“Kids, get down!” I yell. But they aren’t listening. How can they? It’s chaos.
Beneath my hands the man jerks. He’s alive? But when I glance down at his face, his eyes are wide open and he still isn’t breathing. He jerks again and then I see the alligator at his leg, snapping and pulling.
“No!” I yell at the thing.
Jamie pulls me away. “It’s okay.” The alligator continues snapping down on the dead man’s leg. Someone in the middle of the camp throws a flaming stick at one of the gators, but it goes over them, right into the tall grass at the edge of the road.
The grass catches fire almost immediately. Oh no.
“Where’s the water?” I ask Jamie.
“Here!” Cara runs over to the jug but jumps back, screaming. Jamie spins with the fire, revealing three more alligators.
“Jesus! How many are there?” Amy asks.
And why are they here? Does this usually happen with alligators?
A few feet away the first alligator is still pulling at the dead man’s leg. Jamie takes his flaming branch and runs toward him. The alligator rolls and the man’s body rolls with it before his leg rips off and the alligator takes its prize into the grass.
I try to shield the kids from the view. Taylor is just out of my reach, staring at the man’s body. Her face shines in the firelight.
I move over to hug her close and she lets me. Jamie pushes us all back toward the fires in the road, away from the alligators. The wildfire is spreading. Someone shouts to move the vehicles. With part of the field burning brightly now, I can see all the chaos around us.
Alligators—so many of them. There have to be at least ten.
They attack in bursts from the high grass surrounding us. People are trying to fend them off with fire and baseball bats or other blunt objects, but they keep coming. Those with guns shoot at the ground, but not even the gunfire scares them off.
How hungry are they that they seem to be hunting people in a pack like this?
When one of them tries to get close, Jamie chases it off with fire. Daphne comes out of the darkness covered in blood, and my heart stops in my chest. But then I see the huge knife in her bloody hand.
She holds it up to me. “Took this from someone, nearly got chomped in half.” Then she lowers her voice. “This is the moment. I told you torun.”
“You know I’d never leave you. But I am so damn happy to see you,” I tell her.
She frowns but then shakes her head. “Well, given the circumstances, the feeling is mutual, hon.” She looks down at all the kids. “All right, children? Where’s the Kid?”
I spin to look at them. All six of them. No, there’s supposed to be seven! Fuck! The Kid.
“Oh!” I jump up. “Kid!” I scan the chaos. People still shooting and screaming.
In the middle of it all, on the other side of our fire, the Kid is crying. Still in his sleeping bag.
Thank fucking God he’s—
But then I see the light reflecting off something on the other side of the field. An eye in the moving grass. And teeth.
“No! Kid!”
But he’s not moving. He’s looking over at me with tears in his eyes. Crying loudly, Bobo held tightly against his chest.
I move, not thinking. Jamie screams after me.
The alligator lunges out of the grass, trying to beat me to him—and maybe if we were in water he’d be able to—but fuck you, asshole, this is land.
I leap over the fire and land on the other side. Right on the edge of a small pothole. My ankle twists as the edge of the asphalt breaks under my shoes. I eat it, face down on the road. The Kid is still crying. And he’s still five feet away.
But the alligator is closer to him than I am.
