Carrion Safari

by Jonah Buck

  “Fair enough.” Harrison looked back at the locked gate. His rifle shuddered in place as the ahools banged against the door from the other side, but it held.

  Denise looked around the village. Most of the buildings appeared to be houses. The buildings were made out of a combination of compressed mud, like adobe, and a combination of woven reeds and bamboo. There were other structures too, but one thing struck her about the village.

  It was completely abandoned.

  TWENTY

  GRAPPLING HOOK

  “Where is everybody?” Harrison asked, looking around. He had noticed the same thing as Denise.

  Even though there were torches guttering from a few holders around the village, there was no sign of actual human habitation. No one came out of any of the houses to see what all the shooting had been about. There were no guards manning the wall to warn of possible breaches. A sea breeze wafted through the village, causing the torches to dance.

  Denise had been expecting some sort of reception, and probably not a friendly one. They’d made a lot of noise in the process of getting in here, and they’d damaged the gate. She thought for sure she’d have to try to beg forgiveness and shelter through a combination of Afrikaans and pidgin Dutch.

  “Hello?” she called.

  There was no response except for another gust of breeze and the waving of the torches. She walked up to the closest house and knocked on the side of the wall to get the attention of anyone staying inside. There was no movement from inside. Some buildings were immediately obvious when they were empty. The subtle vibrations and thrum of life could be sensed, and it was clear when it was missing.

  Denise stuck her head through the door just to be sure, but there were no signs of any inhabitants. Grass mats and a fire pit sat in the middle of the house.

  Stepping inside, Denise walked over and poked a finger in the dead fire pit. There was still a small amount of residual warmth. Someone had doused the fire a few hours ago, probably shortly before the full moon rose above the horizon.

  Moving back outside, Denise saw some larger structures closer to the beach. They looked like they were probably used for food storage or perhaps some sort of communal gathering place. The islanders must have taken shelter inside.

  The only other option was that they had abandoned their safe walls, and every last soul had moved into the jungle interior for some reason. Denise didn’t think that was particularly likely. They must have all gone to the safety of the largest building, a small area they could actively defend.

  Now that she looked at the thick mud walls of the large building again, the more it looked like a fortress to her. The tall, windowless walls, heavy-looking doors, and imposing size of the structure would make it difficult to breach.

  “I’m guessing everybody is in there,” Denise said, pointing.

  “Should we go introduce ourselves?”

  “Probably. I’d rather stay in there with them until the Shield of Mithridates gets here than out here in the open. It’s not too late for more ahools to come by and realize they can swoop down here and grab us. I think they could knock down one of these huts if they really wanted to. That structure looks a lot more secure.”

  “Let’s head out, then,” Harrison said. They moved between the houses, always trying to stay in the doorways. Denise watched the skies, hoping that there wouldn’t be any more black, winged shapes drifting through the dark ether to hunt them down.

  She held her rifle in the firmest grip she could manage, but her hands were trembling. Now that she wasn’t running everywhere and crawling away from gunfire, she had more time to process what had happened earlier.

  A whole range of emotions tossed and heaved inside her. The sorrow of Gail’s death ate at her like acid, and pure, razor-edged anger was just behind that. At the same time, she felt relief that they’d found safety and a different kind of relief that she starting to put her life back into some kind of order. She had a purpose and goals again. First, she needed to survive the night. Then, she needed to track down whichever son of a bitch shot Gail.

  Gail was dead, and they’d left her body for the island’s creatures to find. Not that they’d had a choice, but it still felt wrong to leave her there. She was Denise’s friend, and she would have at least liked to hide her body somewhere the animals wouldn’t get it. At least they’d had the chance to bury Razan’s body when he was shot. It wasn’t much, but at least it afforded a tiny scrap of dignity.

  God. It had barely been twenty-four hours since someone shot Andris Razan. Since then, the killer had murdered Gail and nearly killed Denise. All that, and the whole island had gone straight to hell.

  “So who’s left?” Harrison asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Somebody killed Razan. That lizard thing tore Shinzo apart. Dr. Marlow is dead. That same bastard who shot Razan probably killed Gail. There were only ten of us on this island to begin with. Now we’re down to six, if that. I want to figure out who killed Gail, and I want to leave them behind. Let them sit things out until the next full moon. See how they like that. I feel pretty comfortable saying that neither one of us is the murderer, so that leaves us with four suspects.”

  “I’ve been trying to figure that out myself, and I don’t have anything.”

  “There’s our friend Jubal Hayes. Nobody knows where he was when Razan was killed.”

  “And he slipped away from Balthazar and Dr. Marlow the next day to bother us.”

  “And Dr. Marlow was asleep when somebody started firing at you later that day. Jubal could have been anywhere.”

  “He could have been.”

  “I may not be a betting man, but Jubal is what the boys in blue tend to label a suspicious character. He’s kind of a shit, too. I think maybe he’s our man.”

  “Could be,” Denise said.

  “You don’t exactly sound convinced. I mean, he nearly strangled the life out of you this morning. If we run into him, I’ll seriously think about putting a hole in him just as a precautionary measure.”

  “There’s three other hunters on this island, too.”

  “I’d just shoot him a little bit. Wing him. He could probably do with a lesson anyway.”

  “He probably could. That doesn’t mean we know it was him, though.”

  “So you don’t think it was him?”

  “I said I don’t know it was him. There’s a difference. I think it’s a fifty-fifty shot.”

  “Fifty-fifty? Shouldn’t it be a twenty-five percent chance? There’s four other people on the island. Maybe. Hard to say who else is still alive, honestly.”

  “Silas Horne and Creighton Montgomery are probably still together. They were sharing a camp. I figure there’s a pretty good chance they’re still alive if they’re working as a team. I’d have been dead a couple of times over already if not for you and Gail.”

  “Yeah, our English pals were together when Razan was killed. If one of them was a psychopath, I think the other would be the first to know. Ol’ Creighton Peckerwood Montgomery wouldn’t be my first choice for a friend, but Silas seems like an okay guy from when I talked to him. Maybe even a little embarrassed by Creighton’s antics. So, yeah, we probably don’t have to worry about them. So that means you think it’s down between Balthazar van Rensburg and Jubal?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I have to admit, I’d still place my money on Jubal. I never had any beef with Balthazar. I know the two of you didn’t see eye to eye, but I never found out why.”

  “To be honest, neither did I. He’s disliked me since the very first moment we met. He made his feelings pretty clear that he didn’t want me on this expedition when we set out from Cape Town that first morning. I don’t trust him.”

  “You think it’s a fifty-fifty shot between Jubal and Balthazar mostly because you don’t like Balthazar?”

  “No, it’s not just that. We don’t know where he was when Razan was killed, either. He said that he was aboard the Hookstadt looking for a Dutch translatio
n dictionary when somebody started shooting at me. Nobody was watching him. And who brings a Dutch dictionary with them on a hunting trip anyway?”

  “He is a Boer. Maybe he likes to keep fluent.”

  “Maybe,” Denise said. She’d known Balthazar for years, and he’d been uniformly unpleasant that entire time. Did that mean he was capable of cold-blooded murder, though?

  “I know the two of you don’t like each other, but you’ve known him a lot longer than I have. Do you think he’s capable of something like this? Jubal may be a sorry excuse for a human being, but I wouldn’t want to drop him if I should actually be looking at Balthazar more.”

  “Dammit, I don’t know if Balthazar could be the killer. I never picked up anything murderous from him over the years, but I don’t trust him, either. I can’t tell if that’s my gut trying to tell me something, or if I’m just biased from too many bad turns with him. But what was it you said originally?”

  “When?”

  “Back when we discovered Razan had been killed. You said it always made sense to follow the money. Jubal seemed like he was mostly interested in the money he could get out of this expedition. That’s why he wanted to know about the meteorites. Once everything went to pot tonight though, everyone’s best strategy for getting off the island alive was probably to stick together. We only get paid if we survive. Jubal is, if anything else, the most likely to gain anything by killing off the other hunters on the island.”

  “Jubal doesn’t exactly strike me as the sharpest light bulb in the shed.”

  “Maybe not, but I don’t see what he gains out of this, and that was his main motivation all along. I’ve known Balthazar a lot longer, and his reasons for disliking me are still pretty opaque. I don’t know what makes him tick. I don’t think Gail’s killer is doing this for money. At least, I don’t think it’s directly about the money we’re receiving for hunting ahools. I think there’s something else going on here, something we don’t understand. Balthazar’s the one I don’t feel like I understand between the two of them.”

  “Alright, fair enough. I trust you. If we see Jubal, I won’t shoot him on the spot. Not even a good winging, no matter how much he deserves one. You can bet I’ll be watching him like a hawk, though.”

  “If we run into him, and he starts acting like he’s here to stab us in the back, I’ll plug him myself. If he killed Gail, I’ll put his head over my mantle.”

  “If he killed Gail, I’m not sure that much of him will be left after we’re done with him.”

  They walked up to the largest building in the village. The thick mud walls reminded Denise of the architecture in Timbuktu, with its massive mosques and libraries and their hardened earth exteriors.

  As if to remind them that he was still out there, the gunman fired another shot. A fist-sized hole appeared in the structure ’s wall. A few seconds later, another hole appeared further up.

  Denise and Harrison waited for more shots, but none came. From the sound of the shots, the killer had moved further away, out of range. If he managed to hit them now, it would be a ma tter of dumb luck. Given the lack of further gunf ire, whoever was firing must have realized the same thing. Together, she and Harrison slipped back out into the open to examine the structure.

  There was only one set of doors, large wooden ones that had been painstakingly carved with intricate designs. Denise could see stylized depictions of men with spears fighting beasts of every size and shape. Hairy monsters, winged monsters, scaly monsters, and every other manner of horror was depicted on that door. Rather than carving a heroic picture of the men slaughtering the monsters, a lot of the human figures in the foreground were being torn apart in messy ways. Only the figures in the background, who were less distinct and given fewer details, seemed to be having any luck at all surviving the onslaught of ghoulish nightmares.

  The door lock was an intricate-looking thing. It was another bar, but this one was more complex than just a simple log laid across the doorframe. Instead, it was a thick beam of smelted metal with an elaborate series of grooves. The positions of the brackets holding the bar in place meant it couldn’t simply be slid to the side, either. It had to be precisely rotated around so the pegs didn’t become unaligned from the grooves.

  Really, the system looked quite clever. A mere animal wouldn’t be able to knock the metal bar off. Deliberate rotation was the key. The bar was attached to a sort of lever mechanism that disappeared through the side of the wall and into the structure, allowing the people inside to unlock it from within or jam the rotation entirely. A great deal of ingenuity and craftsmanship both had been expended on making this door.

  “Here, I think we can get inside if you just take that end, and we work together,” Denise said. Harrison grabbed one end of the metal bar. She grabbed the other end. The metal was incredibly heavy, meant to thwart attacks from even large creatures. It would be impossible for her to work it from the outside by herself.

  “Okay, start twisting it this way,” Harrison said. They both grunted and strained, working the metal through the various pegs and joints.

  More grunting and more heaving freed the metal bar from the door. Denise and Harrison lifted it away and set it on the ground.

  “I hope they’re not too unhappy with us intruding,” Harrison said.

  “I hope so, too.” Denise wasn’t sure how the villagers would react to playing host to the two of them. Hopefully, they wouldn’t be too perturbed to have a couple of strangers stay with them until the Shield of Mithridates could pick them up. They were just a couple of beggars looking for shelter at this point. Even if they weren’t thrilled about it, Denise was sure she could use her Afrikaans skills to navigate some sort of agreement.

  She pushed open the heavy doors. They creaked and groaned as they moved, sounding like the wind through the graveyard.

  Denise realized something odd. The doors swung inward, into the building. A lot of engineering and thought had clearly gone into this structure. The doors should have swung outward. If they were meant to defend against something battering against the doors, the doors should be designed so that the creatures would have to beat the doors all the way down in order to open them. If the bar somehow came loose, all it would take would be a simple push, and the animals would be inside.

  That’s when she realized that the door and its security mechanism weren’t meant to keep animals out of the structure. They were meant to keep the inhabitants inside until daybreak.

  Oh hell.

  The snarls reached her ears before she saw anything. Inside the structure, it was pure blackness. Not a single torch or fire burned, so only the sounds reached Denise. The sounds and the smell. The smell hit her like a slap to the face. It was sharp and musky, like some sort of rare cheese made only by cultists in French caves. As the light filtered in, Denise saw dozens of glowing eyes looking at her.

  “Shut the door. Shut the door,” Harrison said, trying to lift the metal bar back into place. Denise made a grab for the door, but a huge, hairy hand shot out of the darkness and grabbed onto the wood. Long, black claws jutted out of each finger, sinking deep into the wood. The hand wrenched the door out of Denise’s grip.

  “Run,” she shouted. Harrison dropped the bar and started moving. They’d been wrong. They’d both been so wrong. The village wasn’t a place of safety. The same effect that caused the other animals on the island to break out into horrible monstrosities also affected the humans living on the island.

  When those bullets tore holes into the side of the structure, the killer wasn ’t aiming for Denise and Harrison. They were meant to let the moonlight inside the building. The murderer had anticipated that they would try to seek shelter inside, and he’d turned the whole thing to his advantage.

  The moonlight had an effect like poison ivy on everything on Malheur Island, the people included. One brush with it, and things went bad fast.

  The only thing that saved them was how narrow the door was. Several things that used to be people all tried
to shove through at the same time, causing a jam. They bit and slashed and thrashed at each other, all trying to get free. Dozens more of the twisted beings pushed from behind, all baying like the grim reaper’s hounds out hunting souls.

  Denise raised her rifle and almost fired out of pure reflex, but she pulled her finger back at the last second. Right now, that howling mob of awful things didn’t look like anything human, but in the morning, they’d be people again. Her Nitro Express could shoot straight through any of them. She might kill twenty with one shot if she fired straight down the middle. Maybe she could live with herself if she needed to do something like that to save her life. Maybe she couldn’t. She didn’t intend to find out unless she had to.

  “How do we get out of here?” Harrison asked as they ran. He looked at the gate they’d come in through. It was still banging on its hinges as the ahools smashed against it. She and Harrison could both hear the giant bats still shrieking their awful wails after them. Opening that door would offer a quick yet unpleasant death.

  She looked to the main gate. It was huge and heavy. Opening it looked like it would take several minutes and a lot of sweat and effort. That’s why they didn’t use that gate in the first place. They didn’t have several minutes.

  In fact, they had no time at all. The log jam of huge, hairy bodies finally freed itself behind them.

  Denise could see now that the wall was meant as much to keep the villagers in during the full moon as it was to keep everything else out. The wall certainly couldn’t keep flying threats like the ahools from sailing over it, but in case the villagers broke out of their enclosure during the full moon, they still couldn’t scatter to hither and yon on the island and risk being eaten by spiders or Komodo dragons.

  Both the regular entrances were out of the equation. Even if they opened the main gate, they wouldn’t be able to close it in time before they were overwhelmed by the transformed villagers.

  What options did that leave? None of the buildings were strong enough to withstand any sort of siege from the villagers. Most of the houses didn’t even have doors. They were simply open to the elements, separated by a thin curtain of woven fabric or nothing at all. Even the buildings with a way to block off the entrance wouldn’t last long. Their walls were made from woven fronds and bamboo. They wouldn’t last more than a minute. If the creatures following them didn’t simply crash straight through the walls, they could claw them apart in less time than it took to scream.