The Last Hunter - Collected Edition (11 page)

16

After filling my belly, I weep.

Not from guilt over the horrors I’d seen and done. Not for the newborn monsters I’d slain, or even the one I’d eaten—I’ve had veal before and calves are infinitely more adorable than the egg-monsters. I understand survival of the fittest. In school I had been at the bottom of the food chain.

The killing doesn’t bother me. I’m far from a vegetarian and these things are hardly animals in my book. It is my unexpected response to these things that revolts me.

I didn’t notice at first. But as I cut and eat the flesh, and drink the life-giving blood, I become aware of a tightness in my cheeks. The kind you feel after going to a friend’s birthday where wearing a grin is as mandatory as the party hats.

I am smiling.

The meat is stringy and tough. It tastes unlike anything I’ve had before, but is decidedly raw—firm and slimy, like chunks of a rubber slug. But I am enjoying it. When my self-awareness returns—I don’t know when it checked out—I am horrified by what I find.

My t-shirt is blood-stained and beginning to dry. The coagulation clings to my chest. My cheeks and chin are saturated in blood and bits of flesh. I can feel my skin tightening as it dries. With no water to wash myself, I know the red stain will turn brown and flaky, only disappearing when my outer layers of skin fall away.

I see myself without a mirror. Feral and frightening. My hair dangles in front of my wet eyes. The blond hair has turned red at the end. I don’t remember getting my hair in the blood, but it
is
long and I don’t recall much of anything about my recent meal.

I move to stand and my stomach protests. I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten more. My gut, normally flat and skinny, is distended, but not from hunger like the Ethiopians on the news. My stomach is full of raw egg-monster. I’m like a lion that gorges and then rests in wait for the next meal.

Unable to move, I realize that’s exactly what I need to do, too. I’m not sure how long the carcass will keep. It’s cool in the pit, but the other body turned to a jelly filled sack within days. I might get one more meal out of it, but I’m not sure. I need to rest, I decide. And wait.

It was three days between hatchings, maybe four. It may be as many before my next meal arrives.

I feel I should cry again, thinking of these living newborns as meals to be slaughtered, but I don’t. It’s the way of things now. I have no choice in the matter. My tears dry as I fall asleep.

I dream of darkness.

Not total darkness. I sense a light source behind me and to the sides I see a fading blue. As I fight to move, I realize I’m swimming—clawing at the water. Below me is a face surrounded by a white veil. I close the distance. The veil is hair. The face is Mira’s.

I wake up.

Tears return, but I don’t embrace them. I stand and kick my foot angrily, stubbing a toe on a loose bone. I pick up the limb and throw it out of the pit. My stomach rumbles through the streams of tears. I’m hungry already? How long did I sleep? I have no way to know.

As I walk to the carcass, my stomach growls with expectation. The hamster has not yet risen, but I can feel him stirring.

I stop short of the slain creature. A puddle of fetid black slime surrounds it. The meat is useless to me. But how long did it take? How much time has passed? Not having all the answers is a new feeling for me and it roils my already fragile emotional state.

More tears come. “Stop crying,” I grumble at myself. The new, cold corner of my soul tells me no amount of tears can help me. The logic that I have always embraced tells me I will need the fluids. The recently released animal in me licks the salty tears from my cheeks as they pass—this seems mostly involuntary.

“Stop crying!” I scream. “You weak fool. You pitiful little thing!”

I choke out a single sob and then set my face into a stone-like gaze. The tears built up in my eyes drip free, but no more follow. Something in me has broken, or has been fixed. I suppose that’s a matter of perspective.

I vow to never shed a tear again. Not while I’m here. There is no room for those kinds of emotions. They’re a weakness. I squelch my sadness, homesickness, compassion and kindness. If they rule me here, I will die.

Free of these things, my thoughts clear and for the first time since waking up in the darkness, I ponder escape. I approach the wall and once again feel the rough, cracked surface. Only this time, I dig my fingers in and pull. To my surprise, I am able to lift myself off the ground. But only for a moment. My fingernails bend backward and I fall to the stone floor. The knob of some discarded limb digs into my leg. I stand and kick it away, ignoring the pain, and return to the wall.

My second attempt is no more successful. I’m not strong enough to climb out, but that can change. My fingernails aren’t thick enough, but that too can change. And if it can’t, my mind will come up with a solution my body can handle.

A slurping sounds from behind. I recognize it and spring into motion without hesitation. I no longer have the jaw-saw, but any sharp object will work. I pick up a humerus—human—but I’m unfazed by that detail. The knobby head of the bone shatters away when I smash it against the wall, leaving a jagged, but sharp tip behind.

It’s a short spear, but it will work.

I turn and see the egg-sack lowering from above. The thing inside has not yet begun moving. And I’m determined to never give it the chance. It goes against my sense of fairness, but my life isn’t exactly fair anymore, either. There are no rules here.

I rush the thing silently, knowing a battle-cry might startle it into action. Then I’m in the air, arms back and spring loaded. I thrust the bone forward, piercing the opaque sack and then the egg-monster within. The whole dangling thing shifts when I strike. It stretches out as I pull it to the ground and pin the now writhing creature to the floor. With a loud snap, the stretched material breaks open above my head.

As the broken tendril retracts into the darkness above me, a gush of fluid pours out. It washes over me, but I pay no attention to it. The creature beneath me has stopped moving. And I am hungry.

For a moment, some part of my mind thinks,
I am lost
, but the thought is quickly overwhelmed by,
I am hungry
.

As I tear away the gelatinous womb my smile returns.

This time, I welcome it.

17

Killing. Eating. Sleeping.

That sums up what my life has become. Days and hours have no meaning anymore so I can’t say how much time has passed. All I know is I kill an egg-monster, I eat egg-monster meat to the point of bursting and then I sleep. When I wake, I’m hungry again and it’s not long before the next hatchling arrives. This cycle leaves me very little time to focus on escape, and deviating from it could mean death.

I’m not sure how many times the cycle has repeated. I never do try to count. But there are many more bones in the pit than when I arrived.

During the small periods of time I have, mostly while eating, I think about escape. I have tried piling the bones, but the rounded surfaces can’t support my weight. I’ve tried fashioning a rope from strands of the egg monsters’ skin, but the flesh never truly dries and the knots binding them slip apart. And despite a thickening of my muscles, I have not yet been able to scale the walls, though I have lost a few fingernails in the effort.

Having just finished a meal, I burp and sit back, thinking about how much sweeter this egg-monster tasted. My father used to say that taste buds change. I always thought he was just saying that to get me to eat something I didn’t like, but maybe he was right? I may have acquired the taste for egg-monster steaks.

“Raw, please,” I say, grinning.

And no, thinking of my father didn’t make me sad. Not at all. As promised, I have not shed a tear.

As I pick my teeth with a bone shard, I see a splash of color peeking out from beneath some bones. It’s my shirt. Not my undershirt. I discarded that along with my pants when they became too thick and sticky with blood. This is the patriotic flannel I got rid of because it became fouled by the decomposed remains of an eggy. That hardly bothers me now, but I still feel no cold, so the shirt holds little interest.

As a shirt.

It could be used for something else entirely, I realize.

I can feel the meal making me drowsy. I know eating a lot of turkey doesn’t really make people tired. It’s the full stomach. And my stomach is certainly full. The effect of eating the egg-meat is like popping a sleeping pill. No matter how hard I fight, I’ll be asleep within ten minutes.

I have just enough time to grab the shirt and return to what has become my home—a ten foot radius of floor I keep free of bones and blood. I have lined the floor with the skins of several egg-monsters, and in the middle I have several stacked up. It’s nearly as comfortable as my bed back home.

I make it back to my bed with the shirt just in time. Seconds later I’m asleep. The process of waking, killing, eating and sleeping repeats several more times before my latest escape plan comes to fruition. I get a few minutes here and there to shred the fabric, select prime bones—they need to be strong and sharp. Finally I create my bindings and cinch them to my hands.

Having just awakened, I hold my hands up and look at the newly fashioned climbing claws inspired by Justin’s Ninja magazines. Eat your heart out, Michael Dudikoff. I have tied a filed down jaw fragment to both hands. Each contains three short, serrated triangular teeth that I’ve made sure can support my weight. They will do the job my fingernails have failed to do. But I’ve gone a step further. Atop each first joint knuckle is a longer, thinner tooth. When I make a fist, they stick out a full inch. A punch would inflict four puncture wounds. A swipe would be just deep enough to eviscerate and kill an egg-monster.

There will be no more looking for or losing weapons. I am the weapon now. And with my hands free, I can climb out of here with everything I need, which is nothing. My clothes are gone except for my brown flannel boxers and I tore those up the legs because they occasionally hindered my mobility. I’m sure I look like a teenaged Tarzan, but who’s going to see me down here? I got rid of my boots. They were heavy, slowed me down and made climbing all but impossible. My toes grip the stone much better and the soles of my feet have become leather thick. I can also move in silence.

I stare up at the fifteen foot wall and, for a moment, doubt what I’m about to try. Not because I think I’ll fail, but because for the first time, I think I’ll succeed. I’ve become comfortable here. The routine is comforting. I’m surviving. Above this wall...I have no idea what awaits me. I could just stay. But my curiosity is a force to be reckoned with and no matter how cold I have become inside, it will always be the force that guides my actions.

I place my hand against the wall, sliding it up until I find a lip with my fingertips. I raise my hand higher until I feel the teeth of my climbing claw slip into place. I repeat the process with my other hand, digging in a little bit higher. One of my feet goes next, finding a crack to wedge in. Then, with all three limbs I heave myself up.

I find a foothold first, then begin the search for the next handhold. When I’ve found it, I start on the other hand.

That’s when I hear the slurp.

An egg-monster is descending.

My stomach growls.

My hand pauses.

If my climb fails and I fall back down, the beast will be free and waiting. I consider leaping down and killing the thing before leaving, but I know that if I smell its blood, I will eat. And if I eat, I will sleep. And the will to escape might very well have left me by then. It has to be now. Or I’ll spend the rest of my life here.

The thing hits the stone floor with a wet splat. I can hear it tearing through the womb.

For a moment I can taste it and the long-silent hamster comes to life. I’m a slave to this hunger and that fact fills me with anger. I have sacrificed a lot to survive, to reach this point. I will not be a slave to this thing, this cycle.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. As I reach up to find the next hand-hold, I can hear the monster breathing now. Its awkward legs are stepping in circles. It’s hungry too, and no doubt smells my rank scent.

The teeth of my climbing claws bite into the stone and I rise higher. The movement betrays my position. The thing is coming for me and I’m not yet high enough to avoid its jaws.

I block out the oval-shaped human-eating Pac-Man pounding toward me and focus on the wall. I move with confidence, pushing and pulling, searching and finding. I feel a breeze on my foot as I pull it up. The creature has struck the wall just beneath me.

I pause, listening. The thing is not moving. The impact has either killed it or knocked it unconscious. I’m not sure which, but the smell of blood fills my nose a moment later. I feel my instincts pulling me away from the wall. Finish the kill! Eat the flesh! Sleep! The cycle beckons.

Then I feel the surface beneath my raised hand. The texture is no different than the wall, but it is deep. I reach as far as I can and know my hand has reached the top. I forget the egg-monster and ignore the hamster. Ten seconds later I’m standing on top of the fifteen foot wall that has been my prison.

I am free.

But the glory of escape is short-lived. A solid wall stretches out before me. I follow it around, finding a two foot deep ledge surrounding the pit. For a moment I think I am a prisoner once more. Then I see a spot of black on the far side. A tunnel. I run for it and soon find myself squatting in front of a small hole in the wall about three feet wide and perhaps two tall. But the size is not consistent. This was not a hewn out crawlspace. There are rises in the tiny space, and rocks.

A year before coming to Antarctica I went to Polar Caves in New Hampshire, with Justin and my parents. After the guide told me which hand-holds to take and how to twist my body, I easily maneuvered through the Lemon Squeeze. I imagine getting through this space will be similar. There is only one way through. Getting it wrong will send me back, or worse, leave me stuck.

I turn back to the pit, feeling its pull for me increasing. Then I smell something coming from the tunnel. Food. Cooked food. And I suddenly remember what I’ve been missing. I enter the tunnel without looking back, and as it turns out, without looking forward. Ten minutes into my own personal Lemon Squeeze and I’m stuck.