For Those Who Dream Monsters by Anna Taborska Page A

screaming for their lives. Jim ran to his truck and
returned carrying a loaded revolver.
    “Hey,
over here!” he shouted at the creature, drawing it away from the body of a male
villager it was disembowelling. As the creature ran at him, Jim discharged
several bullets, each one hitting the thing point-blank in the chest. Jim’s
determined expression turned to one of fear as the creature kept coming at him.
It hardly broke pace as it slashed the driver across the throat with its claws,
veering away from the mortally wounded man to confront a couple of village
youths armed with makeshift spears.
    Jim
fell to the ground near the scrub, clutching at his maimed throat, trying to
stop his life from draining out of him. Then a hand was touching his shoulder
gently, but urgently, and the driver heard a familiar voice through the
pounding of blood in his ears.
    “Mr
Jim! Mr Jim!” Pierre crouched down in front of the driver, distress and sorrow
in his eyes.
    “Pierre,”
Jim managed to gurgle.
    “Mr
Jim, you hurt bad.”
    “Listen
Pierre…” Speaking made the blood squirt out of his wound, but Jim was
experienced enough to know that nothing would save him now anyway. “Told you
how the tank was fired…”
    “Yes,
Mr Jim.”
    “Still
can be… Ammo … in my truck… In back … under blanket…”
    The
blood was spraying out from between Jim’s fingers, and his words were coming
out as little more than gurgles, but Pierre’s determined nod told him that
somehow the blacksmith understood.
    “I
use them, Mr Jim. I use them.” Pierre kept his hand on Jim’s shoulder until the
light went out in the driver’s eyes, his hand dropped from his throat and the
last of his blood spurted out onto the earth.
    As quickly as it had appeared amongst them, the creature disappeared, loping
into the scrub and trees behind the village. But everyone – everyone who was
still alive, that is – knew instinctively that it was coming back.
    After
a hasty and half-hearted search for Alicia, the foreigners left, saying that they
would send help, and taking Jim’s body with them. The villagers wished that
they too could leave and say that they would send help, but they had nowhere to
go. Centuries of living in a war-torn country left them in little doubt that
the help which the westerners would send would not arrive in time to make a jot
of difference to any of them, so they buried their dead and made plans for
surviving the following night.
    Alicia had fed well the previous night, but now the hunger was back, stronger
than ever. She could smell the goat as though it were standing right in front
of her, but she could smell the humans too – despite their best efforts to hide
themselves away. She would have them all – the goat and the humans – and then
the hunger would subside and she would be able to rejoice in the night and the
light of the moon before it waned again to nothing.
    As
she approached the village, the enticing smells intensified and Alicia began to
drool. She quickened her pace, the hunger inside her lesser only than the rage
that accompanied it.
    She
burst out of the scrub and threw herself at the goat tethered to a stake in the
middle of the village square. Just then something long and thin glanced off her
side and fell to the ground next to her – it was a wooden spear with a
sharpened stone tip, thrown by one of the villagers. Alicia roared and leapt at
the man, her fangs ripping out his throat before he had a chance to scream. The
other humans were all around her – pelting her with stones, spears, clubs and
anything else they had managed to assemble in the way of weaponry. Alicia
hardly felt a thing as the puny projectiles bounced off her thick hide. But
then there was a small sting – like a mosquito bite – on her back. She spun
round and saw the village elder pointing a revolver at her – one of the youths
had found it lying next to the body of the dead truck driver and the elder had
taken it upon himself to