by Lee Murphy
***
Emory Pittman wasn't getting any sleep at all, and it was pissing him off. For some reason the thermostat had been turned up to ninety-five degrees, and that damned Dubbins wasn't answering his phone. He didn't know what was happening, but if there was a malfunction, Dubbins should have reported it. And if Dubbins was pulling something, he was surely going to pay.
Pittman may have been laid up with this broken hip, totally at Dubbins' mercy, but when he was back up and around Dubbins would be reminded of just who called the shots around here. Of course, after fifty-three years of faithful service, Dubbins was well versed in Mr. Pittman's intolerance for employee insubordination, and the usual procedures for straightening out said employee. Pittman preferred the cane for disciplining his manservant. It was the one thing with which he was truly generous. Once, he had even broken a cherry wood cane across Dubbins' back.
Pittman smiled at these sadistic memories, and the near unbearable heat made him think of more cruel punishments. Maybe this time he really would feed Dubbins to Mark Anthony like he was always threatening to do. Oh, that would be...
As Pittman lay in his bed daydreaming of all the cruelty he could and would inflict upon his gentleman's gentleman, he was distracted by the sound of the vault door opening. And then Dubbins walked in, looking at his employer in his usual stoic demeanor.
Pittman sat up against his pillows and glared at Dubbins, almost drooling at the thought of what he was going to do to punish him. "I've been trying to call you all day and night! Why haven't you answered me? Do you have any idea how hot it is in here?" Pittman was nearly screaming, but Dubbins simply stared at him through flat, vacant eyes, as he had for fifty-three years.
"I am sorry to disturb you, sir. But you have a visitor."
Pittman was incredulous. Was Dubbins serious? A visitor at this hour? "A visitor? What the hell are you talking about?"
"You have a guest. I suggest you prepare to receive them."
"What kind of crap is this? I'm not expecting anybody. Tell them to go to hell!"
Dubbins shook his head and clicked his tongue. "I'm sorry, sir, but I'm afraid I can't do that."
"Oh? And why not?"
"That would be rude. And I'm afraid your days of being rude are over." Dubbins let out an uncharacteristic giggle and started pushing the vault door all the way open. "I'm afraid, sir, your
days of everything are over."
When the vault door was completely open, Pittman gasped and shuddered violently.
Mark Anthony was laid out upon a hydraulic lift that was specially built for transporting the reptile. He was unconscious, or dead, and Pittman was hoping-- praying-- it was the latter.
But he knew better, as Dubbins eased the lift into the room and lowered Mark Anthony to the floor and unfastened the straps that held him. Pittman watched everything with those blue-jewel eyes wide with disbelief and horror. "Dubbins... Dubbins... You... Don't do this..."
Dubbins stood back upright and for the first time since Pittman had known him, he was smiling. "You'll find the phones have all been disconnected. Probably why you were unable to get hold of me. I've also taken the liberty of changing the code to the lock, and as for the guns you keep hidden in here, including the German Luger you keep under your mattress that you didn't think I was aware of, I relieved them all of ammunition.
"Now, if you'll excuse me, Mr. Pittman, I have travel arrangements to make. But I will be watching the festivities from the closed-circuit T.V. in the game room. The big screen. So do put on a merry show. I want lots of screaming." Dubbins bowed for what would be the last time and exited the room. Pittman heard the electronic locks jamming into place, and he knew that now it was Dubbins who had screwed him. And screwed him good.
Now he knew why the temperature was up so high. In order to guarantee Mark Anthony's cooperation, the temperature in his pond had to be lowered to where his body would shut down so that he could be handled. Once he was in the room with Pittman, the heat would revive him, and the odds were very high that all he had to eat in the past few weeks were a few scrawny chickens.
Emory Pittman was terrified beyond anything he had ever known in his life. He was trapped in here, not just because of the phones, the locked vault door, and his useless guns, but because his broken hip made it impossible for him to get out of bed. He looked up at the television camera from which Dubbins would be monitoring the scene, but decided pleading would be useless. If anything, it would just give the withered up old bastard the first real hard-on he's had in a hundred years.
He looked back at the slumbering Mark Anthony and saw the first sign of his impending doom; the reptile let out a great hiss, took in a breath, let out another tremendous hiss and slowly opened the two beady eyes set atop his huge head.
There was no defense other than to stay perfectly still. Between the stifling heat and his intense fear, Emory Pittman was swathed in perspiration that dripped from his domed head into his eyes.
Mark Anthony groaned and got up on his feet, looked about his new surroundings, and suddenly he spotted his prey.
Pittman looked into those cold, hungry eyes and felt his bowels opening up, filling his silk pajama bottoms. Mark Anthony sensed his fear and started ambling across the floor toward him.
"Oh, God." Pittman searched through his bed sheets and found the remote control for the revolving platform that supported his bed. He pressed down on the switch until his thumb turned white. The bed started to turn away from the alligator.
Mark Anthony followed him, picking up his pace from an amble to a deliberate surge. Pittman held the button down, but the bed continued to move at a pathetic crawl. He hit another switch and changed direction, but the platform continued to move just as slowly.
Pittman started crying. First just a little whimper that crept from the back of his throat, then quickly into open sobs of hysterical fear. The bed came to a three hundred and sixty degree turn, and Pittman looked up at the camera, screaming, "DUBBINS! DUBBINS! DUBBINS!"
Mark Anthony made his move. With a mighty thrust he threw himself upon the bed, dislodging the mattress and smashing the hydraulic platform under his tremendous weight. Pittman almost rolled into the huge, slavering jaws, but he drew away just as they crashed shut, narrowly escaping the razor teeth.
Pittman hit the floor, and his hip exploded in a violent blast of burning, crippling pain as the fracture re-opened. He screamed, and Mark Anthony lunged over the side of the bed after him.
Suddenly Pittman saw hope: the bathroom was on the far side of the room. It was a separate wing housed in black glass. If he could make it to the bathroom, he could lock himself inside and escape the alligator. He would have to crawl twenty-five feet across the floor, and up five steps to get in there, but what choice did he have? He scrambled like a lunatic away from the bed and Mark Anthony, and headed for the bathroom. He ignored the pain, and even managed to move a little faster when he heard the alligator's great bulk slide off the bed and hit the floor behind him.
Ten feet out, Pittman laughed and shouted, "Dubbins! I'll have your head!" But his luck was short-lived. In five easy steps Mark Anthony was on him, and his five-foot jaws slammed shut on Pittman's useless legs.
Pittman screamed at volumes he never before thought humanly possible, as Mark Anthony twisted his massive body and tore off both legs that were clamped securely in his mouth.
Pittman's mind died a little before Mark Anthony actually got him, which was Dubbins' whole idea. Now the thing that was Pittman pulled itself free of the alligator, minus his legs, and continued pulling himself toward the bathroom, spilling his life-blood in a river that led from Mark Anthony to a distance of seven more feet, where Emory Pittman finally shuddered in his death spasms. He then lay perfectly still, his blue-jewel eyes staring out from the brown, splotchy skin of his skull-like face.
***
When they set out upon the river Jamie Montagna let Norm sit up front. Now that old Norm had his vision back, Montagna didn't
cherish the idea of having his back to him, especially after he screwed Norm over on the island with the Sasquatch. Oddly, it didn't occur to Norm that maybe it was dangerous to have Montagna at his back.
It turned out that placing Norm up front was a mistake, because he smelled to high heaven. Nobody on this trip had the opportunity to take a real bath, but everybody had at least brought a change of clothes and had taken some time to wash in the river. Everybody except Norm, who had been wearing the same filthy clothes for a week. Come to think of it, Montagna had never seen Norm in any other clothes.
Thankfully, there was a powerful side wind that drowned out the desire for prolonged conversation, as well as blowing away the 'eau du Norm'.
Norm laughed, paddling the rubber raft through a narrow gorge. "You know, Jamie, I'm starting to feel pretty good! How much farther 'fore we're back in civilization?"
Montagna turned his head away to take a breath, then said, "Too far!"
Norm turned to him. "What?"
The raft suddenly shot down a ten-foot plume and disappeared in a cloud of white vapor. It was hurled violently upward to the cries of Norm's frenetic screams.
Montagna was almost hurled from the raft. He grasped the sides for dear life. But they were totally unprepared for the thrashing they were about to be subjected to; more than a hundred yards of white water rapids populated with ferocious-looking jagged rocks that threatened to tear their meager little raft to shreds.
Norm's bowels turned to water as he looked out at the hell before them. The raft felt totally inadequate as the water twisted and thrust the inflated rubber and canvas body towards the obstacle course of rocks.
Huge waves of frigid water pounded down upon them, threatening to wash them from the raft. The raft slid across large boulders and provided no barrier of protection for the two men as their legs and backs were relentlessly battered. God, there were so many ways to die; drowning, chief among them.
Montagna held tight to the raft, trying to see where they were being sent, but between the constant pounding of waves and total disorientation, all he could do was try to gulp in breaths of air before going under again.
Norm was terrified, screaming like a baby, clinging as fiercely to the raft as Montagna and whimpering with every wave that washed over them.
The worst of the rapids began to peter out where the gorge became wider and the water deeper. The rubber raft took a tremendous beating, but contoured with grace through the angry currents and banked off the rocks without major incident.
As the buffeting softened, Norm sat up and looked forward. "Jamie!" Directly ahead a large whirlpool had formed, and the raft was heading right for it.
"Jump, Norm!" Montagna jumped from the raft just as it slammed up against another rock.
Norm almost waited too long. When he jumped, he went straight into the water and was floating toward the whirlpool right behind the raft. He managed to kick towards an outcropping of rocks, and, just as he grabbed onto them and got a foothold, the raft was sucked into the whirlpool and dragged under the water in mere seconds.
Montagna looked across the river at Norm and thought, at least he won't stink anymore.
***
It looked like Kodiak and Cyrena were going to spend another night in the forest, but, at this point, they didn't really care. They were like zombies; drained physically and emotionally, and far too tired to even consider going on tonight.
They had buried the Gigantopithecus. Between the two of them, they had dragged the seventeen hundred-pound body four feet into the river, then spent three hours piling as many boulders as they could onto its corpse, until there was no way anyone would ever see the remains. Even then, there would only be pieces of bones broken and worn away by the continual flow of the river.
When they finished, Kodiak looked at her and said, "Meet Gigantopithecus-DeVarona."
"What?"
He reached out his hand. "You still have your knife?"
She took her knife from her pants pocket and handed it to Kodiak. It was one of the deluxe model Swiss Army knives, with the saw blade.
Kodiak rolled away several large rocks that covered the Giganto's right foot and drew the largest knife blade. It was still sharp and sliced through the thick hyde around the dead ape's ankle fairly quickly. He sliced through muscle and sinews, then had to switch to the sawblade to cut into the cartilage in order to separate the bones of the foot from the ankle. The entire process took Kodiak half an hour, and when he finished, he was dripping with sweat.
The severed foot weighed thirty-five pounds. He wrapped it in his flannel shirt and carried the bundle under his arm as they walked away from the dead relic. "This puts us in more danger than anything that's happened so far."
Cyrena looked at the bundled shirt that was starting to saturate with blood. "Why?"
Kodiak said, "When I told you that I didn't want to be the guy who goes down in history as handing over the first sacrifice, I had other reasons. You think it might be a simple matter of showing up at some newspaper, or television studio with this foot, and that would lay everything to rest. Well, nothing could be further from the truth.
"By just coming out and saying we've got a piece of a body, chances are nobody will take us seriously, let alone come out to take a look. Odds are, somebody will try to con it out of our possession, or worse, kill us for it. Just look at Jamie Montagna and what he's done so far. No, we have to stash this someplace safe, until we can expose it to the media in a manner that guarantees our rightful ownership.
"Then there's all the controversy. You better be prepared for the wrath of those animal rights organizations that will accuse us of murder, as well as those who will be adversely affected by the effect on the economy, when the species is labelled as endangered.
"Of course, should we manage to weather all that, we will have the right to name the species." He stopped walking and smiled.
Cyrena lowered her head and said, "Good Lord."
"And now to find shelter." Kodiak dreaded the idea of having to build another lean-to, no matter how simple and flimsy. He was so tired, he just wanted to sleep. Then Cyrena said, "Maybe we can get a ride with them." She was pointing to a Winnebago camper that was parked between two huge trees. This in itself was not unusual, except that there were no campgrounds around for miles.
***
Ron Pearl was angry. He'd been stuck here in this Winnebago for two days now, waiting for Montagna's goons to show up, and there had been no sign of them. He didn't know how much longer he was going to have to wait before either going to look for them, or just leaving them altogether.
The fact was, he wasn't going anywhere. If they did catch a Sasquatch, as Montagna had alluded, then he would continue to be patient. That didn't quell the feeling that something was wrong. The fog was setting in again, and through the fading daylight it looked creepy, which made him wish he was back home where it was warm and spacious, with ceilings higher than seven feet.
Why hadn't Montagna contacted him on the radio? Was it broken? He suddenly had horrible images of the Sasquatch, ten feet tall, all hair and fangs, with glowing red eyes, getting loose from its cage and ripping everybody to bloody pieces.
Somebody pounded on the door of the camper, and he jumped. It had to be Montagna's people, he hoped.
Taking a deep breath to steady his nerves, Pearl got up and walked over to the door. He hesitated just a little before he pulled it open. Much to his surprise, it wasn't Norm Cocke and Dave Bovard. It was George Kodiak and some woman. They both looked like hell, and Pearl was definitely going to get to the bottom of what had happened out there. But right now, he was just glad that he could now get out of this Godforsaken wilderness. "George Kodiak."
"Mr. Pearl. Funny meeting you out here. How's Pittman?"
Pearl stood aside to let them in. "You mean, Montagna didn't send you here to meet me?" He saw that Kodiak was carrying something big wrapped in a filthy, blood-soaked shirt. It smelled like it might have been a dead ani
mal.
Cyrena looked at Kodiak. "He works for Jamie?"
Kodiak nodded. "For Emory Pittman."
Cyrena's voice got louder, completely startling Kodiak and Pearl. "So he's working with Jamie and Norm..."
Kodiak said, "Yeah, I suppose you could say that."
Cyrena punched Pearl in his face. He fell back, his nose bleeding. Before he could react, she jumped on top of him and started pummeling him with her fists. Her blows were hard and effective.
Pearl was barely able to protect himself, let alone fight back. But when Cyrena grabbed a fistful of his hair, it came off-- all of it. Ron Pearl wore a toupee, and when it came off, it distracted Cyrena. He kicked her.
She landed hard on her elbows and was almost struck again by Pearl's foot when Kodiak hauled Pearl off the floor and threw him out of the camper. She heard him thump into a tree as Kodiak shut and locked the door.
He helped her up. "You okay?"
She nodded, sitting on one of the beds and rubbing her elbows.
Kodiak started laughing. "You were gonna beat the living crap out of him!"
She looked at the toupee in her hand and tossed it aside. "It was Ben. The Sasquatch. And even Dave. I guess I connected him to Jamie and Norm, and everything just came out. I would have done anything I could to hurt him."
Kodiak stopped laughing. "Yeah, I know what you mean. Let's get going." He got in the driver's seat and started the engine, and much to their delight, Cyrena found the refrigerator was fully stocked.
***
"We finally made it." Norm's voice cracked with emotion as he and Montagna cleared the last of the woods and stared at the Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center. It was still two hours before the sun would set, but the temperature had dropped ten degrees, and they were still wet.