“You have no idea, dude. You and your fucking mind tricks don’t work on me anymore.”

“All I ever tried to do was help you.”

“You tried. And you failed.”

“Where’s the body?”

“Why don’t you ask Heather’s daddy,” he said. “They’re probably keeping him there on display, in the middle of their mall church.”

“Come on,” said Donny.

“What’s this about, baby?” said Heather. “Is it true?”

Slider looked at her. Then he looked at Donny.

“You really want to know?” he said to Heather.

She nodded.

“I was on the squad that intercepted that fucker. And I helped deliver the sentence.”

“You really killed the President?” said Heather.

Slider nodded. “Me and four others. I’m the only one left. The rest all got out of the country. I had unfinished business. I needed to get you. But then the people who sent us to do the job decided we knew too much. And that’s the real reason I had to disappear. But that’s not his body. Because there is no body. We broke it down in acid. Dissolved it down to the bones. Now, stop asking about it. Leave it alone. And get the fuck out of here.”

“I can go?”

“You have to go. Out there, like I said. I’m sorry, Donny. That’s just how it is.”

Donny looked at them. Then he stood up, grimaced at the pain from being locked in the box, and looked out at the landscape through the window.

Black water, the silhouettes of lush trees, and the sound of predatory wild.

“Okay, Daryl,” said Donny. “But can you at least spare me some shoes?”

45

Donny walked, barefoot, dragging oversized sneakers through thigh-high water, waiting for when the pull on his leg was not the muck swallowing his feet, but a gator on his leg.

He had not been that high in many years, and the cocktail of intoxicants he had been enjoying from sundown to midnight mixed with the jolt of adrenaline he felt as he stepped out into it had a weird effect, simultaneously altering his senses and sharpening them. He felt the bite on his toe and the sting on his neck and the muggy sweat soaking through the T-shirt Slider had let him take. He heard the frogs laughing at him and wild dogs taking in his scent and the snakes moving his way, or maybe moving away. The moon was out, a new moon, but with a clear sky and just enough light that Donny swore he could see the glisten on the scales of the fish in the water, scattering at the sight and sound of his lumbering legs.

He saw other lights. Lights in motion, man-made. Trucks, he thought, before realizing they were boats, moving on the river, not too far away.