Dawn of the Living-Impaired

by Christine Morgan

  This is the burly one’s argument.

  But sometimes there are dangers in such places, even ones as small as this. The other-kind may have left their strange encased foods, but they also left points, hooks, and cutting edges. Things that could damage us. And if there was food, surely our rivals had found and eaten it by now.

  This is the biggest one’s argument.

  The rest of us gather and wait.

  The burly one is our leader, has been our leader for a long time. Ever since the large hairy one chased a beast-kind along a steep slope and was swept down in a rockslide, limbs broken, skull smashed, brain spread in sticky lumps over a boulder.

  The biggest one would like to be leader. To have the most attendants for grooming, the driest spot in the den, the choicest bits of meat. To give the orders and make the decisions.

  The burly one has been a brave and strong leader. We have held our territories, won many battles, increased our numbers by overpowering weaker rivals and bringing their best into our group, while feasting on the remainders.

  But we have taken risks and suffered losses. There have been hastily-dug dens that seeped with rain, bringing damp-rot. There have been battles and hunts gone wrong. The foraging has become poor, the meat scarce.

  We wait as they argue. The metal-toothed one and the skinny one take up sentry posts because this is rival territory, but the others stay with the tall quick one and me.

  The biggest one had been a leader once, not of our group but of another.

  Leader of a group we fought and beat. With ease.

  Not all of them with such ease. Not the biggest one. The biggest one damaged several of us in that battle. The biggest one had wrenched the short stocky one’s head off with one hard twist and hurled it, caving in the tall slow one’s chest in a splintering burst of ribs.

  But then we had beaten the rest, and the biggest one surrendered and joined us.

  They go back and forth, the burly one and the biggest one, until the noseless one interrupts with an alarm.

  An urgent, hungry alarm.

  Beast-kind. A herd of them on the move, stirring up a haze of dust. Hunched backs and swishing tails. Horns curving out from their low heads, some blunt and stubby, some long and sharp. Large and solid.

  Meat.

  So much meat!

  The argument is forgotten.

  We go.

  The beast-kind plod slowly, eating the dry brown grass. As we get closer we can feel the thud of their hooves vibrating through the ground. Bug-kind buzz around their eyes and ears.

  They are huge and heavy. A single one could fill us all.

  Fill, but not satisfy.

  They are nervous. They shift and snort.

  Some of us want to attack. Others want to be cautious.

  The burly one attacks.

  Arms raised. Groaning and wailing.

  We follow.

  The beast-kind are startled, afraid. Their hooves pound the earth, flinging up clods of dirt, billows of dust, shredded grass. They bellow. It is a milling churning mass of meat, horns, and hides … and we are in the middle of it. Grabbing, grasping, reaching, clawing.

  Then there is blood. Thick dark splatters of blood.

  A horn-tip catches my hip, tears my skin, knocks me spinning. My feet tangle. I fall to the shuddering ground with beast-kind thundering all around me. A hoof slams down beside my head. Just misses.

  I grab for the leg attached to that hoof. The beast-kind stumbles, trips, drops with a shaking thud. I yank myself up and on. There’s a broad dusty expanse of hide in front of my face. Short coarse hairs atop skin. The heat of a live-thing, the beast-kind’s side rising and falling, a frantic beating throb from inside, where its organs are.

  My jaws gape and I bite. That coarse hair, that tough hide, resisting my teeth and then giving way. Now there is more blood. Thick and dark, in a gush this time, into my mouth, pouring down my chin.

  The beast-kind heaves and lunges but I hold on. I bite deeper. Meat against my teeth now, meat in my mouth, meat sliding down my throat as I gulp it in hot ragged chunks. Others are with me, leaping upon the beast-kind, tearing at it while it squalls and kicks.

  We eat. Ripping and pulling. Blood everywhere, blood all over us, damp and wet, but there is meat, meat and a loose flood of guts when its belly comes open, and we eat and eat and eat.

  Finally we are full. Not satisfied, never satisfied, but full.

  The herd has gone. Two beast-kind are dead in flattened grass and blood-muddied dirt. We are full and there is still so much meat, more than we can carry, more than enough for the ones back at the den.

  But the burly one is not with us.

  Bug-kind buzz around us now. Landing to sample the blood. We are damp with it and now there are bug-kind and we badly need grooming.

  But the burly one is not with us.

  Not eating with us.

  Not giving orders for carrying meat back to the den.

  Not reminding us that we must groom.

  Not leading us.

  Not with us at all.

  And the biggest one is damaged. Gored. Horn-gouged. A deep hole punched into a shoulder, and another to the groin. One arm hangs useless, the bones snapped in many places.

  The noseless one makes a call, not an alarm but a help-call.

  We go.

  The burly one’s body is far from the kill-spots, as if dragged there. Dragged there, impaled, then dropped or dislodged or shaken off. The horn-gouge must have gone in through an eye socket and out through the top of the head. Bone-slivers jut up from the scalp.

  The skinny one crouches and pokes probing fingertips into the wound, then, when there is no reaction, grasps the edges and pries the skull apart. It cracks and splits. The skinny one scoops out the punctured brain, digging under until the stem is severed, and holds it out in cupped hands.

  There is a long moment of uncertainty.

  Our leader is gone.

  The biggest one is damaged.

  It is the tall quick one or me, now.

  The long moment stretches longer.

  Uncertainty. Indecision.

  With sudden resolve, the skinny one peels the brain into segments and passes them around to everyone. We may be full, but we still eat. This settles things for now. Anything else must wait until later.

  Then the metal-toothed one gives another alarm.

  This is not our territory. Our rivals are coming.

  We cannot fight them, so we take as much as we can carry. The best meat, dripping slabs of it. Rich organs – liver, kidneys, eyes, tongue. We load ourselves until we are bent double and staggering from the weight. The rest of the meat, we have to leave for them. The burly one, except for the brain, we also leave.

  Already, bird-kind circle overhead and swarms of bug-kind have appeared. Soon, more beast-kind like the pack from before will arrive to scavenge their share, if our rivals do not get there first.

  They come but we go. Hurrying. Burdened with meat. The biggest one may be too damaged to ever fight or hunt again, but one arm still functions enough to carry much meat. Out of the grasslands. Back to the other-kind place. Across the long narrow flatness. Into our own territory. Returning to our own den.

  Eating. Grooming. Standing sentry.

  The wobble-headed one stays near the biggest one, but the burly one’s former favorite attendants are uneasy, their positions within the group now precarious. The legless one pulls arm over arm along the ground, staying meek and submissive, toward the tall quick one. The half-faced one attempts to lick the congealing blood from my torso, but the hollow one is there with a hard shove and a warning snap of the teeth, and the half-faced one cowers. The tiny shrunken one snatches up a whole liver that the noseless one dropped and scurries off with it, down through the den’s entrance and into some side passage too small for the noseless one to pursue.

  Neither the tall quick one nor I take the spot atop the sand pile, above the den. Not yet. It happened too fast, too unexpected
ly. No leader. It will be one of us, must be one of us, but we do not know which, and dare not make a presumptive move too soon.

  We eat. We groom. The sentries keep watch. We dust-roll to dry and cake the blood, then pick it away. I inspect the horn-scratch on my hip. The smoked flesh is ripped and uneven. The bone is nicked. But it is not bad damage. I can still walk. I can still hunt and fight.

  The hollow one needs only a single chunk of meat. It goes in the mouth, is chewed, is swallowed, goes down the throat, and drops into the gaping cavity where the pieces can be fished out and eaten again. Over and over. Until that single chunk of meat has been reduced to a mashed-up pulp. The hollow one is never full, can never be full, but the act of eating is enough.

  The sun descends toward clouds. The air begins to cool and there is a hint of dampness to it. We feel night’s approach in the growing heaviness of our limbs, the stiffness-sluggishness-lethargy that creeps into our bodies.

  We enter the den before the last of the sun’s warmth has ebbed from us, and settle into our accustomed places in the sandy soil.

  The next day brings rain. We stay below, where it is dry. We are cold and hungry, but we stay.

  The day after that brings sunshine again, sunshine raising steam from the wet earth. Also raising many bug-kind from the wet earth, and we feed on them eagerly.

  A decision has been made. The tall quick one defers to me. So do the rest of the group. The biggest one does so grudgingly, but does. I am the new leader. I sit atop the sand pile. The hollow one grooms me and will not allow anyone else to help.

  A sentry gives an alarm. Then there is a hail-call. It is a wandering one, seeking permission to come near. The rest of the group waits for me to grant or deny that permission.

  I grant it.

  The wandering ones belong to no groups, because no groups will have them, and they form no groups of their own because even the wandering ones do not like to be together. They go alone, from territory to territory, visiting for as long as they are welcome, sharing what meat will be shared with them, and then they move on, bringing news and rumors from one group to the next as they go.

  The damp cannot damage the wandering ones, cannot make them rot, because they do not rot. They are not smoked or salt-crusted or sun-dried like the rest of us, but they still do not rot. They are … preserved somehow … some way we do not understand.

  Beast-kind shy away from them and bug-kind do not infest them. They can be damaged as easily as we are, sometimes more easily. They can be destroyed by a crushed skull or mangled brain, just as we can. But they are not the same as us.

  The sour reek of chemicals lingers around them in a miasma. Liquid oozes from their skin, beading like dew. Their eyes are milky and sunken behind loose, drooping lids. Some have long straight cuts from collarbones to breastbone and down the torso, the edges held together by metal clamps or loops of thin dark cord. More strings, these often pale and hair-fine, dangle from the soft, torn flesh of their lips.

  Their meat is vile and inedible.

  This one is pallid and ashen and bloated and slick. Like the belly of a fish-kind that has bobbed to the surface of some deep wet pool. There are no straight cuts on the body, but one eyelid is gummed shut and the lips are shredded.

  I grant the wandering one permission to come near and join us for a while. If there is news, even if there are only rumors, I want to know. I need to know, if I am to be leader.

  Most of the beast-kind meat was already consumed, but there is chewed pulp left in the bottom of the cavity where the hollow one’s guts used to be. As a token of hospitality, I scoop some out in my fingers and offer it. The rest of the group offer worms and beetles. The wandering one eats, slurping and smacking with those shredded lips.

  News. News that seems like rumor. But the wandering one insists that it is true.

  A group, not far from here, found the other-kind.

  We do not believe. Not all of us. Not immediately.

  True, insists the wandering one. Not rumor. True.

  Some of us want to believe.

  The wandering one claims to have been there, claims to have seen-smelled-heard. Not to have tasted, not to have eaten, because while we might share ordinary meat, no group would share something as rare and precious as other-kind meat.

  Warm, breathing, bleeding, tender, juicy, succulent other-kind.

  Meat the way meat should be. Meat that fills and satisfies.

  If it was true …

  If only it was true!

  The wandering one insists that it is. Suggests that we go there, find out for ourselves. The wandering one will show us, will help us fight the rival group if we must, and in exchange, wants a few bites. Just a few bites.

  It is tempting. Very tempting.

  Our territory is hunted-out. We must move on anyway. We must move in some direction. There will be disputes wherever we go. The chance at other-kind meat …

  The noseless one groans. Imploring. Hungry.

  The rest of the group join in.

  I decide. We will go.

  So we go.

  Those who can move well help or carry those who cannot. The hollow one stays by me, and the wandering one walks with us. I have the metal-toothed one, whose eyes are very good, keep watch.

  That night we shelter in a ravine, beneath a rock-shelf overhang. The next night we must huddle together in the open, unhappy and exposed under a dark sky of fierce bright spots. There has been little meat, no time to hunt. But the beast-kind who might attack us smell the sourness of the wandering one, and avoid us, instead.

  At last we are close. We are in their territory. The plants are short and squat and spiny. The stones rise in pillars and arches and strange shapes. There are stinging bug-kind and swift long-tailed bird-kind that run along the ground. We find a cave that is large and dry, roomy enough for us all.

  I send the metal-toothed one ahead with the wandering one, with orders to return and bring me news. Real news, not rumor.

  They do not return that day.

  They do not return the next day.

  We are all restless and uneasy. There are squabbles over the scant meat of bug-kind and running bird-kind. The biggest one is belligerent, mocks my inaction. The tall quick one does not agree … but also does not disagree. The tiny shrunken one bites the legless one, gnaws off most of a hand, leaves the legless one too damaged to be useful. There are squabbles over that meat, as well.

  I must do something.

  I summon the tall quick one and the skinny one. We will go. The rest will wait.

  We leave the cave when the sun is high. Bird-kind circle in the distance and we move toward them, until we find the place.

  The carnage-place.

  Parts everywhere. Rot everywhere. The ground stained with dried fluids. A rippling, humming cloud of bug-kind roils above it all.

  The wandering one is there. We cannot tell if the metal-toothed one is there. Many more are there, though. All of them in pieces. Decaying under the hot sun, decaying in that roiling bug-kind cloud. Salt-crusted meat, smoked meat, sun-dried meat … maybe even other-kind meat … it doesn’t matter. All of it rotting. All of it seething with maggots, teeming with flies.

  Then the tall quick one gives an alarm.

  Movement.

  Tottering, staggering movement.

  Approaching us.

  The mouth flaps. The lips and tongue gabble. There are sounds and wild gestures, pleading, begging.

  It does not have wrappings over its skin, wrappings that might be fine and flimsy or sturdy and tough. It is not plump and pink, jiggling with rolls of fat. It is as naked as us, thin and dirty, scabbed and scarred.

  But it is other-kind.

  Other-kind!

  We go.

  We go with arms raised and outstretched. We go groaning and wailing.

  And hungry.

  It pleads and begs, then stops, and turns, and runs.

  The tall quick one brings it down. It screams. It thrashes and kicks.
Then the skinny one and I are there. We grab. An arm in my hand. Warm. Pulsing with life. The other-kind screams and screams and shrieks. Fingernails dig and gouge. Blood flows. The tall quick one tears off a dripping chunk of thigh. The skinny one claws at the belly.

  I bite into the arm.

  Meat!

  Meat like nothing else!

  Moist and delicious!

  Gobbets of it bulging in my cheeks, sliding down my throat. A thick vein throbs between my teeth, throbs at a furious beat, then bursts as I clamp down. A gush of rich blood spurts from the corners of my mouth, streams over my chin and chest.

  We eat. We feast. We gorge.

  The screams and thrashing finally stop.

  We keep eating.

  I remember the rest of the group at the cave, waiting for us, but we keep eating.

  The meat is very salty. But it fills. It satisfies.

  I pull open the other-kind’s slack mouth to reach in for the sweet spongy tongue, and I pause.

  The tall quick one is slamming a legbone against a rock, to get at the marrow. The skinny one is rooting around in the guts. They do not notice.

  I notice.

  There is metal.

  Metal on the teeth.

  Peculiar.

  I grip the tongue and pull until it rips loose. I am still hungry, always hungry, but I do not eat it. I save it to take back to the hollow one.

  We are full and satisfied, and badly in need of grooming. Some bug-kind have already found us.

  Not much meat is left on the other-kind’s body, but we gather it as well as we can. The scraps and morsels clinging to the bones, the spleen and lungs, the head that still has face and scalp and delicious brain inside that solid shell of skull.

  The cave seems far away. We trudge. Our feet drag. I feel heavy, swollen, satisfied.

  Satisfied … and strange.

  Hot. Hot in the pit of my stomach. Hot as if I swallowed the sun whole.

  And itchy. The stump of my small-finger, my missing toes, the rim of my ear, the long gash on my hip where the beast-kind gored me … those spots most of all, but other spots, too, prickle with an intensifying, maddening itch.