'Absolution' Excerpt: Read the Beginning of Jeff VanderMeer's Newest Southern Reach Book

Once, the story went, there had been biologists on the Forgotten Coast , in numbers so great that the ground shook in the aftermath of their passage.

Their packs had been full of supplies and food but of gold, conspiracy theorists at the Village Bar claimed.

That the biologists had been complicit, aware of their role, Old Jim believed.

The four large, 15-year-old alligators had been captured in the wild.

Three had been plucked fortuitous from roadside zoos and the fourth came from some prior Central experiment.

One stated goal was to field-test cutting-edge equipment, while the primary purpose consisted solely of seeing if the alligators would, via wetlands and interconnected waterways, return to their prior locations.

“There must be ten thousand alligators up here already,” Man Boy Slim’s friend Drunk Boat said in disbelief.

The drugged reptiles had been outfitted with their gear and constrained by containers that resembled huge, long coolers.

The Tyrant ran-slithered in all her 10-foot glory down to the water’s edge and disappeared almost in that same instant, as if the water were as much a portal as blessed release.