves, adrenalin, and basic aboriginal instinct. Pockets of memory flashed every once in a while but only for seconds, replaying the horror of last night: Caleb’s decapitation, Jory’s disembowelment, and…what came afterward. Something else haunted her too, just as intermittently—a high, wheeling noise like a cat on fire, but then Kari Ann realized she was simply remembering her own screams.
Sixteen hours later, naked and mauled, she lay completely buried in the forest’s detritus, only her nose and one eye exposed. Last night, the man who’d killed Caleb and Jory had dragged her through the woods for what seemed hours, but every fifteen minutes or so, he seemed to take a break—to rape her.
That’s how the night had gone—all night.
She’d never seen her attacker—he preferred her on her belly, in the dirt—she’d only felt him, the grueling and almost perfunctory violation of her body. He’d never said a word. Resistence was useless, though, even unwise, as she learned fairly quickly. His arms felt firm as dried cement, and his grip—like a vise. Once she’d kicked him, aiming for the groin, but she’d missed. He’d responded to the action by merely grabbing her wrist, which he squeezed until—
crack!
—her wrist broke.
Later, she’d started screaming again, and evidently it was beginning to annoy him. He’d yanked her up by her hair, slapped the palm of one hand against her lips and sealed her mouth closed. With his other hand, then, he pinched her nostrils together. He let her smother slowly, shuddering, and at just a moment or two before she would die, he released her nostrils—only to pinch them shut a second later after she’d had time to wheeze in one breath. He did that for a while, pinch and release, pinch and release, until she got the message: Don’t Scream. She got the chance to test her resolve right then and there; the action of alternately bringing her to near-death via asphyxiation caused him to grow aroused again, and then she was slammed back down on her belly in the mud and taken once more.
This time Kari Ann didn’t scream.
She’d done some bad things in her life, and in the brief snatches of cognition now, she actually realized that. Cheating on Caleb, sure, and ripping him off every chance she could, but that was nothing. There was that drive-by, though, a couple, three years ago. This was long before she’d hooked up with Caleb. Her boyfriend at the time had bought some bad flake, turned out to be oregano with no PCP on it at all! They’d driven right back to the same street corner in southside; her man had opened up with a Taurus 9-mill, fourteen shots. Killed the player who’d ripped them off, peeled his cap bigtime.
Killed a little boy, too, riding his bike on the next block.
But Kari hadn’t done the shooting, she’d only been driving, so it wasn’t really her fault, was it?
What else had she done that was really bad? She’d turned plenty of tricks in her time, and when her herpes was active, she didn’t bother telling the john. But that was the john’s problem. She’d dealt her share of crank and crystal meth too, but, hey, that was the life. Back when she’d been dealing, she had no reservations about turning on kids at the schoolyard. Kids were easiest, one or two tokes and they’d be hooked. First thing they’d do is run right home, steal all the money out of mommy’s purse and come back for more. Easy money.
She had plenty more sins, in fact, but reflecting on them now wouldn’t really do her any good. Yes, it was true. She’d done some pretty bad things in her life.
But were they bad enough to warrant a death like this?
Last night, she’d lost track of how many times her assailant had violated her. She was insensible, half-paralyzed from shock. She didn’t even feel the pain any more, each time he grasped her by the hair to drag her on, like someone pulling a duffel bag.
Had she actually died and gone to hell?
Was this it?
Was this her punishment for all those bad things she’d done in her life: to be raped by this faceless man ad infinitum? To be dragged naked through swamps and creek-muck and sawgrass beds and thickets? Forever?
No.
Because long into the wee hours, she’d escaped.
She didn’t know how she’d gotten so lucky. He’d been dragging her further through the woods but suddenly there was a great thrashing sound and he dropped her. She’d been in and out of consciousness for the last hour, and her brain was only half-firing now, but when he dropped her, it jogged her senses enough to realize that something had happened. She rolled over in muck—they’d just entered a salt marsh at low tide—and she opened her eyes.
The clouds had broken and a great full moon beamed down on the marsh. There was more of the thrashing, then a loud snapping, followed by louder thwacks!
and that’s when Kari Ann’s eyes were able to register what was going on. Her attacker was wielding a long stout branch like a weapon, slamming it into the ground, trying to hit—
Kari Ann’s heart seemed to freeze in her chest.
—a ten-foot alligator.
The animal surged forward, the monstrous jaws snapping down.
“Eat him!” Kari Ann yelled to the alligator, her voice raw and whistling. “Bite the motherfucker’s head off!” and then she was running blindly away into the woods, fast as an animal herself. Her attacker’s back had been to her the whole time; she hadn’t seen his face nor any other details, just that he was naked and muscular. But Kari Ann didn’t care what he looked like. She just ran.
By then almost every square inch of her skin had been creamed in creek mud and swamp scum—perfect camouflage. Her best hope was that the alligator made mincemeat of her assailant but she knew she better not count on that. If he survived, and came after her, it wouldn’t take him long to find her. Her sprint through the woods sounded like an avalanche, and the more deeply she progressed, the more the trees shut out the moonlight. She had no idea where she was going, no clue as to the best way to get off the accursed island.
So, instead—she buried herself.
She dove onto the ground and completely covered herself with leaves and forest mulch. I’ll lay here and not move a muscle till daybreak. If I hide all night, maybe he’ll go away, figure he lost me. And even if the motherfucker doesn’t, I’ll stand a much better chance of finding one of the camp trails when the sun’s up…
And there she lay, all night long.
It was, in fact, the smartest move for anyone in such a predicament. What she didn’t count on, however, was the extent of her exhaustion and shock. She fell asleep at once…and slept well beyond daybreak.
By the time she woke up, she was baking in her cocoon of detritus. The sun through the treetops seemed high in the sky—past noon. When she wakened, a normal mental function still alluded her; she was dehydrated now, and an empty stomach since yesterday along with the amphetamine withdrawal didn’t help. At least she had a few senses together—enough to realize that last night was no dream.
Caleb, no head, she thought in chops. Jory. Gutted. By that guy. Gotta get the fuck. Outa. Here.
She had to find a main road, either that or—
Boat!
They’d come here on Caleb’s boat!
Now if she could only figure out where it was…
But then another thought occurred to her, a crucial one.
Guy. Raped me all night.
Where was the guy? Had he given up on finding her?
Had the alligator gotten him?
Even in her reduced mental state, she luxuriated in the fantasy: the alligator taking her assailant apart piece by piece. The head would be saved for last, of course; those huge jaws would crack it apart like a styrofoam ball, let the brains loll awhile on the mammoth tongue…
But there was no time for fantasy now.
As more awareness returned, she sat upright with a start, her cover of leaves bursting around her. YECH!
There were bugs all over her.
Panicked, she brushed several off her breasts at once, then quickly reached around and picked one off the cleft of her buttocks—
—and nearly screamed aloud when she saw the size of it.
It was one of those wood roaches, as long and wide as a shot glass, and nearly as round. She could feel more down there, crawling lower, but then—
crunch-crunch-crunch—
Footsteps.
The reactive horror caused the blood vessels in her brain to swell, till they were fit to burst.
Him!
She slithered back down beneath the pile of leaves, covered herself over as fast as she could but as delicately too, so not to make an excess of noise. In just a few seconds, Kari Ann was buried again.
The slow, steady progression of footsteps crunched closer, louder. Kari Ann listened for voices, for talking—any indication that it might be campers or hikers coming through. But there was nothing, and it was clearly just one person.
It had to be him.
She lay still as a corpse, realizing well that that’s what she would be—a corpse—if she breathed too loud, coughed, flinched, or made even the most minuscule sound or movement.
Still, the footsteps crunched closer.
The humid muck from the forest bed lay on her body like a hot, damp heavy-pile carpet, but through the tiniest gap between some of the leaves on her face, she could see a little. She could see an area of space to her right, and judging by the sound of the footsteps, her attacker would be walking right by her.
crunch-crunch-crunch-crunch—
Louder. Closer.
Then Kari Ann stifled the sharpest urge to flinch, to even squeal. She’d forgotten about something, hadn’t she?
The wood-roaches.
They were still there, of course—more of them now—massing on her skin mostly around her buttocks, inner thighs, and pubic region. It was reverse torture: the urge to pick them off but knowing that if she did, she’d be right back in the clutches of a rapist and cold-blooded murderer. The effort to resist moving felt like slow electrocution beneath her heavy cover. And the wood-roaches…
The wood-roaches were roving through her pubic hair now, heading lower, heading for the nearest source of moisture.
The current of her revulsion was peaking now…just as her assailant—
crunch—
—stopped.
He stopped cold, right next to her.
Could she hear him sniffing? And what was the sound that came next, something like a low, guttural grunt?
Through those tiny gaps in the leaves on her face, she could see legs, from ankle to thigh-level. His skin was mottled and seemed grayish in the dappled sunlight, and like hers, it was flecked with all manner of filth from the bayou and woods. And—
What was that, swinging at his side?
A bucket?
Yes, she could see it quite clearly. He was carrying a long, foot-wide plastic bucket.
This would’ve seemed quite a bizarre fact to contemplate save for a couple of other facts that were present at the time.
One, Kari Ann, by now, was half-insane, and—
Two, the wood-roaches had now found their way into her vagina.
Her heart-rate had surely trebled. Could he hear it? Was she whimpering beneath the muck and just not aware of it?
Could he smell her fear?
Just as her drug-wrecked, torture-and-rape-traumatized mind became convinced that he was reaching down now to slap the muck off her face, haul her out, and break her neck while he raped her a final time…
He stalked away.
Kari Ann waited a full twenty minutes, lying buried as if dead, before she unearthed herself, and scurried off in the opposite direction.
Her lungs wheezed in the new freedom, her soiled feet and filth-smeared legs hurtling her through the forest. She picked out the disgusting roaches while she ran, not knowing where she was running to but running just the same, away from him.
The woods seemed to darken, the palms and pines overhead so dense they were tenting out almost all sunlight; nevertheless, to her left, she could see light that was blindingly intense, and then it finally registered:
The water!
Was it Lake Stephanie? Was it one of the passes between the spurs of the island, or perhaps the Gulf itself?
She slowed down, glancing over her shoulder, then thrashed to the trees just before the shore and stared.
For the first time in her life, perhaps, luck was with Kari Ann Wells.
The body of water shimmered in the high sunlight, a mile-long stretch between two of the island’s densely wooded spurs. It was the pass off of the bay.
And just a hundred yards or so down the nearest spur, she could see Caleb’s boat, exactly where they’d left it last night.
(II)
As they’d neared,
the arrowed signs read, simply, CLINIC. There was no sign on the building itself, and, like that first gate-access they’d had to come through, the clinic couldn’t have appeared an uglier edifice. Sitting here, in the middle of this beautiful park? Clare would’ve expected something more appropriate, a log-cabin motif, perhaps, or something Isba-like with stained-wood plankwork and cedar shingling.
Nope, she thought, taking her first glance at the place through the Mercedes’ windshield. Typical Air Force. They can spend $800 on toilet seats and twenty-five bucks apiece for five-cent rivets, but they can’t buy a decent architectural blueprint.
The pitched roof had been built at an unsightly high angle, for hurricanes, she guessed, and the rest of it stretched on as a long one-story building with drab, oddly narrow windows and an overall structure of what looked like enameled cinderblock. The color scheme? Pale gray.
“The word ‘institutional’ comes to mind,” Clare said when they were getting out of the car in the small asphalt lot.
“It’s a sore thumb, all right, considering the surroundings,” Dellin commented. “But you know the military: all function, no style. The Air Force could care less about what things look like as long as they get the job done…and speaking of getting the job done, see that old guy there?”
A thin, elderly man with a cane was slowly crossing the parking lot to a waiting car. Balding, stoop-shouldered, and what little hair he did have was snow white. He paused to wave at Dellin, then hobbled on.
Dellin waved back. “That’s Mr. Hanklin. He should’ve been dead a month ago. Cancer of the intestinal stroma spreads so fast you wouldn’t believe it.”
“I’ve never heard of that kind of cancer,” Clare told him.
“The stroma is a kind of connective tissue around the organs of the lower abdominal cavity. It’s not even that rare anymore, but the reason your average person isn’t familiar with it is because it’s not in the top ten. Lung, liver, prostate, breast, and ovarian cancers are the leading killers. Stromatic cancer isn’t too far behind. It’s unique because it’s virtually untreatable. Chemo, radiation, surgery—none of that works because it moves too fast. By the time it’s diagnosed, it’s already spread all over the place, and when it spreads, it accelerates the malignancy wherever it goes. In other words, when it spreads to the lungs, the cancer there becomes untreatable too. It makes the cancer of any place it spreads to just as unique because it mutates the growth markers in the cancer cells. We’re talking about the mother of all carcinomas.”
