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Slimy green pillars supported the mansion above the swamp. Walls of mosquito nets ran along the walkway only accessible by boat. Waylon Wilson was at the front door, the sun heating his black Barmah hat studded in crocodilian teeth. The face below was scarred, fretted, its wide nose sniffing the sulfuric stench of 1,000 corpses.
A mosquito landed on a croc tooth. He slapped it dead as quickly as a Venus trap. Then the door opened to a woman and a man wearing bikinis. Playmate was written on the bras atop their hourglasses.
“They’re expecting you,” the man murmured.
Both smiled at the stoic guest.
“Show me the way,” Waylon said, his voice dry leather.
They turned, revealing thongs.
Waylon whistled. “Your employer knows how to make a guy feel welcomed.”
They ushered him to the stairwell. Each step clanged during his descent. The stairs dipped to a soundproof room of maps, filing cabinets, and women and men typing on computers. Eli Oz stood in a tailored suit with a red bow tie, studying the giant map hanging on the western wall. A younger man was standing next to him. Both were sipping screwdrivers through curled straws.
“Mr. Wilson,” he said without looking, “your arrival is punctual.” He turned to the new arrival. Eli’s face was smooth at fifty-five-years-old, except for the scar zigzagging his brow. His hand stretched. Waylon shook it.
Eli pointed at the map on the western wall. “Soon we’ll rule the coke trade in ten more counties. I’m teaching the ropes to my son.”
“It’s a lot to remember,” Max Oz said.
“You’re 27, son. Al Capone was the biggest bootlegger by 26. And Escobar started a cartel before he was 30.”
“That was long ago.”
“And crime can still be organized.” He patted Waylon’s back. “Mr. Wilson, are you ready to make the tropics snow?”
“I’ve never seen a flake.”
“You’re about to see the blizzard.”
Eli strolled to the vault in the far-right corner. Standing on a hatch, he punched digits into the keypad. Then he turned the baton-shaped handle. There was a hiss followed by a steel squeak. Waylon peered in at the piles of white bricks.
“It’s Christmas,” he said.
“We’re keeping Christ in Christmas,” Eli explained. “Look in the crate.”
The crate was inside, butting against the entry. Waylon removed the lid. A stack of wooden Bibles lay inside. He lifted one and opened the cover. Instead of Genesis, he was staring at a snowy brick.
“This is your shipment,” Eli said. “Oh. One more thing.” Waylon was at full attention as his boss held up a business suit. “You’ll dress and act like a missionary.”
A middle-aged woman bespectacled in thick-rimmed glasses darted into the room. Eli impatiently shut the vault.
“She must be the accountant,” Waylon assumed.
“Communications manager,” Eli said. “What is it, Kathy?”
She stiffened. “Victor Bella, sir. He sent an encoded threat, warning about moving into his turf. He threatened to send a kill squad.”
Eli hurled his glass. It shattered on the vault. Waylon calmly stepped aside. Eli gritted his teeth, crinkled his face. Max backed into a corner.
“I’ll fucking bury that cockroach! Every dog has its day. He’s finished—fucking finished! Am I clear?”
The breath of oranges and vodka was a cloud. She hesitated, then said, “Yes, sir.”
“You’re excused.”
She briskly ascended the steps.
Mr. Wilson whistled. “Kill squad...”
Eli perked his eyebrows. “I’m not afraid of any man!”
“I believe you...sir. And I’ll do the job. I can use the pay.”
“Nobody pays as well as I do.” To the staff, he said, “Help this man fill the boat. We’re ready.” Under his breath, he added, “Fucking Victor Bella. He’s nothing.” Then the roomful of ears were rattled: “NOTHING!”
“He doesn’t scare me, either,” Waylon replied. “I grew up fighting, spent time homeless, went to jail, killed 200 crocs and gators. Only one thing scares me.”
“What scares you, tough guy?”
He reopened the vault and with the help of staff scooted the crate closer to the hatch.
“Terrorizer.”
Eli crunched his face.
“Terrorizer’s an old croc,” Waylon went on. “Hell, some say he’s been alive since the dinosaurs. Killed 900 people, legend claims. And he’s a big boy. Nobody knows how big. Some say he’s a 40-footer. But I never saw him. Never want to see him. They should call him Terrorizer the Torturer. Because he doesn’t just terrorize and kill. Terrorizer takes his time torturing you.”
“Sounds like a movie,” Max said.
“Movies get ideas from the real world.”
“Sounds like a story my competition would make up to scare me,” Eli said.
Waylon changed into the suit. The hatch opened to a small blue motorboat anchored in the swamp. The Bibles were piled into the duffle bag on the stern, and then he squeezed into the driver’s seat. Eli dropped two Bibles into Waylon’s lap. “We carry extras for collateral. You’ll meet the other missionary after the fourth curve in the swamp. Hand him the Gospels and promptly return.”
Waylon tossed the collateral into the duffle bag, used his hunting knife to cut the anchor’s line. His wrist straightened, his elbow inclined slightly forward, his upper arm went horizontal. He fired off a salute, turned the key in the ignition. The boat hummed between the pillars and reached the straight stretch.
After passing the second bend, he grimaced at a trio on a dinghy.
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Terrorizer bent his legs against the sides of his body, pushed forward, making quietly lateral wavelike motions with his tail. Mystic yellow eyes, witches’ crystal balls, blinked at the fiery halo suspended above the mangrove.
Terrorizer turned 200-years-old today, making him the oldest croc in the world. He was losing his will to live. His appetite was gone, except for his craving for vegetation. Meat increasingly tasted of leather boots caked in metal. His reign of terror was over. Not because of the hunters and their guns. Not because prey had fought back. It had taken the death of his carnivorous appetite to kill the reign, which was a result of life itself becoming fatigue. Five years before his bicentennial, eating, sleeping, and excreting had become unbearable chores.
The old beast released air from crusty lungs and sank below the surface. He swam diagonally, turning his tail counterclockwise. In a few seconds his body was vertically inverted, descending sixty feet at a speed both fast and silent.
His jaws clamped a bustle of reeds. They were juicy but hard, sort of like the expired spinach he had once eaten out of a human gut. He finished his vegan entrée and swam angularly toward the surface.
The sudden humming equated to nails scraping a chalkboard in his ears. Water rippled, curled, and splashed. There was a thump as a trail of bubbles shot into his nostrils. A book—no, a secret compartment—dived, summersaulted, and ejected a brick that struck his nose.
Waylon peered back. The branch the hull had struck had split into two halves. He noticed that a Bible was missing.
“No crime without collateral.”
Terrorizer opened his jaws. Their reptilian knives punctured in and out of the solid. A powder exploded, flying down his throat. He jerked violently and swallowed the rest.
This prey tasted of kerosene and sulfuric acid. Terrorizer considered that he had swallowed meat. His stomach spun. The chemical aftertaste seemed welded to his tongue. He breached the surface. A water machine was disappearing under the ball of fire. His mouth flapped, tongue twitching. The V pushed forward.
The motorboat curved twice, thrice. A large airboat idled in the widening calm after the fourth curve. The driver was wearing a business suit and a mask. Mr. Wilson parked beside the vessel. After removing one Bible, he tossed the duffle bag into the craft.
Giving a salute, he said, “Merry Christmas and praise Jesus.”
With that, he sped to the mansion. A massive shadow floated below the surface around the last bend. Was it—
He glanced at the sun.
“Tricking me with your reflections, Apollo?”
He parked and tied the boat to the ladder. Then he climbed and knocked on the hatch. Instantly it opened to Max.
“Dad wanted me to ask how it went.”
“As perfect as could be.”
“He’ll be happy.”
Max took Waylon’s hand, which was twice the size of his own.
“I’ve got it,” Waylon said, breaking the grip and pulling himself through the hatch.
“You must be strong,” Max said.
“As strong as a mule. But put a mule in this swamp and it’ll come up soup.”
He thought about the shadow.
“But humans are the dominators.”
A low chuckle escaped Waylon’s dry lips. “We aren’t at the top of the food chain. We even built cities to hide from these beasts.”
“That’s a way to put it.”
“Just sticking to truth.”
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Terrorizer was basking in a clearing he’d made with his tail. The bitter chemicals on his tongue finally retreated. An electrical wave was crashing into his limbs. It grew, wrapping his underbelly and back. Then it blew into his brain, washed him anew. Every scale was dancing to the beat of vibrations. It was as if cushions were channeling fluffy energy into his elder bones.
His stomach growled. He started crawling toward lily pads. The crawl broke into a full throttle. He bellyflopped into the water and accelerated in the direction of the machine. A realization struck like the blue forks that sometimes pronged his home at night: he was alive.
The V-shape pushed faster than it had during its tenure as a lower-case letter.
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Eli and his son were sitting side by side across from Waylon. Plates of pot roast prepared by the chef set on the table.
“This is the best meat I’ve had,” Waylon said.
“We keep our employees happy,” Eli replied. “Right, son?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I know you won’t let me down, son. You’re going to be my right-hand man next month.”
Max’s spoon dangled.
“What did you season this with?” Waylon asked.
“Salt and pepper.”
“It has a unique ting.”
“It’s the meat.” He paused, studying Waylon. “We don’t eat competition for breakfast. We save them for lunch.”
“So, that’s the secret recipe.” He winked at his boss.
“You’re a good man, Mr. Wilson.”
“It doesn’t bother me. I used to eat raw rabbits and live inside gutted oxen. Rabbits aren’t human. Then again,” he shrugged, “they don’t taste as good as this.”
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A mother alligator was hissing and growling at the twin teen gators closing in on her nest. She alternated to the front, to the back. They were outmaneuvering her, drawing closer. As her hiss heightened, they snapped at her limbs. Terrorizer exploded out of the watery calm, sprinted to the nest, and clamped his jaws around the throat of Gator #1 while slamming his tail into the back of Gator #2.
With Gator #1 hanging in his mouth and Gator #2’s calcium ground into dust, he bellyflopped back into the water. Reptilian blades put a dozen shallow punctures in the gator’s throat. Water mingled with blood, supplementing salinity.
Terrorizer relinquished his hold. The gator struggled to the surface. It gagged, wheezed, choked. Terrorizer drew his big V onto the surface and grinned.
The mother was hidden inside a Coontie palm. At night the swamp shared secrets with the rest of the earth. She had heard the whispers about a croc named Terrorizer. Sometimes the howl of the wind emphasized the terrible legend. And she knew this intruder fit the earth’s description.
Terrorizer sniffed the nest. An egg crackled, cracked. A tiny head appeared and viewed the world for the first time. Saliva dripped out of Terrorizer ’s jaws. A glob fell onto the baby gator. Now it saw that the world was nothing but hazy olive green. Terrorizer dug into the nest and swallowed it whole. The meal tasted of woody boiled eggs. Dead tastebuds resurrected in the name of Meat. He fidgeted, circled aimlessly, and then dived into the depths.
––––––––
“I’m pleased you enjoyed our exquisite cuisine,” Eli said, deck planks groaning under his stride.
“I feel full of delights,” Waylon replied. “And, though it’s delicious, I bet the meat is economical.”
“In more than one way.”
They laughed.
Eli patted Waylon’s shoulder. The water below their feet splashed spasmodically. Waylon dashed to the railing. All was motionless. He lifted his Barmah and brushed away sweat.
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Terrorizer moved side to side in an S-shaped pattern. A swarm of fish raced in the opposite direction. He splayed his feet and thrust his tail until he was passing through the mouth of the cave. Then he bellycrawled onto the flat rock in an air pocket, where dark crimson stained most of the surface. He high stepped to the back corner and spotted the crusty opaque triangle atop dried, discolored yolk stains. A tear fell, sizzling like a spark. His brain played a 150-year-old reel: Claudia and he were on the flat rock, before the waterline was high. She lay incubating her eggs while he was sharpening his claws on a stalactite. She looked at him and he purred. They talked about how wonderful life was going to be as a mother and a father, as a family. He crawled forward and caressed the eggs. Inwardly, a softness glowed. His four-chambered heart multiplied its rooms, growing into a mansion of love.
“They’re in here!” a man barked.
Splash-splash-splash!
A disheveled quintet pointed skinny barrels and squeaky lights. Terrorizer , Claudia, and their nest were illuminated as bullets echoed, ricocheted, and pierced. Eggs exploded, yolk splattering the wall. Shells reduced Claudia to half a face. A fragment hit Terrorizer ’s tail, chipping off a scale. He charged the attackers. A hail of gunfire ripped off pieces of his armor and burned into his flesh. Descending, he escaped through the smaller side entry, thrashing his tail enough to delay the next shots.
The following week, the quintet was sitting on outstretched logs on the eastern bank of the swamp. They put the surviving hatchlings on trays and then removed tiny steel saws, pliers, and scalpels out of a red bag. The trays shook. Firmly gripping them, the men started hacking, sawing, and pulling at the subjects. Laughter erupted with pained squeals.
Terrorizer’s ears rang louder than the bullets that had damaged his body. Sore and stinging, skeleton aching, he sank until he was out of earshot.
The cloudy reel burst as rain pitter pattered above the cave. He scanned the flat rock. The blood and yolk were old stains again. A vibration circulated, stirring his hemoglobin. His limbs were weightless. His stomach: a rumbling engine.
He was alive and planned to feast on the mangrove until it was red.
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Duff King leaned over the dinghy and dipped the meter into the water. Lincoln was sitting in Zelda King’s lap. Her free hand clenched a notepad and pen. A shadow no larger than the meter passed by Duff. Ripples expanded as the multicolored fin sliced the waterline.
“A fish,” Duff remarked. “Look at its colors!”
“Nature is beautiful,” Zelda said, smiling.
“Nature’s cool,” Lincoln added.
“Nature is beauty,” Duff philosophized.
“You just solved the metaphysical problem with beauty,” she said with a wink.
“Nature and my wife showed me the light.”
He lifted the test tube. A swamp-colored liquid rose to the top arrow.
“One hundred percent pure.”
“We’re blessed to be the first researchers here.”
He kissed her lips.
“This little expedition will get us into the National Geographic.”
“I just wish we hadn’t brought Lincoln. It’s too dangerous for him.”
Frowning, Lincoln said, “Mom, I can hear you. Hey. Let me go swimming.”
“No, Lincoln,” they said in unison.
He wore his angelic beggar’s face. “Please.”
“I said ‘No.’”
He reclined in the seat and folded his arms.
“But Mommy still loves you,” she said, kissing his cheek.
“I love you, too,” he mumbled.
“The swamp can be dangerous, Lincoln.”
“Sometimes it can be,” Duff said. “Not always.”
She corrected, “No, always.”
“What happened to nature being beauty?” Duff asked.
“Nature is beautiful...at a distance.”
“Come on, hun. We humans are the most dangerous creatures. Did you know we kill more humans than any other species, except for mosquitos? We’ve raped and ravished the earth, depleted resources and biodiversity, created war and genocide. But the other animals are harmoniously helping the planet.”
“And where do we come from, Mr. Philosopher?”
“Yes, we’re part of nature. But we’re also different. We’re apex predators. Our longer opposable thumbs, prefrontal cortex consciousness, and biological organization grant us superiority.” He ruffled Lincoln’s hair. “That’s why you and your classmates can’t keep fearing the outdoors. Nature is wonderful, but we’re more important. We’re not just meat or prey.”
Thump!
The dinghy spun 180 degrees. One of the gunwales splintered, water spraying. Duff screamed, and Zelda turned to her son as he fell overboard and disappeared in the watery eruption.
“No!” she shrieked, then dived off the gunwale.
Inside the swamp, a new world. Lincoln’s arms were dangling frantically. A red pigment was breaking up the dark green uniformity. His screams turned to gasps. She lunged forward, but the distance widened. He was going down, down, down. She tightened her breath and swam in his direction.
Lincoln was being quickly turned around. A gushing sound echoed near her ears. Gazing downward, she saw the scaly tail.
Duff was standing on the gunwale when she surfaced, water and tears cascading below deepening wrinkles.
“Something took our baby!”
Half an hour later, Terrorizer returned to the sunken boat.
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Terrorizer was swimming an inch above the waterline when the buzzing started. It was distant, determined, coming out of the sun like bees. He roared and dashed behind a line of palms.
The kill squad was driving 30 armored airboats equipped with deck guns and tall gunwales. (Each vessel harbored three people.) They slowed as the mangrove narrowed and the greenery thickened. Suddenly the lead boat stopped, splashing water onto the bow behind it. The other vessels halted their advance.
“I heard a noise,” the driver of the first boat said.
She and the gunners turned to the right, where a row of spiky bushes and cypresses hid that side of the wetland.
“Help us!” a woman cried.
The mercenaries squinted at the couple sprawled on a branch. Zelda’s spinal column was partially exposed, and her husband’s eyes jerked on a skinless face.
Whoosh! Crack. Snap.
The cypress fell forward, dropping Zelda and Duff and landing on the first craft, halving it in a burst of water. Another tree fell. The trunk hit the stern of a vessel, flipping the hull faceup. The canopy knocked the driver behind it out of his seat. Then another tree fell into the one beside it, in turn knocking loose the closest companion tree.
A sudden roar hollowed out a hemisphere. The kill squad fired aimlessly at the bank. Trees continued falling. Craft after craft wrecked, broke, exploded. Once enough trees to load a freighter had fallen, Terrorizer charged from behind the stumps and palms. Energy—life—was supercharging every scale. He stood on his back legs, bent them, and jumped over the water and the boats, carefully clenching the arm of a gunner. The screaming man’s sinew dangled between the limb’s upper and lower sections. Terrorizer released the clench in exchange for a nibble on the ankle. Only nibbles would do. Too much too fast and he wouldn’t be truly terrifying. The screams were bloodcurdling. But not to Terrorizer. His blood already curdled in the best of ways.
Once the man was wounded beyond movement and begged to die, Terrorizer plunged into the fire-licked water. He was an acrobat spinning, flipping, and dancing under the destruction. Fire grew, diminished, grew again. His tail stirred a frenzy of splashes, which extinguished the flames.
Some members of the kill squad lay prostrate on the banks, their blood drowning ant colonies. He grinned and winked a wink that said, I’ll be back. Then he licked the sinew of the one he’d pulled off the boat in midair. His stomach vibrated. His tastebuds were euphoric. Stringy tissue was a delicacy. He bit a sample out of the shoulder, careful to avoid major arteries. The taste: filet mignon dipped in the finest red sauce.
For the following hour, he tortured the living and ate the dead.
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After passing the straight stretch, Terrorizer swam abruptly under the mansion. The internal electricity was receding, being replaced by a headache and fatigue. His legs began aching and his nose watered slime. Sniffing nail polish and gasoline, he dived to the bottom. A white brick lay tangled in weeds. The smell had become part of him, supplying lifeforce, reanimating appetite, electrically washing him anew. He gobbled the brick, his blades causing faint explosions of powder.
His bioelectricity intensified. His body vibrated. Terrorizer was young and fresh, on the high end of high.
“The screams stopped,” Max said. He was on the back deck, smoking a bowl with Waylon and the playmates. “What do you think it was?” As smoke exited his orifice, his eyebrows perked at Waylon.
“Some things are best not known.”
“What about the explosions?” He turned to the others. “You guys heard, right?”
“Everybody heard,” the woman answered.
“It was ear-splitting. The swamp’s always quiet.”
Waylon said, “May I ask you a question?”
Max nodded.
“Did you expect this sort of lifestyle to stay quiet?”
“What?”
“Tropical swamps and snow don’t mix without combustion.”
With a puzzled expression, Max leaned over the railing, shaded his eyes with a sideways hand, and gazed long into the mangrove. A mosquito landed on his brow. He swatted and missed as it took flight. “All quiet on the Western front.”
“If it’s the quiet front I’m thinking of, most the characters died.”
Crossing his arms, Max said, “My dad hires you and you bring nothing but gloom.”
“Gloom and money.”
Max paced the deck. (The marijuana had failed to ease his unease.) The man in the Playmate outfit noticed a swelling in his bladder. He raced to the edge of the deck, which faced the side of the property, and urinated through the crack between the planks. Meantime, Terrorizer ’s V eagerly surfaced. He sniffed with eager enthusiasm as urine rained onto his head and into his eyes. A hot electrified liquid filling his witches’ crystals and somehow further energizing him.
Water faintly splashed below the deck. The playmate dipped his head over the railing and scanned the surroundings. There was another splash. When he tilted toward the sound, wood exploded. Terrorizer sprang upward with the legion of splinters and giant planks, gingerly clenching the playmate’s torso, soaring over the railing, and diving into the depths, where he was taking the body to his torture chamber in the grotto.
A support beam snapped, causing the entire back deck to sway. Waylon and the others were opening the back screen when Terrorizer charged the pillars. The mansion shook violently. The surviving playmate and Max opened and raced through the back door. He fell over a wicker chair. She helped him to his feet as Waylon entered.
“What the fuck was that!?” Max shouted. His nails dug into his scalp.
Waylon peered out the screen door. Pieces of wood drifted by in the quiet. A black-gray sparrow was foraging for insects in a palm.
“It’s him.”
“What?”
“Has to be.”
“That fucking thing was, like, 30 feet!” the playmate said.
“Thirty-five,” Waylon said. “Maybe 40.”
“What are we going to do?”
Below, a buzzer buzzed harshly. A door hissed. Metal steps rattled. Then Eli turned the corner.
“What the fuck is going on?” His nose was red, his eyes disassociated. His skin retracted. “The downstairs shook.” Worry gleamed in his eyes.
“Terrorizer.”
“Bullshit! This isn’t time for stories.”
“See for yourself, Mr. Oz.”
A roar erupted, rattling the glass.
Whoosh!
The floor quaked. Eli raced to a gun cabinet, turned the dial, opened the heavy door, and removed his pump action shotgun as well as an eighth ball. The bag was ripped, spilling snow across the top of the gun case. He used his nails to form a line. This he snorted. His body jolted and he spun around. A bead of sweat bloomed on his brow.
“Nobody fucks with my home!” He looked at Max. “Son, always remember to protect the product. At all costs!” He pumped the gun and opened the backdoor. “Come on, Mr. Wilson!”
Waylon removed a desert eagle from his back pocket.
“Dad, I never thought I’d say this...but I’m glad you hired a stereotypical macho man. They always save the day.”
“That’s the only thing they’re good for,” the playmate said.
WHOOSH!
SNAP!
The deck was swaying. Eli backstepped and leaned into the wall. Waylon lost his balance and tumbled over the railing. Terrorizer seized his arm in his jaws and dived to the cave. Eli pumped five shells into the chaos of bubbles.
“You think you can fuck with me, huh?! You don’t know who I AM!”
Terrorizer death rolled into the grotto. A minority of tendons in Waylon’s forearm remained attached. The beast surfaced at the rear of the cave. Then he leapt a foot and tossed Waylon onto the flat rock. On the opposite end, a blood-drenched man—jawbone exposed, purple goo leaking out of his cranium—gargled for help as he sank into a heap of skinned meat. Above him, impaled to a stalactite, the playmate gasped.
Waylon squirmed with his free limbs. His continuous pouring of crimson repainted the rock—splashes, curves, dots, crude geometry. Waylon’s dizziness masked the pain. His body went numb and motionless. Terrorizer chewed. The blades didn’t hurt, because Waylon’s nerves were gone. The monster munched and sucked until only a shiny white bone protruded from the shredded upper arm.
Waylon’s mouth was a salinity worse than saltwater. His consciousness slipped in blood. Rocks and weeds were morphing, reshaping, into red anthropomorphic creatures with bloodstained fangs and pointed tails, reminding him that he was already in hell.
Terrorizer crawled partially onto the rock and hovered over Waylon. Bloody saliva dripped onto his pale face. He coughed, causing some of the goo to go up his nose. Terrorizer ’s V came an inch from Waylon’s eyes. The legend’s tongue lolled unnaturally, then licked Waylon’s squishy sockets. He felt them gluing shut. Before he was fully blinded, he turned sideways and jammed his meatless bone into one of the witches’ crystal balls.
Terrorizer roared and dropped his body onto Waylon. The cracking of bones echoed in the chamber. Terrorizer rose on his four limbs, angled upward. Then his jaws enveloped Waylon’s head. He pulled lightly and swallowed. Blood sprayed out of the neck. Terrorizer guzzled a gallon of the tomato juice. He regretted that the kill had been instant compared to his plans. But there was more meat to terrorize, to torture.
Surfacing, he started toward the mansion. The sun was red.
The broken crystal oozed brownish-yellow photoreceptors and spewed live wires of goo, electrifying the water. Terrorizer gasped for breath. His body was a sauna. His four-chambered heart—as dark as moonless nights—hammered. He was becoming dizzy as blood circulated too fast.
A humming broke the growing silence. He shifted from side to side, twisted, rolled. Finally, he caught a view of the speedboat charging toward the entry to the grotto. Eli Oz was standing at the front: one hand steering, the other hand hoisting a shotgun to the sky.
“I’m gonna bury you!” Eli yelled.
The gun was pointed, aimed, and fired. Terrorizer dived, spun, shell fragments barely missing, and then vertically assailed the hull.
The speedboat flew twenty feet in the air and sailed, crashing, exploding, into the mansion. Stones and slithers of wood decorated the swamp in burning polka dots. Two pillars snapped like legs hit with sledgehammers, collapsing the anterior. The metal stairwell leading to the supply room was exposed, water gushing in. The outer walls expanded and cracked. Terrorizer sniffed the chemicals and advanced. Although he was slowing, aging, almost rewound to his former old self. His body squeezed down the steps. The metal pieces imploded under his weight. Once at the bottom—nauseous, weak—he spotted Max, who was guarding the vault.
Max’s knees buckled.
“Leave us alone!”
Terrorizer plodded, lolling his tongue. The water rose and he started to float. The source of white electricity was turning against its host, tangling him in parasitism. He was being drained, consumed, by the powder. He and it had been as symbiotic as the gators who let birds clean their teeth in exchange for food. Terrorizer had helped spread the drug’s energy and rage, and the drug had reanimated his will to live. Now the snow was more parasitic than the leeches sucking the fish below his heart. His organs swelled. The sauna was stuffed with lit charcoal. His stomach was full, begging for reprieve. The water turned a ghostly haze. Milk coated the remaining witches’ ball. And then everything faded to black.
Terrorizer grinned in the dark.