Tag: short story

Matilda lay on the old bed in the twilight and gazed through the broken window while absently stroking her swollen belly. Then she turned to me. Her smile creased the pockmarks of her complexion and bared the yellow nubbins that were her teeth. In the darkness her hands seemed soft and fine, and I couldn’t discern the webbing of flesh linking her fingers. Momentarily, I wondered if the child would be like her, with gnarled skin as rough as rock. Or similar to me, hollow and with legs stilted and bent back at the knee like a bird’s. I hoped our child would resemble Matilda because she was beautiful to me, although I knew there was little likelihood it would take after either of us.

“I’m hungry,” she said. “And he’s hungry, too. Do you know what I’d like, Hilary?”

This was a game of hers and I played along to amuse her and to allow us to forget the actual time since our last good meal, a matter of weeks. I recalled the gaudy confections she always pointed out in the brittle magazines we found here and there in the ruins of the city, and said, “Watercress salad with fresh kiwi?”

“No, not tonight, I don’t think.”

“Sauteed medallions of veal in a butter sauce with capers?”

“Much too Continental, wouldn’t you say?”

I laughed, she laughed, I loved her. Matilda sat up and propped the tattered gray pillow behind herself. “We’ll start with snails in a Burgundy sauce, followed by a cup of jellied consommé, and finally filet mignon wrapped in bacon and stuffed with liver and garnished with asparagus and potatoes Anna.” She giggled at the unfamiliar words, her tongue clumsy with the syllables of another century. “And for dessert, I want goat cheese and a lemon sorbet and black coffee and Napoleon brandy. How does that menu sound, Hilary? Tell me.”

I mimed taking down her order and bowed as I believed a waiter would, my motions culled also from the yellowed periodicals, ancient flotsam of a different age, that she enjoyed. “Will there be anything else?”

“No, thank you. That is all, sir.”

We laughed together as wind came through the window, scudding clouds across the moon. “Hilary!” Matilda gasped. Her hands went to her belly.

I kneeled beside her. Beneath the skin of her abdomen, I felt the movement of the child.

“It will be soon,” she said.

It had been five months. I hoped she was right because I wanted the event over with, a usual paternal desire, I suppose. But I had no way of knowing whether her feminine inspiration was accurate. There was no longer a common term for human gestation.

Then the child quieted.

It was time to go out into the streets and avenues to hunt. I went to our bedside cabinet and retrieved my pistol and six precious rounds. I inserted the cartridges. It had been eight months since I had discovered good ammunition, a single box somehow overlooked for generations on the floor of a sports shop. I couldn’t guess when I would have another occasion of such luck.

“Well, then, on what are we to dine?”

Matilda was still playing the game, so I replied in a similar spirit. “Perhaps a saddle of venison with cranberry relish and mushrooms.”

“What else?”

“An invocation of quail with Madeira.”

“And?”

“Stewed hare with fresh herbs and summer squash.”

“Yes, the menu will suffice now, I think. Kiss me before you go, Hilary.”

I kissed her forehead and her cheek and her lips. Since the moon was almost full, yielding enough light to read by, I brought Matilda several magazines to occupy herself with while I was away. I tucked the blanket around her, made sure she was comfortable, and embraced her again.

Then I locked our apartment door. Out of habit, I climbed the tenement stairs and examined the access to the roof, finding it secure. Then I went down four stories, through the lobby, and out the front entrance. This was iron grill work, which I fastened with a chain and combination lock. There were few in this post war world who could get by such precautions, but just to be safe, I made the gesture from the dead religion that Danton had taught me, and I crossed myself.

From the remaining signage I’d learned we lived on Riverside Drive, in what had been a residential neighborhood. Since the war, a nearby park had sprawled onto the concrete of the urban environment. The surface was crumbled and I had to force a path through brush and bramble, and around the overgrown hummocks that had once been cars, as I made my way toward West End Avenue. I moved as silently as possible, keeping to cover. Game had become scarce and I was determined to use all my skills to ensure Matilda and our child were fed.

From uptown came the sound of piping, a noise so strange that I had to listen. The music was made by a tribe of simians with territory nearby. They were terrible creatures, too much to handle, so I turned onto Broadway and moved toward the pond at 86^th Street.

This was normally an excellent location for game.

I am not introspective, but as I went along, lurching from stoop to storefront to thicket, I began musing about the life I led with Matilda. More than anything, I wished I could make it better for her. Impossibly, I yearned for the civilization I knew only through the magazines that so thrilled Matilda and through the improbable tales the old man, Danton, had told us when we were children.

Not that I accepted all Danton said. Even as a boy, I’d always suspected he made things up.

Perhaps I lack imagination. But the century that lay between my birth and what Danton called the Great War was a gulf too great for my mind to cross. Unlike Matilda, I never could visualize the relics of technology, except for a few simple things like guns, actually working. Nor could I picture multitudes of people possessing the same kind of limbs, or dumb animals. To my mind, these had always been the fancies of an old man, and from an early time I preferred to concentrate on everyday facts instead.

Here, at least, Danton was straightforward. During the years since he had found us, abandoned as babies by our anonymous parents, he’d drilled into Matilda and me what he knew about survival. When he forgot to ramble on about history and philosophy, Danton was an excellent instructor. There was a craftiness to the man that still surpassed my own. Regardless of our current animosity, I still recognized Danton’s ability, and knew I was in his debt.

For one thing, he hadn’t eaten us when we were young and he was hungry. Instead, he had named us and raised us as his own.

Until recently, I couldn’t understand why. In his place, I would have devoured the two lost infants without a thought. Only when I felt the faintest stirring under my hand in Matilda’s womb did I at last have an inkling why Danton had adopted us. Only now that my own seed was flowering could I comprehend his altruism, or feel such disgust at what he proposed to now do to Matilda. Despite his explanations, which were full of ancient and abstract words, I couldn’t make any sense of his desire to give Matilda an infusion of old drugs and abort our child.

Caterwauling interrupted my thoughts, and I went down behind a clump of bramble, then dug myself into the brush. Nerves thickened my pulse while I looked along the avenue. The awful noise went on with such horrible and lunatic vehemence that I became afraid. When the screaming died out, I continued peering warily uptown through the screen of vegetation in which I was concealed.

The maniac vocalization broke out again, and nearer. The noise issued from the dark thicket that had been a pocket park.

A haze of clouds covered the moon, but I had no difficulty seeing the five figures who emerged from beneath the trees and ran through the tall grass. They were the simians whose eerie fluting music I had heard earlier. I hunched down and hoped I would escape their attention because they were vicious creatures with disturbing habits.

But as they approached my concealment, passing so near that I saw their every feature and heard the details of their panicky conversation, I realized I wasn’t in danger. Something had so spooked the simians that flight was their only concern. I realized, also, their vigilance would be relaxed by their maddened rush, and saw profit in this fact. Crawling out from under the brush, I began trailing the creatures.

The hunger in my stomach was like fire. I had difficulty moistening my lips. I hesitated to think what Matilda endured with appetite for two within her body.

Following a block behind the simians, I closed this distance when they reached the pond. They had lost all caution. Four of them went one way around the moonlit water while the fifth took the right-hand path.

Here was the opportunity for which I was waiting. I took out my hunting knife, increased my pace, and soon closed in behind the lone runner. It noticed me only when my blade was descending. With a startled yelp, it twisted awkwardly to evade the cut, and I stabbed it in its shoulder instead of the heart.

I wrenched the knife out of its fur. I had to kill it quickly, so I plunged the sharp metal, still bright after a century or more, into it again.

Life remained in the creature. It turned on me and took me in a terrible grip.

Perhaps the most chilling aspect of the situation was that it talked to me while we wrestled. Its words were distorted by the shape of its muzzle and by its long teeth, and like most animals, it lacked any concept of grammar, but I understood it well enough.

“Die man man hurt hurt o brothers hurt. O brothers.”

“Shut up. Shut your mouth.”

“Brothers die die man knife hurt die.”

I tore the knife from its flesh and stabbed again. The simian emitted a mewling exhalation and coughed blood in my face. I felt vitality slip from its musculature like water from a bowl. It cried a little and relaxed in my arms.

I lowered the carcass onto the grass and surveyed the area. The other members of the tribe were already out of sight along the avenue and our brief struggle had gone unnoticed. But I was uneasy despite the quiet because I couldn’t stop wondering what danger had startled the animals.

I hoisted the body across my shoulders and ran into the nearest side street. But my progress was slowed by a heavy growth of brush, thorn, and brilliant yellow roses. It felt like forever before I reached the adjacent avenue. Here the likeliest security was presented by the corner building, a structure of gray stone two stories high. I went up the front steps three at a time and through the gap where a door had been and into the dark lobby. I remained still while my eyes adjusted to the dimness.

Eventually, I became confident that the interior was free of peril.

I put the carcass down on the marble flooring. Nervously, I peered through the entrance back along my trail but observed nothing unusual. I finally decided I could return attention to my kill, which had to be dressed. Pulling the head back, I made an incision and allowed blood to drain from the body. Then I made a cut along the abdomen, so I could skin it. But as I began peeling the hide away from the flesh, the cold touch of metal against my nape interrupted my work.

A hoarse voice hissed beside my ear. “You are slow tonight, my boy. I could have had your liver in my fist already. So slow that I am ashamed of how easily I have taken you. But that would be admitting a certain failure at parenting on my part, don’t you think?”

The pressure of the spear point eased. I turned to face Danton. I hadn’t seen him in three months, and I was startled by the change in him. He had always seemed old to me, but now his age was doubly apparent. There were dark welts beneath his eyes. His hair had whitened. But I felt no sympathy for the man because of the contention between us.

“I’ll kill you if you ever do that again, Danton.”

“Will you now, my boy? I think not.”

There was no profit in arguing with Danton. I choked down my anger and began gutting the simian.

As I sent my hand into its body cavity, the old man said, “I’ve eaten only rat for a month and I’m sick of the diet. Let me have the heart.”

I ignored him. “Not a sly hunter like yourself, Danton. Not rat. I don’t believe it.”

“Impossible but true. What I hate most is how the bastards curse you as they die. You can just make out what they’re saying if you listen carefully. Give me the kidneys.”

Danton was still a dangerous man despite his age, so I motioned for him to go ahead and feed. He plucked up a hunk of flesh and put it to his mouth. Sighs and small noises escaped him as he ate, and I realized the change in him was starvation. This insight reminded me of my own hunger, but I refused to satisfy it before returning to Matilda. I stripped the pelt off the beast with quick passes of the knife and cut the carcass into smaller portions.

Danton wiped juice from his lips with a palm. Then he said, “Damn it, but nothing equals fresh meat. Give me a hindquarter, Hilary. Good, good. Now, my boy, tell me how Matilda is.”

“Why? You were going to poison her.”

“That wasn’t it, boy. Don’t you understand the simplest thing?”

“I get you well enough. You wanted Matilda to take some rotten drugs you rummaged up somewhere and kill our child.”

“Only because this pregnancy scares me. Let me go over my reasoning one more time. I hope it isn’t too late already.”

Seeing the gleam in his eyes, I realized Danton was beginning a lecture. From long experience, I knew it would be useless to interrupt. I returned to dressing the simian while listening with half a mind to his discourse. Danton wrapped his hands around the shaft of the spear and leaned toward me.

“For the hundredth time, let me tell you about the Great War. In those days, there were millions of people who were all the same except for minor variations in color. I know you have difficulty imagining such uniformity. I have trouble myself, because by the time I was born, the plagues had already made the world into what it is today. From what my parents told me, the preliminary blights were merely virulent, eliminating fifty-seven percent of the human population within a decade. Of greater impact, however, were the infections spread later on.

“First, the ancients set free a sickness of DNA, which joined to mammalian plasm and gave the higher animals the gift of speech. Even though the fact of articulate nonhuman species may seem like an ordinary thing to you and me, this was an effective act of terrorism to people not accustomed to it. Next came the Mutagenic Plague.

“This virus affected the very stuff of life. It introduced a random factor into the genetic material. From that time on, it was no longer possible for mankind or other mammals to breed true to type. I have sixteen fingers while you have eight, and that poor bastard there could have descended from a raccoon or monkey or domestic cat. The lines separating species were gone and the world will never again be what it was before.”

“All this is history, Danton,” I said. “Tell me something new.”

There was a sudden venom in his tone. “You’ve heard it before, but you haven’t listened. Just make damn certain you do now.

“Like the rest of the population during the final years, my own parents were soldiers. They were drafted to work on the project that eventually developed the Mutagenic Plague. What they learned then ruined them. Even though they survived the War, they were dead inside after that. I owe my birth not to any passion of theirs but to a government order, perhaps the last before society broke up. By that time, most people were so disillusioned with their offspring that few were having children.

“Knowing I wouldn’t look like them was not, however, what robbed my parents of optimism. It was knowing the effects of the plague would worsen, not diminish, in their descendants. It was predicted that the incidence of random genetic variation would increase over the generations until the species reverted to some basic common denominator. We have already seen the result of this activity in rats and other animals with high reproductive rates, which stabilized years ago in forms that are very unlike those of their ancestors. I fear other complex mammalian species are reaching that threshold. Which is why I decide to follow the advice of my parents and not have children of my own. And why you and Matilda, being several generations younger than I am, should rethink your decision.”

“Just what are you talking about, Danton? What’s this about rats?”

“Is your head as hollow as your bones, boy? Haven’t you heard me?”

“I’ve heard you, old man. I’ve heard you a thousand times. And so what? I guess it would be nice if the child took after Matilda or me. But what do I care if it doesn’t?”

“You miss my point. I’m not talking about additional fingers, or a tail or snout, or webbing like there is on Matilda’s hands. I mean that there could be a total break with genetic tradition, and that something awful might be born. I don’t want Matilda to endure that. Or you. Let us remove the child now. You may have another if this one proves vaguely human and I am wrong. I have what is necessary here.”

Danton took from his pouch a glass jar with a faded label, evidently the drug. I struck the vial from his hand.

“Not while I’m living, old man.”

The fight went out of Danton as the glass broke. He looked so pitiful that I felt an urge to hit him. But I restrained myself because I knew hunger and worry were making me edgy.

“Your philosophy is worthless, old man,” I said. “Tell me what you know about the scarcity of game.”

“Show respect, boy. According to the ancient literature, the depletion of wildlife from a habitat may be caused by catastrophe or by over hunting. Since there is no evidence of disaster or disease, I believe there must be some recent upset in the ecological balance. Perhaps a new predator migrated into the area and has already exhausted our local resources. Or maybe an endemic feral population has increased beyond feasible limits. I don’t know. All we can do is wait until a new equilibrium is struck. If I had the strength, I’d head south. That’s my best advice.”

“We can’t go anywhere until the child is born.”

“Yes, of course. I wasn’t thinking. In any case, Hilary, there are always rats.”

I bundled up the carcass in my shirt and slung the sack over my shoulder. Danton took his portion of meat and followed me into the foyer. We peered out but discovered nothing unusual in the expanse of grass and concrete.

 I was thinking of Matilda and of how pleased she would be with my bounty, even if it was only stringy flesh and not some fine cuisine like in the magazines she read.

It wasn’t until we were outside in the open air that we became aware of danger.

Once, the intersection had been a major civic juncture. The nearest cover in our direction of travel was provided by a wild latticing of morning glory and ivy overgrowing a dry fountain in the center of the area. We made our way across the avenue toward this shelter and huddled in the shrubbery beneath the statue of a smiling child in the middle of the basin. As we caught our breath, we heard the sly sound that foretold our peril, a noise as gentle as a whisper.

Danton nudged my shoulder and asked, “What the hell is that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t like it.”

We pressed against the pedestal and scanned the surroundings but saw only a few leaves tumbling across bald patches of pavement. I took out my pistol. Danton put down the simian haunch and readied his spear. Then we heard the odd teasing sound again. It lacked a definite point of origin and seemed to rise from all around us, as if from the air or from the ivy in which we were concealed.

The volume and clarity increased until I realized I was listening to an actual discussion. To my terror, I found I could decipher the exchange despite its lack of grammar and the slippery accent of the hidden speakers.

“Man o man man meat man meat. Good good. Yes.”

“Yes. Yes. O yes.”

“Man meat. Man meat.”

“Good. Good good. Good.”

I looked everywhere but couldn’t discover the source of the conversation. Then Danton gripped my arm and called my attention to a clump of vegetation before us. The tension in his eight spidery fingers communicated his fear as easily as words. Despite the moonlight, it felt like forever before I made out the reddish specks, glinting like coals, to which he was pointing. These, I knew, could only be eyes.

“Meat yes man man meat.”

“Go go. Go. Yes. Yes yes.”

“Man meat man meat.”

By the agitation of the discussion, I realized the creatures were encouraging each other to attack us. It was time to seize the initiative. I took aim at the nearest eyes and fired. Startled screams rang out as the shot echoed, and I saw dark shapes scurrying through the grass.

“Go get it, boy,” Danton said. “Let’s see what the bastard looks like.”

I raced out and retrieved the body of the thing I had shot and flung it down before Danton. The creature was small, but even in death it seemed to possess a malevolence greater than its size. Sensual lips had pulled back to expose an inlay of sharp teeth. Talons crusted with blood extruded from its paws. The shape of its body was almost human, but because of the large pads on its knees, I didn’t think it walked upright. Danton appeared interested in the fingers, which he moved curiously back and forth.

“The third one is opposable,” he told me. “It has the ability to use tools, but I doubt it did. The musculature is too feral.”

“What is it? I don’t like its looks.”

“That makes two of us. We’ve found our new predator, boy. The thing could have come from human stock. Other aspects, however, are animal.”

“I think it looks like the ape I killed.”

“Yes, there is a similarity. It also looks something like you, too.”

Our speculations ended when conversation once again sounded in the grass surrounding the fountain. The creatures were gathering to assail us again and so I cocked my pistol and fired off the remaining rounds at the baleful eyes. Shrieks welled up and then there was quiet. Knowing I had gained us only a brief respite, I tucked the gun into my belt and unsheathed my knife while Danton jabbed his spear at the air.

“They have the advantage on us,” he said.

I ignored him. I was thinking of Matilda. The knowledge of her frailty frightened me more than fear for my own life. I imagined her awaiting my return in the dark apartment. Perhaps this is why I made the decision I did. Despite his being a father to me, I had never really liked Danton.

“Prepare yourself,” he said. “The bastards are coming.”

A scream rose from the brush and a hundred of the things hurtled toward us, fangs glistening in the silver light. I think I shrieked, although I’m not sure of this. One was upon me, impaled on my knife and struggling despite the blade in its belly. More came immediately. Danton was being pushed back until he stumbled against the pedestal of the smiling child and went to his knees. The creatures fell upon him. A terrible wailing rose from the tangle of bodies, but I was already on my way away from there. Using my long legs to full advantage, I leaped up and over the imps and across the tall grass.

I told myself what was needed to survive was decisiveness, not philosophy.

So I turned away from the fountain and the horribly smiling statue and from the feast beside it and ran away from there.

A cloud passed beneath the moon, darkening the city. I didn’t slow down even after I became sure I wasn’t followed. Even so, I was gripped by an unreasonable fear, and wanted nothing so desperately as to be at home with Matilda. By the time I approached our tenement, coming upon it from the concealment of a wild growth of rhododendron, I was near to panic. I dashed up the flight of steps that led to the front door and fumbled clumsily at the lock across the iron grill work.

Breathing deeply, I closed the heavy door. Then I climbed to the fourth story. The dust coating the landings appeared undisturbed, but I remained on edge. I cursed Danton for having died and for having filled my head with his craziness. I knew Matilda was all right. She was even now gingerly folding back another page to follow an ancient article in the moonlight. I told myself that tomorrow, I’d have more luck at the hunt. I imagined the smile that would crack open her wrinkled lips, and how she might fan me with her webbed fingers. Going to the steel door of our apartment, I tested the knob. It held fast. So I slid the key into the mechanism.

My first intimation of disaster was sound where there should have been silence.

I went into the hallway and along the corridor past the living room and kitchen and past the smaller bedroom. Through the open door of the larger room issued whispering. I knew it was impossible for them to be here, but the noise was so like the conversation of the imps around the fountain that dread seized me. I threw the door open and flung myself into the room.

For a brief instant, it seemed all was well. Matilda was lying asleep where I had left her, the blankets tucked up, an ancient periodical beside her fingers. Yet still the whispers continued, seeming to come not from the closet or any corner of the room but from the very bed on which Matilda rested. Then I noticed the flatness of the blanket that should have risen upward with the swell of her belly, the wet discoloration of the linen, and a twitch of movement beneath the material.

I cried out and wrenched the covering off her. Then I unsheathed my knife.

I killed them all.

Mostly I cried. The moon set and in the darkness I stared at the dead things, the immature imps that were our get. One had been chewing her thigh into pablum. Another was at her breasts, lapping reddish milk with its sharp teeth. The others I scraped from her womb and killed before they could draw breath.

I sat beside Matilda through the dismal hours of the night. I closed her eyes and the magazine she’d been reading. Holding her hand, I stroked the webbing between the fingers and thought of all her fancy dreams, some fine cuisine. Eventually, I slept.

In the morning I awoke to the fact of my starvation. I gathered up our children. I was hungry, so I ate.