The killing hour

CHAPTER 45

Dismal Swamp, Virginia

6:33 A . M .

Temperature: 96 degrees

HER MOTHER WAS YELLING AT HER. “I sent you to college for an education. So you could make something of yourself. Well, you’ve certainly made something, now haven’t you?”

Tina yelled back. “Woman, bring me a goddamn glass of water. And get those tuxedoed waiters out of here.”

Then she sat down and watched the blue butterfly.

Water. Lakes. Ice-cold streams. Potato chips. Oh, she was hot, hot, hot. Skin on fire. She longed to peel it off in strips. Peel down to the bone and roll in the muck. Wouldn’t that feel good?

The flesh on her forearm squirmed. She watched bloody sores ripple and ooze. Maggots. Horrible little white worms. Writhing under her flesh, feasting on meat. She should pull them out and pop them in her mouth. Would they taste like chicken?

Pretty blue butterfly. How it glided along the air. Dancing up, up, and away. She longed to dance like that. To dance and glide and soar. To drift off to the comforting shade of a giant beech tree… or lake… or cool mountain stream.

Itched. Her skin itched and itched. She scratched and scratched. Didn’t make a difference. Hot, hot, hot. So thirsty. Sun, coming up. Going to burn, burn, burn. She would cry, but no moisture left. She slathered on the mud, flattened out puddles and sought desperately to wet her tongue.

Her mother was hollering at her again. Now look at what you’ve done. She didn’t have the strength to yell back.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Then she closed her eyes. She dreamt of deep Minnesotan winters. She dreamt of her mother holding out her arms to her. And she prayed the end would happen quick.

It took over two hours to drive due east to the swamp. The visitors’ entrance was in North Carolina on the east side. Operating under the assumption that the killer would stick to the Virginian playing field, however, Kathy Levine led their little caravan to a hiking entrance in Virginia, on the west side. All three vehicles pulled into the dirt parking lot and Kathy, the official search-and-rescue member of their party, assumed command. First, she handed out whistles.

“Remember, three blasts signifies the international call for distress. Get in trouble, stay put, blow away, and we’ll find you.”

Next, she handed out maps. “I downloaded these from the Internet before we left the motel. As you can see, the Dismal Swamp is basically a rectangle. Unfortunately for us, it’s a very large rectangle. Looking at only the Virginia half, we’re still talking over a hundred thousand acres. That’s going to be a bit much for seven people.”

Mac took one of the maps. The printout showed a large, shadowed area, crisscrossed by a maze of lines. He followed the various markings with his finger. “What are these?”

“The dashed lines represent hiking and biking trails bisecting the swamp. The broader lines here are unpaved roads. The thin dark lines reveal the old canals, most hand-dug by slaves hundreds of years ago. When the water levels were higher, they would use the canals to harvest the cypress and juniper trees.”

“And now?”

“Most of the canals are marshy messes. Not enough water for a canoe, but not dry enough to walk.”

“What about the roads?”

“Wide, flat, grassy; you don’t even need four-wheel drive.” Levine already understood where he was going with this. She added, “Technically speaking, visitors aren’t permitted to bring vehicles onto the roads, but as for what happens under the cover of night…”

Mac nodded. “Okay. So our guy needs to get an unconscious, hundred-and-twenty-pound body into the heart of the swamp. He’d want to take her someplace remote, where she wouldn’t immediately be found by others. He’d need a road for access, however, because carrying a woman through a hundred thousand acres would be a bit much. Where does that leave us?”

They all studied the map. The marked hiking paths were fairly centralized, with a clear grid pattern occupying most of the west side of the swamp. Closest to them was a simple loop labeled a boardwalk trail. They immediately dismissed that as too touristy. Farther in lay the dark oval shadow of Lake Drummond, also highly populated with hiking trails, roads, and feeder ditches. Beyond the lake, however, moving farther east, north, and south, the map became a solid field of gray, only periodically bisected by old, unpaved roads. This is where the swamp became a lonely place.

“We need to drive in,” Kimberly murmured. “Make it to the lake.”

“Branch off from there,” Mac agreed. He looked at Levine intently. “He wouldn’t leave her by a road. Given the grid pattern, it would be too easy for her to walk out.”

“True.”

“He wouldn’t use a canal either. Again, she could just follow it straight out of the swamp.”

Kathy nodded silently.

“He took her into the wild,” Mac concluded softly. “Probably in this northeastern quadrant, where the trees and thick underbrush are disorienting. Where the predator population is higher and that much more dangerous. Where she can scream all she wants and no one will hear a thing.”

He fell silent for a moment. It was already so hot out this morning. Sweat trickled down their faces, staining their shirts. The air felt too heavy to breathe, making their hearts beat faster and their lungs labor harder, and it was barely sunrise. Conditions were harsh, bordering on brutal. What must the girl be going through, trapped here for over three days?

“Going there ourselves will be dangerous,” Kathy said quietly. “We’re talking brier thickets so dense in places you can’t even hack your way through. One minute you might be walking on hard-packed earth; the next you’ll have sunk down to your knees in sucking mud. You need to be on the lookout for bears and bobcats. Then there’s the matter of cottonmouth snakes, copperhead snakes, and the canebrake rattler. Normally they keep to themselves. But once off the trails, we’re intruding in their terrain, and they won’t take it kindly.”

“Canebrake rattler?” Kimberly spoke up nervously.

“Shorter than its cousin, with a thick, squat head that will scare the piggy out of you. Cottonmouth and copperhead will be around the wet, swampy patches. The canebrake rattler will prefer rocks and piles of dead leaves. Finally, we have the bugs. Mosquitoes, yellow flies, gnats, chiggers, and ticks… Most of the time, none of us considers the insect population. But the overwhelming swarms of mosquitoes and yellow flies are what help the Dismal Swamp to be considered one of the least hospitable places on earth.”

“No kidding,” Ray muttered darkly. He was already swatting at the air around his face. The first few mosquitoes had picked up their scent, and judging from the growing buzz in the air, the rest were on their way.

Ray and Brian dug in their packs for bug repellent, while the mood grew subdued. If the girl was in the wild lands of the swamp, then of course that’s where they would go. No one liked it, but no one was arguing it either.

“Look,” Kathy said tersely, “the biggest dangers today are dehydration and heatstroke. Everyone needs to be drinking at least one liter of water an hour. Filtered water is best, but in a pinch, you can drink the swamp water. It looks like something that’s been used to wash dirty socks, but the water is actually unusually pure, preserved by the tannic acids in the bark of the juniper, gum, and cypress trees. As a matter of fact, they used to fill barrels with this water for long sea voyages. The habitat and water have changed some since then, but given today’s temperatures…”

“Drink,” Mac said.

“Yes, drink a lot. Liquids are your friends. Now, assume for a moment that we get lucky and find Tina alive: First priority with anyone suffering severe heatstroke and dehydration is to reduce core body temperature. Douse her with water. Massage her limbs to increase circulation. Give her water, but also plenty of salty snacks, or better yet a saline solution. Don’t be surprised if she fights you. Victims of extreme heatstroke are often delusional and argumentative. She may be ranting and raving, she may seem perfectly lucid, then lash out at you the next instant. Don’t try to reason with her. Get her down, and get her hydrated as fast and efficiently as you can. She can blame you for the bruised jaw later if need be. Other questions?”

No one had any. The mosquitoes were arriving in force now, buzzing their eyes, their ears, their mouths. Ray and Brian took some halfhearted swipes at the winged insects with their hands. The mosquitoes didn’t seem to notice. They all doused with bug repellent. The mosquitoes didn’t seem to mind that either.

Last-minute check of gear now. Everyone had water, first-aid kits, and whistles. Everyone had a map and plenty of bug spray. That was it, then. They loaded their packs back into their vehicles. Ray opened the gate to the main road leading to Lake Drummond. And one by one, they drove into the swamp.

“Scary place,” Ennunzio murmured as the first dark, muddy canal appeared on their right and snaked ominously through the trees.

Mac and Kimberly didn’t say anything at all.

Things grow bigger in a swamp. Kimberly ducked her head for the fourth time, trying to wind her way through the thick woods of twisted cypress trees and gargantuan junipers. Tree trunks grew wider than the span of her arms. Some leaves were bigger than her head. In other places, tree limbs and vines were so grossly intertwined, she had to take off her backpack to squeeze through the narrow space left between.

Sun was a distant memory now, flickering in a tree canopy far above. Instead, she, Mac, and Ennunzio walked through a silent, boggy hush. The spongy ground absorbed the sound of their footsteps, while the rich scent of overripe vegetation filled their nostrils and made them want to gag.

On a different day, in different circumstances, she supposed she would’ve found the swamp beautiful. Bright orange flowers from the trumpet vines dappled the swamp floor. Gorgeous blue butterflies appeared in the beams of sunlight, playing tag among the trees. Dozens of green and gold dragonflies darted along their path, offering delicate flashes of color amid the deepening gloom.

Mostly, however, Kimberly was aware of the danger. Piles of dried leaves bunched at the base of trees and made the perfect home for sleeping snakes. Predatory vines, the same thickness as her arm, bound trees in tight, suffocating coils. Then there were clearings, sections of the swamp that had been logged out decades ago, and now just worn, rounded tree stumps dotted the shadowed landscape like endless rows of miniature gravestones. The ground would be softer there, marshy and popping as toads and salamanders leapt out of their hiding places to escape the encroaching footsteps.

Things moved in the dark recesses of the swamp. Things Kimberly never saw but felt like whispers in the wind. Deer, bear, bobcat? She couldn’t be sure. She just knew she jumped at the random, distant noises and was aware of the hair rising at the nape of her neck.

It had to be over a hundred degrees out. And still she battled a chill.

Mac led their little party. Then came Kimberly, then Ennunzio. Mac was trying to work a rough grid, sweeping between two unpaved roads. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Thickets and dense trees often made passage impossible, however, so they started having to veer a little more to the right, then a little more to the left. They had to take this detour and then that detour. Mac had a compass. Maybe he knew where they were. From what Kimberly could tell, however, the swamp now owned them. They walked where it let them, passed where it let them pass. And increasingly, that path was taking them to a dark, decaying place, where the tree branches grew denser, and they had to round their shoulders to fit through the tight, cramped spaces.

They didn’t speak much. They slogged their way through the hot, wet vines, searching for signs of broken twigs, scuffed ground, or bruised vegetation that might indicate recent human passage. They took turns issuing single blasts on their whistles or calling out Tina Krahn’s name. Then they heaved themselves over giant, lightning-felled trees. Or wriggled between particularly large boulders. Or hacked their way futilely through dense, prickly thickets.

While they downed more and more of their precious supply of water. While their breathing became hard and panting, and their footsteps grew unsteady, and their arms started to tremble visibly from the heat.

Kimberly’s mouth had gone dry, a sure sign she wasn’t drinking enough water. She found herself stumbling more, having to catch herself on tree limbs and tangled brush. The sweat stung her eyes. The yellow flies constantly swarmed her face, trying to feast on the corners of her mouth or the tender flesh behind her ears.

She didn’t even know how long they had been hiking anymore. It seemed as if she’d been in the steaming jungle forever, pushing her way through thick, wet leaves only to encounter another choking eternity of vines, briers, and bushes.

Then, all of a sudden, Mac held up his hand.

“Did you hear that?” he asked sharply.

Kimberly stopped, drew in a ragged gasp of air, and strained to hear: There, for just an instant. A voice in the wind.

Mac turned, his sweat-covered face at once triumphant and intent.

“Where is that coming from?”

“Over there!” Kimberly cried, pointing to her right.

“No, I think it’s more like over there,” Mac said, pointing straight ahead. He frowned. “Damn trees; they’re distorting the sound.”

“Well, somewhere off in that direction.”

“Let’s go!”

Then, a new and sudden realization sucked the last of the moisture from Kimberly’s mouth. “Mac,” she said sharply. “Where is Ennunzio?”