Robert R. McCammon: The Collected Stories Part 10

Brenda's singing died. He heard her sob quietly. The air was beginning to whistle around the crowbar, a dangerous sound. Inside the room, Brenda's hair danced and her clothes were plucked by invisible fingers. A storm of air whirled around her, being drawn into the walls. She was transfixed by the sight of J.J.'s white baby teeth in his brown, wrinkled face: the face of an Egyptian prince. "Brenda!" Johnny's voice was firm now. "Come on!" She drew the sheet back up to J.J.'s chin; the sheet crackled like a dead leaf. Then she smoothed his dried-out hair and backed toward the door with insane winds battering her body.

They both had to strain to dislodge the crowbar. As soon as it came loose, Johnny grasped the door's edge to keep it from slamming shut. He held it, his strength in jeopardy, as Brenda squeezed through. Then he let the door go. It slammed with a force that shook the house. Along the door's edge was a quick whoooosh as it was sealed tight. Then silence.

Brenda stood in the dim light, her shoulders bowed. Johnny lifted the oxygen tank and backpack off her, then took the mask from her face. He checked the oxygen gauge; have to fill it up again pretty soon. He hung the equipment back on its hook. There was a shrill little steampipe whistle of air being drawn through the crack at the bottom of the door, and Johnny pressed a towel into it. The whistle ceased.

Brenda's back straightened. "J.J. says he's fine," she told him. She was smiling again, and her eyes glinted with a false, horrible happiness. "He says he doesn't want to go to Ray's tonight. But he doesn't mind that we do. Not one little bit."

"That's good," Johnny said, and he walked to the front room. When he glanced at his wife, he saw Brenda still standing before the door to the room that ate oxygen. "Want to watch some TV?" he asked her.

"TV. Oh. Yes. Let's watch some TV." She turned away from the door and came back to him. Brenda sat down on the den's sofa, and Johnny turned on the Sony. Most of the channels showed static, but a few of them still worked: on them you could see the negative images of old shows like "Hawaiian Eye," "My Mother the Car," "Checkmate," and "Amos Burke, Secret Agent." The networks had gone off the air a month or so ago, and Johnny figured these shows were just bouncing around in s.p.a.ce, maybe hurled to Earth out of the unknown dimension. Their eyes were used to the negative images by now. It beat listening to the radio, because on the only stations they could get, Beatles songs were played backward at half-speed, over and over again. Between "Checkmate" and a commercial for Brylcreem Hair Dressing-"A Little Dab'll Do Ya!"-Brenda began to cry. Johnny put his arm around her, and she leaned her head against his shoulder. He smelled J.J. on her: the odor of dry corn husks, burning in the midsummer heat. Except it was almost Christmastime, ho, ho, ho. Something pa.s.sed by, Johnny thought. That's what the scientists had said, almost six months ago. Something pa.s.sed by. That was the headline in the newspapers, and on the cover of every magazine that used to be sold over at Sarrantonio's newsstand on Gresham Street. And what it was that pa.s.sed by, the scientists didn't know. They took some guesses, though: magnetic storm, black hole, time warp, gas cloud, a comet of some material that kinked the very fabric of physics. A scientist up in Oregon said he thought the universe had just stopped expanding and was now crushing inward on itself. Somebody else said he believed the cosmos was dying of old age. Galactic cancer. A tumor in the brain of Creation. Cosmic AIDS. Whatever. The fact was that things were not what they'd been six months ago, and n.o.body was saying it was going to get better. Or that six months from now there'd be an Earth, or a universe where it used to hang.

Something pa.s.sed by. Three words. A death sentence. On this asylum planet called Earth, the molecules of matter had warped. Water had a disturbing tendency to explode like nitroglycerine, which had rearranged the intestines of a few hundred thousand people before the scientists figured it out. Gasoline, on the contrary, was now safe to drink, as well as engine oil, furniture polish, hydrochloric acid, and rat poison. Concrete melted into pools of quicksand, the clouds rained stones, and... well, there were other things too terrible to contemplate, like the day Johnny had been with Marty Chesley and Bo Duggan, finishing off a few bottles at one of the bars on Monteleone Street. Bo had complained of a headache, and the next minute his brains had spewed out of his ears like gray soup. Something pa.s.sed by. And because of that, anything could happen.

We made somebody mad, Johnny thought; he watched the negative images of Doug McClure and Sebastian Cabot. We screwed it up, somehow. Walked where we shouldn't have. Done what we didn't need to do. We picked a fruit off a tree we had no business picking, and... .

G.o.d help us, he thought. Brenda made a small sobbing sound.

Sometime later, red-bellied clouds came in from the prairie, their shadows sliding over the straight and empty highways. There was no thunder or lightning, just a slow, thick drizzle. The windows of the James house streamed crimson, and blood ran in the gutters. Pieces of raw flesh and entrails thunked down onto the roofs, fell onto the streets, lay steaming in the heat-scorched yards. A blizzard of flies followed the clouds, and buzzards followed the flies.

2.

"Read 'em and weep, gents," Gordon said, showing his royal flush. He swept the pot of dimes and quarters toward him, and the other men at the round table moaned and muttered. "Like I say, I'm a lucky dude."

"Too lucky." Howard Carnes slapped his cards down-a measly aces and fours-and reached for the pitcher. He poured himself a gla.s.sful of high-octane.

"So I was sayin' to Danny," Ray Barnett went on, speaking to the group as he waited for Gordon to shuffle and deal. "What's the use of leavin' town? I mean, it's not like there's gonna be anyplace different, right? Everything's screwed up." He pushed a plug of chewing tobacco into his mouth and offered the pack to Johnny. Johnny shook his head. Nick Gleason said, "I heard there's a place in South America that's normal. A place in Brazil. The water's still all right."

"Aw, that's bulls.h.i.t." Ike McCord picked up his newly dealt cards and examined them, keeping a true poker face on his hard, flinty features. "The whole d.a.m.n Amazon River blew up. b.a.s.t.a.r.d's still on fire. That's what I heard before the networks went off. It was on CBS." He rearranged a couple of cards. "Nowhere's any different from here. The whole world's the same."

"You don't know everything!" Nick shot back. A little red had begun to glow in his fat cheeks. "I'll bet there's someplace where things are normal! Maybe at the north pole or somewhere like that!"

"The north pole!" Ray laughed. "Who the h.e.l.l wants to live at the d.a.m.ned north pole?"

"I could live there," Nick went on. "Me and Terri could. Get us some tents and warm clothes, we'd be all right."

"I don't think Terri would want to wake up with an icicle on her nose," Johnny said, looking at a hand full of nothing.

Gordon laughed. "Yeah! It'd be ol' Nick who'd have an icicle hangin' off something', and it wouldn't be his nose!" The other men chortled, but Nick remained silent, his cheeks reddening; he stared fixedly at his cards, which were just as bad Johnny's.

There was a peal of high, false, forced laughter from the front room, where Brenda sat with Terri Gleason, Jane McCord and her two kids, Rhonda Carnes and their fifteen-year-old daughter, Kathy, who lay on the floor listening to Bon Jovi tapes on her Walkman. Elderly Mrs. McCord, Ike's mother, was needlepointing, her gla.s.ses perched on the end of her nose and her wrinkled fingers diligent.

"So Danny says he and Paula want to go west," Ray said. "I'll open for a quarter." He tossed it into the pot. "Danny says he's never seen San Francisco, so that's where they want to go."

"I wouldn't go west if you paid me." Howard threw a quarter in. "I'd get on a boat and go to an island. Like Tahiti. One of those places where women dance with their stomachs."

"Yeah, I could see Rhonda in a gra.s.s skirt! I'll raise you a quarter, gents." Gordon put his money into the pot.

"Couldn't you guys see Howard drinkin' out of a d.a.m.n coconut? Man, he'd make a monkey look like a prince char-"

From the distance came a hollow boom that echoed over the town and cut Gordon's jaunty voice off. The talking and forced laughter ceased in the front room. Mrs. McCord missed a st.i.tch, and Kathy Carnes sat up and took the Walkman earphones off.

There was another boom, closer this time. The house's floor trembled. The men sat staring desperately at their cards. A third blast, further away. Then silence, in which hearts pounded and Gordon's new Rolex ticked off the seconds.

"It's over," old Mrs. McCord announced. She was back in her rhythm again. "Wasn't even close."

"I wouldn't go west if you paid me," Howard repeated. His voice trembled. "Gimme three cards."

"Three cards it is." Gordon gave everybody what they needed, then said, "One card for the dealer." His hands were shaking.

Johnny glanced out the window. Far away, over the rotting cornfields, there was a flash of jagged red. The percussion came within seconds: a m.u.f.fled, powerful boom.

"I'm b.u.mpin' everybody fifty cents," Gordon announced. "Come on, come on! Let's play cards!" Ike McCord folded. Johnny had nothing, so he folded too. "Turn 'em over!" Gordon said. Howard grinned and showed his kings and jacks. He started to rake in the pot, but Gordon said, "Hold on, Howie," as he turned over his hand and showed his four tens and a deuce. "Sorry, gents. Read 'em and weep." He pulled the coins toward himself. Howard's face had gone chalky. Another blast echoed through the night. The floor trembled. Howard said, "You're cheatin', you sonofab.i.t.c.h."

Gordon stared at him, his mouth open. Sweat glistened on his face.

"Hold on, now, Howard," Ike said. "You don't want to say things like-"

"You must be helpin' him, d.a.m.n it!" Howard's voice was louder, more strident, and it stopped the voices of the women. "h.e.l.l, it's plain as day he's cheatin'! Ain't n.o.body's luck can be as good as his!"

"I'm not a cheater." Gordon stood up; his chair fell over backward. "I won't take that kind of talk from any man."

"Come on, everybody!" Johnny said. "Let's settle down and-"

"I'm not a cheater!" Gordon shouted. "I play 'em honest!" A blast made the walls moan, and a red glow jumped at the window.

"You always win the big pots!" Howard stood up, trembling. "How come you always win the big pots, Gordon?" Rhonda Carnes, Jane McCord, and Brenda were peering into the room, eyes wide and fearful. "Hush up in there!" old Mrs. McCord hollered. "Shut your traps, children!"

"n.o.body calls me a cheater, d.a.m.n you!" Gordon flinched as a blast pounded the earth. He stared at Howard, his fists clenched. "I deal 'em honest and I play 'em honest, and by G.o.d, I ought to..." He reached out, his hand grasping for Howard's shirt collar.

Before his hand could get there, Gordon Mayfield burst into flame.

"Jesus!" Ray shrieked, leaping back. The table upset, and the cards and coins flew through the air. Jane McCord screamed, and so did her husband. Johnny staggered backward, tripped, and fell against the wall. Gordon's flesh was aflame from bald skull to the bottom of his feet, and as his plaid shirt caught fire, Gordon thrashed and writhed. Two burning deuces spun from the inside of his shirt and snapped at Howard's face. Gordon was screaming for help, the flesh running off him as incandescent heat built inside his body. He tore at his skin, trying to put out the fire that would not be extinguished.

"Help him!" Brenda shouted. "Somebody help him!" But Gordon staggered back against the wall, scorching it. The ceiling above his head was charred and smoking. His Rolex exploded with a small pop. Johnny was on his knees in the protection of the overturned table, and as he rose he felt Gordon's heat pucker his own face. Gordon was flailing, a ma.s.s of yellow flames, and Johnny leapt up and grasped Brenda's hand, pulling her with him toward the front door. "Get out!" he yelled. "Everybody get out!" Johnny didn't wait for them; he pulled Brenda out the door, and they ran through the night, south on Silva Street. He looked back, saw a few more figures fleeing from the house, but he couldn't tell who they were. And then there was a white flare that dazzled his eyes and Ray Barnett's house exploded, timbers and roof tiles flying through the sultry air. The shock wave knocked Brenda and Johnny to the pavement; she was screaming, and Johnny clasped his hand over her mouth because he knew that if he started to scream it was all over for him. Fragments of the house rained down around them, along with burning clumps of human flesh. Johnny and Brenda got up and ran, their knees bleeding.

They ran through the center of town, along the straight thoroughfare of Straub Street, past the Spector Theatre and the Skipp Religious Bookstore. Other shouts and screams echoed through the night, and red lightning danced in the cornfields. Johnny had no thought but to get them home, and hope that the earth wouldn't suck them under before they got there.

They fled past the cemetery on McDowell Hill, and there was a crash and boom that dropped Johnny and Brenda to their knees again. Red lightning arced overhead, a sickly-sweet smell in the air. When Johnny looked at the cemetery again, he saw there was no longer a hill; the entire rise had been mashed flat, as if by a tremendous crushing fist. And then, three seconds later, broken tombstones and bits of coffins slammed down on the plain where a hill had stood for two hundred years. Gravity howitzer, Johnny thought; he hauled Brenda to her feet, and they staggered on across Olson Lane and past the broken remnants of the Baptist church at the intersection of Daniels and Saul streets.

A brick house on Wright Street was crushed to the ground as they fled past it, slammed into the boiling dust by the invisible power of gravity gone mad. Johnny gripped Brenda's hand and pulled her on, through the deserted streets. Gravity howitzers boomed all across town, from Schow Street on the west to Barker Promenade on the east. The red lightning cracked overhead, snapping through the air like cat-o'-nine-tails. And then Johnny and Brenda staggered onto Strieber Circle, right at the edge of town, where you had a full view of the fields and the stars, and kids used to watch, wistfully, for UFOs.

There would be UFOs tonight, and no deliverance from the Earth. Gravity howitzers smashed into the fields, making the stars shimmer. The ground shook, and in the glare of the red lightning Johnny and Brenda could see the effect of the gravity howitzers, the cornstalks mashed flat to the ground in circles twelve or fifteen feet around. The fist of G.o.d, Johnny thought. Another house was smashed to rubble on the street behind them; there was no pattern or reason for the gravity howitzers, but Johnny had seen what was left of Stan Haines after the man was. .h.i.t by one on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Stan had been a ma.s.s of b.l.o.o.d.y tissue jammed into his crumpled shoes, like a dripping mushroom.

The howitzers marched back and forth across the fields. Two or three more houses were hit, over on the north edge of town. And then, quite abruptly, it was all over. There was the noise of people shouting and dogs barking; the sounds seemed to combine, until you couldn't tell one from the other.

Johnny and Brenda sat on the curb, gripping hands and trembling. The long night went on. 3 The sun turned violet. Even at midday, the sun was a purple ball in a white, featureless sky. The air was always hot, but the sun itself no longer seemed warm. The first of a new year pa.s.sed, and burning winter drifted toward springtime.

Johnny noticed them in Brenda's hands first. Brown freckles. Age spots, he realized they were. Her skin was changing. It was becoming leathery, and deep wrinkles began to line her face. At twenty-seven years of age, her hair began to go gray.

And sometime later, as he was shaving with gasoline, he noticed his own face: the lines around his eyes were going away. His face was softening. And his clothes: his clothes just didn't fit right anymore. They were getting baggy, his shirts beginning to swallow him up.

Of course, Brenda noticed it too. How could she not, though she tried her best to deny it. Her bones ached. Her spine was starting to bow over. Her fingers hurt, and the worst was when she lost control of her hands hands and dropped J.J. and a piece of him cracked off like brittle clay. One day in March it became clear to her, when she looked in the mirror and saw the wrinkled, age-freckled face of an old woman staring back. And then she looked at Johnny and saw a nineteen-year-old boy where a thirty-year-old man used to be.

They sat on the porch together, Johnny fidgety and nervous, as young folks are when they're around the gray-haired elderly. Brenda was stooped and silent, staring straight ahead with watery, faded blue eyes.

"We're goin' in different directions," Johnny said in a voice that was getting higher-pitched by the day. "I don't know what happened or why. But... it just did." He reached out, took one of her wrinkled hands. Her bones felt fragile, bird-like. "I love you," he said.

She smiled. "I love you," she answered in her old woman's quaver.

They sat for a while in the purple glare. And then Johnny went down to the street and pitched stones at the side of Gordon Mayfield's empty house while Brenda nodded and slept.

Something pa.s.sed by, she thought in her cage of dreams. She remembered her wedding day, and she oozed a dribble of saliva as she smiled. Something pa.s.sed by. What had it been, and where had it gone?

Johnny made friends with a dog, but Brenda wouldn't let him keep it in the house. Johnny promised he'd clean up after it, and feed it, and all the other stuff you were supposed to do. Brenda said certainly not, that she wouldn't have it shedding all over her furniture. Johnny cried some, but he got over it. He found a baseball and bat in an empty house, and he spent most of his time swatting the ball up and down the street. Brenda tried to take up needlepoint, but her fingers just weren't up to it.

These are the final days, she thought as she sat on the porch and watched his small body as he chased the ball. She kept her Bible in her lap, and read it constantly, though her eyes burned and watered. The final days were here at last, and no man could stop the pa.s.sage of their hours.

The day came when Johnny couldn't crawl into her lap, and it hurt her shoulders to lift him, but she wanted him nestled against her. Johnny played with his fingers, and Brenda told him about paradise and the world yet to be. Johnny asked her what kind of toys they had there, and Brenda smiled a toothless grin and stroked his hair. Something pa.s.sed by, and Brenda knew what it was: time. Old clocks ticking down. Old planets slowing in their orbits. Old hearts laboring. The huge machine was winding to a finish now, and who could say that was a bad thing?

She held him in her arms as she rocked slowly on the front porch. She sang to him, and old sweet song: "Go to sleep, little baby, when you wake... ."

She stopped and squinted at the fields.

A huge wave of iridescent green and violet was undulating across the earth. It came on silently, almost... yes, Brenda decided. It came on with a lovely grace. The wave rolled slowly across the fields, and in its wake it left a gray blankness, like the wiping clean of a schoolboy's slate. It would soon reach the town, their street, their house, their front porch. And then she and her beautiful child would know the puzzle's answer. It came on, with relentless power. She had time to finish her song: "... I'll give you some cake and you can ride the pretty little poneeee."

The wave reached them. It sang of distant sh.o.r.es. The infant in her arms looked up at her, eyes glowing, and the old woman smiled at him and stood up to meet the mystery.

Copyright 1989 by Robert R. McCammon. All rights reserved. This story originally appeared in the collection Blue World and Other Stories, first published in April 1989. Reprinted with permission of the author.

LIZARDMAN.

The lizardman, king of his domain, rode on air into the swamp and gnashed his teeth against the night. He had a feeling in his bones. A mighty feeling. He was old and wise enough to know the power of such feelings. Tonight-yes, tonight-he would find the beast he sought. Out there amid the cypresses and on the mud flats, somewhere betwixt moonrise and dawn, the Old Pope waited for him, in robes of gnarled green. Tonight he would pay his respects to the Old Pope, that chawer of bones and spitter of flesh, and then he would sail his la.s.so around the Old Pope's throat and drive his gaffhook into the white bellyflesh to pierce a heart as tough as a cannonball.

The Lizardman chewed on his unlit cigar, the wind streaming his long white hair back from his leather-brown face, and powered the airboat over a sea of weeds. The light of a single battery lamp, mounted on the frame behind his seat, speared a direction for him, but he could have found his way in the dark. He knew the sounds of the swamp-the chirrs, croaks, and whispers-and he knew the smells of the swamp, the stale wet odors of earth caught between dry land and sea. The lizardman had navigated this place in drought and monsoon; he knew it as a man knows the feel of a well-worn shirt, but in all these many years the Old Pope had found a secret pocket and would not come out to play.

"You'll come out," the lizardman growled. The wind ate his words. "You'll come out tonight, won't you? Yessir. you'll come out tonight and we'll dance us a little dance."

He had said those same words every night he'd left the sh.o.r.e and ventured into the swamp. Saying those words was a habit now, a ritual, but tonight... tonight he could feel the true power in them. Tonight he felt them p.r.i.c.k the hide of the Old Pope, like darts thunking into treebark, and the Old Pope stirring in his underwater cavern, opening one red eye and exhaling a single bubble from the great, gruesome snout.

The lizardman changed his direction, a wrinkled hand nudging the tiller. South by southwest, into the sweet and rancid heart of the swamp, where honeysuckle covered the hulks of decaying boats and toads as big as dinner platters sang like Johnny Cash. Some of those boats had belonged to the lizardman's friends: other lizardmen, who had sailed the sarga.s.so seas of the swamp in search of Old Pope, and found their eternity here. Their corpses had not been recovered. The lizardman knew where they were. Their guts and gristle had nourished Old Pope, had rushed through the reptilian bulk in b.l.o.o.d.y tides to be expelled into the dark mud thirty feet down. Their bones had moldered on the bottom, like gray castles, and slowly moss had streamed from their ramparts and consumed them in velvet slime. The lizardman knew. His friends, the old braggers and b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and butchers, had made their living from the swamp, and the swamp now laid new foundations on their frames.

"Gonna dance a little dance," the lizardman said. Another correction of the tiller, the fan rotor roaring at his back.

"Gonna prance a little prance."

He had seen sixty-three summers; this sweltering August was his sixty-fourth. He was a Southern man, burned dark by the Florida sun, his skin freckled and blotched, his eyes dark brown, almost black, revealing nothing. He lived alone, drank rotgut whiskey straight from the moonshiner's still, played a wicked game of five-card stud, had two ex-wives who couldn't stand the sight or smell of him, and he made his money off gator skins. He'd done his share of poaching, sure, but the gators were growing wild in Florida now and it was open season. He'd read in the paper last week that a gator had chomped three fingers off a golfer's hand when he'd reached into the bushes for his ball on a Sarasota course. That didn't surprise the lizardman. If it moved or used to move, a gator would go after it. Mean sonsofb.i.t.c.hes, they were. Almost as mean as he was. Well, the lizardman figured, it took mean and ugly to kill mean and ugly.

A slight nudge of the tiller sent the airboat heading straighter south. He could smell honeysuckle and Indian weed, the sweet tang of wild persimmons and the musky fragrance of cypress. And the odor of death in the night air, too: rot and fungus, putrifying gas from the muddy bottom, something long dead caught in a quicksand pool. The wind took those aromas, and he arrowed on, following the beam of light. Wasn't too far now; maybe a mile or so, as the buzzard flew.

The lizardman did not fear the swamp. That didn't mean, of course, that he came in asking to be gator bait. Far from it: in his airboat he carried two gaffhooks, a billyclub with nails driven into it and sticking out like porcupine quills, a double-barreled shotgun, a bangstick, and his rope. Plus extra food, water, and gasoline. The swamp was a tricky beast; it lulled you, turned you into false channels and threw a mudbar up under your keel when you thought you were in six feet of water. Here, panic was death. The lizardman made a little extra money in tourist season, guiding the greenhorns through. It always amazed him how soft the tourists were, how white and overfed. He could almost hear the swamp drool when he brought the tourists in, and he made sure he stayed in the wide, safe channels, showed the greenhorns a few snakes and deer and such, and then got them out quick. They thought they'd seen a swamp; the lizardman just smiled and took their money.

The Seminoles, now, they were the tall-talers. You get a Seminole to visit the little hamlet where the lizardman lived, and his stories would make curly hair go straight. Like how Old Pope was a ghost gator, couldn't be killed by mortal man but only by G.o.d himself. Like how Old Pope had ridden on a bolt of lightning into the heart of the swamp, and any man who went looking for him was going to end up as nuggets of gator dung. The lizardman believe that one, almost. Too many of his friends had come in here and not come out again. Oh yeah, the swamp had teeth. Eat you up, bury you under. That was how it was.

He cut his speed. The light showed a green mora.s.s ahead: huge lilypads, and emerald slime that sparkled with iridescence, The air was heavy, humid, pungent with life. A mist hung over the water, and in that mist glowed red rubies; the eyes of gators, watching him approach. As his airboat neared, their heads submerged with thick shucccck ing sounds, then came back up in the foamy wake. The lizardman went on another hundred yards or so, then he cut off the rotor and the airboat drifted, silent through the mist.

He lit his cigar, puffed smoke, reached for his rope, and began to slip-knot a noose in it. The airboat was drifting over the lilypads, making toads croak and leap for safety. Just beyond the area of lilypads was a deeper channel that ran between glades of rushes, and it was at the edge of this channel that the lizardman threw his anchor over the side, a rubber boot full of concrete. The airboat stopped drifting, in the midst of the rushes on the rim of the deep channel.

The lizardman finished knotting the rope, tested it a few times and found it secure. Then he went about the business of opening a metal can, scooping out b.l.o.o.d.y chunks of horseflesh, and hooking them onto a fist-sized p.r.o.ng on the end of a chain. The chain, in turn, was fixed to the metal framework of the airboat's rotor and had a little bell on it. He tossed the bait chain out, into the rushes, then he sat on his perch with a gaffhook and the la.s.so near at hand, switched off the light, and smoked his White Owl.

He gazed up at the stars. The moon was rising, a white crescent. Off in the distance, toward Miami, heat lightning flared across the sky. The lizardman could feel electricity in the night. It made his scalp tingle and the hairs stand up on the backs of his sinewy, tattooed arms. He weighed about a hundred and sixty pounds, stood only five feet seven, but he was as strong as a Dolphins linebacker, his shoulders hard with muscle. The lizardman was n.o.body's kindly old grandpap. His gaze tracked a shooting star, a red streak spitting sparks. The night throbbed. He could feel it, like a pulse. To his right somewhere a nightbird screeched nervously, and a gator made a noise like a ba.s.s fiddle. Tonight the swamp seethed. Clouds of mosquitoes swirled around the lizardman's face, but the grease and ashes he'd rubbed onto his flesh kept them from biting. He felt the same powerful sensation he'd experienced when he was getting ready to cast off from sh.o.r.e: something was going to happen tonight, something different. The swamp knew it, and so did the lizardman. Maybe the Old Pope was on the prowl, mean and hungry. Maybe. Laney Allen had seen Old Pope here, in this channel a year ago. The big gators cruised it like submarines, placid in the depths, angry on the surface. Laney Allen-G.o.d rest his soul-said the biggest gator paled beside the Old Pope. Said the Old Pope had eyes that shone like Cadillac headlamps in the dark, and his ebony-green hide was so thick cypress roots grew out of it. The Old Pope's wake could drown an airboat, Laney had said, and from grinning snout to wedge-shaped tail the Old Pope looked like an island moving through the channel.

Laney and T-Bird Stokes had come out here, in late April, armed with shotguns, rifles, and a few sticks of dynamite, to root Old Pope out of his secret pocket. In May, a Seminole had found what was left of their airboat: the rotor and part of the splintered stern.

The bell dinged. The lizardman felt the boat shudder as a gator took the bait.

Teeth clenched around the cigar's b.u.t.t, he picked up a high-intensity flashlight from its holder beside his seat and flicked it on. The gator was thrashing water now, turning itself over and over on the end of the chain. The lizardman's light found it, there in the rushes. It was a young gator, maybe four feet long, not very heavy but it was madder than h.e.l.l-cast Lucifer and ready to fight. The lizardman got down off his perch, put on a pair of cowhide gloves, and watched the gator battle against the p.r.o.ngs jabbed in its jaws. Foamy water and dark mud splattered him, as the beast's tail smacked back and forth. The lizardman couldn't help it; though he and the gators were always on opposite ends of the chain, he found a savage beauty in the saw-toothed grin, the red-filmed eyes, the heaving, slime-draped body. But money was more beautiful, and the hides kept him alive. So be it. The lizardman waited until the gator lifted its head to try to shake the p.r.o.ngs loose, then he let fly with the la.s.so. His aim, born of much practice, was perfect. He snared the gator's throat, drew the beast in closer, the muscles standing out in his arms and the boat rocking underneath him. Then he picked up the gaffhook and speared the white belly as the gator began to turn over and over again in the frothy gray water. Blood bloomed like a red flower, the heart pierced. But the gator still fought with stubborn determination until the lizardman conked it a few times on the skull with the nail-studded billyclub. The gator, its brain impaled, expired with a last thrash that popped water ten feet into the air, then its eyes rolled back into the prehistoric head and the lizardman hauled the carca.s.s over the side. He gave the skull another hard knock with the billyclub, knowing that gators sometimes played possum until they could get hold of an arm or leg. This one, however, had given up the ghost. The lizardman slipped the chain out of the p.r.o.ngs. which were deeply imbedded and would have to be pulled out with pliers at a later date. He had a cardboard box full of p.r.o.ngs, so he attached another one to the chain, baited it with horseflesh, and threw it over the side.

He freed his la.s.so from around the bleeding, swamp-smelling carca.s.s, turned off his flashlight, and climbed again onto his perch.

This was what his life was all about.

An hour pa.s.sed before the bait was taken again. This gator was larger than the first, heavy but sluggish. It had one claw missing, evidence of a fight. The lizardman hauled it in some, rested, hauled it in the last distance with the la.s.so and the gaffhook. Finally, the gator lay in the bottom of the airboat with the first, its lungs making a noise like a steam engine slowly losing power.

The lizardman, slime on his arms and his face glistening with sweat, waited.

It was amazing to him that these creatures had never changed. The world had turned around the sun a million times, a hundred times a million, and the gators stayed the same. Down in the mud they dwelled, in their secret swamp caverns, their bodies hard and perfect for their purpose. They slept and fed, fed and bred, slept and fed, and that was the circle of their existence. It was weird, the lizardman thought, that jet airplanes flew over the swamp and fast cars sped on the interstate only a few miles from here while down in the mud dinosaurs stirred and crept. That's what they were, for sure. Dinosaurs, the last of their breed.

The lizardman watched shooting stars, the dead cigar clamped in his teeth. The hair p.r.i.c.kled on his arms. There was a power in the night. What was it? Something about to happen, something different from all the other nights. The swamp knew it too, and wondered in its language of birdcalls, gator grunts, frog croaks, and whistles. What was it?

The Old Pope, the lizardman thought. The Old Pope, on the move.

The moon tracked across the sky. The lizardman brought in his bait-found a water moccasin clinging to it-then he pulled up anchor and guided the boat through the weeds with a gaffhook. The water was about five feet deep, but nearer the channel the bottom sloped to twelve or more. He found what he thought might be a good place next to a clump of cypress, a fallen tree angled down into the depths and speckled with yellow crabs. He let the anchor down again, threw out the bait chain, got up on his perch, and sat there, thinking and listening. The swamp was speaking to him. What was it trying to say?

Ten minutes or so later, the bell dinged.

Water foamed and boiled. A big one! the lizardman thought. "Dance a little dance!" he said, and turned on the flashlight.

It was a big gator, true, but it wasn't Old Pope. This beast was seven feet long, weighed maybe four hundred pounds. It was going to be a ballbreaker to get in the boat. Its eyes flared like comets in the light, its jaws snapping as it tried to spit out the p.r.o.ngs. The lizardman waited for the right moment, then flung his rope. It noosed the gator's muzzle, sealing the jaws shut. The lizardman pulled, but the gator was a powerful b.a.s.t.a.r.d and didn't want to come. Careful, careful, he thought. If he lost his footing and went overboard. G.o.d help him. He got the gaffhook ready, the muscles straining in his shoulders and back, though he already knew he'd have to use the shotgun on this one.

He started to pick up the shotgun when he felt the airboat rise on a pressure wave. He lost his balance, came perilously close to slipping over, but the rubber grips of his boots gripped to the wet deck. He was surprised more than anything else, at the suddenness of it. And then he saw the gator on the end of the chain thrash up and almost leap out of the foaming water. If a gator's eyes could register terror, then that was what the lizardman saw.

The gator shivered. There was a ripping noise, like an axed tree falling. b.l.o.o.d.y water splashed up around the reptile's body. Not only b.l.o.o.d.y water, the lizardman saw in another second, but also ropy coils of dark green intestines, billowing out of the gator's belly. The beast was jerked downward with a force that made the rope and the chain crack taut, the bell dinging madly. The lizardman had dropped his light. He fumbled for it, amid the gator carca.s.ses, the rope scorching his cowhide glove. The airboat lifted up again, crashed down with a mighty splash, and the lizardman went to his knees. He heard terrible, crunching noises: the sounds of bones being broken. And just that fast, it was all over.