Acts of Nature

TWENTY-EIGHT

They were all dead. Arms folded at impossible angles. Clothing unnaturally empty and stained in dark amber colors that they never would have worn for themselves. Human bodies are diminished by death. In a movie some alien called us bags of water and in death our life leaks out.
I stepped around Marcus, let my eyes skim over the head wound but they stopped on the outstretched hand, the missing fingers I was responsible for. I moved on to a jump bag, one I hadn’t seen before and assumed was Harmon’s. Inside I found the phone he’d spoken of before the gator took him away in pieces. I turned it on and dialed Billy Manchester’s number. He would be the one person I knew would have the technological ability to take the call even if the power and the cell towers were down in West Palm Beach. He was my friend, my attorney, and since I often worked for him as a private investigator, he was also my boss. He listened as always in absorbed silence until I was done describing where Sherry and I were and the GPS coordinates, her medical condition, and a quick synopsis of the carnage lying around me.
“I will be on a med flight in thirty minutes, Max, with a crew and an evacuation basket,” Billy said. “I will also inform the Broward sheriff’s office of the situation. Are you OK?”
“Yeah, Billy. Just get here.”
I punched the off button and stepped out past the hand with one thumb. Buck was facedown, the ripped left leg of his jeans was empty. Farther along the deck was the body of a big man I did not recognize. As I walked around him, I glimpsed a clump of bloodstained gristle against the nearby wall that I barely recognized as an ear. At the corner was Wayne, lying on his side, his arm extended out in the direction of his friend as if offering the four fingers he had left from an accident long ago to match his partner’s lonely thumb.
The sun was partway up now, smoldering behind an overcast sky, dimly glowing. A humid wind stirred and blew through the broken Glades trees and ferns, momentarily sweeping away the stink of blood and cordite and humans. Sometimes nature cannot stand us. And sometimes we cannot stand our own nature. I carefully made my way back inside to Sherry’s side and waited for the sound of a rescue.