    |
                       
|
The First 48Excerpt
The transmission popped and the boat jumped forward, veering back toward the boulder point under the lopsided drag of the man who now had both hands locked on the gunwale. He was heaving himself onboard. Jane grabbed an oar from the bottom of the boat -it was taking on water- and swung at the man's head. The crack of board on bone was startling. The boat lurched, suddenly free from his grip. Jane staggered, her arms flailing, and nearly went overboard. She lunged for the outboard's throttle and grabbed hold, saving herself and quickly regaining control of the boat.
On the other side of the spit, the patrol boat was surging for the mouth of the cove, a creamy white foam slipped along its gray hull. Jane pushed a dark string of wet hair off her face and looked ahead. To her right was the patrol boat, now almost invisible in the glare of the rising sun. Ahead, water forever. To her left, a point of land. Beyond that? Maybe something. They would catch her on the open water. She went to the left. Water bubbled up from the leaky bottom. Jane's sneakers were underwater. She looked back. The big boat was at the mouth of the spit. She twisted the throttle, but it was already as far as it could go. By the time she reached the point, they were fishing the man she'd clubbed out of the water. She rounded the point and lost them from sight. Ahead was more water. Flat water forever and no sign of another boat. To her left, the shoreline continued. An island? That or a massive peninsula. Either way, there was no sign of anything but rocks and trees. Jane strained her eyes. Was that an inlet? She could hear the rumble of the big boat's engines as it approached the point. She looked back and saw its bow plowing up the water. She willed her skiff to go faster, but the opposite was true. The water in the bottom now sloshed up over the tops of her ankles. Its added weight was slowing her down. There was an inlet. She could see it clearly now. The small dark opening in the shade of the trees. She craned her neck. A narrow murky stream. The water was dark, soiled by the mud from the small estuary. Jane looked back. She could now make out the forms of the men on the bow of the patrol boat. One of them had what looked like a shotgun. He aimed it at her. Jane looked back at the stream. She was almost to its mouth. She turned her attention again to the patrol boat and saw the small burst of smoke issue from the shotgun's barrel. A second later, she heard the slug buzzing angrily past her. It struck the stump of a nearby tree with a thwack. The man fired again. Jane felt a fresh bolt of fear. She crouched and swerved her boat back and forth. The leaves and branches of the trees snapped and hissed at the passing slugs. She was at the mouth of the stream now. She shot right in and soon had to duck to avoid random low-hanging branches. The morning light filtered through the heavy canopy of leaves. It filled the cool air with soft brown light. The motor's whine was muted now by the thick foliage and the heavy smell of mud and sulfur and rotting plants. The water's edge was crawling with thorny brambles. The stream began to bend wildly and she was forced to slow down. Jane puttered on, careful not to entangle her boat in the thickening foliage. Above, the canopy began to diminish and the cool air was replaced by the burning yellow sun. The stream grew wider. Many of the trees were now dead, bleached by the sun, rent with dark holes, broken and decayed. Now the motor began belching blue smoke. She was riding too low. The water in the bottom of the skiff was almost to the middle of her shins. She doubted that she could go much farther before she sank. The stream became a swamp, thick with dead trees. Green slime floated atop the water now. Jane let up on the throttle for a moment to listen. In the silence of the swamp, she could easily hear the distant putter of another outboard motor. It was hard to tell, but she could only presume that they had lowered another skiff from the big boat and were now pursuing her into the swamp. She opened up her own outboard again, frantic now for a landfall. When she saw a grassy finger, she headed directly for it. It wasn't until she was beneath the big dead tree that she realized it was covered with something strange, as if it had endured a snowfall of slick black jelly. Each of its dozen or more dead branches was heavy with whatever it was. She was under the first branch when she saw the loop. They were snakes. She swung the outboard hard to the right to get away, but the maneuver bumped the stern into the trunk of the decaying tree and the snakes began to writhe all at once. One dropped down into her boat and darted toward her with its teeth bared. Jane shrieked. She jumped up and fell backwards over the gunwale, into the slime. The water's surface boiled with writhing black snakes. Jane splashed toward the grass. Something bit her neck. She screamed. Her feet found the mucky bottom and she thrashed at the water. Another snake bit her leg. She spun, kicked and screamed again, throwing herself back into the warm grass. She crabbed backward, kicking at the snakes. Her fingers dug into the sandy dirt and she flung handfuls of it at the writhing snakes. Then she blinked, and they were gone. The last flicker of a tail whipped away into the shadows of the tall grass. Jane looked up. The skiff had continued on without her, slogging slowly through the swamp, leaving a dark plume of smoke floating in its wake. Jane grabbed at the stinging in her neck. Her muddy hand came away with a fresh streak of bright red blood. She gasped and pawed at her leg. Two deep holes oozed blood of their own. Breathing heavy, she unzipped Mark Allen's sweat jacket and pressed the clean white lining against the bleeding bite. How poisonous? She used the jacket lining to wipe the worst of the pungent slime from her face and rose, trembling from the grass. She started at the sound of her skiff as the prop clattered noisily against a submerged tree then ground to an abrupt halt with the violent sound of snapping of metal. A blue heron flapped noisily up from the sky, startling her with its size. In the quiet, she could clearly hear now the drone of the approaching motor. She had lost one of her sneakers in the muck. She thought nothing of it until she felt the nasty prick of thorns as she scrambled across the grass finger and toward the thicker trees. The ground grew firm beneath her uneven gait and she began to run through the maze of black bark and bright green leaves. She looked up at the sun. It was close to its apex and gave her no sense of the direction she was moving in. She had no idea where she was going. But she knew with the instinct of a wild animal that her hunters were right behind her. © Tim Green 
BUY THE BOOK from an independent bookstore or Amazon.  |
|||
 |