ATOMIC TALES – Strange Invaders #35: Snapgator Lake

Agent Three

I coughed out a mouthful of swampy water and shook the hair from my eyes as I surfaced. I glanced in all directions, looking for my companions and praying my Colt 1911s would still work after getting drenched. The small boat we’d been crossing Snapgator Lake in lay nearby, capsized. It looked like its keel might have been broken, and God only knew whether it would stay afloat if we managed to right it.

Agent Four came up next, sputtering water, too, about three yards away. “Rocky… What in hell just happened!”

“Damned if I know, Alec.” The lake wasn’t deep, and we’d been navigating fairly close to shore, but I was still treading water when I drew one gun. “Where’s our prisoner?”

Four looked around and shook his head. “I need to rescue my gear.” Our backpacks were floating nearby, along with other flotsam from the skiff. Four’s looked in danger of quickly submerging. He always carried an infernal device or two close at hand. “Do you think she caused this?”

“I don’t see how she could have.”

Alec “Boom Boom” Murphy scowled. “You never know what tricks a commie spy might have up her sleeve.”

Just then, our prisoner emerged from the lake, eight yards away, coughing and spitting bog water. “H-help!”

I cursed silently. Naturally, she’d have trouble swimming because of the handcuffs.

Four swore aloud, and we quickly swam to her aid while still keeping an eye out for whatever had overturned our skiff. We’d come to Louisiana to investigate the disappearances of local boaters and fishermen—and, of course, reports of strange lights in the sky. Last thing we needed was to end up missing ourselves.

“Th-thanks!” Soviet spy Tanya Ruhoff gasped for breath between coughs. “Now please uncuff me, so I can swim!”

Alec and I exchanged a skeptical glance. Tanya, in her guise as reporter Tammy Rubens, had been giving the US Science Bureau the runaround for months. She’d slipped through our fingers more than once.

Agent Four shot her a sly grin. “Sure. Just tell us how you capsized our boat.”

“Are you crazy? I didn’t do that! We need to get out of here!”

Her denial seemed frightened enough that I believed her. “We can figure out what’s going on once we reach shore.”

With Alec and I towing the Russian, we all splashed toward the boggy lakeside. But suddenly, with a thundering hiss, our capsized boat surged out of the water and broke into splinters.

And this had started as such a normal day…

*

Snapgator Lake lay twenty miles from anywhere in the heart of the Louisiana bayou, southeast of Lafayette and southwest of Baton Rouge.

A lot of us at the bureau had hoped that things would quiet down after the capture of Dr. M., but no such luck. The giant crab attack just after New Year’s proved there were still earwigs lurking in the woodpile. Despite a lot of false leads, our job remained to root out and solve such problems before too many people got hurt.

With that in mind, Four and I hired a swamp buggy to drop us at the backcountry cabin of Luke Mosbach, who knew some of the vanished fishermen. It only was a short hike from the landing spot to Mosbach’s cabin, but the humidity plastered our clothes to our skin, and the buzz of mosquitos and cicadas filled our ears. The warm January air smelled of swamp water, reeds, and cypress. Imagine our surprise to find another interested party had gotten there first.

Mr. Mosbach looked shocked when we aimed our guns at his visitor.

Agent Four’s stern gaze left no doubt that he’d shoot if he had to. “Tanya Ruhoff, also known as Tammy Rubens and numerous other aliases, I am arresting you by the power vested in me by the United States government and the USSB.”

“Now lookee here…” Mosbach protested. “I may not be keen on reporters, but we still got rights in Lou’siana. This is America, after all!”

“True,” I replied. “But your ‘friend’ here isn’t an American. She’s a Soviet agent, and we’ve been on her trail a long time. I’m Agent Suzanne and this is Agent Alec.” I flashed my government ID. “Cuff her, Alec.”

Tanya looked more annoyed than worried. “Is this really necessary?”

Four pulled her hands behind her back and slapped on the bracelets. “After the way you’ve slipped custody before? Hell, yes, it is.” I could hardly blame him for treating her rough.

“She said she was a reporter, lookin’ into folks disappearing,” Mosbach objected.

“She’s fooled a lot of people, Mr. Mosbach,” I explained. It’s her standard cover story.”

“Yeah. But she’s probably just field-checking her communist handiwork.” Four ratcheted the cuffs extra tight.

Tanya squawked. “Easy, boy! I’ve told your people before that I’m just trying to find out what’s going on for my government the same way you are for yours.”

Mosbach snarled and spat onto the soggy ground. “Better dead than red, I say!”

“We still want to interview you, Mr. Mosbach,” I said, “but we need to get our captive into custody as quickly as possible. She’s tricky.”

I cursed the fact that I’d told the swamp boat not to return for us until sundown, figuring we’d check the area after our interview. Now I didn’t want to give Tanya that much time to escape. “What’s the quickest way out of here?”

The old-timer rubbed his balding head. “Well… You could borrow my skiff and take it across Snapgator Lake, then portage down to the Pigeon—that’s only a hundred yard carry—and then take that south to Bloody Bayou and the trading post at the fork. They oughta have an airboat there for ya—’les ol’ Edouard’s gone huntin’.”

“Sounds good to me.” Four urged Tanya toward the ramshackle dock we spotted, through the cypresses, on the nearby lakeshore. The Russian grumbled uncomfortably.

I shook the swamp man’s hand. “Thanks, Mr. Mosbach. We’ll return your boat as soon as we can. Any tips for operating it?”

He laughed. “Just put your back into it and row.”

“I see… Any trouble with alligators in the lake or on that portage?”

“Nah. No gators to speak of in this lake, just turtles. And skeeters. Snapgator’s local talk for alligator snapping turtles. They shouldn’t bother you none, so long as you stay in my boat.”

*

The water erupted in a gout of slimy spray as the thing that had smashed our boat to flinders emerged: a snapping turtle bigger than a dump truck. Green algae and khaki weeds draped its armored body. Its jaws stretched wide enough to bite a grown man in half. It smelled like rotting garbage. Probably the thing had denuded its local food supply before turning toward human prey.

We’d gotten lucky, though. The turtle must have believed the skiff was a rival, because if it’d come for us, it could have finished us easily.

Instead, it went after the skiff’s remains again, while we waded ashore.

Of course, once nothing remained of Mosbach’s boat, we’d be next up. That terrifying prospect in mind, we ran down the soggy lakeshore as fast as possible, dogged by a buzzing horde of mosquitos.

“Uncuff me!” Tanya pleaded. With her hands still secured behind her back, every false step threatened to send her into the swamp water.

Four ignored her and eyed the boat wreckage floating nearby. “I need my pack. If I can reach it…”

He didn’t have to finish the thought. I’d seen Alec get out of plenty of bad situations using just his wits and his stowed equipment.

“Uncuff me! Uncuff me, give me a gun, and I’ll distract it.”

Four and I exchanged a worried glance as the giant turtle finished making sure the skiff was dead and turned hateful yellow eyes our way.

I fished out the keys and uncuffed Tanya. “No guns, though.”

“Here. Take this.” Four handed her one of the boat oars that had washed up nearby.

“Seriously?!” Tanya glared at us as the snapgator surged toward shore.

Four smirked. “Go to it.”

Tanya cursed and ran in the opposite direction from us, waving the oar like a spear. “Hey, ugly! This way! Over here!”

As the turtle gave an ear-splitting hiss and veered to follow her, Four splashed in after his pack, which was now nearly submerged, seven yards from shore.

“Help!” Tanya screamed. She brandished her makeshift spear at the turtle’s face, but it merely grabbed the oar and snapped it in half with one bite. A low, angry rumble emitted from its monstrous throat.

I took careful aim, praying my pistols had survived their dunking.

Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!

Not all of my shots hit the snapgator’s baleful yellow eyes, but enough struck home to half blind it.

The monster took a final snap at Tanya—who dived into the water to avoid getting bisected—and then turned toward me.

Fury blazed in its remaining eye and the shallow water whipped into a white froth as it rushed toward me.

I retreated, trying not to trip over the tangled roots crowding the shoreline, firing as I went.

Blam! Blam! Blam! Click!

Jammed!

I turned and ran, the monster hot on my heels.

A shot rang out—Blam!—and Four’s voice called: “Hey, stupid! Over here!”

The turtle’s enormous head turned, and Alec threw his backpack down the creature’s gaping mouth.

BOOM!

The concussion knocked both of us off our feet and into the swampy water. Guts, shattered shell, and rotten-smelling chunks of turtle meat rained down around us.

And when the smoke from the explosion cleared… Nothing left but turtle soup.

I rubbed my aching head. Between giant crabs and monster turtles, I really needed to find a different diet.

“You okay, Suzanne?” Alec offered me a hand up.

“Fine. You?”

“Fine.” He quickly scanned the area. “Looks like we lost our ‘friend’ though. Again.”

I frowned. “She’s got more lives than a cat. And we still don’t know whether she’s responsible for all this.”

Agent Four shrugged. “With the Reds… Who can tell?”

THE END

About “Snapgator Lake”

“Snapgator Lake” was inspired by a painting by the late great Bernie Wrightson, “Loggerhead,” which shows a boat being smashed to smithereens by a giant turtle.

I didn’t check out that favorite image before writing this story—I hadn’t seen it for decades—but now that I have, I can see that it has a bayou connection as well. It’s amazing how images can get into both your conscious and subconscious.

Though likely the idea of a giant turtle attack has been with me a lot longer than that. When I was an aspiring filmmaker growing up next to a large pond, I often thought about making my own monster movies, and—probably after the summer of JAWS—one of the movies I fantasized about making was about a giant snapping turtle.

Now, nearly 50 years later, I’ve finally written a version of that childhood story. If anyone cares to commission me to write a movie about the same idea—either with or without the USSB—I’m willing to consider it. Until then, this tale will do.

Despite the explosive end of the snapgator, I’ve always been a friend to turtles. Our family owned a variety of them when I was a kid, including a number we rescued from certain death on local roadways.

To this day, I will always stop and try to help a turtle attempting to cross the street, though sadly there seem to be fewer turtles around now.

And my turtle-saving duties include saving snapping turtles.

When I was a kid, probably in first grade, someone brought a huge snapping turtle to my school. In my memory, it was at least two feet long across the shell from stem to stern. My dad worked as a teacher at that school, and I remember him seizing the turtle by the tail and holding it up.

The trick—and I have no legal liability if you try picking up a snapper yourself—is that you have to keep your body parts out of reach of the turtle’s powerful jaws, and you must realize that it’s neck is very stretchy and mobile. So, if you get a body part anywhere close, it can (and will) bite you. Its beak can’t reach the rear end of its body, though, so if you pick it up by the tail, all you have to worry about are the vicious claws on its hind feet.

When my kids were small, I rescued a snapper from a farm road near the Field of Dreams in Iowa. It was heavy, and wiry, and pissed off, but even a large turtle is easily flattened by a car or farm vehicle. It was more than a foot long across the shell, but like I said, I’ve been rescuing turtles most of my life, so I just grabbed it by the tail, moved it into the nearby watery culvert, and let it go on its way.

Don’t try this at home. Leave the snapping turtles to the pros, but keep in mind the claws and flexible necks even when trying to rescue small non-snapping turtles. Also remember to park your car and approach the road in a way that keeps both you and the turtle safe. There’s nothing worse than failing at a rescue because a car swerves and hits a turtle to avoid you. Sadly, that happened to me once.

Anyway, though I’ve been tough on the giant alligator snapping turtle in this story, you can probably tell from what I’ve written that I think all turtles are worth saving.

And honestly, it doesn’t have anything to do with my stint writing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics.

Though maybe my past experience with turtles made me a good choice for that job.