After the life-flash: more blackness. Her brain was misfiring. Did she hear someone shout? Did she hear a loud clack? Like her name, none of this mattered. Bub bles exploded from her mouth and then she bucked like a fish on a pier as her lungs filled with water and the frenzied thuds of her heart… stopped.-
Now the blackness-hell, perhaps-was all-pervading.
Impressions, then. A splash in reverse. Something tugging at her. Hands? Who knew? She was dead.
The-vomited water. Thrashing, and a coughing fit that threatened to tear her chest out.
"Got her." A voice seemed proud. "Got her back."
"Ya don't say?"
The woman's eyes shot open in the brightest moonlight. She shivered, heaving, on the floor of a flatboat. A longhaired man with a kind face knelt aside, tending to her.
"You all right, lady?"
Her brain refit the scattered jigsaw puzzle that was her consciousness. Drenched, she hacked up more water, and sucked in hard breaths. Eventually, she figured what happened. "My God… you saved my life…"
"Sure enough did, ma'am. Pretty fancy piece of work if I may say so."
More sentience gathered. Providence had given her a second chance! She leaned up and looked around. The longhaired man held her hand. At the other end of the boat, a stockier, bearded man was hauling a limp alligator aboard with a grappling hook. The moonlight crisped the image; she saw a hole in the animal's head-the same animal that would've eaten her. A bullet hole…
What a stroke of luck. God had thrown down a lightning bolt to save her. As she was drowning-and was about to be chopped apart by gator jaws-this pair of poachers had happened by.
"How can I ever repay you?" she sobbed, hugging the longhaired man.
"I'd say you're damn lucky."
"Oh yes, I know! And I'll repay you, I promise."
The bearded one had stacked the dead gator atop of several more. "Lady, you must not know about Big Jaw Swamp. They call it that for a reason."
She nodded absurdly, still partially disbelieving that she was still alive. "Thank you, men. Thank you, thank you…"
"You're a long way off from the campground, a damn sight. And this swampland, Big Jaw? It's been closed to campers for years-too dangerous."
The longhaired one: "That's why we're here."
To poach, of course. "Oh, I understand. And I wouldn't dream of telling anyone what you men were doing out here."
Silence.
The woman looked at both men, who remained stone-faced.
"I'd say you're damn lucky," the longhair repeated, "if it was anyone else that pulled you out, I mean."
"Whuh… what?" she pleaded.
"Nice jewels." Her diamonds were pulled from her fingers. A hand rummaged through the big pocket of her shorts, extracting her soaked cash, ID, and cards. "Um-hmm. ATM card."
Before she could reckon more, her top was torn open. She shrieked, spitting water. Rough hands twisted the six-thousand-dollar pair of implants. "Yeah, she's a looker, all right, for an old one."
"Old one's more seasoned!"
Aghast, she was flipped over on her belly and her shorts were hauled off.
"Please, please!" she tried to reason. "It doesn't have to be like this! I'll do anything you want, and give you
"Um-hmm."
A hand was laid so hard across her buttocks the sound could've been a bullwhip. She shrieked, then shrieked again when that same pinkened buttocks was bitten hard.
"What you gotta understand, lady," the longhaired one said, "is we ain't got time to fuck around. Just some quick fun and we're gone."
"That's fine, believe me," she pleaded more as her spirit turned dark as the water, "that's fine. We canwe can-I'll do anything you want."
The other one sat toward the rear of the boat, near the hulk of fresh-killed gators. "Ain't no fun to poke 'em cold anyways."
They took turns, chortling as they splayed her middle-aged body into shapes she'd never imagined. Gentle lovemaking this was not. The longhair's hand continued to crack her skin like a whip. She yelped as soft flesh was bitten for effect: the buttocks, her nipples, her face.
So this was what providence had saved her for, to bring her back from the dead, for this.
"Yes sir!" the bearded one reveled. "She's a party, all right!"
"Been out in this hot swamp three days. I'll tell ya, this is just what the doctor ordered!"
More revel. The woman was raped again, for posterity, perhaps.
Drained by terror and exhausted, she lay pasty, naked, eyes wide in the next inevitable contemplation.
A Buck knife was put to her throat, her ATM card flashing before her stare. "PIN, lady."
She told him without hesitation.
The bearded one appeared to be urinating over the side. Then he dragged up his overalls. "Three more out there. Guess they smell the old bitch's fear."
"They do that, I heard."
She could hear more gators splashing into the water, homing in on the commotion.
Of course, they'd let her go! They know I have friends at the campgrounds! They won't kill me because they know they can't get away with it!
"I'll punch her ticket, and then we can leave," the longhair said, hoisting a crowbar over her head.
"No," the beard said.
Thank God! she thought. See, they weren't that stupid.
"Throw her in alive. More fun that way."
No! No! No!
Recompense for a life of deceit and shallow sin? Or just some pretty damn bad luck?
Like the woman's name, it didn't matter.
She didn't even have time to scream when she was tossed nude and thrashing into the water. The gators converged.
"We got a full load anyhow," the beard said. "Let's head back."
"Good idea. After all that, I could use a cold beer…"
They watched for a few moments as the woman was hacked apart chunk by suntanned chunk. Then the boat's motor was started and off they went.
"Good goddamn! Life is sure good to us, ain't it?"
.You got that right…"
The longhaired's name was Jonas. The bearded one's was Slydes.
(II)
"It just seems kind of bizarre is all I'm saying," Nora cited, setting out a row of specimen jars along the makeshift table they'd set up in the head shack. They'd already put up their tents at the campsite, and Annabelle had decided the light wasn't ideal for much photography today. Fine with me, Nora thought.
Loren plugged in the small field microscope, clicked the switch several times to make sure it worked. "You're not yourself today, you know?"
Nora winced. "Oh, bullshit, yes, I am!"
"All right, all right, forget I said that. So what is it? What's so bizarre?"
"Well, for one, the army guy. Trent. He's acting weird, isn't he?"
"No."
"Oh, bullshit!" she snapped.
"Hey, you asked." Loren's facial expression seemed a meld of amusement and confusion. "How can he be acting weird, Nora? You don't know him. So how do you know the difference between him acting weird and him acting normal?"
Nora slammed down an empty case. "Oh, blow me! You'd have to be a moron to not see it!"
"Well, I think my 159 IQ might contravene your assessment. What's your IQ, by the way?"
"Oh, blow me!" She huffed over to the next case of equipment. Nora's was 158, and Loren knew that. "Don't forget, buddy, I am your boss. You're my T.A. That stands for teaching assistant. You're still working on your doctoral degree and-oh, how do you like that? I already have mine, which is why I'm the professor and you're my assistant."
Loren laughed. "You do realize I was just joking."
"Yes!"
"So tell me, then. Why, exactly, is it your analysis that Lieutenant Trent is acting weird?"
Nora sighed. He's right. I'm not myself today, and I'm fully aware of that. "I don't know. The scenario, I guess."
"The scenario isn't exactly atypical, Nora," Loren pointed out. "We're zoological experts sent by the college to escort a field excursion, in this case a photographic one. National Geographic no less. That's pretty cool. They didn't ask anybody else in the state to do it. They asked us to do it. Any other time, you'd be so into this you'd be spinning like a top. But no. You're pissed off instead. You claim that Trent's acting weird. Well, I don't think he's acting weird at all. I don't know where you're coming from."