I brought a clenched fist around, its tight arc connecting solidly against the distorted head of the nearest demon. It howled and fell back, tripping on the one behind it, hitting its skull against the concrete patio. The other scrambled to its clawed feet but I was immediately there, upon it. It rolled over and faced me, its golden eyes feral and glowing in their fullest wickedness. A crooked scar ran across its face and I realized that I'd operated on this one before—for what, I did not remember, as I'd treated hundreds of them on my numerous outings to their den; most likely a wound earned in battle with a forest dweller.
It thrashed beneath me with its bony stick limbs and long scraggly hair. I brought my fist up, prepared to crush its golden-eye socket, holding a firm grip around its filthy neck with my other hand. It made one final convulsion, then stopped, seemingly frozen with consternation. I glimpsed away for a brief moment and saw the one I struck slowly crawling away from me, legs dragging weakly behind it, stunned. I noticed a cascade of blood sheathing its face, a result of its contact with the solid ground. Eventually they'll call upon me to mend this very injury.
Silence dominated the terror of the moment, sweat and fear and heat rising from me in an almost visible vapor. They watched me, and I them, a dozen floating orbs awaiting my next move. My mind swam in circles: if I kill it, they'll injure me, slowly and surely (my death is the only thing these demons do not wish for, as without me their slow demise is imminent). If I let it go, then the game tonight will be performed and terminated. They will return to their lair and let me be, for now, until their next visit.
I wanted to serve the demon its death, but resorted to my sensible mind and released my grasp from its neck. It darted away like a once-caught fish returned to water.
I didn't stay to watch their retreat to the woods. Instead I hurried inside and hid within the barricade of my home.
Peeking out, I saw them leave. I caught my breath, then crawled to my prize. The bag. Its contents: one dead golden-eyed demon.
They eat their dead. Have I ever mentioned that before?
I discovered this quite some time after I'd been so duly elected their 'savior'. I'd garnered much success in healing their race, and never assumed for one moment that I might not succeed in amply correcting their ills, which under nearly all circumstances were injuries earned in their aggressions. My wife and daughter (my wife, remarkably, for the sake of our child, has seemed to have tolerated my 'derangement' and continues to remain in our home, yet has recently gone about her life ignoring my presence) had retired to bed, leaving me in my study despairing over the life I once had: a physician's career whose family and patients had once respected, but now virtually shunned. Thankfully I've been able to maintain a small calendar of clientele whose loyalty has been the financial support necessary to maintain my family's hope that all will someday return to normal.
Boarding up the windows in my home had only made my obsession worse, but it had become an urgent necessity. Discovering their breach into the sanctuary of my daughter's room had finally led me to sealing off every possible entrance—doors, windows, and even the chimney, which they had first utilized to gain access into my study upon my initial abduction. The only accesses now available were the front and back doors, whose windows I secured behind plywood beams.
Still, I left the slightest of gaps here, enabling me to seek out their summons—the appearance of their illuminated eyes in the woods.
I had nodded off at my desk when the harsh sounds of scratching tore me from my rare slumber. I darted awake and immediately set my sights upon the thickest gap I'd left myself to hunt their call. Long yellowed claws scraped along the edges in a slow almost mocking manner, each talon vaporously irradiated from the partial sections of eyes I glimpsed from beyond the slight crevice.
Automatically, I reached for my medical bag—a specific one I keep packed mostly with antiseptics, antibiotics, gauze, and stitches—and exited into the cool dark night. I was promptly forced deep into the woods, nearly dragged through the tunnels and into their den (I could go on and on about this place—the polluted horrors of their lair are unimaginable to anyone who has not hazarded upon it; it is my assumption that I am the only human to pass through unscathed). A multitude of angular limbs grasped me in violent fashion and led me into one of the hundreds of mini-dwellings pocking the great mudded walls. Within, I encountered a situation I'd never experienced before.
When I first began treating the people with the golden eyes, they were a race weakened by injury, and had been consequently malnourished through an inability to adequately hunt. Soon, however, they flourished, began to multiply (my efforts in aiding their genetic exigency for caesarean births proved quite fruitful towards the acceleration of their population, as it seemed apparent to me that the female parent almost always perished during childbirth), gained strength and vigor, and soon reestablished themselves as the evil and hateful breed that must have thrived years ago. Never had I encountered the circumstances of imminent death.
I had dreaded all along that an untreatable demon would eventually lay before me. And now here that demon was, not bitten or scratched by a forest animal; not broken-limbed from a playful skirmish, nor the ill-fated recipient of a graze from a hunter's bullet.
No. This demon was suffering from disease.
It lay shivering atop a burlap bag, gnarled teeth clenching and grinding in outright agony, blood and feces surrounding it like a foul moat. Its golden eyes had lost all their luster, dulled to naked gray hues. Upon close inspection I observed that it had been bitten in a multitude of places, on the legs, stomach, and groin, either from a snake or spider. Something poisonous, no doubt. I administered a penicillin vaccine, but knew it would prove of no avail.
An hour later, the demon was dead.
The anticipatory panic I felt could never be aptly illustrated using words alone. It had taken so long for me to simply find a comfort level within their domain, so when the sudden eventuation of death manifested, a whole new realm of fear took the place of everything I'd known and realized up until this point.
I found myself suddenly alone in the tiny alcove. Behind me they had all emerged from their resting places into the core of the den, crawling slowly and quietly, the amassed grind of their teeth and claws sending wicked shudders throughout my body. I nearly collapsed at the sight of them: a greater body than I'd ever imagined them to be. Their clan had grown to great innumerations, to a point so abundant that I couldn't imagine them not needing to soon branch out into newly settled territories, something quite daunting in theory.
I could only kneel at the edge of the dirt chamber, staring out at the thousands of golden eyes, which in turn, all stared back at me. I stepped down from my platform and paced slowly away, keeping my sights to my feet and feeling their bodies brushing by me.
Suddenly, a loud scuffling ensued. I cringed, expecting them to leap me much like they did my now dead neighbor, Len Deighton. When they didn't, I turned to see what it was that had had them so suddenly kinetic.
I beheld a gruesome sight.
A few of the demons had ripped the dead body from its resting place in the alcove and began tearing its limbs away. In mere seconds many more had feverishly pounced it, and I was horribly reminded of a documentary film I'd seen where a pride of lions competed for a share of a downed wildebeest. Rancid jaws locked onto muscle, tendon, and bone, pulling away as much sustenance as possible. Wild screeches and howls ensued, and before I found the fortitude to grasp my sanity, the once-dead demon had been reduced to mere gristle lodged between the spaces of their twisted teeth.
I ran away as fast as I possibly could, thinking only of my family's safety—of my wife and daughter who slept soundly within the walls my home. It wasn't until I rested beneath the covers of my bed that my mind began to formulate the deed I'd promised myself I would die trying to attempt. The deed that had begun tonight, with the dead body.
The night ended and my morning began, the prospect of sleep seeming forei
gn, even surreal. I dragged the body into my office and laid it out on the patient's examining table, smears of slimy deposits and muck staining the pure white paper sheathing the surface: present should a patient venture through my doors. Perhaps four feet in length, the monster rested messily, its legs and arms twisted into near impossible angles, dangling from the edges like the limbs of a strewn rag doll.
I knew that they would soon come for the body, so I had only one chance to get it right. And not much time to do it.
I could hear my wife and daughter pacing about upstairs, each preparing to go about their day, my wife to work, my daughter to school. Their daily activities—like my own—are being monitored by the demons, and should my wife decide to attempt to leave this place with our child (which is inevitable), I can only sit back and pray that their lives will be spared.
As I went about preparing my 'evil deed', my curiosity got the best of me and I took a moment to study the body more closely. Its face was horrible, like that of a child stricken with Progeria, skin pruned, teeth overgrown and terribly misshapen, a few wispy strands of hair straggled atop its warped head. Its rib cage was sunken, its stomach cavity ripped with sinewy muscle, its limbs long and gangly, broomstick-thin. So different from us, yet so genetically similar. For a moment I considered the fact that only one singular gene differentiates us from the apes—and yet the primates vary in much greater inhuman-like detail than these creatures do. Is it possible that these golden-eyed demons are indeed human? If one could assume for a moment the theory of evolution, then indeed, yes, there could be no other mammal these beings could have branched off from. But then what of the glowing eyes? Could I only premise them to be a result of the adaptation to their subterranean environment?
I'd spent many months considering how to go about successfully putting an end to their survival. Setting fire to their lair was an option, I even went as far as to building controlled campfires in the nearby brush in attempt to discern how the flames would bear in the woods. But I had concerns with this means of action. Was there enough oxygen to hold the flames beneath the ground? And would the fire take in the dampness? They ran torches down there, but could something wildly uncontrolled flourish as well? Certainly not anything I could set in a moment's time. Sure, I could end up killing off a number of them by smoking out the entrance, but I had to assume there to be many more accesses leading in and out from that great den, ones that I pertained no knowledge of.
Other theories seemed even more implausible: flooding them out, weapons; it was futile to even consider it, their numbers were too extensive. At the first indication of threat, they'd come after me, capture and torture me, then they would murder my family and make me watch.
So here, I surmised my only option as I saw it.
Disease. Highly communicable.
I took a sample of the beast's blood, placed it under my microscope and looked through the eyepiece. I saw it immediately. Fluttering on the slide. A germ. A bacillus, a tiny rod of protoplasm propelling itself through the blood by means of hair-like flagellum. The presence of this germ at once confirmed some of the more important mysteries up until this point. Most alarmingly, that these creatures were indeed human, grossly infected with a unique germ that had somehow over the years wreaked havoc on their genetic system, mutating it to a degree previously unfathomable in any biological string. Their warped features, withered skin, stooped posture, even their maniacal aggressiveness were all the result of this little bugger in the microscope, this horribly transfigured germ.
Certainly they'd built a remarkable resistance over the years, but if they were susceptible to germs, then they could catch a virus too, just like we do. With the right virus, I could kill them, and quickly. It would be a vicious chain of events.
Certain kinds of bacilli, when conditions become unfavorable, are capable of creating bodies called spores. These bodies can detach themselves and become free spores, highly resistant to physical and chemical change. Later, when conditions are more favorable for survival, they will regerminate, and reproduce the original qualities of the bacillus. The same goes for the communicable virus. The same way we catch colds, or the flu.
Deep in their den of aggression, where physical contact is high and the damp environment is supporting, sporulation would work masterfully.
I looked over the body of the beast in front of me. This was the fifth death I'd seen this month. In a moment I found exactly what I'd hope to see. Bites. Just like the first one. This creature, bitten, infected, dead.
Has a nice ring to it.
But the animal doing the damage, most likely a species of snake, forces no communicable disease. The snake would have to bite each and every damned one of them.
A patient came in to me a few years back. He complained of diarrhea, vomiting, fever, congestion, cough. It had all snowballed upon him three days after being bitten by a rat while cleaning out his barn. I took his blood, tested it.
His blood tested positive for hantavirus.
Two days later my patient died from acute respiratory distress syndrome and hemorrhagic fever.
I went into my basement and unlocked the freezer where I kept samples of my patient's blood, in case, for any number of reasons, additional work needed to be done—I always found it prudent to harbor these samples, as there have been instances where the initial blood sample had been lost on its way to the lab, or had been mishandled by a technician. Amongst the hundreds of tubes filed there I located the blood of Peter Andrews, labeled: hantavirus.
For the first time in nearly three years, I smiled.
Night fell. Most of my work had been completed. Time passed slowly as I peeked though a gap in the boarded window, waiting for their emergence from the woods. The body, it lay beside me—their future meal. In my hand, a syringe, filled with Peter Andrews' infected blood. I waited, waited, waited, suddenly realizing that I hadn't heard my wife return from work, or my daughter from school.
I shuddered.
Then, they appeared, golden eyes, a dozen or more, floating in from the gloom of the woods. I jammed the syringe into the dead demon's stomach and injected half the contents. The other half...I waited, just to make sure.
I opened the door and carried the body out into the night. It lay limply in my arms, like a virgin sacrifice. The golden-eyed demons bounded forward, some on two legs, most on all fours. They looked wildly simulated, like computer generated beings in some fantastical game. Soon they surrounded me, sneering, poking at me and puncturing my skin with their viscous claws.
I handed over the body. Two of them yanked it away, pawing at it like kittens wrestling over a piece of yarn. The rest followed suit, nearly dancing in their agitation. Except one. I grabbed it by the hair and yanked it back. It howled as I plunged the syringe into its jugular. Stiffened as the tainted blood raced through its body, weakening it. It staggered away as I let it go, its injury unnoticed by its over-eager brothers.
Again, I smiled. And prayed. And then I returned to the sanctuary of my home.
A month has passed, and I have yet to sight their eyes glowing from within the depths of the woods.
The night they took the tainted body away, I discovered that my wife had indeed packed up a number of things and attempted to leave the township with our daughter. The next morning my daughter was found wandering the streets in town, untouched, telling tales of little men that had taken mommy away.
My wife has been missing since.
I dare not lead authorities into their lair, as I know they will be taken down. No one should perish at the hands of these demons, and no tale I can tell would prepare them for the evil that awaits.
Only I can make certain—for the sake of my own sanity, I had to be sure.
On the sunniest day of the month I walked to the circular patch where the only entrance I know of exists. I went in, neither quickly nor slowly, following the tunnel, down, down, down, the beam from my flash light my only guide. Soon, I entered the hub.
All was silent. N
o activity. No torches meeting my gaze. Just a terribly foul smell. Decay
Then, I heard something. Moans, rife with pain and suffering. When I brought the flashlight up, I beheld a gruesome sight.
A seemingly unending collection of bodies, knotted together in a great mass of ruin, many dead, many dying and squirming, not a single golden eye aglow.
And it was here that I smiled once again, this time triumphantly, silently commemorating the pains of my labor: a vast playground, perfectly befitting for the infestation of maggots.
I turned away, making sure not to trip over any of those sprawled bodies in my path. Suddenly a single hand grasped my ankle. Stunned, I pointed the flashlight down and saw the glow in its pleading eyes fading to gray. I'd seen this look before, that of desperation, a visage in need of solace.
I kicked it away in disgust. I then turned to admire my work one last time.
In the distance, in one of the multitude of burrows, I saw a pair of eyes ignite, their glow intense, intent on revenge. In their illumination I saw a single bony hand raise up and point an accusatory finger at me.
And as I considered the daunting possibility that one or more of the beasts might be immune, a single howl like nothing I'd ever heard before ripped the silence to tatters, condemning me back to the life of hell I had so fleetingly escaped—but will now continue to suffer until all of them are dead and rotted.
So for now, as I ponder those two glowing eyes in the reach of the great den, my only choice is to return home and start over again. This survivor, and maybe others, will soon be there looking for me.
Dregs of Society Page 5