EDIT by Rick Chesler

Author:Rick Chesler [Chesler, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Severed Press
Published: 2020-02-02T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Everglades

“Everybody calm down!” Ben Offstead demanded. His tone was firm, but Sam Gumshoe could see that his gun hand wavered a bit as he aimed his pistol at the as yet unseen disturbance. This was proving to be quite a last couple of days—the deaths, the strange animals, the missing rookie ranger, and now this—whatever this was. Gumshoe drew his own weapon, just in case. It was probably some drunk kids coming back from taking a piss or making out or something like that. But his boss drew his weapon, so…

“What is it?” a young woman seated by the campfire asked, voice trembling.

In response, Offstead bellowed toward the vegetation. “Federal ranger here. Slow down and come out with your hands up! I repeat…”

“If it’s a panther it won’t listen!” one of the campers joked to subdued cackles. But he was right, Offstead mused. Not that he expected a panther—he knew just how rare they actually were. But it could be something formidable; there was a small population of bears in the Everglades, or even a pack of feral dogs would be no picnic. He’d seen it before.

But the next few seconds would make it all too clear that this was no dog, or bear or panther. The very first thought Offstead had was that somehow an alligator had gotten up into a tree—high up. They did sometimes climb a little ways up if the branches were big and low enough to the ground. But the scaly reptile body he saw moving through the leaves was way, way up in the trees, much higher than a ‘gator could normally get. So what was it?

Like him, Gumshoe and the campers concluded that they didn’t need to be this close to find out. All of them backed away, nobody running yet, but all of them moving backwards at a steady pace. The guitarist still carried his instrument, and a couple of the campers still clutched bottled beers in foam coozies. All of them were here for different reasons, and all now had a common purpose: stay safe in the face of this unknown danger.

So far only the scaled body was visible, but it was large, Offstead thought. But there was something else, too, something that was really oddball about whatever the hell this thing was. He hadn’t gotten a view of the head yet, so he wasn’t sure what he was dealing with, but when part of the body passed through sparser foliage near the treetops, he could swear that the skin of the creature changed color. It was green, and then it was blue and white—matching the sky!

Offstead shook his head to clear the ridiculous thought. I must have breathed in some of these campers’ joint smoke! But then, as the campers collectively let out a whoa! he got a glimpse of the whole creature, and he saw it change color before his very eyes. As if the rapid color-changing ability wasn’t enough, what the creature actually was floored the experienced park ranger even more.

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