by Edward Lee
“No, but when they’re on a rampage like they are now, if we don’t try, we’re dead by morning for sure.”
Waterways, hunting a scent, I thought. If we made it back to Providence, I’d install Pinkerton’s men round the clock. Either that or I’d relocate to a place so far removed from any waterways.
“There’s the truck,” Zalen whispered just as the trail had navigated us to an opening in the woods just behind Onderdonk’s property. The aroma of slow-cooking meat hung dense. Several shacks sat teetering in shadows; betwixt two of them I spied a pickup truck that looked as dilapidated as everything else. The only sound that came to my ears was that of pigs chortling.
“Onderdonk’s had those same pigs for years,” came Zalen’s next snide remark, “but they’re just for show. I’ll bet that hillbilly and his kid haven’t really cooked pork for a decade.”
“But where is he?” I queried. “The place looks abandoned.”
“They probably went to bed after they put the meat in the smoker,” he suspected, and pointed to the rows of propped-up metal barrels which sufficed for the cooking apparatus. “That’s good for us… but get your gun out just in case.”
I obeyed the instruction and followed him into the overgrown perimeter. We ambled forth with great care, so not to snap a single twig. Moonlight and shadows diced the various shacks into wedges of light and dark; several sets of small eyes glittered at us when the pigs in the sty took note of us. An owl hooted, then went silent.
“That seems irregular,” I commented of the burlap sacks near the smokers. “Those sacks appear to be full. I saw Onderdonk with my own eyes, carrying the sacks out of the cavern after he and his boy butchered a number of the crossbred corpses.”
Zalen opened a sack; in it were hanks of freshly butchered meat. “Yeah, and if the meat’s still in the bags, then what the hell is…”
The question didn’t necessitate completion. I suppose, deep down, I already knew before we raised the lids of the smokers. I shined my flash inside, then we both recoiled.
Smoke billowed up from Onderdonk’s pink-blistered face, while tendrils of it hung off the hair on his scalp. More smoke, as well, issued from the mouth agape in horrific death; the eyes had curdled cloudy white. A powerful, pork-like aroma spread a ground fog throughout hodgepodge of shacks. Another smoker sealed the fate of Onderdonk’s boy—a pitiable sight, indeed. The lower body-weight, and the probability that the boy had been “cooking” longer than his father, was demonstrated by the fact his eyesockets were filled with bubbling humors. Steam from the poor lad’s poached brain keened from his sinuses and ears.
“God save us,” I croaked.
“The fullbloods got to them,” came Zalen’s hopeless appraisal, “which means they may still be here.”
The prospect seized my heart like a vulturine claw and squeezed. We all but slithered in the direction of the motor, eyes never blinking. But, still, my questions remained in a maelstrom. “Previously, you told me that women made pregnant were allowed to keep their firstborn, but the others must be relinquished to the fullbloods.”
“Yeah? So what?”
“But you also told me that you yourself fathered Mary’s third or fourth child. What kind of a treacherous cretin could deliver his own child to those things in the water?”
“I didn’t have anything to say about it, Morley. We don’t have a choice here—don’t you get that? If I’m ‘treacherous,’ then so is your beloved Mary.”
I wouldn’t hear of it. I knew, I knew to the marrow of my soul, that Mary’s misgivings were levered upon her; if she did not comply, her son, brother, and stepfather would be made fodder for the fullbloods.
“And the kid we had was an accident,” he went on. “I suppose back then I actually loved her—before she joined the collective.”
I winced at the excuse. “Only the unGodliest of men could proclaim to love a woman he was prostituting out like a commodity.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” and then came a snicker. “And I don’t believe in God anyway.”
“I should say that’s obvious—”
“So if your God really exists, you’re gonna have to do a lot of praying to get us out of this.” We both arrived at the truck; in the back bed stood two cans of petrol. Ducking down, Zalen took one and carefully emptied it into the vehicle’s fuel tank. “And,” he went on, “you can pray that this hunk of junk starts…”
“One last question first,” I importuned and gripped his shoulder. My curiosity burned like a brand-iron. “Answer what you refused to answer before.”
“Come on, Morley, we have to—”
“I insist! You said that the ritualism is just veneer founded in ignorant traditions of old: occultism used as ‘icing’ to cover something else.”
“Yes!”
“So what about the babies? What about the sacrifices? If the sacrifice of newborns isn’t an occult oblation, then what else can it be?”
“It’s not sacrifice, for God’s sake. They want the newborns to study them—to study us. Their brains, their cells, their blood—everything, to see how they grow. Like what I said before—the microscopic things in every cell that make us what we are… that’s what they study, that’s what they experiment with.”
“Their understanding of the genetic sciences must outweigh ours a thousandfold,” I said. “So that’s it.”
“Yeah. Sacrifices to the devil? Black magic? It’s just a bunch of what my grandfather used to call codswallop. Ornamentation, Morley, to fool the ignorant masses: us.”
It was with little positivity that I contemplated the potential of his explanation. Based on the little I’d read I knew that, in theory, the study of human genes (particularly human genes still in developmental stages such as infancy) could not only enhance understanding of human life but could alter human life. I was forced, next, to ask, “What is the purpose of their studying us on a genetic level, Zalen?”
“That’s the worst part,” he said. “They hate us, Morley. They want to wipe us out, but not by brute force.”
“With what, then?”
“With disease, deformity, sterility.”
“Of course,” I croaked, aware now of the ramifications. “Via research and experimentation on the newborns, the fullbloods could identify our biological vulnerabilities and produce viruses, malignancies, and contagious disease mechanisms that could lay waste to the human race from a multitude of angles.”
“That’s right. That’s what they want to do eventually—”
“And you’re helping them!” I snapped.
He frowned in the moonlight. “I thought I was helping you. I’m helping you and your precious Mary escape. Remember that.” He turned then to the bedraggled vehicle. “Start praying, Morley. Pray to your God that this has a starter button instead of a keyed ignition…”
I actually did pray for that, but before the prayer was done, I’d leapt back, yelling in fright, for when Zalen opened the truck’s dented and paint-faded door, he didn’t lean in, he was pulled in—
—by a pair of long, thin, bizarrely jointed and musculatured arms with hands more resembling the forepaws of a frog, but with slick, webbed digits nearly a foot in length. I never saw its face, though I clearly understand what it was by the pungent smell which gusted from the truck when Zalen opened the rusted-patched door. It was the smell of a fish-pile tinged by the earthy stench of creek scum. Creek scum, too, was what the thing’s skin looked like. It took moments in these wedges of shadow for me to compose reactive thought. I did seem to see its bump-pocked sickly green skin shine as if wet, and as the commotion ensued within the truck I also heard wet sounds, slopping sounds, and then sounds which were more refined and more ghastly.
Only the word evil could describe what I heard next, though to make direct simile I’d have to say it sounded like someone dislocating the joints of a raw chicken, only the “chicken,” in this case, was Zalen. A heftier tearing sound followed, after which came a great, wet
splat as all of the long-haired malcontent’s internal organs were tossed out of the truck, and after that came the addict’s destitution-worn black rain jacket.
Then came the arms, uprooted at the shoulder sockets.
Then the legs.
It’s taking him apart, piece by piece, I realized.
And last came the torso, though Zalen’s genitals appeared to be absent from the groin. I could only hope that the chewing sound I heard from the truck was my imagination.
I do not consider myself a coward, however, for not attempting to intercede with my pistol, for what you must understand is that the above dismantling of Cyrus Zalen expended only a matter of a few seconds. Instead, I rolled behind a rotted tree stump of considerable breadth. Reflex more than my conscious brain directed my positioning; I lay on my belly, both hands outstretched gripping my weapon, doing my best to establish a firing lane over the area I knew the creature must venture into if it were to pursue me. Shooting eye lined up over the weapon’s small sights, I waited.
And waited.
Come out! I pleaded.
No significant movement could be detected within the truck, though I believe I noticed minor movement. A moment later—and for only a moment—the faintest greenish luminescence seemed to fluoresce within, and I could only judge that it was coming from the passenger side of the vehicle’s interior. A second later, it was gone.
What guided me to re-examine Zalen’s torso I can’t imagine, but as I did so I made the sickening revelation that the cad’s head was no longer in connection with his neck. Why had the batrachian monstrosity within ejected everything but the head?
Something arched in the darkness, thumped, then rolled to answer my question.
Zalen’s head.
The head grinned in a manner that mirrored Zalen’s snideness to perfection. The whites of its eyes, in a faintness that was less than minute, glowed with the same greenish ghost-light I’d noticed in the truck. “Think about what you’re doing, Morley,” came Zalen’s corroded voice, yet a wet, slushy titter now companioned the words. “You don’t have enough bullets to take them on, but you do have choices.”
The dead words wracked me in a near-paralysis. Zalen’s head chuckled when I shakingly aimed the gun at its brow. I noticed, too, that the torn and bloody stump of the neck glowed phosphorically with the thinnest tendrils of whatever netherworld-elixir had been administered into it—the reagent, I presumed, that had also reanimated Mr. Nowry, Candace, and Lord knew how many others.
“What… choices?” I finally managed.
“Join Olmstead’s town collective—”
“Bombast,” I said in spite of my revulsion and fear. “I will not be a party to infanticide, nor will I aid and abet the enemies of my race.”
“Jesus, man. If you don’t join them, you’re dead. Oh, sure, you might take down a few of them with that peashooter of yours, but they’ll get you eventually.” The severed head winked. “And when they do, it won’t be a pretty sight.”
“I’d sooner shoot myself.”
“Well, that’s the only other choice you have. If you’re not gonna join them then you better do yourself a big favor and put that gun to your head right now and pull the trigger, Morley. That thing in the truck just pulled me apart in less time than it takes to bat an eye. You have any idea how much that hurt?” and then the dead mouth bayed wet, mushy laughter.
When I looked up, I spotted the silhouette of the thing standing just outside the truck now, staring at me in great attendance. The eyes which shined in the darkness were gold-irised and seemed the size of adult fists. Its evilly webbed hands hung down well below the joints that sufficed for its knees.
“Of course,” the wretched head continued, “if you’re gonna kill yourself, you’ll need to kill Mary first—”
“Mary?” I exclaimed.
“If you don’t join the collective, they’ll do things to her that will make the Holy Inquisition look like a couple of kids playing in a sandbox. They’ll torture the daylights out of her, Morley, with their chemicals and their tools, and then they’ll kill her, and then? They’ll bring her back just to do it all over again.”
“Shut up!” I yelled and put the gun to the head’s eye.
“But none of that’ll happen if you join the collective. You’ll have your Mary, happily ever after.”
Tempting as they may have been, I knew that I could not fall prey to his promises. If I agreed, they would kill me just the same, for what I knew. I prevaricated, biding time—there was still the fullblood at the truck to deal with—“Let me think about this,” I delayed—but then I looked back to the truck and saw that the heinous, scum-skinned creature was no longer there.
“Too late,” Zalen intoned with a chuckle.
If was from behind that the slime-gloved hand came round and encompassed my entire face; I was hauled back, unable to breathe, and my pistol fell out of my hand. The foot-long fingers encased the full of my head, and thin as they may have been they exerted such force that I knew only seconds would be required before my skull burst like a pressured gourd. Zalen’s execrable head continued to cackle as my struggles grew more enfeebled; worse, the aberration’s other flagitious hand was slipping its way beneath my belt and into my trousers. What I suspected is had used Zalen’s genitals for were about to be duplicated with my own.
“Looks like your God hit the road, Morley,” hacked another splattering laugh of the evil head. “Can’t say that I blame Him…”
It was almost merciful the way my consciousness dimmed just as the marauding hand clasped my genitals and began to twist. Would my skull erupt before I ultimately smothered? I felt the thin, boney fingers tightening, slickened by frog-slime. It seemed to temper itself then, as though it would uproot my privates and collapse my head simultaneously; but as I felt what I was certain were my last heartbeats, the abomination released me as if electrically shocked, leapt upright onto its hideous feet, and released a bellow so cacophonous and inhuman I thought I’d go mad merely from the sound.
A sound like a rising and falling shriek intertwined a wet, slopping-like splatter.
I thudded to my side, desperate to recover breath. Moving clouds over the woods unmercifully afforded more moonlight at the same instant I looked up…
The awkward-jointed, shuddering thing had somehow been staked to a tree via one of Onderdonk’s iron stoking rods rammed into one of its orbicular eyeballs. As the impossible vocal protest wound down, it convulsed with an added sound akin to wet leather flapping.
A dark blur, then, and rapid footfalls, snagged my gaze, as I plainly saw a figure gliding away into the woods.
Who had saved me? Mary? I wondered, but, no, if so she’d have said something, and no woman in her stage of pregnancy could’ve moved so nimbly. Or perhaps a townsperson in conscientious objection to the collective’s ghastly initiatives. Or…
Could it have been young Walter?
The madness of the previous minutes released my senses. I was still on a mission: to save Mary and her son, to see to their escape from this macabre, clandestine netherocracy. Distant thrashing in the woods told me my savior was heading west, across the road…
Towards Mary’s house.
Recovered now, I reclaimed my pistol.
“Kill her,” Zalen’s head said. “Then kill yourself.”
With more than a little loathe I picked the head up by its greasy hair and—
“Don’t you dare, Morley!”
—dropped it into the smoker which was slow-cooking Mr. Onderdonk. Reclosing the lid, I could still hear its muffled remonstrance. “Ain’t nothing but a rich pud…”
“But a rich pud still in possession of his head,” I replied. Then I ran off—after the shape that had spared my life.
It was chiefly blind faith that guided me through the night-shrouded thicket and labyrinth of gnarled trees. Fireflies constellated the darkness. Eventually, I sighed in relief to see the squat, dark form of Mary’s overgrown abode, the faintest can
dles glowing in the tiny windows. And—
There he is!
It was before one such window that I spied the obscure figure, the person who’d saved my life. But before I could take even a single step forward, the figure whirled, and it whisked away into the trees deft as a wood-sprite. My first impulse was to call out but then I remembered the necessity of inconspicuousness. Who knew how many other fullbloods lurked near? Nor did I run after the figure, for that would result in complete diversion to my goal. Instead, I peeked into the wanly lit pane that the figure had just quitted, and there I saw, on a pitiful sack filled with leaves and dead grass, Mary’s young son Walter, asleep. It was the candle-stub and holder sitting on the crude dirt floor that gave the room its diminutive light.
I had no time for contemplations; softer and more erratic footfalls alarmed me from the southward side of the house. Pistol at the ready, I covered myself behind a tree, holding my breath…
The figure that stepped into a sprawl of moonlight was Mary.
She trudged forward with difficulty, obviously returning from the forced bacchanal at the lake. Wearied, then, she gasped, then buckled over and was sick. I rushed to her as she retched in misery.
“Oh, Foster!” she sobbed. “I prayed that you’d still be alive—”
“Your prayers have been answered,” I said and took her up in an embrace. But we’ll need more than prayer, I’m afraid, came an amending thought. She wore the esoteric robe of earlier, with the confounding configurations embroidered within its fringes. Her warm, heavy body trembled in my arms. “I’ve come for you, and your son—”
She bolted from the comfort my embrace had given her. “We must get inside, and we must keep out voices very low.”
“Mary, I—”
“Shhh! You don’t understand!” and she took my hand and pulled me into the squalor-embalmed house through a narrow, uneven door. Total dark and a dense mustiness suddenly cocooned me; it was only her warm hand I had as a guide.
She piloted me to another low-ceilinged room lit by one candle alone, make-shift furniture in evidence. I helped her sit on a milk crate-turned-chair, and when she finally caught her breath, she looked up at me with the saddest eyes. “Oh, Foster, I’m so sorry. You’ve jeopardized your life by coming here.”