Kristin Read online

  But it would leave nothing to chance. It would find the Christ, it would kill the Christ, whose presence could be guaranteed with its father’s creation now in such mortal peril of its own making. It thought that it might have been close once or twice, could sense a nauseating benevolence close by, but it had been mistaken. It must keep searching, it must find before it was found.

  The Beast tired of the novelty of captivity quickly, and its deliberations had made it restless. It lifted its body from the resting place and drifted effortlessly through the thick, dense barriers of the space into the freezing night air, its mastery over physical matter absolute.

  The concept of murder, the finality of death, fascinated the Beast. Countless numbers had been senselessly maimed or slaughtered by their fellow human beings since the siren sounded, since the transference of its thoughts: it had issued its instructions to humankind and most had listened to them, obeyed the directive. But still it wanted more. It decided to go and see one of the great weapons of death, to absorb its power, its beauty. On a global scale, the carnage the missile would wreak would be truly irresistible.

  Exercising but a fraction of its ability it instinctively dispersed the cells of its membrane, lifeblood, and boney substructure, making them transient. Employing the crude organ of thought to help it locate the weapon it arrived microseconds later in time, as measured on Earth, and reformed the cells to find itself near the base of a mountainous rock face. The terrain was very different here. Clearly, it had travelled some distance, although it had no idea in which territory it stood. Neither did it care.

  At the base of the escarpment it noticed a hollow in deep shade. Inside, it could make out the shape of something big, something that had been hidden.

  Walking into the subdued light it could see the weapon had been covered, it imagined to protect the mechanisms from the clouds of fine rock dust that swirled around, and lay piled up in frozen drifts against the ochre face of the edifice. It undid a series of clasps holding the cover down, grasped the edge and walked backwards, dragging it away. Then it stood back and gazed in wonder: Had it underrated humanity?

  Something approached ... its pace quickened. The Beast pivoted to see a human being rushing at it. The human stopped, removed what seemed to be a small weapon from the top of its upper limb and pointed it. The Beast concentrated its thoughts on the human’s circulatory organ behind the protective structure of bone and made it stop beating. Then it turned back to the great weapon of death, enraptured.

  The Beast guessed the missile to be around five times longer than its physical height. It had been constructed from a smooth, human-made metal alloy and finished in a dark colour as ominous as its purpose. The nose cone, which it suspected housed the most exquisite part, the nuclear warhead, was coloured like a flame in hell. It pointed skywards, mounted high on a large means of transport.

  Carefully, it climbed up and sat astride the weapon.

  Below, it could see the dead human; its body was quite different and yet they seemed to belong to the same species. It became confused — the human’s face was large, angular and rough, with short hairs disguising its features from the olfactory organ down. Its own face was small, round and soft, with no hairs, no subterfuge. The front of the human’s body was flat beneath its coverings, whilst its own was raised, with two gentle swells.

  It slipped a digited limb end under its topmost covering, felt the swells and experienced immediate pleasure. Instinctively it moved lower, down between its limbs of mobility, where it found soft hairs, a moist opening. It pulled the digit out urgently and held it to its olfactory organ, inhaling the sweet musk: what was wrong with it, was it sick? At the top of the opening its digit encountered a protuberance, a little knot of membrane, and it groaned in ecstasy. Now it could not wait to see what its hidden body looked like. It pulled and yanked at its coverings impatiently until it was naked, and found that it was beautiful — perfect in every way.

  Hungry for more of the sensation it started to gyrate the large girdle bone attached to its limbs of motion, forcing the little knot harder and harder against the missile. Leaning right forwards it ran the tip of its fleshy organ of speech and taste up and down the frozen cylinder, groaning with satisfaction, and its organs of vision filled with fluid that flowed down its face in narrow streams. ‘Father, isn’t it magnificent?’ it cried, looking to the heavens. ‘So powerful, so destructive ... the bringer of death on an unparalleled scale! How proud thee must be of thy creation to have manufactured such a murderous device?’ But, as usual, it waited in vain for God’s answer.

  The physical pleasure, the euphoria of the moment in time had passed when it heard the voices. Their owners were nearby; the vibration of their vocal chords originated from within the rock face.

  The Beast modified the trillions of cells once again, merged into stone and partially materialized just beneath the surface of the thick barrier to a small, natural chamber, clearing an area, microns thick, through which to see.

  Three humans similar to the one it had murdered sat huddled on the ground, their faces lit by naked flame. One picked up a vessel and sipped at some hot liquid whose strong aroma permeated the wafer-thin rock, rekindling fond memories from the Beast’s past. The human being to its left started to communicate with the others in a repulsive, guttural language that it was forced to translate.

  ‘The West has interfered too often, disrespected Islam, angered Allah, for too long. We should blow the infidels to hell now! Why wait any longer?’

  Opposite, the third human sucked on a fat, white stick. It drew its contents into its respiratory sacks, exhaled the pungent smoke and considered its words carefully. ‘Our strength lies in our threat, not in our actions. If we attack, the Great Satan will respond one thousand fold. Kabul will be annihilated for its complicity. If Afghanistan ever recovers, we will never be allowed back, we shall have no base for Jihad, for our operations.’

  ‘If there’s all out war, if the Koreans are drawn in too, there will be no more operations, no Afghanistan, no Jihad. There will be no more world. Is that really what we seek?’ said the first human.

  ‘A simple sequence of numbers,’ continued the zealot. ‘that’s all ... and then it will be done. Join with me, children of Allah!’

  ‘We’ll perish, every last one of us.’

  ‘Allah will spare us. In any case, my soul is ready.’

  The inhaling human filled its respiratory sacks with more smoke and studied the others. ‘If we leave the first strike to the Great Satan, everything we’ve worked for will have been in vain. All of our people who’ve died by his wicked hand will never be avenged. His corruption, his avarice, will spread over a receptive world. Islam will die.’

  ‘Then let us act now!’ said the zealot.

  The first human finished consuming the hot liquid, got up and walked towards the barrier. It bent down, pushed its digited limb end into a hole and withdrew a small black box. Then it inspired sharply and lurched backwards, staring at the barrier.

  ‘What is it?’ asked the inhaling human.

  ‘She is near ... I can feel her in this cave.’

  ... She? The human had referred to it as ... she!

  ‘Who is here, what are you talking about?’

  ‘The scourge of mankind.’

  ‘The girl? There’s nobody here but us — you don’t believe that shit?’

  ... Girl ... it was female ... it had been given human form!

  ‘Here me, servant of evil, western whore! If you believe we are doing this at your bidding you are mistaken! We had hatred in our hearts long before you came! What we do, we do for the glory of Allah!’

  I am the hatred in thy heart, fool! She murmured, inwardly.

  The first human lowered itself back down onto the frozen, gritty floor and activated the box. Then it deactivated it.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said the zealot. ‘Launch the missiles!’

  ‘We shall not be dictated to by this fucking whore! We will configu
re the sequence, launch the missiles, when we are ready. But whenever we configure the sequence, launch the missiles ... if we begin the war that destroys Islam, will Allah forgive us?’

  Inside the stone, she shrieked, cried tears of crimson blood, and all three humans turned to the barrier. Why dost thou still listen to thy conscience? she cursed. Why art thou not driven to act by thy loathing of the western human scum? She would not wait much longer.

  Her concentration had lapsed, she’d allowed the cells of her being to over-materialize and the rock now entombed her earthly body like a shroud, its sharp edges cutting into her outer membrane, drawing her lifeblood. Koreans … what is that? she muttered, sourly. Another region of this pitiful Earth? Did the humans there also possess the means to inflict large-scale death and if they did, why was she not aware of it?

  In the darkness of the sarcophagus she shuttered her pitch organs of vision and focused on the ungrateful, but comparatively advanced mind of the inhaling human. A clear picture became visible — Koreans was a long way from here, much further east.

  She thought hard about the composition of her physical body, willing it to break down into its component parts, its complex chemicals, and percolated back through the rock and away from the Middle Eastern lands, evaporating into the freezing evening air in enormous pain.

  The Beast reassembled the fabric of her existence to find herself lying face down in the lush, green vegetation of a steep hill. She levered her body up against the rough stem of a tall, organic life form. It was even colder here, but it was a different cold to the desert area and the air, heavy with moisture, made her feel uncomfortable at once: The atmosphere seemed almost confused. She jumped as she felt fluid stream down her face, in between her swells.

  Collecting a drop on the tip of her longest digit, she transferred it to the tip of her organ of speech and taste ... SALT! Urgently, she ran a digited limb-end over the affected surfaces, wiping the moisture off, but it returned immediately and she panicked, shooting up. At once she was beset by raging thirst: she must find more fluid, pure fluid, quickly. Evidently, its consumption was essential to the well-being of her human form.

  Below, a flow of partially frozen liquid shimmered in the golden glow of the rising sun. How much of it would she need to consume in order to feel well again — the whole flow? She couldn’t be sure until she’d tried. Unsteadily, she started down the hill.

  Near the banks of the flow a large structure diverted her attention, luring her with the promise of something far greater than the need for physical survival. The structure was surrounded, protected on all sides by a number of humans. She partially dematerialized and hid with stealth in the shade of another large organic life form. The humans weren’t the same as the one she’d murdered, or the ones in the rock. Their organs of vision appeared narrow, and their outer membranes bore a different hue. There were no hairs of disguise upon their faces and they wore austere, authoritarian coverings. They, too, were equipped with upper-limb joint weapons.

  One by one the humans slumped to the ground, screaming, as she superheated their organs of thought, boiling them down to nothing inside their thin shells of encasement.

  Fully reformed, she approached the structure and stood astride her first victim. She lowered herself, perched on the corpse and wondered ... maybe? Bending forwards, she closed her sharp, oral bone protrusions around the human’s head-stem, punctured the membrane and sucked insatiably on a major lifeblood conduit. She kept drawing until her oral cavity was full and then swallowed. Now she felt even worse than before, and her digestive sack spurned the offering, sending it gushing back up the same tube with great force, covering the human’s face.

  The dead human’s coverings appealed to her, even though the lifeblood, and the contents of the ejection had marred them somewhat. She ripped them from the corpse and dressed herself in them before vomiting more bloody effluence over the human’s remains.

  Above her left swell she noticed a crude marking on the covering and tilted her head awkwardly to ascertain its meaning: KWANG. What was it? Was it a message? She scowled with frustration. More likely a description, she surmised. Or could it be an identifying mark? Yes ... KWANG! This, she decided, would now be her identity. She would be Kwang, since she lacked any other name.

  She coughed up more bloody fluid, spat it out over the deceased human’s face and kicked it hard in the head, hearing the shell shatter, then proceeded to what seemed to be an entrance to the structure.

  Breathing heavily, she jammed her digited limb-ends into a narrow opening, swept the moveable barriers open and felt the now familiar sensation of pleasure surge through her mortal body. But why did the slain human have a collection of external organs located between its limbs of mobility? Why didn’t she have these too? Had her father not created each human equally? Had he hated his firstborn so much that he’d left her without a vital physiological appendage? Since he no longer spoke to her, she would never know.

  Before her, in the tempered light of a cavernous space, four mighty weapons of death rested on their means of transport, humming with impatience and intent.

  Suddenly, an overwhelming wave of doubt and fear flooded her human mind ... the thought patterns were distant, but exceptionally clear — they belonged to the weapons’ masters. Without hesitation, she travelled to the source, descending into the heart of a vast metropolis of structures.

  Near the centre of the hard-featured sprawl an erection of considerable size sucked her bodily molecules in through supporting external barriers, internal barriers, and countless small spaces divided, and subdivided by them, until she came to be in the corner of a big space full of light. The space was dominated by an enormous, thick piece of organic material, around which six human beings were positioned. They were in dispute, their voices loud, their faces aflame. They didn’t look happy to her, screaming at each other in their ugly language. She translated as the obese human at the end of the piece of material rattled its vocal membrane at the others like an indigenous species of mammal.

  To one side of the obese human was a non-obese being with hard, flat facial features. It wore coverings similar to hers. Opposite, a shrivelled human with a curiously oversized cranium stared at its fellow human through some things that looked like thick, visual aids.

  The obese human appeared to be in a position of superiority. When it had calmed down sufficiently, ceased its jarring, clattering oration, the non-obese being started to babble at it, but in a much higher pitch that amused her, causing her upper side-limb joints to shake gently up and down, and left her respiratory sacks short of air.

  We must act before we are subject to attack, Mr President,’ the non-obese being insisted. ‘The Americans have forty thousand troops based south of the border — why do you think they are there? I don’t care what Seoul says, they have no right to be on Korean soil. We should eradicate them at once. Does nobody here recall Vietnam?’

  The shrivelled human looked upwards in exasperation.

  ‘You are a fool, General, if you believe the Americans would take a pre-emptive strike lying down. President Joyce is a psychopath, the United Nations merely his puppet show. They would answer with a nuclear strike on Pyongyang.’

  Another member of the gathering, silent so far, spoke. ‘We dare not antagonize the Americans, and we cannot afford to alienate them. Neither can we cope with further United Nations sanctions. Our natural fuel resources are critically low, in two years time we will no longer be able to illuminate our cities at night. May I remind you, gentlemen, that the reason behind the decision to develop a nuclear capability was purely economic — a persuasive method of bringing the West to the bargaining table.’

  ‘The West thinks it runs the world!’ the non-obese being countered, vibrating its vocal membrane to the limit. ‘It thinks it can pull our strings, that we shall dance to its tune ... we shall not! Humanity exists only in the Eastern Hemisphere, the great cities of the West are dispensable, its people worthless bags of flesh and b
one.’

  She felt a rush of physical gratification that almost equalled her experience atop the missile, but fumed as the shrivelled human offered its own solution.

  ‘If you want to bring them to their knees, force them to lift their sanctions, there is another way.’

  ‘Explain,’ the obese leader instructed, its face wet with salt-fluid.

  ‘Cripple their computer systems — business, government, military, they will end up like a toothless lion.’

  ‘ ... A computer virus?’

  ‘One that will not be cured in ten years, maybe more. Physical war is outdated, unnecessary and expensive. Your information technology department are already at work on such ... ’

  ‘Computer warfare?’ the non-obese being warbled, derisively. ‘Have you all gone completely mad?’

  The obese leader clenched its digited limb-end and brought it down hard on the shiny surface. ‘GENERAL CHOI!’

  The large device of air circulation rotated slowly above their heads.

  ‘ ... Mr President, American cities could be atomized on your word. We have the means at our disposal. The Taepodong-2 missiles are armed with nuclear warheads and ready to go. Their range is two thousand kilometres, they can reach the western seaboard of the United States — Los Angeles, San Francisco.’

  Yes, exterminate the humans of the West, now! she urged, squirming with ecstasy. In turn, they will obliterate the humans of the East — many will perish in such a cataclysm, bringing me pleasure beyond thine understanding, and I will possess all who survive until the end of time.