IV

The giant roar would have woke him from a deep slumber. He sits upright in the comfy chair looking around dumbly but feeling great. Rested, strong, ready to dig the rest of the track free. The table is still present and on the other side of it, looking equally startled, is Rat. The only difference is that in his hand now is an old .25 with an ancient patina on it and a shiny pearl handle. With no sign of trigger discipline, he racks the slide when another roar directs his attention properly.

It fills the cavern.

The creature and its war cry.

The freshly dug-out track running through the middle and off into the abyss bisects two yellow eyes. The eyes peer out from the dark in front of him, not blinking just focusing on him as if he were a prize up for grabs.

From it wafts the same rotten egg smell that he has been cleaning up since morning and it comes along with that wonderful old baby shit stench. The kind that lives in a diaper genie needing to be taken out, yesterday.

Vile.

There is the fast sound of huge paws clawing at the rocky surface of the ledge.

Rick stands and moves behind the chair and table littered with dishes. There he finds his shovel leaning as he left it. He holds it in his hands protectively.

He blinks in response as the thing enters the sphere of yellow light. He knows it shouldn't be. It's a thing from the old movies he watched as a kid, a green-scaled serpent. A slithering shiny thing with jaws lined with sharp yellow teeth and a slick pink tongue tasting the air. It moves on huge muscled legs and swings a broad tail behind it.

Rick knows he is the giant lizard’s target, the menacing yellow eyes never leave him.

He doesn’t know what anyone else is doing but finds himself unable to take his eyes off the giant lizard. His enemy. The danger that needs to die.

With a roar, it skitters around the table and comes at Rick from the side. From its mouth, hitting Rick full force is the baby shit stench. He reels. Knees wobbly. And then it’s here, the moment he dies.

If, at the last minute, Rick hadn’t shoved the chair he had been napping in into the creature's snapping mouth. It bites down hard and splinters of wood go flying but the soft cushion gets tangled in the thing’s teeth. It shakes the stuffing free even so the springs are still stuck squeaking as it opens and closes its mouth trying to free itself. It flops onto its back scratching at its mouth with its hind legs doing far more harm than good.

Seeing an opportunity, Rick fails to utilize it fully and slams the shovel into the giant lizard’s head. The spade rebounds, vibrating in his hands painfully as if he had hit rock. The lizard seems unfazed, but no is longer distracted by its snarled-up teeth. It returns to its feet by simply twisting and standing in one fluid motion, and Rick knows what is going to happen next. He is going to die for real. But instead of fleeing, Rick tries one more tack and stabs the flat edge of the shovel into one of the beast’s yellow eyes. The shovel enters with an obscene pop followed by the spray of thick viscuous juice. The lizard screams in pain and slithers back through the mud trying to escape. The shovel slips free of the wound covered in eye juice. The lizard swats at Rick with one of its huge claws and catches the laborer on the shoulder. He feels the laceration as a stinging slice.

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Another blow was coming but prevented when three pistol shots rang out, echoing in the dark. They don’t do much, but they do draw blood and the lizard's attention.

Fucking Rat, Rick laments, now he has to save his ass on top of everything else.

This is when Rick goes berserk. He screams. It’s guttural. The shovel comes up for a third attempt and again bounces off the lizard’s jaw, but this time; the creature's head snaps back. The attack leaves the shovel in two pieces, a splintered end, and a free end which skitters across the ground and disappears over the edge of the chasm. Hefting the splintered end, Rick leaps onto the lizard’s trapped jaw. Its head can’t hold Rick’s bulk up and slams hard into the ground with a hollow painful thunk. At that moment, he sinks the remaining portion of the shovel into the lizard’s other eye.

A stench, that dwarfs anything encountered thus far, shoots out of the beast’s mouth obliterating the cushion springs still trapped there. Rick rolls free just in time, feeling the stench melting the hair off his right arm. He is up, slowly, feeling every bump but where he intended to be, right next to the other shovel. A thought enters Rick’s head; he is probably going to have to pay for these shovels at Workforce later, but that doesn’t stop him from catching the lizard just behind the head with another jab. It’s a lucky attack. The shovel sinks through a thin membrane and enters the beast's soft ear canal. The brutality of the attack allows the spade to puncture through the small bones of the ear and find purchase in the creature's brain.

Rick twists like he would if encountering a root or stone, or some other obstruction on his way to finishing a dig. The dragon attempts one last half-hearted swing but the only task it succeeds at is driving the shovel in more completely. It shudders and lands with a splat of the stinky mud spurting out of its body from beneath its now still tail.

His mind seems to clear at that. All anger, gone and for a brief second “Mother fucker, I was shoveling lizard shit this whole time!”

Then the shock of it all settles over him.

“Did you just kill a dragon?” Rat says over his right shoulder. His squeaky voice which matches his outward appearance so perfectly, goes even higher and more shrill still.

Rick reaches out to touch the thing with a shaking hand. He lays his fingers on smooth scales over a cold muscular body. A stench of pungent sulfur drifts lazily out of the giant nostrils. Standing back, Rick can't help but notice, from snout to tip of tail, it’s a good thirty feet in length with the heft upwards near a good thousand pounds.

With that, the adrenaline leaks from his body.

He shakes as if suddenly freezing, hand groping for the amazing itch of agony pounding from his shoulder. He accidentally sticks a few fingers in the gaping wound which makes the pain fire up and knock a few tears out of his eyes and not just a few exclamations from his mouth. He even tries on a few of the new ones Rat just taught him.

Rat looks at the wound, shock evident on his face, “Damn, you are straight cut to the bone.”

Rick knows it’s bad because he is bleeding in rivulets out the cuff of his field jacket.

Another cold shiver runs through his body. His knees and ankles hurt too bad to stand. And as if he has suddenly gained a thousand pounds, Rick plops down onto the freshly cleaned ground. A moment later, he leans forward and vomits.

But before the fuzz growing around his eyes and painfully seeping into his brain does its job he notices the Rickshaw is gone and so is his wad of cash.

“Not smart,” he slurs then promptly passes out.