They then heard a flurry of crashing noises in the water, and the yellow raincoat suddenly went in and out of sight. Jessica instinctively rushed toward the sound, ahead of Sorrento.
“ Wait… wait up! We go in together!” he shouted, rushing in behind her.
The sound of a struggle ahead in the fog-laden bayou beckoned her on. So far, they had been unable to save any of the Skull-digger's victims. Jessica, acutely aware of their utter failure in this regard, meant to change that here and now. Then a deafening silence fell over the place, and Jessica again spotted the yellow cloth. It began to move and thrash about in the black water, and then she heard the sound of the bone cutter's deadly whirr.
“ Jesus, he's killing her right now!” Jessica rushed toward the flagging yellow marker in the dense forest ahead. They had come perhaps a hundred yards from where they'd left Konrath and O'Hurley. Her flashlight shone crazily, hitting the tops of trees now as she brought up her 9-mm semiautomatic to bear on the scene.
As she came into a clearing of caked mud and ooze, she fell and her body was trapped up to her hips in a sucking muck. She'd fallen prey to the swamp. Just ahead of her, from her prone position in the sucking mud, she saw the last of the color yellow go down the gullet of a feeding alligator that was pulling back into the river. Then she realized that Kenyon had leapt onto the monster, that he was actually wrestling with the alligator, using his bone saw now on the creature, cutting wide swaths of tough skin from its head, attempting to kill it. She knew instinctively that this was no act of heroism on Kenyon's part, but rather a rage against the beast and an attempt to regain Mrs. Swantor-or rather her brain-for himself.
Jessica, staring at this sight, froze, curious and amazed.
From behind her, Sorrento shouted as he broke through the brush, almost joining Jessica in the quagmire. Balancing himself, he came to a standstill and stared out at the water where the battle raged. “Shoot… shoot him,” Jessica shouted at Sorrento.
While Mike hesitated, Jessica managed to bring up her gun, readying to fire at Kenyon when she saw that he'd vanished. All had gone silent in the water as if there had never been a disturbance. Nothing left of the battle but ripples on the surface.
Sorrento cursed himself for having hesitated firing. He imagined either the gator had sunk its teeth into Kenyon, or the madman had slipped away. He could be making his way to shore, given that the alligator was busy with Swantor's wife. She pictured Kenyon wading from the water and crawling onto shore somewhere on the island, still holding firm to his bone cutter.
“ Can you get me out of this muck?”
Sorrento worked his way to solid ground as close to her as possible, trying to reach her. He perilously reached a hand out to her, nearly falling in beside her. “Sonofabitch is getting away,” he complained, unable to reach her.
“ No, he slipped off to the left. I saw him,” countered Konrath who'd come up on the clearing from another direction. “He's still out there.”
“ Will you two please get me the hell out of here?” asked Jessica. “We've got to follow the riverbank. Try to keep up with Kenyon.”
Konrath located a strong branch, and with Sorrento's help, they towed Jessica to safety.
“ We have to split up.” Jessica told them. “Kenyon could crawl ashore anywhere on the island, maybe down by the boathouse, make a clean escape. I swear I won't have that, gentlemen.”
Konrath helped her to her feet. “I say we call in for help and wait until daybreak before one of us gets killed.”
“ You do what you think's right, Mr. Konrath,” said Jessica. “I'm going after the bastard.” She stood mud-soaked before them, her eyes determined.
Sorrento suggested, “Why don't you radio for everyone aboard the cutter to form a search party, Mr. Konrath? By time they get here, it will be daybreak.”
“ I'd do that but I lost my radio someplace out here, and the only other one is back with LaPlante's body.”
Sorrento then turned to Jessica, but she was gone, moving swiftly along the bank and out of sight.
“ Damn that impetuous woman,” said Sorrento, before going after her.
Kenyon had felt terror rip through him as the alligator plunged below the surface, turned topsy-turvy, spinning and going for the bottom while holding on to Mrs. Swantor, a little of her coat still extended from its jaws. Kenyon's own ability to hold on became a question of losing either the gun or his bone cutter, something he couldn't allow. So he'd lost the gun in the struggle. In the end, it had been a futile attempt when the alligator dove into the depths, dragging Mrs. Swantor with it.
He imagined her brain deep inside its gullet on its way to the stomach, and awaiting digestion.
He cursed those chasing him; he'd had to give up the fight when they appeared. He had swum away, trying to keep the bone cutter from taking on any more water than it already had.
He tried to catch his breath as he swam, hearing the authorities in the distance. He quietly made for the bank, disorientated and wondering where he was in relation to the house and the boat dock.
Then he saw the gator coming for him, weakened but coming on, its eyes filled with an eternity, its mouth still filled with small parts of Mrs. Swantor's raincoat.
Horrified now, Kenyon hurled the bone cutter ahead of him, hoping it would make shore, and then he swam faster and noisier in the same direction. The creature was right on his heels, snapping and trying to grab hold of Kenyon.
Kenyon had weakened it considerably with the damage he'd done the monster's head, yet it came on like a demonic force. Kenyon now pulled himself to land, and tugging at the exposed roots of trees, he threw himself onshore, tearing at the earth and pulling himself as far from the bank as he could. When he looked back, he saw the thing had somehow climbed ashore as well.
“ Fuck, the damn thing's fixated on you, Phillip,” Grant reasoned. “Something in it has to have Phillip-to feed on Phillip's cosmic mind.”
But Grant didn't want to die, not like this. He clawed his way farther along, mustered his strength and got to his feet. He ran.
Having heard Kenyon's struggle from the water and the thrashing alligator, Jessica positioned herself as close to the battle as possible. She had grabbed a vine in the underbrush where she saw Kenyon attempting to escape the alligator, and she pulled the sturdy vine taut just as Kenyon raced toward her, unaware of her presence. Jessica had waited for the exact moment to rip at the hanging vine that cut across Kenyon's path. The vine stiffened at an angle, cutting him viciously across the face.
This sent him down on his back, a bruise across his forehead like one of the lines he'd so often drawn on his prey.
Seeing Kenyon immobilized, the alligator now took one last, powerful leap, and with its front feet firmly set, its bottom jaw scooped beneath Kenyon's skull and the massive upper jaw awaited its lower counterpart. The consequent crack, snap and pop through bone sounded like small gunfire at a distance, muffled as it was by the monster's closed jaws. The massive teeth met directly at Kenyon's forehead. Again the monster chomped, and Jessica heard the subsequent sound of crackling bone until she imagined the man's brain was spiked. She wondered if he were yet alive in this position.
Grant Kenyon, the man she had chased halfway across the continent now, writhed, his body stiffening and his every fiber feeling the pain, not unlike the pain that he had inflicted on his victims. He was still very much alive. As the gator thrashed, so did Kenyon's body.
Finally, Jessica listened to the horrible sound of bubbles and air escaping Kenyon in a long, painful agony of last rites.
She held out her firearm, preparing to put an end to it, but she questioned such an action. Kenyon had shown not the slightest mercy to his many victims, victims he presumed to rob of their souls while they suffered a live torment.