The dreamy expression passed from JoLayne’s face. “That wasn’t all they did.”
“I know.”
“But still I’m not sure if I can make myself pull the trigger.”
“Maybe it won’t come to that,” he said.
JoLayne pointed up in the mangrove branches. A tiny barrel-shaped beetle had become trapped in one of the gossamer webs. Slowly, almost casually, the spider was crossing the intricate net toward the struggling insect.
“That’s what we need. A web,” JoLayne said.
They watched the stalking until a drawn-out cry broke the stillness; not a woman’s cry, this time, but a man’s. It was no less harrowing.
JoLayne shuddered and rose to her knees. “Damn. What now?”
Tom Krome got up quickly. “Well, I’d rather have them screaming than singing campfire songs.” He held out his hand. “Come on. Let’s go see.”
Chub didn’t trust either Bode or Shiner to shoot the crab safely off his hand. He didn’t even trust himself.
“I feel like dogshit,” he admitted.
They persuaded him to lie down, and the panic passed after a few minutes. The piercing pain subsided into a dead throbbing weight. Bode brought a lukewarm Budweiser and Shiner offered a stick of beef jerky. From Amber, nothing; not a peep of sympathy.
“I’m cold,” Chub complained. “I got the shakes.”
Bode told him the wound was badly infected. “What I can see of it,” he added. The crab had quite a mouthful.
“Is the fucker dead or alive?” Chub, squinting fretfully.
Shiner said, “Dead.”
Bode said, “Alive.”
Chub looked to Amber for the tiebreaker. “I can’t honestly tell,” she said.
“God, I’m freezin’. My skin’s on fire but the rest a me is freezin’ cold.”
Amber pulled the tarpaulin off the tree and blanketed Chub, up to his neck. He was thrilled by what he perceived, incorrectly, as an act of comfort and affection. Amber’s true intent was selfish: to conceal from plain view Chub’s stringy nakedness, as well as the ghastly crab.
He said, “Thank you, darling. Later we’ll go on that walk you promised.”
“You’re in no shape to walk anywhere.”
Shiner said, “Amen, that’s a fact.” Dreading the thought of the two of them alone.
Bodean Gazzer warmed a pot of coffee on the fire. Chub began to doze. Amber furtively tried to retrieve her waitress shorts but they caught on Chub’s ponytail, which snapped him awake. “No, don’t you dare! They’re mine, goddammit, you gave ’em to me!” Twisting and shaking his head.
“OK, OK.” Amber backed off.
From beneath the tarp emerged Chub’s good hand. It readjusted the shiny pants across his nose and mouth, leaving his unpatched eye exposed through one of the leg holes.
Shiner, his hack turned to Chub, mouthed the words: “He’s crazy.”
“Thanks for the news flash,” said Amber.
They drank the coffee while Bodean Gazzer read aloud from the writings of the First Patriot Covenant. When he got to the part about Negroes and Jews being descended from the devil, Amber waved a hand. “Where does it say that in the Scriptures?”
“Oh, it’s in there. ‘Those who lay down with Satan will bring forth from his demon seed only children of darkness and deceit.’ ” Bode was winging it. He hadn’t cracked a Bible since junior high.
Amber remained skeptical, but Shiner chirped: “If the colonel says it’s in there, it’s in there.” Though Shiner couldn’t recall his fanatically reborn mother invoking such a potent verse. It seemed like something she would’ve mentioned, too; demon seeds!
Chub lifted his head and requested his sack of marine glue. Angrily Bode said, “You’re done with that shit.”
“I ain’t, either.” Whenever Chub spoke, the satiny fabric of Amber’s shorts puckered around his mouth. Amber expected she would carry the freaky vision to her grave.
Bodean Gazzer was saying, “Christ, you already got a fucked-up eye, a fucked-up hand—last thing you need is a fucked-up brain. You’re a soldier, remember? A major.”
“My ass.” Chub, glowering through the pants.
Bode resumed reading, but only Shiner remained attentive. His questions mostly concerned the living accommodations provided in Montana by the First Patriot Covenant. Did the pillboxes have central heating? Was there cable TV, or a dish?
Chub, who’d nodded off again, suddenly sprung to a sitting position. “My gun! Where’s it at?”