Black Water (38 page)

“They getcha?” Harvey asked, nodding in the direction the hogs’d disappeared. Hub shook his head. Harvey unlocked the chain and put it on Hub’s right wrist, through the satchel grips, back on his wrist, and pocketed the key. Raeleen and Harvey put on their own backpacks.

“What’re we takin’ with us?” Harvey asked, nodding to the camp goods.

“Nothin’,” Raeleen said. “Nothin’ that’d slow us down.”

They picked up their weapons, and Harvey took one last look at Superman’s body. “I wish we’da stayed home ‘n never started this shit.”

Raeleen wrapped her arm around his waist and squeezed. “I doubt it’da made any dif’ernce. I think maybe if it hadn’t been hogs, here, it’da been somethin’ else, som’ers else.” She pushed on his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Harvey took point, then Hub. Raeleen brought up the rear, contemplating shooting Hub in back o’ the head.

…Th’day th’first dies…

The sun was still fairly low on the horizon when they came on a creek, burbling peacefully, cut deeply in a gully, maybe fifteen, sixteen feet across, hemmed in on both sides by a steep, gravelly, rocky wall. Floods had scalloped a wall along the far side. A tangle of broken timber, debris from past floods, was wedged in ever so many yards. A fallen log straddled the gap, both ends wedged in tight. Water coming on the high side flowed through a gap only about a foot deep between the creek bed and bottom of the log, then became a small waterfall. The drop was six or seven feet below this natural bridge.

Harvey kicked at the log’s end a couple of times to test its stability. Determining it wasn’t going anywhere, he started over, carefully, but about halfway acrost, his foot slipped on the spongey, slippery moss and he slud off the lee side. Going down feet first, he thought he was gonna be all right, but with the added weight of his backpack, the Sharps, and bein’ off balance, he landed hard and his left foot glanced off the side of a slime-smeared stone like it was ice. He crashed onto his left side, bruisin’ his hip badly on a sharp rock. The rifle clattered across the stones and settled in the water.

“Get over there!” Raeleen barked, nudging Hub away with the end of her rifle. Hub moved off, and Raeleen set the rifle on the ground, adjusted her holstered .45 in case she had to go for it, and carefully, but quickly, walked the log just over Harvey. There he sat, on his butt like a baby in a playpen, water flowin’ over his legs.

“You okay?” She’d just lost one son and was suspicious of anything happening to the other.

Harvey pushed the wet out of his hair and rubbed it back. “I ain’t sure,” he said, more embarrassed than anything. “I didn break nothin’, but I mighta fucked up m’foot.”

“Gotchur bag?”

He pulled it out from under his shirt and waggled it at her.

She looked back over her shoulder at Hub to make sure he was being good.

“I ain’t goin’ nowhere,” he said, reading the look.

She turned to face Hub so she could keep an eye on him, got down on the log on her all fours, reached down, and wiggled her fingers to Harvey. “Come on.”

While he was pushin’ hisself up out o’ the water and gingerly testing his foot, Hub was lookin’ around. The wind was comin’ up. A familiar wind. All too familiar.

“Yeah, shit,” Harvey said, testing his ankle, “I hurt it some.”

“Well,” Raeleen said, “they ain’t nothin’ we’cn do but keep goin’, come on.” Harvey started to bend to get his rifle. “Leave it!” Raeleen blurted. “We got others.”

Harvey grimaced from the pain it took to hobble under the log, and reached for her hand.

“Rae?”

She looked up to Hub. He nodded to the sky.

“You better hurry.”

She followed his nod and saw the darkening clouds boiling overhead and the treetops swayin’ back and forth. She looked back down at Harvey. “Gimme yer hand. Quick!”

He did, and as he started to pull hisself up, his chest slid past a short stub protruding off the log’s low side. After pullin’ his hex bag out of his shirt to show Raeleen, he’d neglected to tuck it back. It snagged the stub, ripped off, and plopped in the water. Harvey tried to get it, but with the bad ankle, a wasted effort. Dumbstruck, they watched it tumble downstream, sluicing through and over the stones, until it disappeared.

Then they heard it.

The screeching, the wailing, approaching like a thundering locomotive from Hell. Harvey pictured Superman and what the hogs had done to him and wondered if it was his turn for somethin’ as bad—or worse.

Raeleen lay flat on the log, wrapped her right arm around that side, leaned to the left, and reached for Harvey. “Move!”

Harvey had no more than reached up when he jumped back and looked down to see a two-foot-long cottonmouth hangin’ from his pants leg, its fangs hung up in the fabric. He’d been bitten. Then another got him. And another. Another. In seconds, they were all over, like they’d popped up out o’ thin air. They were slitherin’ out of holes in the gravelly creek walls.

Hub watched one wriggle right between his own two feet, slide down the bank, and splash into the water. It had no more interest in him than the hogs had. It undulated in the water with its kin, straight to Harvey, and bit him. Raeleen jumped up as one wriggled past her on the log and dropped over the side. Cottonmouths, rattlers, and copperheads slithered through the water, ever one of ’em bound for Harvey. He reached down and squeezed hard with both hands, squishin’ somethin’ inside his pant leg. A writhing serpent fell out. He swooned, pressed the heels of his hands to his temples, and fell back in the pool. He looked like a six-foot-two, two-hundred-and-forty pound child, sittin’ on his butt in a wading pool. The venom taking effect, he looked at the squirming multitude, confused and bewildered. He picked one up and brought it to his face as if to look at it, and it bit him in the cheek. He looked up at Raeleen and whimpered, “Mama?” Then his lip curled, his eyes rolled up, and his body crumpled as if his bones had turned to butter. He flopped back, smackin’ his head, hard, splittin’ the back of his skull on the sharp edge of a rock, and the water turned the prettiest pinkish-red. His body spasmed, sickeningly, a byproduct of the venom. Finally, it stopped, but even in death, the serpents continued to bite.

…Th’day th’first dies…

Nature exploded while Raeleen struggled to stand up on the log. She turned around and pulled Hub’s revolver from her belt. “Well, asshole,” she yelled over the storm, “it’s over. It’s done. They’re dead. I got nothin’ t’lose now.”

“’At’s CRAZY,” he hollered back, his eyes squintin’ from the rain and wind. “We still got a chance,” but all he saw looking back at him was the gun’s big black hole, and in back of it, a face that’d lost all reason.

Lightning cracked. The thunder was deafening. Hub ducked as if it’d been thrown at him. Raeleen never flinched. All she felt was her finger crooked around the trigger, and all she saw was the look of fear on Hub’s ugly face.

“What d’I care?” she laughed, crazily, through gritted teeth. “She’s got both m’babies now. I ain’t gettin’ out alive, ‘n I’ll make damn sure you don’t! Like you said, maybe me killin’ you’s part o’ her plan all along. I don’t know ‘n I don’t much care. It’s awright with me.” She raised the gun, helt it out at arm’s length, and thumbed the hammer back.

Hub looked down the barrel where the hot lead slug was gonna come screamin’ from and put one o’ those neat little holes in his forehead, blowin’ out the entire back of his skull, brains and all. That was the picture he saw. Nothin’ else. Obviously all that bullshit ‘bout your life flashin’ through your brain was just that. Bullshit. He did notice, however, that her hand wasn’t shaking. Not a’tall. She looked happy. She wasn’t gonna get talked out of it this time. It was gonna happen. She pulled the trigger.

click

He rocked back a step but caught hisself before falling over. He’d been fully prepared to die, and it was a shock that he hadn’t. He wasn’t disappointed, but he was surprised.

So was Raeleen. She looked at the gun, then at Hub. He started to move to her, but she snapped the gun back up.

He stopped.

She thumbed the hammer back—again. Aimed—again. Pulled the trigger—again.

click

Again.

Hub leaned back and howled. “It’s empty! You dumb bitch! You forgot t’reload it!”

Quicker than she could get out o’ the way, Hub jumped to the log, swung the satchel with both hands, and clobbered her upside the head. The blow knocked her in the water on the log’s high side. She righted herself, but before she could shake it off, he jumped off the log, wound up and swung the satchel like an Olympian in the hammer throw, and hit her again. The blow spun her around. She fell flat on her face in the water, but before she could get up, Hub was on her, straddlin’ her back. He leaned for’ard with all his weight on the back of her head, grinding her face in the gravelly bottom. Gathering all her strength, she pushed herself up onto her all fours, Hub ridin’ her like a hobbyhorse. He got off on her left side before she could get to her feet and kicked her, hard, in her left saggy tit.

It felt as if her breast had exploded. The kick emptied her lungs, and the pain emptied her stomach. Lumpy globs a’ vomit flowed downstream as she grabbed for her ruined breast and rolled over in agony to her back. Except for the excruciating pain, her mind was a blank.

Hub jumped on her, astraddle her gut. She bucked and tried to push him off, but she didn’t have near the strength on her back she had on her belly. He pounded her in the same tit, and when her hands went to protect it, he hammer-fisted her face and shattered her nose. Bright red blood flowed over her lip. Temporarily stunning her with a hard blow to her left cheekbone, he lifted the heavy bag over his head and smacked it flat in her face. Blood gushed from her broken nose and a gash over her right brow, down her cheeks, and into the water.

They were both so consumed with hate and rage they didn’t notice the air was filled with Lootie’s screech. Hub finally weakened Raeleen to the point where he could grip her throat with both hands. He leaned for’ard and, lockin’ his elbows out, straight-armed all his weight into it, helt her head under the water. She thrashed desperately, trying to pry his fingers loose, but it did no good.

Then Hub noticed her hex bag bobbin around in the water above her throat. She gasped for breath when he yanked her head out o’ the water just long enough to let her watch him rip it off her neck. He pressed the sodden bag to her busted nose and ground it in the blood, then tossed it in the water. She watched it flow under the log. Laughing, he leaned into her again, forcing her head under the water. Raeleen’s fingers dug into his, but it was useless. She finally let go, and Hub figured she was finished.

He figured wrong, though, because under the water, she was groping for the knife in the sheath on her belt. She pulled it out and jammed the blade into Hub’s side, hard. He gnashed in pain and almost let go, but came to his senses and, if anything, squeezed harder. She stabbed him repeatedly in the hip and thigh, anywhere she could stick it—under the circumstances, she wasn’t particular. But still he didn’t let go, his fingers buried in her throat. Then it hit him, that with his fingers clamped around her throat, she’d probably last longer than if she took a lungful o’ water. He pushed her head down as far as he could and then let go. As he’d hoped, she took advantage of it and sucked, hard. He helt her face under the water, allowing her to take all the water her oxygen-depleted lungs wanted. Then he rewrapped his hands around her throat….

Lookin’ up through the watery distortions, Raeleen saw her killer. There was no mistaking the long, scraggly hair, the scar’s discoloration, and the eyes, one inky black, the other….

…and this time he squeezed so hard he felt somethin’ snap in her throat. Immediately, her body went slack, and the knife rolled from her dead hand to the gravelly creek bottom.

…Th’day th’first dies…

Raeleen was dead, but unlike Henry’s end, the hot wind didn’t subside and just blow off. The dark, menacing clouds kept boiling and thunder rolled. Blood pulsed from his wounds when he rolled off Raeleen’s body, exhausted. He stood up, and although hampered by the satchel, unhitched his pants and pulled ’em down far enough to check the wounds. They were bleeding, but other than burnin’ like Hell, he didn’t believe they were anywhere near life threatening. Most of ’em had hit him in the hip and upper thigh. Nothing vital. He hitched his pants back and, bending to Raeleen’s body, searched her pockets for the key to the manacles. Then he remembered. Harvey had it. He remembered his puttin’ it back in his pocket after chaining him up that morning.

He hobbled along the crumbly creek bank. He’d been so busy throttlin’ the life out o’ Raeleen, he hadn’t noticed how the creek’d risen. The water that’d been flowin’ under the log was now lapping over it. Raeleen’s lifeless body was wedged under it, helping to dam it up. Standing in water now almost knee high, he looked into the lower part o’ the pool where dozens of snakes continued to wriggle and slither over Harvey’s lifeless corpse.

He picked up a cantaloupe-sized rock out o’ the water and tossed it over the side to scare ’em off. It hit Harvey square in the sternum, forcing water to spout from his mouth. His arms and legs jerked skyward, his eyes bugged open, and he screamed as if bein’ ripped from a horrendous nightmare.

Hub screamed!

If the writhing, squirming mass’d had the capability, they woulda screamed too, but instead, they took their shock out on Harvey’s already venom-saturated body, all over again. Then, as quickly as it’d started, it was over. Harvey plopped back in the water. Dead.

Again.

The miraculous reanimation had stirred the wrigglers up but hadn’t scared ’em off as Hub’d hoped. He looked at the blood runnin’ off the tips of his fingers. Blood that wasn’t comin’ from the knife wounds but his scarred arm. Rain pelting his face, he looked into the boiling sky and shook his fist. “It’ll take more’n this, you old bitch!”

Then Hubert Marshall Lusaw started off, the satchel with fifty thousand dollars still chained to his wrist.