Kent Montana and the Once and Future Thing by Charles L. Grant

Author:Charles L. Grant [Grant, Charles L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: humor, science fiction
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2017-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

III

Zergopha’s Plan

1

Deep in the swamp, confused by the flying bugs and the clutching quicksand and the treacherous currents that made traveling pure Hell, Zergopha, newly hatched and thinking only of unadulterated, untainted, unsullied revenge, ate a porcupine for lunch and pretended it was the man who had given him life.

It was in no hurry.

Familial memory told it there was only one person alive who knew how to kill it, and that person was most definitely not the man who lived in the big white house at the edge of the bayou. Who that man was, exactly—the one who might destroy it—it did not know. And, frankly, it didn’t care.

Zergopha knew it was invincible.

Zergopha knew that the man who had given it life knew that it was invincible.

Zergopha suspected that the only man in the world who could kill it didn’t even know he could and therefore couldn’t kill it, which is where the invincible part came in.

Therefore, it plucked another porcupine clean, swatted the hell out of those flying bugs that kept trying to lay eggs in the gaps between its scales, bounded over the quicksand without any trouble at all, and avoided the treacherous deep currents by staying away from them.

It slobbered, splashed onward, tore the head off an alligator and ate the brains for a snack, and finally, as the day’s heat wilted the fluffy red feathers that sprouted where the scales didn’t, it curled up beneath the comforting knees of a gnarled cypress tree.

Nossir.

Zergopha, invincible and cunning, was in no hurry at all.

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