The Hunger (15 page)

“If Hutch wins, I’m out. I don’t see any other alternative.”

“You wouldn’t.” She pecked him on the cheek, smiling too brilliantly. It seemed at least possible that she was not indifferent to his sacrifice at all, but rather so guilty about it that she couldn’t bear to acknowledge it. Perhaps he was fooling himself, but it felt better to believe this than the other, cold thing.

“Let’s get going,” he said. “We’ve got a lot to do.” An image from the past floated into his mind: school play, eighth-grade year. Before them all he had forgotten his lines. He remembered his silence, and the way the faces of his jealous and resentful audience lit up when it was realized that the faculty’s darling was failing, and the roar of delighted laughter when his silence did not end.

Miriam’s visit to Sarah Roberts had worked well. A vestige of what Sarah had experienced remained in Miriam’s own heart. It had been a strong
touch
. The next phase of the plan was very much more problematic.

She would have to “meet” Sarah, and the only fast way she could do it would be to become a patient at the Sleep Research Clinic. It would be the most dangerous thing she had done in a very long time. For the first time in history human scientists were going to get a chance to study a member of her species. They didn’t exist in human scientific literature, only in mythology. What would the scientists do when they tried to take the measure of her mystery?

Most of all, she dreaded captivity.

She was terrified by bars, such as the ones that surrounded Sarah’s ape, the one that had
touched
so powerfully as it died.

Miriam did not like the feeling of being menaced by humankind. And the thought of being studied by them was even more disquieting. They might consider her to be without human rights and cage her just like an ape.

The risks were frightening.

But Sarah could solve the problem of transformation, could make it permanent. That made all the risks seem trivial. If Miriam could only have known what was going to happen to John, she would have captured the doctor earlier. There might have been some small chance . . .

At the thought, her mood shifted to gray sorrow. But she refused to live in grief. Her life must be rebuilt. She would comfort John and protect him if she could, but she would not obsess herself with his suffering. Life was full of tragedies. You buried the dead.

The
touch
that had been broadcast through the vast emotional babble of the city by Sarah’s experimental ape was like a beacon to Miriam. It told her how very close Sarah had come to inducing transformation, and therefore to understanding it.

Miriam’s next move had been carefully planned. As soon as she successful
touched
Sarah she went home and made an appointment for an interview at the Sleep Research Clinic. Now that Miriam had hidden a part of herself in Sarah’s heart the next step was to engage her mind.

A part of Miriam might have enjoyed the danger of all this, just as she might have enjoyed fox hunting with John. There was something exhilarating about jeopardy. Safe air was stale, but dangerous air was silver clear. Love your enemy, her father used to say, for without him you would never taste the flavor of victory.

Yes, the noble sentiment of the past.

Forget the past. Go upstairs, change clothes; you’ll be late for your ten o’clock appointment. She had made it of necessity at the last minute. “We’ll fit you in, but please expect a delay.”

She wore her blue silk Lanvin suit for the occasion. As she dressed she reviewed all she had rehearsed for the sleep clinic interview. She would enter as a patient suffering from night terrors of adulthood. Before branching off into gerontology, Sarah had specialized in this rare disease. Even yet she was the clinic’s only expert. The three or four cases they got in a year didn’t justify a full-time staff position. Sarah would certainly be called in.

Sarah. Miriam thought of her, huddled in her robe, shaking with passion that she could not possibly have understood. It was going to be most interesting to contend with somebody as intelligent and spirited as Sarah.

Miriam did not scorn human intellectual achievement. She had developed a keen interest in science. She had identified her own animal ancestors. She belonged to mankind and mankind to her, just as the saber-toothed tiger and the buffalo had once belonged to each other.

She put the finishing touches on her outfit. It would do: she looked beautiful, just a bit tired, eyes rather sad.

Eyes rather sad.

Time was passing, time could not be stopped. If only . . . but it was no use thinking about it. John was a dead man. “Dead.” What mockery there was in that word.

The doorbell rang. Miriam looked through the peephole, observed a man in uniform. Her chauffeur, appearing at nine thirty-five as requested. When she had to do any driving in the city she used a limousine. Her own car would be an inconvenience and taxis were too unsafe; she used them only when necessary.

As she walked out the front door, she noted with approval that the car provided was a dark-blue Oldsmobile. It was foolishly risky to use the more pretentious cars; they only attracted unwelcome attention. The driver, who was young, clear-eyed and sober, opened the car door for her. She fastened the seatbelt and settled back, locking her door but leaving her hand near the catch in case it was necessary to exit quickly. Her analysis of automotive design led her to conclude that this make was safer than most, and less prone to explode if hit from the rear. The driver started the engine. She sat well back, relaxed and yet attentive, ready if her luck ran out and there was an accident. Her ride was so pleasant that she found herself envious of those who could afford such transportation full time.

The medical center was swarming with people. Miriam rode to the twelfth floor in a jammed elevator, trying not to inhale their scent. Unfortunately, the waiting room of the Sleep Research Center was also crowded. The smell and feel of so much human flesh was unnerving.

Nevertheless, she waited with the others, thumbing through a well-worn copy of
Book Digest
. Ten became eleven, then eleven-thirty.

“Blaylock,” intoned the receptionist, at last. “Desk three, please.” This was the only facility of its kind in the city. The crowding and impersonality of it indicated that there ought to be more. Miriam was interviewed by a pleasant young man in shirtsleeves who took her name and asked her to describe her problem.

She knew what the effect would be when she mentioned the intensity of her “nightmares.” He looked at her with renewed interest. Most of their cases must be common insomnia, cured by teaching the patient how to cope with stress.

Medicine knows night terrors of adulthood as one of mankind’s most frightening problems. Miriam could have quoted Sarah Roberts: “These terrors arise from the primordial depths and induce in the sufferer perhaps the most intense fear that a human being can know. In quality and intensity they are to nightmares as a typhoon might be to a spring shower.”

“How often have you been having these . . . troubles, Mrs. Blaylock?” The interviewer’s voice was calm but his eyes regarded her sharply.

“All my life.” How pitiful that every word was true. The vividness of the experiences she had during Sleep were probably even worse than night terrors. But she had long ago learned to endure them. They went with Sleep and therefore must cleanse the soul.

“When was the last one?”

“Last night.” She watched his face flicker at that. This was working well. Mrs. Night Terrors Blaylock was going to become a priority case, she suspected.

Now his voice dropped and he leaned closer to her. “Can you describe it?”

“The ocean was chasing me.” It had just popped into her head, but she thought it a lovely night terror for the spur of the moment. Much nicer than the one she had planned, about hands choking her.

“The ocean?”

“Huge, towering black waves that stretch up forever. Roaring and crashing over me and I’m in the sand, I’m running, I can hear it over my shoulder, it comes right up the dunes, nothing’s going to stop it. You can see a shark cruising in the waves. Everything smells horrible, like it had all gone rotten.” Goose-flesh had broken out all over her body as she talked. Her hands were grasping the edge of the table. She was surprised at the intensity of her feeling. It ceased to be an act. Had she ever experienced such a dream? Perhaps it was
behind
the dreams she remembered, perhaps there was something in her, coiled like a snake, spitting out recollections so monstrous that her mind dared not touch them directly.

The worst of it was something she didn’t tell the shiny young doctor: she was indeed the woman running from the ocean. But she was also the shark.

JOHN WAS RUNNING through the early morning, running like a slowed-down movie past the blooming flowers, the tulip trees with their buds, and the new-sprouted grass of Central Park. His hunger made him feel as if a living thing were moving in his stomach. His eyes bulged, his mouth opened wide as he ran. He must be hideous in his flapping raincoat and dirty blue suit, with the fingernails of a demon and the face of a corpse. People shrank from him, children shouted alarm. He felt like a hermit who had been knocked out of his hiding place by a wrecker’s ball.

His heart skipped and thuttered. Pain shot down his shoulder. He staggered. Then the beat started again: food, foodfood, food, FOODFOODFOOD! He coughed, running along the Bridle Path, lurching past Cleopatra’s Needle, finally plunging into the shrubbery beside the path.

He could go no farther, his breath was fire, his heartbeat a confused rattle. This place was redolent of hot, strong flesh. Every few minutes another jogger passed. He listened to one, a big man breathing easily. Too strong. Then another — lighter but still not tired enough. His victim would have to be practically exhausted, just at the end of a long hard run. Yesterday little Alice had nearly gotten the better of him. Today he was even weaker. In his extremity he began to recollect an almost forgotten time of his life, which he now saw as the best time — before he met Miriam. He remembered the grassy slope at Hadley where he and Priscilla lay intoxicated with the smell of the heather on windy spring days. The clouds rolled madly down the sky. God, what wonderful times! He was ceasing to love the drama and speed of this age, and to cherish the quieter time before. Even old Hadley was gone now, the ruined house rebuilt and turned into an orphanage by the strange populist state that had followed the Empire.

Without warning, a cough burst out of him. He found himself pitching backward, almost losing consciousness. Above him he saw the sky through a tulip tree. And the clouds in it were the same! The same as that day at Hadley! “Oh, Johnny, my pladies awa’,” Priscilla had cried, “awa’ with the win’!” And there bouncing across the heather went her fluffy plaid skirt. How he had run! Run in the wind and the kind land, run for that plaid with all the might of his young years.

Another cough, not his own. He struggled up, heard it again. Thud-thud on the gravel, thud-thud, thud-thud. Here came a girl who had put on a little extra during the winter, jiggling along in a purple sweat suit, gasping like a tophorse at a coach stop.

He connected with her right side as she jogged past. She let out a surprisingly shrill scream for one so heavy.

A pack of crows took flight, their voices echoing in the sky. The wind tossed the trees and the clouds scudded past. John grabbed her hair and pulled her head back, jammed his scalpel in until he felt the “pop” as it penetrated the pectoral muscle. He fell on her, clasping his hands behind her neck, adhering to her with desperate energy. She staggered and flounced and shrieked for help. Pain flashed through his joints as she struggled, but he had a good hold. He placed his mouth over the wound and sucked with every last whisper of energy. Slowly the life oozed into him. As her movements weakened, his became stronger and more assured. She grew lighter and he expanded in size, filling his slack clothes, gaining pinkness in his cheeks and sharpness in his eyes. Her screaming lowered to a hoarse rumble, then a growl, finally a rasp across a dry and withering tongue, past lips become strips of leather. The skin sank to the bones and the lips cracked away from the teeth. After a moment the girl’s jaw snapped open, her gums contracting. Her hands had become black claws, the flesh tight and splitting on the bones. The eyeballs sank into their sockets, collapsing in on themselves.

John jumped away from her. Stiff and light, she toppled to the ground like a papier-mâché toy. He was bloated and flushed, his eyes ablaze. He pounded his temples in an ecstasy of relief. Snarling with his victory, he snatched the remnant up and threw it high into a tree where it caught and fluttered in the wind.

He gnashed his teeth, he was far from satisfied. Without the Sleep, his body demanded ever more energy. The longer he remained awake the more he needed.

“I’ll never need more than I can get,” he said aloud, testing to see if the softness of youth had returned to his voice.

What a delightful surprise
that
was! He hadn’t sounded like that in days. “O mistress mine,” he sang, listening to the sweet smooth tones, “O mistress mine, where are you roaming? O stay and hear, your true love’s coming!” And then he laughed, rich and deep and full, and ran with a firm step down the path after stronger, better, even more enriching prey.

Behind him shouts were rising, feet thundering past Cleopatra’s Needle. (Miriam always laughed to see that thing here, occupying such a place of honor. She said that the Egyptians had considered it the worst obelisk in Heliopolis.) Young men were bearing down on him. On the roadway to his right a scooter cop stopped and got off his machine, looking with a frown in the direction of the shouts. He began to trot up a low hill to the scene of the crime. John moved toward him, down the same hill.

With the strength he had gained it was just possible to take the strapping young policeman. As they were passing each other he slammed his fist into the side of the man’s head, sending him reeling, his cigarette flying from his mouth and his cap sailing into a bed of begonias. He made quick work of the struggling, cursing man. In another twenty seconds he was fitting the remnant back onto the scooter. The devil take caution, let them figure this one out. He could see the headlines: C
OP TURNS TO MUMMY; RADIUM DIAL WATCH TO BLAME
?