by Hunter Shea
“Shoo! Go on, get the hell out of here,” he said, careful not to raise his voice for the woman to hear.
The lizards didn’t obey his command. Their eyes followed him as he shifted to his right, then again when he took a few steps to his left.
Shit. They were zeroed in on him as if he were standing on a bullseye.
Frank had no desire to be covered in lizards again. But his need not to be seen by the neglectful mother outweighed his revulsion.
“All right, you little dickheads. Top of the food chain coming through.”
He plowed through their defensive line like a power running back, stomping heads and scattering the others.
For a second, he laughed at his initial fear. It’s not like a bunch of lizards could actually stop him. In fact, feeling a couple of them explode under his weight was kind of satisfying. Payback for the other night.
Winded because his stores of energy were at an all-time low, he leaned against a car to catch his breath.
The surviving lizards were squirming his way, bodies moving impossibly fast.
Frank ran, the lizards close behind.
First Tony with the gators. Now him with lizards. What the hell did the dinosaur throwbacks down here have against New Yorkers?
Chapter 9
“I’m pretty sure the AC was turned off so the meeting would end sometime this century,” Barbara said, fanning herself as she and Don walked out of the luncheonette that served as the location for town hall meetings. It held a hundred people, packed like sardines in booths, counter chairs and folding chairs. Usually, that was never a concern. At best, a typical meeting netted the same fifteen or twenty people.
Not so tonight. Sam had commented it was like a giveaway day at church.
“Well, if someone had the presence of mind to do it, I thank them,” Don said, checking his watch. They had hired the sitter, Mindy, a high school junior who lived two doors down, to stay with Gary until ten. They had fifteen minutes to get home, which they could do walking on their hands.
“I know what Don and I will be doing tomorrow,” Sam said. “We’ll board your house up first, then we can do mine.”
Don clapped his neighbor on the back. “Bright and early?”
“Bright and early. You sure you don’t want a ride home?”
Don tucked his arm around Barbara’s waist. “It’s a nice night for a walk. Might as well enjoy the peace and quiet while we can.”
“Suit yourself, lovebirds. See you in the morn.”
The people spilling out of the luncheonette were not a happy bunch. First, there was the fear that always gripped the town when a big storm stopped by for a visit. Old timers like Sam who had been here sixty years and lived through countless monster storms still worried.
Second, the whole green iguana explosion and the repercussions, not just on the town’s infrastructure, but the damage to body and limb they were causing, did not make for an agreeable mood.
“Poor Ann,” Barbara said. “She looked like she was in a lot of pain.”
Their mayor, a girl they had babysat when she was in grammar school, had her lower leg wrapped up in a tan bandage. The doctor must have given her painkillers, which she must have not taken in order to be clear-headed for the meeting. By the end, she was pale and sweating with deep, dark circles hanging under her eyes.
“You mean Mayor Hickok,” Don corrected her, walking at a pace a notch below leisurely. He and Barbara didn’t have much time just to themselves. It was nice, despite the dire news from the meeting.
“She’ll always be plain old Ann who loved to watch Barney to me.”
“I think she did good. She laid out all of the hurricane protocols and is the first mayor to secure buses for anyone who wants to evacuate. I don’t think anyone will be on those buses, but that was progressive thinking on her part.”
Barbara sighed. “Maybe we should ride this one out somewhere else. I worry about Gary.”
“The weather channel is saying it won’t be that bad. We’ve been through far worse. Our house laughs at seventy-five mile-an-hour winds.” He chuckled, hoping she’d join in. She didn’t.
“Let’s walk in the street,” she said. Word of how Mayor Hickok had broken her ankle from running around with lizards dropping from the trees had everyone avoiding the shade. It was one thing to keep your eyes peeled to the ground and watch were you walked. Now they had to be wary of raining iguanas?
Something skittered in the darkness, an amorphous shape that glided under a row of bushes. Barbara shivered. Don pulled her closer.
“Jesus, they’re running in packs now,” she said.
“Yes, but that exterminator said he and his team will come in after the storm and remove them without any harm to the environment or the lizards themselves,” Don said in his best imitation of the good ol’ boy exterminator’s accent.
“I don’t think he knows how many there really are.”
Don had to admit that she was right. In just the past two days, the lizards had been popping up everywhere, destroying yards and the park and sidewalks as if they’d been tasked with laying waste to the town. People had fallen and hurt themselves just like Ann. The local hospitals were going to run out of crutches if things kept up like this.
Through it all, Don had forgotten about his lawsuit. Gary was just the first victim of Mother Nature gone wild.
A cool wind blew off the nearby Gulf. It was a pleasant surprise, and a portent of the coming storm.
“There was one thing he said that really bugged me,” Don said.
“Oh?”
“It’s that all of the iguanas he’s seen so far are basically babies. Somewhere, there are a whole lot of adults making those babies. Where are they and why aren’t they making their way to the surface?”
“Maybe they’re too busy underground doing the old lizard bump and grind to come out?” Barbara gave a big smile.
“The bump and grind?” Don said, chuckling.
“Yeah. I can be street when I want to.”
“I don’t think the street calls it the bump and grind.”
“Sure it does.”
They came to their house, stopping to admire it.
“You and Sam have a lot of windows to board up.”
“We’re old pros. Just keep a cold beer waiting for us and we’re golden.”
She squeezed her arm. “Do you really think we’ll be okay?”
“If I didn’t, I’d be packing the car right now. We’ll get some board games and candles and snacks . . . and wine of course . . . and make it special for Gary.”
She kissed him tenderly, the kind that promised so much more to come.
“I love you,” she said.
“Till hurricane winds and lizards do us part?”
“Not even then.”
Chapter 10
Hurricane Ramona was even worse than Sam’s ex-wife. Picking up steam as she made her way up Florida’s west coast, she brought the hammer down on Polo Springs.
This time, all the fancy satellites and computer models had gotten it wrong. The winds were close to ninety miles an hour. Rain cascaded from the gloom as if the town had been transplanted under Niagara Falls. Trees were uprooted. Rooftops groaned under the weight of water. The soil became waterlogged, sinking in on itself. Sidewalks buckled.
As the infrastructure of Polo Springs grew weaker and weaker, forces from deep beneath the sheltered town pushed ever upward, escaping the hell of the depths.
* * * *
Mayor Hickok sat in her darkened living room with her parents. The power had gone out an hour ago. That wasn’t a shocker. In Polo Springs, they lost power during a sun shower. Yet another issue Ann had been bludgeoned over, even though every previous administration had chosen to ignore it.
“Anyone want to play cards?” her mother said, nervously looki
ng toward the boarded window as a gust of wind made the entire house shudder.
Ann checked her cell phone. She’d bought a separate charger on Amazon days ago just to make sure she’d have the extra juice. The weather reports were not helping her anxiety. The winds were going to top out at a hundred miles an hour soon.
She wished at least some of the townies had taken up her offer of a free bus ride further inland. She’d even made a deal with the mayor of Pocantico to let them stay in the school’s gymnasium until Ramona blew herself out.
Of course, no one had evacuated. The citizens of Polo Springs hated going outside the town as much as they disliked outsiders.
“I don’t think I could concentrate,” Ann said.
“You’re no good at poker even when you do concentrate,” her father joked. A beer can rested on his considerable belly. The candlelight gave a sinister cast to his normally jovial face. “The storm will be over soon, and then you’ll really be busy. You might as well appreciate the downtime and make the best of it.”
“Easy for you to say,” Ann said.
“As a matter of fact, it is.”
What she didn’t tell her parents was that she wasn’t so much worried about the storm. The power would eventually come back on, damaged trees would be taken down and insurance companies would flock to the neighborhoods.
What was really eating her was what the exterminator had told her before the town hall meeting.
“You know, those babies aren’t responsible for all that damage,” he’d said in between sips of Red Bull.
“But there’s so many of them.”
“Yep, but they’re leaving after the fact. No, you’ve got some big mama jammas underneath your feet. Once your hurricane skedaddles, I’ll be fixin’ to go down and take a closer look.”
“How . . . how big can these green iguanas get?”
He’d scratched his head with his Red Bull can. “Oh, a nice booger would be about five feet from snout to tail.”
Ann was pretty sure she had audibly gulped.
“But what you got out here honey—erm, I mean, Ms. Mayor—ain’t no typical five-footer. No sir, you have something else entirely. Like I said, we’ll see for sure in a few days.”
Something else entirely.
Ann was far from reassured.
* * * *
Nicole and Cheryl had decided to ride the storm out in their bedroom eating homemade quinoa chips, drinking box wine, and just enjoying their time being unplugged.
The rain sounded like nails being thrown against the house. The boards on the windows shook with each hard gust, but so far had held fast. Nicole made the sign of the cross when she checked the crawlspace above the bedroom and saw there were no leaks in the roof.
“Even if your garden wasn’t torn up, it’s toast now,” she said to Cheryl who was sitting cross-legged in front of her reading a magazine by candlelight.
“Yeah, well I hope all the rain drowns those little jerks.”
Nicole had called the police when the army of lizards kept on skittering out of the giant hole they’d made in the garden. Naturally, they’d arrived two hours too late. The deputy said they’d gotten a bunch of calls about big holes popping up overnight, some of them filled with iguanas.
“Hey, can you get me something from my nightstand drawer?” Nicole asked.
“Sure. What?”
“My big emery board. I have to sharpen these claws.”
She did her best to remember this moment; the way Cheryl casually dropped her magazine, stretched across the bed and opened the drawer. The look of confusion on her face when she plucked the nail file out. The diamond ring sliding down the emery board, landing in the palm of her hand. Best yet, the giant smile and even bigger tears when she said, “Is this what I think it is?”
“Cheryl Banner, will you . . . “
A tremendous crash cut through what was the biggest, brightest moment of both their lives. They leapt from the bed, the ring bouncing off the covers and falling to the floor.
Neither of them noticed where it had gone as they ran to the front of the house.
* * * *
Don, Barbara and Gary were on their fifth game of Candyland, the room lit up by Gary’s battery-powered camping lantern. The lantern gave off enough light to give the sun a run for its money.
“You want any more juice?” Barbara asked.
Gary happily extended his cup. Normally, he got to enjoy one glass of fruit juice a week. Don would have liked to give him more, but Barbara was adamant that they limit his sugar.
“I grew up on Hawaiian Punch and Pixy Stix,” he’d said many times. “No diabetes here and I think I turned out pretty okay.”
“Just think how much better you’d be without all that sugar ruining your body and mind,” was her steady reply, always with a playful smirk.
Don had a throwback transistor radio that had been his father’s. He’d kept it on low, listening to the news and weather. Ramona was definitely leaving her mark on the town. At one point, he thought he heard a tree being uprooted. Either that, or someone’s house had cracked in two. It wasn’t as if he could peek outside the window to see.
Gary didn’t seem the least bit afraid of the storm. That was one silver lining.
“You think the road’s washed out?” Barbara whispered to him while Gary worked on resetting the game.
“I’m sure. Good thing we’re all stocked up and have nowhere to go.”
“Speak for yourself. I have a viewing outside of town in two days.”
“Well, if the place has electricity and running water, Gary and I are coming with you.”
He gave her a reassuring smile. She’d been nervous ever since Ramona started. If she was concerned about Gary’s well-being, she could rest easy. To him, this was just a fun family game night.
“More wine?” Don asked her. “Because I definitely need a fresh beer.”
“You’ll make a fine waiter someday.”
“Yeah, chop chop, Dad,” Gary said, clapping his hands.
Don couldn’t help chuckling. “Where did you get that from, bud?”
Gary opened his mouth to answer at the very moment their house pitched violently to the right like a sinking ship.
* * * *
“Fuck my life,” Frank Ferrante grumbled for about the hundredth time since the storm had started. He was soaked to the marrow, rainwater pooling in his butt crack.
An hour before the storm had touched down, the streets of Polo Springs were utterly empty, houses boarded up, pets safely tucked away. He’d walked the streets feeling like Charlton Heston in The Omega Man, the sodden last man on Earth.
For once, he didn’t have to worry about being seen. It was the first time his ass had unclenched since those gators had eaten Tony for lunch.
He’d had time to find a perfect spot to ride out the storm, if such a thing were possible. The rain came first as he walked from one end of town to the other. That abandoned house still looked inviting, but the big hole had gotten much bigger. Nope, no way was he going near there again.
Being near trees was out of the question. Limbs, if not entire trees, were going to be flying like baseballs at batting practice. He wanted to avoid being brained by one.
So, he sauntered to Main Street amidst the sturdiest buildings that would most assuredly also be empty. He squeezed himself into the narrow alley between the dry cleaner and post office. There was a little overhang from the dry cleaner’s roof, so it kept most of the rain off him, the wind whistling madly as it huffed down what accounted for the town’s business district.
The problem came when cold rainwater started to fill the warped alley, soaking his ass. Then the winds shifted, rocketing the rain into the gap between the buildings so he was getting soaked two ways to Sunday.
How had it come to this? He used to wear ni
ce suits and had even gotten his nails manicured once a month. Now he was ass deep in alley water.
All he wanted to do was go to sleep and block everything out, but the screaming of the wind made it impossible. As did the keening of the buildings that had him worried they’d fall down and go boom on his head any second.
Tucking his face into his arms folded on his knees, he squeezed his eyes shut.
“You’re at Jones Beach hanging in the water, watching Tina oil herself up in her red thong bikini.”
He had just about convinced himself that he wasn’t in misery down in Florida when something ran up one side of his body, scampered over his head and dove into the water with a splash. Frank pulled his head up in time to see one of those damn lizards running down the alley.
“Stay the fuck off me,” he shouted at the darting iguana. It didn’t look back.
Turning to look down the other end of the alley, the hinges of his jaw came undone.
A rolling wave of lizards were heading his way.
Staggering to his feet, he made to run into the storm. Anything was better than being swarmed over . . . again.
Before he could take his first step, he saw the shadow.
And stopped dead in his wet tracks.
Chapter 11
Cheryl bounded down the stairs, her stomach twisted in a Gordian knot. From the sound and vibration alone, she knew for sure she’d come upon a tree sitting in the middle of their living room, the roof and walls smashed to splinters.
“Wait!” Nicole cried. “We need a flashlight.”
Cheryl stopped midway down the dark stairway. Nicole was right. The house was pitch-black thanks to all of the windows being boarded up and the electricity going out. If not for her girlfriend . . . no, fiancé . . . she could have broken her neck.
“Here,” Nicole said, handing her the small flashlight they usually kept in the glove compartment of their Camry. Nicole had a flashlight as well, the beam jittery from her nerves.
Before they descended, Cheryl said, “You feel any breeze?” She held her hand out, moving it slowly back and forth.