The unrelenting movement of the beast continued to fill the tunnel with its gruesome mass. Its side was scarred with smouldering tar. The sliced tentacles were lost among a horrifying mass of outstretched pistons of death. Violet saw her actions as the blueprint irrefutably creating this very moment. She had fashioned this monster as surely as if she were Dr. Moreau splicing together wild animals with macabre vivisection.
Violet thought of the professor. After the boy expired, her every instinct as a hunter told her to rush to Limehouse to forestall the creature’s rise, but she could not. She retreated to the professor. It had been such a short meeting. There was no time to say all those necessary words. Standing in front of her approaching destruction, Violet realised how much of an omission that was. There was only time for the professor to relate to her what was now painfully apparent to Violet; draining the biological charge from the electric beasts was a catalyst that motivated exponential growth in the tentacled monsters. If there was one thing that these beasts did well it was to adapt and evolve into increasingly destructive monsters.
The beast’s tentacles were reaching out for Violet, seeking her with the enthusiasm of an angry Flashman looking for a cheating bobtail. She had certainly attracted its attention. Unwilling to move, Violet could see down into the creature’s body. Past the viscous exterior and debris of human beings as they were digested by caustic chemicals and into the solid heart of the beast. Filling the entire two-track tunnel, the monster elongated its vast form toward Violet for a deadly embrace. Forcing itself forward to within inches of Violet, she backed against the wooden wall.
In the constricted space of the tunnel, the air became heavy with the putrid smell of bile and a foul bitterness that Violet could taste. The air around Violet prickled with tremors of electricity.
A rumbling took hold of the tracks as they vibrated beneath her feet. It would be only a moment before it reached her. Violet lunged towards the platform leaving the monster on the tracks and backed against the tunnel wall. The tentacles attempted to turn and follow Violet but under the wide arch of the tunnel the beast was afforded little room for movement. Violet braced for impact, but the beast was not her concern. The rumbling increased until it was engulfed in a loud splintering of wood as an underground train burst through the wooden wall and steamed into the beast.
The train pushed forward, wheels turning quickly against the undulating and squirming mass of the beast. The movement of the train had slowed. Sparks flew from where the wheels still held onto the tracks, pushing the beast into submission, its tentacles flailing together. Violet looked up at the beast, holding fast against the tunnel. The train was lifted up off the tracks and towards the ceiling. Even the greatest invention of the modern age could do nothing but temporarily stop the beast’s advance. Violet moved back towards the tracks and waited.
The entire engine, coal truck and half the first carriage had been absorbed. Steam and smoke engulfed the tunnel as the noise of the engine slowed. Careful to watch for the approach of errant tentacles, Violet moved towards the accessible remains of the train and caught a glimpse of the professor clawing his way out of the back of the carriage.
“Professor,” Violet shouted concern ringing through her voice. He tried to wave her back only to fall against the gravel of the tracks. She could not leave him out there, but it was too late. The explosions had started. Even through the hundreds of tons of earth she could hear the blasts, one after another circling overhead. The ceiling cracked and buckled down onto the beast. The weight of bricks and earth pushed the beast down before it swelled and rose against the falling tunnel. Violet retreated to the wall. The smoke and dust made visibility worse than the deadly fog of ’79 that claimed the lives of 156 poor souls.
The rumble of falling earth was followed by a piercing screech. The circular tower of the Sutton gasworks and electric plant, a marvel of modern steel and ingenuity, was falling into the tunnel. The detonations had loosened the girders and they were cutting down into the tunnel, slicing into the beast and pinning it to railway line.
Amid the eerie silence and occasional crumbling, Violet heard a muffled cry. The professor was calling to her. With little concern for the villainous machinations of the beast, Violet climbed across the rubble to find the professor trapped, his useless legs restrained by the ruins of the train and tunnel.
“Violet,” he said brushing her concern away from his well-being. “The suspended wires of the train. I had not taken them into consideration. They are holding back the girders. You need to cut the cables and then you can attach the electric cables to the girders. The girders must impale the creature while still connected to the train tracks, only then will the electric current cause a catastrophic eruption. You don’t have much time. Major Ashcroft, Mrs. Hearnsweaver and the servants will be setting the second set of charges. The Thames will breech the tunnel once they set off the explosions. If the beast is not dispatched it will all have been for nothing…”
Climbing onto the train and over the debris, Violet could make out the lattice work of steel girders pointing down into the tunnel and held in place by a web of cables.
Two girders, one either side of the tunnel looked sufficiently brutal. Violet climbed up to the uppermost end of one girder and held the cable. Using a swift slice of a blade, she cut the cable and rode the first girder as it swung down and squelched into the beast. Violet jumped onto the rubble, caught the live cable flipping and skipping in the tunnel and looped it into the girder.
The charge was feeding the beast, she could see its burnt skin healing and expanding. Violet scrambled back onto the debris. She dug her left blade into the rubble to pull herself up and it broke. She discarded the useless gauntlet. Returning to the second girder she severed the cable and rode the girder into the beast. The impact threw her off and she lost her grip on her second blade. With her insulated gauntlets out of her reach, Violet ripped away the last fragments of her dress and wrapped them around her hand. The beast was expanding and growing behind her. Violet pounced on the lethal cable, catching it in the single movement of an accomplished hunter. She climbed up to the second girder. She could feel the heat burn through the material. It would be only moments before the final remnants of her dress caught fire.
“Burn in hell,” Violet said looking towards the approaching tentacles of the beast as she looped the cable round the girder.
For a moment the beast’s body quivered and shook. She dropped clear of the girder and waited. Had it worked? The beast distended and bubbled. The healed flesh fizzed and boiled.
Turning away from the monster, her body bruised and burnt, her corset and low heeled boots the only items of clothing still barely intact, her face, arms and legs coated in dust and grime and without her blades, Violet made her way back to the professor.
In the distance, she could hear the blasts destroying the sluice gates. As the monster’s flesh bubbled and popped behind her, Violet looked into the darkness of the tunnel from which the professor had driven the train and from which the rushing waters of the Thames would flood the station to wash her and the professor into the exploding body of the beast.
She held the professor close. His breathing was shallow and he had lost a great deal of blood. The tentacles of the monster whipped about her in its final futile movements against destruction. Large sections of caustic flesh splattered about the couple, burning debris into a poisonous gas. Whether the beast was attempting to expunge its ailing flesh, burn away the danger or just submitting to its continuing destruction, Violet didn’t care.
The moment of inevitable annihilation was fully upon her and she smiled. Trapped underneath the body of an exploding monster, she was going out the way she had spent so many nights on the Ratcliffe Highway, except she had the professor with her. Her smile faded as she realised she had been unable to save him as he had saved her.
“I am sorry,” said Violet. “I brought this upon us.”
“Violet,” the professor said, his face calm and
serene. “We are finished and it is time to go.” He reached his good hand up to her face and lightly touched her cheek.
“Yes professor. We will flush this monster back to the stinking hell from which it crawled and we will…”
“We will move to the reward that we have earned.” He smiled at her. “You have fought more valiantly than I ever imagined possible. You have stood without hesitation against monsters that would give the most courageous men nightmares. The world has become a better place because of your existence. Go onward with peace in your heart.”
“Thank you,” Violet said with a smile. “But first I want to deliver this one to the gates of hell myself.”
The penny press poured scorn upon reports of the Limehouse leviathan and yet the stories endured. Reasons for the various events of that night quickly turned into causes for social reformers to highlight the unstable and polluted Thames, the dangers of modern structures, the explosive hazards of underground rail travel and the threat of electricity. Those of the Lost Guinea who tried to tell the true story ended up in Bedlam for their troubles.
When the Thames drained out of the tunnel, only a littering of unremarkable scattered debris remained. A scavenging rolleyway man found a single blade lodged into the wall of the tunnel and took it home. Thinking of the wisteria he had surreptitiously clipped from Kew Gardens, he used the blade as a support to allow the flower to grow. No one would know of the battle that was fought for the continuation of humanity.
There were merely a few less patrons of the Lost Guinea that night, and through the haze of the London fog, the sun rose over the Ratcliffe Highway as it did every morning.
T.W. Garland has a stack of Victorian novels that taunt him with their unbroken spines. He buys more books than he could hope to read and is glad not to have been born in the nineteenth century or in a novel by Dickens.
One Less
Steven Gepp
Hide in plain sight. This is the credo they all seem to live by now, and it works so well. Finding them, tracking them down, and killing them has become a rare feat; in the ten years since I started on my chosen course, it’s become next to impossible to find them.
But I know they’re still out there.
I only have to look at what one did to my brother Danny to know that.
Ah, revenge… Isn’t that always the motive? People like me don’t start doing what I do without some strong emotional response, and the strongest of all is vengeance.
But over ten years it’s gone beyond that for me. Now that I know what and how many of them there are, it’s a matter of wanting to exterminate each and every one from the face of the Earth for the vermin that they are. There is nothing else.
I spend my life living out of ten-dollar-a-night backpacker accommodations, or roughing it where I can, using public showers where I find them. Before it all started, I had a job. I’d even saved a bit of money. Before it all started, I was still engaged to Bridget and life was so much easier—so much more innocent. I miss it. I wish I had not been sent on this path.
And I really miss Danny.
I make sure Danny’s face is the last one I see before I kill each time. The way it looked the day before he was taken from me. The way it looked two days before I was forced to kill him.
And now they will all pay for what they have done to him and me; for what they have made me do. For ten long years that has been my only waking thought, across the country and then into Canada. The last one led me along a merry chase, but in the end, he could not shake me.
Geoffrey, his name was. I first saw him in his other form in Chicago. That wasn’t long after I’d killed the old woman—funny how one always leads to another. It’s always been that way. Maybe it’s just pack mentality. But Geoffrey, he was good. I followed him all of the way to Victoria Island, and I would have got him there, but there were too many others around. I scared him, though. Scared him good enough for him to run to Saskatchewan.
I had to wait. With two days to go, he left the city and went out into the agricultural areas. He was trying to feed on animals, to leave humans alone, but that meant little to me. I don’t care that he was trying—the fact of the matter was that he was one of them, and I had to get rid of him.
I watched and I waited. I saw him creeping over the hills and toward the sheep sleeping in some quiet, secluded field. I looked at the photograph of Danny. I kissed it. I loaded the silver bullet—a 30-06 soft point, engraved with my own initials—into the barrel of my rifle, which I had cleaned with a liquid made from the leaves and flowers of the Aconitum vulparia. It seems crazy, but it was harder to get the plant than the weapon. And you know something? It always is. But it was necessary. My first two kills had been with just a silver bullet between the eyes. But after that terrible third one when I did not kill, but merely wounded my target, I had to have something extra on my side. With the oil, all it takes is a headshot to ensure death.
I found my target in the scope and waited until I was sure it was not an actual animal. They always show just a little more intelligence in the way they stalk their prey than a normal animal, and that was all I needed to see. I smiled as I took aim.
He lifted his head and looked in my direction. Even from so far away, I knew he was looking at me. He knew where I was, what I was, and what I was going to do. He snarled, but it looked so much like a smile, mocking me, daring me to try anything. He did not know everything, though. I pictured Danny and smiled myself as I pulled the trigger.
The loud crack echoed across the fields, startling the sheep and sending birds from their roosts. Every insect fell quiet. I refocused through the scope on him and the look on his face was one of shock. He would be found and counted the victim of a murder, though why he was naked in a field, miles from his home, would be glossed over by the media. It always was.
I did not sleep after. I never do. The images of Danny that last time I saw him always flood through my mind after a successful kill.
Poor, poor Danny…
Of course, Bridget blamed me. After all, I was the one who liked to hunt, and it was me who dragged him along to kill wild dogs. The farmer who wanted to get rid of them was paying two dollars a head and I knew it would be easy money. But then he was attacked. He lingered for a while, but there was so much blood. And then…
I will never forget what I saw as long as I live. Sure, that’s a cliché, but damn if it isn’t true.
The funeral of the American named Geoffrey was held in Massachusetts, of all places. They flew his body back in a commercial plane while I managed to ride in economy class on the same flight. I had to go to the funeral. Why? Because they always come to see if one of their own has really died. I would guess it’s a bit more of that pack mentality. But, really, it’s like they don’t believe it can really happen, like they think that they’re immortal or something. Well, they’re not. Not even close.
The funeral was a big one. I made some noises that I’d met him in Canada and nobody asked for more.
I watched Geoffrey’s funeral. I watched the people. I saw which people went up to the family, how long they lingered, what they looked at. All the little signs, signs that mean something to me after this task I have undertaken. Two people captured my attention and had it even more so when they left together.
I had my next targets, I was sure of it.
I followed them home and watched for a moment, saw their house and where they made their life. Then I left them. Next would come the watching, the confirming and the making sure. I’d been wrong more than once in the past decade, and though it had never led to a death that was not deserved, I’d rather the kill be one of them.
I sat in the trailer I had rented—five bucks a night, seventh night free—and looked at the photos I carried with me. Danny the day before that hunting trip, Bridget leaning against the porch and smiling…. Yeah, even nine years after she left me, I still keep her picture. I tried getting in touch with her a few years ago, but she hung up on me. She’d given up and moved on,
and who could blame her? I was the one who had left and used the money I had saved for our life together to criss-cross the country, hunting. I never told her what. She hung on for a while, but after I never came home, she finally left. I didn’t even try to chase her.
I watched the couple, living right in the middle of suburbia. Their house was so nice, with a well-kept lawn, freshly painted, and a new car. Just like every other house in their middle-class street. Not so much as a blade of grass was out of place anywhere. I felt like I was in a Norman Rockwell painting, and it was uncomfortable. I mean, I was used to them having good jobs, living in nice houses, all that, but to live in this middle-class enclave of conformity was just almost beyond belief. And I started to have my doubts.
I was going to have to watch very carefully, and what better way than to find a job here? It took me half a day to find three houses close by that could do with a new gardener. I mean, I was clean and fit—I just looked a little down on my luck. And I worked hard, mowing lawns, trimming hedges and pruning trees. They paid well and tipped even better. So long as all I asked for was a drink of water and a toilet, they never pried.
From each of those three houses I could watch everything that happened at number twenty-seven.
So I watched, took my mental notes, and went back to the dingy, dank trailer where I would sleep and dream of Danny and his eyes pleading with me to end it all. I dream about those eyes often…too often. He started me on this path. But I don’t blame him. How can I? I was the one who took him hunting, collecting the bounty on feral dogs. I was the one who went off alone and left him in the camp by himself. I was the one who wasn’t there to stop the attack. And I was the one who bought the silver bullet and ended it all.
I watched that house and the quiet couple while doing my jobs and earning enough money to be able to eat properly and afford my accommodation. It was not a real life, but it was better than what I had become used to in recent years.
Use Enough Gun (Legends of the Monster Hunter Book 3) Page 13
