And now another four joined the flock. But they didn’t swarm his way…their movements were sluggish and they didn’t seem to know he was there. They milled about, looking confused. What were they waiting for? Reinforcements?

If more were coming up from the cenote, maybe Jack could ambush them along the way. He unclipped a grenade from his belt—only a couple left—pulled the pin, and lofted it toward the cenote. It passed through the swarm and down into the opening. A few seconds later he saw a flash, heard a boom, but that was it. The ones fluttering over the hole didn’t even react.

If this were a movie like Rio Bravo, he’d stumble onto a crate of dynamite, conveniently left behind by a construction company, and use it to seal the cenote. But this was Jack’s world, not Howard Hawks’s. Things never seemed to work out that way for him.

He heard a scream behind him and recognized the voice this time: Carl again. He looked around and saw him staggering in a circle at the water’s edge. One of those things had its fangs buried in the back of his neck…and it was chewing…

Where’d that one come from?

Jack leaped to his feet and took off on a run. He couldn’t use the shotgun without hitting Carl too, so he pulled the Ruger. But before he could use it, Carl pitched over backward into the water.

That wasn’t all bad. The cenote thing didn’t seem to like water. It loosed its grip and buzzed back into the air, banking and gliding toward Jack. He already had the Ruger up. He waited until it was close, then fired at it head on. It dissolved in an explosion of green. As its wings fluttered to the ground, Jack dropped the Benelli and the Ruger and jumped into the water to help Carl, who wasn’t doing too well.

The water was waist deep and cool, its surface churning and bubbling from the wind and rain. The muddy bottom was slippery and sloped off on a steady decline. A bullet whizzed by, then another. Someone on the Horse-ship had spotted them. Jack heard Dad’s Mossberg boom, then a cry from the boat, and the bullets stopped coming.

“Carl!” Jack shouted as he leaned forward and stretched out his arm. “Give me your hand!”

Carl, with his poncho floating around him like a lily pad, thrashed and splashed and kicked his way shoreward. Jack grabbed his outstretched left hand and began hauling him in.

Suddenly Carl was jerked back. He let out a scream of pain and Jack was barely able to hold on to him as something pulled him back toward the center of the lagoon.

“Oh, my leg!” he wailed. “My leg! It’s Dora! She’s got me! Don’t let her have me, Jack!”

“I won’t, Carl.”