Behind Arlis, the field of saw grass and scattered trees darkened as a cloud sailed beneath the stars. He gripped the tire iron in his right hand and found the flashlight with his left. With the light, he probed the bushes. Thirty yards behind him, he spotted a thicket of wax myrtle trees that were leaning at an odd angle.
The animal was hunkered down there, he realized. It was something heavy, built low to the ground.
The worst thing he could do was attempt to run away. It was better to take the offensive in these situations—be the attacker man or beast—so Arlis began walking toward the thicket, walking faster and faster, as he waved the light ahead of him like a torch.
He yelled, “Hey! Get out of here!,” as he might to an aggressive dog, and it worked. The myrtle trees began to thrash as the animal retreated.
“I’ll be damned,” Arlis whispered as he stopped to watch. It wasn’t one animal, it was three—three lizard-looking creatures, maybe forty pounds each.
Man, they were fast.
Iguanas, Arlis thought. They were pet-store animals that had escaped—the port of Boca Grande was loaded with the things. Arlis wasn’t related to the famous Lee County Futches, but he knew the story. The iguanas had come over on boats from Central America, the pets of bored cargo captains.
As Arlis watched, the lizards disappeared into the shadows, but then they reappeared a minute later in the far distance. He could see three pairs of orange eyes watching him and he sensed that the lizards were no longer afraid. He felt that radiating chill in his lower spine again.
They’re pack hunters, he thought. They’re stalking me.
But these lizards were too small to attack a man . . . weren’t they?
To his left, he heard something else moving and he spun around to look. It was a familiar sound: the subtle slosh of mud and waves as something big entered the water.
He swung the flashlight toward the cypress head, with its natural moat, and Arlis saw another set of glowing eyes. The eyes were the same bright color—orange. This animal was huge, though. Its eyes were spaced more than a foot apart, which told Arlis that the animal was at least thirteen feet long—the formula used by alligator hunters was a simple one.
The eyes stared back into the light, fixated, for an instant, then vanished in a swirl of silver froth before Arlis could get a good look.
Was it another iguana?
No, he thought. It couldn’t have been an iguana. The ugly little bastards didn’t grow that big. A croc had orange eyes, but this was too far inland, Arlis reminded himself, for it to be a saltwater croc. And this animal seemed to be spooked by bright light, which was unlike most crocs or gators in his experience.
Because of what Ford had told him—and other hunters, too—Arlis knew that many strange and exotic animals had escaped into the Glades—particularly after hurricanes. He himself had seen photos of a python that had busted open and died after killing and swallowing a six-foot gator. That damn snake had to have weighed three hundred pounds!
Did the orange eyes belong to a python? Arlis couldn’t remember ever seeing a snake’s eyes glow at night, but maybe some did. Or it could be an anaconda—those things lived in the water, he had read, and they grew to be thirty feet long.
Arlis tried to picture an anaconda with a head so big that its eyes were a foot apart, and the image settled it in his brain.
My God, he thought. It’s a big-ass damn snake!
Stunned, Arlis began walking fast toward the limestone mound, seeking higher ground, without even thinking about it. As he hurried, he barked, “Get away, stay away from me!,” hoping the tactic would work again.
From a black opening in the rocks, a voice too clear to be a hallucination shouted a faint reply. “Arlis? Arlis, are you up there?”
The old man felt dizzy—so many strange things were happening all at once. He stuttered, “Yeah, sure! I’m here!”
The voice came from beneath rocks and brush, Arlis realized, at the base of the mound. The voice said, “It’s us—me and Will-Joseph. Come closer, keep walking. I thought you’d gone off and left us!”
Arlis, beginning to recover, said in a loud voice, “Leaving a partner ain’t something I would do!,” which was now true. He would never again go off and leave a friend.
He hadn’t been hallucinating, which was a relief, and now Arlis felt better about himself than he had in a long time.
It was Tomlinson’s voice. There was no doubt about that now.
Tomlinson was alive—maybe the boy, too.
TWENTY-THREE
THE NIGHT WAS COOL, NOT COLD, BUT PERRY HAD used a towel to wick gasoline out of the generator and built a deadwood fire at the edge of the lake while he bickered with King about who was going into the water to help me with the jet dredge.
They were both afraid, although King was better at hiding it. And he had the fake leg injury to use as an excuse.
“Don’t blame me, blame yourself for trusting Jock-a-mo,” he had told Perry more than once. “I’d handle the hose if I could—hell, I’ve done it! But I can’t, so it’s up to you.”
They had left me facedown at the edge of the lake, hands and ankles tie-wrapped again, while they collected wood. It didn’t take long because they were in a hurry now that there was a chance that Arlis would hike to the dirt road and flag down help. They decided it would take the old man at least two hours to make it to the road, then another half hour to get to the highway, which left them with some time to help with the salvage work before they had to get in the truck and try to intercept him.
“We can give it an hour, but not a minute more,” Perry had finally agreed—one of the few things that he and King hadn’t argued about since Arlis had escaped.
I wasn’t so sure. Arlis was too smart to follow the trail we had cut. There was too much risk of King and Perry catching him, plus it would be shorter to hike cross-country, through swamp that was too soft for the truck.
Arlis Futch and I had had our differences over the years—the most serious having to do with a woman the old guy had had a crush on—but I didn’t doubt his courage or his skills as an Everglades hunter.
When the fire was going, the cons finally cut me loose, then tossed me the remains of an open MRE. I hadn’t eaten anything but the crackers they’d given me, so I ripped open a foil pouch and had vegetarian chili as the men continued bickering. I would need the energy before the night was done.
King and Perry were a painful pair to watch. If some scientist had melded prison genetics with random bad luck, the two could have served as a template. Backdropped by flames and sparks that soared starward, the men resembled absurd rodents, their silhouettes becoming more animated and their voices louder as they squabbled, until Perry finally said, “Okay, okay! I’ll get in the goddamn inner tube. But I known damn well you’re faking!”
“I wish that was true,” King replied, sounding suddenly pleased. “I can barely walk ’cause of that son of a bitch, which is all your fault and you know it.”
“Oh . . . bullshit,” Perry yelled. “But don’t think the cut’s gonna still be fifty-fifty because it’s not. The cut has to be sixty-forty if I’m doin’ extra work. What do you think about that, smart-ass?”
Unperturbed, King said, “Perry, you drive one hell of a hard bargain! I guess I got no choice, now, do I?” He didn’t bother to hide the sarcasm, and there was a smile in his tone when he turned toward me and lied, “We’re discussing our part of the take—not yours, of course.”
I didn’t bother answering. I was watching Perry, who had begun pacing. With the rifle angled over his shoulder, he resembled a toy soldier now. Maybe the man had run out of amphetamines or possibly he had recently swallowed a few more, because his voice was quivering when he spun toward King and screamed, “You always get your way, don’t you, you son of a bitch? Well, at least I won’t screw up the job like you did. But you’ve got to agree to one more thing before I do it. And you’re not gonna weasel out of this one.”