June was nearly over, but it had brought the end of school, the most terrible flood I’d ever seen or heard about, the shrimp boat, the alligator and all that came with that, Heather’s and Mr. Moore’s deaths, Jeff’s drug use, and of course the wolf man, of whom I still refused to believe.
I refused to give up on my summer vacation, though. We hadn’t been back to the Swamp since the flood, and I was curious to see what had become of it. So, the next day, a Tuesday it was, Jeff and Eric and I got our pellet guns and Max and went out to see what the Swamp looked like.
We carried our guns by the breach, like World War II Marines trekking through the jungles of Indonesia, and crossed the strip of manicured grass at the edge of our subdivision, slid through a gap in the fence that was supposed to keep us kids out, and entered the Swamp. Once, while traipsing through the Swamp, I had seen a giant black snake slithering across one of the trails. I am terrified of snakes and I had never been that close to one so big. Scared half to death I jumped the thing and ran to beat the devil. That experience always came to mind whenever I entered the Swamp, reminding me that I had to be on my toes whenever I was in here. Like the alligator we’d destroyed by the scum pond, there was real wildlife in here. Suburbia was behind us.
But there was something else too. I’d heard my dad say that the land upon which our subdivision was built on had once been a vast cotton farm, and just a few hundred yards in from the fence was what I guess had once been a cotton processing facility. It was little more than three large, interconnected metal silos, nearly every inch of which was covered with graffiti. They were moldering rust heaps towering over a field of wrecked machine parts and Coke cans and used condoms, but I was drawn to it nonetheless. For me, those rusting silos held me with an irresistible gravity. They lit my imagination on fire, for when I stared at them, I saw city skylines in ruin. I turned the field of trash into rivers of wrecked and abandoned cars. That lonely collection of silos never failed to send me to dark and apocalyptic places, and I loved it for that.
“Come on,” Jeff said, waving me on.
“I’m coming, I’m coming.”
He and Eric were already pretty far ahead and Max and I had to trot to catch up. The storm had done some damage to the Swamp, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be. The bits of garbage that hung from the trees and the shrubs were about what I expected. So too were the broken tree limbs. The odd thing though was the knot of grass and vines matted to the tops of the trees. I had seen the same thing in the gutters of my house after the water drained away, but to see it here, in the tops of the trees, meant that the water would have had to reach all the way up there, and some of those trees were twenty-five-feet tall. It made me wonder how the deer and the rabbits and all the other critters that lived out here had made it through the storm.
Clearly they had, though, for Max saw a whitetail deer and took off after it, barking like a dummy.
“You’re not worried he’s going to get lost?” Eric said.
“No, he’ll be fine. Watch.” I turned toward Max. “Max, come!”
Instantly his barking stopped. A moment later, he was crashing through the scrub brush and bounding onto the hard-packed dirt of the trail.
“See?” I said. “He’s good.”
Rather than answer, Eric let out a sharp cry of pain and clapped a hand over his cheek.
“What happened?” I asked.
He took his hand away, and I saw both his hand and cheek were wet with blood. And there was a nasty looking wound on his cheek.
“What the hell?”
“I think I got shot,” he said.
“What?” Jeff said.
I stepped closer to study the wound and when I did something stung me on my forehead, just above the hairline. I cried out just as Eric had done, but when I touched my wound I felt a hard piece of metal stuck in my hair.
I held it out. “It’s a pellet.”
“Somebody’s shooting at us,” Jeff said.
“Billy,” I said, and a moment later Billy and Matt Drake and Lee Johnson erupted from the trees behind us and charged.
“Oh shit,” Eric said. “Run!”
I didn’t need prompting. I took off as fast as I could go. Jeff and Eric took off in opposite directions, but it was obvious right from the get-go that Billy and his friends weren’t interested in them. They wanted me, and they were coming on fast.
Max had wanted to stand his ground. As soon as Billy and the others broke from the trees he started to growl. I looked back and didn’t see him. Instead I saw Billy gaining ground on me, his arms and legs pumping and pure hate and meanness in his glare.
“You better run, pussy!” he yelled at my back. “I’m coming for you.”
I ducked my head and ran harder. We had reached an empty spot in the Swamp where there were no trees or shrubs, just waist-high grass for the next hundred yards or so. Up ahead was a thicket of trees. I knew I had to reach those if I had any hope of getting away. There was a wide ditch inside that thicket. If I could make it down into there I could choose from three different trails that led out the other side, and two of those went deeper into the Swamp, where the shrubs got really thick. It’d be the perfect way to escape.
Except I had to get there first.
Billy was gaining on me still. I could hear his breathing. I could almost feel his hands on my back. I chanced a glance over my shoulder and saw he was right behind me. Matt and Lee looked like they were getting tired. They had fallen behind, and Lee was actually slowing to a walk and holding his side.
Not Billy though.
Billy was right on my back. He couldn’t have been less than ten feet behind me when we reached the trees. I slammed into a screen of limbs and leaves and rolled to the left because I knew these woods well. The tree limbs gave way for me and I paused only long enough to bend the biggest of the branches back and let it go. It snapped back into place just as Billy got there and smacked him in the face.
He barked in surprise.
He thrashed at the branches, trying to get them out of his way.
I used the few seconds I’d bought to sprint to the side of the ditch and slide down the steep muddy bank to the tangled screen of weeds and shrubs below. I sank to my knees in water left over from the storm. But I wasn’t about to let it slow me down. I ran for the opposite end of the ditch, where it opened onto the outgoing trails and offered a way out.
From above me I heard Matt Drake say, “Where’d he go?”
“He’s down there,” Billy said. “Move.”
I turned and saw Billy and Matt standing at the edge of the ditch. Lee Johnson came up beside them a moment later, chest heaving like he was about to puke from the exertion of the sprint.
“How the hell are we supposed to get down there?” Matt said.
I took up my pellet gun and fired for Billy’s face. I think I hit him in the cheek, but I’m not sure, because right after I pulled the trigger and saw him flinch, confirming the hit, I turned and ran. He screamed that he was going kill me, but at that point I knew I had the advantage. I was in known territory, home turf, and he couldn’t touch me.
All I had to do was stay quiet.
I took the left fork when the trail opened into three possible choices. The middle way had a dense screen of limbs and leaves right at the head, and to get through it would have definitely left a mark and probably made a lot of noise. I didn’t think Billy and his crew were smart enough to read the language of spoor, but they could certainly hear me busting through the underbrush.
The trail I was on was made of packed white dirt. My mud-soaked tennis shoes would leave footprints anybody with eyes could follow. Realizing this, I jumped into the grass that grew alongside the trail and took off running. That grass was perfect snake country, but at the moment my fear of what Billy would do to me far outweighed the nebulous fear that a snake might be lurking underfoot.
I ran like hell.
I ran until I reached another stand of oaks and hackberry and there I dropped to the ground and crawled under a tangle of leaves and branches that I hoped would hide me. My lungs were burning and I was too exhausted for another foot chase.
Then I heard Billy and Matt coming up the trail.
“You think he made it this far?” Matt said.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Hey, look at that.”
I couldn’t see them, and I doubted they could see me. I listened to see if they were coming my way. If they were, I’d have to run again.
But they were going the opposite way. I could hear them crashing around in the tall weeds that grew next to the trail.
“What’s that for?” Matt asked.
“What do you think? I’m going beat his ass with this.”
A pause.
“I don’t know,” Matt said. “You could really hurt him with that.”
“No shit, Sherlock. What do you think I’m trying to do here?”
“Yeah, but…that thing could do a lot of damage. I mean, like, put him in the hospital damage.”
“That’s the idea.”
Oh crap, I thought. I was still breathing hard, trying to catch my breath, and no matter how hard I tried, my breathing sounded way too loud. “Please don’t do this,” I told myself. “Be quiet, be quiet.”
“Yeah, but we gotta find him first,” Matt said.
“Shhh,” Billy said. “Be quiet for a second.”
Ah crap, I thought, and held my breath. My lungs felt like they were going to catch fire they hurt so badly, but I held my breath.
“I want to go back and get Lee. There were three trails back there. We’ll each walk one. We’re pretty far out. He probably won’t want to go much farther. It should only be a matter of time before we catch up with him. When we do, we’ll bring him back to the fork and wait for the others to come back.”
“Unless it’s you that catches him.”
“Yeah. If so I’m gonna leave his dead ass out here. I bet we could put him next to a pond. Shouldn’t be long before an alligator finds him.”
“Dude, that’s hardcore.”
“Can you think of any little shit who deserves it more?”
I listened to this with my lungs still burning. It sounded like they were headed away from me, back down the trail; but I knew Billy, and that was just the kind of trick he’d use. Get a little ways off and wait, the whole dialogue between he and Matt just a diversion to get me to give myself away.
But I couldn’t hold my breath any longer.
I let it out and then took a deep breath.
I waited.
Still, the sound of them walking away.
I took a chance and parted the screen of leaves I was using for cover and saw them walking off, not bothering to look back.
So it wasn’t a trick.
Good to know.
I slowly got to my feet, careful not to disturb the branches around me, and headed off down the trail. I walked through the copse of trees to the next clearing and I broke into a run. There was no way in hell Billy and his crazy ass friends were going to catch me out here alone.
I ran.
I ran like hell.