Then Jesse heard a whimper that surcharged his body with adrenaline.
Emma.
He crawled to the far corner of the promontory and spotted her.
And the Night Flyer holding her captive.
She was pinned by the throat. The Night Flyer holding her down kept sniffing her, not in the salacious, would-be rapist manner of the Big Nasty, but the way a dog will inspect a bug he has trapped and will soon bite in half.
So maybe lust, Jesse reflected, was more indigenous to the Children. Lending credence to this theory was the proliferation of long, waxen creatures massed near that area of the circle.
They want Emma more than the other hostages, he thought sickly.
Movement to his immediate left snapped off his thoughts. Sam was wrestling Charly away from the edge. One of Sam’s hands was clamped over her mouth, the other arm cinched tight around her torso. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought Sam was making off with her. Something, Jesse realized, had caused her to cry out, and though he knew what it was, could hear it even now, he hadn’t yet spotted it.
He scanned the crowd of murderous monsters below until Red Elk literally grabbed his chin and pointed it straight down.
One of the children clutched Charly’s baby.
Taller and stronger than most of the other Children—the thing looked twelve feet tall, at least; its muscles swam like eddying water with each of its panther-like movements—the creature grasped the poor child by one chubby leg and was holding Jake aloft like an unscrupulous barker enticing patrons with some prize, a teddy bear maybe, at the county fair.
The Night Flyers, who were staring with rapt attention at the squalling infant, had all but forgotten about the four victims trapped within their circle.
The huge, pale creature strode forward, his own kind parting before him in two neat rows. The Children were avidly watching the child, but something—fear of the creature clutching the baby?—precluded them from acting on their desire. When the creature and its quarry reached the edge of the fire-lit circle, Charly pumped an elbow into Sam’s chest, loosening his grip, and for an awful second Jesse was sure her screams would be heard.
When the sentinel Night Flyers reached up for little Jake Florence, the creature carrying him yanked him back and out of reach. With a single nod, the creature seemed to indicate the humans in the circle.
Jesus Christ, Jesse thought. They’re bartering.
The creature brought the baby close to its mouth and clipped its teeth together an inch from one tiny hand. The Night Flyers screeched in protest, and Jesse looked away in helpless dread.
There was a flurry of movement within the circle, and Jesse looked up in time to see the Night Flyer that had been slowly feasting on Marc Greeley scuttle forward to the edge of the circle of guards. It extended Greeley’s blood-splattered body, the man’s sneakered feet kicking weakly.
Several Children leaped forward to claim Greeley, but the Night Flyer hauled him back into the circle, dark teeth snapping menacingly. The ranks of sentries closed, and the two races of creatures stood growling at one another with palpable loathing. The Night Flyer holding Greeley flapped its great wings until it hovered in the air above the circle. Again it extended Greeley’s body in trade, and again the Children lunged for it. When the alabaster bodies surged into the winged black ones, the sentinels attacked. Jesse watched in nerveless horror as the Night Flyers leaned back and braced themselves on their arms and sent their appallingly lethal hind legs into action. Within seconds, a half dozen Children reeled back from the circle, their fronts shredded like paper.
One of the bleeding Children, Jesse discovered without a great deal of surprise, looked a lot like the college kid Austin, the spiky blond hair mostly fallen out and replaced by a leprous-looking white pate.
Again the Night Flyer holding Greeley let the man dangle over the reaching arms of the Children, but again it drew back, this time floated a good thirty feet above the pale creatures. The Children who hadn’t been injured in the initial skirmish growled their fury at the hovering Night Flyer, but still the winged creatures remained intent on the baby. This time the Child holding the baby actually lowered Jake’s upside-down body and opened its mouth as if to devour the head in one ferocious bite.
Behind him Jesse heard Charly and Sam wrestling again and knew the wounded man couldn’t prevent her from breaking loose much longer. Charly was a smart lady, but that intelligence was no match for her maternal love. She was ready to dive into the crowd of monsters for a chance to touch her baby again.
It was at that moment that one of the Night Flyers darted at baby Jake.
Chapter Eight
Sam spotted the creature before it lunged. Granted, it was difficult to see much of anything with the bad lighting and especially with Charly bucking against him, but he’d noticed the oversized Night Flyer early on because of two things. One, it was gigantic and mean-looking, even meaner than the others, and that was saying a hell of a lot. Secondly, it had been chewing on what appeared to be one of the professor’s white butt cheeks.
That wasn’t the kind of thing a person could ignore.
When the Child holding Jake refused to relinquish him, Sam had seen the alteration in the big Night Flyer’s posture. Until that point it had been borderline uninterested, merely doing its job while enjoying a fine cut of severed ass. But the kidnapper’s second refusal—and Sam strongly suspected it was the same creature that had abducted the baby to begin with—had flipped some switch within the large Night Flyer. It dropped the meager remains of the butt cheek, its eyes going wide and murderous, and fluttered its wings like a hawk about to dive-bomb an unsuspecting field mouse.
Sam didn’t see it launch itself at the kidnapping creature too clearly because when it happened, Charly went apeshit. But what he did see was the kidnapper spin away to protect its prize as the Night Flyer drove in with its razor talons splayed. The kidnapper arched its back as the talons striped its exposed flesh in deep vertical slits. And though some primitive facet of Sam’s psyche was gratified to see the vicious fucker in pain, he knew Jake was now in even graver peril than he’d been. The kidnapper shot an elbow back at the whirring hind claws of the Night Flyer, but it was obviously a lost cause. In addition to the black ichor showering the already-black Night Flyer, Sam saw the kidnapper’s exposed entrails, its dark brown lungs, its darker intestines.
The rest of the Children had watched, frozen in shock, as the attack took place, but now they surged forward as one body to destroy the offending Night Flyer.
All of this happened in the space of fifteen seconds.
The dying and perhaps already dead kidnapper pitched forward, baby Jake still clutched in its pestilent white fingers. Before the kidnapper’s face smacked the cave floor, Charly let loose with an inhuman wail, and this time Sam did nothing to muzzle it. Instead he did the only thing he could think to do.
He leaped forward and slid down into the pit.
Frank Red Elk had just turned to Jesse, the words, “We gotta get down there,” falling from his lips, when Jesse saw Sam Bledsoe rocket past them and go skittering down the endless decline. Even as Sam began his descent, the scene below devolved into a hellish maelstrom of Night Flyers and Children. As the kidnapping Child fell, the baby in its hand lowered to the cave floor too. When the hand met the ground, Jake flopped over in a short tumble that could have been far worse but was still difficult to behold.
He couldn’t imagine how awful it was for Charly.
But the child appeared unharmed, and soon baby Jake’s heartbreaking, hoarse cries could be heard beneath the chaotic din.
Tearing his gaze away from the screaming child to see what had become of Emma and the others, Jesse was reminded of footage he’d seen of sharks attacking chunks of bloody bait, only in this case there was no bait, only sharks attacking on both sides.
The carnage was unspeakable.
Jesse couldn’t imagine moving into such a churning sea of mayhem, but when Red Elk
grabbed his arm and dragged him over the lip of their box seat, he didn’t protest. At the same moment, another figure skidded down the steep slide to his left, and when he glanced that way and glimpsed Charly’s grim face, he experienced an evanescent glimmer of hope.
Then he faced the pit and his hope was incinerated.
Several Night Flyers had taken wing and were swooping about the arena in screeching loops, reminding him very much of all the dragon movies he’d seen. Only these weren’t benevolent, tractable creatures who breathed pretty fire and permitted their owners to strap on leather harnesses. These were homicidal beasts bent on destruction, their furnace-red eyes aglow and their stygian wings beating a dreadful cadence. From above he saw scores of Night Flyers arrowing down toward the melee and chided himself for not noticing them before. Of course, he thought. They planned this. They probably welcomed this war, and had ensured themselves a tactical advantage. Why else drag their victims into the arena in the first place?
With real awe Jesse glimpsed one large Night Flyer snatch a pale creature up in a mad lover’s embrace and proceed to puncture the creature’s midsection with its lethal hind claws. Before Jesse could look away, the black legs thrust down hard, and the Child’s dusky entrails plopped out like a farmer’s slop bucket at feeding time. The guts poured over a grappling pair of creatures, who didn’t seem to notice.
Under his roughly sliding body, Jesse felt the scabrous rock wall grinding through his cargo shorts. He’d started out using his palms for brakes, but after losing much of the skin there, he relied on his sneaker heels to slow him. Beside him Frank Red Elk bounced over a rise, his face jerking forward and his arms pinwheeling in instant terror. He tumbled awkwardly, somersaulting twice before getting his big body under control. Just as Red Elk ceased his tumbling, a Night Flyer, evidently ready to take a break from the fighting, whooshed over him, its talons grasping the air Frank had just vacated. It let loose with an enraged shriek and whorled back down into the chaos.
Jesse saw immediately that the Children were faring much better on the ground. They swarmed over the Night Flyer sentinels, and here the bloodshed was worse. Two dozen of the Children hurled themselves onto the scythe-like hind talons with suicidal abandon. One pale creature was slashed from throat to belly. Another Child got it in the mouth, the force of the Night Flyer’s pumping leg unhinging the mandible with a meaty click that turned Jesse’s stomach.
The Children battled their way through the pistoning talons, and once they reached the torsos and faces of the Night Flyers, the tide of battle began to shift. One Child, its guts spilling over its crotch in a glistening mass of coils, broke through the whirring, motor-like legs of its winged adversary and clamped down on the Night Flyer’s face with its dripping teeth. The hind talons flared out like dual exclamation marks and then started to convulse as the Child chewed through its face and bored its relentless way into the brain. Another pair of Children had gotten hold of a Night Flyer’s legs, but rather than wishboning their quarry, they lifted the screeching Night Flyer into the air and in one astonishing movement whipsawed their victim downward. The Night Flyer rammed the cave floor with such concussive force that its brains blew out the back of its head.
With a quick glance Jesse saw that Sam had nearly reached the ground.
About five more seconds and he would too.
Charly sees it all happen in slow motion. She’s heard about traumatic events unspooling in this muffled, protracted manner, but not even when that pale creature kidnapped her baby had she truly understood what it meant.
Until now.
She’d wanted to kill Sam—honestly would have killed him—had she been given the means a few moments earlier. She had to get down there to Jake. Those nightmarish moments during which Sam had refused to relinquish his viselike grip on her body had been the longest of her life. But then Sam was barreling by her, leaping, and then she was watching with something like love as he skidded down the rock wall. It had only taken her a second or two to follow his lead, but while those seconds played out it seemed to her that she was stuck in neutral, the hard rock beneath her feet abruptly congealing and sucking her down. The most torturous moment of all was little Jake’s vertiginous drop. The creature, she discovered as she began her own descent, had not loosed Jake from its vile grip. Even from this maddening distance Charly could see the ugly brown stains on Jake’s light blue pajamas. The onesie had little sharks on it, which she liked because she imagined them guarding her baby at night, when she’d awake at two a.m. and worry about sickness, about SIDS, about lightning striking the nursery or a sudden tornado. She’d worried about everything, and now she is sure she won’t be able to save baby Jake.
But Sam is almost there, Sam is extending his legs to meet the ground. Charly shoots an anguished look at her baby and moans at the mass of brawling bodies stomping and thrashing all around him. Jake’s a good ten feet inside the churning area of bloody combat, and she knows he will be trampled, and she’s the one who deserves to die for letting this happen. Oh God, why didn’t she lock the nursery window, why didn’t she keep Jake in bed with her?
She is nearing the bottom. She’ll be there in a moment, but Sam is already up and dashing straight for Jake. One of the black creatures spots Sam and swoops down at him, hind talons extended. Sam pauses, feet apart, and aims the revolver at it. He squeezes off one shot, two, and the Night Flyer is screeching, tumbling, blood spouting from its face. Sam tosses the revolver aside, but he’s only twenty yards away from Jake now. Fifteen. He is moving like a running back, head down, strong arms pumping, and she loves him then. He is closer, closer, and Charly reaches the ground in time to see Sam disappear into the writhing, snarling creatures, and her feet hit the ground perfectly. She pops up like a gymnast and immediately sights Sam, whose body she can make out because it’s much shorter than the others, childlike amidst the towering Night Flyers and the stiltwalking Children. She sees Sam stop, whirl, an agonized, questioning look on his face. She realizes he cannot find Jake. Sam is searching, scanning the ground, and then his eyes open wide. Charly is almost to Sam now, and Sam is crouching next to a lifeless white body.
When she sees Sam rise with something in his arms, she is sure she’s hallucinating.
It can’t be, she thinks. Please God, let it be true.
Sam looks up at her, his eyes brimming with tears, and she knows it’s real. Something inside her explodes, and she’s sobbing and moving toward him on legs that have no feeling. Sam starts forward too, his body hunched over her baby—who is moving, still alive, oh Jesus—and she knows he will protect little Jake. And they are only a few yards apart when the cave fills with the most horrifying noise she has ever heard, a deep, rending roar like the earth is exploding, and she and Sam and the creatures all turn and stare at the immense, vertical tunnel that leads into this airplane hangar of a cavern.
Charly’s heart stops when she sees what is making the noise.
Chapter Nine
Jesse landed in a tangle and felt a fiery pain in his groin. He’d either pulled it badly or given himself a hernia, but that didn’t matter at the moment. He spotted Frank Red Elk, his normally hooded gaze stretched wide in feverish urgency. Red Elk was shouting something, and after a moment Jesse got the sense of it: “This way, dammit, this way!”
Jesse gestured toward Charly, but Red Elk shook him hard enough to make his neck ache.
“This way,” Red Elk commanded, hauling Jesse to his feet. “Let those two take care of the baby. We don’t get the girls now, they’re as good as dead.”
Jesse followed Red Elk toward the hellish battleground. There were bodies everywhere, the guts and limbs of three different species strewn about like litter. Night Flyers feasted on Children; Children disemboweled Night Flyers. One Child, having bested a downed Flyer, scooped out its red eyes and popped them into his mouth like oysters on the half-shell.
Intrepidly, Red Elk waded forward into the massed bodies, looking every bit like some film protagonist.
His gun was drawn, his head lowered slightly as if against a stiff wind. Jesse followed in his wake and prayed the creatures wouldn’t attack. His whole body thrummed with terror, his hands quivering little birds that threatened to drop the pocketknife at any moment, but one thought recurred, bolstering him just enough to keep him from swooning:
If they could just wrest the girls free and get out of here before the carnage subsided, they might just stand a chance.
They were almost to the fires. Jesse discovered with real surprise that Colleen was alive. The creature still encircled her with its small, insectile arms, but its attention was now diverted to the surging tide of Children. Jesse was heartened to detect just a glimmer of fear in its satanic red eyes. Not fear for its own life, but fear of having its prize taken away. Its great black wings fluttered, preparatory to escaping perhaps, but something—Duty? Outrage? A desire to spill the Children’s lifeblood?—kept it grounded.
“I’ll get Colleen!” Red Elk shouted back. “You find your girl!”
Without another word, Red Elk charged toward the creature and Colleen. Then the mass of bodies shifted and swallowed Red Elk up. Jesse hustled by the battling creatures. So far they hadn’t marked his passing, and for maybe the first time in his twenty-eight years Jesse was thankful for his diminutive stature. Perhaps sensing he’d never grow beyond his current five feet, eight inches, his parents had bombarded him with children’s books about how wonderful it was to be small, characters like Piglet and Percy the Tank Engine experiencing the same tired epiphany after completing some task that could only be accomplished by someone little. Even at the age of five, Jesse thought the stories were bullshit. Who cared if Piglet could crawl under a bush or Percy could fit through a narrow tunnel? If they were bigger in the first place they wouldn’t have been given such shitty jobs.
But now, as he slipped through a throng of hissing Night Flyers and came within two feet of a snarling Child, Jesse thanked God he was such a little man.
Savage Species Page 29