Dracula of the Apes 3

by G. Wells Taylor

  The reckless night ape smiled while twisting at the waist to launch a hard fist at the monster’s bulwark head. A terrific concussion knocked the stunned Gazda onto his back, where the giant stamped on his right leg.

  Pain flashed through Gazda’s body, but it did not consume his aching heart.

  Then Magnuh turned his bony skull and hooked the night ape with a tusk to flick him skyward—where the tumbling Gazda lashed out with a gory hand to catch a high branch. In the space past it, he saw the first faint glimmer of stars.

  “The night comes,” Gazda grunted, like it was curse, even as the growing darkness regenerated the many damages already inflicted upon his form.

  Gazda looked about beneath him and then swung back and forth to build momentum so that with a simple kick he flew over the elephant’s head to sink his sharp nails into a neighboring tree.

  Below him Magnuh watched the feat and roared, whipping the air with his trunk.

  “Kill me if you can!” Gazda laughed grimly up on his new perch, bracing his hands on a thick branch and his feet against the tree trunk as he gauged the distance to the elephant’s head. “No one will care.”

  Magnuh bellowed, and shook his shoulders, lowering his bony skull as Gazda shot himself downward with all the strength in his coiled thighs. There was a great crash at impact of elephant and night ape, and both powerful creatures were flung back stunned.

  Earthbound again, they faced each other in a small, rough open circle; their arena defined by a ring of high-limbed trees.

  Magnuh lowered his tusks and charged toward the night ape with his forehead sweeping lower to catch and crush his foe who stood his ground with arms outstretched, corded muscles rippling in the growing dark.

  Gazda’s eyes flickered with fire as the elephant’s thick skull crashed against his chest, but the night ape dug his naked feet into the ground as he was forced backward, the earth tearing up along a pair of deep black grooves—until Gazda’s feet found purchase.

  And with his arms wrapped near the thick stumps of the monster’s tusks, Gazda laughed into the elephant’s red eye as the beast twisted its mighty head to left and right to force his release from the night ape’s hold.

  To no avail. Gazda sneered and sank his sharp fangs into Magnuh’s bristly brow. He roared, as the monster bellowed, striving uselessly to tear the night ape’s arms from his body.

  Gazda’s feet were braced against rock and root, and from this position he pushed, shoving the elephant by increments backward in anticipation for what was to come.

  Incensed, Magnuh felt the earth slip beneath his own gigantic feet, but he quickly got his footing and pushed back.

  But Gazda was ready and with all the strength in his body, trembling by sinew and thew, with skeletal joints screaming; the night ape pulled on the elephant’s tusks, using the beast’s momentum as it pitched forward against his immoveable strength.

  Magnuh bellowed as his weight shifted toward his head, as his body followed and as the night ape heaved and thrust with all of his strength.

  The great bull elephant tipped over Gazda, rolling forward on his tusks and thundering down upon the back of his broad skull, slipping so his great shoulders wedged between the ground and the trees that held his body angled up against their leaning trunks.

  His mighty legs and feet kicked at the night sky.

  Panting with humor and pain, Gazda dragged himself from the hole torn in the earth and tried to gain his feet, but he staggered as Magnuh kicked at the air, groaning as the tree trunks that held him snapped and splintered with loud reports like thunder.

  The ground shook as the giant struck and Gazda stumbled—raw new pain blinding him. Wincing, he saw that his right leg had snapped backward mid-thigh and was regenerating quickly in the darkness, popping and clicking as the bone reset itself.

  Agony flared up his right forearm from where it had exploded gorily beneath the strain, and this he quickly grasped by the wrist and pulled. Crack! He cried out at the action, as the splintered bones slipped back beneath the flesh, as the skin began to knit.

  “Can’t you kill me?” Gazda croaked huskily as the great beast kicked its mighty forelegs, rolled and righted itself. Rising to his full height, the bull elephant roared his outrage, and in the twilight his head and hide showed many wounds—but no surrender.

  “One of us must die, Magnuh!”

  The monster watched the night ape limp toward a jumble of broken tree limbs and roots where he chose a long stout piece of hardwood ten feet in length.

  Gazda turned as Magnuh trumpeted.

  The beast’s eyes burned with a desire for blood and domination as he stamped and tore at the broken earth conjuring from it a terrifying malevolence of titanic proportion.

  The bull elephant charged explosively as Gazda stood his ground to swing the branch and strike the monster’s head.

  The blow stopped Magnuh in his tracks. Stunned, he shook his skull, but Gazda stepped in close, reversing his grasp to strike the monster on the other side of his head.

  Magnuh trumpeted as he reached out for Gazda with his trunk, but the night ape had cocked his bludgeon back and hit now with a speed and power that knocked the elephant’s head to the left, splintering the tusk on the right side.

  The beast staggered back, and dropped to one knee, disoriented by the blow. Blood was flowing freely from the wounds on his gigantic head.

  Gazda found the scent intoxicating, and raised his passion for killing the more. He swung the club overhand and struck the elephant between the eyes. The beast somehow absorbed the blow and was ready with a club of his own, having found a length of broken tree trunk that he now brought down on Gazda’s left shoulder to shatter it and leave the limb hanging.

  But the night ape would not be stopped, so he leapt in close and delivered a powerful punch that drove his hard right fist deep into the thick muscle on the elephant’s face.

  Stunned, Magnuh swung to the left and slammed his large head against a heavy tree trunk. The elephant dropped to his knees, and Gazda charged in, drilling his bloody fist into Magnuh’s gargantuan cheek again.

  There was a terrific cracking sound as molars were unseated, and the elephant lunged to his feet. Magnuh turned to catch his balance, shifting and spinning until he reached uneven ground and fell in the wreckage and ruin of the forest floor

  Gazda smiled, then cradling his broken arm he leapt into a tree to reset the mangled limb and watch as the jungle giant streamed blood and struggled in the muck, trying to gain his feet—unable to accept defeat.

  CHAPTER 40 – The Order of Things

  As Gazda watched the bull elephant labor in the mire, he was struck by his own thoughtless savagery. He should not have done this! He had learned much in his battle with the bone-faces. The night ape knew his own power by now, and had suspected that the elephant was no longer a match for him.

  Yet he made the challenge.

  Where he should have experienced great shame and pity, he had felt elation to see the jungle giant humbled.

  Magnuh was king of the land, greater than Goro or any silverback had ever been. The bull elephant was by nature’s decree the lord of the jungle.

  It was the order of things—the natural order.

  And yet Gazda had selfishly acted on a suicidal impulse, and in his childish tantrum challenged Magnuh to a fight he knew the beast was unlikely to win.

  Such a challenge and outcome did nothing to define a position for the night ape in the natural hierarchy, but rather it showed him that he had no logical place in nature—that he had no place in this world.

  Perhaps that had been the motivation for Magnuh’s long hatred of him. The beast could see that there was no place for Gazda in his lands or among these towering trees. There was no territory or lair for a night ape—there was no natural predator to keep him in check.

  While he felt himself a member of his mother’s tribe of apes, even those dull creatures had recognized he did not belong.

  And Gazda h
ad known it, too—realized his own alien nature, and denied it until he thought he had a chance to join with Ginny and her night ape tribe. Their world and their artifacts, their unnatural music, garments and customs somehow suited him, and matched his uncanny ways.

  More than his tribe of apes ever had.

  Yet even Ginny’s tribe had rejected him—found him unfit for their fellowship. Was that how he had come to Eeda? Had Fur-nose abandoned him, too?

  So, after this last rejection, Gazda had hoped to muscle his way back into the jungle world by taking Magnuh’s life. He would use brute force to dominate and demand acceptance.

  He would force his way into the natural world just so he would have a place somewhere, so that he would not be alone.

  “Magnuh! Whose thoughts are these—whose words?” the night ape cried out to the wounded giant. Parts and pieces of unknown languages fell from his tongue and crowded his head. “Eeda did not teach me this...”

  He panted anxiously, crouched on a branch remembering the strange images that had come into his head with the night ape talk. They had used words that hinted at understanding, like the music that still echoed in him and conjured thoughts of Lilly and Ginny dancing and turning.

  “They feared Gazda?” He laughed without humor. “They feared a friend!”

  He struck the tree with his fist causing the thick trunk to tremble and shards of bark and splintered wood to scatter. Then he contemplated his bone white hand as the fresh cuts upon it healed before his eyes.

  He screamed, but it was no roar of challenge. Sorrow filled the hoarse cry.

  Below him, Magnuh watched from the ground. The beast had ceased his efforts to stand, but his great ribs heaved as he gathered his strength.

  “Rise Magnuh,” Gazda encouraged the elephant, as the monster roared and trumpeted, unleashed its mighty strength against the earth to surge upright in the bloody mud.

  Gazda cheered the great beast and beat his chest as Magnuh gained his balance in the slippery scarlet muck beneath his feet. Thick red blood still drooled from the elephant’s trunk.

  “What am I, Magnuh?” the night ape cried, voice breaking and eyes blinded by tears.

  The great beast rumbled, its bloody trunk snuffling at the tangled litter and torn earth.

  “I am a greater hunter...” Gazda said, suddenly slumping against the tree. “That is all I know.”

  A loud, deep growling began to roll through the jungle, rising past the quivering leaves until the canopy high overhead began to shudder. It cycled again, this vibration rolling upward, emanating from the bull elephant’s bulk below. The battered beast flapped his torn ears and the rumbling came again. He was growing stronger.

  “You are the true king, Magnuh! I will leave this place to you and your kin, and to my tribe of apes...” Gazda shrugged, with lowered head. “And I will go to hunt for the thing I am—and I will find it!”

  He threw his head back and with swelling shoulders wide he pounded upon his chest, and gave forth the terrifying challenge of the bull ape.

  With hot tears running from his blazing eyes, the night ape leapt up into the high branches and swung away from where Magnuh stood swaying, trumpeting his answer to Gazda’s challenge.

  Eventually the night ape climbed the tallest tree with the highest branches overlooking the clearing that had played such an important part in his life, and there, too, was the vine-draped tree-nest of Fur-nose. The structure held so many secrets, yet he now could not stand to be inside it. Such a full and rewarding mystery, and yet...it was a prison for his loneliness.

  His eyes drifted with some hesitation to a dark blight of twisted limbs where the sickly grove of trees now dominated, where black fog seeped out into the twilit grasses.

  He could not bear to feel the dank mist’s touch again for it would remind him of his Lilly, of Ginny—and of betrayal.

  Frowning, he looked out to search the distant line where sky met water, yearning for something that he longed for, and yet could not have.

  Did Ginny—did any of them—know that he still lived? Was it possible they had thought him dead in battle with the bone-faces? It was possible. He recognized that hope.

  To Gazda’s blackback spirit a “hope” like that seemed like weakness—but if hope was all he had, then it conveyed a certain kind of strength.

  As the weight of years pressed upon his heart he thought of Eeda, and that memory led him back to thoughts of his tribe.

  Glancing to the south he knew that the apes would be in their sleeping trees after foraging all day for fruit near the shore. Old Baho would have been center to them with his stories while the blackback guards watched him for weakness and courted females that were not suckling little ones.

  Baho had survived his own succession, and now served as Gazda’s lieutenant as he had for Goro. Would the former silverback not survive another change of the guard? If a blackback with ambition were to claim the leadership, it was likely Baho would negotiate the outcome, and end up a protected and trusted advisor again.

  And so long as Gazda’s death were never witnessed or known, might there not be temporary stewards for the throne? Who would dare to claim it outright, if the true king might return?

  A king like Gazda of the Apes.

  Thought of his tribe brought him memories of Ooso and Kagoon. All gone now. And Goro his king and like a father, gone.

  Gazda looked back to the great blue water and thought of the other night apes passing over its surface. He thought of Ginny and the smell of her smooth, clean limbs. He thought of her clear eyes and soft kisses.

  His mate would not have left him on her own account, and if, indeed, she lived, he would find her.

  So, until Gazda could discover a way to follow her over the water, he would begin to go around it, but first he would recover his box of gold and jewel-encrusted trinkets. He had taken the treasure from a man whose scent he recognized from the big nest on sticks in the bone-face lair.

  This one’s skull-mask only went to his cheeks where he grew a long black braid of beard like old Fur-nose must have worn. His garments were similar to the Bakwaniri silverback Gazda had killed with Omag’s head, and he might have escaped had he not quarreled with the other bone-face who’d been helping him carry the heavy box.

  Gazda had found that body on the trail, and easily followed the drag marks to the second man who had wept for his life as he died.

  The night ape had buried the box some miles north along the river.

  Ginny might enjoy such shiny baubles—if he could find her.

  Gazda smiled fiercely at the night sky. He would find her.

  The night ape dropped down beneath the jungle canopy to swing from branch to vine to tree, flinging himself along an eastern course to where the world grew larger.

  CHAPTER 41 – The Crew’s Fate

  With much reluctance, Harkon left Anim with the little group of survivors in a safe place west of the river so that she might make a swift and secret journey to spy upon the Bakwaniri village before returning to her distant homeland. She wanted to know the fate of those degenerate people—whether they were still a threat—and to learn what had happened to her jungle friend.

  A horrid stench grew stronger as she approached the village, a smell of death it was and worse. It was foul, and tasted of evil, and was overpowering to her as she hid across the river from the guards atop the wall.

  Only to later find that they were not guards.

  But the fears kindled by that realization did not dispel the concern she felt for the ape-man.

  Mighty though Gazda was, he had been aflame with the heat of battle, and Harkon knew how bloodlust weakened the wit and betrayed the most powerful warrior. She hoped her friend had not been slain while mad with hate for there was no need. The worst of the evil ones could be killed, and the rest spared, the children at least, who were innocent.

  But what Harkon found within the abandoned palisade was more horrific than she could have imagined. Degenerate though they wer
e, she doubted that even the cannibals deserved what she found—what they had suffered.

  Harkon was a hardened huntress yet she was sickened by the sight.

  The unusual village was empty of life, though its inhabitants remained.

  Many of the bodies had been dismembered, torn limb from limb and left to rot, but it was what she had mistaken for guards atop the wall that repulsed her most. Man, woman and child had been impaled upon the pointed poles that formed the palisade and were pierced through and through by the sharpened tips of the uprights.

  The entire village had been killed, and it had been for torment as much as revenge for the expressions on the many corpses said that most had been alive when set in place.

  Harkon could not believe that Gazda had done this thing, and she searched for him in the ruins, hoping for an explanation, and fearing that she would find him among the dead.

  She searched the grisly tableau dogged by shadows that were dispelled if she turned to look, and the huntress became vexed and confused when tinkling laughter came from burned out huts amidst a weeping echo, and always she felt a strong presence lurking near—and coming closer.

  Harkon encountered remnants of a tattered black fog that swirled and faded in the blood-drenched shadows; and where the murk still clung to the stone stairs and drifted in the old slave hold the presence weighed on her senses and she could not linger.

  When she did not find Gazda’s body among the others, she set flame to the Bakwaniri village, and hoped that the fire would purge the dead of their terrible sins and cleanse the jungle of that awful black mist.

  ###

  More Vampires of the Kind

  in

  BENT STEEPLE

  by G. Wells Taylor

  The fire had burned down to an even orange flame when it exploded. There was a sudden cracking noise, a cloud of cinders and a fist-sized coal shot out. The missile rocketed toward Kelly and her breath caught.