Robert Walker - Grave Instinct

He reached for the gun, not surprised to find it gone. He patted for the syringe, also gone, along with his wallet and keys.

He imagined Swantor would be turning him over to the police now, but then why the elaborate hoax? Why hadn't he simply had the cops waiting in the bushes? How much time had elapsed since taking the blow to the head? he wondered. Then he felt the rhythmic movement of the boat and realized they were on the water en route somewhere known only to Swantor.

He screamed out, “Swantor! You bastard! What're you pulling here?”

He got no answer.

He tore at the chain, bruising himself in the process.

He sat on the edge of the bed now, his head in his hands.

He looked up to the ceiling corner to watch that damned camera eye moving from side to side, watching him.

Muttering to himself, he realized that Swantor meant to do exactly what he'd said he would, film the Skull-digger at work on his latest victim and put it on the Internet. “Not if I kill him first…”

Phillip told him, “I'm angry as hell. Angry enough to tell you this, Grant. I'm hungry to the point that this creep's brain will do as well as any.”

“ He's a bigger psycho than you, Phillip.”

He recalled now how Swantor had earlier entered the room with a gun-Grant's gun-and the Demoral-filled needle. “I insist you inject yourself now. I'm going to attend to your van, and when I return, we'll leave New Orleans together, the three of us.”

“ But we're on the water, already set sail.”

“ Just took us off a bit. I don't want anyone showing up at the marina to find the three of us. That won't do.”

“ But the van?”

“ I'm on it.” He pointed the gun and held out the needle. “Puncture yourself with this now! Or die now!”

“ That would spoil your plans for a good show.”

“ But it would make me a hero-saving the girl, killing you! Shoot up or be shot.” Grant now recalled how it had all come down to this, having to administer the Demoral into his own arm.

After securing both hostages in the yacht, Jervis Swantor had moved his home to a private marina covered with low-hanging willows, a place no longer in use on the other side of the river. He then took a dingy and returned to the van, all the while a timer on the computer photographed his two hostages and sent out a few minutes of each directly to Cahil's website in cyberspace.

He expected little trouble ditching the van, but on closer inspection from behind the wheel, Swantor cursed the fact that it was a stick shift. He sat grinding gears trying to find reverse, sending up a cat cry to the marina residence and the moon. When finally the thing lurched backward, Swantor drove off calmly, heading for the back bayou road he had surveyed a day earlier for this purpose.

Oblong black objects-buzzards-slept on the branches of trees garlanded with eerie moss. “Witch hair,” he muttered, recalling what he had heard Spanish moss called in his youth.

Off in the distance behind him, he heard the wail of a siren. He knew the danger of being caught within a hundred yards of the van, much less in the driver's seat, but he didn't want it located smack in front of his marina address, either, should some enterprising cop locate it.

He wound through the thicket and finally came up on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi, a granite cap. Swantor first opened the driver's side door should he need to jump. He then shifted into first, holding the brake hard against the machine's desire to go forward. Tires rotated madly now as he held firm to the brake. He then shifted and rolled from the cab as the monster van screeched and squealed headlong into the air, diving nose first into the great river.

Swantor got up, mud-encrusted, feeling his heart pounding as he did so. His heart had been racing along with the van's tires. He went to the edge of the bluff to stare down at his handiwork by the half moon, crouching on his knees in the soft drizzle. Only the rear of the van showed, and if the river swelled, it would be washed downstream and perhaps consumed altogether.

Swantor made up his mind to leave and worry no more about the van. He had a long walk back to where he had left the dingy. He stood from the crouching position he'd taken, thinking of the fantastic computer film he planned on making, when suddenly his shoe slipped on the gleaming, flattened mud, where the van's tires had turned it into a slick spot of earth winking wet-eyed back at the moon.

Swantor wound up on his knees again, but this time backward, his feet and lower legs extending over the cliff in mid air. He tried to move, but each movement sent him slipping ever so slightly back toward the air and the river. He imagined if he did fall, he might well land dead atop of the van's back doors. Ironic enough, he thought.

He looked about for anything to grab hold of. Useless hanging tree moss presented itself as if to taunt him. There was nothing, no saving branch, no vine, no swinging rope. He realized how crucial this moment was. He pictured this as one of those moments that came in stark black and white, when the eye pinpointed on the fact that one's life could end or resume based upon something as slight as a single choice. No room for mistake. From somewhere overhead, he heard an owl cooing its eternal question, and he imagined what he must look like to the bird. A man in the position of prayer, teetering on the edge.

He gave a thought to his two guests back on the yacht, thought of how eventually they would be found shackled there. He wondered what authorities would make of it should he die here like this, while Kenyon and the woman were discovered on his yacht.

He could do nothing and remain here on his knees, or leap up from the kneeling position and find solid ground or find himself on his way to the bottom.

He took action, using his knees as springboard. One knee did well, but the other slid beneath him like a tire stuck in mud, landing him on his stomach. But he had managed to gain a bit more land. From there he pulled and clawed himself to safety.

He ushered the strength and breath to crawl and next to stand. The dark, empty woods around him heard his delighted laughter, but seemed not to care, and the owl had taken wing, disappearing out over the great and silent river.

DR. Jervis Swantor had made his way back to the yacht by 3:40 A.M. He was mud-caked and so he threw his filthy clothes overboard. He then showered and looked at Grant via the monitor. The other man still lay prone on the bed in the other room, muttering to himself. He turned the volume up to listen.

The infamous Skull-digger is cursing me! he thought with delight.

Swantor would send no words or photos out on the Internet that might lead to him. He knew the FBI and other authorities had sophisticated ways of locating a computer's whereabouts, but his machine scrambled such information in hundreds of different directions, thanks to his Anon program.

For the second time tonight, he spliced the tape to the section he wanted and uploaded it and sent it out to Cahil's website. “Now I'm in your face,” he said to the invisible person manning Cahil's website. He then forwarded the picture to countless other sites, after which he went to the yacht's controls and started downriver.

After a long couple of hours, he had put some distance between New Orleans and himself, meandering about the canals and anchoring the yacht in a cotton grove. He then retired to his master bedroom for sleep, glad that he had repainted her trim, and now he pulled off the stencils that changed the call numbers and name to a smaller ship kept registered and harbored elsewhere under the name of a dead uncle named Sweet.

He heard a faint crying out, but it was not a woman's voice. He only dully heard Kenyon's voice from the other end of the boat. A distant tugboat whistle wafted over the water, drifting down from upriver. He closed his eyes on the sound, feeling he had done a good night's job.