The Monstrumologist (The Monstrumologist #1)(79)

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.