“Danny! Get outta here!”
He crashed through the reeds. Razor-edged leaves cut his face and bare arms. If he could get to deep water, dive into the channel…
Behind him, something crashed through the palmettos. Only then did he realize the cough and growl had been purposeful, meant to flush him out.
The reeds broke around him. Open water lay ahead. He bunched his legs for a leaping dive-but something massive struck his back, pounding him facedown into the shallow water.
All air was knocked from his lungs. Knives cut into his shoulder and back. He fought to get his arm around, to fire blindly over his shoulder. He managed one squeeze, the gun near his ear. The blast deafened, but not enough to miss the hissing scream that followed, full of blood and fury.
A shadow fell over him, blocking the sun.
He felt hot breath on his neck. Jaws clamped onto the back of his head and shoved his face under the water and into the boggy mud. He felt pressure in his skull, a moment of piercing pain, a crack of bone- then nothing but darkness.
DANNY HEARD THE gunshots, the piercing scream of rage, the call for him to flee. He knew he had only moments. Bobcats and bears hunted the Louisiana wetlands, but whatever had made that cry was far larger and had no place among its swamps and bayous. The hairs rose all over his body, vibrating to that scream.
He grabbed his pole and propelled his boat away from the main channel. It was the only direction open to him. The fallen tree limb blocked his way. It was far too large and tangled to move on his own. And he knew he had no time to struggle with it. He had to get as far away as possible.
As he poled, he listened for more gunshots, a blistering shout, any sign that his father was still alive. But the bayou had gone quiet. Even the mosquitoes seemed to have grown more hushed.
He dug the pole into the bottom mud and shoved. He passed the spot with the mangled crab pots and continued deeper into the maze of hillocks and dense stands of cypress. He didn’t know this section of the bayou. All he knew was that he had to keep moving.
The weight of the pistol helped keep him breathing. He had shoved the gun into his belt, not trusting he could free it from its leather holster in time.
Just keep moving…
It was his only hope. He needed to reach open waters, maybe even the Gulf itself. But he realized he was headed in the wrong direction, north instead of south. He had no hope of reaching the Mississippi, but small settlements lay between here and the Big Muddy. If he could reach one, raise an alarm, stir up men… men with lots of guns…
Time slowly passed, measured by the pounding of his heart. It felt like hours, but was probably less than one. The sun hung low on the horizon. At some point noises returned to the swamp: the croak of frogs, the whistling of birds. He even welcomed the buzzing clouds of mosquitoes. Whatever monster hunted the swamps must have decided not to give chase.
The thin channel opened at last into a small lake. He poled into the center of it, glad to see the shoreline retreat around him. But the sun had dropped below the tree line, turning the lake’s surface into a black mirror.
It was in the reflection that Danny caught a flicker of movement along the shoreline. Something white flashed silently through the forest, keeping mostly out of sight.
He grabbed the pistol from his waistband.
A deadfall along one edge of the lake allowed him to catch his first glimpse of the beast. It looked like a pale tiger, only sleeker and longer of limb, balanced by a long tail. It carried something limp and pale in its bloody muzzle. Danny feared it was some bit of his father, an arm, a leg.
But as he kept his gaze locked over the barrel of his pistol, he saw it was a large cub, carried by its scruff.
Before the cat disappeared back into the forest, it stopped and glanced back at Danny. Their eyes locked. Its muzzle rippled back and exposed fangs that looked like bony daggers. A hot wetness flowed down Danny’s left leg. A trembling shook through him.
Then in a flicker, the cat vanished back into the forest.
Danny remained with his pistol still pointed. After a full minute, he slowly sank into the center of the boat. He hugged his knees to his chest. He sensed the big cat had moved on, but he wasn’t going anywhere. He would rather starve than ever move closer to shore.
As he watched the forest around him, he could not shake the memory of the creature’s gaze. There had been nothing bestial in those eyes, only calculation and assessment. It had seemed to be judging him, deciding what was needed to reach him.
In that moment Danny knew the broken tree limb had not blocked his way by accident. The cat had done it purposefully, to separate the two men. It had gone after his father first, recognizing the greater threat, knowing its other prey was trapped and at its mercy. With Danny snared as surely as a crab in a pot, he was easy pickings for later.
Only something had drawn the beast off.
Something more troubling than a boy in a boat.
Chapter 10
Jack crossed over the swinging bridge. He didn’t bother with the moldy rope rails that lined both sides. He didn’t look down-though several wooden slats of the bridge had long rotted and fallen away. He carried his weight with the easy balance of the familiar.
Ahead, his family home rested on one of the small islands in Bayou Touberline. The land was really no more than a hillock pushing out of the black water, fringed by mats of algae and edged by saw grass. The house sat on the crown of the island, a ramshackle construction of rooms assembled more like a jumbled pile of toy blocks. Each marked additions and extensions built as the Menard clan had grown over the past century and a half. Most rooms were now empty as modern life lured the younger generations away, but the core of the ramshackle structure remained, a sturdy old stacked-stone home. It was there his parents still lived, well into their seventies, along with a smattering of cousins and nieces and nephews.
An old fishing boat listed by a dock near the side of the house. It still floated-more by the sheer will of his older brother than any real soundness of keel. Randy sat on a lawn chair at the foot of the dock, beer can in one hand, staring at the boat. Bare-chested, he wore knee-length shorts and flip-flops. His only acknowledgment of Jack’s arrival was the lifting of his beer can into the air.
“So we’re going hunting,” Randy said as Jack reached him.
“Did you call T-Bob and Peeyot?”
“They got word. They’ll be here”-Randy stared to the lowering sun, then belched with a shrug- “when they get here.”
Jack nodded. T-Bob and Peeyot Thibodeaux were brothers, half black Cajun, half Indian. They were also the best swamp trackers he knew. Last spring, they had helped find a pair of drug smugglers who had abandoned ship in the Mississippi and tried to escape through the delta. After a day on their own, the escapees were more than happy to be found by the Thibodeaux brothers.