Terror at Bottle Creek by Watt Key

Author:Watt Key
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374374310
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

25

It was a horrible, nonhuman scream. I stopped and studied the weave of tree branches, whipping and slashing before my face.

“What was it?” Liza said through chattering teeth.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“It came from ahead of us.”

“I know,” I said.

We had to get out of the water. Even if it didn’t rise another inch, we were all close to hypothermic. I started forward again. We hadn’t gone far when I heard another wail, followed by an explosion against the surface like a herd of cattle stampeding across a river. I felt fear rise hot up my back, but I didn’t stop this time. I didn’t want to talk to Liza about it. I didn’t know what it was, but it didn’t matter. We had to reach the mounds.

I felt the ground slope up beneath my feet. I continued forward until I was standing only waist-deep in the water. Liza came up behind me.

“This is one of the smaller mounds,” I said. “The big one we need to get to is a little farther.”

“What’s making all the noise, Cort?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“How much farther?”

“Maybe seventy yards.”

I pointed my light in the general direction, and through the rain I saw the reflective eyes of another animal on the mound just ahead of us. I kept my light on it, slowly making out the shape of a buck, standing up to his neck in the floodwater. He stared at us helplessly, numbed and fearless. Then the horror of what we were about to find hit me.

The animals of the swamp were all going for the mounds. No different from us, they knew it was their only refuge for miles. But why is this buck hanging back? I wondered. I was pretty sure I knew—still, I didn’t want to think about it. And again it didn’t matter. We had no choice.

I stepped down into the deep water again and pressed forward. We passed within ten feet of the buck while he stood there, strangely paralyzed. Gradually I saw other animals standing on the low mounds around us. All of the small rises held a deer or a hog, still as statues. I tried to keep the light focused ahead, but it was hard not to turn it on the various grunts and squeals and splashing and scratching of things clawing their way up into the trees. Then there was another explosion of stampeding animals from directly ahead, and I saw the vague white froth of the disturbance and felt the water as it slapped cold against us.

“Crap,” I said aloud.

I hadn’t meant to say it. I felt Liza come up against me and grab the waist of my pants. Francie trembled on my shoulders and I tightened my grip on her arm. I pulled and carried them along through this eerie isle of prisoners, feeling panic begin to rise within me, moving helplessly toward whatever lay ahead.

Something large and black, grunting and woofing, paddled past us. I stopped and put my light on its face.

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