by Hunter Shea
Rooster patted her on the shoulder. “Nice shot. You still cool with taking point?”
“Hell yeah. That was a good idea you had about one set of eyes on the ground. Just saved at least one of our lives,” she said.
He went back to helping Dominic carry John, and she and Liz kept moving forward. Long, ominous shadows had begun to seep in among the trees, and the sun slunk down over the horizon. They had to find someplace relatively safe fast, but so far all they had found were trees and old leaves. There were some sweet bay bushes, waist high and looking like little trees, but they could barely conceal a squirrel.
The constant thrumming of tree frogs grew as night approached. Maddie thought it sounded nice, kind of peaceful, which was a welcome thing right about now. She was so glad Liz was still by her side and unharmed. And in a weird way, she was thankful to have Rooster with them, even if it was mostly his fault they were stuck out here. She had been taught to be self-sufficient, but there was a simmering power in him that she knew they’d need to get out alive. She also suspected that he wasn’t as bad as he’d like people to think. It didn’t hurt that physically, he was right in her sweet spot.
Jesus, Maddie, get a grip! she scolded herself. Way to moon over a bad boy like a dumb teen.
“You think we’re going to make it out of here?” she asked Liz. They may have been identical in appearance, but Liz had always been the stronger and smarter one. Must have been because Liz was born five minutes ahead of her. Liz had the advantage of more life experience.
Liz squeezed her arm. “I don’t think so, no. I know we are.”
When Maddie turned to thank her, she saw, over her sister’s shoulder, where they would hole up for the night.
“I think you’re right.”
Night chased the sun’s brutal rays away, but the humidity increased to the point where it felt like they were underwater.
Everyone was exhausted. The fallen mahogany tree made a good place to stay and provided ample protection to their backs. It would have been nice to light a fire, but no one had matches or a lighter, not that any of the tinder would have held a flame. Besides, they didn’t want to betray their position to the murderous Bigfoots.
They decided that two people would take watch at a time. Rooster chose Maddie to sit first watch with him. He saw her sister’s reproachful glare, so he explained to her that he needed someone good with a gun on each watch. It didn’t look like she bought it, but she was too tired to argue.
Liz, Jack, Mick and Dominic slept shoulder to shoulder against the trunk. John sat apart from them, his eyes half open, though whether he was conscious or not was anyone’s guess.
Rooster and Maddie stood against a nearby mangrove, searching the darkness for any sign of encroachment.
“I figure we’ll smell ’em before we see ’em,” he said to her.
“Unless they’re smart enough to stay downwind of us. Something that big would need a lot of food, and I don’t think Jack’s theory of them eating fish and berries holds water. If you ask me, they know how to hunt, and they know how to hunt big game. There’s lots out here to choose from. That would also mean they’ve learned how to sneak up on their prey undetected.”
“They teach you shit like that in college?” he asked.
She let out a small laugh. “Nah. Liz and I grew up in a military family. Our daddy taught us all kinds of stuff about hunting and survival. You may not think so, but we were a couple of total tomboys growing up. We knew how to make traps, throw knives and defend ourselves from personal attack before we hit our teens.”
“After the number you did on me on the boat, I could tell your daddy that he did a good job.”
Heat lightning flickered in the sky. There was no thunder, and thankfully, no rain. The lightning offered brief glimpses of their immediate area, and all was quiet, save for the droning of the frogs and buzzing of the mosquitoes.
Maddie sighed. “He died a year ago yesterday. He’d always wanted to see the Everglades. That’s why Liz and I came down here. We were kind of hoping he’d see it right along with us.”
That hurt. Rooster’s moment of rage had taken them from grief to running for their lives. He was about to apologize when she said, “You mind telling me why you have bags of guns and money and why those guys were trying to kill you? I’m not being nosy, but you just don’t seem the gun-running type.”
“And you know what the gun-running type looks like?”
“I watch a lot of movies and reality cop shows.”
He swatted a family of flies off his neck. “Long story short?”
She nodded.
“I wasn’t exactly running guns. These were for my collection. I’m a big Shooter Jennings fan. You know, the country singer? Waylon’s son?”
“I’ve heard of him. Who’s Waylon?”
Rooster was shocked, but had to remind himself that she was young. “Anyway, these pistols look just like the one Shooter has tattooed on his arm. I heard through the grapevine that this guy Cheech in the Cuban mob had a box of them. I don’t know why, but I just had to have them. I’ve dealt with Cheech on other…matters, so I figured it would be easy. I got the money by knocking off a few stores and stealing some cars. I know this may sound weird, but I was kinda hoping that I could somehow get Shooter’s attention through the collection and maybe, I don’t know, he’d send me a ticket to one of his shows, maybe even float me a backstage pass.”
“So you are a bad guy. And maybe a little stalkerish on the side. You know, you could have just used that ill-gotten money to buy a concert ticket and backstage pass.”
Lightning flashed and he could see that she wasn’t the least bit afraid.
“I’m no saint, but I ain’t the Devil. Come to think of it, I guess I just really wanted those guns. Anyway, I go to get them and Cheech, well, he was all fucked up and had his beer balls on, started ragging on me. It got to the point where I had to shut him up and he kinda died.”
“You killed him?”
“It was an accident. I only punched him a couple of times. I guess coke does all kinds of weird shit to your skull, because his head caved right in. Then his cronies found me and the body, and I took off. The rest you know.”
They stood in silence and Rooster figured she was taking everything in. After a while, she asked, “What did he say to make you kill him?”
“Accidentally,” he added.
“Yes, accidentally.”
This was the hard part. How else could he say it without sounding like an insecure kid in a school yard? Might as well rip the Band-Aid off and suck it up.
“He kept making fun of my name.”
“Well, you do have an odd name.” She said it without a hint of sarcasm or mockery.
“My dad was a real John Wayne and Johnny Cash fan. He wanted to toughen me up like the guy in that song A Boy Named Sue, but instead of Sue, he called me Rooster after his favorite John Wayne film.”
“I guess it worked,” she said.
“Huh. Rooster Murphy. All it gave me was a lifetime of anger issues.” It felt good talking to Maddie about this, way better than those therapists or his anger management coach. For the first time he could remember, he felt calm.
“I think it’s a pretty cool name. Hard to forget,” she said and giggled.
He jerked to his left when he heard the quick rush of leaves. Maddie reacted by raising her gun in the direction of the commotion.
Deep, angry growls filled the damp air, but it didn’t sound anything like the Bigfoots.
Something heavy thumped so hard into the ground near them that it shook like a tiny earthquake. The growls grew louder and more objects crashed through the darkness.
It was during one of the sparks of lightning when Rooster saw what was piling up around them in an angry, thrashing mosh pit.
The fucking Bigfoots were throwing alligators at them!
Chapter Fifteen
“What the hell? Aaahhhhhh!”
Rooster could hear Jack screami
ng but he couldn’t see a damn thing. He put his arm over Maddie’s chest to hold her back.
He felt the ground shake again, and another angry roar echoed in the darkness.
The entire forest had erupted in gator growls, Bigfoot howls, human screams and mad scrambling. When the next flash of lightning came, it was all Rooster could do to keep from running.
Four alligators faced everyone by the collapsed tree with open jaws. A heavy, ominous rumble purred from their throats. Liz, Jack, Mick and Dominic huddled together, scrambling for their guns.
Now normally gators were pretty timid, doing what they could to avoid interaction with humans, but it appeared they took great exception to being thrown about in the dead of night.
“Don’t move!” Rooster shouted. “And most of all, do not jump over to the other side of that tree. They’re trying to flush us out!”
Maddie gripped his arm so hard he was sure she was drawing blood. “What’s happening?”
“Those fucking apes just tossed four very angry gators at us.”
If possible, her grip tightened. “Oh, my God, what do we do?”
“I’m thinking!”
His head was pounding, whether from fatigue, thirst, fear, uncertainty or all four was too hard to tell. All of the gators came from the rear side of the downed tree. The Bigfoots either wanted them to run right into their waiting arms so they could break them down like cheap Legos, or they were happy to let the gators do their dirty work. He could hear the Bigfoots howling and shuffling around. It almost sounded like they were cheering the gators on.
That was mistake number one.
Now he knew exactly where the hairy assholes were, which left them an escape route.
“Okay, we’re going to have to get everyone over to us,” he said, wiping the sweat from his gun hand.
“How can we do that?”
“Just sit tight and don’t pull that trigger unless you know what you’re shooting at. I’ll be right back.”
It could be suicide, but he figured the only way to get everyone free was to distract the gators so they could slip around them and away from the smelly fucks-in-waiting. It sounded like a goddamn zoo at feeding time. Fucking Cheech.
“Heyah!” he bellowed. The sound of his voice stopped Jack’s screaming. “Now you all gotta pay attention. I’m going to get the gators to turn to me. Wait for the lightning. When you see them pointed away from you, run like hell behind me. Maddie’s waiting. Run faster than you ever have in your life, ’cause these gators can sprint like a bottle rocket when they’re riled up. You hear me?”
“We got you!” Liz shouted back, her voice tinged with uncertainty.
Lightning came, but all but one of the gators were still eyeing them like choice beef in a butcher shop window. And then there was John. There he sat, legs pulled up to his chest, eyeing the ground like hell hadn’t broken out around him. That was going to be a problem.
He could hear the Bigfoots whooping it up and was tempted to take a wild shot in the dark and hope it hit something near and dear to them, but he had to hold his impulse in check. It was better to wait anyway. If he was lucky, he’d get a nice, clear shot during the day, when he could bury a bullet right between their red eyes.
Red eyes! That was it! During the day, it almost looked like their eyes glowed, as if there was a raging fire behind them. Could Rooster be so lucky that their eyes would give them away in the dark?
“Oh shit!”
Dominic’s shout, followed by a blast of lightning, derailed his train of thought. Dominic was sitting atop the vertical trunk with his feet raised in the air. One of the gators had come in for the kill and just missed him.
The forest plunged into darkness and a shot cleaved the air.
“Don’t shoot them,” Rooster called out. “You’ll only get ’em madder.”
With that last burst of light, he had seen that the pack was turned his way, with the exception of the one trained on Dominic. It wouldn’t wait long to try again, and it wouldn’t miss Dominic twice.
“You all gotta go now!” he ordered. A series of flashes made it look like they were under a strobe light in a nightclub. He saw Mick grab Liz’s wrist, and together they scampered around the gator to their left. Dominic walked along the tree like a trapeze artist, and as the gator leaped up to grab ahold of his thigh, he jumped, hitting the ground running. The clack of the gator’s jaws slamming shut on nothing but air sounded like a pair of two-by-fours smashing together. Jack was right behind him, scrambling to get to his feet, his messenger bag cast aside. He lost his balance, bumping into John’s side and sending him forward. John didn’t even put his arms out to break his fall. He just went facedown and rolled to his side.
The lightning was relentless, which was to their advantage. Thunder decided to roll in, shuddering the bones in their chests, drowning out the Bigfoots.
Liz, Mick and Dominic raced past him and back to Maddie.
“John, get your ass up!” He screamed so hard he tasted blood on his tongue. Every gator was fixated on the prone man.
It would have been so easy to leave him there. Rooster had bailed out on plenty of other guys when things shit the bed. It was all part of his instinctual self-preservation skills, which had kept him alive in a line of work where people did not stick around long enough to collect social security.
“John! John!”
Dammit! The guy didn’t deserve this. He hadn’t deserved to see his wife die. And what would Maddie think if Rooster left him to die? For some odd reason, that mattered most.
“I’m coming for you, John!”
Rooster ran. Thunder clapped, and it sounded like the sky was breaking apart.
He had no idea how he was going to get past the gators, scoop John’s deadweight off the ground and get them both out of Dodge. All he could do right now was plow forward, even though his body and half his brain were screaming at him to go back.
When he felt the tip of a long tail under his foot, he stopped and jumped back a step. He cocked the gun back. If one of them was about to take a bite out of him, he was going to shove the gun into the soft inside of its mouth and pull that trigger until the gun was empty.
Nothing happened.
Instead, he heard what sounded like tearing fabric and a series of grunts.
The lightning returned, and his heart trip-hammered.
All four gators had formed a circle around John. The tearing sound was that of his flesh and bone being rent from his body. His head was in one of their mouths. All that showed was the very bottom of his chin. The gator flexed its jaw, and John’s skull gave way like Styrofoam. Another had clamped on his side and locked on. One had pulled his arm free, and the other was gnawing on both legs.
“Do you have John?” Mick cried out behind him.
What the hell could he say? Sorry, John just became a late-night snack?
It was then that he noted the stink. It was heavy as an anvil, and close.
Flash!
Two of them were on the other side of the trunk, looking down at the carnage, just as he couldn’t take his own gaze away. The big one with the breasts, the momma Bigfoot, gaped at John’s dismemberment with calm satisfaction. Rooster’s stomach quaked when he thought he saw the hint of a smile at the edges of its thin-lipped, grimy mouth.
Chapter Sixteen
Liz and Maddie told everyone else to just run while they went back for Rooster and John.
“We’ll be right behind you!” Liz said, trying to keep herself under control. It felt like her blood was racing so fast that her veins would burst.
They ran blind until a wall of stink nearly stopped them dead.
“Oh, my God, that’s bad,” Maddie huffed. “Try breathing out of your mouth.”
Liz did, and her diaphragm convulsed. “Great, now I can smell and taste them.”
For the first time, Liz wondered if the skunk apes’ foul smell was an offensive and defensive weapon. In this case, it was doing a good job of taking their minds o
ff what they had to do and putting their guard down. If the smell was this bad, it meant the creatures were very close, and she had to put it out of her mind.
“Rooster, where are you?” Maddie cried.
Liz had the wind knocked out of her as something large and heavy collided with her side, sending her sprawling. She struggled to regain her grip on her gun. She was not going to go down without a fight.
When the hammer clicked back, she heard, “Don’t shoot. It’s me, Rooster! Come on, we gotta haul ass!”
Rooster grabbed under her armpit and lifted her like she weighed two pounds.
“Where’s John?” she asked.
“He didn’t make it. Gators.”
“What about the skunk apes?” Maddie asked, panting.
“At least two are right behind us. Go!”
He stayed at their backs while they sprinted, arms and legs pumping with stores of energy that were quickly being depleted. Liz prayed that they wouldn’t stumble into or hit any trees. They were one misstep away from disaster.
Maddie pulled ahead and shouted, “Guys, run!”
They had caught up to Mick, Jack and Dominic, and didn’t need to tell them twice to double-time it.
Liz felt heavy thuds behind them and knew the skunk apes were gaining. By the sound of things, they had to be only a few steps behind Rooster.
“Maddie, you want to try a twist and shout?”
Maddie slowed so she could get shoulder to shoulder with her.
“Are you sure?” she said.
Liz’s lungs were on fire. There was no way she could keep up this pace, and she knew she wasn’t alone feeling that way. They were all dehydrated, and sooner or later their legs were going to give out.
It was twist and shout or nothing.
“Either that or run ourselves out and get killed.”
Maddie didn’t hesitate. “I’m in.”
Their father had taught them a lot of things that they had thought were weird and unnecessary growing up. If he only knew how much they appreciated, at this moment, every afternoon spent under his watchful eye, going through drills that seemed pointless. The whole world may not be coming to an end, but if they didn’t do something fast, theirs was about to have the plug pulled.
