Chung and Nestor looked at the little cabin nestled in the crook of the water. Evening had fallen, and the last rays of sunlight were too weak to do more than outline the bulk of the house. Fitful lamplight flickered warmly from the windows. They'd circled the cabin as best they could without slogging through the water, and everything inside looked still and silent.

Nodding and signaling to each other, they separated and crept up either side of the long stairs leading up to the porch. Walking on the edges of the old wooden stairs to minimize squeaking, Nestor made his way up to the porch. Chung followed once Nestor had set himself, and eased forward. With excruciating slowness, he gently pulled the screen door open. Its rusty spring squealed loudly, and Chung froze, but nothing stirred inside. He motioned to Nestor who darted forward on silent feet, and teased the front door open.

The interior was dim and quiet. An old oil lamp with a tall glass chimney almost, but not quite, entirely failed to light the interior of the cabin, casting fitful, flickering shadows around the room. A pot of some noisome substance bubbled quietly on the stove.

Nestor slipped into the fitful lamplight, giving his eyes a minute to adjust as Chung crept in after him. They attempted to creep around the perimeter of the room in opposite directions, but the floor gave off such a series of creaks, groans, and complaints with every step that stealth was clearly not an option.

Chung finally stood up straight with a sheepish grin. "Nobody's here," he said.

"I think you're right," Nestor replied, standing and lowering his rifle. "They'd have come out by now."

A four-foot long double-barreled shotgun swung down from a collection of shadows in the far corner behind the stove, in front of the tall, gaunt, grim visage of Ma Daugereaux.

Fleer had left Ma Daugereaux a generous supply of 12-gauge buckshot. She'd appreciated the gesture, but she surmised that what was good medicine for squirrels was good medicine for rats, too.

She tested this supposition by leveling the shotgun at Nestor's back, and with a practiced squeeze, lit off one of the barrels. Nestor flew forward, skidding along the floor for a couple feet when he landed.

Chung whipped up his rifle as Nestor's body flew by, swinging it up toward the source of the shot, but the second barrel of the shotgun filled his face with a pepper-spray of #6 birdshot. Chung mewled and blindly pulled the trigger, chopping rifle rounds into the walls of the cabin. From across the room, Ma Daugereaux launched the empty shotgun like a javelin, barrel-first. It caught Chung in the mouth, crunching through his teeth, and knocked him to the floor.

Ma Daugereaux stormed forward, snatching up her marble rolling pin from the counter as she swept by, and stood over the gasping mercenary. It only took a couple heavy swings to render him unrecognizable, but Ma Daugereaux was not a woman who stopped before the job was fully done.

Once Chung was very, very clearly never going to be a threat again, she moved on to Nestor. He hadn't moved yet, and she made sure he wouldn't.

Thoroughness is the watchword of the country kitchen.

Once she was finished, she stood and surveyed her work. She heaved the tired sigh of a woman who'd already had to make supper and do the dishes, and was now going to have to deal with the two bodies and a terrible mess in her kitchen.

She shuffled out the back door to set up the soap-making tub.

----------------------------------------

Bostock regained consciousness slowly. He was lying on the cold ground, bound somehow. He shifted uncomfortably. His head throbbed. How had he gotten here? Last thing he remembered was running with Irving and Schmidt, tracking some old man through the swamp, catching flashes and glimpses here and there. He thought he'd caught up to him finally, then... that was the last thing he remembered.

His wrists were tied together. It was the first thing he noticed, because it had been done right, which is to say, so tightly that he could barely feel his hands any more. He kept his eyes closed while he did a self-assessment-- no reason to let his captors know he was awake.

His clothes and equipment had been stripped off of him. He was completely naked, as far as he could tell. His feet and knees were bound as well. He was lying on some rough material-- burlap, he thought-- with more of the same covering him.

He could hear that he was still in the swamp-- the frogs sang their lovelorn songs loudly, and crickets accompanied them. The crackle of a fire nearby capped the sound. There was an unpleasant smell of burning flesh, which worried Bostock briefly, but as far as he could tell, he was whole.

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He risked cracking one eyelid open the tiniest bit. He was in a campsite. A few yards away burned a small fire, professionally hidden in a fire hole. It burned hot, with tiny, short-lived sparks shooting up briefly into the darkness. A log lay next to the fire, and other than that, Bostock was alone.

Near the fire was his equipment.

He tried to sit up, but there was an old hay rope tied around his neck, staked to the ground a foot away, which jerked him roughly back down. Opening his eyes fully, he found that he was in a burlap sack all the way up to his neck.

"Hooo, looks like I done cotched me a city rat lost way out here in de swamp."

Bostock glared silently up at the old man that ambled into the campsite.

Daugereaux sat on the log and poked the fire with a long stick, carefully examining its depths.

"Well, well. Dis ain't gon' be pleasant," he said mournfully.

Bostock snorted.

"Do you think a little fire is gonna make me talk? Whatcha gonna do, burn my face up? Boil out an eyeball? Think that'll make me sing? You have no idea who you're dealing with, old man."

Daugereaux stared in surprise at the bound man, then burst into laughter.

"Burn you? May non, shah, I'm jus' makin' my dinner! I trapped me a nutria rat down de levee and I'm gonna eat 'im up!" He pulled something that looked like a dog-sized rat on a stick out of the fire hole and showed it to Bostock. "I think I mighta cooked him too long wid'out turnin' 'im, though. But he'll still eat alright. If you behave, I can let you have some."

Bostock glared at him.

"No?" Daugereaux continued. "I don' blame you, pers'nally. Dat meat takes some gettin' used to. Taste like a coon dat's been eatin' moss, sometime." He shoved the meat back into the fire. "Dat's why you got to cook it up a bunch, so's you taste de burnt, and not de rat."

Daugereaux sat silently for a time while his nutria cooked.

"Who are you?" Bostock burst out. "Why are you here, interfering with our operation?"

"Oh, you gonna axe me de questions now." Daugereaux turned on his log so that he faced the recumbent man. Stomping his feet down in his big rubber boots to settle them, he leaned forward close to Bostock' face.

"I am here 'cause I live here. You couyons de ones come all on my land and makin' a big ol' ruckus. Dis ain't your op'ration, dis is my home, and I reckon I got to teach you all a lesson in gentlemanship and civility."

Bostock snorted.

"Now," Daugereaux said, "I answered your question, you can answer one of mine. Dat's how tradin' works."

"Good luck," muttered Bostock.

Daugereaux leaned in close and fixed Bostock with a sharp eye.

"You tell me now. What awl comp'ny you wit'?"

"You can't make me say a th-- what? Oil company?"

"Yeah, which one you wit'? You got to tell me. I got to know who wants de awl rights on my land."

"Oil rights?" Bostock gaped for a moment before continuing slowly. "You are a crazy old man. Nobody cares about your land!"

"Oh, mmhmm. Dat's jus' what I would expec' a awlman like you to say. 'No, your land ain't wort' much, but we'll buy it offa you jus' de same!'"

"What are you talking about? There's no oil! We're not after any oil! You have no idea what's going on around you!"

"Yep, no awl, dat's what dey said last time dey tried stealin' my land, too."

Bostock was beginning to froth.

"What are you even doing out here? You're mixed up in business way, way over your head you stupid old coot!"

"Stupid? I ain't de one tied wit' my face on de groun'. Mmmhmm. Well, I din't figure you and me was goin' to be able to do dis de easy way. So I brung me a little presuasioning."

"What are you talking about!? I can't tell you anything because there's nothing to tell! I'm here as part of a black bag cleanup operation! You are going to die, you fumbling idiot! My team is going to turn you into Swiss cheese!"

"Oh, yah, uh huh," Daugereaux said distractedly as he dragged a big bag around.

"We're professionals! We can't be stopped by some ignorant, inbred worthless swamp trash!"

Daugereaux quietly ignored him as he prepared his bag. It was another burlap sack, nearly the size of the one enclosing Bostock, and it made a nasty skittering, scratching sound as it slowly undulated. Bostock' eyes fixed on it.

"What's that?"

Daugereaux gave him a slow, lazy grin.

"Dis here is what some people call waterbugs, or palmetto bugs. Me, I jus' call 'em cockroaches." He shook the sack slightly, and the dry, frantic scratching sounds intensified.

Bostock watched in growing horror as Daugereaux busied himself sliding a vacuum hose into his sack, behind his neck. He felt the chilly plastic touch the bare skin of his back as it slid down.

"Now what dese bugs like is de warm. And you gon' be de warmest thing dey can get to. You sure you don't want to talk to ol' Daugereaux?"

Bostock watched as one of the giant insects escaped Daugereaux' sack. It dropped to the ground in front of him and regarded him briefly. It was easily four inches long, colored a deep, nasty brown with crinkled wings, a tiny, shiny alien head and two antennae that twitched nauseatingly. It gave him a look, seeming to communicate "them's the breaks," and zipped off into the darkness.

"Welp, here we go, den," Daugereaux said, affixing the other end of the hose to his sack. "One thing I forgot me to mention, shah... dese bugs is hongry."

With a slap and a shake, Daugereaux emptied his sack into Bostock's.

It was a credit to Bostock's training and fortitude that he didn't even scream until the roaches started biting.