Wicked Awake

by Merrill David

  Dressed as he was, Jake decided it would be best to stay off of the highly traveled highway. He decided to travel east through the swamp region instead, until he could acquire a more suitable means of transportation to get him out of the area and back to the northeast.

  The striped journeyman grabbed his wallet and stumbled across the murky marsh for what seemed like hours. Eventually he came upon an abandoned air boat, floating atop the swampy water just a few feet from the marsh on which Jake traveled. Surely the owner of this vessel had to be close by.

  Jake was correct, for what remained of the owner was just yards away. There was a pile of entrails and a pair of mutilated Lee jeans crumpled up into a ball nearby. That was all that remained of whoever this was.

  Hathaway had no idea that an epic battle had transpired on this very spot just twenty-two hours earlier.

  Chapter Thirteen - The Blue Elbow

  Blue Elbow Swamp (22 hours earlier) Junior Swanson was a native of Thibodaux, Louisiana. Born and raised there, he had never gone outside of the southern half of the state. He had no reason to. He lived in a humble houseboat that was docked upon the Blue Elbow Swamp, and spent a great portion of his days there, hunting gators from aboard his pride and joy – an American Air Ranger airboat.

  This was not your everyday run-of-the-mill fan boat. It was equipped with a supercharged 502 big block engine and three composite propellers enclosed in a protective metal cage. This cage prevents objects such as tree limbs and branches, clothing, passengers, or wildlife from coming in contact with the whirling propeller. This could cause devastating damage to the vessel and traumatic injury to the operator and passengers.

  The propellers are the key driving force in these vessels. They produce a rearward column of air that propels the airboat forward upon the driver’s command. The operator and passengers of this boat are seated in elevated seats that allow visibility over swamp vegetation. The improved visibility permits the operator and passengers to observe floating objects, stumps and animals in the airboat's path.

  Above the cage on this model of Air Ranger is an observation platform. This higher vantage point is ideal for sportsmen like Junior who need such an advantage when doing what they do best

  - hunting the American alligator.

  By perching about ten feet above the swamp level, one may more readily locate the largest reptile in North America. The American alligator loves nothing more than to bask in the sun or snack on one of their favorite meals from their diet of crabs, fish, frogs, birds, nutria, beavers, snakes and turtles.

  The larger specimens Junior would capture alive. He would rope them with lassos as if rounding up young steers at a rodeo, except for the fact that the gators are much more slippery, slimy, elusive and deadly. They are then duct taped around their powerful jaws and loaded into a pickup truck for transport to a live gator farm.

  The hatchlings he would simply scoop up with a net and toss into a large plastic beverage cooler containing a few inches of swamp water. Eventually they would be shipped to a taxidermist in town who would transform the little fellas into keychains, hats, and other trinkets to be pawned at the local Jiffy Marts to tourists who are just passing through.

  On this fine fall afternoon in August, Junior sat upon the observation platform of his Air Ranger. The boat was stationary, floating in the frothy green swamp water approximately forty feet out from the nearest tract of low wetland.

  Binoculars in hand, the hunter spotted what appeared to be a series of large black bumps projecting out of the water among a patch of lily pads. It was halfway between the airboat and the marsh. Junior knew those bumps well. They belonged to the back of an American alligator, and probably a goodsized one from what Junior could tell. But directly in Junior’s line of sight with the binoculars, about twenty feet behind the gator, there appeared to be an outline of a person stumbling around in the low marsh.

  The person appeared to possibly be intoxicated or stoned, staggering around and repeatedly falling face first. As Junior watched, the person fell repeatedly in the thick inundation of grass, sedges, cattails and rushes.

  Upon further observation, Junior identified the form as a man dressed in a grey suit and with a pink and blue striped power tie. And now the impeccably dressed one was staring straight at Junior and wading through the swamp vegetation, walking in a beeline for Junior and his boat.

  Junior found it incredibly odd that a man in a suit would be mucking through a swamp. But he also realized that the odd one did not see the gator between himself and Junior. Junior did not want to startle the gator by yelling or making a loud noise, but somehow, he needed to alert the man that he was ambling directly toward a large gator.

  Suddenly a wood sandpiper with its long legs, dark brown upperparts and white spotted breast obliviously landed upon a log. The log was floating in the same lily pad cluster as the hungry alligator.

  The gator lunged forward with its broad snout and open steel-trap-like jaws, snatching the piper by its white rump and black-barred tail. The panicked native swamp foul began to flap its wings mightily, flying out of the mouth of death and barely escaping alive with only the loss of a handful of tail feathers.

  Junior highly expected the possibly drunk man to retreat after seeing the gator in action. However, just the opposite transpired. The suited one began to stride faster, his eyes locked in on Junior and paid no heed to the crock. Junior began yelling.

  “Hey man – no!!! Go back!!! Get out of the water!!! There’s a gator right there!!!” The suit began moving at a faster pace, still awkward and unbalanced but with a look of determination on his face. He was up to his waist in the thick goopy vegetation. He was completely ignoring the gator.

  The nine-foot reptile was highly disappointed in having lost his tasty piper treat. It turned his long head sideways and clamped its 74-mini dagger-like teeth into the upper left thigh of the stranger, and a black liquid oozed and squirting from the new row of holes in the strange one’s side. These holes perfectly matched the row of razor-sharpincisors in the gator’s mouth. The thick black coagulation of fluid was flowing into the swamp water like crude oil.

  Junior couldn’t stand by and watch as this guy who was possibly mentally challenged or wasted got eaten. Junior moved the boat closer and held out a ten-foot-long wooden pole toward the injured man. “Grab a hold of this. I’ll get you out of there!”

  The bitten one made no effort to reach out for the lifeline, and Junior noticed his entire left leg was hanging by just a few tendons. Tendons that looked like rubbery strands of well-done pasta between the torso and the severed appendage.

  But the suited one continued forward. He was hopping on his one good leg under the water and using both arms to steady and balance itself in the green swampy froth. The gator again snapped at the man, grabbing his left arm. Its teeth clamped down harder and harder, severing muscle, tendons, and veins. The loud sound of bones popping, and snapping could be heard clearly. And with the gator’s mouth still clamped upon the arm like a vice, he jerked his head suddenly, yanking the mindless one’s arm off in a split second.

  Junior grabbed his shotgun from a storage compartment underneath his airboat seat and blasted the gator in the face with a 12-gauge shotgun round. The gator bellowed an intense B flat chorus of intense infrasound and released the arm, which floated off with the currents and into a clump of swamp grass.

  The severely wounded reptile rolled over on top of the water, baring its cream-colored underbelly before submerging into the deep dark depths of the swamp.

  Junior exclaimed, “My god, man, are you okay?”

  The odd man, now hobbled and with only one arm and one leg, did not answer. He was

  unfazed by the loss of his limbs, not exhibiting any fear or shock or pain.

  Junior had not heard any news stories about these once-human creatures that were turning up in random locations throughout America. But he knew now that this suited amputee was not human. Far from it.

  Junior reach
ed for th e Air Ranger’s gear stick to start its powerful engine and rotate its propellers. This would produce a column of air and create forward momentum. But before Junior could complete the motion, the creature pushed off with its one existing leg, leaping up out of the froth and into the airboat.

  The apparition opened its mouth and chomped on Junior’s neck, removing a mouthful of skin tissue and blood. Junior was traumatized and in shock, trying to comprehend how he went from attempting to rescue a stranger from a gator, to now having that same stranger actually be a monster who was now dining on Junior’s flesh.

  The force of the attack caused both Junior and his attacker to careen off the air boat and into the murky water.

  The monster stood in the water, its only arm holding the Cajun around his gorged neck area. IT began to chew at Junior’s face, removing his eyeballs with his teeth.

  Then IT reached into the now empty orbital sockets with its tongue and teeth. The THING was using ITs mouth to pull out chunks of the brain. IT began to feast upon the morsels like a young child enjoying bite-sized portions of carnival cotton candy from a large swirl of the product on a stick.

  The evil dead thing finished snacking on Junior’s face and head. Then IT began to tear into Junior’s torso, biting into his vital organs. IT was severing the body parts and gorging at the tender meaty vessels.

  Once the creature’s hunger was satisfied, IT dropped the lifeless, hollowed shell of a carcass into the muck. IT began to hop back in towards the shore.

  Without warning, the pissed-off gator re-emerged from behind the creature. The right half of his snout and face was completely blown away from Junior’s shotgun. With his mouth wide open in mid-flight, the gator dove at the crippled zombie. With one ginormous chomp, the gator dismembered the head from the body of the THING’s cadaver. Then the monstrous gator belly-flopped back into the sludge.

  The zombie head was still in the large reptile’s mouth, ITs zombie eyes fluttering up and down and ITs mouth still opening and closing.

  A deafening silence filled the air as nature and all her participants maintained a stillness unprecedented. The silence was soon muffled by the sound of a 300-pound gator with only half of a face, which began to stroll from the tide and wobble up onto the marsh to enjoy his midday zombie head delight.

  The gator finished his treat then dove back into the darkness of the deep. The smell of spleen spirit was still pungent and wafting about the Louisiana Bayou a day later.

  Blue Elbow Swamp (Present Day) Jake continued walking east out of the swampland and soon encountered a clearing with a large dirt parking lot. Here motorists parked their vehicles during the daytime to either share rides or jump on a bus. After a quick scan of the lot, Jake spotted a beat-up yellow Olds Cutlass Supreme with the windows rolled down parked at the rear of that lot.

  Fortunately, the driver’s side of the car was facing away from the more heavily traveled side of the parking area. He eased his way to the vehicle and slid in through the open passenger window. Jake wormed his way into the driver’s seat and then slumped down while looking around in the glove box and console for whatever might become useful. Nothing but junk was in there.

  However, Jake located a large flat-head screwdriver down on the back-seat floorboard. This was just what the doctor ordered! Who needs a key when you know how to pry open the steering column and start the ignition with a screwdriver? During his police career, Jake had recovered many stolen vehicles that had been taken in just this fashion.

  Jake fired up the Cutlass and then took a longer glimpse into the back seat to behold a welcome sight. The owner of this fine vehicle had also been gracious enough to leave behind a greasy old outfit. This would help Jake blend into his new surroundings much better than his striped jumpsuit.

  Hathaway slipped into the grease covered white wife-beater tank top, torn blue jeans, and “Git-er Done” ball cap. Now he felt like he really fit in splendidly here, in what he would soon learn from a road sign, to be Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

  Jake drove that stolen Cutlass Supreme with a purpose. He avoided the main thoroughfares and took to the back roads when possible, only returning to the freeways when he needed gasoline. For the most part, and when he could get decent reception on the FM radio, the prison escapee listened to classic rock radio stations. They were playing many of the songs Jake grew up loving. These tunes posed as a gentle reminder of the life he once had and would most likely never experience again.

  When the rock stations faded away from bad reception, he went to the AM side and listened to the news. Jake was curious as to whether the news agencies were reporting the story of his prison bus takeover from earlier.

  He did not hear any reports about himself, but another news flash struck his curiosity. There was an account of a naked Florida homeless man who apparently went into a cannibalistic feeding frenzy and ate another guy’s face off. As the story recounted, this apparently ‘crazy’ person spent eighteen minutes ravaging his victim, devouring over 75 percent of the other man’s face.

  Supposedly a video camera from witnesses captured the growling and vicious attack. The suspect was filmedeating his victim’s nose, mouth and eyes before being shot four times by a responding police officer.

  Federal investigators determined that the suspect was not mentally ill. Rather, he was extremely ‘mind altered’ as a result of smoking a dangerous new street drug known as “bath salts.” This news report troubled Jake greatly. Not so much the story itself, which was damn frightening, but even more perplexing was something the reporter said at the end of the story. The reporter closed the news report by indicating that the incident was being investigated by federal agents, who were attributing the behavior to the abuse of a new drug.

  Once again, this was not an occurrence that required a federal investigation. It had not occurred on federal property; the suspect did not cross state lines. There was no reason whatsoever for federal agents’ involvement.

  But Carson’s birthday party night mare did not rise to the level of requiring a federal investigation either. Sure, Jake was there, and he was a government employee for the City of Dallas, and as a result, it could not be investigated by his own agency. But that meant that it should have been investigated by an agency at the state level - say, the Department of Public Safety or the Texas Rangers.

  Jake was seeing a pattern. Why were the United States Government taking over these investigations when they were not required to? This was very unlike federal workers, who usually are hard pressed to even do their own jobs, never mind picking up extra assignments (he reflected upon his last visit to a US Post Office to arrive at this conclusion).

  Another recent news story came to mind. Jake recalled a few months earlier in San Francisco, another naked man was filmed running wild through the 16th Street BART Station. The long-haired 24-year-old former circus acrobat was seen attacking several commuters. The attacks came in between some impressive acrobatic maneuvers, such as the backflips he was executing on top of turnstiles.

  And again, a federal investigation into the incident was conducted. Their “analysis” led them to report their conclusion that the individual “had been through a lot of stress. He seemed to be having a nervous breakdown.”

  People have mental breakdowns and do unreasonab ly odd things all the time…you don’t see the FBI getting involved in those incidents.

  Jake concluded that these three events were probably all somehow related. This could be just the tip of the iceberg.

  Something is going on here. What do the Feds know and why do they not want everyone else to know about it?

  Jake was very familiar with conspiracy theories and government scandal and corruption talk. Afterall, he had spent all that time working the very Dallas beat where President John F. Kennedy was murdered. That was one of the most often debated crimes in American history. Movies and tv shows based on that incident and the surrounding theories are still being produced today.

  The secret government Area 51,
also officially known as Groom Lake, also came to mind. This is a famous remote detachment of the Edwards Air Force Base in the southern portion of Nevada. Its primary purpose, according to the Central Intelligence Agency, is to support development and testing of experimental aircraft and weapons systems.

  However, the intense secrecy surrounding the base has made it the frequent subject of conspiracy theories and a central component to unidentified flying objects folklore. This has never been declared a secret base, yet all research and occurrences in Area 51 are’Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmented Information’.

  Jake wondered if right across the street from Area 51 was another top-secret government operated airplane hangar with a small handwritten sign marked “Area 52” hanging from the front doorknob. Inside could be where the bodies of what used to be Holly and Rich lie, along with other possible victims of whatever it was that changed them.

  A team of scientists clad in white plastic hazardous material jumpsuits picking and prodding at the corpses, scraping flesh samples onto rectangular glass slides to be analyzed beneath a microscope.

  When the Area 52 guys run out of supplies, they must go next door to the Area 51 people and ring the doorbell to ask if they can borrow latex gloves and scalpels. Jake caught himself trying to put a humorous spin on what has been a way too serious past year or so. A nice brief lapse of reason could take him away from the grim realities surrounding him. Even if it was only momentarily.

  Chapter Fourteen - Time for A Reunion

  Reunion Tower, Downtown Dallas (Present Day) Reunion Tower was a 561-foot-tall structure. It featured a towering, rotating spheroid at the top that was covered with evenly spaced, bright fluorescent white lights. The tower and the Bank of America Plaza, a 72-story skyscraper with miles of green lateral fluorescence illuminating laterally upon its magnificence, combined to beautify the nighttime view of downtown Dallas’ skyline.

  Just down the street a short distance was Reunion Arena. This was a massive dome styled structure which had now sat empty and alone for several years in the southwest corner of downtown Dallas. This building lies just west of the colossal convention center and south of the “West End “entertainment district. The infamous historical landmark turned tourist trap known as “Dealey Plaza” is just around the corner, to the north.