“Onderdonk’s had those same pigs for years,” came Zalen’s next snide remark, “but they’re just for show. I’ll bet that hillbilly and his kid haven’t really cooked pork for a decade.”
“But where is he?” I queried. “The place looks abandoned.”
“They probably went to bed after they put the meat in the smoker,” he suspected, and pointed to the rows of propped-up metal barrels which sufficed for the cooking apparatus. “That’s good for us… but get your gun out just in case.”
I obeyed the instruction and followed him into the overgrown perimeter. We ambled forth with great care, so not to snap a single twig. Moonlight and shadows diced the various shacks into wedges of light and dark; several sets of small eyes glittered at us when the pigs in the sty took note of us. An owl hooted, then went silent.
“That seems irregular,” I commented of the burlap sacks near the smokers. “Those sacks appear to be full. I saw Onderdonk with my own eyes, carrying the sacks out of the cavern after he and his boy butchered a number of the crossbred corpses.”
Zalen opened a sack; in it were hanks of freshly butchered meat. “Yeah, and if the meat’s still in the bags, then what the hell is…”
The question didn’t necessitate completion. I suppose, deep down, I already knew before we raised the lids of the smokers. I shined my flash inside, then we both recoiled.
Smoke billowed up from Onderdonk’s pink-blistered face, while tendrils of it hung off the hair on his scalp. More smoke, as well, issued from the mouth agape in horrific death; the eyes had curdled cloudy white. A powerful, pork-like aroma spread a ground fog throughout hodgepodge of shacks. Another smoker sealed the fate of Onderdonk’s boy—a pitiable sight, indeed. The lower body-weight, and the probability that the boy had been “cooking” longer than his father, was demonstrated by the fact his eyesockets were filled with bubbling humors. Steam from the poor lad’s poached brain keened from his sinuses and ears.
“God save us,” I croaked.
“The fullbloods got to them,” came Zalen’s hopeless appraisal, “which means they may still be here.”
The prospect seized my heart like a vulturine claw and squeezed. We all but slithered in the direction of the motor, eyes never blinking. But, still, my questions remained in a maelstrom. “Previously, you told me that women made pregnant were allowed to keep their firstborn, but the others must be relinquished to the fullbloods.”
“Yeah? So what?”
“But you also told me that you yourself fathered Mary’s third or fourth child. What kind of a treacherous cretin could deliver his own child to those things in the water?”
“I didn’t have anything to say about it, Morley. We don’t have a choice here—don’t you get that? If I’m ‘treacherous,’ then so is your beloved Mary.”
I wouldn’t hear of it. I knew, I knew to the marrow of my soul, that Mary’s misgivings were levered upon her; if she did not comply, her son, brother, and stepfather would be made fodder for the fullbloods.
“And the kid we had was an accident,” he went on. “I suppose back then I actually loved her—before she joined the collective.”
I winced at the excuse. “Only the unGodliest of men could proclaim to love a woman he was prostituting out like a commodity.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” and then came a snicker. “And I don’t believe in God anyway.”
“I should say that’s obvious—”
“So if your God really exists, you’re gonna have to do a lot of praying to get us out of this.” We both arrived at the truck; in the back bed stood two cans of petrol. Ducking down, Zalen took one and carefully emptied it into the vehicle’s fuel tank. “And,” he went on, “you can pray that this hunk of junk starts…”
“One last question first,” I importuned and gripped his shoulder. My curiosity burned like a brand-iron. “Answer what you refused to answer before.”
“Come on, Morley, we have to—”
“I insist! You said that the ritualism is just veneer founded in ignorant traditions of old: occultism used as ‘icing’ to cover something else.”
“Yes!”
“So what about the babies? What about the sacrifices? If the sacrifice of newborns isn’t an occult oblation, then what else can it be?”
“It’s not sacrifice, for God’s sake. They want the newborns to study them—to study us. Their brains, their cells, their blood—everything, to see how they grow. Like what I said before—the microscopic things in every cell that make us what we are… that’s what they study, that’s what they experiment with.”
“Their understanding of the genetic sciences must outweigh ours a thousandfold,” I said. “So that’s it.”
“Yeah. Sacrifices to the devil? Black magic? It’s just a bunch of what my grandfather used to call codswallop. Ornamentation, Morley, to fool the ignorant masses: us.”
It was with little positivity that I contemplated the potential of his explanation. Based on the little I’d read I knew that, in theory, the study of human genes (particularly human genes still in developmental stages such as infancy) could not only enhance understanding of human life but could alter human life. I was forced, next, to ask, “What is the purpose of their studying us on a genetic level, Zalen?”
“That’s the worst part,” he said. “They hate us, Morley. They want to wipe us out, but not by brute force.”
“With what, then?”
“With disease, deformity, sterility.”
“Of course,” I croaked, aware now of the ramifications. “Via research and experimentation on the newborns, the fullbloods could identify our biological vulnerabilities and produce viruses, malignancies, and contagious disease mechanisms that could lay waste to the human race from a multitude of angles.”
“That’s right. That’s what they want to do eventually—”
“And you’re helping them!” I snapped.
He frowned in the moonlight. “I thought I was helping you. I’m helping you and your precious Mary escape. Remember that.” He turned then to the bedraggled vehicle. “Start praying, Morley. Pray to your God that this has a starter button instead of a keyed ignition…”
I actually did pray for that, but before the prayer was done, I’d leapt back, yelling in fright, for when Zalen opened the truck’s dented and paint-faded door, he didn’t lean in, he was pulled in—
—by a pair of long, thin, bizarrely jointed and musculatured arms with hands more resembling the forepaws of a frog, but with slick, webbed digits nearly a foot in length. I never saw its face, though I clearly understand what it was by the pungent smell which gusted from the truck when Zalen opened the rusted-patched door. It was the smell of a fish-pile tinged by the earthy stench of creek scum. Creek scum, too, was what the thing’s skin looked like. It took moments in these wedges of shadow for me to compose reactive thought. I did seem to see its bump-pocked sickly green skin shine as if wet, and as the commotion ensued within the truck I also heard wet sounds, slopping sounds, and then sounds which were more refined and more ghastly.
Only the word evil could describe what I heard next, though to make direct simile I’d have to say it sounded like someone dislocating the joints of a raw chicken, only the “chicken,” in this case, was Zalen. A heftier tearing sound followed, after which came a great, wet splat as all of the long-haired malcontent’s internal organs were tossed out of the truck, and after that came the addict’s destitution-worn black rain jacket.