Jokers Wild

Chapter Eleven

4:00 p.m.

Electrochemical neutral responses diminished, body slowed to a dreamlike slow motion, the alligator moved among the tu

The creature padded through pools of cold radiance shed by the low-wattage trouble lights fixed to the tu

The alligator turned a corner and entered a much older section of passage. The floor was slab stone rather than concrete. The ceiling lowered. The creature felt the welcome in crease of humidity as his feet plopped down now in brackish pools.

His unblinking eyes passed incuriously across years of graffiti vandals had scrawled and spray-painted on the stone walls. Near a narrow branching tu

The alligator didn't care. He responded only to his basic drives and forged ahead against the awful inertia that tugged him back at every step. Hunger. Still so hungry… So needful.

The dark shallow water now covered the entire passageway. The alligator welcomed it, hoping on a primal level that the level would deepen until the reptile could start to swim. The powerful tail switched slowly with anticipation. His ears detected unfamiliar sounds and he halted jerkily. Prey? He wasn't sure. Anything could be prey ordinarily, but there was something about the noises… He heard the scrabbling of a multitude of claws on stone, a hissing sibilance of almost-voices.

They came upon him from around the next bend. There were at least two dozen of them, most tiny, as small as the webspan of his foot. Others were larger, and a few, the leaders, perhaps a quarter the size of his twelve-foot bulk.

The larger alligator slowly opened his jaws and bellowed a challenge.

The smaller reptiles stopped in a semicircle around him, their eyes glittering in the trouble-light glare. Their damp hides shone moistly, the mossy green most pronounced in the smaller ones. The skins of the larger, older alligators held an overlay of hoary whiteness, a dark-bred pallor.

The pack started to hiss and grumble as one, and started forward. Hundreds of sharp teeth shone bright as polished bone.

The larger alligator looked at them and roared again. These could be food, but he didn't want them to be. They were something else. They were as he, even if their forms were much smaller. He closed his jaws and waited for them.

The smaller ones reached him first, scuttling up, rearing on their tails and hind legs, and rubbing against his own muscled feet. The hisses, some low and rumbling, most high and sharp, filled the tu

They surrounded him only a short time, the smaller, more agile alligators gamboling about, while the larger reptiles nuzzled against their bigger brother. The larger alligator felt something alien, something puzzling, disturbing on all levels. It was not hunger. It was something like the opposite.

Then the pack left him, the smaller members again merrily circling a few times before rejoining their comrades down the tu

The larger alligator hesitated then in his single-minded course. Something tugged at him, urging the creature to turn in the passage and follow after the smaller reptiles, to be part of something bigger, something different from what he already was.

Then the sounds and scents faded, and all the alligator heard was dripping water. He turned back to the darkness of the tu

Je

She needed a haven, a place of peace and safety where she could take a breather, rest her sore feet, and, above all, think. The sign in front of a small brick-and-stone building on Or chard Street made her pause. This, she thought, was exactly what she needed.

It was a church. The sign in front said Our Lady of Perpetual Misery. It looked Catholic. Je

She hurried up the worn stone steps and through the large wooden double doors that opened up into a small vestibule. She stepped inside the vestibule, looked at the doors leading into the nave, and stared.

The vestibule itself was a small windowless room with flagstone paving. Wooden benches stood along its side walls with coat hooks, now all empty, above them. The closed dou ble doors leading into the church nave were also wooden. A scene had been painted on them in a naive style that would have been beautiful if the subject matter hadn't been so grotesque.

The central figure was a crucified Christ, but a Christ like Je