Wrong Turn by Illegal Eagle (f, qs, grim) Now forty-five minutes away from anything resembling civilization after a successful bank robbery, Karen found herself driving her '94 Chevy Impala down a dark dirt road in the Florida Everglades. It was now 10:00 p.m. and she had to get down to the other side of the swamps before dawn to catch her boat to Cuba. By then the story will be out and the surveillance tapes and fingerprints will be getting collected. Karen wasn't a bit worried about that. She left no prints and wore a mask to keep her identity from being known. She hit the bank at 7:00. By bypassing the alarm system and being a former head employee from the bank, she found out the combination to the vault. She worked there two weeks before she committed the robbery and left on good terms with the bank. For the next two weeks while she was out of work, she made her plans to hit the bank. When she was sure no one was around, she went to the back of the bank to the alarm transmitter box. Wiring in her laptop computer, she bypassed the alarm system to turn off the police response signal and switched off the bell. Then she used a drill to open the delivery door into the back of the bank. The camera in the hall saw a female dressed in all black with a ski mask and gloves and a black backpack. She then turned her attention to the janitor in the lobby. Ducking behind a counter, Karen reached into her bag and pulled out an electric shocker. Very lightly, she tapped the side of the counter to get the janitor's attention. The janitor didn't notice, he just kept mopping the marble floor. That's when Karen noticed another advantage, the janitor was wearing a set of headphones. And he was backing right up to the counter. 'He won't even know what hit him,' she thought to herself. The janitor was now within Karen's reach. She grabbed him with her free hand and shocked him in the chest with the other. Little did Karen know that the man had a heart condition and had a pacemaker installed in his chest. The shock from the device fried the pacemaker and put him in cardiac arrest. Karen, not aware that he was dying, leaped over the counter and went down the hall to the vault. There were 8 numbers in the combination and the entire lock was computerized. On the keypad, she gained access to the code entrance screen. Reaching into her bag again she put the shocker away and grabbed a piece of paper tucked inside one of the side pouches. "24 - 56 - 38 - 96 - 45 - 03 - 71 - 12," she read aloud as she punched it in. The screen flashed a sign reading "ACCESS APPROVED", and the vault door began to open. She went inside and began to grab all the moneybags filled with dollar bills ranging from 1s to 100s. Altogether Karen managed to grab over $250,000. Not much in the U.S. anymore but it was worth quite a bit in Cuba. Karen left the bank with the vault door wide open, a dead janitor on the floor, and a large amount of cash now in her hands. As discrete as possible, Karen left from the bank in a white Pontiac she rented to the Holiday Inn. She parked the car next to her Impala and she got out removing her ski mask. She went into her room where she had been staying and changed out of her clothes. She took her black suit off and got into a pair of tight jeans-shorts and a white tank top. She took the suit and put it in a plastic bag. She grabbed two suitcases that were in the corner and walked back into the parking lot. She put the suitcases in the trunk of the Impala. Then she took the moneybags out of the Pontiac and put them in there as well. Karen started the Impala with a broad grin on her face and headed south out of the city to her awaiting boat to fortune and fame. Along the way she tossed the plastic bag with the suit out the window. Karen planned out this robbery perfectly and it worked without the slightest amount of trouble. But a turn for the worst had just taken place. When Karen got the plan set up for the boat to Cuba, she drove down there in the daytime and knew every road that she needed to get on. But not knowing it, Karen took a left when she should have gone right. Still thinking she was going in the right direction Karen kept driving down the dirt road. The only light showing out was her headlights and the full moon. Along side the road, the swamp came in close enough that the moon glistened across the water in the dark night. Karen was starting to become aware that she might have taken a wrong road. She reached over to the glove box and opened it. She grabbed the map inside and looked back up to the road. "Oh, shit!" she screamed. She had her eyes off the road too long. Right in front of her was a bend to the right with trees on the other side. In a panic, she cut the wheel hard to the right, the rear of the Impala skidded out of control to the left. Again, Karen cut the wheel, this time all the way to the left, but she was too late, the rear of the car smashed into the trees on the left side, glass from the rear windows flew everywhere. Karen was thrown out of her seat and into the bushes. After landing on her side hard, dislocating her shoulder, she rolled 10 feet off the road and into a bush next to the swamp, unconscious. After the car ejected Karen, it went into a barrel roll and flipped 4 times throwing everything inside the car and in the trunk all over the road. A few flames were coming out of the motor. An hour later, Karen awoke to a sharp pain in her arm that was stretched out over the water. A loud scream in pain filled the air as Karen could feel her bad arm being ripped apart by a hungry alligator who decided to take advantage of Karen's little predicament. The large beast rolled to the left and to the right with Karen's arm still in it's mouth. Karen screamed even louder when she felt her elbow separate from its joint and her flesh rip off her lower arm that was now in the process of being digested. With the alligator off what was left of her arm, Karen scrambled to her feet. The alligator leaped out of the swamp looking for seconds and Karen limped as fast as she could back to the road with the alligator chasing her. She managed to get back to the road to see her car engulfed with flames now. She could still hear the alligator following her trail of blood through the bushes and closing in on her, so she started to limp down the road as fast as she could to try and shake him. The car was well out of sight now and Karen was feeling pain everywhere. She could feel warm blood running down from her head, her left knee hurt after hitting a large rock during her tumble. But that was nothing compared to the pain in her totally useless arm. She could still hear the alligator tailing her though. He wasn't going to give up on his meal. Karen thought she might be able to lose him in the woods along the road. She limped off the road and into the woods. "He won't catch me now," she said limping through the bushes. Karen went on through the woods with no idea of where she was going, just wanting to get rid of that alligator. The ground was now sloping downwards. Karen didn't even care to notice the ground was getting muddy. She came to a small clearing of dirt about 20 feet across. She started to cross the dirt when suddenly she felt her left shoe slip under the surface of the ground. He natural action of stepping forward sent her right leg into the ground up to the bottom of the shin. Karen tried to pull her left leg out of the mud to find he right leg sink down to the middle of the shin. Yanking on her right leg, she pushed her left leg down to the same position as the other. "What the hell?" she asked aloud to no one. Pumping her legs up and down in a panic, Karen was now up to her thighs in the mud. All at once Karen just stopped moving and realized that not only was she stuck, she was sinking. Now she knew the danger she was in and up to her mid thigh, she went into a big frenzy, started moving left and right, reaching for anything she could, twisting and turning her body. She sank right up to her stomach and watched as the quicksand swallowed her bloody tank-top inch by inch. "Help me!" she screamed. "Help me! I'm sinking!" The quicksand was now up to the bottom of her breasts. She could feel the shortness of breath combined with her loss of her blood was taking their toll on her. She knew she couldn't fight anymore, she didn't have the strength. She looked down and watched her breasts be consumed by the mud. It was still rising. Then she heard it. A rustling in the bushes and it was coming closer. Karen felt a wave of relief run through her pain stricken body as her shoulders slipped under the surface. 'Someone must have heard my calls and came,' she thought quietly. "Over - here," she said weakly. Karen tipped her head back as the quicksand engulfed her neck. Here ears went under quicksand with that move. Unable to hear the rustling now she could only look in the direction it cam from. Ever so slowly, the quicksand began to claim her face. Just as her chin began to slip under, she saw the alligator emerge from the bushes. The alligator snapped its jaws at Karen. She opened her mouth to let out a scream only to get a mouth full of mud. She inhaled and filled her lungs with the quicksand. The mud claimed her nose and eyes, slowly the top of her head and her long red hair were dragged down with the rest of her. Karen kept on sinking down with her lungs burning for air. In her mind she thought about how close she was to success. A few minutes after the last of Karen's hair disappeared, the quicksand bog was still again, waiting for its next poor victim. As for the alligator, he too disappeared after his meal escaped him. The next afternoon, a park ranger driving down the road discovered the remains of Karen's car, belongings, and the money. He notified the station of his findings and a criminal investigation was done. They concluded that alleged bank robber was thrown from the car, into the swamp and was eaten by an alligator. The money was returned to the bank, and Karen's car and belongings were taken away. All the while, Karen's lying in a bottomless, unmarked grave.