Nocturnal

by Scott Sigler

  From inside Mommy’s cabin, the hidden trumpeter played a long, single note.

  The boy with no tongue ran for the ladder. He grabbed it and scrambled down, athletic and graceful if a bit sluggish. He hit the bottom and sprinted down a maze trench.

  The crowd suddenly cheered, a sound just like every sporting event Aggie had ever seen.

  Like a pack of tiny wolves, the children rushed to the side of the deck. Tumbling, little-kid running carried them forward, pajama-clad feet zip-zipping across the dirty wood. They didn’t bother with the ladder — they just leaped, dropping fifteen feet down to the uneven trench floors below. Some landed gracefully. Others hit hard in a clumsy mess of arms and legs. The children screamed and laughed, stepping over each other to chase after the boy with no tongue.

  Hillary giggled an old woman’s giggle. She clapped her hands. “So cute!”

  The teenager sprinted through the trenches. He banked left and right, without pattern or thought, sometimes turning a corner so fast his momentum would slam him into a wall. Pieces of rock and dirt fell wherever he hit. A trail of dust followed behind him, almost as if he were smoldering. Sometimes the trench walls obscured any sight of him, and sometimes Aggie could see all of the terrified boy.

  The chasing children split up and rushed down different trenches, little feet pounding away in pursuit.

  Hillary pointed toward the one with the long fingers and the pointy thumb. “Crabapple Bob is my favorite,” she said. “He’s a nice boy. I hope he gets the groom.” She sounded like any old aunt or grandmother watching kids run and play, like this was nothing more than an Easter egg hunt and she was rooting for her favorite to find a hidden chocolate bunny.

  The teenager turned down a trench that led straight toward Aggie’s spot. Aggie saw the look of panic on the kid’s face, the wide-eyed stare, the open mouth, the blood-streaked chin, the snot hanging from his nose and trailing across his cheek. And from this angle, Aggie saw the little blond boy with the faded 49ers shirt coming down an intersecting trench from the left.

  The little boy turned the corner to block the teenager’s path, then raised his fork and knife. The crowd cheered in excitement. The teenager didn’t slow a bit — he kicked out with all the strength of a muscular, nearly full-grown man. His foot smashed into the little boy’s face, throwing his tiny body backward and into a trench wall. Blood instantly poured from the kid’s mouth.

  The crowd booed.

  “Aww, that’s too bad,” Hillary said. “I like little Amil.”

  The teenager’s running kick had thrown him off balance. He stumbled, then fell to his knees, hands skidding across the rock-strewn path. From behind him came the bat-thing and the nightmarish Crabapple Bob.

  Hillary clapped. “Go, Bob!”

  The teenager scrambled to his feet. Blood poured from his left knee. He hopped in a mad lurch that threatened to spill him to the ground again.

  Kids closed in from trenches on the left and on the right. A mass of shapes and colors, the glint of forks and knives reflecting the flickering torchlight, the happy squeals of children at play. The gorilla boy came from the left, running fast on all fours to pass the others. At an intersection, he shot out and tackled the hopping teenage boy. Together they tumbled into a trench wall, kicking up a cloud of dust and dirt.

  Crabapple Bob and the bat-thing dove on the pile. The teenager punched and kicked. The little monsters stabbed. The rest of the children poured in, burying the teenager beneath a pile of twisted, tiny bodies. Forks and knives rose up and down, up and down, flashing clean at first, then trailing arcs of blood.

  Aggie watched. That could have easily been him down there. “Why?” he croaked from a dry throat. “Why would you do this?”

  “Well, they have to learn how to hunt, don’t they? They have to get the taste.”

  Aggie saw the little red-haired girl dart out of the swarm. She held a bloody, severed hand. She ran away from the pack, giggling and gnawing on the thumb like a kid working a caramel apple.

  “They’re eating him!” Aggie said, managing to yell without yelling, to pack all his panic and horror into a hissing whisper.

  Down in the trenches, body parts came loose. A curl of intestine flipped up, arced wetly, then fell on top of something that looked like a blue-furred wolf boy wearing a Hannah Montana sweatshirt. Blood spread across the trench floor, turning it into red mud. The giggling kids tore at the body, played in the blood-mud like any child in any sandbox anywhere in the world.

  Hillary sighed. “They always get so dirty.”

  A swarm of masked men, hundreds of them, ran through the trenches and closed in on the kids, white robes swishing with each step. Some of them carried hacksaws. They rushed to the mass of bloody-muddy children, pulled them off and held them up while little hands and feet kicked in protest. Aggie had a brief glimpse of the teenager’s body — pajamas soaked head to toe in blood, right shoulder ripped open, left foot gone, intestine strings spread about and trampled flat into the dirt.

  The masked men went to work with the hacksaws.

  Aggie felt eyes upon him. He turned his head to the right, as little as possible, and looked out of the corner of his eye — the man with the snake hair was staring right at him.

  A tap on his shoulder, Hillary’s mouth near his ear. “Follow me. They have smelled something on you. Keep your eyes toward the ground and make no noise, or you will wind up as the next groom.”

  He felt her hands pulling up his blanket, hiding his head and face. It reminded him of being a small child, when his mother would adjust his jacket for him to make sure he stayed warm.

  Aggie stood. He kept his eyes cast down as instructed. He followed Hillary’s feet. With each step, he waited for hands to grab him, yank him back, toss him down into the cavern floor where the children would dig into him with forks and knives.

  He barely breathed until he again slid into the tunnel from which they’d come, leaving the ledge behind. “Hillary, what happens now?”

  “Now they cut up the groom to make the stew. Except for the brains — Crabapple Bob gets to feed those to Mommy. Or maybe they think Vanilla Gorilla got the kill? Either way we will have much stew tonight.”

  Stew. The Tupperware. Aggie had been eating people? The realization should have shocked him, he knew, but he’d seen more than he could handle and he just didn’t give a fuck. As long as he got out of here, it didn’t matter at all.

  “No, Hillary, what I meant was … what do I have to do so I don’t wind up as stew.”

  They exited the narrow tunnel into the hodge-podge hall that led back to the white room. Hillary gave him a missing-tooth smile, her eyelids and cheeks crinkling so deeply he would have thought her blind.

  “Oh, that,” she said. “All you have to do is deliver something for me, then you are free.”

  Free. Just the thought of it. He would deliver whatever she wanted, no matter what the risk.

  They reached the white room. It shocked Aggie that he was actually relieved to see it, to once again be locked behind those white bars. For the moment, he had the place to himself — but he knew more prisoners would come.

  Aggie could only hope that when the masked men brought in the next bum or illegal, he wouldn’t be there to see it.

  Long Live the King

  So many.

  All along the ledge, down in the trenches, on the cracked deck of the old shipwreck: his people, his kind. How had he gone his whole life without knowing this feeling? His heart felt like it might swell up and choke him, push his lungs out of his chest. So much love.

  “Sly, I don’t know what to do.”

  A big, strong hand on his shoulder. “We’ve got your back, my king. Everyone is here. This is your time. Are you ready?”

  Rex glanced to the right, to the ship cabin and the ledge above it where Firstborn sat in his golden throne. If Rex was going to claim his birthright, he’d have to face that frightening creature in the fur-lined cape.

  Rex took a
deep breath, then nodded. “I’m ready. Yes. Let’s do this.”

  “Can you jump?”

  Rex looked over the edge — at least a thirty-foot drop to the meandering trenches below. “I can’t jump there. That would kill me.”

  The big hand patted his back lightly. “I’ll show you how to do that later. Pierre?”

  Strong hands slid around Rex’s sides, lifted him, set him behind a big, skewed-jawed head. Then Pierre dipped, and leaped.

  The ceiling came so close Rex had to duck tighter into Pierre’s fur. They soared under rocks, bricks, broken pieces of wood and jagged bits of rusted metal, then they were dropping down fast.

  They landed on the shipwreck, Pierre’s big body rattling the dry wood. Sly thumped down on their right, Sir Voh and Fort on their left. Rex slid off Pierre’s back. They stood in the middle of the deck, near to the big mast. This close, Rex saw that the mast was old wood with human skulls all around it, running from the base right up to the T-bar with all the lights. Sly ran to the ship’s cabin and disappeared inside.

  Rex looked up and around at all the strange faces peering down at him from the ledge above. Everyone was standing now, looking down — clearly, this was something new to them.

  Sly came out of the cabin. He carried a man in a white robe. The man wore a mask from the Saw movies and held a trumpet in his hands.

  Sly set him down in front of Rex.

  “Blow,” Sly said.

  The man with the Saw mask did as he was told, blowing a long, single note.

  Sly waved his arms, turning quickly to face one side of the cavern then the next. “Attention! The moment promised to us is here! This” — Sly turned and pointed at Rex — “is our king!”

  A murmur rippled through the cavern. Rex felt anxious at being put on the spot, excitement at being the center of attention in a good way for once, and pride at knowing he was here to help these people, to lead them.

  Then, a too-deep voice echoed through the cavern.

  “The king? Impossible.”

  Rex looked up toward the throne. Firstborn stood on the ledge, looking down. The man with a big head stood on his right, the black-haired woman on his left.

  Rex noticed Pierre take a step back.

  “He cannot be the king,” Firstborn said. “Sly, what lies do you speak?”

  “No lies,” Sly said, more to the audience than to Firstborn. “Everyone, come and smell the truth!”

  More murmurs of excitement. People started jumping off the ledge, sailing through the air to land on the deck. Such strength, such agility. They gathered around Rex. So many shapes. So many sizes. So many colors. They sniffed him. And after sniffing, they all whispered the same thing.

  The king.

  Some were as scary looking as Pierre and Sly and Sir Voh and Fort, and some were even worse — like the one with the blue scales that looked like a boll weevil. But some looked like regular people, men and women with unwashed hair and multiple layers of ragged, secondhand clothes. They could have been the bums and street ladies Rex saw every day; some of them probably were.

  They sniffed, they whispered, they reached, they touched.

  Rex’s heart filled with love.

  “Enough!”

  Firstborn’s roaring rang off the cavern walls and ceiling. Everyone stopped. Everyone looked.

  The black-furred man jumped off the ledge. He sailed through the air, his fur cloak trailing behind. People scrambled out of the way, giving him room to land. He hit the ruined ship’s deck with a thud, knees bending to absorb the shock, left hand pressed flat to the ground.

  The big-headed man came down to his left, the black-haired woman to his right.

  Firstborn slowly stood, rising up to his full height. He was as tall as a basketball player on TV. Six-foot-six? Even taller than that? This close, Rex saw the gray lining Firstborn’s mouth, and streaks of that same color running from his temples to above his ears. He looked old.

  “So, this tiny boy is our king?”

  “He is,” Sly said. The snake-faced man again played to the crowd. “Can’t you all feel it? Can’t you all smell it?”

  The crowd murmured with excited agreement — excited, but cautious. Rex saw the way they looked at Firstborn. They all feared him.

  “Smells can be faked,” Firstborn said. “This boy is just a human.”

  Rex saw many people shaking their heads.

  Firstborn stamped his big boot, rattling the boards beneath. “He is human! You are all being tricked!”

  There was anger in Firstborn’s voice, but also desperation. He sounded like one of the kids in school who — when caught in a lie by a teacher — just kept repeating the lie louder and with more intensity, hoping to wear the teacher down.

  Rex knew he needed to say something, but he couldn’t even form a word. Firstborn seemed so powerful, so … cool.

  Now Firstborn played to the crowd, raising his arms, turning and staring at anyone who would meet his gaze. “What all of you smell, it is a ruse. It is impossible!”

  Then a new voice, the cutting hiss of an old lady. “And how do you know it is impossible?”

  The crowd parted for a woman wearing a long gray skirt, a brown sweater and an orange scarf tied over her head and under her chin. She was kind of fat and hunched over a little bit. Everyone fell quiet as she walked across the deck. Firstborn watched her approach, but her eyes were only on Rex.

  The woman stopped right in front of Rex. Rex didn’t move. She put her hands on his shoulders, leaned in and took a big sniff. Her eyes closed. She leaned back.

  “Finally,” she said. “We have waited for so long.”

  Firstborn’s gray-speckled lip curled up, showing the sharp teeth behind. “Not you too, Hillary. This can’t be the king.”

  She turned on him, wrinkled eyes narrowing. “And how would you know that? How would you know this boy could not be the king?”

  Firstborn started to answer, then stopped. All his power seemed to vanish.

  She stepped closer to Firstborn, reached up to shake her bony finger in his face. “You say it is impossible because you have killed babies that could be the king!”

  The crowd gasped. The mood of the cavern seemed to change instantly. Rex stood very still — it suddenly felt like something bad was about to happen.

  Firstborn spoke in a calm voice. “That’s ridiculous. The only babies I killed are the ones that came out human. We have enough mouths to feed as it is.”

  “You lie!” Hillary wheeled to face the crowd. “I have seen Firstborn kill the babies, the babies that could be kings, the ones” — she pointed at Rex — “that smelled like him.”

  Firstborn laughed, but the sound was hollow, forced. “And if I killed these babies, Hillary, then how is it that this boy stands here claiming to be king?”

  She spoke in a low hiss that was easily audible over the silence. “How do I know? Because for eighty years, I have been taking the ones that could be kings and sneaking them out of Home. This boy, the one who stands here, I made sure he made it to the surface thirteen years ago.”

  Firstborn stared. He blinked, slowly, almost as if he couldn’t understand what Hillary was saying. “You took them out? You know not what you have done.”

  “But I know what you did,” she said. “You kill our kings because you want all the power for yourself!”

  “Don’t be insane,” Firstborn said, but the crowd’s growing roar drowned out his words. A circle of strange bodies started to close in around him. The big-headed man and the black-haired woman pushed back against the crowd.

  Firstborn stood tall. “This isn’t about power. This is about keeping our kind alive. A king will lead you all to your deaths — I will do what has to be done.”

  The big, black-furred man’s eyes locked on Rex’s, and in that moment Rex felt the depths of Firstborn’s rage, knew that the creature wouldn’t think twice about killing anyone in this cavern to get what he wanted.

  Rex saw a brief sneer, then Fir
stborn rushed in, claw-tipped hands reaching out. The tall creature bellowed a roar that rooted Rex to the spot.

  Sly and Pierre shot forward and slammed into the oncoming Firstborn, stopping him short — the points of his black claws swiped just inches from Rex’s eye. Firstborn’s knee shot up, snapping Pierre’s head back. Two black-furred hands lifted Sly as if the snake-man weighed nothing at all, then threw him hard into the crowd.

  Rex had never imagined someone could be that fast, that powerful.

  As Firstborn turned again to attack, a shadow passed over Rex’s head — Fort stepping over him to block the way.

  From Fort’s back, Sir Voh raised a tiny hand. “Save the king!”

  The crowd roared and rushed in. Bonehead swung and hit a white-scaled man, but then went down under a pile of bodies. A normal-looking man reached for the black-haired woman. She reached for the chains on her hips but the man was on her before she could get them. She ducked a punch, then shoved her hands against the man’s chest — there was a flash and a loud crack. The man twitched violently and fell. The woman turned to do the same to her next attacker, but a blanket-clad person hit her from behind, knocking her to the deck. In seconds, a dozen people covered her, twisted her hands behind her back.

  The crowd cautiously closed in on Firstborn.

  He let out a primitive growl that made people flinch away, then reached for the guns strapped to his thighs as he once again rushed at Rex.

  Fort stepped toward Firstborn and swung his big right fist. Firstborn sprang high — Fort’s punch whiffed harmlessly beneath. Still arcing through the air, Firstborn aimed his pistols. Rex moved by instinct, diving between Fort’s barrel-like legs, hiding under the bigger man’s mass.

  Firstborn fired, bam-bam-bam-bam-bam, trying to adjust his aim even as he descended, but it was too late for him. When he came down, dozens of hands reached up to grab his feet, his legs, his arms, his chest. The leader of Marie’s Children went down under a kicking, punching pile of bodies.

  Sly stood. “Kill Firstborn! Kill him for the king!”

  Bleeding from bullet holes in his shoulder and the leg, Fort lumbered to the pile of bodies. He tossed people aside until he reached his giant left hand down and pinned Firstborn facedown on the deck. Fort put a knee in Firstborn’s back, then grabbed the man’s wrists and held them firm.