Autumn swung the RV south to hit Alligator Alley and civilization. She came to an immediate stop at the small truss bridge over the canal. Pythons with glowing blue eyes covered it.
She’d seen collections of snakes before, often coiled together for mating or warmth. But these giants weren’t a writhing mass. They were a concerted collective, wrapped around the trusses and intertwined like bread bag tie-wraps. The snakes contracted and the trusses buckled inward with the shrieking wail of shearing metal. The trusses went horizontal and the bridge collapsed with a crash into the canal. Thirty feet of air separated Autumn from her escape.
She piloted the RV through a swaying U-turn and went with Plan B. She headed north into Citrus Glade.
Oscar jumped up into the passenger seat and meowed. He put both paws on the dashboard and scanned out the front window. Python blood matted the white bib on his chest.
Chapter Forty-Six
Autumn didn’t see another car on the deserted streets of Citrus Glade. When she passed the Food Bonanza, she knew why. The lot was full to overflowing, everyone in town stocking up on supplies. The WAMM weatherman’s warnings had not fallen on deaf ears here. Rain squalls had blasted her on the way into town and the sky had grown noticeably, ominously darker.
Autumn was better stocked for the inevitable power outages and foodstuff shortages. The RV powered itself and she had food laid in for at least a week, if canned would be okay. She didn’t feel the need to fight that crowd. What she did want to do was take a better look at the snake head on the floor of the RV. Something had made it go homicidal.
She rolled down Main and looked for a parking spot with a bit of privacy to examine the snake’s severed head. One big lot had a street sweeper and a rusting dump truck in it. The space between the dump truck and a building wall looked pretty secluded. She spun the wheel and nosed the RV into its temporary home.
Once they parked, Oscar left his co-pilot perch and trotted back to the python’s head just ahead of Autumn. He gave it two perfunctory sniffs and a low growl. He looked up at Autumn.
“Thanks, boy,” she said. “I can take care of myself from here.”
Oscar retreated to an overwatch position on the kitchen table. Autumn scooped up the python head and set it on the countertop. She pulled her dissection kit from one of the drawers and rolled it open.
The snake’s neck was a ragged bloody mess where the shovel blade had worked with less than surgical skills. The jaw hung partly agape. Its eyes were open, but the lenses concave, as if the blue fire within them had boiled something away when it departed.
She removed a scalpel and flipped the head upside down. She cut away the lower jaw and what was left of the trachea. With a few slices through the upper pallet she exposed the snake’s brain.
She’d seen plenty of snake brains in her studies, usually about the size of a grape. She’d never seen one like this. The organ was black, like a tiny charred lump of coal. Snakes didn’t do much thinking with this undersized organ, but in this condition it wouldn’t do any. It looked like something had supercharged the brain from the inside and smoked every synapse.
Three sharp bangs on the RV door broke her concentration. She opened it to see her friend from the Citrus Glade DPW.
“I wondered if you would find some shelter with the hurricane brewing,” Andy said.
“This is a cozy little spot for Porky, but I hadn’t planned on staying here long.”
“Well, technically it’s illegal to park in the city lot,” Andy said. He gave the lot a dramatic inspection. “But there may be an extra space I can spare.” He gave her blood-striped wheels a sideways look. “What happened here?”
“You wouldn’t believe it,” Autumn started.
Attacks by pythons. Snakes destroying a bridge. She barely believed it. But that didn’t make it untrue. She relayed the story of her day, showed him the remains of the snake. He didn’t call her crazy.
“You might want to check these out,” he said. “Bring the tools of your trade.”
Autumn followed him to the tailgate of his pickup truck. A gust of wind delivered a spray of thick raindrops. Two gators lay in the rear. Andy told her his story. She was relieved that she wasn’t the only target of Mother Nature’s apparent rampage.
“You want to check out their brains?”
“Hell, yeah! I’ll be right back.”
The weather wasn’t conducive to a measured autopsy but all she needed to know was going to be right inside the skull anyway. She grabbed a small battery-powered saw and a rib spreader. By the time she got back, Andy had a blue tarp tied over the bed of the truck like a tent.
“Dead animals and a tarp shelter,” Autumn teased. “You know how to worm your way into a scientist’s heart, don’t you?”
Andy’s cheeks reddened a bit.
They both climbed into the protected bed. The claustrophobic humid air smelled like algae and blood.
Autumn flicked on the tiny saw. It spun into action with a high-pitched whir. She started at the top of the skull and sawed a stripe down the center to the tip of the snout. She inserted the rib spreader and twisted. The head popped open a few inches.
“Unreal,” she muttered.
Andy stuck his head in under the tarp. “Prognosis, Doc?”
“See this?” She pointed to a mass of blackened tissue about the size of three olives. “That’s the brain.”
“In all that head?”
“Alligators are all sinus,” she said. “This is all they have to think with. And this one’s fried. Cerebellum, medulla oblongata.” She prodded the inside with the screwdriver blade. “The pituitary looks like an exploded balloon, which would account for some of the behavior you saw. Something got inside this gator’s head and pushed the overdrive button. Just like the pythons.”
“Something like what?” Andy said.
Autumn gave the charred brain another poke. Rain pounded against the plastic over her head as the storm worsened.
“Like something I can’t explain.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Gridlock.
From Key West to central Florida, the population’s prudent retreat had descended into panic. Announcers said Rita on the weather reports, but people heard Katrina. Twelve lanes of I-95 through Dade County became a long thin parking lot as rain-induced accidents blocked entire sections. Evacuees switched to surface streets and the gridlock spread like blood poisoning to the smaller thoroughfares. A firefight broke out on a bridge from a barrier island when a man in a black and chrome Hummer tried for a quick return to his home around the police blockade. At noon, the governor addressed the state, but particularly the residents of the Keys. He told them to sit tight. A1A was a Gordian knot of vehicles, backed up all the way from the mainland when hundreds of cars ran out of gas. He warned them that if they walked the Overseas Highway, there was still no place to go. Even the shelters were moving north.
Tens of thousands were trapped in the evacuation. Millions more watched the chaos and opted to forego it. Stores sold out of everything, alcohol of course being the first to go. Customers fought over what remained. Some long timers remembered Hurricane Andrew and this one would be ten times worse. The mayor of Miami-Dade imposed a curfew. The collective clicks of rounds being chambered and dead bolts locking echoed across the state.
All along both coasts, boats tore from their moorings as absentee owners had no time to reinforce the lines. Epic winds drove waves ashore that tossed the boats into piles. Entire marinas ripped their pilings from the ground and balled up into heaps of shattered fiberglass and smashed planking.
Small power outages in the morning grew into major blackouts by the afternoon. Crews, daunted by the worsening weather and the frozen traffic, did not venture out to make repairs. People with battery-powered radios heard the boiled water alerts that every city issued. Errant candles started dozens of fires that burned until the hurricane’s downpour quenched the flames.
An awful realization spread among the peopl
e huddled in dark corners of their homes or cowering under blankets in their bathtubs. No power. No water. No food but what they had on hand. Civilization had deserted them and if the storm did the damage everyone foretold, it would not return for a long time.
Chapter Forty-Eight
A curtain of rain fell and pounded the pavement outside. Juliana looked at that and then back at her livid boyfriend. She ducked her head and chose to face the elements. She ran though the downpour and climbed into the truck cab.
The diesel rumbled to life. The truck departed with a grind of the gears and a splash through a newly formed puddle. Juliana gripped the wheel so hard her knuckles went white. She was so good to Cente and in payment he told her to drive forty thousand pounds of steel through a hurricane.
Rain lashed the windscreen like intermittent cracks of a whip. Her eyes felt heavy and her arms were like lead. She’d been high most of the day and the resultant energy crash was on its way. She wasn’t going to make it to Macon in one day at this rate. She was going to need a little help, the same help that had gotten her through so much in the past.
She pulled over and slipped a baggie from her pocket. The white powder inside was damn near pure. The Colombians might cut it with filler once it got into the states, but they weren’t going to ship it in that way. There was no comparison between it and the watered-down blow she used to do in Liberty City as a kid. She tapped a line onto the truck’s center console and rolled a scrap of paper into a tiny tube.
When she inhaled the powder, every synapse in her brain caught fire. Her senses amped up to max. Colors got brighter, sounds got crisper. Above all, she was flush with energy, a boundless unbridled surge so powerful she felt like she was floating. Now she was ready to drive.
Another wave of rain pelted the windshield and she flicked the wipers on. The low speed was too slow, not for the rain, but for her senses and she switched it to high. She checked the side mirror six times, though the road was deserted, and pulled back onto CR 12. Her muscles jittered as the cocaine fueled them. She ground each gear as her left leg danced on the clutch.
CR 12 was a flat straight stretch north of town and despite the increasing rain, she hit sixty-five mph in no time. She thrummed her hands on the wheel in time to some beat that pounded in her head.
The rain picked up but it didn’t register. Her mind raced. She saw the route up I-75, figured the miles, calculated the time. She could make it. She would make it. Nothing could stop her now at the wheel of the big rig. Cops would be busy with hurricane stuff. She would power through the weather, weave through the traffic, move like the wind.
She’d go so fast she could create time. Like that freaking movie with the DeLorean. She needed to do eighty-eight and, wham, she’d be flying. She pushed the accelerator to the floor.
Then when she got back, she would have proven herself worthy. She and Cente would blow out of this cesspool of a town. They’d live like royalty on the beach with a snowstorm worth of coke. Awesome.
She drove into a downpour and the windshield looked like a waterfall. Each frenzied sweep of the wipers cleared a split-second view of the watery road. No problem. She had it under control. She didn’t need to see the road. She could feel it. She was one with it. The truck hit ninety.
The wheel tingled in her fingers. A swipe of the wipers flashed a yellow sign that said Slow–Bridge Ahead. That was the big canal north of town. She was making great time.
The truck powered over the little rise to the steel truss span. The wheel relaxed in her hands. Juliana thought how smooth the bridge surface was.
Then the cab nosed forward. The bridge wasn’t smooth. It was missing, crushed like its sister on the south side of town. The cab splashed nose first into the rushing water of the rain-swollen canal.
She had a moment of hope when she hung horizontal by her seatbelt in the cab, still above the shallow churning canal. Then the trailer plowed forward and thousands of pounds of steel and plastic crushed the cab like an empty soda can.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Barry Leopold had lived the last twenty-four hours in and out of some blissful, hallucinogenic dream. Every minute he did magic shifted between crystal clarity and utter nonsense.
Yesterday, after Lyle’s incantations, he felt like he’d floated out of the Magic Shop. He’d feigned illness when his mother got home. Her overprotective genes kicked in and she confined him to his room. As she slept that night, he used the hat.
Lizards, mice, turtles. The hat gave birth to a veritable ark of tiny creatures into the early morning hours. He collapsed into bed in ecstatic exhaustion.
His mother checked on him before she left for work. She let him sleep. The weather was turning nasty and she figured she would be sent home early.
Barry awakened later to a fuzzy recollection of recent events. But he knew he’d been on a magnificent high and the only way to continue it was with the magic hat. The more he performed, the better this flying carpet ride would be.
He locked the door behind him, a strict no-no in the Leopold household, but weren’t they beyond all that now? He pulled the hat out of his desk drawer and popped it open. Just the sound of the hat snapping into place made him coo with pleasure, anticipating the rush about to come. He draped the first thing he could find, a dirty T-shirt, across the top.
He wondered what to conjure, what creature to call forth. He fell back to the cliché, a rabbit. A cute little bunny.
“Bakshokah apnoah,” he said as he waved his hand over the hat in a lazy oval.
A charge hit his heart like a bolt of lightning and telegraphed that the rabbit had materialized. He moaned in ecstasy. He pulled away the shirt and looked into the hat’s black recess. Two aquamarine eyes glowed back from the darkness. The oddity of it did not register.
He reached into the hat. In his dreamlike state, all he felt was a bit of a pinch to his index finger. He extracted his hand and to his great surprise, his finger was gone. Blood burbled from the gash where something jagged had chopped away all below the first knuckle. He stared at his damaged digit with only the vaguest comprehension. Like a child with a boo-boo, he put his finger into his mouth. He cocked one eye and peered into the hat. Two bright blue dots stared back. The creature growled like gravel in a metal pan and leapt straight up. The rabbit cleared the brim of the hat before the dazed boy could react.
The mangy gray beast had ragged, asymmetrical ears. Twin rows of tiger shark teeth ringed its open mouth. It clamped on Barry’s nose.
Pain exploded straight into his brain and swept Barry’s confusion away. He shrieked. Blood spurted from both sides of the rabbit’s mouth as its teeth dug deeper. Barry panicked, grabbed the hare from hell with both hands and yanked. The rabbit tore his nose from his face with a sickening moist rip.
Barry dropped the wriggling creature. He grabbed his face and his severed finger slid into the gaping hole above his mouth. Blood sprayed out like a fire hose. Barry stepped back, tripped and landed on his ass on the floor.
The hat spun two full revolutions and toppled on one side, the opening facing Barry. Inside a constellation of bright blue eyes bobbed and weaved. He screamed.
More rabbits charged. A half-dozen of them bounded out of the hat like a migrating infestation. They leapt straight for Barry.
The horde bowled him over, enveloping him. Each rabbit bared its serrated teeth and tore a chunk of flesh from his body. Before he could process the horror of it all, one rabbit clamped down on his neck and ripped his carotid artery free. Barry went motionless.
The rabbits did not mourn. In unison, they leapt from the floor, aimed at Barry’s bedroom window. The glass shattered and the stampede burst out into the night, a fleeting mass of wet, gray fur lit with bright blue eyes. The swarm raced southward through the rain-soaked backyard in a beeline for downtown.
In front of the house, Barry’s mother’s car pulled up.
Wind whipped rain through Barry’s broken window and the white curtains fluttered like twin spir
its of the night. The drops rinsed the blood from the wounds on Barry’s face and left the visage of a confused, nose-less boy staring up at the ceiling. One of the lenses of his glasses was shattered.
Two sharp raps sounded at Barry’s door.
“Barry?” his mother called. “Are you alright? Open this door!”
The bedroom door burst open. Over the howling wind, none of the neighbors heard Mrs. Leopold’s scream.
Chapter Fifty
Paco Mason hadn’t been home.
He’d left the Magic Shop and wandered a random route through town, not fully aware of where he was or where he was going. Everything around him looked like it was shattered and re-assembled, a kaleidoscope of bits and pieces of a world he no longer inhabited.
He arrived back at his house that afternoon. This world of disjointed shards was strange, but familiar. He walked through his house with light, fluid steps. He flourished his wand in great loopy arcs as he flitted from room to room in a strange combination that was half modern dance and half orchestral conductor, all in time with some lilting, unheard music. Each time the intoxicating power that coursed within him waned, he tapped a passing object with his wand. Bakshokah korami. It vanished in a puff of flame and smoke. A release of magic flowed down and out from its home and a sliver of it reinforced the high that propelled him around the house.
His mother came in the front door out of the storm. He just saw her as slices, an eyeball here, a hand there, all flitting like a flurry of multi-colored snowflakes that never quite made a full design.
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