Chimera

by David Wellington

  He lifted a radio to his lips and said something Chapel couldn’t hear, then climbed out of the box and waddled toward the trees on the far side of the road.

  Chapel wasted no time. He tapped Julia on the shoulder, then sprang up and moved quietly across the cratered earth and through the gap in the fence.

  They were in.

  CAMP PUTNAM, NEW YORK: APRIL 14, T+46:22

  The camp comprised a hundred acres of woods surrounded by a fence. A hundred acres can be an interminable wasteland if you don’t know what you’re looking for and you have to search every corner.

  For the most part the camp was exactly what it looked like—uninterrupted forest, an endless stretch of trees that grew so close together the two of them were forced to stick to winding, cramped trails that twisted between them. Occasionally they would cross a chattering creek, the icy water bright in the starlight. Very seldom they found an old shack or lean-to, beaten down by years of wind and weather until it was little more than bare lichen-smeared planks sticking up from the broken remains of a concrete foundation.

  Those were the only signs that anyone had ever lived in Camp Putnam. Chapel found himself wondering if the shacks had been built by the chimeras, or by mountain men who lived up here a hundred years ago. It was impossible to tell just by the wan light of Julia’s flashlight. Some of the shacks had latches on their doors, while others had more modern doorknobs. Beyond that they all looked the same. They were all empty save for a few scraps of fabric in one, the remains of a campfire in another. Everything inside them was sodden and bristling with mushrooms.

  “It looks like this place has been abandoned for years,” Julia said at one point.

  “The chimeras were here less than two days ago,” Chapel said, though he had to agree with her.

  They found no sign of habitation for nearly an hour, until they stumbled on a pond in the middle of the forest.

  The water stretched away from them as far as they could see, black and full of stars except where mist snaked across its surface. A stout rope hung down over the water, perfect for swinging out over the still pond. Nearby a row of changing stalls had been built back in the trees. The door of each stall had been torn from its hinges and lay shattered on the ground. Julia shone her light into one of the stalls, and Chapel saw a splash of bright red on its back wall.

  He stepped closer, intending to take a closer look, and nearly crushed a skull under his shoe.

  The skull was half buried in the dirt, only one eye socket looking up at them as if its owner had been disturbed in his bed and wanted to go back to sleep. Nearby the remains of a rib cage could be seen. The limbs were missing, perhaps dragged off by animals.

  “Jesus,” Julia said. “If a guy with a chain saw and a hockey mask shows up, ask him for directions. He’ll be the least creepy thing in this place.”

  Chapel squatted to examine the skull. It was fractured in a couple of places, but otherwise it seemed normal enough. “Looks human,” he said.

  Julia shook her head. “But . . . look at those ribs—they’re too thick, and too close together.”

  When he knew what to look for, Chapel saw it at once. This was the skeleton of a chimera. The thickening of the ribs explained, perhaps, how they could take multiple gunshots to the chest and not even slow down. The skull was human enough that when you shot them in the head they tended to die. It matched what he’d seen in the field.

  “Looking at this,” Julia said, “I’d say he came here to hide. Someone was chasing him. He went into the stall to hide, but it didn’t work. The pursuer tore the stalls open one by one until he found him. After that the cause of death looks to be multiple traumas to the head with a blunt weapon.”

  Chapel felt his jaw fall open. “Impressive analysis, Doctor,” he said.

  Julia shrugged. “When your patients can’t tell you what’s wrong, you have to get all kinds of CSI on them. You learn to spot the signs of abuse and trauma.”

  “That’s no poodle,” Chapel pointed out.

  She shrugged. “I’m about to wet myself with fear. Acting like a professional helps.”

  “Then please, keep it up,” he told her. “Look over there, on the far side of the pond,” he said, pointing.

  She swept her light across the water, but it couldn’t reach that far. It didn’t matter. Something big and shadowy was hidden in the trees there, something made of right angles, which suggested a building.

  “Ellie mentioned a schoolhouse, big enough for her and two hundred students,” Julia said.

  Chapel nodded. “Let’s take a look.”

  CAMP PUTNAM, NEW YORK: APRIL 14, T+46:31

  It proved difficult to get around the pond. The trees grew right down to the water, and all the paths seemed to wind away into dark groves, farther and farther from where they wanted to go. Eventually, though, they stumbled out into a massive clearing full of buildings, some small and haphazardly built, some massive and made of durable brick. The building they thought was the schoolhouse was the largest, a two-story edifice with lots of broken windows, but it looked mostly intact. Other buildings had been burned down to cinders. Directly in front of the schoolhouse lay a broad patch of open grass that had grown knee-high. On the other side of this lawn lay a little church with a cross on its roof.

  “It’s like Smalltown, USA,” Julia pointed out, letting her light play over the broken windows of the nearest buildings. “After the bomb dropped.”

  Chapel took in a tall flagpole in front of the schoolhouse. A tattered rag hung lifeless from its top. In the starlight he could almost make out its stripes. “You see anything that looks like a laboratory? Or maybe a cloning facility?”

  “That could look like anything, but . . . no,” Julia said. She shrugged. “You’d expect it to look clean, I guess. Maybe to have its own fence so the boys couldn’t wander in and disrupt the experiments. Everything I see here is kid-friendly. I mean, if the kids in question are superstrong and violent.”

  Chapel had to agree. There was nothing resembling a scientific facility in the clearing. He approached one of the bigger buildings and peered inside. It was mostly dark, but part of the roof had fallen away and he could see a line of steel cots with no mattresses. “Dormitory,” he called.

  Julia had gone to look at a low, long building with multiple chimneys studding its roof. “This is a kitchen. Like the kind you’d see at a school—big enough to feed two hundred people every day.”

  Chapel nodded. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s check out the schoolhouse.”

  If Ellie hadn’t told them there was a schoolhouse, he might have given the building a different name. Maybe “town hall” or “auditorium.” A pair of double doors had once stood at its entrance, but one of them was missing now. Debris—broken wood, bits of glass, a pile of leaves—clogged the entry, but he kicked it out of the way and stepped inside.

  Julia followed with her light, which she shone around the interior of the building. It turned out not to be two stories after all, just one big floor and most of that open space. Starlight streamed in through high, filthy windows but showed Chapel little. He could only take the place in piece by piece as the flashlight moved across its surfaces. A yellow wooden floor—cracked and scored now—stretched away to a raised stage at the far side. A podium stood on one side of the platform, and at the back of the stage stood a massive blackboard, scrawled with obscenities and doodles of—

  “Oh my God,” Julia said, and near
ly dropped the flashlight.

  Its light had just illuminated the four bodies tied to the blackboard, their arms twisted up over their heads, their feet dangling just above the floor.

  They were in bad shape, heavily decomposed, but not as far gone as the skeleton they’d seen by the pond. Their flesh looked dry and leathery, like the flesh of mummies.

  They weren’t boys when they died. They were adults with beards on their chins and hair on their chests. If these were chimeras, they must have died recently, when they were fully grown.

  The stench hit him then, and he nearly threw up. He fought to control himself. This was as bad as anything he’d seen in Afghanistan. Maybe worse.

  To one side of the bodies the blackboard had been washed clean, then someone had written a final message there:

  we did this

  together

  “What does that mean?” Chapel asked, though he knew Julia was just as in the dark as he was.

  “Four bodies, partially mummified. Their throats were slit,” Julia said, and he could hear her fighting back her own urge to vomit. “That’s probably how they died. But—but there are other cuts, on their arms; those are defensive wounds; they were—they fought, hard. They were attacked with . . . with knives . . . Chapel, I can’t do this. I have to go outside.”

  He started to nod, but then he heard something. A creaking sound, as if weight was being applied to floorboards, just above his head.

  Julia must have heard it too. She swiveled around, pointing the flashlight like a weapon. Chapel saw there was a balcony running around the walls above them, a mezzanine looking down on the main floor of the place. Something was up there, moving fast. It was out of the light before he could get a good look, but—

  “Chapel, someone’s here!” Julia gasped.

  CAMP PUTNAM, NEW YORK: APRIL 14, T+46:52

  Whoever it was, he moved too fast for Chapel to get a good look at him, dashing out of the light almost before Chapel had registered his presence at all. Julia tried to move the light to keep up, but Chapel heard the sound of footsteps coming down an iron stairwell in the corner of the room. He drew his sidearm and pointed it into the darkness, having no idea what was coming for him.

  “Over there,” he said, pointing at a corner of the massive room. Julia swung the light around and it scattered over a pile of folding chairs, some of them twisted and bent out of shape. A bird fluttered its wings near the door, and Julia stabbed the light at it, even as the figure in the dark came running right at Chapel.

  He could hear its feet pounding on the squeaking floorboards, hear it breathing heavily. He would only get one shot, once chance to—

  But before he could fire his weapon, it was on him, knocking him sideways. His jaw stung and he knew he’d been hit, but everything happened so fast he barely had time to drop his pistol and put his hands out to catch himself before he hit the floor.

  Chimera, he thought, which was impossible—all the chimeras had been accounted for. But the strength in that hit, the speed with which the figure moved couldn’t be denied.

  He dropped to one knee, threw his artificial arm up to protect his head, knowing it was futile. He hadn’t been ready for this. He’d thought he was safe here, that the place was deserted. That lack of planning was going to get him killed. Would he end up hanging on the blackboard, his throat slit, his feet turning black with congealed blood?

  He had time to shout for Julia to run. Not that it would make any difference.

  In a second he would be dead, as soon as the chimera hit him again.

  He braced for it.

  Waited for it.

  Eventually he opened his eyes.

  “He ran out there,” Julia said, pointing her light at the doors of the auditorium.

  Chapel squinted at the light. A starling hopped across the debris there, turning its head from side to side.

  “Did you get a look at him?” Chapel asked.

  “His eyes,” Julia said. “When the light hit them, they turned black. All black.”

  Chapel grabbed his pistol from the floor, then rose to his feet. “Okay,” he said. “Stay behind me. Point the light where I tell you.”

  She brought the light up under her chin, sending deep shadows upward from her nose, obscuring her own eyes. But he could see the terror in her face. “Chapel, maybe we should just go. Head back to the fence. This isn’t one of the chimeras you were supposed to track down, is it? Why would they come back here?”

  “If there are more of them—”

  She lowered the light. “I know. I just—I guess I’m just scared.”

  “I am too. But we have to do this,” he told her.

  He led her to the door and out onto the lawn between the buildings. The starling scampered out of their way.

  Outside the starlight made everything silver and gray. A chimera could have been hiding anywhere and they wouldn’t have spotted him until they were right on top of him. Chapel forced himself to hold his pistol in a loose grip. The last thing he wanted to do was discharge it because he was so jumpy his finger slipped.

  He looked forward, directly across the lawn. The little church stood there. It looked more intact than the other buildings—some of its windows hadn’t been broken, and the paint on its door hadn’t peeled or been scratched off. Of all the buildings on the lawn it looked most like a place where someone might find shelter from the elements.

  He whispered when he spoke to Julia. “I want you to turn the light off. We’re going to the church. When I get to the door, we’ll stand to one side of it. I’ll cover the door with my weapon. When I say ‘freeze,’ you turn on the light and shine it inside. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she whispered back.

  They moved forward faster now. If Chapel was wrong about this, they might both be dead. The chimera could be lying in wait anywhere on the lawn, ready to spring up and attack them. It was the best idea he had, however.

  The door of the church was raised up on a narrow porch. Two steps went up to the porch. Their feet sounded on each step, but there was nothing to be done about that. On the porch Chapel pressed his back up against the front wall of the church and Julia did the same. He checked his weapon, made sure it hadn’t been decocked when it fell from his hand. Then he nodded to Julia and swung around to point his pistol inside the church door, into the darkness inside.

  “Freeze!” he shouted, though he could see nothing. Almost instantly the light burst into life behind him. Its beam speared inside the church and lit up a carved wooden crucifix on the far wall. The eyes of the figure on the cross had been blackened with a permanent marker.

  At first Chapel thought he’d made a terrible mistake, that the church was empty and the chimera was probably right behind him. But then something moved among the pews inside, and he swiveled around to cover it with his weapon.

  The chimera stood up very slowly, his black eyes wide in the light. He had a full, bushy beard, and his long hair was tangled up in the rags of a shirt he wore.

  “Put your hands up!” Chapel demanded, expecting the chimera to jump right at him. At least this time he had a chance to shoot before he got knocked down and slaughtered.

  Amazingly, though, the chimera obeyed him. Both hands came up and lifted above the chimera’s head. Chapel kept his eyes on the chimera’s face, looking for any sign he was about to be attacked.

  “Chapel,” Julia said, “his hands!”

  Chapel glanc
ed upward and saw what she meant.

  The chimera had no fingers.

  CAMP PUTNAM, NEW YORK: APRIL 14, T+47:01

  The chimera started to lower his hands, as if he were ashamed of them.

  “Keep them where I can see them,” Chapel told him, and the chimera obeyed.

  This made no sense. Based on what he’d seen for himself and what Ellie had told him, chimeras were impulsive and aggressive, unable to bear any kind of frustration or anger. This one acted like a human with a gun pointed at him.

  “Chapel, he’s terrified. Don’t be such a man,” Julia said.

  “Seriously?”

  “Look at him. He’s half starved and he’s shivering.” Julia took a step forward. Chapel held out his free arm to stop her. At least she didn’t run over and give the chimera a hug. “What’s your name?” she asked.

  The chimera looked at Chapel as if for permission to answer. When it didn’t come, he said in a halting voice, “I’m Samuel. Are you going to kill me?”

  “No,” Julia said. “No. We’re not going to hurt you at all. We’re just trying to be careful. When was the last time you ate, Samuel?”

  Now that he knew to look, Chapel saw the chimera’s cheeks were sunken, and he was much smaller than the chimeras he’d seen outside the camp. His wrists were like sticks coming out of the sleeves of his tattered shirt.

  “It’s been a while. They used to throw food to us over the fence but . . . now I just get what I can catch, and it’s not easy,” Samuel said. “I can find some mushrooms, sometimes. But sometimes they make me throw up, and that’s worse than eating nothing. There’s tree bark, and every now and again I catch a fish. I have a net.”

  Julia lowered the light and Chapel expected Samuel to bolt, but he didn’t. Julia rummaged around in her purse for a while, then brought out a half-eaten protein bar. “Here,” she said, but Chapel stopped her from walking over to hand it to the chimera.