Jeff Abbott - Panic

Carrie and Evan sprinted through dense growth and stone paths, past another faux temple with spider monkeys, past a children’s archaeological-dig play area. They stumbled down a creek lined with thick bamboo, hurried back up the other side to the stone path. A few moms and kids ambled along and they stared.

‘Crazy guy with a gun!’ Carrie yelled. ‘Take cover!’

The moms jumped for cover in the bamboo or off the path. Jargo ran past the women, ignoring them.

‘Evan!’ he yelled. ‘I can give you your dad!’

Carrie spun and fired at him. Jargo ducked back into the bamboo. Evan ran past a sign that read NO TRESPASSING, ZOO EMPLOYEES ONLY, Carrie following. It had to lead to a building, he decided, a place they could barricade themselves in – Jargo would flee to avoid the police, who would be racing into the zoo now.

Evan hit a short fence, they went over it and then rushed up to another short fence, and Evan said, ‘Shit.’

Alligators. On the other side of the three-foot divider, on a bank, with a narrow gap of scum-topped water beyond, leading to the zoo’s Louisiana Swamp wooden walkway, where visitors walked above the water and admired the reptiles from a safe distance. Three of the gators sunned themselves on the bank. Not five feet away from them.

Behind them, a bullet hissed through a silencer. The shot caught Carrie high in the shoulder and she staggered and screamed. On the walkway across the water, a woman screeched for the police. Loudspeakers boomed into life, urging everyone to head calmly for the exits.

‘Wrong move, Carrie,’ Dezz called from behind a tree. ‘Wrongo. Stupid. Fucking dense.’

Evan held her with one arm, aimed the gun with the other. To stand there was to die. The gators looked fat and zoo-happy and probably weren’t hungry. Please. He hoped. He spotted Dezz peeking around a tree and fired a steady barrage of bullets, forcing Dezz back into the undergrowth, helping Carrie over the fence.

‘Dezz… hates reptiles,’ she said. ‘Afraid of them.’

Evan wasn’t sure he had a bullet left in the clip. He hurried her past the resting gators. He stumbled over one’s tail and it opened its white, razor-ringed mouth in a defensive hiss. But the gator started a slow waddle away from them.

Do they smell the blood? Evan had no idea.

‘Go,’ she said. ‘Leave me. Get safe.’

‘No. Come on.’ Dezz would be charging toward them since Evan had quit shooting. He saw Dezz approaching, taking careful aim. Evan’s gun clicked on an empty magazine. Evan and Carrie jumped into the green-frothed water. He heard a bullet scream above their heads.

Evan held Carrie’s gun above the water, but he couldn’t swim, help Carrie, and shoot at the same time. The distance to the wooden walkway seemed like a mile. People on the walkway scattered, mothers fleeing with children, one man hollering into a cell phone.

Dezz gingerly put a foot over the fence, his gun aimed at the gators, who seemed as uninterested in him as they had been in Evan and Carrie.

Evan kicked forward, pushing Carrie, thinking, Dezz gets a bead on us, it’s over.

‘Help us!’ he hollered up toward the walkway. The cell phone man gestured at Evan to swim to the right.

A log lay between them and the walkway, and with a sudden, yet ancient horror that spasmed up from his spine, Evan saw it wasn’t a log. An alligator, facing away from them, lay barely submerged. Ignoring the ruckus behind him.

Evan shoved Carrie to one side, slapped his hand on the water to draw the gator away from her. Carrie paddled toward the walkway. He heard a hiss behind him. One of the gators on the bank opened its mouth again, heckling Dezz, and Dezz gave ground, putting one leg back over the fence. Looking scared and furious.

They can move faster in water, Evan thought, logic kicking into his brain. Carrie’s bleeding, does it draw them like a shark? Carrie reached the wooden supports, the cell phone man offered a hand, another man steadying him, and they hauled Carrie up to the walkway.

Evan kicked away from the track Carrie had cut in the water. The log-gator orbited toward Evan. Evan swam hard, waited for the tug to tear off his leg. He blundered close to the walkway and put up an arm. The men yanked him up. Six feet behind him, the gator wrenched its mouth open in bravado, then settled and watched him with an ageless gaze. Evan dripped water and scum and sprawled across the wood. One of the rescuers wrenched Carrie’s gun from his grasp.

‘Please!’ Evan said. ‘I need that!’

‘No way, asshole!’ Cell Phone Man put a heavy hand on Evan’s chest, pushed him to the railing. ‘I called the police, you stay right here!’

Evan turned toward the bank. Dezz was gone, swallowed back in the bamboo. No sign of Jargo.

‘She’s really shot,’ the other man said. ‘Holy Jesus.’

Evan seized Carrie’s hand, shoved Cell Phone Man to one side, ran. The men yelled at him to stop. Old swamp-style rocking chairs lined the deck, two older ladies sitting frozen in shock, clutching their purses, as Evan and Carrie ran past. At the end of the walkway stood a gift shop and just past its door, a railing. They went over the railing; the next walkway led to a wildlife nursery, built to look like a weathered swamp shack with small boats docked in a fronting lagoon. They hurried around the back of the shack. More fencing, covered with ivy, bamboo curtaining a service road beyond.

Evan pushed Carrie up so she could pull herself over. Blood welled from her shoulder and she gasped as she climbed. She tumbled over the ivy, falling headfirst into the blanketing thicket of bamboo beyond the fence. He jumped on the mesh and saw Jargo approaching from his right, Dezz from his left.

‘Give it up, Evan,’ Jargo called. ‘Right now.’

‘Stay back, or that tape puts your face on the evening news.’

The indecision played on Jargo’s face. ‘You go, you’ll never see your dad again.’

Evan went over the fence. A bullet barked a centimeter from his hand as he let go and fell into the overgrowth.

Carrie grabbed him and they ran, hearing the pit-pit of bullets pocking through the bamboo curtains. Then the noise stopped. Evan was sure the two men were only stopping to climb over the fence in pursuit. They ran along a paved road that served as a tram path. Zoo employees headed away from them in a golf cart, hollering into walkie-talkies. Another fence and they stumbled along a stretch of parking lot and grassland on the border of the zoo. He checked behind them. No sign of Dezz or Jargo; they hadn’t scaled the fence.

They ran along the edge of the zoo now, hearing the approaching whine of sirens.

‘Are you in pain?’ he asked. Stupidest question ever asked, he decided.

‘I’ll make it. Are you all right? Did they hit you?’

‘No. I’m fine. How did you…’ Shoot your way out of there. Save me. He looked at her as if he didn’t know her.

‘We’re getting the hell out of here,’ she said.

Beyond the expanse of the parking lot they could see the whirl of police-car lights near the main entrance.

‘Here.’ He steadied her. ‘I’m getting you to a doctor.’

‘No doctor. Evan, you have to do what I say. I’ve been protecting you since day one. I’m sorry I had to lie to you.’ Her voice faded to a weak whisper. ‘I’m from Bricklayer.’

He stopped in his tracks. ‘What?’

She reached out a hand to him, bloodied from being pressed against her shoulder. ‘I… I was supposed to protect you. I’m sorry.’

‘Protect me. For how long?’

She steered him off a path that cut across a swath of deep green. ‘Jargo thought I worked for him. He thought I would kill you for him today. But I would never hurt you. Never.’