Carnival of Cryptids (Anthology to Raise Funds for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) (Kindle All-Stars Book 2) Read online

  Jack pulled out his Colt and blew the whole lock assembly out with a high-caliber slug.

  He kicked the door open.

  A Hybrid monster straddled a half-naked woman on her bed. She thrashed as the Hybrid tore at her face. A thick purple tentacle slithered from between its lips as white ones thrashed at the back of its skull.

  Jack's machine filled the room with a new kind of thunder. Two big .45 caliber rounds found their mark. The Hybrid was blown into chunky chum from the neck up.

  Jack spun the Colt once on his index finger and holstered it.

  Catarina ran to the woman. "Are you all right?"

  The woman had tears in her eyes. "Is that a fucking joke?" She sobbed as she reached for the tattered remains of her garments. Tried to cover her exposed breasts and thighs. "Some wretched monster just tried to rape me and you're asking if I'm all right?"

  Catarina cut a glance to Jack and he nodded.

  It made a horrible kind of sense.

  ***

  Jack and Catarina jogged down the halls of the hotel. They checked on each room. Ones taken by women in particular.

  Jack said, "Sounds like what the limey English cocksuckers did to my kin. 'Breeding-out' the Irish. Raping Irish women to dilute the bloodlines. Fucking Lafitte."

  Catarina huffed as they jogged. "Except Lafitte is trying to 'breed-out' all humans."

  "We get to kill him now, right?"

  "Abso-fucking-lutely. Cut the head off the snake."

  "Still got that hurricane outside."

  Catarina grinned. "We've survived worse."

  ***

  "You could have called me, you know," Menard said. He sat in his chair with a glass of whiskey.

  "Stop," Catarina said. "You need to get all of the women of Resilient into a safe place. A bunker. Anything. You need to send out your police force and you need to get those women together."

  "That is both impractical and dangerous. We're in the middle of a hurricane."

  "If you don't, then Lafitte's Hybrids are going to hunt them down and –" Catarina stopped. She furrowed her brow. Rage left her unable to speak.

  Jack put a hand on her shoulder. He said, "Menard, Lafitte is using the cover of the storm to send his army of freaks into Resilient. Their goal isn't just to kill. They're going to rape and impregnate every woman on this island.

  "Lafitte doesn't just want to kill you. He wants to kill your future."

  ***

  Over the din of the storm, Resilient's klaxons screeched. Between each blast, a voice urged the women of Resilient, for their own safety, to head outside, to meet up with one of the five hundred police officers stationed on city corners, and be marched to the safety of the bunker under the mayor's office. Or to a shelter nearby.

  Menard himself manned the city-wide broadcast network.

  And the people trusted him.

  The streets were swarmed. In the gale and hell of the rain, they walked. Thousands of women and young girls. Anyone of breeding age found themselves outside, ferried by cops down Main Street.

  And it all seemed to be going so well.

  ***

  "Left!" Jack hollered. He drew his machine and unleashed thunder. A Hybrid leapt down from the roof of a nearby building. Its target was a group of young girls. Jack's bullet split it in two, showering the street and the women with ropes of thick red gore.

  "Right!" Catarina shrieked.

  Jack turned the Colt and shattered the writhing heads of two more Hybrids. Their broken bodies tumbled. They spurted piss and shit.

  The two were perched on a rooftop overlooking the street. Something that gave them the best advantage.

  Jack reloaded. His running tally was twenty-seven. He said, "Lafitte's been breeding like a goddamn rabbit."

  Catarina said, "According to the mayor, almost everyone is in. If nothing else, we saved a lot of people. Be happy. Keep killing."

  "The one thing I really am good at." Jack exploded the faces of four more Hybrids. "They keep lining up like this, I'm gonna get bored."

  Catarina tapped his arm and pointed to the end of the parade of people, down the street. "Just got interesting."

  Jack squinted. He saw the limping figure of Lafitte along the bridge from the mainland. The bastard and his air tank. "Son of a bitch."

  Jack and Catarina climbed down. They jogged. They urged the women to move faster.

  "Go, go! Get behind us!" Catarina shouted.

  Lafitte screamed, "What have you done to my children?"

  Catarina pulled her knives, face stern against the hurricane. She said, "Giving them the burial they deserve. Just guts on the sidewalk."

  Jack fought to stay steady. Colt in hand.

  Lafitte smiled. "You're thinkin' this'll be easy. Like I'm just an old man. Some cranky fool wants back what's his." He laughed. "You ain't met momma yet."

  The water beside him boiled. A hundred tentacles sprang and whipped back and forth like downed electrical wires. Something brayed, the sound of an enormous beast howling.

  The water exploded. A huge dark shape lunged onto the land.

  The titanic Teuthapien stood fifteen feet tall. And there was no trace of humanity in it. Just two beefy legs holding up a torso that wriggled without end.

  "Momma's not happy with what you done to our kids," Lafitte said.

  Jack made a disgusted face, "You've been having sex with that?" Jack sneered. "I'm not afraid of kink but, man, that shit is nasty."

  "You don't get to talk about her that way!" Lafitte screeched.

  The Leviathan pounced.

  Jack and Catarina dodged as an enormous tentacle hit the ground between them. A second tentacle slapped Catarina to the side and a third wrapped itself around Jack's waist.

  Jack said, "Get Lafitte. I'll handle Momma. Got a way with the ladies."

  Catarina charged Lafitte.

  ***

  "Come on, baby," Jack said. "Get me close to that throat."

  The Leviathan stomped and swept its tentacles from side to side. It knocked out store windows and broke support beams. It howled as it dragged Jack closer and closer to its mouth.

  ***

  Lafitte fired on Catarina, but he had no idea how fast she was.

  Even with an aimed shotgun blast, he couldn't hit her.

  She juked and rolled. Glass and stucco burst above her.

  Catarina jumped. Landed on Lafitte's chest. She held a blade at Lafitte's throat. She said, "You want to fuck women? You want to fuck little girls? Well now a woman is fucking you, how does that feel?"

  Lafitte laughed. "Let's see what your boyfriend has to say about it."

  ***

  Jack planted one foot on the Leviathan's lower beak and one on its top. He fired six rounds down the thing's gullet. All that seemed to accomplish was pissing it off.

  "You're not good at dying," Jack said. He reloaded and aimed for one of the big black eyes on the side of the Leviathan's neck. His machine roared. The eye burst in a yellow shower. Ichor splashed Jack's face and mouth.

  The Leviathan yowled in pain. It dropped Jack. He started to crawl away as another tentacle grabbed his ankle and held him like an appetizer over the beast's beak.

  Jack squirmed and shot again, hitting the second eye.

  The Leviathan dropped him. He fell, landed hard on his back, and coughed up a chunk of phlegm.

  But in another heartbeat, the Leviathan reached for him.

  ***

  "I think my Cowboy is doing just fine," Catarina said. "He has a special set of skills. And if something moves, he can kill it."

  Lafitte went rigid. Watching the eyes of his squid love pop like party balloons shook something loose in him.

  Catarina said, "You got anything you feel the need to say?"

  Lafitte spat in her face, but it was lost in the wind and the rain. "You'll die, whore. You and your kind. You had no right taking this island from me. No goddamn right."

  Catarina shrugged. "Again with the 'whore' shit, huh?" S
he flicked her wrists and a geyser of blood burst from Lafitte's carotid arteries.

  ***

  Jack again planted one foot on the Leviathan's lower and upper beak.

  He fired down into its maw. And again, it just pissed the monster off.

  Jack groaned. "Just have the common courtesy to die."

  The water along the bridge boiled anew. Now, with the tridents and glowering faces of Plesio and his two guardsmen. They jumped from the water. And landed like experts on the squirming tentacles of the Leviathan.

  Plesio and his guards drove their tridents down, into the maw of the Leviathan. The Leviathan cried out. The Teuthapiens rotated their arms as if stirring a pot.

  The tentacle holding Jack loosened. He found himself on his back looking up.

  He gawked as the Teuthapiens kept stirring. And then they began to mash. They churned the insides of the Leviathan until it was paste.

  Plesio jumped down. "Females of our species difficult when enraged."

  "No shit," Jack said.

  He watched the two guardsmen stick and slaughter the Leviathan. They sheared away her tentacles. They gouged her insides. She became a stew of innards tossed and turned by the storm.

  It caked Jack's clothes. His boots. His gun. So much gore.

  He said, "I was supposed to be on vacation." He tried to light a cigarette, but the wind wouldn't let him.

  ***

  Jack and Catarina watched as Menard and Plesio took one another's respective appendages.

  The deal was done. Peace seemed at hand.

  To Jack, Plesio said, "Much thanks. You and your female brought us what we could not have before. You go where now?"

  Catarina said, "We're going to the World's Fair. At home. In New York."

  "That sounds wonderful," Plesio said.

  "We hope it will be," Jack said. "But you know, going forward? Might want to keep your women on a leash."

  The Jungle

  You stuff the last remaining pieces of the squid into your mouth and chew as fast as you can, trying to get it finished before sickness overwhelms you. The barmaid's eyes glitter as she watches you slump in your stool and gasp for air. "How was it?" she says.

  "Dreadful. I suspect I'll have nightmares about it for the rest of my life."

  This makes her clutch her stomach and laugh, and the laugh spreads to the fishermen behind you like a virus, infecting each of them. Soon, they're roaring so loudly you have to cover your ears. That's when you feel the first sharp stab of pain in your stomach. You grab the center of your belly just as it ripples, the same as when your mother was pregnant with your baby sister and said, "Put your hand right here."

  Now something kicks at the wall of your stomach too and you cry out in terror. The barmaid holds up her hands for everyone to be silent and says, "What's the matter, sweetie?"

  "Something's wrong!"

  "Oh dear, oh dear. Well, my mother always told me to be careful who and what I let inside of me!" She breaks into laughter again, this time having to lean against the bar to keep herself upright.

  Another thrust from within leaves you doubled-over in agony and you realize the squid is still alive. You feel its suckers boring a hole through your insides and you leap off the stool and run screaming through the pub, forcing your way past the crowd of dirty fishermen who are too busy crying with laughter to stop you.

  You burst through the pub's door and collapse on the dock, aiming your face at the dark water in time just to vomit up the contents of your stomach. You hate to vomit, resist it fiercely on almost every occasion, but this time you squeeze and strain to get every last bit of it out. Once finished, the slithering inside of you has stopped and you remain there against the cool wood, too exhausted to move.

  The man's footsteps vibrate the wooden slats of the dock as he walks toward you, stopping just inches away from where you lie. He leans down and pokes you in the center of the back with the tip of his metal claw and says, "Are you ready to continue?"

  "You left me," you mutter.

  "Indeed, I did."

  "You left me with those horrible people."

  "Mmm, so it seems."

  You sit up and pull away from the man, wounded by his indifference. "You brought me here and abandoned me!"

  He looks at you through his opaque purple glasses, too much of his face covered by hair to reveal whether he smirks or frowns or remains impassive to your words. He simply says, "I never said I would stay with you. I only offered to show you what you wanted to see."

  "Well you never told me you wouldn't stay, either."

  "And why should I stay?" he says. "Because I'm an adult? Does that make me any more reliable or trustworthy or knowledgeable than you? Do you want to know the secret of things?"

  "Yes," you say.

  "No one stranded on an island survived by sitting around waiting to be rescued. The truest way is never found by following the map. Do you understand?"

  "No. Not really."

  He frowns a little at you, as if he is disappointed, then reaches into his coat and removes a small clear bottle tied with a blue ribbon. He holds it out to you and says, "Drink this." When you don't move he unscrews the top and waves it under your face, "It will fix you right up, right as the stars. Or, you could wait for the remaining tendrils of that squid to reassemble and try to tear its way free of your gullet."

  You snatch the bottle from him and grunt unhappily as you lift it to your lips and drink. Sparkling water tingles in your mouth and throat as you swallow and settles your stomach the moment you finish. "That's better," you say.

  "Do you want to continue?"

  "If I say no, can I go home?"

  "No," he says with a quick smile. "The only way back is through, and the only way through is by getting in this boat."

  He offers you his hand as you climb down from the dock and ease yourself into the boat's seat. You look up at him and say, "Are you coming with me?"

  But the boat has already begun to drift in the current, backing away from the dock and the pub and the lights of the town. He stands at the edge of the dock with his hands wrapped over his cane to watch you depart. "If we do not meet again, I hope your death is not too unpleasant."

  "No one ever said anything about dying!" you cry out.

  "That is because they are dishonest and perhaps too afraid of it themselves. I prefer to at least let you know what you're up against."

  You spin around in the boat, trying to see what lies ahead. "Where am I going now?"

  "Into the jungle's dark embrace," he calls back. "And as a very wise man once said, never get out of the boat."

  4. Where is Captain Rook? - Jeff Provine

  He is dead, senhor,” Paulo told him.

  Mr. Jameson, a portly man, sat back in his chair, making a long, low, squeaking sound as he did. He was a businessman. His head was large and bald from too much thought, and his body was a soft, round pedestal to hold it. His eyes were wide, but weak, and wore thick spectacles. Only his hands, which he now tapped on the open folder of documents, photographs and insurance policies, were thin. “What do you mean, 'he's dead?'"

  The room was hot with the kind of sticky heat only Chicago could produce in August, and 1938’s August seemed especially bad. Mr. Jameson was soaked in sweat from his forehead and under his vest. João Paulo Nativo sat across from him and didn’t sweat at all. “The jungle took him.”

  Mr. Jameson took off his glasses and rubbed his nose. “What does that mean? 'The jungle took him?'”

  Paulo closed his eyes. He stroked the steel Caravaca cross around his neck with his index finger and thumb. It held two cross bars in the middle of a central piece instead of the general single cross. Some might’ve considered it the edge of heresy.

  “Mr. Nativo!” Mr. Jameson called from the dark.

  Paulo opened his eyes again. “The jungle is very dangerous. Many men enter it and never return.”

  Mr. Jameson spattered. “Obviously, but, Captain Rook, he was one of the best!
He has been on more than a dozen orchid hunts, four of them with you. He wrote of you fondly as an excellent guide. What went wrong this time?”

  “He was taken,” Paulo repeated, “by the jungle.”

  For a moment, the room was quiet. The only sound was a buzzing electric fan stirring the thick air around them. Paulo missed the roar of nature, the symphony of a thousand insects, bird songs, shrill lizards, growling beasts, the sigh of plants as they grew. Man filled the world with the noise of trains, electricity, and furnaces.

  Finally, Mr. Jameson broke the silence with a guttural cough. He sat forward again and leaned over the life insurance policy.

  “Tell me, precisely, Mr. Nativo,” Mr. Jameson said, slowly and clearly, “how exactly did the jungle take him?”

  ***

  Twelve weeks ago, João Paulo Nativo had been standing on a pier in Manaus, the city that stood on the border of the jungle and the world. It was the highest navigable point on the Rio Negro; anything the outside world wanted from the jungle between Venezuela and the wide Amazon River to the south had to come through here.

  The city rumbled with activity like ants over a deer’s corpse. A few rusty automobiles, trucks mainly, drove down the paved streets, whose cracks showed signs where the jungle threatened to retake the town. Horses and donkeys carried bundles over their backs. Every so often, the electric tramway would grind past, groaning as it headed up into the hills. Even the river looked old, down by inches from where it had been, thanks to drought in past two years.

  Once, the city had been grand. It had been on par with the legendary capitals of Europe: an opera house to rival Paris, electric street lights where London still burned gas, plazas wider than Paris, Madrid, or Vienna. Now the plazas were nearly empty, the electricity was precious, and the opera house slowly decayed. Many of the warehouses that were once filled to overflowing with barrels of rubber had already collapsed. The docks still remained, but Paulo could remember as a boy seeing the massive river boats come in what seemed like every day. Now, the boats came as slowly as the phases of the moon.