Breathing heavily, he grabbed hold and took a step up the bank before he realized there was a hole in the bottom of the skiff. Not huge but big enough that he couldn't fix it. He let out a grunt of frustration and slid off- balance in the muck again. The skiff spun out of his reach, righted itself, and immediately started to sink. He turned away and found he was going under again.
He came up gagging and sucking wind. By the time he got ready to try and climb up from the shallows again, he heard the sharp sounds of hissing nearby.
'Terrific,' he said. Two more bull gators were coming straight for him down the silt bank, their eyes shining with silver moonlight.
He thought about going for his gun but the possibility of bigger pockets of methane worried him. Dumb to die out here rolled to the bottom of some mud-hole, but it would be even worse if he blew himself up.
He said,'I'm not good eating, guys. Just go ask your other pals. Why don't you both just-'
The first bull slued forward, opening its jaws wide. Instead of waiting, Hellboy lunged, shifted his weight, and more or less fell directly across its nose. The gator scrambled along up the bank with Hellboy on its back. Good, they were getting to drier, firmer ground. Hellboy rolled off and stood in a crouch. After those hours in the skiff and slipping around in the mire, it was nice to have earth beneath his hooves again. When the bull turned to make another pass he caught hold of its tail and held on. The second gator tried to go for his legs, but Hellboy hauled its brother around, lifted it high, and brought it slamming down on the other's back in a crushing blow of muscle and scale. While they tried to untangle themselves, Hellboy grabbed what was left of his coat, put it back on, and moved further along the narrow shore.
In the distance he saw flame.
The mud bank thinned until he was back in the water. Forced to swim and crawl through the morass, clambering across sandbanks and tussocks of briar, thorn, and barb, he made his way toward the fire.
Chapter 7
The dark lake glistened with star shine, the rim of the water a searing white as if slabs of light had been laid end to end around its edge.
It took him over an hour to reach the camp, and by the time he got there he was exhausted, half-drowned, completely covered in mud and rotting vegetation, and he was sick to his stomach from swallowing so much swamp water. Or maybe it was the old lady's Celiac Ganglia with the Sympathetic Plexuses of the Abdominal Viscera, but he really didn't want to think about that.
A skiff had been beached in white sand, and nearby a young man sat playing a mouth-harp. The guy had a campfire going with something freshly killed cooking on a spit. Thankfully the old lady hadn't given Hellboy her nose too. He didn't want to know what it was he was watching sizzle in the flames.
He figured this had to be John Lament. A deep calm seemed to settle around and within the guy. He was maybe twenty-five, but with a shock of white right up front in his otherwise wavy brown hair. Dressed in jeans, suspenders, and a light white linen shirt rolled up to the middle of his muscular forearms.
Lament quit his twanging, looked up, and said, 'Well son, you look like you've had a hell of a time of it out in these black waters.' He drew a blanket from a rucksack. 'Dry off and come sit by the fire 'fore you catch your death.'
Hellboy nodded his thanks, yanked off his belt and ragged coat, and dried himself, doing his best to clean off the mud. His ankle was chewed up pretty bad and he had deep lacerations across his thigh. He tore off a couple of lengthy strips from his coat and bound his wounds, then put his belt back on.
Lament offered a small jug. 'You want a tap of moon to kill the pain?'
Might as well make sure he was dealing with the right person. 'You're Lament?'
'Yessir. John Lament. Pleased to make your acquaintance.'
Lament made as if to shake hands. Hellboy held out his right fist. Lament's face broke into a wide grin. Hellboy put his hand down.
As good a time as any to get the ball rolling. Hellboy opened a compartment on his belt and tossed the Dome of the Rock charm, expecting some real action this time. Lament caught it in his left hand, turned the medallion over, and checked the ancient inscription.
His lips quivered as if he was fighting to frame unfamiliar words. Then he said, ''
That got Hellboy's notice. He scratched between the stubs of his horns. 'You read Sumerian?'
'No,' Lament told him, 'but it speaks to me. You go 'round throwin' this thing at every stranger you run across?'
'Lately,' Hellboy admitted, 'it seems that I have.'
'Not very civilized.'
Lament threw the charm back and Hellboy pocketed it once again. The old lady had been right. The swamps were like nowhere else he'd ever visited.
'Listen,' Hellboy said as Lament twanged another tune. 'I've had a kind of bad day so far. So if you want to rumble let's do it now and get it out of the way.'
Lament quit picking at his mouth-harp and looked up. 'Rumble?'
'Fight.'
'Why we gonna do a foolish thing like that?'
'I didn't say we should, I just said if you wanted to I'd oblige you.'
'Right neighborly that is.' Sitting up, Lament checked the meat on the spit. 'You hungry?'
Hellboy said, 'Considering I just drank half the damn swamp, and before that I got a spoonful of a granny witch's stew jammed down my throat, and before that a big catfish stared at me like he'd scream if I stuck a fork in him, I don't think I'll ever be hungry again.'
That got Lament chuckling. It was an easy, honest laughter. He lifted his chin and squinted at Hellboy. 'Yep, now I recognize them eyes. You been suppin' with Granny Lewt tonight. She's a right fine lady but her manners could use some polish. She did what she done to help you, so be at ease about the rest of it.' He tapped the meat on the spit with a stick and said, 'No worries 'bout this food right here.'
'What is it?'
'Gray squirrel.'
Hellboy turned aside in disgust. 'I think I'll pass anyway.'
'Iffun you say.'
Lament ate the meat directly off the spit, tearing at it with his teeth and occasionally drinking from his jug. He kind of hummed and sang as he ate, fully enjoying his meal. Hellboy watched, a little dismayed. He'd been edgy and waiting for a fight, and the ruckus with the gators hadn't gotten the tension out of his system yet. The smell of his own drying blood made him anxious, and his tail kept twitching at mosquitoes.
Stepping up, he loomed over Lament and decided to brace him. 'What are you doing out here?'
Swallowing a bite of food, Lament said, 'Same thing as you, I reckon.'
'You have no idea what I'm about.'
'That ain't rightly true, son.'
'How about if you lay it on the line? You people talk pretty but you take up a lot of air before you actually get around to saying anything much. I'm in a hurry.'
'Are you?'
Thinking about the time he'd killed on his way down south, hitching and brooding, alone with his thoughts and his bad mood, Hellboy realized he hadn't been in a rush to do much of anything. It had been okay to put all the miles behind him, wet in the rain. But now it was different. There were teenage girls lost out there, and he wanted to make certain they were safe before he called it a day.
'Yeah,' he said. 'I am. So how about you answer my question. What are you doing out here?'
