Edward Lee - Ghouls

The thing’s hand shot out between the bars. Shouting a prompt, “Jesus!” Kurt jumped back as the frame slammed loudly against its mortar bolts. A single inch closer and he would’ve been grabbed by the throat.

Before them all, the twisted, three-fingered hand opened and closed, talons clicking.

“I told you they have a good reach,” Sanders reminded, though unmoved by the momentary start. “And once they get hold of you—believe me—they don’t let go.”

The scare made Kurt’s chest want to burst. The thing’s face and shoulder pressed tight against the bars, its hand still reaching vainly out. For a churning, sickening moment, Kurt feared it might actually squeeze through the frame of bars.

“Ultimate killers,” Willard observed in a flat voice. “Perfect in their purpose. Ferocity is instinct for them; they kill without forethought.” A proud hush crept into his words. He pointed to the pen. “Look at them. They’re marvels, patterns of biological excellence. Their physical superiority is incontrovertible. What my research has revealed will split the world of natural science wide open.”

“Now’s your chance to impress us,” Sanders said. “Give us a rundown.”

Willard spoke in illusionary fragments. “Maximum scotopic vision. Auditory perceptibility in excess of 100,000 hertzes. Pulmonary volume, oxygen transport, and carbon-dioxide disposal close to twice that of men. Voluntary cardiac and catecholamic innervation; they can raise or lower their heart rates and certain hormonal levels at will. A completely hermaphroditic reproductive mode, full larva gestation in fifteen days. Hyperosmotic urine synthesis, specific gravity 1.08, absolute fluid retention—which all means they can live weeks without water. Their central and peripheral nervous systems alone surpass anything man has yet seen; conduction velocities and reaction times may triple or even quadruple those of human beings. They defy everything we’ve ever thought of as axiomatic in vertebrate life. There are organs in their bodies I haven’t even been able to identify yet. Most important of all, they possess an additional physical system that drastically reduces metabolic energy demands in extreme states of hypoxia—living proof of the theories of cellular hibernation, a self-contained mode to live for extended periods with little or no oxygen.”

For the whole time Willard talked, Kurt’s eyes remained riveted to the things in the pen. A block of shadow engulfed the back of the compartment, but soon he became aware of something only part in view near the farthest corner. It was an odd, ragged heap of some sort, and the one that crouched seemed to be guarding it.

Kurt looked demandingly to Willard. “What is that?”

“What is what?”

“That.” Kurt pointed, anger rising like steam. “That stuff in the corner of the cell.”

“You’d be better off not knowing.”

Kurt took Sanders’s flashlight and turned it on, this time keeping a safe distance from the frame. He then learned why Willard had made no reference to the exact nature of Glen’s murder.

The heap in the corner was a pile of bones, all gnawed clean and glistening in the shaft of light. The largest of the bones had been split and drained of marrow. The skull had been pried apart. A pair of jeans lay in shreds nearby, and also Glen’s old poplin jacket.

Vicky moaned wanly. She turned away.

“You fed him to those things,” Kurt said.

“I had no choice,” Willard countered. A definite crack could be detected in his voice: For the first time, he was beginning to lose control. “I already told you. Glen and my wife were conspiring against me. It was them or me, can’t you see that?”

“You’re insane,” Kurt said, though by now all he felt and thought had been tapped dry of emotion. A great chill filled his soul now, not shock, not horror; the reality was finalized at last. These things behind the bars were not men, but obscenely less. Willard had unleashed monsters.

Kurt reached for his handcuffs. His voice was like the drone of a machine. “Dr. Willard, I’m arresting you for the murder of Glen Rodz and Nancy Willard…”

“Don’t be a fool,” Willard exclaimed, straightening against the counter. “Can’t you comprehend the importance of my work? I’ll carve milestones of knowledge from what I learn of the ghala.”

“Please understand that from this moment on you have the right to remain silent—”

“No! Please, I—” Willard snapped his gaze to Sanders. “Sergeant, kill him, I’ll make you rich. If I’m taken into custody, the authorities will destroy the ghala. All my work will have been in vain; no one will benefit. Kill him and the girl, and you can name your price.”

Sanders offered him a remiss grin. “Eat shit and die.”

“—anything you say can be used against you—”

Willard moved with stupefying quickness. Before anyone could react, he’d grabbed a bottle of ethyl chloride and sprayed it precisely across Sanders’s eyes, while at the same time flinging a tray of instruments at Kurt’s face. Sanders tottered back, firing several rounds into the ceiling. Blinded, he tripped and fell, and the rifle slid across the room.

Before Kurt could draw his gun, Willard was holding Vicky in front of him, using her as a shield. He held a #22-blade scalpel to her throat.

“I seem to have regained a few cards in the shuffle,” Willard said, tightening his arm around Vicky’s waist. The scalpel turned, glinting. “Shall we try the old routine one more time? Very carefully now, with your left index finger and thumb, I want you to remove your service revolver by the tip of the hammer and place it on the counter. You will then take one step back.”

Kurt stood as though his joints had fused. He couldn’t move, not even slightly. Vicky looked at him in squirming silence. Terror made her eyes seem large as cue balls.

“Please, Officer Morris. Do as I say, or I’ll cut her throat to the bone.”

“If you hurt her…”

“Not hurt, kill. And I will kill her unless you do exactly as I say. You’ll get to watch her bleed to death before your very eyes, and there’ll be nothing you can do to stop it.”

Kurt’s hand began to lower. He would have to give it to him.

“Jackass,” Sanders said, only now getting his sight back. He blinked painfully and leaned up off the floor. “Never surrender your weapon. Never.”

“He’ll kill her!”

“He’ll kill us all if you give him that gun.”

I could try for a head shot, Kurt thought perilously. Chances can’t be any worse than a million to one.

Willard was smiling. The scalpel edge gleamed like a thread of molten silver. “Officer Morris, if you don’t place that pistol on the counter by the time I count three, I will punch this blade right through her carotid artery.”

Shit.

“Don’t do it,” Sanders said.

“One,” Willard said.

A headshot was impossible. By the time he drew and lined up, it would be over. There had to be another way. But what?

“Two.”

Vicky whined, cheeks and forehead reddened to a blaze of panic. She rose up on her tiptoes, some visceral compulsion causing her back to arch. The scalpel began to push against her throat, soft flesh going white around the tip.

“Three—”

Kurt withdrew his revolver as instructed and set it on the counter. Sanders mouthed several hopeless obscenities, closing his eyes, shaking his head. Willard then laxed his grip, leaving an inch between the blade and Vicky’s throat. He reached across for the gun.

Go for it, Kurt’s mind flashed, and without conscious direction he sidearmed his handcuffs forward as hard as he could. It was perhaps the most reckless, imprudent thing he’d ever done. He’d thrown Vicky’s life away, and his own, with less calculation than a hand of twenty-one, for surely the handcuffs would miss by a country mile and Dr. Willard would laugh uproariously as he pumped them all full of bullets from Kurt’s own gun…