Culp cast a quick look around the laboratory, his hands hovering over the light switch; he had memorised the general look of the laboratory when he had first walked in, knowing only too well that if he made too much of a mess getting the phial of the new wonder drug, Theramine, it would arouse too many suspicions.

Theramine.

Culp had known the two scientists well enough to understand they were up to something big. He had ferried enough scientific equipment to the house once owned by Lopez, which had been bought and taken by the two scientists. The river house was a long way from civilisation and it took many hours for a boat to move up and down the river. It was a perfect place for the scientists to work without anyone spying on them, and he had found enough proof they were working on something big, something that required a place of absolute quiet without any nearby neighbours for them to work.

And then one day Culp had seen the body of a very large rabbit. The animal was three times larger than any other rabbit he had seen before, and he knew that whatever they were working on, he could use it to become rich.

And he knew they were working with some kind of cocktail made from river plants, but he was not good at botany, so he didn't know which plants they'd used.

Culp had been spying on the scientists for a while, but the information he had gotten from them was extremely limited and it wasn't until they had summoned Blackmer to come to the house, that Culp had finally put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Theramine was a drug which would make any grow larger and larger, and its applications for the food industry were incredible. When Culp had been hearing the lecture even though he was a little bit late, which meant he didn't know precisely which plant or plants in the river were used, so that was once more a mystery to him. Culp blamed the density of the jungle for that; he had needed a good ten minutes to walk through the thick vegetation just to get to the laboratory vent to listen in.

But later that night, he planned to break in and steal some of the drug.

He could take it to some labs and get tests run on it, before showing off what it did and then he would sell it first before Orchard and McGill got to that point.

He regretted accidentally spilling some of it in the sink, but he had quickly washed it down, and he had replaced the missing Theramine using the liquid from another source.

Seeing nothing wrong, the boatman walked out of the lab and switched off the light. Once he was gone, he didn't hear the gurgle of the sink as the last drops washed down the sink. He didn't see the water washing the theramine down into the pipes. Culp had seen the effects of the Theramine, which was one of the reasons why he had seen himself becoming incredibly rich, and if he had known where the sink's plug went down, he would have likely done something else.

The pipes drained into the swamp.

In the warm murky depths of the Ambro River, river vegetation covering the banks of the river and the bed itself, the Theramine mixed with the water and went with the current. An alligator passed through the Theramine contaminated water, and then another, and then another and then another. Some small fishes were exposed, but the effects on the alligators were more obvious.

Dr Orchard and Dr McGill had performed enough studies into Theramine to learn how to measure the dosages, unknown to Culp. The two scientists had both learnt enough about the drug to understand they only needed a few drops of the substance injected under the skin was more than enough for the drug to work.

Unfortunately, Culp had washed down the theramine he had accidentally spilt down the sink. There was too much of the drug.

Far too much.

As they swam through the contaminated water, which began to dilute - Culp had used water from the laboratory's supply to wash the drug away to clear the evidence away, and it had begun diluting, but in the river, it diluted to the point where it wouldn't contaminate the rest of the Ambro - the alligators began to change. Their bodies became larger and more powerful; their bones became denser, their muscles became stronger and their armoured hides became strong enough to repel bullets. The drug mutated the alligators until they became three times larger than they had been originally.

For the next few hours, the alligators continued growing in size.

And nobody would realise it until the morning when the alligators used their new size to attack and sink Culp's boat and begin attacking the house.