Les Simons - Gila!

[kooshmeister]

Giant Gila monsters terrorize New Maxico and gobble up a bunch of stereotypes in repetitive attack scenes. The book reads like a rough draft at times.

Anyway, the plot! After a (very short) prologue set in the 50s in which what can only be an atom bomb test is described, we cut to modern day (i.e., the 80s) where the waitress at a roadside diner in New Mexico is waiting for closing time, passing the time by alternating between feeling sorry for the narcoleptic Indian "Red Chief," asking truck driver "Tex" about his new boots and trying to keep the horny teens from making out in the back booth. She isn't entirely successful at the latter, but she does get Tex to talk about his boots. Lizard skin, he proudly announces. Suddenly there's a commotion outside. A crash? Getting up, Tex rushes outside to investigate... and doesn't return. And suddenly something huge and powerful is pushing against the wall. The waitress grabs the shotgun she keeps under the counter... but is too terrified to even think about using it when the thing pressing against the exterior of the building finally busts through. Red Chief sleeps through the whole thing, which may be just as well...

Later that morning, the parents of one half of the amorous teenage couple are beginning to wonder where their daughter is. The dad sure hopes she isn't out with that no-good pervert handsy boy. And upon finding out that that is indeed the case, the dad, seeing red, grabs his gun and drives off towards his daughter's last known location, the diner. He's got murder in his eyes and indeed fully intends on emptying his gun into his daughter's boyfriend. His wife, having failed to talk sense into him, calls the police.

But the dad changes his priorities completely upon reaching his destination. Who wouldn't if they saw the diner they drove past every day and maybe even went in sometimes flattened like someone drove a bulldozer through it multiple times? His anger fading, he grabs his gun, no longer intent on murder, but scared out of his wits. As he explores the wreckage, he is (in a nice bit) horrified to find his daughter's boyfriend, or what's left of him ("the man he'd come to kill"). He finds the remains of several other people... and finally stumbles across what can only be the mangled remains of his daughter. In a grief-stricken panic, he runs to the payphone... only to hear something hissing behind him. He turns, screams, and then promptly gets flattened when whatever it is knocks the phone booth over and steps on it with him in it. Needless to say, by the time Sheriff McIntyre and his men get out there in response to the wife's phone call, whatever did it is gone and all that's left is the carnage.

The next attack happens that night, during a storm, as a school bus is driving a school football team back from a game that they won thanks to "Paco" (no idea why he's nicknamed that). He's getting the hero's reward by feeling up one of the hotter cheerleaders. The poor bus driver is slowly losing her mind because of how loud the kids are being. Even her literally turning around and screaming at them to shut up doesn't work. But when she turns her eyes back to the road, she suddenly sees two huge glowing yellow orbs. Thinking they're headlights and she's about to have a head-on collision, she swerves, and the bus drives right into the river.

As before, by the time the Sheriff and his men get there, the monster is gone, and there are only two survivors, Paco and the cheerleader he was flirting with, neither in any condition to do much talking. At his wit's end, Governor Bubba J. Roy calls in herpetologist Dr. Kate Dwyer to examine a piece of skin found at one of the attacks. Kate identifies it as lizard skin and theorizes that the atomic bomb tests back in the 50s have created a race of giant Gila monsters (think Them! just with lizards). The remainder of the book involves Kate and her boyfriend, the Native American Chato Del Klinne, both trying to figure out how to deal with the lizards, as well as (of course) get Governor Roy and his ambitious hangers-on who are feeding him bad advice to understand just how serious the situation is, complete with frequent attack scenes scattered throughout to keep the reader from getting bored (highlights include the Gilas' massacre of a fairground and them managing to sneak up on a National Guard tank somehow - several, in fact - and also slaughtering a busload of annoying reporters).