Peter Benchley's Creature (27 page)

"I been here a million times, they don't give a shit."

"Yeah? Then why's all them 'No hunting, get your ass outta here' signs?"

"Insurance," said Toby, who had already turned seventeen and thus possessed two months' more wisdom than Chester. "They gotta have 'em."

"Well, they sic the cops on us, it's you stole that friggin' thing, not me ... don't think I won't tell 'em."

"You helped."

"I watched."

"Same difference."

"Anyhow," Chester said, "I don't know what makes you think you can hit a friggin' raccoon with a friggin' crossbow."

"It said on the box: accurate to fifty yards. 'Sides, maybe we'll see a deer instead."

"Oh, no, you don't. You shoot a deer, it's outta season and I'm outta here."

"Don't be an asshole."

They walked on for a few more yards, until they came to a big tree growing amid a tangle of thick foliage.

"Perfect," Toby said, and he stepped into the foliage and made his way around to the far side of the tree.

"That's poison ivy," said Chester.

"You got long pants on."

"What's perfect about it?"

"Chestnut tree. They'll come right to it, they love chestnuts."

"What does?"

"Critters ... all kinds."

"A lot you know."

"Shut up."

They knelt behind the tree. From a quiver at his waist Toby took a steel-pointed graphite bolt, eighteen inches long. He set the butt of the crossbow on the ground, pulled back the drawstring, cocked it and fitted the bolt into its slot.

"How's that thing fly true with no feathers?" asked Chester.

"The slot here makes it spin like it's rifled."

"The tip's not even barbed."

"Neither's a bullet, shithead. A thing's got enough force behind it, it'd prob'ly kill a rhino."

"Or a jogger. That'd be a fine one to explain to the—"

"Shut
up,
I tell ya!"

Chester stayed silent for a moment, then whispered, "So, whadda we do now?"

"Whadda hunters always do? We wait."

There were two of them, one fatter than the other, both slow and vulnerable . . . but apparently armed, though with what it did not know. It watched, waiting to see what they would do.

They did nothing, only squatted in the bushes.

The bird noises had stopped, and the squirrel sounds.

It moved slowly to its left, until it had a clear path toward them. It would take them easily, first one then the other, and drag them both back to its den. The fat one first.

"What was that?" Chester said.

"What was what?"

"A noise, back of us."

Toby turned and looked, but saw only bushes. "Forget it," he said. "We're the hunters here, you think somethin's gonna sneak up on
us
?"

"I hate woods," Chester said. "I ...
Toby!"

The fat one had seen it, was looking at it, pointing at it, making a noise.

It sprang from the underbrush, took two swift strides and was upon the fat one. It dug one set of claws deep into the fat one's chest, the other into his scalp and eyes, bent his head back and, with its teeth, ripped at his throat.

The fat one died quickly.

It turned to the other.

"Oh God . . . oh Jesus . . . oh God ... oh Jesus ..."

Toby staggered backward. Something had Chester, something huge and grayish white, and blood was flying everywhere because . . . oh God, oh Jesus . . . the thing was
eating
him!

Toby's back struck the trunk of the tree.

Now the thing was turning toward him. It had yellowish hair and steel teeth and eyes as white as cue balls, and it was bigger than Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Toby jerked the crossbow up and held it in front of him, and he tried to say something but no words came out. He pulled the trigger.

The crossbow bucked as the graphite bolt flew from its slot. He saw the bolt hit the thing and sink in, and there was a little squirt of what looked like blood.

But the thing kept coming.

Moaning in terror, Toby dropped the crossbow, wheeled around the tree trunk and ran.

It felt a burning sensation in its side, below its ribs, and looked down and saw something protruding from its flesh. It wrapped a hand around the thing, pulled it from its flesh and cast it away.

It was not badly wounded, none of its vital functions was impaired, but the pain slowed and distracted it. It stopped and watched the human blunder away through the bushes. It returned to the fat one, intent on dragging him back to its den.

Then, for the first time, it experienced foresight: the other human might come back, return to hunt it. With others. It was in danger, it would have to make a plan.

It sat down against the big tree, willing its brain to work, to project, to sort, to innovate.

Its main priorities were clear: to staunch the flow of blood, to survive. From the floor of the forest it gathered leaves, and moss from the trunk of the tree, and it crushed them and packed them into the wound.

To nourish itself, it used its claws to cut strips of flesh from the fat one; it consumed them. It ate as much as it felt it needed, then forced itself to eat more, until it sensed that another bite would trigger regurgitation.

Now, it knew, it must escape, and find a different, safer place.

It arose and walked to where the trees ended at the shoreline. It stood in the shelter of the trees, to be sure it was alone, then it entered the water.

It could not submerge, but it could swim; it could not feed in the sea any longer, but it could survive until it reached different land.

As it had become aware of its past, now it was beginning to fathom a future.

41

THE sea was flat, there wasn't enough breeze even to raise ripples, so the Mako rose quickly to a plane and cut through the glassy surface at forty miles an hour.

"I wonder who came up with the ten grand," Tall Man shouted over the scream of the outboard motor.

"Some TV producer, probably," Chase answered from the helm.

"Well, they better hope to hell they don't raise that critter."

A single boat was anchored in the deep channel southwest of Block Island; though it was still a quarter of a mile away, Chase recognized it instantly. "That's Sammy's boat," he said. "White with a blue stripe . . . tuna tower. . . outriggers."

The sun was behind them, lowering in the western sky. Tall Man shaded his eyes and squinted. "They got two ass-kicker marlin rigs off the stern," he said. "Wire lines. Only a couple guys in the cockpit."

"Is one of them Puckett?" .

"Yeah." Tall Man paused, looking. "The other's a big dude, big as me. Looks like he's cradling an AK-47."

"Cradling," Chase said, "not aiming."

"Not yet."

Chase kept a hundred yards from the bigger boat as he passed it. He saw no other crewmen, no cameras, no sound gear. "They're not making a movie," he said. "They're hunting." He swung the Mako around, took it out of gear and let it drift up alongside the fishing boat.

Puckett leaned over the side and shouted, "Beat it, Chase! Every time I get a break, you find a way to fuck it up. A man's got a right to earn a living."

"Not by slaughtering dolphins, he doesn't," Chase said. "You're looking to spend a lot of years in a little room all by your lonesome."

"You don't know shit." Puckett reached into his pocket, brought out a paper and waved it. "These dolphins died of a virus, them and a dozen others. We bought 'em from a lab in Mystic."

Chase hesitated. What Puckett said was possible, it even made sense. Over the past few years, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dolphins of several species had washed up on the shores of the eastern seaboard, dead from viruses whose origins remained a mystery. Pollution was presumed to be the catalyst, but what kind of pollution—sewage, agricultural runoff, oil or chemical waste—no one seemed to know.

"So what're you doing, then, you and Rambo?" Chase gestured at the huge man holding the assault rifle across his chest. Before Puckett could answer, Chase felt Tall Man nudge him and look up, and he saw a video camera mounted on the lip of the fishing boat's flying bridge. It was moving, tracking them as they slid by in the Mako.

"Fishing for great whites, what else?" said Puckett. "A good white-shark jaw can fetch five grand, easy."

"Don't bullshit me, Rusty, I know what—"

The man with the rifle said, "We have broken no law. That is all that need concern you."

"No, what concerns me is, I know what you think you're looking for, but you don't have the faintest idea what—"

Suddenly, from a loudspeaker mounted somewhere above the cockpit came a disembodied voice, gravelly, unnatural—almost mechanical sounding—heavily accented and shouting, "Rudi! Get in here!"

The man passed the rifle to Puckett, turned and entered the cabin.

Chase's Mako had drifted past the anchored boat, and Chase reversed the motor and backed up until the two boats were once again side by side.

Puckett held the rifle at his waist, pointed at them.

"Put the gun away, Rusty," Tall Man said. "You're up to your eyeballs in shit already."

"Stuff a cork in it, Geronimo," said Puckett.

The man returned from the cabin. "Throw me a line," he said. "Come aboard."

"Why?" said Chase.

The loudspeaker boomed, "You!"

Chase looked up at the video camera and pointed to himself.

"Yes, you. You say you know what we are doing?"

"I'm afraid so," said Chase.

"Come inside . . . please . . . you and your friend. I think we need each other, you and I."

42

THE cabin was dark; the glass in the doors was tinted, and curtains had been pulled across the windows. It was chilly, too, air-conditioned and dehumidified.

As their pupils adjusted to the dark, Chase and Tall Man saw that all the furniture had been removed from the cabin and replaced with what looked like a portable intensive-care unit. In the center of the room was a motorized wheelchair, and in it sat a man. A rubber tube led from a digital monitor through a hanging bottle and into the veins in the crook of one of the man's elbows. His other hand held the end of a hose attached to a tank of oxygen. Behind him were more machines, including an electrocardiograph and a sphygmomanometer, and on the overhead in front of him was a television monitor showing a color image of the stern of the boat.

The man was old, certainly, but how old was impossible to tell, for his head was shaved and he wore sunglasses. The breadth of his shoulders suggested that he had once been large but had shriveled; a blanket covered him from knees to chest.

The man raised the hand holding the oxygen hose, nudged aside the folds of a yellow ascot and pressed the hose to his throat. His chest expanded as he filled his lungs.

Then he spoke, and Chase was startled to hear the words come not from him but from a box behind him, an amplifier of some kind.

"Where is he?"

"He," Chase thought, what "he"? "I don't know," he said. "Now
you
tell
me: what
is ... it?"

Again the man touched the hose to his throat, and again he spoke. "Once he was a man. He became a great experiment. By now, there is no way to know. A mutant, perhaps. A predator, definitely. He will not stop killing; that is what he was made to do."

"By who? And what makes you think you—"

"I know what he needs. If I can deceive him into ..." The man slumped, he had run out of breath; he waited, as if to regain the strength to breathe.

"What d'you mean he was an experiment?" Tall Man said. "What kind of experiment?"

The man took a breath. "Sit down," he said, and he gestured at the open deck by the door.

Chase glanced up at the television monitor and saw Puckett ladling fish guts and blood into the sea. The other man, Rudi, was sitting on the stern with the rifle in his lap.

The old man said, "If he comes, Rudi will shoot him."

"You can kill it, then," said Chase. "That's a relief."

"No, it is a question." There was a slight change in the tone of the man's words, almost as if he were smiling. "A good question: can you kill what is not really alive?"

Chase and Tall Man sat while the man gathered strength and, after a moment's silence, began to speak. At first, the words came in short bursts, but gradually he developed a rhythm of inhaling and exhaling that allowed him to express complete thoughts.

Chase closed his eyes—it was distracting to see the tube touch the throat and withdraw, to watch the chest expand and contract—and let the words wash over him and become pictures.

"My name is Jacob Franks," the man said. "I was born in Munich, and in the years before the war I worked as an apprentice in my father's pharmacy. We could have left, we were urged to leave, but my father refused, he was a man with an unfortunate belief in the basic decency of mankind. He could not believe the rumors about the Nazis' intentions for us Jews . . . until, one night, it was suddenly too late to get out.

"I last saw my parents and my two sisters as they were led away from a cattle car on a siding near a town no one had ever heard of.

"I was kept alive—I was young and strong and healthy—and put to work as a laborer. I could not know that what I was building were crematoria . . . essentially I was digging my own grave. My health began to fail, of course, from malnutrition, and in hindsight it is clear that I was only a few weeks of months away from being rendered into ashes, when one day a new doctor arrived at the camp. Because my papers indicated that I had some experience in pharmacology, I was sent to work for him.

"His name was Ernst Kruger, and he was a protege, a friend and, later, a rival of Josef Mengele." He paused. "You know who Mengele was, I assume."

"Sure," Chase said. "Who doesn't?"

"
I
don't," said Tall Man.

"They called Mengele the Angel of Death," Franks said. "He was a doctor at Auschwitz; his joy came not from saving lives but from taking them, and in the most hideous ways possible. He enjoyed experimenting on prisoners, torturing them for no other purpose than to see how much pain they could endure, slicing open twins only to see how similar they really were, transplanting eyes only to see if they would function, freezing or boiling women and children solely to see how long it took them to die. He escaped at the end of the war and lived in Paraguay and Brazil."