Swamped, p.1
Swamped!, page 1
SWAMPED!
Ken Wells with Hillary Wells
Swamped!
by Ken Wells with Hillary Wells
© Copyright 2023 Ken Wells with Hillary Wells
ISBN 978-1-64663-886-4
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The names, incidents, dialogue, and opinions expressed are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Published by
3705 Shore Drive
Virginia Beach, VA 23455
800-435-4811
For Al Delahaye, my much-missed mentor
who steered me on a writer’s course.
Rest you, my friend. ~ KW
To my parents, Bob and Mandy,
who taught me that not only could
I be anything I wanted to be,
but I could be everything
I wanted to be. ~HW
This is a work of the imagination. While the Great Atchafalaya Swamp (also known as the Atchafalaya Basin) is a real place, the authors have taken some liberties in descriptions of flora, fauna, and landscapes.
CHAPTER 1
JACK CANE LANDRY stirred awake from a deep and troubling fog, a bright sun warming his face.
Confused at first, he lifted an arm to block the golden orb stabbing at his eyes.
Where am I? he thought. Is this a dream?
Glancing to his right brought a shocking sight—and the horror of it cleared his head.
It was a nightmare—except the nightmare was real.
Olivia FitzGerald, motionless, eyes closed, sat slumped in the seat next to him, a smear of blood painting her left cheek. A jagged metal object separated them, something speared into the seat back with obvious violence.
Had it veered a few inches to either side, it could have severed limbs. Jack shuddered at the thought.
“Olivia?” he said. “Are you okay? Can you hear me?”
She didn’t stir.
Was she alive?
A bolt of panic seared through Jack’s fog. God, the plane really went down. We crashed. We—
Jack shook his head, trying to clear it.
The glaring sun made it obvious that the sheared-off rear of the aircraft that sheltered them faced east. He stared out at the gaping opening before him. The extended tail section of the Otter float plane sat on an apron of soft marsh, explaining, maybe, why they were alive. The spongy ground had cushioned their fall from the sky.
Across an expanse of dense marsh, Jack could make out the rest of the plane—the cockpit nose down, jabbing into the swamp bottom, wings bent and broken nearby. Debris lay all around.
A memory of terror filled his head—lightning, the violent explosion of thunder, the plane lurching crazily through the blackest clouds Jack had ever seen, Olivia clutching at his arm, screaming, “Oh, God! Oh, God! No, no, no!”
Joe Desmoreaux, the pilot, yelling, “C’mon, c’mon, gimme some speed!” as the plane coughed and sputtered and spun and then plummeted through the storm clouds.
Terrence FitzGerald, Olivia’s father in the seat next to Joe, turning back and saying calmly, “It’s okay. We’ll be fine.”
An opening in the clouds as the plane gained speed and tried to right itself, shuddering and rocking, its stall horn blaring. And then, just as suddenly, a shadowy line of trees appearing in the fading, eerie light, and a jarring bang, the shock rattling the cabin as the plane broke apart.
Jack could remember the blistering rain on his face; the slap of cool, wet air; the sickening, sideways roller-coaster gyrations as they spun around and hit the ground; objects flying around the cabin as they skidded upright across the marsh; Olivia’s shriek; the scream that formed in his own head but that was swallowed by his terror.
A loud thump as they rolled across what might have been a log. And then, for a long while . . . nothing.
Until now.
How could they even be alive?
Cupping his hands to his mouth, Jack called out toward the wreckage of the cockpit. “Joe, are you there? Joe! Mr. FitzGerald, can you hear me? Anybody out there? If you can hear me, say something!”
He held his breath, waiting, but the swamp swallowed the fading echoes of his voice.
Silence.
The storm had clearly blown past, leaving behind a perfect autumn morning. The sky preened blue and calm. Layers of fog lazed in the nearby cypress tops.
A crow cawed in the distance, breaking the silence.
Jack forced himself to move. Unbuckling the three-point harness that had kept him in his seat and no doubt saved his life, he shifted gingerly at first, testing his arms and legs. Nothing seemed broken. A long, shallow gash on his right forearm still oozed blood. Something crowded the vision in his right eye. He reached up, his hand touching a large knot above his eyebrow.
It didn’t hurt.
None of it hurt, though it should.
Shock? Jack wondered.
He shook his head. Swiveling in his seat, he looked into the compartment behind him. A pair of dirty work gloves sat atop a stack of life vests. How hadn’t they been blown from the wreckage?
Everything else of value unsecured seemed to have been tossed into the void. Jack suddenly realized that their backpacks, which had been at their feet with bottles of water, energy bars, and their iPhones, were gone.
“Damn,” he muttered under his breath.
Not that cellphones would work in the cover of the deep swamp. But Jack could see maybe getting a signal if he climbed to the top of a tall cypress tree. No use thinking of that now.
Jack pulled on the work gloves and tackled the jagged piece of metal between him and Olivia, clearly some torn-off part of the fuselage. He grabbed it top and bottom and, with a sawing motion, worked it back and forth until it broke free. He pitched it out of the gaping opening in front of him and heard it bounce, sprong, on the spongy ground below.
Tossing the gloves aside, he inched forward, hovering over Olivia. She was pale, almost colorless save for the thin track of dry blood on her left cheek and a bruise on the other.
It had been chilly in the plane. The heavy green sweatshirt she wore made it impossible to tell if she was still breathing. Steeling himself, he reached out to touch her forehead.
“Don’t be dead,” he whispered. “Please don’t be dead.”
He flinched as his hand touched her skin.
Warm.
Jack knelt awkwardly in front of Olivia, reaching for her hands. He knew some first aid basics. His town, probably still no more than seventy-five miles from them, was tiny; lots of high schoolers volunteered for the EMT crew.
He’d joined the crew the past two summers in a row. Why hadn’t he paid more attention?
Fumbling a little, he felt Olivia’s wrist. Her hands were icy but her pulse strong and steady.
He sat back in relief.
Now what? Stay with the plane? Hope someone finds us quickly?
The tail end of the plane was broken open, but it was still shelter. And it would be easier for rescuers to see that from the air than to see two people alone in the swamp. If they waited it out, they could—
Jack lurched backward as the plane suddenly shifted, leaning sharply left and throwing him off balance. He grabbed frantically for the handle on the seat back just in time to keep from being pitched to the marsh below.
They were sinking. He had a brief but terrifying vision of being trapped—swallowed up by a dark, marshy pit of muck and water.
Scrambling back into his seat, he did a quick inventory of the compartment behind him. Bleak. Even the five-gallon jug of emergency water was gone, gashed open by the piece of fuselage that had speared into the seat between them.
Hands shaking, he fought back the panic.
Jack stared at a stack of orange life vests, an idea forming in the back of his head. It wasn’t a good idea, but it was all that he had.
Grabbing the life vests, he threw them one by one out of the opening and onto the mucky ground below. Beneath the sixth vest he got lucky—a white, waterproof, zippered nylon bag, about the size of a seat cushion, emblazoned with blocky red lettering.
“Emergency kit.”
There wasn’t time to look inside, but he tossed it out as well.
Scrambling back to Olivia, Jack undid the three-point seat harness. His first thought was to try to pick her up and lower her gently to the marsh bed. But, inching closer to the edge of the shattered opening for a look, he saw that the plane was cocked at a strange angle to the ground, probably lodged on a log. Metal shards of the fuselage bristled like knives below them.
There was only one thing to do.
Kneeling before Olivia, he heaved her unmoving body over his left shoulder, grunting with the effort.
Olivia was tall. When they had first met two days ago, it had taken him a minute to realize how tall; she bested him by at least a couple of inches. There’d been too many other things for him to notice about Olivia, like the fact that she was gorgeous, or how she had the greene
Jack was five-foot-seven-and-a-half (five-foot-eight to anyone who asked), but he’d dated girls taller than him. It had never been an issue. In fact, he’d hardly even noticed—until he met Olivia. It felt strange to be holding her like this. Breathing in the aroma of her hair, the smell of her, feeling her shallow breath as it rose and fell against him.
Reaching out with his left hand to grasp the seat back for balance, Jack rose slowly and inched his way to the edge of the opening, praying the plane wouldn’t suddenly shift again. He stared down at the watery patch of marsh ten feet below them, now littered with life jackets.
Olivia was growing heavy in his arms.
Jack was fit. He was on his school’s swim team, which he loved, and cross-country, not so much. An odd thought fluttered through Jack’s mind. What would Coach Galjour think?
Galjour was his hard-assed cross-country coach, and Jack often groused with his teammates about Coach’s insistence on a heavy regimen of weightlifting. What did that have to do with running?
Now, it was coming in handy. Jack mentally noted to thank Coach—if he survived.
He tightened his hold on Olivia, pulling her close to his chest. He took a deep breath, and then he jumped.
CHAPTER 2
THWUCK!
Jack hit hard, thankful that the ground was soft.
He pitched forward, ducking his shoulder as he rolled atop then over Olivia. He landed on his back, splattering Olivia with thick, wet mud.
So much for shielding her.
He picked himself up, shivering as a trickle of swamp water ran down the back of his collar. The warm, methane-drenched stench of disturbed marsh filled his nose.
Jack scrambled forward, dropping to his knees in the watery ooze to look Olivia over. Leopard-spot patches of mud covered her face, hair, clothes, and bare legs.
“Jesus,” Jack said. “What a mess.”
Olivia moaned but didn’t open her eyes.
Jack rose, his sneakers sinking deeper into the disgusting ooze. Wiping a spray of mud from his forehead, he glanced around, trying to get his bearings, his mind racing.
What the hell are we supposed to do now?
Olivia was from New York City—the Upper East Side, just off Central Park—as she’d made a point of telling Jack. Her private high school was just blocks from her family’s apartment. To Jack, who’d never been to New York—unless you counted the movies—it seemed an entirely different planet from the swamplands that edged Black Bayou, Louisiana.
Olivia wasn’t like anyone Jack had ever met. Not that he knew her so well, but some things stood out. She was funny and interesting and, okay, yes, she was hot, but more than that she was . . . confident. She had a way of carrying herself that made everyone else look like they were trying too hard. Everything about Olivia seemed almost effortless, from the tilt of her chin to her clothes.
Now, though, lying on the ground covered in mud, Olivia looked like a bedraggled swamp creature.
What’s she going to think when she wakes up? That is, if she wakes up.
Panic stirred in Jack’s chest.
Looking around again, Jack saw there was no obvious way out. The watery patch of muck holding them was what he and the other Cajun-French-speaking locals called flotant—basically a large, spongy clump of floating marsh. This one covered maybe a quarter of an acre, having broken off from some fixed stand to drift freely. It had cushioned the crash but also explained why the plane section was starting to sink. The marsh wasn’t built to hold such weight for long.
Beyond this floating island was terrain that Jack knew all too well—Louisiana’s Great Atchafalaya Swamp. In better times, it was the vast playground where, with family and friends, he hunted, fished, set out crawfish traps, and paddled about for miles and miles for the sheer sake of exploring. The Great Atchafalaya was a mix of ponds, bays, bayous, rivers, and lakes ringed by marshes and swamp decorated with stands of cypress and tupelo gum—a vast hardwood forest jutting from the water. Beautiful to look at but difficult to walk or swim, it was tricky to navigate without a compass or GPS.
It was a place Jack knew reasonably well, though he doubted any one person knew the swamp in its entirety. As a weekend swamp-tour guide, he had memorized the talking points. Stretching 125 miles north and south, and about one hundred miles east and west, the Atchafalaya, at about 1.4 million acres, was the largest contiguous hardwood swamp in North America. Alligators ruled the bayous, marshes, and lowlands; swamp bears, panthers, and bobcats the ridges. Snapping turtles, cottonmouths, and water snakes of all kinds prowled the dark waters shared with giant catfish, alligator gar, and ancient paddlefish. Hordes of mosquitoes invaded the warm-weather nights.
Knowing the list of things that could bite and sting made Jack not even want to go there. On the other hand, if you loved birds, it was paradise. Almost 300 species of indigenous and migratory birds filled its skies and foraged its bayous and wetlands. The Atchafalaya was also a key part of Louisiana’s commercial crawfishing industry; locals annually harvested about fifteen million pounds of the crustaceans that were a staple of the Cajun diet and an icon of Cajun culture.
A few large upland ridges laced the interior of this watery wilderness, like giant pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, providing high ground for land-loving critters—but none of these ridges led in or out. People came to the Great Atchafalaya by boat, helicopter, or float plane, or they didn’t come at all.
Even in a boat steered by locals, its vastness was a challenge. Still, Jack loved it. He’d thought about quitting school to become a full-time swamp guide, but his parents had quickly quashed that idea.
Now, to be stranded here, under these circumstances . . . no, there was nothing great about the Atchafalaya now.
Jack knew where their flight had started and had some idea of where it had ended. He was pretty sure they’d crashed in a corner of the swamp that was as remote and inaccessible as any place in North America—well, maybe outside of Alaska or some of the mountain ranges of the West.
It was Columbus Day weekend, and Joe Desmoreaux had flown the FitzGeralds into a base camp on the swamp’s eastern fringe two days earlier. Jack was one of the guides hired for the FitzGerald’s four-day tour.
Or at least, that had been the plan.
Oh, God! Could Joe and Olivia’s dad actually be dead in the cockpit of the plane? The thought was too horrifying for Jack to process.
It didn’t seem possible that Terrence FitzGerald could be dead. Like his daughter, Olivia’s father had been . . . impressive. Tall, handsome, articulate. He oozed self-confidence. In his pressed khakis, safari shirt, and ankle-high leather boots, he’d reminded Jack of a swashbuckling general in some old war movie.
Jack stood, scanning the distance again for the other part of the plane. But though he’d been able to spot the cockpit from the higher vantage of the tail section, he couldn’t see a thing now; it was as if the swamp had swallowed it up.
Should I leave Olivia and try to check on them?
What if he couldn’t handle what he found when he got there? And what if he got stuck and couldn’t get back? Olivia would have no chance then.
But maybe the smart thing to do would be to leave Olivia behind. He could move much faster by himself, maybe get to a spot where he could send help. Trying to drag her out would only slow him down.
An image came to him—both of them trapped in some Godforsaken marshy bog, him exhausted, Olivia unconscious, night falling, mosquitoes swarming. They might both die.
Jack Cane Landry had just turned seventeen in August. He was not prepared to die. And, anyway, he barely knew Olivia FitzGerald. Did he really owe her his life?
Another flutter of panic. What the hell am I going to do? Jack swallowed hard, trying to slow his racing thoughts. And then, an image of his grandfather popped into his head.
Paw-Paw Jack Landry, for whom Jack had been named, had grown up as a fur trapper in the salt marshes down by the Gulf of Mexico, about three hours south. Jack’s dad called him Old School—a man who seemed to belong to another century. He was one of the toughest men Jack had ever known and, as soon as Jack could walk, Paw-Paw had become his swamp mentor. He taught Jack fishing, hunting, and survival skills, but he made it fun and adventurous. Paw-Paw was not formally educated. Like many Cajuns of his generation who had grown up poor, he had dropped out of school by seventh grade to help work his father’s traplines and support his parents and numerous siblings. But Jack felt his grandfather knew more about the intricate workings and life cycles of the swamp and its denizens than any college-bred ecologist he had ever met—knowledge gained through experience.
