Robert Walker - Grave Instinct

Sorrento was beside her now, doing his own assessment of the situation. With Mike's help, she turned the body and stared into the face of Jervis Swantor. “One down, one to go,” she said through gritted teeth. “It's Swantor.”

Sorrento and Jessica crouched over the bodies in the storm, their weapons pointed, but they had no target, and they were exposed. The two agents scoured the landscape for any sign of Kenyon and Mrs. Swantor. They saw no one.

Konrath came racing from the house, going to his knees over the young guardsman, LaPlante. “Oh, Christ! No, no!”

O'Hurley followed, saying, “He's got the woman! I got two shots off from the upstairs window. I'm sure I hit him.”

Konrath bellowed, “O'Hurley, which way did the bastard go?”

“ They went straight down, just as if they were swallowed up by the earth,” said O'Hurley. “There's got to be a steep drop-off right out there, maybe sixty yards. She's wearing LaPlante's raincoat. The man's wearing dark clothing.”

“ Let's get this bastard before he feeds again,” said Jessica, her teeth set. She grabbed her flashlight and beamed it toward the area O'Hurley's own light sought out. The men followed suit, and they spread out along the drop off, shining their lights at the dark hole into which Kenyon had crawled, taking his prey with him, like some beast out of the scriptures.

They tentatively made their way in the slippery undergrowth for about ten minutes before Jessica's flash picked up a slight movement and the color yellow in the for distance. “There! There she is. Come on!”

They carefully negotiated the incline, when a shot rang out, a bullet whistling past them. This made O'Hurley fall and tumble, sending up a bevy of frightened quail and shattering his ankle on impact against a tree. “Son of a bitch.” He moaned.

First Mate Konrath ordered everyone to discard their slickers, realizing they presented too much of a target. Konrath then tended to O'Hurley while Jessica and Sorrento went toward the yellow marker, where they hoped to find the woman.

They fought tough, jagged underbrush, palmetto bush and gnarled branches that cut their hands and faces just to win a foothold on the riverbank where the yellow coat winked again and again at them like a lure.

Jessica whispered in Sorrento's ear, “Do you see it, the raincoat?”

“ Could be there to decoy us in, a trap,” he replied.

“ What do you suggest?”

“ I walk into the trap… you cover me,” he told her.

“ No, I walk in, you cover me.”

“ Not in this life.”

“ Then we go in together.”

“ We don't have that option,” he insisted.

“ Look, if he hasn't killed her already, this may be our only chance of flushing him out before he does.”

They then heard a flurry of crashing noises in the water, and the yellow raincoat suddenly went in and out of sight. Jessica instinctively rushed toward the sound, ahead of Sorrento.

“ Wait… wait up! We go in together!” he shouted, rushing in behind her.

The sound of a struggle ahead in the fog-laden bayou beckoned her on. So far, they had been unable to save any of the Skull-digger's victims. Jessica, acutely aware of their utter failure in this regard, meant to change that here and now. Then a deafening silence fell over the place, and Jessica again spotted the yellow cloth. It began to move and thrash about in the black water, and then she heard the sound of the bone cutter's deadly whirr.

“ Jesus, he's killing her right now!” Jessica rushed toward the flagging yellow marker in the dense forest ahead. They had come perhaps a hundred yards from where they'd left Konrath and O'Hurley. Her flashlight shone crazily, hitting the tops of trees now as she brought up her 9-mm semiautomatic to bear on the scene.

As she came into a clearing of caked mud and ooze, she fell and her body was trapped up to her hips in a sucking muck. She'd fallen prey to the swamp. Just ahead of her, from her prone position in the sucking mud, she saw the last of the color yellow go down the gullet of a feeding alligator that was pulling back into the river. Then she realized that Kenyon had leapt onto the monster, that he was actually wrestling with the alligator, using his bone saw now on the creature, cutting wide swaths of tough skin from its head, attempting to kill it. She knew instinctively that this was no act of heroism on Kenyon's part, but rather a rage against the beast and an attempt to regain Mrs. Swantor-or rather her brain-for himself.

Jessica, staring at this sight, froze, curious and amazed.

From behind her, Sorrento shouted as he broke through the brush, almost joining Jessica in the quagmire. Balancing himself, he came to a standstill and stared out at the water where the battle raged. “Shoot… shoot him,” Jessica shouted at Sorrento.

While Mike hesitated, Jessica managed to bring up her gun, readying to fire at Kenyon when she saw that he'd vanished. All had gone silent in the water as if there had never been a disturbance. Nothing left of the battle but ripples on the surface.

Sorrento cursed himself for having hesitated firing. He imagined either the gator had sunk its teeth into Kenyon, or the madman had slipped away. He could be making his way to shore, given that the alligator was busy with Swantor's wife. She pictured Kenyon wading from the water and crawling onto shore somewhere on the island, still holding firm to his bone cutter.

“ Can you get me out of this muck?”

Sorrento worked his way to solid ground as close to her as possible, trying to reach her. He perilously reached a hand out to her, nearly falling in beside her. “Sonofabitch is getting away,” he complained, unable to reach her.

“ No, he slipped off to the left. I saw him,” countered Konrath who'd come up on the clearing from another direction. “He's still out there.”

“ Will you two please get me the hell out of here?” asked Jessica. “We've got to follow the riverbank. Try to keep up with Kenyon.”

Konrath located a strong branch, and with Sorrento's help, they towed Jessica to safety.

“ We have to split up.” Jessica told them. “Kenyon could crawl ashore anywhere on the island, maybe down by the boathouse, make a clean escape. I swear I won't have that, gentlemen.”

Konrath helped her to her feet. “I say we call in for help and wait until daybreak before one of us gets killed.”

“ You do what you think's right, Mr. Konrath,” said Jessica. “I'm going after the bastard.” She stood mud-soaked before them, her eyes determined.

Sorrento suggested, “Why don't you radio for everyone aboard the cutter to form a search party, Mr. Konrath? By time they get here, it will be daybreak.”

“ I'd do that but I lost my radio someplace out here, and the only other one is back with LaPlante's body.”

Sorrento then turned to Jessica, but she was gone, moving swiftly along the bank and out of sight.

“ Damn that impetuous woman,” said Sorrento, before going after her.

Kenyon had felt terror rip through him as the alligator plunged below the surface, turned topsy-turvy, spinning and going for the bottom while holding on to Mrs. Swantor, a little of her coat still extended from its jaws. Kenyon's own ability to hold on became a question of losing either the gun or his bone cutter, something he couldn't allow. So he'd lost the gun in the struggle. In the end, it had been a futile attempt when the alligator dove into the depths, dragging Mrs. Swantor with it.

He imagined her brain deep inside its gullet on its way to the stomach, and awaiting digestion.

He cursed those chasing him; he'd had to give up the fight when they appeared. He had swum away, trying to keep the bone cutter from taking on any more water than it already had.