Part 11 (1/2)

He stood up, shaking. The airboat rocked, rocked, rocked, a cradle on the deep. He found the light and turned it on the beast at the chain's end.

The lizardman gave a soft gasp, his mouth dry as Sahara dust.

The gator had been diminished. More than half of it had been torn away, guts and gore floating in the water around the ragged wound.

Bitten in two, the lizardman thought. A surge of pure horror coursed through him. Bitten by something from underneath...

”Good G.o.d A'mighty,” he whispered, and he let go of the rope.

The severed gator floated on the end of the chain, its insides still streaming out in sluggish tides. On the fallen tree trunk, the crabs were scrambling over each other, smelling a feast.

The lizardman realized that he was a long way from home.

Something was coming. He heard it pus.h.i.+ng the reeds aside on the edge of the deep channel. Heard the swirl of water around its body, and the suction of mud on its claws. Old Pope. Old Pope, risen from the heart of the swamp. Old Pope, mean and hungry. Coming back for the rest of the gator, caught on the chain's end. The lizardman had often heard of people bleating with fear. He'd never known what that would've sounded like, until that moment. It was, indeed, a bleat, like a stunned sheep about to get its head smashed with a mallet. He turned toward the airboat's engine, hit the starter switch, and reached for the throttle beside his seat. As soon as he gave the engine some gas, the rotor crashed against the frame, bent by the force of Old Pope on the chain, and it threw a pinwheel of sparks and crumpled like wet cardboard. The airboat spun around in a tight circle before the engine blew, the flashlight flying out of the lizardman's grip as he fell onto the rough hides of the dead gators. He looked up, slime dripping from his chin, as something large and dark rose up against the night. Swamp water streamed from Old Pope's armored sides. The lizardman could see that Laney had been right: roots, rushes, and weeds grew from the ebony-green plates, and not only that but snakes slithered through the cracks and crabs scuttled over the leathery edges. The lizardman recoiled, but he could only go to the boat's other side and that wasn't nearly far enough. He was on his knees, like a penitent praying for mercy at Old Pope's altar. He saw something-a scaled claw, a tendril, something-slither down and grasp the snared gator's head. Old Pope began to pull the mangled carca.s.s up out of the water, and as the chain snapped tight again the entire airboat started to overturn.

In another few seconds the lizardman would be up to his neck in deep s.h.i.+t. He knew that, and knew he was a dead man one way or the other. He reached out, found the shotgun, and gave Old Pope the blast of a barrel. In the flare of orange light he saw gleaming teeth, yellow eyes set under a ma.s.sive brow where a hundred crabs clung like barnacles to an ancient wharf. Old Pope gave a deep grunt like the lowest note of a church organ, and that was when the lizardman knew.

Old Pope was not an alligator.

The severed gator slid into Old Pope's maw, and the teeth crunched down. The airboat overturned as the lizardman fired his second barrel, then he was in the churning water with the monster less than fifteen feet away. His boots sank into mud. The flashlight, waterproof, bobbed in the turbulence. Snakes writhed around Old Pope's jaws as the beast ate, and the lizardman floundered for the submerged treetrunk. Something oozing and rubbery wound around his chest. He screamed, being lifted out of the water. An object was beside him; he grabbed it, held tight, and knew Old Pope had decided on a second meal. He smelled the thing's breath-blood and swamp-as he was being carried toward the gaping mouth, and he heard the hissing of snakes that clung to the thing's gnarled maw. The lizardman saw the s.h.i.+ne of an eye, catching the crescent moon. He jabbed at it with the object in his grip, and the bangstick exploded.

The eye burst into gelatinous muck, its inside showering the lizardman. At the same time, Old Pope roared with a noise like the clap of doom, and whatever held the lizardman went slack. He fell, head over heels, into the water. Came up again, choking and spitting, and half-ran, half-swam for his life through the swaying rushes. Old Pope was coming after him. He didn't need an eye in the back of his head to tell him that. Whatever the thing was, it wanted his meat and bones. He heard the sound of it coming, the awful suction of water and mud as it advanced. The lizardman felt panic and insanity, two Siamese twins, whirl through his mind. Dance a little dance!

Prance a little prance! He stepped in a hole, went in over his head, fought to the surface again and threw himself forward. Old Pope-swamp-G.o.d, king of the gators-was almost upon him, like a moving cliff, and snakes and crabs rained down around the lizardman.

He scrambled up, out of the reeds onto a mudflat. Hot breath washed over him, and then that rubbery thing whipped around his waist like a frog's tongue. It squeezed the breath out of him, lifted him off his feet, and began to reel him toward the glistening, saw-edged jaws.

The lizardman had not gotten to be sixty-four years old by playing dead. He fought against the oozing, sticky thing that had him. He beat at it with his fists, kicked and hollered and thrashed. He raged against it, and Old Pope held him tight and watched him with its single eye like a man might watch an insect struggling on flypaper. It had him. It knew it had him. The lizardman wasn't far gone enough in the head not to know that. But still he beat at the beast, still he hollered and raged, and still Old Pope inspected him, its ma.s.sive gnarly head tilted slightly to one side and water running through the cracks on the skull-deep ugly of its face. Lightning flashed. There was no thunder. The lizardman heard a high whine. His skin p.r.i.c.kled and writhed with electricity, and his wet hair danced.

Old Pope grunted again. Another surge of lightning, closer this time.

The abomination dropped him, and the lizardman plopped down onto the mudflat like an unwanted sc.r.a.p. Old Pope lifted its head, contemplating the stars.

The crescent moon was falling to earth, in a slow spiral. The lizardman watched it, his heart pounding and his arms and legs encased in mire. The crescent moon shot streaks of blue lightning, like fingers probing the swamp's folds. Slowly, slowly, it neared Old Pope, and the monster lifted claw-fingered arms and called in a voice that wailed over the wilderness like a thousand trumpets.

It was the voice, the lizardman thought, of something lost and far from home.

The crescent moon-no, not a moon, but a huge shape that sparkled metallic-was now almost overhead. It hovered, with a high whine, above the creature that had been known as Old Pope, and the lizardman watched lightning dance around the beast like homecoming banners.

Dance a little dance, he thought. Prance a little prance.

Old Pope rumbled. The craggy body s.h.i.+vered, like a child about to go to a birthday party. And then Old Pope's head turned, and the single eye fixed on the lizardman.

Electricity flowed through the lizardman's hair, through his bones and sinews. He was plugged into a socket of unknown design, his fillings sparking pain in his mouth. He took a breath as the Old Pope stepped toward him, one grotesque, ancient leg sinking into the earth.

Something-a tendril, a third arm, whatever-came out of Old Pope's chest. It scooped up mud and painted the lizardman's face with it, like a tribal marking. The touch was sticky and rough, and it left the smell of the swamp and reptilian things in the lizardman's nostrils.

Then Old Pope lifted its face toward the metallic crescent, and raised its arms. Lightning flared and crackled across the mudflats. Birds screeched in their trees, and the voices of gators throbbed. The lizardman blinked, his eyes narrowed against the glare.

And when the glare had faded, two seconds later, the lightning had taken Old Pope with it. The machine began to rise, slowly, slowly. Then it ascended in a blur of speed and was gone as well, leaving only one crescent moon over the cacophonous swamp.

The Seminoles had been right, the lizardman thought. Right as rain. Old Pope had come to the swamp on a bolt of lightning, and was riding one home again too.

Whatever that might be.

He rested awhile, there in the mud of his domain.

Sometime before dawn he roused himself, and he found a piece of his airboat floating off the mudflat. He found one of his gaffhooks too, and he lay on the splintered remnant of his boat and began pus.h.i.+ng himself through the downtrodden rushes toward the far sh.o.r.e. The swamp sang around him, as the lizardman crawled home on his belly.

Copyright 1989 by Robert R. McCammon. All rights reserved. This story originally appeared in the anthology Stalkers, edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg and published in 1989 by Dark Harvest. Reprinted with permission of the author.

HAUNTED WORLD.

Well, I knew it was the end of the world for sure when I walked into my den and found William Shakespeare sittin'

in my BarcaLounger.

At least I think it was him. Anyways, it was one of them fellas wore starched collars and a velvet suit and said a lot of ”thees” and ”thous” like they used to do every year at the high school senior play down the road. I called Vera in. I said, ”Vera, come in here and take a look at this right quick!” and she came runnin'. Of course, we'd seen ghosts before, just like everybody else in the world had by then, but Will Shakespeare sittin' in your den watchin' Crosswits on the TV is a d.a.m.n peculiar sight.

Every so often he'd speak, as if he were tryin' to answer the Crosswits questions. Then he'd rest his head back, and I saw him close his eyes and heard him say, ”Woe is me,” clear as a church bell. By then Ben Junior had come in, and he pressed in between his momma and me, and we all three watched the ghost tryin' to talk to the man on TV. Ol'

Will was the same as the other spirits: He wasn't all there. Oh, you could make him out all right, and even see the color of his hair and skin and suit, but he was kinda smoky too, and you could see the chair right through him. He reached out toward the lamp beside him, but his hand was misty and couldn't touch it. ”Woe is me,” he said again, and then he looked at us standin' in the doorway. His eyes were sad. They were the eyes of a man who was lost on a long trip and couldn't find the right road again.

Vera said, ”Would you like me to change the channel?” She was always mannerly to house guests. Even uninvited ones. Ol' Will started to fade away then, bit by bit. Didn't surprise us none, 'cause we'd seen the others do it too. In another minute just his face was left, floatin' in the air like a pale moon. Then nothin' but his eyes. They blinked a couple of times, then those were gone too. But we all knew ol' Will hadn't vanished for good, and he hadn't gone too far away neither. He was like all the other ones roamin' around the haunted world. h.e.l.l of a mess, that's for sure.

Wasn't too long before Ben Junior said, ”Dad?” and he motioned me and his momma over to the big picture window in the front room, the one that has such a pretty view over the meadow. It was October, and the world was turnin' deep red and purple. The sky was that greenish-gray it gets just before it happens. Vera said a while back that the sky reminds her of a lizard's skin, and I guess that about hits the nail on the head. Ben Junior pointed, and he said in a quiet voice, ”There's another one.”

Vera and I looked, and of course we saw it. Have to be blind as a bat in a Bundt cake not to see one of those things, once they get started.

The tornadoes are always that peculiar lizard-skin color. One of 'em whipped right across Pennsylvania Avenue in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., the other day. I saw it on the five o'clock news. Anyway, there was a tornado whippin' and whirlin' down the hillside into our meadow not two hundred yards away. Things started poppin' and creakin' in our house like the whole place was fixin' to come unjointed. A light bulb blew out and right after that the power went.

”Lord,” Vera whispered, standin' beside me in the lizard-green light. ”Lord have mercy.” You could see 'em in the tornado, goin' around and around and tumblin' over each other from the bottom of the cone to the top of the spout. How many were there it was hard to say. Hundreds, I reckon. Some of 'em were smoky, but others looked just as solid as you and me. The tornado was spittin' 'em out hither and yonder, and they were fallin' to earth like autumn leaves. They drifted into the treetops and onto the gra.s.s, and they fell over the fence and onto the road that leads to Concordia. Some of 'em were tattered to pieces, like old rags caught in the blades of a lawn mower, but others stood up and staggered around like Sat.u.r.day night drunks. The tornado took a turn away from our house and marched up the hillside again toward the south, spittin' out ghosts with every whirl, and then Vera reached out and pulled the curtains shut, and we all stood in the twilight listenin' to the trees moan as the tornado went on.

”Well,” I said, because there wasn't much else to say. Deep subject, I know. Cold, too. Vera walked over to the wall switch and flicked it up and down with a vengeance, but the power wasn't goin' to come back on for quite a while. ”There goes a hot dinner,” she said, and she sounded like she was about to cry. I put my hand on her shoulder, and then she kind folded up against me and hung on. Ben Junior sneaked a peek through the curtain, but what he saw he didn't care for, because he let the curtain drop back real quick.

Someone-somethin'-called from outside. ”Mary?” It was a man's voice, and it was terribly lonely. ”Mary? Are you in there?”

I started to go to the door, but Vera held me tight. We both knew I had to go. I pulled away from her, and I went to the door and opened it.

On our front porch stood a frail-lookin' man with dark hair slicked back and parted in the middle. He wore a dark suit-black or brown, I couldn't really tell. His face was pale and kinda yellow, like spoiled milk. He took a step back when he saw me, and he was wearin' old high-top shoes. He was s.h.i.+verin', and he looked around himself. If he saw all the others staggerin' about in the meadow, nothin' registered on his face but pure puzzlement. Then he looked at me again, and when his mouth opened, his voice was like the chilly wind. You felt it more than heard it.

”Mary? Is Mary waiting for me?”

”Mary's not here,” I told him.

”Mary?” he asked again. ”Is she waiting for me?”

”No,” I said. ”Not here.”

He stopped speakin', but his mouth stayed open. His eyes looked wet, like those of a dog that had just gotten kicked in the ribs. ”I don't think you know anybody here,” I told him, because he seemed to be waitin' for somethin'