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Leach is seated in his swivel chair behind his desk. His eyes are not only wide open, but they seem to be bulging out of their sockets. He’s still alive, but not for long. His face is drained of all its blood. He spots me and tries to say something, and yet it’s impossible for him to utter even a single word. Max Gator’s body from the tip of snout to tip of tail, takes up most of the office. To say she smells like putrid shit is putting it so mildly as to be laughable. She’s slowly eating the warden, consuming him like a giant anaconda might consume a hog, bit by bit; pound of flesh by pound of flesh.
At this point, I feel all fear leave my body. Shouldering the M16, I take a step forward to get a better shot at the feasting but wounded beast. I have no time to spare. My brother from another mother is downstairs, bleeding out.
“I need another ambulance, Warden,” I say as casually as ordering a Whopper from the Burger King takeout window. “But first, I’m going to kill Max Gator. It’s likely you will die too. Collateral damage the soldiers call it.”
Leach gives me one more wide-eyed horrified look while blood begins to pour out both corners of his mouth. He nods in approval. No, that’s not right. He nods because he doesn’t want to go on living a second longer, any more than Arty did when he asked me to kill him.
Max Gator is so consumed with feeding on the warden, that she doesn’t take any notice of me. She must realize I’m standing in the room and that I represent a threat to her. She must know I’m here to kill her. But it’s as though she is taking so much pleasure out of tearing the leader of this private super ultra-max prison to shreds that nothing else matters in the world. Not all the men she’s killed, not the hurricane, not the fact that she must realize she’s not crawling out of this prison alive.
Or maybe I’m giving the rabid giant animal way too much credit. Maybe it’s simply acting on instinct and has no clue what it’s doing other than what it’s been programmed to do. And that is to kill and feed, as much as possible. I have one grenade left. If it doesn’t do the job, my assumptions about her not getting out of here alive will be all wrong. It will be me who won’t get out alive. Blood will die too and all the fault will rest with me.
How can I be sure I will kill Max Gator with this one last grenade?
“She not only needs to be hit with the explosive, but she needs to burn,” I whisper to myself. “But it’s not like there’s gasoline stored up here.”
I spot the whiskey bottle on Leach’s desk. My spinning brain goes to work, despite the exhaustion that plagues it.
“Whiskey,” I say.
I give Leach a good look. His eyes are rolling back in their sockets and a gusher of arterial blood is pouring out his mouth and nostrils as the gator completely separates his lower torso from the upper portion. Now’s the time to make my move or I’ll never have another. I go to the storage closet located near the narrow opening between the warden’s office and his assistant. Opening the door, I find not quarts, but gallons of whiskey.
“Whiskey is flammable,” I say.
Shouldering my mini-M16, I grab three of them and make my way back across the office to where Max Gator continues to feed on the now-dead Leach like it doesn’t want to miss even a single succulent morsel of human flesh. I make my way around the back of Leach and, when the creature opens its mouth wide, I toss in all three gallons of whiskey.
Clamping its jaws shut, Max Gator begins to choke. I suppose I could wait to see if it chokes to death, but I’m not betting on it. I pull the M16 off my shoulder and take aim with the grenade launcher. That’s when Max Gator looks me in the eyes with her dark green, lifeless eyes. She’s no longer choking, having swallowed the three gallons of whiskey whole. I swear to Christ, she’s smiling at me if such a thing is possible. She’s smiling at me like I’m her next meal. And I am, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m now aiming the M16 at her, point-blank.
“Later gator,” I say in my best imitation Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Laughing out loud, I pull the trigger.