Good advice.
“Do not wander from designated paths and trails.” That’s what the first sign said. It was a hundred yards back, where there was still some light from the visitors’ center.
“Do not go near any water.” That order was posted ten yards farther along the trail.
Now here she was breaking all the rules. She was off the trail. She was near the water. Beneath her bare feet she could feel the muddy ground begin to turn into something that was the consistency of wet, putrefied hay. The stench was sour. In the darkness the odor screamed at her.
Gritty moisture squished up between her toes.
She bathed twice a day. Every day. Morning and night. She detested filth.
And decay? Please! Shivers shot up her spine.
The night was moonless. Her eyes found streaks to focus on, but the streaks disappeared as soon as she tried to reel them in. She couldn’t see. It was the smell, and the feel of the rotting life between her toes, that convinced her that the swamp water was near.
And there had been one more sign. It had read, “Do not smoke or litter.”
She wasn’t breaking that rule. Five minutes ago, maybe. No, it had only been two or three. She’d been breaking that rule, sitting there in the car. Smoking, yes; not littering. Fantasizing. Had everything changed so much in two minutes?
Yes. Everything had changed.
She shivered.And why am I naked?
Oh, yeah.
Sterling.
Damn Sterling.
Five minutes ago she was still loving it. Every bit of it. The headphones, the tape, the music, the voice, the whole thing. Disrobing in the car. Waiting for him there, naked. Waiting for him to…
She tried to think.
Truth? She was more frightened of the swamp than she was of the gun. She’d grown up around guns in Virginia, was a pretty good shot herself. She didn’t have the gun this time, though. It was pointed at her. That was hard to ignore.
But not as hard to ignore as the swamp.
She hated swamps and everything that lived in them. She hated snakes. She hated alligators. She hated frogs. She even hated the damn harmless dragonflies. When she was thirteen, one had become tangled in her hair at school. She’d been so frightened by the flapping that she’d pulled the hallway fire alarm to get some help.
Her friends had never let her forget it.
She told herself not to panic in the swamp. There was a way out. She had to find the way out.
The voice from the Walkman had instructed her to duct-tape her mouth.Let that awful stuff even touch her hair? Yeah, right.She’d thought he was kidding. He wasn’t. She’d done it. Now the tape across her lips limited her to whimpers.
Her wrists were bound in front of her with the same awful gray tape.The instructions had made sense at the timeis what she told herself.
What was I thinking?
On an exhale, she thought of blue herons. Herons liked swamps. She’d loved watching them on that boat tour she’d taken that time in the Everglades. She liked herons. Okay, she didn’t love them. Birds made her nervous. But she tried to imagine walking into a flock of blue herons. That would be okay. She could survive that.
She stopped.
Behind her the voice said, “Keep going.” It was a hoarse whisper. The same strange voice that was on the Walkman. “Don’t turn.”
The voice said keep going. She kept going.
Her next step took her ankle-deep into the dank water. Two more steps, and her kneecaps sank below the surface.
She’d lived in Augusta for four years. During that time she’d never visited the Phinizy Swamp Nature Park. Not once. She hated swamps. A girlfriend had once said something about there being bobcats out here.
Bobcats? She shivered.
She preferred golf courses. That was all the nature she needed: the back nine at Augusta, across town. Midnight on the thirteenth green again? She didn’t need to be a member for that round, did she? That night was… perfection.
She had no idea what was spread out in front of her. A pond-size swamp? An Everglades-size swamp? Are swamps deep? Shallow?
She heard a splash, then realized that she had made the noise herself. How far behind her was the gun? She didn’t know, but she couldn’t wait. She had to move. She decided to run. In her head she flipped a coin. Tails.
She would run right.
Before her first step, she heard another splash. She knew she hadn’t made that one. She screamed into her gag.
“Keep going.” The gun hadn’t moved with her. “Don’t turn.” The gun was farther away, back a few steps. The odds saidnow.
Now!
She lifted her knees high and sprinted to her right, hoping, praying that her next few steps wouldn’t be her last few steps.
She splashed. Can’t run in knee-deep water without splashing.
Please don’t shoot, please don’t shoot.
She thought she spotted the glooming outline of a tree. Someplace to hide. Something to provide cover. How far away was it?
She heard more splashing. Her own? She didn’t know. She tripped on something solid below the surface of the swamp and slipped right down as though she’d been slapped. Muck seeped into her nose and ears. She tasted decay as she tried to scream, “I’m sorry, Daddy,” but despite the tape her mouth was full of the effluent of the Phinizy Swamp.
Have to get up.She tried to stand.
She felt a tug on her thigh.
It was insistent. And then it was crushing.
Suddenly, she was swimming backward involuntarily. Her last thought wasI hate alligators.