Frogmouth

by William Marshall

  She felt the surge in the machete turn into life. She felt it begin to grow.

  ". . . Jakob . . ." She smiled in the photograph.

  She had smiled when she had killed him.

  She heard him rasp.

  She heard him whisper. She heard him. She heard him move across the stone floor of the factory in the darkness. She heard his shoes grate on something hard. She heard him stop. She heard him draw a breath.

  ". . . Jakob . . ."

  He heard it. It was a whisper, a rasp. He heard it.

  ". . . twenty-eight . . ."

  O'Yee said softly, "Oh my God—!"

  He listened, unmoving in the darkness.

  ". . . twen-ty-eight!"

  It was a whisper, a rasp. It was barely there.

  She listened. She heard him move.

  He heard it. Something moved, someone. O'Yee, his mouth dry and like sandpaper, said in a rasp, "Hullo? Are you there?"

  He listened.

  She heard him.

  He was against some sort of wooden packing crate or machine. In the darkness he could only feel it with his outstretched hand. O'Yee, inching his way along whatever it was, in total, pitch black darkness, smelling the smell of oil and dust and ammonia, said in a whisper, a rasp, "I'm here . . . I'm over here . . ."

  On the phone to St. Paul de Chartres hospital, Detective Chief Inspector Osgood said in a gasp, "Oh, my God!"

  She was gone. She had been gone a week.

  On the phone, shouting, Detective Chief Inspector Osgood, the phone electric in his hand, out of control, shrieked back down the line to the psychiatrist registrar, "I know how bloody old she is! She's fourteen years old! You should have told us as well as goddamned Juvenile!" They shouldn't. They should have done exactly what they had done.

  They knew it. They knew it better than he did. Osgood, because he could think of nothing else to say, because, somehow, for some reason everything he had ever thought had all gone for nothing, said, "In the name of all that's goddamned holy, for Christ's sake, both her goddamned parents are bloody dead!"

  "Left!" On the street map, between Shanghai Street and Godown Street he found an opening where there were no pylons. In the back of the car, Auden, tracing it with his finger, ordered Spencer, "Turn left into there—into Cheong Street—into that lane!" The radio was gone, shrieking static. Auden, being thrown against the loaded shotgun propped up on the floor and wincing as the barrel cracked against his left knee, ordered Spencer, "There! That lane there! It goes straight into Temple Street." The lane looked barely wide enough. He sensed Spencer hesitate.

  Auden, rubbing at his knee, trying to avoid Feiffer's eyes in the rearview mirror, yelled as an order as the car did a ninety-degree turn in the middle of the street, "Down there! Don't stop! Straight down there and then right!"

  "Mr. O'Yee!" He could not get the corrugated iron doors open. He could not get his fingers around the opening to pull. The doors were shut, locked. Lim, starting to pound on them with his fists, looking up and down the facade of the building for another way in, starting to panic, yelled, "O'Yee! Mr. O'Yee! I can't hear anything!" He was shouting in Cantonese.

  He stopped.

  He listened.

  He could hear nothing.

  Lim, at the doors, pounding on them with both fists, wrenching, prying, trying to get his fingers around the gap to pull it apart, yelled in Cantonese, "Mr. O'Yee! O'Yee—I can hear a car coming!"

  There was nothing. He was moving in a giant black room full of nothing. He touched a shape, an object: he felt it cold and hard, like metal, and then another, something else, something wooden and with nails in it. From all the boarded-up windows and doors there was no light at all, no chinks or breaks. He was in the middle of night. He was moving toward the center of it. O'Yee, moving, going down and then up, going nowhere, lost, moving away from the center and then turning back into the center, said in a whisper, "Anyone? Anyone . . . ?" There was the smell of oil and dust and disused, rusting machines and the smell of wood and metal—he smelled the metal's coldness or something someone had put on it or spilled on it to preserve it—he smelled the smell of ammonia drifting away from him. His mouth was no longer dry. He felt it full of saliva. He touched at the butt of his gun and felt only the feel of Bakelite and cold, gray metal. He was in darkness. There was only, far off, far behind the way he had come or the way he was going, a distant pounding sound, like throbbing—too far away, somewhere else.

  ". . . twenty-eight . . ." He heard it. It was faint, three-syllabled: it was like the voice of a child.

  It was the voice of someone pretending to be a child.

  ". . . twenty . . ."

  He listened.

  He waited.

  ". . . twen-ty . . ." It was to the left, moving. It was faint. It was the voice of a child's cartoon, a man or a woman pretending to be a child or, even more than that, something a child imagined sounded like—

  O'Yee said suddenly, "Oh my God."

  He listened.

  He froze.

  He knew what it was.

  ". . . twenty . . . twenty . . . eight."

  He knew what it was.

  O'Yee said, "Oh my God!"

  He heard it. He heard it move.

  He heard a single word. He heard someone call.

  It was in front of him, at eye level on a box or a machine or a crate.

  He felt its breath.

  "Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God—"

  He saw something metal glitter. There was no light. He saw it gleam like ice.

  He saw, he felt, he sensed—

  In the darkness he—

  ". . . twenty . . . Twen-ty-EIGHT!"

  "JAKOB!!"

  In the darkness, alone, lost, rooted to the spot, O'Yee shrieked, "NO—!"

  O'Yee shrieked, "Urn! Urn! LIM!"

  He found a side door with the corrugated iron on it hanging loose and rusty.

  Lim, wrenching at it, pulling it, tearing it apart, hearing the car coming down the road at full speed, yelled, "I hear you! I hear you!" The iron was pulling away, bending, exposing the door behind it. The door was only plywood with no lock on it, a service entrance. He got the iron free and pulled at it. It was stuck. On the other side there was a nail put into the doorjamb to hold it. It would not come free.

  He banged on it with his fists and then his gun butt.

  Lim, banging on it with his gun butt, smashing it, breaking it, splintering it, worked at the wood around the nail to get it free. He heard it coming. He heard the nail start to give. The door was opening. In the factory or the gasworks or whatever it was, there in the darkness, the sound—the banging—was echoing, coming back to him amplified, over and over, banging, banging, banging—

  They were banging on the doors. In the hospital every morning, they were going up and down the long white corridors banging on all the doors, shouting and calling and making sounds in the kitchen.

  All the dreams were gone. In the banging, all the dreams and silence fled and the banging went on and on and on and, everywhere, everywhere in her head, there was the banging as they came down the corridor toward her room shouting and bringing the light and the glare and the day with them, banging and banging and banging—

  "Oh Jesus . . ." He was going backward. He touched something. Something near him was moving. In the darkness, something took wing and flew. He felt the wind. He was caught up, falling over. He felt something behind him fall away with a clatter. Bamboo. It was lengths of thin bamboo. His foot was on it as he moved. He felt himself lose balance. He was going backward—going forward in the darkness, the bamboo and the smell and the wooden crates and the metal all caught up. He was still. He was not moving at all. Something was coming toward him. It was a shadow, an impression. He had thought he was going away, but it was something coming toward him.

  He heard a pounding, a thumping, a banging like a drum, a pulse. In the darkness it was everywhere, amplified, getting closer, getting louder. He heard someone call his na
me. He heard—

  "MR. O'YEE!" It went. The door and part of the jamb splintered and it went and it was open, spilling light into the place. It was alive, full of birds, the floors covered with dead rats and the remains of other birds. There were holes bitten into the walls, broken bamboo cages. There were holes bitten into the walls where the old gas pipes were.

  "Twenty-eight!" It was a bird, some sort of parrot. It was in the air, mad, circling and flapping. There were dead rats everywhere, killed, gutted, gnawed down to the bone. They had killed everything that moved in the place and then one another and then they had bitten through into the old pipes and killed everything that was in there or came from there or got into there to try to escape. Lim, frozen at the door, yelled, "Yat's! It's the thing from Yat's! It's—" Lim, his gun out and pointing, yelled, hearing the car coming up fast behind him, "Mr. O'Yee! O'Yee— where the hell are you?"

  He saw her only for an instant. Whatever she was, she was not human. The birds with their claws and their beaks had torn her face to pieces.

  "MR. O'YEE!"

  He saw her only for an instant. The birds with their claws and their beaks had torn her face to pieces. The machete in her hand was running red with blood. She was tiny, a child wearing a man's white coveralls with the word QUARANTINE in red on them. She was a child in adult's clothing. She was looking away toward the door. She was—

  "O'YEE!"

  He saw her. He saw her see Lim. He saw the giant gun in her other hand. O'Yee shrieked, "Lim!" He saw him see her. He saw him start to run back out the door. He saw her face, the machete, her hands running blood. "Twenty-eight!" He saw the parrot wheel overhead and something dark and powerful and quick cover it and then it was gone. He saw—

  In the doorway, as he ran, he saw Lim start to turn, to think better of something, to do his duty. It was happening in microseconds, too fast to take in.

  "Mr. O'Yee!" He was coming back, spinning at the door to turn around, to come back in, to say—

  O'Yee, moving, reaching out, yelled, "Lim!" He saw her move. He saw her bring her hand up with the gun in it. He saw her aim.

  He thought for an instant Lim was about to say something—

  He saw her, in a single shattering explosion that lit her up and turned everything to light, shoot Lim dead where he stood at the half-open, spring-loaded, suddenly closing doorway.

  17

  There were only the flesheaters left. Everything else had been killed and eaten. It had not been enough—the flesheaters, the birds of prey, themselves were dying. At the wrecks of their bamboo cages, against the walls and boarded-up windows they were colliding, dashing themselves to pieces, falling bloody and flapping and screeching to the floor and into the machines. At the open door O'Yee saw Auden and Spencer going for the piles of wooden crates in the center of the place, Auden with his shotgun out. O'Yee, on his knees, had both his hands pressed down hard against Lim's chest wound to stop it bleeding. The blood gushed out over his hands and drowned them. Lim was on his back with his eyes half open: the blood was saturating him, drowning him, covering him over. He heard someone shout. It was Auden. He was on top of one of the crates, going over it, jumping down the other side, looking for the boarded-up windows. He saw Feiffer only feet from him with his revolver out. Feiffer shouted, "Phil, take out the windows! Get light in here!" There was a crash as Auden found a window and knocked out the glass with the butt of his shotgun, then a second, a louder thump as the boards on the other side of it went out and fell into the street in splinters.

  Spencer shouted, "Phil! Another! Here!" He had no idea what was happening. He had no idea where they had all come from.

  O'Yee, his hands swimming in blood, his eyes staring, shrieked, "Harry!"

  "It's all right." He was beside him. Feiffer, trying to pull O'Yee up, said, "It's all right. We're here. It's all right."

  "What the hell's happening?" She was running. She was somewhere up on the metal catwalk that led to what looked like a storeroom or a half floor above the machines, running. There were birds everywhere. There was a crash as Auden got another window out and there were shapes and shadows everywhere. O'Yee shrieked, "It's a kid! It's just a kid! I thought—" The blood was welling out in gouts—he could not stop it. O'Yee, pressing, pushing at the wound, shrieked, "I thought she'd been attacked! I thought it was a plastic gun! I thought it was a plastic gun and she—" O'Yee, pressing, pushing, trying to stem the blood that would not be stemmed, shrieked, "We came to help!" He fought against Feiffer's grip as he tried to lift him up and away from the open door. O'Yee, pushing him off with his hand covered in blood, yelled, "Twenty-eight! Twenty-eight! Someone, over and over kept calling—" He heard crashes and the sound of breaking glass as Auden found another window. "It was a bird! It wasn't a person—it was a goddamned bird!"

  He couldn't move him. He was too heavy. Feiffer, seeing O'Yee's eyes go, said quickly as Spencer, with the light spreading across the factory, saw the metal stairs to the floor above and started to mount them, "It was a parrot. It was an Australian Port Lincoln parrot. That's their call."

  "Are you crazy?"

  Feiffer said, "Christopher, Lim's dead."

  "Are you crazy?" It wasn't someone else—someone he didn't know—it was Feiffer. O'Yee, shaking his head, said, "What are you talking about? You're Harry Feiffer—I've known you for fifteen years—what the hell do you mean it's an Australian Port Lincoln parrot? You don't know that! I've known you for years and you don't know anything about things like—" O'Yee, his hand sinking into the wound as something deep inside Lim seemed to give way and sag, shrieked, "Harry, what's happening?" He saw Lim's face. He was dead. O'Yee, beginning to shake all over, ordered Feiffer, "He's not dead! Don't say he's dead because he isn't dead!"

  From somewhere up high Spencer called, "Up here! I think she's gone up here!" There were thumpings, hangings as he tried to break through a window with only the butt of his revolver. "Rats! Dead rats and—bones and a—" Spencer yelled as something on the other side of the glass gave way and sent a shaft of light down, "Everything's dead!" She was running. She was on a metal catwalk somewhere. He heard her running. Spencer, above the sound of another window downstairs going with the butt of Auden's shotgun, yelled, "She's up here!" He heard a click, he sensed a movement, something stop. Spencer yelled, "I see her! I—" Spencer yelled, "Cover! Take cover!" There was a flash that lit up the catwalk as the blast from the .455 Webley sent a bullet an inch from his head into the glass of another window. Spencer yelled, "She's up on the first floor running toward you!"

  "Move!" At the open doorway, Feiffer, wrenching, pulling O'Yee to his feet, shoved him out of the light. Feiffer, holding him back, stopping him going down to Lim, yelled in O'Yee's face, "He's dead! You can see he's dead! He's dead!" There were more shots, sharper, as Spencer fired back high into the roof.

  Spencer yelled, "She's gone! I can hear her, but she's gone!" He saw Auden in a shaft of light going for the far corner of the warehouse where there was the shadow of a flight of metal stairs. For an instant Spencer saw her. Spencer, firing another shot into the air, yelled, "She's a kid! She's wearing coveralls two sizes too big for her! They're dragging around her ankles!" Spencer, getting no reply from Auden, hearing him clatter onto the stairs cocking the shotgun, ordered him, "She's a kid! Phil, she's a kid! Don't kill her!"

  They were coming, banging on all the doors as they came. They were coming along the ward, laughing and banging and ending all the dreams and the night, and they were coming, coming. She was on the fire escape of the hospital. She had got out. She had worked all night at the lock on her window until her hands bled and she had finally got it open. On the fire escape all the smell of the antiseptic and the disinfectant and the medicines in little plastic cups they brought around on trays was gone and she was out in the open, clean air.

  She had nowhere to go. Out there, high up, she could see all the lights of the city at night, but she had nowhere to go.

  She heard them coming. She heard them
banging and banging and banging and she ran, going nowhere, with nowhere to go. She ran.

  She ran down, going fast, not stopping.

  The cocoon swallowed her.

  All the lights turned red and the cocoon swallowed her and the cocoon knew what to do.

  She heard them banging. She was on the fire escape again, running.

  She escaped. She was in the cocoon.

  She ran.

  She was on the top of the fire escape again and they were banging, banging, coming for her. She— She—

  "JAKOB!"

  "Jesus Christ!" On the stairs, lit up by the flash from the gun, the bullet missing him by inches and tearing out a chunk of railing, Auden, falling, yelled, "Bill!" The shotgun was going from his hand. He reached for it and caught it by the barrel and, turning it in midair, held it. Auden, recovering, getting his balance, his hand burning with grazes and cuts from the sharp edge of the ventilating rib, yelled, "What the hell's she got?" He was blind from the flash. He could see only sparks and colored lights. He had caught the gun by feel. Auden, hearing something fast and big go over his head in a series of rasping cries, yelled, "Bill, I can't see!"

  He was shooting. She was running along the catwalk with the machete and the big gun like some sort of tiny child dressed in her father's clothing and, aiming carefully, shooting above and behind her to herd her away from Auden, Feiffer was to one side of the open doorway with O'Yee with his arm outstretched shooting round after round, placing the shots, punching holes in the roof He saw her shadow running. He saw her start to turn and, reloading, he fired round after round up at her—yards away—and turned her back and sent her running again. She was covered in blood. Above her, there were shadows, shapes as the last of the birds crashed into walls in panic or took flight and somersaulted, all their strength gone, and fell down over the catwalk and died on the hard stone floor. She was armed. She had the big Webley from Quarantine and the machete. Lim was dead. All he had to do was order, "Kill her!" and— He saw her reach the end of the catwalk and turn into shadows. He heard her start to come down another metal stairs in the darkness. All he had to do was— Feiffer yelled, "Bill, I can't see her! Keep down! Get Auden!"