The Little Monsters Come

What he did not know was that in the shadows of the bayou bank up ahead strange little shapes were cautiously moving. Living things that did not belong here; that had never been here before.

The night sounds of the lush woods were blended into a voice which Nixon had heard all his life, so that now he was never aware that he was hearing it. A 'gator would hear it too--the slither of a rattler; the flip of a fish or a water moccasin; a marsh-hen croaking; or an owl's hoot--and the steady blend of the voices of a million million insects. And that was all that could be heard, for the strange dark little shapes, along the bank at the next bend, moved very cautiously, quite soundlessly--little things moving upright. They were only a few inches tall. Once they stood in a group as though communicating. One of them carried a tiny light, but its glow was less than a firefly's.

Now Nixon saw, out in the center of this stretch of the bayou, the two green dots that were a 'gator's eyes, and his face relaxed a little with the flicker of a smile of satisfaction. His light swept the water, reached the eyes and clung, so that the stupid 'gator just lay there and stared, with the light dazzling him. His brain, not much bigger than a pea buried in the pulpy mass within his big flat head, held no thought of danger.

The twin reptile-eyes were perhaps fifty yards away when Nixon first saw them. Now he paddled more slowly, with the rowboat gliding forward soundless as a floating leaf. The grip of his right hand down by the blade of the oar-paddle tightened.

The twin eyes there among the stars on the shining water, held motionless. Presently they were only fifteen or twenty feet away, just to the right now of the uptilted empty bow of the little rowboat. Nixon stopped paddling. Slowly he rested the oar in the bottom of the boat and picked up his shotgun.

At about eight feet, Nixon fired both barrels almost together with a great crashing roar. A hundred yards ahead of him, where the bayou made its bend, there was consternation and terror among the tiny upright shapes gathered there on the soggy bank--a terror that made them scurry with tiny cries; and then, when seemingly they were not hurt by the burst of light and the vast roar, made them stand peering in wonderment at this gigantic drama out there on the water.

Nixon knew nothing of that. He was intent only on the splash where his shot had gone; and he saw that this 'gator did not sink, but was lunging away, off to the right, toward the bank. A big one, he had seen that by the spacing of the eyes and now by the water slick and the splashing as it floundered toward shore. Then he was after it, paddling with all the power of his arms as he bent forward, until in the shallows near the bank, where the mortally wounded reptile was now aimlessly floundering, he came almost on top of it.

In an instant more he was over the rowboat's side, waist deep in the water. There was a thrill to this, the lunging of his hands to grip the writhing, slimy, brainless adversary by the foreleg, threshing ashore with it as skillfully he avoided the snapping jaws, and dangerous swishing tail. An eight foot 'gator. Good enough. Its head was an oozing mass of pulp where his shot had blown into it. Panting, he hauled it onto the soggy bank, darted back to the rowboat for his hatchet; then he had hacked into the base of the reptile's spine where the tail began, cutting into it so that the threshing stopped and the big green-black adversary lay only quivering.

Ralph would be pleased. Now if he could get another one as big as this, and then row back home--

Nixon's thoughts suddenly went blank so that he stood over the dead 'gator with his jaw sagging in amazement. He had jerked off his headband with the light-torch when he jumped overboard from the rowboat, but there was enough starlight here for him to see the tiny upright thing. It was in a silvery patch beside a line of brush back from the water. A thing in the shape of a man. Hardly that; but it was upright, oblong with a head and a width of tiny shoulder. It stood divided at the bottom like two legs and there were two arms. A thing only a few inches high. The starlight showed it to be brown-black. Then suddenly Nixon's gasp of astonishment made him suck in his breath as he blankly stared. The tiny thing seemed to be wearing clothes....

To Nixon in those seconds, there was a blur of his mind when he wasn't thinking, just staring as though this were something not to be explained, something which didn't have to be explained because it wasn't real, just a conjuring of his own imagination, a trick of his vision. His hand went with a puzzled gesture to brush his eyes. He blinked. One tiny, six-inch man-shape?

Abruptly he saw that the brush here seemed alive with them. They were moving now. They emitted tiny squeaks that could have been words; shouted commands to each other. But up here in the starlight of Nixon's six foot height, the sounds were like the voices of excited insects.

Adversaries? There was no such idea in Nixon's mind, those first blank seconds. Then suddenly, with a tiny hissing flash, a thread of violet light stabbed up at him. It struck one of his dangling hands with a hot little flash of tingle like the shock of a weak electric current. Then he saw where it came from--an edge of a patch of wire-grass. Three of the brown-black figures were dragging a tiny wheeled thing. A weapon. It was hardly bigger than Nixon's hand. Its nozzle slanted upward and spat another tiny violet flash. Then at his feet he felt something hit against the bottom of his leather puttee. One of the shapes was trying to climb up his leg. He could feel the weight of it on his shoe. A surprising weight, as though the six-inch thing were made of lead.

Nixon was stooping to reach down when a tiny projectile hit him in the face. It stung, with a scratching little stab of pain. Then others came. It was like a handful of peas being thrown at him. All in a few seconds while Nixon had stood blankly staring with incredulous amazement, what seemed hundreds of the tiny shapes were around him. Attacking him. With anything normal, Nixon could think quickly. A 'gator's jaws closing on his arm, simple enough to know what to do. But now suddenly his emotion at this weird attack was only one of puzzled anger. He stooped swiftly, seized the tiny figure that was at his ankle. It screamed as his hand closed over it, a thin, high-pitched squeaking cry. But it was blood-curdling--so nearly human in its frenzied, agonized sound. As he raised it up, still it was screaming. A heavy little thing, heavy as though it were of metal. And it was solid, so solid that his squeezing fingers could have held a leaden figure.

For an instant Nixon held the screaming little thing up and stared at it; and the starlight showed him the contorted features of its tiny bluish face, its flailing arms. Then he flung it out over the bayou. There was a little splash. The screaming stopped as the figure sank like a stone. Now abruptly, the dazed incredulous astonishment of Nixon dropped from him, and a stab of fear came; fear and a surge of anger as he realized that this attack was reality. He staggered back from the rain of tiny missiles pelting him, and another flash of the tiny wheeled gun. The ground here was black now with the lunging, milling little shapes. His first backward step trod on two or three of them, mashed their solid, heavy little bodies into the soggy ground of the bayou bank.