Scott Sigler - Nocturnal - A Novel

Robin nodded.

“Rex and the others are people , which means they’re mammals,” John said. “Eusocial creatures are insects.”

“There’s at least two species of eusocial mammals,” Robin said. “The naked mole rat and the desert rat. They have a single queen, breeding males, and the rest of the colony are sterile workers.”

Pookie pulled the pad in front of him. “I could live with fleshy-headed mutants, I really could, but come on … a king? A queen ? Besides, ant colonies have more than just kings or queens, they have workers and drones, right?”

“Right,” Robin said. “Those are called castes . There’s one more caste you didn’t mention. Blackbeard had no testicles. He was sterile , couldn’t have passed on his genes to a new generation. But he was strong, he was dangerous, and he could heal fast, which would let him recover from damage. Guess which caste is most likely to get damaged?”

Bryan stared at her. His eyes widened. He leaned back. “Holy shit.”

Pookie looked back and forth from Robin to Bryan. “What? Come on, tell me.”

Bryan sagged in his chair. “She’s saying Blackbeard is like a soldier ant,” he said. “Soldier ants can’t breed — they just live to protect the colony.”

They all sat in silence. Robin felt better for having shared the strange hypothesis. It was the only thing she could find to explain the limited data they had.

Pookie took a long drink of beer, then let out a belch. “Attack of the ant-people,” he said. “Awesome. Just awesome . But then what’s with the costumes?”

Robin picked up the pen, started making a random, back-and-forth doodle on the pad. “The costumes might be there to hide physical deformities. We really have no idea what we’re dealing with. The thing is, I think those teeth marks on Oscar Woody were exactly that — teeth marks . Not some tool designed to look like teeth. If that’s true, we’d be talking about someone with a wide mouth and two big incisors, so big you’d see it instantly. Maybe the masks and blankets hide more physical abnormalities?”

Bryan shook his head, so slightly Robin wasn’t even sure if he knew he was doing it.

John drained his beer in a long pull, then set the bottle on the table. “This new chromosome means we’re talking about a specific people , a genetic and possibly ethnic minority. As far as we know, someone is wiping out that minority — genocide — and Amy Zou is complicit in that act. Maybe there’s a damn good reason these ant-people have stayed hidden.”

John brought up a good point. Technically, the Zeds weren’t a separate species, not as long as a queen could breed with normal men, or a king could breed with normal women. They were human … sort of. But what if they were all killers?

“We don’t know enough,” she said. “We need to find that vigilante. Zou won’t give us information, maybe he will.”

Bryan pulled out his phone, tapped it a few times, then held it out so everyone could see — it was a picture of the bloody arrowhead. “I watched Metz clear out the computer system. All of that data is gone. I’m betting they won’t let any of us anywhere near the bodies of Blackbeard, Oscar Woody or Jay Parlar. We won’t be able to search Rex’s house. That means this arrow is our only lead. Pooks, I think we have to go back and talk to the guy who literally wrote the book on the subject.”

Pookie nodded. He reached into his wallet and pulled out a white business card. There was nothing on it but a phone number. He called, then waited for someone to answer.

“Biz, this is Pookie. Sorry to clog your booty-call phone with a non-booty-call message, but we need to see you. Call me back ASAP.”

Pookie put the phone away.

“Who was that?” Robin asked.

“Mister Biz-Nass,” Pookie said. “Your friendly neighborhood Tourette-syndrome-afflicted, throat-cancer-surving fortune-teller who speaks with a voice box.”

Maybe he wasn’t making up the thing about the guy jumping across the street, but she knew damn well that one was bullshit.

Pookie turned to Bryan. “Bri-Bri, it’s three-thirty in the morning. I suggest we don’t sit here and wait for Biz-Nass to call us back. Everyone is cashed out. I need some sleep, Bro. Let’s all go home and hit it in the morning.”

Bryan’s jaw muscles twitched. Robin knew he didn’t want to wait for even a second, but he trusted Pookie.

“All right,” he said. “Tomorrow.”

Robin saw the three men out.

The Monster

So much pain .

The dream’s blurry swirl engulfed him, lulled him, but the pain in his belly, the fire in there — that felt more real than anything Bryan had ever known. How could anything hurt so much? Being dragged, being kicked … what would happen to him now?

He shouldn’t have gone out alone, and now it was too late.

Savior had him.

What would death be like? Would he go to the Hunting Ground like the old people said, or would he just end? The religion, it was all a lie, he knew, because he’d drawn the ward to chase the monster away and yet the monster still got him.

Bryan’s hands and feet pulled against the restraints, but he was already too weak. The thing in his mouth muffled his cries for help.

Sliding on the ground now, across grass, his stomach screaming with agony. Where was the monster taking him?

Bryan looked ahead. He saw a cellar door, the angled kind that led down into a basement.

The monster released him. The monster in his cloak, a faceless man-shaped thing of dark green, it opened the cellar door. Inside, shadows.

The monster turned, grabbed Bryan by the neck and dragged him to the door. Bryan slid off the grass and onto concrete steps. The monster pulled him down, thump-thump-thump along the steps, rough edges digging into Bryan’s shoulder and hip as he slid. The shadows grew, engulfed him, swallowed him up until there was nothing but blackness.

Bryan woke to someone pounding on his apartment door.

He opened his eyes, blinked — was he still dreaming? If so, he was dreaming about his messy apartment and the cardboard boxes he had yet to unpack.

He sat up on his couch.

The door pounded again. From outside, a yell: “Bri-Bri, rise and shine!”

He stood, shuffled to the door and opened it. Pookie walked in, two cups of steaming coffee in hand.

“Pooks, what are you doing here?”

“We have to go see Mister Biz-Nass. We left him a message last night, remember?”

Pookie stepped inside. Bryan shut the door. He was still groggy, but now he recalled Pookie calling Biz-Nass the night before. “Yeah, I remember. Sorry, I’ll get ready.”

“Answer your phone much?” Pookie said. “I was getting worried that I’d find you in the center of one of those bloody symbols.”

Did that mean Pookie worried Bryan would be a victim, or the perp? Maybe that was a question best left unasked.

“I guess I fell asleep on the couch,” Bryan said. “I was watching TV.”

The exhaustion, the stress, the uncertainty — those things had been weighing on him, combining with the last remnants of the physical aches, joints that felt like they were stuffed with broken marbles and the lingering

[it’s not cancer it’s an organ]

chest pain.

But he didn’t feel those things anymore. In fact, he felt no pain at all.

“Bri-Bri, you get any sleep?”

Bryan shrugged. “Four hours, maybe?”

“Well, you look better,” Pookie said. “Way better, in fact.” He handed Bryan the coffee. “Here’s your milkshake. Four sugars, three creams, just the way you like it.”