Prophet of Bones A Novel

by Ted Kosmatka

  His fingers convulsed into claws. He felt his left hand start to slip, slow movement under his fingers. He willed himself to grip.

  He let his biceps relax, dropping down so his arms were straight. At furthest extension. He couldn’t keep going. He hung. The last moments of his life.

  His fingers white on the beam, sliding—losing friction. His left hand fell away, and he dangled for a split second by his right, and time seemed to slow, and his fingers snapped free, and he fell.

  43

  He woke in pain. Lilli was cradling his head in her arms.

  “Shhh, it’s okay.” She was crying.

  “What—”

  “I thought I’d lost you.”

  “Where…” His head felt wooden. He couldn’t think.

  “It’s fine. It’s fine. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Paul tried to stand, but his left leg wasn’t working.

  “I think it’s broken,” he said.

  He leaned on Lilli as the two of them climbed across the twisted remains of the cages. Paul had landed on the sprawling wreckage and somehow survived the fall. They trudged forward and collapsed near the wall.

  “It’s death out there,” she said. “Those things we let free … they’re still running. Guards killed about half of them. But they’ve killed all the guards now, I think. The guard outside the control booth tried to leave and they ripped him apart. I waited for hours before I unlocked the door. I thought you were dead. I thought everyone was dead. The shooting stopped a long time ago.”

  “We’ve got to get out.”

  Paul let himself be pulled to his feet again. He leaned heavily on Lilli, putting most of his weight on his right foot.

  They limped their way to the door. She helped him sit with his back to the wall. He opened the door and peered out. It was night. The trail leading back to the main structure looked empty, but it was hard to tell. No movement. It was a short walk back. Maybe a hundred meters, but it might have been a hundred miles.

  “Do you think we can make it?” she asked.

  “We don’t have much of a choice.”

  They crossed the gap as quickly as they could, trying to keep quiet. When they entered the building, it looked like a tornado had moved through the area. Everything they’d seen the day before was overturned. Knocked asunder. Destroyed. The creatures had torn through the place.

  In the lobby, they found two bodies. They recognized them as two of the guards who’d kidnapped them. One’s face was crushed. The other’s neck was twisted at an odd angle.

  “Look,” Lilli said. She stepped across the room and bent to pick something up. She returned with a gun. Paul checked the ammunition.

  “Four in the clip.”

  She nodded.

  Paul bent and checked the other body.

  “No gun,” he said. “But…” He fished in the man’s front pant pockets and pulled something free. “Keys.”

  They moved deeper into the building. Moving through the nursery now. A distant mewling could be heard, right on the edge of perception.

  “Wait. Wait here,” Lilli said. “I have to check something.”

  She disappeared into the darkness. It was the longest four minutes of Paul’s life.

  Then she was back—with a small form swaddled in her arms. She was crying.

  “It would die if we left it,” she said.

  “What about the others?”

  “There are no others.”

  Paul felt sick to his stomach.

  The creature waved its strange hands up at her. A cute hairless face. Dark eyes. Staring up and out. Eyes that hadn’t seen the sun in five thousand years.

  “Come on.”

  Lilli followed Paul through the facility, down a familiar hall. Paul got to their room and pushed the door open. He grabbed the report off the bed; he’d left it there earlier that morning. Alan’s report of divergence. They headed toward the front doors.

  They waited in a corner of the front entrance lobby, huddled against the wall.

  A few hours later, dawn came.

  Out the window, in the world materializing in the growing light outside the building, Paul saw the vans, parked in a line by the curb. There were three of them now. A third van parked behind the others. He scanned the grassy front lawn and the trees beyond the driveway. Just past the flagpole, several massive shapes lounged in the morning sun.

  He nudged Lilli, waking her.

  “It’s time.”

  Beside her, the bundle moved. A soft sound. Then quiet again.

  They stood.

  “Are you ready for this?”

  “No.”

  Paul pointed the keys at the vans. “It’s now or never,” he said and hit the unlock button.

  There was a chirp, and the middle van’s hazards flashed briefly. “The middle one,” Paul said. “It had to be the middle one.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The other vans are parked close. It’s going to be hard to pull out.” He gestured to the swaddled form she cradled in her arms. “Do you want me to carry it?”

  “No, I can manage.”

  Paul pushed the door open slowly, watching the dark shapes beyond the flagpole. He exchanged a look with Lilli, a slight nod.

  They slipped through the doors. Paul covered ground as quickly as his mangled leg would allow.

  They crossed the dozen yards to the vehicles, kicking up gravel as they moved. Paul flung open the driver’s door and hopped into the seat. Lilli climbed into the passenger side—the bundle crying now, jolted awake by the run.

  Their movement had attracted attention. Paul put the key in the ignition. Across the lawn, two big males swiveled their heads toward them, not bothering to rise. But the third big male stood. Blood caked its bare chest.

  “Come on,” Lilli said.

  Paul turned the key and the van rumbled to life. The baby’s gentle cry changed into a scream.

  The first gorilla hybrid charged.

  Paul put the transmission into reverse and hit the accelerator. Their vehicle smashed into the van behind it. A moment later, the hybrid slammed into the side of the van. The whole vehicle shook. Paul’s side window collapsed inward in a cascade of glass.

  “Jesus!”

  Paul pulled his gun.

  The hybrid lunged at the door.

  He fired two shots through the window, center of mass, and the hybrid juddered forward. Paul fired again, twice, this time at its head, and the thing went down, rolling as it crashed. Paul squeezed the trigger again, and again, and nothing happened. The gun was empty.

  Near the flagpole, the others took notice. The largest of them rose up and charged.

  Paul put the transmission in drive and hit the gas, slamming the van into the vehicle in front, pushing it forward a few feet. He hit reverse and floored it, smashing into the van behind, making room. The gorilla-thing hesitated, confused by the movement. Paul put the vehicle in drive again and slammed into the forward van, pushing it farther this time.

  The beast hit the van like a car crash. It hammered its arms down on the front, crinkling the hood.

  Paul shifted into reverse again, turned the wheel, and floored it. The van sideswiped the van behind it but pulled free, ripping off the mirror on Lilli’s side. Paul kept his foot on the accelerator, pulling away in reverse. The gorilla paused for a moment, confused, and then it gave chase, gaining on them. Paul spun the wheel so he could back out and turn around, and the gorilla caught up and smashed a huge shoulder into the side of the vehicle, rocking it on its suspension. Then its arm came down on the windshield.

  Lilli screamed as the glass spidered but did not break. The baby screamed louder. Paul shifted into drive.

  Another blow from the gorilla rocked the van, and now the glass from the side window exploded inward, showering Lilli. Paul punched the gas and the van lurched ahead, sliding past the beast. He glanced in the rearview mirror as the gorilla-thing stood in the road behind them and beat its chest in frustration.


  The baby shrieked on, while Lilli tried to soothe it.

  The van bumped along down the empty roadway, heading for the highway, leaving the facility behind.

  44

  They pulled into a town called Immokola with a quarter tank of gas. The battered van rolled past the small police station without stopping, continuing on past restaurants and stores to the town’s main drag, where it finally came to a stop in front of a small storefront with the name IMMOKOLA TRIBUNE stenciled across the plate glass.

  Paul shifted into park and turned the van off. The engine ticked.

  He and Lilli stepped out. Lilli held the baby close to her, covered in a blanket, as they walked to the front door. A small group of onlookers had already begun to assemble from random passersby on the sidewalk, their attention caught by the wreckage of the van, and now the two strangers with ripped and bloody clothes.

  Paul and Lilli stepped into the cool air-conditioning of the office and walked up to the receptionist.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “My name is Paul Carlsson, and I have numerous deaths to report.”

  The woman behind the desk stared at him. Lilli stood beside him, rocking the baby softly, which was still swaddled in a blanket.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” the woman said, and stepped into the other room.

  The receptionist returned with her boss and Paul repeated himself.

  “How numerous we talking?” the boss asked. He was a heavyset man in his fifties with a sun-creased face.

  “Hard to say.”

  “That so?” The boss’s expression was unreadable.

  The boss got on the phone and made a call. The conversation was short, and Paul couldn’t hear what transpired. “If you’ll take a seat,” the boss said.

  Paul and Lilli sat and waited until a police car arrived, its lights spinning.

  It was a county officer who arrived first.

  The officer stepped through the door, and the boss gestured to Paul and Lilli, and Paul repeated himself a third time.

  “Who died?”

  “A lot of people. The workers at a laboratory. The whole lab. Everyone.”

  The officer looked at Paul, sizing him up, then got on his radio, requesting backup.

  The baby started to cry.

  “Does the child need assistance?” the policeman asked.

  “Milk,” Lilli said. “If you can get it, baby formula.”

  The man looked at the infant, then at Lilli, his confusion growing. For a moment he seemed on the edge of asking something, a question about the child that was not a child, but then he kept it to himself.

  Two more police cars pulled up outside. More policemen. More questions. Paul tried to tell them about James. “He was the first to die. His throat was cut.”

  “Where did this happen?”

  “An island called Flores.”

  “Do you have a last name for James?”

  Paul glanced out the front window, saying softly, “Herpetology, mate.”

  An older cop with a thick gray mustache seemed to be in charge.

  “We’re going to need you to come back to the station.”

  Paul and Lilli stood and followed the officers outside. More people had gathered on the sidewalk now, staring at the clump of police cars.

  “We’d like to get a complete statement from you,” the officer said. “For the record.”

  “I’ll tell you everything,” Paul answered. It’s what prophets did.

  They ushered Lilli to one squad car, Paul to another.

  Lilli started to pull back, but Paul told her, “Just go with them. It’s okay. Just tell them what you know.”

  She nodded and let herself be steered away gently by the arm.

  Paul’s officer opened the back door of his squad car, and Paul ducked his head and sat. He pulled the report out and set it on the car seat next to him. The papers were crinkled but still legible. A dozen pages that might or might not matter. The car idled while the officer talked to the newspaper boss for a moment, and then the two shook hands and the officer headed for the car.

  Paul watched the newspaper boss head back inside his building to write the next day’s headline. He wondered what it would look like. He wondered if there would be future headlines, in other cities, as the scope of what had happened was finally revealed.

  The officer climbed into the car and shut the door. The back of his head was slick with sweat. “It’s gonna be a hot one today,” Paul said.

  “Yeah,” the cop said. “Feels like.”

  The cop started the car and eased past the throng of onlookers crowding the sidewalks. They stood staring from both sides of the wide city street, watching the police lights. Paul took off his eye patch and looked out the window at the curious faces, with both his good eye and the ghost eye, and then he closed his eyes in silent prayer as the cop car pulled down the road, leaving the faces behind.

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