The night ape wiped the blood from his friend’s lips.
“Like a fool I did, but now our friend Ooso...our lovely Ooso. She that I longed to be my mate, and mine alone. Omag commanded that she and the other females submit to him as queens. It was his right to start his bloodline, but Ooso would not mate with him. When he beat her, I could stand by no longer, and so I challenged Omag!”
Those red images then flickered in Gazda’s mind, and his eyes grew moist.
Kagoon fell silent to draw in a rattling breath before continuing: “He would not fight me. Instead, his loyal blackbacks were told to kill Kagoon. I fought, but they were too many.” Another coughing fit took him and he whimpered as his broken ribs scraped and cracked. “I escaped before they killed me, and since then I have traveled to this ‘secret’ place of yours.”
“Bravely done, but you must rest,” Gazda cried, tears rolling down his cheeks. His old friend knew he had taken Fur-nose’s lair as his own, but had never said. At some time he must have followed...
“To warn you...” Kagoon’s voice weakened and his breathing slowed.
“Kagoon...” Gazda whispered, voice breaking like his heart. But his friend was dead in his arms.
Gazda pressed his face against the bull ape’s chest and wept.
There he stayed until the sun fell behind the trees and the great blue water beyond, and when the darkness in the jungle turned to black, and shadow crept across the landscape like a fog, he felt the first surge of night strength burn in his arms and chest.
Gazda closed up the tree-nest and sped toward the Two Trees faster than anything in the jungle had traveled before.
The tribe was still at Two Trees, though the night ape could see that it would soon have to move. The surrounding banana grove and bushes had been picked bare, and in places the very grasses had been chewed down to the dirt.
Gazda dropped out of the trees and frowned at the smell of blood still permeating the earth. When blackbacks slipped out of the shadows to surround him, he was prepared for a fight, but among them he recognized old Baho.
The night ape sniffed the air, and found little evidence of Omag’s recent spoor. The crippled ape’s unique stench of rotting injuries and suppurating sores was a shadow on the night, but he was nowhere close.
Then Gazda studied Baho with his night-time eyes and saw the bull ape’s injuries. The former silverback’s old face was torn and battered, and his bruised shoulders were raw from many bites. The night ape snuffled at his old friend as they brushed knuckles and he smelled blood on the many wounded apes around him. There had been a brutal battle...
“Where is Omag?” Gazda snarled, but the old ape shook his head.
“Gone,” Baho answered, and then he clutched the night ape’s arm and drew him toward a nearby copse of stunted trees that were silhouetted against the lightening sky. “It is good you are here.”
“What happened?” Gazda asked, moving with him, his pulse raging in his ears. So much blood he smelled, but there was something else...
He had almost flown through the jungle canopy hoping to reach the tribe of apes before the dawn; his mind and body set for battle, but it looked like he had missed the fight.
Then it struck him. The blood! Ooso! It was Ooso’s blood...
The night ape thrust himself past Baho and in the dark found his little friend lying on a mattress of leaves and grasses beneath the copse of trees. Her mother crouched near, grooming the festering flesh around bite marks that clustered on Ooso’s face, breasts and shoulders.
Tiny Yulu’s frightened eyes gleamed where she watched from another female’s embrace.
“Ooso!” Gazda fell at the tiny ape’s side; ignoring her mother Amak’s threatening growls. He slipped his arm beneath his injured friend to lift her head.
The little she-ape seemed half asleep as she muttered, and her eyes glinted along the line of her closed lids. Ooso’s small body had been savaged with vicious bites and blows from fists and feet, and her soft, dark hair was matted with blood.
Crouching near him in the dark, Baho whispered: “After Omag’s blackbacks attacked Kagoon, the new king flew into a rage when he heard that they had allowed him to escape. In his anger, Omag killed three of those apes with his flat and shining stone. I knew as most of us did that this also was against all tribal law, and so with other blackbacks young and old I attacked Omag and his loyalists. In the battle, he slew many with his weapon.
“Half of his followers we killed and the aging queens were captured. Omag fled with what remained of his force when he saw we would submit no longer, and that his treachery could not be forgiven,” Baho moaned sadly, reaching out to touch little Ooso’s arm. “We found her. By this time, he had tried to mate her, but she...she would not submit. Omag and the queens forced...”
He grumbled savagely, and turned his watery eyes away.
Amak panted worriedly, and licked at her daughter’s many wounds. Still more females crowded near keening sadly.
It was hopeless. Gazda could smell the rot in his friend’s injuries. She was dying.
“Little Ooso, my friend,” he said, lying beside her and grabbing her hands. She cried out in pain until he pressed her broken fingers to his lips. She blindly sniffed the air.
“Ooso is Gazda’s mate—not Omag’s!” the little she-ape squeaked before asking, “Is Gazda for Ooso?”
“Gazda is for Ooso,” the night ape whispered brokenly. “And Ooso is for Gazda.”
She fell unconscious soon after, and her breathing slowed. Gazda pressed his cheek to her brow and set her bruised palm against his forehead. The tribe had gathered around them in the morning light, moaning softly; but a hush went through them as tears rolled over the night ape’s pale face.
Gazda pushed through where the tribe crowded around his dying friend; moaning with grieving voices for little Ooso.
Baho walked with Gazda, wincing at his own injuries, and said, “Omag did this.”
“He was not alone. Where are the queens?” Gazda hissed.
“We put them in the old thorn-nest,” Baho growled, gesturing to the place.
Gazda followed the former silverback to the thicket of thorny bushes that tradition said was used as a prison for traitors, and he slipped between a pair of bristling blackbacks that guarded the entrance.
Within the dark and thorny place, the old queens immediately lowered their heads and pressed their faces to the hard-packed dirt floor. With open palms extended, their voices came out as whining supplication.
“Omag threatened to kill us!” Oluza shrieked. “With his flat and shining stone.”
“Silence!” Gazda growled, and the she-apes trembled.
“Where has Omag gone? Tell me now!” he snapped, but when neither spoke he grabbed both she-apes by the hair atop their heads and heaved them up, viciously pushing them against the wall of thorns where they whimpered and squirmed and wept.
He looked deep into Akaki’s eyes and spat, “Old queen, you will tell me after this!”
Snarling, Gazda sank his fangs into Oluza’s throat and ripped at the muscles and veins there. He chewed at the flesh as Akaki screamed in fear, but she could not look away for the night ape’s hand held her face close to his as he lapped at Oluza’s foaming blood.
His red eyes burned at the other aged queen.
When the night ape had drunk his fill, and dropped the dead Oluza, he turned to grip Akaki’s trembling shoulders.
“Old she was, and her blood was thin,” Gazda said. “I am hungry yet, Akaki. Where is your ‘king’ Sip-sip?”
“Omag—er—Sip-sip ran into the forest and east toward the bone-face larder. There is a cave by the river where he eats their females,” Akaki shrieked. “He has been gone three days. Please, Gazda, there is nothing for old queens in the tribe. He made us...”
“He made you?” Gazda sneered at Akaki. “You made Omag powerful when you put your ambitions into him, and he passed those ambitions into the fists of Ulok and his blackbacks. Th
ey have killed other apes unlawfully, and have brought on Kagoon’s death, and soon poor Ooso!” The sudden emotion that clutched his features was banished as he bared his fangs.
“So!” he snarled, moving his face close to the shivering old she-ape as he sniffed the gray fur along her jaw. “They were your fists that crushed Ooso’s bones and broke her flesh.”
Gazda’s hurtling rage surged up in him as he roared, “And I will do the same to yours!”
Many apes were waiting outside the thorny thicket, moaning now and mourning the loss of Ooso who had died. Others whimpered in fear at the sounds of horror and violence that came from within the thorn-nest.
So all stepped back trembling as Gazda exited the thicket, his pale body covered in crimson and dotted with bits of flesh. His eyes burned like red flames and his mouth and chest bore dark stains of clotting blood.
He held Akaki’s mangled body in his hands before him as he stared around his frightened tribe before he lifted the dead queen overhead and dashed her corpse upon the blood-drenched earth.
Snarling, he smelled Ooso’s death in the air, and he grimaced, spinning on his heel, to bare his fangs to the east. For in that direction did the bone-faced Bakwaniri live—and soon Omag would die a terrible death...
His reverie was interrupted as old Baho hurried into his path.
“What of the tribe of Goro?” Baho blurted.
“What of it?” the night ape answered menacingly.
“And Ooso’s daughter? Will Yulu go unprotected as you seek vengeance?” Baho grumbled.
“You protect her!” Gazda snapped.
“Please! Gazda, wait!” Baho winced as the flame in the night ape’s eyes blazed at him. “You must not leave us. Omag’s treachery has left your tribe without a king, and without protection. I am too old. Many loyal blackbacks have died or are injured and few are left to preserve what remains. You are young, the strongest ape in the tribe and the swiftest on the hunt. You have shown this, and none would dare question your leadership if you took it here at the Two Trees.”
The other apes had started creeping forward hesitantly, many injured, limping as they approached; their eyes imploring. Fear preyed upon them, and the little ones whimpered in terror. And yet the night ape’s burning gaze drew them with its promise of power.
“Gazda is king!” Baho said bowing, and the words were immediately echoed by the group.
“Gazda is king!” the other apes shouted.
Despite himself, Gazda swelled with pride.
He could feel Akaki’s and Oluza’s blood moving in his veins, and his heart hammered with its strength. How he wanted Omag—oh, to sink his fangs into that stinking flesh!
But his tribe, his mother’s tribe...Ooso’s tribe would go unprotected. Leaderless they would fail...
Yulu broke free of her grandmother then, and stopped at Gazda’s feet to bow.
Ooso! Great sadness gripped Gazda’s heart when Yulu looked up at him and he bent to brush her little tears away.
Rising to his full height, Gazda looked over the tribe of apes that huddled before him. They were injured and terrified. Their hollow eyes looked to him for hope.
“Do you doubt I am strongest?” he bellowed, swaying on wide-spaced legs. The closest wounded blackbacks shifted away from him, bowing and scraping at the earth with their foreheads. “Who would challenge Gazda the night ape to be king?”
“Gazda is King!” the apes chanted now, as they dropped down onto their knees and bellies, pressing the ground with their faces repeating, “Gazda is King of the Apes!”
Gazda was overcome by this show of respect and loyalty, and so he hardened his resolve by glaring into the east again. In that direction was the river and somewhere near it the bone-faced Bakwaniri lived.
A look came into his blazing eyes that promised death for Omag—and the Bakwaniri also. Had they not caused the death of his mother?
Eeda had raised him to be one of the apes, and she had died...
If her son took up this mantle, might her loss become a sacrifice?
Of his loyalty there was no doubt, and like the other bull apes in the tribe, Gazda was a blackback with ambition.
He would be King of the Apes.
The night ape set one bloodied foot upon Akaki’s broken corpse, and beating upon his powerful chest with his fists, he threw back his head and roared the terrifying challenge of the bull ape.
The tribe that lay on the ground before him, his tribe, trembled at the call, but not least of all did Baho, oldest, who had heard something different in this cry that came from Gazda—different from the call he had made before.
Never had such a roar come from an ape.
Indeed, nothing like that had been heard since before the dawn of time, when primordial forests locked the earth in a dark, unending band of green and shadow.
###
Dracula of the Apes
continues in
Book Three:
THE CURSE
by G. Wells Taylor
1 - The Castaways
A savage roar rose out of the dense jungle and charged toward the beach like a hungry carnivore after blood. Too terrified to do more than shudder, the seven castaways remained in place in the shadow of their stranded lifeboat, paralyzed by their fear.
As the last echo died, they returned to the task of unloading cargo and as a group stared wide-eyed into the dense foliage that edged the pale sand and gradually climbed east into the highlands. They had seen the distant mountains before they’d been put ashore.
A heartbeat later, another feral call sounded from a point much farther south, and all eyes turned to a member of their group, a man of some 50 years of age who was silently studying the treetops with keen scientific interest.
“What the devil was that?” someone asked in a high-pitched voice.
The scientist remained silent, his gaze focused on the high branches.
Beside him young Phillip Holmes hissed in frustration, his pale blue eyes desperately whipping back and forth as he searched the heavy jungle’s leading edge for whatever so captivated his older companion.
The clean-shaven Holmes was dressed in fashionable tweed Norfolk jacket, matching breeches and knee-high leather boots. A brown derby hat covered short hair of the same color.
An Englishman in his mid-20s, he had been aboard the S.S. Dunwich which was steaming from London to Cape Town and the captain of that ship had invited him to join him and the Quarrie family for dinner. Young Lilly Quarrie’s charms had kept Holmes near her ever since.
“It is an ape,” answered Dr. Joseph Van Resen finally, adding a curt nod that caused the thick iron gray curls atop his head to quiver. His rumpled green sack suit had tears in the left shoulder and along the seam of one arm. “Though, I have never heard such a variety of call—which was very strange, I’m sure you will agree. By the volume and power, I suspect it was a large animal—a gorilla most likely.” He spoke with a German accent.
“Sounded more like a madman. What an awful racket to make!” cried Abigail Quarrie, and her husband, Clive, quickly agreed. The pair were in their mid-60s and barely managing to contain their fright where they clung to each other upon the savage shore.
Like the other women in the group, Mrs. Quarrie had chosen a tailored suit for travel. Hers consisted of matching blue jacket and skirt set off by a silk scarf and broad-brimmed hat. Her husband wore a black sack coat and embroidered gray vest with brown trousers and shoes.
He had lost his hat in all the commotion, but would never mourn it. The narrow-brimmed Homburg was a weak imitation of the ten-gallon Stetson he wore back home, and it had only been at his wife’s insistence that he wore the ridiculous thing at all.
The Quarries hailed from a very dry part of Texas, so the vast Atlantic at their backs did nothing to sooth their nerves.
“That was an animal?” Virginia James, the Quarrie’s governess, offered with a well-polished drawl. “It sounded human enough to give me goose bumps!”
; Miss James had the formidable task of turning the rambunctious and headstrong teenaged Lilly Quarrie into a lady. It was a full-time position that Virginia had held since the girl was a mere child, and was expected to continue for years to come, especially now that she’d reached her mid-30s and had no reasonable prospects for marriage.
Her companions thought it a shame for there were no external indications as to why she was headed for the spinster life. Virginia was beautiful, with milk-white skin and long brown hair that she kept tied up under her gray hat, the headgear held in place by a pale scarf that swept over it and was tied under her chin. From boots to collar, her suit was of modest earth tones.
“Gorillas, like the other apes, share many similarities with men—be they mad or simply English, Miss James,” the scientist said reassuringly. “Of course, it is unlikely that we need to worry. Research on captive specimens suggests they are herbivores—excuse me, plant eaters. However, the science is in its infancy, and few of the creatures have been studied in the wild. Hunters given the task of collecting specimens report that the beasts are capable of great violence when defending their young.” He smiled and then stroked the moustache and goatee that jutted out from his narrow face. “Do not be concerned, my good friends. Apes may be terrifying to behold...” He looked toward Holmes. “But the evidence suggests they would prefer eating apples to a gentleman’s leg.”
“Suggests?” Holmes blurted, completely unnerved.
“Africa is a vast continent,” the scientist explained. “It would be profoundly arrogant for us to presume that Victorian biologists have identified all classes and varieties of anthropoid ape which means the greater mystery will have to be solved by 20th century minds.” He frowned. “We may find a carnivore among them yet...” Then he smiled. “Similar to a species, perhaps, from which our own fine families may have sprung...”
“Oh, doctor, you’re not starting up on Darwin again,” Mrs. Quarrie interjected weakly. She remembered their conversations aboard the ship and had detested his views.
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