The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(50)
“May God have mercy on our wretched souls,” Reynolds heard him murmur.
The explorer looked back at the creature, which at the pace it was going would soon reach them. But he calculated that he had time to make one last attempt to kill it. He stood up, leaving Allan where he was, and ran toward the cage where the dogs were barking frantically, flinging themselves at the bars. He broke the padlock with the butt of his gun, released the door, and stood aside, praying the dogs were barking out of anger and not fear. He felt immensely grateful when he saw that, once released, the team of twelve or more snarling dogs made straight for the Martian. Reynolds’s tactic took the creature by surprise, and it stopped in its tracks, watching the dogs hurtling toward it. The lead dog flung itself at the Martian, unleashing all the fury that had been fermenting since Carson first came aboard the ship. But, with an almost effortless movement of its claw, the monster sliced the dog in two in midair. Fortunately, the rest of the pack was undaunted, for it did not enter their brains that they might suffer the same fate. Or if it did, then they did not care, for they leapt at the monster with the same primitive ferocity, like brave soldiers doing their duty, perhaps because they could not help making that final gesture for Man, their master. They attacked the monster with their powerful jaws, but within seconds it had pulled them off, hurling them in the air or decapitating them with its talons, and Reynolds soon realized that the dogs’ spirited attack would detain the Martian for only a matter of seconds. Knowing they must keep running, the explorer hurried back to Allan and pulled him to his feet. Then he took off in the opposite direction, practically dragging the gunner, while behind them he could hear the dogs yelping as they were torn limb from limb. A couple of them, reduced to bloody shreds, even went sailing over the two men’s heads before landing with a dull thud on the snow.
Suddenly, Reynolds felt he had no more strength to go on running and came to a halt, exhausted. Without Reynolds to hold him up, Allan slid to the ground on his knees and gazed up at the explorer with a weary face. What was the point in trying to flee? he seemed to be asking. Would it not be better to surrender to the creature, to let it kill them without further ado, so that they could at last be allowed to rest in peace? Reynolds stared at the vast expanse of ice stretching in front of them, which had seemed so claustrophobic, and realized it made no sense to keep running, that it would only prolong their end. He took a deep breath and turned to face the monster, which was making its way slowly toward them over the snow, a pair of dogs still clamped to its body like some macabre adornment. Reynolds drew the pistol from his belt and gazed at it for a few seconds, as though weighing up the possibility of using it once more, before throwing it onto the snow. There was no longer any need for heroic or desperate deeds, because no one was watching. From the very first scene, the drama had taken place without an audience, in the intimacy of that godforsaken stretch of ice.
The monster came to a halt ten or twelve yards away, contemplated them, its head tilted to one side, and let out a noise resembling an animal screeching. Now that the creature was no longer using a man’s vocal cords, what they heard was its real voice, a kind of cawing sound, like a domesticated raven attempting to speak. Naturally, Reynolds could not understand it, but he fancied the tone was triumphant. He prepared to die hacked to pieces. He lowered his head and let his arms flop to his sides in an attitude of surrender, or simple exhaustion, or possibly of indifference to his fate. Then his eyes fell on the pistol he had so casually cast aside a few moments earlier, and an idea formed in his head. Why succumb to a slow and gruesome death at the hands of that creature when he could take his own life? A bullet in the head and it would all be over quickly and cleanly. That would be a far more merciful end than the one the Martian no doubt had in store for him. He glanced at Allan, who was lying flat, his cheek resting on the ice, his gaze focused on horizons that only he could see. In the meantime, the monster continued edging toward them, as though savoring the fear of its quarry. Even so, Reynolds doubted he would have time to shoot Allan, take out the gunpowder and tamping rod, reload his pistol, and then shoot himself in the head before it reached him. No, he would only have time to kill himself. In any event, the gunner seemed to have found refuge somewhere beyond consciousness or reason, and he prayed with all his might that his friend could remain in that place until the very last moment, so that he could escape in some way the torment that would be the end of his life.
“Forgive me, Allan,” he whispered, hurriedly reaching for the pistol and cocking it. “I fear that even in the final moments, I will not attain the greatness I so yearned for.”
Yet that no longer mattered. A last heroic, altruistic act would have changed nothing. He aimed the pistol at his temple, gently, almost affectionately, caressing the trigger. Then he looked at the Martian, which, as though sensing that Reynolds was about to deprive it of its satisfaction, had quickened its pace and was ominously spreading its claws. Reynolds smiled. However fast it ran, the Martian wouldn’t make it, he said to himself, as he caught a whiff of rotten flesh and chrysanthemums. The creature’s smell. A smell that also vanished when it changed itself into a human.
“I shall see you in Hell, son of a bitch,” he whispered, preparing to pull the trigger and spill all his dreams onto the snow.
Suddenly the Martian stopped dead in its tracks, raised its misshapen head to the sky, and let out a bloodcurdling cry. An instant later the tip of a harpoon burst violently through its chest. The creature looked at it with the same puzzlement as Reynolds. It grabbed the harpoon with its claws, and the explorer, lowering his pistol uneasily, watched the creature grappling vainly to pull it out, writhing in agony, as its features began dissolving once more. First it was Wallace trying to wrench himself free, then Shepard, then Peters, then the young gunner, even though the real one was lying at Reynolds’s feet. The appearance of Carson, howling, mouth contorted, eyes popping out of his head, ended the sequence of transformations, the chain of agonized corpses. It was then that Reynolds noticed that whoever had fired the harpoon had also taken the trouble to tie a couple of sticks of dynamite to it. Without a second thought, he threw himself on top of Allan, shielding him with his body. A second later, a thunderous roar rang out and the Martian exploded into a thousand pieces that scattered in all directions. When silence returned to the ice field, Reynolds ventured to look up, half dazed, his ears ringing. And through the smoke that had begun to clear, he made out the calm figure of Griffin silhouetted against the polar twilight.