“Wait.”
The female had halted, its body suddenly besieged by nervous tics.
“What’s wrong?” Tammy said.
The woman governed her little spasms and stood still, listening. Then pointed, off to her right, and having pointed she quickly bounded away, dragging Tammy after her.
As they fled — and that’s what it was suddenly, fleeing — Tammy glanced back over her shoulder. They were not taking this journey unaccompanied. There was a contingent of freaks coming after them, though they were keeping their distance. But it was not the freaks, however, that the female was so afraid of; it was something else.
“What?” Tammy gasped. “What?”
“Peacock,” the woman replied. She didn’t speak again. She simply let go of Tammy’s arm and threw herself into the cover of the thicket. Tammy turned, and turned again, looking for the creature that had caused this unalloyed panic. For a moment, she saw nothing; and all she heard was the sound of the female racing off though the thicket.
Then, almost total silence. Nothing moved, in any direction. And all she could hear was a jet, high, high above her.
She looked up. Yes, there it was, crawling across the pristine blue, leaving a trail of vapor tinted amber by the setting sun. She was momentarily enchanted; removed from her hunger and her aching bones.
“Beautiful,” she murmured to herself.
The next moment something broke cover not more than ten yards from her.
This time Tammy didn’t stand there mesmerized, as she had at the cages. She threw herself out of the path of the shape that was barreling towards her. It was the bizarrest of the all the freaks she’d encountered. Like all its kin it had some of her own species in its genes but the animal it was crossed with — yes, a peacock — was so utterly unlike a human being that the resulting form defied her comprehension. It had the torso of a man, and the stick-thin back legs, scaly though they were, also belonged to a human being. But its neck was serpentine and its head no larger than a fist. Its eyes were tiny black beads, and between them was a beak that looked as though it could do some serious damage. Having missed her on the first assault it now turned around and came at her again, loosing a guttural shriek as it did so. She stumbled backwards, intending to turn and run, but as she did so it raised its body up and she saw to her disgust that it underbelly was made exactly like that of a man, and that it was in a state of considerable arousal. The moment of distraction cost her dearly. She fell back against a blooming rhododendron bush, and lost her footing in a midst of pink-purple blossom. She cursed loudly and coarsely, grabbing onto whatever she could — blossom, twig, root — to haul herself up. As she attempted to do so she saw the creature slowly lower its sleek turquoise head, and one, of its scaly forelimbs — withered remnants of arms and hands — went to its chin, where it idly scratched at a flea.
Then, while she struggled like an idiot to get back on her feet, the creature lifted up its backside and spread its glorious tail. By some quirk of genetics, it had inherited its father’s glory intact. The tail opened like God’s own fan, compensating for every other grotesque thing about the beast. It was beautiful, and the creature knew it. Tammy stopped struggling for a moment, thinking perhaps she could talk some sense into this thing.
“Look at you,” she said.
Was there brain enough in that little skull to understand that it was being flattered? She frankly doubted it. But the creature was watching her now, its head cocked to one side. She kept talking, telling it how fine it looked, while tentatively reaching around to find a branch large enough to carry her weight, so that she could pull herself to her feet. The creature shook its tail, the feathers hissing as they rubbed against one another. The iridescent eyes in their turquoise setting shimmered.
And then, without warning, it was on her. It moved so suddenly she didn’t have a chance to clamber out of its way. She fell back into the blossoms for a second time, and before she could raise her arms to ward it off, the peacock came down against her body, trapping her.