1
When I was younger, my grandmother used to swear that lightning bugs knew when storms were coming. The more lightning bugs there were, the more they flickered and glowed, the worse the storm was going to be. I was never sure if she actually believed that or if she just liked telling me.
There are certainly worse things to believe.
It’s hard not to think of that right now, though: my grandmother slowly rocking on her back porch, a wispy cloud of smoke around her as she steadily worked her way through two packs a day, her voice creaking as we looked out into muggy summer evenings and she told me to count the lightning bugs. There is a storm coming tonight—a proper gully washer, according to my phone—and the air is thick with moisture and fireflies. A warmer-than-usual spring brought the fireflies out early this year.
I take a deep breath, feeling the heavy moisture creep into my lungs. Sweat-damp clothes cling unpleasantly. It’s going to be a long, miserably hot summer if this spring is any indication. This late at night the rest stop is deserted. We’re just close enough to town that travelers would rather press on to someplace more populated before stopping, and even the truckers are largely off the road. Many of them are probably an exit or two south at Café Risqué, and they’ll wander up here in the early hours of the morning looking for the prostitutes who know where to wait for easy marks. For now, however, there’s precisely one car in the parking lot, a two-door sports car that looks too expensive for its current location.
It’s parked a good distance away from the buildings, out of range of the diffuse yellow lights. A couple of smaller lights are posted at intervals to at least make people aware the pavilions are here, that the grassy stretch of picnic space is broken up by concrete and wood from time to time, but they’re not meant for evening use. They’re meant to indicate, not illuminate.
Fortunately for me—unfortunately for general safety—that also means that the pavilions have no security cameras.
I lean against the wooden post, looking out at the trees that loom behind the rest stop. The stop was built near the crest of a hill, but not far at all into the wood, the ground is broken by a jagged gully. There are signs posted around not to go into the forest because of poor visibility and uncertain ground. Some of the signs have additions tacked on below: BEWARE OF ALLIGATORS.
“Why we here again?”
I turn to the voice and see the young man swaying drunkenly down the path. It seems to take him extraordinary effort to stay relatively upright. Then again, he was blisteringly drunk even before I picked him up with a bottle of paint-thinner vodka. “We’ve still got a bit of a drive, baby,” I tell him. “You said you needed to stop on the way.”
“Yeah.” He blinks at me in the moonlight, mostly shadow. “Yeah, I need a piss. But why we down here?”
“The bathrooms are closed for maintenance.” I wave out at the woods. “You’re a guy. You can get away with plan B.”
“Hell, yeah, I can piss in the woods!” He kind of sounds like he’s cheering. It’s almost funny, but more sad; this is the best conversation I’ve gotten from him.
Jordan stumbles down the path. Where the sidewalk gives way to marshy grass, he falls to his hands and knees and starts laughing. “Oh, man, my dick is gonna get muddy. You gonna be okay with that?”
“I think we can manage to wash the mud off at my place,” I say.
“You don’t want to take care of it now?”
“Do I want mud and piss in my mouth? Not so much. Come on, baby, do your business in the trees, and we can get on with the rest of the night.”
He starts laughing again, but he does push himself back to his feet and meander into the woods, past the tree line and into the shadows. Stray bits of light gleam demonic red off eyes close to the ground, there and gone and there again. Around his crashing footsteps and the snaps of twigs, I can hear deep-throated croaks and singing crickets and the occasional grumble of a car passing on the interstate down the hill. In that relative silence the jangle of his belt is surprisingly loud.
Thankfully, thunder booms and rolls overhead to drown out the sound of his pissing, the bass rumbling through my bones to make my toes tingle in my sneakers. There’s still time before the rain hits, the clouds congregating to the southwest and gradually shifting to cover more of the sky.
Suddenly there’s a dull roar, a crunch of breaking bone, and a pained, panicked scream. After pulling the mini-flashlight out of my pocket, I click it on and train it toward the trees. The light is just barely strong enough to see Jordan falling to the ground, and it reflects red off a pair of eyes. The gator lumbers backward, dragging Jordan with it out of sight. His screams get hiccupy and strained as alcohol and shock combine to temper his reaction.
Normally people aren’t in very much danger from alligators; the four-legged suitcases are at least as scared of us as we are of them. Humans are far more likely to be bitten by a shark than an alligator. But it’s April, and the gators are starting to get frisky and hungry ahead of mating season, throwing off the sluggishness of the winter months. There were problems with alligators in the gully last year, too, but the winter convinced people that the danger had passed.
People, as a rule, aren’t very bright.
More growls and a few bellows join the chorus of Jordan’s screams before a sickening thump and squelch silence the screaming. Maybe Jordan’s head hit a rock? I’m certainly not going to go over and find out.
As hot as the spring has been, it’s also been wet—days and days of rain that keep the humidity soaring and make some of the meteorologists look nervously ahead to hurricane season. The creek in the gully should be a good depth, deep enough for the gators to stash Jordan’s body under the water to age for a while.
Fun fact: alligators can bite, but they can’t chew. They rely on decomposition in water to soften their food enough that they can bite off chunks and swallow.
I keep the flashlight trained on where Jordan disappeared, not because I think it’ll do anything to frighten off other alligators but because I’d like to see them coming if they start moving my way. No eye flash, no sign of scales. Probably safe to move.
Pushing off the post, I walk back along the sidewalk to the main path and stumble over something on the concrete: Jordan’s keys.
I was the one to drive us here, given his inebriation. We’re close enough to the same height that I didn’t need to adjust the seat or the mirrors, and I carefully removed all signs of myself from the vehicle before I gave him back the keys. My hair is tucked up into a hat, and even this late at night, the metal on cars is hot enough to hurt and burn; gloves may not be a popular fashion choice, but they’re a practical one. In more than one respect, as a matter of fact. Even the vodka bottle is back in my bag for later disposal so an intrepid officer doesn’t try to find out who bought that specific brand of vodka in the past few days. (Not that it would much assist an investigation; UF may not be one of the top-ten party schools anymore, but it is absolutely still a drinking school, and this is one of the cheapest bottles on the shelf.)
The keys, though . . . there’s a reason I gave them back to Jordan. It’s important that it looks like he drove himself. I even made sure to park worse than he usually does. That wasn’t easy. Jordan routinely gets ticketed for taking up two spaces in permit lots because he’s an asshole and overprotective of his stupidly expensive car. That’s not a reason to kill him, of course, but it’s certainly not a reason to spare him.