Pax Britannia: Human Nature

by Jonathan Green

  Ulysses hauled himself to his feet. He felt exhausted. He didn't know how much longer he could maintain the chase. But then if he didn't, who would? And besides, he could not - would not - let the beast to escape him again.

  Turning away from the fire-lit interior of the church, Ulysses stumbled back along the path. But rather than return to the Abbey and the mob of policemen and circus folk awaiting it there, the chimera turned left past the east end of the church, heading out across the stone-planted field of St Mary's cemetery.

  Ulysses rounded the end of the building after it and ran on, his lungs feeling like they were on fire, the monster galloping over the weathered tombstones and monuments that littered the graveyard.

  And there, even further ahead, Ulysses could make out the running figures of Jennifer and the freak as they followed the cliff-top path towards the eastern extremity of the cemetery and its perimeter wall.

  The creature was closing on them.

  The intensity of the moment helping him to focus his mind on tapping the last reserves of energy his body possessed, Ulysses bounded along the well-trodden grass path between the gravestones, towards the crumbling cliff path.

  The chimera was only a few lolloping strides from its quarry, its pounding footfalls sending shudders through the turf at Ulysses' feet. For Jacob and Jennifer it was only a matter of another ten yards to the cemetery wall. Soon there would be nowhere else for them to run, nowhere left to hide.

  As the chimera bore down on them Jacob turned in a display of astonishing bravery, and with nothing but his bare hands, prepared to make a good account of himself in the face of the vivisect's attack.

  The move obviously surprised the tiny part of the old man's mind that remained his own and the creature stumbled to a halt, in a confused flurry of lurching legs. As the creature reared up before them, preparing to make its mantis-like strike at last, Jacob took a bold step forwards, looked directly into the old man's leering face and let out a pained roar of anger, frustration and desperation.

  For a moment, the bewildered beast withdrew its head. Then slowly its face came level with the boy's again. The chimera opened its gaping mouth and roared in animal fury, meeting the young man's challenge.

  And Ulysses' blade fell.

  The monster's roar of fury became a howl of pain as the razor-edged rapier sliced through one arthropod leg.

  The howl became a scream as Ulysses pushed against the blade to prise the leg apart. With a horrible sucking sound and a popping crack, the lower part of the crab limb came away from the thigh-like merus. The shorn limb fell uselessly to the ground, trailing stringy white meat from the horny-joint, a watery grey fluid dribbling into the grass at Ulysses' feet.

  The chimera wheeled round. Ulysses had its attention again. He took a wary step backwards.

  He had faced the impossible hybrid three times now, and on every occasion so far the outcome had been inconclusive. However, they shared a mutual understanding now that this time neither would desist until one, or both of them, was dead.

  Its old man's face contorting into a bellow, the chimera charged at Ulysses, hampered by the fact that it had lost one of its eight legs. This incapacitation gave Ulysses all the time he needed to prepare his next move.

  The monster rushed in, gorilla-fist drawn back ready to take a swipe at the dandy while the long, disembowelling claw unfolded, ready to tear the man open from sternum to groin.

  At the last possible moment, Ulysses launched himself at the beast, sprinting from a standing start to charge in under attack-raised arms. He slammed into the solid wall of muscle that was the vivisect's broad crocodilian midriff, forcing the tip of his sword-cane through the leathery epidermis and into the coils of viscera behind. Umbridge screamed again.

  Only Doktor Seziermesser had known what manner of internal organs actually lay buried inside the fleshy shell of the monster's body. For all Ulysses knew his blade might have punctured a kidney, a lung, a stomach, the monster's heart - and who was to say that it only had the one? - or maybe he had even managed to sever a major artery.

  Bullets might not have had much of an impact against the unnatural creature but good old-fashioned, tempered British steel - that was quite another matter!

  Ulysses kept his hold on the pommel of the blade firm as the monster writhed and kicked, pushing him backwards, but the beast was unable to dislodge him despite its frenzied efforts. But then Ulysses felt strong hands grasp his shoulders, blunt fingers digging into his flesh, worrying at his old shoulder wound and threatening to tear the stitches where the ape's arm had been attached to his other shoulder.

  Now it was Ulysses' turn to cry out, moaning through gritted teeth as he desperately tried to keep a hold of his sword. He might have managed to escape the reach of the chimera's larger limbs, but he had still been within reach of its smaller secondary arms.

  And then his fingers slipped from the blood-slicked bloodstone-tip of his sword-cane and he suddenly found himself unable to defend himself against the monster's onslaught.

  Ulysses had thought that nothing could top the horrors he had witnessed and experienced first-hand, the personal abuses he had suffered. But as his eyes snapped open, excruciating pain lancing through his aching body as the monster tugged at his left arm, he realised how wrong he had been.

  For there, right in front of his eyes, the amalgamated flesh of the chimera was starting to bubble and blister. Ulysses watched as the patches of exposed skin began to sizzle and pop, as if its flesh had been subjected to a chemical attack - or as if something was moving beneath the skin. And then, as he peered closer, unable to tear his eyes away, despite the agonies he was suffering, he saw that there was something there beneath the shiny, translucent skin, a tiny something inside each and every blister.

  Ulysses cried out again as the stitches securing the chimpanzee's arm to his shoulder began to tear and his eyes swivelled round to see for himself what was happening. What he saw filled him first with horror, then revulsion until that feeling too changed to become furious resolve. Seeing his own left arm worrying at the surgery that had been carried out as a result of its amputation gave him the strength and the determination to fight back.

  Using the chimera's hold on him to support himself, Ulysses tucked his legs up to his chest and planted both feet firmly against the monster's reptilian abdomen. Tensing his thighs, he pushed with all the strength he had left. His body skewed to the left as the monster maintained its hold on his ape arm, the pain in his shoulder easing immediately, his right arm pulling free of the chimera's own blood-wet hand.

  At once he reached for the beast again, swinging precariously from the stubborn grip of his own left hand. The shattered fingers of his right hand clutched at the old man's face and, making a paralytic claw of his maimed digits, he dug in.

  The chimera gave voice to another scream - pain and fury indistinguishable now - and Ulysses felt something, soft and pliable as jelly, pop under pressure. With a sharp, spasmodic jerk, the abomination hurled Ulysses away.

  For a moment Ulysses sailed through the cold air, both his left arm and shoulder feeling like they were on fire. He landed hard on his back, sliding over the dew-wet grass. He came to a halt - eyes shut tight against whatever terrible disaster might befall him next - and lay there for a moment, listening to the screams of the girl, the shouts of the boy and the incessant roaring of the beast. The salt sea breeze ruffled his hair and stung his face with cold.

  Utterly exhausted, as he was, part of him felt like just lying there and doing nothing, waiting for the inevitable end to come, for the beast to take him. But he had hurt the creature now; he had it on the back foot. The advantage was his.

  Ulysses tried to push himself up into a seated position and would have gone off the cliff backwards and into the sea, had it not been for the precarious fence that leaned out over the drop. He had come to a stop right on the very edge of the crumbling precipice, and when he had tried to put his hand down under the wire, to find some purchas
e, he had put all his weight on thin air.

  He sluggishly staggered to his feet once more as the chimera bore down on him. With the creature filling his entire field of vision, Ulysses saw the blistering flesh again, great red wheals forming in other places now.

  For a moment, he almost believed that the monster's charging run was going to take it off the edge of the cliff, the abomination unable to slow itself in time before hurling both Ulysses and itself over the precipice and into the sea.

  Barely on his feet, he bowled himself clear of the great talon-scythe.

  As the monster dug all of its remaining arthropod limbs into the soft turf before the fence, Ulysses suddenly found himself caught in the cage it had made of its claws. He was trapped.

  He looked up at the pallid underbelly of the beast. There, sticking out of its reptilian flesh, was the glinting pommel of his sword. Reaching up, he grabbed the bloodstone hilt and pulled. The blade came free with an obscenely wet sucking gasp.

  Pulling himself upright within the embrace of the abomination, the swelling blisters mere inches from his face now - the embryonic forms of something horribly familiar squirming within the iridescent mother-of-pearl fluid of their birthing sacs - Ulysses brought the blade up cleanly and parried the panicked thrusting of the creature's own chitin blade.

  As the monster's talon slid free of his sword, Ulysses twisted his wrist sharply to deliver a downward cutting stroke of his own. His old left arm flopped onto the windswept grass at the cliff's edge.

  "Let's see how you like it!" Ulysses said, a look of grim satisfaction on his face.

  The dreadful raging screams of the beast suddenly ceased, replaced by a single, breathless cry. The Umbridge-chimera reeled backwards as gouts of thick black blood pumped from the severed brachial artery at the distended limb's second joint. The creature struck the fence, two of its claw-tipped limbs thrusting through the metal mesh, while others pushed against the wire netting on the near side.

  Ulysses stepped in again, bringing his blade back up in a sweeping arc. The tip of the bloodied weapon made contact again, denying the old man any memorable last words, even if Umbridge had been able to articulate them. Ulysses' final blow had half cut through the fibrous muscles of the snaking neck, shearing through the creature's oesophagus and windpipe.

  The severed stem writhing like a salted slug, the old man's head flopped impossibly to the right. For a moment the thing's staring eyes locked onto his and, in that one look Ulysses thought he saw something that might have passed for a trace of humanity within the dead-eyed fish stare he found there.

  And then the creature's body began to fall, toppling almost languidly off the edge of the windswept cliff. First went the heavy shark's tail, the cancroid legs tearing the tangled fence from its roots under the great weight of the body, then the mish-mash of a torso, its flesh bubbling like boiling mud, then the trailing primate and crustacean limbs, and lastly the snake-like neck and the half-human head, gasping for air like a landed fish.

  Ulysses staggered to the edge of the cliff, dropping to his hands and knees at the spot where the monster had fallen. He felt almost ready to go off the edge after it.

  Beneath him the monster somersaulted through the air, blood spilling from a multitude of wounds to stomach, limb-stumps, face and neck.

  The splash of the abomination entering the sea was lost amidst the white-water torrent of the breakers crashing against the black rocks. And then the abomination was claimed by the hungry waves, the dark surge drawing the vivisect's twitching body down into the freezing, stygian depths.

  The roiling waves released the rocks again, pulling back from the rugged coastline, but the creature's carcass was gone. And with the creature gone, Ulysses' body gave in at last.

  He collapsed onto the cold, wet grass at the edge of the cliff - the North Sea wind pulling at his clothes and pain-wracked body, stinging his face with cold - and let blissful unconsciousness claim him.

  Epilogue

  Plenty More Fish in the Sea

  "So, this is goodbye," Jennifer said, smiling despite the tears welling up at the corners of her eyes. Steam gushed around them as the train prepared to depart.

  Standing there, face to face on the platform, Ulysses gently took her hands in his. He caressed her fingers with the soft black leather of his gloves, although inside he was wincing as his right hand throbbed with pain. Plenty of rest, the doctor who had treated him after his wild night on the moors had said.

  But Ulysses felt like he had rested enough. He had slept for the whole of the following day, after his battle with the Umbridge-chimera, and had not woken again until well past nine on the morning after that. He had stirred to find Jennifer waiting anxiously at his bedside. He soon discovered that she too was staying at Mrs Scoresby's guesthouse now, as apparently Hunter's Lodge had also suffered the ravages of fire. "Well, they do say these things come in threes," Ulysses had remarked to Nimrod later, in private.

  For a moment he had not known where he was or what the girl was doing there. As he came to wakefulness, the events of the previous forty-eight hours had seemed like nothing more than some hideous nightmare. But any such wishful thinking, on Ulysses' part had been banished by the reality of the pain he felt when he tried to move. Every muscle in his body felt either stiff or as if it had been damaged in some way. When eventually he pulled back the sheet, persisting in his struggle to rise, he found his body was a patchwork of bandages and plasters, that covered a myriad cuts and bruises. Nimrod had done a good job of taking care of him - as always.

  But there had been one thing that his skilled manservant could do nothing about, not now, and that was his replacement left arm. The limb that he had reclaimed from the vivisect had been packed in ice and kept in the guesthouse's cold cellar - unbeknownst to Mrs Scoresby - but Ulysses feared that the flesh would have begun to necrotise before they could get it to a surgeon with the skill to graft it back onto his body. No, it looked like the chimpanzee's arm was there to stay.

  And despite having been prescribed three days of bed rest by the local doctor, if not a whole week, Ulysses had insisted in not only getting out of bed, but of also getting dressed - although it took him rather longer than usual - and going about his business as if nothing untoward had happened at all. The rest of that day had been spent sifting through the smouldering embers of Jennifer's home and trying to make sense of all that had happened over the past few days, while Inspector Allardyce led the local police in an investigation of the burnt-out ruins of Umbridge House.

  It crossed Ulysses' mind that the inspector didn't seem overly bothered that his visit to his wife's family had turned into a busman's holiday.

  Rest was what the doctor had ordered for Ulysses, but in his own expert medical opinion there would be time to rest later. The curious case of the Whitby Mermaid was not yet closed.

  "Yes. Goodbye, for now," Ulysses said softly. "There are matters regarding this case that I need to tie up back in London."

  "So, you're going after the one who supplied Doktor Seziermesser with his flesh-melding potion? This Alchemist?"

  "Indeed I am."

  "There's more to this than you're telling me, isn't there?"

  Ulysses stared into Jennifer's eyes remembering the distinctive aniseed and rancid meat smell of the serum, as well as the nifty box of tricks they had found embedded in the flesh at the base of the Barghest's skull. He had encountered both before, when they had been used in conjunction by certain elements attempting to bring about the end of the British Empire.

  "What will you do now?" he asked.

  Jennifer sighed. If that was how it had to be, then so be it. "I'm going back to the Umbridge estate."

  "After all that happened there?" Ulysses said, somewhat taken aback.

  "The police have cleared the house, rounded up those who were in on Umbridge's scheme, those that he didn't kill in the end or that weren't burnt to a crisp by the fire," she added. "But when they came to the cellars they found them empty,
apart from what was left of the good doktor, apparently."

  Jennifer broke off and cast her gaze from the waiting train, the platform and the station buildings, to the headland on the other side of the Esk valley and the borders of the blasted moorland beyond.

  "They're still out there," she said. "Seziermesser's experiments; his other victims. They've probably gone to ground in the caves and mines. Some might have made it to the coast. Others, who knows. But they need to be tracked down and found, so that they can be helped. And I have the expertise... to help."

  Ulysses smiled. "Good for you." The girl was more resilient that he had given her credit for. It just went to prove the old adage of that which doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. "If anyone can make sure that those poor wretches get the help they need, it's you," he said warmly.

  "Besides," she went on, blushing, "I feel that it will go some way towards vindicating my father's work."

  "He'd be proud of you, to hear you say that. Good for you."

  Ulysses lent forward and kissed Jennifer softly on the lips. She pulled away, her blush deepening, but did not remove her hands from his.

  A sharp whistle cut through the background hubbub of the station, informing those gathered on the platform that the twelve forty-one to London was ready to depart. It was time for last fond farewells to be shared, for passengers to board and for well-wishers to allow them to do so.

  Ulysses and Jennifer remained where they were.

  "Sir, I hate to intrude," Nimrod interrupted as politely as he could, "but it's time to go. The train is ready to depart."

  "One minute, eh, Nimrod old chap?"

  "Very good, sir," Nimrod replied with just the slightest hint of annoyance in his voice.

  "Jennifer... Jenny," Ulysses began. "There's something I need to say to you, something that I don't think I've said to you once in all this."

  "Yes?" she said expectantly, her face drawing close to his again.