by Peter Clines
He rested his hands on the desktop and she poured hydrogen peroxide across his stomach. It sizzled on the wounds. Mike took in a sharp breath and banged his hand against the desk.
“Stings?”
“Yep.”
Jamie splashed more of it on him. The cuts foamed and hissed. She rinsed his wounds one last time and a few more bubbles danced on his skin. “Almost done.”
“Good. My pants are soaked.”
“You’ll live.”
“Other parts of me are tingling.”
“That’s just because I’m touching you.”
“Hah.”
She pulled the cap off a yellow tube and squeezed ointment over the gouges. Mike went to spread it around, and she slapped his fingers away. She tore open two packs of gauze at the same time, pressed them over the wounds, and had him hold them while she peeled off some tape. Then she found a bandage in the kit and wrapped it four times around his stomach.
“I think that’s enough,” he said.
“You sure?”
“How are you? That thing hit you pretty hard.”
She reached back and touched her head behind her ear. “I’ve got a lump and some sore ribs. I’ll live.”
“You sure?”
“I got off easy. The rest of you took the beating.” She gestured at the body. “So…what now?”
“We should lock it up somewhere,” he said. “Maybe clean out one of the hazmat lockers?”
She looked past him. “The closest one’s way over there. We wouldn’t be able to watch it and empty the locker.”
“Maybe tie it up?”
“It’s a high energy physics lab. We don’t have a lot of rope laying around.”
He shivered.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m kind of cold.”
“Really?”
“I’ve lost some blood, my pants are wet, and I don’t have a shirt. Yes, I’m cold.”
“Okay, then,” she said. “We can’t leave it alone. We can’t lock it up.” She glanced over at the rings. “And we can’t stay here.”
He nodded. “So we make sure it’s dead.”
Jamie found two big wrenches in the toolbox. Each one was only a foot long, but they were steel and solid and had a good weight to them. There were a few utility knives, but the blades were too short to be of any use.
They approached the body. Its blood was dark red. A few more roaches circled the creature, but none of them moved closer than a few inches before skittering away.
He could see the back of the creature’s head. It had a loose circle of gray-black hair. The strands were close to dreadlocks in places, thinning and patchy in others.
The cloak was coarse leather that had been bleached by the sun. Not even leather, just hides that had been worn and bent enough to stay soft. Some of it was hairless, some had bristly patches of fur. The whole thing was held together with broad stitches of thick cord. Mike had a feeling it was dried muscle sinews. He knew Native Americans and some other cultures used sinews for threads and bowstrings.
“I think that’s a good sign,” he said, pointing his wrench at the roaches circling the body.
“You think they’re going to eat it?”
“No clue. But they were mobbing this place until it showed up and now they’re all coming back. I think they know its dead.”
“Does that mean we’re done?”
He shook his head. “We’ve got to be sure.”
Jamie looked at the two right hands sticking out from under the cloak. One was palm up, the other palm down. Two of the long fingers curled under the left hand. “You want to take its pulse or something?”
“I guess. It’s a start.”
“Wish I’d kept the fire extinguisher.”
“You want to go grab it?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Believe me,” she said, “if it moves I’m beating its head in with this wrench.”
Mike reached over the puddle of blood and touched the creature’s left wrist. Hot pinpricks of pain sparked under his bandages as he stretched. He tried to ignore them.
The skin looked like wet clay, but he felt dozens of tiny scales shift under his fingertip. He counted to five. When the body didn’t move, he lifted the hand. The bent fingers uncurled, and he heard the rustle of Jamie’s clothes as she tensed up. He let the wrist settle against his fingers and counted to ten. Nothing. No throb or rhythm or tremor. Drops of blood beaded up on two of the long nails and plopped to the floor.
“Well?” asked Jamie.
He counted to ten again. Still no pulse. “I’m going to try to roll it over,” he said.
“Why?”
“To get a better look at it.”
“You’re hurt,” she said. “Why don’t I roll it over?”
“Because I’m hurt,” he said, “and if it jumps up and grabs me, I want somebody healthy trying to beat its head in.”
She managed a tight smile.
The easiest way to flip the body, Mike decided, was to move the single arm in close to the torso and then roll the creature from the other side. He tucked his wrench into the back pocket of his jeans, slid his hand along the cloak to the elbow, and pushed. The joint was more flexible than he expected. The loose material of the cloak, half stuck to the floor by blood, rolled and flopped under the arm.
He shifted his feet, leaned a little farther, and pushed the arm up against the body. The fingers left trails of clean floor in the puddle, and then the blood oozed back in to fill the trails and erase them. The cloak dragged out flat.
Mike looked down and screamed. He pushed himself back, the pinpricks of pain in his stomach became razors, and he slammed into Jamie. She saw the cloak and made a sound that could’ve been a loud groan or a muffled shout. She slapped her free hand over her mouth.
Mike’s mind was a blur of static. The ants had hundreds of facts and images for his comparison. What kept rising to the foreground was another fact about Native Americans, an old grade school maxim.
They used every part of what they hunted.
FORTY-FOUR
The eye sockets were ragged. Mike wasn’t sure if it meant the cloak was well-used, or if the skinning had been a sloppy job. One of the holes went right up to the eyebrows. The mouth and nostrils were still plain, even though they’d been stretched flat. He could even see pores and a few whiskers on the cheeks.
Jamie made another sound. It was muffled by her hand. She took a step back. “What the fuck is this thing?” she hissed.
Mike straightened up and took a few steps around the body. The blood puddle was still creeping out. He didn’t like the idea of putting himself by the double arms, but he was feeling more confident that the creature was dead. He also knew that in most horror movies that confidence marked the moment the monster got back up and killed the guy poking it with a stick.
He glanced at Jamie. “You ready?”
Her grip tightened on the wrench again. She pressed her lips together and nodded.
Mike crouched and reached for the cloak. He shuddered as his fingers touched it, and he tried to think of it as a collection of hides and leather. He felt the body through the material and found the double shoulder. He set his hands against it and pushed. The creature was heavy.
He braced his feet, ignored the pain in his gut, and heaved. The head twisted around and the swollen eye glared at him. He almost lunged back again, but there was no life behind the stare. The pupil was wide and gazed past him at the wall.
Mike heaved again, and the creature flopped onto its back. He over-balanced, slipped, and landed on his knees in the blood puddle. He shuffled backward, leaving sticky tracks on the floor.
One of the small eyes was closed, the other half-lidded. The large one stared up at the ceiling. A dozen of its teeth were broken. Half of them oozed dark blood.
Mike picked out all five bullet holes in the cloak. Each of them was ringed with blood. One high enough that it almost skimmed
the raised shoulder, one where the thigh met the hip, and three scattered across the torso. One of them might’ve been in the heart, but the creature wasn’t humanoid enough for him to be sure.
He wondered if it was one of Koturovic’s alpha predators.
He slid out his wrench, held it over the body for a moment, and then whacked one of the gunshot wounds.
Nothing.
He smacked the bloody hole again. Then he jabbed it with the pointed tips of the wrench. He poked his way across the body to one of the other wounds.
Nothing.
Jamie leaned over him. “Now what?”
He looked past her to the rings. “We need to get out of here.” He looked down at the body. “We should get it out of here, too. Do you have the keys to the spare trailers?”
“They shouldn’t be locked.”
“I say we stick this thing in one of them for now, crank the air conditioning up all the way, and then call someone to come take it off our hands.”
“You know someone to call for that?”
“I know someone at DARPA,” said Mike, “and I’m betting he knows a lot of people who’d fight to get this thing.”
“So how do we move it?”
“I’ll take the heavy end.”
Jamie looked down at the body. “You want me to touch it?”
“I wanted you to say ‘you’re hurt’ again and then offer to take the heavy end.”
She shoved her own wrench in her pocket and crouched to grab the ankles. “It feels like fish,” she said.
“I thought it was more like snakeskin,” said Mike. He tried to figure out a way to reach under the body’s crooked shoulders without smearing blood on his hands. After a moment, he grabbed two big handfuls of the cloak. “You ready?”
“I guess.”
He heaved on the cloak and she pulled on the legs. The creature’s knees bent back and its shoulders rolled too far forward. The hood slumped back over its face. The body lifted a few inches off the floor. Jamie wrestled the ankles up higher, almost into her armpits. Mike set his end down and gathered up more of the cloak. Some of it was sticky with blood.
They shuffled past the rings to the back door. The cloak dragged and left streaks on the concrete. Jamie took short steps to avoid tripping on the fabric. She tried not to look at the swath of material with the face sewn into it.
Mike hit the release with his elbow and pushed the door with his back. The cuts in his stomach were burning. The bandages were wet.
They struggled with the corpse down the rear staircase. The cloak snagged on the corner of a step and almost yanked the body out of Mike’s hands. He teetered on the step for a moment.
“Set it down,” said Jamie. “I need a break, anyway.”
He nodded. It was going to be a pain to pick up the body again on the stairs, but his knuckles ached from holding the gathered-up cloak. He lowered his end of the body and tried to stretch out his fingers.
She shook out her own hands. “You’re bleeding again.”
He glanced down. Red blobs spotted the gauze. “It’s not bad,” he said. “It’ll hold until we get this thing locked away.”
They wrestled the body back into the air between them. They lumbered to the bottom of the stairs and started across the park toward the trailers. Mike aimed them at the back of the double row, straight toward the empty one. The gravel crunched under their feet and made a whisking noise as the cloak dragged across it.
Jamie flinched and turned away from the body.
“What?”
She dipped her head down without looking in that direction. The tunic-cloak had slid halfway up the creature’s thighs. The creature’s legs were almost white in the sunlight. “I think it’s some kind of hermaphrodite or something, maybe. It’s going commando, whatever it is.”
“Ahhh.”
“I’m going to take a long shower after this.”
Mike glanced at his trailer. “Me, too.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” she said. “I’m not thinking sexy shower.”
“Neither was I.”
“You have no idea, believe me.” She glanced at the pale thighs and shuddered.
“Very, very unsexy,” Mike agreed.
“Later maybe. When this thing’s out of sight and all that shit’s off you. And I’ve had three or four good, mind-erasing drinks.”
“Just let me know.”
They shuffled a few more feet closer to the end of the trailers. “Hang on.” She shifted her arms. “It’s slipping.”
Mike opened his mouth to suggest setting the body down again, but his hands weren’t aching as much. He had a better grip, or the cloak had settled into a better position to take the weight. He held his end and waited for her to adjust.
Jamie heaved up one ankle so she had it between the crook of her arm and her armpit. Something crunched and her eyes went wide. “Oh crap,” she said. “I think I just broke its foot.”
He shook his head. “Probably just feels that way. Come on, we’re almost there.”
They carried the body another few yards. Mike stepped onto the green Astroturf, and they worked their way around the corner. Mike glanced over his shoulder and saw the steps to the last trailer just a few feet away.
Jamie rolled her shoulder, then shook her head. “It’s broken. I can feel it.”
“We can deal with it later.” Mike looked between the doorknob and the body. The corpse was balanced so well right now, he almost thought he could gather the cloak in one hand and hold it while he opened the door.
“You got it?” asked Jamie.
“Yep.” He didn’t move.
“Something wrong?”
“Is it just me,” he asked, “or does this thing feel a lot lighter than when we picked it up?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I thought it was just me.”
He lifted his arms. Lifted, not heaved. The corpse went up. It wasn’t as easy as lifting an empty box, but it wasn’t much harder, either.
“Set it down for a second,” he said.
He lowered the double-handful of cloak. Jamie tried to release the legs and they made a rustling noise, like flipping through dry old books. Tiny scales flaked off them like dust and settled on her hands and arms and chest.
The left leg broke off at the knee with a sound of snapping twigs. Jamie shrieked. Bits of skin and bone scattered in the breeze. She dropped the calf and it hit the Astroturf with a dry sound, like a bag of leaves.
Mike crouched and pulled back the hood. The creature’s swollen eye was gone. A dry crater gaped in the head. The two small eyes had vanished, too, leaving bullet hole sockets in a sagging patch of flesh. The gray skin was tight around the nostril slits, and the lips were gone.
“It’s mummified,” said Jamie.
The gums receded before their eyes, showing the roots of the needlelike teeth. More scales dropped away. The cheekbones pushed their way out of the skin. The fingers became claws that became knotted sticks.
She looked up. “Is it the sunlight?”
“It was wrapped in the cloak.”
“The legs weren’t.”
“The face was.” He pointed at the skin-wrapped skull. “It’s just as far gone as the legs.”
“Oh, shit.” Jamie wiped her hands on her jeans, then kneeled and rubbed them on the plastic grass.
“Nothing happened until it died,” said Mike. “I think you’re okay.”
Jamie looked over her shoulder, over at her trailer. “I need to go wash off,” she said.
He nodded.
“I’m sorry,” she yelled as she ran off. She unlocked her door and yanked it open. She ran inside and left it swinging. A minute later Mike heard running water and splashing.
He watched the body shrivel and fall apart, moving his head to get it from multiple angles. The cloak shifted as the body beneath it grew thinner and thinner. The ants carried out grade-school science films about decay and childhood images of raking dry leaves that crumbled between the tines of th
e rake.
By the time the water stopped running, there was nothing left but bones.
FORTY-FIVE
Mike unwrapped the cloak and looked at the skeleton. Gloria Barker, the biology teacher, had a poster of the human skeleton up in her classroom, complete with labels. Mike had seen it twice. More than enough to give him a basis of comparison.
The creature’s skeleton was more or less humanoid. An extra bone ran along the back, something flat and wide where the extra arm attached. The sternum was peaked along the front instead of flat. The ribs were asymmetrical, with fewer on the side with the extra arm. The knees and elbows were an odd arrangement, not quite hinges, not quite ball and sockets. It had an extra toe on the left foot, the one that had broken off.
He examined the skull. Forty-nine teeth, eleven of them broken. Twenty-four on top, twenty-five on bottom. The large eye had its own socket, but it looked like the two small eyes shared one. He couldn’t even guess how something like that evolved.
The ants carried out pictures of Bob, the wasteland Bob, and he wondered if the creature had developed naturally.
Mike looked at it all and had the ants file it. Dozens and dozens of images, all stored alongside frames of the creature alive. The contrast gave him a better sense of muscle structure, but not much.
He held up his hands. The blood from the cloak had dried and flaked away. There was almost no sign of it on his fingers, arms, or body.
The cloak was spread out. There was another broad patch with a nipple on it, but past that he couldn’t see anything to hint at the origins of the material. Maybe just those two patches were human skin. Maybe it all was.
How could there be recognizable humans in a world that had allowed this thing to develop?
He folded the cloak around the body as best he could. He made a point of hiding the face inside the layers. Then he gathered the whole thing and put it in the trailer. The bones barely weighed forty pounds. There was no meat left on it, but he twisted the air conditioner knob to HIGH just in case.
Mike went to Jamie’s trailer. She sat on her bed in her underwear, eyes closed. She was still wet from the shower. He let her have her moment. He knew how important such moments could be.