Cryptozoica

by Mark Ellis

  “Jah-Kuh.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The gasping, liquid voice caused a fist of fear to knot in Kavanaugh’s gut. The creature’s pronunciation was slurred due to the structure of its mouth, but he understood it called him by name. In the depths of its eyes swirled the light of intelligence.

  Honoré labored for breath as if she had just run a three-minute mile. “She recognizes you, Jack! Oh my God––!”

  “Nobody move,” Kavanaugh snapped in a fierce whisper.

  With a faint, dry rustling, the figure pushed itself up from the chair. The dim light gleamed dully from an intricate pattern of tiny, glittering scales covering naked, gray-black flesh.

  The creature’s posture was canted to one side, but she still stood taller than Oakshott. From down-sloping shoulders dangled long arms, the five fingers tipped with spurs of discolored bone. The neck was longer than a humans', the head was blunt of feature, with a wide, lipless mouth. The narrow, elongated skull held large, round eyes that were almost invisible under hard-edged brow ridges.

  Honoré forced herself to look full upon the creature’s seamed face. Pride was stamped there, as well as a dark wisdom. She was a queen without a kingdom, a ruler without subjects or a nation. She heard herself whisper, “She’s the last of her kind, just like you said, Jack. That must be her mate. God only knows how long he’s been there, sitting beside her. His body looks like it was coated in some type of preservative.”

  Kavanaugh sensed that the female was old, so old that her soul wearied of trying to dredge up memories of youth. He couldn’t recall the last time his heart had pounded so hard and violently within his chest.

  She continued to shuffle forward, dragging a deformed, five-toed foot behind her. The leg was gnarled, twisted at the ankle and knee. She stopped and her head swiveled slowly from Kavanaugh to Belleau, then back to Kavanaugh again.

  “No nipples, no mammalia,” Belleau murmured. “Oviparous.”

  “Or viviparous,” said Honoré breathlessly. “There are some reptiles that give birth to live young. Just because we can’t see external sex organs doesn’t mean they’re not there.”

  The creature pointed a trembling finger at Kavanaugh. “Jah-Kuh. Not kam bek you. Kam bek deed. Bad. Bad Jah-Kuh.”

  Crowe muttered, “What’s she saying?”

  Bai said, “She’s telling Jack he shouldn’t have come back. That he was bad to do so.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Mouzi whispered, casting a glance over her shoulder at the Deinonychus standing by alertly.

  Clearing his throat, Kavanaugh took a step forward, staring fearlessly up into the deeply lined, scaled face. “I didn’t want to disobey you. We don’t mean you any harm. What is your name?”

  The creature gazed at Kavanaugh unblinkingly, impassively. Slowly, she reached out with her left hand and touched the outside corner of his right eye. He forced himself not to flinch. With a yellowed nail, she traced the curve of the scar down the line of his jaw. Faintly, as if sensing smoke rather than seeing it, a whisper impressed itself on his mind: Get up and run, Jack.

  Kavanaugh laboriously formed words in his mind, visualizing how they sounded. I did get up and run. I did not die. Thank you.

  “I don’t think she understood you,” Honoré said quietly. “Maybe her kind didn’t have proper names except those given to them by humans. Or maybe she’s so old, she forgot hers. I’ll just go ahead and give her one—how about Wadjet?”

  “Wadjet?” Crowe’s brow furrowed as he stumbled slightly over the pronunciation. “What kind of name is that?”

  Belleau chuckled briefly. “The cobra goddess of lower Egypt. As a patron and protectoress, Wadjet was often shown coiled upon the head of Ra, the chief deity, in order to act as his protector. The asp on the headdresses of the ancient Pharaohs was the symbol of Wadjet.”

  In a voice made hoarse by amazement, Bai Suzhen said, “She actually could be Wadjet, couldn’t she? The mother of the Nagas.”

  She kneeled, laying the sword on the cavern floor. Pressing the palms of her hands together, she steepled her fingers together at her chin and bowed deeply, respectfully. “She is the queen, the Deva-Naga of legend.”

  “You’re babbling, Madame,” commented Belleau.

  As she rose, Bai cast him a venomous glare “Didn’t you say the Prima Materia could make people and animals practically immortal?”

  Belleau’s eyes flickered and his expression registered a dawning excitement. He quickly stepped closer to Wadjet, who drew back a pace. “Dear God, yes! Why not? It should have occurred to me!”

  “You’re frightening her,” Honoré said, pulling him back.

  “I don’t think much of anything frightens her,” Kavanaugh stated. “But there’s no point in testing the theory, especially since I think she has a degree of control over the animals here.”

  A loose pouch of flesh at Wadjet’s throat pulsed and a trilling issued, not from her mouth but from her dilating nostrils.

  “What’s she doing?” Oakshott asked nervously.

  With a click and clatter of claws, a Deinonychus pushed between them, uttering skreeks to warn everyone to get out of its way. It held a large chunk of blood-dripping meat in its foreclaws. Oakshott’s big hands clenched around the length bone as the raptor went past.

  “Don’t do anything that’s even remotely hostile,” Honoré sidemouthed. “Don’t move.”

  The Deinonychus handed the slab of flesh to Wadjet and backed away, glaring at the humans around it. As Wadjet tore off a little chunk of meat and put it in her mouth, Belleau said quietly, “This situation just becomes more and more amazing. Wadjet exerts influence on the fauna here, probably due to the absorption of the Prima Materia.”

  “That’s what I just said,” Kavanaugh whispered irritably. “She likely sent the Quetzacoatlus to keep us from getting too close to the escarpment and maybe she even directed the croc and Stinky, too.”

  “Perhaps,” conceded Honoré. “She must rely on the Deinoncychus to bring her food, like they’re her attendants. The Hadrosaurs and Parasaurolophus probably occupy the same niche as cattle…that’s why she dispatched the Deinoncychus to attack your hunting party, Jack. They threatened her primary food source.”

  To their surprise, Wadjet did not bring the meat to her mouth and rip into it with her teeth. Delicately, she tore off small bits of flesh with thumb and forefinger and put them in her mouth, chewing thoroughly with her mouth closed. The quality of the light peeping through the waterfall suddenly dimmed, as of the closing of a curtain.

  “Getting on towards dark,” Crowe observed. “Or a storm is coming. Either way, I think we’re here for the night.”

  Mouzi eyed the Deinonychus assembled in the bone-yard as they squawked, skreeked and squabbled over the raw meat they had carried in with them. “That’s a comforting thought.”

  Belleau gazed in rapt fascination at Wadjet. “I don’t think any of you quite grasp the enormity of this discovery.”

  “The last living member of a mythical non-human race?” Crowe asked dryly. “I think we’ve all made the connection between it and enormity.”

  Belleau shook his head. “You haven’t, not really. Standing before us is not just the encapsulated lost history of humanity, but quite possibly its future as well.”

  Bai Suzhen eyed him suspiciously. “That sounds like the line of PR you fed poor Howard Flitcroft.”

  Belleau snorted. “Hardly. I could not have concocted such a plan on my own. Consider—scientists have long puzzled over the similarities between the reptilian brain and the human brain. At the core of the human brain lies a vestige of our reptilian past, known as the R-complex.”

  He tapped his forehead. “It is what performs the dinosaur functions—aggression, territoriality, ritual, and establishment of social hierarchies, like families. The middle layer is called the limbic system, and that is thought to generate love, hate, compassion, and spirituality––characteristics believed to be strictly
mammalian. The neocortex is believed to be the seat of reasoning and a sense of morality… where we differentiate between good and evil.”

  “And what’s your excuse, then?” asked Kavanaugh. “Were you dropped on your neocortex as a baby?”

  Belleau sighed. “I’ll ignore that. Think about this…the knowledge of good and evil was given to humanity by a serpent…it caused the first woman and man to fall from grace with God.”

  Honoré mimed pulling the ends of a rubberband. “Stretching, Aubrey. Very much so.”

  “I wish I were, darlin’. In an ancient Jewish document, known as the Haggadah, it is made quite clear that the serpent was not merely a snake. To quote from it: ‘Among the animals, the serpent was notable. Of all of them, he had the most excellent qualities, in some of which he resembled man. Like man, he stood upright on two feet, and in height he was equal to the camel.’ The document mentions his superior mental gifts, despite having ‘a visage like a viper.’

  “Those superior mental gifts caused him to become an infidel. It likewise explains his envy of man, especially his conjugal visits....in punishment for tempting Eve, God said 'I created you to be king over all the animals...but you were not satisfied....I created you of upright posture...therefore you shall go upon your belly.'

  “And of course the references to Watchers—good and bad angels, can be found in many ancient texts including the Old Testament—which borrowed much from older documents, including the books of Enoch. It’s not a coincidence that the Enochian alphabet is also known as angelic script.”

  “So?” Bai asked.

  “So, I think it’s safe to postulate that the Enochian alphabet was a phonetic rendering of the language the Nagas spoke. I think they also used it to express mathematical and scientific concepts. Over the centuries, the root of the language became confused, lost in legend and since Enoch was a patriarch, the assumption was the alphabet was the means he used to communicate with angels…instead of the Nagas, the Watchers of Biblical lore.”

  Crowe shrugged. “We can’t deny that Wadjet’s people interacted with humanity, but there’s a big difference between having interaction and intercourse. I’m not a scientist, but I know mammal and reptiles can’t conceive offspring. That’s ridiculous.”

  “As you said,” Belleau stated coldly, “you’re not a scientist. If you were, you would know humans go through an accelerated process of evolution while in the womb. As repugnant as it may sound, I think Wadjet’s people, using the Prima Materia as a propagation medium, engaged in transgenic experiments on primitive humans. There is a tradition in ancient Kabalist texts that the serpent of Eden didn’t just tempt Eve, but actually seduced her and fathered Cain. That could be a report of early genetic engineering, cloaked in myth and analogy.”

  “That’s insane,” bit out Bai Suzhen.

  “And how would you know, Madame?” shot back Belleau. “Your only experience with DNA is mopping up after some of your less restrained customers. Have you ever heard of chromosomal crossover? No? It is when two DNA helices break, swap a section and then rejoin. Recombination allows chromosomes to exchange genetic information and produces new combinations of genes, which increases the efficiency of natural selection.”

  Honoré intoned dolefully, “The Holliday junction.”

  Belleau nodded toward her approvingly. “Just so, darlin’, just so. The Holliday junction is a structure that can be moved along a pair of chromosomes, swapping one strand for another.”

  With both arms, he gestured to the cave, to the ruins outside, to Big Tamtung at large. “This island is quite possibly the largest genetics lab in history and Wadjet’s people the first geneticists.”

  Belleau pointed to Wadjet. “And there we have the perfect living laboratory of everything we need to process the essence of the Prima Materia. Every cell is saturated with it, her blood flows with it and it’s probably what has kept her alive for thousands of years or however long ago it was since her people retreated here …after some cataclysm, perhaps the Flood, devastated the world.”

  Wadjet regarded Belleau with mild interest, still single-mindedly chewing.

  “Why wouldn’t the animals here provide the same source?” asked Honoré.

  Belleau glanced at her, frowning. “I think Wadjet directly partook of the pure Prima Materia on many occasions.”

  Kavanaugh inquired, “What makes you think she’d tolerate having her blood and spinal fluid be tapped and analyzed?”

  “What makes you think she’d have any say-so in the matter?”

  Honoré glared at Belleau first in surprise, then anger. “You don’t intend to abduct her, take her away from here?”

  “Why not?” he countered. “The longer she remains here, the more risk we run of losing her to old age or any number of accidents. We can’t allow her to die and her body to corrupt like the pool of Prima Materia, can we? Look at her…she’s far gone in senility.”

  “Maybe so,” Kavanaugh said. “But remember, she has some kind of telepathic or psychic ability. If you upset her, you might be upsetting her nasty domestic staff next door.”

  “I’ll take that chance.” Belleau stepped close to Wadjet, speaking in a low, soothing voice. “You wouldn’t mind leaving here, would you, old girl? You’d be taken care of in your old age, and I’d make sure you’d want for nothing. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

  Wadjet stared down at him contemplatively, still chewing. She inserted a thumb and index finger into her mouth and removed a little chunk of raw, masticated meat. Leaning down, she thrust the blood and saliva-damp piece of flesh toward Belleau’s mouth. Face twisting in revulsion, he recoiled so hastily he stumbled. Crowe and Mouzi laughed.

  “She thinks you’re the runt of the litter,” Crowe said. “I guess she still has a maternal instinct…takes a reptile to love a reptile.”

  Aubrey Belleau’s eyes flashed in sudden fury. “Don’t make sport of me!”

  Mouzi uttered a contemptuous laugh. “Lighten up. You’ve been calling me a mongrel for two days and here you are being force-fed Quinterotops steak tartar to bulk you up.”

  Teeth bared, Belleau whirled on her with a speed that deceived the eye. He lunged forward, grasped the barrel of the M-16, and using all of his considerable upper body strength, slammed the stock deeply into the pit of Mouzi’s stomach.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  All of Mouzi’s breath exploded past her lips in an agonized grunt. Belleau yanked the autorifle from her hands and she fell to her knees. He hammered the butt of the weapon against the back of her head, driving her face first to the cavern floor.

  Almost in the same instant, Oakshott lashed out with the length of bone in his hands, smashing it down on a clump of ganglia on Crowe’s right forearm. Crying out, his fingers lost all feeling and the revolver fell to the ground. A lightning fast follow-through with the tip of the cudgel slammed against his jaw and knocked him flat to the cavern floor.

  Pivoting smoothly on the ball of his foot, Oakshott drove the blunt end of the bone into Kavanaugh’s diaphragm. He folded over in the direction of the sickening blow and Oakshott jacked up a knee against his chin. It was like being kicked by a tree. Multicolored pinwheels spiraled behind his eyes.

  Kavanaugh fell onto his side, agony spreading through his bruised torso. He tasted bile rising in a burning column up his throat, but he managed to keep it down and his eyes open, although he saw everything through a gray fog. He glimpsed Oakshott swing the bone at Bai Suzhen, who parried the blow with the sword, chopping out a fragment.

  For a long moment, the two people exchanged a flurry of bludgeon-blows and sword strokes, but Oakshott used his greater strength and weight to batter the blade down and then smash his cudgel against the side of her head. She went staggering across the chamber and fell, the sword chiming briefly against the stone.

  Oakshott spun and twirled the bone between the fingers of his right hand. His face creased in a superior smile as he played to a non-existent crowd.

  Kavanaugh
struggled to raise the Colt Python, but Oakshott whirled around and cracked the tibia against his wrist, knocking the pistol from his hand, and then swept his arms out from under him with a kick. A deep boring pressure at the base of his neck kept him prone as Oakshott leaned his weight on the length of bone, grinding his face into the rock.

  “Relax, Jack,” Oakshott said in a low voice. “You really didn’t think it would be that easy with me, did you? I’m a professional, ex-SAS…you’re a barely talented amateur, a boozy flyboy.”

  Over the pounding in his ears and the thunder of the waterfall, Kavanaugh heard Honoré shout furiously, “Let him up, you bastard!”

  Belleau said in a gloating croon, “Do as the doctor says, Oakshott.”

  Oakshott pulled the bone away, tossing it aside. Kavanaugh pushed himself up by shaking arms. The big man stared down at him, a faint smile of disdain creasing his lips. Mouzi lay on the floor, unconscious, her hair clotted with blood seeping from a laceration on her scalp. Crowe stirred feebly. He could not even see Bai Suzhen.

  A smirking Belleau held the rifle at waist level. He kicked both revolvers to one side. Wadjet stared in wide-eyed, silent wonderment, apparently only perplexed by the sudden outburst of violence, not disturbed by it.

  Honoré kneeled beside Kavanaugh. Her green eyes, blazing with loathing, fixed on Oakshott. “You’re a coward.”

  “And you’re a silly, obnoxious cunt, mum,” Oakshott retorted quietly. “Pardon my French.”

  “Now what, Aubrey?” demanded Kavanaugh. “You think you can just waltz out of here, hand-in-hand with Wadjet and somehow get her back to the world without drawing attention from customs or anyone else?”

  “That’s exactly what I think. Why else would I even consider going into business with the triad if not to take to advantage of their smuggling lanes?”

  “You’re out of your mind,” Honoré said raggedly. “Completely mad.”