Free Acts of Nature by Jonathon King Page A

Wayne finally said and both of them nodded their heads as they climbed into the pickup truck. Marcus took the backseat of the club cab.
    Buck got behind the wheel dunking: Jesus H. I know these two haven’t been smoking pot for at least a couple of hours. How did two human minds get so dense? He let it go.
    “He gave us six possibles,” Wayne said, taking a sheet of paper from his pocket and unfolding it for Buck to see. “Here’s the GPS coordinates for each one so we could use that handheld unit and he said you can get out to the first one in a couple of hours.”
    Buck started the truck engine and looked over at the paper. It was the lined type you used in school, the kind with the three-ring binder holes in it. The numbers made no sense to anyone unaware of global positioning systems, but most of the people in the Glades had been using the GPS to mark fishing grounds and crab trap placements for the last fifteen years. Out on the Gulf waters it had become almost essential, a quick and easy way to find your way on a sea of nothing but bare horizon once you were out beyond sight of land. Then they started miniaturizing the technology so everyone and their grandmother were using the thing now. They even started building them into high-priced cars and even cell phones so you could be a halfwit and still find your way around. It was the way of the world now, Buck thought. Easier and softer. Same with the people. That’s what made them such simple prey. They got fat and comfortable. Might as well have been asking for it.
    “So this sweeper guy knows these camps?”
    “Yeah. His uncle is a kinda contractor and ferries the building supplies and stuff out to these places when they’re building them or redoin’ them all modern. Sometimes this kid goes along with his uncle to load and unload the wood and shingles and plumbing pipes an’ all. They’ve got a big ol’ airboat that lugs it,” Wayne said, rushing on with as much detail as he could so that Buck wouldn’t think he was just stupid and they wouldn’t have just wasted two hundred dollars on the locations and that would really piss Buck off.
    Marcus sat in the back where he always did, watching the backs of the others’ heads. Wayne was stealing his idea, of course, and he’d never get any credit for it if it worked out. But then he figured he also wouldn’t catch all the shit if it didn’t. That was the trade-off.
    Buck looked at the numbers again. He’d have to map them out to have a clue where they were. All three sat in silence for a couple of minutes until Wayne couldn’t take Buck’s lack of response any longer.
    “Toby said this here one, at the top, is only about a half hour north off Alligator Alley on the airboat and then the others are pretty close too.”
    He kept looking at the paper, like you could see something there, like he was studying the numbers just like Buck appeared to be.
    “OK, we’ll see about that,” Buck finally said. “I’ve got a surveyor’s map back at the house. We can plot these out and see just what kind of access two hundred dollars just bought us.” Buck knew the Glades could be a tricky place to navigate even in the best of times. And although the boys were oblivious to the weather Buck had been watching in the casino, he knew a coming storm could work for them as well as against them.
    He looked back over his shoulder as he started the truck and said to Marcus: “This plan of yours might still have life.”

NINE
    Harmon was in the back of his house in Coral Springs, a cordless electric drill in his hand, spinning tight the wing nuts that held his hurricane shutters over the rear sliding glass doors. The sun was out. He was already sweating profusely with the effort of carrying and mounting the steel panels from his garage and stacking them in front of every window and door to his home. Each one was marked with its designation: N SIDE BEDROOM, S SIDE DINING . He’d been through this many times during his