Apocalypsis 01 - Kahayatle

before going nuts again.   Something was seriously exciting to the fuzzy pink guy.
    “What’s so cool?” I said absently, trying to keep from dragging the rear end of Peter’s boat around again, since it was making him so cranky.   It was taking most of my concentration and back muscles.
    “There’s like five … no seven … well, more like twenty pretty salamander gecko things here.   They’re crawling all over this tree root mess.”
    I looked up to see what he was talking about.   We had plenty of those kinds of creatures in Florida.   A person can’t walk across a sidewalk without twenty lizards scrambling to get out of the way.   I swear, they stand on the edges of walkways and dare each other to cross whenever a giant human comes by.
    I couldn’t see the salamanders because they were too far away and hidden.   The place where Peter was gesturing towards was behind a big root that blocked my view.   Buster sure seemed pretty excited about them, though.
    “I can’t see dem,” said Bodo.   “What are dey doing?”
    “They’re crawling all over.   And swimming too!   I’ve never seen geckos swim before.”
    Neither had I.
    “What do they look like?” I asked.
    “They’re black with yellow stripes on them.   Long tails.”
    Something was clicking in my brain, nagging me that these gecko salamanders were something I remembered seeing before.
    “How many of them are there?” I asked again.  
    “A ton.   More than ten.   Maybe more than twenty.   They’re everywhere.   It’s like a nest of them or something.”
    The word ‘nest’ set off the alarm bells.   Then Bodo’s next words sent my pulse into overdrive.
    “Um, guyss?   I think dare’s a gator coming dis way.”
    I turned around as fast as I could to look at him, ready to scream at him if he was joking around; but he was pointing just off to my right, and when I looked in the direction he was pointing, I saw that sure enough, a huge log-looking thing was making a beeline for Peter’s boat, its eyes and snout visible above the water as it cut a V through the current.   It was moving fast - a hell of a lot faster than we were.
    “Peter, those aren’t geckos!   They’re baby gators!   Get the hell out of there!”
    Peter screamed like a girl and back-paddled as fast as his skinny arms could take him.  
    I did the same, feeling the burn in the muscles of my arms and back as I strained them to the maximum, trying to pull not only my boat, but Peter’s away from the nest.
    Buster changed his focus from the nest to the gator.   He ran to the side of the canoe and barked like a dog possessed.   He wanted to get out of that boat and tear that gator to shreds, from the sound of it.
    “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod,” cried Peter, his boat now moving back only a few inches from the nest.   “Buster!   Shut up!”
    The gator was about fifteen feet away.
    “Bodo, help!” I yelled.
    I felt a jerking motion coming from behind me.   Bodo had taken the rope tying us all together and was hauling back on it.   It moved us towards him a little, but it moved him towards us too.  
    “Wait!” I yelled, dropping my oar.   “You paddle back.   I’ll pull Peter!”
    Bodo grabbed his big oar and got up to kneel in the bottom of the boat.   I spared him just a glance before I grabbed the chain that held Peter’s boat to mine.   As soon as I felt my boat moving backwards, I pulled on Peter’s.
    The gator was now only five feet away.   Peter’s boat was less than two feet from the nest.
    “Keep going!” he screeched.   “She’s coming!”
    As soon as the end of Peter’s boat bumped into mine, I dropped the chain and scooted on my butt up to the front of mine, leaning over to take the edge of his boat in hand.   I jerked back on it hard, using the leverage of Bodo’s backward pull to keep my boat from moving forward.  
    Peter’s body leaned forward involuntarily as I pulled his canoe up alongside mine, putting a good six feet between us and the baby gators.   He snatched at Buster and pulled him into his arms, putting his hand over the dog’s mouth to try and muzzle him.
    Bodo continued to pull us back a few more feet, while Peter and I watched silently.   The momma gator swam up to her babies and opened her mouth.   Several jumped in, and for a second, I thought she was going to eat them.   But then I noticed several more getting on top of her head.   She closed her mouth partway and then climbed up