Alligator (36 page)

"That's just your nerves talkin'," said Lee, though he knew Rye was right. Suddenly it struck him that he too had known it all along.

"Yeah, maybe you're right," said Rye, trying to convince himself. "You're a decent man, Boone. I ain't met many of those in my life. It's interestin'. We've been together night and day for two weeks—of course, we ain't been exactly pals, but still, it seems strange that I don't know much about you."

"You probably know more than most," said Lee.

"That ain't sayin' a whole lot," Rye said with a laugh.

"No, I guess it ain't. What kind of things do you want to know?"

"Well, like for instance, do you have a girl?"

"Yeah," said Lee.

"She nice?"

"Sure she's nice."

"Then take my advice and marry her." Lee laughed in answer. "I'm serious, Boone," said Rye. "I ain't never married, and I always regretted it. I had a lot of things in my life, but I ain't never had a woman's love for more than a few hours. Some men just don't have it in them."

"You think I do," Lee said.

"I hope you do," said Rye.

"Yeah, so do I."

Rye didn't say anything for a while, and when Lee too remained silent, he was sorry he'd interfered. "You ain't angry about me givin' you advice, are you?" he asked. "I'm always stickin' my nose where it don't belong."

"I ain't angry."

Again Rye was silent. Lee felt he wanted to say something, though, and was just looking for a way to phrase it.

Finally, Rye asked, "What happens to you after we get back?"

"Don't know," answered Lee. "Only job I've ever had was guiding, and you fixed that for me pretty good."

"I wouldn't worry none about that; everyone knows I planned that trick." Rye hesitated, then decided to plow on. "Besides, I've been doin' some thinkin'. I don't have no one to give all my money to, so it might as well be some crazy hick as the government."

"I told you before, I don't want your money," Lee answered firmly.

Rye flared up, even though it was the answer he was expecting. "Why the hell not! You think there's blood on it or somethin'? Let me tell you—don't matter what you heard, I never done in a man who was straight with me."

"I believe you," said Lee.

"Then why turn me down?"

"I don't know. I guess money'd just make me more screwed up than I am now."

"You know what, Boone? I think you're crazy."

"Yeah, so do I," said Lee.

"If you're turning it down for the other reason..."

"That ain't it."

"Well, if you are," said Rye, "let me tell you the truth. I figured it all out in town with dates and everything, and it ain't possible."

"You ain't figured out nothing of the sort," said Lee. "You don't know if it was you or Aaron or even someone else. The fact is, you don't know any more about it than me."

Rye paused before he answered, then admitted with a sigh, "No. But it's only one chance in a million."

"To tell you the truth, I don't mind any more," said Lee.

Rye was surprised, and more pleased than he would ever have thought possible. "We'll never know," he said, wondering if it even mattered. He decided that it did, though it didn't change things; they would never know.

Lee was about to answer when suddenly he realized that the swamps had become silent. The night animals were quiet; even the wind had calmed; it was like being in a vacuum. Everything seemed to have stopped. Then came the roar, shattering, explosively loud. All at once the sleeping platform buckled. With a violent lurch, Lee and Rye were wrenched from the trees and into the air. Everything around them was splintering and cracking apart. The noise of destruction mixed with the earsplit-ting roar, until even the air seemed shattered by the noise.

It took awhile for Lee to realize he was lying on the ground. Through the blackness, he saw a red glow, glittering and flashing in the reflected light of the campfire; it was the eyes of the alligator. He was very close, not more than a foot away, rising high above Lee. Lee lay perfectly still, but he knew the alligator could see him.

Lee could hear Rye's breathing. From the sound of it, he must be very close. He would have felt better if he could find out if Rye was all right, but he dared not try to speak to him. He felt for his knife. It was gone. He vaguely remembered he had reached for it just before the alligator battered the platform; it probably fell out of his hand then. It hardly seemed to matter, since fighting the massive alligator was out of the question anyway. Lee cursed himself for being so stupid. It had never occurred to him that the alligator would attack like this. He'd been caught offguard, lulled into a false sense of security by his knowledge of alligators.

Just above him, not more than a foot away, the great black body stood watching him, his blood-red eyes winking at him in the firelight.

Suddenly the alligator shifted. Lee braced himself for the inevitable, and was surprised when the alligator moved farther away from him. Off to the right, Lee saw the outline of several cypress trees. If they could reach and climb them, perhaps they'd have a chance. At least it would give them time to think.

Lee moved his hand slowly over toward Rye until he touched him. In his touch was the message: Follow me.

Lee hugged the ground, moving out of the alligator's line of sight as quietly as possible. He pulled himself along almost soundlessly. He could barely hear Rye inching forward right next to him. He knew it was impossible for the alligator not to have heard them, yet the gator didn't move, didn't even turn around. This frightened Lee more than anything; it was totally unpredictable. He couldn't read the alligator at all. Anything could happen.

The alligator turned slowly. His flashing red eyes caught the firelight and gleamed with it. For a moment Lee thought he was going to charge. Instead, he stopped where he was, his eyes flashing in dancing points of light, his huge silhouette even blacker than the night. Then he shifted and turned back to the campfire.

Without waiting to see if the alligator would change his mind, Lee scrambled to his feet and rushed for the trees, with Rye close behind him. Lee stopped at the first tree and, using the cypress knee as a stepladder, he grasped the trunk and began to shimmy up. The bark was slick, giving him nothing to hold on to. He kept slipping back, losing an inch for every two gained. Still he tried to move up the slippery bark, clawing with his nails to gain hold, feeling the bark split and sliver into his fingers and scrape open his skin. When he was up to the lower branches, he reached out for one and swung his body into the crotch of the tree. Rye was trying to gain hold of the tree next to Lee's, but he'd only gotten a few inches above the knee. Lee leaned over and put out his hand for Rye. Rye grabbed it and, using his leg to push off, heaved over to Lee's tree, and boosted himself up to another branch. Rye lay across it, panting for breath.

Lee looked down at the campsite. The massive figure stood at its edge, silent, unmoving. All at once he bellowed; it was a brutal sound that echoed through the night. Then his powerful body began to move. Building speed and force, he crashed forward into the camp, trampling through what was left of the sleeping platform, splitting the already shattered wood into a million pieces.

The alligator stopped at the opposite edge of the campsite. He hesitated for a moment, turned, and charged directly into the fire. The smoldering logs split into pieces, sending burning sparks all around, lighting the blackness like a Roman candle. The alligator swung around once more and crashed through the glowing wood, beating it into a mound of crushed embers. He paused among the coals. His red eyes shot sparks like embers; the outline of his grotesque body shone blackish-red in the reflected light. Then, as if their paltry campsite weren't enough, he threw his bulk at one of the slim trees near the fire, battering the bark with his thick, armored head. The tree split and crashed to the ground. The alligator hissed, then turned on another tree, hurling his howling mass against it until it too crashed to the ground.

The enraged alligator swung around. There was a huge gash across his head; blood was pouring from his snout in thick clots. The alligator turned on the next tree and, screaming in pain and rage, thrust his body against it, slicing the tree right through the middle. With a loud crack, the tree split in two and fell across his back. Roaring in pain, the alligator whipped at the tree with his great tail, sending it flying through the air; then, using his body as a battering ram, he pounded against the two remaining trees and felled them.

He stopped, exhausted and wounded. Blood gushed from his head; huge chunks of flesh were torn out of his crooked back and the battered flesh of his snout. With a terrible hissing sound, he glanced once more at Rye and Lee, then melted back into the night.

The swamps were silent. Rye lay perfectly still, afraid to speak or even breathe, not knowing whether the alligator had left for good or was close by, waiting for them to climb down the tree.

After a minute, Lee said, "He's gone."

"You sure?" asked Rye.

"Yeah, I'm sure."

"Jesus, for a moment there I thought he saw us."

"He did see us."

Rye was startled. "If he saw us, why didn't he attack?"

"That wasn't what he came for. He just came to leave us a message, or maybe I should say to deliver a challenge. He's old, used up. This is probably his last fight, and he wants to make sure it's a good one."

Rye laughed; it was a dry, mirthless laugh, and full of deep pain.

It saddened and frightened Lee. "You all right?" he asked.

"Yeah, sure, I'm fine," answered Rye hoarsely. It sounded as though someone else were speaking.

Lee was about to climb down when a strange rattling came from the direction of the campsite. In the moon's half light, he was able to make out a dozen small alligators rushing toward the campsite, crawling over one another in their haste to get at the debris. The alligators crashed through the smoldering embers and the broken pieces of wood, slashing at the wreckage with their small tails, hurling their bodies at the felled trees in pathetic imitation of the giant alligator.

After a while, the largest of them stopped, and bellowed out his disappointment. Suddenly his jaws flashed open, and, leaping on the tail of one of the smaller alligators, he clamped onto the still unformed armor with his teeth. The smaller alligator howled in pain and fury, but the sound of his howls, the smell of his blood, served only to enrage the others. With snapping jaws, all the alligators began to turn on one another, trying to wrench off pieces of flesh. For several minutes, they snapped and slashed at one another, until finally, enraged even beyond their instinct for survival, they turned on themselves. Seizing their own tails, they chased them around in circles, pulling off great chunks of flesh. Finally the pain brought them back to their senses. Exhausted and wounded, they slowly slunk back into the forest.

Rye and Lee didn't move or speak for quite some time. The vision of the alligators undulating cold and black around the campfire remained with them, more vivid and terrifying than any nightmare.

The next morning Lee awakened with a start. He had slept so soundly that the sun had already risen and been up for a good hour and a half. Most of the thick morning mist had burned off, and already the day was clear and quite warm. Lee's body was aching from sleeping on the hard ground. Huge patches were swelling under his skin where the spiders had made a meal of him. Inside his belly was a heavy, knotted feeling from days of hunger and fear. Still, he was probably a lot better off than the alligator. Last night he'd battered himself beyond what any human could stand and even though his hide was thick and hard, he must be in terrific pain from it. Lee wondered if the alligator didn't almost want to feel the pain; perhaps he was using it to work himself up for the fight.

Lee let out an involuntary groan as he got up. He walked down to the shore, splashing away the morning dullness with the yellow, scummy water, then quenching his thirst.

Rye was already up, and stood farther along at the shore, staring out at the water. Even from fifty feet away, Lee saw the staggering change in him. It was as if, during the night, he had shrunk and wasted away until all that was left was a brittle and angry inner core. All softness, all humanity had been sucked from his face, leaving only protruding bones and tense facial muscles held together by brown, sun-roughened skin. His face resembled a shrunken Indian head. There was something pagan and evil about the way he looked. The carapace of manners and civility, reason and logic, had fallen away, and all that remained of Rye was the brute fury. Lee knew it had always lurked just below the surface. Most of the time it had been under control, only flashing through the layers of civilization occasionally, but now Rye had lost control, and it threatened to run right over him, and perhaps over Lee, too. Strung between the fear of fighting and the fear of not fighting, Rye had been pulled apart, and finally had caved in under the strain.

Lee walked over to Rye and said, "Maybe you better eat somethin'."

Lee's voice made Rye start. He didn't seem to be aware of sharing this planet with another human being. "I ain't hungry," he muttered. His voice was hoarse; it sounded almost cracked. He glanced over at Lee with a look on his face that said: I'm scared, Boone, I'm scared.

Lee stripped off a piece of cabbage palm and handed it to Rye. "You may not think you're hungry, but your stomach probably is."

Rye took the cabbage palm distractedly. Obediently, he bit off a piece, but he hardly chewed it, and forgot it completely as he looked back out at the water. Lee took the rest of the tender root from his hand; perhaps it was better if he didn't force it.

As Lee was walking away, he heard Rye ask, "How much longer you think we got to wait?"

Lee shrugged his shoulders, but Rye wasn't even watching him.

Lee sharpened their knives on whetstones, then sat down and tried to eat something. He met with little more success than Rye had. Finally, he put the pieces of cabbage palm aside; perhaps later he'd feel more like eating.