Big Lizard

"Big Lizard is a wild, weird, darkly comic, gory, occasionally terrifying, and consistently entertaining romp through the world of the occult, chicken restaurants, and Biblical theme parks. You really get a representation of all Lansdale's genres here. Crime, horror, humor, it's all in there. I literally cannot recommend this book highly enough."
—Jeremy Baker, author of Drawing in the Dark


Buster Nix, overweight and frustrated with his life, finally finds a new job through the help of his aunt who works at an employment agency. He has been given the position of security guard at the headquarters of a chain of fast food restaurants called Pick-A-Chicken. There, like choosing a lobster in a seafood store, you literally pick your own chicken for slaughter, and for a bit of extra cash, you can do it yourself with a company hatchet.

It's all the rage. Buster hates it. He even hates the fried chicken they make, and he has a discount. What he doesn't know, is not only is Pick-A-Chicken the home of a radical new trend in dining, it is primarily successful due to supernatural intervention from a strange, denizen of Hell called the Lizard God. He provides the restaurant chain's owner, Elroy Cuzzins, with incredible success in return for a few bloody favors. In fact, appeasing the Lizard God is a family tradition dating way back.

One night, while checking doors, Buster hears chanting in a storage facility, discovers a supernatural ritual, accidently upsets a flaming brazier that not only destroys the ceremony, but sets his employer on fire with the literal flames of hell. The fire doesn't do Buster any good either, not to mention the chickens set for sacrifice.

Buster ends up in the burn unit, and not long thereafter, discovers that the botched supernatural ceremony has given him the power to transform into a big lizard who can run fast, has incredible strength, a large tail, and a hard time not ripping his pants.

With a rag tag crew, including, Socrates, a surviving eye-patch wearing chicken scheduled to have been one of the sacrifices, a teenage tech wizard named Isaac who lives in the remains of a Biblical theme park dedicated to Noah and shaped like an ark, Buster sets out to battle evil. Prominent on his evil list is his old boss, Elroy Cuzzins. The same supernatural accident that changed Buster into Big Lizard, has transformed Cuzzins into an angry, giant chicken that drives a red sports car and commits serial killings. Through lack of imagination, Cuzzins is given the moniker, Big Chicken.

If that isn't bad enough, Buster can't quite control his transformations into a giant reptile. The surviving brain-enhanced chicken with an eye patch, Socrates, can not only talk, but is an irritating smart ass. Socrates has helpful premonitions of the future, as well as visions of hell, and to activate these abilities an electrical shock and a spewing of chicken doo-doo is required. To make matters even more complicated, Buster is now the stand in for Issacs's dead father, and the talking Noah statue in the theme park won't shut up about boarding the ark "Two by two."

Being a superhero turns out to be far more complicated and personally devastating than Buster and his friends could ever have imagined, and stopping Big Chicken is no easy trick.