Pax Britannia: Unnatural History

by Jonathan Green

  They had left the maltreated Neanderthal in the basement room. It had appeared unwilling to follow them into the sewer; perhaps it knew what was waiting for them down there even if it couldn't communicate that fact to them directly.

  At every junction they waited in anxious anticipation. Never quite sure of what they might meet. Ulysses waited either for his sixth sense to give him an inkling as to which direction they should head or for another reptilian roar to guide them to its source.

  Sometimes the roars sounded like they were coming from just around the next corner in the twisting tunnels and at other times they sounded more distant again. Then they would not hear anything at all for as much as a quarter of an hour.

  Was the reptile or dinosaur, or whatever it was, hunting them, scenting their blood even over the overwhelming stink of the sewers? And there was another nagging thought at the back of Ulysses' mind that he almost didn't want to even consider. Were they in fact hunting the transformed Professor Galapagos altered even further, changed into a totally inhuman form by whatever degenerative disease he had contracted?

  Then, at last, the tunnel began to widen, the roof becoming higher, so that they could walk two abreast without having to stoop. Another thirty yards further on and a walkway, raised from the stream of filth, appeared on the left hand side. It was a relief for them to get their feet out of the stinking sludge.

  Ulysses paused at another parting of the ways. Four tunnels met at an intersection, the current becoming stronger at the confluence as three of the sewer passages emptied into the fourth - and largest. The roar of water suggested that a little way down this last tunnel the depth of the sewer increased, the current being carried over a precipitous waterfall into the even more unsavoury depths of the sewer network.

  But Ulysses was not interested in any of these new tunnels, at least not for the time being. He was shining his torch down at the narrow walkway they were now on.

  "What is it, sir?" Nimrod asked. "What have you found?"

  "Something's last meal," Ulysses said, studying the half-eaten remains of a rat. It was missing its hindquarters, the spill of its pallid intestines a greasy purple-grey in the light of his torch.

  "And here's another one." Something had clearly taken a bite out of the middle of this rodent. The rat's head, tail and legs were all intact but the flesh of its middle was completely gone, only a few stringy bits of gristle remaining attached to its gnawed spine. "Watch where you're stepping, old chap."

  "Sir?" Nimrod's voice floated back up the tunnel. "I think you should see this."

  Ulysses turned and looked back down the tunnel. His manservant had stopped a few yards behind on the walkway. He had his torch beam pointed down at the side of the ledge.

  "What is it?" Ulysses asked, joining Nimrod where he was crouched at the channel's edge.

  Whatever it was, it looked like a swatch of leather, discoloured almost beyond recognition by the filth of the effluent half-filling the tunnel. It had caught on a rusted pipe jutting out from the stonework. Nimrod pulled it free and carefully laid it out on the mouldering pathway.

  Now that it was out of the muck both men could see quite clearly that the material was covered in coarse hair and had gathered in folds. In the light of the torches Nimrod began to tease out the folds, separating them in an attempt to stretch the object out.

  "My God!" Ulysses gasped, as the shape of the object became unquestionable. The thing Nimrod had recovered from the sewer was undoubtedly a skin. It was not complete but both men could see arms, the outline of legs and a face.

  "How vexing," Nimrod said, without any apparent emotion. "It would appear that something has eaten the wretched Professor Galapagos."

  "I don't think so, old chap," Ulysses corrected, running his torch up and down, the ape-skin. "I don't think that the errant professor has been skinned and eaten. These ruptures here don't look like talon marks, they look more like tears to me. There's no subcutaneous fat, blood and general mess on the skin. It's relatively clean, if you choose to ignore the fact that it's been soaking in sewer filth. I think that Professor Galapagos has shed his skin."

  "I am no naturalist, sir, but as far as I am aware, mammalian species do not shed their skin."

  "No, they don't, do they?"

  "So," Nimrod said, seeking a better understanding so that he was clear as to what the two of them could expect to face down in the stinking darkness, "you believe that the cry we heard was not made by the professor's killer but by whatever he might have become."

  "Something like that, yes."

  A sense like precognition sent shockwaves skittering along tingling nerve endings. Ulysses threw himself backwards against the wall of the tunnel as the effluent stream exploded, showering the two men with filthy water. A hulking shape hurled itself at the crouching men. A sweeping claw struck the edge of the walkway, the rotten brickwork crumbling under the blow.

  Mastering their shock at the abrupt appearance of the monster, Ulysses and Nimrod turned their torches on the creature. The thing roared in fury, its reptilian voice brimming with anger, and threw its arms up in front of its face. Its eyes had become used to the fetid darkness and so it was now blinded by the sudden sharp light of the torches.

  It had used other senses to track the two hunters which, as well as a heightened sense of hearing and smell, included the ability to sense a creature by body heat alone.

  The creature had found it easy to hunt the rats, the scrawny rodents appearing as scampering blurs of hot orange and yellow against the dull black of the bone-numbing slurry water. Then it had chanced upon the two men, sensing the heat of their bodies in the darkness, feeling an animal thrill of satisfaction that here at last were some more satisfying prey with which it could sate its ravenous hunger. It was only Ulysses' precognitive sense that had saved him from an instant death at the claws of the lizard man.

  In the split second in which it was rendered incapable by the light of the torches, Ulysses' heightened mind took in every detail of the creature's unnatural anatomy. The trunk of its body was like that of a muscular human but covered with scales instead of skin. The scales of its belly were pale, the colour of ivory, but on the rest of its body the creature's rough hide became more like the colour and texture of tree bark. Its arms were again humanoid in form, but corded with muscles like ship's cables and ending in sharp-clawed talons.

  The monster's face and head had lost all vestiges of its original form, showing no signs of its human origins. It looked more like that of a lizard. It was completely hairless and had a short crocodilian snout, strong jaws bristling with needle-sharp teeth, its tongue a stabbing spear of black muscle. But its eyes were the most chilling aspect of all; they had lost any sign of the humanity that might have once lingered within. Around the scales of its neck - so tight that it was cutting into the saurian flesh beneath - was a silvered chain and the curiously shaped locket Ulysses had seen before around the neck of the apeman in the Natural History Museum. There could be no doubt now as to the identity of the mutated half-lizard thing.

  "Professor Galapagos, I presume."

  The creature responded by issuing another blood-curdling roar from between gaping jaws, large enough to remove a man's head from his shoulders with a single bite.

  The change that had come upon the professor was obviously not as straightforward as him simply transforming into other ancestral life forms as his body regressed. With every change he underwent his body maintained its overall human proportions as if he was actually becoming a hybrid of a human being and whatever other evolutionary form he might be regressing into. It was as if the damned Professor was creating new species, or sub-species, with every transformation. The form he was in right now the academics would give the name homo lizardus or lizardus sapiens. That was his divine punishment for the hubris he had demonstrated in meddling with the secrets of evolution, for cracking the Darwin Code. God alone knew what he would turn into next. It seemed to Ulysses that Galapagos's regression was acceler
ating.

  The monster howled, its saurian voice like the shriek of a circular saw. It lashed out again, this time catching Ulysses' flashlight, smashing the torch from his hand and shattering the bulb. The light died, but with Nimrod's torch still dazzling the creature Ulysses sought a way to defend himself.

  Before the pistol was even in his hand, the lizard-thing hurled itself back into the brown slurry and vanished beneath the surface.

  Ulysses trained his gun on the spot where the lizardman had disappeared but it failed to resurface. "Come on, we can't let it get away!" He shouted, recklessly leaping into the sewer channel again.

  "But which way, sir?" Nimrod asked, shining his torch after Ulysses.

  Ulysses scoured the sewer intersection for any sign of where the Galapagos-lizard had gone, whether that sign be sight or sound of the lizardman or some precognitive clue from that extra-sensory part of his subconscious.

  "This way," he declared, pointing into the pipe into which all the other channels emptied, and began dragging his legs through the water with heroic strides.

  "Sir, wait!" Nimrod called after his reckless employer, but Ulysses' blood was up and he would not be held back.

  Entering the gaping mouth of the main tunnel Ulysses instantly felt the pull of the stronger current. Only a few yards ahead the sewer passage emptied over the edge of an abyssal drop, the sound of the water a thunderous roar.

  "Sir!"

  Ulysses heard his flunkey's warning as his heightened sixth sense cut through the adrenalin. He spun round to see the monstrous saurian shadow rise behind him, filthy brown water running from its rugged hide.

  He had been ready for the monster but turning cost him precious fractions of a second. Something lashed out of the darkness, whipping him across the forearm, smacking the gun from his hand and opening up the flesh of his wrist.

  "A tail! A bloody tail!" Ulysses gasped, clutching a hand to the gash in his arm. Galapagos had become even more like one of humankind's prehistoric reptilian forebears than Ulysses had at first realised.

  As the creature bore down on him, Ulysses realised that he had no choice but to fight the creature hand-to-hand. And then the time for calm, reasoned thought was gone and there was only time for brutal, instinctive action.

  The lizardman reached for Ulysses with taloned hands and Ulysses grabbed hold of both the creature's wrists, feeling the scales scrape against the softer skin of his palms. The Galapagos-lizard was taller than he and had the greater body mass. But Ulysses was lithely strong too, more so than might at first have appeared to the casual observer. And in his months away from the rest of civilisation he had learnt how to use an opponent's own strength and weight against itself. He did so now, pulling the lizardman towards him whilst deftly sidestepping. As the scaly creature stumbled past him, Ulysses delivered a strong, straight-legged kick into the base of the lizard's spine.

  The beast stumbled but retained its balance, the taloned claws of its feet anchoring it to the floor of the tunnel beneath the rushing effluent. Without even looking back over its shoulder, the Galapagos-lizard delivered another unavoidable whip-cracking stinging blow with its tail, this time catching Ulysses across the chest. He stumbled backwards, desperate to keep his balance, fearing what might happen should he become submerged.

  Then the beast was on him, Ulysses and the lizardman wrestling one another at the very edge of the subterranean waterfall.

  Ulysses looked up into the elongated face of what had once been Genevieve Galapagos' father and into the eyes of what had become Lacerta erectus. Those eyes were now a chilling ophidian yellow, the pupils cruel crescent slits. The monster stared back, nictitating eyelids blinking rapidly.

  There was the crack of a pistol shot and a bullet buried itself in the wall of the tunnel next to them.

  "Try to hold it still, sir!" Nimrod called over the roar of the lizard and the furious crashing of the cascading sewage.

  Ulysses felt his shoulder cry out as he tried to resist the weight of the beast bearing down on top of him.

  "All right," Ulysses spluttered, closing his eyes against the torch beam as it swept into his eyes, "and while I'm at it, I'll ask the dear Professor Galapagos to pose for his portrait for the National Geographic Magazine"

  Nimrod's aim was compromised by the disorienting shadows cast by his small torch and also by the fact that he did not want to hit Ulysses. To kill one's own employer would not look good on his curriculum vitae should he have to look for other gainful employment following this incident.

  There was another crack and this time the lizardman cried out in pained surprise. For a moment it turned, as if considering this new threat.

  "A hit, Nimrod, a very palpable hit!"

  "Thank you, sir!"

  "Not that it seems to have made any difference," Ulysses added to himself.

  Driven on by its rage at having been shot, the lizardman grappled with Ulysses, snapping at him with its alligator mouth, forcing him closer and closer towards the edge of the pitch-black precipice. Ulysses lashed out with kicks and punches, but the creature's hide protected it from his pummelling. Where he landed punches with his fists he winced as he took the skin off his knuckles.

  There was a splash as Nimrod entered the channel after them. The manservant's torch beam wavered as he did his best to run to the aid of his master. "Watch out, sir! I'll get the blighter!"

  There were two more pistol shots. It sounded like one of them spanged off the bony ridges of the lizard's back. The other hit home.

  The creature roared, enraged by the manservant's constant goading. It spun round savagely, delivering Ulysses a reeling blow to the head with one club-like fist as it did so.

  For a moment grey supernovae exploded across Ulysses' vision. He reeled backwards, grabbing out at anything that might arrest his fall. His fingers closed around something small, sharp and hard. There was the ping of a chain snapping and then the mighty pendulum weight of the monster's tail connected with the back of his legs.

  There was no way he could have avoided the tail attack. His legs swept out from under him, his feet slipping in the rancid silt covering the floor of the sewer passage, Ulysses felt the surging current catch him and pull him with it into the void.

  The flickering light of Nimrod's torch illuminating the circular mouth of the tunnel disappeared rapidly upwards, receding gunshots echoing from the sewer pipe.

  He could feel nothing but air beneath him, his ears deaf to all but the roar of the effluent-fall. And the hungry darkness of the sewer swallowed him up.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  His Waterloo

  Ulysses surfaced, coughing violently, the surging current of the sewer channel bringing him to a stone ledge in the septic darkness. He scrabbled for a hold, trying to pull himself out of the vile water. His stomach heaved and before he was fully aware of what was happening he vomited, his body's reaction to the presence of the noxious effluent that had suddenly flooded his digestive system. He spluttered, spitting in an attempt to rid his mouth of the ordure, and his stomach heaved again.

  Eventually Ulysses managed to pull himself onto the ledge and then could do nothing but sit with his head hung low, weakened by the experience and disorientated by his plunge into the deeper sewer tunnels. Taking in heaving lungfuls of air he retched again, unable to rid himself of the nauseous taste. This time nothing more came up; there was nothing left inside him. There was a dull throbbing ache in his skull from the resounding blow the lizardman had laid against him during their struggle.

  As he sat there, leaning over the sewer channel in the darkness, he became uncomfortably aware of his own ragged breathing. Ears straining to hear anything else, he searched for any clues as to his surroundings using sound alone. Down there in the darkness, soaked to the skin in malodorous sewer water, without a light source to see by and minus his gun, Ulysses felt horribly vulnerable.

  He could hear the ever-present gurgle of the steady stream coursing through the sewer pipe. There was also
the slow drip of moisture from the ceiling and the small plashes of the drips falling into puddles collecting on the pitted stone of the ledge. And then there was the occasional scampering patter of tiny feet as the rats went about their disgusting business.

  He could see nothing and smell far too much. It was as if the fetid stench had taken on physical form and was trying to smother him as well as take away his sight.

  Ulysses couldn't hear the sound of gunfire anymore, but then he wasn't sure how far he had been carried following his plunge. He wondered what had become of the ever-loyal Nimrod. Had he bested the lizardman or had he simply become Professor Galapagos' latest victim? There was no time for mourning now, though. Besides, he had no idea really as to his manservant's fate one way or the other - Nimrod had been armed, as had the lizard in its own way. His priority was to get out of the sewers alive so that he could pursue his investigation to its conclusion, and if that meant avenging Nimrod's death, then so be it.

  Ulysses could still feel the professor's curious locket gripped tightly in his fist. Incredibly, he had managed to hold onto it after his fall and all the time he was being carried along through the miasmic dark.

  He couldn't hear anything that might hint at the approach of the inhuman lizard-thing - either the sound of something breaking the surface or surging towards him through the foul water - but then he had barely been given any warning the last time that the monster had attacked. Was the lizardman hunting him even now through the cloying, fetid darkness? Or was its corpse floating through the tunnels, on its way to the Thames, shot dead by his butler?