Apocalypse

43

The airboat slid broadside amidst a wall of churning white water, its spinning propeller spraying a vortex of water vapor onto the hot air, and Ethan realized that there was no way that they could avoid smashing into it.

Bryson yelled out in alarm as he desperately tried to turn the airboat away from the impending collision. Ethan threw himself down again onto the deck as the bow of their airboat crashed into their opponent’s hull in a whining crescendo of clashing metal. Ethan felt the airboat mount the bow of the boat below them, screech across it and crash down onto the water on the other side.

Ethan rolled over in time to see the big blond man kneeling in his violently rocking boat, his rifle pulled into his shoulder. A fearsome blast of automatic fire smashed into their engine, the huge propeller blades shattering to clatter against the inside of the cage as a dense pall of oily black smoke spilled from the engine block.

The blond man reached down and threw the throttles of his airboat forward, the craft surging forward past them. Two words passed unbidden through Ethan’s mind.

Semper fi. The motto of the United States Marines. Always loyal.

Ethan scrambled to his feet and sprinted across the rocking deck of the airboat. He leapt into the air as the blond man’s airboat thundered by, arms outstretched for the one place where the killer could not fire. The cage around his own engine.

Ethan hit the huge cage with a deep thump that reverberated through his chest as he landed. His fingers ached as they grasped the metal wires and the windblast from the blades pummeled his chest.

The airboat accelerated across the water, the vibrations from the engine shuddering through Ethan’s bones as he struggled to maintain his grip on the cage. The blond man sitting in the pilot’s seat could not fire through the blades at Ethan for fear of destroying his own craft, and the metal cage prevented him from reaching around it with his rifle to shoot Ethan off. The killer instead aimed his airboat at a dense bank of towering sawgrass.

Ethan braced himself as the blond man turned the vessel, sweeping along the edge of the reed banks. Thick blades slapped and sliced across the rear of the airboat, scraping painfully across Ethan’s face and tearing at his shirt, but he held on grimly as the airboat soared back into open water.

Ethan reached up and hauled himself onto the top of the cage, the wind and spray stinging his eyes. As the blond man looked over his shoulder to see if he had dislodged him, Ethan hurled himself down onto the killer’s broad shoulders.

The impact felt as though Ethan had hurled himself against a tree. The blond man roared as he was propelled forward to fall flat onto his face against the seats in the boat’s hull. Ethan tumbled over him and rolled into the bow alongside the camera that he sought. He grabbed it with both hands and scrambled to his feet just as the killer rushed toward him with huge hands outstretched.

Ethan ducked down beneath the giant arms and barged his shoulder deep into the man’s belly, spinning him aside to topple onto the deck as Ethan made a grab with his free hand for the M-16 propped alongside the driver’s seat. He grabbed the butt and turned as he let the weapon slide down through his hand until his finger slipped onto the trigger. He took aim.

The blond man’s fist smashed the barrel aside even as Ethan squeezed the trigger. The weapon stuttered as it fired and the barrel flew up into the air from the recoil. Another chunky fist flashed toward Ethan’s face and he ducked his head down, letting the solid bone of his skull take the full impact of the blow. He heard the blond man howl in pain as his knuckles crunched across the top of Ethan’s head, but the huge force of the punch sent Ethan reeling across the boat. He collided with the row of seats and sprawled onto the rolling deck. The camera was pinned beneath him and dug painfully into his ribs as the M-16 span from his grasp and clattered out of reach.

He crawled onto his hands and knees and reached out for the weapon, only to see a heavy boot swing upwards to thump squarely across his chest. Ethan gasped as his lungs convulsed and he was flipped over onto his back, his hands wrapped around the camera. The killer reached down and picked up the M-16, looming over Ethan against the blue sky and aiming the rifle down at him. The blond man’s angular features contorted into a malicious grin and his eyes shone with hatred.

One thick finger curled around the trigger and squeezed.

A flash of green reeds blasted into Ethan’s field of view as a crash of rending metal screeched in his ears. The M-16 flew high in the killer’s grasp, the shot smacking through the hull inches from Ethan’s head as the man was hurled forward through the air over Ethan’s body. Ethan curled up into a fetal ball as the airboat slammed into dense coils of mangroves and launched itself clear of the water. Ethan felt himself float briefly in mid-air before the airboat slammed bow-first into a thick bank of trees. Ethan hit the deck hard and cracked the back of his skull as he flew toward the bow and was hurled out of the boat.

He saw the world spin and then the ground rush up at him in a blur. On instinct he threw his hands out to break his fall and the camera span from his grasp. He hit the foliage with a tremendous impact that blasted the air from his lungs and sent spots of light spiraling across his vision. He rolled twice across the hard and unforgiving ground and slumped to a halt against the gnarled trunk of a tree.

For several moments he lay unable to move, his lungs devoid of air, his limbs numb and his vision blurred into a haze of disconnected whorls of color. Somehow he managed to suck in a lungful of air, and his sight sparkled and returned. The sound of crackling flames entered the battered field of his consciousness, and he turned to see the buckled wreckage of the airboat crunched up against a thicket of trees, black smoke and flame spitting from its ruined engine.

Ethan struggled to focus and looked to his left just in time to see the big blond man run into the dense forests nearby with the camera tucked beneath his arm. Ethan reached out to haul himself up alongside the tree he had fallen against, but bolts of agony shot across his shoulder and he slumped back down again.

‘Damn.’

Ethan lay on the bank for almost twenty minutes until he saw Bryson and Lopez paddling their crippled airboat up the creek toward him, homing in on the spiraling pillar of dirty smoke that stained the bright blue sky above.

Bryson guided the airboat in to the shore as Lopez hopped off the edge of the deck and rushed to Ethan’s side.

‘You didn’t get the camera,’ she observed.

Ethan struggled to his feet as he massaged his shoulder. ‘I’m fine, thanks for asking.’

‘Were you hit?’ she asked, looking at his arm.

‘Not by bullets,’ Ethan replied, ‘but just about everything else.’

Bryson called across to him. ‘Speak for your goddamned self.’

Ethan saw a roughly applied tourniquet adorning Bryson’s left forearm, where either a bullet or shrapnel had grazed him.

‘Jarvis is on his way with the police,’ Lopez said. ‘I called him the moment you took off.’

Ethan nodded.

‘Good work. We need to get back to Canaveral,’ he pointed out as he turned to Bryson. ‘And we need to search that spit of land where Charles Purcell died. He just sacrificed his life to find justice.’