It's Not the End

by Matt Moore

  “So?”

  “Livingstone and men like him claim to have all the answers. You’re thinking. Learning.”

  “And?”

  “Do you know how rare that is? Even to the east, towns are idle in their knowledge. They wait for a new man or new book to arrive from Philadelphia to tell them about better ways to construct a building or treat disease. Doling our knowledge. We are pushing ahead, fearlessly, in expanding what we know and can do. You could have a place here.”

  “No thanks.”

  Noah imagined that as he headed east from Dean End with the creature, Pendore would go west over the mountain to establish a larger factory, another slag pile spilling down into another river, more heavy metals polluting the ecosystem.

  Still, with a rational mind and scientific approach, Pendore had a chance of coming to realize the harm he was causing. Unlike Livingstone and his zealotry.

  He blew out a breath, hoping Philadelphia could hem Pendore in when they learned what he was doing. “I’m gonna get some rest.” He stood.

  Pendore did as well. “I have some things to attend to myself. Good night, Noah.”

  Moving upstairs and into his room, Noah removed his outer clothing, extinguished the lamp and climbed between the coarse wool sheets. In the last few moments of consciousness, as thoughts drifted, he saw his career before him, rushing to find these creatures before the inevitable future where cities covered the continent and the beasts he sought were wiped out from history.

  He must have slept because pounding on the door pulled him awake. After a moment of disorientation in the dark, the door opened, spilling in light from several lanterns.

  “Noah!” Pendore said, Riders surrounding him and his hand on a sobbing boy’s shoulder. “Get up. It’s killed a man!”

  The group emerged from the forest into a large yard. The boy steered his horse around a series of barns and outbuildings to a simple stone farmhouse. In the side yard, a woman knelt in the dirt, wailing. She clutched a man, twisted and still, to her chest as she rocked. Smears of blood, brown stains in the dawn’s light, covered their simple clothing. Pigs, wandering freely from what was left of a smashed pen, scattered in a squealing wave before the halting horses.

  The boy leaped from his horse and ran toward the woman. “Ma! Ma!” He collapsed at her side, throwing his arms around her. Nearby, several pig carcasses lay in the dirt.

  Elder Pendore waved the Riders into a semicircle. “Spread out. Look for any signs of where it’s been or could have gone.”

  “Be careful,” Noah added, positioning himself next to Pendore. “Thing’s probably hurt and dangerous. If ya see it, tell me. I’m the one who kills it.”

  The Riders galloped off, rifle in one hand and reins in the other.

  Noah and Pendore dismounted and approached the woman. Secretly, Noah hoped the man had been killed by some accident. Anything but an attack by the beast. Several metres away, a pitchfork lay discarded in the dirt, tines thick with a dark liquid; a sickle lay farther still. Near the pen, Noah spotted a musket with a snapped stock.

  Noah struggled to keep his face neutral as he knelt in front of the woman. The stench of copper-hot blood and outhouse-stink of bowel filled his nose. He asked, “Can I see him? See what it did to him?”

  The woman looked up, eyes blazing. Blood smeared her cheek. “Chutia! You were supposed to kill it. All I hear is you talk and talk. Now my Sanjeev is dead.”

  “Please,” Noah repeated.

  “Kavita.” Pendore knelt, tricorn held over his heart. “Please, it could be important.”

  The woman, Kavita, nodded and slowly lowered the body to the ground. The boy, who had been crying into his mother’s shoulder, shrieked.

  “Salvation and resurrection.” Bartholomew, recovered from earlier, had joined them.

  The faint hope Noah held that this had been some accident, or that the farmer had been trampled, evaporated. The farmer’s simple white tunic and breeches had been ripped to tatters. His right arm nearly severed below the elbow, attached only by bits of skin and tendon. Slice wounds, all of them the familiar three parallel cuts, scored the torso and abdomen. Grey-purple loops of bowel bubbled from the belly. The man’s throat had been sliced open.

  “I’m sorry,” Noah said.

  Kavita hugged the body of her husband back to her blood-soaked dress.

  Noah stood and moved to the smashed remains of the pigpen. Bloody tracks—man, pig and the three-clawed impressions—led away.

  “So what now?” Pendore asked.

  “We pick up its trail and go after it!” Bartholomew said.

  “I go after it,” Noah said, returning to his horse. Grunting with the effort, he lifted the saddlebags and set them on the ground. “’Fore someone does somethin’ stupid.”

  “Maybe you’re not all hox-pox tricks,” Bartholomew said. “But it’s not sheep and goats no more.”

  Noah bit back a retort that the reason this man had been killed was that he had recklessly confronted the creature. Instead, he unclipped a rolled-up backpack from the saddle and opened it. Only the passing seconds mattered, not debating with these primitives. Still, he wondered if this farmer had been among the crowd gathered to listen to Yoji’s boasting. Emboldened, had he rushed out when he heard it attack? A convergence of two species that never should have met. Silently, he selected supplies from the saddlebags and loaded them in the pack.

  A Rider, not much older than the boy now sobbing over his dead father, galloped up to them, breathless. “We found a blood trail and some tracks. Starts by the pen”—he motioned with his head—“cuts through the fields toward the tree line.” He pointed up the sloped terrain, finger trembling. A kilometre distant, the farmland ended abruptly in dense forest. Above, the trees clung to the mountains’ slopes before giving way to rocky peaks tinged pink by the rising sun.

  “Good work,” Pendore said.

  “There’s more. Elders Livingstone and Hongtu are here.”

  Noah turned, looking down the broad path that curved out of sight into the forest. A team of horses pulling a cart carrying Hongtu and Livingstone approached. Noah finished transferring the supplies he needed to the backpack. He slung it over a shoulder, snapped the saddlebags’ clasps shut and replaced them back over his horse. As he pulled his rifle from the saddle, the cart stopped before him.

  “Faith and charity,” Elder Hongtu greeted Noah, descending to the ground. Livingstone followed.

  Noah nodded.

  “We understand a man is dead,” Livingstone said, owl-like gaze fixed on Noah.

  “Yeah,” Noah replied. “He attacked it. The thing—”

  “Sanjeev had been devout.” Livingstone absently rubbed his abdomen. “Perhaps this demon sought to punish him for being seduced away from the teachings of Pastor Dean to the supposed effortlessness of Pendore’s weapons. Or serve as a warning to us for our dalliance with you. That is to say, with Philadelphia.”

  Hongtu’s fingers twisted in the white strands of his neckbeard.

  Noah rested the rifle across his shoulders. “Every second I spend here jawin’ is a second I ain’t huntin’ it. Got a point?”

  Livingstone drew himself up. “If you stop it, you are to bring back its head. We will mount this Hellspawn’s skull in the town square as a warning to never stray from the teachings of Pastor Dean.”

  Resentment bloomed in Noah’s belly. “Ain’t the deal. Thing’s mine. All of it.”

  “I am altering our agreement.”

  Noah forced a laugh. “And if I leave ’cause ya broke the deal?” he bluffed.

  “Then we’ll keep your horse and equipment,” Livingstone replied. “It’s a long walk back to Charlotte.”

  Resentment flared to fury at the realization that Livingstone had backed him into a corner.

  “Resurrection,” Pendore cursed. “You can’t make a decision like that on your own. I vote ‘nay.’ Zian?”

  Hongtu looked down, stroking his neckbeard. “We do require proof it i
s dead. This seems a simple way. I support Elder Livingstone.”

  “Return without its head,” Livingstone added, facing Noah, “and we will throw you in the stocks for three days and three nights. If someone else is hurt, we will visit that injury upon you. If someone else is killed, even if you kill the creature, you will be put to death.”

  “Salvation!” Pendore screamed. “We never talked—”

  “It is the law of Pastor Dean.” Livingstone glanced at Hongtu, who reluctantly nodded his agreement.

  Noah held Livingstone’s gaze. “I’ll need bait.”

  “What real hunter needs bait?”

  “Resurrection,” Pendore cursed. “If the man needs bait, let him have it.” To Noah, he said, “What do you need?”

  Noah motioned to the pig carcasses.

  Pendore nodded. “I’m sure Kavita wouldn’t object.”

  “Such little respect for personal property, Stefen?” Livingstone said.

  “I believe,” Hongtu began, stroking his beard, “Elder Pendore is correct, Elder Livingstone. Time is short. Killing this thing matters more than other concerns.”

  Livingstone looked at Noah. “Bring me its head.” He turned and headed for the cart.

  “I will pray for you in the wilderness,” Hongtu began, but Noah moved to a narrow wood-framed tower with a multi-bladed rotor at its top. Belts and pulleys ran from the rotor’s axle to a series of pipes and valves at its base, a spigot emerging from it, several empty buckets surrounding it.

  Pendore followed. “Let us come with you. I know it’s important that you kill it, but one man alone—”

  “Bunch of you, makin’ noise?” Noah placed a bucket below the spigot and turned the handle. Water rushed out. And with it, a hint of that sulfuric smell. “More of a danger than help.”

  “Then just me. Look, you can keep the gold. But the two of us stop this thing, bring its body back? We show people Livingstone’s piety doesn’t mean anything. It’s progress that’ll stop it.” Pendore put his hand on the network of pipes. “Knowledge.”

  “I work alone.” Noah turned off the spigot and carried the bucket to the nearest pig carcass, knelt and shrugged off his pack. After rolling up his sleeves, he drew his knife and carved into the pig’s belly.

  “Here,” Pendore said, hunkering down next to Noah. “Let me. Don’t want the smell on your clothes or this thing’ll mistake you for a meal.”

  “Thanks,” Noah said, genuinely grateful as he handed over his knife. He dipped his hands into the shockingly cold water, rubbing them clean, and passed an empty tin to Pendore, who sliced meat into it.

  Filling his waterskins from the spigot, Noah watched Livingstone kneel with Kavita and her son, their heads bowed. Two Riders wrapped Sanjeev’s body in a thick cloth. Hongtu stood alone and surveyed the land, probably wondering what would become of this farm with the man of the family dead.

  After cleaning his hands and wiping off the tin with his tunic, Pendore passed the metal tube and knife back to Noah, who loaded them into his pack.

  Pendore extended his scarred, calloused hand. “Good luck.”

  Noah shook, shouldered his pack and crossed into the field where the Rider had found the blood trail. Cries of grief resumed as Noah followed rust-coloured smears through the broken stalks toward the forest.

  Inside the tree line, Noah hunkered down and swapped out the period-appropriate rounds in his weapons for stun charges in the rifle and high-velocity explosive rounds in the pistol.

  Once he’d found the creature, he’d arrange an evacuation with Philadelphia and be done with this place. It meant leaving behind his horse and some equipment, but without his thumbprint no one would be able to open his saddlebags. And when Noah didn’t return, these primitives could believe whatever they wanted about the creature and its fate.

  Inhaling the comforting smell of pine, peat and damp earth, he followed the thinning blood trail and the occasional three-clawed track in the soft brown soil up the mountainside. His ears filtered out the soothing, familiar forest sounds—birdcalls, small animals moving in the branches—listening for anything out of place. Around him, thick trees—wider than a man could reach his arms around—towered, blocking the midmorning sun.

  After an hour, the upward sloping forest floor gave way to dry, crumbling soil—impossible for tracking. And with the blood trail dried up, he’d come as close as he would get.

  He climbed to a rock outcropping that provided a view of the forest below and removed several containers from his pack. One was the tin of pig meat. Another, a small vial containing an enzyme to break down proteins. The last was an aerosol cylinder, thick as his forearm and nearly as long. He unscrewed the top of the cylinder, set it upright on the ground and cut pig hide into the open end. After pouring in the enzyme and screwing the top back on, Noah carried the container down from the outcropping, set it among the rocks and thumbed a switch on its top. Thirty seconds later—enough time to get clear—a small nozzle emerged, silently spraying the pig’s scent into the forest below.

  By then, Noah had returned to his perch. He dug in his satchel for scentless, freeze-dried rations and waited. He considered what other unknown and unrecorded creatures might still roam this forest. And what had been here a thousand years ago, long before people had arrived.

  Movement drew his eyes to the forest below—shifting shadows lacking a breeze to explain them. They shifted again and Noah slowly brought the rifle’s scope to his eye. His breath caught at the sight of it—mammalian, bilaterally symmetrical, quadrupedal, brown-fur with streaks of white. Measuring four metres from snout to tail, it resembled a cross between an Ursus and a member of the extinct Macropus genus. Using its front legs, it pushed itself up, balancing on its strong rear legs, using its long, thick tail as a counterweight. Its triangular, rodent-like head swayed at the end of a serpentine neck.

  The creature lowered to all fours and moved out of the tree line. Taking slow, measured breaths to calm his thudding heart, Noah lined up the creature’s head in the crosshairs and squeezed the trigger. The tip of his rifle glowed orange and the creature let out a low moan before collapsing.

  Adrenaline surged. He had it. A creature unrecorded in any text and he’d brought it down. Noah grabbed his pack and scrambled down the slope toward the beast.

  A few metres from it, he drew his six-shooter and forced himself to advance slowly. The stun charge should have rendered it unconscious, but with its size and unknown biology, he could not be certain. Approaching from the rear, he extended his left hand and stroked the firm, wiry fur of its flank. The creature’s only movement was its slow, deep respiration. Gun trained on its head, he gave it a sharp shove, but it remained still.

  He stifled a cry of joy, already thinking twenty-four hours ahead when he’d be in a modern lab beginning his documentation.

  He reached into his pack and removed his communicator. Using his thumbprint to activate it, he keyed in the emergency code.

  After a moment, a voice said, “Noah, this is Hollister.”

  Noah grinned hearing the voice of the Institute’s director. The emergency code must have caught the director’s attention. “I’ve taken a creature alive, sir, and need immediate evacuation.”

  “What manner of creature?”

  Noah described the beast, what had happened since his last update and his situation in Dean End.

  Silence followed his explanation. Then: “Noah, our budget is thin as it is.”

  “This is the first apex predator we’ve ever found, sir. We could ask the Directorate to extend our funding—”

  “The Directorate is considering cutting our funding. With the declining rate we’re finding undocumented species, we might not be around in ten years. To say nothing of those creatures you had transported from your Charlotte excursion. Sixty-three specimens? Think of the costs. We euthanized all but two, which are in stasis.”

  Noah’s chest constricted. He’d spent a week tracking the six-legged creatures. Clearly intelligent
, they’d adapted to his strategy to trap them. They’d dart away, rush back, dart away again, chattering and hooting as if playing. Eventually, he’d trapped as many as he could, forced to use lethal means on the rest. It hardly seemed fair—these creatures had been there for millennia. To them, these invading bipeds were the monsters. “They’re pack creatures, sir. Two of them can’t function—”

  “You’re speaking like you expect them to live out their lives.”

  Noah eyed the creature before him, fear unspooling. His gaze fell upon dried, near-black blood congealed around a wound in its left shoulder. Noah knew his next few words could do more harm than Yoji’s musket. “Sir, what’s happened to the other specimens I’ve collected?”

  A sigh. “We’re not a zoo. We’ve learned what we needed to about them. Some of the small herbivores we can deal with. But the others, no.”

  Noah shut his eyes, jaw clenched. He’d honestly believed others at the Institute, once they had beheld these wonderful creatures, would come around to his belief that they deserved to live. “Sir, this will be the last one.”

  “No, Noah. I’ve been patient with your little menagerie. Do your job: put it down and destroy the remains.”

  Noah played the one card he had. “I told you I need to bring its head back. I can’t return to Dean End—”

  “Then we’ll pull you out. I’ll send coordinates for the rendezvous. Is there anything else?”

  “No,” Noah admitted. The thought of killing this animal and reducing it to ashes with incendiary charges made him feel ill.

  “Stand by for evacuations details.” The line went silent, but the interface indicated data download.

  Noah shoved the communicator in a pocket and stroked the creature’s thick fur. If he could find a way to transport the creature out of the forest in stasis, he could present it to Livingstone. Try to shame him into honouring the original agreement. Livingstone would resist, but Pendore might be able to pressure Hongtu. Yet how could he move several hundred kilograms—?

  “You killed it.”

  Noah spun toward the voice. Pendore, a rifle in his hand, emerged from the tree line. He wore a fresh tunic, a satchel hanging at his side, a saber on his waist.