This was the first full week in the swamp. Our adventure is just starting to heat up…
Bobby Grim watched from his tree stand, as the last of the television crew's boats disappeared around the bend.
Rube Rarick stood, hands on hips, at the edge of his dock, admiring the five-footer hanging above him. Grim thought the gator's head looked too big for the body, like it had swallowed a garbage can that got lodged in it's skull.
Rarick detached the metal head and slid the bloody arrow from the giant head. Then he popped an electric cigarette between his lips, pulled a Rambo knife from his belt, and began to cut the hide from the beast.
He finished before sunset, then rose early the next morning, ready to hunt again.
And on this day, he'd hunt alone—as would Bobby Grim.
Rarick left the dock before dawn, his bateau loaded light, leaving plenty room for a couple of big ones. He raced through the dark bayou, grinning. Twenty years, he'd been hunting here, no one knew the area better. Around the bend from where he expected the first tag, he killed the Evinrude and started the troll motor.
Even in the fog, where trees and beasts appeared and disappeared with every turn, Rarick still believed he was the swamp's most dangerous predator.
"Huh?" Somewhere behind him, another troll motor started up in the fog.
Saturday morning. Leta found the padlock on the bait shop door missing, along with bandages, antiseptic, and Albon—dog antibiotics. The bald muscle guy with the tattoos and ass. She knew, looking at the hundred dollar bill on the counter. She thanked God he hadn’t drowned in the storm. She wanted to get him drunk before he left the swamp.
She heard a sound in the woods, a chainsaw. She walked out on the porch. Not a chainsaw, a motorcycle.
When the first rays of sunlight danced over the bayou, Rarick spotted a spinach green forehead skimming open water. Fastening 500 lb test line to his custom arrow, he took aim.
Behind him, hidden by fog, Bobby Grim loaded his bow with an identical arrow.
Rarick pulled back his bow aimed at the gator. Grim did likewise, aiming at Rarick.
Seconds from release, Grim stopped. Damn it. Another outboard motor, coming fast from the west...
...along with an extremely loud bass amp and the unmistakable rap of Kanye West.
From the midst, another boat emerged. The woman from the bait shop, an orange boom box, and a couple of kids way out of place in the swamp.
"Leta," Rarick said, "what the shit are you doing here?"
"Sorry, Rube, but these kids said it was a matter of life and death."
A tattooed girl in her twenties stood behind Leta. Different hair, but Rarick recognized her other parts. "You're the girl from the cab."
"Yessir," she lifted Rarick's canvas bag from her seat, "And I brought your medicine."
For those just joining the party, here’s what we’ve been doing: In the tradition of the fast-production pulps of old, we’ve got a wild plot and some zany, but dangerous characters, and through Twitter and Facebook, readers are giving me hints, helping me create a crime fiction short story in posts of less than 140 characters.
Our plot again: When Wild Child Kat LeRouge hooks up with Bad Boy DJ Ponchatoula, they find out the hard way that some New Orleans cab drivers carry guns. Desperate for safer income, Kat decides to blackmail a crooked Louisiana politician—a scheme that brings this modern day Bonnie and Clyde face to face with CIA Black-Ops Baddie Bobby Grim.
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