‘‘Look,’’ Isaiah said. ‘‘Over there.’’
Brian looked at where the man was shining his light. It was an adobe building much bigger than the others, and Brian couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it before. It was to their right, away from the other huts and just inside the line of trees. It also had a doorway, and when he said, ‘‘Let’s check it out,’’ Todd snapped his fingers, made a few hand gestures, and he and Carrie were once again ensconced in that presidential security detail as their whole party made its way toward the building.
The smell hit them even before they reached the structure, a sickening stench of rotted food and feces. They were all breathing through their mouths, trying not to gag, and Todd stood several yards back from the entrance and shone his light into the open doorway. Inside were what looked like crudely constructed pens, and Brian was reminded of Lew Haskell’s barn. Indeed, a bed of straw could be seen in the closest pen, and lying on that straw was a person.
A human being.
Brian glanced up the slope, and though it was getting so dark that it was hard to see without the aid of the lights, it appeared as though the monsters were hanging back, staying away.
He turned his attention back to the building.
‘‘Come out!’’ Todd announced in his loudest, most authoritative voice.
The person on the straw stood and faced them, squinting against the bright light and trying to wave it away.
‘‘Go in there and bring them out,’’ Todd ordered Garth and Christian. ‘‘Him and anyone else you can find.’’
‘‘Jesus,’’ Garth breathed, taking a deep breath and trying to hold it. The two of them rushed in, weapons at the ready, and emerged a moment later with the man from the first pen. They went back in, came out with another man. And did it again. And again.
Finally, there were twelve of them lined up outside the building, all with lights and guns trained on them. Christian was off to the side, puking in the grass, and Brian didn’t blame him. Even this far away, the stench was nearly overpowering.
An old man with tangled gray hair and a massive matted beard, wearing filthy, raggedy clothes, separated himself from the others. He staggered when he walked, and looked up at an odd angle so as not to be blinded by the lights. The man was sinewy and stoop-shouldered, and though he couldn’t see it beneath the dirt and hair and years, Brian knew instantly and instinctively that this was his dad.
Next to his father stood another man, and he too came forward, although he quickly held up his hands in surrender and ran to Todd. He didn’t appear to be in as bad a shape as the others, and his clothes, while a little dirty, looked fairly new. ‘‘My name’s Andrew,’’ he said in a voice that threatened to break down into tears at every syllable. ‘‘Andrew Bledsoe. I’m vacationing with my family in Oak Draw. I don’t . . . I don’t know why . . .’’ And then he did break down. Brian could tell that they were all wary of the man, unsure if he was a rescued prisoner or some sort of decoy, but he had no time to devote attention to that.
His dad stood before him.
As he stared at the wreck of a man, Brian remembered the last time he’d seen him, when his dad—hair short and neatly combed, buttoned down in his business suit—had given him a hug in front of the empty junior high school—
‘‘I love you, Brian.’’
—and then driven him to the printer to drop off the page dummies. He was filled with an overwhelming sadness as he thought of all those lost years, all the times he wished he could have talked to his father and asked his advice but had had to make do with a memory and a hypothetical what-would-Dad-do?
Had his father missed him? Or his mom? Or his sister? He looked into that wrinkled, dirty face, those blank, unreadable eyes, and as much as he wanted to believe that their abandoned family had never been far from the old man’s thoughts, he could not make himself buy it.
Brian walked forward slowly, and the others walked with him, Carrie holding tightly to his arm, two of the men shining their lights, two stepping forward with their guns raised and ready. Only Todd remained in place, speaking to the man who’d called himself Andrew.
‘‘Dad?’’ After all these years, it felt strange actually using that word to address someone, and Brian choked up as he did so. He cleared his throat. ‘‘It’s me. Brian.’’
The old man said nothing, but he saw recognition in those eyes, a softening, and for the first time there seemed something familiar beneath all of the hair and grime. Brian quickened his pace, arms extended, ready to embrace his dad and—
‘‘He has a knife!’’ Carrie screamed.
Before the team could even raise their weapons, Brian was jumping in front of his father, waving his hands wildly. ‘‘Wait! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!’’ He turned around to face his dad, and there was indeed a knife in his right hand, an intricately carved blade that looked like it had been made from bone. That hand was gripping the blade so tightly the filthy skin was almost as white as the blade, and the expression on the old man’s face was one of shame and despair.
‘‘Don’t, Dad,’’ Brian said softly.
His father looked at him, tried to speak, but managed only an incoherent croak.
‘‘I got your letter. You said, ‘Stop me.’ That’s what I’m trying to do.’’
‘‘Stop me,’’ he repeated awkwardly.
‘‘I miss you, Dad. We all do.’’ Brian took a step forward. He heard clicks and rattles as the men behind him retrained their weapons. ‘‘Don’t do this. Please. You don’t have to do this.’’
‘‘I do.’’
‘‘No.’’ Brian was still walking forward, hands extended.
‘‘She’s . . . my . . . wife,’’ he got out.
‘‘What about Mom? What about me? What about Jillian?’’
The old man’s grip on the knife loosened, and Brian took the last step forward and gently removed it from his hand. The moment he did so, there was a shiver in the ground beneath their feet, and puffs of foul-smelling dust flew up from the holes in the earth as though the land itself had exhaled. He didn’t know how it had happened, but the monsters were suddenly everywhere, taking a much more threatening stance, and there were cries in an alien language, strange mewling and odd whistles, followed by screams so harsh and dissonant that it hurt their ears. Vegetation was growing wildly all about, dark, menacing plants that threatened to cut them off from everything around them. Vines whipped around crazily like hyperkinetic snakes, and flowers with mouths, like bastard hybrids of Venus flytraps and the monster plant from Little Shop of Horrors, pushed up from the dirt and wiggled their way into the world.
The creatures actually seemed to be moving with purpose now, picking things up off the ground, touching their hands to the walls of the huts, walking about in precise ordered steps almost like a ritualized dance. No one knew what they were doing—but they were doing something.
Between the trees that formed the boundary to the village appeared more dead animals, big ones, as well as living plants more than capable of doing serious harm to a human being.
‘‘What are they doing?’’ Brian asked his dad. ‘‘What’s happening?’’
The old man started to speak, then stopped, frowning, as though he’d suddenly forgotten what he was going to say.
Or how to say it, Brian thought, and he remembered those letters with their earnest attempts at simple English. Perhaps his dad had forgotten how to write and speak after all this time.
Twenty years, he told himself.
But he would not have forgotten how to speak and write after twenty years, or even after eighty. He’d learned the English language, it was imprinted on his brain, a part of who he was, and he didn’t understand how his father could forget such a basic fundamental thing after any amount of time.
Then Brian looked around at the plants that were sprouting up between the doorless, windowless huts; at the monsters doing God knew what; at the holes in the earth that appeared to be breathing; at Black Mou
ntain, which loomed over it all, and realized that he had no idea what his dad had gone through. In all likelihood, he would never know, and the horrors to which his father had been submitted would remain forever a mystery, unable to be translated or explained.
One of the females began shimmying toward them down the slight slope. It looked like a partially shaved Bigfoot with the tail of a rat and the face of a gargoyle, but damn it, the thing was still sexy, and though Brian knew it was wrong, he was filled with lust. The reaction was instinctive, involuntary, and he could tell from the suddenly still postures of the men around him that they felt it too.
Todd shot the monster.
‘‘Kill them all!’’ the man named Andrew yelled hysterically. ‘‘The women first!’’
There seemed to be no reaction among the creatures to this killing of one of their own, but seconds later, another female started toward them, her pink pubic area distended, hair that looked like rope hanging down from the top of her white head and from the sides of her leathery body. In the light of the halogens, she looked grotesque.
But sensuous.
Brian felt more than saw his dad’s tension, and when his father let out a painful, guttural yell, Brian somehow knew what was coming next.
‘‘My . . . wife.’’
Even before he had finished saying that, Raul had opened fire and blown her away, thin gruelish liquid spurting out from her mortal wounds like water from a fountain.
Brian reached for his father, but he had already darted away, screaming, and though Garth tried to keep track of him with his light, the old man disappeared into the vegetative darkness almost instantly. Brian started after him, but Carrie grabbed his arm, holding tight. ‘‘No,’’ she said.
He pulled away from her—
And Todd grabbed him by the shoulders, turning to face him. ‘‘No.’’
The other men were gone as well, Brian noticed, having taken the chance to escape, although Andrew remained behind. He was the only one who didn’t seem fully acculturated, and though no one was willing to entirely trust the man yet, the lost and frightened expression on his face told Brian that he was safe, that he wanted only to get out of there and go home.
But not before killing the monsters.
‘‘Shoot them all!’’ Andrew screamed crazily. ‘‘Shoot them down!’’
A top-heavy creature with a lionlike face and gazellelike legs jumped through a bush toward them, and someone shot it down in midstride.
‘‘Practice run,’’ Todd said. ‘‘They’re testing us.’’
‘‘We don’t have enough ammunition to take out all of them,’’ Raul noted.
‘‘Off with your packs,’’ Todd said softly. ‘‘Get your explosives.’’
As the two civilians, neither he nor Carrie were involved in this tactical discussion, and he looked into her face, a hazy alabaster in the darkness. Even without light, he saw worry there and concern. ‘‘Don’t even think about it,’’ she told him.
‘‘I can’t let them kill him.’’
‘‘You might get killed, too.’’
‘‘I might anyway. We all might.’’ He turned away from her. ‘‘Dad!’’ he cried.
‘‘Shut up!’’ Isaiah hissed. ‘‘They’ll know your weakness. They’ll exploit it.’’
‘‘They know it already,’’ Brian said. ‘‘Dad!’’ he called.
Something hit him on the back of the head.
When he came to, he was lying on the ground and Carrie was crouched worriedly next to him, bending over and touching her cool hand to his forehead. His skull felt as though it had been pierced with an ice pick, but when he felt around he could find no blood. He sat up. He had probably been out only a couple of minutes, but somehow several of the mercenaries were gone. All of them, in fact, save Isaiah, who stood behind Carrie, his light dimmed and pointing at the ground.
‘‘Sorry I had to do that,’’ Isaiah said. ‘‘But I did.’’ He motioned toward the threatening vegetation that surrounded them and already blocked off several views of the village. ‘‘Let’s go. We need to get you up and get past that, out in the open so we can see what we’re doing.’’
‘‘Are Todd and—’’
‘‘Already out there,’’ Isaiah told him.
But when they moved past the still-growing plants, Isaiah shooting one of the whipping vines and using a knife to slice through a writhing sinewy stalk that dripped blood when he cut it, they saw that the rest of the men had not progressed any farther, but were standing together, facing a virtual wall of creatures, several dozen thick, training their lights and weapons on the monsters in what looked like an impasse.
‘‘What’s this?’’ Isaiah asked.
‘‘Custer’s Last Stand,’’ Christian said.
No one commented. The comparison hit a little too close to home.
‘‘They’re watching us,’’ Todd said. ‘‘We can’t get past them.’’ He shone his light to the right, at the bodies of three dead monsters lying on the ground amid thick blades of waving grass. ‘‘Garth tried to go around and they attacked. We took them out and regrouped.’’ He looked at Brian. ‘‘Any ideas?’’
‘‘Rhymes,’’ Brian told him. ‘‘Nursery rhymes.’’
‘‘What?’’ Raul said incredulously.
‘‘Kirk said that they like nursery rhymes. I’m thinking we could use that to maybe distract them, hold their attention while the rest of you go out and . . . do what you’re going to do.’’ He met Todd’s gaze. ‘‘What are you going to do?’’
Todd lowered his voice. ‘‘We’re dropping explosives in the holes and slapping some on the buildings. Best-case scenario? We kill a whole bunch of them and scare the rest enough that they’re running around like chickens with their heads cut off, so we can pick them off in the chaos. Worst case? We can’t even get out there and they kill us here where we stand. In case you haven’t noticed, we are slightly outnumbered.’’ He took a deep breath. ‘‘Nursery rhymes, huh?’’
Brian nodded.
‘‘Any ideas what kind?’’
Brian shook his head.
It was Andrew who began chanting, ‘‘Fee fie foe fum. I smell the blood of an Englishman.’’ He repeated it over and over again at the top of his lungs. Brian had not known what to expect, but the line of creatures suddenly shrunk as it closed in around them, moving into the beams of the searchlights, hundreds of misshapen eyes focused directly on Andrew. Behind them, those creatures still working at whatever tasks they were trying to complete stopped what they were doing and came forward. A stray beam shone over the heads of the monsters and over the village, its last dim traces hitting Black Mountain, revealing more creatures still coming down.
How many of them were there? Hundreds?
Custer’s Last Stand.
Andrew was screaming. ‘‘Fee fie foe fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman!’’
All of them took up the mantra, and the monsters seemed to move as one, dazed and mesmerized.
‘‘It’s working!’’ Brian said quickly between lines.
Todd nodded, grabbing Garth, the first man scheduled to go out. ‘‘You know how to time it, right?’’
Garth nodded.
‘‘Set it for ten. Go!’’
The rest of them continued to chant.
‘‘Fee fie foe fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman!’’
With a few quick instructions, Todd sent out the next man, Isaiah, who ran to the left, past the edge of the line of monsters, then dashed forward into the village unmolested.
‘‘Fee fie foe fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman!’’
Christian screwed up. He was not paying attention to what he was saying or his mind was wandering somewhere else, but instead of ‘‘fum’’ he said ‘‘fuck,’’ and the change was instantaneous. All of the monsters stopped where they were, and the air was suddenly filled with a strange keening sound. In the light of the overlapping beams, the females started dancing in place, gyrating to unhear
d music, while the males stood where they were and began mindlessly playing with themselves.
‘‘Quick!’’ Brian yelled. ‘‘What rhymes with ‘fuck’?’’
‘‘Suck!’’ Carrie said.
‘‘Fee fie foe fuck. On a cock you like to suck.’’ He raised his hands as if directing a chorus, and they all started chanting. ‘‘Fee fie foe fuck! On a cock you like to suck!’’
The creatures seemed pacified momentarily, but they also appeared to be building themselves into a frenzy, and Brian saw a few of them looking furtively around as though searching for something to . . . fuck.
Yes, that was it exactly, and he was about to tell Todd, but the team leader must have figured it out for himself, because now all of the mercenaries were running out, crouching low as they spread out to different parts of the scattered village, explosives in hand. They had gone without lights, leaving their handheld halogens on the ground, pointing outward in a semicircle. Only three of them were left—Carrie, Andrew and himself— and they chanted the rhyme in unison as loudly as they could.
‘‘Fee fie foe fuck! On a cock you like to suck!’’
Illuminated by the static beams in what was now the darkness of true night, the rising moon providing a blue-tinged backdrop, the monsters appeared even more grotesque, their terrifying faces and hideous physical attributes combining with the lurid sexuality of their movements to create a repulsive tableau.
And yet . . .
Brian pressed down on his erection as he chanted.
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