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The engine coughed once and died, waterlogged, steam whooshing from beneath the hood.
He tried to push the door open with his injured shoulder and winced. The door wouldn’t budge. After dragging the gym bag across the console, he turned in his seat with his back to the door. With his good hand, he pulled himself out of the driver’s seat and sat in the window frame.
For a second, he hesitated, the stars overhead blurring.
His father had told him of the alligators that lived in the bayou. Some grew as long as seventeen feet and weighed over five hundred pounds. And they were most active at night.
With no other choice, he swung his legs out of the car and dropped down into the water, sinking six inches into silt. When he tried to move his feet, the suction made it difficult.
A light shone through the foliage, bouncing toward him. Men’s voices murmured in thick air.
Leaning into the car, he grabbed the bag from the console and waded to the shore. If he didn’t get moving faster, the alligators would be the least of his worries.
Once he made it up the bank, he pushed through the brush, following the shoreline, trying to move silently but not succeeding. Leaves crinkled, branches snapped, and the damned frogs and cicadas had decided to shut the fuck up. It was as if they wanted him to be found by the men tracking him.
A spotlight from a boat shone across the water, aiming toward the shoreline.
He ducked low as the light swept over his position, continuing toward the men following him. It stopped, shining brightly at something.
A voice sounded over a bullhorn, “Parish Sheriff’s Department. Raise your hands above your head!”
A shot rang out, the spotlight waivered and a boat motor revved, moving the boat quickly toward the shoreline.
“Put down your weapons and raise your hands in the air,” the voice blared over the bullhorn.
Another shot rang out.
The boat swerved and then righted. Return fire popped off from the boat.
Swear words and footsteps crunching through the underbrush moved away from where he hunkered low in the brush.
The boat ran up on the shore, and the men on board jumped out and gave chase.
With his pursuers being pursued, he gathered what little strength he had and headed in the opposite direction.
After several hundred yards, he doubled back in the direction he hoped he’d find the road. After fighting his way through thick brush and thorny vines, he broke out of the woods and ran into a barbed-wire fence, the sharp prongs slicing into his legs and torso before he realized a fence was there. Beyond the fence stretched a long field with plants lying close to the ground with rounded humps scattered throughout. Light shone from the corner of a barn on the far side of the field. If he could make it to the barn, he might find a house nearby and another vehicle.
With his good hand, he grabbed a fencepost, planted his foot on the middle strand of the barbed wire and swung his leg over the top, planting it on the same wire on the other side. He was swinging his other leg over when a shout sounded.
“Putain de merde!” a voice said from nearby.
Two shadowy figures rose from the plants in the field. One held a large object shaped like a watermelon in his hands.
Fear spiked, and he flung himself away from the fence. The hem of his jeans caught on a barb, and he tumbled to the ground, wrenching his shoulder. Pain knifed through him, and his head swam. He could barely move; his clothes were soaked from his blood, and he wasn’t sure he could get up again. Even the stars overhead blinked in and out. Dark. Bright. Dark.
Must get up. Keep moving.
So tired.
Hurt.
His thoughts, like his vision, faded in and out, confused, unfocused.
How had the men who’d been following him gotten away from the police and ahead of him into the field?
The stars blinked brightly again.
His strength waning, he dragged himself to his feet, shifted the bag barely hanging on his good shoulder and staggered away from the men in the field. He prayed they couldn’t get a bead on him. If they did, he hoped they made it a clean shot, ending his life quickly.
