by Hunter Shea
Reaching out for her hand, he said softly, “We have to go.”
As if to emphasize his point, one of the big lizards stomped all over a house behind them. Shrapnel pelted the back of his head, stinging like hornets.
That got Nicole running again.
Cutting across yards, scaling small fences and skirting unused pools, they put some distance between themselves and the lizard. Unfortunately, there were plenty more roaming around.
“How many of these bastards can there possibly be?” he moaned, chest burning, head hurting, legs feeling numb.
“Just one more block over,” Nicole said as she scrabbled up a wooden fence. Frank helped give her a final push. An expert at making getaways, he had no problem making it on his own.
Hitting the ground and rolling, he knocked into Nicole.
She wasn’t moving.
He saw why.
Between them and the cul-de-sac where the old school lie were thousands of lizards. It was like looking at the soil after a heavy storm, the earth alive with squirming worms.
“At least it’s the small ones,” Frank said.
“How can we get through them?”
“Just run very fast and keep your mouth closed.”
“Why do I need to keep my mouth closed?”
“Because they have a tendency to stick like glue and crawl all over you. Any opening to them is a place to explore.”
Nicole studied the sea of iguanas.
Frank had no desire to wade through them. Not again. But if the school was their best bet at saving their asses, well, there was no reason to hem and haw.
He got down on one knee. Nicole shot him a quizzical look.
“I’m not proposing,” he said. “Hop on my back. I’ll get us through.”
“I can’t have you carry me.”
The ear-splitting report of another house being brought down to its foundation made them jump.
Big fuckers to the rear, little assholes in front, Frank thought. I’m starting to feel like Custer.
“We ain’t got time to discuss it,” he said. “My back. Now.”
Nicole took a deep breath and hopped on, her arms wrapped around his shoulders and neck.
“Just don’t squeeze too tight, honey. I don’t wanna pass out before I get us to the Promised Land. And I’m sure you don’t want that either.”
“Okay,” she said breathlessly.
“Here goes everything.”
Nicole’s extra weight didn’t do wonders for his tired legs and lungs, but he ran nonetheless. The moment he stepped to the edge of the sea of iguanas, they took note of their presence and started to swarm.
Nicole screeched as they climbed up his legs, most assuredly sticking on her. She tried to bat them free, but he knew it was a losing proposition.
“Just stop,” he ordered. “You’re gonna throw me off balance.”
If he fell, they would be swamped. That wasn’t an option.
He was midway to the school when he heard sirens.
So did the lizards.
Migrating toward the sound, they slithered like rats away from them.
He saw the fire engine tear around the corner.
It didn’t look like any firefighters were in control of the hook and ladder. Regular people clung to the sides of the truck. Some had guns that they fired into the mass of iguanas. Even Frank could hear the pop-pop-pop of lizard bodies as the heavy fire truck rolled over them.
“Guess . . . you’re not the . . . only one . . . to think this is . . . the place to be,” he said, staying on course to get to the school.
There were still iguanas hitching a ride, but the going was easier because most of the ones on the ground had migrated toward the fire engine.
Nicole screamed.
“I think I’ve been shot!”
Crap. Frank called up whatever reserves of strength he had left, making an all-out dash to the front doors. He almost cried when he saw one of them was already open. It hadn’t occurred to him until that moment that the whole place might be boarded up, leaving them outside to be taken under the iguana undertow.
Frank saw blood running down Nicole’s arm.
“Just hang on,” he said.
He ran up the five steps to the door and nearly collapsed. Nicole slipped off his back.
Before they went inside, the ground quaked.
“Shit cakes,” Frank wheezed, his heart trip-hammering.
Three dino-lizards must have been following the fire truck as if it were the equivalent of the lizard ice cream man. The people turned their attention from the horde of smaller lizards, firing into the faces of the big daddies.
It got so bad so fast, they could no longer see the people hidden under the undulating lizards.
The big ones showed mercy by crushing the fire truck and all its inhabitants with their heads and tails.
Recovered enough to stand straight, Frank shoved Nicole into the darkness, slamming the door behind them.
Flicking his Zippo open, he ignited the tiny flame. Nicole’s arm was awash in blood, but on further inspection, it appeared to only be a superficial wound.
At least he hoped. Because unless the school nurse had remained on duty all these years, proper first aid was going to be long in coming.
Chapter 26
Ann broke free from Don, her younger legs running ahead of him and scooping Gary up.
She was about to hand him over to Don when the hardware store where Sam had stopped the truck was blown to smithereens. Sam’s truck flipped into the air, engulfed in flame. It landed on its hood, burning like a log.
“No!” Ann screamed.
Don had been so busy looking at the truck, he didn’t notice Barbara was on fire from head to toe. She ran in a mad circle, her screeches stopping his heart.
Ann tackled Barbara, rolling her on the wet blacktop. Barbara’s arms flailed, then went still.
“I can’t put her out,” Ann said, stepping back.
Don draped his body over his wife, ripping off his soaked shirt to bat the flames. It felt like an eternity, but it only must have been twenty or thirty seconds before the flames were doused.
It was painfully clear he was too late.
Barbara’s blackened, charred face stared up at him, her eyes melted in their sockets. Don felt an ungodly wail building in his guts. It nearly tore his throat apart when he let it out.
He wanted to hold her in his arms, but she was too hot to touch. Blisters were already breaking out on his hands.
“Mommy!” Gary shouted. Ann held him back.
Streetlights fell as all of Main Street, or what was left of it, rocked as if it had been hit with an earthquake.
Don looked back and saw a host of the behemoths that had destroyed his life racing down Main Street. They must have come to investigate the commotion, the flames urging them to get out fast.
Don didn’t feel Ann’s grasp until she had pulled him to his feet.
“Follow me,” she said, holding Gary with her other arm.
They took a detour between two stores, leaving Main Street behind. He followed the mayor, his mind suddenly gone blank. Gary looked to him, his eyes brimming with tears.
“Let me take him,” he said. He may not have been able to form a coherent thought, but he had sense enough left to care for his terrified son.
Ann passed the little boy over. Gary dug his hands into Don’s back as if they were claws.
“We’re going to my old school,” Ann said. “The basement part was like a bomb shelter or something back in the day. I think.”
As they ran, Don saw that every house on every street had been destroyed. Small fires had broken out amidst the rubble of Polo Springs. Thick plumes of oily smoke billowed from Main Street.
Someone would see it. The neighboring town
s had to have felt the blasts.
Don’t try to save us, he thought. Run. Run for your lives.
They were doing just that when cars started flying.
The lizards had left Main and were coming for them at breakneck speed.
Chapter 27
The old school was unsettlingly quiet. It wasn’t so much that the place was abandoned and kind of creepy looking. It was that whole quiet before the storm thing that was niggling at him.
Even though they’d just made it through a storm and then some. Things could always get worse.
Just ask Tony.
“You’re gonna be all right,” he said to Nicole, tearing off a piece of his sleeve and wrapping it around her arm.
“I don’t think that can ever be true,” she said, sniffling.
He didn’t know what to say to that.
“Where is this gym?”
“Down that way,” she said, pointing down a long hall with rusted lockers.
Holding the Zippo in front of him, Frank led the way.
“She never even got to put it on,” Nicole said.
“What’s that?”
She didn’t finish her thought.
A rat scurried past their feet. Frank lashed out, trying to kick it. After everything they’d gone through, the rats could kiss his ass.
“The stairs are to the right, just past those two doors.”
The classrooms were closed up tight. Frank was sure teenagers had been using the place like an hourly motel. A lot of sex-ed must have been taking place here.
“There,” Nicole said, tapping his arm.
He put his hand on the steel bar and was about to press it down when something crashed behind them.
* * * *
Ann made sure not to get too far ahead of Don. He looked as bad as she was sure he felt. They both did. She was broken and hollow, the emptiness begging to be filled with despair and doubt and longing.
Then she saw Gary, his desperate eyes looking to her and his father to keep him safe.
She may not have been able to save the town, but she was determined to see that Gary saw tomorrow.
She should have taken everyone to Polk Elementary in the first place. Maybe they’d all be alive now. Sure, the sturdy old building had been labeled a toxic hazard, but it wasn’t as if they were going inside to eat lead chips and asbestos.
A lizard bellowed so close, she was sure she could feel its fetid breath on the back of her neck.
“There it is,” she said.
A pair of creatures fought over the remains of the town’s lone fire truck. There were smaller lizards everywhere, crawling around the legs of the monsters like excited children.
A stitch in her side almost stopped her cold.
“Not now.”
She hit the school doors, glancing back to see if the lizards had noticed their arrival.
They had.
She yanked the door open, ushering Don inside.
A dozen giant iguanas surrounded the school.
She’d failed again.
No matter what she did, she led people to their death.
Don pulled her inside. She was swallowed by darkness.
Chapter 28
“Over here!” Nicole cried out.
From the sounds of things, the intruders were definitely human, not lizard. They could be the thugs sent to finish him off and Frank wouldn’t care at this point.
When the trio came within the Zippo’s light, Nicole said, “Are . . . aren’t you the mayor?”
In spite of everything he’d seen that day, Frank couldn’t believe it. She was just a kid. How the hell could she be mayor?
The building shook.
“We have to get downstairs,” the girl said. A man holding a crying boy stood beside her. The guy looked like he’d checked out.
“That’s where we were headed,” Frank said, pushing the door to the stairwell open. “Come on.”
It sounded like the roof was collapsing. They clambered down the stairs as fast as their tired legs would take them.
“Take it,” Frank said to Nicole, handing her the lighter. “I don’t know where the fuck we’re going.”
She led them down another long hall while everything crashed above them. Bits of plaster rained down from the ceiling.
“I don’t know if the gym will be safe now,” Nicole said.
“We have to go under the gym,” the mayor said.
“Under the gym?” Nicole said.
“Yes. They built it as a fallout shelter, or at least that’s how I remember it, when the state inspector showed me everything. It’s probably the only solid structure left in the town.”
They burst through the double doors leading to the gym, their footfalls echoing on the hardwood boards. Frank watched the hanging lights sway as the building came apart.
“This way,” the mayor said. They piled into the equipment room. She pulled an empty storage rack away, revealing a steel door. Thank God, it opened.
“It’s down there.”
They followed the light in Nicole’s hand. The stairway was narrow, the room below not so small. He guessed it had been erected to house most of the small town in case of a nuclear bomb. It was solid concrete and utterly empty. Every sound they made was amplified, echoing back to them. It must have cost them a pretty penny, being so close to the water table. Then again, worries about being incinerated by a nuclear bomb had a way of freeing budgets.
There was nowhere else to go.
“End of the line, kids,” Frank said.
The sounds of the school breaking apart were muffled down here.
He wondered how long it—and their luck—could hold up.
* * * *
Don must have fallen asleep. Without the light, and after everything they’d been through, it was inevitable. He hadn’t dreamt, but he knew he had a lifetime of nightmares ahead of him.
As did Gary.
“You hear that?” he said, his voice repeating itself over and over.
He heard the others shuffling against the floor.
“No,” the girl who’d been here with the ratty-looking guy said.
“Exactly.”
“I’ll go check it out,” the guy said.
“I’ll go with you,” Don said.
“We’ll all go,” Ann said. “The second we see anything wrong, we head back in here.”
Don couldn’t believe they were still alive. It literally sounded like the school had been caught in a tornado. The lizards had gone insane looking for them.
Or perhaps they never cared about them. Maybe their only purpose was to destroy everything in their path. To that end, they had succeeded.
Opening the door, they were blinded by daylight.
“What the?” the man said.
“Holy cow,” Don said.
The school was gone. All that was left was rocky ruins.
He lifted Gary, holding him to his chest as he navigated the debris.
A cool breeze blew off the Gulf. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
“Look at them,” the woman said.
“Somebody croaked them,” the guy said, whooping and raising his arms in victory.
An olive helicopter zoomed overhead.
Everywhere Don looked, there were dead giants.
“I knew the Army would fix their nuts,” the guy said.
“But there’s no blood,” Don said.
“They probably hit them with some top secret chemical shit.”
Don hoped not. That would mean they were in danger as well.
Ann walked ahead of them. She came up to a lizard, its mouth open, long, graying tongue rolled out like a carpet. Hands on her bent knees, she looked inside its mouth.
“Chemicals killed it, all right,” she sa
id. She reached her hand inside its mouth.
Everyone screamed for her to get back.
She pulled out a wet wad of what looked like drywall.
“The school was loaded with asbestos. The town council didn’t want to alarm anyone, so we kept it quiet. Besides, it had been shut down years ago. We didn’t have the money to have a professional demolition team that deals with asbestos take it down.”
“Asbestos. Are you shitting me?” the guy said, scratching his head.
“I’m only guessing. If those helicopters took them down, I think we’d see some very torn up lizards.”
Don carried Gary across the debris field. “We can’t stand around here,” he said.
They walked among the fallen creatures and away from the poisonous wreckage of the school.
“Saved by fucking school,” the guy Don had never seen before but who had somehow made it to be one of the last five people in Polo Springs said. “Huh.”
A helicopter landed in front of them, the side door sliding open.
Don could only pray as they were escorted onto the chopper by a phalanx of soldiers that it had started . . . and ended . . . here. He held Gary and Ann tight as they took to the air, looking down at the shattered remains of his life, knowing his wife was down there, a feast for the scavengers.
Meet the Author
Hunter Shea is the product of a misspent childhood watching scary movies, reading forbidden books, and wishing Bigfoot would walk past his house. He’s the author of over 17 books, including The Jersey Devil (Pinnacle), the Mail Order Massacres trilogy (Lyrical Press), and We Are Always Watching (Sinister Grin). Hunter’s novels can even be found on display at the International Cryptozoology Museum. The Montauk Monster was named one of the best reads of the summer by Publishers Weekly. He was selected to be part of the launch of Samhain Publishing’s new horror line in 2011, alongside legendary author Ramsey Campbell. When he’s not writing thrillers and horror, he also spins tall tales for middle grade readers on Amazon’s highly regarded Rapids reading app. He’s the co-host of two of the most listened to horror podcasts in the world, Monster Men and Final Guys, where terror meets humor. Living with his crazy and supportive family and two cats, he’s happy to be close enough to New York City to see the skyline without having to pay New York rent.