by Hunter Shea
Walking on unsteady legs, he made it to the wreck of the boat. A few more bodies inside, none of them moving. He felt bad. He hadn’t wanted it to come to this. All he wanted was to get away from the Cubans. He’d planned to give the passengers the boat back once he found where he needed to go. Odds were they’d never have been able to trace their way back to him. They were so far off the beaten path, it would be a miracle if they found the dock in Naples. But at least they would have been alive to try.
And he had to admit, he was impressed by the girls. They were some tough broads. It took a lot to impress him. More than just a set of boobs and a nice smile. Nah, they were the goods. Too bad they had to bite it this way.
Rummaging around the stern, he found a bag full of tools, rope and other crap that collected on boats. He dumped everything onto the sand and set out to gather his money. It had taken him a long time to get all that cash, and murdering Cheech to retain it, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let it go now.
Bills were everywhere. A lot of them were caught in a large swath of sawgrass. The sawgrass had sharp edges to it, and his hands and arms got cut up pretty good.
He had to be careful because gators liked to nest in sawgrass. Their tough hides didn’t care a whit about the razor-sharp weeds. The last thing he needed was to stumble upon a hungry gator.
Speaking of gators, where were the guns?
Rooster went back to the boat and checked around. He found one of the pistols and jammed it in his waistband. But the bag was nowhere to be seen.
“Nothing’s ever easy,” he lamented.
The mosquitoes were out in force now and doing their best to suck him dry. He swatted at the back of his neck and face constantly as he wandered around, picking up stray twenties and searching for the bag of guns.
He finally found it under one of the Jersey Shore guys. The dumb dago had landed on the bag. He was facedown in the sand. His Gucci shades were still stuck in the spikes of his hair, but cracked in half. Rooster found the strap by his neck and tugged. The bag came out and the kid rolled over.
To Rooster’s surprise, Jersey Shore’s chest rose. He was alive!
Now that was going to be a problem. When Rooster thought Jersey Shore was dead, he’d had no problem leaving his body out here for the gators and panthers. When they were done, the birds and bugs would take care of the rest. The circle of life. Nothing wrong with that.
The fact that the kid was alive was throwing a fat monkey wrench in his plans. How was Rooster supposed to navigate the swamp and drag him along?
“I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it,” he said. For now, he had to load up one of the pistols in case he needed to make a point with the local wildlife to leave him be. He found the box of bullets in the bag and slipped six inside the pistol.
Man, they were some sweet guns. They wouldn’t take down a charging gator, but they may give one enough incentive to find something else to eat.
Feeling more prepared, he was turning to decide what to do with the kid when the sounds of moaning filled the heavy air.
Rooster looked around, brought the gun up and hissed, “Crap balls!”
Chapter Eight
All around him, bodies began to move. Groans of pain and confusion were everywhere, even coming from places he couldn’t see. It was like one of those zombie flicks where the dead all rise from their graves at the same time.
Only this was worse. These weren’t zombies, and he didn’t want to go around shooting them in the head. Unless, of course, they tried to attack him again. Shit, he wasn’t sure he could do that to the girls even if they handed his ass to him again.
He found a stone in the sand and sat down, waiting to see what the final living count would be.
Liz woke up feeling like a spear had lanced her skull in two. The rest of her body didn’t feel much better. Her head rested on the Italian guy’s thigh. She heard him grumble, and from the sound of it, he wasn’t in much better shape.
Maddie!
Despite the pain, she sat up quickly and looked for her sister.
“Maddie, where are you?”
She looked over the side of the boat and found her sister on all fours, marshaling her strength to get up.
“I’m fine, Liz,” she said. “Just taking inventory.”
Relief almost swept Liz off her feet. She carefully straddled the edge of the boat and dropped down onto the sand. Maddie rushed over to her and they hugged.
“I thought for a moment I lost you,” Liz said, holding back tears.
“I’m not that easy to kill,” Maddie replied with a pained laugh.
“Uuungh.” The middle-aged guy who had landed alongside Maddie struggled to open his eyes. They knelt down to help him.
“What happened?” he said, grimacing when he attempted to roll to his side.
“We crashed,” Liz said. “My sister and I took that guy out, but we didn’t count on losing total control of the boat.”
“My wife, is she okay?”
Liz looked at the boat. “I…I don’t know. I saw her in the boat. You want me to check for you?”
He nodded, too dazed to do it himself. Maddie kept by his side while Liz went back to the boat. The woman was coming to, along with the nerdy guy who was fingering the space in his mouth where some missing teeth used to be. The Italian kid was on his knees and massaging his jaw.
“Hey, is everyone all right?”
Her head jerked in the direction of the voice. The pilot—she thought he’d said his name was Mick or Mike—limped toward them. His face was covered in blood that was still seeping from an unseen wound under his cap.
“We’re alive, but far from all right,” she answered. “Do you have a first aid kit?”
“It’s in a metal box by the stern. I’ll come up and get it. Think I might need a few things out of it myself.” He wiped a palmful of blood off his forehead and out of his eyes.
For the first time, Liz took note of the heat and mosquitoes. It was exactly the way she imagined hell would feel. The buzzing swarm was a roiling, black mass that had descended on everything and everyone.
The nerdy guy scratched a fingernail into the cloth of a seat-back. She watched with revulsion as he extracted a pair of bloody, cracked teeth. He put them in his pocket, turned to her and smiled.
“You never know. If I get back to the hotel, I’ll put these under my pillow and maybe the tooth fairy will give me a dollar.” He tried to laugh, but it came out as a racking cough, causing him to spit up a quivering gob of blood.
“My head!” someone else was shouting. “I think my head is broken! Madonna mia, I think I’m gonna puke.”
Liz saw the other Italian guy, this one on the sand about fifteen feet from the boat, rock from side to side on his back, holding the sides of his head with his hands like it was going to come apart.
That’s when she saw the big guy, the one who had gotten them into this, sitting on a rock, watching them.
He said to the Italian guy, “Well, at least that’ll take your mind off your hand.”
The guy stopped, looked at his hand that was more broken up than a trailer park after a twister, and wailed loud enough to be heard in the Bronx.
An osprey swept out of the sun-blistered sky and dove into the water, snatching a fish from its merry way, and disappeared over the tree line. Rooster watched it with a burning envy. He’d arm-wrestle the Devil to have himself a pair of wings. Slogging through the swamp in this heat, and later in the dark, could get him killed.
Getting up off his ass was no easy feat, but he made a point not to show the least bit of discomfort. It felt like every bone and organ in his body had been taken out, put through a cement mixer filled with bricks, and shoved back inside, all broken and bruised.
This was some motley crew he had to contend with. He sighed with resignation. The way he looked at it, they were all in this together. It was, when he thought about it, his fault that they were stuck here, some of them most likely gator bait. It wasn’t t
heir fault he killed Cheech. And it wasn’t like they had asked to get shot at and spilled all over the place in a wreck. In his book, that made them his responsibility. Not that he knew what the hell to do with them, but it would come to him. Getting out of tight jams was his specialty, though this one was tighter than usual.
He’d try to do right by them…unless they pissed him off. In that case, all bets were off.
When he saw that he had their full attention, all eyes shifting to the loaded pistol in his hand, he said, “Let’s get one thing straight. I am not the bad guy. I was running from the bad guys. You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“If you’re not the bad guy, how come you’re holding a gun on us?” one of the blonde girls said without a lick of fear. She was wrapping gauze around the pilot’s head. It bled like a waterfall, but head wounds did that. She may have been young and slight, but she and her sister were probably the toughest in the bunch. Despite the pain and their unfortunate circumstance, it kind of turned him on.
Rooster slowly slipped the gun through his belt on his right side. He moved his hand away and raised both to show he had no intention of using it on them.
“Is that better?” he asked.
She didn’t reply.
The ones who weren’t dazed shot daggers his way. He had to take control of the situation before somebody did something stupid. When people did stupid things around him, it was usually the last thing they did. The swamp had enough shit out to get them. He didn’t want to be part of the list.
“We’re gonna have to move out of here, and soon,” he said. “This is a good time to get yourselves fixed up as best you can with that first aid kit. Those of you that don’t need much should gather things like water and tools and anything else we could use for shelter or protection. I’d help you, but I think it’s best I supervise until you come to grips with my intentions.”
The Jersey Shore kid without the busted hand said, “What happens if we don’t leave? You going to shoot us?”
Rooster could tell the kid was trying to be brave, but the slight quiver in his voice gave him away. It wasn’t a challenge. He was just scared and wanted to know if he should pull out his rosary beads.
“I’m not going to do anything. The gators who have been nesting in all this sawgrass, however, will do plenty. They’re out in the water now, but you can bet those fuckers will be coming home soon enough. If you want to lay yourself out like an appetizer, be my guest.”
He let that sink in. Now their anger at him had been replaced by fear of the gators. It was a start in the right direction.
The pilot adjusted his cap and gingerly put it back on his head. He looked left and right and sucked in hard through his teeth a few times. Finally, he said, “Man’s right. I count at least a dozen nests just around us. No telling how many more are in spots I can’t see.”
Rooster snapped his fingers. “Okay, now that you all got a second opinion from the good pilot, I say you get your asses moving.”
And move their asses did.
The girls patched up the other lady, then helped get her husband to his feet and gave him some Tylenol. The two-handed Jersey Shore was fine, except for the limp, and the little guy looked like he had just come out of the dentist and forgotten to pay the doc for his dentures.
The swarthy pilot noisily lumbered all throughout the demolished boat, ransacking every nook and cranny for supplies and things to carry them in. His head disappeared below the stern line and he got real quiet. Rooster was about to check on him, make sure he wasn’t getting any funny ideas, when the blonde girl whose hair had been chopped off on the right side of her head asked him if he needed any medical attention. Her sister was luckier, the blades having given her a more even cut that made her look like a punk rocker.
“Nothing that kit can help me with,” he said, feeling the burn of his ribs.
She gave a slight grin, casting her gaze downward, and walked away.
When they were done with everyone else, the girls went to the other guido, who was the worst for wear of the bunch. From the wet way he was breathing, it sounded like he had some internal bleeding. The rest went to the boat and put what supplies they could find into an old net and some shopping bags.
“How much water we got?” Rooster asked.
“Not a lot,” the middle-aged guy said. He had his arm around his wife, whether to hold himself up or console her was anyone’s guess. “There’s six bottles of water, two bottles of Gatorade and three sodas.”
We’re fucked, Rooster thought. Heat like this, dehydration was going to be on them quicker than a fart through an asshole.
The pilot walked over to him. He had an old gunny sack over one shoulder and was holding a black plastic case. He said, “I don’t suppose you’re going to let me send up some flares.”
Rooster shook his head. “Can’t let that happen…yet. Why don’t you hand them over before temptation gets the better of you?”
He held out his hand. The pilot thought long and hard about it, but finally slumped his shoulders and gave him the case. Rooster was glad he had come to him and asked, rather than sending one off and forcing him to put a few of these new bullets in his head.
The pilot was about to walk back to the group, paused, and said low enough for no one else to hear, “You see any sign of that monkey we run over when we came to ground?”
Rooster’s first instinct was to laugh, but the man was dead serious. That head injury must have really scrambled his brains.
“What the hell are you talking about, some monkey? There’s ain’t no monkeys in the Glades.”
“That’s what I thought, but I saw it clear as day and even felt the boat thump it when we went over it.” He looked toward the water and pointed. “In fact, I think it was standing right there.”
Rooster patted his back with enough force to send him back to the others.
“Don’t you go worrying about no monkeys. We got bigger problems, Mac. Why don’t you help the girls get that kid on his feet?”
Fucking monkeys. Wait until thirst started settling in. The rest of them would be seeing flying giraffes and talking hippos before this day was done.
He watched everyone work together in silence, occasionally stealing glances his way. When he yawned, a family of mosquitoes got sucked in by the backdraft and lodged in his throat. His lungs went into instant convulsions and he coughed to beat the band. Stooped over, he hacked as hard as he could to get the bastards out, but it was no use.
Hocking up whatever he could, he spit into the water, hoping to expel at least one.
He stopped coughing and spitting the instant he saw the mangled lump of bloody fur and flesh curled up in a ball by the water’s edge.
Chapter Nine
Mick saw the big guy stop and stare at something by the water. His eyes looked about ready to fall out of his skull.
“Guess I’m not so crazy after all,” Mick muttered.
“Say what?” the Italian kid asked. He was busy tying a pair of Windbreakers together so he could make a sack to carry supplies in.
Mick didn’t answer him. Instead, he walked over to where the big guy stood and fixed his gaze on the mangled body sitting in muddy water, blood and brain matter.
“What the hell is that?” Mick said.
“I’ll tell you what it’s not. That ain’t no fucking monkey.”
“It looks like it has two legs and two arms, but they’re so tore up, it’s hard to make heads or tails. Maybe if we can see the face.”
Mick found an old, gnarled stick and used it to try to turn the body over. It had been squished into the mud and sand, neither wanting to give up their desperate hold. When it came loose with a sickening burp, the foulest odor he had ever had the displeasure of smelling exploded out of the carcass.
“If I had anything in my stomach, it would be on the floor right now,” Mick said, pinching his nose shut. “Feel free to get as close as you want, mister. That’s as far as I care to look
.”
“Name’s Rooster,” he replied. “Mister is for old men and fags. Here, give me that stick. I want to get a better view.”
“Be my guest,” Mick said, backing up and shifting upwind.
Rooster worked the stick back and forth like a pry bar until the body completely turned over.
“Guess it’s true,” Rooster said. “The grass isn’t always greener on the other side. Looks like it head-butted the boat. No telling what it looked like before it became swamp kill. But I’ll tell you one thing, I’ve watched enough animal shows to know that ain’t no monkey. A full-grown chimp, maybe, but I never seen one with such long hair. I have no fucking clue what it could be.”
“Oh, my God, that’s gross!” One of the girls had come over to see what the fuss was about. Mick tried to gently guide her away with a hand on her shoulder, but she wouldn’t budge. Aside from the grisly body, he thought it only right to keep the girls away from their hijacker. There was no telling what was going on in his head. “Did we hit that?”
“Pretty hard,” Mick said.
A long, dark shadow crept over them, turning the day to dusk in seconds. Mick looked up at the sky and shook his head.
“Afternoon storm’s coming in right on time.”
“Good. At least it’ll cool us off and get these damn mosquitoes to quit biting us.”
“Not that simple,” Mick said. “The rain won’t last long, and then you’ll be soaked with no way to dry off in this humidity. The mosquitoes will be back when it’s over, and in full force.”
No sooner had he said the words than a crack of thunder signaled the downpour to follow. The rain came down in a frenzy, with no buildup. One second they were dry, the next it was like the angels were dumping truckloads of water on their heads.
Everyone started to move toward the trees, some quicker than others depending on the severity of their injuries. The one Italian kid just lay on the sand, taking the storm full in the face.
