It occurred to Taylor that he wasn’t challenged leaving the camp. In fact, no one seemed to care about someone leaving the camp. Apparently, it was trying to get back in that would be the tricky part. He carried his passport and depended on being recognized by the security detail, such as it was. The fact that there were very few Americans in the area made it more likely he’d be remembered.
He left the camp by simply walking away. The sun was setting, casting long shadows from the trees in the distance, the edge of the jungle where the heavy machinery had given up the battle against the wild. It looked like the jungle was trying to move back into the clearing, and without constant maintenance it probably would cover the entire area within a year or two.
The clinic was closer to the city’s edge, a bulwark between civilization and squalor, though the edge of the city wasn’t exactly the part they showed on brochures either. But the night was clear, and the sounds of the jungle carried across the empty field where the giant bulldozers stood mute guard against the encroaching trees.
Taylor looked around him, anxious to shed his clothing and trade skin for fur, but there was no place to hide in a large open field like this. While they did a wonderful job of keeping the jungle from the camp, the tradeoff was a long area of treeless, man-made desert. Taylor tried to figure out where to change.
Visions of Clark Kent trying to find a phone booth in this day and age raced through his head, and all he could come up with was Superman having a very uncomfortable moment with Dr. Who. It was a ridiculous image, but it kept him chuckling for quite some time as he wandered further into the shadows.
He saw a copse of trees that the dozers had missed, or perhaps hadn’t bothered to level. They grew in a tangle near where the equipment was stored, as if the bulldozers had to get a fresh scent before they could go hunting another tree. It was only about five trees altogether and the reason for their prolonged life soon became clear. There was a large hole between them, a natural divot that was the product of years of erosion, and in another million years or so might be a nice rival for the Grand Canyon. Currently it was just large enough to swallow one very expensive bulldozer.
It was also the perfect place for a man to take off his clothing. Not only did the equipment mark the location, since he would be back before morning, but he could leave his effects inside the cab and not worry about the clothes being scattered by wild animals. He’d once lost a very nice shirt to a raccoon, and wasn’t inclined to risk his passport become monkey fodder.
He chose the smallest bulldozer, a tiny little thing, probably used to... he couldn’t think of a single reason for it to be there. It was dwarfed amongst its brothers, like a newborn elephant in the middle of an iron and steel herd. But it was the easiest to reach without having to climb and it was least likely to be useful to anyone out of all them, making it the perfect place to stash clothing and ID.
Taylor stepped into the shadow of the machines, keeping the small copse and the great gaping hole to his rear, covering him from any wandering eyes from the city. He stood still for a moment, listening to the sounds of the night and the jungle. There was no hue and cry about some stranger hanging around the machines, no panic that a reporter/boyfriend/fiancé was missing. It was a quiet night, cloudless, with a sullen moon trying to rise in the distance as though in protest, like getting a teenager to mow the lawn.
Taylor stripped off his shirt. The air against his skin felt glorious. He pulled off his shoes and then his pants, setting them all on the seat of the small bulldozer. His underwear went next, his watch and wallet and passport crowning the pile.
For a moment he wanted nothing more than to stand in the night air, reveling in the freedom of his nakedness, letting the warm breeze caress him. The pull to change, to be really free, was too strong, too hard. He looked around one last time, letting a little paranoia work for him, and crouched down. Only then did he relax and welcome the cat.
His limbs grew and shortened, bones cracking and grinding, his head and face shifting, aligning, breaking, healing. In his entire lifetime, the change had never happened so fast. It was as if a plug had been removed and suddenly the flow of the need to be the cat was overwhelming. It was a force he couldn’t control anymore, let alone stop.
It hurt, it always hurt, but the pain wasn’t any greater for the speed. In less than half the time it usually took, the cat dug sharp claws into the stripped earth and shook off the last touches of being human.
The forest called to it, in every squeal and hoot and grunt and trill that came from the thick woods. The other memory spoke of caution, of being invisible, of being careful, but the jungle spoke of adventure, of the hunt, of life.
He sprang for the trees and stretched long, powerful legs across the emptiness between him and the jungle. The dirt beneath his paws was soft, the smell of the night intoxicating. Cries came up from the concentration of men behind him, but it meant nothing to him. He had little care for things that were concrete. Artificial smells didn’t enflame the senses the way the jungle did.
The jungle drowned out the world of man. It set a pulse in his head that thrummed to the rhythm of his own heart, that punctuated every fall of the great paws and the daggers that pulled at dirt and roots and vegetation.
He stretched as he ran, elongating, pulling himself across the devastated area, digging in and throwing tufts of dirt behind him in a continuous rooster tail. The other memory was trying to control, to speak, but the jungle was in the cat’s ears and in his blood, and the other memory had nothing to say that it wanted to hear.
He ran until the trees surrounded him and the canopy drove away the light from the moon, leaving the darkness complete.
The eyes of the cat drew in the small light that filtered through the leaves and noted the movements of the grass, the shifting leaves, and the rustling in the undergrowth.
The arid mountains with the sheep who dance on cliffs with tiny hooves was his favorite place. The jungle where he met his mate he didn’t like so much. It was humid and much of it smelled bad, but meeting the mate was good. The other memory said it was. The other memory was happy to be mated.
The cat was... alone. She was his mate, too, as much as the other memory. She was theirs, his and his. She was never with the cat after that day in the cave, the time they had, the warm of the fire. He found himself longing for something different, for a mate of his own kind. It was not the first urging he’d had of this kind. But this jungle couldn’t give him what he needed. The mate hunger became a thing to be ignored.
Which wasn’t hard when there was so much to see. So much to smell.
He slipped to one side and dropped into a shadow. He wasn’t hungry, but the hunting and stalking instinct had become something more than base animal need. The other memory had influenced him, had saturated his mind and changed him. He was more than a cat, more than whatever tiger or beast that held this shape and walked these jungles.
He crouched and watched his prey. At the edge of the jungle monkeys ran in gangs, some daring to cross the desiccated land and steal into the camp to snag bits of bread, take shiny objects, or just create certain mischiefs. They were an annoyance, but they also had a serious bite that made them dangerous to small children. Their thieving was difficult for a camp full of people who had nothing left to lose.
He found his target. A monkey asleep in a tree, just low enough to reach easily. The cat stole through the grasses, keeping belly to the ground, tapping on velvet paws through a soft loam. Every blade of grass, every bush that parted for its passage was silent as a breeze.
He worked the pass for a long time, stretching out the minutes to silence, pulling the darkness around himself and finally reaching the base of the tree. He rose on his haunches and lifted his head to the bough upon which the monkey rested.
The scent of his prey filled his nostrils, the fur on the monkey’s back tickling his nose.
The cat bared his fangs and snarled silently, drool dripping off incisors half the length of the monkey’s body. He growled low in his throat and watched as the monkey awoke, looking around him in confusion. The monkey turned around and saw the cat, saw the teeth and saw his death, and screamed. He also fouled himself.
The tree exploded into shrieks and screams and motion as a hundred monkeys realized that a giant predator was among them. The jungle awoke and the screaming, shrieking messengers ran in every direction, mostly just up.
He dropped to his feet and padded off again, his fun complete. He remembered the early days in the cold woods, the little beast that played with him. It had been like that, and he purred with a satisfaction he hadn’t felt for a long time.
The other memory was back again. It wanted to leave, to go back to where they swapped, to return to the world of metal and oil and broken lands, broken people. It was too soon. Not yet. Not yet. It wanted to find something, something hidden. Maybe. Not now.
The other memory was strong, its will a force that led, but tonight it was hard to hear. The jungle sounded louder, offering a different life, one worth a thousand lives of cages and restrictions and hallways with closed doors. Tonight it was the cat’s game.
He froze suddenly.
A whiff of something tickled at his nose, at his memory, a sudden burst of something familiar.
In the deep of the night, the cat tore through the jungle to another part of cleared land. Among the stench of death and oil and metal, a new scent called.
The cat sought his mate.
***
OKAY, THIS IS BY FAR the creepiest thing I have ever done. This is pure Frankenstein time. Angelica had experience with cadavers. It was an important part of medical school. She’d done several autopsies, sat in on a dozen more. Somehow the thought of harvesting a dead body in the middle of the night from a mass grave felt very, very different.
She had in mind finding the body, looking at it, and heading home. Hoping that Taylor would be back, and they could talk this all out and then soak in the tub together before he went out in the morning and saved the world. Simple.
Except she had never seen this place before. She knew where it was; it certainly was no secret. It was a large trench filled with dead bodies. What could possibly be creepy about that?
She walked quickly through the empty area where the jungle had been pushed back to make room for the camp. The local government had made a large showing of how difficult that was to the UN and had received funds to clear the land. They then set fire to a large swath of jungle, bulldozed the ashes, and pocketed the rest of the money.
Yet they were at least willing to take in the strays from a foreign country, even if said strays were not allowed to mix e with the natives. She walked past a collection of construction equipment, ranging in size from having a built-in ladder to the operator’s seat to smaller than her father’s car. They seemed to be centered around a grouping of trees that were incongruously left alone among the wholesale slaughter of its kind.
The trench was larger than she’d imagined. The bodies were wrapped in rags and there were several inches of dirt and lime over each one. The flashlight revealed something so ghoulish she regretted coming out and had already turned around to go back. It simply wasn’t worth it.
Right?
You can do this. You’re a professional. Remember that.
As she walked around the collection, she had that prickly feeling of being watched. As though someone was shadowing her. She turned and looked behind her but saw nothing there. She dared take another step, cursing herself for her stupidity in coming out in the first place like some grave robber. The sight of the mass grave made her shiver and she again wanted the warm comfort of Taylor’s arms.
“Who’s there?” she demanded, her flashlight plucking shadows from the night and finding nothing. She had taken a particularly good flashlight, it was old, probably made in the late ’60s or ’70s. The bulb had started to fade, but it was weighted like a club and she could swing it freely if she needed.
No reply. The hoots and taunts from the distant jungle mocked her, but made no move to get closer to her. Great, I’m alone in a cleared jungle between a graveyard and refugee camp, talking to myself and thinking about bashing something with a flashlight. “Study medicine, join a humanitarian organization,” she recited in a sing-song tone, “and you, too, can challenge a shadow in the wilds of wherever the hell I am.” She slumped, the light hanging heavy at her side. “Taylor!”
She turned to resume her journey and the wind left her lungs in a great whoosh, and if she’d remembered she had a bladder she would have emptied it on the spot. In front of her, glowing in the dim moonlight, was a large predator, but in the shadows the head was a misshapen lump. All her mind could register was that it was big—larger than her.
She felt the weight of the flashlight, but looking at this magnificent walking death it seemed like a toy. There was nothing she could do to this hulk. “Taylor?” She wanted to scream, to cry out, but she merely squeaked his name.
The thing lifted its head, broader than it was long, as if the head had been installed sideways. It rode through the dim reflection of the moon, closer and closer as her knees threatened to give way. It stopped and sat.
Angelica looked closer. The misshapen head was a trick of the light. It was holding something in its jaws, something wider than its head, but not by much. “Taylor?” she gasped. The cat dropped the thing it held at her feet. A small leather satchel with a reinforced handle, thick and heavy for large teeth to grasp.
The cat licked his lips and trotted to her. There was nothing puppy-like about his movement, and though he was happy to see her he strode to her not like a reunion, but like he was reclaiming his own.
He pressed against her, his head under her hand. The weight of him took her off balance for a moment. Large cats couldn’t purr, a length of tough cartilage runs up the hyoid bones to the skull, thus opening the larynx far enough that the membranes cannot vibrate in the action required for a purr, but enables the full-throated roar characteristic of large cats. But it was the only thing about him that didn’t resemble a housecat at the moment. He rubbed himself over her leg and hip and she fell to one knee, embracing him, digging her fingers into his fur. It was warm and soft; the thrum of his body was close enough to a purr that she laughed despite herself.
She broke off enough to look at him and sigh. “Speak of the devil and here he is,” she misquoted. “Why like this? Can’t you skulk around and look suspicious as a man?” She smiled and ruffled the cat’s fur. “You certainly look suspicious to me most of the time.” She grinned and added, “Please tell me you don’t remember conversations when you switch back.”
The cat exploded. With a deafening roar it spun in her hands. Angelica screamed and threw herself backward into the dirt, and the cat charged the stand of trees behind them. A cry rang out, human, very human, and she heard a shot fired. “TAYLOR!” The name tore through her throat, burning her lungs. Another cry, another roar and she was on her feet, running before she knew where she was.
Taylor stood. Naked, human, breathing heavily. The body of Sergeant Batu lay at his feet, rifle still smoking. Beside him lay a walkie-talkie. A single word was repeated over the tinny speaker: “Report.”
There was a long crackle of static. She and Taylor simply stood a moment, staring at it, at each other. She was breathing every bit as hard as she was. Adrenaline still coursing through her veins.
“REPORT. REPORT. REPORT.”
The connection went silent. Taylor looked at her but she was on her knees, examining the sergeant. Complete severance of the larynx, trachea and larger muscles, tear in the carotid, blood loss was almost instant. Severe break in the C2 and C3 vertebra.
Stop it. He tore his head off.
Angelica shuddered at the thought. She glanced back at Taylor where he knelt in the moonlight. There wasn’t a mark on him.
“He was aiming at you,” Taylor said, looking up to meet her gaze. “Not at me.”
“Why?” Angelica looked back on the ruin of the man. “Why me?”
“Because then I could be captured, I suspect,” Taylor said. “Do you smell anything? Something... sweet and a little like bleach?”
Angelica sniffed. She shook her head. “No.”
“I smelled it earlier, when I woke in your room. At first I thought it was cleaning materials, but I smell it here, too. It’s in his clothing. It’s...” He turned to her, a look of confusion and desperation in his eyes, “it’s so hard to stay human; I want to change, like trying to scratch an itch you can’t reach. I need to change back. Hell, the cat fought me! It’s never been like that before. It’s like a drug...” He floundered for a moment and trotted to the small bulldozer. He opened the door and pulled out a bundle.
His clothes.
Dressed, he walked back to her and re-examined the body. “I don’t know why he tried to kill you, but he thought he had control of me and he was almost correct.” Taylor looked up at her. “I almost missed it entirely.”
“What do we do about him?” she asked, her mind racing. There were too many questions building up. No answers. Just what the hell was going on around here?
Taylor shrugged and dragged the man by his ankles, tossing him into the pit at the center of the trees. The body disappeared, and a muted splash barely registered to her ears. “The problem is who he was talking to and how much he said?”
“But...” She was grasping at straws and she knew it. “He didn’t see you change, he didn’t...”
“You were petting a white tiger in Africa. Even assuming you’re St. Francis and all the animals love you instinctively, there are no white tigers in Africa.”
“What are we going to do?” She gathered up her flashlight and the bag the cat had dropped. The bulb was broken now, the light useless. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. “This is so beyond my area of expertise.”
He reached out and stroked her cheek. “Come here.”
She moved into his embrace, letting the flashlight fall to the ground between them, the bag hitting the dirt with a thump as she wrapped her arms around him. Her head fit perfectly against his shoulder. Why couldn’t she stay here forever? She didn’t want this life. She’d come out here to help, to do some good. Why was it that everywhere she travelled she found tragedy?
“I hate this. I hate all of it. I don’t know how to handle conspiracies. At least with the drug lords you knew which ones were the bad guys.” She looked at him, her attempt at a smile somewhat pathetic, but she was trying.
“I think if we wait around here, they’ll make it clear which side they’re on.” He cast an uneasy look back toward the camp. “It’s not going to take long for whoever was on the other end of that walkie-talkie to send out someone to figure out why this guy isn’t answering. I suggest we go get cleaned up.” He cupped her cheek with his hand, his thumb moving to wipe away the errant tear she hadn’t even noticed until then. “And then we make arrangements to get out of here.”
Angelica nodded and took his hand in hers. They returned to the clinic carefully, only too aware that they might not be the only ones out there. That feeling of being watched followed her all the way back.
She wondered if she would ever feel safe again.