They stopped at an old seafood shop nearby before driving slowly back up Palmetto, just within the strict 35 mph speed limit. Bernard wanted to see if any of his associates were still on the beach, in hopes that he could drop the creature off.

“Did you say something?” Mireia asked him.

He glanced at her, perplexed, then turned to continue scanning cars at each beach access. “No, why?”

“I could have sworn you said something.”

He shook his head as she turned down Point Street. “Nope.”

It was a dirt road, so she took it easy and gave him time to look for familiar cars. They only found one, but the owner was nowhere in sight once he got to the beach.

They had no time to wait around, so they pulled back onto the main road.

“God . . . damn.”

Bernard spun sharply at the unfamiliar voice.

Mireia glanced back, and looked at him. “Did that . . . thing—”

“My head. . . .” the thing croaked, sounding somewhere between a toad and a raven.

“Oh my God!” she cried, turning around.

“Wh . . . where am I?”

“ ‘Rei! Stop!” Bernard shouted, looking forward.

She looked back and gasped, slamming her brakes and terrifying a family that had chosen to stop in the middle of the road to fool around with their kids.

The creature slammed into the back of Bernard’s seat, squealing in pain, followed by a thump and a sharp squeak.

Mireia rolled down her window, calling, “I am so sorry!”

“You should be paying attention!” a woman yelled back at her, before returning to the important task of adjusting a small child’s sun hat.

Bernard rolled down his window and yelled, “Get out of the road! This isn’t a playground!”

“Do you have children, young man?” another woman asked him.

Bernard opened his door. “Do you value your lives?”

“Excuse me?!” a man shouted.

Mireia grabbed his sleeve, “Bern, stop it. Let’s just get going.”

“Nah, I’m sick of this behavior,” he snapped, “it’s a town. This is a four-lane road. It’s technically still the highway. People need to learn to bring their common sense with them when they go on vacation.”

“Not from you,” she pulled on his volunteer shirt, “And not while you’re wearing this. You can yell at people and start fights later when you’re not representing anyone else. Sit down.”

He did so reluctantly, slamming the door shut—and drawing a glare from her.

The family was now protesting his behavior, so she called out, “I’m really sorry. Y’all go enjoy your vacation!”

The family was still grumbling as she pulled around them, but Bernard kept his trap shut, and his hand remained, gripping the windowsill in lieu of shooting rude gestures.

Mireia scowled at the road and said, “They need to put in crosswalks.”

“What, for every beach house?” he growled under his breath.

She smacked his leg with the back of her hand, “At the access points, Bern.”

“That won’t stop them from using the whole road. Do they do that at home?”

“They’re on vacation.”

“From common sense?” he asked, “By the way, I think there’s a talking thing in your backseat. Or there was.”

The thing hadn’t made another sound since she’d stopped.

Mireia reached for the crank to roll up her window. “I think your hammer fell on it. Maybe it’s finally dead. Regardless, put it in a cat crate or something when we get to the house and make sure you padlock it, so it doesn’t escape into the woods or something.”

“Fuckin’ . . . hell.”

Bernard craned his neck back curiously at the sound coming from the floorboards, like someone was squeezing a handful of wet gravel, and had figured out how to make it speak.

Mireia spread her hands over the thin red steering wheel, “I can’t do this. There’s a talking snake with legs in my car.”

She started to pull into the gas station.

He put a hand on her arm. “Pull around to the putt-putt course. There’s too many people at the gas station, and I need to think this over.”

“I thought—”

“Something doesn’t feel right, Mireia.”

She rolled her eyes and pulled around the gas station, through the grocery store lot to the aging family mini golf course.

The strange voice behind them made a strangled noise as though it were going to hurl, then croaked again, slightly clearer and less gravelly, “Def’nitely a one-point-six. Ford Escort?”

It had a raven-like voice, but now they could detect a distinctly Southern accent. The word “point” was drawled out, and the twang in “Ford” couldn’t be missed.

Mireia glared at him, “Do whatever it is you’re going to do and make it quick. I want that thing out of my car.”

“Thing?” it asked, “What . . . ? Oh. . . . Oh sweet Jesus. . . . No. Not here. Oh my God. Not this. No, no, no, no—how many people done seen me?”

Bernard got out to move the creature off the floor. He noticed his hammer had slid under the seat.

“Out of the car!” Mireia cried.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“I smell grocery store,” the thing said, “Tha’s a bad idea.”

“I’m gonna go call the State,” she snapped, getting out of the car.

“—too many people,” the thing was saying.

Bernard started after her, “ ‘Rei wait!”

“You’ll start a war!” the creature cried hoarsely.

“A war?” he asked, leaning in to be sure he’d heard that right.

Mireia froze in her tracks, closed her eyes, collected herself, and got into the back seat next to the thing, “Make this fast, Bern.”

The creature gazed up at her, and rasped, “S’bad enough ya’ll seen me. State finds out . . . I ain’t even s’pposed to talk about it. Let’s just say . . . I ain’t alone on this planet.”

Bernard felt his blood drain again, and set his weight against the car door. There it was again: a heavy, unexplainable trepidation like an invisible lead weight.

“But if we’re all gonna die, can you at least tell me where?”

“Edisto Beach, South Carolina,” Bernard said as he tried to shake the feeling, “In the back of a red ’83 Ford Escort station wagon.”

“Thought it were yella,” the creature mused, “Cain’t see red with these eyes. I wanted t’like the GT. Great on gas. So underpowered.”

The remark was so strange that Bernard still was trying to picture the creature driving a car when Mireia asked, “Why are you here?”

“Here? In yer car?”

“On . . . I don’t know. Here. Edisto, let’s start there.”

“I don’t know,” it croaked in its drawling, uncanny twang, “Last place I recall is Beaufort. I mean, uh, ‘Byoo-fort’. Sorry ‘bout that.”

“Beaufort?” Bernard asked, “What were you doing there?”

“Eatin’ dinner,” the thing said, “Caesar salad, country-fried steak with shrimp and grits, and seven homemade biscuits. ‘Mazin’ biscuits. After that . . . nothin’. Don’t recall a fuckin’ thing. All I got’s this headache . . . an’ everythin’ else tha’ hurts. ‘Cept muh tail. Cain’t feel muh tail. ‘Cept fuh where it hurts. An’ I’m starvin’. Tell me . . . who else’s seen me?”

“Just us,” Bernard promised, “And a couple of vultures.”

“I’ll be damned . . . there is a God.”

“How. . . ,” Mireia started. She swallowed, took a breath, and asked, “Where did you learn English?”

“Trainin’,” it said, “I speak English more’n my own language. I don’t . . . uh . . . typically meet people from this height.”

“What do you mean?” Bernard asked it.

“I ain’t s’pposed to talk about it. . . .”

Mireia stood, “I’m gonna go rent those movies, Bern. We can’t sit here all day playing word games with the dead animal you found on the beach. Your mama will throw a fit if that shrimp goes bad.”

“ ‘m not an animal,” the thing muttered, “Don’t think I’ve died, yet, either.”

“Close enough,” Bernard told it, “that you should be in a shoebox right now.”

Mireia scoffed under her breath, “More like a plastic trash bag.”

“Huh,” the thing breathed in awe, “Symbiotes must’a kicked in an’ brought me back—I weren’t s’pposed to say that.”

Bernard recalled the spasms and the sudden mysterious expulsion of liquid. He nodded for Mireia to go, and she stood, “Fine. I’m not gonna call anyone, but I want that thing out of my car, ASAP.”

It called out, “Can ya bring me back some Slim Jims or somethin’?”

She hesitated, and Bernard could see from her expression that her patience was wearing thin.

“I’ll consider it,” she said. Then she shut the door and left.

“I done fucked this up,” it said, “S’all wrong. We’re all gonna die ‘cause ‘a me.”

“Why?” Bernard asked, “No one else has seen you, and we haven’t told anyone, yet.”

It looked up at him, gray eyes unfocused as it seemed to study him. Then it said quietly, “We ain’t alone, son. There’s more out there. I cain’t tell ya no more. They’ll be ‘bound to find me soon. You. . . ,” it propped itself up on its long forelimbs, narrowing its eyes as it peered at him, “You. . . . It’s. . . . Cain’t be.”

“What?” Bernard prompted curiously—though based on the day’s strange happenings so far, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know that badly.

“You ain’t Terry Zhào’s boy, are ya?”

Bernard felt himself go numb and deaf at the sound of his father’s name. The island around him could have blown up, and he wouldn’t have noticed it. Somewhere in the roaring silence of his shock, he realized that the creature had pronounced it like “chow” or “ciao,” in its correct dialect, without a drawl or twang.

“Siddown,” the creature said, pushing itself away from the door.

Slowly, Bernard sat, pushing the bag and the creature out of the way.

“Shut the door.”

He obeyed.

“Bernard, ain’t it?”

He nodded.

“Maxwell Bernard Sparker, born April a’ 1980 to Terry and Rhonna Zhào?”

He nodded again, and managed to utter, “Yeah. It’s Rhonna Moore, though. He left and she remarried.”

“I know,” the thing said, “Yer gonna find a lotta people know about the divorce.”

“How?”

“This ain’t the place, son,” it told him sternly, “An’ this ain’ how this conversation were s’pposed to go.”

A long, silent moment went by, as Bernard tried to absorb this.

The creature asked quietly, “You got plans, today?”

“We’re supposed to go into town,” he told it, “Into Charleston, for the weekend.”

“You and your friend?”

“And my cousins.”

“No parents?”

This discussion was rapidly becoming uncomfortable, as the creature pried into his personal business, so he answered cautiously. “Why do you ask?”

“ ‘Cause I wanna speak to ya, son, and it’s okay if your friend or your cousins hear this, but it ain’t somethin’ most people’re gonna keep a secret, and I’m serious ‘bout that war. They’re gonna mean well, but they’re gonna do exactly what you were thinkin’, an’ they’re gonna call the Feds—that’s if they don’ try t’ use me for personal gain. If your gov’ment takes me in, and word gets around, there’s some folks ain’t gonna handle it well. I got other reasons, too, but it’s gotta wait. Can y’get to a payphone?”

“Yeah, why?”

A fine coat of brindled fur replaced the rich iguana-green stuff on the creature’s body, and it slowly began to take on a more dog-like shape until a tiny male Italian Greyhound sat where it had once been. The injuries remained.

It cleared its throat and said, “Now, this is gonna be hard for me, using a syrinx in this body in my condition, but you can hear me, right?”

Bernard noticed its accent had faded, in favor of careful enunciation. He nodded, shocked.

“Good. I’m gonna need a couple favors when your friend gets back.”

He prodded the animal curiously, just to be sure it was still real. “Are you . . . a dog? Or . . . whatever you were? Some kinda archosaur?”

The dog appeared to smile as its ears perked, “Interesting guess, but too broad. Marasuchus lilloensis is what your scientists call me. The name Lagosuchus might be more familiar.”

Nodding vaguely, Bernard muttered, “I’ll be right back,” then got out of the car and shut the door. He leaned against the trunk, watching Mireia jog back from the gas station with a paper bag, presumably full of movies.

Lagosuchus lilloensis. He’d been right—right from the very beginning. This thing was a species of animal that predated the dinosaurs.

Pulling himself together, he explained to Mireia what had just happened. She nearly dropped the bag of videos, but instead gripped it tighter and said, “You’ve got shellfish on ice, Maxwell Bernard. Time’s ticking. I can’t deal with . . . this is too much. Let’s get the shrimp back to your mama, and we’ll have a whole hour to talk about it on the way into town. We’ll find another payphone later.” She opened the back door to her car and put the videos down. The creature had crawled back into the canvas tote, coming out only to snatch up the Slim Jims she handed it.

As Bernard sat down in the front passenger seat, the thing said, “It’s Lasoren, by the way . . . call me Lasoren.”

Mireia started the car as she asked, “And there are creatures like you all over the planet?”

“I guess,” Lasoren said, “but we’re not from this planet—well, we are, but we weren’t born here.”

The car lurched as she engaged it harshly, barely getting it into first gear and too shocked to care. “So you have a spaceship or something?!”

“No, I took mass transit.”

Mireia shook her head, “I can’t do this.”

“You ain’t gonna do much of anything if you tear your tranny out.”

She rolled her eyes and glared at Bernard. “And now it’s a backseat driver.”

Bernard remained silent, mulling over everything the creature had just said.

Lasoren claimed to know his father, and that somewhere out there, perhaps on another planet, a lot of people did. The plausibility of that story was slim to none, but the creature had known his mother’s name and his approximate date of birth—and that she was divorced. How? And why? What did it mean? Had this thing been looking for him?

He remained quiet once he got home, and focused on making sure he had what he needed for the weekend, doing his best to act natural for his mother as she carried on and on about how they needed to stick together, have a safe meeting place if they got separated, make sure they all knew the hotel and room phone number, carry change in case they needed a payphone, don’t give personal information to strangers, and so on—and don’t forget to buy something for his sister. Even if it was just a bag of candy.

Mireia spent most of the visit changing clothes and borrowing his mother’s curling iron, spending what felt like an eternity volumizing her thin black hair just so it would look a certain way with her fancy gold barrette and gold hoop earrings. About the time she started looking for a clothes iron, lamenting a wrinkle in her black-on-white paisley blouse, Bernard lost his patience and started dragging her toward the door.

Finally, they got back in the car and left.

The creature was still in his bag.