Walking Bear drew his big knife from his belt and took a half step in front of Dolly.
“We’ll try to clear you a path,” he said. “Stay away from their jaws.”
The python coiled itself for a strike. The panther pounced. Its jaws caught the snake and snapped it in half. The cat threw the rest of the snake away with a toss of its head.
The gators came on at a run.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Vicente’s high dwarfed anything drugs had ever done. Beasts at his command. Human lives in his hands. The million-watt thrum of magic that passed under his feet and into the tower behind him. He could even sense the energy in the bubbling clouds that swirled around the calm center over Citrus Glade. In seconds, his creatures of the night would destroy the two interlopers at the entrance of the Apex plant.
The dump truck idled on four shredded tires. Pythons had strewn exterior parts like bumpers and mirrors all over the parking lot. The thick remains of thousands of suicidal insects blackened the windows. Three pythons encircled the cab, ready to pop it open like Popeye crushing a can of spinach.
Instead of collapsing the cab, the snakes paused. Their heads twisted outward and their forked tongues licked the air. The gators across the parking lot paused mid-stride.
Something was wrong. The power Vicente felt, his power, was weaker, drained away to somewhere else…
“Cente,” called a voice behind him.
He whirled to see Juliana step out of the scrub. Her feet were torn and bloody, her long legs scratched. Her hair hung down in wet strands across her face but could not obscure her bright blue eyes.
Pale memories fluttered by of a girl and a truck the girl should have delivered to Georgia by now. At one point all these things had been important. Now all that mattered was Juliana might be a threat to the tower. If she could divert power from him, could she pull it from the tower as well? Were the rest of these people just a diversion for her attack?
“Get out of here,” he said. “Before I kill you.”
He focused his waning power on the three pythons around the dump truck cab. They uncurled and slid down to his feet.
“The skank you are doing is dead by now,” Juliana said. Her voice had an eerie, childlike quality to it. She walked straight to Vicente, eyes locked on his, face devoid of expression. “Now it can be the two of us. Together. Forever.”
With every step Juliana came closer, the power within him weakened. Vicente sent the pythons forward. They didn’t move. Juliana took a last step and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Forever,” she whispered in his ear.
Before he could push her away, the pythons rose and spiraled up around their bodies like three stripes on a barber’s pole. Cold, slick scales slipped across Vicente’s damp neck as one wrapped around the couple like a collar. Vicente squirmed and the snakes constricted. His lungs whooshed flat. He choked out a gasp.
“We are so in love,” Juliana said.
The snakes squeezed. Ribcages cracked. Vicente groaned and the blue fire left his eyes. Juliana rolled her head back, stared at the stars in the sky, and followed her lover to whatever came next. The two corpses toppled to the ground.
All across the parking lot, the eyes of the sentry animals returned to normal.
Chapter Seventy
A tree crashed outside the DPW and woke Felix with a start. He tried to sit up and pain lit up his leg like a solar flare. He eased himself back down. The bandage on his leg had only dried blood. Thank heaven.
His watch said four-fifteen. He’d been out for hours. Rain blasted against the office window and outside random bits of the town scraped across the street. He hadn’t slept through the hurricane.
His first thoughts were about his family. The old wooden farmhouse wasn’t built to take this kind of pounding. The wind outside conjured up visions of the metal roof peeling off or uprooted trees crashing through walls. Carlina would use her head and protect the kids if the storm threatened the house. No, Carlina would get them to safety before things got dicey. She would take no chances.
He rolled himself off the couch, careful to keep all his weight on one leg and drag the other. He hobbled over to the window.
The pounding rain nearly grayed out the view of the City Hall parking lot. He wiped away condensation on the glass. A wind shift parted the curtain and he caught sight of Carlina’s car in the third row.
Gracias, Padre en el cielo.
They made it to the shelter. If the place could withstand Russian nukes, it could withstand Rita.
But something had gone wrong. A car was parked on the shelter doors. The crumpled remains of the generator were bashed into the wall of City Hall. That meant everyone down there was trapped with no light and no air. Rita or no Rita, that door needed to come open. He was about to venture out into the storm when something around the car moved. The sight made his leg throb.
Rabbits. The same gray scruffy bastards with the ragged ears and the teeth like a mangled bread knife. Their eyes glowed blue.
His family was down there. It was up to him to get that door open.
He limped out the back door, into the storm and to his truck parked in the street. He shielded his eyes and shuffled through the items in the bed of the truck. He pulled his machete out from under an empty orange sack and slipped it into his belt. Then he pulled out the long-handled pole saw. He was reminded of a movie where he saw knights selecting weapons as they prepared for combat. Where’s some chain mail when you need it?
He turned into the wind and headed for City Hall.
“Just relax,” Flora said softly. “We’ll all be fine.”
Her flashlight beam lit each face one at a time as she moved from person to person in the shelter. They might have looked relieved when she welcomed them in earlier, but now they all looked scared. Few others in the pitch-black shelter had flashlights with them. The atmosphere had turned thick and humid. Between that and Flora’s order to blow out any candles, everyone knew without asking that the air inside wasn’t being scrubbed. They all lay on the cool concrete floor. Soft sobs and hushed prayers echoed off the walls. A few of the older occupants wheezed out labored breaths in the dying air.
Flora paused at Carlina, who lay with her arm wrapped around Angela. The day had caught up with the girl and she was asleep. Carlina’s eyes were red from crying. Flora knelt down beside her.
“Ricky will be okay,” Flora said. “The town is full of safe places to ride out the storm. He is a smart boy.”
“I’m not crying for him alone,” Carlina said. She hugged Angela tighter.
“We’ll get out of here,” Flora said. “Andy is out there. He’ll be pulling open that door any minute now.”
“Do you really think so?”
Flora could not dash the hope in Carlina’s eyes. “Absolutely.”
Flora moved on before her true assessment betrayed her. Andy would assume that the shelter was safe. This would be the last place he checked.
Someone else would have to get that door open, and soon, before the town shelter became the town tomb.
Felix turned the corner of the DPW building and faced the shelter entrance at the base of City Hall. He yanked the pull cord on the pole saw and it ripped to life. Four rabbits turned their shining eyes toward him.
“Come and get it, Thumper,” he said.
He lurched toward the shelter doors. The rabbits perked up and bounded to intercept.
The lead rabbit came on at a surprising speed, jagged teeth bared for the kill. At a dozen feet out, it leapt for Felix’s throat. Felix swung the pole saw like a broadsword and caught the rabbit mid-flight. The whirling chain sliced the rabbit clean in two. The haunches dropped to the ground. The lifeless head kept flying forward and hit Felix in the chest.
Two more charged from the right. Felix caught the first with a glancing backswing of the pole saw. It disappeared in an explosion of fur and blood. The second leapt through the mid-air remains of the first, aimed at Felix’s face. F
elix swung the heavy motor end of the pole saw up just in time to swat the rabbit away. Its teeth crunched against the metal casing.
The pivoting swing on his one good leg set Felix off balance. His left went unguarded. A last rabbit jumped in and chomped down on his injured leg. The bolt of pain made him shudder and scream. He dropped the saw and grabbed the rabbit by the ears. The skin below its mangy fur crawled like an army of maggots squirmed within. Felix fought his revulsion and yanked the rabbit away. The bandage and a chunk of his flesh came with it. He slammed the rabbit against the concrete curb. It spit out the bloody muscle in its mouth and hissed. Felix bashed it twice more until the blue light in its eyes died.
Raindrops pummeled the gash in his leg and he felt like he was hit with a flight of arrows. He clamped the wound with his hand and fresh blood oozed through his fingers. This wound was deeper than the first. He was sure he’d seen bone. His head swam. He staggered over to the car on the shelter doors. He opened the car door and yanked the shifter from first to neutral.
He was about to pass out. He dragged himself along the side of the car to the rear, leaned his back against the trunk and pushed. Wind ripped a shredded palm frond against his face. His feet slipped out from under him and he slammed the back of his head against the car. It didn’t move.
He raised himself back into position. The world spun like he was on a carnival ride. He dug his feet in against a ridge on the shelter door and took a deep breath. He thought of his wife and children trapped just inches below him. He pushed.
The car rocked up on its springs and stayed there. Felix strained against it.
The car nudged forward.
Felix exhaled and gave another push. The car kept going. In two steps it rolled off the shelter doors.
Felix dropped to his knees and crawled onto the doors. He let loose his bleeding wound and pulled at the door handle. It didn’t move. His strength was gone. He collapsed against the door.
Inside the shelter, all was still. Flora sat with her back against the open interior exit doors. Each labored breath drew in only thick, stale air. She knew it would wind down like this. The people at her feet were either passed out from oxygen deprivation or dead. She did not want to know which. She had tried to save them all, and instead suffocated them all to death. Her mind wandered off to a day she’d spent at Sanibel Island as a child. Bright sun, warm water, wet sand between her toes…
A thud sounded behind her and she snapped back into the shelter.
My imagination…
It sounded twice again. Weak, but there.
Rescue? Was she dreaming?
She crawled up to the exterior doors, put her shoulder against one and pushed. It opened a few inches, then the wind outside caught it and threw it wide open. Fresh air blasted through the opening and rejuvenating rain splashed Flora’s face. She sucked in deep draughts of air and her mind came back to life. She saw Felix crumpled on the other door and pulled him down into the shelter.
The noise, the air and the ambient light brought the people in the shelter back to life. Sighs of joy and laughter rose from the floor.
Flora propped Felix up on the steps. She examined his bleeding leg with her flashlight.
“That’s one nasty bite,” she said.
He nodded to her. She grabbed a roll of paper towels from the supplies at the base of the step and started to wind them around his leg.
“Felix!” Carlina rushed to his side.
“Daddy!” Angela ran up and wrapped her arms around his neck.
Felix managed a weak smile and scanned the room through drooping eyelids. “Where’s Ricky?”
Carlina looked out through the shelter door into the heart of the storm.
“I wish I knew.”
Chapter Seventy-One
Outside the Apex plant, Walking Bear crouched in defense, knife drawn, with Dolly at his back. The panther was poised to spring at the lead alligator.
Then the sea of blue eyes faded away. The advancing animals paused as if they had just awakened from a strange collective dream. The panther snarled in confusion. The reptilian mass turned from the exposed parking lot and lumbered off to the safety of the surrounding scrub.
Dolly and Walking Bear watched in grateful bewilderment. The big cat trotted off to assist the gators in their retreat.
“Your son must have done something right,” Walking Bear said.
“Let’s get in there before something else goes wrong,” Dolly said.
The entrance door to the plant was off its hinges with the No in the No Trespassing sign spray painted over with a black X. They entered the plant straight to the former production floor.
Magician Lyle Miller stood within some kind of inscribed circle. He chanted in a strange language, arms outstretched. A blue aura, the same soft hue as the pulses from the tower outside, coated his body. Candles burned on stands around the circle, but something worse outside the circle caught Dolly’s breath. Denny and Chester stood guard, stony-faced and eyes aglow. Shane stood front and center, cane at the ready, face a charred misshapen mess from their last meeting. The evil power she’d felt within them at Elysian Fields was now off the charts. Lyle paused and gave the two an annoyed look.
“Well, the Addled Artist and the Chief,” he said. “Charging in to save the day. Too little and way too late.”
Lyle’s inner line of defense advanced on Dolly and Walking Bear. Shane pointed at Walking Bear.
“You two take the Indian,” Shane said. “I owe this bitch a new face.”
Denny and Chester rolled in on Walking Bear like a rogue wave. The Anamassee would normally be able to hold his own against the two smaller men, but Denny and Chester were no longer normal.
Shane grabbed Dolly by the front of her shirt and threw her into the wall. The hit knocked the wind out of her and she saw stars. Shane stalked after her and grabbed her again. He stuck his burned face right next to hers. His eyes watered and bulged in their lidless sockets. His breath reeked of charred, spoiled meat. He raised his cane to strike her.
“Take a last look at this face,” he said. “Your whole body is about to feel this way.”
The added life force within Shane practically crackled off his skin. The spirit guide had felt the same way. The armadillo’s message to her…to show her how…
She reached out and touched two fingers over Shane’s heart. The power within him flowed through her fingertips, a hundredfold stronger than when she touched the armadillo.
What little of Shane’s face still moved registered profound shock.
“You biiii–”
His grip on her loosened. As the energy drained from him, his legs went weak. He wobbled and collapsed on the floor.
Dolly felt the power of a goddess within her. She scooped Shane’s cane up from the floor and ran to Walking Bear. She pulled Denny off her friend and tossed Walking Bear the cane. She put her fingers to Denny’s heart. Energy drained from him, though not nearly the voltage Shane had on tap. Denny’s eyes went from blue to white to normal. Then he passed out.
Walking Bear hauled off with the cane and walloped Chester on the side of the head. Chester’s eyes drooped shut and he dropped like a sack of rocks.
Dolly turned to face Lyle. The life force that swelled within her made her feel invincible. She marched toward the circle.
Through the fight, Lyle had continued his incantation, eyes closed and seemingly unaware. But when Dolly stepped into the candlelight, his eyes snapped open and he turned to face her.
“What the hell?” He waved a hand in her direction. “Bakshokah gerza lop!”
The candle flames expanded into a defensive wall of fire around the circle. Dolly recoiled from the heat.
“I can’t finish this if I’m wasting time with you,” he said. “I always have to do everything myself.”
He chanted a lengthy spell. The fire around the circle billowed and swayed until it rose up in a pillar. The pillar tip formed the head of a dragon with great pointed ears and a cro
codilian snout. It spread its jaws and lunged. Dolly covered her face.
The fire dragon’s teeth snapped closed around Dolly’s shoulders and pulled her off the ground.
Chapter Seventy-Two
Outside the plant, the truck cab was eerily quiet. Andy dared hope that something good had finally happened. He rolled down the window an inch.
Near the fence, two enormous pythons held Vicente and a young woman in an intertwined death grip on the ground. One had already swallowed Vicente’s head. The other was up to Juliana’s calves. The alligators moved off into the scrub. There wasn’t a fleck of blue to be seen anywhere on the ground.
“I don’t know how,” Andy said. “But I think we won one.”
Autumn opened her door to the same scene of retreating reptiles. Above, the tower still sent out its swirling blue power bands. She stepped out of the cab and checked the twisted front bumper on the ground.
“Gators got the winch,” she said. “I am so doing a research paper on that. Plan B?”
Andy rolled down his window and looked up at the tower.
“Three tons of truck.”
“You can’t drive into that! Whatever that blue juice is will probably fry you!”
“I’ll jump out long before that. Climb out. I’ll need a running start on these rims.”
Autumn stifled a final protest and climbed down from the cab.
Andy wiped a section of the windshield clear. Back inside, he threw the truck into first and started a wide circle in the parking lot. Shredded rubber flapped around the rims as they sent up sparks from the pavement. As the truck headed back at the tower it was doing twenty. Fast enough for this much mass to crush the fence and cream the tower, but not too fast to do a Hollywood exit from a moving vehicle. He hoped. He popped the door open.
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