First Kill: A Dave Carver Novella (16 page)

The monsters fell on Michelle with all
of the hive-mind mentality of the piranhas they’d filmed the day
before. The largest, strongest of the four, began biting at
Michelle’s throat while the others squabbled for places at her
wrists.

Some distant, clinical part of Ian’s
mind categorized these beasts: They feed like a pack of
wolves.

Michelle wailed and screamed, but only
for a few moments. She fell silent. Ian knew why. One of the
vampires moved, and he could see the bloody ruin that was all that
remained of his wife’s throat.

Ian howled, all scientific detachment
blown away by the hurricane of this monstrosity. He threw himself
onto the back of the largest of the creatures. Dimly, some part of
him was aware that this was the one that had thrown him against the
tree, that this was the one which had surely killed Michelle. He
jabbed his utility knife into the side of the monster’s neck, over
and over again until his hands, wrists, and forearms were covered
with a thick black liquid. Spent, Ian fell to his side and stared
up in astonishment.

The monster should have been on the
ground with him. It should have been dead. The knife should have
split open important blood vessels. But it stayed on its feet,
staring down at Ian. There was nothing in those black eyes. Nothing
like empathy or sorrow or guilt. Nothing human.

And the creature threw back its head,
and it laughed.

What could Ian do? You didn’t need
three doctorates—which Ian had—to see that Michelle was dead. The
other three monsters were noisily, gruesomely ripping chunks of
flesh from Michelle’s body and lapping up blood. He couldn’t think
of her now. He had to think of his children: Ian Junior, Tommy,
Miranda, and Ellie. They’d lost their mother. He couldn’t let them
lose their father. What could he do?

He ran. The creatures let him
go.

Ian didn’t see see any sign of them
for the rest of the day. He slept--or tried to--in a hollowed-out,
muddy hole under a redwood tree. He was too frightened, too
traumatized, to start a fire, even though he knew this jungle could
be dangerous without a fire to ward off predators. Something told
him that it’d be even more dangerous for him to light a fire, that
it would only serve to give away his position to those strange
creatures.

He hiked all of the next day, heading
north towards the coast, where most of Guyana’s cities are, before
realizing that he was lost. He wasn’t sure how it had happened, but
there was no question: Ian Twine, world-famous naturalist, was lost
in the wilderness. With a pained grimace, he put it down to shock
and climbed a tree, trying to get a handle on his
location.

The jungle stretched out for miles in
every direction. There was no sign of people, no sign of
civilization. Not for the first time, Ian wished he hadn’t left
Michelle’s pack behind. They had had a satellite phone in there,
plus some long-range radios. He could have used them to make
contact with the network’s people in Georgetown, and they could
have sent a chopper to rescue him. Instead, he had to
walk.

His direction secured, he climbed down
the tree and set to walking. Each time he closed his eyes he
remembered the sight of those black-eyed creatures. They were
beasts of darkness, he knew, something out of a nightmare. But the
fact that it was the middle of the afternoon did less than nothing
to ease his fears. The rainforest’s canopy was so thick in some
places that it blocked the sun as fully as a parasol. Yes, those
creatures were of the night, but this was a place of the
night.

A few hours before sundown, as if to
prove his point, Ian encountered one of the creatures. This one was
smaller than the four that had killed Michelle, and obviously a
female. It was hunched over the body of a dead capybara, ripping
into its tough, piglike throat with those serpent’s jaws. The
creature, so intent on its meal, or perhaps simply disinterested in
Ian, never so much as looked up while Ian snuck by, holding his
breath and praying the monster didn’t see him.

Monster
. He found himself using the word in his internal cataloguing
of the creature. It stuck in his scientific craw that he didn’t
know where these...beasts fit into the natural order, but there was
only one word that seemed to fit.
Monster
.

Late that evening was when Ian found
the cabin. It was really more of a one-room shack, with glassless
window frames and a door that wasn’t flush with the jamb, but it
was the first sign of humanity that Ian had seen in two days, and
he was overjoyed. Even better, there was a radio inside. It was an
old one, but the microphone looked to be in good shape. He almost
sobbed with joy when he turned it on and heard the static that
meant it was working.

“S.O.S. My name is Dr. Ian
Twine,” he said into the mic. “My wife’s been killed by some kind
of...animals, and I’m afraid they’re stalking me. I’m somewhere in
the jungle south of Georgetown, Guyana. I don’t know the exact
coordinates. Please. I’m very wealthy--I can give you a
reward.”

Ian couldn’t say whether anyone heard
his message, because the only reply was static, but he repeated it
over and over again for two hours until he drifted off to
sleep.

Two things happened at once that could
have woken him, and Ian couldn’t say which was which. The first was
the sun’s morning rays pinching his eyelids. The second was
something just outside the cabin growling. Screaming, startled
awake and terrified, Ian ran, forgetting all of his scientific
training, into the jungle.

Nothing chased him, so he
decided he must have escaped the danger, whatever it had
been.
For now,
he
thought ominously, and laughed.

He was still laughing some time
later—it was hard to tell exactly how long, because he’d his
wristwatch had broken when the biggest monster had thrown him into
that tree—when he heard footsteps in the jungle.

Ian ran. He could hear them behind
him, his progress slowed by the necessity of passing logs and huge
fallen branches. These things weren’t hampered in the least by
these obstacles, though--they bounded over them with a grace that
Ian had previously only associated with big cats. But these weren’t
cats. For one thing they moved on two legs, like no other large
animal in the world...well, except for one. Sure, lots of animals
could move on their hind legs, but none of them could run with this
kind of speed that way. Except for humans. And his pursuers,
whatever they were, certainly weren’t human.

Ian didn’t know how much
longer he could keep up this pace. A mile back he’d dropped his
pack, hoping the noise in the bush would distract the monsters from
his trail. No such luck, and now he’d lost his only reliable supply
of fresh water. The jungle humidity conspired with the physical
exertion to drain all of the moisture from his body. Sweat poured
down the sides of his face and soaked the back of his khaki
shirt.
Not
much
farther,
he thought.
I can’t go much
farther.

Though Ian knew better, the root
seemed to rise out of the ground like a snake, twisted and bent, to
trip him. His boot caught on one of the crooks. His right palm
landed on a jagged rock and was slashed open. Blood poured from the
cut.

Behind him, something screamed. Ian
thought he knew the calls of every big animal in this part of the
world, but he’d never heard anything like this scream. A
high-pitched wail that he knew instinctively didn’t belong in the
animal kingdom, but also didn’t emanate from a human throat. It was
an in between scream, part human and part animal.

Ian rolled over just in
time to see one of the creatures land on a downed log. He wasn’t
sure, but he thought it was one of the ones that had been there
when Michelle died. It wore raggedy clothes and its hair was dark
and shaggy. Its mouth hung open, showing Ian those teeth. For a
moment, he wondered how these things could ever close their mouths
with all of those long, dagger-like teeth in the way. His distant,
clinical mind thought:
Like a bat’s
teeth.

And then they were there,
vaulting into the monster’s path like a couple of track runners.
The older man grunted with slight effort as he leaped over Ian’s
still form. He was holding a square-bladed sword in one
hand:
a katana, I think it’s
called,
Ian thought dully. The man swung
his sword and took the creature’s head from its shoulders before
the horrible thing had time to react.

By the time the body hit the ground
there was nothing left but a skeleton and some rags.

The large, bald-headed man squinted
into the jungle, listening for the animal sounds to start up again.
“There’s at least three more of ‘em,” he said. “I’ll deal with it.
You take this genius and start headin’ for water.”

For the first time Ian realized that
there was another man with a sword standing over him. There was a
strong hand on his biceps, helping him to his feet.

“Can you walk?”

The other man was younger, in his
mid-twenties, maybe. He wore a sword on one hip and a holstered
handgun on the other.

“I think so.Those
things...killed Michelle.”

The younger man frowned. He had long,
straight hair the color of a young wolf’s fur. His eyes were the
same color as a cup of warm, inviting coffee. His nose was crooked,
like it had been broken several times and never healed
right.

“Yeah,” he said, “vampires
will do that.”

Ian didn’t argue. Of course those
things were vampires. If someone back in civilization had told him
that he was about to run into a pack of ravenous vampires, he’d
have laughed, but out here in this jungle, it didn’t seem so funny.
Something about the jungle made it possible to believe in things
that shouldn’t exist. Besides, what else could those monsters be?
What could look so human and inhuman at the same time? What else
could have those teeth?

“Come on, Doc,” the young
man said. “We gotta get out of here.”

As they hiked south--which seemed to
Ian to be the wrong direction--Ian could tell that the young man,
who said his name was Dave Carver, was moving more slowly than he
was capable of. He suspected it was too allow Ian to stay close,
which the old professor was more than happy to do. The young man
positively radiated strength. As long as Ian was in Dave’s
presence, he felt safer.

Not safe, but safer.

“You know,” Dave said
while he looked over his shoulder for the fourth or fifth time, “I
used to watch your show when I was a kid. I loved nature
documentaries.”

“Oh...oh, thanks.” Ian
shrugged. “That’s very gratifying to hear.”

At that moment, a large, dark shape
crashed out of the brush in front of them, drawing a small scream
from Ian. Dave smiled faintly, though, because it wasn’t a
vampire--it was his partner.

The other man with the sword stared at
him for a moment, then spat on the ground. “Uh-huh.” He pulled a
small cloth out of a pouch on his belt and wiped a black liquid off
the blade of his sword. When he was done he pulled out a canteen
and took a swig.

Dave shot a nervous glance at Ian,
then looked at the big man. “You got them?”

“Yeah, I got ‘em,” he
said. “But there’s a crew of hunters out there, too.”

“Thralls or
groupies?”

“I don’t know, Dave. I
didn’t get close enough to ask ‘em.” He swallowed a little more
water. “Definitely vamp-related, though. They got a coupl’a
chupacabras with ‘em.”

That was a step too far into crazy
territory. Ian could accept vampires--after all, he’d seen them for
himself, even if he hadn’t known exactly what they were. But this?
This was...insane.

“Chupacabra? You mean the
mythical beast from the southwest?” Ian looked from Dave to the
bigger man and back, expecting one or both of them to burst out
laughing at the professor’s gullibility. “I did a special on it
early in my career. It doesn’t exist.”

“Yeah,” the big man said,
“they do.”

“Take it easy, Bill,” Dave
said. “He’s a straight--you know how disorienting this can be.” To
Ian, he said, “
Chupacabra
is just the word we use for any animal that’s
been infected with vampire venom.”

“But...that’s...”

“Impossible?” Dave was
grinning now. “Impossible’s what we do.”

“If you’re done coinin’
phrases, Dave,” the big man, Bill, said, “we oughta be gettin’ a
move on. This part of the jungle’s vamp territory, clear and
proper. We ain’t even s’posed to be here.”

Dave grimaced, but Ian could see that
he agreed with Bill. He took a swig from his own canteen, then
handed it to Ian, and followed Bill into the jungle. This time
neither of them looked back. They trusted Ian to keep
up.

#

“You know,” Dave said,
“I’d argue we can be here. Dr. Twine called for help. Order
personnel picked up his transmission. That’s a human requesting
help against vampires. If that’s not our business, I don’t know
what is.”