Page 127 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

“Shit,” someone said, and Fallon gave himself a mental shake. He’d learned that cursing meant someone might be about to die, in this situation.

“What?” someone else asked.

“Look at all these damn gators.”

Gators?

Dear God.

Fallon looked out at the water, and his guts shriveled.

The moon was bright enough to reveal the humped backs of countless gators. They scattered before the boat, but there wereso manyof them, enough to run along their backs if they’d have tolerated that.

It looked like a feeding frenzy, gator tails slapping the water; more eyes than he could count reflecting the flashlight beams.

He hadn’t wanted to die the whole time, but, suddenly, he really didn’t want to die in this way.

“Look!” one of the men shouted. “A light.”

Fallon lifted his head, ears stuffy thanks to the high-frequency racing of his pulse, and saw that, yes, there was a light, high-powered, a white glow like an eye across the lake. A boat.

The phraseany port in a stormfilled him with one last flicker of hope. They were definitely in a storm, and he’d take any port.

The light drew closer, until the sound of its motor reached them, their own light glinting off the backs of the gators that slithered and tussled each other out of the way.

With backup, and enough bullets, maybe they could start firing on the gators. Would injury send them fleeing? Or would blood in the water only put them into a sharklike frenzy? Fallon didn’t know, but he thought it was worth trying, as far as strategies went.

Lloyd swung the boat sideways, and lifted a big hand in greeting as the second boat drew closer. “Hey! Cody!” He waved, hand white-limned in the fierce glow of the other boat’s spotlight. “We–”

With all five fingers distinctly outlined, it was easy to see when the middle one exploded with a spurt of black blood, and then was gone.

Lloyd bellowed with pain and snatched his hand down into his chest. With his good hand, he attempted to gun the throttle, but then his head kicked back, and he fell back across his seat.

Whoever was in the other boat, they weren’t friends.

~*~

Through her night vision scope, Ava saw Boyle slip between blackberry-webbed tree trunks, and disappear from sight. Getting away! Again!

But…

“Mama!”

She swung the rifle over her shoulder on its strap, dropped to one knee, and opened her arms.

Remy hit her like a little cannonball, without slowing, warm, and sweaty, and crying out loud in a way he hadn’t done since infancy, big, gulping hiccups and sobs. He was rank from the swamp, from a lack of baths, and when Ava wrapped him up tight, and cupped the back of his head, she felt the scratch of twigs tangled in his hair.

Ava had spent so long suppressing her grief, her sense of doom, her throat-gripping panic, that it wasn’t until now, his small body wrapped safe and shaking in his arms, that she actually believed she would ever get to hold him again. She’d known that she would do anything, would die trying, but hope had been only the most ephemeral thread woven through her determination.

And here he was, alive and whole, even as he clung to her and whimpered “mama” into her neck, which he wetted with his tears. He was here. Against all reason, against the odds, shehadhim.

Ava turned her face into the side of his head and breathed deep the scent of unwashed scalp, and green water, and rocked him side to side as his crying slowly quieted. She’d thought whenthis moment came –ifthis moment came – that she would cry along with him. Instead, though she felt warm tears slip down her cheeks, she was filled with an overwhelming relief; a crushing exhaustion at war with the lightness in her lungs. She could have laid down here on the marshy ground and slept, her baby clutched to her chest.

But they weren’t done.

When he’d gone quiet, she eased Remy back, and wiped his face with her hands, smearing the dirt smudges across his cheeks. “You okay, baby?”

He sniffed hard, and though his lip trembled, he nodded. Brave boy.

---