she noticed what looked like the back of a small chimpanzee, its dark skin showing beneath sparse and wiry hairs up. She returned the camera to her pocket and began clearing away body parts that were piled on top of the chimp. She removed a colorful cluster of birds tied together on a wire, a slurry of stray guts at the center of a fly swarm, and finally a long tail, apparently severed from some creature much bigger than anything she could see here.
Except that the tail resisted her pull. After a moment of staring dumbly, Amy realized that it was actually connected to the torso she was trying to uncover, which meant the animal could not be a chimpanzee.
She grasped the thing by a front and back leg, hauled it over, face up, and her confusion quadrupled.
Somehow it was much skinnier now, with a body like…hard to say. Maybe a long, slender monkey. The face was somewhere between a teddy bear and a rodent, and its eyes were the giant orbs of a nocturnal creature. Gobs of bunched-up, pink-brown flesh hung on its upper face, surrounding the enormous eyes and a petite kitten nose. The sagging bits reminded her of the folds of skin on a young Shar-pei, the baggy-skinned dogs from China. There were smaller clumps of similar loose skin below its mouth and on the sides of its head.
Amy was still holding one front and one back limb, and now she took a good look at the paws. At first glance, the front paw seemed like a chimp’s hand – but it was really more like a smaller creature’s appendage embedded into a chimp’s palm. Almost as though what looked like a chimp’s hand were really just a hardened fatty growth that clung to the back of a smaller, real paw. The digits of that paw had joints and tips that were round and bulbous.
The fingernails were thick, pointed, and overly long, but definitely nails rather than claws – a trait that ought to put this animal in the primate order.
Yet those big eyes belonged to something nocturnal, and there simply were no nocturnal primates more than a tenth the size of this thing.
The back foot was similar, but stranger. The ankle was especially long, designed for jumping. The paw-within-a-paw effect was there again , but this time there were nails on three digits and claws on the other two – another characteristic of nocturnal primates. Yet even the largest of such creatures weighed under seven pounds, and this thing felt closer to fifty.
Amy put her hand to her injured shoulder and ran a fingertip across the five rough scabs that were forming where her skin had been punctured two nights earlier.
When she curled the dead paw as though it were gripping something, the points of the claws and nails formed an array proportionally identical to the marks on her shoulder. Another member of this species may well have been what had grabbed her, although it had been far too dark to see her attacker’s features. She wasn’t even sure whether she’d really seen the limb that had taken hold of her, or simply formed a mental image based on how it had felt.
But why grab with its back leg? A possible answer came quickly. This animal’s hind legs were at least fifty percent longer than its front ones. Maybe, with the window only open a couple of inches, her attacker hadn’t been able to reach all the way to her shoulder with its front paw.
Not that she had any idea why it would grab a five-foot-ten human being.
She turned the animal face down again for another look at the features that had seemed so chimp-like, and the illusion reappeared. It looked exactly like the back of a small chimpanzee, except for the long, pinkish, mostly hairless tail. The body looked much wider than it had seemed from the front. The apparent chimp posterior seemed to cup a smaller animal, the way a shell cups a tortoise.
She needed another photo, less for her exposé than for the ability to identify th is thing later. She flipped the creature face-up again and reached for her camera, then decided that the
Except that the tail resisted her pull. After a moment of staring dumbly, Amy realized that it was actually connected to the torso she was trying to uncover, which meant the animal could not be a chimpanzee.
She grasped the thing by a front and back leg, hauled it over, face up, and her confusion quadrupled.
Somehow it was much skinnier now, with a body like…hard to say. Maybe a long, slender monkey. The face was somewhere between a teddy bear and a rodent, and its eyes were the giant orbs of a nocturnal creature. Gobs of bunched-up, pink-brown flesh hung on its upper face, surrounding the enormous eyes and a petite kitten nose. The sagging bits reminded her of the folds of skin on a young Shar-pei, the baggy-skinned dogs from China. There were smaller clumps of similar loose skin below its mouth and on the sides of its head.
Amy was still holding one front and one back limb, and now she took a good look at the paws. At first glance, the front paw seemed like a chimp’s hand – but it was really more like a smaller creature’s appendage embedded into a chimp’s palm. Almost as though what looked like a chimp’s hand were really just a hardened fatty growth that clung to the back of a smaller, real paw. The digits of that paw had joints and tips that were round and bulbous.
The fingernails were thick, pointed, and overly long, but definitely nails rather than claws – a trait that ought to put this animal in the primate order.
Yet those big eyes belonged to something nocturnal, and there simply were no nocturnal primates more than a tenth the size of this thing.
The back foot was similar, but stranger. The ankle was especially long, designed for jumping. The paw-within-a-paw effect was there again , but this time there were nails on three digits and claws on the other two – another characteristic of nocturnal primates. Yet even the largest of such creatures weighed under seven pounds, and this thing felt closer to fifty.
Amy put her hand to her injured shoulder and ran a fingertip across the five rough scabs that were forming where her skin had been punctured two nights earlier.
When she curled the dead paw as though it were gripping something, the points of the claws and nails formed an array proportionally identical to the marks on her shoulder. Another member of this species may well have been what had grabbed her, although it had been far too dark to see her attacker’s features. She wasn’t even sure whether she’d really seen the limb that had taken hold of her, or simply formed a mental image based on how it had felt.
But why grab with its back leg? A possible answer came quickly. This animal’s hind legs were at least fifty percent longer than its front ones. Maybe, with the window only open a couple of inches, her attacker hadn’t been able to reach all the way to her shoulder with its front paw.
Not that she had any idea why it would grab a five-foot-ten human being.
She turned the animal face down again for another look at the features that had seemed so chimp-like, and the illusion reappeared. It looked exactly like the back of a small chimpanzee, except for the long, pinkish, mostly hairless tail. The body looked much wider than it had seemed from the front. The apparent chimp posterior seemed to cup a smaller animal, the way a shell cups a tortoise.
She needed another photo, less for her exposé than for the ability to identify th is thing later. She flipped the creature face-up again and reached for her camera, then decided that the
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