"Peacock," she said.
A peacock? There had been peacocks here? It wasn't so surprising, on second thought. It fitted with the extravagance of the place. But they belonged on well-clipped lawns, not in this jungle of thorns and flowers.
And even assuming the bird could push its way through the thicket without being stripped of all its finery, what could it do if it did catch up with them? They had bad tempers, she remembered reading once, but they were nervous things. She'd just shoo it away.
"Nothing to be scared of," Tammy said.
The woman gave her another disconcerting sideways look. The male, meanwhile, came up beside Tammy and stared at her breasts. Not about to be intimidated, Tammy stared back. There was something vaguely recognizable in this freak; a cast to his features which reminded her of somebody famous. Who the hell was it? Some movie star. Was it Victor Mature? Yes, it was. Victor Mature. It was uncanny.
The lookalike, meanwhile, leaned forward, hooked a long, cold finger through a hole in Tammy's blouse and before she could do a damn thing about it, tore the light cotton blouse away from her skin.
"You keep away from me," she told the offender.
He bared his teeth at her. "Pretty boobies," he said.
"What?"
The forbidding grimace had transformed into a weird version of a smile. "Titties," he said.
He reached out and touched the side of her breast with his open palm, stroking it. "Jugs. Knockers—"
"Baby feeders," Tammy added, figuring it was better to play along with the joke, however witless.
"Fun bags," he said, grinning, almost moronically.
She wondered just for a moment if that was the answer to this mystery: that these pitiful remnants of humanity were cretins, mongoloids, retards; the children of Hollywood parents who could not bear the idea that they'd produced such freaks, and given them over to somebody who'd simply dumped them in the empty Canyon. No, that was ridiculous. Atrocities like that didn't happen in this day and age; it was unthink-ably callous. But it did go some way to explaining the curious passages of starry flesh and bone she kept seeing: Garbo's throat on the woman, Victor Mature in this breast-obsessed male.
"Udders," he said.
"Jigglies," she countered. "Chi-chis. Kazooms—"
Oh, she had a million. So presumably did every woman with larger-than-average breasts in America. It had started when she was twelve, when thanks to an unfortunate hormonal trick she was walking around with a bosom that would have looked just fine on a big-boned twenty-two-year-old. Suddenly men were looking at her, and the dirty words just came tumbling out of their mouths. She went through a phase when she thought every man in Sacramento had Tourette's Syndrome. Never mind that the girl with the hooters was twelve; men got diarrhea of the mouth at the sight of large breasts. She heard them called everything: "the twins," "skin-pillows," her "rack," her "set," her "mounds," her "missiles," her "melons," her "milk-makers." At first it upset her to be the object of fun, but after a while she learned not to listen to it anymore, unless some unusual name came along to swell the lexicon, like "global superstars," or "bodacious ta-tas," both of which had brought a despairing smile to her face.
Of course in two years' time all her girlfriends had got bosoms of their own—
"Wait."
The female had halted, its body suddenly besieged by nervous tics.
"What's wrong?" Tammy said.
The woman governed her little spasms and stood still, listening. Then pointed, off to her right, and having pointed she quickly bounded away, dragging Tammy after her.
As they fled—and that's what it was suddenly, fleeing—Tammy glanced back over her shoulder. They were not taking this journey unaccompanied. There was a contingent of freaks coming after them, though they were keeping their distance. But it was not the freaks, however, that the female was so afraid of; it was something else.
"What?" Tammy gasped. "What?"
"Peacock," the woman replied. She didn't speak again. She simply let go of Tammy's arm and threw herself into the cover of the thicket. Tammy turned, and turned again, looking for the creature that had caused this unalloyed panic. For a moment, she saw nothing; and all she heard was the sound of the female racing off through the thicket.
Then, almost total silence. Nothing moved, in any direction. And all she could hear was a jet, high, high above her.
She looked up. Yes, there it was, crawling across the pristine blue, leaving a trail of vapor tinted amber by the setting sun. She was momentarily enchanted; removed from her hunger and her aching bones.
"Beautiful," she murmured to herself.
The next moment something broke cover not more than ten yards from her.
This time Tammy didn't stand there mesmerized, as she had at the cages. She threw herself out of the path of the shape that was barreling toward her. It was the bizarrest of all the freaks she'd encountered. Like all its kin it had some of her own species in its genes but the animal it was crossed with—yes, a peacock—was so utterly unlike a human being that the resulting form defied her comprehension. It had the torso of a man, and the stick-thin back legs, scaly though they were, also belonged to a human being. But its neck was serpentine and its head no larger than a fist. Its eyes were tiny black beads, and between them was a beak that looked as though it could do some serious damage. Having missed her on the first assault it now turned around and came at her again, loosing a guttural shriek as it did so. She stumbled backward, intending to turn and run, but as she did so it raised its body up and she saw to her disgust that its underbelly was made exactly like that of a man, and that it was in a state of considerable arousal. The moment of distraction cost her dearly. She fell back against a blooming rhododendron bush, and lost her footing in a mist of pink-purple blossom. She cursed loudly and coarsely, grabbing on to whatever she could—blossom, twig, root—to haul herself up. As she attempted to do so she saw the creature slowly lower its sleek turquoise head, and one of its scaly forelimbs—withered remnants of arms and hands—went to its chin, where it idly scratched at a flea.
Then, while she struggled like an idiot to get back on her feet, the creature lifted up its backside and spread its glorious tail. By some quirk of genetics, it had inherited its father's glory intact. The tail opened like God's own fan, compensating for every other grotesque thing about the beast. It was beautiful, and the creature knew it. Tammy stopped struggling for a moment, thinking perhaps she could talk some sense into this thing.
"Look at you," she said.
Was there brain enough in that little skull to understand that it was being flattered? She frankly doubted it. But the creature was watching her now, its head cocked to one side. She kept talking, telling it how fine it looked, while tentatively reaching around to find a branch large enough to carry her weight, so that she could pull herself to her feet. The creature shook its tail, the feathers hissing as they rubbed against one another. The iridescent eyes in their turquoise setting shimmered.
And then, without warning, it was on her. It moved so suddenly she didn't have a chance to clamber out of its way. She fell back into the blossoms for a second time, and before she could raise her arms to ward it off, the peacock came down against her body, trapping her.
She felt its erection against her body, and its wizened hands clawing at her breasts. Its beak snapped above her face, threatening her eyes.
For a moment she lay still, afraid of what it would do to her if she resisted it. But then it began to thrust its hips against her, and a spasm of revulsion overcame her better judgment. She reached up and caught hold of the thing's neck, just below the head, her fingers digging deep into its blotchy, corrugated flesh. Even so, it continued to grind its body against her. She raised her other hand to join the first, and started to strangle the thing. Still it pumped on, as though so stupefied with lust it was indifferent to its own jeopardy. She pressed hard on its throat, closing off its windpipe. Its grindings continued unabated. She pressed harder, and harder still. Then it seemed to reach a point of no return, and a series of shudders passed through its body. She felt something wet spurting on her belly, where its rhythms had pushed up the rags of her blouse.