"I can dress how I want to. I like this skirt." She paused and looked at him defiantly. "Lisa wears skirts like these."

  Allen felt his cheeks blush. "I wouldn't know."

  Danielle looked at him. "You don't know what your secretary wears?"

  He didn't look at her as he spoke. His eyes were fixated on the coffee as he slurped it. "She's not my secretary anymore. I told you."

  "So, you don't see her anymore?"

  Allen hit his fist on the counter. "Damn it, Danielle. I told you, she's out of the picture, all right. Now, leave it alone. And go change. Now. I’m losing my appetite looking at you."

  She left with a scoff and rolled her eyes at him. Allen snorted. The nerve of that woman. She was getting more and more attitude as the days went by. He sat down at the counter and turned on the News. He watched while drinking his orange juice.

  "Damn protestors," he grumbled and shoveled in the granola. He fantasized about using the rifle he had at work and just shooting them. One after another. Pow-pow-pow. They'd fall at his feet and finally stay quiet.

  Allen was sick of having to drive through the flock every darn morning when going to work. It was his job to oversee that the pipeline was put in the ground, and right now they were getting the outside world's attention to the extent that it made his job difficult. And for what? What were they even getting out of it? Attention? Compassion? It was so easy to get carried away with this type of emotional thinking. And, by now, Allen and his company, Titan Oil, were among the most hated people in the U.S., maybe even in the world. Every day, he had to endure all the yelling, and even on Facebook people would write things to him and ask him to drop dead. All for what? They had already started digging in the ground, they had been going at it for a week now. It wasn't like they were going to stop now. This was progress. There was no stopping it. This would make the Americans independent of oil from the Middle East, didn't people see how important that was? He was helping the U.S. regain its independence from the countries who wanted them dead. Who cared if the land was holy or considered sacred by those darn Injuns? How far had they progressed the past hundred years, huh? Nowhere. They were going absolutely nowhere and they wanted the rest of the world to stand still with them. If they were in charge, we would all have to live in freakin' teepees.

  "Sacred, smecred, pah," he said to himself when a woman, wrapped in what looked most like the carpet Allen's grandmother had in her living room, thundered against the company, telling them digging in the sacred land, where their ancestors were buried, would be worst for themselves.

  Allen laughed. Danielle returned wearing pants. He smiled. He actually liked when she wore pants. Made her look proper and not cheap like the other women in this town. Still, he decided to have a little fun with her, just because he could.

  "What are you, a man?" he laughed. "Why do you always wear pants?"

  She stared at him, confusion in her eyes. "I thought you wanted me to."

  "Do I look like I'm into men, huh? You calling me a darn faggot, huh?"

  She shook her head, her eyes avoiding his. Allen wondered how far he could go with this. She was so freakin' annoying. Pathetic. But she was beautiful and looked good on his arm when they went somewhere.

  "I ain't changing again, if that’s what you want me to do," she said.

  Allen looked at his watch, then decided he didn't have time to go all the way with her on this. He laughed again and pointed at the TV.

  "You should have heard that woman before. Telling us it will be worst for ourselves if we continue to dig the pipeline. She sounded like she was a Kindergartner. I tell ya', these people are like kids, Danielle. They're just like little kids."

  He grabbed his briefcase that Danielle brought to him. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, sensing how she shivered at his touch. It made him feel more powerful than ever. He whispered in her ear.

  "And just like little kids, they need discipline; they need to know who's in charge."

  With a big grin, he winked at her, corrected his tie, and walked for the door.

  Chapter 51

  I ran faster than I had in many years, probably faster than ever. I wasn't in great shape, but in a moment like this, I didn't care that my body was screaming at me, telling me to slow down or I would pass out. My knees were aching, my hips screaming in pain, I could hardly breathe, yet I still managed to run like the wind.

  I had never been so terrified in my entire life. Not even when my two-year-old Grace had wandered into Main Street while playing outside and I spotted her just as she was about to walk into the road in front of a truck. I knew I would never be able to stop her, but luckily, she stopped herself because she spotted something in the asphalt and had to pick it up.

  That was the first and only time I ever spanked her behind. Back then, I thought that was the scariest thing I would ever have to go through.

  But running through the Glades all alone with the trees chasing me topped it, or at least you might call it a tie.

  I didn't stop running till I was completely out of air and my knees gave out. I fell forward in exhaustion and landed on my knees, panting and sputtering, gasping desperately for air.

  It wasn't until I finally managed to get up on my feet again, still bent over, leaning on my thighs, that I saw it.

  "What on earth…?"

  I realized I had landed somewhere strange. It was hard to tell at first, but it looked like some sort of small town in the middle of the swamps. There were houses, several of them. They were hard to see because they were covered by thick vegetation. They seemed like old houses, some of them nothing but small cottages. When I looked inside of one, I found—and smelled—that skunks had inhabited it. There were still things in there. Like stuff that the people that lived here had left behind. On the stove, there was a kettle, and the table was set. It was like they had left it all when they abandoned the house. Had they been in some sort of hurry?

  "What kind of a place is this?" I mumbled. "Why have I never heard of a town in the middle of the Everglades?"

  I walked to one of the other houses and peeked inside. Just like the other one, it seemed to have been abandoned in a rush. There were no bones or leftovers of bodies of people, but then again, animals could have taken them and dragged them somewhere else to eat. There was no telling.

  Most of the small cottages were impassable since the vegetation had wrapped itself around it so tightly it blocked every opening, but a few of them were still open for me to look inside, and one of them I was even able to enter. The floor complained underneath me. It was small; the ceilings low, even for a small person like me. It looked extremely old, I thought. An empty whiskey bottle was on the table, dusty, another had fallen to the ground and shattered. I kneeled and touched the glass, then looked around. Tree roots had sprung up from between the planks, branches had reached in through the windows. It was like the trees didn't care that there had been a house here, they just kept growing. Like those funny pictures you'd often see from big cities where some small sprout had managed to crack its way through the asphalt.

  I heard a sound and looked outside, where I thought I saw the shadow of something disappear behind a tree. I rushed to the door and peeked out, but couldn't see anything. I couldn't help but feel like there was a whisper in the wind, or in the top of the trees, sounding exactly like they were talking to one another.

  I walked outside as the whispering and sighing from the trees got worse, and I couldn't help getting the sensation that it was my presence that caused it. I felt very uncomfortable.

  All the trees were moving, their branches swaying in the wind, except there was no wind.

  "What is this place?" I asked as the swaying became more intense, the whispers loud and aggressive.

  Get out of here, Patty. Get away, now!

  Everything screamed inside of me, yet I still didn't move. The moaning from the trees overpowered my thinking and I realized I had to stop wondering, trying to make sense of it all. I knew it was time to get back to my primal instinct.

  To run.

  I turned around and was about to set off—pain or no pain—when something touched my foot and I looked down. Long slithering vines were coming across the ground from all sides towards me. One already licked up the side of my leg and wrapped itself around my shin. I gasped and tried to kick it off, but it remained, and soon another one slithered its way up the same leg on the other side of it. I shrieked when I felt one touching my shoulder and looked up only to see what looked like a hundred more vines descending towards me.

  I didn't scream when they wrapped themselves so tightly around me I could no longer move. I didn't scream when they lifted me up and I was stretched out like some sort of ancient torture machine. No, I didn't. It wasn't until I saw it emerge from between the trees that I finally lost it.

  Chapter 52

  "Hey, what's that?"

  Sam stopped. His dad was still leaning on his shoulder for support, but otherwise mostly walking on his own.

  "What’s what?" he asked.

  "You didn't hear it? It sounded like someone yelling."

  His dad shook his head. "No. Can't say I did."

  "Try and listen," Sam said.

  They both did, but there was nothing but the usual sounds they had heard all day from the Green Swamps; the occasional rustle in a bush, the birdcalls, the insects, the trees moaning. Somewhere in the distance, a woodpecker was going at it, with a rat-a-tat-tat sound.

  Sam was disappointed. He was so certain. "I could have sworn…"

  They both thought about it the instant their eyes met across the forest. They hadn't talked about it all day, but it was constantly on their minds. The others. Where they were, what had happened to them. They both had a feeling the answer wasn't a pleasant one and so they refused to think about it. It was sort of a survival mechanism. It was just too brutal to think that John and the kids and all the other people in the camp, the ones around the fire, who were singing, that they had all been suffocated inside those…those weird plant-traps.

  Everything about this whole thing was hard to think about because it made no sense at all. Nevertheless, it was real. Very real. But oftentimes Sam wondered if he would ever be able to talk about it when…if he ever made it out of the swamps. Who would ever believe him? Even if he and his dad told the same story, people would never believe it, would they? That a big plant monster had tried to eat them? That they had taken everyone else? No, they wouldn't.

  Oh, my God, they're going to think dad killed them all and then made me lie for him, aren't they?

  The thought made him feel awful.

  "Wait. I think I heard something just now," Greg said.

  "Really?" Sam asked, hope springing to his heart.

  "It's coming from over there. Look, Sam."

  Sam looked at the plant in front of them and gasped. "That's like the plant I…I was…"

  He felt his dad’s hand on his shoulder. The plant was about twice as big as the one that had held Sam, the stem at least three times as wide. It had seven long-armed leaves with Venus Flytraps at the ends.

  One of them was sealed.

  "Someone is trapped in there," Sam said. He pointed, his finger shaking. "In that one over there."

  "Let's go check it out," Greg said and let go of Sam's shoulder. He was walking better now after the fall from the plant, even though he was dragging his left foot slightly. Greg hurried towards the leaf, then stood beneath it. Sam followed him closely, terrified to the bone, constantly looking around for any kind of movement.

  "Hello?" Greg yelled. "Is anyone up there?"

  A muffled sound. Someone yelling. It sounded like help, but Sam wasn't sure. On the other hand, what else would you yell in a situation like this?

  "You’re right," Greg said and looked at Sam. "Someone is trapped up there and we have to get him out as fast as possible."

  Sam whimpered and nodded. The thought of having to face yet another Venus Flytrap scared him senseless. Last time they had been lucky to get away alive. Could anyone be that lucky twice?

  Chapter 53

  It was a plant from the pit of hell. It was about fifty feet tall, maybe more. It was thick-trunked and had these long velvety heart-shaped leaves rolled into a tube. This one had five of these big tubes that it was now reaching out towards me, all five coming at me at once, every one of them big enough to suck me up in one fell swoop.

  Needless to say, I was absolutely terrified.

  It didn't help that I was strapped down and couldn't move. This plant could do with me whatever it wished. The closer the tubes got to me, the closer of a look I managed to get at them, and as one came really close to my face, then stopped moving, some sort of gluey sticky green slime came out of the tube's opening, and it slowly dripped down into my face. Like the darn thing was drooling on me.

  I almost threw up. But forgot all about it when I spotted the huge barbed fish hooks at the end of the tube's horns and realized that in a few seconds this thing was going to strike at me and poke me with one of those hooks, wasn't it?

  The way I was strapped down, I guess I was bound to stick around and see. There really wasn't any way out.

  The thing came closer, the sticky slime dripping and drooling down on me, and soon I was looking directly into the depth and darkness of this thing, this endless tube, wondering if I would be killed by the hooks first or if the plant would simply keep me inside for so long that I would slowly suffocate or maybe die of thirst. Maybe I would simply die of exhaustion first.

  Or fear.

  "Oh, my dear God," I whimpered, as the plant came so close above my head it completely covered all the light. It smelled nauseatingly sweet in there and panic spread as I realized I might not ever see sunlight again.

  "This is really it?" I said with a slight whimper. "Really, God? Like this?"

  I closed my eyes as the tube, in one quick movement, sank down above me and completely enclosed me, while all the vines loosened their grip on my arms and legs. I now knew what it felt like to be a spider being vacuumed up from the carpet.

  "Let go of me, you bastard!" I screamed.

  Next thing, I was being literally sucked into the tube, fighting to avoid being hurt by the hooks. But they were everywhere, and one of them pierced my right foot. Pain shot through me and I screamed.

  I tried to grab onto the sides, to hold onto something, but all I got was slime, slippery, clammy slime, and soon I didn't know what was up or down. That was when I heard something else, a loud crack, followed by the feeling of falling. Seconds later, I tumbled out of the tube and rolled onto the ground, the beautiful sunlight hitting my face once again. I landed right on the sneakers of someone. Covered in slime and still screaming, I looked up.

  "Pete?"

  He reached down and grabbed my hand. In the other, he was holding a machete like the ones I saw them use to open coconuts on my trip to Mexico with my girls six years ago.

  Behind me was the tube. It had been cut off at the stem. My foot was still hooked to it and bleeding heavily. Pete looked agitated.

  "We've got to hurry, come on," he said and swung the machete to cut off the hook from the plant, so I could get free. He pulled my arm.

  Again, I found myself running beyond my capabilities, only being slowed down by the excruciating pain in my foot. Meanwhile, the long arms of the purple plant were reaching out for us, it's tubes slamming on the ground, trying to shut us in, but we avoided being hit by zigzagging through the forest. With the machete, Pete cut down anything that blocked our way. Plants, bushes, even small trees, to make a way out for us, grunting and yelling like a caveman.

  Chapter 54

  "So, you're Marty? Marty Ingram? The mayor?"

  Billy was suddenly remembering bits and pieces from the night before. He remembered something about this mayor and the tall grass. Had he really gone in there to save him?

  It sounded so unlike him.

  "Yes. And who might you be?" Marty asked, a lot less suspiciously than when he first had laid eyes on Billy.

  Billy reached out his hand, then noticed it was covered in mud, and wiped it on his pants. Sorry about that. I’m Billy. Billy Bob."

  "Just Billy Bob?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Billy never gave his last name to anyone, just in case. It was something Darlene had taught him, with the argument that this way he wouldn't leave a trail for them to follow, whoever it was that was after them. For some reason, he already got the feeling, early in their relationship, that she expected to be followed and hunted by people a lot in her life. Back then, he had just thought she was paranoid; now he had started to believe she had wanted a career as a small-time criminal.

  "All right, Billy Bob, what are you doing out here?"

  "Guess I was looking for you," he said, feeling the dryness in his mouth. He smacked his lips to try and get it to go away.

  "You came in here…looking for me?"

  "I suppose so…"

  The mayor shook his head. "Why?"

  Billy shrugged. He didn't remember. He just remembered looking for him. He didn't feel like explaining. "You were lost," he said.

  The mayor looked suspiciously at Billy, then nodded slowly. "Well, yeah…all right, so do you know where we are?"

  Billy smacked his lip again. "Not really."

  "Did you bring a phone?"

  Billy made a grimace. "Not really."

  "Knives to cut the grass down with?"

  He shook his head.

  "But water, at least tell me you brought water, right? I’m dying here."

  Billy didn't say anything.

  The mayor rolled his eyes at him. "No water either?"

  "I'm sorry."

  The mayor rubbed his forehead. "So, let me get this straight. You were looking for me but didn't bring me anything, and I take it you have no idea how to get out of here either, do you? Or did you make marks to show the way back, like a trail of rocks that you left behind you that we can follow back?"