Some mud got into his mouth and he wiped it away from his teeth. He thought about the two who were waiting on Ingersoll. But they won’t just stay there and wait, he told himself. What they’ll do, they’ll join the party when the deal goes down and you make your break for the swamplands. They’ll hear the shooting in there, and they’ll come running to put in their two cents. You mean their two guns. And two added to three makes five. It’s gonna be five guns on your tail, and you won’t be no rabbit in there. You can’t move fast like a rabbit in all that ooze and muck and guck. You’re gonna hafta move like a night crawler. Like a blind night crawler, considering how dark it’s getting now.

Well, maybe that’s a break for you, that dark sky getting darker. Them five guns can’t aim at what they can’t see. But you know they can aim at what they hear, and you go stumbling into a ditch or tumble into one of them pools, they’ll hear that and they’ll—

All right, cut this noise. Just cut it, will you? You’ll handle the aggravation when you come to it. What you better do now, and I mean right now, is get rolling, and fast.

He was up on his feet, running hard toward the swamplands. He heard the shots and wanted to throw himself down again but knew it wouldn’t delay them this time. They’re out for meat; they’re really hungry, he thought and told his legs to keep running.

At the edge of the swamplands, there were mostly weeds and low bushes. He heard the buzzing of a bullet. It was close and he wished the bushes were higher so he could throw himself down behind cover. He kept running, going deeper into the swamplands and heard one of them shouting, “There he goes.” Next he heard a flurry of shots, and he pleaded with himself to run faster. In this section the ground was fairly solid, but he was slowed down because he was zigzagging. Ahead the bushes were higher, the vegetation thicker, and he could make out the silhouettes of trees.

He heard someone shout, “You see him?”

Another voice answered, “Can’t see him now.”

Just as Corey was getting a lift from that, a third voice yelled, “I see him—headed for them trees.”

“Them trees won’t do him no good,” the one who’d shouted first predicted, and then there was heavy firing. The buzzing of the bullets came closer. Corey sprinted for the nearest tree, got behind it, realized it wasn’t wide enough to offer cover. He heard the bullets buzzing very close, much too close, and got away from the tree and ran deeper into the swamplands.