The Monstrumologist (33 page)

Morgan shouted at him, “For God’s sake, what are you doing, man? Shoot it again! It’s not dead!”

“Fool,” snapped Kearns. “I don’t want it to be dead.”

Below us the woman had completely collapsed. Perhaps she
had
broken her neck, or fainted from fear or loss of blood. The doctor shoved past Kearns and scooped up the bowie knife dropped earlier.

“Will Henry!” he called. “Snap to!”

He swung his legs over the edge of the platform and heaved himself off. I took the longer route, down the improvised ladder, to join him at the woman’s side. I looked over his shoulder at the screaming, squirming beast, afraid that it would overcome its injuries long enough to rip our heads from our shoulders with a single swipe of its enormous claw. The doctor evidently did not share my concern; his entire focus was upon the woman. He rolled her onto her back and pressed his fingers below her lower jaw.

“Not too late, Will Henry,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the yowls of the wounded
Anthropophagus
behind him. He cut the rope with one mighty blow, slapped the knife into my hand, and gathered her into his arms. “Follow me!” he called, and we ran, slipping and sliding in the mud, hopping over the oily trench, to the shelter of the platform, directly beneath Kearns and the others. He propped her against a tree trunk and leaned close to examine the wound in her stomach.

Above us I heard Kearns call down, “I wouldn’t tarry there too long, Pellinore.”

The doctor ignored him. He threw off his jacket, ripped off his shirt—buttons flew in every direction—and then wadded it up, covering the incision with the makeshift dressing. He grabbed my hand and placed it over the shirt.

“A steady pressure, Will Henry. Not too hard.”

At the moment he said this I heard Morgan cry out
in a loud, panicky voice: “There! See it? What is that over there?”

The doctor grabbed my shoulder and brought his face close to mine, looking deeply into my eyes. “Can you, Will Henry?
Can you
?”

I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Here.” He pressed his revolver into my free hand and turned to go. He froze, and for a moment I thought we were done for, that one of the
Anthropophagi
had snuck around through the trees and now was upon us. I followed the doctor’s gaze and made out a tall, thin form holding a rifle, its bright blue eyes glittering as if in defiance of the gloom.

“I will stay with Will Henry,” said Malachi.

Malachi stayed—and the
Anthropophagi
came, answering the cries of pain and outrage of their fallen sister. The earth disgorged them; the graves themselves vomited them up. For months they had been tunneling, expanding their underground warrens to accommodate their growing brood, creating a network of passageways of labyrinthine complexity in the hard New England soil, beneath the sleeping dead. Now, enraged by this encroachment upon their domain, maddened by the howls of their wounded comrade, they came. To the circle’s eastern boundary they rushed, crowding into a single hissing and grunting, snapping and snarling milky white mass. They came right to the edge of the circle … and stopped.

Perhaps they smelled something they didn’t like, or another, deeper sense warned them, an instinct inbred by thousands of years of conflict with their prey, these ambitious bipedal mammals who had had the audacity to evolve from a thick-headed, easygoing primate into hunters themselves, capable of not only defending the human species but of wiping the
Anthropophagi
from the face of the earth. What terrible irony was this: that they needed us to thrive in order to thrive themselves, but at the cost of their own extinction!

I heard Kearns call from above, “Steady, lads, steady. Only on my signal! Brock, are you ready?”

Brock grunted something in reply. Beside me Malachi went to one knee and raised his rifle. I was close enough to hear his ragged breath and smell the damp wool of his jacket. On my other side Kearns’s anonymous victim clung to life, grasping my wrist in both her hands as she stared uncomprehendingly at my face.

“Who are you?” she croaked. “Are you an angel?”

“No,” I answered. “I’m Will Henry.”

I started, for suddenly Kearns’s voice rang out. He was shouting at the top of his lungs, “Hullo, hullo, my pretties! Olly olly oxen free! The party’s over here!”

The effect upon the milling monsters was immediate: With leaps and bounds, over the trench and into the slaughter ring, they swarmed, two dozen strong, fanning out as they rushed the platform, with black eyes shining and
mouths agape, the taunting of Kearns overcoming all cautionary instinct. When the last headless horror had crossed the eastern boundary, Kearns shouted the order to “drop the fire,” and Brock hurled a flaming oil-soaked rag into the trench. Five feet high the flame erupted; I felt its heat on my cheeks as it raced around the trench, fed by the fuel of oil and kerosene, sending roiling plumes of acrid black smoke boiling into the atmosphere. The monsters skittered and slid to a panicky halt within the circle of fire, screeching with shock and fear primordial: When man had first tamed fire, it had foreshadowed their doom.

Like the closing of hell’s fiery gates, the two lines of flame met on the far side of the trench, sealing the beasts—as well as their fate—inside.

“Fire at will, gentlemen,” shouted Kearns over the crackle of the fire, the spitting hiss of the rain, the terrified shrieks of the
Anthropophagi.
Gunfire exploded above us; the boards over our heads rattled and shook violently, to the point where I was certain the entire improvised structure would come crashing down upon our heads. Night had fully fallen, but now the grounds were alight in a smoky orange glow, crowded with spasmodic shadows, choked with the cannon-ade above and the death cries below. Through the awful din I heard Kearns’s delighted cry: “Like shooting bloody fish in a barrel!” An object twice the size of a baseball sailed into the circle, and an instant later the ground shook with the concussion of the grenade’s blast, a great blooming ball of flame
blossoming where it burst, hurling searing-hot shrapnel in a flesh-rending radius of destruction.

“Can’t see, can’t
see
!” Malachi muttered in frustration, swinging his rifle to and fro. He scooted forward, as if he actually intended to rush the flames, hop the trench, and take the fight directly to the things that had slaughtered his family. “Just one. Please, God, just one!”

At which point his wish was granted.

Anthropophagi
are not born with a taste for human flesh. Neither are they, like the solitary shark or the noble eagle, born hunters. They must, like the wolf or the lion—or the human, for that matter—learn these complex behaviors from their parents or from other members of the group.
Anthropophagi
do not reach full maturity until the age of thirteen, and the interim between birth and adulthood is spent learning from elders. They are allowed to feed only after the kill has been picked over by the older members of the clan. It is a period of learning, of trial and error, of observation and emulation. One startling and rather counterintuitive fact about these creatures is that
Anthropophagi
are actually quite doting and indulgent of their young. Only in the most extreme cases—starvation, for example—would they turn on one of their own.

Such was the case described by Captain Varner that occurred in the hold of the ill-fated
Feronia
, and such a case
was probably the genesis of the misconception repeated by Sir Walter Raleigh and Shakespeare that the
Anthropophagi
are cannibals. (So might we humans be fairly called, by that criterion, for, faced with starvation, we have practiced this selfsame unthinkable abomination.) And, like the mother bear with her cub, all members of the group fiercely defend the youngsters when a threat arises: The smallest are sequestered to the remotest corner of the den; the juveniles are consigned to the rear in any assault, whether it be for food or, in the case of that rainy spring night in 1888, in protection of their territory.

A juvenile straggler, then, it had to be, perhaps the same age as I—though two feet taller and several dozen pounds heavier—that had been slow to answer the summons of the one dropped by Kearns’s bullet, and had been cut off from the rest by the lighting of the ring of fire. Or perhaps, seized by the impetuousness of youth, he had not followed the herd into the killing zone but had determined to take a more circuitous route to the audacious invader, one that circumvented the fire altogether, bringing him round, unseen in the tumult of battle, to the little woods in which we crouched.

His assault was clumsy and amateurish by
Anthropophagi
standards, owing to his limited experience, to the excitement of the hour, or to a combination of both. Though we did not hear him crashing and stomping through the brush until a few seconds before he sprung from the deep shadows of
the trees, those precious seconds were enough for Malachi to react.

He whirled around the instant it emerged from the trees behind us, firing without taking aim, for there was not enough time for that; if he had not fired when he did, I’ve no doubt Malachi would have succumbed, as would I and my gutted charge. The bullet struck the beast square in the chest, in a spot equidistant between the two black eyes, a mortal wound for a human, but as the doctor had pointed out, the
Anthropophagi
, unlike their human cousins, possess no vital organ between their eyes. The shot barely slowed him, and Malachi had no time to reload. He did not attempt that folly, but flipped the rifle around and rammed the butt into its snapping mouth as hard as he could. The reaction was instantaneous: The jaw clamped down in a violent spasm, shattering the wood with a resounding
crack
, the force of its tremendous bite—more than two thousand pounds, according to Kearns—ripping the rifle from Malachi’s hands. Blood poured from the monster’s wound, flowing down its heaving chest straight into its mouth, staining its teeth crimson. It lunged for Malachi with arms outstretched as it had seen its elders do, the killing pose, eyes rolling back as the arms came up, the digits of its massive claws splayed, hooked barbs spread wide for maximum effect.

Malachi stumbled backward … lost his balance … fell… . In another half second it would be upon him. But I was only
three or four feet away, and a bullet travels far in a half second. It tore into the triceps of the creature’s striking arm, throwing off the blow directed at Malachi’s head; the tips of its three-inch nails barely grazed his cheek. That was my first shot—as well as my last—for the headless thing abandoned Malachi and turned the full force of its wrath upon me, scrambling in the wet leaves and mud on all fours as it came, like some ghastly man-size spider. Quicker than I could blink, it smacked the doctor’s revolver from my hand, wrapped the other claw around my neck, and tugged my head to within inches of its champing mouth. Never have I forgotten, in all my long years, the horrific stench that exuded from its gullet, or its bloody teeth, or the excellent view deep into the recesses of its throat. My view might have been even better if not for Malachi, who had hurled himself onto the monster’s back. The doctor’s words echoed in my head, and those words saved both our lives.

If one should drop, go for her eyes, where she is most vulnerable.

I yanked the bowie knife from my belt and buried it to the hilt into the closest lidless, lightless eye. The
Anthropophagi
thrashed in agony, its throes throwing Malachi off its back and nearly knocking the blade from my hand. But I held on, giving it a half twist for good measure, before pulling it out and sinking it into the other eye. Blinded now, its blood spurting fountainlike, soaking its contorting torso, soaking
me
, the beast pushed itself to its knees, swaying back and forth while swinging its arms madly in a perverted parody of hide-and-seek.

I had cursed my fate on that seemingly endless night of the necropsy, had been forced, I felt, to endure the doctor’s interminable lecture, and witness the gruesome dissection of Warthrop’s “singular curiosity.” Frightened and weary beyond words, still I had paid attention.
What else occupies your thoughts?
he had asked, implying not much did beyond my appetite. But my answer had been an honest one: I watched; I tried to understand. Like this young
Anthropophagus
, I had learned by observing my elders. I knew, you see, the exact location of its brain.

Holding the hilt with both hands, I drove the knife home with all my strength, into the spot just above its privates. The thrust landed true. Stiff as a board the monster went, arms straight out from its sides, with arched back and open mouth, teetering on the precipice of oblivion before oblivion took him down.

I fell over too then, to lie beside the murdered beast, clutching the dripping knife against my stomach, shuddering in the aftershock of those fleeting, eternal moments of terror. A hand touched my shoulder, and instinctively I raised the knife, but of course it was only Malachi.

His face was streaked with mud; his left cheek bore three bloody stripes where its claws had raked. “Are you hurt, Will?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No, but
it
is. I killed it, Malachi,” I added with breathless obviousness. “I killed the damned thing!”

He smiled, and his teeth seemed very bright against the backdrop of his blackened face.

Kearns had been correct in his prediction: It was over in less than ten minutes. The gunfire over our heads dwindled to a few sporadic pops; the fire, having consumed quickly most of its fuel, and suffering from the steady onslaught of rain, petered out, leaving in its wake an undulating black curtain of smoke; and inside the circle itself was heard nothing but the gurgling and muffled grunts of the mortally wounded. The doctor appeared first, and, upon seeing the lifeless young
Anthropophagus
at our feet, his face lit up with surprise and alarm.

“What happened?” he demanded.

“Will Henry killed it,” Malachi explained.

“Will Henry!” exclaimed the doctor. He looked at me with wonder.