Terror at Bottle Creek Read online

  We went ten days without power. Since the electric pump on the well wouldn’t work, Mom boiled water from the bay to use for washing. We had clean drinking water in the bathtub, which Dad had filled before we left. Our meals were limited to canned food and powdered milk. But I was just a kid and it was all an adventure to me.

  Dad worked on clearing the trees while I shoveled mud out of the yard with my siblings. For months afterward the crisp winter air was filled with the sound of chain saws and trucks. It was heavy with the smell of briny bay water and diesel and two-cycle oil. And slowly, like a place swarmed with worker ants, the trash disappeared and our house stood in a leafless land of brown, not to be green again until spring.

  While hurricanes are nothing new to any of us down here, there is an aspect of them that still fascinates me. North of us is the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-acre swamp, second in size only to the Mississippi River Delta. It is filled with deer, wild hogs, alligators, snakes, bears, and countless other, smaller animals like squirrels, raccoons, opossums, and nutria. During hurricanes the storm surge from Mobile Bay backs as much as ten feet of water over it. Where do all the animals go?

  My imagination has them swimming the perimeter rivers like caribou, climbing the high bluffs and standing about terrified on people’s green lawns. But I’ve never seen or heard of this happening. For the most part, they stay out there. I know from seeing their bloated bodies in the river that many of them drown, but most don’t. After the floodwater drains away, the swamp seems as healthy as ever. How did they survive?

  I got my answer one day. It was late in the afternoon before a hurricane was supposed to hit. It was already gusting and drizzling rain. I was at the river landing where I keep my boat, waiting my turn to back my trailer down the landing ramp into the water. Everyone was in a hurry to get their equipment out and up to high ground.

  There was one man waiting to put his boat in. He was a rough-looking character dressed in full camouflage, watching the rest of us like he didn’t know anyone and didn’t care to. In his boat was a sadistic-looking Catahoula dog and beside it was a single-shot twelve gauge shotgun.

  “You about to go out in this stuff?” I asked him.

  “Best huntin’ day of the year,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “Every danged thing in this swamp’s headed to high ground. Like shootin’ fish in a barrel.”

  But I couldn’t think of any high ground for miles. As far as I knew it was flat marsh.

  “Where do you go?” I asked him.

  “Sand Hill,” he said. “Alligator Ridge. There’s places out there.”

  I was vaguely familiar with both of the spots he mentioned: grown-over mounds of dredge spoil from a channel cut during the Second World War. Most people hadn’t heard of them; fewer knew how to find them.

  Ever since that conversation I’ve been fascinated with what it must be like to see all of those swamp creatures, predators and prey, crowded together on a tip of high ground. As with any large, densely vegetated, unpopulated wilderness, there are rumors of other, more unlikely creatures. The black panther … coatimundi … Sasquatch.

  Would they be there?

  But Terror at Bottle Creek is not a story about strange creatures. I kept it realistic. It’s an account of how I now imagine things are out in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta during a fictional hurricane. I’ve changed the names of a few locations, but otherwise they all exist. I did not change the name of the Bottle Creek Indian Mounds. You’ll want to look those up for yourself.

  Watt Key

  Point Clear, Alabama

  About the Author

  Albert Watkins Key, Jr., publishing under the name Watt Key, is an award-winning southern fiction author. He grew up and currently lives in southern Alabama with his wife and family. Watt spent much of his childhood hunting and fishing the forests of Alabama, which inspired his debut novel, Alabama Moon, published to national acclaim in 2006. Alabama Moon won the 2007 E.B. White Read-Aloud Award, was included on Time Magazine’s list of the Best One Hundred YA Books of All Time, and has been translated in seven languages. Key’s most recent novel is Terror at Bottle Creek. You can sign up for email updates here.

  BY WATT KEY

  Alabama Moon

  Dirt Road Home

  Fourmile

  Terror at Bottle Creek

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Note

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  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Also by Watt Key

  Copyright

  Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York 10010

  Text copyright © 2016 Watt Key

  All rights reserved

  First hardcover edition, 2016

  eBook edition, January 2016

  mackids.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Key, Watt.

  Title: Terror at Bottle Creek / Watt Key.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2016. | Summary: “Thirteen-year-old Cort’s father is a local expert on hunting and swamp lore in lower Alabama who has been teaching his son everything he knows. But when a deadly Gulf Coast hurricane makes landfall, Cort must unexpectedly put his all skills—and bravery—to the test”— Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015021386 | ISBN 9780374374303 (hardback) | ISBN 9780374374310 (e-book)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Hurricanes—Fiction. | Survival—Fiction. | Swamps— Fiction. | Alabama—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General. | JUVENILE FICTION / Boys & Men. | JUVENILE FICTION / Family / Parents. | JUVENILE FICTION / Family / Marriage & Divorce.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.K516 Te 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015021386

  eISBN 9780374374310

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