He noticed another sound. A chorus of clanking rattles from all around him. The homemade ornaments—the painted cans on sticks salted in among the leprechauns, bunnies, turtles, and flamingoes—were shaking and rattling on their sticks. Funny…he didn’t feel a breeze.

The dog increased the pitch and volume of his yipping.

Tom turned to Anya. “What’s wrong with him? He hardly ever barks.”

“He must sense something out of the ordinary,” she said. “Oyv! Get away from there and stop that racket. A migraine I’m getting already. Go back to—”

Suddenly the water erupted and something huge and bellowing exploded from the pond. Tom dropped his beer and his mind blanked in shock for an instant. What the hell was it? All he saw at first was a wide-open set of jaws bordered with dagger like teeth, the delicate pink membranes lining the maw, and the long, tapered, slightly darker tongue waggling within. Then he saw the dark green scaly legs and the thick undulating tail behind.

An alligator, bigger than any he’d ever seen in all the gator parks he’d visited. And it was racing right for him.

The only thing between Tom and those jaws was Anya’s Chihuahua. The little dog held its ground for a second, then charged the gator, leaping at it with a high-pitched growl. The onrushing jaws scooped up the dog and snapped closed.

“Oyv!” Anya cried.

“Holy shit!” Jack was out of his chair and reaching for the small of his back.

Without breaking stride, the alligator made one convulsive swallow and the dog was gone, devoured like a canapé.

The monster gator was still lunging forward. Tom started to leap up but his foot slipped on the grass and suddenly he was falling backward in his chair. Before the gator opened its jaws again, Tom got a look at its head. He caught a flash of two scaly protrusions, gray-green like the rest of its hide, each about six inches long, on either side just behind and below the large brown eyes with their vertical-slit pupils. They looked like horns.

Something twisted in his chest…something familiar about this alligator. But what? How could he ever forget a creature like this?

As he and his chair hit the ground, Tom rolled to the side and started to scramble to his feet. He heard Jack mutter a curse and saw his hand coming out from under his shirt at the small of his back. Jack moved quickly, like a pouncing cat, grabbing the back of his chair and holding it out legs first, like a shield. To Tom’s shock, he leaped between him and the gator.

“Dad! Get back!”

Tom regained his feet and backed away, but Jack hung in there, facing the big gator down.

“Jack! Anya!” Tom cried. “Into the house!”

“Not to worry,” Anya said.