Acts of Nature

century.
    Then there was the Mauser, a German-made World War II classic, heavy, built to last, knock down a fucking mule with one shot. As he had already figured, these guys weren’t real hunters, they were playboys, out here to make noise with their expensive toys. There was a twelve-gauge over-and-under shotgun there as well, the most utilitarian of the group and no doubt used to knock a few curlew out of the evening sky just for the hell of it.
    Then there were two handguns: an old 9mm Glock, the one law enforcement gave up on after a couple of heavy-fingered cops said they fired prematurely, and a .45-caliber revolver of the style Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry might have carried but too fucking big for anyone to lug around these days except for some asshole drive-by gangbangers who thought the sound of it was cool because it was louder than their car stereos when it touched off.
    Buck had stared at the collection for a few seconds. In his excitement over the total haul in the house, his natural wariness of the weapons was lost. No, he didn’t like guns. He’d heard too many stories of their violence and how it inevitably came back on you. But there was something about this day that was feeling too easy, everything working out the way he’d envisioned it, the way he boasted on it to the boys. It was all going smoothly and Buck had spent nearly thirty-three years on this earth and nothing had ever gone completely smoothly for him. The guns were now stashed under the pile of other things they’d decided to take. Buck had slipped them there himself, not bothering to tell the boys what he’d found. He’d taken three boxes of ammunition from the secret drawer and wrapped them and the rifles and the big .45 in a blanket and covered that with some raingear he’d found to keep them as dry as possible.
    Now he shook off the urge to torch the place and emptied the gas can into the tank and then tossed it onto the dock of the house. Fuck it, he thought. Don’t overdo it just to get back at the assholes for trespassing on your life. This mission ain’t about them. If you set the place on fire, you’re sending up a smoke signal that anybody could respond to. Do the job, Buck. What you gotta do. Be smart.
    “OK, boys. Let’s move on. We’re burnin’ daylight,” he said. Buck and the Duke. He reached into the seat trap and took out the GPS.
    “Next on the list ain’t but an hour south. If she’s still standing we might be able to spend the night there.”
    Wayne and Marcus put a final knot in the line holding their newfound booty and climbed up into the backseats.
    “You say so, captain,” Wayne said, and when Buck hit the ignition and the big engine caught and the noise ripped into the heavy air, the boys looked at each other and grinned and passed the bottle between them. They’d already opened the Van Gogh vodka that they’d lifted from the kitchen and found they liked the espresso flavor.

SEVENTEEN
    I was in the water, waist deep, sloshing around at the edges of the raised cabin deck, one eye peeking up under the two-by- eight stringers for some sign of a trap door, the other watching for Wally.
    I had climbed back up on top of the structure when it became apparent that there was no way I was getting into the mysterious room from the inside. I’d already dismantled part of the metal frame of the other bed next to Sherry, an old prison trick inmates pulled to salvage strong enough chunks of metal to shave sharp and make killer shivs out of. I used one of the unsharpened chunks as a pry tool but it had been useless against the frame of the security door and after I worked for an hour to peel back a piece of baseboard and then chopped at the low corner of the wall, I gave up.
    Outside, I even climbed back up on the roof where I’d found access before and scoured the panels for a ceiling entry to the other room. I found a vent that might have been for recirculated air. And a damaged edge I was able to peek into, only to find a secondary sheath over the room, some kind of fiberboard or waterproof polymer that was too tough to gouge through.
    “You look too frustrated, Max,” Sherry had said when I gave up and rejoined her. The aspirin from the medical kit had brought her fever down some. Her eyes were more alert. I’d opened a can of sliced peaches I’d found warm in the small refrigerator and used my fingers to fish out individual pieces and feed them into her mouth. The sugar and solid food had