(I)
Leona flipped the burgers on the grill; at least, she guessed she was doing it right. She pulled another Zima from the cooler, then looked into the woods.
Where are those assholes?
The burgers sizzled, their aroma eddying into the trees. Leona wasn't much of a cook. How long per side? she wondered. This weekend party had sounded like a great idea…
Damn them!
Leona did a good job hiding her insecurities, but the truth was she couldn't stand to be alone. At once she felt foolish, dressed only in flip-flops and her cutoffs. I'm cooking burgers topless and I'm by myself! What happened to the party? Her thoughts trailed back to Alan. Sure, he was cute, popular, and seemed very connected to her, but she'd always had the tiniest suspicion that his true interest was Carol.
My best friend, Leona reminded herself.
All was fair in love and war, she knew, but she also knew Carol, especially after a couple of drinks…
Alan's probably bofng her right now. Hell, Howie's probably in on it too. She's got them in a three-way, the ho! And here I am, cooking hamburgers in the woods with my tits out!
She shrieked as something scratched up her bare shoulder. She imagined the most disgusting bugs, but when she flung it off, she saw that it was only one of those little green lizards.
"Oops. Sorry," she said.
The lizard landed on one of the burgers. When it tried to run off the grill, it got about two inches before the heat claimed it.
Gross… A few moments later, the smoking remains fell into the grill. She looked at the burger it had landed on, then decided, That's Alan's.
"Come and get it!" she yelled at the top of her lungs. Some birds cackled back at her, as if inconvenienced by her shout. "Where are you!"
Sexual excitement wasn't the only thing that hardened Leona's nipples. Anger did too, and said nipples stuck out firm as coat pegs when her gaze fumed back into the woods. They're out there laughing at me, the fuckers! And Carol, that sleaze! Some best friend. I know she's doing both of those guys-
She screamed hard when two clammy hands landed on her bare back and shoved at her. Instinct made her grab the spatula for a weapon but just as she would take a swipe-
"Howie?"
Howie collapsed against a tree.
My God! When her own shock wore off, she was seized again merely by the look of him. Hair pasted to his brow by sweat, and more sweat drenching his shirt. There was something else on the shirt, too…
Did he… puke on himself?
He stared up openmouthed for a moment, silent, shaking.
"Howie! What happened to you? And where's Carol and Alan?"
"Carol, Carol," he stuttered, "out in the woods, I had to leave her. She had these-these-these things on her, and-"
"What things?"
"Ticks or something, I don't know-"
Leona didn't process the information very well. "You left her in the woods!"
"I-I-I-I had to, 'cause-'cause she passed out, and these ticks, er, well, I don't know what they were, but they were this really disgusting yellow color with red spots on them and I think they were poisonous or something-"
Leona fell to her knees and shook him by the collar. "And you left her? You asshole!"
He yammered on, eyes wide open and bloodshot. "Had to come to get Alan, I couldn't carry her by myself but then-then-then I found a dead body-"
"What!" Leona bellowed.
"I got lost trying to find you and Alan, and there was another inlet with a boat, not Alan's boat, but just a little boat, and that's where I saw the body floating in the water. It was some chick just floating there, her eyes out of her head, and-and-and there was a really long snake wrapped around her, and oh Jesus God, I think it was one of those girls who disappeared a few weeks ago!" And then Howie's torment-twisted face fell into his hands, and he sobbed aloud.
Dead bodies. Ticks. Missing persons.
This… was too much for a girl like Leona.
"Howie! You're on drugs! Look, I know lots of peo ple at school are doing the Ecstasy and crystal and this Oxycontin stuff-"
"No, no, no," he blubbered. He hadn't even seemed to notice that Leona was topless as she leaned over to talk to him, the orbs of her breasts practically bumping his face. "Do you remember?" he stated more declaratively. "A couple, three weeks ago. It was in the local papers and the paper at school-"
"What?"
"Robb White." He cleared his throat, rested his head back against the tree. "Do you remember that name?"
Do I remember him? Shit, she thought, embarrassed. I fucked him. Robb White was one of the classier jocks at school, nice guy for a jock, and, yes, Leona had hooked up with him at the Easton dorm mixer several months ago, after Alan had petered out after too much tequila.
"The papers said… he was officially missing," she recounted. "He and a bunch of other kids from school disappeared."
Howie shoved a piece of paper in her face.
What? It was a -credit card receipt, for gas at the marina.
"I found that in the boat," Howie declared.
"In our boat?"
"No, no, no, in his boat. A little skiff anchored at one of the other inlets on this island. It's here now, Leona. And that receipt is from three weeks ago, when he and his pals disappeared. I think that corpse I saw with the snake around it was one of the girls he was fooling around with."
Leona's mind ticked further… rather slowly, but at least it was functioning. Corpse, she thought stonily. Snake.
"And-and… what about Carol?" she asked. What had he said? Ticks?
She had ticks on her tits. Yellow ticks…"
The idea, the very image, made Leona swoon in disgust.
.But that's not all. After I found that body, I saw… this guy-"
Leona's anger rose. She was too confused. "What guy? Robb White, you mean?"
"No. A guy in a gas mask and hood. Military."
Yes, this was much too much…
"I don't know what the hell's going on…" Howie's shock was finally wearing off; he was getting his reason back, and this was a good thing for Leona. "We have to start somewhere."
"We have to get off this island!" she blurted back.
"I know. But first we have to find Alan and we have to find Carol, and we need to do that now."
Just as Leona helped him up-
What's that smell? she thought.
"Something's burning!" Howie yelled.
He was up and running toward the Coleman grill.
Holy shit!
Boy, had Leona fucked up! The leaves and sparse brush around the grill had somehow caught fire.
And the fire was crackling toward the shack.
"Jesus Christ, this whole island'11 be on fire!" Howie snapped. "The smoke'll kill us before we can get to the shore!"
Leona stood paralyzed, ludicrous now since she was topless.
Howie pointed to the end of the shack. "Turn on that faucet! I'll get the hose!"
Another second, and the seriousness kicked in. This island, this time of year? It was dry as tinders. A fire could engulf everything… including them.
Leona sprinted forward, slid to the shack on her knees, and cranked the faucet handle. She grabbed the hose lying there and clumsily aimed the water stream toward the fire. She wagged the hose back and forth, drawing lines of smoking sizzle. The fire had spread out quickly, but just as quickly, Leona had managed to put it all out.
Jesus… Relief!
But…
She looked around. Where was Howie?
"I found the hose!" he bellowed, running back around the comer. He held the long length in one hand. "Turn it o-" But then he stopped, scanned his eyes at the smoking ashes.
"Howie," Leona croaked. "That thing in your hand isn't the hose…"
It hung limp until the moment she'd said that, almost as if it had sensed the trigger of Howie's fear. His eyes snapped down. Then the "hose" began to move…
Vaguely pink, glistening skin. About an inch thick. How long was it? It extended from his hand, behind him, its other end still on the other side of the shack. Howie tried to drop the grotesque thing, but it was already too late. In the space of that synaptic second, the creature energized and wrapped around Howie's upper torso so fast it was but a silent, pinkish blur in the air.
Then Howie was dressed in the thing, wearing it like a corselet. His scream was severed when more of its length coiled about his neck. Howie fell over. – - -- – - – - – - – - – -
His eyes still registered images as his vision clouded, and then the thing's head made itself plain: slightly tapered, less like a snake and more like a worm.
A pink hole dilated-a mouth opening?-then a thinner pink tube of something fleshy slipped out and"Howie!" Leona screamed.
– slithered down Howie's throat.
Leona stood, uncomprehending, glaze-eyed, as this twenty-foot-long living thing that appeared to be a snake relaxed the pressure of its coils… and began to pulse.
Leona wasn't quite sure what she was seeing in those last few moments before her paralysis snapped, but before her feet mindlessly began to take her away into the woods, Howie's body seemed to be filling up with something.
Something that the snake was pumping into him, through the fleshy, ringed tube that was its mouth.
(II)
Ruth Bridge's lips looked like she'd been punched in the mouth-hard-if one were cynical enough to look closely; her face, in fact, would easily have been pretty were it not for the permanent, uneven swelling. She'd asked the doctor for "Lips like Pam Anderson!" but received something significantly less. She wasn't even aware of it, though, so what did it matter? A positive self-concept was sometimes more important than the truth.
Her body, on the other hand, looked damn good for a gal worn out by thirty-nine years of dope, booze, and onthe-run living. And her breasts? It had been a Miami plastic surgeon who'd done the work-for free, because Ruth had been his sideline plaything for most of her latter twenties. The doctor's name was Levin, and the manner with which he'd inflated Ruth's meager 32-As to prominent 36-Cs was worthy of a certificate of achievement. Dr. Levin had tired of her, though, after so many hotel rendevous, after which she'd ventured to Beverly Hills for a change of scenery and the pesky warrant for check kiting. Here she'd hooked up with another plastic surgeon, one Dr. Winston Prouty, who, in return for Ruth's pleasures, offered a free lip job. Well, Dr. Prouty-jaundiced by a hidden Demerol addiction turned out to demonstrate some howlingly inferior skills. The dirty collagen needle had caused an infection whose scars had never properly healed. Hence, Ruth's overlarge and permanently puffy lips.
In the end, though, it was all relative. These days, most men likely to share company with a woman like Ruth cared less about facial prettiness and more about the auxiliary benefits of unnaturally swollen lips.
The first three dealers in Naples had offered Ruth roughly twenty-five thousand for the watch, but… shit! They'd also insisted on identification. Fuckers know the score, she thought. One had even had the balls to add, "For instance, miss, if I sold this watch and it turned out to be"-he winked at her-"stolen, then I could be charged with a felony." Fuck you, Ruth thought. But Slydes and Jonas had really scored a big one this time. The watch they'd ripped off some broad down South turned out to be a French-made lady's Cartier Baignoire Mini, eighteen-karat gold and studded with diamonds and rubies. List price: fifty-three thousand. Ruth had about had an accident in her overly tight jeans when they'd told her that.
The fourth dealer had been a bit more compliant. "I can take one look at you and know this watch is hot."
Ruth glared. "What's that supposed to mean? What? I look like some lowlife? Some tramp thief trying to peddle stolen goods?"
"Actually, yes. That's exactly what you look like, and I see people like you every day."
"Aw, fuck you!" she dismissed and was about to storm out.
And if you want some advice," the proprietor added, "put your wig on right when you're trying to disguise yourself."
She sneered. "Huh?" Then, Oh, shit! she thought. She'd forgotten to take off the cut-price sweeping redhaired wig. When she'd first picked it up, she tried it on for Jonas and Slydes, striking a sexy pose. "Do I look like Julianne Moore?"
"No," Slydes said, beer in hand. "You look like a hose bag wearing a shitty red wig." The bastard! But it was a good idea; she wore it whenever she jacked money from an ATM. They all had cameras now.
And as for this chump jewelry salesman?
She dragged the wig off, revealing the unkempt blond shag. Fuck him anyway. What could he do?
She gave him the finger and started to leave when he said, "Wait! Don't be hasty!"
When she looked back, he was holding a stack of bills. "There's no way in hell you'll do better than five thousand. And that would be in cash, by the way."
Ooo… Ruth pretended not to be waylaid. He's right. And… that's a lot of money!
"Plus," he added, "ten minutes of your time. In the back. If you know what I mean, and I'm pretty sure you do."
"Buddy!" she celebrated. "You got a deal!"
Ruth was the kind of woman who could relate to those terms. He hadn't even lasted five minutes, which was even better, and now all that money formed a big clot in her purse. She'd already tapped five hundred dollars out of the ATM (you could only take out five hundred dollars per twenty-four-hour period); hence, the wig. It was her job to hit a different machine each day until everything was gone… or until somebody found the woman's body and the bank froze the account. The lady had bucks-thirty grand in her checking account!
All in a day's work… Back down the main drag in the dented white van the boys had jacked from some one in Georgia. She lived with Slydes and Jonas in their dead daddy's house back at the far corner of Collier County, near the Everglades Highway. When she'd been dating Slydes, she'd cheated on him with Jonas, and when she'd been dating Jonas, she'd cheated on him with Slydes. So they decided to keep it simple; they were both her boyfriends now.
Slydes poached gator; he was the brawn. Jonas grew pot; he was the brains. (While Slydes had dropped out of school in seventh grade, Jonas had actually made it to college, if only for one semester, taking horticulture and botany classes). Beefy, tall, and bearded, Slydes didn't look anything like his short and slightly younger brother. In fact, they had a slew of brothers, none of whom looked anything like each other. Even in areas south of the belt, Jonas and Slydes couldn't have been more different-to put it one way, Jonas got all the brains of the bloodline, while Slydes got… something else. The entire observation certainly suggested a moral deficit on the part of their biological mother.
Most of the time, Ruth felt more like their sister than a mutual lover, and given the oddity that Ruth's mother had been good friends with the boys' father-well, that suggested something to them, too (which they never discussed.) Fuck it, was Ruth's overall view. She helped the brothers work their scams and gigs, and they all partied together: a great big happy dysfunctional family. It works, so why worry about it?
The ramshackle house sat at the end of an unpaved road that twisted deep into the woods. Deliverance, Ruth always thought. She made a face the second she got out of the van. Fuck! Slydes has the tanning drum going… Between the hides and the meat, Slydes could make about three hundred dollars per gatoractually, more now that gator ribs were big in all the Florida restaurants. (Alligators had a lot of ribs.) They had a slaughterhouse out back, and plenty of freezers for storage in between runs. He'd sell the meat under the table to the restaurants, and then dealers would buy the untrimmed hides for the European market. Ruth liked gator meat, she supposed, but what made her sick was the smell that often permeated the house: the stench of Slydes's tanning chemicals.
"Hey, baby," Slydes greeted when she pushed open the rickety door. "Give your man a great big kiss."
Ruth did, getting beer fumes along with the passion.
Jonas rose from a beaten chair. "Ruthie, I thought you were givin' your man a great big kiss."
Ruthie smirked. In truth she was starting to get tired of this threesome, but… The three of us work so great together. She feigned more passion, then tasted more beer breath tinged with pot.
"So what'choo get for the old bitch's watch?" Jonas called over. "It looked damn nice."
"Did ya get five hundred?"
"I got Jack Fuck," Ruth complained. "Twenty-five bucks," and then she handed Slydes a twenty and a five. "Can you believe it? It was a knockoff."
"Huh?"
"It was a fake Cartier. They make 'em in China, and pilots and flight attendants bring 'em back in their luggage to sell here. They're all over the place. Fake Rolex, fake Cartier, fake whatever."
"Well, I'll be damned," Slydes said, scratching his heavy beard.
"Ain't that a kick in the ass?" Jonas said. "The bitch was a phony. Bet her jewelry's all that fake Chinese shit too."
"But I tapped another five hundred from her checking," Ruth said, and handed it over. "So nobody's-re- ported her missing to the bank yet."
"I think we'll be milkin' that one for a while," Slydes projected. "We'll have the account drained 'fore they get wise."
Jonas winked. And it ain't like they'll ever find the body,*
"We'll be going to Clearwater tomorrow, so you can try to pawn the jewelry at some of the shops there."
"Clearwater?" Ruth asked. Finally, a break to the boredom. "We're going to the island?"
Jonas nodded. "Yeah, got no choice. That last pound went faster than shit; my hydro's so good the word spreads, you know? Couple months ago I had ten dealers wanting a pound a month. Now I got twenty-"
"I?" Slydes raised a brow at his smaller brother. "How's about we?"
"Aw, shit, Slydes. I'm the grower, you're the poacher. We stick with what we know."
"Right, but we're a team, bro. And you keep talkin' like you're the mastermind or some shit. Remember, it's my boat that gets us on the island."
Jonas pursed his lips as if he'd just swigged straight lemon juice. "I know that, but I'm just sayin'…"
"Yeah, well, you say too much."
Ruth shook her head. What a pair of rednecks. They split everything down the middle anyway, so she didn't know what they were always arguing about. Couple of macho morons…
Jonas danced his finger to the words. "We stick with that we know. I know growing grade-A hydroponic pot and you know guttin' gators-"
"And I know bustin' grade-A pussy, and you know bitin' the pillow in the cell block and takin' it up the tail."
"Aw, shit on you, Slydes!" Jonas yelled.
Slydes cracked laughter.
Idiots, Ruth thought. Whenever Slydes was at the back end of an argument, he always tossed up that little "joke," which wasn't totally a joke at all because Jonas had done five years in Collier County Detent, and being the skinny white longhaired fella that he was, well…
Jonas finally got back to his explanation to Ruth, who was now brushing out her blond shag that had been mussed from the wig.
"Gotta get some more right away or I might lose some of my bagmen to the competition."
"Well, that's just fine with me," Ruth said. She liked going out to the island. She pulled up her FLORIDA Is FOR DRUNK LOVERS T-shirt, showing her perfectly flat belly. "I need to work on my tan."
"Not this time, baby," Slydes informed. He stuck out a leg and farted.
Gross, Ruth thought. Chili.
"We're in and out real fast; no time for layin' out in the sun this trip."
"Oh, wait a minute," she remembered. "I thought you said we couldn't go to the island for at least another week, some nature photographers out there or something."
Slydes nodded his big block head. "Which is why we slip in and slip out, at night. High tide's at eleven p.m. tomorrow, and that's when I'll be pullin' up."
Fuck, Ruth thought. She liked to keep tan-it was good for tricks when Jonas and Slydes were too busy to realize what she might be doing on the side. And the island was perfect. But all this running around latelymainly running their errands-she'd lost most of that Hot Tramp Florida tan.
"Have some chicken nuggets, hon." Slydes offered a plate. "Jonas just got back from Chik-fil-A."
Ruth was famished. "Thanks!" she said, crunching a few down. "These are great!" When silence filled the room, she noticed Jonas and Slydes staring at her.
Then they both burst out in laughter.
"Those ain't chicken nuggets, hose bag!" Slydes roared. "It's fried gator dick!"
"You fuck!" Ruth yelled.
Slydes was cackling. Then he hugged her and smacked her another kiss on her big overly swollen lips. "Aw, it was just a joke, baby, and, mmmm-" One big callused hand slipped under her shirt and up her back, the other hand slipped down her jeans from behind. Ruth's nipples shot right up. She was… a reactive woman.
He sniggied her neck, the big hands still roving her skin. "Aw, baby, I really missed you."
"You did?"
"Aw, shit yeah. I just got a serious need to have my hands all over your beautiful body."
"Slydes! How sweet!"
"Tell her why, Slydes," Jonas bid.
"'Cause, ya see, baby, I'm all out of towels and I sure as shit need something to wipe all this gator slime off on."
Ruth couldn't have been more offended. "Fuck you!"
Slydes and Jonas heehawed like a couple of donkeys.
.Now be a good girl and drag them jugs back to the shed."
"And on your way back," Jonas added, "bring us a couple more beers. If you're lucky"-a cocky grin"I'll lay some on ya later," and then he spread his legs in the chair and squeezed his crotch.
Yeah, she thought. If I'M lucky. That skinny slob! At least the blockheads bought her jive about the watch being fake. That was five big ones in her little pocket, and-damn it-she deserved it. For all the shit work she did for those two?
Ruth's back creaked when she picked up the jugs. She weighed a hundred pounds on a "fat" day, and each of those three-gallon jugs must've weighed twentyfive pounds apiece. PROWASH: REPTILE HIDE DEGREASER, one read. The other: TRU-TAN SKIN PREP. It was the stuff Slydes used on the gator skin, and it stank. To herself, she admitted, Slydes was a great lover-the big, rough type, which she went for most of the time. But everything, his hair, his skin, his clothes-Even his jism! she thought with a knot in her gut-stank of these chemicals, all mixed, of course, with the fishy malodor of alligator.
The brothers swigged beer as they watched her lug the jugs-true gentlemen. "Oh, Ruth?" Slydes called out. "One other thing."
"Huh?" she replied, aggravated.
Slydes lifted his leg, twitched a hip, and farted.
The brothers laughed uproariously.
What a pair of perfect assholes, she thought, humping the jugs out the back door. Too bad I'm in love with the both of them…