The tyrant was no fool. His brain was larger than one might have expected, big and convoluted. He needed all that brainpower to see past the tricks and feints of his prey, to catch them as they tried to escape. He knew that while he had beaten back extinction for the moment there were no guarantees. His belly rumbled angrily, after so many days without a kill, and his lungs were still clotted with the dust. He needed to move, to find a way out of this powdered labyrinth. Perhaps he would scale the peaks, and pounce upon the fliers, and be whole again. Perhaps he would travel north, away from the place where the world-killer struck, into the cooler valleys of the uplands. He knew he needed to move, to migrate. Always in the past he had been the overlord of this valley, its sure and potent master, but now time had called for a change. He would need to find a new land to conquer, one perhaps still unknown to the rule of an apex predator. He lifted his legs high, and balanced with his massive tail as he plunged through the dust, headed up the gentle slope, away from the deepest drifts. He paused only once, barely slowing down as something stirred in the dust right in front of him. Pure instinct was enough to send his snout flying downward, into the powder, his jaws closing like a blast of lightning on the thing that was foolish enough to wriggle there. Slaver poured down his gums and made mud of the dust as he lifted his head again, snapping it upward on his thick neck, and his teeth crushed the bones and tore the flesh of his meal.
Something was wrong, though. The meat was foul and bitter. Perhaps he’d grabbed up too much of the dust along with the anonymous little snack, perhaps it was one of those tricky little animals that secreted poison from its skin. The tyrant spat out the mouthful of corruption, spat and hawked up mucus to clear his mouth of the terrible taste. He blinked his eyes rapidly as the smell of the toxic meal filled his sinuses and he barked out a coughing cry of disgust.
No matter. He was hungry, still—starving—but there would be other prey. Other animals he could chomp and rend, in the higher altitudes.
The thing he’d tried and failed to eat he left behind him, still twitching though its bones were shattered, its flesh in ribbons. He paid it no attention as he passed on by, having no interest in sticking around to watch it die. He was not at all aware of the way it dragged itself through the dust, crippled limbs convulsing in slow motion, pulling itself along the ground with the dulled claws.
In a minute’s time, he was far enough away he couldn’t even smell its sour reek anymore.
The armored behemoth trumpeted a call of defiance as the tyrant came near, but it had nothing to worry about. The bony plates that covered its skin were proof against his jaws, and he was not so stupid as to risk getting close enough to face its weaponized tail. He sought softer, smaller prey as he always had. Like the tyrant, the behemoth was headed north, up the slope, out of the deep, restless cauldron of the dust. They followed parallel tracks as they sought out their chosen food, one looking for meat, one for anything green. Behind them, but moving fast, the horned nemesis joined their quest. There was only the one way out of the valley, one route to higher ground, and the survivors of the world-killer were racing to get there first.
The stakes might be survival. Predators lived always on the raw knife edge of hunger; herbivores needed to stuff themselves constantly, gorge all day long on plants that offered only a bare trickle of nutrition. If they didn’t get out of the dust-choked land in a hurry, they were all likely to starve.
It was hard going. The tyrant was a speed demon on the flatlands below, on the long stretches of slickrock and grass that ringed the vanished lake, but on these slopes he had to pick his way a step at a time, bracing himself with his tail as he constantly tottered, facing a long backward slide through the dust if he once lost his grip. It took focus, and concentration—and the behemoth just wouldn’t shut up. Its bellows, its mooing, filled the air, a constant distraction.
Hungry as he was the tyrant wondered if maybe, just once, he ought to take his chances with that club of a tail. Until he came over a rise and saw the behemoth beset, and knew its meat was beyond his reach.
Someone had beaten him to it. No—a lot of someones.
The behemoth must be near death, he thought. Its ribs were exposed to the air, long bloody arches over a heap of viscera that had been ripped apart like wet cloth. Its armor plates had been cracked open as if by implacable machines. Blood stained the dust all around it, turning the dust a nasty orange.
And yet—it kept screaming. Its eyes searched the horizon, eyes growing dull and glassy but still, still they moved.
What monster could have done this? The tyrant knew of no predator greater than himself. No virtuoso of violence with the power, the will, to break apart that armor to snack upon the wet calories within. Whoever they were, they were long gone. He worried, briefly, that he might have to face them farther up the trail. He was capable of imagining the future, though only in the most abstract terms.
It was when he saw the dying behemoth that he first felt fear.
He was no stranger to scavenging. No meal too old or ripe that it could be passed up. He stomped over toward the soon-to-be corpse, his jaw flexing in the air, spilling saliva. He darted in for a quick bite of its liver, knowing its tail wouldn’t strike as fast or as quick as it used to. Yet even as he claimed his prize he caught a whiff of that same strange corruption he’d tasted before, the awful inedible stink of the dying lizard. He reared back, red meat spilling unchewed from his mouth.
He reared back—just in time. The behemoth was already in mid-retaliatory strike. Not with its dangerous tail but with its beak-like mouth, which snapped at the air right where the tyrant’s throat had been, a moment before.
Utter nonsense, of course. The behemoth was a plant eater. Its teeth couldn’t tear and rend meat. Yet even as the tyrant stepped slowly backwards, away from the giant herbivore, it snapped again and again at his skin. At his life.
It raised itself up on broken legs, pushed upright by sheer will. Its guts trailed behind it, its ravaged tail dragging.
Its eyes glowed, positively glowed not with reflected sunlight but with an inner, evil illumination. The color of the dust all around them.
Its liver fell to the ground behind it. Its lungs slithered out, dangling on stringy blood vessels that ripped and tore. Its heart plopped onto the dusty soil.
And still it came, lurching for his blood.
The tyrant, utterly incapable of understanding what he saw, ran.
He ran as fast as he could.
He came along a bend in the trail, a place where a lip of rock jutted out over the valley. Short of breath and weak with hunger, he slowed and came to a panting stop, and simply let his chest heave for a moment, sucking in oxygen that was tainted with the blowing drifts of dust, even this high up. He breathed, and let his pulse slow, and tried to regain his composure. And then he looked down on the valley, on what had been his empire. And he saw.
He saw what had brought the behemoth low. He saw what had come of the little meat animals that burrowed through the dust. He saw they had gone to war.
Final, apocalyptic war. A war of all against all.
The dust boiled with impossible combat. Animals that once had known their place in the web of life now driven mad by insatiable hunger. Plant-eaters ganging up on predators, tearing them to gobbets of meat, then turning on each other. Long, loping herd beasts turned killers, their blunt teeth chewing and chewing on tough skin. He saw legs torn off, he saw skulls cracked, little ones feasting on the brains of giants, giants that had never tasted flesh now lifting maws caked with gore. And their eyes—
Their eyes all burned. That same dull fire blazed in their eyes, in every eye.
The tyrant could not imagine hell, or the end of all things. Yet in the heart of every emperor and king lurks the same nightmare, the possibility of revolution. That moment when the rightful rulers are tossed from their thrones by the ravening mob. The tyrant could understand that wrongness, that irruption of propriety, and he knew that impossible day had
come.
The little ones, the meek, the helpless. They were devouring their former masters, eating forbidden meat with reckless abandon. They were torn apart themselves, ripped to pieces. And yet the pieces kept moving. Kept returning to the melee, as long as they had jaws to snap, claws to tear.
This was a revolution not just against the proper order, but against the greatest monarch of them all, the satrap that would one day come even for the tyrant himself. This was a revolt against death itself.
And the little ones were already climbing the slope. Coming for the tyrant. Coming for anything that still lived. It looked like the world-killer, which had surely brought this madness, was going to live up to its name.
The tyrant turned his face upward again, running now not even for survival but simply for fear, for the fear of being torn apart by tiny blunt teeth. He ran, slipping and sliding and losing ground, he ran on pure instinct.
A grumbling roar met him as he ran. A warning shout. He lifted his square head and looked, and saw the nemesis above him on the trail. Standing between him and safety.
They had met in combat before, though never with this ferocity, this level of panic. The struggle of jaws versus horns was an old one and it followed certain rules. There were moves, gambits to be attempted, feints and ripostes hardwired into the tyrant’s brain. He came in quickly from the left, and as the nemesis swung its massive frilled skull that way, the tyrant darted right, trying to get behind the giant’s armored head. Its flanks and belly, those were the weak spots, and if he could just—
The nemesis shrieked in fury and the tyrant did too, as he felt one of those three horns dig a deep trench through his own soft-fleshed chest. Blood ran and the tyrant’s breath came hot and fast. He scrabbled at the enemy with his short forelimbs, his tiny claws that could never gain purchase on the smooth bony frill. He snatched with his teeth at the nemesis’s eyes, trying to make it flinch. The nemesis stood its ground. It stamped its elephantine feet and snorted, defying the tyrant to try again.
The tyrant heard something, a pattering of feet from behind. He risked a glance backwards and saw they had an audience. A thousand, a million burning eyes coming up on their heels, ready to interrupt this duel of the ages, ready to devour them both.
It was now or never.
The nemesis had backed up, a little, readying itself for a charge. Its head was down, horns pointed forward like three lances. It was a lumbering beast, but once it got up to speed it would run at him like a fiery comet, a fast blur of motion and then it would gore him, pin him on its horns and push him back, push him as his little arms beat at its plow-shaped face. It would disembowel him—
If he let it.
The nemesis charged with all the strength in its massive legs, hurtling toward him in a perfectly straight line. The tyrant waited, standing there as if he’d given up, as if he’d accepted this final pass—until the last possible moment. Then he broke left, his feet slapping at the ground. He didn’t quite get out of the way, but instead of goring him those horns knocked him ass-over-head rolling up the path. The tyrant scrabbled to recover his footing. The nemesis started to wheel around, loosing horrible cries. It knew the game, just as the tyrant did. The tyrant was behind it now, ready to strike at its unprotected sides, and it turned as quickly as it could.
But for once—just this once—the tyrant didn’t take the opportunity. Instead he turned tail and ran. Because he knew what was about to happen.
Behind him, even as the nemesis prepared for another charge, the wave of dead-eyed plant-eaters rolled up the trail. It broke over the nemesis, all those dead mouths clamoring for living flesh.
The nemesis’ screams chased the tyrant all the way to the top of the world.
The air was better up there. Cleaner. As the tyrant’s lungs surged, they no longer sucked in great snootfuls of dust. He could see what lay ahead of him, and it was good. A long, easy slope leading down into a new world, a hidden world of canyons that wound between the mountain peaks. He saw nothing moving down there, neither living nor dead.
He could hide in those canyons. He could nurse his wounds down there and consider his options.
He was going to make it.
He wanted to rest. He needed to eat. Those things didn’t matter. He was going to head down into those shadowy canyons and he was going to live. He would survive. A hundred million years of evolution had made him the master of this world. One rock from space couldn’t end that winning streak. He, perhaps alone, would remain, would outlast the end times.
And it was good. So very, very good to be alive.
His lips peeled back in his trademark evil grin as he headed down the slope. So much easier to climb down than up. He settled into a relaxed, energy-conserving lope, and the fear began to subside. The things behind him could have the valley, the dead things. The not-dead things, they could consume one another all day if they wanted. He had made it out, passed beyond the vale of death. He would find something to eat, and then he would think about how to reconsolidate. How to regain his crown, as the undisputed master of the food chain. He would—
There was no sound, but something moved. He froze and looked around. And saw it had been a shadow. A dark spot flashing across the rocky ground, there and then gone.
It came again. He twitched his head back and forth, looking for what made that shadow. What was up there with him, up in the heights.
Then he heard a piercing cry, a warbling ululation. And he looked up.
He’d forgotten about the fliers.
One wheeled above him, now, its streamlined head cutting through the wind. Its wings were ragged, torn. Its chest had been torn open and its ribs exposed. It was missing one of its feet.
Its eyes burned with unearthly fire.
It cried again, a shrieking that cut through the tyrant’s brain like a drill.
And then it dove to attack.
Tiny claws scrabbled at a bit of loose soil, sending grains of dirt rolling back, down the long ramp of the burrow. A little face, ringed with fur, pressed out into the light, and a pink nose twitched at the air. Bright eyes looked out on a world still clogged with dust from the stars, but there was less of it then there had been before. It was blowing away, blowing down toward the sea.
The furry creature climbed a little further out of its burrow, one foot still underground, ready to dart back into the safety of darkness at the slightest provocation. The mammals of this time were timid things. They needed to be.
The shrew-like animal saw nothing moving. It crept a little further into the world. It saw a wall of fallen flesh before it. A heap of meat as big as a hill. The mammal was an omnivore, and not picky about eating dead things. It took a few tentative steps toward that massive windfall of calories. It twitched its nose at the smell.
The tyrant’s eye opened like a portal into a burning abyss. Its head started to lift from the ground. Much of its face had been chewed away, but that only revealed more of its massive, toothy grin.
The mammal bolted back into its tunnel, scrabbling down the slope of loose dirt, and it didn’t stop until it was curled in a ball with its mate and its children. Some of them looked up with curious eyes. They saw what had happened in their father’s aspect, his quick, spasmodic breaths.
It wasn’t safe out there.
Not yet.
Shh, their mother whispered, in that language every mother shares with her children. Calm yourselves. It’ll be a while longer, yes. But just a little while longer.
Soon, she told them,
Soon.
THE WASHINGTONIANS
BENTLEY LITTLE
I will Skin your Children and Eat Them.
Upon Finishing, I will Fashion Utensils of Their Bones.
“It’s authentic,” Davis admitted. “It was written by George Washington.” He flipped off the light and, with gloved fingers, removed the parchment manuscript from underneath the magnifier. He shook his head. “Where did you get this? I’ve never come across anything like it in a
ll my years in the business.”
Mike shook his head. “I told you. It was in a trunk of my great- grandmother’s stuff that we found hidden in her barn.”
“May I ask what you intend to do with it?”
“Well, if it was authentic, we were thinking we’d donate it to the Smithsonian or something. Or sell it to the Smithsonian, if we could. What’s the appraisal value of something like this?”
Davis spread his hands in an expansive gesture. “It’s invaluable.”
“A ballpark figure.”
He leaned forward, across the counter. “I’m not sure you realize what you have here, Mr. Franks. With this one sheet of paper, you can entirely rewrite the history of our country.” He paused, letting his words sink in. “History is myth, Mr. Franks. It’s not just a collection of names and dates and facts. It’s a belief system that ultimately tells more about the people buying into it than it does about the historical participants. What do we retain from our school lessons about George Washington? About Abraham Lincoln? Impressions. Washington was the father of our country. Lincoln freed the slaves. We are who we are as a nation because of what we believe they were. This letter will shatter that belief system and will forever change the image we have of Washington and perhaps all our Founding Fathers. That’s a huge responsibility, and I think you should think about it.”
“Think about it?”
“Decide if you want to make this knowledge known.”
Mike stared at him. “Cover it up? Why? If it’s true, then people should know.”
“People don’t want truth. They want image.”
“Yeah, right. How much do I owe you?”
“The appraisal fee is fifty dollars.” Davis started to write out a receipt, then paused, looked up. “I know a collector,” he said. “He’s had feelers out for something of this nature for a very long time. Would you mind if I gave him a ring? He’s very discreet, very powerful, and, I have reason to believe, very generous.”
“No thanks.”
Fantastic Tales of Terror Page 29