Description
Short Science Fiction Collection 013
Faithfully Yours
by Lou Tabakow
If it’s too impossibly difficult to track down and recapture an
escaped criminal … there’s a worse thing one might do….
JULY 18, 1949 A.D.
The fugitive lay face down in the fetid undergrowth, drawing in
spasmodic lungfuls of air through cracked and swollen lips. Long before,
his blue workshirt had been ripped to ribbons and his exposed chest
showed a spiderwork of scratches, where branches and brambles had sought
to restrain him in his frenzied flight. Across his back from shoulder to
shoulder ran a deeper cut around which the caked blood attested to the
needle-sharp viciousness of a thorn bush a mile to the north. With each
tortured breath he winced, as drops of sweat ran down, following the
spiderwork network and burning like acid. Incessantly he rubbed his
bruised torso with mud-caked palms to dislodge the gnats and mosquitoes
that clung to him, gorging shamelessly.
To the east he could see the lights of Fort Mudge where the railroad
cut through on its way to Jacksonville. He had planned to ride the
freight into Jacksonville but by now they were stopping every train and
searching along every foot of the railroad right of way. In the distance
he heard the eerie keen of a train whistle, and visualized the scene as
it was flagged down and searched from engine to caboose.
Directly before him loomed the forbidding northern boundary of the
Okefenokee Swamp. Unconsciously he strained his ears, then shuddered at
the night noises that issued from the noisome wilderness. A frenzied
threshing, then a splash, then … silence. What drama of life and death
was being played out in that strange other-world of perpetual shadows?
Product ID: 9781776778638
Sku: 9781776778638
