by A R Davis
“I don’t know why but I…I keep going back to that. When I first saw the sun rise, when I first saw the city, when I felt…” He struggled to find the words and failed. “Well, it doesn’t much matter anymore. I am not there and he is not there.” Damien shook his head and rubbed his temples. “I didn’t mean to bore you with all that. I just didn’t want to think about it anymore.”
Valerie thought it was anything but boring. “Why did you leave?”
Damien’s jaw moved right and left as though he was chewing on something. He mumbled a word Valerie couldn’t hear.
“What?”
“Me,” he said. “We left because of me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I…I grew sick of the place. I was tired of eating goddamn fish and I was tired of talking about things we would never do. The truth was we were not kings or rulers. The people below us had power.” He pointed angrily to himself. “We had nothing.”
“You had each other,” Valerie pointed out.
“Had. We had. And sometimes I’m not even sure about that.”
Sure you are, Valerie thought. He nearly went mad when he thought I hurt you. “Are you angry he didn’t stay?”
“He can do whatever he likes.”
That didn’t answer the question, but Valerie didn’t need to hear it spoken. She understood his feelings well enough, and she wondered if it should have unnerved her. After all, Damien was not a man. This line of thought brought her to her next question, one she had been wondering since Dante burst through the door. “Damien, are there more of you?”
“More of what?”
“You know…” She did her best to avoid the word creature or monster. “More like you and Dante.”
Damien crossed his arms and leaned back against his chair. He closed his eyes and seemed to be in deep thought. Valerie started to imagine all sorts of creatures roaming the earth, undetected by people, or doing their best remain undetected. How many of them end up in places like this?
How many of them end up alone?
“There used to be,” Damien said finally. “But I think they’re all dead. I think we are the last.”
Chapter 18
Damien woke in a cage in a dark room. His head pounded like a panicked heartbeat. He did not know why he was there, how he had gotten there, or who he was. It felt as though he was lying under a pile of stones; just the act of sitting up was painful. The front of his shirt was stained with blood, and his hands were wrapped with dirty bandages that looked days old. Where am I? he wondered as he took a moment to look around. The last thing he remembered was playing by the river as a boy, or maybe that was a dream; he didn’t know. He didn’t know anything about himself. He only knew his name.
He glanced around and realized that he was not in a room. He was in a tent. There were boxes piled around the cage. He remembered the face of a doctor. Did he put me in here? Is he even real?
Someone screamed in the distance.
It was a shriek that ripped the air apart, and when it died, it left a silence so filling that Damien thought his ears were clogged with water. There was a sudden explosion, and he nearly pissed himself. Shadows raced past his tent in all sorts of haphazard directions. The acrid smell of smoke wafted into the tent and underneath that was the vague smell of cooked meat. Damien peered between the bars of his cage, but all he could see was the side of the tent he was stored in.
What’s going on out there? Damien thought as he got to his knees. People were shouting for others to run. He thought he heard the sharp cracks of gunfire. Panic felt like a cold sweat working its way down his body, from his head to his feet. He knelt there, frozen, watching shadows racing by.
Another shriek rent the air, only this time it was inhuman, and it made his heart hum against his ribs. The ground beneath him shook in slow, steady beats. It was as though a giant was walking around outside. Was it coming towards him? If that was true, Damien didn’t have a way to escape.
Eventually, the ground ceased shaking. The shrieking persisted, but it was fading now. He was at a safe distance. Damien felt like he could breathe again.
He gasped when the tent flap opened, and when he saw what had entered, he wished he had not woken up at all.
A group of monsters emerged into the tent, intruding into his space, clicking, growling, and making other disgusting noises with their misshapen mouths. They flanked a creature with pointed ears that twitched uncertainly with his every movement, his dark fur made his green eyes glow dangerously in the lamplight. He immediately commanded one of his comrades to watch the opening while they took a look around.
“Are you sure he’s here?” one of the monsters asked. His left leg was like that of a rabbit, and he had half a rabbit’s ear sprouting from the top of his head. The rest of his face was marred with shiny burns that made it look like his eye was seconds away from drooling off his face.
“I saw them bring him in here,” the leader responded.
“And if he isn’t?”
“We’ll keep looking.”
“Will we have time?”
The question went unanswered. The leader raised his lantern eye-level.
Damien quietly crawled into the corner of his cage and kept low to the ground. He had no doubt as to who they were looking for, but he was not sure why. What did they mean to do with me? He had flitting images of torture and death—of the monsters eating him like in a children’s story someone once told him.
Or worse, maybe they planned on turning him into one of them. Maybe they had put him in this cage.
It did not take long for them to find him; the tent was not very big after all, and there was nowhere else for him to hide. He felt the soft heat of the lamplight as it shone on him. He looked up and met the horrible green eyes of the leader, who was staring down at him incredulously, as if he could not believe Damien was real.
“Get him out of there,” Dante commanded.
One of his comrades stepped forward; an awful beast with a head in the shape of a lopsided stump with a thin line for a mouth, the bulging eyes of a fly, and thin, needle-like fingers that slipped effortlessly into the lock.
“Dante,” shouted the lookout, “we don’t have much time!”
“Hurry up,” Dante growled impatiently.
The fly creature began to move quickly. As he did so, Damien had a million pleas running through his mind. His mouth, however, felt too slow to form the words properly.
When the lock clicked open, Damien’s heart thudded like the steps of the giant. He pressed his back against the bars behind him, wishing he could slip through.
Dante flung the cage door open, stepped inside, grabbed Damien’s arm and pulled. Damien did his best to resist and tried desperately to twist away.
“Get up,” Dante commanded. “You’re coming with us.”
“No!” Damien said, turning his head away.
The lookout shouted for Dante again.
“We need to move,” the rabbit man said. “Just leave him!”
Dante ignored them and gave one last pull, getting Damien on his feet and out of his cage. “Move,” he instructed. Damien could only reluctantly obey.
When they opened the tent flap, Damien could see nothing through the miasma of smoke and flame. There was a great fire roaring and ripping through the open field. It curled into fists in the distance and crushed the dark shapes in its grip. The smell of cooked meat was stronger out here, and it was the most sickening thing. It threw a punch to his gut as soon as it wafted into his nostrils. He nearly doubled over in pain. Terrified shrieks ripped through the air, making his ears ache with the sound. He glanced to his left, and at first he thought he saw a mound of dirt, but when he squinted, he saw that it was a pile of burnt bodies—human legs, arms, and heads that had been clearly ripped apart and were now black and rotten, as if they were old food.
Bile rushed up his throat and he stared at that pile for a long time frozen in fear. That’s what they’re going to do to me, he
thought.
Dante shoved him forward roughly, telling him to keep low so he wouldn’t breathe in the smoke. Damien obliged, if only to gain a brief respite from the smell. In front of him a man was racing across the field, trying to escape one of the monsters chasing after him. The monster opened its mouth and its tongue darted out like a frog’s, snatching the man around his waist. He shrieked and Damien heard the sound of nails scraping against a rock face as he was pulled back towards the creature. It took the man’s head in its hands and ripped it from his torso. It stuffed the man’s bleeding head into its gaping maw.
Some of the humans were fighting back and shooting at the monsters. They managed to kill a few but not enough to gain the upper hand. The monsters dragged the people down into the flames. Their bodies merged together, human and inhuman, and it looked like a macabre coupling as they melted.
Damien knew that the goal of the monsters was not liberation.
It was revenge.
“Stay close to me,” Dante shouted to be heard above the chaotic cacophony, and Damien did not know if he was addressing him or his companions. “We only need to –”
Damien never found out what they only needed to do. There was a crack of gunfire and one of Dante’s companions went down. Blood bloomed from a sizeable hole in its stump-like head, its bulging eyes reflecting the smoke and the stars.
During the sudden moment of panic, Damien broke free from the group and ran.
He could hear Dante and his comrades calling after him. He thought one of them decided to give chase. His lungs seem to cling to his ribs as he sprinted through the thick smoke. Hopefully it was thick enough that he could lose himself in it.
Where he was going, he could not say. He did not even know if there was a place to go or if there was a way to escape this. An angry heat pressed all around him, as though it was slowly enclosing him into another cage. He shielded his eyes from the harsh firelight and from the glowing embers raining down. Ash filled his nose and mouth, and he wondered if he was breathing in human or monster remains. Blurred shadows and shapes appeared and disappeared out of the corners of his eyes. If I cried out for help now, who would answer me? Only the roar of the fire. Only the terrified screams.
A harsh light flashed in his eyes and he nearly lost his balance. Something heavy struck his temple. Damien crashed to the ground, the side of his head throbbing with a sharp pain. When he regained his focus, he saw the blank eyes of a rifle staring down at him.
Damien slowly raised his hands to shield his face. “Please,” he whispered. “I’m not –”
The ground shook violently beneath him. The inhuman shriek returned. Whatever was producing it was coming towards them quickly.
The man holding the rifle looked up and took two frightened steps back.
A large black spike stabbed into the earth a few feet away from Damien. He began to shift his body to the right, but another spike blocked his path.
Something was breathing above him.
The man in front of him shot the thing wildly, but he must have missed. A heartbeat later, a spike speared through the man’s torso, and he was lifted up into the sky.
Damien was rooted to the spot. There was a wet, crunching sound above him. Bones and entrails rained down from above and landed by his feet.
When it is finished, I will be next.
Was it bravery or stupidity that dared him to move? He got on his knees and began to crawl through the mud and gore as silently as he could. All the while, the thing above him was feasting, smacking its lips and sucking on the remains.
A spike landed in front of him and he flattened himself to the ground. The thing dropped the remains of her meal on his back. It was disgustingly warm, almost like he was being draped by a blanket—tucked in for a good sleep. He could almost feel the eyes of the thing above him focusing on him, trying to decide if it had room for another meal. Several times he tried to swallow. All he could taste was ash.
There was a horrible clicking noise above him. Beside him, the earth shifted with the creature’s weight. Was it his imagination, or could he feel the creature’s hot breath against the back of his head? He wanted to shut his eyes, but he was afraid to make even the smallest of movements.
He heard the crackling of the earth as the creature raised its leg into the air. Damien could feel it poised above him, ready to strike, ready to kill. He wrestled with indecision. If he moved now, he did not have a means of escape. If he moved now, he doubted he could escape. The thing was fast and powerful, and he was only…He was only…
Maybe he would never know.
Damien rolled to the side right as the monster speared the spot he vacated. He scrambled to his feet and leapt to the side as another leg attempted to stab him.
Fighting was not an option. If he stopped moving for just an instant, he would be dead. At first he tried to find an escape amongst the circle of legs, but the ground was rumbling so violently beneath him that he was in constant danger of losing his footing. It felt as though he was teetering at the edge of the cliff and he would fall at any moment. Drunkenly, he dodged and wove through the tangle the creature created. He could no longer hear the sound of his heartbeat, nor could he feel his legs even as he forced them to move. Above him, the creature let out a bloodcurdling shriek that nearly knocked him to his knees. It felt as though someone was scraping his eardrums with a needle. Instinctively, he reached up to cover his ears, but this proved to be his downfall. The creature sensed his distraction and pushed him to the ground. He lay in the human remains, a horrible foreshadowing of what was to come.
Before Damien could even attempt to move, the monster pinned him to the ground with its legs like someone pinning down a butterfly on a board. One of the legs tore into his arm, but Damien was too terrified to feel the pain. The creature slowly lowered itself.
At first, he thought he was saw a hanged pregnant woman descending from the smoke. Her stomach was the first thing he could make out, pale and round like the moon. Her bloated frame dangled lifelessly, like a puppet with no master. Her head had fallen to the side, as if her neck had been snapped in half. Yet when he looked into the woman’s eyes, he could see life in them. They darted wildly, and when she met his eyes, her head jerked upright. She scanned him from head to toe, as though trying to decide which part of him to eat first. The massive black legs that had him pinned now were growing out of the woman’s back; he could see her corpse-like flesh straining against their movement. She leaned in close to him, spit dribbling down her chin, slathering her bruised and naked chest. Stupidly, Damien imagined her planting a death kiss on his lips.
She opened her mouth.
Her cheeks split apart like tent flaps, exposing a circle of teeth that spun slowly, hypnotically. Inside her mouth he could see a man’s eye stuck between one of her teeth. It stared at Damien. Two fangs dripped with yellow liquid at the end of each flap. She snapped her mouth open and closed three times, getting closer and closer to him. Damien could smell blood and rotten flesh on her breath.
Out of desperation, Damien wrenched his arms free, tearing some of his skin in the process. He locked one of his hands around her throat; his other grabbed her left flap and the fang pierced into his palm. Damien felt a hot sting of pain that was immediately replaced by a numbing sensation that flowed down into his wrist and worked its way up into his arm. The woman pushed against him, her circle of teeth filling his vision, even as Damien turned his head away. He wasn’t strong enough to choke her. He tried, but he couldn’t.
It was only a matter of time before she completely overpowered him. Damien briefly envisioned his body being sliced apart in her mouth.
In his mind’s eye, he saw the river again, glittering like jewels in the summer sunlight. He saw the blank slate of his face. He felt the gentle touch of a hand on his shoulder and heard a voice call his name and beg him to come back.
It did not matter if it wasn’t real.
Damien closed his eyes and waited for the creature to take h
er first bite.
The sound of a gunshot made him flinch. He felt a warm splash of blood on his face. The woman ceased her clicking and her strain against his grip. Her head fell forward, blood and spit dripping on Damien’s front, her belly pressing against his legs. He let her go, painfully removing his hand from her fang, and he watched as, like a tree, she collapsed to her side.
For a moment, he lay there as though the woman still had him pinned. He took in deep, rasping breaths and clutched his chest with his good hand, feeling his heart beat furiously. His entire left side was numb, and he could not move his arm. But he was still alive.
Sharp, snapping sounds quickly made him sit up. Surely she was not still alive? He stared at the large, grotesque body, at the legs curling around the bloated form. One by one, those massive legs broke from the woman’s back and collapsed on top of her, crushing her, killing her for good. Damien breathed out in relief.
Something smacked the side of his head. He curled up on his side and cradled it with his good hand. It felt as though a million glass shards were stabbing his temple.
A man was standing over him. When he spoke, the voice was frighteningly familiar. It was slightly muffled, as though he were speaking behind his hand. “Look at me,” he commanded in a deceptively soft tone.
“No,” Damien said automatically. He did not want to look. He did not want to see. He just wanted it to be over.
The man reached down and grabbed the side of his head, pressing the glass shards deeper into Damien’s skull. The man forced Damien to look into his merciless black eyes.
It was the doctor.
Damien wanted to crawl away. He remembered the doctor with perfect clarity. He remembered those eyes staring down at him, holding a knife, cutting into Damien’s flesh. That had all been real. Damien could feel it now, the knife digging into his sides and the doctor prying his ribs open. He did not remember why the doctor did those things. “The why is not important,” the doctor had said. “Only the results matter.”