Page 137 of Death is Familiar

Experiences like this made me really appreciate the indoors. The lack of bugs. The lack of risk. Temperature control. Access to fresh water. Access to soap, a bath.

Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a bath. A real one.

The stagnant water and decomposing vegetation clung to our skin, our hair, our clothes. Our hospital gowns muddied with earth tones, hid the familiar antiseptic blue, making us a lot more difficult to spot. Despite the smell, it gave me hope that we were encased in enough essence of swamp that the tracking dogs wouldn’t reconnect with our trail. At the very least, it would make the unbearable odor mean something.

And through it all, I’d kept Three motivated by playing games. I spy, rhyming games, twenty questions, the duckweed is lava, and my personal favorite—the silent game.

Unfortunately, Three wasn’t very good at it. I’m pretty sure she kept losing on purpose.

Slowly, but surely, the scent of sulfur and decomposition gave way to earth and wet dirt. We were so close to semi-solid ground I could taste it. And I really wanted to be out of the water—mud—before total darkness.

We were almost there. We could do it.

To make the final push to land, I just needed to keep a handle on my nerves, and stay motivated.

Scanning the water before us, I did yet another risk assessment. The tea-colored pits, and milky whorls suggested deeper water. The moss-sodden logs and bulbous bald cypress trees looked like wax melted on candle wicks. In the middle distance, there was a large rock. And it was moving.

Smiling, I reached my hand back for Three.

What I’d learned, as we trudged through the muck, and murk, and moss, and duckweed, was that snapping turtles were a lot more common than I’d expected, and seeing them became somewhat of a relief—because if a snapping turtle was around, their predators weren’t.

Aside from the hand-trained pet we’d encountered earlier in the day, Lawrence had been right about the creatures, they were docile. They avoided us every chance they could, disappearing under the surface to get away. I was also fairly certain I stepped on one at some point, before feeling a rock shift and lift beneath my feet. If it was a turtle, it seemed unaffected, but feeling the ground move made me wonder what else lurked below.

Swallowing, I tried to keep my thoughts away from what was possible. Alligators. Water snakes. Giant catfish. Leeches. Bodies. Alligators. Water snakes. Giant catfish. Leeches. Bodies. Alligators⁠—

“You know, Delilah, you still haven’t told me any good news, and it’s been hours.”

Calf-deep in the wet, we were so close to getting out I felt the earth solidifying beneath my toes. “Things changed.” When you betrayed me, went unsaid.

“So… you don’t have any good news then?”

I’d entertained her for hours while navigating the backwaters of whatever state we were in, trying not to freak out from the fact that we were walking barefoot through the unknown, and working not get caught by a cult—one Three had been intending to lead to us—in the process, so no, I hadn’t been preoccupied with thinking of something that would make her feel better.

“I see…” was her response to my silence.

“Good news is…” I started, not knowing where the sentence was going or why I felt the urge to calm her.

It took a moment, as I pulled her out of the godforsaken swamp and onto the muddy bank after me, to figure out what I would say next. Spotting a large hollowed-out tree, gave me what I needed.

“Good news is that we have food, and shelter, and when night falls,” I looked to the sky, at the violet, plum, and dusky orange, at the first stars peeking out overhead, “we might be lucky enough to have the sky guide us home.”

†

In the near complete darkness of the swamp, I could hardly see my own hand in front of my face, which meant we couldn’t travel by night, but we could see the light pollution from the nearest inhabited settlement. By my guess, it was a day’s worth of walking away, if there were no surprises along the way.

I planned on working us hard and fast the next day so we wouldn’t need to spend another night in the cold wet woods.

For the record, a swamp is not silent at night. If anything, it came to life. Bugs chittering, buzzing, frogs croaking, all of the creatures I ignored and pretended didn’t exist during day light, made their presence known. Now and then, a low throaty bellowing reverberated off the trees confirming my worst suspicions—we were in alligator territory.

Things would have been different if I’d have been able to make a fire. Fire created a circle of warmth and safety, but not when getting pursued by other humans and their pets. And with nothing on hand but wet wood, we wouldn’t have been very successful in getting the kindling to spark.

Despite the damp and the cold, Three managed to fall asleep rather quickly. Curled against my side for warmth, I told her I’d take first watch, and that I’d wake her when it was her turn.

But the truth was, I trusted Three as much as I could trust anyone who had been brainwashed by a cult their entire lives. So, no, I wasn’t about to trust her with keeping watch, even if it meant I wouldn’t sleep.

I told myself extracting people from cults was what I did, and taking Three with me was part of the gig. That I could handle whatever came next. However, I’d never been at the center of a cult’s attentions, carrying a passenger, while trying to escape through the wilderness before.

Then again, there was a first for everything.