Greg Iles - Blood Memory

I veer south again. Tree branches whip my face, and peppervine claws at the legs of my jeans. Here the ground rises and falls in three-foot undulations, and I pray not to step on a cottonmouth as I splash through the dark slews. I’ve seen fifty moccasins together roiling the water in the drying pools.

The rain falls relentlessly, and the sound of my pursuer crashing through the brush grows nearer. Sweat pours from my skin, and my heart thumps against my breastbone. Free diving keeps me in good physical shape, but terror steals my breath, and alcohol withdrawal probably isn’t helping matters.

As I slow to get my bearings, the rifle cracks again, driving willow splinters into my left arm. I duck down and scramble between two cottonwood trunks, then crab-crawl through the dark until my arms begin to itch like fire. Bull nettle! There’s a thicket of the stuff all around me. I could never have imagined being glad to feel this pain, but at this moment I’m ecstatic.

Thirty yards into the thicket, I bear right, toward the boat ramp. Before I cover twenty yards, the sound of cursing floats through the trees. With a tight smile on my face, I rise and sprint for the west side of the island. A light beam cuts the air close by, but then a scream of male rage echoes through the trees. I can’t make out his words, or even if there were any.

My heart lifts with hope as I hit a level patch of sand, cause for joy until I spy a string stretched across my path at thigh level. It’s an old trotline strung with rusty fishhooks, and though I twist my body torturously in an effort to avoid it, nothing can stop my headlong flight. I swallow a scream as the hooks tear into my flesh. The line rips free from whatever held it as I fall, but the treble hooks are well and truly buried in my right thigh.

The rifle booms again, its echo rolling over sandy berms like cannon fire. My hunter heard my scream and got a new fix on my position. I pray he doesn’t know about the boat ramp, but what are the odds of that? I’m almost certain that it’s Jesse Billups behind me. Who else knew where I was?

At the top of a dune, I catch myself and stop. The main channel of the Mississippi has opened before me, its far shore a mile away, cloaked in rain and darkness. Get down! shouts a voice in my head. You’re silhouetted against the clouds!

Sliding down the dune, I race south along the bank, skirting cypress knees and driftwood snags. There’s the boat ramp, forty yards along the shore. Its concrete slab runs right down into the water at a steep angle. A glitter-coated bass boat sits on a trailer on the sand about five feet above the river. The problem is, it’s totally exposed. To launch that boat quickly, I’ll have to unsecure it from the trailer, lift the hitch end of the trailer, and heave both trailer and boat down the ramp into the water. If I can manage that, the boat should float free while the trailer sinks into the depths. I’ll have to swim freestyle with the fast current to catch the boat and board it, but I can do that. I’d rather swim the damned river with one arm than fight this island on foot anymore.

The boat ramp looks deserted from here, but that means nothing. If I walk into that open space unprotected, a ten-year-old could pick me off with a rifle. I crouch near the river’s edge, my senses primed for the slightest stimulus.

Something’s not right. I don’t hear my pursuer anymore. The wind is louder on the exposed bank, but I should hear something. The rain raking the water sounds like rain hitting a tin roof, only the pitch is higher-almost a hiss. The southerly wind blasting upcurrent is building whitecaps three feet high. Rough going for a bass boat.

I need a weapon. A tree branch? Not much good against a rifle. A rock? Same problem. What do I have with me…?

Cell phone. If I can get close enough to my attacker to identify him before he shoots me, I can give his name to the police-and tell him I’m doing it. Killing me at that point would be the act of an idiot. Or a lunatic, counters the voice in my head.

Taking the Ziploc out of my pocket, I see silver metal but no electric light. Did the sealed bag somehow short it out? I squeeze the phone through the plastic, and the light of the screen clicks on. My joy is short-lived. The screen reads, NO SERVICE .

Shit! I need to move to higher ground. There’s no true high ground on the island, but there are better spots than this.

A blue beam of light sweeps over me, nearly stopping my heart. It’s the push boat again, driving its barges upriver. Any hope there? I could signal the crew by standing in the spotlight and waving my arms, but that would be suicide. I could try swimming out to the boat, but I would probably be sucked under its barges and into its massive propellers.

I’m thinking of sprinting north along the shore, away from the boat ramp, when a flashlight beam shines out of the woods behind me and moves steadily along the bank. In seconds it will pick out my hunched body on the sand.

Without even thinking I shove the Baggie into my front pocket, crawl to the river’s edge, and slip into the current like a rat leaving a sinking ship. The water is cool but not cold, thank God, and it soothes the hives caused by the bull nettle. The waves are another matter. When I swam this river at sixteen, its surface was like glass. Now it batters me like breaking surf, and the rain lashes my face as I try to keep my head above the waves.

The flashlight sweeps over the spot I just left and lingers, but I’m no longer there. The current has me now. I’m moving along the shore at the speed of a jogging man, and a force like the hand of a giant is pulling me out into the river.

I feel no bottom below me because there are no shallows here. This part of the island forms the outside of a river bend, and so takes the full brunt of the current before deflecting it west. The cutting power of all that water is enormous. Wherever it hits a bank like this, the Mississippi gouges out a channel over a hundred feet deep. Compounding this effect, the river also narrows here, creating a sort of sluiceway that would knock down skyscrapers if they were placed in its path.

I’ve got to get my shoes off. My jeans, too. In this river, they’re more lethal than Jesse’s rifle. I’m reaching down to pull off my left shoe when the flashlight pins me to the crest of a wave. I don’t feel or see the impact of the bullet, but the whipcrack by my ear knocks my heart into my throat. Whoever is firing that rifle knows what the hell he’s doing. I’m a good shot, Jesse bragged, when telling me about my father.

I yank off the shoe and dive, exhaling to bleed off buoyancy, extending my limbs like sails to catch the current and drift more swiftly past the island.

When I surface again, the flashlight is gone.

Unsnapping my jeans, I try to peel myself out of them, but they’re tight even when dry. I curse my vanity, sinking like a stone as I fight to get the soaked denim off my legs. My left leg comes loose, but the other won’t. Kicking back to the surface, I see why. The fishhooks from the trotline have fastened the jeans to my thigh. Two prongs of the treble hook are buried deeply in my flesh. I’d like to rip the jeans to get them free, but even if I could manage to tear the wet denim, I can’t afford to do it-not with what I have in mind.

I pull gently on the central stem of the hooks, and a trickle of blood runs toward my groin. Getting fishhooks out of flesh is a tricky business. I’ve seen my grandfather remove dozens. Sometimes he snips off the loop and pushes the barb out through unwounded skin; other times he widens the hole with a scalpel and frees the barb the way it came in. Both methods take tools I don’t have.