Swamp Monster Massacre (8 page)

Rooster picked up the empty water bottle and tossed it at Jack’s head. “No one gives a shit, Einstein. We got to get up and get moving. Night’ll be coming soon, and I don’t want to leave my ass exposed like this. Further we go into the interior, the better chance we have to find a secluded spot.”

He counted the guns that were left to them. Six.
 

“How many bullets you all have left?” he said.
 

They each opened the chamber.
 

“I’m all out,” Liz said.
 

“Thought you would be,” he said. The way that girl came charging out of the woods like Annie Oakley and that chick from
Alien
was damn impressive. He removed two of the four bullets he had left and tossed them to her. “Don’t wanna leave you empty.”

She smiled and loaded them up.
 

“I’ve got two,” Dominic said, looking at him like he was the bullet fairy.
 

“I still have four,” Jack said.
 

“Me, too,” Mick chimed in. “You can have one of mine, kid. And Jack, you look like you could use another. Something tells me once you start pulling the trigger, you’re not stopping. ”

Or hitting anything
, Rooster thought.

“Okay, that means you all can only pull your trigger if you have a clear, close shot. There’re at least four of them out there, and it didn’t look like that one bullet even fazed the one I plugged. They’re fucking fast, so the more distance between them and you means the more likely they’ll dodge your shot. You’re gonna have to wait until they’re almost on you. Everyone understand?”

All heads nodded, except John’s.
 

“All right, let’s start hauling ass.”

He held out his hand to help Maddie to her feet. Her hand was soft but there was a lot of strength there. Liz approached them and said, “What are we going to do about him?” She nodded at immobile John. The man was a vegetable.
 

“I’ll get the kid to help me with him. You two take the lead. One of you keep an eye on the ground for snakes, the other to the sides and forward in case our friends show up. There’s lots of natural lean-tos out here. If we find one a good distance from the water, we stop.”

They nodded and started walking through more sawgrass. Their legs looked like they had traipsed through a herd of raging cats, but they didn’t so much as wince when the sharp blades cut through existing wounds.
 

“Hey, Jersey, help me take a side so we can get going.”

Dominic didn’t look happy to be on babysitting duty, but he did what he was told.
 

They walked through the palm and mangroves, taking deep breaths to detect if the Bigfoots were near. Rooster’s eyes stung from sweat, and more than once he was tempted to dump John’s deadweight, if only to relieve some of his own pain. His ribs were killing him. But Dominic stayed strong, and he’d be damned to give up before some punk kid.
 

Jack was blathering on about what little he knew about skunk apes, from what they ate (fish and plants) to his theories on whether or not they could build and use tools. It was nothing but nervous chatter, and none of it seemed the least bit useful. All that hot air made Rooster’s head spin.
 

Finally, Mick turned to Jack with narrowed eyes and said, “Can you please shut up?”

He did.
 

And then they heard the shot.
 

Chapter Fourteen

Rooster and Mick darted to the girls with their guns at the ready.
 

“You girls okay?” Rooster said.

Maddie waved a hand. “We’re fine. Liz stepped on that sucker’s tail. I didn’t want to give him a chance to retaliate.”

Mick whistled. “Holy shit. That’s one of the biggest cottonmouths I’ve ever seen.”

The bullet had caught the snake three inches below its head, severing it from its long, coiled body. It had to be almost five feet long.
 

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 screaming 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.