Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters (18 page)

In our bunks, smelling like summer in a charnel house, we gather and talk and wait. At night, we cluster close together even though all of us stink of death and bodies that haven’t seen a bath in months. It’s better than cowering alone and listening to the knock-kneed haint come walking by.

We think it grows by consuming us—it eats the starved ones up and walks on borrowed bones ill-fit together. And so many of us have wasted away, and so many more are bound to follow.

In another month, that thing will be a god.

“Hey,” Lisa said. Her long brown hair was tied back behind her ears, elf-style, and her eyes were more bloodshot than blue.

Dean thought maybe she was looking thinner every day, like her collarbones jutted sharper out of her tank top and maybe her tits were settling closer to her ribcage. “Hey. Welcome back.”

“Sure,” she said, but it didn’t make much sense as a response.

At supper rush she manned the cash register at the end of the counter, and Scott leaned in over Dean’s shoulder. “She looks like hell.”

“Yeah she does. Told you. She’s been sick.”

“That doesn’t look like sick to me, exactly.”

Dean shifted his arms to push Scott back, out of his personal space. “What do you think it looks like, then? What are you saying? You think it’s drugs or something?”

“You said it, not me. It looks like it, though. Look at her. And you know what—she’s gone to the bathroom three times in the last five hours.”

“You’ve been counting? That’s fucked up, man.”

“I’ve been counting because I’ve been covering the register while you’ve been making pizzas. It’s not like I’ve been taking inventory of her bladder or anything.” He tapped his foot against the counter’s support and chewed his lower lip. “I’m thinking, it could be crystal meth, or something like that. Meth makes you skinny.”

“Meth makes you wired too,” Dean argued. “She’s been dragging. I think she’s just been sick. I wonder if, do you think it’s something like cancer? Christ, what if she has AIDS or something?”

“Did you ever fuck her?”

“No. Didn’t go together that long.”

Scott raised a shoulder and crushed his lips together in a dismissive grimace. “Then who cares?”

“I do, sort of. She’s all right. Don’t be an asshole about her. Hey—the phone’s ringing. It’s for you.”

“I don’t want to answer it.”

“Well, you’re going to.” Dean turned his back completely, absorbing himself in the scattering of green things onto the crust and paste.

After a few seconds of being ignored, Scott took the hint and picked up the phone. “Pete’s Party Palace, what’s your request?”

Dean returned to making pizzas and shoveling them onto the slow-moving conveyor belt in the oven. Lisa stayed at the register and didn’t seem to notice much of anything that wasn’t right in front of her.

He watched, though. He waited for her to take a break, and then he followed her—back outside to where the dumpsters are pillaged by the creatures who come up from the edge of the woods.

By the time he reached the doorway she was struggling with a cigarette lighter, so he offered her his.

“Thanks,” she said, and she leaned against the bricks.

Dean joined her. “I’ve been wanting to ask you,” he started, but she cut him off.

“Thanks for covering for me the other night. I appreciated it. I wasn’t feeling good, is all.”

“That’s cool. No big deal. I wanted to ask you, though, if something’s wrong. I mean,
really
wrong. I know we’re not that tight or anything, but if you need something, all you have to do is say so.”

Lisa took a short drag on the cigarette, one that couldn’t have earned her much nicotine. “What are you trying to ask me? You talking your way around something?”

He studied her closely, trying to think of how to ask what he meant. She was shaky—not in a hard way like she was shivering, but in a low-grade hum that meant her whole body was moving, very slightly.

When her fingers squeezed themselves around the cigarette, her chipped pearl nail polish looked ill and yellow against the paper. She glared out at the dumpster, and out past it. She glared into the coming dark like it might tell her important things, but she didn’t really expect it to.

“Are you sick? I can’t ask it any better than that. You’ve looked, I mean, you haven’t looked good the last few times you’ve been here. Like you’re weak, or like you’ve got a fever. I was wondering if maybe there wasn’t something really wrong and you hadn’t felt like telling us.”

“Like what?”

“Like, I don’t know. Cancer or something.” He didn’t mention Scott’s meth theory because it seemed even ruder than telling a girl she looked terrible. He rolled on his shoulder to face her. “Look, you—you look like you’re wasting away. You’ve been losing weight, enough weight that Scott even noticed, and he didn’t notice it when you cut your hair off and dyed it black last year. It’s pretty dramatic.”

It was strange and not at all pleasant, the small smile that lifted a corner of her mouth beside the cigarette. “Bless your heart,” she breathed. Then, a little louder, “You think I’m shrinking? You didn’t have to say it like you were asking if I was dying. Most women like it if you point out they’re losing weight.”

“Yeah, but . . . ” He couldn’t figure out a tactful way to phrase the obvious rest.

“It’s been good, lately. I’ve been getting into clothes I haven’t worn since junior high.”

“That’s good?”

“It might be. I think it’s good. I could still stand to—” she stopped herself, and changed her mind. “It’s not the end of the world, dropping a few pounds. It’s a good thing. I don’t mind it, and I wish I could take another few down, so stop worrying. That’s all it is. I’m on a diet.”

“What kind of diet? Like a starvation diet, or what? You got some kind of eating disorder now, is that how it is?”

“There’s nothing disordered about it. It’s the most orderly thing I’ve ever done.” She crushed the lit end of the cigarette against the wall, leaving a black streak on the brick and a mangled butt on the ground as she went back inside.

There’s a Chinaman here in camp, a small fellow who looks like he might be a thousand years old. Someone told me he came from out west, out across the frontier—someone said he’d come east from California, but I can’t imagine why.

He says he’s no Chinaman, and he seems to get offended if you call him one, even though I don’t think he understands one word of English out of three.

I don’t know his name or what he’s doing here, except that he runs errands between the officers. He washes pots and clothes for the Confederates when there’s water to wash them, and I guess that’s not strange since there aren’t any women around.

The little old fellow is mostly quiet. He mostly listens and keeps his head low, not wanting to draw any attention to himself. Henry says he looks strange and wise, and I don’t know if that’s right or not, but the Chinaman sure has these black, sharp eyes that always seem to know something.

He came up on us, the other night while we were talking about the thing that eats the bones out back. Like I told it, I don’t know how much of our talk he understands—but he got the idea. He saw our fear, and he watched the way we pointed and whispered at the sheds out back.

One of the guards heard us too, and he told us to shut ourselves up and be quiet, we were just trying to start trouble. He was complaining how we didn’t need any more trouble than we’d already got, and he was right, but that didn’t change anything.

When he was gone, the Chinaman approached us with small steps and a hunched back that bowed when he tiptoed forward. He nodded, yes. He nodded like he understood. He pointed one long, wrinkled finger towards the sheds where the dead are stored and where they wait to be buried.

“
Gashadokuro
,” he said. It was a funny, long word filled with sharp edges.

We stared up at him, blank faces not comprehending very well. He looked back at us, frustrated that he could not make us comprehend. “
Gashadokuro
,” he said again, pointing harder.

And then I nodded, trying to repeat the piece of foreign tongue and probably mangling it past recognition. I tried to convey my realization, that yes—the thing was there, and yes—it had a name, and it was a foreign name from across the country, and across the ocean, because white men like us wouldn’t know what to call it.

Gashadokuro.

We can’t even say it.

After Lisa was gone, Dean kept smoking and he said to the empty back lot, “You don’t eat with us anymore. We all used to eat together after shift.”

A creak answered him, with a twisting squeal of metal and a gentle knocking.

He jumped, and settled. The dumpster again. Something inside it. No, something behind it. Dean held his dwindling cigarette out like a weapon, or a pointer.

“Scram,” he said, but he didn’t say it loud. “Scram, you goddamn rats. Raccoons.” It wasn’t worth adding “bears” to the list, because he still thought Scott was full of shit.

But it was dark enough, and the woods were a black line of soldier-straight trees, hiding everything beyond or past them. He stepped forward, just a pace or two. Towards the dumpster, and the rattling shuffle that came from behind it, or beside it—somewhere near it.

“Get lost,” he said with a touch more volume as another possibility occurred to him. Plains didn’t have too many homeless people; it didn’t have too many people of any sort, truth to tell. But there was always the chance of a passing human scavenger. You never knew, in this day and age.

The noise was louder as he got closer—tracking it with his ears to a spot behind the dumpster, close to the trees. It wasn’t all scratching, either. It was something muffled and banging together—something like pool balls clattering in felt, or inside a leather bag. He couldn’t pinpoint it, no matter how hard he listened.

Scott’s head popped into the doorway, casting a giant round shadow against Dean’s back. “Who’re you talking to out here? Yourself again?”

“Sure.” He turned and squinted at the doorway, where the world suddenly looked much brighter within that rectangle.

“I’ve got to make another run out to my favorite spot in all of Georgia. You coming back inside or what? I can’t leave until someone takes the ovens, and baby, that needs to be
you
.”

Dean looked back into the woods, past the dumpster where the noise had stopped as soon as Scott appeared. “Back towards the old prison camp?”

“Of course. Why can’t that guy always call during the day, huh? Why’s he got to wait until the creeps come out?”

“Why would you put it that way?” Dean asked, a hint of petulance framing the words. “There aren’t any creeps. There’s just the old camp, and there’s nothing there anymore.”

“Then why don’t you drive it, if you’re so fucking unperturbable. I hate going out there, it’s—”

“It’s not even two miles, you chickenshit. You could practically walk them the pizza in the time you’ve stood here complaining about it.”

“Practically, but never. I’m serious. You do it, if that’s what it’s about. I’ll take the ovens and the onion-smelling hands for a few minutes.
You
go brave the ghosts from the old camp.”

“I will, then. Fine. Give me the address.” He pulled himself back inside and swiped the sheet of paper out of Scott’s hand.

The gash-beast is hungry; it is as hungry as we are. As it grows, so does its appetite. As it grows, and we diminish, it becomes ravenous. It outpaces us.

For us, the hunger comes and goes—and comes again.

It’s when it comes again that we know, we know that it won’t be dysentery or cholera or pneumonia that takes us. We know it will be the hunger. When first we go without food the days drag and stretch, and the belly is all we can think of. But in a few days, after a week or so, the hunger fades. The body adjusts. The stomach shrinks and thoughts of food are sharply sweet, but no longer dire.

It when the hunger comes again that we know.

It takes some time—maybe a month, maybe less. But when the weeks have slid by and there’s nothing yet to fill us, when the hunger returns it returns with a message: “Now,” it says, “you are dying. Now your body consumes itself from the inside, out. This is what will kill you.”

The gash-monster knows. It hovers close, a clattering angel of death that follows the weakest ones after dark. It hums and taps, drumming its bone-fingers against the walls and waiting by the doors. It is impatient. And we are all afraid, even those of us whose stomachs have balled themselves into tight little knots that don’t cry out just yet—we are all afraid that the gash-monster’s impatience will get the better of it.

We are all afraid that the time will come when the dead aren’t quite enough, and it comes to chase the living, starving, withering souls whose hearts still beat with a feeble persistence.

We are all afraid that the time will come when it pulls our still-living limbs apart, and peels our skin away, and eats our bones while we bleed and cry on the ground.

We keep ourselves quiet when the hunger returns.

We do not want it to hear us.

When Dean returned, he reclaimed his apron and went back to the pizza line. “Hey look,” he told Scott. “Nothing snuck up and ate me.”

“Bite me, big boy. Speaking of eating, we’re shutting down in ten—no, eight minutes, and there are two large leftovers with our names on ’em. Pete said they’re ours if we want them.”

“Good to know. What’s on them?”

“Gross shit. Pineapples and onion on the one, and sausage, chicken and anchovy on the other—that’s your three major meat groups, right there. Three of the four, anyway. It’d need hamburger too, to make a good square meal of meat.”

“Jesus.” Dean made a face.

Scott mirrored the grimace and put the pizzas on the outside edge of the oven to stay warm. “Yeah. If I weren’t so hungry, I’d leave them out back for the bears, but I’ve been here since before lunch and I’m either going to eat one of these fuckers, or my own hand—whichever holds still first and longest. Lisa—hey string bean there—we’ll save some for you, baby. You could stand a little grease on those bones. It’ll fatten you up. Put hair on your chest.”