Eric Turowski

I

 

Motion cut the light. Irons opened his eyes. He found himself recumbent on a hard surface, his immediate area black as pitch with dim light streaming through an uneven opening. The air smelled of fresh rain, cold mist lingering.

Again, a shadow blocked the light, moving smoothly before dropping away. Instinct told him not to move, that even a slight shift might cause the double length of drive chain he wore through the loops in his jeans to jingle, the shafts of his harness boots to creak.

The moon shifted several degrees with no further sign of the visitor. Silently, he crossed the uneven floor of a cave, the inside strewn with litter. Near the entrance, a Harley stood, the shape of pursuit blinkers and a siren on the front fender in silhouette. It started to come back to his still-sleeping brain. 

The Police Special had belonged to rural cops in a tiny Sierra foothills town, where the force was a hundred years past retirement and only worked the night shift. He escaped on one of their bikes, a ‘59 dresser—modern equipment for that department. 

He fled, trying to put more than a night’s ride between himself and the pigs. Even undead cops could put out a BOLO. His nearest friend ran a chop shop in Bishop. But a few miles along a nameless mountain road, his plans changed. He intended to drop the cop special off a high cliff and into the pines below. But as the sun dipped behind the surrounding peaks, Irons saw aspens painted with strobing red. He recognized the old-fashioned police gumballs. Sunset came early in the mountains, and the night shift cops were hot on his trail, trolling the parallel highway.

He slowed, eyes peering into the deepening dark. An old dirt logging road branched off, overgrown and nearly invisible. He took it–although it was no place for a thousand-pound Harley. 

Twenty minutes in, after two switchbacks, erosion erased the path. In scattered moonlight, his eyes caught a trail leading into the scrub. Branches from tall brush scraped at the late chief’s bike, wheels occasionally sinking into mud. But Irons was soon rewarded by the sight of a cut into a steep slope. He rode the hog up an undulated slope and into the cave, the mouth barely wide enough to fit the police bike. A dozen yards in, a rockslide ended the man-made cut. He shut off the motor, hearing it echo in the stone throat. A crude bench sat against the wall. Irons stretched out, boots hanging over the edge. 

Not knowing how long he slept, he crouched at the lip of the cave, listening. A few yards away, the bush began weaving in a path away from him. He thought of coyotes, but no footfall in the leaves could be heard. A second, silent path of motion paralleled the first. Straining his ears, Irons heard a steady dragging sound. 

Almost too late, he realized that the sound came from directly above. Ducking against the wall, he watched a dark mass move downward, covering the opening.

Slithering and scraping, the eclipsing presence continued for many heartbeats, giving only the impression of motion. Finally, a blunt end slid past the cave lighting again as it departed.

Irons gazed down the slope. Dark and glistening, a shape undulated down the rolling slope and disappeared. A few seconds went by; then another path of motion again shook the scrub.

He’d been in some scrapes before—strange scrapes few people would believe. But anything that could block a cave big enough for a hog was something he didn’t want to mess with.

Time passed, he saw no motion in the scrub. The cut was too narrow to turn the cop bike around—he had planned on leaving it. Even on wheels, a half-ton of motorcycle was a burden. Sweating, he finally backed the hog outside. Rain left the highlands dotted with jewels of precipitation that glittered in the moonlight and left the path a muddy wreck.

Mounting, he rolled down the rocky slope, and kicked the bike to life. Slow and easy, wheels frequently losing purchase, he made his way toward the road. Eyes sweeping the bush, he saw no sign of movement. Too late, Irons saw the trail blocked and he plowed through a high pile of whitish, greenish stuff.

The bike skittered out from under him, dumping Irons into the pile. Slime clung to his vest, his jeans, his arms. It smelled like a combination of rotten meat and ammonia. Gagging, he wiped himself clean. Something crunched beneath his boot, and it looked familiar. To be certain, Irons nudged it with the toe of his boot. Although cracked nearly in half, there was no denying the shape of a human skull.

In disgust, he backed away. Moving toward the motorcycle, he heard the engine still running. How he was going to pick up the bike, he didn’t know. And then it didn’t matter.

A black, bullet shape extruded from the brush, mouth grabbing the handlebars. He could make out a dark blue, glossy color to the enormous, worm-like thing, a huge bony collar behind a blunt head, in place of eyes, weird tentacles waved. Frozen, he saw another enormous, glossy snake dart in. The creatures pulled the rear tire in one direction, the forks in another, ripping the bike apart in a shower of sparks and a shriek of metal. The frame dropped to the ground, V-twin roaring and sputtering in protest. Dropping their prizes, the worm-like monsters pounced on the motor, massive forms bending steel. 

The third one undulated down the path, branches and leaves whisking against its lustrous skin. Ignoring Irons, the creature fell on its brothers, fighting over the motor.

Irons fled down the path in blind fear, not caring where he ended up. Behind him, pistons screamed to a halt as the engine died. Irons raced along the path with boots sliding and breath coming hard. When the slithering sound followed, he ran for his life.

Irons was a big man, over six-and-a-half feet tall; his long legs could cover a lot of ground in a hurry. But the slithering pursuit kept pace, and even started to get louder as the grade steepened. Pounding along in his boots, he began to pray for the path to descend. Heart ready to burst, lungs a conflagration, he powered on.

Cresting the steep hill, he poured it on going down the other side. It smashed into his legs. Crashing into the brush, he rolled over and over, down the incline with a shout, finally gaining his feet and running. Moments later, his feet were swept out from under him again. 

Somersaulting into a tree, sparks flew before his eyes. They could not block the sight of the bullet-headed worm that reared up. Lunging, eel-like mouth wide, its nightmare head blurred. Irons nearly dodged it, but the side of its head landed like a sledgehammer. He saw the ground rise to meet him, the freakish head rise to strike, then blackness. 

 

II.

 

“I know you’re awake, so you might as well open your eyes.” A woman’s voice addressed him with a slight southern drawl. Irons had been trying to catch a glimpse of the feet he heard crunching in the leaf litter for a while from beneath his lashes. The voice also had an official ring. That boded ill. He opened his eyes, squinting in the afternoon sun—he’d been out for a while. Her brown uniform tried to conceal the fact that she was an attractive woman. He openly admired her figure, especially her wide hips. A gun rested on the right one.

“Eight years in college, and I end up chasing scallywags around the forest.” She sighed. “Your name, sir?”

She was some kind of cop. He refused to show his unease. “They call me Tire-iron.”

“Tire-iron?”

He grinned. “Wanna know why?”

“Mr. Tire-iron, this talk might be appropriate for your tough-guy tea parties and such, but this isn’t the time.”

“It’s Irons.”

“And without the sad attempt at flirting, what are you doing here, Mr. Irons? You tie one on at the roadhouse and end up taking a tumble?”

“I don’t drink. I do tumble.”

“You’ll have to come with me, sir.”

He tried to rise, and found his hands cuffed behind him. Grunting, he lunged to his feet, towering over the ranger. “I apologize, but you seemed, how do I put this politely? Somewhat dangerous.” With her left thumb, she hooked the chain dangling over her shoulder--his “belt,” a double length of drive chain.

She was right to take it—he’d busted countless skulls with it. “What if I’m more dangerous when my pants fall down?”

“For your sake, you might want to stop thinking of me as a girl in the woods and start thinking of me as a special agent for the U.S. National Parks Service, okay?”

He smirked. “Yes, ma’am.”

She indicated north with a motion of her head. “Jeep’s that way. You want to tell me what you’re doing here?”

“It’s a long story.”

“It’s a fair piece to the Jeep.”

He started walking, the ranger falling in step behind him. “Answer me one question first. What’s a special agent doing out here?”

“That’s none of your concern, Mr. Irons.”

“It’s a fair piece to the Jeep,” he said.

She sighed. “There have been problems around Dragon Ridge, and we’re seeing to them. Your turn.”

“Problems,” he mused. “People gone missing? Animal mutilations, like that?”

Behind him, he heard her feet stop. “What do you know about it?”

In spite of the fact that she was taking him in, something about her demeanor said he could trust her. “Last night, I saw something pretty unusual.”

“Do tell.”

How to put it without sounding like a lunatic? “They were animals, kinda like snakes, kinda like worms. Dark blue. They didn’t have eyes, tentacles sticking out from their heads. Ever heard of that?”

“They’re called caecilians. But they’re tropical, mostly subterranean, and they don’t get bigger than five feet.”

“Five feet?” He grunted. The things must’ve been forty feet long. “Three of them, near a railroad or quarry cut. I found bones in some scat. Made my bike slide.”

“Unh-huh. That how you got banged up, falling off a bike?”

He was losing her. “One of them smashed into me. I was pretty sure I was dead.”

“Dead drunk, maybe.”

“I don’t drink.”

“But you do tumble. I see that now.”

“Let me show you? I’m positive some of the bones were human. But you should probably take a look.”

The ranger said nothing for a while until they finally reached the Jeep. His reflection in the window showed a bruise covering his entire left arm. She opened the back door, guided him inside. Then she circled around the vehicle to the rear, opening the trunk. To his surprise, she entered with a drum-loaded shotgun, holding it carefully in view while she spoke. “I don’t know what you saw last night, Mr. Irons, but I don’t have a whole lot else to go on. So we’ll check out your scat with bones in it. If you’re pulling my chain, I’ll see to it that you are left in an uncomfortable room for a very long time before we ship you to a federal lockup. Are we clear on this?”

The special agent worked in the wild. He could sense that she knew something was very wrong in the protected wilderness. “As a mountain stream,” he said.

 

III.

 

The drive back took more than an hour, most of it on impossible hairpin turns he wouldn’t want to tackle with the longest forks. They drove through a construction site near the summit of Little White Mountain. Workers waved as the special agent passed.

“What’s going on there?”

“Fire protection cistern. No hydrants out here.”

At the sound of loud pounding, he turned his head to see a drill rig in operation high on a ridge. Vibrations shook the Jeep, making it feel like they were riding on flat tires.

The ranger drove another set of hairpin turns, rounding the mountain. Above the deep scrub, Irons saw the cut into the cliff wall. “That’s it.” Leaving him in the Jeep, the ranger got out and looked in the cave. After a moment, she came back. “It’s illegal to bring motorcycles on the trail, Mr. Irons.”

He grunted.

With the pistol grip of the shotgun pressed against her hip, she frowned. Irons knew she weighed whether it was better to leave him in the car, which he might steal if he could get free, or take him along, putting herself in possible danger. Then, she opened the door. “Slowly, please.”

Levering himself out of the Jeep, he nodded toward the scrub field. “They went through there, probably left a trail.”

“Don’t go anywhere, Mr. Irons.” She moved into the bush, eyes sweeping back and forth. “Nothing more pathetic than a handcuffed man running through the woods.”

The ranger moved behind a line of low trees. He could make a break for it, but she was right. It would be a pathetic attempt. Her footsteps in the weeds diminished, but a few minutes later, she said, “What a pile of crap.”

She didn’t believe him. Any hope of her freeing him evaporated. She’d take him to the nearest ranger station, and it wouldn’t take long before he was tied to the apparent murder of a cop in the foothills. “Shit.”

The ranger came back into sight, her face pale and drawn in anger. “Turn around,” she ordered. Irons fully expected the pistol grip of the shotgun to come down on his head before she called in the dogs. Instead, he felt her unlock the cuffs. When he turned back, he saw that her face was not angry, but frightened.

“I’ve seen smaller piles of elephant dung.” Then she looked up at him. “Show me.”

He led her down the path he’d tried to follow the previous night, the mud now dry. And there it was, a white crust growing over the top, a swarm of flies audible from several feet away, tire tracks bisecting the pile, and the cracked skull.

Crouching down, she fished around for a stick, then turned the skull over. “Prominent supraorbital ridges, big mastoid process—I’d say this was a man.”

“Men have gone missing in the park?”

She brushed large flesh flies away, standing up. “No, from the roadhouse on Highway 6. It’s less than a mile, as the crow flies.”

Irons turned in the direction she indicated. You’d have to be a crow to go that way, the slopes of the peaks nearly sheer, bare rock. 

“We’ll have to evacuate the area. Shouldn’t be too hard to do on a Tuesday evening.” She took a brick-sized radio off her belt. “Romeo Foxtrot, this is Sierra Adam One.” There was no response. The ranger headed back toward the Jeep. “Romeo Foxtrot, come back.”

“Sierra Adam, where you been? Highway 6 is code I2 at Dragon Ridge, copy?”

She depressed the mic button. “Do you require assistance, over.”

“Negative special agent, CHP’s on scene. No vehicles in lot twelve. But if your 20’s west of Little White, you’ll have a long drive, over.”

“I0-4 Romeo Foxtrot.”

“All units, I0-23 until further notice.”

She turned the radio down. “A landslide,” she told Irons.

“Not because of the rain.”

She shook her head. “The ground isn’t saturated. But if your description of these animals is accurate, they mostly live underground. And if they’re as big as their scat indicates—”

Irons wasn’t buying it. “Those things are too big to burrow.”

“This is just a guess, but I’d say they didn’t start out that way. Soil in the valleys is deep, thousands of feet deep in some places. Food would be limited, of course, but the caecilians, even the biggest ones we know of, could survive without ever being discovered. Something must be luring them to the surface, where there’s more prey, greater oxygenation.”

Irons nodded. “They get bigger.”

“Worse, once they reach a certain size, they can’t return to subterranean habitats. They can’t run down faster prey, either.”

He got it. Slower prey, like people. 

“I’m going to get some samples, get a team of zoologists out here so we can figure out what to do.”

“What to do?” Irons said in amazement. “You’ll have to kill those things.”

“I’m a ranger first and foremost, and I have to protect the environment.”

Irons grunted, folding his arms. “What about the visitors? Don’t they come first?”

“Yes, that’s why I’m closing the park. The construction site, too.” She didn’t speak for a moment, thinking. “Big caecilians don’t exist in the fossil record, at least, not the ones with the limbless adaptation. They have to be studied. The earliest ones, stegocephalia, are thought to be a link between land-dwelling amphibians and bony fish. We might answer a lot of questions about evolution.”

Irons didn’t argue. Instead, he watched the sun moving toward the range with some trepidation.

The ranger and he walked back to the jeep. She set the shotgun in the trunk and came out with several bags and jars and two pairs of rubber gloves. “If you help me with this, we can get leave sooner. It’s a long, slow drive over the mountain. I’d rather not do it after sunset.”

Irons frowned at the fly-swarmed mound. “I’m not trained for this.”

“Just put different colored shit in each jar. Sing out if you find more bones.”

It wasn’t like he hadn’t already rolled around in it. Trying not to make a face, he scooped samples into jars. The enforcement ranger put the skull in a black body bag. Rooting around with a stick, she pulled out several bones, ribs they looked like. These went into the bag as well.

“Your theory, about these caecilians coming up from below and getting stuck.”

She looked at him. “What about it?”

“Would they be nocturnal, living underground?”

“Not necessarily. But they’d need to shelter from the sun to keep their skin from drying out.” She stopped talking.

“So they would be more active at night. Sun sets pretty quick up here.”

Tossing everything in the trunk, she made ready to close it. Irons stopped her, pointing to the shotgun. The special agent grabbed it, and they took off. The sun slid behind the range, but as they rose up the switchbacks, they drove out of the shadow and into daylight. But before they reached the construction site, they swerved back across the terminus into evening.

“Oh my God.”

Irons saw the destruction as she pulled into the clearing used as a parking lot. The drilling rig was bent in half, yards of steel cable dangling. The truck it rested on had a cab flattened to two dimensions, front tires blown. The ranger leapt from the car, charging toward the scene.

“Wait!” Irons tried to stop her. He saw his chain on the seat, and snatched it up, following her. The sight of a body nearly made him pause. It had been bitten in half, legs and lower torso laying right side up outside the car, upper body upside down several feet away. The ranger was already at the excavation site. Irons walked up the hill to join her.

“I think they came out here,” she said, quietly. Long, curving tracks cut through the soil and gravel outside the excavation, leading from the brush several yards away. Shotgun ready, she crouched down. “You can tell the direction by the kickback of the dirt in the track. They’re big as dragons.”

“Hey! Hey, help!”

The shout came from the other side of the site. Irons and the ranger moved quickly, scaling a mound of soil. On the other side, a man lay in a deep culvert. Even from several yards above, Irons could see the man had two broken legs.

“Help! I’m down here! Call a paramedic!”

The ranger shook her head. “We can’t get him out of there ourselves. I’ll have to call in a chopper.” She reached for her radio.

“Please! Those things, they ate Stan, they killed Mike and Darren!” He started to sob, but his voice was loud, echoing off naked stone. “Help me!” The man in the steep-walled ditch screamed, his words made unintelligible by pain.

“I need medevac at the cistern excavation site, do you copy, Romeo Sierra?”

“Help meeeee!”

Irons looked to the opposite edge of the culvert as the man’s scream suddenly became terrified. Polished blue skin rose with amazing speed from a bend in the ditch.

The ranger aimed the shotgun and fired. Across the twelve-foot gap, the caecilian jerked—but it hardly slowed down. Slithering forward, the tentacles on the sides of its head wiggled, testing the air. 

“Goddamn it,” the ranger swore. She fired, and fired, the street sweeper delivering seven shots in a row.

Irons saw only one shot go wide. It blasted a huge chip of rock from the opposite face with a ricocheting whine.

“There’s nothing you can do!” Irons shouted, but she folded out the stock, pressed it to her shoulder and started a second barrage. Another five rounds exploded, the target jerking with every shot, but its rubber-like resilience seemed bulletproof. Irons saw wounds in the cobalt skin, revealing glistening white scales like chain mail.

“I’ve put twelve slugs in it! I don’t know what to do!”

The caecilian slithered its thirty-foot body through the ditch. On the sides of its head, the tentacles waved in all directions. When the injured man screamed again, it lurched forward, huge jaw hinged open. In an instant, the screaming stopped as the monstrous snake bit down. Blood sprayed the walls of the culvert.

Irons caught motion in the corner of his eye. He spun around just in time to see a blue mass rising from the ground. He leapt, carrying the ranger a few yards in a flying tackle. Behind them, the second caecilian smashed into the ground, sending dirt and gravel spitting. Convulsively, its jaw worked, and though Irons’ ears were deadened by the shotgun concussion, he heard the grinding of rock as the thing masticated.

They scrambled to their feet. Point blank, the ranger aimed at the caecilian’s head. The creature reared back. She fired again, a rubbery chunk of blue skin flying away. Opalescent scales quivered beneath the wound. It wasn’t enough. It lunged.

With lightning reflexes, Irons shoved her aside. The strike missed the ranger by inches, but plowed into Irons, and sent him flying. Air knocked out of him, he got to his knees. He was behind the thing; the ranger in front of it. Between, the smooth-skinned behemoth wavered, head swaying back and forth like a cobra—the twitching glands writhing from its eye sockets.

Irons suddenly understood. The tentacles sensed vibration—that’s how they hunted beneath the ground. He held up a hand, putting a finger to his lips. The ranger ignored him, firing more rounds into the monster’s eyeless face. The dragon struck. As it opened its mouth, she emptied the final rounds from the drum clip.

It proved softer on the inside. In spasms, the monster curled in on itself, tossing large stones in its wake. In seconds, it lay still. The enforcement ranger dropped to her knees. Sweat and tears poured from her face, her breathing came in huge, ragged gulps. Every part of Irons hurt as he rose to his feet and made his way to her side.

“You okay?”

“No. And I won’t be until we kill all these bastards.”

Irons nodded. He didn’t remind her that not long before, she wanted to protect the animals for study. Life-or-death situations could change a person’s attitude.

“I have another drum clip in the Jeep.”

He stopped her. “We need help, here. You have to call some people in.”

“Like I could get someone to believe me, even if the radio worked up here?”

Tell me about it, he thought. But he said, “Make something up. But get more people, more guns—”

“I don’t need more people to kill a couple amphibians!” she shouted. “And they’ll take the same attitude that I did, at first. That they should be captured, or corralled. Forget it! We take all of ‘em out right now. You said there were three; one’s dead, and one’s in that gully. When it comes up, I’ll shove this street sweeper right down its throat if I have to—”

The caecilian suddenly reared from the deep culvert, moving like lightning. The monster lunged at her, wide mouth open, and swallowed her whole. Gone. She was gone.

Wiggling its bizarre antennae, the caecilian turned toward him. Irons couldn’t move.

 

IV.

 

It had happened to him before, someone dying horribly in front of him. And each time, he felt the same immobility, mind numb, muscles frozen, the only awareness the furious pump of his heartbeat. All that remained of the pretty special agent was a puddle of blood, drooled from the mouth of the caecilian. Suddenly, he realized he never even learned her name.

His heartbeat seemed loud in the gathering night. Could it hear?

Irons turned his head in concert with the blind snake. A distant, deep pulse drifted in the night. In a moment, Irons picked up the beat. It must be coming from the roadhouse. A band, or a DJ.

Rearing like a viper, the third caecilian rose from the scrub, scanning the air with vibration tentacles. As one, they flattened out, slithering and sidewinding toward the drums with amazing speed.

As he came to himself, survival instinct prompted flight as far away as he could get. He would have to be quiet. Attacks occurred at the drill rig, or when he was running all out, boot heels pounding the soil, or when the worker screamed, or when the ranger fired the shotgun or shouted her defiance, now the drums.

With slow steps, Irons crossed the parking lot. What he wanted was immediate egress from the area. What he needed was to evacuate people from the roadhouse. Irons gazed at the Jeep, keys inside. If the caecilians heard the sound, they might turn back. 

Five minutes from the construction site, he jogged onto a passable, paved surface. Heading west, he remembered the direction the ranger pointed in. The roadhouse was to the north—he was going the wrong way. The road ran along a high cliff, and Irons slowed at the sight of lights below. By the light of the moon, he could see that this roadway swerved off a long way, and it would probably take hours to follow the switchbacks to Highway 6. He needed a more direct route.

With no path visible, Irons took the slope directly. For the first hundred feet, he could walk in a crouch. However, the gentle grade became a rocky drop. Though not an adept climber, Irons was strong. His fingers and boot toes found crevices as he carefully levered himself down the craggy face. He did so without fear. Long ago, he had taken the step from outlaw to outsider, living beyond the fringe of human society. None would mourn him should he fall to leave his bones drying on this cliff. Perhaps, around the fire at a big biker run, his name would be whispered, connected with things weird. For living without a tether to the human gestalt left him susceptible to things that only existed in most people’s nightmares.

Fingers cramped, knees bruised, he made it to flatter ground. Light shown from below, brighter now. Jeffrey pine and red fir were cast in silhouette on the slope below. Crashing through a meadow clearing, he stumbled on intersecting trails, and chose the descending one. Moving quickly, keeping his footing, he came upon a precipice with a broad view. In the distance, Owens Valley stood like an ocean of dark. More immediately, several hundred feet below, he saw the highway, which stood empty, save sawhorses with amber warning lights. Finding another trail, he followed the lights, soon crossing an empty parking lot for the protected wilderness area. From there, he ran, sure-footed, to the entrance on Interstate 6. Less than a mile down the road, he found it.

He expected to see a line of semis or a row of bikes, but the roadhouse in question was actually The Roadhouse Lodge, the construction and paint glittering and new in the lights of the parking lot. Hurrying toward the structure, he saw he had arrived too late. Cars lay scattered like children’s toys in the hard-packed dirt lot. A huge hole rose into the center of the parking area. Irons was wrong—the things could still burrow.

Even from outside, the drums thundered, screams accompanying. Double-doors leading inside had been wrenched from the frame, shattered on the floor, looking like a gaping mouth. Irons spied a hog in the lot and considered hotwiring it and roaring away. Another scream stopped him. He remembered the ranger, a woman whose name he didn’t know, a law official who gave him the benefit of the doubt. Making sure the chain was through his belt loops, for all the good it would do, he entered hell.

Bodies littered the floor, women, children, men, some in serving attire, some in shorts and T-shirts. He knew what had happened. The closure of Highway I north caused the Roadhouse’s parking lot to be used as a turn-around—and many had chosen to stay, to their misfortune.

The driving beat led him to dance floor and stage area. A band had set up, but the stage was otherwise empty. A DJ had left a tape playing to warm up the crowd. Except the crowd consisted of two blue amphibians striking at speakers hanging from chains.

A voice came from behind him. The caecilians’ eyestalks twitched toward the sound before they returned to their task of rearing at the high speakers. Quietly, Irons entered the dining area. Tables set with white linen and gleaming flatware spread out under dim lighting, wide windows black mirrors.

“Denny, please, please!”

He found her under a table, dressed in a polyester waitress uniform kneeling next to a waiter, his white shirt scarlet with blood. As he crawled under, she opened her mouth to scream. He stopped her with a fast, gentle hand. “They’ll hear you.”

Blue eyes wide, she nodded. But then started jabbering. “The dragons came up through the lot, wrecking all the cars; then plowed in the front doors, and eating—”She took a breath. “And Denny tried to pull some people off of the dance floor and he got bit, and, I don’t know, are dragons poisonous?”

Irons looked at the waiter. Skin and fabric near his right elbow had been ripped away. It didn’t look too bad, but the kid was in shock from the blood loss. Or maybe from the sight of those things.

“Get me a sharp knife” he read the girl’s embroidered nametag, “Darlene, and do it quietly.” While she was gone, Irons reached up, grabbing the napkins from the tabletop. As he folded them into pads, she returned. “Good, now cut me a nice long strip from the tablecloth.”

In a few moments, Irons had the kid’s arm in a pretty good pressure bandage. “Are there others in here?”

Darlene nodded. “Maybe, in the kitchen, hiding, maybe more under the tables, I don’t know—”

“Shh.” Her voice was rising in panic. “We have to get Denny out. Is there a back door?”

She nodded, eyes wide again. “Through the music area.”

As she said it, the pounding thump of the DJ’s recorded music came to an abrupt end. Through the wall, the slithering, heavy movements of the caecilians could be heard. They’d soon be on the move. He tried to remember what the ranger had said. Amphibians preferred moist, cool, darkness. They needed to go someplace opposite. “Where’s the kitchen?” he whispered.

Lifting Denny in his arms, he followed Darlene across the room. Pushing through double doors produced a billow of smoke. He set the kid on the floor and moved to a bank of six stainless steel stoves. The restaurant staff had fled in the middle of cooking. Several pans still sat on burners. He removed all of them; then turned every burner and every oven up all the way. Immediately, the room grew hot.

Returning to where Denny and Darlene huddled, he whispered, “I don’t think they’ll come in here, they don’t like it—”

Above their heads, a smoke detector screamed. Outside the kitchen, loud crashes shook the roadhouse. Double doors flew open, the bullet head of a caecilian shoving through. It shook its head, as if in discomfort. Irons could see the sheen of its dark blue skin flattening to matte. With a hiss, it pulled back out of the room.

Irons scanned the ceiling, finding the smoke detector. Standing on one of the stoves, he pulled it down, yanked the batteries out. Kitchen doors bowled open again, but this time, the monster reared back almost immediately. If he could blast the whole restaurant with hot air, he might chase them back outside.

“Darlene, where’s the thermostat for this place?”

She kept her eyes on the swinging doors. “Behind the bar,” she whispered.

“Stay here.” The bar stood near the entrance. Peering out the circular windows, he moved out of the kitchen.

Distantly, he heard a door thud, and a heavy dragging sound that sped off to investigate. Behind the bar, he located the thermostat, and pegged it. In the bowels of the roadhouse, a furnace rumbled to life. Wood and glass cracked and crashed, the caecilians seeking source of the sound. It rarely reached ninety in the mountains. He only had to wait for the monster to flee to the mist-shrouded outdoors, to the comfort of whatever damp wallow they inhabited.

Then, a scream blared out, impossibly loud. Irons realized why he had heard screams outside, above the pounding of the DJ’s beat. The fearful sound had been amplified.

As he looked over the bar, a caecilian rushed by, close enough for him to feel the wind of it. Across the dance floor, the leviathans slithered, again leaping for the speakers suspended from the ceiling. He could see a face in a tiny window in the corner—the sound booth. Someone was trapped inside. One of the amphibians moved sideways, caroming into the booth. Again, the ear-piercing scream.

Without thinking, Irons grabbed a bottle, a dry bar rag, and a book of matches. Fashioning a Molotov cocktail, he lit the soaked rag and leapt over the bar. A well-tossed bottle smashed apart on the nearest caecilian’s head, coating the thing in flames. It writhed on the floor, hissing in agony as its sensitive skin burned. Before he could go back for a second bottle, an alarm bell rang. Sprinklers let go a rain of rusty water. He had made the place as damp as it could get.

 

V.

 

The flames died on the dragon he’d hit, and both animals surged around the room, seeking the alarm bell. Water sloshed from the carpet in their wake as they squirmed into the dining area. It at least gave Irons the opportunity to get the survivor out of the DJ booth. Running, he made his way to the corner and opened the door to the sound room. It was a closet containing a soundboard, light board, racks of electronics. Dual turntables sat on a stage just outside the room.

“Now’s your chance,” Irons said. “Get out of here, but go quiet.”

“Go where? Outside? That’s where they came from!” The young man looked a little gray, eyes wide, hands shaking.

“Get to the kitchen. It’s too hot for them in there. Wait—”He grabbed the man by the arm. Looking at the gear in the booth, Irons asked, “Is everything live? The stage?”

Looking up from the hand that grabbed him, the DJ said, “Why, you gonna play a song?”

He shook the man. “Is it?”

“Yeah, yeah, let me go!” The DJ pulled away, running across the dance floor.

Irons didn’t know much about music. The board in front of him, acres of dials and sliders, was almost meaningless. Instead, he turned to the light board. Everything was labeled with masking or duct tape and black marker. He flipped a few switches, turned a few dimmers. On stage, banks of lights came on. Stage lights were hot, he knew that much. He turned them all on.

With the heat and lights full blast and the sprinklers dripping to a stop, the place became a sauna. Opening the door, Irons heard the alarm go from a bell to loud metallic static before cutting out. No matter. Now, he could lure them back into the stage area, toss as many Molotovs at them as he wanted with the sprinklers empty. Cook the bastards.

As he stepped out, he brushed past a component. His heart nearly stopped as the system roared back to life with the pulsing beat. Caecilians crashed into the music room through the dining room wall in a blizzard of sheetrock and plaster. He was now trapped as the DJ had been as the amphibians swept through the space, striking at the speakers. He slammed the door shut. The burned caecilian lunged at the sound, its bullet head ramming the door. Plaster and glass cracked, the equipment rocking in its racks. How sensitive were their tentacle ears? He gazed at the soundboard. At the bottom a strip of tape labeled the controls. Only the DJ sliders were up. He pegged them. Feeling the bass thump in his chest, he glanced out the window. The caecilians no longer snapped at the speakers, but slithered away from them. The volume hurt them.

Finding a pair of headphones hanging from a rack, he unplugged them and put them over his ears. Then, with both hands, he pushed every slider, turned every dial, to the maximum.

Even with the headphones, the cacophony cut into his brain. Behind him was a rack of amplifiers. Finding the volume knobs, he cranked everything up. Mics on stage picked up the sound creating a loop. A groaning, howling roar of feedback filled the room, vibrating the walls, the floor, an ungodly hum rattled the cracked glass from the booth’s window.

Heads to the floor, the caecilians moved slowly. When they came in contact, they snapped at each other with devastating power. Blood and scales flew from their frenzied attacks.

Irons stepped from the booth, feeling the sound in his bones, on his skin, in his clothing. If he could slip past the battling monsters, he could get back to the bar, burn the place to the ground. But as the dragons pulled apart, one lunged, the contact making it snap at him, rows of teeth audible above the din. He jerked the chain from his belt loops, swinging it like a flail. Impact drove the lethal bite off target, but just. An urban barbarian with a modern sword, he attacked again and again, smashing at the dragon. But strong as he was, the monsters had shrugged off shotgun blasts. Jaws snapped, inches from his face. Irons’ weapon, however, was a more flexible tool than just a blade of steel. He wrapped it around the blunt muzzle, twisting the links. The dragon couldn’t open its mouth. It could, however, lift him off the ground. Shaking him, like a terrier with a rat, Irons felt himself battered into a tower holding the lighting truss. Groaning from the blow, the biker held fast. 

Pulling himself closer to the smooth dragon, he aimed a kick at the wavering tentacles jutting from its eye socket. It writhed and jerked as he did, slamming him to the ground, swinging him back into the lighting rig. Still he held fast, delivering another kick. This time, the beast crashed onto the stage, sending the gear flying. Irons’ shoulders and back collided with the ladder tower of the lights. Blackness tried to cloud his vision, but he shook it off. The wounded dragon surged around the room, snared by cables and wires. Out of the corner of his eye, Irons saw the light truss dragged forward, toppling.

Four dozen smoldering lights crashed into the other amphibian. A horrible stench rose as its moist flesh was burned by the smoking fixtures. As it thrashed, pieces of metal and glass flew like shrapnel. A cable snapped, juice surging through the water on the floor. Irons could feel the power electrifying the dragon he rode, its huge muscles twitching in electric agony. The biker fell with his quarry, splashing and sliding across the dance floor. A breaker must have triggered somewhere, for the lights and the noise ended. But emergency lights kicked on, revealing the dragons twitching in their death throes, electrocuted. 

With battered slowness, he lifted his bruised body from the floor. Oddly, the creature had saved Irons’ life by thrashing him around the room, ungrounded.

People began to emerge from their hiding places, faces pale and shocked at the sight of the slain dragons. Darlene, the soundman, a shivering Denny, several in cooks’ whites, people in suits or hiking clothes, each gathered at the entrance to the music area, unspeaking.

Irons ignored them, the hog in the parking lot foremost on his mind. He needed to steal it before the owner came around. If that biker was alive, he owed Irons; if not, he wouldn’t need the hog. 

But Irons did. When the authorities arrived, they would have questions the biker couldn’t answer. In the parking lot, ransacking the hog’s saddlebags, stripping the red and the green wires with a knife, he crossed them. Irons thought about the electrocuted dragons as he did. With a kick, the Harley roared to life.