Ferret opened the screen door.
“Stay here,” she whispered to Jude.
“Took the words right out of my mouth,” he mumbled back.
She half-crawled, half-lunged through the door behind the desk.
Thinking fast, Ferret ran back out the way he had come and circled the shack.
Cable was waiting for him. “Hey, you!” she yelled, “drop it!”
Ferret coolly ignored her and squeezed the trigger of his automatic.
Cable leapt into a pile of old tires. A storm of dust and tire fragments rose from around her. Ferret’s firing pin fell on an empty chamber.
Cable rose up and fired at him point blank. The old gun gave off a terrific explosion, fire kicking out the side of the rusted cylinder; then the gun literally fell apart in her hands.
“Oh, great,” she moaned, hurling the gun aside, and turned and ran down a path toward thickets and marshland.
Ferret slammed a fresh clip in his automatic and laughed. As the jeep rounded the corner of the station, he jumped in, still laughing, and urged them down the old pitted drive into the marsh after Cable. Bruno was driving.
Cable had made a mistake. The old road was solid; the quicksand on either side of it was not. She was a bowling pin at the end of a lengthening alley, and the jeep was rolling toward her.
But the jeep had a problem, too. The road was so full of deep holes that it could not gather speed. It lurched and bumped like a maddened beast hellbent on revenge, while the occupants held on for dear life. Only Ferret, standing front and center and holding the top of the windshield, seemed at ease on the bucking machine. Bruno’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel.
“Faster!” Ferret commanded. “Run her down!” he yelled loudly enough for Cable to hear. She was about forty yards ahead; the distance between them was shortening perceptably.
The jeep hit a rock-hard rise in the road and one of the men in the back flew out with a scream. All four wheels left the ground.
“Faster!” Ferret commanded again. Twenty-five yards now. He stared only at Cable, thought only of her.
But Bruno saw something rising out of the swamp just beyond Cable. His foot eased back on the accelerator.
“What are you doing!?” Ferret demanded.
“Look!” Bruno shouted, his voice high and pinched. “It’s back! It’s that thing!”
“I don’t care,” Ferret snarled, refusing to look. “Run her down.”
“We’ve got to stop the car!”
Ferret poked his gun barrel into Bruno’s side.
“But it’s that thing!” Bruno whined. Nevertheless he began to accelerate again, timidly.
Ferret jammed his left foot on top of Bruno’s flooring the pedal. “I want her before he gets her!”
Bruno struggled with the steering wheel. “Where’d it go? I don’t see it!” he said, scanning the way ahead frantically.
“Maybe you never saw it,” Ferret growled. “Hit her! Hit her!”
Cable was only feet ahead, stumbling, only seconds from death.
Suddenly a huge, moss-encrusted, human-shaped monster burst up from the bog and planted itself squarely in front of the jeep.
“Don’t stop!” Ferret screamed—crazed, obsessed, his foot still bearing down on Bruno’s. “Ram it!”
The jeep rocketed ahead. The thing braced itself and shoved out its two massive arms.
The crash was grinding, grating, explosive. Ferret sailed over the monster’s head as the windshield snapped forward; his automatic flew out into the quicksand.
Cable ran even faster to escape flying debris, men and weapons. The jeep’s engine was thrust back into the firewall as the body wrapped around the creature’s massive form.
The headlights sprang off like eyes popping from their sockets. Smoke and steam rose from the ruined hood and a hubcap continued ringing down the road; the jeep had been stopped dead as a bike hitting a linebacker.
The sound of the crash reverberated through the trees; it turned into the rustle of a gentle breeze.
For an eternity that was only a few seconds, nothing moved. The scene was like a frozen frame of film: the monster still braced, one giant foot back, one knee bent, against the jeep. The men still inside were too stunned to stir; those on the ground lay quiet.
14
Bruno peered up over the dashboard right into the thing’s face. It had a face, a human face, but one malformed and exaggerated. A great primitive brow ridge hid amber deep-sunk eyes. A nose stripped to cartilage flowed into cheeks that looked hard as bone. A wide lipless mouth, a chisled slit that seemed sculpted of unfinished granite, was part of a powerful square chin. Hairless, the skull was interwoven and made to bulge by tangles of tentacled roots. The face—the entire creature—was the earth-green color of muddy swamp vegetation.
Bruno stared at that face and body and quite literally held his breath.
Others recovered and also were spellbound by the thing’s appearance. Its musculature—webbed and defined by what looked like roots but might have been external veins—was awesomely beyond the possibilities of human development. His skin had the unreflective texture of matted moss; but it was like felt covering shapes of iron.
The thing seemed unaware that a dozen eyes were appraising it. It was preoccupied. Its huge eyes wide, it was looking from the destroyed vehicle to its own massive hands, and from the hands down to its monumental naked body. It seemed to be surprised, alarmed, by its own strength, by realities it had not imagined.
Slowly it removed its hands from the jeep and stood erect. It was easily over seven feet tall; and from the way it tipped its head to turn its attention to the mere mortals down in the jeep, it had not previously realized its outstanding stature.
Had Arcane been there, he might have been the one bright enough, shrewd enough, with enough presence of mind, to observe that the creature was at that moment undergoing an awakening of intelligence, a maturing of self-awareness. But his men were too dumbstruck to entertain such notions.
Cable felt something, though, in the form of an overpowering fascination and the conviction that whatever it was, it knew what it had done. She wondered if it knew why.
As if the creature read her mind, it turned and looked for her, spotted her where she crouched by the side of the road. It gave her a direct fiery look of strange, frightening intensity.
She shrank back, terrified.
One of the gunmen cautiously climbed out of the wrinkled jeep. He hit the road, dropping his rifle, and ran back toward the gas station. Another, who sat on the ground shaking sense back into his head, saw the defector and thought he had a good idea; he got shakily to his feet but stumbled again to his knees.
With a rumbling shriek of rage, the monster thundered to the side of the jeep and ripped off Bruno’s door as if it had been paper. The door sailed out and splashed in the mire.
“No!” Bruno yelled as one of the enormous green hands reached toward him. “No, no!!” He reared back and fell over the awakening body in the other front seat.
The thing grabbed Bruno’s arm at the shoulder and wrapped sinewy fingers completely around his ham-like biceps. With leverage that might have broken the man’s arm, the monster hoisted Bruno into the air and with its other hand thrust against his rear to sail him into the swamp like a model airplane.
Bruno screamed like a man falling from a building till he plummeted into the muck and came up flailing, battling weeds and water lilies to reach firm land.
Ferret’s ears were still ringing from his tumble, but he was wide awake and his mind was in gear. He established that the aching pains he felt did not indicate broken bones, got slowly to his feet so as not to attract the thing’s attention, and walked casually to the automatic rifle the defector had dropped in his flight. Ferret aimed from the hip and opened fire.
A continuous stream of high-power bullets exploded into the air and dug into the flesh of the swamp thing. The creature’s mouth opened and a roar of rage emerged that competed with the bo
oming gun. Bellowing mightily, the giant stumbled backward, jolted by the bullets that tore at his flesh and sent green fragments flying. Another gunman opened fire from the back of the jeep.
Incredibly, once the monster recovered somewhat, he was more enraged than injured. He turned on Ferret while the man’s bullets were still digging into his body and, his arms menacingly wide, advanced into the gunfire.
Ferret stood his ground, his automatic pumping, until the last bullet was used. Then he dropped the weapon and snarled, intent upon suicidal combat with this superhuman killer. Ferret’s bony gray face seemed more than ever like a grinning skeleton’s, and the profound hatred radiating from his eyes would have terrified most men into submission, hypnotized them as a cobra does its victims.
But Ferret’s evil only enraged the monster. It would have torn him in two—if Cable had not screamed.
The creature wheeled. One of the gunmen was holding Cable against him as a shield.
“Get back!!” the gunman screamed shrilly, without a shred of confidence in his voice, “Or I’ll kill her!” He fired the last of his bullets into the swamp thing’s chest and then, dragging Cable with him, he backed toward the jeep. Beyond the jeep lay safety; beyond which—silhouetted against light at the start of the tunnel of trees—stood Arcane and his driver, watching.
Frozen by fear, the gunman released his grip on Cable. The monster lifted the man high into the air and slammed him, shattering his spine, onto the rocky road. It nudged the body into the quicksand with an enormous green foot and watched it settle down out of sight.
When the creature looked around again, he seemed to be alone.
The jeep still steamed and hissed; everything had taken place in a minute, though it had seemed like an hour.
The creature leaned against the jeep, breathing labored, deep and halting; it was weak and in pain; its huge head sank onto its chest. The metal of the jeep creaked, bending under its weight.
There was a sound, a rustle of leaves.
The thing lifted its head and listened, straightened its back and sniffed, taking in great volumes of air.
A bush at the roadside moved.
The monster charged toward it with a violent growl. He swiped down and tore the bush out by its roots.
Cable—who had been hiding behind it—screamed.
She felt dizzied by the terror that gripped her and clouded her eyesight.
But the monster stopped. It made no move toward her. It stood straight and, startled and curious, cocked his head to one side.
She sprang to her feet and ran.
It took a few tentative steps toward her but stopped again.
Cable waded out into the swamp, away from the road. She backed away, watching the creature who stood still as a tree and watched her through interested amber eyes.
She stopped. Something like sap was oozing from the ragged bullet wounds of the creature.
Cable realized she was sinking. She had waded into quicksand. She panicked at first and fought the mud to get out. The movement sank her deeper. She could feel that the deeper she sank the thicker the substance under there became.
The creature made no move to hurt her or to help. He continued to stand there watching with interest, breathing slowly and audibly.
She collected her wits; she was, at the moment, more afraid of the swamp than the creature. She had sunk almost to her shoulders. She remembered what she had been told about quicksand: struggling makes you sink; you must swim or pull yourself out with your arms. She did something against all instinct; she leaned forward, sinking more into the mire at an angle, and stretched out her arms. An easy breaststroke pulled her forward, and she felt her feet rising, coming out of the thicker goo.
The green monster just stood and watched.
She had no choice but to swim roughly toward him: that was where vines grew that she could use to pull herself out. The cool silt infiltrated every fold of her clothing until she felt naked. Twigs and clots of dirt suspended in the thick liquid scraped her body as she pulled herself along. Before she reached the bank she was lying face-down on the surface, breathing to one side.
When she stood dripping at the edge of the road, brown silt streaking her body from head to foot, she wiped her eyes and found herself not ten feet from the monster who stared at her as before.
There was a hefty stick near her foot; she picked it up and held it ready.
The creature turned and, as if it had learned all it wanted to know, shambled off slowly into the trees.
When it was out of sight she heard its splashes for a moment. And then the swamp was quiet except for a whine of insects.
Cable dropped the stick and backed away from where the creature had disappeared. Her heart was returning to some kind of normal beat.
Something touched her back, and she spun around. It was the wide-eyed black boy from the gas station.
“Jude! What are you doing here?”
“You think I’m gonna stay around that station with everybody pumpin’ it fulla holes, you mistaken,” he said.
“Did those men leave? The other car—that limousine?”
“They got in and drove away. Temporarily. Heard ’em say they’s comin’ back.” As was his manner, Jude had been sizing her up with his X-ray eyes. He shook his head. “Can’t manage to stay clean, can you?” He shot a glance at the crumpled jeep. “What happened to that thing?”
“Um, it hit a tree,” Cable said.
“Uh huh. Must’ve been one of them hit-and-run kind of trees. Don’t seem to be there now.”
“No,” she agreed, unwilling to elaborate.
The boy looked at the muddy ground. Near his bare foot was the clear imprint of a foot five times as large. Most of his foot fit into the thing’s big toe mark.
Jude said, “Some tree, alright.” He stared off in the direction Cable had been looking. The long shadows of late afternoon made the swamp especially spooky and dense. The boy turned to Cable. “There’s this trapper’s cabin I know. You can stay there till morning. Swamp’s no place to be at night.”
“I know,” she said, grateful for his thoughtfulness and unsure how he’d want her to express it.
“C’mon,” he said, “I got a boat.”
His boat was tied to an old dead cypress only a hundred yards or so farther along the bumpy road. Here a ridge of land held back the mire, and a shallow clear waterway—almost invisible beneath lilies and sawgrass—led deeper into the forest of moss-draped trees. Jude propelled and steered his flat metal skiff with a long pole he pushed against the bottom, working from the bow while his passenger rested on the wooden bench lashed across the stern.
He seemed to be concentrating on landmarks Cable could not find; she did not disturb him with talk.
The yellow rays of the sun came at a low angle, where they penetrated at all, and Cable noticed a haze forming through the trees. It obscured detail, emphasized distance. An alligator climbed out of the water onto a jut of land. It did not frighten her; she watched it with curiosity and interest.
She caught Jude’s eye. He had seen it, too, and had regarded it much the same way. He said, “But I seen one take a man’s leg off once for no reason ’cept maybe it was hungry.”
“Thanks for the reassurance,” she said sarcastically.
“Welcome,” he muttered as he returned his attention to the path ahead.
The trapper’s cabin had no lock on the warped front door. One window still had glass in it; the other three had been tightly boarded over. Not much light found its way inside. There was a smell of mildew and dust.
Jude took a kitchen match from a Mason jar and lighted a hurricane lamp. “Let’s look around for spiders,” he suggested. “I hab’m been out here in a while.”
There were two dusty cots, a broken rocking chair, several empty fruit crates, a porcelain-topped kitchen table with patched legs, and a wood-burning stove.
Jude said, “A skillet’s in that box by the stove, and some cookin’ things.”
“If there were anything to cook,” said Cable, “I’d make you some dinner.” She sat on one of the cots and reached down to pull off her wet muddy boots.
Jude stood at the open door, black anyway and now just a skinny silhouette with eyes and teeth. He scraped the door back and forth as he thought something over. “You start a fire?” he asked her.
“Sure.”
He thought a minute more and said, “We got fish. And blueberries. I planted carrots in back—if they ain’t rotted away by now. An’ sassafrass tea, taste like root beer. If you really wants company.”
“I really do,” she said. “I’ll start the fire. What do we do for water?”
“Drink the swamp. Bad some places, but around here there’s springs. Ain’t killed me yet.”
Jude brought in half-a-dozen carp a few minutes later—they spawned in the shallows at sunset, and he grabbed what he wanted—and while Cable built the fire and began to dress the fish, he gathered a pan of fresh blueberries and collected the paltry survivors from his neglected carrot patch. The sassafras root he promised for tea had been collected in another season and was stored in jars stacked by the stove.
“Do you do everything by yourself?” she asked him. He was showing her a better way to scale the fish.
“Most times,” he said.
“Live by yourself?”
“Anymore.”
“Like it?”
“Okay.”
Thin clouds gathered over the breathing swamp. They turned orange in the late sun and their color was reflected in the water of the swamp. The trees and shadows were lavender, gray and black.
Cable and Jude ate near the open door and watched the spectacle of the day petulantly relinquishing the swamp tonight.
“Can you make it back the way we came after the sun goes down?” Cable asked.
“C’mon!” he exclaimed, insulted.
“Well, do you want to? There are two cots.”
He stopped a carrot halfway to his mouth. “Don’t take me wrong, but . . . bein’ aroun’ you don’t make me feel ’zactly safe.”
“Suit yourself.”
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