The Human Zoo

by Kolin Wood

  CHAPTER SIX

  Osterley House felt eerie, cavernous, and quiet. An old and musty smell, like washing which had been abandoned in the machine overnight and then left to air dry in a room for ten years, permeated the fabric of the antique building. Stale and yet fresh in its uniqueness, it soared compared to the stench of rot that clung the rest of the world.

  They moved together, room to room, with only two torches providing the light; each torch barely powerful enough to permeate the darkness through to the ornate cornices of the high Victorian ceilings. The General studied the boys as they walked, mouths agape, understanding each and every thought running through their socially-bounded heads. The opulence, the size, everything that they could see from the ornate rugs to the dust-covered, crystal chandeliers, appeared alien to them, the stuff of television and fantasy.

  How is everything so in place, so tidy? he thought to himself as he walked. The house, aside from the dust which congealed its insides, looked untouched in its magnificence. The orderliness of its contents left an eerie feeling in the pit of his stomach. The house was too big to be so quiet; it left the space empty and dead, almost akin to the feeling of stepping into a morgue.

  Mitchel held the second torch. Its pale light offered a thin, fragile beam on the far wall along which he moved slowly, illuminating paintings and shelves of antique ornaments. It was too weak to pick out the hooded figure crouched by the corner of the large antique cabinet, or the shiny barrel of the gun that was aimed in their direction.

  A flash of light lit up the darkness, followed by a loud bang that left them all blinded and deafened in its wake. Something small and hard whooshed past the General’s head, and he brought his hands up to cover his face. A shadow to his right moved as a body fell. Another bang and a shadow to his left was thrown back violently against a wall. By the time it had sunk in that they were under attack, at least three of them had fallen.

  The next few seconds were chaos as the gloom was set alight by gunshots. Finally shocked into action, the General turned and dived for the cover of a wall behind. A scream pierced the air above the bangs, then more than one; their chorus filling the cavernous room like an opera of pain. Plaster showered down and windows behind him popped and cracked against their steel shutters, peppering the darkness with pinholes of moonlight. With one final loud assault, the shooting ended, leaving his ears ringing painfully from the rape on his senses.

  Hunkered down against the wall, the General stayed low. Pungent gun-smoke filled his lungs, bringing with it the urge to cough, but he managed to suppress it. They were at a severe disadvantage; whoever was attacking them had easily lessened their numbers considerably. Two or three of his boys had definitely died in the ambush, and there was the strong possibility that more had been badly hurt; judging by the screams. They needed to move, and quickly, before he lost any more control of their already dire situation.

  “General?” a hoarse whisper sounded somewhere off to his right. “D’s dead. Who the fuck is shooting at us?!” It was Mitchel. He sounded animated and clearly excited about the chance to spill more blood.

  Another closely aimed gunshot splintered a picture on a fireplace mantelpiece to the General’s right. If he didn't do something quick then they were all going to die here tonight. From the relative safety of where he hid, he could see feet attached to a body lying splayed out on the floor. Think!

  “TAKE ONE MORE STEP AND WE’LL DROP YOU ALL WHERE YOU STAND!” A voice he didn’t recognise, deep and gruff with a thick London twang, commanded them from out of the darkness behind the cloud of smoke.

  With angry frustration, the General slammed his hand down on the floor. They had to reform their ranks—it was the only way. At least fighting side by side they could cover a few angles. The wall behind him felt cold and slightly damp under his fingers. He counted down in his head, gripped his gun tight, and stepped out into the open.

  Something hard and cold immediately pushed into the dent on the back of his head. He froze. Somebody had crept up on him, without him knowing, and that meant that this shit storm was about to get much worse. Momentarily, the General thought about spinning and taking his chances. Given the right opportunity, he could perhaps put one in their gullet before they had a chance to pull the trigger. Maybe the surprise of the attack would be enough. But, a latent finger frozen in intent—maybe he would be too slow and result in a piece of metal tearing through his brain and opening a hole in his forehead. The odds were not good enough.

  Defeated, he raised his hands, and stepped unprompted out farther into the open expanse of the room. Over to the far side, barely visible through the smoke, he saw the shadow of a person crouching with a rifle pulled up tight to their shoulder; the black barrel trained right between his eyes.

  “I said… one… more… step,” the voice from behind him said. Unshaven hairs tickled his earlobe. He recognised it as the same deep, gruff voice from before. The breath smelled stale, a mix of meat and peppermint.

  The General didn’t move. On the ground before him lay Terry, one of the original twelve. A large, dark pool of black blood lay around his body, giving the appearance that it was floating over some deep, dark hole. Next to him was D, whose dark skin made his vacant eyes seem to glow—a stark contrast in the darkness.

  They had been hit hard. Whoever these people were, they could shoot; even in the dark. The General suspected they may have even possessed military training.

  “WE WILL NOT ASK AGAIN! WE WANT YOUR GUNS AND WEAPONS… ALL OF THEM… NOW!” The higher-pitched voice from behind the rifle on the other side of the room commanded.

  “Tell them no sudden movements or I’ll open up your head… Don’t test me, you big ugly son of a bitch!” the man behind him spoke again, barely loud enough to hear. He pushed on the gun, forcing the barrel harder into the back of the General’s skull and driving his chin onto his chest.

  From this awkward position, the General nodded, breathing as steadily as he could manage, his eye throbbing painfully as blood rushed to it. “Do it!” he conceded finally, “Right now, boys… this is over!”

  Silence followed as options were weighed.

  Unseen relief washed through him as Mitchel’s machete came sliding across the smooth wooden floor, followed by a bat, a hunting knife, and a length of rusted pipe. The speed at which the surrender of the weapons came surprised him. Had he been a betting man, he would have guaranteed that his number one psycho would have sacrificed his life in favour of a bloody showdown to the death. He stood corrected.

  “OUT HERE… NOW! ANY SMARTNESS AND I KILL HIM WHERE HE STANDS,” the higher voice in the shadows came again.

  The General turned a fraction to his left, slowing as the pressure on his head increased. “Easy… easy…” he said, trying to show that he had no intention of a violent response. “We're listening to you, okay? We didn’t know anybody lived here.”

  The pressure remained.

  From behind him there came a shrill whistle. One by one, other shadows came forwards; their faces, covered with balaclavas, were barely visible in the dark. A torch lay discarded on the floor, sending an empty beam into a far wall. Even in the half-light, the General could see the skinny frame of one and the faint swell of breasts belonging to another.

  The group stopped a couple of metres away, forming a practiced semi-circle with gun barrels pointed at each of their prisoner’s heads. Again it was the voice behind who spoke.

  “You and only you. What are you doing here?”

  The General said nothing, watching as the skinny man’s eyes darted up to the barely disguised growth on his forehead before betraying a flicker of uncertainty. He smiled.

  Annoyed at the disrespect, the thin man stepped forward and swung with his rifle. There was a loud cracking sound, and the growth on the General’s face split open. A pain like nothing he had ever felt, deep, raw and piercing, engulfed his skull. Thick, warm blood spilled down the side of his face and splattered in a steady stream onto the dusty floor.


  The General bellowed and raised his hands to protect himself. Blood seeped into the corners of his mouth and stained his teeth. A warm fuzziness of black flooded through his veins, encompassing his entire body. He was not even aware that he was falling.

  From a detached consciousness, somewhere far away, he heard a voice in slow motion say, “Take them upstairs’.

  ***

  I am stuck in a hole. I am head first in a dark rabbit hole and I am trying to inch forward, pushing with my feet. I cannot go back, only forwards. My arms are stuck down by my sides, so I cannot use them. Blood rushes to my head as I wiggle and push, harder and harder, heading downhill, always downhill. The black in front of my face is thick, heavy in some strange way, and I am hot, unbearably hot, sweating, and itchy. The lower I go, the more claustrophobic it gets. I stop pushing. The realisation is that I am stuck sinking into the pit of my stomach and making me feel panic, a deep, real panic, primal and all-encompassing. I shout loudly, but the noise is tight, enclosed around my ears and face like a wet, hot and suffocating mask. The sound is not penetrating anywhere further than where I am. I try and breath but the sides of the hole are constricting me, tight around my waist and I realise that the air is running out. I try to slow down, to make the breaths shallow, maybe make the air last longer but the fear is making me hyperventilate. I look up and freeze. A pair of dipped red eyes are looking at me from farther down the dark hole. A pair of unblinking, evil eyes are staring straight at me. The devil's eyes. I shake my head, praying for the visions to be gone. When I open them again, the eyes are right in front of me and I can smell a foul odour of something—something in front of my face—breathing on me. I smell meat and the coppery scent of fresh blood. I close my eyes and that’s when I feel it, sharp on my forehead. I remember the cancer, the growth on my face, and the thing is biting at it, chewing the skin, opening the wound up and feasting on its soft centre, like a lizard, cracking and eating a warm egg, savouring the protein filled tissue…

  ***

  The General woke with a grunt. Sweat poured from his head and it stung to open his eyes. The floor boards he was lying on were hard and cold. His arms and legs, which had been pulled tightly behind his back and hog tied, were numb. The weight of his head had pushed down on the growth above his eye, mashing it into the floor.

  As awareness resurfaced, the pain hit, striking with furious intensity. He tried to lift his forehead from the floor. The wound opened afresh, and the skin tore as it pulled free of its sticky, bloody bond. He gritted his teeth hard, stemming the cry which threatened to escape him. There, in the background of his thoughts, the feeling of the demon rat moved up the tunnel and gnawed wantonly at his face.

  Cracking and eating a warm egg…

  He lay still, slowing his breathing; it was pointless to struggle.

  How could I have been so stupid? After all this, everything will have been for nothing.

  Guilt lay heavy on his chest as he thought of all the abhorrent things he had allowed to occur under his instruction; of all the people that had died so that he could realise his vision of a strong, new society. Strong… New… Society… He’d been a fool to think he could lead such a movement.

  After what seemed a short time, the door opened. He heard footsteps draw closer, stopping directly beside him. A sharp beam shined down and focused on his partially opened eye, painfully blinding him.

  “It didn’t have to be like this friend,” the person above him said.

  The General bared his teeth like an angry, wild dog, partially turning his face towards the beam. The veins in his neck popped and his nose curled with hate. He heard a laugh.

  “Don’t say much do ya, fella? That’s okay… turns out you all have nothing we need. Don’t you worry; it will all be over soon.”

  The light moved off his face, allowing the General to open his one good eye. Dots of red and white danced on the pallet of his vision. The torch beam moved around the room. A slim built lad with skinny legs stood over him. He carried a rifle which he allowed to hang down, non-threateningly by his side.

  From the doorway, the voice of a young girl, sounded. “Is he alive, Preston?”

  The second figure, also carrying a gun, slid next to the boy and joined him in gloating. The light from the torch once again shone directly into his eyes, causing him to turn away.

  “Oh, he’s alive, sis. Get a look at this ugly son of a bitch.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Harold Elm awoke suddenly, his eyes not adjusted and still watery from sleep. A bright strike of lightening lit up the room through the large infirmary window, which had been only partially covered with a drab and dirty blind. He sat up slowly. The sweat on his head caused his thin hair to stick to his skull, and he shivered as droplets ran down his neck, soaking a wet patch on the front of his t-shirt. A cool draft danced across his face as the heavy rain beat a steady, hypnotic drum beat on the smeared glass. A loud, deep rumble started off to his right, miles away in the distance, as more lightning cracked, tearing up the sky. He yawned and dropped his skinny legs over the edge of the rigid, damp bed. His thighs, no thicker than a standard man’s forearms, poked out like dirty toothpicks from his tight and heavily stained, y-fronted pants.

  Harold sat like that for a while, staring at the floor, embracing the chill and the quiet. He enjoyed early morning in the prison, awake, usually all but alone. It left him free to wander the halls, to watch, to understand. Peace had become a rare commodity, one not easily sold to him by his demons, and there were more than a few of those that taunted him. But it was when he slept that the voices really began, screaming his name again and again, tormenting and twisting in and out of his dreams.

  Harold… Harold… HAROLD! Life isth on the inssthiiide, Harold…

  He stood, reaching over to the table for his glasses. They were the same pair that he had worn for the past six years; the type with no frames, just the small, metal arch that sat crooked on the bridge of the nose. Dull, golden arms affixed them to his slightly over-sized ears. He set them in their usual wonky fashion upon his face and the tile edges on the linoleum in front of him came more clearly into view. The glasses were a constant source of anxiety; should he lose them, the impaired position that it would put him in did not bear thinking about.

  The floor was cold, and he quickly slid into the plimsolls that he always kept at the foot of the bed, the well-worn backs offering no resistance to the thrust of his grubby feet. His breaths came in short, sharp bursts and hung before him as the cold air of the draughty room crept into his lungs, freezing and clawing at his insides.

  He listened again. Nothing—no movement, no sound, no interruptions. Time to get back to work.

  In the middle of the room sat a gurney. It was an old-fashioned, heavy looking type which had been laid flat and was half-covered in shadow. Forgetting his trousers, Harold pulled on his stained, white doctor’s overcoat and made his way towards the trolley, whistling and sliding his feet lazily in the un-tied shoes. As he neared, one foot stuck slightly in a sticky patch by one of the rear wheels and he pulled it free without bothering to look down.

  In front of him, three restraining straps were in place, each as thick as a wrist; clasps, similar in design to those found on airplane seats, formed a uniformed line down the front. Harold ran a finger along the top strap, the material cold and coarse to the touch.

  Wake up, he thought, bending down until his nose was but an inch from the body on the table. Naked skin flashed pale with each crack of lightening outside.

  He could smell the blood.

  He closed his eyes and inhaled deep, enjoying the sharp tang of it as the faint metallic aftertaste tickled at the back of his mouth. His spectacles slipped and he pushed them back up his nose, before reluctantly pulling his face away.

  Behind him, a cheap plastic torch sat just within reach on the metal shelf. He picked it up and clicked it on. A dim beam sputtered from one end, and Harold shook it aggressively in a vain attempt to incre
ase its output. The heavy batteries slammed up and down inside the dense plastic handle, amplifying the sound as it bounced freely off the sparse white walls. But the act was futile; the beam stayed the same. Harold shrugged, turning it on the gurney.

  Two pale feet stuck awkwardly out from underneath the sheet that covered the body. They were grey and looked a bit like plasticine, lifeless, almost as if they belonged to an accident victim in a hospital morgue. But this was no morgue; the man on the gurney was alive. At least, Harold hoped he still was.

  With a strong grip on the bottom of the sheet, Harold yanked it sharply upwards, exposing a wound cut straight through the middle of the man’s stomach. The sutures were roughly tied and disproportionate in size, but the incision was clean with no visible sign of infection. Small speckles of dried blood were dotted bountifully around, much like an aerial photograph of people waiting for a train. The man’s face however, showed no signs of life.

  Wake up.

  The wound had stopped bleeding and yet the blood was still wet, slowly turning tacky in the cold, damp air of the night. The flesh around it was black, flecked with a deep purple and the faintest hint of yellow at the edges.

  The man had passed out about a minute into the procedure; probably due to shock, he had guessed. The anaesthetic had only been a local; three small jabs from one hypodermic syringe, evenly placed in a line down the stomach. He doubted whether the effect had been much; perhaps dulling the initial slice through the first few layers of skin, but nothing more. He wished that he had been able to procure something stronger, not to aid in the pain control of his subject, but to help stop the man from thrashing around quite as much as he had. The kicking and bucking had caused unsteadiness in his arm, and the result had been a jagged incision. It annoyed him. Harold liked to try and make his cuts as straight as possible. He liked everything as straight as possible. Still, the man had survived the operation. It was the biggest thing he had yet attempted, so in the grand scheme of things, he guessed that that was something.