Oct 4th – Let’s say I can cover fifteen miles a day by foot. I could make St. Louis in two weeks.
Oct 5th – Gone off the walking idea. Mainly because I don’t wanna die at the side of some forest road, killed in the night by one of those beast things. On the upside, there’s a ton of oats in the barn. I make it around ninety pounds worth.
Oct 6th – Found some vegetable rows that are still good – carrots and potatoes, jackpot!
Nov 3rd – Weather’s turned real bad. Lightning storm last night. Not gonna lie, it was terrifying. Been pouring with rain all of today. Rain’s cold. Wind too.
Nov 4th – Winter’s definitely approaching. Frost on the ground this morning. Need to make sure I’ve got enough wood stored up. Think I’m gonna be stuck here. Gonna dig a latrine pit behind the barn tomorrow. Or maybe build some sorta compost storage. Never know when you might need fertilizer.
She continued leafing back through the notebook until she returned to the most recent two entries and added a few missing details.
8th Feb (est.) – They were heavily armed, she added. All of them had guns. Mostly handguns. I think one had a rifle. I need to plan in case they come back. If they do, this time I’ll kill them.
9th Feb (est.) – Back on track with wood and water. Beast’s body still there – autopsy starts tomorrow.
***
“You have no right to be here.”
“Luce, I just came to pay my respec–”
“Yeah, and now you can just leave,” snapped Lucy.
Her mother pulled off the large, fake Gucci sunglasses she was wearing, revealing watery eyes. “Lucy, if I could have done things diff–”
“I told you already. Leave or I’m calling the police.”
Her mother started to cry. “You were young. You don’t understand what it was li–”
“I understand enough, Mom. Goodbye.”
Lucy turned and walked away, back towards the open coffin, where a small group of mourners were talking, and thanked them for coming. Their responses washed over her as she smiled politely, hearing nothing, all the while discreetly digging the nail of her thumb into the side of her finger as hard as she could. She waited for minutes before she dared glance over her shoulder. When she finally did, her mother was gone.
***
She woke, panting. Her cheeks were wet. The fire was burning low, just about keeping the freezing cold at bay. Pale blue sunlight peered through the cracks in the curtains.
“Ouch,” she winced, as her tender shoulder muscles reminded her of yesterday’s wood cutting. The image of her mother flashed across her mind as she climbed to her feet. She grunted, remembering her dream.
Dunking a rag into a bucket of warm water by the fire, she quickly cleaned herself. “You need more potatoes, girl,” she reprimanded, as she washed her skeletal midriff, the rag bumping over each rib down to her bony pelvis.
The image of her crying mother flashed before her eyes again.
“I swear to god, one more dream about my freakin’ mother and I’m changing channel. Not you,” she added, chastising the redundant TV.
“Thanks again, Paul, much obliged,” she muttered, as she pulled the Wilson leader’s holster over her shoulder. She reached under her pillow and took out the gun itself. “I think a plan B would be wise, don’t you? Alright then,” she decided, securing it into the pouch.
Entering the master bedroom, Lucy slid a stool in front of the wardrobe and stepped up. Reaching up to the dusty, out-of-sight top, she felt around until her hand found the farmer’s shotgun. She groped around for a box of shells, which she took too, blowing the dust off both. She hadn’t fired a shotgun since her childhood. Point and squeeze, she heard her father’s voice say, but watch out for the kickback – it’s got one mother of a kickback!
Her mind flew back to a vivid childhood memory.
“Don’t hesitate,” urged her father.
The cow was badly injured, lying on the ground moaning in agony. Its legs and throat bore the deep bite marks of a coyote. Her dad had already killed the wild dog. Now it was her turn.
“Don’t think on it,” said her dad. “It’s no kindness at all if you don’t get on with it.”
Lucy raised the gun to her shoulder and peered down the long barrel.
“Now remember, you’re not aiming between the eyes, you’re going above them. Find that midpoint between the eyes and the horns,” her father counselled.
Lucy looked at the moaning creature and squeezed the trigger. The cow jerked its head as Lucy pulled the trigger. The pellets tore through its neck and into its shoulder. The animal screamed in pain.
“Oh shit!” cried her dad, grabbing the shotgun from Lucy’s hands and reloading it in a flash, firing a shell directly into the animal’s head, immediately silencing its wails. He fired a third shot, just to be sure, all in the space of a few seconds.
“That’s why we don’t hesitate,” he said, thrusting the empty rifle into her chest and walking back to the truck. “Hey!” he yelled, snapping Lucy out of her horrified stupor. “Hurry up and grab the other shovel. If we get her buried quick, we’ll be back home by eight. No point making a bad day worse by delaying dinner.”
Lucy blinked several times as her mind jolted back to the present day and the dusty shotgun she was holding from atop the stool in the master bedroom.
She descended the stairs and cleaned the gun by the fireside, with the living-room curtains opened to let the light flood in. Once satisfied it was in working order, she loaded each barrel, and made her way out to the barn, where she hid the gun out of sight, but within a few paces of the entrance.
***
It was time for the autopsy. Not wanting to risk any sort of contamination, Lucy fashioned a crude laboratory uniform for herself out of kitchen aprons, tying a dish cloth over her mouth and nose. Next, and with extreme care, she curated a “sharps box”, along with more plastic tubs for holding offcuts.
One chilly walk later, she clambered back onto the far icy riverbank. The dead beast had a sunken appearance; it looked dryer, wrinkled, its muscles had shrunk.
“That’s not right,” said Lucy, under her breath, noticing the thin layer of vapor rising up from the corpse. “Vapor means heat in the body … but it’s icy.”
She backed up a little and picked up a rock from the embankment. Holding her pistol in one hand, she hurled the rock at the creature’s body. The rock landed with a dull thud and rolled off the furry torso, which undulated briefly with the impact then fell still.
“OK,” she said, approaching again, with the gun still raised. “So you’re still dead, that’s good. Oh, jeez,” she spluttered, covering her nose with her scarf. Now that she was only a few yards away, the stench of the corpse was overpowering; this thing was no longer prepared to go gracefully.
She set out her notepad to the side, ready, and began with a quick sketch of the creature’s appearance, including its injuries. She then quickly recorded its length with a tape measure, before browsing the knives she’d brought for the next stage.
“Bit of a step up from your last dissection, Lucy,” she muttered, remembering the dog cadavers they’d been tasked with dissecting at veterinary school. “Time to see what’s under the hood.”
The chest remained the obvious place to begin; it contained the vital organs, and was the site of the beast’s injuries – the most likely cause of death. She pushed a serrated blade into its fur and began to cut in a sawing motion, creating a lateral incision along its left side. Vapor billowed outward through the new perforation in the flesh, making Lucy lean back sharply until the rate of expulsion slowed. It was like opening the door of a hot oven.
She resumed the cutting. Once she’d reached its hip she used the scissors to make perpendicular incisions at the top and bottom of its torso, creating a large flap of skin and fur.
Nervously, she peeled it back and stared at the beast’s steaming insides. It was astonishing. A series of symmetrical organs filled the torso,
shielded by a ribcage boasting a lattice effect of interwoven bones and cartilage. Inside the lattice, nestled behind the first row of organs, was a second, smaller ribcage, shielding an organ she couldn’t see – like a Russian doll set.
She hastily sketched it as best she could before taking the knife to the first rib. It had no effect. With some reservations, she reached for the saw.
The bones crunched hideously as she drove the jagged blades through them in turn. Lucy began to sweat from the exertion. After the last bone was severed, she lifted the lid off the entire ribcage, laying bare the organs inside.
She wiped her hands clean of fluid and blood using the frozen grass beneath her, then set about sketching the central organ system. Four lungs stood in each corner, interspersed by bundles of fibrous tissue comprised of different-colored strands. Each bundle was as big as the lung next to it. The lungs connected to their adjacent fibrous masses through a series of vein-like appendages, which themselves divided exponentially into the complex, woven networks of organic cabling that disappeared into the secondary ribcage and outwards in all directions around the body.
A coil of black tubing about the width of her index finger nestled atop each lung, akin to a soft snail shell. Unlike the fibrous masses, which burrowed inward, these four coils had a definite tip. The tapered ends pointed upwards to where the ribcage had been. Lucy re-examined the flap of skin she’d peeled off; sure enough, there were four corresponding apertures on each corner.
Her mind leapt back to Toby and Dan’s bodies, and the puncture marks she’d seen on both of them. The diameter of their injuries correlated with those of the four coils. Lucy furiously annotated her drawings – this could be one of the beast’s weapons, she scribbled.
She cut one of the black coils out from the creature’s chest and examined it up close, unravelling it and testing its elasticity. It was only about a yard and a half long, with a small amount of give. The sharp end of the coil is filled with a white, chalky powder, she wrote, finding this to be the case for all but one of the coils. Lucy placed the dissected coil into a plastic container, and scraped the chalky powder of the others into a separate tub for preservation.
The light began to fade; already the day was drawing to a close, and she’d only explored a fraction of the beast’s anatomy. Re-covering its chest, she gathered her amateur autopsy kit and began to cross the ladder again. As she passed over the receding ice, a faint glow caught her attention. Lucy stopped once she was on the home side again and inspected more closely; clinging to the underside of the ice was an iridescent algae, glowing a soft blue.
After drawing a hasty sketch she withdrew to the house for the night. There she labelled and dated her collection, using an empty shelf in the kitchen as the exhibition stand. Before turning in, she burned the bloodied pair of jeans outside on what remained of the bandit’s funeral pyre.
As she watched the flames from the kitchen, thinking of Dan’s unburied, un-cremated body, she made a vow in her diary: I will learn everything I can about these creatures. And I will bring an end to them.
SIX
The Hunter
_______________________________________
11th February (est.) – The algae under the ice has changed color slightly from blue to dark purple, she wrote, kneeling down by the riverbank the next morning. There are new structures appearing among it too that look like wasp nests. Occasionally a small, fast-moving creature will swim into one or leave one, but the ice blurs their shape, so I can’t make out their exact size. They remind me of fireflies; they have a gentle golden-tipped glow, and weave through the water like there’s no resistance. I estimate they’re about an inch long. They’re quite beautiful. I’ll also assume they’re lethal until further notice.
Lucy finished sketching the underwater wasp nests and refocused her attention on the beast’s carcass. Resuming the autopsy, she noticed that it was steaming more than the day before. Its organs were visibly more shriveled, and it felt dryer to the touch; she was racing the clock.
The creature’s nose was long, like a bear’s, and the nasal cavity had dozens, if not hundreds, of small muscles running its full length. Lucy made more incisions through the thick fur, then tugged the layer of skin away to reveal the skull. She paused, contemplating how to proceed.
Not sure how to open the skull without damaging the brain’s structure inside, she wrote. Will explore the rest of the body until I can think of a solution. If this thing can smell a drop of blood from a mile away, I’m guessing it’s got one hell of an olfactory bulb in there.
She abandoned her notepad again and turned her attention back to the mouth area. The creature had no esophagus; the back of its mouth cavity was a sealed flap of thick, leather-like skin. There’s no way it can feed though its mouth, she noted next to her drawing. The serrated teeth must be purely used as weapons – which means the creature must ingest its prey through some other part of the body.
But no other part seemed obvious. Just as it had no functional mouth, it had nothing resembling an anus, no visible way of excreting; its buttocks were a sealed entity from the outside, connected to none of the plumbing humans or other mammals had. Lucy was dumbstruck; this thing has no stomach, no way to digest food, she wrote.
Her mind flashed back to the victims of beast attacks she’d seen; all had puncture marks on their bodies, and all had degraded to Gen Water within forty-eight hours of being attacked. There had to be a link.
Working hypothesis, she scrawled in her notebook, is that the black coils are projected like tentacles, puncturing their victims. This would fit with the size of punctures I saw on Dan and Toby. Maybe the tentacles inject victims with an enzyme or toxin that causes the liquefaction? I’ve found white chalky powder on the ends of each tentacle – perhaps that could be the enzyme? I need to investigate its properties.
Her examinations began to stray from the torso. As she cut deep into the creature’s forearm, forcing the blade upwards from its paw to its elbow, globules of sticky, glistening Gen Water leaked out onto the frozen ground beneath. Prizing the two sides of flesh apart, Lucy discovered a series of small interconnected chambers and valves situated between the bands of muscle. The same phenomenon occurred in its legs and shoulders, and in the muscles lining the spine. Chambers of Gen Water are all over the beast’s body, she wrote.
She returned to the arm she’d started with. The lowest chamber ended in a dark black band of muscle, a sphincter, which led to the center of the creature’s paw. Taking the paw in her hand, she searched its center for the perforation. Carefully brushing aside jets of overlapping white hair, she revealed the outside of the sphincter. She teased the knife tip through the hole; as predicted, it emerged inside in the first arm chamber.
She scribbled frantically as her theory gained traction:
I’ve found Gen Water chambers lining all the major muscle groups of the body. I think they must be energy stores. Each paw has a sphincter which links to the first chamber of that limb – my guess is that it’s how the Gen Water enters the body. The beasts have no way of swallowing through their mouths, so this seems the only alternative. It would also explain why they don’t eat their prey at the point of attack – they wait for them to turn to Gen Water, then somehow absorb the liquid through these openings.
As Lucy gazed into the distance, chewing on the end of her pencil, something fluttered across her line of sight. A beautiful, multicolored butterfly skipped across the light breeze, blowing precariously from side to side until it tumbled down into the grass by her foot. Lucy kept her body rigid. Moving only the tip of her pencil, she sketched the butterfly as quickly as she could. It bore the same warm autumnal colors as its predecessors on the train track all those months ago. The creature basked in the sunlight with its wings held upright, back to back.
Lucy did a double take. She ceased sketching and scrutinized the insect. Beads of sweat were appearing on the creature’s wings; small shiny blobs steadily growing larger. Lucy stared for a further m
inute, observing as neighboring blobs began to interconnect until eventually both wings were entirely covered by a thin shimmering layer of liquid. The wings began to droop under the weight. Slowly, gravity prized the bowing tips apart. But as they parted, they revealed an impossible, rippling body of water between them. It filled the V-shaped space from each wing tip down to the body. As the wings continued to droop downwards, the insect’s body and legs began to dissolve, seemingly fueling the rippling pool above it. Finally the wings reached near-horizontality on the uneven grass, forming a reddish-orange disc. Over them was a shimmering hemisphere of liquid, much like a snow globe. Lucy stared in astonishment as the wings themselves were drained of their color and became completely transparent. The invisible wing-disc began to recede inwards towards the center, causing the snow globe to rise until it formed a full sphere, with half the radius of its previous form. Before Lucy could resume her sketching, the now-spherical globule rippled once more and rolled towards the river, where it tipped over the edge and vanished into the stream.
A smoky scent brought her attention back to the beast’s carcass. The steady wisps of vapor had turned to smoke. She staggered to her feet and leapt back, not a moment too soon – the entire corpse burst into flame.
She stared, open-mouthed, as the creature’s body burned into nothingness before her eyes.
***
Later that evening, once she’d finished her frenetic note-making – sketching both the butterfly’s transformation and the beast’s combustion – she re-examined the chalky white powder, studying the tub in the kitchen. She resolved to make a plan.
Convulsive Box Set Page 26
