I have yet to see the ceiling of the cave. It is the one place that remains concealed by absolute darkness. But now something descends from above. It reminds me of an oversized drop of honey, pushed slowly from the bottle and stretching out. A giant teardrop.
But this does not look sweet. Slime drips from its sides. I can’t see its true color, but my imagination colors it mucus green. And it’s wriggling. From the inside. As it dangles just above the floor, I step closer.
Something moves within. I see the shape first, bulbous and stubby. Through the translucent skin I see distorted details—mottled flesh, a wide, sickly grinning mouth and closed eyes.
The two large eyes snap open. Black circles stare back at me. Only a foot of open space and a lettuce-thin sack separate the newly birthed egg-monster and me. It sees this just as easily as I do, and like me, it is hungry.
Its stubby arms claw at the sack, tearing it with small, but sharp claws. It’s like a giant sized clone of the hamster in my stomach.
That’s not entirely true. The hamster is on my side. And it, too, is clawing to get out.
As I turn and run, I know this fight will be different. The outcome may change. I may lose my life. But this time...this time we won’t just be trying to kill each other, we’ll be trying to eat each other.
I pick up my tooth-filled jawbone and spin around, facing the creature as it emerges from its womb.
15
My first mistake is assuming that this creature will act and react like the first. It doesn’t. While the first egg-monster charged like a bull, this one is intent on dizzying me. It runs in frantic circles, spiraling slowly toward me with each lap. A thick glob of drool stretches from its open, dagger-filled mouth. I’m positive it will switch directions at any moment, and by the time it does, I’ll probably be on the floor watching the room spin.
My second mistake is over-estimating my own abilities. The thing has been sprinting madly for only thirty seconds, but the jaw-saw (that’s what I’m calling my weapon) already feels heavy in my hand. My heart pounds from exertion and fear. I stumble around on weak legs, tracking its run.
I can’t keep it up. I’ve got maybe a minute of energy left. Probably less before I succumb to dizziness.
So I stop and catch my breath.
This seems to confuse the creature. Its next two circles maintain a ten foot radius.
I watch it run as my dizziness ebbs. Its stubby legs are ridiculous. To say the egg-monster is running isn’t accurate. Bobble’s the word. The ten-inch legs, which end in small two-digit feet, have no knees. Each step brings the leg out and around. Like I said, ridiculous.
Then it’s moving closer again. Only now I know exactly where it’s going to strike. I think I’ve got it outsmarted, and perhaps I did at one point, but I’ve already repeated mistake number two.
It lunges from behind, as expected, and I spin to greet it, raising the jaw-saw and swinging. But the weapon is heavy and my movement is at half speed. Rather than striking the beast with a row of razor sharp teeth, I biff it dully with my forearms.
My only consolation is that the movement saved my life. Rather than ending up inside the gaping shark-like jaws, it sideswipes me and sends me sprawling. The rough skin of the creature rubs against my arms as it passes, sheering off a few layers of my skin. But I hardly notice the burn. There is no time to consider it. The creature is arcing into another spiraling sprint.
I regain my feet, holding my weapon in both hands. It’s going to wear me down. Just standing now is a challenge.
Then it occurs to me that even though this creature has a different plan of attack than the first, it may be equally dull. It will try the same thing again. I’m sure of it. It will run circles, close in and then pounce from behind. Probably from the same optimal distance. Not that any of that will help me. I still won’t be able to spin and strike.
So I’ll just have to stop it before it gets that far.
I judge the distance between us.
Five rotations left.
I grip the jaw-saw like a baseball bat. I haven’t played since T-ball, but I remember the basics. Eye on the ball. Step into the swing. Follow through.
When it begins its fifth and final revolution, it passes within range. I shout, step forward and swing with all my remaining strength, which isn’t much, but I’m swinging into its run. Its own momentum should inflict most of the damage, I just need to get the jaw-saw there.
The blow is solid and sends a tingle up my arms. The jaw-saw is yanked from my hand. I turn to watch it go, hoping to see its teeth buried inside the beast. But they’re not. The egg-monster’s jaws have clamped down on my weapon.
The thing stops and gives the object in its mouth a few playful tosses, like a dog with a dead mouse, positioning my weapon across its own jaws. It turns to me, its black spherical eyes somehow conveying humor. Then it bites down. The jaw-saw shatters into three fragments. The two on the sides of its mouth spin away onto the bone littered floor. A giant black tongue pushes the third piece from its mouth, then works at the tiny fragments encased in its drool.
One bite, I think. That’s all it will take. One bite and I’m lunch.
I back away, but don’t watch my step. A bone trips me and sends me to the floor. As I scramble away on my hands and feet, the thing rises taller. Seeing me on my back triggers something in the creature. It knows I’m defenseless.
Flinging its short, straight legs into motion, the thing charges. Now it’s acting like its sibling. But it’s faster. More ferocious. It occurs to me, as the thing bears down on me, that the first egg-monster I faced had already been in the pit for who knows how long. It was already weakened. I think this one could fight all day without stopping.
Not that it will have to. The fight will be over in ten seconds—the time it will take it to reach me.
I reach out with my hands, searching for something with which to defend myself. My right hand grasps a long bone. I pull it out. It’s a human femur. I nearly drop it in disgust, but manage to hold onto it and thrust it out, hoping to channel Luke Skywalker’s Rancor-stopping technique.
In a flash I see the bone I’m holding enter the creature’s open maw. Then the jaws close. My eyes close, too, so I don’t see what happens next. But I hear it. And then feel it. A crunch and slurp of splitting flesh strikes my ears a moment before an intense pain jolts up my arm.
I scream as I’m struck and lifted. A moment later the back of my body and head strikes the solid wall of the pit. Spots of light dance in my vision for a moment and then fade. I wait for a second strike, for teeth to surround and sever my head.
But the attack has stopped. The pressure holding me against the wall is steady. The egg-monster has stopped moving. And then I see why.
The broken bone I jabbed into the creature’s mouth ended with a jagged, sharp tip. The creature’s own powerful jaws had shoved the bone up through its head and out its forehead. I can only assume it pierced whatever passed for a brain in the process.
But before it died, the beast’s jaws did their work, closing just enough to grip my arm in a death-vise. It could be worse. The bite could have easily severed the limb. The four quarter-inch-deep puncture wounds are insignificant by comparison. Of course, there is still the issue of freeing my arm from the jaws without filleting my skin.
The creature is heavy and hard to push, but it’s still on its feet, and once propped up, begins to fall backward, which is extremely painful for me since my arm is still clutched in its jaws. I move with it, hopping up onto its body, straddling it just below the lower jaw. The movement deepens the wounds and sends a fresh wash of pain through my body. I grunt, which sounds more like a primitive growl, and steady myself above the creature.
Its black eyes have fogged over. The black tongue dangles from the side of its partially opened mouth. My blood seeps over the gleaming white teeth and drips into the thing’s throat. For a moment I fear it will awaken and finish the job, but then I look again at the large bone stickin
g out of its head.
“You’re dead,” I tell it.
But it doesn’t reply.
“I’m going crazy,” I say. “But you? You’re dead.”
I plant my right foot against its upper jaw and push down. For a moment it doesn’t budge, but then slowly, the jaws separate. I was hoping the mouth would simply snap open and get the painful part over with, but no such luck. I can feel the teeth sliding slowly out of my flesh. A warm pulse of blood pours out. A snag and pull of serrated tooth on sinew follows, along with a stab of pain. The thirty seconds it takes to free my arm feels like thirty minutes.
But then I’m free and standing over the monster like Hercules himself. Wounded, but alive.
I stand still for a moment, my chest heaving with each breath. I’m changing, I think, and realize I have thought this before. It began when I arrived at Antarctica and I couldn’t feel the cold. My agility increased. Then my confidence. And now some hidden killer instinct has emerged. I’m not sure what this is, but it’s helping me adapt, physically and emotionally, to this harsh new life. So I’m thankful for it.
I look at my wounds. There are four of them. Assessments run through my mind: stitches, antibiotics, apply pressure. But I ignore them. Something else has my attention. The hamster in my gut had hidden while I was fighting for my life, but now that the deed is done and I’m still breathing, it’s back with a vengeance.
For a moment I consider finding the shirt I discarded and tying some clean strips around the wound, but now something else distracts me from the injury: a fragment of jaw-saw still holding three teeth. I move back to the carcass and kneel by one of the muscle-filled stubby legs.
My first cut is tentative.
The second goes deep.
By the third I’m lost in my hunger and sawing away.
Moments later, I’m eating.
I’m surviving.
For now. I have no idea what comes next.
16
After filling my belly, I weep.
Not from guilt over the horrors I’d seen and done. Not for the newborn monsters I’d slain, or even the one I’d eaten—I’ve had veal before and calves are infinitely more adorable than the egg-monsters. I understand survival of the fittest. In school I had been at the bottom of the food chain.
The killing doesn’t bother me. I’m far from a vegetarian and these things are hardly animals in my book. It is my unexpected response to these things that revolts me.
I didn’t notice at first. But as I cut and eat the flesh, and drink the life-giving blood, I become aware of a tightness in my cheeks. The kind you feel after going to a friend’s birthday where wearing a grin is as mandatory as the party hats.
I am smiling.
The meat is stringy and tough. It tastes unlike anything I’ve had before, but is decidedly raw—firm and slimy, like chunks of a rubber slug. But I am enjoying it. When my self-awareness returns—I don’t know when it checked out—I am horrified by what I find.
My t-shirt is blood-stained and beginning to dry. The coagulation clings to my chest. My cheeks and chin are saturated in blood and bits of flesh. I can feel my skin tightening as it dries. With no water to wash myself, I know the red stain will turn brown and flaky, only disappearing when my outer layers of skin fall away.
I see myself without a mirror. Feral and frightening. My hair dangles in front of my wet eyes. The blond hair has turned red at the end. I don’t remember getting my hair in the blood, but it is long and I don’t recall much of anything about my recent meal.
I move to stand and my stomach protests. I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten more. My gut, normally flat and skinny, is distended, but not from hunger like the Ethiopians on the news. My stomach is full of raw egg-monster. I’m like a lion that gorges and then rests in wait for the next meal.
Unable to move, I realize that’s exactly what I need to do, too. I’m not sure how long the carcass will keep. It’s cool in the pit, but the other body turned to a jelly filled sack within days. I might get one more meal out of it, but I’m not sure. I need to rest, I decide. And wait.
It was three days between hatchings, maybe four. It may be as many before my next meal arrives.
I feel I should cry again, thinking of these living newborns as meals to be slaughtered, but I don’t. It’s the way of things now. I have no choice in the matter. My tears dry as I fall asleep.
I dream of darkness.
Not total darkness. I sense a light source behind me and to the sides I see a fading blue. As I fight to move, I realize I’m swimming—clawing at the water. Below me is a face surrounded by a white veil. I close the distance. The veil is hair. The face is Mira’s.
I wake up.
Tears return, but I don’t embrace them. I stand and kick my foot angrily, stubbing a toe on a loose bone. I pick up the limb and throw it out of the pit. My stomach rumbles through the streams of tears. I’m hungry already? How long did I sleep? I have no way to know.
As I walk to the carcass, my stomach growls with expectation. The hamster has not yet risen, but I can feel him stirring.
I stop short of the slain creature. A puddle of fetid black slime surrounds it. The meat is useless to me. But how long did it take? How much time has passed? Not having all the answers is a new feeling for me and it roils my already fragile emotional state.
More tears come. “Stop crying,” I grumble at myself. The new, cold corner of my soul tells me no amount of tears can help me. The logic that I have always embraced tells me I will need the fluids. The recently released animal in me licks the salty tears from my cheeks as they pass—this seems mostly involuntary.
“Stop crying!” I scream. “You weak fool. You pitiful little thing!”
I choke out a single sob and then set my face into a stone-like gaze. The tears built up in my eyes drip free, but no more follow. Something in me has broken, or has been fixed. I suppose that’s a matter of perspective.
I vow to never shed a tear again. Not while I’m here. There is no room for those kinds of emotions. They’re a weakness. I squelch my sadness, homesickness, compassion and kindness. If they rule me here, I will die.
Free of these things, my thoughts clear and for the first time since waking up in the darkness, I ponder escape. I approach the wall and once again feel the rough, cracked surface. Only this time, I dig my fingers in and pull. To my surprise, I am able to lift myself off the ground. But only for a moment. My fingernails bend backward and I fall to the stone floor. The knob of some discarded limb digs into my leg. I stand and kick it away, ignoring the pain, and return to the wall.
My second attempt is no more successful. I’m not strong enough to climb out, but that can change. My fingernails aren’t thick enough, but that too can change. And if it can’t, my mind will come up with a solution my body can handle.
A slurping sounds from behind. I recognize it and spring into motion without hesitation. I no longer have the jaw-saw, but any sharp object will work. I pick up a humerus—human—but I’m unfazed by that detail. The knobby head of the bone shatters away when I smash it against the wall, leaving a jagged, but sharp tip behind.
It’s a short spear, but it will work.
I turn and see the egg-sack lowering from above. The thing inside has not yet begun moving. And I’m determined to never give it the chance. It goes against my sense of fairness, but my life isn’t exactly fair anymore, either. There are no rules here.
I rush the thing silently, knowing a battle-cry might startle it into action. Then I’m in the air, arms back and spring loaded. I thrust the bone forward, piercing the opaque sack and then the egg-monster within. The whole dangling thing shifts when I strike. It stretches out as I pull it to the ground and pin the now writhing creature to the floor. With a loud snap, the stretched material breaks open above my head.
As the broken tendril retracts into the darkness above me, a gush of fluid pours out. It washes over me, but I pay no attention to it. The creature beneath me has stopped moving. And I a
m hungry.
For a moment, some part of my mind thinks, I am lost, but the thought is quickly overwhelmed by, I am hungry.
As I tear away the gelatinous womb my smile returns.
This time, I welcome it.
17
Killing. Eating. Sleeping.
That sums up what my life has become. Days and hours have no meaning anymore so I can’t say how much time has passed. All I know is I kill an egg-monster, I eat egg-monster meat to the point of bursting and then I sleep. When I wake, I’m hungry again and it’s not long before the next hatchling arrives. This cycle leaves me very little time to focus on escape, and deviating from it could mean death.
I’m not sure how many times the cycle has repeated. I never do try to count. But there are many more bones in the pit than when I arrived.
During the small periods of time I have, mostly while eating, I think about escape. I have tried piling the bones, but the rounded surfaces can’t support my weight. I’ve tried fashioning a rope from strands of the egg monsters’ skin, but the flesh never truly dries and the knots binding them slip apart. And despite a thickening of my muscles, I have not yet been able to scale the walls, though I have lost a few fingernails in the effort.
Having just finished a meal, I burp and sit back, thinking about how much sweeter this egg-monster tasted. My father used to say that taste buds change. I always thought he was just saying that to get me to eat something I didn’t like, but maybe he was right? I may have acquired the taste for egg-monster steaks.
“Raw, please,” I say, grinning.
And no, thinking of my father didn’t make me sad. Not at all. As promised, I have not shed a tear.
As I pick my teeth with a bone shard, I see a splash of color peeking out from beneath some bones. It’s my shirt. Not my undershirt. I discarded that along with my pants when they became too thick and sticky with blood. This is the patriotic flannel I got rid of because it became fouled by the decomposed remains of an eggy. That hardly bothers me now, but I still feel no cold, so the shirt holds little interest.
The Last Hunter - Collected Edition Page 9