The Lobster prepared to act, just as the orangutan and chimpanzee slowly emerged from behind the gorilla, each exhibiting the same traits as the great ape. And the Lobster knew that his suspicions had been correct.
The Missing Links were not in control of their actions; something—or someone—else was responsible.
The gorilla reached for him, but this time the Lobster was ready. He tipped over the formaldehyde-filled fish tank, shattering the glass and spilling its contents onto the dirt floor.
He dove beneath the gorilla’s outstretched arms and rolled across the floor to reach one of the tent supports. Snatching a lantern from the nail upon which it hung, the Lobster tossed the burning light at the animal’s feet, igniting the flammable liquid in a flash and explosion of flame.
Silently, the gorilla burned, letting out not a shriek or a wail of pain as it fumbled about, beating at the voracious fire that consumed its fur and flesh.
The chimpanzee used the moment to attack. It headed for the Lobster at a gallop, using its long, powerful arms to propel itself across the floor.
The Lobster dove for his gun, snatching it up in his black-gloved hand, and rolled onto his back, taking aim. The Colt roared like thunder, and the chimp was knocked back by the force of the shots. The Lobster rose from the ground, turning just in time to see the burning gorilla coming toward him. Even in this state, the great ape moved with remarkable speed. It grabbed hold of the front of the Lobster’s jacket and pulled him close.
The stink of burning flesh, fur, and leather filled his nostrils as he struggled to be free of the monster’s grip. He lashed out with his gun, whipping the barrel across the ape’s bubbling face, and all the while its eyes glowed like two stars alone in the velvety night sky.
Barely fazed, the ape continued to pull him closer, as if trying to embrace him in its burning arms. The Lobster allowed himself to be drawn in, close enough to jam the barrel of the Colt beneath the flaming beast’s chin and fire a single bullet up through the top of its skull.
The eerie light immediately left the gorilla’s eyes as the gunshot passed through its primitive brain. The fight left the burning beast; its powerful body fell limp, like a puppet whose strings had been suddenly cut. The gorilla dropped to the tent floor in a smoldering heap.
Fanning away the oily black smoke that wafted up from the ape’s still-burning corpse, the Lobster spied the orange-furred orangutan disappearing behind a curtain at the far back of the tent. He made a move to follow, but his momentum was halted by a powerful grip latching onto his ankle. The Lobster fell forward, his chest hitting the ground. Flipping onto his back, he looked down the length of his body to see the chimp crawling eagerly toward him, the front of its body leaking scarlet from multiple bullet holes.
The Lobster drew back his leg, and then slammed the heel of his boot into the chimp’s grinning, leathery face. The force of the kick flipped its head backward, but did little to halt its progress.
The beast was atop him, its powerful hands reaching to wrap themselves around his throat. He tried to bring the gun up, to send a bullet through yet another fevered brain, but the angle wasn’t right. The chimp grabbed hold of the weapon, wrenching it from his grasp with almost supernatural strength and tossing it away.
The chimp’s eyes glowed evilly, and he could have sworn the animal smiled as its fingers encircled his neck and began to tighten.
Explosions of color bloomed before the Lobster’s eyes as precious oxygen was at once cut off. The chimp bore down on him, as the Lobster thrashed beneath it. Time was short. The Lobster called upon his deep reserve of inner strength. He managed to reach up with both hands and grab hold of the chimp’s prodigious ears, and then savagely twisted the beast’s head, breaking its neck with a wet snap.
He watched the light leave the chimp’s eyes as the fingers upon his throat grew slack. Throwing off the corpse, the Lobster scrambled to his feet, running toward the velvet curtain at the back of the tent.
He had to move quickly, or his quarry would escape.
There had been a string of vicious home invasions across the East Coast. The victims had been horribly maimed, their limbs torn from their bodies. The police were baffled, stunned by the savagery of the attacks—as if the murdered had been preyed upon by some powerful beast.
The Lobster had begun to investigate, and found that there was credence to their fantastic theory. Animal hairs were found at the various crime scenes and upon the corpses of the victims, and with closer examination he was able to determine that the police were not wrong.
Apes. The hairs belonged to apes. And not one, but three different species.
But what could possibly cause these usually docile creatures to act with such savagery and malicious intent? The homes had been ransacked, stripped of all valuables, and the victims’ bodies had been almost ritualistically defiled. The mystery was deep, and the Lobster had thrown himself into the investigation with full abandon.
The Lobster plunged into the darkness behind the curtain. A placard resting upon an easel told him that this was the hall of Professor Powell’s most fabulous oddity. This was the dwelling of something—or someone—called the Human Brain.
The back of the sprawling tent was set up like the parlor of somebody’s home: an old couch, a rocking chair, yellowed pictures in frames of a very stern-looking man and woman hanging upon flimsy, plywood walls.
He wondered what part the two of them played in this, if any, as he stalked through the parlor to an adjoining section, separated by a wall tapestry that depicted an English fox hunt. The Lobster heard a soft, whispering voice from behind the curtain, and he reached out to pull it roughly aside.
What he saw there would have made any normal man cry out, but the Lobster was far from a normal man, and he no longer remembered a time when he had been.
The orangutan stood behind the curtain, in what looked to be a child’s bedroom, and it turned to look at him with glowing eyes. It held something inhuman in its hairy, orange arms. The body was long and thick, like that of a maggot, ending in a misshapen head that seemed more brain than skull. The thing cradled in the orangutan’s powerful arms was also looking at the Lobster, dark eyes burning with a powerful malevolence.
The Human Brain, as advertised, he imagined.
“Kill him,” the Human Brain croaked, its horrible voice startling the Lobster for a moment.
The ape set the limbless abomination down upon a child’s bed and came at him.
The Lobster had lost his gun during the last attack, but he wasn’t without resources. With a snap of his wrist, he triggered a knife that dropped down from his sleeve into his waiting hand.
The lumbering beast threw its long, shaggy arms out in an attempt to grab him, but the Lobster was ready. He ducked beneath the orangutan’s reach, and sprang up, plunging the throwing knife’s blade into one of its glowing eyes. He felt the ape stiffen and attempt to jump back, but he pushed the blade deeper, making sure that it pierced the thing’s brain.
The orangutan dropped to the dirt floor, its remaining eye no longer glowing.
“Here,” croaked a voice from nearby.
Removing the throwing blade from the orangutan’s eye socket, the Lobster turned toward the Human Brain, its body rising up cobra-like upon the bed. Briefly its eyes flashed, and the Lobster felt its presence, like insects scurrying around inside his brain.
“That’s it. Look at me,” the abomination gurgled.
This grotesque creature . . . this Human Brain had hold of him, as it had held the simple minds of the three apes. Images—scenes that the Lobster did not own—flashed through his mind, memories that belonged to the one who now tried to possess him.
He saw the stern man and woman from the old photos driven to despair by the sight of the thing they had brought into the world, and he saw their horrible deaths at each other’s hands; their malformed child responsible, taking hold of their wills and twisting them to its dark desires.
And then there cam
e the carnival, a new home where it would be accepted amongst others dealt similar blows by a cruel nature, but this one, now called the Human Brain, this one could be cruel as well. The carnival members, the employees, all became its playthings. All it had to do was reach out and touch their minds . . .
and there was little they could do to resist its power.
The Lobster saw how it chose its victims, picking them from the crowds that came to ogle its deformities. Reaching into their thoughts, it stole all the information it needed, and then it would send the apes.
The violence perpetrated upon the sideshow patrons was savage beyond belief, the limbless freak lashing out at those who had what it did not.
Taking not only their wealth, but also what made them dif-ferent—better.
It was as if the Lobster was there, looking out through the eyes of the great apes as they tore the Brain’s victims apart.
You think yourself superior, the voice of the Brain gurgled inside his head. But you’re wrong. I’m stronger than you . . . far, far stronger.
The Lobster had seen enough.
On your knees, the Human Brain ordered from the bed. It did not speak a word, but its eyes flashed momentarily, and a cruel smile had appeared at the corners of its twisted mouth.
The Lobster felt as though a giant hand was pushing down upon him, driving him to his knees. But he fought it. This was not the first time that something had attempted to take control over him, and he knew that it would not be the last.
On. Your. Knees.
The sound of its horrible voice echoing inside his skull was nearly deafening, and his face twisted in a combination of pain and exertion.
Down, it screamed, frustration evident in its psychic cry. The Brain was not used to its victims fighting back.
But the Lobster was not a victim.
He felt his knees begin to bend, slowly moving down toward the floor. And that became the Brain’s entire focus, distracting the monstrosity from the Lobster’s next move.
Still clutching the throwing knife, the Lobster jabbed the blade quickly into the muscular flesh of his leg; the flash of pain was sudden and dramatic, momentarily breaking the Human Brain’s psychic hold on him.
The Brain screamed, flopping back onto the bed as the Lobster acted. Pulling back his arm, he threw the knife. The metal blade spun through the air and over the bed to strike the burning lantern that rested atop a nearby chest of drawers.
The throwing dagger’s pommel struck the lantern, shattering the glass and spilling burning oil down onto the bed. The mattress ignited in seconds.
The Lobster heard the Human Brain’s pathetic gasp as it saw its bed afire. It looked toward him, reaching out with its mind, trying to wrest away control, trying to force the Lobster to save it. But as its eyes flashed, the Lobster quickly looked away.
He could feel it attempting to crawl inside his skull, trying to force him to turn around, to make that crucial eye contact, but the Lobster denied it.
The air was quickly filling with smoke, and he started from the tent.
“Please,” he heard the twisted thing beg as the voracious flames moved inexorably closer.
But the Lobster did not turn, even as the ear-piercing screams filled the air along with the thick, choking smoke.
—
The Lobster limped from the tent, the stab wound in his thigh pulsing painfully with every step.
He coughed repeatedly; expelling the noxious smoke from his lungs, while replacing it with gulps of cool, fall air.
As the fire began to spread to the other carnival tents, he headed across the moonlit field toward a lonely stretch of road where his ride should have been waiting. And sure enough, as he drew closer, the headlights of the black Ford snapped on, illuminating the road before it.
The Lobster opened the door to the back seat and practically fell inside.
“Everything all right, boss?” Harry, his driver for the evening, asked, watching him in the rearview mirror.
“Justice has been served,” the Lobster said. He pulled the heavy metal car door closed and slumped in the seat. “We can go home now.”
Behind him, the carnival burned slowly to the ground beneath the watchful eye of a cyclopean moon.
CHAPTER TWO
—
Jake Hurley was dead.
Everything that made him, everything that defined him as the person he was, had been taken away. His job, his family, his honor, everything had been stripped from the man, leaving behind an ambulatory corpse that didn’t have the good common sense to fall down.
In all sense of the word he was dead, and had been for the last few years, but recently he had been given another chance.
A chance to return from the dead.
Hurley brought the steaming cup of joe to his mouth and took a sip. He grimaced at the bitterness as his eyes darted around the mission soup kitchen. He was trying to be inconspicuous as he listened to the four men sitting at the table behind him.
He’d known these four in his past life, when he walked a beat as a police officer in one of the city’s toughest neighborhoods. They were typical street thugs, known for their petty thefts, but it seemed that hard times had made them desperate, and they were planning something much larger.
Hurley had first noticed the men chumming around a little over two weeks ago. It had piqued his curiosity, and he’d decided to keep an eye on the four, knowing deep down that the chances they were up to no good were pretty darn good. He’d been shadowing them since, being sure to eat his meals and drink his coffee in their vicinity, attempting to hear their every word.
His suspicions were proven correct when they started talking about the newly built First National Bank on Wall Street, and how it was going to be the score to put them on Easy Street.
For days now he’d been watching and listening, waiting for the words that would tell him when, and tonight he hit the jackpot.
Friday.
It ate at him that he couldn’t arrest them now, that he couldn’t extend the long arm of the law and haul them in, but that wasn’t his life anymore. That life had been taken—stolen away by the very criminals he’d sworn an oath to bring to justice.
Lost in his thoughts, he was unaware of his growing anger, until the pressure of his grip on his coffee mug caused it to shatter in his grasp.
The sudden sound drew unwanted attention to him.
Grumbling beneath his breath, he wiped what remained of the black coffee from the front of his threadbare shirt and coat.
“Got a problem?” one of the potential bank robbers called out to him. He recognized the voice as belonging to Johnny “The Shiv” Febonio, a two-bit crook Hurley had hauled in at least ten times in the past.
“Naw,” he said, without turning around. “Guess I just don’t know my own strength.”
Hurley stood up from the wooden bench, swiping the coffee and pieces of broken mug to the floor. Everyone returned to their conversations or quiet ruminations—all except for the four behind him. He could feel their eyes on him as he stepped over the bench and, chancing a quick glance over his shoulder, he saw that he was right. They were all looking at him. Their eyes were rat-like, desperate, but these were desperate times, which forced men to do the normally unthinkable.
He wanted to stay, to listen for more details, but he’d already drawn enough attention to himself, and he couldn’t afford that. Since his death, Jake Hurley had become nearly indistinguishable from the countless other people down on their luck.
A ghost walking amongst so many others.
Saying nothing more, he left the mission, moving out onto Delancey Street. There was a constant flow of humanity through these doors. For the price of a sermon, the destitute could get a hot bowl of stew and a cup of coffee—a small example of charity in a world that had become cold and quite cruel.
But he wasn’t like these bums anymore. Jake Hurley now had a job to do. He pulled the collar of his coat tight around his neck, trying to stave off the ni
ghttime chill, and headed down the street.
—
Jake Hurley’s job was no longer to enforce the law, but to listen to those who would break it.
On the streets of the Big Apple, Hurley was to be his ears, the one who had rescued him, kept him from plunging further and further down into the yawning abyss that his life had become. He knew there were others on the streets as well, every one providing him with information he used to fight a war on the criminal element.
His war.
The Lobster’s war.
On Bowery, Hurley started down the steps into the subway. It was late, and the crowds were at a minimum. Reaching into his pocket, he found the nickel he’d been saving and inserted it in the turnstile, giving him entry to the station platform.
He strolled toward the edge of the platform, looking around to see if anyone watched him. There were only six people in the station, and each seemed lost in their own thoughts, probably of the day that had just passed, and the nervous anticipation of what was yet to come. Hurley lost himself in the shadows at the far end of the platform, and climbed down a grime-encrusted ladder to the tunnel floor below.
It was dark in the tunnel, small safety lamps on the walls barely capable of forcing back the intensity of the darkness, but he had walked this path before. He proceeded down the passage, hugging the concave walls, and staying within the paltry light, just to be on the safe side.
He’d heard whispers about these tunnels, about how there were things here that hunted in packs, hungry for the taste of flesh. Hurley had scoffed when he’d heard the rumors from the junkies and winos on his beat, but after he’d fallen from grace and become one of the invisible, he came to realize that there was truth to their words.
The sound of something moving in the darkness up ahead made him freeze. He listened carefully, barely making out the faint sound of a train way off in the distance, traveling another tunnel within the vast, underground system. But there was something else too, and he wasn’t about to continue until he was sure what it was.