“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.

“…and as I came to the stop sign on South Road, I slowed to a stop—well, maybe not a complete stop, but a sort of rolling stop. I was taking my foot off the brake as the car eased into the intersection, but before I could give it gas again I saw something crawl onto the road ahead of me. I hit the brakes hard and came to a dead stop maybe three-quarters of the way through the intersection.”

“An alligator?” Jack said. “The one we just saw?”

Tom nodded. “No question. I couldn’t keep going. Something that size—I mean it must be twenty feet long—doesn’t leave you any room to go around it. And truth be known, I didn’t want to go around it. I felt safe in the car—especially after I put the windows up. It wasn’t threatening me, just staring at me. I put on the high beams for a better look at it, and I must have been so fascinated by the sight of this horned gator that I didn’t hear the truck until it was practically on top of me. My closed windows and its off headlights didn’t help either.”

“Wait,” Jack said. “The guy was driving out there in the dark with no lights? Not even running lights?”

“Nothing. I heard a rumble to my right and looked and saw this dark shape roaring down at me from the west. It was practically on top of me. I didn’t have time to react—or maybe I froze in shock. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t move out of its way and it rammed me hard. I saw a big bumper smash into my right front fender and then the car was jerked around like…like I don’t know…like it had been punched by God. My head hit something and everything went dark for a while, I don’t know how long, and then I was back again, but the world was blurry and full of steam. My ruptured radiator, maybe.”

“Did you see any part of the truck? I mean, was it an old red pickup, by chance?”

Tom shook his head. “No. This was a big rig, and seemed to be in good shape. At least its bumper was. I remember seeing what looked like a wall of shiny chrome slamming into me. Why did you think it was a pickup?”

“Just a thought.” Somehow Jack looked disappointed.

“Getting hit wasn’t the worst part. The really frightening part came after the impact. I was lying there, feeling sick, hurt, bleeding, barely able to move, but alive and so thankful I’d worn my seat belt, when I heard these voices, growing louder as they got closer. I remember hearing someone sounding mad, cursing, saying something about hitting me too hard and what if they’d killed me. And then the door was pulled open and I almost fell out of the car. That was when I heard someone say, ‘Look! He’s moving! You damn well better thank your lucky stars he’s still alive!’”