War Party

The Gorilla With Twenty Four Heads chapter 4

It is past midday. The pool of water has visibly receded. The ground is hotter than ever. The starfish-like creatures around the oasis arch their backs to walk on the tips of their arms. Nathaniel pants continuously. After a long nap, Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill sit about trying to perfect their slip-sweat gathering process. Trace compounds in the slips’ secretions make Nathaniel’s feathers stick together. He squeezes one to force more sweat out of it, gagging at the smell. “I think you’ll be cooler if we cut your feathers off,” Haticat suggests.

“No,” is all Nathaniel says.

“It will be cold at night later,” Doctor Bill reminds everyone. “He’ll want his feathers then.”

At first, the four explorers build a fence of sticks to restrain the slips, but they easily climb the sides. Then they use an old, empty tub of crackers and poke breathing holes in the lid, feeding them scraps of laser star meat. This works. Nathaniel wipes the slips all over himself and steps outside. It is bearable for a few minutes, but soon the mixture of water and alcohol evaporates into the air, leaving Nathaniel dry. It is so hot outside that even the Stuffians wipe themselves with slips. They turn to retreat into their shelter.

Suddenly, Doctor Bill feels a tingling sensation in his pocket. “That’s strange,” he mutters, removing his electromagnetic scanner and looking at it.

“What is it?” Haticat asks.

“My scanner just turned itself on – and it’s fully charged again,” Doctor Bill says.

“Strange,” Nathaniel remarks. “Scan for an inductive energy source.”

Doctor Bill presses several buttons. “There’s a microwave anomaly north of here. Wait, it seems to be moving,” he reports.

Doctor Bill, Haticat, Fred, and Nathaniel are so focused on the scanner readings that they do not hear the approaching footsteps until the monkeys let out a scream. Looking outside, they see the eleven-meter-tall gorilla with twenty-four heads smashing its eleven-meter, translucent, amber club on the ground. It flattens three monkeys in rapid succession, killing them while it dances around trying to keep its legs from being stabbed by the chest-horns of all the other monkeys.

One monkey charges The Gorilla, pushing his horn deep into a calf muscle. It howls in a chorus of all its twenty-four mouths (a very strange sound) and reflexively kicks, flinging the bold monkey through the air and splashing into the pool. Every monkey charges The Gorilla at the same time now, some climbing up the backs of others to reach The Gorilla’s thighs and then climb up its back. The Gorilla yells as it is pierced in the back and sides. Staggering, it wipes the climbing monkeys off itself and then accidentally steps on one, horn up. Staggering backwards and howling, it then takes off running. The monkeys are too slow to catch it.

“Why does it attack us?” Nathaniel asks, running outside to join the group.

“Because it’s mean,” the monkey leader explains, without really explaining anything, angrily wiping The Gorilla’s colorless blood off his horn.