Tom Piccirilli - Emerald Hell

Maybe it was time to talk. He said, "Hey now, boys, listen-"

A powerful thud rocked the skiff and nearly knocked him off his feet. Louder grunting and hissing made him turn and look behind him. The boat spun and drifted into deeper water. He grabbed up the stobpole once more and swept it out to batter the gators away. It splintered in his hands and he thought, Damn stupid move, I needed that thing.

Now he was stuck with no way back toward the bank. He tore at the netting and removed the oars, which looked small and ineffectual now. He slotted them in and tried rowing but didn't get far before he heard claws scrape across the bottom of the skiff. It pitched again, and a huge, powerful tail slammed into the bow, raising waves that splashed against his chest.

Hellboy had just enough time to say, "Son of a-" before the skiff flipped, hurling him into the brackish, gator-infested waters.

The emerald-black depths yawned wide even as other jaws tore at him. Tumbling over, something got hold of his ankle almost daintily and he was yanked down. He swung his fists and connected with thick reptilian scales, but without any leverage he wasn't doing much good. The gators twisted across his body and snapped at him, their claws shredding his overcoat and ripping at his belly.

He fought to swallow his shouts and pain, keeping his mouth tightly closed against the cold slimy slough. He got his stone hand up in front of his face and a pair of jaws locked on his wrist, yanking him forward. The tatters of his coat flapped up across his throat and he was jerked in another direction by his hoof, two gators tussling over him and playing tug-of-war for their dinner.

Granny Lewt was trying to tell him something. Jaws snapped shut on his upper leg and pulled him away from the others. He opened his mouth to let out a drowning warble. He could taste his own blood in the water. The churning froth of sludge erupted into his face and he became completely disoriented again. He hauled off, hammering with his fist, and managed to break the gator's grip. He lashed out with his tail, connecting with something. Okay, enough of this. He needed air. He tried to swim but wasn't sure he was heading to the surface. His instincts kept pushing Granny away, and with his brain burning from lack of oxygen he forced himself to settle down enough to hear whatever she needed him to hear.

Gators drag you down to their mud-holes, roll you under logs, and leave you rotting, sometimes in air pockets, fer days. They liked their meals tender. There were rumors of men who woke up with their feet chewed off, in the black twenty feet down, who had to dig their way back to the water before the bull gators came back to finish their supper.

They were pulling him down to a mostly submerged tussock island, where they could bury him in the roots. He had to move in the opposite direction and get to air. His brain was already getting foggy, his head full of white and red spatters.

Hellboy swung around hard and connected squarely with one of the gators. Felt like it was directly on its snout. He kicked hard then, feeling teeth snap oil in the flesh of his ankle, and let loose with a cry that released the last of his air. A burst of bubbles tickled his forehead, and he knew which way was up.

He broke the surface spitting out Christ knew what, the thick sludge of swamp boiling around him. Oil from the broken lantern burned across the water and gave him a little light.

During the struggle he must've knocked the skiff aside. He saw it was overturned and stuck in a snarl of cypress roots not too far away. He swam for it. Behind him the bull gators had made it to the far bank of the inlet and were nursing their wounds.

Hellboy could touch bottom now but he kept slipping in the slime and flopping over on his face, unable to catch his breath. It was difficult going but he finally managed to shrug out of his ruined overcoat and get a hand on the boat.

Breathing heavily, he grabbed hold and took a step up the bank before he realized there was a hole in the bottom of the skiff. Not huge but big enough that he couldn't fix it. He let out a grunt of frustration and slid off-balance in the muck again. The skiff spun out of his reach, righted itself, and immediately started to sink. He turned away and found he was going under again.

He came up gagging and sucking wind. By the time he got ready to try and climb up from the shallows again, he heard the sharp sounds of hissing nearby.

"Terrific," he said. Two more bull gators were coming straight for him down the silt bank, their eyes shining with silver moonlight.

He thought about going for his gun but the possibility of bigger pockets of methane worried him. Dumb to die out here rolled to the bottom of some mud-hole, but it would be even worse if he blew himself up.

He said,"I'm not good eating, guys. Just go ask your other pals. Why don't you both just-"

The first bull slued forward, opening its jaws wide. Instead of waiting, Hellboy lunged, shifted his weight, and more or less fell directly across its nose. The gator scrambled along up the bank with Hellboy on its back. Good, they were getting to drier, firmer ground. Hellboy rolled off and stood in a crouch. After those hours in the skiff and slipping around in the mire, it was nice to have earth beneath his hooves again. When the bull turned to make another pass he caught hold of its tail and held on. The second gator tried to go for his legs, but Hellboy hauled its brother around, lifted it high, and brought it slamming down on the other's back in a crushing blow of muscle and scale. While they tried to untangle themselves, Hellboy grabbed what was left of his coat, put it back on, and moved further along the narrow shore.

In the distance he saw flame.

The mud bank thinned until he was back in the water. Forced to swim and crawl through the morass, clambering across sandbanks and tussocks of briar, thorn, and barb, he made his way toward the fire.

The dark lake glistened with star shine, the rim of the water a searing white as if slabs of light had been laid end to end around its edge.

It took him over an hour to reach the camp, and by the time he got there he was exhausted, half-drowned, completely covered in mud and rotting vegetation, and he was sick to his stomach from swallowing so much swamp water. Or maybe it was the old lady's Celiac Ganglia with the Sympathetic Plexuses of the Abdominal Viscera, but he really didn't want to think about that.

A skiff had been beached in white sand, and nearby a young man sat playing a mouth-harp. The guy had a campfire going with something freshly killed cooking on a spit. Thankfully the old lady hadn't given Hellboy her nose too. He didn't want to know what it was he was watching sizzle in the flames.

He figured this had to be John Lament. A deep calm seemed to settle around and within the guy. He was maybe twenty-five, but with a shock of white right up front in his otherwise wavy brown hair. Dressed in jeans, suspenders, and a light white linen shirt rolled up to the middle of his muscular forearms.

Lament quit his twanging, looked up, and said, "Well son, you look like you've had a hell of a time of it out in these black waters." He drew a blanket from a rucksack. "Dry off and come sit by the fire 'fore you catch your death."

Hellboy nodded his thanks, yanked off his belt and ragged coat, and dried himself, doing his best to clean off the mud. His ankle was chewed up pretty bad and he had deep lacerations across his thigh. He tore off a couple of lengthy strips from his coat and bound his wounds, then put his belt back on.

Lament offered a small jug. "You want a tap of moon to kill the pain?"