Part 22 (1/2)

Tonight, she was totally alone.

She felt the panic edging its way back, grasping at her once again.

No! she told herself.

I'll be all right. I'll keep moving, and I'll find my way out.

But even as she spoke the words silently to herself, she knew she didn't believe them.

Deep in her heart, she wasn't sure she would ever get out at all.

17.

Michael cut the engine on the outboard, letting the boat drift silently through the bayou. He played his flashlight over the foliage, the brilliant halogen beam slicing through the darkness, illuminating the trees around him. Insects sparkled and glittered in the shaft of light, homing in on the artificial sun until Michael finally switched it off as they swarmed around him.

”Kelly!” he called out. ”Kelly, it's Michael. Can you hear me?”

He listened, but heard nothing except the sound of other voices, also calling. It was as if the whole swamp had become an echo chamber, with Kelly's name drifting back and forth.

But he knew that unless she was in the immediate area, Kelly wouldn't hear the searchers, for the thick mosses that covered the trees m.u.f.fled sound quickly. Only a few hundred yards away, there would be no hint of the twenty-odd men who were combing the wilderness for her.

The cloud of insects that had answered the flashlight's beacon moved on, except for the mosquitoes that whined around Michael's ears, risking a landing every few seconds, only to be swatted away. At last Michael turned the light on again, its beam trapping a possum that clung to a tree a few yards away. The animal froze, mesmerized by the light, staring unblinkingly at Michael.

”It's okay,” Michael crooned softly to the frightened creature. As if responding to his voice, the possum moved slightly. Suddenly a large green form dropped down from the branch above and a tree boa threw three quick coils around the possum's body. The possum, squealing loudly with surprise and pain, struggled in the grip of the reptile, but the snake, responding to the movement, only tightened its grip on the little marsupial, crus.h.i.+ng its lungs.

In a few minutes the possum's wriggling began to weaken, and then as a final breath was squeezed from its body, it went limp in the snake's grip.

The boa began to move, never releasing the creature from its grasp as it worked itself around so that its mouth was at the possum's head.

Its jaws opened, stretching wide as it began working the dead creature into its maw. Michael watched, fascinated, as the boa's mandible dropped away from its maxilla to accommodate the impossibly large body of its prey. Michael had seen it before, and knew it would take the better part of an hour before the possum's long tail finally disappeared into the snake's craw and the serpent, sated, crept off to coil in the crotch of a tree while it digested its meal.

At last, as the insects once more began swarming around him, he cut the light again and restarted the outboard. s.h.i.+fting it into forward, he opened the throttle, and moved on.

He left the light off for a while, his eyes slowly adjusting to the dark. Around him other lights blinked intermittently through breaks in the foliage, and as he moved from one channel to the next, rounding small islands and crossing the wider lagoons, other boats drifted around him in a surreal, random pattern.

He knew where he was, so intimately acquainted with the geography of the swamp that each time he made a turn, another familiar landmark appeared.

But there was no sign of Kelly.

Once more he let the boat drift to a stop and cut the engine while he sat and thought.

He knew where she'd gone into the swamp, knew the island the footbridge she'd crossed led to. He'd explored every square foot of it years ago, when he'd first started going into the wilderness by himself. It was a long, narrow, strip of land that barely rose six inches above the water. Only at the near end was it truly solid; as it extended into the swamp, it became boggier and boggier, until at last you were wading.

In the darkness Kelly would have been unable to retrace her steps. Even in the full light of day, it would have been difficult, for Kelly had no familiarity with the area.

So she would have followed her feet, testing the bottom, feeling her way. And since she hadn't come back to the end of the island at the bridge, she must have stumbled onto the one other spot where the island could be left: a narrow, shallow channel, too shallow for anything but the lightest of boats to navigate, with a second, larger island, on its other side.

Perhaps Kelly was still on that island.

Michael gazed around. The rest of the boats had momentarily disappeared, and he was alone. But at least he knew where to go.

Restarting the engine, he began threading his way through the maze of waterways.

Though Kelly was wandering on foot, Michael was confident he could follow her with his mind. In the swamp there simply weren't that many paths she could follow.

Unless she made a misstep and stumbled into one of the great patches of quicksand that dotted the area.

Michael refused to think about that possibility.

”Help!” Kelly called out. ”Someone, please help me!” Though she shouted at the top of her voice, even to herself the words sounded pitifully weak, seeming to die away into the heavy humid air almost as quickly as she uttered them.

She was tired now, but she kept moving, afraid even to sit down, for the last time she stopped to rest, lowering herself onto the damp earth, she felt something wriggling beneath her and leaped up, yelping with fright. So she kept walking, and finally, off to the right, she saw a faint glow in the sky.

Villejeune!

She quickened her pace, and the light grew steadily brighter.

Her spirits began to rise.

Just a few more minutes and she'd be out, emerging from the tangle of trees and reeds to find the ca.n.a.l, and the village beyond.

And then just as she was certain she was nearly there, the moon rose in the east and all her fears crashed in on her once more.

”Please?” she called out. ”Can't anyone hear me?”

No one answered her plea.

How long had she been walking, and in which direction?

Or had she simply been going in circles?

She didn't know.

There was a high whining sound in her left ear, cut off as the mosquito settled on her forehead. She raised her right hand, slapping at it, then brushed at another as she felt it pierce the skin of her left hand.

Suddenly they were all around her, seeming to come out of nowhere, and she batted at them in the darkness.

She could feel their p.r.i.c.ks everywhere on her skin now, and feel them in her hair, as well.

”No,” she whimpered. ”Get away! Leave me alone!” Her arms windmilling as she tried to fend off the attacking insects, she broke into a run. Her foot caught in a root, and she sprawled out, feeling a sharp pain in her ankle. She lay still, waiting for the worst of the pain to pa.s.s, then sat up, gingerly pulling her foot free from the root, ma.s.saging it with her fingers.

Suddenly she sensed rather than saw a movement in the gra.s.s a few feet away. Instinctively freezing, she held her breath as she waited for the movement to repeat itself.

For a long moment nothing happened, and then a snake, weaving back and forth as it rippled over the ground, slid out of the gra.s.s and into a patch of moonlight that shone through the tall cypresses. Its head rose up from the ground, its mouth wide open, showing its fangs in the moonlight. From the whiteness inside the mouth, Kelly knew immediately what it was.

A water moccasin, hunting in the darkness.