The 5th Wave (63 page)

Dr. Warthrop reached into the thing’s chest with the forceps. I heard the scraping
of the metal against something hard—an exposed rib? Had this creature also been partially
consumed?
And, if it had, where was the
other
monster that had done it?

“Most curious. Most curious,” the doctor said, the words muffled by the mask. “No
outward signs of trauma, clearly in its prime, yet dead as a doornail…. What killed
you,
Anthropophagus
, hmmm? How did you meet your fate?”

As he spoke, the doctor tapped thin strips of flesh from the forceps into the metal
tray, dark and stringy, like half-cured jerky, a piece of white material clinging
to one or two of the strands, and I realized he wasn’t peeling off pieces of the monster’s
flesh: The flesh belonged to the face and neck of the girl.

I looked down between my outstretched arms, to the spot where the doctor worked, and
saw he had not been scraping at an exposed rib.

He had been cleaning the thing’s teeth.

The room began to spin around me. The doctor said, in a calm, quiet voice, “Steady,
Will Henry. You’re no good to me unconscious. We have a duty this night. We are students
of nature as well as its products, all of us, including this creature. Born of the
same divine mind, if you believe in such things, for how could it be otherwise? We
are soldiers for science, and we will do our duty. Yes, Will Henry?
Yes, Will Henry?”

“Yes, Doctor,” I choked out. “Yes, sir.”

“Good boy.” He dropped the forceps into the metal tray. Flecks of flesh and bits of
blood speckled the fingers of his glove. “Bring me the chisel.”

Gladly I returned to the instrument tray. Before I brought him the chisel, however,
I paused to steel myself, as a good foot soldier for science, for the next assault.

Though it lacked a head, the
Anthropophagus
was not missing a mouth. Or teeth. The orifice was shaped like a shark’s, and the
teeth were equally sharklike: triangular, serrated, and milky white, arranged in rows
that marched toward the front of the mouth from the inner, unseen cavity of its throat.
The mouth itself lay just below the enormous muscular chest, in the region between
the pectorals and the groin. It had no nose that I could see, though it had not been
blind in life: Its eyes (of which I confess I had seen only one) were located on the
shoulders, lidless and completely black.

“Snap to, Will Henry!” the doctor called. I was taking too long to steel myself. “Roll
the tray closer to the table; you’ll wear yourself out trotting back and forth.”

When the tray and I were in position, he reached out his hand, and I smacked the chisel
into his palm. He slipped the instrument a few inches into the monster’s mouth and
pushed upward, using the chisel as a pry bar to spread the jaws.

“Forceps!”

I slapped them into his free hand and watched as they entered the fang-encrusted maw…deeper,
then deeper still, until the doctor’s entire hand disappeared. The muscles of his
forearm bulged as he rotated his wrist, exploring the back of the thing’s throat with
the tips of the forceps. Sweat
shone on his forehead. I patted it dry with a bit of gauze.

“Would have dug a breathing hole—so it didn’t suffocate,” he muttered. “No visible
wounds…deformities…outward sign of trauma…. Ah!” His arm became still. His shoulder
jerked as he pulled on the forceps. “Stuck tight! I’ll need both hands. Take the chisel
and pull back, Will Henry. Use both hands if you must, like this. Don’t let it slip,
now, or I shall lose
my
hands. Yes, that’s it. Good boy. Ahhhh!”

He fell away from the table, left hand flailing to regain his balance, in his right
the forceps, and in the forceps, a tangled strand of pearls, stained pink with blood.
Finding his balance, the monstrumologist held high his hard-won prize.

“I knew it!” he cried. “Here is our culprit, Will Henry. He must have torn it off
her neck in his frenzy. It lodged in his throat and choked him to death.”

I let go the chisel, stepped back from the table, and stared at the crimson strand
dangling from the doctor’s hand. Light danced off its coating of blood and gore, and
I felt the very air tighten around me, refusing to fully fill my lungs. My knees began
to give way. I sank onto the stool, struggling to breathe. The doctor remained oblivious
to my condition. He dropped the necklace into a tray and called for the scissors.
To the devil with him,
I thought.
Let him fetch his own scissors.
He called again, his back to me, hand outstretched, bloody fingers flexing and curling.
I rose from the stool with a shuddering sigh and pressed the scissors into his hand.

“A singular curiosity,” he muttered as he cut down the
center of the girl’s burial gown. “
Anthropophagi
are not native to the Americas. Northern and western Africa, the Caroli Islands,
but not here. Never here!”

Gingerly, almost tenderly, he parted the material, exposing the girl’s perfect alabaster
skin.

Dr. Warthrop pressed the end of his stethoscope upon her belly and listened intently
as he slowly moved the instrument toward her chest, then down again, across her belly
button, until, back where he began, he paused, eyes closed, barely breathing. He remained
frozen this way for several seconds. The silence was thundering.

Finally he tugged the ’scope from his ears. “As I suspected.” He gestured toward the
worktable. “An empty jar, Will Henry. One of the big ones.”

He directed me to remove the lid and place the open container on the floor beside
him.

“Hold on to the lid, Will Henry,” he instructed. “We must be quick about this. Scalpel!”

He bent to his work. Should I confess that I looked away? That I could not will my
eyes to remain upon that glittering blade as it sliced into her flawless flesh? For
all my desire to please and impress him with my steely resolve as a good foot soldier
in the service of science, nothing could bring me to watch what came next.

“They are not natural scavengers,” he said. “
Anthropophagi
prefer fresh kill, but there are drives even more powerful than hunger, Will Henry.
The female can breed, but
she cannot bear. She lacks a womb, you see, for that location of her anatomy is given
to another, more vital organ: her brain…. Here, take the scalpel.”

I heard a soft squish as he plunged his fist into the incision. His right shoulder
rotated as his fingers explored inside the young girl’s torso.

“But nature is ingenious, Will Henry, and marvelously implacable. The fertilized egg
is expelled into her mate’s mouth, where it rests in a pouch located along his lower
jaw. He has two months to find a host for their offspring, before the fetus bursts
from its protective sac and he swallows it or chokes upon it…. Ah, this must be it.
Ready now with the lid.”

His body tensed, and all became still for a moment. Then with a single dramatic flourish,
he yanked from the split-open stomach a squirming mass of flesh and teeth, a doll-size
version of the beast curled about the girl, encased in a milky white sac that burst
open as the thing inside fought against the doctor’s grasp, spewing a foul-smelling
liquid that soaked his coat and splattered around his rubber boots. He nearly dropped
it, holding it against his chest while it twisted and flailed its tiny arms and legs,
its mouth, armed with tiny razor-sharp teeth, snapping and spitting.

“The jar!” he cried. I slid it toward his feet. He dropped the thing into the container,
and I did not need his urging to slap on the lid.

“Screw it tight, Will Henry!” he gasped. He was covered head to toe in the blood-flecked
goop, the smell of it
more pungent than that of the rotting flesh upon the table. The tiny
Anthropophagus
flipped and smacked inside the jar, smearing the glass with amniotic fluid, clawing
at its prison with needle-size fingernails, mouth working furiously in the middle
of its chest, like a landed fish gasping upon the shore. Its mewling cries of shock
and pain were loud enough to penetrate the thick glass, a haunting, inhuman sound
that I am doomed to remember to my last day.

Dr. Warthrop picked up the jar and placed it on the workbench. He soaked some cotton
in a mixture of halothane and alcohol, dropped it into the jar, and screwed the lid
back on. The infant monster attacked the cotton, stripping the fibers apart with its
little teeth and swallowing chunks of it whole. Its aggression hastened the effects
of the euthanizing agent: In less than five minutes the unholy spawn was dead.