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Max Gator opens its blood-soaked jaws wide and lunges for me at the very moment the grenade shoots from the tube. It goes right down her throat and explodes. Her entire midsection blows apart, spraying the walls, windows, and ceiling of the office with her guts, bone, skin, and blood. The rest of her body lights up in a terrific alcohol-induced fire.
Wiping some of the carnage from my face with the back of my hand, I can’t help but notice that she’s still somehow alive. She’s screaming a high-pitched wail. But the wailing is getting weaker and weaker by the second as life escapes her. With most of her nearly completely severed skull and snout intact, she peers at me with eyes that roll into the back of her skull, just like Leach’s did moments ago when death finally touched him. What’s left of her drops to the floor, dead weight. It’s then I know for certain, that Max Gator is finally dead.
I could just stand there and stare at the dead monster for a while, as the lightning flashes on its mutilated and burning corpse. But Blood is bleeding out downstairs. He needs help immediately or I’m going to lose him. I go to Leach’s phone and grip the handset. Assuming the governor was the last person he spoke to, I press redial. Much to my surprise, someone picks up after only three rings.
“Governor’s line,” someone barks.
The fire is so hot now and the stench of burning gator so foul, I carry the phone to the opposite side of the office. Luckily, there’s enough landline to accommodate me.
“I’m calling from Warden Leach’s office at the Overlook Ultra Super Max Prison,” I say. “Is this, in fact, the Governor?”
“You know it’s the governor, Leach,” he snaps. “Don’t know if you noticed, but I’ve still got a serious fucking emergency on my hands. This hurricane doesn’t want to let up.”
“First things first, your excellency,” I said. “Leach is dead. They’re all dead. Most of them anyway. A few are still alive and need medical attention immediately. We need four ambulances now. Stat. Understand?”
There’s some commotion in the background, and the sound of pouring rain, wind, and thunder. Something tells me the governor isn’t lying. The hurricane isn’t letting up but instead, getting worse. It doesn’t matter. We still need those ambulances.
“You listen to me, pal,” the governor says in a gruff voice. “I don’t know who the fuck you are, or where you get off demanding even a stick of gum from me. But I’m up to my ass in civilian casualties from this storm. Civilians equal voters, get it? I already gave Leach what I could spare for his second-in-command. The rest of the EMT teams are needed for this damn storm. You got that?”
“Gonna be a damn shame when I head outside and talk to that MSNBC reporter about how you’ve been grafting money from this private super max ever since they broke ground. No, actually, I’m wrong about that. How do you think they got a permit to build this place on what was environmentally protected swampland and Everglades? It’ll be no surprise a monster like Max Gator was agitated enough to breach the prison and take her revenge on all the humans who occupied this place. In fact, news of what you’ve done will not only destroy your political career and your, um, anticipated run for president, it’ll end you up in federal prison for a stint that would make Joe and Hunter fucking Biden blush. You getting my drift here...Governor?”
Other than the nasty elements raging outside his van window, the Governor goes silent. I picture the clean-shaven, stocky, black-haired man seated in the shotgun seat, a laptop open before him broadcasting a satellite image of the hurricane as it gets worse, with maybe a smaller interior screen open that’s showing live reports of the carnage happening at The Oven, the private ultra super-max prison that’s been lining his pockets for years now.
“Who the fuck are you?” he repeats.
My eyes gravitate to the dead and destroyed gator, its burnt flesh and dark, nearly black blood that now covers almost the entirety of the office floor.
“Just a concerned citizen,” I say. “And as of now, a free citizen.”
“The ambulances will be there in five minutes,” the governor spits.
I want to thank him since that’s the way my parents raised me. But he’s already cut the connection. Dropping the phone to the floor, I walk back to Leach’s desk, the thick layer of blood sticky under the rubber soles on my sneakers. Opening the top drawer, I find both the signed contracts for Blood’s and my immediate release and an envelope that contains forty thousand in cash. Twenty for Blood and twenty for me. It won’t be enough to live on, but it will give us a new start for a few months anyway. We’ll have to go on living with the memory of Max Gator and all the killing she did. But it beats being locked up inside The Oven for even one more grueling day.
Lightning flashes and a crack of thunder rattles the concrete walls and my bones, but for some reason, I find myself smiling. I head for the open office door. All goes well, I’ll never step foot inside this hell on earth again.