SQUIB HOPPED TO HIS DUTIES A LITTLE SMARTER THE REST OF JULY now that there were wages at stake, and Vern, for his part, showed up most evenings for a chinwag, though on some occasions he still kept himself to himself. Squib relished these little talks with the dragon, as he reckoned he was the only human on God’s earth engaging in such conversations and looked forward to the day when he could share his secret with Charles Jr., or maybe even get himself on James Corden, who was one funny Downton Abbey cheeky servant-type guy.
Squib pitched up at the shack one evening with an old calendar he’d picked up on eBay the previous week but had never found the right moment to pass over. He wasn’t even sure if this was the moment, but Vern spotted the curled edges poking out of the grocery crate. He plucked the calendar out, had a quick peruse, and was appalled.
“What in the name of God’s balls is this, son?” he said, flicking through the summer months.
“That? That is a genuine dragon-fetish calendar,” said Squib, squaring six bottles of Absolut away in the refrigerator. “You would not credit the amount of ladies perving on dragons. It’s like a fetish or some such. They call themselves Scalies, can you believe it? Goddamn Scalies. Look at them, getting all hot and bothered over some guy dressed up as a dragon.”
Vern laughed. “You remember that time recently when I was gonna kill you, boy? I feel that time coming around again.”
“Come on, Mister Vern. These are pretty ladies.”
Vern settled into his easy chair. “Not to me, kid.”
This raised a question for Squib. “How come if human ladies are so ugly you wear those Flashdance T-shirts with the picture on ’em?”
Vern winked. “That there is a martini question, boy.”
“Everything is a martini question with you, Mister Vern.”
But Squib wanted the answer, so he mixed the dragon his cocktail in a peanut butter jar, olives and all, and waited while Vern took his first sip.
“Not bad, kid.”
“So, what is it about Flashdance? That movie was nothing special.”
Vern growled, embers wafting from his nostrils. “You hush your mouth, boy. That was an inspirational movie. The woman goes after her dreams. She gets there in spite of everything.” His eyes lit up. “And her main job is welding. She works with fire, get it?” He purred and closed his eyes. “What a feeling.”
Squib was skeptical. “That’s it? She works with fire? That’s your big connection?”
“Well, not entirely,” the dragon admitted. “There is that moment when she’s on the chair. And the water comes down.”
Squib knew that moment. It was still teenage boy top ten, even after all these years. “Yeah, but she’s a human—we’re ugly, right?”
“That’s true, Squib, my boy, but when the sheets of water hit Jennifer Beals in silhouette, if a guy hits pause at the right moment and maybe squints a little, then it almost looks like she’s got wings, and maybe a tail. And goddamn if she don’t remind me of a Chinese lady dragon I spent some time with up on Mount Sagarmatha. We melted some snow on that peak. Cold as hell, but worth it on that occasion. I could tell you about it, but I better not on account of you being a minor.”
Squib helped himself to a Pepsi from the cooler. “I reckon a guy would have to practice a lot with the pause button to get that effect.”
“Years,” said Vern. “Decades.”
HOOKE WAS NOT twiddling his thumbs while all this dragon-boy heart-melting stuff was going down. That was not the Regence Hooke way, especially with a potential murder charge hanging over his noggin like the sword of Damocles. Hooke knew all about the sword of Damocles because his pops liked to reference it whenever the pressure of running a failed storefront ministry was too much for even the bourbon to alleviate.
One time he’d charged into Regence’s bedroom in the early hours, raving like a jonesing tweaker. “You ain’t got no idea,” he shouted at the bleary teen. “You ain’t got no idea the strain doing God’s work puts on a body. Even the Lord Jesus Hisself tried to wriggle out from under it. But there ain’t no escaping the sword of Damocles, boy. It hangs over me every second of every day. And the instant I weaken, down she comes.”
Hooke checked out this famous sword and found that it wasn’t even mentioned in the Bible. Some Greek guy invented the whole thing to make a point.
Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben said it better: With great power comes great responsibility.
And more serious consequences too, I guess, the young Regence thought.
Still it gave him a notion, and one night while his poppa had his drunk on, Regence suspended his hunting knife from the ceiling fan over the passed-out pastor’s bed, using a string of Plasti-Tak rolled real fine.
The knife hung there glittering with each revolution, but it didn’t fall until Reverend Jerrold rose to take himself a piss. His pops never noticed a thing. He never heard the thunk. Never saw the boy sitting cross-legged in the rocking chair.
Balls, thought teen Hooke, retrieving his knife. I guess Poppa lives to preach another day.
Now Hooke felt that metaphorical sword over his own head. Maybe “sword” was too strong an image. Maybe “mosquito” was better. Squib was an irritant, nothing more. Something to be dealt with. Hooke was confident that if he stayed on his path, solutions would keep presenting themselves as they always had, until they didn’t. That was how life worked and there wasn’t no point fretting on it. A fella fixed his eyes on the prize and kept going until some greater power decided enough was enough and called a halt.
So do you believe in God or not, Regence? Hooke often asked himself.
And the answer to that question varied, depending on his mood. Often it boiled down to something along the lines of: I believe in God enough to hate Him.
A conclusion which made Hooke smile.
BUT SQUIB. SQUIB Moreau was behaving just like that one mosquito that proved impossible to catch. Most skeeters hovered around, legs dangling, just waiting for the rolled-up magazine that would flatten them. But there was the occasional insect that seemed possessed of more smarts than the rest of his species.
What was the word for those guys?
“Pesky.”
Squib was proving pesky.
Of course, Hooke could simply wait on the dock and lift Squib straight out of his precious pirogue any day he felt like it, but there was more in play now. Squib was working for Waxman. Maybe that deformed old coot knew more than he should. Maybe Squib Moreau had confided in him, or in his other boss, Bodi. Maybe Squib had whispered tales of crooked constables to his mother, or his pal Charles Jr.
Goddamn ripple effect, thought Hooke, and laid his plans.
Which were as follows: take a few days’ personal time, just as his doctor had suggested, and dedicate himself to tailing Squib Moreau, military-style.
Hooke was pissed off that he was being forced to exert himself to tie off a loose end, but better safe than sorry.
Also, he was pissed that he was taking sick leave when he had planned to fake an illness later in the year to attend a dark web sniper camp in the Ozarks.
Squib’s gonna lose a lot more than a finger this time around.
THERE WASN’T NO need to go full military, not really, but truth be told, Hooke enjoyed tinkering with the tools of his trade, and he didn’t get too much opportunity in Petit Bateau. Occasionally he would stake out a moonshine operation or a pot farm, but that was state police business, and Hooke didn’t want to draw any attention by playing hero local cop, so he generally just kept watch to see if there was anything in it for him. The previous year he had been so bored that he started blowing up meth labs. The plague was creeping into Petit Bateau and drawing in the sheriff’s office, which was hampering his own operations, and so Hooke decided the best thing would be to help those crystal chefs carbonize themselves. Simplest thing in the world to put an incendiary round into a gas tank and let the phosphorus do the rest. Hooke retired three industrious swamp factories in half a year, and then called it a day before some eagle-eyed deputy smelled something off. Turned out he’d done enough and the crystal meth addiction flowed back downriver to New Orleans like a saltwater tide.
When Hooke thought about that campaign, it was so unlikely that he sometimes wondered if he’d dreamed it.
Fun dream.
So truth be told, Hooke was content enough to take his kit from behind a panel in the boat shed and let loose his soldier sense. And if the opportunity arose to feed Squib to the gators, so be it, just so long as nothing could be traced back to him. It would be a cosmic joke to get out from under one murder rap just to land right under another one.
Softly softly catchy monkey.
You said it, Colonel.
The first night was strictly remote recon, but what he observed was enough to convince Constable Hooke that he was definitely on the right track. He set himself up nice and comfy on the flat roof of his boat shed and trained his night-vision monocular on the Moreau dock.
Let’s go, Squib, he thought. Ain’t you got a job to go to?
And Squib did.
Soon as his momma set out for the bus stop, Squib was pottering around on the decking, loading cargo into his boat. Looked like regular groceries. Hooke could see the little bastard clear as day through his scope.
Look at that eager beaver, he thought, all happy in his labors.
Hooke felt a millisecond of jealousy. What must it be like to be happy for a few minutes every day?
Nah, he thought, fuck that. Happiness ain’t no kind of motivator.
But Squib did look happy, dancing around to some tune in his head. And Hooke was offended by this and contemplated shooting the kid there and then, but the revenant of Faraiji stayed his hand.
Patience, Sergeant. We must gather intelligence, not destroy it.
And so Hooke left his rifle in its bag and kept watching, chewing a Cuban and looking forward to sparking her up. But not yet.
Down on the Pearl, Squib cast off and started his engine right there in the cut-back. Nice watercraft, Hooke had to admit, and it occurred to him that should Squib prove sufficiently bent, he would be an ideal replacement for Willard Carnahan, being a swamp guy through and through. But Hooke quickly dismissed the notion. He was done with swamp guys. They were unpredictable and slaves to their appetites, not to be trusted. Hooke was aware enough to realize that he himself was inherently untrustworthy, but he preferred his own subordinates to be loyal.
If that ain’t irony, it’ll do until something better comes along.
Hooke bit a chunk from the end of his cigar and sucked on it like chewing tobacco. He was warm, and that didn’t feel right to him.
Seems like if a soldier is on night surveillance, then the desert chill oughta be keeping that soldier frosty.
Except this wasn’t Iraq and he wasn’t a soldier no more.
Below him on the water, Squib did not navigate cross-river, as expected; instead he stuck close to the Pearl’s fringe of reeds and set his course downriver.
Downriver, thought Hooke. Toward Honey Island. Where that grenade somehow reversed its own trajectory. Where someone bore witness to me gutting Carnahan.
This was an interesting development, and a positive one. Could it be coincidence, or could it be that Hooke had struck gold on the first try?
Is Squib my guy?
It sure would be good to plug that leak.
And there might be a most welcome side effect. In Hooke’s experience, grieving parents dropped their defenses way on down. A heartbroken mother might do just about anything for some strong arms to comfort her.
Hell, I could even pin Squib’s murder on some fall guy and present myself as a white knight.
Regence had enough self-awareness to realize that offing a kid and dating that kid’s mother was about as coldhearted as a guy could get, but it didn’t bother him none. In point of fact, he was kinda proud that he hadn’t yet arrived at the limit of his callousness.
I guess the colonel was right and I’m one of them sociopaths, thought Hooke. Like Spock.
He had taken an online magazine test once, to find out just how sociopathic he was, and was delighted to score in the top five percent, right up there with the big-business boys.
Hooke had lost points because unlike most sociopaths, he did actually have a very focused life plan and he learned from experience.
I’m a sociopath who thinks ahead, thought Hooke, smugly. King of the crazies.
When Squib’s canoe meandered around a bend in the river, Hooke lit his cigar and enjoyed a quiet smoke, thinking how pleasant it was being up here, watching the world, visualizing his focused life plan rolling out.
Squib. Ivory. Metal pipeline.
It occurred to Hooke that the most valuable blocks in Conti’s infrastructure were the pet law enforcement officers.
Shit, we don’t need nobody but ourselves. All those gangster types are more trouble than they’re worth.
What he needed to do was lay waste to Ivory’s hub of operations and then reach out to the police on his payroll.
Those cops will already be hooked on blood money. Shouldn’t be none too hard to tempt them over to Team Regence.
HOOKE WAS ON his third cigar and was feeling the raspy effects in his throat when the monocular picked up Squib, maybe ninety minutes later, tacking cross-river toward Waxman’s place.
I love this night vision shit, thought the constable. There ain’t no place to hide.
Even at a distance of maybe a thousand yards, Hooke was able to count the fingers on Squib’s left hand, which was wrapped around the tiller.
Four digits. All present and correct.
And the constable smiled to himself remembering the night of Squib’s misfortune.
Dynamiting catfish. That boy sure has his dumb spells.
The pirogue was riding a little higher in the water, so Hooke reckoned whatever cargo he’d ferried downriver had been delivered. There was a small sealed drum in the prow which hadn’t been there before, so the boy had obviously picked it up wherever he’d stopped over.
What’s in there? Radioactive waste?
Probably nothing much. Bait or salt. Probably Squib was just checking his traps and dropping off a few groceries for some swamp bachelor. Probably.
Still, probably wasn’t definitely, so best to keep a lookout.
Could Squib be running some kind of operation? Was Waxman dealing in contraband, if anybody even used that word anymore? These were all questions that needed to be answered.
This is my water, Hooke thought. I am Regence, king of the Pearl River, and no one runs shit through here without my say-so.
Even thinking like this made Hooke grin. He had options now. He could take out Carnahan’s inflatable and motor across to Waxman’s boathouse, have a little word with them both.
Or.
Or he could follow some more, increase his stock of information. After all, it was a lot easier to surveil a subject if a person had an educated idea as to where that subject was going.
HOOKE SET UP farther downriver for the second stakeout. This time he went full bush and spent the day weaving some cover into his old sniper veil.
Shit, he thought, all nostalgic. How long has it been?
Truth be told, the veil probably wasn’t necessary, but Hooke enjoyed the feel of the netting in his hands, and if he was honest with himself, the camo cloak made him feel powerful, gave him a little edge. It had always pleased him to deliver death remotely because he imagined his targets’ last thought to be, What the fuck?
If all the guff his pops had spouted was true, then the victim’s soul would be levitating toward the heavens still looking around for who the hell had shot him, and Hooke would be there all invisible in the brush. Sometimes, if the op zone was completely clear, then Hooke would flip the bird skywards just to add insult to mortal injury.
Hooke wasn’t actually a scout sniper by trade or rank, but he’d taken it up for some freelance work in-country, mostly for Faraiji. He wasn’t the worst from five hundred feet, but after that his vision let him down some. Slight presbyopia, the eye doctor told him. Apparently he had trouble bringing things into focus.
Like the future, thought Hooke. But I’m working on it.
Hooke took one of Bodi Irwin’s rental skiffs out on the river. The craft was built with a draft so shallow it could float in a bathtub, and an aluminum hull so light any idiot tourist could drag it off a sandbar. He left the boatyard late afternoon, looking for all the world like a recuperating cop taking advantage of a mild day to dip a line in the Pearl.
I got all the trappings, don’t I? thought Hooke, one hand on his tackle box, which was filled not with lures and spinners but with batteries, bullets, and grenades from Carnahan’s stash.
Hooke could not be completely sure where Squib had been for that hour and a half the previous night, but his best guess put the boy somewhere near Honey Island, where all the shit he was concerned with had gone down.
Where I lost the Elodie and all my gear, Hooke thought, taking a minute to mourn his cruiser and all the wonderful ordnance that had gone down with her.
Hooke took his sweet time motoring downriver, waving at passing pleasure craft and shrimp boats, the brim of his fishing cap pulled low over his eyes, trying to make himself look ordinary.
I ain’t here, he broadcast to the universe, and the universe seemed okay with that, because once he cleared the Petit Bateau southern meander, traffic thinned out, and soon Hooke found himself alone on the river so far as humans were concerned.
It was tough for a guy not to enjoy himself out there on the Pearl. Fish were swimming so thick they butted the keel on occasion, and the weather was that rarest of Louisiana sorts where the sun was penned behind a stubborn haze and the humidity was having a little mercy on the folks below and easing up for once. Hooke found that he could mouth-breathe deep as he liked without the usual lung constriction.
So it was tough for a guy not to enjoy himself, but Hooke persevered.
Again it occurred to him that maybe a man could be happy, but the notion didn’t hold much weight.
Happy? What’s the damned point in that?
His poppa had never been happy, no matter how high he’d clambered on Jacob’s ladder.
In his youth, Hooke believed that he himself experienced happiness as an emotion per se whenever he put an enemy down, but now he reckoned that was more of a triumphant rage, an I’m still here, motherfucker kind of thing.
Close enough, thought Hooke. And I’ll still be here long after that bug Squib Moreau is crushed.
So he lit a cigar to chase the mosquitoes away and settled back into his usual grim funk.
SQUIB MOTORED ALONG the same stretch of river some hours later, his pirogue evenly weighed down with the day’s groceries, which included:
A new card for Vern’s satellite box so the dragon could watch the pay-per-view fights.
One carton of Krispy Kremes, which were definitely not ketogenic.
And:
A gallon of fungus ointment, which Vern did not want to discuss.
Squib WhatsApp’d Vern to let him know he was on the way and then relaxed on the wooden slat seat he had built into his craft, having a little fun with the throttle, weaving in and out of a cypress and tupelo wetland slalom course.
Ain’t life awful curious? he thought. One minute there’s a dragon on my ass with murder on his mind, and the next thing I know I’m on the payroll.
Squib was squarely in the sweet zone age-wise when it came to accepting such a frankly astonishing turn of events, information which would surely have driven most adult types to distraction. Not only had dragons ruled the world, but there was one left and he, Everett “Squib” Moreau the Third, worked for him.
Actually, there weren’t no Everett Moreaus the First or Second, but it sounded cool, so Squib sometimes tacked it on in his mind. He’d made the mistake of mentioning it to Charles Jr. one time, and for maybe a month his friend had referred to him as Everett Squib Moreau the Turd, which wore thin real quick.
Squib popped in his earbuds while he steered. No doubt Vern would make him listen to that ancient jazz stuff he liked, which sounded almost as old as the dragon himself, so he stuck on some Green Day, who were favored by his number one boss, Bodi Irwin, and Squib did have to admit that those boys knew how to shred a guitar.
Ten minutes later Squib skirted Honey Island and nudged up into Vern’s switchback just as the sun tucked itself into the treetops. If a guy didn’t know the old dock was there, then he would never find it behind its curtain of moss and bamboo and a slop of lily pads on the water looking like they hadn’t been disturbed in a thousand years. But Squib had memorized a bunch of markers for himself, and he knew by the five fingers of cypress root poking through the scum and the brown horizontal slashes on a water oak trunk that he was where he needed to be, and so gave his engine one last rev before cutting the power altogether and drifting the last ten feet, steering with the dead prop.
Squib considered today’s questions for Vern as he unloaded the pirogue:
Have you ever fought a bigfoot?
Did you ever meet Dracula?
And the big one:
What’s that trick you do with your dragon junk, making it disappear like that?
On further reflection, Squib figured he might lead off with the dragon-junk question, as Vern often ran out of tolerance for interrogations real quick. Or maybe he’d soften Vern up with the bigfoot softball and put the junk question second.
Once settled on this course of action, he decided that he should maybe take a sniff of the fungal ointment, see if he couldn’t get a handle on where Vern might be intending to slather it, seeing as the dragon probably didn’t suffer from no human-type ailments.
Lotta crevices, though, thought the boy. And he does live in a swamp.
Squib had the top half screwed off the ointment container when he heard a snuffling, which cut through the fading final chord of “Basket Case” in his earbuds. He looked up guiltily, reckoning that maybe Vern had caught him red-handed interfering with his medicine.
But it wasn’t Vern. It was a red-eyed boar the size of a small cow. The bristles quivered on its back.
“Easy, boy,” said Squib like he was talking to a dog. “Easy now.”
Unfortunately, the boar didn’t speak canine and charged like it’d been shot out of a cannon.
Fuck, thought Squib. Spared by a dragon and done in by a boar. This is some bullshit.
VERN WAS IN his favorite subaqua cradle while all these boar-centric shenanigans were about to unfold on his dock. The cradle was a natural hammock of tangleweed and soft shale which had bedded itself into a mud bank. Not only was it slowing down the erosion process, but the little niche provided a nice heat trap for a fella who might like to eke the last red rays outta the Louisiana sun, and there was a tiny icicle of salt water that somehow snaked up this far, which kept a dragon cool, and so Vern was reluctant to climb out even though the kid was already on the dock. He could see this because he had elevated the top end of his cradle with a turtle-shell pillow which fit neatly into the crook of his neck, so he could open his nostrils when he needed a breath and see pretty clear through the few inches of water.
There be Squib, he thought, sucking out a heelsplitter mussel. I wonder did he get that ointment?
Vern cleaned out the mussel, then crunched on the shell, which had the double advantage of scraping his teeth and toughening the gums: his version of a visit to the dental hygienist.
Ten more minutes, thought Vern. Then I’ll go over there and educate the boy about jazz.
Ten more minutes, just enough time for one more breath.
Vern opened his nostrils and breathed in. A scent crept in with the air: a familiar scent, if a mite stronger than usual.
Boar, thought Vern.
But not just any boar. This particular guy was the pig master on Boar Island, and he would have been top dog entirely had it not been for Vern. The boar had made a couple of snuffling forays over Vern’s border, and Vern had sent him scurrying off with a shot of flame to his hindquarters the last time he came around, burning his hide good.
It was stupid toying with the boar, really, because wild animals as a rule didn’t tend to learn their lessons. Hell, not even the gators had learned to stay clear of his patch, and he’d been throwing them around for years/decades.
I should have barbecued that fella because now he’s making a move on my boy Squib.
When he raised his head, he spotted the animal, and even from this distance Vern could read the boar’s body language. The big pig was quivering like he was plugged into an outlet.
If that boar’s head goes down, thought Vern, then the fat lady has sung.
The boar’s head went down.
Goddamn, thought Vern, and made his move.
VERN MANAGED TO flap his wings underwater just once, which is a bastard of a maneuver to accomplish considering the resistance, but it was enough to lift him clear of the surface, sending water sluicing through the grooves in his plates, which had evolved for exactly that purpose. Once airborne, he threw his hindquarters backwards, which jerked his head upright, and from that position, maybe six feet out of the water and from a range of fifty yards, he squinted for clarity, hawked, and spat a single blob of dragon flame, which was reflected in the Pearl as it covered the distance between dragon and boar in less than a second, catching the boar in midleap and pinning him to the trunk of a water oak, where the poor animal crapped himself and squealed like the hog he was until the dragon flame burned through to his heart and shut him up for good.
By the balls of Blue Ben, thought Vern, which had been quite the saying back in the day. It’s a pity Squib had his back turned to that move.
Because, goddamn, it must have looked awesome.
HOOKE WOULD CERTAINLY not dispute that the display was awesome in the true sense of the word—not awesome like good pizza or doing some sort of flip with a skateboard on YouTube. But awesome as in very close to incredible.
He’d scouted the area and decided to set himself up in a horseshoe wetland that would most probably be an oxbow in five years and an island in twenty. There was the usual huddle of ancient trees on the central hump clustered together, fighting for root space, and every spare inch of mud was populated by bamboo. Hooke was able to wade ashore and wedge his skiff between two trunks under a quilt of moss until it was invisible to the untrained eye and damn near invisible to the trained eye.
Hooke admired his work and was satisfied. “Hey, Pop,” said Hooke to the heavens, “I am gazing upon my work, and damn, it is good.”
Which made him smile.
He went a little craft-crazy then, hacking out a nice hide for himself maybe eight feet up where two cypress trunks were twisted like lovers. He enjoyed that kind of work; it cleared out his head for a while. When a fella was swinging through hardwood with a short-handled field axe, there weren’t space for nothing but the blade and the timber, unless that fella didn’t mind sacrificing a finger or two.
The job took longer than it should have because Hooke was forced to suspend his labors whenever a boat came around the bend.
Shrimp boats. Pleasure cruisers. Swamp skiffs. Pirogues. Hooke had never realized there was so much traffic on the river. But at least the breaks meant he kept himself hydrated, which was important at his age.
Hell, Regence, he thought, you’re sneaking up on fifty, boy. Who’d’ve thought you’d last this long?
Nobody, most especially not Regence himself.
Shit, the grim reaper must have had me in his sights a dozen times or more.
Eventually, once Hooke had the hide set up to his satisfaction, he climbed on in there and wiggled himself comfortable, with the camouflage veil draped over his head and shoulders.
Okay, Regence, he thought, nothing for it now but to wait.
And wait he did, for several hours, staring through the sights mounted on his old Browning rifle, watching with some satisfaction as Squib came downriver in his dinky canoe, doing some dipshit maneuvers in the tree line. It was light enough that Hooke didn’t bother changing over to Starlight.
He watched the kid tie up at a concealed dock and begin unloading his cargo. Then a boar showed up and Hooke thought, Shit, maybe nature’s gonna solve my problem.
But nature never got the chance because the boar’s ticket got punched in a most unlikely way.
HOOKE HAD BEEN on stakeout for hours at this point and had transitioned into that sniper fugue that made the world seem somehow illusory. Veteran shooters often spoke of how pulling the trigger on a target didn’t seem real after hours spent looking through a scope.
Which was why, when a large creature erupted from the water maybe fifty feet downriver, Hooke didn’t fall out of the tree with shock. His first thought was, You murdered your daddy in a church during a hurricane. It was only a matter of time before you started seeing demons.
But he quickly realized this wasn’t no hallucination. That thing was real as the water it came out of and the sky it flew into.
Goddamn Honey Island monster, thought Hooke. It exists.
He kept stock-still, as he had no idea as to the potential of this creature, but he guessed that a winged bear-sized animal with tusks like a walrus could probably inflict a lot of damage.
He ain’t pointed my way, he thought. Let’s just see how this goes.
He imagined that it would go something along the lines of:
Boar craps itself.
Boar runs away.
Monster eats boy.
But he was wrong on two out of three of those points.
The boar did indeed crap itself—but only after the monster nailed it with a ball of flame which it shot out of its mouth, looked like.
A ball of honest-to-God, I-shit-thee-not flame. Dragon-style.
Nice, thought Hooke; then, Is that what I’m dealing with here? A dragon?
A part of him was pleased that he was continuing his keeping-it-together-while-shit-went-crazy streak going.
I am not bothered by extremes.
Not extreme religious fanatics of any kind.
Nor, now, by extreme animals.
Though Hooke did notice his hand was shaking slightly.
Hell, most guys would have vibrated right out of this tree, thought Hooke. A shaking hand just means I ain’t stupid.
The surreal sequence of events went right on unfolding, oblivious to Hooke’s bearing witness. The dragon, if that’s what it was, glided across to the hidden landing, and not only did it not attack Squib, but it seemed to know him.
It looked like they were . . .
Could those two assholes be . . . ?
Actually conversing? In actual language?
The light was fading now, so Hooke hurriedly reached into his pack for his monocular and switched on the night vision.
And there they were, plain as green day: kid and dragon, chewing the fat.
This is unexpected, thought Hooke, sharpening his focus and thinking absently that he must trade this monocular in for a newer model with autofocus.
But old gadget or not, it was working well enough for Hooke to see the dragon dismember the boar with a few casual slashes of its claws and then chew on a charred leg right out there in the open.
That motherfucker is dangerous, thought Hooke, and then: More than dangerous, he’s like the wrath of God.
The wrath of God: exactly what Hooke had been searching for.
“Thank you, universe,” said Hooke under his breath, and made a mental list of what he needed to do:
Take more time off.
Step up the surveillance to include audio and video.
Get hold of some heavy-caliber weapons.