After Sundown

by Mark Morris

  “Get him on a board!” Buzz barks. But they can barely keep the hulking shape afloat, and besides, David observes, even Ikaika’s Phantom XL and his own big gun – which Carly’s hanging onto from astride her sleek Nusa Indah – look fairly puny next to the waterlogged thing.

  “Shore!” Bernie calls, pointing to the beach. “Get him to shore!”

  She’s thinking about CPR, David supposes. But he doubts she’s gotten a good look at the body, or she might think twice about locking lips with…

  What the hell is this?

  “She’s right,” he gasps. “Let’s get him out.”

  Hauling the body, the four men kick toward the beach. The others collect boards and paddle in around them. It’s no easier even when they can stand. The lolling shape is sodden, impossibly heavy. Carly leaves Bernie to handle the phone and a couple of the others to watch the boards and splashes toward them to help. In the end, it takes six of them to shove and drag the body clear of the water. David, Buzz and Ikaika roll it onto its back as everyone draws near.

  “Jesus.”

  “Is it a gorilla, Dave?”

  “It stinks like fucking dogshit, palāla.”

  “You said it, mijo.”

  David says nothing. He’s looking at the strange, simian face of the brute, its prognathous jaw and shelf-like forehead smeared with sand, its dark hair hanging in a limp tangle. Both eyes are open and intact, and that is both amazing and unsettling; most dead things in the sea quickly become a grazing table for every little nibbler around. They’d chosen not to chew on this thing.

  He feels Carly’s hand slip into his own, but as his gaze shifts to her, he catches sight of the brute’s feet. His grip tightens, and Carly gasps at the sudden pressure. David doesn’t notice.

  Its feet are bare, and they are colossal. Underwater, he’d estimated the creature’s height at eight feet. He’s not far off – and it has feet to match. Surely not even Shaquille O’Neal or Yao Ming could offer up kicks big enough for this thing to wrestle into. Each foot must be 26-28 inches from heel to big toe. More dark hair sprouts from its instep and from the top of each toe.

  Ikaika leans over him, hands on meaty thighs, curly black hair dripping salt water onto the sand, the body, David’s shoulder. “Look at those dogs, brah!” he says. “And you guys say I’m big.” His smile is still there, like always, but to David it has never looked so forced, so fake.

  And that’s when he knows.

  He squeezes Carly’s hand more gently this time. When she looks into his face, she sees a strange mix of awe and grief there. “What?” she asks him. “What is it, David?”

  “Sasquatch,” he answers hollowly. “It’s fucking Bigfoot.”

  * * *

  It’s almost midnight when Jack ‘Torch’ Torstenson, strike leader for Greater Cali Smokejumper Crew 4, understands that they’re going to lose most of the national forest – and probably Ojai and Goleta as well – to the Los Padres wildfire.

  “Shoulda called it Los Madres,” he husks, his throat seared raw. “This is the mother of all blazes, for sure.” He hawks and spits.

  Torstenson is standing on a blackened ridge a mile north of Ojai, just west of Route 33, which his team has backburned for the past ten hours, trying to stifle the runaway conflagration. The sky itself appears to be ablaze, the clouds lit a nightmarish red by the firelight. He takes off a glove, jams the thumb of that hand first against the left side of his nose, then the right, and blows black snot from each nostril. Not bothering to wipe his lip – he’s flinders and ash from scalp to jaw anyway – he lifts his radio and toggles the go-button.

  “AirTac-One, this is Strike-One, Crew Four, come back.”

  Swede and Big John, both knocking away cinders, their axes and boots smouldering, appear out of the smoke which obscures the road and the rest of their team. Jack waves his glove at the stumbling, exhausted duo and they hustle to his position, keeping quiet, knowing he’s on the horn with an Air Tactical Supervisor in the big radio plane somewhere high overhead.

  Jack tries again, keeping his voice even for the guys’ sake: “AirTac-One, come back.”

  The radio crackles. “Strike-One-Four, Tac-One here. What’s it looking like, Torch?”

  “Like Dante didn’t know shit,” Jack says brusquely. “No-go on the backburn. Wind’s gonna blow it right across the road, even with thirty yards cleared on the hot side for ten miles, north to south. Wheeler Springs is gone. Ojala too. Over.”

  Silence from the radio. He trades grim looks with Swede and Big John.

  Finally: “Copy, Strike-One-Four. Over.”

  Jack continues. “I see lights on the road to Ojai, Tac. We set to hold it there? Over.”

  “Every water tanker and hose-roller within eighty miles is here. Hotshot crews are holding the southeast flank. Forestry Office in Goleta was evac’ed with everybody else south and west of the blaze, but they’re staging in Santa Barbara, directing air and ground support from Kern, Ventura, San Luis Obispo and San-Bar Counties. We’ll stop her cold. Over.”

  Swede is shaking his head. “They using their eyes?” he mutters. It comes out Dey usink dere eyes? Before he came to the States, first to teach firefighting tactics, then to stay – mad for California girls is Sven-Oli Persson – he was a smokejumper in Scandinavia. His accent has lessened a bit, but when he’s tired or upset it comes back strong.

  Jack rolls his eyes. “Copy last, Tac,” he rasps. “Where do you want us? Over.”

  “Gather your boys, Torch. Run west two miles, then cut south. We’ll have relief units pick you up at Casitas Pass. Strike-Six will step in and widen the firebreak at 150 and 192 all the way to Carpenteria. I’d say you guys have earned a wash and a nosh. Copy?”

  Fire’s not out, you glib prick, Jack wants to snap back. You don’t drop your gear til the dragon’s dead. Instead, he nods to Swede, who goes to alert the troops. “I copy, Tac,” he radios. “We’re moving. Strike-One-Four out.” He drops the mic, lets it bob and spin at his waist. Spits.

  “Christ, boss,” Big John rumbles tiredly. “These goddamn kids…”

  Swede’s rally whistle begins to shrill. Jack glances his way, watching Swede blow for all he’s worth. He’s maybe twenty yards east, right on the lip of the ridge, looking into the burning valley below for the rest of their guys. He goes on blowing the whistle, and a moment later Jack hears Kilkenny’s whistle answer, distant but unmistakable. He sighs, looking around at the burnt trees, the firefly swirl of cinders gusting by on the rising wind.

  He properly holsters the radio. “Twenty years defueling wildfires,” he snorts. “Chopping breaks, digging trenches… Just once, Johnny, you’d think the honchos would—”

  Kilkenny’s whistle wavers to a stop, and Jack breaks off. There’s a booming crash as something – a big valley oak, maybe – topples to the forest floor. Fresh sparks gush skyward, the wind snatching them away. A second crash. Big John turns, takes two steps toward Swede, just as his whistle cuts out too, and—

  Christ, was that a scream?

  Jack lifts the mic again. “AirTac-One, Strike-One-Four, can you see my team?” He is waiting for a reply when a volley of booming crashes rips open the glowing red night.

  No, not crashes. Footfalls. Massive footfalls. Coming on the run.

  Swede, looking into the valley, stumbles back and turns to look for Jack and Big John. His eyes are saucers. Behind him, something massive looms out of the smoke. It towers over him, closing the distance fast. A gigantic, red-eyed wolf.

  “SWEDE!” Big John screams, lunging toward his friend.

  It’s at least eighteen feet tall at the shoulder, and it is fully engulfed in fire, running mad from the flames devouring its fur. Its flesh. The world.

  Jack toggles the mic again and roars, “Tac! Crew Four is in serious fucking trouble!”

  “Mormor,” Swede gasps in shock. �
�Förlåt mig, Mormor.”

  The gargantuan wolf opens its blazing maw and howls, its voice that of all the demons in Dante’s hell and a hundred more unnamed. Jack can see the agonised creature has no idea Swede is directly in its path. Its eyes aren’t red at all; the holes where they should be are gushing flame. It’s blind. It closes the distance in two titanic leaps, still howling—

  And then Big John, running full-out himself, tackles Swede, knocking him to one side. One trunk-like flaming paw grazes the back of John’s fireproof jacket and he and Swede are spun further into the bracken. Whether the glancing blow throws off the wolf’s stride or it simply submits to the fire’s insatiable hunger, the burning animal suddenly stumbles and falls, sliding twenty yards or so before coming to rest in a crumpled, nearly immolated heap. Thick, greasy smoke boils up from its head and hide.

  Big John climbs slowly to his feet, breathing hard. Beside him, Swede is on his knees. He has wrenched off his gloves, and his fingers claw weakly at his face. He’s weeping.

  “Oh, Mormor, I should have listened to your stories,” he chokes. “Forgive me, Grandmother. Förlåt mig.”

  “What!” Big John barks, eyes watering from the stinking smoke. Behind them, he can hear Kilkenny and the rest shouting as they draw near. “What the hell is it, Swede?” he croaks.

  Swede puts his face in his hands. “It’s Fenrir,” he says at last. “The Great Wolf Fenrisúlfr is dead.”

  But John is no longer listening. He has realised they’re alone. “Torch?” he calls. He rushes forward, shielding his face against the dead thing’s heat. “Jack!”

  There’s something at his feet. John stoops, picks up Jack Torstenson’s dropped glove.

  He realises where the runaway monster’s path has taken it, where it has fetched up. He begins to shout his boss’s name, over and over, knowing there will be no answer.

  By the time the other smokejumpers top the ridge, the smell of burning flesh is nauseating, and Big John has no voice left to scream with.

  * * *

  Seated behind stacked sandbags on a high dune overlooking the town of Mahmudli, twenty-three-year-old Hassan al-Attia shifts his rifle from one shoulder to the other and curses himself for forgetting his second waterskin. He’s clothed in a loose, dark-coloured didashah and sandals, his red-and-white checkered shumaq held in place by its black-banded ogal. It’s cinched tight to keep the relentless desert sun off his prematurely balding scalp, in shaa Allah.

  It’s Hassan’s job to keep watch over the north road to Raqqa and radio the Quwwăt Sŭriyă al-Dĭmuqrăṭĭya – the Syrian Democratic Forces – should ISIL fundamentalists come spilling out of the desert like jackals. His friend Amraz, a Kurd who lives in Mahmudli, is supposed to spell him at midday. So far, though, there is no sign of him, the wretched dog.

  Hassan has decided to sling his rifle – a Hungarian AK-63, which he hasn’t fired since the Battle of Raqqa in 2017, Allah be praised – and go to town himself, when there is a sound like a thunderclap. The sky fills with the cries of frightened beasts, and a long shadow races across the ground below him. He whirls round just in time to see something disappear, smoking, over the next rise. There is a grinding crash of wood and metal and meat, echoing off the dunes.

  Anti-aircraft missiles took down an enemy jet, he thinks. Allahu akbar!

  But now those weird animal cries have turned into agonised shrieks. He’s never heard anything like it. Has the downed jet somehow crashed into Mahmudli’s camel caravan? He unlimbers his weapon and runs up the dune. His head swims. He realises he has forgotten his radio, but he is too overwhelmed by shock and adrenaline to go back for it.

  He clears the top of the dune. Insanity awaits him below.

  This is no jet fighter. No recon drone. The sand is chewed up and splashed in all directions, a deepening furrow gouged into the land for forty metres. At the end nearest to Hassan are the first pieces of wreckage.

  Silver tinsel glitters in the sun, and it takes him a moment to grasp what he is seeing: hundreds of gaily wrapped packages, some with ornate ribbons and bows. Some are burning. Some have been crushed on impact. They trail along to the far end of the crash site, and there…

  The vehicle is smashed, one side buckled on impact, the other blasted apart by whatever SDF Stinger or anti-aircraft missile brought it down. But it’s not any kind of plane Hassan has ever heard of. It is tangled in what he first takes to be electrical cables, but then his head clears, and he understands they’re traces. Reins. Like those the Mahmudli camel riders handle so deftly.

  The boxy vehicle has slid hard into what appears to be a team of shaggy, horned animals, like massive versions of the tiny ibex he saw once in an al-Raqqa marketplace, tied to a post and bleating for its mother. But these were flying, his mind objects. Flying!

  Most of the beasts are dead, necks broken, leg bones snapped and twisted in every direction, but two or three still thrash and bawl in agony. One of these is burning fiercely, and Hassan, shamed and horrified by such suffering, runs forward, raising his AK to put the poor creatures out of their misery—

  Then, drawing close enough to discern what else lies in the smoking ruin, he stops.

  Hassan al-Attia is twenty-three. He has been the man of his family since his father’s murder by ISIL executioners when Hassan was just fourteen. He was at Raqqa when the walls fell in 2014, his father’s gun in his hands, and he helped reclaim the city three years later for the Kurds and Assyrians who had lived there in harmony all their lives. Who greeted one another this time of year, whatever their spiritual beliefs, with the words Milad Majid. Merry Christmas.

  Hassan’s rifle slips from his fingers. One hand goes to his mouth.

  The downed vehicle’s pilot has been ejected from his seat. He hangs suspended over the sand, crucified on the antlers of one of his dead, pinned animals. Blood mats his bone-white hair and beard, and his heavy coat is turning a deeper shade of scarlet. Half his face is blackened, the cheek and eye on that side a crushed ruin. His lips twitch. His one good eye, a piercing blue, fixes on Hassan. He is trying to speak, but only more blood pours from his mouth.

  Sobbing, Hassan al-Attia stands in witness to the lonely death of Baba Noel.

  * * *

  Within hours, nearly every network and cable channel the world over is reporting on these increasingly strange and terrible miracles, every one thousands of miles from their fabled place of origin. And every one of them dead.

  Shaky footage from downtown Tokyo: A dead plesiosaur lies gruesomely splattered atop a flattened city bus, inside which are the remains of some forty people killed instantly when the apparent Loch Ness Monster dropped on them without warning during morning rush hour.

  A series of iPhone stills from a family on safari in Africa: A frenzied pack of hyenas tears to pieces a creature that looks like an enormous, bipedal owl. A supplicating hand rises, bloody, fingerless, from the throng of predators, and then the Mothman is no more.

  McMurdo Station dispatches a party with portable heaters to warm a massive, icy form enough for teams of twelve men – all of them shocked into silence – to gently unfold and show off to the world the broken wings of the Thunderbird that has crashed and expired in Antarctica.

  Grainy video from Wyoming shows the 867-foot-tall Devils Tower slimed with grey mucus, the excreta of the giant, reeking kraken carelessly slopped over the monolith’s table-like peak. Tentacles dangle down the Tower’s raked sides. The milky eyes are the size of small cars. A CNN crew, recording the hasty human exodus from the area along I-24, catches sight of a shirtless man standing in the bed of a pickup. He appears to be bleeding from his eyes. He does not smile or speak, just holds up a handmade sign: DEAD CTHULHU LIES DREAMING.

  Anchors bloviate endlessly, filling time until someone can answer questions with no rational answer. Pundits bellow at one another. Anderson Cooper interviews a priest, a rabbi and an imam, then
nervously jokes that the four of them are going out for drinks afterward. Nobody laughs. Laura Ingraham throws up on live TV. Alex Jones upstages her by shrieking himself into a stroke on a live webcast. He expires as he is rushed to an Austin, Texas emergency room.

  And the unsettling stories keep flooding in.

  Osiris, dismembered atop Mount Everest.

  Tecuciztecatl, the Aztec ‘Lord of Snails’, shotgunned to death on a rural road in South Carolina, his body doused in moonshine and set alight.

  Hundreds of giant rodents – like hairless mole rats with fangs – floating, drowned, in the Lincoln Reflecting Pool in D.C. It doesn’t take long for them to be tagged as chupacabras.

  * * *

  Swede Persson, Martin Kilkenny and Big John sit at a folding table in one of the relief tents. Kilkenny is mopping at his face with a towel that once was pink and is now mostly black, and John has scrubbed as much soot from his face and neck as it’s possible to do without running water and soap. The towel in front of Swede is still immaculate.

  Kilkenny’s taking pulls off a Löwenbräu, but Swede and Big John are sticking with cups of water. “Anybody got a smoke?” Kilkenny asks for the third or fourth time. No one answers. He sighs, knocks back his Löwenbräu again.

  They’re off for the next ten hours. Most of Crew Four is already asleep in their racks, or pretending to be, but Swede and John aren’t ready to try yet. They both know the Los Padres blaze won’t be contained in the next ten hours. Nor in the next twenty. They’ve also met with Bill Hubscher, head honcho at Greater Cali and an old friend of Jack Torstenson. At one point, Hub called them both goddamned liars, but John showed him the iPhone video someone shot of the giant wolf’s carcass. And what they found when they rolled it aside. Hub nodded, wept a bit, then got himself under control and they wrote up the fatality report.

  “You guys wanna go find some more beers?” Kilkenny asks. “I’m still all keyed up. Fuck! Whatcha think about that wolf thing, huh? You think—”