“Dad! Get back!”
Tom regained his feet and backed away, but Jack hung in there, facing the big gator down.
“Jack! Anya!” Tom cried. “Into the house!”
“Not to worry,” Anya said.
Tom looked her way and saw that she was still on her recliner. She’d straightened so that she was off the back rest, but she still held her wineglass.
“Anya!” he said. “Get up! It’s—”
She glanced at him. Her eyes and expression were unreadable, but her voice was calm, almost serene.
“No creature on earth will harm you here.”
“Tell that to Oyv!” Jack said, backing away from the onrushing gator, but keeping himself between it and Tom and Anya.
His son’s courage and protective stance amazed Tom. He’d known guys like that in the service—most of them long gone, sadly—but had seen little of it in today’s every-man-for-himself world.
And then, incredibly, the gator halted its charge. One second it was roaring toward them, the next it stopped as if it had run into a wall. It stood on the border of Anya’s emerald sward and the brown grass that typified the rest of Gateways. It closed its jaws and shook its head as if confused. It tried again to cross the line but then quickly retreated.
It turned left and stalked along the margin of green, thrashing its huge tail as it looked for a way in, and that was when Tom saw something dangling from its right flank. He squinted in the failing light and saw that it was an extra leg. But it looked vestigial. It didn’t move and didn’t touch the ground. It simply hung there.
The gator then turned and stalked the other way. Tom saw another vestigial limb on its left flank. But far more puzzling was its inability to cross onto Anya’s lawn. It made no sense.
And then it occurred to him that the situation might be only temporary. If only he had a gun!
“Call the cops!” he cried. “Call security! Get someone here to either drive this thing off or kill it before it kills someone!”
“No need,” Anya said from her recliner. “It will be leaving soon.”
The alligator stopped its stalking and bellowed. It shook its head and whipped its tail back and forth. It seemed confused. It bellowed again, and this time it sounded as if it was in pain. Then it rolled onto its side, and from there onto its back, swinging its head back and forth, thrashing its tail and clawing at the air with its taloned feet.
With another throaty bellow it rolled back onto its feet but didn’t charge. Instead it made a slow turn and began a limping retreat toward the pond. As it moved away Tom noticed a fist-sized bulge in its left flank, just ahead of the vestigial limb. Not so much a bulge as a pulsation.
The gator roared again as the bulge ruptured, spewing blood along the hide, a crimson splash along the gray-green scales. Something moved within that opening, something red and snouted. The hide split further and—
“Holy shit!” Jack shouted. “It’s Oyv!”
Dear God, he was right! The little Chihuahua was chewing its way out of the gator. It squeezed through the ragged opening like a baby being born. Once the upper half of his body was clear, the rest of him slid out. He landed on all fours and shook himself, then started barking at the retreating gator, chasing after it, nipping at its tail until it slid into the water and disappeared below the surface.
The dog dove into the water, repeatedly dipping its head under as it paddled in a small circle, then emerged with the blood washed away. He shook off the water with an almost epileptic shudder, then trotted back toward Anya with his tail wagging, his little head held high, and his black eyes shining. Proud, and very pleased with himself.
“Good boy,” Anya said, patting her lap. “Come to Momma.”
“What?” Jack started to laugh and Tom thought he heard an hysterical edge to his voice. “What the—? This is impossible! Just plain…” his voice trailed off to a whisper “…impossible.”
Jack turned and stared at Anya and she stared right back. Tom would have asked what was going on between them, but he couldn’t speak. He had to sit down. He quickly righted his chair and dropped into it, panting for air as his chest tightened.
He remembered now where he’d seen that horned alligator before.
12
Semelee dropped the eye-shell and fell to the floor, clutchin’ her left side. She felt as if someone had shoved a spear halfway through her. Never in her life had she felt pain like this.
“It hurts, Luke. Oh, God, it hurts!”
He hovered over her, hands reachin’ toward her, then pull in back. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
“Not sure.” The pain was easin’ off now. “Don’t know how, but Devil got hurt. Hurt bad.”
“Did you finish the old man?”
“No. I couldn’t get to him.”
“That old guy?” Luke’s tone said he didn’t believe a word of it. “He hurt Devil?”
“No-no. It was the same like in the hospital, only ten times worse. There was this line I couldn’t cross without feelin’ like I was gonna be sick or explode or both. I couldn’t push Devil past it.” Truth was, she couldn’t push herself past it. “And then this pain in Devil’s side that I felt too. Like he was bein’ stabbed, but from the inside.”
“The old guy’s kid?”
“I don’t think so. This wasn’t even at the old man’s house. It was at the old lady’s next door. It’s her. Gotta be her. She’s the one that’s been messin’ us up.”
“Whatta we do?”
“I don’t know. I’ll worry about that later. First thing I gotta do is get Devil home. He’s hurt bad, and he won’t know where he is. I gotta bring him in.”
She looked down at her eye-shell. She knew that if she put it on she’d feel that pain again. But she had to. She couldn’t leave Devil hangin’. Had to bring him back to his gator hole where he could wallow and heal up.
How’d that skinny old hag do it? How’d she hurt Devil whose hide was like armor plate?
Semelee didn’t know but she was gonna find out. And when she did, that old lady was gonna pay for what she’d done to Devil. That bitch was gonna hurt like Devil. Maybe even worse.
13
“Dad? Are you okay?”
Tom looked up from his chair and found Jack staring at him, a worried look on his face.
I must look like hell, he thought. He tried to respond but all he could do was shake his head and sweat.
“Is it your heart?”
“No.” Finally he could speak. “Not my heart. It’s my head. I remember what happened Monday night.”
“You mean, Tuesday morning?”
“Whenever I had the accident. That…that alligator was there.”
“That same one?” Jack said.
“You think I could forget those horns and those extra legs?”
Anya was watching him from her recliner. “Don’t go out at night like you do—how many times did I tell you that?”
“Countless times.” He shook his head. “I should have listened.”
Jack dropped into his own chair, opposite. “But how does that alligator figure into your accident? Or doesn’t it?”
“Oh, it does. I remember it now. I was driving south along Pemberton, taking my time…”
No hurry, no place to go, no timetable to hew to on that warm yet unseasonably cool night. Cool enough to drive with the windows open, not worrying about the mosquitoes because even that easy pace was too fast for them. He remembered the hum of his tires on the pavement, the soft feel of the wind swirling through the car and the mix of fragrances riding it: the sour smell of the saw grass yearning for water, the sweetness of the flowering roadside bushes.