Read an Excerpt
From Into the Hurricane:There’s some disturbance there in the gently sloshing waves. Max wades through the drifting junkyard of gum and candy bars and Hunter’s World! magazines to shine the flashlight in the area where the walkie-talkie landed. And then the light catches on two shiny black marbles about ten feet away, rising just above the waterline.Above her, Sabine yells, “Ivory!”Max sees Sabine standing at the railing on the second floor, horrified, pointing to where the eyes had been. When Max looks again, they’re gone.Driven by instinct, she swings up onto a checkout counter, clearing her feet from the murk just as Ivory’s snapping jaws rise after her. The albino alligator chomps air, collapses back into the water, and lifts again instantly, clawing now at the metal sides of the checkout lane. Max backs away, her slick boots nearly slipping on the rubbery conveyor belt. Ivory thrashes in the water, churning it, trying to get high enough to climb onto the countertop. More than once, his massive head makes it up, but the weight of his body pulls him back down.Max scans the water surrounding her. It’s thirty feet to the stairs, way too far to make a break for it — and what’s to say this monster can’t climb steps? She’d just be leading it to Sabine. Ivory launches once more from below, and Max sees the rows of yellowed teeth in his mouth. Without thinking, she leaps across the open space between checkout lanes and lands on the next countertop over. It’s far from a perfect landing — it takes wild arm-swinging to maintain her balance — and she nearly slips on the rubber soles of the boots. She tugs them off, certain that if she needs to make such a leap again, she’d be better off barefoot.Ivory swims around and begins circling Max’s new perch. After a few loops, he settles down beneath her, hanging just below the surface with only his eyes exposed. In the dim light, his scaly skin seems more pink than white. Max uses her flashlight to confirm that the row of checkout lanes ends far short of the steps. Some shelves would take her higher up, but getting to them means going into the water, and that’s the worst idea ever. She scans the area for some kind of weapon, but there’s nothing. Desperate, she squats over the register and grabs hold of both sides. She heaves it up and waddles carefully to the edge of the counter, holding it just over the space where Ivory had been. But he’s retreated a few feet, clearly out of range. He’s watching her again, and their eyes come together. Max remembers what Eli said, how the alligators were so patient, they didn’t mind waiting for prey to rot. Maybe somewhere in his reptilian brain, Ivory knows what Max does, that the floodwaters are rising.
