Written in the setting/time of my 101 Apoc Nights story.
They had been passing bathtub hooch for hours and the fire had burned down to coals, on which they were roasting whatever they still have to roast. And then one old woman, her hair white and her skin a maze of wrinkles, set down her jar with a thump.
“I tell you,” she told them, “the monsters are scary and the places where time goes backwards, yeah, those are pretty scary. But the worst thing I ever found – and I am not joking about that – was a lizard not quite as long as my arm.”
Now, she continued, I could tell you horror stories about this area I was in. It had been a city and then it had been a ruin and now it was four little cities around a whole bunch of ruin that only the bravest went into.
Because – and this was the kicker – because some asshole had released a series of giant poisonous lizards into the city back in the end times. Someone had, the Lord only knows why, let some asshole would-be god watch Godzilla, I guess.
So that thing had been killed. But the problem is – the problem was the great-dane-and-a-chihuahua problem, I suppose, but the end result was baby lizards.
And those baby lizards had been wiped out too, but… well you get the idea. It turns out that, in the center of this down, one lizard in ten has a chance of having flaming acid breath.
And I don’t mean just a little puff like a thing that small ought to give. No. No, I mean, these things could spit out a cloud of acid fire like their great-grandmama had.
And that, my friends, is why that one city split into four is the scariest I’ve ever been into.
She leaned back and gulped her whisky. “’Cause let me tell you, you pick up a baby lizard just like seven others and this one happens to put a hole in the nearest wall… you stop thinking oh cute and start running really damn fast. And those things could show up anywhere. No crashing, no roaring, nothing. Just a little squeak and a belch.”
She rubbed where her eyebrows had been. “But I didn’t lose anything I couldn’t stand to lose. What about you, my friends?”
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