The Land of the Shadow by Lissa Bryan

today’s guns.
    She kept talking until they reached the yard, but the last word stuck in her throat.
    Kaden had put Dagny’s playpen on the porch while he worked to turn the scraps from canning into the compost pile in its bin beside the woodshed. So intent was he on his digging that he hadn’t noticed anything amiss.
    There was a huge alligator on the lawn, less than a dozen yards from her baby.
    A jagged scream of horror ripped from Carly’s throat, and she tore across the lawn, her only thought to get to Dagny. Sam was faster. He bolted like a gray streak of lightning from her side and charged at the gator, snarling and snapping. From the corner of her eye, she saw Kaden look and begin to run, too, the hoe clutched in his hand.
    As they ran toward it, it drove the beast forward. Straight toward the baby who obliviously clacked her plastic keys.

    Justin was in the barn when he heard Carly scream, and the sound of it almost stopped his heart. It was a sound of sheer terror, a sound that could only mean . . .
    He didn’t finish the thought. His brain clicked into action mode, based on training and instinct, pushing his own fear aside.
    Justin jumped to snatch the pump-action shotgun mounted on pegs above the door and ran harder than he’d ever run in his life, pumping the weapon to chamber a round. He prayed as he ran. He didn’t know to whom he was praying, nor for what, but he prayed just the same.
    Rounding the corner of the house, he saw Kaden and Carly running toward a goddamn big alligator in the front yard. Sam darted around its sides, snapping.
    Justin caught up to Kaden just as the beast decided that Carly’s direction was a better avenue of escape than the path blocked by the snarling wolf and the two running men. It charged right at her, its mouth wide, tail thrashing in its wake. Carly jumped for the porch, clutching at the post, her foot braced on the rail. Kaden charged up the steps and swept Dagny up into his arms, flinging open the screen door to scramble inside the house.
    Dagny yelled something that sounded like, “No, kay!” as the keys tumbled from her hand to clatter on the floorboards. Justin heard her wail as the screen door slammed behind Kaden. But she was safe, and that was what mattered at the moment. Carly still clung to the porch rail, her eyes wide. Safe, too , Justin noted, as his mind switched over to seek-and-destroy mode.
    The alligator kept running across the lawn and straight into the cornfield, surprisingly fast for such a large, awkward creature.
    “Not the corn!” Justin swung wide to try to drive the reptile toward the road instead, but the alligator saw safety and concealment in the thick patch of tall green stalks. It charged into the patch, clearing a three-foot-wide path of broken stalks with every swipe of its thrashing tail.
    A flash of movement from the left caught Justin’s eye, and Pearl jumped in front of the alligator with a shout, waving her arms to prevent it from charging deeper into the field. The gator hissed at her and brandished its gaping maw, but began to back away.
    More people from the town, who had been drawn by Carly’s scream, ran across the lawn toward the corn patch. The confused alligator found himself surrounded, and he turned, crushing more stalks. Justin swore.
    He caught Pearl’s eye and didn’t even need to tell her what he needed. She shouted and feigned a lunge to get the gator’s attention, and it swung around to hiss at her.
    He darted to the gator’s side and aimed the shotgun at the back of its head. “Clear!”
    “No, Justin!” Carly shouted. “Don’t!”
    Justin groaned. His wife, the animal lover. Was she going to say something like, He can’t help he’s an alligator , and insist Justin transport the thing back to the swamp? He was already picturing wrapping the beast’s jaws with duct tape or something to avoid losing a goddamn hand in the process when she reached his side.
    Instead, she pulled out the .45 she wore