Monster

  The grave sites of Todd and Kathy weren't hard to find. It was a small cemetery, and the flowers from the funerals were still heaped up on the uneven earth rectangles. The two had been buried next to each other, Nguyen sighed and sat down between them, where the grass still grew green. He asked himself once more why he was there.

  He felt, in his indecision, that he was missing an important event.

  He couldn't get Angela's words out of his mind:

  “Quit following me. Let me do what I have to do. By the time you know enough to believe what is happening you'll be dead.”

  What was Angela going to do? Take up where Mary had left off? Kill more of them? The monsters with the green demons in their veins and the red blood in their mouths? The last time he had seen Angela she had been wiping away the blood that had spilled from her mouth. Whose side was she on?

  A breeze came up, moaning as it passed through the tranches of nearby trees. Yet the moan did not stop when the wind ceased. The sound seemed to carry across the cemetery, to come in waves, like the moan that would come from a living human being if he or she were in pain. Sitting where he was, Nguyen's heart began to pound silently.

  The moaning was not coming from the wind.

  It was coming from beside him.

  Below him.

  “Save us, Lord Buddha,” he whispered.

  Nguyen leaned over and cocked his head above the grave of Todd Green. He didn't actually put his ear to the soil, which would have been the best procedure to follow if the moan were truly coming from under the ground and he wanted to verify that fact. He had a fear – it was ridiculous but then again, so was what he was hearing – that a hand might reach up out of the soil and grab him and pull him under. Or at least pull off his car. Tran Quan, that tyrant in his company in Nam, collected the ears of the VC he had killed. Once Nguyen had seen him cut off the ears of one of their own dead soldiers. Nguyen had always had a thing about losing his own ears.

  The moaning came again.

  “Jesus,” Nguyen whispered. He always called upon both Buddha and Jesus when things got really bad.

  The groan was coming from far under the ground – like six feet under. Nguyen told himself that the only thing down there was a box with Todd Green's corpse in it, and that this was not possible. The groan did not sound fully human, though that did nothing to comfort him. Rather, it sounded more like some kind of huge, hungry animal.

  Nguyen leapt to his feet and took twenty quick steps away from the grave site. There he could no longer hear the sound. That was good. It had never been there to begin with, he thought. He had imagined it.

  But then Nguyen made himself take the twenty steps back to Todd's grave, and he heard the moan again. “Stop,” he screamed at the ground.

  The moan stopped.

  Todd's corpse had heard and understood him.

  Nguyen turned and ran to his car. He started the engine and pulled away from the cemetery at high speed. He had to see Angela Warner, human or not. He had to talk to her. He realized he might have to kill her.

  If she could still be killed.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  They opened the door to the basement near the time she finished feeding. For some reason the light in the basement had failed, and she had had to satisfy her hunger in darkness. The shaft of light from upstairs stung her eyes. They were up there – she could see them staring down at her. Somebody named Jim was at the front of the pack.

  “We are going to have a meeting,” the one called Jim said.

  She stood and saw she was soaked in blood. It was everywhere around her, dripping off small chunks of torn flesh. She couldn't remember exactly where it had come from, but it had been good – the blood and the flesh. She could also remember the pounding in her head, but that had stopped, which was also good. The pounding had been painful. She walked to the steps.

  “I will come to your meeting,” she said.

  “Clean up first,” the one named Jim said.

  “I will clean up first,” she said.

  She went up the stairs, and then up another flight to a room she recognised. It was called bedroom, and it belonged to a human called Angela Warner. She knew Angela – she was Angela. She was that body. It was the body and the clothes on the body that had to be cleaned up. She was alone in the room but knew what to do. It was called shower, which she could do in the place called shower. That was in the bathroom, which was over there. She understood these things – sort of. First the blood had to come off.

  The water came out warm, and it reminded her of the blood. She did not need any blood right now but she'd need some later. The need would always be there but as long as there was blood, the painful pounding would stay away. The meeting could be about finding more blood. When she was clean she'd go to the meeting.

  The water washed away the blood. When she stepped out of the shower she saw a thing called robe. Angela Warner would put on the robe after shower, so she put on the robe. It was yellow, and her hair was wet as she looked in the mirror. There was no blood. Angela Warner would smile when she looked in the mirror, so she smiled. The smile showed her teeth, which she'd use the next time she needed blood.

  There was something sitting on the counter of the bathroom in front of the mirror. It was called picture. She picked it up: a picture of people. She recognised the bodies. Angela Warner, Mary Blanc, Kevin Jacobs. They were holding one another and smiling. They were – she had trouble with the word, but it came at last – happy. Happy bodies. She knew the word, but not the meaning. But she believed happy meant the pounding had stopped and that there was blood. She decided she was happy. Happy and clean.

  There was something else on the countertop. It was the colour gold and shaped like a KAtuu minus its head. She knew what a KAtuu was. She was KAtuu. She was part of the World. Angela Warner's body would change into this shape KAtuu as time passed. If there was enough blood. It took a lot of blood, many killings, to become a full KAtuu. She knew that. It was her destiny.

  But she didn't know why she suddenly put the amulet over her head.

  It may have been she had another destiny.

  Even now – so late.

  A powerful tremor passed through her body. Her mind, her connection to the World and all the KAtuu that were and had ever been, was suddenly made visible in her being. A ghostly red ribbon circled the house and all the KAtuu that were gathered there; it streamed off into the sky and then deep into space, out to where the surviving cells of the World tumbled for ever on the surface of misshapen asteroids in the endless black of the abyss. They called to her, and she called to them. They desperately wanted her to stay a part of them and bring the flow of blood among the enemy that had destroyed the World.

  But something else also called, in a voice that belonged to the body alone. It was the voice of Angela Warner's thoughts. It was the sound of Angela's heart, beating deep inside the body; pounding, not like the pain in the head when the blood was not available, but throbbing with the feelings of the enemy.

  But who was the enemy?

  Who had invaded whom?

  They invaded us.

  Us. Humans.

  The red ribbon turned a ghastly purple and began to dissolve along the endless road back to Earth. Then it suddenly snapped, and Angela drew in a sharp breath.

  Yes, Angela Warner. She remembered who she was, what she was. Not KAtuu, not even with the horrors she had committed. She was human. She was not the enemy. They were. They were evil.

  “Kevin,” she whispered. Tears formed in her eyes; she saw them in the mirror. But she didn't allow them to flow on to her cheeks. Kevin was dead – she couldn't worry about him now. She couldn't think about what she had done to him, or she'd go insane before she could finish her job.

  But that was easier to say than do. Nausea swept over her, and she turned to the toilet and vomited red junk that made her keep vomiting until there was nothing left in her guts. She hoped to God there was nothing left.

  “Kevin,” s
he cried softly.

  The pounding began to throb inside her brain.

  This time she welcomed.

  Angela whirled and ran to her bedroom closet. Earlier she’d had trouble tying the smaller bottles of gasoline in a circle with the other five-gallon bottles. She had finally decided not to put all her eggs in one basket. She had stacked her eight two-and-a-half-gallon bottles behind the clothes in her closet. Because she had gone and buried her grandfather's remains after all, she had not had time to make herself a second fuse. Her second basket was a last-resort bomb. She had figured if she had to light it, she would probably be going up with it.

  The bottles of gasoline were where she had left them.

  It was past the time for last resorts, she decided.

  Angela closed the closet door and began to rifle through her desk for a lighter. Luck was with her. She found a bag holding three new ones: red, white, and blue. A choice of colours. Ripping open the plastic, she grabbed the red one.

  The plastic.

  The dog was standing on the balcony, peering in through the screen door with fear in her eyes. If she blew up the house, Angela thought, she would kill Plastic. A small price to pay for the safety of the human race, to be sure, but she already felt bad for what she had earlier done to the dog. She hurried to the screen door and quietly opened it. Plastic was forgiving. The dog immediately began to lick Angela's hands and whimper as Angela knelt beside her.

  “Shh,” Angela said softly. “You can't stay here. You have to go swim.” She pointed. “Jump in the water. Go swim, that a girl. Go, Plastic. Get the hell out of here.”

  Of course, Plastic didn't jump in the lake. The dog had never liked the water and wasn't about to start liking it. Angela was debating what to do next when she saw Jim come through her bedroom door. He was alone. She glanced at the closet. She had closed the door but had not shut it.

  “We are going to start the meeting,” Jim said tonelessly.

  Angela let go of the dog and stood. She tried to keep her voice and face expressionless. “I am coming,” she said.

  “Come now.”

  She stepped into the bedroom. Plastic remained on the balcony. “I need to dress more,” she said.

  “It does not matter,” Jim said, watching her. “The meeting will start now.”

  “I will be down in a minute,” she said, wondering if the KAtuu ever argued among themselves. Her eyes darted to the open drawer of her desk, then back to Jim. She had left the torn packet of lighters sitting on top of a box of unsharpened pencils. The red lighter, of course, she had hidden in the fingers of her left hand. She was in a quandary; she didn't want to move in the direction of the desk and draw Jim's attention to it, but she remembered she had left her hunting knife in the top drawer on the right. The way Jim was staring at her, she might need that knife very soon.

  “What is that you're wearing?” he asked.

  Damn! The amulet.

  “What?” she asked. She could feel the gold chain round her neck and didn't have to lower her eyes to look at the amulet. She began to edge toward the desk.

  “What is that you're wearing round your neck?” he repeated.

  “It is decoration,” she said. Another step towards the desk. Jim turned his whole body to follow her. He took a step closer.

  “It looks like KAtuu,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you get it?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Who gave you that amulet?” he asked.

  She finally looked at it; she touched its gold surface and said a silent prayer of thanks to Shining Feather. If she was going to die, at least she was going to die human.

  “An Indian,” she said.

  “When?” He was close now, maybe two steps away.

  “Just now,” she said.

  “I do not understand,” Jim said. “Where is this Indian?”

  “I will show you.” She strode towards the closet, passing within inches of the desk. But she didn't reach for the knife – not yet. One hand on the door of the closet, she said, “He is hiding in here.”

  Jim quickly stepped by her and threw open the door of the closet. In that same moment Angela took a step back, pulled open the desk drawer, and grabbed the knife with her right hand. The stacked bottles of gasoline had distracted Jim just enough for her to accomplish that small manoeuvre. But Jim had ears, he had reflexes. He was whirling to confront her when she snapped back the knife and stabbed the razor-sharp blade into the side of his neck.

  “Help!” he shouted as a fountain of blood erupted over his shoulder. The blood was darker than it should have been; it had a distinct green tinge to it. She had lost the knife in her attack. He reached up with both hands to pull it free as he staggered back a step. She lashed out with her foot, with every bit of her newfound strength, and caught him directly in the balls. He grunted and bent over, and the blood from his neck dripped on to the floor.

  “Bastard!” she swore.

  She ran to the bedroom door and slammed it shut. They were already coming up the stairs. She twisted the lock into place. She did not think that it would hold them long, and she was right. Their first blow on the door brought the sound of splintering wood.

  Angela hurried back to the closet. She had to jump over Jim in the process. He had fallen to the floor. He feebly reached up to grab her leg but failed. He was swiftly losing strength. His blood formed a pool round him, and she briefly wondered how many poor souls' blood had gone into his veins to make that weird puddle.

  “Help,” he gasped.

  The door shook again. They would be inside in seconds.

  Angela opened the closet door and grabbed the top bottle of gasoline. She dropped it on the floor in front of her, jumped in the air, and landed on it with both feet. The plastic walls burst; the gasoline spilled over the floor of the bedroom and the closet, round the stack of plastic bottles. The fuel also splattered the hem of her robe. She whipped up her left hand and flipped her Bic. The orange flame glowed like a tiny sun in her eyes. She looked down at Jim. He was watching her.

  “You waited a hundred thousand years for revenge,” she said. “You wasted your time. You're goners. You're just a bunch of dead heads from a dead world.” She paused and smiled wickedly. “I hope you feel pain when you die.”

  With that Angela leaned over and lit the edge of the puddle of gasoline. It caught immediately; the flames raced into the closet and engulfed her wardrobe and the bottles of gasoline. Her robe had also caught fire, but she didn't stop to try to put it out. Her bedroom door lurched; a huge chunk of wood came smashing in behind the power of an angry fist. Angela turned and ran towards the door to the balcony.

  It was fortunate she had left the door open.

  Angela had scarcely crossed the threshold to the outside when two things happened almost simultaneously. The bedroom door burst open, and the front ranks of the gang of vampires barged in. They had only a split-second to survey their fallen leader and the fire in the closet before her alternative bomb exploded.

  Angela experienced the shock wave as the slap of a giant’s unforgiving hand, a slap that literally swept her off her feet and off the balcony. She was immediately blinded by the brilliant light. But this was a hand that could strike more than once. A second shock wave hit as she hovered above the lake. At the back of her mind she registered the fact that the power of the explosion upstairs had been sufficient to burst through to the basement and ignite the larger bomb.

  All sixty gallons had gone up. Whew.

  Then a third shock wave hit her, and this one made the other two puny by comparison. She was in the sky, flying towards the moon – anywhere but towards the asteroid belt – and she still understood what had happened. The propane tank had blown. No one, she thought, nothing could have survived that. The fact reassured what was left of her mind and body as she reached the upward arc of her flight and began to fall, down into the cold black waters where it had all begun, and where it would now all end.
br />   Lieutenant Nguyen was two hundred yards from Angela Warner's house when it exploded. First the top blew off, then a geyser erupted from deep inside, and finally the white tank beside the house went up like a miniature atomic bomb. A mushroom cloud of fire reached for the stars. Nguyen immediately pulled over to the side of the road. He thought he glimpsed a figure on fire kicking and yelling as it flew out over the lake. But then he blinked and the figure was gone, and he didn't hear a splash. Had he imagined it?

  Nguyen got out of his car, stood in the suddenly hot night, and watched the house burn. He didn't use his radio to call for help. He imagined everyone in the town of Point had heard the explosion. Plus he wanted the place to burn as long as possible. The people who were inside – he wanted them turned to ash, because that's what Angela must have wanted. He knew it was she who had stopped them, and even though he didn't fully understand what they were, he knew they had been horrible enough.

  In the orange light of the fire Nguyen lowered his head and silently saluted Mary Blanc and Angela Warner.

  EPILOGUE

  Lieutenant Nguyen walked the shore of Point Lake not far from where Angela Warner's house had stood. Although the fire had been before the winter had come and the snow had fallen, there were still signs of that horrible night to be found. The snow had covered most of what remained of the charred wood, but the black skeleton of a support beam still stuck up through the white blanket, and a few boards from the balcony balanced precariously on the stilts of scarred wood that wouldn't stand the next strong windstorm.