Gateways

Jack grabbed his arm. “Hold on a sec. I want to see this again—on the TV.”

“Fine. And while you’re setting that up, I’ll be calling—”

“Just wait, okay? Just let me see it again before we get officialdom involved.”

Dad reluctantly agreed, grumbling about wasting time as Jack wired the camera to the audio-visual inputs on the backside of the TV.

“This happened at least twelve hours ago, Dad. Maybe more. Another ten minutes isn’t going to matter.”

He finished plugging in the wires, then reran the movie. The TV screen offered over one hundred times the viewing area of the camera’s LCD. It offered sound as well. The movie began with the rattle of the lawn-ornament cans and Oyv’s barking, but that broke off with a high-pitched squeal just as the last of the clan reached the front of the house. A couple of minutes later the things streaked away. Jack was ready with his finger on the PAUSE button.

“Got ’em!” he said. He leaned closer to the screen. “But what the hell are they?”

The camera’s image intensification coupled with the speed of the things left little more than amorphous, blurry streaks on the screen, but there was enough resolution to reveal five shapes instead of three in the first batch. He’d missed the other two because they were farther from the camera and hadn’t caught as much light. He could see that the three in front had slightly curved bodies that reflected light like a shell might; their wings were fuzzy blurs.

“Y’ask me,” Carl said. “They look like flyin’ lobsters.”

Not a bad characterization, Jack thought. But lobsters didn’t fly, so what on earth were these?

Jack felt his neck muscles tighten. On earth…

Nothing on earth can harm you here.

But what if those flying lobsters weren’t from anywhere on earth? What if they were somehow from the Otherness? Semelee had gone down into that sinkhole. Maybe she’d found something down there that she could control like she did the creatures in the Glades.

Jack pulled the rolled-up paper towel out of his jeans pocket and unwrapped the little crystal shard.

“What have you got there?” Dad said.

“Not sure.” He handed it to him on the towel. “Careful. It’s sharp. Ever seen anything like it?”

“I did,” Carl said. “Saw one just like it stickin’ outta the tore-up wood on Miss Mundy’s door. I just figgered it was glass.”

Dad was holding it up, rotating it back and forth in the light. “You know, it almost looks like some weird sort of fang.”

Carl laughed. “Glass teeth! That’s funny!”

Dad lifted the beer bottle he’d been sipping at during the endless weather reports and scratched the fang’s point along the glass. It gave out a faint, high-pitched squeak as it scored the surface.

Dad frowned. “Not glass. Much harder. The only thing I know that can scratch glass like that is a diamond.”

“If it is a tooth,” Jack said, “that means that Anya was attacked by things with diamond teeth.”

They all sat silent for a moment, then Jack restarted the movie. They watched more of the things fly out, then the clan crowd into the house. When they emerged this time he kept freezing the frames but got no better view of what they were carrying than before. What else could it be but Anya?

But alive or dead?

As the movie ended again, Dad slapped his thighs. “That does it. Time to call 9-1-1.”

“Don’t bother, Dad.”

“Why on earth not?”

Jack pulled the Glock from the SOB holster and checked the magazine: full.

“Because I’m going after her and I don’t want them getting in the way.”

3

Tom could only stare at his son. He’d sensed that the Jack who had gone into Anya’s ruined house was a different Jack from the one who’d come out. But now he’d changed further. His mild brown eyes had turned to stone; he seemed remote, as if he’d left the room without moving his body.

“After her? Are you crazy? We trumped a couple of them once because it was a controlled situation and we had surprise on our side. But all that’s changed now. You can’t expect to stroll in there alone and—”

“Won’t be alone,” Carl said. “I’ll come along.”

Tom noticed Jack’s cold eyes warm briefly at this simple man’s unadorned courage. And in that moment he wished Jack were looking at him like that.

“Not necessary, Carl,” Jack said.

“’Tis. She’s a good lady. Lotsa people look at me funny, some don’t even want me around. But she always smiled at me and when it was hot she gave me lemonade and cookies and stuff like that. My own mother never treated me that good. And besides, the clan ain’t got no right to do that to her. Semelee’s gone crazy. Ever since she come up outta those lights she’s been different. Scary. Who knows what she’s got in mind for Miss Mundy. We gotta get her back.”

“But that’s what we have police for!” Tom cried.

He’d resisted the urge to chime in and say he’d go along too. Anya was a friend, a good one, and his blood curdled at the thought of her in the hands of a bunch of swampland inbreds. But it was just because he cared about her that he had to stop this craziness. Jack’s gung-ho plan might wind up putting Anya in greater danger. Might even get her killed.

“And in case you two would-be vigilantes haven’t noticed,” he added, “there’s a Category-Three hurricane blowing out there.”

“Exactly why we’ve got to take care of this,” Jack said. “Who’re you going to call? The Novaton police? Their whole department, along with every other cop south of Miami, is going to be tied up with the hurricane emergency. They’ll be busy with evacuation, shelters, looting prevention. You know the drill. A missing-person problem will be put on a back burner till the storm’s passed. Hell, we don’t even have proof she was taken.”

“But the movie—”

“—will be great in court. But do you think it will get a bunch of cops running around in boats out in the Everglades looking for a particular hummock in the middle of a hurricane?”

Tom had to admit he doubted it—but only to himself. Under no circumstances did he want Jack going out there—not even with Carl, who Tom couldn’t see as much help.

“Carl,” Jack said, pointing to the screwdriver protruding from his sleeve. “Do me a favor and use that to take the medicine cabinet out of the wall in the bathroom.”

Carl gave him a strange look—imagine that—then shrugged and nodded and said, “Okay.”

“Medicine cabinet?” Tom said. “What—?”

Jack turned his back and headed for the hall closet.

“Look, Dad,” he said as he knelt by the toolbox and began rummaging through its contents. “I don’t know for sure, but I think that taking Anya has something to do with the lights. But the lights only last a couple of days. By tonight or early tomorrow morning they’ll be gone for another six months.”

“What lights?”

“Oh, yeah. Right. I forgot.” He pulled a socket wrench from the toolbox and headed for the dinette table. “You don’t know about the lights.”

“Care to enlighten me?” Tom said, following. “And what do you think you’re going to do with that wrench?”

“You’ll see. As for the lights, forget about them for now. Take too long to explain. What matters is that after the lights go out, Semelee and Company will have no more need to hang around their lagoon. Good chance they’ll be gone by sunup tomorrow.”

“And take Anya with them?”

Jack gave him a stony look before he crouched under the table and began loosening the nuts that fastened it to its support pillar.

“I doubt it. She’s the one whose dog chewed a hole in the side of that big mutant gator, remember? I’m worried they’ll feed her to it before they go—if they haven’t already.”

Tom felt his knees go rubbery. “No…they couldn’t.”

“Let’s hope not.”

“Hey!” Carl called from the bathroom. “They’s only one screw holdin’ this cabinet in place and that’s only halfway in.”

“I know,” Jack called back. “Just twist it out.”

One screw? Tom brushed aside questions about his medicine cabinet. The thought of Anya being hurt overshadowed all that.

“Jack, we’ve got to call the police. Or the Coast Guard, or the Park Service.”

Jack stuck his head out from under the table and gave him a you’ve got-to-be-kidding look.

“She’s a friend, Dad. A better friend than you know. And I owe her.”

“For what?”

“For you being alive.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She’s the one who reported your accident to the police twenty minutes before it happened.”

“That’s as crazy as going out in this storm. She told you that?”

“She didn’t. But I’ve no question in my mind that’s what happened. She knows things, Dad. All sorts of things. And now she needs help. When a good friend needs help, you don’t call on somebody else. You go yourself.”

The words struck a chord deep within Tom. Yes, he knew that. He’d been taught that. He’d lived that. But where had Jack come by it?

And yet he couldn’t allow himself to bend here, couldn’t let Jack go out into that storm against twenty men.

“Where’s that written?”

Jack slipped out from under the table and rose to his feet, his face barely a foot away. He tapped a finger on the center of his forehead.

“In here. Right in here.”

Yes…that was where it would be. But not the only place.

He tapped his son’s chest, over the heart. “In there too.”

Jack nodded. “Yeah. There too.”

And as they stood staring at each other, Tom flashed back to Korea. That had been the Marine code: Nobody gets left behind. At least nobody still breathing. Sometimes you had to leave your dead, but you never left your living. If someone was stranded, or hurt and unable to get out on his own, you went in and got him.

And you didn’t call on anyone else because there wasn’t anyone better. You were US Marines, the toughest sons of bitches on earth. It was a matter of pride. If you couldn’t do it, no one could.

Back at Chosin, when Tom took that piece of shrapnel in the gut, he’d radioed in that he’d been hit and couldn’t make it out. He’d expected his buddies to want to come and get him, but figured there was no way with all the shit coming down on the Fifth. But damned if three of them hadn’t shown up after dark and carried him out.

“Help me lift off this top,” Jack said.

“What on earth for?”

“Let’s just do it.”

Tom grabbed one side, Jack the other. They lifted it, tilted it, and leaned it against the kitchenette counter. Then Jack reached into the hollow interior of the post and came up with a black plastic bag. Its lumpy contents clunked together as he laid it on the counter.

“What the hell? How’d that get in there?”

“I put it in the other day. Let me tell you, I had one hell of a time maneuvering that tabletop around on my own.”

“But what’ve you got in there?”

Jack reached in and came out with a fist-size lump of metal that he flipped over the counter. Tom caught it, saw what it was—a smooth metal sphere the size of a tennis ball, with a key ring at the top attached to a safety clip—and felt his heart trip over a beat.

“A grenade?”

“M-67s. I had a dozen sent down after seeing that gator.”

“Sent down when? I never saw any—” And then it hit him. “The toys. They were in the toys, right?”

Jack gave him a tight smile. “Right. I also—”

“Hey!” Carl called from the bathroom. “You got a gun in this wall!”

“What?”

A gun? In his wall? Tom started toward the bathroom but Jack got there first. Carl had pulled the medicine cabinet from the wall, exposing the studs and the unfinished backside of the Sheetrock of the opposite wall. The end of an empty metal tube jutted a couple of inches up from the lower end of the space. It had a blued-steel finish and looked like an open plumbing pipe until Tom spotted the bead sight on the end and realized this was the business end of a shotgun barrel.

Jack fished it out and handed it to Carl. Its black polymer stock barely reflected the overhead lights.

“Ever use a shotgun?”

Carl laughed. “You kiddin’? Fed myself mostly by fishin’ and huntin’ before I came to work here. If’n I wasn’t no good, I’da starved.” He took it from Jack and hefted it. “But I ain’t never see one like this before.”

Neither had Tom. He saw a breechlock, a magazine tube, but where was the slide handle?

“It’s a Benelli—an M1 Super 90, to be exact. I think the semi-auto action will work best for you.”

“A semi-auto shotgun?” Tom said. “I didn’t even know they made such a thing.”

“She’s a beauty,” Carl said. “I like the rubber grip. Kinda like a pistol.”

“Very much like a pistol. Will you be able to handle it?”

“Sure. I told you—”

“I mean”—Jack glanced at Carl’s right sleeve—“will you need to modify the stock or anything?”

“Nuh-uh. I’ll be fine.”

“Great. Excuse me, Dad,” he said as he turned and edged by Tom into the front room. “Be back in a minute.”

Without another word he ran out into the storm. Two minutes later he returned, dripping, carrying an oblong object wrapped in a blanket Tom had last seen in the linen closet. He pulled it off to reveal another shotgun.

“I’ll use this one,” Jack said.

With its ridged slide handle riding under the barrel, this one was more like how Tom pictured a shotgun. Its polymer stock was done up with standard camouflage greens and browns.

“It looks military,” Tom said.

“It is. It’s a Mossberg 590, made to military specs. Very reliable.” He started across the front room. “Now…one last thing and we’ll be set to go.”

Tom followed Jack around to the guest bedroom where Jack pulled out the bottom drawer on the dresser and laid it on the floor. Tom watched in shock as his son reached into the space beneath and produced one box of shells, then another, then another…

“Jesus, Jack! Did you think you were going to war?”

“After I saw that gator, I figured a little old 9mm pistol wasn’t going to do the job, so I ordered up some heavy artillery.”

“But two shotguns?”

“Well, yeah. One for here and one for the car, in case something happened while we were out.”

Carl stepped into the doorway, carrying the Benelli. “What you got this loaded with?”

“With what’s known as a ‘Highway Patrol cocktail’—alternating shells of double-ought buckshot and rifled slugs.” He held up one of the boxes. “Here are our reloads.”

Tom felt a tightening in his chest. He didn’t know if it was his heart or dismay at what was happening here. He slipped past Carl, went to his own bedroom, and pulled the M1C from the closet. He carried it back to Jack and Carl.

“What are you doing with that?” Jack said.

“Well, since I can’t talk you out of this insanity, I guess I’ll have to come along.”

“No way, Dad.”

Tom felt his anger flare. “Aren’t you the one who just gave me a lecture on going out for a friend in trouble?”

“Yeah, but—”

“And have either of you ever been in a firefight?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “No, of course not. Well, I have. And that’s what you could very easily wind up in. You’re going to need me.”

“Dad—”

Tom jabbed a finger at him. “Who put you in charge anyway? Besides, your mother would never forgive me if I let you go out there without backing you up. I’m in.”

Jack stared at him a moment, then sighed. “All right.” He held out the Mossberg. “But put away that antique and take this.”

“But I’m more comfortable with—”

“Dad, it’s going to be dark with all sorts of wind and rain. Let’s hope we can pull this off without any gunplay, but if it comes to that, we’ll be working close—maybe twenty-five feet, fifty max. A sniper rifle’s no good in that situation.”

Tom had to admit he was right. He reluctantly took the shotgun.

“But what are you going to use?”

“I’ll have the grenades. But I’ll also have…” Jack reached back into the space below the drawer and pulled out a huge revolver. It had a gray finish and was well over a foot in length. The barrel alone looked to be about ten inches long.

“Oh, man!” Carl said. “What’s that ?”

“Took the words right out of my mouth,” Tom said.

“A Ruger Super Redhawk chambered for .454 Casull rounds. I do believe this will stop that gator if he shows up again.”

“Looks like it’ll stop a elephant,” Carl said.

A discomforting thought started worming through Tom’s brain.

“Jack…you’re not in one of these right-wing paramilitary groups, are you?”

He laughed. “You mean like the Posse Comitatus or Aryan Nation? Not a chance. I’m not a joiner, and even if I were, I wouldn’t join them.”

“Then what are you? Some sort of mercenary?”

“Why are you asking all this?”

“Why do you think? Because of all these guns!”

Jack looked around. “Not so many.”

“You didn’t answer my question, Jack. Are you a mercenary?”

“If you mean one of those soldiers of fortune, no. But people do hire me to, well, fix things. I guess that might make me a mercenary. But—”

Just then the TV started emitting high-pitched beeps. They all hustled into the front room. A red banner took up the lower quarter of screen, announcing that a hurricane-spawned tornado had set down in Ochopee.

“Where’s Ochopee?” Jack said.

“Other side of the state,” Carl replied. “Way out Route 41.”

Jack looked at Tom. “Anyone wants to back out, now’s the time. No explanation required, no questions asked.”

Carl grinned. “Hey, I live in a trailer park. You know how tornadoes zero in on them places. I figure I gotta be safer out in the Glades.”

Just then, lightning lit the windows, followed by a rumble of thunder.

Tom’s gut crawled, but he said, “Let’s get moving.”

And God help us all.

4

Jack drove his paddle into the water to keep the canoe moving against the wind and driving rain. He had a terrible feeling that it might already be too late for Anya, but if not, then the sooner they reached her, the better.

Carl sat in the stern, working the little motor, steering them along the channel. Dad had the front, Jack the middle seat. When the channel nosed them into the wind, the engine didn’t have what it took to keep them moving; that was when he and Dad put their paddles to use.

He’d never seen rain like this. He’d expected it to be cold, but it was almost warm. When it wasn’t lashing them with horizontal cascades that would put Niagara Falls to shame, it pelted them with huge, marble-size drops that did drum rolls on the hood of his poncho. The rest of the Glades had gone away; the world had narrowed to a short length of the channel’s rippling water with only occasional glimpses of its banks. Everything else, including the sky, had been swallowed by dark gray sheets of wet. Only the ever more frequent flashes of lightning and roars of thunder hinted that there might be a world beyond.

Good thing the hardware store had been open so he and Dad could pick up ponchos—dark green, like Carl’s—and a hand pump. He didn’t want to imagine what this trek would have been like without the ponchos. Jack had his hood pulled tight around his head, the drawstring knotted at his throat. Still he was getting wet.

And the hand pump—they wouldn’t have got even this far without it. Into the wind, they paddled; when the twisting channel put the wind to their backs, Jack let Dad rest while he worked the pump to rid them of the rainwater that kept accumulating around their feet.

The canoe had been flooded when they found it. They’d flipped it to empty it, then wasted precious time trying to get the little motor to turn over. Carl finally got it going and they were off.

Jack cupped his hands around his mouth and leaned back toward Carl.

“Did we get to the shallows yet?” he shouted above the din of the rain.

Carl nodded. “Just passed them.”

And we didn’t have to get out and walk, Jack thought. Testament to the amount of water falling out of that sky.

“Let me know when we’re almost to the lagoon.”

Ahead of him Jack noticed that his father had stopped paddling. His oar rested across his lap as he rubbed his left shoulder.

“You okay?” he said, leaning forward.

Dad turned sideways. All Jack could see was his profile; the rest of his head was tucked into the poncho hood.

“I’m okay. Just not used to this sort of thing. At least I don’t have to worry about the lightning.”

“Why not?”

“I tried to lead an orchestra once and found out I was a poor conductor.”

Jack gave him a gentle shove. “One more of those and we toss you overboard!” He could see Dad was exhausted, but not too exhausted to come up with a rotten pun. He gripped his shoulder. “Take a breather. We’re almost there.”

Dad gave a silent nod.

Jack bent his back into paddling, forcing the canoe ahead into the wind. And as he sweated, he planned. They’d reach the lagoon soon. He tried to picture the layout…the houseboats, the huts on the bank. Would the clan be on the boats or ashore? Would they be at the lagoon at all?

Had to be. The lights would keep them there.

Light…it was fading fast. Somewhere on the far side of Elvis the sun was crawling toward the horizon, but the storm swallowed up its light, leaving Jack and company in growing darkness.

Good. The lower the light, the longer it would take the clan to figure out how much backup Jack had brought along.

He felt a tap on his shoulder: Carl.

“We’ll be getting to the hummock soon.”

The storm seemed to let up as they fought their way into the rainforest-like tunnel of green at the edge of the hummock. The palms, banyans, and gumbo limbo trees seemed to hang lower under the weight of the rain; aerial roots and vines brushed against their ponchos.

“Couple more turns and we’ll be in the lagoon,” Carl said.

Jack leaned back. “Should we shut off the motor?”

At that moment a bolt of lightning struck close enough for Jack to hear its buzz and sizzle; the almost simultaneous blast of thunder hit him like a fist.

He could just barely hear Carl through the ringing in his ears: “I don’t think that’ll be a problem. You?”

“Probably not, but shut down anyway.”

No telling what kind of vibrations the little motor might set up in the hulls of those ships. Why risk tipping them off?

Wind and rain blasted them again as the canoe slipped out of the tree tunnel and into the relative open. Straight for a while, then around a bend and they were in the lagoon.

At least he thought it was the lagoon. The water was wider and he could see only the near bank on his right, but where were the houseboats? He had a bad moment as he looked around and couldn’t find them, then a flash of lightning lit up the area and he saw both boats through the rain, floating straight ahead. The Bull-ship sat to the left, the Horse-ship to the right.

Dad must have spotted them too because he turned and started motioning toward the right bank.

“Put it in over there!” he said.

Jack figured he must have his reasons—and he was, after all, the only one with military training—so he passed the message to Carl.

When the canoe nosed into the bank, Dad hopped out and motioned Jack and Carl ashore. He led them to the lee side of a stand of twisted palms where they could converse without shouting.

“If they’re here,” Dad said, “they’re on those boats. Agreed?”

Jack nodded. “Agreed.”

“Okay. Then we need to deploy ourselves around the bank at wide intervals along a hundred-fifty-degree arc, no bigger.”

“Why not?” Jack asked.

“Because when you get much closer to one-eighty you run the risk of shooting at each other. Ideally we want all three of us to have line of sight to both boats, but if that doesn’t work, then the two flanking guns will concentrate their fire on the nearer boat; the gun in the center can fire on either—wherever it’s most needed.”

“Dad, I’m looking to get this done without turning the lagoon into the OK Corral.”

“Amen to that, but we have to be prepared for a worst-case scenario.” Dad patted the Mossberg through his poncho. “To get the most out of shotguns in this rain and low light, we’ll need to set up about fifty to seventy-five feet from the boats. That’s closer than I’d like, and lots closer than I’m used to, but these conditions don’t leave us much choice.”

Dad’s takeover of the tactics impressed Jack. He seemed to be talking from experience, so Jack deferred to his judgment.

“Just don’t set up too near the cenote,” Jack warned him. “You might see some lights shining up from it, but don’t get curious. Just stay away.”

“You mean the sinkhole?” Carl said. “I’ll take that spot. The lights’ve already done what they’re gonna do to me.”

Dad said, “Speaking of lights, if we do get into a firefight, don’t stay in one spot. We can hide pretty well in the rain and the dark, but our guns don’t have flash suppressers, so once we start firing, the muzzle flash will give away your position. Fire and move, fire and move. Unless of course you can time your shot to a lightning flash, but that’s a lot easier said than done.”

Jack swung the plastic bag with the grenades and the big Ruger over his shoulder. “Carl, you take the north position, near the cenote; Dad, you set up on the south end, I’ll take the middle; that way I can lob a grenade at either boat should the need arise.”

Which he hoped wouldn’t. He didn’t feature being shot at, and liked his father being shot at even less. The old guy had the experience, and he had the skills, but he also had a body that didn’t move or react like it did in its heyday.

“Anyone see any problems with that?”

Dad and Carl shook their heads.

“Good. Okay, once we’re all in position, I’ll fire a couple of shots to get their attention, then tell them I’m from the Novaton Police Department and demand they release Anya or else.”

Dad grinned. “Novaton Police Department? You’re planning to kill them with laughter…is that the plan? Better off saying you’re from the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Department.”

“What if they don’t buy it?” Carl said. “What if they start shooting?”

“Then we’ll have to shoot back—unless of course they bring Anya on deck.”

“Then what?” Carl asked.

“Then we improvise.”

Lifting his poncho to reveal the Mossberg, Dad spoke to Carl. “Since these are loaded with alternating slugs and double-ought, I suggest we aim the buckshot at the decks and the slugs at the waterline, preferably near the bow. Anywhere but the superstructure. At this range the boat walls will, I hope, stop most of the shot, but the slugs will go through them like paper, and Anya could be in there.”

Carl nodded. “Gotcha. Easy. Those boats is too pan-o-ramic to miss.”

Dad looked at Carl, then Jack.

“Don’t ask, Dad.” Jack gestured ahead. “Let’s go.”

“And look out for that alligator along the way,” Dad said.

Carl shook his head. “I heard Semelee and Luke talkin’ while I was stuck here and they was sayin’ Devil was hurt bad. The way they was talking, I don’t think he’ll be up for chasin’ us.”

“Be on the lookout anyway,” Jack said. “Even if he’s not, there’s still that two-headed snapping turtle.”

“Oh, yeah,” Carl said. His lips tightened. “Dora.”

“Two-headed snapping turtle?” Dad said. “What—?”

“Later, Dad. Just don’t get too close to the water.”

“Haven’t you both forgotten about something else to look out for? What about those flying things that gobbled up Anya’s dog and made such a mess of her place? I don’t want to run into them.”

“A snootful of double-ought buck will clip their wings, don’t you think?” Jack said.

Dad frowned. “If you can hit them. The ones I saw in the movie were moving pretty damn fast.”

On that reassuring note, Jack turned and led them away from the canoe. Heads down against the wind and rain, they sloshed through the oaks, palms, and cypresses, keeping a good ten feet from the water’s edge, heading toward the cenote. Well before they reached it, even through the driving rain, Jack could see the lights flashing up from its depths.

As they arrived at the rim, now only an inch or so above the waterline, Dad leaned close to Jack and spoke in a low voice, barely audible above the storm. “Now isn’t this a helluva thing?” He peered down into the flashing depths. “What on earth is going on down there?”

“Not sure,” Jack told him. “But you want to avoid too much exposure to those lights.”

Dad took a quick step back. “Why? Radioactive?”

Worse, Jack wanted to say, but that would stimulate a lot of questions he didn’t have time to answer. So he settled for, “Could be.”

Carl stepped ahead and crouched behind the head of a newly fallen royal palm. “This here looks like a good spot. Gives me a good bead on the Horse-ship. I’ll park here.”

Jack nodded and motioned his father southward. Dad followed, but kept glancing over his shoulder at the lights from the cenote. They seemed to fascinate him.

Along the way they passed the clan’s little boats—the Chicken-ship, the No-ship, and others—pulled up, turned over, and tied down on the bank. Jack spied a spot near the old Indian huts to take cover, but he kept walking. He wanted to see Dad as fully protected as possible.

He found him a spot behind the wide trunk of a cypress where he had a good angle on the Bull-ship.

Jack gave the old man’s shoulder a gentle squeeze and leaned in close. “Keep your head down, Dad. And if all hell breaks loose, be careful.”

His father patted his hand. “I’m the soldier here, remember? You just take care of yourself and don’t worry about me.”

Jack had a sudden urge to pull everyone out and head back to Novaton. A dark premonition stole over him, a feelin’ that something terrible was about to happen, that fewer would be leaving here than arrived. But he couldn’t turn back now, and he knew neither his dad nor Carl would go. They’d come too far. And Anya needed them.

One more squeeze of his father’s shoulder and then he hurried back to the ruins of the Indian huts. He found himself a spot behind a thick support post. He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but it began to rain harder.

Jack squatted and spread his poncho like an umbrella over the plastic bag. He removed a few of the grenades and stuck the safety clips into his belt. He pulled out the big Ruger and checked the cylinder. He didn’t have a holster big enough to hold it so he stuck it in his waistband. The nine-plus-inch barrel was cold and not a comfortable fit. If Semelee got a look at him she’d probably think he was very glad to see her.

But he wouldn’t be. It would be just fine with Jack if he never saw her again.

He rose and started to cup his hands around his mouth when he sensed movement behind him. He whirled, pawing at his poncho, trying to get his hand under its flapping hem, but stopped when he saw what it was: a small towel, tacked to one of the hut posts, was flapping in the wind.

Jack waited to let his racing heart slow—for a second there he’d thought he’d walked into an ambush—then turned back to the water.

He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted.

“Hello the boats!”

He repeated this three times at top volume before deciding that they weren’t going to hear him over the storm. He pulled out the Ruger and pointed it skyward. He’d never fired one of these, and had only heard of the .454 Casull round. He knew it was a monster so he was ready for a loud report and a wrist-jolting kick when he fired two shots in the air. Even so, the boom surprised him.

That ought to wake them up.

He replaced the two rounds as he began calling again.

5

“You’ll never guess who’s out there,” Luke said, grinnin’ and drippin’ as he came in from the deck. He wore a yellow slicker and a Devil Rays cap. Corley and a couple of the other men trooped in behind him, shakin’ the water off theirselfs like dogs.

Semelee didn’t feel like guessin’—specially if she’d ‘never’ guess the answer—so she waited for him to tell her.

Everybody in the Bull-ship had jumped at the sound of those two shots a moment ago. It’d sounded like a cannon goin’ off. Luke and the others went out to see what was up. Semelee had heard some shoutin’ back and forth but couldn’t make nothin’ out of it due to the poundin’ of the rain on the roof and sides of the boat.

Finally Luke told her: “It’s your boyfriend.”

Boyfriend? Semelee thought. What’s Luke—? Oh, shit.

“You mean that Jack guy? He ain’t no boyfriend of mine. I hate him.”

She did. Sort of. But that didn’t keep her heart from flutterin’ for a second at the passin’ thought that he’d come all the way out here in this for her. But that thought flew out the window soon as it came. He’d made it awful clear he wasn’t interested in the likes of her.

“Good,” Luke said. “Cause I hate him too. I hate anybody who thinks I’m stupid, and he must think we’re pretty damn stupid. Know what he said? Said he was from the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s office and that he’s got a whole passle of cops out there in the dark with him.”

“You sure it’s him?”

“Sure I’m sure. Recognized his voice, even through the rain. Couldn’t see him, but it’s him.”

“What’s he want?”

“Says he wants the old lady back. Callin’ her ‘Anya’ or somethin’ like that.”

Semelee felt her stomach plummet. “Then he knows we was there.”

She went to one of the little rectangles of glass that served as windows on Bull-ship ’s deckhouse and looked real hard into the storm. The rain splashin’ against the glass and runnin’ down its outside kept her from seein’ even an inch beyond it.

“He knows somethin’,” Luke said, “but he don’t know everthing, that’s for sure.”

“But how’s he know we was there?” She couldn’t imagine Jack just watchin’ from a window. He and his daddy woulda come out sure, probably with guns a-blazin’.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Luke said.

She turned and saw that Luke had opened a closet and was handin’ out rifles and shotguns. He pointed to Corley.

“Get below and haul everbody up here.”

“What you gonna do?”

He smiled at her again. “Gonna give him a nice warm lagoon-style welcome and make sure he don’t leave the Glades—least not alive.”

“That really necessary?”

As Semelee watched the men start pilin’ up from below decks, grabbin’ guns, and headin’ for the deck, she felt a little somethin’ stir in her chest. Like sadness. Like guilt. She’d taken a change of heart about Jack since yesterday afternoon. She’d tried to make him die then, but afterwards she was a little glad she’d failed. Yeah, he’d turned her down right to her face, but he’d only been tellin’ the truth: I’m taken meant he had someone else he liked better. End of story. He could’ve lied and then used her like she’d been used before, then dump her like she’d been dumped before. That would’ve been worse. That didn’t make her heart hurt any less, but at least he’d been straight with her.

“I think when he don’t get what he’s askin’ for—and he ain’t gonna—then I got a feelin’ there may be some shootin’. So I figure we’ll shoot first.”

“What if you’re wrong?” Semelee said. “What if that really is a buncha deputies out there?”

“Ain’t wrong. It’s him, I tell you.”

“All right. Say it is. What if he ain’t alone?”

Luke’s smile turned real ugly. “I hope he ain’t. I hope he brought Daddy along.” He lifted his cap and ran a hand over his scabbed-up head. “I got me a score or two to even with that old coot.”

Semelee stepped back to the window. Why did he come? This storm’s tearin’ up the place and yet here he comes, loaded for bear, lookin’ for an old lady he only met a couple days ago. What sort of man does that?

She ducked away from the window as the gunfire started outside.

Whatever sort of man Jack is, she thought with a sting of sadness, he’s gonna be a dead one pretty soon.

6

Jack had taken cover behind an old fallen trunk at the first sight of a rifle on the Bull-ship ’s deck. Good thing too, because they’d opened up without warning. Dad and Carl had responded immediately. The element of surprise allowed them to take down a couple of the clan before the rest of them dropped to the deck to take cover behind the gunwales. The Horse-ship crew had their guns out now and the air was filled with wind and water and lightning and bullets and shot.

Most of the fire from the Bull-ship seemed concentrated on Jack’s position. Semelee’s idea, probably…or Luke’s…or both. He’d definitely put himself on the wrong side of those two. When Jack dared raise his head, he fired back with the Ruger. He wanted Luke. If he could take him out, the rest of the clan would lose their steam. But Jack couldn’t identify him through the dim light and the rain. And even if he did, he’d be hard to hit. Jack wished he were a better marksman, but knew if by some chance he did hit Luke he’d be a goner. He was firing Cor-Bon .454 Casulls, hard-cast, flat-point, 335-grain rounds that jerked the barrel high every time he pulled the trigger. Which was okay in a way. If he missed, he wanted to miss high. He didn’t want one of those big rounds to plow through the hull and hit Anya.

The fire on Jack’s position became so intense he didn’t dare raise his head to return it. These guys were good shots. When a lull came, he belly-crawled back to the old huts and took a position behind a post. Maybe from back here he’d be able to take the time to aim and make his shots count. He glanced back at that towel flapping in the rain, thinking it ought to be one damn clean piece of cloth by the time this storm is done.

Lightning flashed as he turned back to the boat, revealing a design on the fabric that caught the corner of his eye. Something familiar about that pattern of lines and dots…

Whatever it was caused a ripple of nausea, and a chill, as if something has crawled under his hood and whispered across his neck on spider legs.

Jack fixed his gaze on the cloth, waiting for the next flash, and when it came he saw the pattern again and knew where he’d seen it before.

On Anya’s back.

With his blood sludging in his veins, Jack rose and stepped over to the cloth, ignoring the lead whistling around him, because it had to be a cloth, a cloth someone had drawn on, copying the pattern they’d seen cut and burnt and punctured into Anya’s back. He reached out and touched it, and when his fingers flashed the message that this was too thick and entirely the wrong texture for cloth, he slumped to his knees in the mud. Somehow he managed to hold on to the Ruger.

A sob burst from his lips, but the grief that spawned it lasted only a few heartbeats before a black frenzy boiled out of the vault where he stored it and took over. Repressing a howl of rage, he rolled back to the post and found his plastic bag of grenades. Breath hissing through bared teeth, he snatched one from within, pulled the pin, popped the safety clip, and waited, counting…

One thousand and one…

The note Abe had included with the grenades said the M-67 fuse gave a four-to-five-second delay between release of the clip and detonation.

…one thousand and two…

It also said each grenade had a kill radius of fifteen feet and a casualty radius of about fifty. Dad and Carl weren’t much beyond that but he was only peripherally aware of the risk. His focus was tunneled in on the Bull-ship and nothing was going to pull it away.

…one thousand and three!

As soon as he hit three, he lobbed the grenade up and out, then ducked behind the pole. If it hit the deck and exploded, great; if it exploded above the deck, even better.

But he didn’t wait for it to hit before pulling another from the bag. He was popping the clip when the first went off. He poked his head up as he started counting. His throw had been short by maybe half a dozen feet, but not a complete loss. It had exploded at deck level and the screams of the wounded and frightened shouts of the rest were music.

…three!

This one sailed toward Horse-ship —no need for them to feel left out—and it too fell short, but not without doing some damage to hull and human alike.

It looked so much easier in movies.

Jack was ready to pop the clip on a third when he heard someone thrashing through the underbrush to his right. The fact that whoever it was made no attempt at stealth left him pretty sure it was his father, but he raised the Ruger anyway. Sure enough, seconds later, Dad burst from a stand of ferns in a crouch and dropped down beside him.

“What the hell are you doing, Jack?” His eyes were wide; rain ran down his face in rivulets. “Anya’s in one of those boats!”

“No, she’s not, Dad,” he said through a constricting throat. “She’s dead.”

He frowned. “How can you know that?”

“I found a big piece of her skin hanging back there.”

“No!” he gasped. Jack couldn’t see his complexion but was sure it had gone waxy. “You can’t mean it!”

“I wish I was wrong, but I saw her back the other day and the same marks are on that piece of skin. They skinned her, Dad. They fucking skinned her and hung it out to dry.”

Dad placed a trembling hand over his eyes and was silent a moment. Then he lowered the hand and thrust it toward Jack’s sack of grenades. His voice was taut, strained.

“Give me one of those.”

7

Semelee lay tremblin’ on the floor, head down, hands over her ears. It sounded as if war had broken out. Those weren’t just guns firin’ out there. With the explosions and the way the windows was shatterin’, it felt like they was bein’ bombed.

Luke fell through the door, grabbin’ onto a bleedin’ shoulder.

“They got grenades, Semelee! They’re killin’ us out there! Corley’s dead and Bobby’s leg’s bleedin’ real bad! Y’gotta do somethin’!”

“What can I do? Devil’s dead and Dora’s no good on land.”

“The things from the sinkhole, the ones you brought up last night…we need ’em now. We need ’em bad!”

“I can’t! I told you before—they won’t come up till after sundown.”

No matter how she’d tried yesterday, she couldn’t get those awful winged monsters to come out of the hole while the sun was up. But as soon as it went down, they were hers—or so she’d thought.

She’d almost lost it when she first saw them. She hadn’t been able to get a good look at them while they was down in the lights, but once they was up in the air, in the twilight, what she saw scared her so much she almost dropped her eye-shells.

The most horrible lookin’ critters she’d ever seen.

They was the size of lobsters—not the crawdad-like things around these parts; no, these was thick and heavy, like the big-clawed ones from up north. These things had shells and claws too, but that’s where the likeness ended. Their bodies was waisted, like a wasp’s, and they had wings, two big transparent ones on each side, sproutin’ from the top of the body like a dragonfly’s.

Chew wasps—that was the name that popped into her head, and it seemed to fit them perfect.

Plus they had teeth. Oh God did they have teeth—each had big jaws that opened wide as a cottonmouth’s, and they was filled to overflowin’ with long sharp transparent fangs that looked like slivers of glass. One of the weirdest touches was the rows of little blue dots of lights along their sides that glowed like neon. They looked like they’d been drug up from the bottom of the sea where the sun don’t shine, a place so deep and dark that even God’s forgot about them.

God…he must’ve been havin’ a real bad day when he made those things. She had to wonder what kind of a world they came from, and how anything else survived with them roamin’ free.

“It’s dark as night out there now! Give it a try! You gotta! They’re putting holes in the hull. They’re tryin’ to sink us!”

“But why’re they tryin’ to do that? Why’re they throwin’ grenades, Luke? If they think we got the old lady and they want her back, ain’t they afraid of killin’ her along with us?”

“Who knows why, damn it!” Luke shouted. “They’ve gone crazy!”

But Semelee caught a look in his eyes, like he was hidin’ somethin’.

“What is it, Luke? What changed their minds? What makes them think she’s not here, or that she’s dead? You didn’t open your big mouth, did you?”

“No. Course not. What kinda fool you take me for?”

“Well, then what? What, Luke?”

Luke looked away. “I guess they found her skin.”

“What? How could they do that? You buried it.” Luke still kept lookin’ away. “You did bury it like I told you to, didn’t you, Luke?”

He shook his head. “Nuh-uh. I hung it up to let the rain clean it off, then I was gonna tan it…you know, like a hide.”

Semelee closed her eyes. If she had a gun right now she’d’ve shot Luke—right through his stupid, brainless head.

Her thoughts flashed back to last night…

She’d been in a frenzy, completely out of control…so pissed at that old lady for killin’ Devil and then ruinin’ her plans for Jack that she just…lost it. All the trouble she had gettin’ those things to come out of their hole didn’t help matters none either. By the time she realized that they wouldn’t come out in the day, she was all but frothin’ at the mouth.

When sunset came, so did the things. She had trouble controllin’ them from the git-go. Soon as they came out they wanted to run wild, but she managed to gather them into a group and herd them toward the old woman’s house. When they got there, they went crazy, rippin’ through the screen and gnawing through the front door.

Their ferocity frightened the hell outta Semelee, and she remembered thinkin’, Oh, God what have I got myself into now? And, bein’ inside them, she was beginnin’ to feel some of their bloodlust.

When they got through the door, there was the old lady, standin’ in the middle of her livin’ room, all done up in one of them funny Japanese dresses. She just stood there smokin’ a cigarette. Smokin’! It was like she knew she was gonna die. She didn’t scream, she didn’t cry, she didn’t even fight back.

But her plants did. They lashed out at the chew wasps and tried to entangle them with her branches. The wasps splintered them and striped off all their leaves.

But they still couldn’t get to the lady because of her little dog. Semelee especially wanted to even the score with that mongrel for killin’ Devil, but he wasn’t going quietly. She’d wondered how such a little thing could’ve killed the biggest gator she’d ever seen, and last night she found out. That tiny dog fought like a full-grown Rottweiler. He brought down two of the chew wasps before three of them ganged up on him and tore him to pieces.

And then there was nothing between the chews and the old lady. She didn’t try to run, she just stood there, like she was acceptin’ what was comin’.

That was when Semelee had second thoughts. She sensed somethin’ special about this lady—something extra special—and had a feeling she’d be losing somethin’ precious if she killed her.

Maybe it was the way she was just standin’ there. She had to be scared outta her mind but she wasn’t showing it, not one bit.

But the thing that most made Semelee want to hold off was knowin’ that this lady wasn’t just gonna be killed, she was gonna be torn apart. Much as Semelee hated her for messin’ with her plans, she didn’t know if she could go through with that. The other folks she’d sacrificed here at Gateways had been stung or bit or pecked up, and they’d died later…not right in front of her.

Semelee was gonna have to watch this and she didn’t have the stomach for it. Maybe gettin’ her house wrecked and her dog killed would be enough for the old lady. Maybe she’d learn her lesson and stop messin’ where she didn’t belong. Maybe she’d even have a heart attack and die later. A lot better’n bein’ torn to pieces.

But when Semelee tried to turn the chew wasps around and bring them home, they wouldn’t go. They smelled blood and there was no stoppin’ them. They lit into the old lady. And what did she do? She stood there and raised her arms straight out from her sides and just let them come.

Semelee wasn’t sure if it was the bravest or craziest thing she’d ever seen, but she did know it was horrible to watch.

More than watch. Semelee was in close with the wasps, inside them as they gouged the old lady’s flesh, crunched her bones. She could almost taste it, and gagged now at the memory. They was so fierce they didn’t even let her body fall to the ground. They ate her upright, even slurped sprays of blood right out of the air. And no matter what Semelee did she couldn’t pull them away. She wanted to drop the eye-shells but was afraid the chew wasps would turn on the clan who’d gone there just to see what these ugly-lookin’ things could do.

Finally, when they were through, there was nothin’ left of the old lady but the skin of her back. For some reason, the chew wasps wasn’t interested in it. They gobbled her up from head to toe, but left that rectangle of skin.

And when they was finished they started listenin’ to Semelee again. She quick got them outta there and back to the sinkhole. Soon as they was back where they belonged, Semelee yanked off the eye-shells and got real sick.

Back at the old lady’s house, Luke did two things, one smart and one dumb. The smart thing was pickin’ up the two dead chew wasps and bringin’ them back to the lagoon. If people came lookin’ for the old lady and found those, it’d be in all the papers and everyone’d assume they came from the Glades. Soon there’d be scientists and hunters and cops and thrill seekers all over the place, including the lagoon. The clan’s whole way of life’d be messed up.

The dumb thing Luke did was bring back the old lady’s skin. He—

The boom of another grenade—sounded like it must’ve exploded over by Horse-ship —yanked Semelee back to the here and now.

“Why, Luke?” She finally opened her eyes and stared real hard at him. “Why’d you do such a fool thing?”

“I wanted to keep it. You know, kinda like a souvenir. I like all those marks. They’re almost like a map. But never mind that. Y’gotta try those wasp things again, Semelee! You just gotta!”

She didn’t want to tell him that she was afraid to. She hated the way they made her feel…like all dark and ugly inside, with this endless hunger. Even with the gunfire, the explosions, the howlin’ wind, the leakin’ roof, the thunder and lightnin’ all around her, this seemed like a better place than where she’d been last night.

But she couldn’t just sit around and do nothin’ while the whole clan got massacred. She had to do somethin…and there was only one thing she could do.

Her gorge rose as she pulled the eye-shells out of her pocket.

“You’re gonna do it?” Luke said, a grin spreadin’ cross his face.

She nodded. “Yeah, but you gotta get outta here.”

The grin collapsed. “But Semelee…there’s all sorts of shootin’ out there.”

“Then get out there and shoot back. Just leave me alone so I can save our asses.”

“Okay, okay.”

He headed for the door in a crouch, then crawled out onto the deck.

Taking a deep breath, Semelee pressed the shells over her eyes and went searchin’ for some chew wasps…

8

“We’re not doing a whole helluva lot of damage with these things,” Dad said after they’d watched the latest grenade sail through the air and explode off the bow of the Bull-ship.

Jack had to agree. He would have thought that something that small and weighing almost a pound wouldn’t get tossed around by the wind. But this was no ordinary wind. He’d tried compensating for it by adjusting his throw but the trouble was you couldn’t wing these things like a baseball; you had to lob them, and the wind kept changing direction.

“We’ve caused some hurt, though.”

“Not enough,” Dad said, his expression grim. “After what they did to Anya, they…” He swallowed and shook his head. “They shouldn’t be allowed to live.”

“I don’t think we’ll be able to kill all twenty guys.”

Dad gave him a strange look. “I said they shouldn’t be allowed to live. I didn’t say we should do the killing.”

Oops. “Oh. Guess I misunderstood.”

“You’re scaring me, Jack.”

“Sometimes I scare myself.”

Just then Jack heard something that sounded like a scream. He looked over toward Carl but couldn’t find him in the dark. Then lightning flashed and he saw him rolling on the ground as he fought something that had clamped onto his right shoulder. Jack couldn’t get a good look at it, but whatever it was, it wasn’t alone. More of them were lifting out of the cenote and weaving toward Carl. The one that had him was too close for Carl to shoot at, so he was using the shotgun as a bat. But Jack could see that he wasn’t getting anywhere.

He slapped his father on the back. “Stay here and keep firing at the boats. Keep them pinned down. When you reload, forget the slugs and fill up on shot. I think we’re going to need it.”

“Where are you going?”

“Carl needs a little help.”

Rising to a crouch, Jack pulled the Ruger from under the poncho and ran through the rain. Lightning flashes lit the scene, and as he neared Carl and got a better look at what was attacking him, it almost stopped him in his tracks. The thing clinging to his shoulder had the head and saber-toothed jaws of a viper fish, the shelled body of a lobster on steroids, and two pairs of long, diaphanous wings. Another of its kind was gliding in for its own piece of Carl.

Jack stopped, knelt, took aim with the Ruger and fired. He scored a hit. The big Casull slug tore into the flying thing, leaving only a spray of greenish blood and a pair of still-flapping wings. Then Jack leaped next to Carl, rammed the Ruger’s muzzle against the eye of the thing chewing on him, and pulled the trigger. This time, not even the wings remained.

Carl groaned. “It hurts, Jack!” His left hand was covered with blood where it clutched his shoulder through the shredded poncho. “Oh, God, it hurts!”

Jack took only a quick look, wincing at what looked like exposed bone and a dozen crystalline teeth still buried in the ragged flesh, then turned back to the cenote. Three more of the things were up and coming their way. He grabbed the Benelli and started firing. The semiautomatic action let him get off four shots quickly. They weren’t all direct hits but the shot tore up the wings of the ones it didn’t dismember.

“Where are your shells?” Jack shouted.

Carl jutted his chin toward a box on the ground. His teeth were bared in agony. He seemed in too much pain to speak.

Jack started reloading the Benelli’s magazine. If he’d known he’d be facing these things he would have had Abe send down flechette rounds.

“Think you can walk?”

Carl nodded.

“Okay, then. Get over to where my dad is. I’ll cover you from the rear.”

Spreading out had been a good idea against the clan, but it meant certain death against these things. Time to circle the wagons.

“It’s Semelee,” Carl gritted as he lurched to his feet. “She’s controllin’ them.” Then he staggered off.

Jack turned back to the cenote and found half a dozen more of the things hovering over the opening in a cluster. He ducked behind a palm trunk and fired once into their center, knocking down two. They fell into the abyss but were replaced by four more.

Jack felt his stomach knot. This wasn’t good. He hadn’t brought enough ammo. But he’d brought his father and Carl. That made him responsible for them.

In the background he heard his father firing methodically, rhythmically, at the boats.

Save some of that ammo, Dad, he thought. We’re gonna need it.

And now another four joined the flock. But they didn’t swarm his way…their movements were sluggish and they didn’t seem to know he was there. They milled about, looking confused. What were they waiting for? Reinforcements?

If more were coming up from the cenote, maybe Jack could ambush them along the way. He unclipped a grenade from his belt—only a couple left—pulled the pin, and lofted it toward the cenote. It passed through the swarm and down into the opening. A few seconds later he saw a flash, heard a boom, but that was it. The ones fluttering over the hole didn’t even react.

If this were a movie like Rio Bravo, he’d stumble onto a crate of dynamite, conveniently left behind by a construction company, and use it to seal the cenote. But this was Jack’s world, not Howard Hawks’s. Things never seemed to work out that way for him.

He heard a scream behind him and recognized the voice this time: Carl again. He looked around and saw him staggering in a circle at the water’s edge. One of those things had its fangs buried in the back of his neck…and it was chewing…

Where’d that one come from?

Jack leaped to his feet and took off on a run. He couldn’t use the shotgun without hitting Carl too, so he pulled the Ruger. But before he could use it, Carl pitched over backward into the water.

That wasn’t all bad. The cenote thing didn’t seem to like water. It loosed its grip and buzzed back into the air, banking and gliding toward Jack. He already had the Ruger up. He waited until it was close, then fired at it head on. It dissolved in an explosion of green. As its wings fluttered to the ground, Jack dropped the Benelli and the Ruger and jumped into the water to help Carl, who wasn’t doing too well.

The water was waist deep and cool, its surface churning and bubbling from the wind and rain. The muddy bottom was slippery and sloped off on a steady decline. A bullet whizzed by, then another. Someone on the Horse-ship had spotted them. Jack heard Dad’s Mossberg boom, then a cry from the boat, and the bullets stopped coming.

“Carl!” Jack shouted as he leaned forward and stretched out his arm. “Give me your hand!”

Carl, with his poncho floating around him like a lily pad, thrashed and splashed and kicked his way shoreward. Jack grabbed his outstretched left hand and began hauling him in.

Suddenly Carl was jerked back. He let out a scream of pain and Jack was barely able to hold on to him as something pulled him back toward the center of the lagoon.

“Oh, my leg!” he wailed. “My leg! It’s Dora! She’s got me! Don’t let her have me, Jack!”

“I won’t, Carl.”

He started sobbing. “I don’t wanna die, Jack. Please don’t let her—”

And then his head plunged below the surface. Jack tried to dig in his heels but the bottom was too slippery. Another powerful tug pulled Jack forward so hard he went face first into the water. He was only under for a few seconds, but during that time he lost his grip on Carl’s hand. His feet found the bottom and he stood again, shaking the water from his face and eyes. He was shoulder deep now.

“Carl!”

Nothing. No reply, nothing but empty, wind-and rain-swept water stretching before him. He shouted the name again and thought he saw a hand break the surface and claw the air maybe fifty feet away. But it was there for only a second—if it was there at all—and then it was gone.

“Oh, Carl,” he said softly, staring at the spot. “You poor bastard. I’m sorry. So sorry…”

A lump formed in his throat. A good, simple man was gone. Jack had known him just a couple of days, but he’d come to respect him. He still didn’t know what had gone wrong with Carl’s right arm, but that didn’t matter. Carl hadn’t let it stop him from leading a useful life. He’d adjusted, with no apologies, no excuses.

A bullet whizzed by Jack and he realized he was a sitting duck out here.

My fault, he thought as he quickly waded ashore. If I hadn’t bribed him to take me to the lagoon, if I’d just said no tonight when he wanted to come along, he’d still be alive. Probably be sitting in his trailer right now watching his TV.

My fault. But not all my fault.

It’s Semelee…she’s controllin’ them.

Right. Semelee.

Jack reached the bank and climbed up onto the mud. He looked toward the cenote and saw maybe twenty of the winged things clustered over the opening. As he watched, they began to fan out and glide toward him.

His blood cooled at the sight. No way he and Dad could bring them all down, even standing back to back with shotguns. Some of them would get through. And once they got you down, you were finished.

Couldn’t stop the winged things…but maybe he could stop the one controlling them.

With the things trailing him, Jack ran back to where his father was still firing at the boats. He heard cheering from the decks as the clan spotted the winged things on Jack’s tail. They didn’t shoot. Probably thought it would be more fun to watch him get gobbled up like Anya.

“Behind me, Dad! Incoming!”

Dad was crouched behind a tree, with the trunk between him and the boats. Jack dove for the ground, sliding through the mud on his belly as his father looked around.

“Where?”

“Right behind me!”

Lightning flashed and he saw his father’s jaw drop.

“Dear God! What are—?”

“Don’t talk, shoot!”

And shoot he did, pumping round after round out of the Mossberg into the air behind Jack. Jack didn’t look around to see what effect he was having. He assumed it was about as good as it got. He laid the Benelli across Dad’s knees for when the Mossberg ran dry, then seated himself back to back with his father and turned to the Bull-ship. If Semelee was anywhere, that would be the place.

He wiped the rain from his eyes and took aim at the superstructure. The big Casulls would rip through it, in one plywood side wall and out the other. He couldn’t be sure he’d hit Semelee, but at least he could distract her…

9

This was so hard…

Semelee crouched in the dark of the cabin and pressed the shells tighter against her eyes. The chew wasps hadn’t wanted to leave the sinkhole until the sun was down, but she’d forced them. She’d tried that yesterday and it hadn’t worked, but this time she was able to coax them up. Maybe it was the storm or the night like darkness up here. Whatever the reason, they came. But so slowly…like only one or two at a time.

Then, once she got them outta the hole, she could barely see. Had to be because of the sun. Even though it was hidden behind mountains of storm clouds, it was still above the horizon; she guessed that whatever was filterin’ through was enough to affect the eyes of the chew wasps.

But she’d been able to see Carl who was right close to the hole and shootin’ at the boats. Traitor to his kin! She set a couple of the wasps on him, then went back to draggin’ others up.

Suddenly one of the ones on Carl got blowed up. And then the other. She seen it was Jack doin’ the shootin’, and though she didn’t hate him like before, she couldn’t let this stand. She had to end it between them. One of them had to go. Semelee preferred Jack.

She had a whole bunch of the chew wasps up by then but couldn’t get them organized. They wanted to go here and there and it was just about all she could do to keep them together. Jack blasted a couple of them out of the air and then got four more with a grenade in the hole as she was pushin’ them up.

She had to attack with what she had, but couldn’t get the swarm to move. She could control one of them, though, so she sent it after Jack. Somehow it wound up on Carl instead. The wasps seemed attracted to sound and movement, and Carl had been makin’ plenty of both.

But she didn’t have to send Dora after Carl when he went in the water—Dora did that on her own.

Goodbye, Carl.

Finally she’d got the swarm to move. She didn’t know why she suddenly had more control. Maybe cause the sun got closer to settin’ while she was chasin’ Jack. Didn’t know, didn’t care, all she knew now was she was on the hunt. And though her stomach turned at the thought of havin’ to go through another chew-up with these things, it had to be done. The survival of the whole clan depended on her stoppin’ Jack and whoever was with him—probably his daddy.

As she guided the wasps after the runnin’ Jack, she heard the guys on the deck start to yellin’. She wished they’d shut up. The chew wasps kept wantin’ to turn toward the noise. The voices pulled at them. She had to keep forcin’ them to stay on Jack’s trail.

Suddenly a piece of the wall exploded and showered her with splinters as something whizzed by her head. She was already crouched on the floor in a corner. Now she dropped flat, and just in time too. Another big bullet smashed through the cabin, low this time, just about singeing her butt.

He’s tryin’ to kill me!

She had to move those chew wasps in on Jack and his daddy. Now!

The old man was shotgunnin’ them, so Semelee split the swarm into two groups. She veered one left over the water, and the other around back. She’d catch ’em in the middle and—

A third big slug blasted into the cabin then, but this one didn’t go all the way through. It plowed into one of the benches of the picnic table and sent it flyin’ against her. She cried out as it conked her on the head. She didn’t think—she put her hands up to protect herself and dropped the eye-shells.

“Oh no!” She started feelin’ around on the floorboards, real frantic like. But it was so dark in here. “Where’d they go?”

She couldn’t control the chew wasps without ’em. They’d all go flyin’ back to the sinkhole if she wasn’t there to hold them.

Or maybe they wouldn’t.

Semelee wasn’t sure which would be worse.

10

“Jack!” Dad shouted. “Look!”

Jack was reloading the Ruger, readying to riddle the Bull-ship ’s superstructure with a few more Casulls. He’d been leaning against his father’s back, getting rocked forward whenever Dad’s shotgun went off, rocking back with the recoil from the Ruger.

He half turned, not sure of what he’d heard. His ears were ringing from the thunder and the booms of the weapons.

“What?”

“Those things. They were all clustered together at first, then they started dividing into two groups, and now…”

Jack turned further and squinted through the rain. He watched for a moment as the cenote things buzzed around in disarray, practically bumping into one another in midair. It looked like they didn’t know where they were, but the men from the boats were still cheering them on.

One of the things veered out over the water; two more followed it; then the whole swarm was making a beeline for the boats. Suddenly the cheering stopped, replaced a couple of heartbeats later by the reports of rifles and shotguns. Jack saw the clan knock a few down, but then the swarm was upon them. The shooting stopped, replaced by screams of pain and panic.

11

Semelee waited for the lightnin’ to flash again. That was the only time she could see what she was doin’. Here! A new flash, coming through the broke windows—where was they? She crouched on her hands and knees, search in the floor. Where was those damn eye-shells?

At least the big bullets had stopped poundin’ through the walls. Not for long she bet. Probably just reloadin’. In another minute—

Somebody started screamin’ outside. Then another. She recognized Luke’s voice among the hellish choir. He sounded like he was bein’ tortured. She jumped to the door and peeked out.

The chew wasps! They was attackin’ the clan. Oh shit oh shit oh shit! What was she gonna do?

Another lightnin’ flash, this time through the doorway. She looked around just in time to see the shells, lyin’ on the floor right up against the wall to her right. She jumped on them and clutched them tight in her fists.

Thank God! She had them. Now she could turn the chew wasps away and get them headed back to where they should be—on Jack and his daddy. But as she raised them to her eyes the door burst open and somethin’ came staggerin’ into the cabin.

Semelee screamed as it lurched to the left, then the right, then stumbled toward her. Whatever it was, it didn’t look human. It let out a muffled screech and then the lightnin’ flashed and Semelee screamed again. It was a man with three of the chew wasps hangin’ on him. One on his leg, the other with its head buried in his flank, and the third with its teeth worryin’ his face. He screeched again, then spun and collapsed onto his belly. He twitched a few times, then lay still.

Another flash of lightnin’ gave her another look at him. Through the rips in his shirt Semelee saw scales and finny spines on his back and knew who it was.

“Luke!”

Her eye-shells. She could use them to get Luke free of the wasps. But before she could get them up, the one on Luke’s leg let go and buzzed straight at Semelee’s face. She stumbled back and fell out the door onto the deck and into a hell on earth. Chew wasps and blood-soaked men everywhere—and the men who wasn’t screamin’ wasn’t movin’.

Semelee’s arrival got their instant attention. The chew wasp that chased her out of the cabin was still comin’, but so were others from the deck. The only place to go was the water.

She slipped in blood and banged her knee as she tried to get up, then broke into a low run and dove into the water. As she kicked toward shore she knew it would take her right into the sights of Jack and his daddy. She pressed the shells over her eyes. She had to get back control of the chew wasps and give those two somethin’ else to worry about before she came up for air.

12

During a lightning flash Jack caught a glimpse of someone—someone small and slim with dead white hair—leaping off the Bull-ship and diving head-first into the water. He watched a couple of cenote things chase after her and hover a couple of feet over the water, waiting for her to surface.

He tapped Dad on the arm. His father was watching the strobe-lit carnage on the boat decks in horrid fascination. Jack had to tap him again.

“Hey, Dad. Which one of those is loaded?”

Dad shook himself free of the spectacle. “Both now.”

“Give me one, will you?”

Dad handed him the Benelli. Jack took aim at the nearest winged thing, not so much from a desire to protect Semelee—she deserved just about anything that happened to her—but because he wasn’t up for watching someone being eaten alive.

The shotgun boomed, rocking his shoulder, and the nearest thing blew apart. But its companion, instead of retreating or continuing to hover, darted straight for Jack.

He fell back, raising the Benelli. Good thing it was semiautomatic—those things could move. His shot went a little high, missing the body but dissolving the right pair of wings. It went into a spin and landed on the edge of the bank, vibrating its remaining wings and gnashing its teeth in fury as it made circles in the mud.

Movement on the surface of the lagoon caught Jack’s eye. He saw a white head begin to emerge from the water. He took aim with the Benelli but hesitated. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe because he felt responsible. Maybe if he’d let her down a little more easily she wouldn’t have attacked him, then Anya. Maybe something about her pathetic desire to fit in touched him. Or maybe he couldn’t bring himself to blow holes in a young woman, no matter how sick and twisted she was.

Whatever the reason, he dropped the shotgun, grabbed the cenote thing by the roots of its remaining wings, and lifted it. It looked heavy but he found it surprisingly light. It writhed in his grasp, trying to twist around and gouge him with those diamond teeth, but its carapace limited its agility.

Jack leaped off the bank and into the water.

“Jack!” he heard his father cry. “What in God’s name are you doing?”

Jack didn’t answer. Holding the cenote thing high, he splashed toward where Semelee was emerging from the water. He noticed she was holding two shells over her eyes.

The shells—that was what she’d wanted them for. Somehow they let her control these things.

And I helped complete her set.

He also noticed the other winged things rising from their feasts on the decks of the two boats and heading his way. He put everything he had into forcing himself through the water.

When he reached her he grabbed the back of her hair. He yanked downward, hard, stretching her throat, and held the crystalline teeth of the cenote thing inches from her skin. The twisting, gnashing jaws reminded him of a wood router.

“Drop the shells! Drop them now, Semelee, or this thing gets a free lunch! Don’t think I’m bluffing! You may have been right about me not shooting Luke the other day, but this is different. After what you’ve pulled in the last twenty-four hours, I’m more than ready for payback.”

“Okay, okay,” she said, but kept the shells over her eyes. “Just let me send the chew wasps back to the sinkhole.”

Chew wasps…a perfect name.

“You do that.”

The approaching chew wasps veered away and headed for the cenote, its lights faintly visible through the rain. Jack watched them fade into the mist, then, with his free hand, pulled Semelee’s hands away from her face. He hadn’t forgotten about Dora. He took her by the upper arm and guided her toward the bank.

As Jack pulled her up on land, he heard Dad call his name. He glanced over and saw him pointing toward the lagoon.

“Who or what is that?”

Jack turned and stared. He saw nothing at first, then the lightning flashed and he spotted a man in a suit standing at the center of the lagoon. Not in the lagoon—on it. No, not just standing on the water, walking on it. His stride was long and purposeful, moving him along at a good pace, yet without the slightest hint of hurry.

Jack tossed the partially dewinged chew wasp into the lagoon where it sank like a mob hit. He squinted through the storm. Couldn’t make out the man’s features, but as he neared, Jack noticed that he seemed to be moving in a bubble—not something with a membrane, simply an area around him, a dry area. The rain driving at him from all directions didn’t touch him. And it didn’t sluice away, it simply…went away.

“Oh, God!” Semelee cried, cringing against Jack. “It’s Jesus come to get me for my sins!”

“You’ve got a lot of things to answer for, but I don’t think that’s Jesus.”

Not unless he’s taken to wearing Armani, Jack thought.

Of course he hadn’t a clue as to the designer—if an Armani suit introduced itself, he’d have to ask it for ID—but it looked expensive, maybe silk, charcoal gray, perfectly tailored, worn over a black shirt buttoned to the collar. Very Euro, this water strider.

When the man moved close enough for Jack to make out his face, he felt his blood congeal. He knew that face, that supercilious expression. He raised the Benelli and roared.

“Roma!”

Jack held him accountable for Kate’s death—at least indirectly—and for a lot of other things that had gone wrong in his life since they’d met at that conspiracy convention last spring. He’d called himself Sal Roma then. Who knew what he was calling himself now. He’d tried to kill Jack then and almost succeeded. Either he or the Otherness or the two in league had tried to kill Gia and their baby just last month. Now it was payback time. No hesitation—he wasn’t sighting down on a waifish woman, this was the “Adversary” Anya had mentioned, the One whose True Name she refused to speak.

“goodbye, whoever you are,” he whispered, and pulled the trigger.

Or tried to. It wouldn’t budge. Jammed!

And then Roma glanced at him and Jack felt himself lifted through the air and slammed back against a palm trunk. The pain of the impact on his spine blew all the air out of him and blurred his vision for a few heartbeats. His knees turned to jelly and he slid earthward to end up sitting in the mud, propped against the palm.

“Jack!” he heard his father cry from what seemed like the end of a long hallway. “Jack, are you all—?”

Jack’s vision cleared in time to see his father tumble back into the brush and disappear from view.

He wanted to shout to him but his voice wouldn’t work.

Fear spiked his chest. Was Dad hurt? Was he even alive?

Jack tried to get to his feet but couldn’t move. For a panicky instant he thought he was paralyzed from a broken spine, then realized that something was holding him in place, something he couldn’t see or feel but powerful enough to press on him so effectively that all he could do was breathe. He tried to shout to Roma but couldn’t do even that. He was at Roma’s mercy.

But Roma didn’t seem interested in him, didn’t even glance toward Jack as he casually stepped onto the bank to stand not two feet away, facing Semelee.

Semelee cringed back as he stared at her.

“So,” Roma said. Jack heard him clearly. The rain and wind seemed to be easing up, although lightning still flashed all around them. “You’re the one who’s trying to usurp my name.”

“Name? What name?”

“You know…the one that doesn’t belong to you.”

“You mean Rasalom? It does belong to me. I’m Rasalom.”

He slapped her face. The move was so quick Jack would have wondered what had happened if not for the sound of flesh hitting flesh, and the sight of Semelee staggering back a step as her face jerked to the right. Jack could almost feel the sting.

And then it hit him—Rasalom. That was the fuck’s True Name.

“Never,” Rasalom said softly, with no show of emotion, “ever refer to yourself by my name.”

“Who says it’s your name?” Semelee cried, baring her teeth.

Jack had to hand it to her—she wasn’t cowed. And the way she took the blow…clearly she’d been slapped around before.

“I do,” Roma said softly. “And the only reason I haven’t pulled your limbs and head from your torso is that you somehow—through pure dumb luck, I’m sure—managed to find a way to kill the Lady. For that I am in your debt. But don’t press your luck, little girl.”

“Ain’t luck,” she said. “And I ain’t no little girl! I was down in that hole, in the lights, and I heard the voices. They told me I was the One and that my name was Rasalom.”

He slapped her again, harder, and this time she went down. She lay in the mud, rubbing her reddened cheek. A few minutes ago the rain might have soothed it, but it was clearly easing up.

“This is your last warning,” he said. “You are not the One. What you heard was talk about me, not you.”

“No!” she screamed, struggling to her feet and backing away. “I’m the One, and my name is Rasalom! Rasalom-Rasalom-Rasalom!” She raised the shells and pressed them over her eyes. “And now you’re gonna pay. Nobody pushes me around anymore! Nobody!”

Jack knew what was coming and found himself rooting for her.

Enemy of my enemy…

He looked over toward the cenote and saw half a dozen chew wasps rising from the opening. He guessed they hadn’t been too far down.

Oh, yes…Rasalom was in for one messy, bloody, and—Jack hoped—painful death. He was glad for a front row seat.

The wasps arranged themselves in V formation and charged, homing in on Rasalom.

Jack braced himself. This was going to be ugly, but he wanted to watch every second of it.

Rasalom remained facing Semelee, his back to the cenote. When the wasps were almost upon him, Rasalom gestured with his left hand—little more than a wrist-flick, like a diner signaling a waiter that the amount in the wineglass was quite sufficient, thank you—and they stopped, hovering around him like bees guarding a hive.

Jack heard a low-pitched screech from Semelee. Her teeth were clenched and bared as she struggled for control of the chew wasps. Jack could tell by the vaguely amused twist of Rasalom’s lips that he was enjoying the struggle and that she didn’t have a chance.

Finally he seemed to tire of the game. Another flick of his hand and the wasps were on her like ants on a sugar cube. She dropped her shells and tried to bat them away but they attacked from all sides and she went down in sprays of red, kicking, thrashing, writhing. Her screams as they tore her flesh were awful to hear. Jack couldn’t help wonder if Anya had wailed like that.

Jack looked away, toward Rasalom, and almost worse than the screams was the avid look on his face as he stood over her and watched her death agonies.

If he could move an arm, just one arm, he could pull out one of the grenades still clipped to his belt and frag this bastard. But his body wouldn’t respond.

As soon as Semelee’s screaming died away in a gurgling moan, Rasalom seemed to lose interest. He sauntered to where Jack sat propped against the tree trunk and stood over him.

Now it’s my turn, he thought as his bladder clenched.

He hoped he didn’t go out screaming like Semelee, but the pain of being eaten alive had to be…his imagination failed him.

The rain died to a drizzle and the sky lightened fractionally as Rasalom stared down at him. Again Jack tried to speak but his voice was locked.

Then he gave Jack’s foot a dismissive kick.

“My instincts tell me to kill you now, that you’ll be a stone upon my path. But I can’t see you ever being too much of a stone for me to kick aside any time I wish. Besides, killing you now might be something of a favor. It would spare you so much pain in the months to come. And why should I do you a favor? Why should I spare you that pain? I don’t want you to miss one iota of what is coming your way.”

The words drove a cold spike through Jack.

…so much pain in the months to come…

What did that mean? What was going to cause it? And how did he know? Jack wanted to shout the questions but couldn’t even whisper.

He struggled to move. He wanted at this smug son of a bitch, wanted to smash his jaw and rip out his tongue.

Rasalom glanced back to where Semelee had been. A partially flayed skull and a twisted mass of blood-matted white hair were all that remained of her. The chew wasps milling above her seemed confused; two of them bumped in midair and started to fight. Was it the increasing light? Was that what was bothering them?

Rasalom made another of his little gestures and the wasps darted for the cenote. He pointed toward what was left of Semelee.

“Physical pain is mere sustenance. But a strong man slowly battered into despair and hopelessness…that is a delicacy. In your case, it might even approach ecstasy. I don’t want to deprive myself of that.” He frowned. “Of course there’s always the risk that what’s coming will only make you stronger. But it’s a gamble I’m willing to take. So for now, you live on. But as soon as you stop amusing me…”

He let the words hang as he turned and stepped off the bank onto the water.

As Rasalom strode away, Jack felt the pressure against him ease, but slowly. He wasn’t able to regain his feet until Rasalom was out of sight. His first urge was to go after him, but that dissolved in a blast of anxiety about his father. He rushed over to where he’d last seen him and found him sprawled in a clump of ferns, his legs and arms splayed in all directions.

Jack rushed toward him. “Dad!”

Was this the sort of pain Rasalom was talking about? He’d lost Kate, now he was going to lose his father?

But as Jack reached him, he moved.

13

Tom sat up and ran his hands over his arms and legs.

I can move! I can feel!

Dear God, I thought—

He looked up and saw Jack skid to a stop before him.

“Dad—you okay?”

“I thought I’d had a stroke! One moment I was standing by that tree. I saw you fly backwards, then the next thing I knew I was on my back and couldn’t speak or move a finger.”

Jack reached a hand down to him. “Can you get up?”

Tom let his son help him to his feet. He brushed himself off and looked around. He felt shaky and a little weak. Well, why not? He was seventy-one and had just experienced the firefight of his life. He’d been in battle before, but against other men, other soldiers. This time…

“Jack! What happened here? Who was that? Was he really walking on water?”

“That’s what it looked like.”

Jack’s eyes were flat. Not hard and cold like before when he looked like murder personified, but Tom sensed that he’d put up a wall.

“What’s going on, Jack? A girl who can control snakes and birds and even flying things from hell—and I’m sure that sinkhole goes straight to hell—and a guy who walks on water…what’s happening to the world?”

“Nothing that hasn’t been going on for a long, long time. Nothing’s changed except you got a peek behind the curtain.”

“What curtain?”

What was he talking about? Had Jack snapped under the stress of what he’d been through…or had he been through something like this before…something even worse?

“It’s over, Dad.”

“What’s over?”

“Semelee, the chew wasps, the guy on the water—”

“But you knew him. You called him by name—Roma, wasn’t it?”

“Just let it go, Dad. Tuck it away and forget about it. It’s over.” He looked up. “Even Hurricane Elvis is over.”

Tom realized then that it had stopped raining. He could still hear the rumble of thunder, but the wind had died, leaving the air deathly still. He followed Jack’s gaze, and through the partially denuded tree branches he saw clear sky, light blue, tinged with orange from the sinking sun.

Over…for a while there he’d thought the storm would never end.

He looked around…at the fallen palms and cypresses, at the slowly sinking houseboats canted in the leaf-and debris-strewn water, at their red decks and the mutilated bodies littering them like jack straws.

Tom’s mouth went dry. “Did we do that?”

“Some of it.” He didn’t seem the least bit fazed. “We can take credit for the holes in the hulls and some of the blood, but Semelee bears the freight for the rest. She’s the one who called those chew wasps out of the cenote and lost control of them. Good thing too. Otherwise they’d be standing here looking at what was left of us.”

Jack picked up one of the shotguns and hurled it far out into the lagoon.

“What—?”

“Evidence.”

The second shotgun followed the first. He saw Jack pull the pistol from his belt, look at it, then tuck it back in.

Tom glanced once more at the carnage on the boat decks, then looked again. Had one of the bodies moved?

“I think someone’s still alive out there.”

“Probably not for long.”

“Do you think we should—?”

Jack turned on him. “You’ve got to be kidding. A few moments ago they were trying to kill us.”

“In the Corps we always treated enemy wounded.”

“This isn’t the Corps, and this isn’t war. This is a street fight that just happened to take place where there aren’t any streets.” His face twisted, almost into a snarl. “What do you think we’re going to do? Paddle a couple of them back and lug them to a hospital? How do you explain their wounds? How do you explain the double-ought buckshot in their hides? In this system, you’ll wind up behind bars while they lounge around a hospital. And when they’re all fixed up, some ambulance chaser will hook up with them and file civil suits to clean you out of everything you own, every penny you’ve saved up your whole life.”

Tom was seeing another side of Jack and wasn’t sure he liked this one.

“But—”

“But nothing!”

He turned and stomped off to one of the old huts and returned a moment later with something dangling from his hand. He stopped before Tom and held it up.

“See this?”

It was rectangular and looked a little like parchment, but it was too supple for that. It was patterned with crisscrossing scars and round, punctate depressions the size of a pencil eraser. When Tom realized what it was he took an involuntary step back.

“Right,” Jack said. “This is all they left of Anya, and then they hung it up to cure. Now tell me how much you want to risk to help one of those bastards.”

Tom felt a rising fury. Anya…what they’d done to Anya…a part of him wanted to paddle out there and finish off any survivors. But he couldn’t allow himself to step over that line.

He shook his head. “Nothing. They’re on they’re own.”

“Damn right.”

Jack stared at the grisly remnant in his hands, then looked around. He didn’t seem to know what to do with it. He appeared to come to a decision as he rolled up the skin and tucked it inside his shirt.

“What are you going to do with that?”

“It’s all that’s left of her. I think she deserves some sort of burial ceremony, don’t you?”

Here was still another side of Jack. Tom sensed it could be a living nightmare to be his son’s enemy, but a very good thing to be his friend.

He nodded. “Most definitely. Now that the storm’s over, we’ll take her home and find a place to lay her to rest.”

Jack looked up at the sky. “Good thing it ended when it did. I thought we were in for a much longer blow.”

“So did I.”

Then an awful thought struck him. He turned and started pushing through the ferns and brush.

“Where are you going?” Jack called from behind him.

“To high ground. I want the highest point on this hummock.”

It wasn’t far—these islands in the saw grass sea weren’t all that large. Just a few minutes walk and he was standing atop the crest of the hummock.

But he still didn’t have the view he needed. He hurried to a nearby live oak that somehow had weathered the storm intact. He stretched for the lowest branch but couldn’t reach it.

“Give me a boost,” he said to Jack, who had followed him.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Just help me up, damn it. I need to see.”

He was sorry for the sharp tone, but he was worried. He crawled onto the limb, then, hanging on to a nearby branch, straightened until he was standing. When he saw the wall of cloud and rain less than a mile away to the west, his fears were confirmed.

“Jack, the hurricane isn’t over. We’re in its eye. It’s going to hit us again. Maybe even worse than what we’ve been through. We’ve got to—oh, hell!”

“What?” Jack said from below.

Tom watched a pale funnel cloud skating back and forth inside the edge of the onrushing eye wall. Another snaked down a short way north of the first.

“Tornadoes!” He turned and slid down the trunk. “We have to get off this hummock!”

“Tornadoes?” As soon as Tom landed on the ground, Jack started climbing. “I’ve always wanted to see a tornado.” He reached the limb and peered west. “I’ll be damned. Three of them.”

“Three? There were only two before! Get down from there and get moving!”

Jack stared a few heartbeats longer, then joined Tom on the ground.

Jack led the way back to the lagoon on a run. As they passed the sinkhole, Tom slowed and peered into the depths. The lights had faded to a dim glow and the lagoon had risen to the level where water was beginning to trickle over the edge.

“This thing should be sealed up,” he said. “Maybe after all this is over we should come back and—”

Jack spoke over his shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. It’s closing itself down until the spring. Keep moving.”

Closing itself down…how could he know that?

Tom was winded, with a dull ache squeezing his chest by the time they reached the bank. He hunched over, hands on knees, panting while Jack inspected the clan’s boats. He pointed to a water-filled flat-bottom dinghy at the edge of the lagoon with Chicken-ship across its stern.

“This one’s got a bigger motor than the canoe. We’ll make better time. Help me tip it up to get rid of this water.” He stared at him. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Tom said. “Just not conditioned for this.”

Tipping a boat was the last thing Tom felt like doing right now, but he didn’t think Jack could handle it alone. Jack pulled off his poncho and positioned himself at the aft end of the starboard side. As Tom moved to join him, something splashed near Jack’s foot. Tom saw him jump and scramble away from the water.

Tom too backed away when he saw what was crawling up the bank. He’d heard mention of a two-headed snapping turtle, and hadn’t quite believed it, but here it was—and much larger than he would have imagined. The shell had to be at least four feet long. It’s gaping hooked jaws closed with loud clacks and they snapped at Jack.

Jack yanked a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and popped the clip.

“This is for Carl,” he said, and lobbed it toward the creature.

Tom stood paralyzed for a moment. Carl…dear God, he’d all but forgotten about poor Carl…

He saw the right head snatch the grenade on the fly and swallow it, then Jack was rushing him, pushing him to the ground.

“Down!”

Tom hit the mud and covered his head with his hands. The explosion was muffled but he could still feel the impact through the ground. And then bloody turtle meat and bits of shell began to rain around them.

When it stopped, Jack helped him to his feet, then stepped back to the boat. The remains of the snapper were sinking into the water, trailing a red cloud. Jack froze, then hurried to the stern.

“Christ! Can’t we get a break here?”

“What’s wrong?”

“The explosion sheared off the propeller!” He kicked the side of the boat. “Damn! Okay. Looks like it’s the canoe.”

They hurried along the bank to where they’d left it. Jack slipped into the rear and started yanking on the little motor’s pull cord. After a couple of dozen quick pulls, he spewed a string of curses and gave up. The motor hadn’t even coughed.

“Won’t start. Who knows what was blown or washed into it during the storm. We’ll have to power it ourselves.”

“Jack…” Tom hated to admit it, but he was all in. “I don’t know if I can.”

Jack stared at him a moment, then said, “It’s okay, Dad. I’ll handle it. You take the rear, maybe use the outboard as a rudder while I paddle us out of here.”

Feeling unsteady, Tom stepped into the canoe and dropped into the rear seat. His chest felt funny, as if his heart was flailing wildly against his sternum. The chaotic rhythm left him drained. But not too drained to grab the tiller of the motor as Jack began paddling.

The canoe nosed out of the lagoon and soon they were gliding along the swollen channel. They hadn’t gone too far before the light began to die as the clouds closed in again. Then the wind and rain returned with a vengeance.

Tom still wore his poncho but Jack had shed his a while back. His T-shirt was plastered to his skin and Tom watched the play of muscles across his son’s back as he worked the paddle. Not bulky steroidal clumps, but sleek efficient bands, close to the skin. He hadn’t noticed Jack’s muscles till now. Where had they come from? He’d been such a skinny kid, even in college. Now…well, he reminded Tom of a few guys he’d known in the service, lean, quiet types who didn’t look like much until someone tried to push them around. He’d seen a guy built like Jack take down someone twice his size.

He’d been angry with Jack all these years for disappearing, and never more angry than when he didn’t show up for Kate’s funeral. But all that seemed ancient history now. Despite Jack’s secretiveness, his reclusiveness, his quirky behavior, Tom realized he loved, even admired the strange, enigmatic man his son had grown into. He sensed a strength, a resolve, a simple decency about him. He’d worried for so long that he must have made terrible mistakes raising Jack—why else would he turn his back on his family the way he had?—but now he sensed that maybe he’d done all right. Not that anyone should take full credit or full blame for how another person turns out; everyone makes their own choices. But as a parent he had to think he’d had some input.

More than anything he wanted Jack to survive this storm. He didn’t care about himself so much, though of course he wasn’t looking to die, but he sensed somehow that it was important for Jack to live—not simply important to his father, but for other, larger reasons. He couldn’t pinpoint what those were; they hovered just out of reach, but they were there. Somewhere along the way, Jack was going to matter.

Tom’s heart had resumed a more sedate rhythm but it jumped again as a lightning bolt speared the saw grass ahead of them. He looked around in the near-night darkness. They were out in the open, begging to be struck by lightning; but staying among the trees of the hummock, especially with this wind and tornadoes, seemed even riskier.

They rounded a bend in the channel and the canoe kicked ahead as the wind roared from behind. Tom spread his flapping poncho to give the wind something more to blow against. It worked. The canoe picked up speed.

He was feeling pretty proud of himself until another bolt of lightning lit up a funnel cloud reaching for the ground a few hundred yards to his left. It hadn’t touched down, which meant it wasn’t—

Another flash showed it on the ground, kicking up mud and grass and water. It was now officially a tornado.

He leaned forward and tapped Jack on the shoulder. “Look left!”

Jack did so, and of course the lightning chose just that moment to hold off; but then a double flash lit up the funnel, whiter than before, and closer. It was coming this way.

“Fuck!” Jack shouted and started paddling even harder.

Fuck…Tom had rarely if ever used the word since leaving the Marines. He didn’t believe it belonged within the walls of a family home, and certainly not in mixed company. But looking at that swirling, swaying mass of wind and debris heading their way…fuck.

Yes, fuck indeed.

During storms on trips to the Keys, he’d witness an occasional waterspout—long, pale, wispy, short-lived things more beautiful than threatening. Even though there was plenty of water about, this thing to the left wasn’t a waterspout, nor was it one of those quarter-mile-wide monsters the Weather Channel liked to show. Its base seemed to be only fifty feet or so across—

Only?Tom thought. What am I thinking? That thing is plenty big enough to kill us both.

He tried to gauge its intensity. He knew about the Fujita scale—he’d learned a few things during all those hours in front of the Weather Channel—and hoped this one didn’t clock in at more than an F2. They wouldn’t survive a direct hit by an F2, but they might handle a close encounter. If they wound up near anything higher up the scale, that would be it.

No matter what its scale, Tom prayed it would head in the other direction.

He pulled a paddle from the sloshing bottom of the canoe and did what he could to speed the boat along. He kept glancing to his left. He could hear a growing roar—that was the damn tornado getting closer, running on an erratic diagonal that was sure to intersect their course. At least that was how it looked. The way it was weaving back and forth made avoidance a crap shoot.

The big question: Stay in the boat or get out? In the boat seemed worse than being in a trailer. They were too exposed; if that funnel came even close, flying debris could cut them to shreds. But to get out…

Jack was looking around too.

“Let’s dump the boat!” he shouted over the growing roar.

“And go where?”

He pointed to the right. “I saw something over there.”

Tom squinted through the rain and darkness. A flash revealed the dark splotch of a willow thicket sitting like an island in the saw grass sea. The willows tended to be small in these thickets, little more than a dozen feet tall. They’d provide some shelter, something to hold on to without worrying it would crush them if it toppled over.

A glance in the opposite direction showed the tornado even closer.

“Let’s do it!” Tom shouted.

“What about gators?”

“If they’re smart they’re on the bottom of the deepest channel they can find.”

He didn’t mention snakes. He had no idea what snakes did in weather like this. He hoped they didn’t head for higher ground…like hummocks and thickets…

Jack jumped out of the canoe, Tom followed. The water was thigh high in the channel. Tom slipped only once climbing the slope to the saw grass where the water was only ankle deep. Jack pulled the canoe up behind him and left it on its side in the grass.

Lightning lit their way as they sloshed toward the thicket, Jack in the lead, while the roar of the twister grew behind them…no, not behind them…to the left…

A flash revealed the swaying, writhing funnel less than a hundred yards away, flanking them. Tom gasped for breath as his heart writhed like the twister. How had it caught up so fast? Another flash showed it veering this way. Almost seemed as if it was chasing them, homing in on them. But that was ridiculous.

Then again, after all he’d seen today…

“Crawl in here!” Jack shouted as they reached the thicket. His voice was barely audible over the roar of the onrushing funnel. Tom saw that he was holding aside a patch of underbrush. “Find a trunk and hang on!”

Tom dropped to his hands and knees as he ducked into the leafy mesh, feeling ahead of him in the dark until he found a sturdy-feeling trunk maybe six inches across.

“You take this one!” he shouted to Jack who was close behind. “I’ll take the next.”

He heard a garbled protest from Jack but kept moving. Half a dozen feet farther on he found another, more slender trunk, maybe half the size of the first. He dropped prone and wrapped his arms around it. His lungs struggled for air. God, it was good to lie still. He felt his heart ramming at his chest wall as he lay in the mud.

“You okay, Jack?” he shouted. He could barely hear himself above the tornado’s roar. “Jack?”

That roar…it had to be at least an F2…any higher, they were goners.

Frantic, he looked around for Jack and saw nothing but darkness. And then the tree began to shake and the ground to tremble; he ducked his head against the wind and the saw grass blades whistling through the underbrush like knives.

Thank God they weren’t trying to weather this back at the lagoon. The flying debris from the boats and the huts would be lethal. Here it was only grass and mud and water. Not that any of that would matter if the funnel passed directly over them.

The wind scythed at him from all angles as he clung to the trunk. He could hear the twister grinding through the saw grass on the far edge of the thicket, roaring like a freight train—he’d always heard tornado survivors describe the sound that way, and now he knew it was true…like a train…in a tunnel…

Tom felt the underbrush around him being twisted and yanked from the mud. And then his tree started to tilt, first to the left, then the right, then—

Dear God, it was coming out of the ground, ripping free of the mud, rising into the air!

Tom had to let go or rise with it. As he released his grip the willow ripped free with an agonized crunch and sailed off. He tried to cling to the rootlets left in the hole but the deluge of water made them slick and they slipped through his fingers. Then he felt his legs lift as he was pulled backward. He clutched for grass or weeds or ferns—anything!—but they came free in his grasp. His body angled off the ground and he clawed at mud that had no more consistency than beef stew. He was losing his last contact with the ground when he felt a hand grab his right ankle and yank him down.

Jack!

Another set of fingers wound around his left ankle and started hauling him backward. He heard Jack’s enraged voice shouting above the storm.

“You got away with this once, but not again. No fucking way!”

Who was he talking to? The twister? But he’d said “again.” Tom doubted Jack had ever even seen a twister, let alone dealt with one. Who, then?

He’d worry about that later. Right now he wanted to know how Jack was hanging on. If both hands were holding Tom, who was holding Jack?

He felt one of Jack’s hands grab his belt and haul him farther back. Tom craned his neck to look over his shoulder and saw that Jack had locked his legs around a willow trunk. He kept dragging Tom back until he could wrap his arms around the larger tree.

And with that…the roaring began to fade. After brushing the thicket, the twister was moving on, probably carving a new channel through the saw grass as it traveled.

Jack rolled away from the tree and lay on his back.

“Thought I was going to lose you there, Dad.”

As his heart regained a normal rhythm, Tom watched Jack lie there with closed eyes as rain pounded his face.

“I thought I was a goner too. Thanks.”

“De nada.”

Nothing? No, it wasn’t nothing. It was something…something very special. He owed his life to Jack.

He couldn’t think of anyone he’d more like to be indebted to.

Tom swallowed the lump in his throat. “Come on. Let’s see if we can find that canoe and get to someplace dry.”

Tuesday

1

“I’ve decided to move back north,” Dad said as Jack packed his duffel bag for the trip home.

Jack studied his face, still bruised from the accident, and weathered from the storm. “You’re sure about that?”

Dad nodded. “Very. I’ll never be able to look at Anya’s house without remembering what…what we saw there…what happened to her. And I can’t see me ever looking out my front door at the Everglades without thinking of the other night…all that blood spilled, especially Carl’s…and that sinkhole and the things that came out of it. And the storm, that tornado…” He shook his head. “We damn near died out there.”

“But we didn’t,” Jack told him. “That’s all that counts.”

It hadn’t been easy getting back. The canoe had been far enough from the twister to come through in one piece, but the subsequent battle through the storm had been an ordeal. With the smaller channels filling up, and no way to judge east or west, Jack had become disoriented and made a few wrong turns. It took nearly two hours of paddling before they arrived at the air-boat dock and gratefully collapsed in the shelter of the car.

Monday had been spent recuperating. Muscles Jack didn’t even know he had protested every time he moved. The groundsmen—sans Carl—were out in force cleaning up the mess left by the storm. They must have seen Anya’s shredded screen door but probably attributed it to the storm.

Late in the afternoon, after the crews had finished for the day and no one was about, Jack and his father buried Anya’s remains in her garden, among the plants she’d loved. Since she kept pretty much to herself, no one had discovered yet that she was missing.

Jack dug a two-foot hole in the wet soil—deeper than any dog or coon would go—and then Dad reverently placed the quarter-folded skin within. He’d chosen not to wrap it in anything. Better to let it decompose quickly and recycle its nutrients back to her plants.

And then a quiet night of mourning, Dad looking for answers to a long list of questions, Jack doing his best not to answer them. Dad didn’t need to know more than he already did and, despite what he’d been through, probably wouldn’t accept the truth as Jack understood it. So Jack told him only what he’d gleaned from Anya and let him assume that the rest of the answers had died with her. It never occurred to either of them to turn on the Monday night football game.

“Besides,” Dad was saying on this bright morning, “what am I doing down here while my sons and all my grandchildren are up north? It makes no sense. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Maybe you weren’t thinking, Jack thought. Maybe you were being manipulated. Maybe everything that’s happened down here was part of a plan—a plan that, thanks to Anya, didn’t go quite the way it was supposed to.

And then again, maybe not.

But with the Otherness so obviously involved, Jack couldn’t help but think that his father had been scheduled to die last Tuesday morning.

“Maybe I’ll come south for just a month or two a year,” Dad went on, “say February and March. Statistics say that an American male who reaches age sixty-five can expect to live another sixteen years. That leaves me ten more. Makes no sense to spend them fifteen hundred miles from the most important people in my life.”

“You’re right. It doesn’t.”

Jack had a feeling he’d better watch over his father. He was sure the Otherness wasn’t through with him yet. Rasalom’s words kept haunting him:

…a strong man slowly battered into despair and hopelessness…that is a delicacy. In your case, it might even approach ecstasy…

How was this battering into despair and hopelessness going to happen? By destroying everyone he cared about?

He was glad his father would be closer to home, but right now he wanted to get back to Gia and Vicky. Worry for them was a knife point in his back, urging him home. And he had to get working on a way to become a citizen before March, when the baby was due.

Yesterday he’d overnighted the Ruger back to one of his mail drops. He’d pick it up after it was forwarded to another drop. All he had to do now was pack up his clothes and head for the airport.

The phone rang.

“That should be the sales office,” Dad said. “I phoned them first thing this morning about putting the place on the market.”

As he left, Jack reminded himself to check out Blagden & Sons once he got home. See if he could find out why they wanted that sand from the cenote. He had a feeling it wasn’t for mixing concrete for back porches.

He scooped the last of his things out of the bureau and froze: The rectangle of Anya’s skin lay in the bottom of the drawer.

His mouth went dry. This couldn’t be. They’d buried it yesterday, yet here it was, without a speck of dirt.

Jack walked out to the main room where his father was discussing prices and commissions with the sales office; he went directly to the back porch and grabbed the shovel he used yesterday. He headed for Anya’s garden.

The burial spot was just as they’d left it. Jack dug into the loose soil and quickly reached the two-foot level.

No skin.

He dug down another six inches—he knew he hadn’t gone this deep yesterday—and still nothing but dirt.

Anya’s skin was gone.

No, wait, not gone. It was lying in a drawer in his Dad’s guest bedroom. But how…?

Jack didn’t waste time with unanswerable questions—how it had gotten out of the hole and into the house, why it was there. Either he’d find out later or he wouldn’t.

He quickly refilled the hole and hurried back to the house. Dad was still on the phone. He looked up with a questioning expression as Jack passed but Jack waved him off. Back in the room he went directly to the bureau and froze again. Now the drawer was empty.

What the hell?

He turned and saw a now familiar pattern through the open top of his duffel bag. He stretched the zippered mouth and stared.

There it lay. Apparently Anya, or at least this piece of her, wanted to go home with him.

Jack sighed. Again, he wouldn’t ask why, he’d just go with the flow and trust that sooner or later this would all make sense.

He covered the skin with his remaining clothes and zipped the bag closed.

All right, Anya, he thought. You want to come along, be my guest.

He lifted the bag and headed for the front room. Dad hung up as he entered.

“Well, just a few papers to sign and the place is officially on the market.”

“Great. I hear they’ve got people lined up to get in here, so it shouldn’t take long.”

“Yeah.”

A silence grew between them. Jack knew he had to go, but he was reluctant to leave his father here alone.

Finally Dad said, “It’s been wonderful getting to know you, Jack. There’s so much about you I still don’t know, but what I’ve learned…I’m surprised, but pleasantly so.”

“You’re pretty full of surprises yourself.”

“But you know all mine now. I get the feeling—no, I know you’ve still got quite a few left.”

Here we go. “Probably not as many as you think. But who knows what you’ll find out once you get back north?”

Dad nodded. “Right. Who knows?”

As if there’d been some unspoken signal, they embraced.

“Good to have you back, son,” his father whispered. “Really, really good.”

They broke the clinch, but still gripped each other’s arms.

“Good to know the real you, Dad. You can take my back any time.” He broke free and grabbed his duffel. “See you back home.”

“Call me when you get in.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No. I’ve always worried about you, but after what I’ve learned about you down here, I’ll really, really worry about you.”

Jack laughed as he pushed through the door and headed for the car and the airport and the plane home to Gia and Vicky.

Afterword

South Floridians will know I played fast and loose with some of the geography in Gateways. Joanie’s Blue Crab Café is not on US 1, but on the other side of the state, on Route 41 in Ochopee. But the crab cakes and softshell crab sandwiches are just as good as I described. While researching the Glades I’d often drive twenty or thirty miles out of my way to grab a bite and an Ybor Gold at Joanie’s.

As for Gator Country FM 101.9, it’s hard to pull in if you’re on US 1, but travel a little ways west and there it is. A good station for modern country and it kept me company during the drives.

Novaton may seem like Homestead, but it’s an amalgam of a number of towns I stayed in during my research sorties.

One thing I did not make up or overstate is the shameful neglect, mismanagement, and outright abuse suffered by the Everglades during the twentieth century. It’s a fragile, fascinating environment, sui generis, that’s been damn near ruined by rampant overdevelopment. There’s lots of talk lately of restoring the Everglades; let’s hope the folks talking the talk will walk the walk before it’s too late.

F. Paul Wilson

The Jersey Shore

March, 2003