Page 32 of Buck Baxter and the Mysteries of Love

“Oh my God, please tell me they made it out of there.”

“Please tell me we’ll make it out ofhere,” Harry said.

I turned to him and saw that his eyes were anxiously darting left and right as we treaded water. “Harry? What’s wrong?”

“Buck, there’s something else in the river with us. Something big… and moving.”

He was right. There was a swish in the water a short distance behind me.

I swiveled around quickly, then heard a splash just behind Harry.

“What the fuck is that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I think there’s more than one of them. We need to get to shore.”

As the plume of fire and smoke continued to rise into the sky, while cinders and burning debris rained down into the river, Harry and I started to swim forthe shore… fast.

Suddenly Harry flinched in the water and stopped swimming. “Fuck!”

“Harry?”

“Something just rammed me in the side.”

With a splash, a large reptilian tail thrashed through the water between us.

“Oh, shit!” Harry exclaimed. “What is that? Is that an alligator?”

“There ain’t no gators in this river,” I said, seeing the long-snouted head of a creature rise up in front of me and swim straight toward me.

“What is it then?”

I eyed the sea monster and said, “If I ain’t mistaken, it’s a Komodo dragon.”

I turned to see one headed straight for Harry. “And so is that,” I added.

“Oh God, they’re gonna kill us. Swim, Buck! Swim!”

But I grabbed his arm and stopped him. “No, wait!”

I saw the dragons slowing in the water as they approached us. I squeezed Harry’s arm to still him, only our legs moving through the water now to keep us afloat.

Then, warily—almost gently—the Komodo dragons swam right up to us.

One nuzzled its head under my arm.

The other nuzzled its head under Harry’s.

“I don’t think they want to kill us,” I said, almost wanting to laugh with relief. “I think they want to save us.”

With a swish of their tails, the dragons set us in motion through the water.

“Hold on,” I told Harry.

I tightened my own grip on the slippery, leathery beast beside me, and with an agility so sure and swift, the giant reptiles carried us across the river to a rocky beach on the banks.

That’s when we saw Stella, Lois, Lucy, Wuzhou and Madame Chang, her ethereal white gown billowing in the breeze.

As the dragons slid onto the shore, Harry and I found our feet, sodden and stumbling up the rocky bank.

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