“Get it off me, get it off me, get it off!”
Its fangs were twin syringes sinking deep. She beat at the long writhing body with her fists. The snake lashed backward, and in a frozen instant she saw it clearly: the broad, flat head, the lidless eyes bisected by vertical pupils, the mouth stretched wide to expose shining fangs and surreal pinkish-white lips.
White mouth. The thought floated like a bubble just at the level of consciousness. It has a white mouth.
Then the bubble popped, the idea was lost, as the snake lunged again.
She dodged it. Her sudden sideways movement sent her tumbling backward into the water with a splash.
It showed its fangs once more, challenging her, then slowly unpacked itself from the jungle of roots where it had lain in ambush. Coil by coil its ponderous, impossibly long body unkinked, while its head nosed languidly toward the water.
She watched, numb with trauma, wondering blankly if it meant to come after her and finish the job.
Finally the snake’s full extension was presented to her like an unrolled carpet. How long was the goddamned thing? Five feet? Six? Thick, too-not ropelike-an undulating cylinder of muscle, nearly as large in diameter as her lower leg.
The snake slipped into the water, lung inflated, head and neck lifted above the surface. For an eerie moment it seemed to regard her out of one cool, unwinking eye.
Then it glided off into the murk. She followed it with her gaze until it had merged with black water and vaporous air, like some evil spirit of the swamp that had briefly materialized out of mud and rot and miasma, only to surrender its form and return, ghostlike, to its essence.
In the near distance, violent splashing.
Turning, she saw a faint yellowish glow.
Jack’s flashlight.
She remembered the siren’s wail that had split the night.
No siren, of course. Screams. Her own voice raised in cries of blind panic. She’d given away her position, and now Jack was coming for her. Coming fast.
He was swimming like a maniac, chopping the water with wild, vigorous strokes. Already his flashlight’s beam tickled the branches of dead mangroves at the other end of the channel.
She clawed at the roots, trying again to find a handhold, but her fingers wouldn’t work right-they were spastic and uncoordinated, her muscles still fluttering with the aftereffects of trauma-the roots kept slipping from her grasp.
Light dazzled her.
Turning her head, she looked blinking into a yellow glare.
“Evening, Mrs. Gardner!” Jack called cheerfully. “Funny meeting you here.”
He was wading in the shallower part of the creek, flashlight in one hand, gun in the other. Black water retreated from him in lazy ripples as he took a final step toward her.
Slowly he lifted the gun, taking aim.
Kirstie waited, breath stopped. No way out for her, not now. She wondered how the bullet would feel as it chewed through muscle and bone.
“Count of three, sweetheart!” He was laughing. “One! Two!”
The flashlight jerked sideways.
A splash-Jack facedown in the water-a muffled crack as the gun discharged into the muddy bottom, launching a geyser of sediment.
In the moment before he’d meant to shoot her, he’d lost his balance somehow. Slipped on the wet mud, maybe. Or had the snake gotten him, too?
She didn’t know, couldn’t guess. Some kind of miracle had taken place, and she was in no position to argue with it.
This time her hands found purchase in the roots. She hauled herself out of the water.
Ducking under the mangroves’ leafless branches, she kicked a deadfall of rotted timber out of her way and plunged blindly into the night.
40
For a confused moment Jack had no idea what was happening.
He’d been about to fire when a sudden impact from behind had hurled him headfirst into the water.
The gun had punched a hole in the creek’s thick sediment and gone off. Recoil and the spray of mud and water kicked up by the shot had shocked him into releasing both pistol and flashlight.
Now he groped for the Beretta, half buried in the mire.
Slam.
Another collision, and he was shoved sideways, out of reach of the gun.
He spun around, twisting free of whatever shapeless thing was trying to get him in its grasp, then surfaced, gasping.
A yard away, Steve surfaced also.
Wet hair was plastered to his forehead. His eyes squinted comically to compensate for the loss of his glasses. In his hand was the Beretta, caked with black muck.
The two men faced each other, hip-deep in the shallows.
“God damn,” Jack breathed. “Thought you’d be out of action by now.”
Steve shook his head. “I’m still in the game.”
Jack glanced toward the thicket of mangroves where Kirstie had been cornered. She was gone.
“Well, congratulations, Stevie. Looks like you rescued your precious wife from certain doom. I wouldn’t have missed her at that range.”
“I know.”
“So what now? You plan to shoot me?”
“Yes.”
“Just like that? In cold blood?” He raised both arms, displaying his empty hands. “When I’m no threat to you?”
“You’re always a threat, Jack. To me and Kirstie and everybody else you come in contact with. Remember that coral snake we found in the bathtub of the plantation house when we were teenagers? It was dead, but it could still bite. That’s you. You never give up.”
“Tough talk.” Jack forced a smile. “But you won’t shoot me. You can’t. Not like this. In a fight, sure; you nearly nailed me back at the house. But now that I’m disarmed and willing to surrender, you’re not going to gun me down. Your conscience won’t let you.”
“Wrong, Jack,” Steve whispered, and looking into his eyes. Jack was suddenly cold, chilled by what he saw there, the pitiless intensity of that gaze. “My conscience won’t allow a thing like you to live.”
The Beretta steadied, its muzzle focusing like a lidless eye on Jack’s chest from three feet away.
Jack gazed into that small black hole and saw eternity.
So this is it, he thought numbly. Well, fuck it. I’ve had my fun.
Steve’s finger flexed, squeezing the trigger.
A dull, muffled click.
Misfire.
Jack allowed himself no time to think or feel. Instinct drove him.
He snapped his leg out, pistoned a kick at Steve’s midsection, felt a thud of solid contact. Steve doubled over, and the gun sailed free, vanishing with a splash.
Instantly the Swiss Army knife was in Jack’s hand, spear blade extracted with a flick of his thumbnail.
Now. Go for the kill.
With a ululant war whoop, the cry of a predatory animal, he flung himself on Steve and thrust the blade between his ribs.
Steve stretched his mouth in the shape of a scream. Only blood came out. It stained the water in coiling purplish swirls.
Jack wrenched the knife free and stabbed again, sticking Steve in the abdomen, then jerked the blade clockwise, turning it like a screwdriver.
“You son of a bitch,” Jack hissed. “Why’d you make me kill you, you stupid son of a bitch?” He rammed the knife in deeper, burying it up to the handle. “We could have been partners if you hadn’t fucked it up!”
Dimly he was aware of an acid burn in his eyes, which might have been tears.
Steve tried once more to release the scream caught inside him. Racking convulsions choked it off.
Jack hung on to the knife, riding Steve in the choppy water as his body bucked and thrashed.
Then abruptly Steve went limp, breath sighing out of him.
Jack thought of Anastasia dying in the radio room just a few hours ago. It seemed strange that this man he had known, this man who had been the best friend of his adolescence, should die no differently from a dog.