Gabriel - Jessie Cooke Page 0,21

go before they were completely submerged.

He hadn’t planned on going to sleep. Exhaustion had torn at every part of his body and weighed on his eyelids to the point of his finally collapsing into an uncomfortable slumber. Now, it was taking him some time to get his bearings. He wasn’t sure how far they’d actually moved, or where they actually were. To the layman, everything in the swamp looked the same. But to a boy who had grown up in them, landmarks were noticeably important. Unfortunately, as he looked around now, thankful for the sunlight, nothing looked familiar and no landmarks gave away their location. Knowing he would have to get out on land and walk, Gabe drew on all the resources he had left and carefully, and slowly, lowered himself over the side of the little canoe and down into the water. His feet were able to touch the bottom...or so he thought, at first.

The wild movement underneath him was his first clue he wasn’t on solid ground and before he could pull himself back up into the boat, the feel of the gator’s teeth digging through his jeans and into his calf was his second clue. Gabe scrambled to get a good hold on the boat, and using all of his strength, tried to pull himself out of the jaws of the startled gator. He wasn’t able to get loose, and pulling only seemed to make the big reptile clamp down tighter. Grunting and sweating, he reached back into his jeans for the gun. When he pulled it out and, he could hear the water drain out of the barrel. Closing his eyes to the pain that the teeth and jaws were causing, he aimed the gun downward and pulled the trigger. It took him a few precious seconds to realize that it hadn’t fired, and another few to realize his knife was in the boot the gator was currently trying to make a snack out of.

Gabe had wrestled alligators before, but that was only when he’d been able to sneak up on them and get a hold on their back, keeping his flesh away from the powerful jaws. Blackheart had taught him that trick, always approach them from behind...and also if you had to fight one, fight like hell because at that point, your life depended on it. Gabe knew that the longer the gator held onto his leg, the more of a chance there was of his losing it altogether. He didn’t want to live the rest of his life as a one-legged man, even if it would be a cool story to tell later on.

Gabe held onto the boat with both hands and using his free leg, he began to kick the gator over and over in the head. The twisting of the beast’s massive jaws made him scream and he was glad there was no one else there to hear it, but he didn’t stop kicking. Blackheart’s words about fighting like hell rang in his ears as he did. Later, Gabe wouldn’t be able to say how much time passed, or how many horrible things passed through his mind while he tried to get free of the gator, but eventually, the gator tired of being kicked in the face, and let go. As soon as he did, even with the pain weighing on him like a thousand-pound weight, he began to scramble back up into the boat.

Gabe tried not to notice the blood pouring out of his leg, and he had to fight the dizziness that wanted to consume him as he struggled to get the knife out of his boot. His hands were covered with his own wet blood by the time he got it out, and his vision was becoming blurry around the edges. The pirogue was being tossed back and forth and his body was thrown on top of Chance as he raised the knife. The gator’s jaws were wide open, ready to take a bite at the oval tip of the pirogue, and Gabe closed his eyes again, and brought the knife down. He felt the scrape of a heavy tooth as the gator fell away. It continued to thrash wildly, however, and when Gabe slipped out of the boat again to push it toward the bank, the gator’s tail whipped around and hit him upside the face several times, almost knocking him back out. Somehow, however, even as his young life was flashing before his eyes, Gabe and the