Blood Games

CHAPTER THIRTY

Lashing the anchor rope to an upright of the raft’s ladder, Abilene shouted, ‘The gun!’

Cora let go of the oars. They were lifted out of their locks and carried away on the waves as she knelt in the sinking boat. She dragged the shotgun out of the water and swung it by the barrels.

Abilene caught hold of the shoulder stock. Clamping it against her side, she scooted on her rump to the highest corner of the platform. She grabbed the edge and braced herself with her feet flat against the slippery boards.

Cora came up the ladder. On hands and knees, she scurried over the lurching raft and flopped beside Abilene. She hooked an arm over the side to hold herself in place.

Moments later, Vivian sprawled beside her.

Finley climbed the ladder. Smiling, she called out, ‘No sweat!’ She sat down, her back to the others, and wrapped her legs around one of the uprights.

Abilene slumped forward against her knees.

We made it! Thank God. We’re all safe. Not quite ashore, but not in any real danger.

Peering through the heavy shroud of rain, she could make out the end of the dock.

Nice to be there instead of here.

But the span of lake separating them from the dock was a gray, flinging turmoil.

Better not to risk it if we don’t have to.

No risk, no fun. She wondered if any of them would ever express that notion again.

That’s the idea that got us into this mess. We could’ve all drowned.

And she remembered, suddenly, that Helen was dead.

Still in the shower room.

And she felt guilty when grief didn’t overwhelm her. She supposed that she must be just too thankful that the rest of them were still alive. If she’d been any less quick to grab Batty’s arm, Finley might be dead now, a knife in her back. If the boat had capsized in the middle of the lake…

It didn’t. We’re okay.

Shouldn’t have gone back to Batty’s.

But it turned out all right. And we got the gun.

She swung the shotgun out from under her arm and lowered it in front of her. As she wedged it into the space between her belly and thighs, the rain stopped pouring down.

‘Hey!’ Finley called. Twisting around, she turned an open hand toward the sky.

Vivian and Cora rolled over, sat up.

A few more drops fell as the wind dwindled. Soon, the raft settled to a gentle, rocking motion.

As the clouds scooted away, the sun came down so bright that Abilene had to squint. She watched the dark thunderheads fly over the tree tops beyond the shore. Though she could see rain falling into the forest, it no longer rushed down in a torrent. She saw no lightning, heard no thunder.

Almost as if the storm was meant just for us, she thought. Almost as if Batty had created it to drown us.

Ridiculous.

Turning around, she peered across the brilliant water. She spotted some willows along the distant shore, but couldn’t figure out which might be the one below Batty’s cabin. There was no sign of Batty.

‘Well,’ Cora said. ‘Shall we get going?’

‘What about this?’ Abilene asked, lifting the shotgun. ‘I don’t think we can swim with it.’

‘We aren’t gonna leave it here,’ Finley said. ‘Not after all we went through to get it.’

‘Will it still fire?’ Cora asked.

‘A little water shouldn’t hurt it,’ Vivian said. ‘I’m not sure about the shells, though.’

Finley dug a hand into her pocket. She pulled out one of the bright red cartridges and rolled it between her fingers as she studied it. ‘Looks like the thing’s plastic or something. Whatever, it seems watertight.’

‘Okay,’ Cora said. ‘We take the shotgun.’ Standing up, she plucked the clinging seat of her shorts away from her rump. She scanned the water. Pointed.

Abilene saw an oar floating on the swells. It bobbed gently, its shaft rubbing against a piling at the end of the dock.

‘Back in a second,’ Cora said, and dived off the raft. ‘Anybody feel like diving for the ax?’ Finley asked.

‘Be my guest,’ Vivian said. ‘I don’t want it. I’d rather not even have to look at it again.’

‘Are you the one who nailed the pussycat?’

‘You didn’t see?’

‘I was otherwise occupied at the time. But I noticed the after-math. You really…’

‘Stop, okay? I don’t want to hear about it.’

‘The cat had it coming,’ Abilene pointed out. To Finley she said, ‘If you’re going down for the ax, see if you can find my shoes. They might still be in the boat.’

‘Just leave the ax,’ Vivian muttered.

‘It might come in handy,’ Abilene said. ‘We could haul it up with the anchor rope.’

‘Viv doesn’t want it. I don’t want it. Do you want it?’

‘I’ve got Batty’s knife,’ she said. ‘I suppose I can get along without my shoes.’

‘Shouldn’t have taken them off.’

‘I try not to go swimming in them.’

Their attention turned to Cora as she splashed closer, pushing the oar along in front of her. Finley lay down beside the ladder. She grabbed the oar and pulled it onto the raft.

Still in the water, Cora said, ‘Let me have a knife.’

Finley shoved the oar over to Vivian, then pulled her knife and handed it down.

Standing up for a better view, Abilene saw Cora duck below the surface. The taut anchor line wobbled, then went slack. A moment later, Cora came up. She held the knife in her teeth while she plucked open the knot securing the rope to the ladder.

She brought the section of rope onto the raft, sawed it in half, and used the two pieces to bind the shotgun to the oar.

‘That should do the job nicely,’ she said.

‘Do you think we should bother with the ax?’ Abilene asked. ‘Nobody seems to want it, anyway. And hauling it up wouldn’t be easy.’

‘I guess we can get along without it,’ Cora said. ‘The shotgun’s the main thing.’ Dragging the oar and shotgun along at her side, she scooted down to the sunken corner of the raft and eased into the water. The oar and weapon slipped beneath the surface. Instead of disappearing from sight, however, they slowly rose.

As Vivian and Finley followed Cora into the lake, Abilene said, ‘I’ll be along in a minute.’ She dived off the side of the platform, plunged into the lake and kicked her way toward the bottom. The rays of sunlight slanting down through the water were cloudy with swirling motes. So much debris had been stirred up by the storm that she couldn’t see past the wrists of her outstretched arms. But the boat should be straight below her unless it had glided away after Cora cut the line.

Slimy tendrils suddenly slid over her hands, up her forearms. Weeds. As they lapped her face with slick tongues, she shut her eyes and groaned.

Screw the shoes.

She swept the weeds away from her face, arched her back, and kicked for the surface.

Moments later, she was sucking fresh air into her lungs. She trod water while she fought to catch her breath, then began to swim with an effortless breast stroke.

The others had already reached the end of the dock. Cora mounted the ladder there. She waited on a low rung, water to her knees, while Finley cut through the ropes binding the shotgun to the oar and thrust the barrels up at her. Cora released the ladder with one hand, grabbed the weapon, and hoisted it onto the dock.

They were all sprawled on the weathered planks by the time Abilene climbed to the top of the ladder.

‘No luck with the shoes?’ Finley asked.

‘Too many weeds down there.’

‘I had to go barefoot last time,’ Vivian pointed out. ‘It wasn’t that bad. The socks help.’

Abilene sank to the boards and lay back, folding her hands under her head. ‘Somebody always ends up shoeless when we visit Batty,’ she said. ‘Ever notice that?’

‘I managed to leave my tire iron behind,’ Cora said.

‘At the cabin?’ Abilene asked.

‘I put it on the floor when we sat down.’

‘You would’ve lost it in the drink anyway,’ Finley said.

‘Probably.’

Abilene shut her eyes. There seemed to be no breeze, but the heat of the sun felt good. For now. Especially good was the feel of flat, motionless wood beneath her back. She heard the quiet lap of water against the pilings.

‘I wonder if Batty’ll come after us,’ Vivian said.

Finley let out a soft laugh. ‘Probably hot-footin’ it through the woods right now, hot for our blood.’

‘I doubt it,’ Cora said.

‘Too bad I missed.’

‘You wouldn’t want something like that on your conscience,’ Vivian told her.

‘Oh yeah? Try me. The weird fuck tried to kill me.’

‘We were stealing from him,’ Cora pointed out.

‘Him? He had boobs. Did you see that? Shit. A hermaphrodite.’

‘I really think he’s gonna come after us,’ Vivian said. ‘Maybe we oughta get going.’

Abilene didn’t want to move. She felt too weary, too comfortable sprawled on the dock with the sun warming her. Keeping her eyes shut, she said, ‘Batty won’t come after us. Probably too busy calling down another curse. Plans to let the forces of magic nail us.’

‘I guess we’re doomed,’ Finley said.

Though Abilene couldn’t help smiling at the remark, she was surprised to hear Cora and Vivian laugh.

‘Next thing we know,’ Finley went on, ‘we’ll have flocks of birds dive-bombing us.’

‘More likely bats,’ Abilene said.

‘I think maybe we should get out of here,’ Vivian said.

‘Batty can hex us till hell freezes over,’ Cora said. ‘It’s just bullshit.’

‘That storm wasn’t bullshit,’ Abilene said.

‘It was just a storm. Batty didn’t make it happen.’

‘You sure of that?’

‘Christ, Abby.’

‘More things in heaven and earth, Horatio…’

‘That’s not what I mean, anyway,’ Vivian said. ‘It’s not curses and hexes that… I think maybe we should get out of here before something else happens. I mean, we could’ve drowned. Finley almost got stabbed. Cora, you got tom up by that damn cat. I killed it. We attacked that poor freak. Abilene broke his arm. Finley, you got so crazy you actually took a shot at him. It’s all… out of hand.’

‘It’s out of hand, all right,’ Finley muttered. ‘Someone murdered Helen.’

In the silence that followed Finley’s words, Abilene rolled over and pushed herself off the boards. She sat cross-legged, facing her friends. They were already sitting up.

‘You want to leave leave?’ she asked Vivian. ‘Not just go back to the lodge, but… really leave? Hike out of here?’ Lower lip clamped between her teeth, Vivian nodded. Her green eyes looked solemn, thoughtful. ‘Nothing we do is going to bring Helen back,’ she said. ‘If we stay… I’d rather get out of here alive, with all of you, than stay and try to get revenge. Look what just happened to us. Just so we could get our hands on a shotgun.’

‘We got it,’ Finley said.

‘And a lot of good it did us when the boat sank.’

‘I guess I go along with Viv,’ Cora said. ‘Hell, I was ready to walk a couple of hours ago until everyone talked me out of it. You included,’ she told Vivian.

‘Things have changed. I never realized…’

‘We always got payback,’ Finley said.

‘Nothing ever got this heavy,’ Cora said.

‘Nobody ever butchered one of us before. I want to kill the son-of-a-bitch that did it to her. And now we’ve got the gun. All we need to do is stay the night and ambush the bastard when he shows up. A piece of cake.’

‘Right,’ Cora said. ‘A piece of cake like stealing the gun from Batty. Let’s just call it quits. I want the four of us to make it out of this alive.’

‘What about you, Hickok?’

‘I’ve had enough.’

‘God! You’re all gonna woos out on me?’

‘You were one second from having a knife in your back.’

‘Sure, but you…’

‘You would’ve been as dead as Helen. If I’d been looking the other way. If I hadn’t been quick enough. It was just too close.’

‘Like they say, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.’

Nobody smiled at her remark.

‘Besides,’ Abilene continued, ‘now we’ve got Batty on our case. I don’t know if he’s got any special powers. It sure did look like that storm was meant for us. But, regardless, I don’t think he’s gonna just leave us alone after all we did. He’ll want to nail us one way or another. So we’ve got Batty and the killer to worry about.’

‘Batty might be the killer,’ Finley pointed out.

‘It was that kid,’ Vivian said.

‘We’ll never know if we don’t stay and find out.’

‘Then we’ll never know,’ Cora said. She wrapped a hand around the shotgun barrels and stood up. ‘We’d better get started.’

‘This really and truly sucks,’ Finley muttered.

‘It’s the only smart thing to do,’ Vivian said as she got to her feet.

‘I don’t feel good about it either,’ Abilene said, forcing herself to stand. ‘But we’ve already pushed our luck. Let’s just hike out and let the police handle things.’

‘A lot of good the cops’ll do.’

‘Come on, Finley,’ Vivian said.

Finley frowned at the three of them. She shook her head. She muttered, ‘Shit,’ then stood up.

Cora in the lead, they started walking over the weathered planks of the old dock. Abilene felt tired and stiff and achy. It would’ve been nice to rest a while longer.

But, God, we’ve got a long way to go.

Miles and miles.

At least we’re getting out of here.

At the end of all those miles, there would be a motel. Eventually. A motel. A cool, soft bed.

If only we’d done this last night.

Helen would still be…

A plank gave out beneath Cora’s foot with a sound like a cracking whip and she gasped ‘Fuck!’ and pitched forward, her foot trapped. Her outthrust arms crashed the shotgun against the dock. Crying out in pain, she slammed down on top of it.

As the others rushed forward, she pulled her fingers out from under the gun. They were red and shaking. She wiggled them a bit, apparently to see whether they still worked. Otherwise, she didn’t move.

She lay there, left leg thrown out to the side, right leg straight out behind her but twisted, caught at the ankle between two boards.

Vivian stepped over the gap, knelt at Cora’s side, and stroked her head. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Just great.’

‘You’ll be all right.’

‘Sure. Damn it!’

Abilene and Finley crouched over the opening. The heel of Cora’s shoe was wedged under the board behind the one that had broken.

‘We’ll have it out in a second,’ Abilene said.

‘Be careful.’

Finley let out a huff. ‘Yeah. God knows, we might get careless and bust it.’

‘Very funny,’ she muttered. She flinched when Abilene eased her knee sideways. She let out a long groan when Finley, holding on just above the top of the sock, pulled her foot out from under the edge of the plank and lifted it free.

Around Cora’s ankle, the sock bulged like an inflated balloon. Vivian, watching, wrinkled her nose.

Finley whistled and said, ‘Nasty.’

Feeling sick, Abilene said, ‘I hope it’s just a sprain.’

‘Don’t bother,’ Cora told her. ‘It’s broken.’

‘So much for hiking to civilization,’ Finley said.