Page 46 of Iggy

“No,” another man answered. Plum, perhaps. His voice carried the slow certainty of someone reading a language written into the ground. “One set. She doubled sideways through the palmetto.”

Neela clenched her teeth to stop them chattering. A flashlight lanced through the leaves inches from her face. She could see each raindrop crossing the beam, bright as sparks. Then the light moved on.

“Tank!” Iggy called somewhere behind them. “Circle toward the high ground!”

The name drove a new pulse of fear through her. She turned away from the voices and entered water to her thighs. The swamp opened beneath her without warning. One step found soft bottom. The next found nothing.

She plunged to her waist, then her chest. Black water closed around her with a dead, oily chill. She flung both arms outward and caught a submerged branch before the channel took her. The current pulled at her legs, dragging them beneath a mat of floating leaves. For an instant something smooth and muscular brushed her calf.

Neela bit down on a scream and hauled herself along the branch. The bank crumbled under her hands. Mud packed beneath her fingernails as she clawed for purchase. A root tore loose. She dropped back into the water, swallowed a mouthful, came up coughing, and lunged again. This time her forearm hooked across a cypress knee. She dragged herself onto the bank and lay there gagging while rain drummed against her back.

Lights scattered behind her again.

“She crossed!” Wood shouted.

“Current’s running too fast,” Jean called.

“There’s a log ten yards east,” Nutt answered. “Move!”

“Keep moving,” she whispered. Her voice sounded small and strange.

“I found blood,” Iggy said.

Water rose from her knees to her hips. Wind chopped its surface into black scales. She held her hands before her, feeling for submerged obstacles. The bottom sucked at every step. When lightning flashed, she saw the far side perhaps forty yards away. She also saw the wake moving across the clearing. It came from her right, wide and deliberate. Neela stopped breathing.

A shot cracked through the storm. Water jumped ten feet from her. The hidden body thrashed, tail battering the surface, and the clearing exploded into foam. Neela screamed and hurled herself toward the nearest tree stump.

“Cut left!” Rush yelled from the bank. “Drive her toward the far bank!”

Another shot sounded, swallowed by thunder, forcing the animal away while narrowing Neela’s only path of escape.

Branches lashed her face. She tasted blood where her lip split. The clearing’s terror had burned through the last of her strength, leaving only momentum. She climbed because the ground rose. She turned because trees blocked her. She breathed because her body refused to stop, although each breath had become a ragged scrape in her chest.

The pursuit broke apart behind her.

Rain hammered her eyes shut. Wind shoved against her chest until she had to lean forward like a climber. Leaves, bark, and small branches flew past in the dark. A length of rusted tin ripped from some distant shed sailed over the road, turning slowly, its edge shining in a lightning flash before it disappeared among the trees. The next gust knocked Neela sideways. She caught herself on both hands. Gravel and broken shell drove into her palms. She rose, fell, rose again. Her ankle had swollen inside the mud caked around it. Each step sent a bright pulse up her leg.

“There!” Wood shouted.

Neela crawled beneath a curtain of vines. The ditch narrowed into a culvert clogged with branches and storm debris. Water thundered through the remaining gap. She squeezed between the concrete wall and a knot of roots, scraping skin from her shoulder as she forced herself through. Then she shoved into the culvert.

Cold water filled the narrow space to her chin. The current pressed her against the concrete. She ducked beneath a jammed branch, turned her face sideways to breathe, and dragged herself forward by fingertips alone. Things moved past her in the darkness—twigs, leaves, something soft that brushed her mouth.

“Don’t follow. She’ll drown in there,” said Nutt.

“She’s already in it,” Wood answered.

The Swamp Rats had spread wide. The team filled the gaps between them. Voices overlapped now, some calling her name, some warning about water, some telling someone named Tank to keep moving toward the ridge.

They were building a net. Neela pushed through it before it closed.

She saw a narrow gap between two lights and aimed for it. There was no trail, only tangled brush beneath a leaning oak. She dropped to her stomach and crawled under the lowest branches, dragging her injured leg. Thorns raked her back. One caught in her hair and held her until she tore free with both hands.

The voices passed on either side.

“Check the ridge!” Ham yelled.

“I’m on it,” came Tank’s answer from somewhere ahead.