by Damon Novak
“I’m a big girl,” she said. “And I’ve got a round in the chamber.”
I nodded and turned to hop down the steps. I jogged over toward the garage and rounded the corner.
And I almost tripped. It was another dog. A black one. Flies buzzed around it, it’s body already very decomposed. The matted fur on its right side was stiff from dried blood, and it looked like a small gator had taken a hunk outta its neck. One of its paws was almost torn off, just hangin’ from a few tendons.
“Fuck,” I said, suddenly paranoid. I looked all around as I stepped over it and eyed the generator, just five feet in front of me. Leanin’ over, I flipped the switch to the ON position and pushed the start button.
It turned twice, then fired up, the amp gauge peggin’ for a few moments before settlin’ down again.
I hurried back, leapin’ over the dead dog and runnin’ back to the porch. To my relief, Lilly did what we agreed on and stayed on the porch. The door was shut.
“Lights are on,” she said. “Here. Call Georgina and Sonya. Tell them where we are. I’m sure Georgie will be glad to hear your voice.”
She said Georgie with snark in her tone, and I just shook my head. I keyed the radio. “Sonya? Georgie? You guys on?”
I adjusted the volume down before they answered. It was Sonya. “CB!” she said. “We were worried about you! Did Lilly find you?”
“I’m with her now,” I said. “I flipped my boat and got cornered by those dead fucks. We’re at Denny’s place now.”
“Keep your radio turned on,” said Sonya.
“You guys okay?”
“So far it’s quiet,” said Sonya. “Are you okay?”
“I’m wet, but fine. My skin probably looks like cellulite.”
“Well, I’m sure Georgina and I would know nothing about whatever that is,” she said.
“Gotcha. Stay inside. We’ll be as fast as we can.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Now that we know you’re okay, I think a glass of wine is in order. You guys hurry back.”
I left the radio on and clipped it on my soggy pants. “Ladies first,” I said.
We went inside, relieved to have light. As we wandered and searched all the downstairs rooms, we found no sign of Denny Jessup.
“Upstairs?” asked Lilly.
A thump came from over our heads, as if on cue.
“Denny?” I called. “You up there? It’s CB and Lilly Baxter.”
Lilly and I stared at one another, but were only met with another thump.
“He is hard of hearing,” she said, her eyes on the stairs.
“You women think all men are hard of hearin’,” I said. “Let’s go have a look.”
We mounted the steps. My shoes squished with each step on the hardwood stair treads. Every squeak of the wood made me cringe. Hard to sneak anywhere in an old-ass house.
We reached the middle landin’ and rounded the corner, makin’ our way up the remainin’ steps. The bedroom door to our right was open, but the master bedroom door, right at the top of the stairs, was closed. Another thump came from inside.
“Denny!” she called, moving to the door. “It’s Lilly Baxter. Are you in there?”
This time something hit the wall, knockin’ a picture of Denny, Sally and their two boys from the wall. As it hit the floor the glass shattered, and it rattled my nerves even more.
“That ain’t good,” I said.
“Maybe he’s just hurt,” she whispered.
“Maybe. Look. Stand back and have your barrel pointed toward the door. I’ll push it open.”
Lilly didn’t argue. She stood in front of the steps, the rifle raised and steady.
I knocked hard on the door twice. “Denny, we’re comin’ in!” I shouted. My voice echoed through the quiet house like I had a megaphone.
I looked back at Lilly and she nodded. I turned the knob and pushed the door hard.
Now, thinkin’ back, I don’t know whether the thing that used to be Denny Jessup was already stumblin’ toward it, or if he was just that goddamned fast. But the moment that door reached the end of its arc, he was already two feet into the hall, and Lilly took an involuntary step backward.
Onto the stairs.
It was like slow motion. As she tumbled backward down the staircase, her rifle exploded, and the bullet struck the square, glass light fixture on the ceilin’. It shattered, rainin’ down slivers of glass as Denny’s body hit the railin’ and flipped over.
“Lilly!” I called, and looked over the wood bannister. I don’t know how many backward somersaults she did, but I saw her on the middle landin’, not movin’ a muscle. Her eyes were closed.
I practically leapt down the steps, reachin’ my sister in seconds. I heard a guttural moan, and at first I thought it was her.
Then I saw Denny, pushin’ himself up off the floor. He raised his eyes toward me before gettin’ to his knees.
The light for the stairs was still on. While this allowed me to see my unconscious sister clearly, it also allowed me a clear view of the new Denny Jessup.
There was what looked like a bullet hole high up on his right cheekbone, right in front of his ear. “Denny, man. Stay there. You’re hurt bad.”
When he raised his head more, I saw his eyes in the glow of the 60-watt bulb overhead. They were milky and clouded, like some ancient blind dude.
I heard a soft moan from Lilly, and she started to stir. I pulled my 9mm out and held it on Denny as she came to.
“Hey, darlin’, you okay?” I asked.
“My … goddamned back,” she said. “Fuck.”
“Can you sit up?” I asked, one eye on Denny, who had landed at the base of the bottom course of stairs and was now tryin’ to crawl back up the steps toward us.
“Stop, Denny!” I yelled.
He growled. The unearthly sound made my teeth zing like I was chewin’ on tin foil.
“He’s like them,” whispered Lilly, now sittin’ up, her back against the wall and her eyes on our neighbor. “Shoot him!”
I nodded. Raisin’ the gun, I realized my hand was shakin’ bad. I steadied it with my other hand and fired.
The round struck him in the collarbone, and he spun around, landin’ on his front side with his feet on the steps. This time, I trotted down the seven steps and held the gun to the back of his head as his old man arms tried to push up again.
I fired. He collapsed, lyin’ still. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I waited for blood to come pourin’ out of his head wound, but it never did.
Somehow, that disturbed me more than I can even say. Denny was a neighbor and a friend, and the first person I’d seen one way – then the other – since my brothers turned.
Starin’ at him for a few seconds to be sure he didn’t try to come back to life again, I was relieved to know he was down for good.
I ran back up the steps and bent over to scoop Lilly into my arms. I hoofed it down the steps again, adrenaline drivin’ my every step, and went back into the kitchen and kicked the door closed. Then I took Lilly into the livin’ room, where I rested her on the sofa.
“I’m going to be fine,” she said, her voice more of a grunt. “Damn. That didn’t go like I thought.”
“Looks like he shot himself, Lil,” I panted. “In the mouth. Came out the side of his head.”
She stared at me. “And then he changed?”
“I doubt he changed before,” I said. “Here,” I said, handin’ her the 9mm. The rifle was still in the stairwell. “I’m goin’ up to his room to have a look.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and I meant it. “Just gotta see what happened in there.”
She nodded and I turned and ran back up the stairs. I grabbed her rifle and continued up to the master bedroom. The light was on as I walked over the broken glass in the hallway.
He’d been in bed. The gun lay in a pool of blood on the messed-up sheets, and I saw chunks of his head mixed in. There was a dark hole with blood splat
ters around it, paintin’ the wall behind the headboard.
I didn’t need to see any more. As I turned to leave the room, I saw a blood-spattered piece of paper on the nightstand. I went to it and moved the pen from on top of it. It was from Denny. The handwriting was shaky and almost illegible, but I was able to read every word, even with the bloodstains.
It read:
To whoever finds this,
This is exactly what it looks like. My wife Sally had gone missing, and I saw my neighbor Cole Baxter a couple days ago. He told me he saw my Sally over by his house. He said she was like those other sick people. Wandering around, trying to attack people.
I went there to find her and bring her home. Cole told me not to. Both him and the lady he was with said it was dangerous. I went anyway.
I drove over there, and when I got to the yard, I parked and ran up to Lilly’s house. I didn’t put in my damned hearing aids, and one of those things was on the porch. I didn’t see him or hear him. By the time I knew he was there, he’d already bit me on my arm, taking a good chunk with him.
I was able to get away, but there were a lot more of them. I just ran to my truck and came back here and started drinking. In just a few hours, I got feverish, and the skin around the bite turned black, and I could feel the infection moving up my veins like little snakes inside me. I’m with Sally now.
Dennis Jessup
September 3, 2017
I went back downstairs and sat beside Lilly on the couch. She stared at me, shakin’ her head. “This is messed up, CB.”
“More than,” I said. “I found a note. He went to our place and got bit lookin’ for Sally. He started gettin’ sick, so he shot himself.”
“Sick?”
“He said he could feel the infection in his veins and his skin turned black around the bite.”
“God,” she moaned. “CB, we need to get the propane anyway. Too late for him, and it’s why we came.”
“I know. Can you get up?”
Lilly grunted and sat up, swingin’ her feet to the floor. I stood and gave her a hand and pulled her up.
Archin’ her back, she pressed on it with both hands. “Just dull pain. I can make it. You might have to take it slow heading back.”
“It’s dark,” I said. “Real slow.”
“There’s a full moon,” she reminded me. “Not too slow. Those gators are acting strange.”
I nodded. “Stay here. No matter what, we’ll need the propane. I’ll go in the garage and grab his five pounders.”
Ω
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
After loadin’ up every full five-pound tank of propane Denny had, which turned out to be seven, we headed back to the shop.
Lilly was hurtin’ more than she let on. She sat on the seat beside me while I drove. She was bent forward, not lookin’, when I saw somethin’ in the glow of the moonlight that freaked me out.
Multiple streaks in the water. They were comin’ from straight ahead, and from the port and starboard sides, and I’ll be damned if every one of ‘em wasn’t headin’ right for our boat.
“Hold on!” I yelled, and cranked the steerin’ wheel hard left. I knew what they were. They could only be one thing.
Lilly looked up. “Are those … gators? CB, what the hell? What’s wrong with them?”
“I know, I know!” I shouted over the motor. “And to answer your question, I have no idea what the hell they’re doin’! Hang on!”
“Charging us is what!” she said, reaching down to grab the rifle. She confirmed it was loaded and held it up. She didn’t fire, because we both knew if you wanted to pierce their natural armor, you needed to shoot ‘em close range.
Why they were bein’ so aggressive, I had no idea. I’d never seen ‘em act like that.
Loud noises will usually either drive ‘em away from the source of the sound, or they’ll just lay still or submerge beneath the swamp water.
But when people feed gators, it removes the fear in ‘em. They begin to associate humans with food. In Florida, if a gator comes toward you rather than swims away from you, that particular gator’s gonna be harvested. It’s the only criteria Florida Fish & Wildlife has concernin’ gators. If they lose their fear of humans, they’re dangerous as hell, and have to be killed.
I never liked that. Now I was havin’ second thoughts about that rule.
“I’m gonna try and angle through ‘em!” I shouted, seein’ another two comin’ in our direction.
“CB, right there!” Lilly pointed, almost too late. She had the rifle aimed, and fired almost simultaneously.
The minute the round exploded from the gun, somethin’ hit the port side, slidin’ us sideways. I compensated with the steerin’ wheel, and opened up the throttle, but the small motor didn’t have enough power to get us out of the way very fast.
“Got him!” she shouted. “It was momentum carried it into the side of the boat.”
“Fucker shoulda just stopped dead and sunk,” I said. “How goddamned fast was he movin’ anyway?”
“They’re all moving faster than usual. Get us home!”
“I’m tryin, Lil!” I said, turnin’ the wheel hard right away from the advancin’ gators, and seein’ I was screwed.
“CB!” cried Lilly, but there was nothin’ I could do.
At first, I’d been glad for the moonlight, but since it allowed us to see the gators streakin’ toward us like enemy torpedoes, I wasn’t so sure anymore. If you were gonna die, wouldn’t you want it to be a bit of a surprise?
That’s how I look at it. It’s not like I could stop ‘em – but maybe Lilly could. She’d stopped one so far.
A gator about fifty yards directly in front of our skiff broke the water. It was enormous. Now, I might’ve been a little too freaked out to recall every gator we’d ever run into near Baxter’s, but this monster I did not recall. He was every bit the size of Ol’ Stanley, and I was 99% sure he wasn’t from around our place.
That big fucker was comin’ straight at our bow.
Another one was anglin’ in from the left, and a third was comin’ from an equivalent angle on the right. And that was just what I could see; who knew what was behind us.
I had nowhere to turn to get us clear. I was less concerned about getting home at the moment; all my attention was on keepin’ us from flippin’ over, where I knew I wouldn’t be nearly as lucky as I’d been on the way to Denny’s. Lilly and I would die; the last of the Baxter clan.
I pushed the throttle full forward so hard, it felt like it would break if I pushed any more. We jetted directly toward the big gator, and I started to pray. Hell, I forced myself not to close my eyes as it came within fifteen feet.
We were ready to hit. I didn’t know how the boat would react; I hoped it would slip sharply to one side or another – we could probably handle that – but if that son-of-a-bitch was too massive, it might just crunch the front end in, or send us into a somersault.
Lilly stood up and fired the Springfield 30.06 straight at the gator comin’ toward us. I saw the bullet splash harmlessly in the water, about six inches off.
“Down!” I shouted, reachin’ over to grab Lilly’s shirt and yank her to the seat.
And then it happened. No. We didn’t hit the gator.
It leapt out of the water, exposing its entire underbelly. Thinkin’ back on its sheer power, it still makes me shudder.
It leapt completely out of the swamp, just eight feet in front of us. I never saw its tail submerge before the jump, and next thing I knew, our boat was slidin’ underneath him as Lilly followed it overhead with her barrel, firing as it came directly overhead.
The bullet blew a hole that seemed to spray blood and rank gore down on us as it flew by, and I heard each chunk slapping the inside of the boat where it rained down. The gator splashed into the swamp behind us as we finally cleared it.
No time to celebrate. “CB, watch out!” screamed Lilly, as another gator breached, then jumped. This time I hadn’t seen it in time, and it land
ed on top of the skiff, slammin’ straight down on both the port and starboard rails, pushin’ us down in the water to where it almost poured in over the rails.
I heard it hiss behind me. I couldn’t look. The boat was so weighted down, we were slogging through, now, unable to remain on plane.
“Make it back away!” I shouted.
Lilly knew what I meant. If she were to deliver a kill shot to its brain, it would go slack, and we’d sink fast. For now, its hind legs and tail were still pushin’ forward, as it tried to crawl into the boat.
The jaws behind me snapped, and I swear, I felt the putrid wind of its hot breath on my neck. Lilly was turned in her seat, the rifle spun around, and she was bashin’ it in the nose with the solid wood stock.
“Go! Get the fuck out of this boat!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Go, you bastard!”
With the last word, she spun the rifle around and fired. I heard a deep croak, followed by the sound of insanely sharp talons scrapin’ the aluminum benches as the boat tilted sharply to the starboard side.
We were goin’ over. Just an inch more, and we were done.
“It’s going!” Lilly yelled, then raised the rifle and fired again. I heard a splash, and the boat bounced back up from the water and took off, no longer in danger of overturning or sinkin’ straight down into the swamp.
“Haul ass and don’t stop!” she yelled, and I did. She fired two or three more shots, but I didn’t have the urge to look at what she was shootin’ at. I found my path back to Baxter’s and let my muscle memory turn the wheel as I got to each familiar turn.
Before we got to the dock, I saw the yellow glow of lights inside the shop. I eased off the accelerator, but only a little. When I was ten feet from the dock, I pulled the throttle back to neutral and let it coast.
“Jump out, Lil!” I said, and she was already on her feet. Her shoes hit the dock and I tossed her the bowline, which she lashed to the cleat. I hopped out and secured the stern.
