Swamp Monster Massacre (9 page)

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 off 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.
 

One of the skunk apes bellowed. It must have sensed the kill.
 

“On twist,” Liz commanded.
 

“One.”

Her right knee almost buckled and she stumbled, quickly regaining her stride.
 

“Two.”

She could hear Rooster’s labored breathing, could almost feel it on the back of her neck.

“Twist!”

Liz and Maddie stopped, dropping to a knee and spinning so they were facing the oncoming skunk apes. Rooster was taken by surprise and tripped over Maddie’s leg, crashing to his chest with a mighty
whump
.
 

Maddie screamed, “Shout!”

They started shooting, the flare from the nozzles lighting up the area around them, cordite burning the stench of the skunk apes out of their noses.
 

The skunk apes, startled and finding themselves hopelessly exposed, roared and tried to swat the bullets away like they were bees from a split hive. Three of them scrambled left and right, shock visible in their wide, red eyes that cut through the pitch like lasers.
 

The fourth one had hung back a bit and reared its head back to let out the mother of all howls. It must have been a call to retreat, because all four darted back from where they had come, their footfalls like thunder.
 

“What…was…that?” Rooster wheezed.
 

“That’s called buying us some time,” Liz answered. Now it was her turn to reach out and help
him
up. “We better take advantage of it.”

It was just before dawn when they stopped running (barely jogging was more like it), and came to the end of the island. They were going to have to swim over to the next one. Dominic felt something burning on his ankle and looked down to see two long, deep scratches carved into his skin. They were so deep, he thought he could see the off-white of bone beneath the tattered flesh.
 

“Looks like that bastard did get a piece of me,” he said through shallow breaths. Everyone had collapsed around him, too tired to take another step, much less swim.
 

Liz looked through the remaining two supply bags and cursed. “We left the one with the first aid kit back at the tree.”

Jack added wearily, “And the one with most of the food. All we have left is a couple of bottles of water and a soda” He had pulled his pants leg up and was massaging a purple golf ball in the center of his calf. One of the alligators had landed on his leg while he slept. He was lucky his leg wasn’t snapped in half.
 

Rooster punched the ground. “We can’t catch a goddamn break! Might as well pass that water around, save the rest for later when the sun gets back to baking us.”