The moment the door was fully extended, Parkowski let go of the handle. She fell hard onto the pavement below, thankfully landing on her good shoulder rather than her injured one. It still hurt like a bitch, though. She rolled towards the grass on the side of the road.
DePresti had leaped out of the van as well and landed hard but upright on his two feet. He took a couple of quick steps in the direction of Parkowski and then broke into a full-blown sprint away from their captors.
Parkowski got to her feet as she heard a shot fired, the bullet hitting the asphalt about two feet to her right as she headed away from the road.
She stumbled and almost fell. DePresti grabbed her arm and got her back to her feet.
Parkowski didn’t hear the van’s engine anymore. They must have stopped and gotten out to pursue them. A bullet whizzed over their heads as they scrambled away, trying to put as much distance as possible between them and their pursuers.
DePresti and Parkowski headed for a grove of mangrove trees along a small decline that she couldn’t see past in the darkness.
He grabbed her hand as they reached the trees and led her through the maze of trunks and branches until suddenly they fell into the water beyond the trees.
The water wasn’t particularly cold, but it still shocked her system.
She could smell a hint of salt right before they hit the water, but it wasn’t the same as when they had traveled underwater, not the same as the ocean. Parkowski wasn’t a hundred percent sure of the geography, but she guessed they were in a brackish estuary or river that ran parallel to the coast to their east.
The water was slightly murky. As she sank, Parkowski opened her eyes to look around.
To her shock, there was a giant twelve-foot alligator on the riverbed not a dozen feet from her.
Parkowski opened her mouth to scream but remembered she was underwater, expelling precious air as a bubble rose to the surface. She closed it quickly.
There wasn't just one alligator, either. She counted at least four of the massive beasts — three on the bottom and a slightly smaller one floating on the surface, nostrils poking out of the water.
This was it, she thought. She was going to die here. Either she was going to be eaten by alligators, or their pursuers were going to execute them on the side of the road.
Parkowski did everything in her power to not panic.
Her boyfriend was next to her, floating near the bottom of the six-foot depth of water. Surprisingly, he didn’t seem to panic. She looked at him and, incredibly, he smiled.
Then, he gave a thumbs-up.
It was time to panic. Something was wrong — DePresti was either hallucinating or just completely losing it.
He slowly but deliberately went up for air, then went back down, taking care not to make any sudden movements. Parkowski did the same, filling her tired lungs while making as little of a sound as possible.
When she submerged again, the Aering engineer saw DePresti carefully swim along the side of the bank, to the south, away from their pursuers.
What the hell was he doing? He was going to get them all killed.
A fish — she couldn’t tell what kind — swam in front of her.
It was huge, and thankfully not a threat. If it was, she’d have been in some trouble.
Another one, this one even bigger than the first, swam right by her legs. Parkowski guessed they had to be some kind of grouper, and had to weigh at least twice what she did. There was no way that they were naturally here, this close to the shore, in a mostly saline environment.
How did such a fish come to exist in a small, remote area?
Then, it clicked.
Parkowski smiled when she realized the answer, then followed her boyfriend deeper into the estuary.
It might just get them out of this one.
Parkowski knew why the fish were so big. And why the giant alligators were so docile and uninterested in her. It was the same reason the turtle they had seen while turning around at the gate seemed so big.
They were in a protected area, one of the few spaces in Florida that was completely closed to hunters and fishermen. The Cape and Kennedy were government facilities, closed off to the general public.
The alligators, groupers, and other creatures had no natural predators. They were at the top of their respective food chains.
No humans were there to hurt or kill them.
The alligators didn’t attack Parkowski or DePresti because they didn’t have to. They were well-fed on whatever lived in this brackish river, and unless threatened would remain in their relaxed state.
DePresti had to have known that, hence why he didn’t panic or freak out when he saw them. It just took her a little longer to come to the same realization.
They swam slowly, almost bumping into a juvenile alligator. Seemingly, they weren’t spotted.
Her boyfriend rose to the surface and stayed there, his nose, eyes, and ears above the water. Parkowski did the same. She scanned the area to see if she could see their pursuers or any other threats.
