Lexie pulled herself into a tighter ball and tried to make sleep come. She had no idea how long she had been in her little leaf shelter. Despite building it in the dark, it was working. The steady rain couldn’t penetrate the dense leaves she had packed on the side and on top. She was still wet, though, from her run through the woods, and the fabric of her shirt and pants was rubbing her the wrong way. One more reminder why Mom always said to wear underwear. If she could at least nod off some, it would make the night more bearable.
Suddenly, she had a realization. She had dreamed strange dreams. Snippets of weirdness and jumbled plot lines. Something about Cam and Huey. The classic monster chase, where her legs felt like lead and she couldn’t move fast enough. Then one brief encounter with that survival hunk on one of the cable shows, who was throwing palm fronds on a bamboo hut on a warm beach, while Lexie lay completely nude inside on the sand. That one was actually pretty good, but she didn’t know how it ended. And weirdest of all, her dead husband, carrying a machete and walking in circles all night through the woods, looking for her little shelter.
I did sleep!
The rain continued to fall outside, and its pattering sound was somewhat comforting. Had she been in her bed, snuggled under her thick duvet, it would’ve been fantastic. But there was another sound, like a rhythmic hissing, breaking the cadence of the raindrops. And it was close.
Lexie opened her eyes but remained completely still. When she did, she realized she could see more detail inside her little home in the woods. Leaves below her, leaves above her. A leaf cocoon. She saw the thicker brown branches that made up the framework. At first, she thought her night vision had improved to its maximum. But this was too much. It was dawn, or daylight. She had no idea what time it was. Her watch was back at her house, probably now in the possession of those assholes from New Orleans.
But the steady hissing sound persisted. No, not hissing. Breathing. It was coming from behind her, at the entrance to the shelter. Just feet away.
With a start, Lexie flexed, turned over on her back and prepared to fight. But what she saw looking into her woodsy home left her speechless.
A voice said, “I thought you were dead.”
Lexie stared wide-eyed at the young woman who just spoke to her. Whoever she was, she had squatted down on her haunches to look inside the shelter. Her dark wet hair was matted to her scalp. There were scrapes on her pale face, and a small cut over her right eyebrow that had started to scab over. She wore a yellow raincoat that looked three sizes too big for her, and nothing else. Lexie could see her pale knees and ankles, also full of scratches and insect bites. The girl wasn’t wearing any shoes either. Or panties for that matter. A kindred spirit, Lexie thought.
“We gotta get the fuck outta here,” the girl said. Lexie noted how her big green eyes shifted to the left. There was fear in those eyes. And something else. A haunted look. They looked a little dilated, too. The girl was in mild shock.
Lexie rubbed her eyes and tried to shake off her own shock. “Who are you?” she said. The moment she did, she knew the answer.
“Mmm….M’Lou,” the girl said.
“M’Lou Marchand?” Lexie said.
The girl didn’t reply. Something caught her attention. There was a new noise. It was the distinct crack of wood breaking. Lexie’s first thought was the storm had moved ashore and was beginning to re-landscape the woods and swamps of south Louisiana.
“It’s coming. Please, get up!” M’Lou said.
A shiver worked its way down Lexie’s spine. M’Lou didn’t say they’re coming. No, it was that fear-inducing, shit-in-your-pants it’s coming. Lexie scooted on her ass across her leaf bed toward the entrance of the shelter. There was a real drop in temperature once she was out, probably due to her trapped body heat inside and the falling rain outside.
“What?” she asked. She brushed off her pants and looked around.
“There,” M’Lou said. She was pointing behind them.
Lexie turned around and looked into the woods. At first, her vision was overwhelmed by the vastness of it. Greens and browns, big tree trunks like nature’s own columns in a vast temple. Gray moss and vines hung everywhere. The entire scene was muted gray by the rain and the low clouds. Tall trees swayed in the increasing winds of Hurricane Tammy. The leaves were still green, faded slightly by the summer heat. They wouldn’t turn brown and drop until late November and December. This was Louisiana, after all. She was amazed that she had come through all that in the dead of night without running head on into a tree.
Lexie was about to turn back to M’Lou and ask again what she was talking about when she saw a tree move in the distance. Its swaying was out of sync with the other trees in the woods that were moving left and right with the rhythm of the fast-approaching hurricane. It looked like something had a hold of it and was shaking it.
Then she saw it.
Like everyone else who had seen the creature, her mind flipped through all the known animals of planet earth, past or present, to find a match. In about two seconds, Lexie’s brain came to a simple conclusion: no match. Get the fuck out of here.
“What the hell is that?” she said, more to herself than to M’Lou.
“Monster,” was all she heard from behind. “Run!”
Lexie started to run, but she was mesmerized by the thing coming toward them. It was maybe a hundred yards away. It was huge, standing on its hind legs. Looked to be half the height of most of the trees, maybe 20 feet or more, she thought. Hard to tell from this distance. It was grayish-white, with streaks of black on its skin. There was no fur. She wasn’t sure, but she thought it had a tail. Its head was huge, with giant brown-gray eyes. The mouth was as wide as a hippo. A hungry hippo. She now knew why some thought there might be one loose back in the swamp. But it wasn’t a hippo. The head was all wrong. Its features were more angular, sharper. And when it opened its mouth, the teeth were long and pointed. More T-Rex like, but also different. Sharper.
“Holy fuck,” she said. The thing pushed the tree down and looked directly at Lexie and M’Lou. It saw them.
“Go, go,” Lexie said, and she gave M’Lou a little push. There was no trail, just short stretches of open pathways through the underbrush and around giant oaks. It was more like a maze. Sometimes they ran directly away from the thing, other times it seemed they lost ground and had to move almost toward it to find another way. Lexie noticed the thing didn’t have this problem. It just walked over the underbrush. At times, it had to stop and squeeze between trees, and occasionally go around a thicker stand. When the overhang was too low, it just went on all fours and slinked under the growth like a giant, hairless rat.
Lexie could outrun M’Lou easily. The poor girl didn’t have any shoes on, and there were sharp sticks and pieces of briar all over the floor of the woods. The classic line, “I don’t have to be faster than the bear, I just have to be faster than you” ran through her mind. But Lexie was in “Protect and Defend” cop mode now, and no way was she going to abandon the kid just so she could survive. But she had a little voice whispering in her ear also. It said, “Bullshit. When it gets down to survival, your ass is outta here.” Survival of the fittest. And the fastest. The one wearing shoes always survives.
Well, except for Floyd. He died with his boots on.
Lexie heard another crack whoosh and turned to see a big ash tree hit the ground. The thing was gaining on them. It was deceptively fast.
“Watch out for its tongue,” M’Lou said through gasps. “Long, fast, like a frog. It can grab things with it.”
Lexie looked back again, but the thing’s tongue was still in its mouth, but she could see its teeth. “Run faster,” she said, and helped M’Lou along. Lexie looked up at the low gray clouds. A big raindrop hit her square in the eye. She wiped it and looked again. The flat light was all around them, and she couldn’t tell where the sun was in the sky. She had no idea which way they were headed now. But navigation wasn’t important anyway. They just had to outrun this thing.
Lexie heard M’Lou whimpering between gasps for air. She was also making a weird animal noise that sounded like a series of short, staccato screams. It was the sound of prey just before it died, Lexie thought.
So this what the thing Troy and Carla had seen. It had attacked them inside his truck and gone along for a short ride, too. Probably what Lee Curtis saw in the bayou behind his house. Surely the last thing Floyd Guidry had seen before he died. Lexie tried to process what it might be. She went through all their earlier theories: man-made, alien, last-of-its-kind dinosaur. Nothing made sense, and at the moment, it wasn’t a big priority on today’s to-do list.
M’Lou hit a low tree branch and went sprawling. Lexie’s momentum carried her forward and she tripped over the girl’s fallen body and landed hard on some tree roots that ran across the ground. She saw stars for a moment, closed her eyes and shook it off. When she opened them, M’Lou was still on the ground, curled up in the fetal position and crying like a baby.
Lexie scambled to her feet and glanced back to locate the thing. It was still picking its way through the thick woods, but it had made up ground. She shook M’Lou hard.
“C’mon, M’Lou. Get up. Let’s go!”
“Cccca…can’t,” she said. She was still in a ball, but shaking furiously. Lexie figured the girl was just out of gas. As tired as Lexie was from her night of adventure, this girl had been out in the swamps for days and nights, certainly since Floyd was killed. What was that? Three, four days ago? Lexie couldn’t imagine being lost for that long in the swamps, never mind being pursued by that thing back there. It was amazing that M’Lou was still alive. Snakes, gators, insects and other weird shit made a stroll through the Atchafalaya a bit problematic. Despite M’Lou’s present physical and mental shape, she was a tough kid. Lexie couldn’t imagine letting her die now.
“Get your ass moving, M’Lou!” Lexie pulled the girl to her feet. She half hung from Lexie’s powerful grip, but managed to put her bare feet into the soggy ground and stand. “We can do this. It can’t catch us in these woods,” Lexie said. She didn’t believe it for one second, but she was giving M’Lou the halftime locker room speech. “Hey, we’re only down four touchdowns. We can win this thing!”
With no further urging, M’Lou started to trot. Lexie followed and they were on the move again. There was a loud hissing sound from somewhere behind them. Like air being released from a huge tire. Lexie knew it was the thing. She kept expecting it to roar like a dinosaur or a lion or something, but all she got was a big hiss. Lexie took another look back and saw what caused the thing to make the noise. It was its tongue, now darting in and out of its mouth. Not like a snake, but more like a frog. The tongue was ridiculously long, shooting out this way and that. It finally shot almost straight up, into a big tupelo tree. When the tongue retracted, it had a big fat raccoon attached to it. The little furry bandit disappeared into the thing’s gaping mouth. That snack complete, it turned its attention back on Lexie and M’Lou.
“Son of a bitch,” Lexie muttered.
The rain continued to sluice down out of the trees. The wind caused them to move back and forth in a kind of slow dance that any other time would be fascinating to watch. Lexie didn’t know when the hurricane was supposed to make landfall. The last time she had heard a report was last night, just before she got home. There was talk of it slowing down, so maybe the shit wouldn’t hit the fan till late this afternoon or even tonight. The problem was, the shit had already hit the fan for Lexie, beginning last night and continuing on to this very moment. Hurricane Tammy would be the last pile of doo-doo to hit those wonderful rotating blades.
Lexie noticed the ground was sloping downward a bit and it helped with their speed, despite their constant dodging of tree trunks and limbs. The palmetto was starting to get thicker, too. The sharp fronds ripped at her legs, but at least she had pants on. M’Lou was catching the worst of it, though. But what really had her worried were the sounds coming from behind them. The thing was tearing up the woods, pushing more trees down, and now throwing branches as well. It was like a bulldozer and stump shredder going full force. Lexie got the distinct feeling the thing was now royally pissed.
But that worry was quickly supplanted by a new one as she and M’Lou skidded to a stop after rounding a huge magnolia tree.
It was the edge of the swamp, where the low land of the woods met the water. As far as they could see was water, full of cypress and tupelo. Raindrops peppered its surface.
“Crap,” Lexie said. She bent down and grabbed her knees, trying to catch her breath. M’Lou just staggered around in a small circle.
Lexie had lived around here long enough to know that the swamp’s depth ranged from a few feet to ten or more. Even if they wanted to wade into it, they’d be over their heads in minutes. And the thing chasing them was apparently well familiar with swimming in the bayou. It would catch them in seconds. She wished she had a compass, or the damn sun could be located through the rainy, swirling gray clouds. Her choices were simple, left or right. Straight was sure death. She looked up again at the clouds. They were moving from her right to her left at a pretty good clip. What did that tell her? She thought a second. Most weather moved west to east, but today the weather was dominated by Hurricane Tammy. The storm rotated counterclockwise, and was still probably just offshore. That meant the prevailing winds were blowing east to west, pushed by the motion of the giant, spinning storm. And that meant she was looking north.
“Let’s go!” she said, and grabbed M’Lou by the arm and turned to her right. There was some comfort for her now that she had some sense of direction. The road was ahead somewhere, how many miles she didn’t know. Could they actually stay ahead of this thing for miles? She doubted it.
Lexie and M’Lou scurried along the edge of the swamp. It was a little more open here, and they made quick time. She glanced back at the thing and saw it too was fast approaching the water’s edge. At any moment it would turn and follow them. But it did something entirely unexpected.
It jumped into the water.