Geckos. Of all the things to get you killed, it was geckos. Not Deathclaws, not Cazadors, not a band of well equipped Fiends. Geckos.

The big bipedal lizards can be dangerous, especially the fire-breathing ones, but you were comfortably stretched out on a ridge sniping them in perfect safety with your silenced rifle. You kill your third gecko of the day, chuckling at the way the remaining lizards run around trying to figure out why their companions keep dropping dead, and then it happens. Your first indication of trouble is a stabbing pain in your calf, between your thick leather boot and the metal thigh plate.

You curse and whirl around, staying low so the distant geckos don't see you and add to your troubles. Blood drips from two puncture wounds on your calf but there is no sign of your assailing. Except...no, that shimmer must just be dust twirling in the wind.

The wounds are more than a hand width apart. Whatever bit you was big, bigger than a coyote. At least as big as one of the geckos, but where is it? You didn't see or hear a thing until it bit you, and then it crept away before you could even turn around?

You have a bigger problem. Your whole leg is numb and it's spreading. Whatever bit you was poisonous. You curse yourself for being out of antivenom. You weren't planning to hunt radscorpions or cazadors, so why waste the money? It seemed a reasonable decision at the time. Now it costs you.

Your legs are too wobbly to walk, much less run. You wedge your back into a gap in the rocks and get out your pistol. You'll have to ride out the poison and hope you can defend yourself if a coyote, gecko or whatever bit you makes an appearance.

The good news is the poison doesn't hurt much. The bad is that the poison is still spreading. within a couple of minutes your hand shakes with the effort of simply lifting your pistol. You struggle to simply move it from its resting place in your lap and in the middle of the effort the predator strikes.

The shimmer you dismissed as blowing dust suddenly moves. Something grabs your ankle and yanks you away from the rocks. Too late you realize the "shimmer" is someone - something - under a Stealth Boy. Nightkin?

No. You land hard on your belly and see your tormentor at last. The shimmer slowly fades and brown fur and scales take its place. Nightstalker! Since when can they go invisible?

The coyote/rattlesnake hybrid is hideous. A scaly snake head with upright coyote ears, a Mohawk of neck fur between bands of black and brown scales. Down below it's all coyote but its tail is largely scaled, purely snakey and tipped with a rattle as large as your thigh. The whole thing is maybe half again your size, about the size of the mountain lions you read about in that pre-war book.

You scrabble for your pistol as it drags you away from the rocks but it's out of reach. Your rifle leans neatly against a boulder, right where you left it. You have a pouch full of ammo, but that's not much help.

The nightstalker pins your legs to the ground with its forepaws and looks around with its ears pricked up.. It's seeing if any other animal is near, something it might have to fight for its meal. Nothing. It turns back toward you and its snakey jaws gape.

So many teeth. You get a good look into its snakey maw. Dozens of small, sharp, inward hooking teeth in its lower jaw and even more in the upper. Two sharp fangs as long as your finger explain the bleeding punctures in your calf. You see them fold flat against the roof of its mouth as it closes its maw over your boots.

It is going to drag you somewhere?  No, it means to eat you right here. Its snakey jaws wrap around your feet and begin to move. Their internal musculature and loose articulation allow it to push one side of its jaws forward, sink the sharp little teeth in, then repeat the process on the other side. The coyote-snake steps forward, slowly pulling itself over your legs. Already your booted toes are a bulge in its tan neckfur and it shows no sign of stopping. It doesn't care that you are still alive. It's swallowing you whole!

"Get off!! You struggle, trying to kick it away. Useless. Its venom didn't kill you, but left you too weak to fight it off. Your struggle just makes it twitch and its distended maw is already past your knees. You fumble uncertainly at your belt pouch. You had another pistol you got off a dead settler and manage to drag it out and point it at the thing's head.

Click. Click, click. You were going to sell the pistol. You didn't check to see if it was loaded!

Its loose, fang-filled jaws take in your hips. Slimy flesh presses in around your legs as a thick coating of drool slicks you down for easy swallowing. It's hot inside the nightstalker, even with only half your body swallowed. Weakly you beat at its head with the pistol. It ignores you as it pushes its jaws past your waist. Sharp snake teeth dig in as you try to wriggle loose. All those teeth hook toward its throat. It's easy to go deeper, almost impossible to pull back out.  The teeth are short enough that few make it through your thick leather gear, and they just slide off the metal plates, but that doesn't stop it from swallowing you alive.

Slitted snake eyes stare impassively back at you. The empty pistol bounces off its scaly skull and it doesn't even flinch. You're too weak to hurt it. Dozens of sharp teeth dig in as its jaws keep ratcheting their way forward, one side, then the other. It's not pulling you in. It's pulling itself over you. The massive bulge in its long neck and upper body changes shape as you slip deeper. Bones in its torso creak and pop as its slender canine frame swells unnaturally to accommodate its meal.

It's not that much bigger than you are. This should be impossible, but to a half-snake creature someone almost its own size is just a bigger than usual meal. You drop the useless pistol and dig your fingers into its distended neckfur, trying to hold it back. It has to breathe, right? If it can't finish swallowing you, it'll suffocate.

There is a hiss from beneath you as a fleshy tube emerges from its gullet. You watch it flutter as the nightstalker takes a breath. Even with its throat full, it can breathe.

Bit by bit it ratchets its jaws over you. There's no one to help you, no way to save yourself. As its jaws work their way up to your armpits your legs slip easily into its stomach. Swallowing prey whole comes naturally to the snakedog. You curse and lock your arms around the huge bulge in its neck. Maybe it won't suffocate, but you're not going down without a fight.

For a moment it struggles. It has you swallowed to the armpits but your grip on its neck keeps it from finishing you off. It's now that you see the scales beneath its fur. Its neckfur is stretched thin enough to see it now. It's even more snakey than it looks. No wonder it can swallow a man whole.

You're shoulders deep in its gullet and even if you had your full strength the inward-hooking fangs dug into your flesh would keep you from pulling back out. The nightstalker has you cold. Still you hang on. You aren't ready to be snakedog food yet.

The nightstalker stretches out its nose, forming an ess in its neck and then pulling its muzzle back. With a hiss of effort it tries to squeeze you down its throat with the help of the bend in its long neck. You cling to its swollen neck with all your might and just barely manage to hold on. The nightstalker's rattlensnake tail buzzes in irritation and it flops down on its belly, panting through its extended glottis.

Slimy gullet shifts around you and you feel its gut slither around your legs. Your poison-weakened knees bent when it swallowed you and even though it can't finish its meal, you are almost to the waist in its stomach.

Therein lies the problem. As the nightstalker lies there, exhausted from the struggle, its body goes to work on the portion of its prey that it's managed to swallow. Slick stomach wall ripples against your leather and metal-clad legs and there is a gurgle as the hot juices flow in. All too soon the acids find a gap in the leather, then more gaps. A slow burn develops around your ankles as the stomach juices reach your skin. More pain as the seams in your leather leggings let in more. You kick weakly, trying to escape the growing pain. Useless.

You can feel your leggings softening as the nightstalker stomach acids go to work. Leather won't stop its stomach juices any more than the hides of its animal victims do. The metal buckles and thigh plates are probably immune, but that's small comfort. They only cover a fraction of your body. 

The pain builds and builds as the minutes go by. You hold back a shriek as your legs begin to dissolve. It isn't just swallowing you alive. It's digesting you alive. Its stomach doesn't care that you are still breathing. It just cares that you are made of meat. Maybe it'll take hours, even days to digest your whole body, but your skin is already on fire.

It's too much. You whimper in pain and let go the swollen neck so you can claw at its eyes. You miss, and the second you let go it eagerly begins working its jaws forward once again. Before you can get a new grip it once again forms a bend in its neck and forces it downward. The loose, snakey jaws slither up over you and suddenly you're looking out of its maw past your stretched-out arms.

It's the poison. If it weren't for that you could have fought back, maybe grabbed a rock and beaten its scaly skull in. Instead you're too weak to fight as it pushes the bend in its long neck down into its body. Slimy gullet slithers upward past your face  and it's all over. The nightstalker hisses, struggles, and swallows, and you slide helplessly down its throat.

Mostly. Even now its stomach can't seem to fit you all in. You feel the muscular sphincter stretched around your armpits, but your arms and face linger in its gullet even as acid finds the first gaps in your leather-and-steel chest armor. Your gear protected you from many a gecko bite and even the occasional bullet. It isn't working as well against acid. Maybe the metal plates will survive to be coughed up. Maybe the buckles will reappear intact when they finish their trip through it bowels. Maybe the bottle caps in your fast dissolving pouch will. You won't. 

You're just a vast, temporary bulge in its normally slender canine half, pinned by the ribcage and hide wrapped all around you. Trapped inside the nightstalker, being digested from the legs up and alive to feel all of it, you finally let out the pent-up scream. Most of the sound sinks into the slimy pink flesh around you. Some makes it out.

As it settles down on its swollen belly the nightstalker yawns. Snakey jaws with their rows of sharp teeth yawn impossibly wide as they snap back onto their joints. For a moment you can see out of its tunnel of a gullet, past the strings of saliva and fangs and into the world you just left. As you do, another nightstalker peers quizzically back at you.

A third appears and tilts its head to the side as it sees your slimy face in the wet folds of the larger one's throat. These two are smaller. They'd have had to tear you apart and swallow you in chunks. Not like the big one.

The light vanishes as the nightstalker closes its snakey jaws and makes one last effort to swallow you down. Despite its best efforts your arms and face linger in its gullet and with what feels like a shrug it waddles a few steps and settles down. The movement forces bubbles of air from around your legs and the snakedog lets  out a long belch.

In a fair world it would have swallowed you headfirst and you'd suffocate in its stinking gut once it burped up the air. Or the others would have quarreled with it over this one big chunk of meat and the pack would have torn you apart. Instead you lie in its gullet, feeling your legs and now your body burning as it digests its meal. Eventually its stomach juices will consume enough of your lower body that your head and arms will slip into its gut as well. No part of you will be spared. You're just a chunk of meat that it'll need a bit of time to process.

You scream. There's nothing else to do. You dig your fingers into folds of slimy gullet flesh, too weak now to hurt it, just as you were too weak to stop it from swallowing you whole. You scream and kick as best you can with poison-addled nerves and legs already cruelly burnt by acid.

The swollen nightstalker twitches, burps, and hisses irritably as something pokes its flank. You feel the shape of a muzzle bump the swelling you make as one of the smaller ones examines this strange bulge. The touch withdraws at once as the one that swallowed you shakes its rattle. Even from inside it you hear the warning buzz.

You think about how much smaller the other two are, and realize what happened. The one that ate you is their mother, or at least part of the same pack.

The nightstalker lets out a last burp and sprawls out on its side, belly churning around your legs and body. The pain gets worse and worse, but you know the end is in sight.  Soon its stomach juices will reach something vital, or you'll die of simple shock. By the time your face follows your body into its stomach you'll long since have died. The rest of your trip through the guts of a snakedog will thankfully be painless.

You realize something else, too, as you hear the hiss of the pack members talking to each other past the fleshy walls that enclose you. Why the nightstalker put so much effort into swallowing you, instead of tearing you apart with its companions.

It didn't want to share.