The Preserve

by Patrick Lestewka

  “Then there’s a zero-percent chance you’ll get out of this alive,” Grosevoir said evenly. “And, much worse, you run the risk of meeting death without the foggiest idea of what this place is, the creatures who inhabit it, and how you might—” a sharkish smile, “—survive.”

  Fingers of light crawled over the eastern horizon, long dim corridors offering no heat whatsoever. What the light did was brighten the campsite, etching the bodies of the twice-dead strewn across the uneven ground. The fact they were now officially dead had somehow accelerated the decay process: the bodies rotted before the men’s eyes, skin and bones and even teeth melting into puddles of putrescence with the rapidity of Popsicles on a summer sidewalk. The frigid temperatures did nothing to deaden the smell of rot, which coldcocked them like a closed fist.

  Edwards moaned. Oddy glanced at Grosevoir, unable to ignore the fact he’d appeared out of nowhere (thinking, He’s taken a page from Answer’s book), and said, “Edwards—you hired him?”

  “Yes.” Grosevoir perched himself on a rock. “Edwards and many others like him, for several years now.” He regarded the rotting zombies as if they’d been amusing, if hideous, pets who’d unexpectedly kicked the bucket.

  “What kind of sick game are you playing?” Crosshairs wanted to know. “Is it true, what Edwards said—no prison?”

  Grosevoir cocked his head to one side. “None of you are fools. Do I have to answer?”

  “What are we doing here, then?” Tripwire said. “We do something to you?”

  “Not exactly,” Grosevoir said, after a moment. “Your role is that of, how should I put it…stimulant.”

  “What are you talking about?” Oddy said.

  Grosevoir flicked a cocklebur off his jacket lapel and said, “You might think keeping captive creatures alive is an easy task. Lock them up, feed them regularly, clean their cages of piss and shit and they should live long and healthy lives, yes? Not so. Captive animals rarely live as long as their wild brethren, despite a steady diet and absence of natural predators. Why? The reason is simple: they die of loneliness, or apathy, or sheer boredom.

  “You see, life in captivity is a most unnatural state of being. No matter how diligently you imitate their natural environment, no matter if you regulate the temperature of their pens to a fraction of a degree, no matter if you feed them exactly what they’d eat in the wild, all captive creatures eventually realize the elemental truth of their situation: their existence is delineated by four square walls, their lives subject to the whims of another. Nobody, beast or man, wants to live that way. Many choose death as an alternative.”

  Grosevoir produced a cigarillo from his pocket and lit it with a wooden matchstick. He scanned the men’s faces for signs of dawning awareness. “So how does a zookeeper ensure his charges choose life over death?” he continued. “In some cases, finding a compatible mate does the trick. Other times, human interaction in the form of grooming, hand-feeding, and so on. But, most often, exercises that engage the body, mind, and soul are most effective. The most elementary methods often prove most effective. Instead of scattering fruits and nuts, which requires an animal do nothing more than collect, a keeper might hide them in sealed boxes, forcing the animal to employ its cognitive and instinctive skills—make it sing for its supper, as it were. Other methods can be used—freezing herring in ice-blocks for polar bears, or constructing challenging maze-systems for rodents. The same principal applies in prisons. Inmates aren’t stamping license plates to make money for themselves or the state. It is simply a means of keeping them occupied, and somewhat pacific. Idle hands seek the devil’s work, hmm?”

  Grosevoir tapped ash onto the snow. A picture was developing in the back of Oddy’s mind, becoming clearer with every word Grosevoir spoke. Its likeness was that of a Bosch or Dali painting: ludicrous, unbelievable, horrific.

  “So you know a lot about animal care,” Zippo said. “Open a fucking pet store.”

  “I have, of a sort.”

  “What does any of this have to do with us?” Tripwire asked.

  “Don’t you see?” Grosevoir replied. “You are the fruit slice in the box. You are the herring encased in ice. You are…” a slowly-dawning grin, “…the mice in the maze.”

  The words, the manner in which they had been spoken, exploded at the base of Crosshairs’s spine, shooting shards of dread off in every direction. “You’re not making any sense…”

  “Am I not? Or is it that you refuse understanding? Look at the ground. What are those things? Don’t answer with your minds, which have been conditioned to reject such realities, but with what your senses show you.”

  “They’re zombies,” Answer said.

  Grosevoir chuckled. “They are that exactly. The walking undead. That Romero fellow got it right.”

  “H-h-how,” Tripwire stammered, “did they get here?”

  “I collected them. Four in Haiti, two in Africa, one in an old-folks home in Peterborough, seven in a run-down trailer park in Arkansas. As you can imagine, transportation was a problem: the undead do not take kindly to moving, and many parts were lost along the way. Their numbers were growing steadily until this little fracas.” Grosevoir clapped his hands together briskly. “No matter! Darwinism, survival of the fittest, and all that…ahem…rot.”

  Edwards groaned. His face had paled several shades.

  “Allow me to detail the situation,” Grosevoir continued. “The territory surrounding Great Bear Lake is a preserve. A preserve, as you all know, is a safe haven where endangered species are allowed to exist free from the distresses—poachers, hostile predators, and so on—responsible for dwindling their numbers. But this is not a preserve for the Snowy Egret, or the Duck-billed Platypus, or the Arctic Fox. It is a preserve for monsters.

  “I only use the term monster because it is the term your society has pinned on creatures of myth and superstition. They are far from monstrous to me. In addition to the undead, other species include lycanthropes, or werewolves in the popular vernacular, and wampyrii. There are others, both large and small, you may also encounter.”

  The setup struck Oddy as queer. Vampires were creatures of gothic mystery who dressed in crushed velvet robes and inhabited crumbling New Orleans manors. He couldn’t envision one of them running around in the woods, sucking blood out of squirrels and field mice—it was undignified. “Why would they stay here?” he asked. “Must be places they’d rather be.”

  “Of course,” Grosevoir agreed. “But the fact of the matter is they’re dying out. Otherwise all of this would be unnecessary.”

  “Why are they dying?”

  Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but for a moment Grosevoir looked wistful. “I’d like to tell you it has something to do with lack of faith, that modern society’s cynicism and disbelief is slowly killing the creatures that once terrified it. The truth is much more colorless: like the dinosaurs and Dodo bird before them, they are unable to adapt. Their world changes, they do not. They are old and stupid, or stubborn.”

  “I don’t get it,” Zippo said. “These things are supposed to be smarter, stronger, quicker than us. How is it possible they’re gonna go extinct?”

  “Some, like the undead, lack the awareness to keep themselves from extinction. Others, like the wampyrii, have become arrogant, which has led to carelessness, which in turn has led to death at the hands of those thought too weak or ignorant to pose a threat. Still others, like the werewolves, have diluted their pure bloodlines through mongrel mating habits. Predator has become prey. Or, if not prey, then certainly in need of protection.”

  “But how do you keep them here?” Tripwire said. “I don’t see any cages, and how could you cage a vampire, anyway? Why don’t they leave?”

  “They could,” Grosevoir admitted. “I’ve set up perimeters, employing certain spiritual totems to discourage escape. But the creatures living here are quite powerful and could leave at any time. Most stay because they realize I am trying to help them.” Grosevoir tipped a knowing wink.
“Plus, they enjoy the sport I provide.”

  The picture was becoming painfully clear. Oddy shut his eyes against the developing image. Some masochistic impulse prompted him to ask, “Sport?”

  Grosevoir smiled in the way you might smile at a particularly doltish child. “Mr. Grant, I think you and your men know the score by now. Emperor Nero had it right: all the masses want is bread and circuses. Dole them crusts and treat them to weekly spectacles of blood and death and they’ll forget all their earthly cares. So here it is, in stark black and white: the denizens of this preserve are the masses. Or the lions. This,” he swept his hand in a wide arc, “is the circus. And you are the bread. Or the Christians. Whichever you’d prefer.”

  ««—»»

  Anton Grosevoir (though this was not the creature’s true name, which was ancient, and guttural, and unpronounceable to the human tongue) had a vision. That vision was to repopulate the globe with the creatures of night and darkness whose numbers had dipped alarmingly over the past centuries. To this end he’d scoured the earth, seeking out those pockets and cubbyholes where such creatures lived, fed, and bred.

  Orlock, the once-great vampire, was found dining on mice and bats in a crumbling monastery in Ipswich. The purest strain of werewolves were found in the Congo, preying on water buffalo populating the banks of the Ubangi river. Grosevoir uprooted a quarrelsome family of trolls living under a bridge in Strasbourg and a pair of Yetis wintering in the Altai mountains of outer Mongolia. He captured a clan of mentally-deficient djinn swirling around an office water cooler in Topeka, Kansas and a posse of goblins picking off freakshow performers in Phucket, Thailand. He secured many more monsters, most of whom defied logical description, wherever his dead-on instincts impelled him to search.

  He told them his plan for a preserve. Most came willingly, acting out of self-interest or self-preservation. Those who refused were taken by force, subdued with the ease of an etymologist bottling a moth in a killing jar. Grosevoir transported them to his preserve and set them free.

  Life in the menagerie was not always tranquil. Most of its inhabitants were loners or pack animals, and did not take kindly to sharing dominion. Boundaries were erected and quickly trespassed upon. Inter-species rivalries were common, the ensuing battles bloody. Inter-species breeding also flourished, enemies making strange but inviting bedfellows. This gave rise to some startling, and startlingly hideous, hybrids. Most of these did not live very long, which was a blessing.

  It hadn’t taken long for the preserve inhabitants to slaughter the local wildlife; maintaining ecological diversity was not a pressing issue with such creatures. They’d also murdered anyone hapless enough to reside within the preserve’s boundaries. Every so often they were gifted with a trapper or wayward hunting party, but such occasions were few and sporadic.

  Disharmony gripped the preserve. Infighting broke out among the inmates, threatening to scuttle Grosevoir’s experiment before it had truly commenced. To quell the disunion, Grosevoir promised to supply a steady diet of “meat.”

  At first he’d chosen bums, welfare cases, and others down on their luck from the surrounding shanty towns, plying them with alcohol or the promise of a few dollars. Most of them came willingly, perhaps even happily, delighted to have their regretful lives wrapped up in such novel fashion. This had sufficed for a time, until the inhabitants started complaining about “inferior quality,” “anemic blood,” and a “gamey taste.” The most common complaint was that the victims lacked vigor; it’s like they want to die, one vampire grumbled.

  Grosevoir’s searches intensified. He sought out bar-room toughs, washed-up athletes, and men whose rampant insanity made for amusing sport. Again, the upswing in quality satisfied for a time before the inevitable complaints swelled: the victims were too few, too disorganized, too easy to pick off. Boredom settled over the preserve. Infighting picked up.

  Fine, Grosevoir said to himself, petulantly. They want dangerous thrills, then that’s what they shall have. The very next day he placed an advert in the Toronto Star:

  HUNTERS NEEDED! SILVER FOX RANCH OVERRUN WITH GRIZZLIES. OWNER HAS LOST 300 FOXES. NEEDED: EXPERIENCED HUNTERS TO TRACK AND KILL MARAUDING BEARS. $2000 PER HEAD. TRANSPORT PROVIDED. BRING OWN WEAPON(S).

  The men responding to the ad were the type Grosevoir had anticipated: lumberjack-vested and duck-booted, hairy and grizzled, not a full set of teeth among them. Those who had wives, families, people who would miss them were dismissed as unfit. Grosevoir settled on ten single men, adequate physical specimens with backwoods experience.

  They’d performed rather well. The last of them survived for five days, until, starving and delirious, he’d stumbled into a cave of exultant goblins. The men even managed to kill a few werewolves (contrary to superstitious belief, almost all “monsters” can be killed by conventional means; bullets—enough of them in the proper locations—are lethal).

  Grosevoir’s efforts were met with an approval almost tidal in scope. Yes, yes, came the cries. More of the same! He set about gathering ever more innovative and challenging stimuli.

  On a trip to Iraq—Grosevoir spent a lot of time in Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, and other war-ravaged nations—he’d convinced a terrorist cell to journey to northern Canada under the pretense of locating a cache of nuclear warheads Uncle Sam had stashed there. They made exhilarating sport, with their guerilla tactics and ability to hide underground for days at a time, although their flesh possessed a pungent and unsavory flavor.

  On another occasion, he’d been fortuitously on-hand at a prison-break in Magadan, USSR, spiriting away twenty of Mother Russia’s most ruthless criminals. The men were unarmed and dressed in only prison coveralls, so he’d provided weapons and warm clothes. Lambs to the slaughter, yes, but well-armed lambs. He took a different tack with these men.

  “This place is full of monsters,” he informed the men in their native tongue. “If you can make it around the lake, I will transport you to a non-extradition location where you can live the rest of your life free from prosecution.”

  “Monsters,” a prisoner scoffed. “You are as crazy as you are ugly, little man.”

  While the prisoners laughed, Orlock, an old and cunning vampire, swooped down from the trees, his form that of a giant bat. He plucked the offending prisoner off the ground with the ease of an owl plucking a field mouse and carried him, screaming, over the treetops.

  Nobody laughed much after that.

  That group had done exceedingly well. Not only did they kill three werewolves, a handful of zombies, and a careless vampire, two men actually made it around the lake alive. True to his word, Grosevoir transported them to a non-extradition location: an ice floe one-hundred miles off the coast of Barrow, Alaska. They froze to death in a matter of hours.

  Since that time many more men had been brought to the barren and dangerous terrain surrounding Great Bear Lake. Very few ran the gauntlet alive. Those who did were rewarded with further suffering and, ultimately, death. The creature masquerading as a man is the great deceiver, spinning lies with the effortless grace of a spider spinning its thread.

  Now it has trapped its greatest prize yet; men it knows, men it has fought, men with whom it has a score to settle.

  — | — | —

  Northwest Territories

  December 9th, 1987. 2:02 a.m.

  A rough-edged wind blew through the clearing, carrying the threat of snow. The men shivered. Grosevoir did not. He said, “I extend to you the same offer I’ve extended to those who’ve walked this path before you: complete the circuit around Great Bear Lake. Run from the creatures you encounter, or stand and fight. Any survivors receive full payment, plus the evenly-divided share of any who’ve died. In other words, if only one man survives, that man will walk away five million dollars richer.”

  Grosevoir delved into his pocket. When his hand reappeared, his palm glittered with shiny cylinders, which he scattered over the ground like bread-crusts to pigeons. “Silver bullets. Not necessary to kill lyca
nthropes, but rather effective. Five rounds, five different calibers, one for each of you.” He reached into his other pocket and produced a vial of clear liquid, smiling in the manner of one granting a passel of fools an undeserved favor. “Holy water. Useful against most any supernatural minions. Use judiciously.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Oddy asked. “If this is a preserve, why are you giving us the means to kill your precious specimens? Like setting hunters loose in a zoo to shoot at caged animals.”

  Grosevoir chuckled. “It’s not like that at all. These creatures are not caged, and they are a thousand leagues removed from harmless. These,” gesturing to the silver bullets and holy water, “are an attempt, however feeble, to level the playing field. And remember: the chief aim of any preserve is rehabilitation. These creatures have grown weak, their survival instincts atrophied. When it comes time for their release, they must be strong, and cunning, and able to rule as they once did. Only the strongest deserve to survive. So think of your role as that of thresher, separating the wheat from the chaff.”

  “I don’t buy your deal,” Tripwire said. “Suppose we do make it out alive—you’re just going to drop us where you found us with a bagful of cash? What’s to stop us going to the cops, the fuckin’ US military, telling them about the little rehab center you’re running up here?”

  “Get your head out of your ass,” Zippo snapped. “Think you’re going to waltz into the fuckin’ Pentagon, ranting about vampires and werewolves and walking corpses? They’ll have the men with butterfly nets on your ass before you can whistle Dixie.”

  “That’s true,” Grosevoir said. “Besides, anyone fortunate enough to survive has been happy to return to their boring little homes, their boring little lives, scarred but richer for their trauma.”