Earth Man

by Richard Paul Evans

  Police surrounded them as they slammed their fists into each other, no more skill or finesse was left in them. They battled at a primitive level, relying only on their base instincts and inner capacity for violence. It lasted only a minute but the ending came quickly. The Third backed up into the road and was struck by an oncoming car. As it recovered it grabbed onto Danny, pulling him across the street. That was close enough to for Danny to take advantage and he grabbed the Third with a large claw, squeezing it around the neck. There was a quick snap and the head rolled off. Just to be sure, Danny chopped off both arms as well. Two snaps and the creature could no longer fight back; its body began to falter just as Danny's power faded away. As the last arm hit the ground, Danny caught his breath enough to speak.

  “That was . . . for my old . . arm.”

  Without the armour to protect him any longer, the abuse he’d suffered at the hands of the monster threatened to overtake him. A small crowd had gathered around him but no one seemed willing to help. The police kept the crowd back, unsure of what to do as Danny stumbled about.

  Finally Danny managed to fly into the air, although he was barely conscious. When he crashed through his living room window, Phil and Linda thought he was already dead. Laying there in a pile of broken glass, covered in blood, they did the only thing they knew how to do. They called Helen.

  EARTH MAN

  PART 3

  THE HEALING SEASON

  He gives his harness bells a shake

  to ask if there is some mistake.

  The only other sound's the sweep

  of easy wind and downy flake.

  - Robert Frost

  Fall seemed to fly into winter while Danny nursed his wounds, spending most of his time in bed. It wasn’t until November that he began to walk again and a foot of snow had fallen on British Columbia. He’d crashed down hard and bloody in his own living room, dying from his injuries. Helen had helped him, got him into the shower so they could wash off his wounds. By the time she’d had a moment to think about what was happening he’d already begun to recover. Danny’s wounds had healed fast enough but there was cost for the superhuman abilities he’d been given. A heavy exhaustion had settled into his bones and muscles, reaching through ever nerve and vein. He felt deeply depressed without any reason for it; it felt as if he was under a shadow that followed him wherever he went.

  The death of the deer hurt Danny deeply, there had been a bond between the two of them and he felt guilty that it had died to protect him. It was not something he was going to easily get over. In his mind the deer had been a mystical creature, a sign of something magical in the world. All he could think was if he’d been better, or smarter, he could have saved it. The Earth had lost something special when it had died.

  Morgan said her father had a dark cloud, like a children’s cartoon, following him around and raining on his head. Helen had bandaged him up but there was little she could do for his motivation. The children hadn’t suspected anything, he’d stayed in bed and they didn’t push the subject. Repairing the house had taken a lot of work, especially for Helen who had to do it all herself, but people had donated the supplies and even brought over food for the family. Nobody knew why exactly what Danny had done, but people had felt something, experienced something in their town that they were curious about. Helen let them feed their curiosity until they grew bored.

  There had been a lot of fighting the first two weeks after his battle with the Third. The media had swarmed their house and between paying the bills and dealing with Danny’s injuries and sudden celebrity, Helen had been carrying all the responsibilities of the house and kids. As well as being the only one of them making any money, Helen had to do all the house repairs, including installing a new window, without any help from Danny. It made her furious that he’d gotten hurt again and there was no way she was going to take him to a hospital after his last doctor turned into an alien monster. Helen juggled the repairs and nursing Danny back to health all by herself, with only their two young children to lend a hand.

  The feeling of being powerless made Helen irritable and she took it out on those around her, which only made her angrier at herself. How could she possibly forbid Danny from saving the world? She’d even threatened divorce during their most heated confrontation, but she had no intention of really leaving him. The paparazzi and all the strangeness surrounding her husband lately was easy enough to deal with. Seeing him injured the way he’d been after the fight had horrified her. How could she ever get used to that level of violence? She wondered if that was how the husbands and wives of astronauts and soldiers felt. Her husband had become the Earth’s chosen champion and they would just have to accept that and work through it. It was overwhelming her yet she knew she would hold them all together, even as their money dried up and jobs became harder to find as winter closed in.

  Every day that Danny was bedridden his son Raymond had sat with him, reading him books on animals or just talking about all the trivial yet devastating things that teenagers went through. They bonded in a way they’d never done before and Danny was proud of his son. His grades were good and Ray was on his way to becoming the type of man Danny had always hoped he’d be. Danny felt completely uninspired, but the kids brought a light into his world that kept him going through the darker months. Morgan and Raymond’s love broke apart the shell of apathy Danny had developed. Day by day as Danny rested, healed and prepared, he dreaded the next confrontation with the alien invaders.

  When Danny began to walk again he started walking the kids to school, as a family. It was a way for them to bond but Danny was also suspicious and overly protective. When Helen was available she went to, although she spent most of her time deflecting questions from the people in town. Everyone wanted to know what had happened to Dr. Rue. There were rumours of course, that the doctor had become an elephant man, or he’d gotten tumours from immigrants, even that he’d become a zombie. The curious death of Dr. Rue was well on its way to becoming a local legend.

  There had been offers of course; money in exchange for exclusive interviews and photographs. When the family refused the media began to hide and stalk them. After a few weeks they all grew bored, once they realized that the Boyle family had no interest in being famous. Occasionally they would encounter a reporter, usually from a tabloid or gossip rag, but now with the snow coming even they were packing up and leaving town.

  Strangely Danny’s power didn’t translate well to electronic devices. Someone, perhaps even one of the police officers that had arrived at the scene, had captured the final minute of Danny’s fight with the Third. While the monster was clearly visible in all its horror, Danny appeared only as a man with a red glow. The lobster armour was not at all visible, or even the claws, none of it. Using every electronic device in their possession, Danny’s family had checked and double-checked this oddity and found it to be true for everything, even VHS cassettes. Even the glorious wings he could manifest when he chose appeared only as a red flash of light. While people at the scene swore they’d seen Danny in some kind of armour with clawed hands, there was never any evidence to prove it. Even though the day time media had moved on to other stories, the internet had not and conspiracy theory sites were having a field day with the video. Raymond had even gotten more attention online as the son of the guy in the strange alien YouTube video. All Danny wanted to do was forget the whole thing.

  Phil took Danny out in the woods for an expedition, although this time they were not hunting or killing anything. Phil wanted to scout out Christmas trees, but that was really just an excuse to walk around and drink beer. The trees had shifted color since the last time Danny had seen them. The last time they’d been out there Danny had felt like a murderous intruder, stalking his prey. Now Danny felt a sense of calm and peace, a sense of quite solitude within the greenery that felt almost as nice as home. Almost, but not quite.

  “Sure is beautiful up here in the winter. Monica used to hate it.” Phil said.

  “Have you talk
ed to her recently?” Danny asked.

  “Oh yeah. Dennis is moving out now, finally. She came by yesterday to see him, help him pack his stuff.”

  “How’d that go?”

  Phil raised an eyebrow as he drank his beer.

  “How do you think? I don’t think Monica liked white people all that much before I left her for a white girl. Linda could pull her out of the mouth of a shark, stitch her legs back on and give her a heart like the wizard of motherfuckin’ Oz and she’d still hate her.”

  Danny couldn’t help but smile. He’d known Monica for years, but Phil’s stories of her made her seem like a mythical Bigfoot bitch of an ex-wife.

  Suddenly a large male fox darted out from behind a large stump, its fur more white than orange. It froze and Danny and Phil did the same. Instead of sniffing the air, the fox just glared at them as if daring them to move, threatening them with its golden brown eyes. Danny exhaled slowly and the fox, as if hearing his breath, turned and darted away without a second glance. Both men looked at each other and then continued walking on the beaten trail through the forest.

  “How are you doing Danny? You’ve been pretty shitty since that thing almost killed you.” Phil asked.

  “Exactly like you’d expect when you almost die. Twice.” Danny sighed.

  “These powers are amazing but I don’t know what to do with them. How do I find these monsters and can I even beat them? In my head I saw worlds full of life, alien beings in the billions, consumed by those disgusting alien things. How can the speed of a beaver stop that?”

  “Maybe we need another hunting trip.” Phil said sarcastically.

  “I didn’t want to hunt the first time, Phil! I need to figure out a way to make this work for me and my family. I need to start pulling my weight, making some money so Helen doesn’t have to work so hard.”

  “And so you can pay Linda for babysitting,” Phil said jokingly.

  The truth was that Danny was scared. The initial rush of power and importance had faded and now he was looking at the truth; there were horrible monsters out there that could destroy him and his family. The fate of the Earth and all the people living on it were now his responsibility. That was a great weight to bear and he doubted there was anyone who could understand that. There was no one else who had seen what he’d seen and he knew there was no one who could ever really understand.

  “But in all seriousness, I think I know who can help.” Phil said.

  “Who?” Danny asked.

  “Monica.”

  “Your ex-wife!?”

  “Yeah. She was bragging about her new life in Eureka, living the L.A. lifestyle, bragging about all the famous black entertainers she gets to meet. Apparently she’s dating this big shot talent agent for the Conan Jones Show. I guess he’s a talent agent, I don’t know what you call that shit. Either way, I’ll ask her for a favour.”

  “You’d do that for me?”

  “It will be a whole lot like making a deal with the devil, but why not? It pays a bit of money, somewhere between three hundred to a couple thousand.”

  “You think she’d do it though?”

  “Listen bro, if I beg her for something she is going to gloat over it forever. She’ll do it, with a big shit-eating grin. And what will I lose? A bit of pride? Pride’s overrated. Our boy is all grown up anyway, so I don’t really have much to lose.”

  Danny was speechless, so instead he wrapped his arms around his larger friend and hugged him tight.

  “Alright easy,” Phil said awkwardly.

  “Me. On TV.” Danny said, letting his friend go.

  “You’ve already been on TV and all over the internet. Now it’s time to cash in, right?”

  The two men each took a new beer, twisted the bottles open and banged them together; the bubbles foamed up and over their hands. They didn’t care. For the first time in weeks, Danny cracked a smile.

  Conan Jones took the stage and the audience went wild. As Phil had promised it had been easy enough to get Danny a spot on the show. He heard the crowd cheer from backstage as the wild-haired Irishman took the microphone dramatically, giving them all his trademarked ‘jazz-hands’.

  “Ello, Ello, Ello my lovely audience! You are all looking mmmm-marvelous today!”

  Danny was beginning to sweat. Freshly shaven and with his first real haircut in ages, he looked good, his new short military style crew cut suited his face. He’d worn a great suit, gray with a black shirt and blue tie. There were other guests in the room with him but they were all regular people, the movie stars had a private room. One guy sat with a dog that occasionally danced around him. He turned on the TV in the room to see the show live, it made him feel better seeing the comedian rather just hear him through the walls. There is he was in Hollywood, California and it was just as bizarre as he’d expected.

  “I’ve decided to stop drinking. I know, I know, they’ll revoke my citizenship back home. But I’ve got no choice. No choice. I’m tired of waking up hung over in my car doin’ ninety on the freeway.”

  The cheering crowd seemed to vibrate the walls and the comedian, a true professional, continued the jokes rolling to keep the momentum.

  “Another election coming up here the U.S. Crazy place, this United States. Seems like every year the candidates get dumber and dumber, don’t they? Compare Reagan to Bush, or Al Gore to JFK. At this rate, in twenty years they’ll be voting for dogs. Speaking of which, we’ve got the internet sensation, Caddie the Dancing Dog on the show tonight.”

  Once again the studio reverberated with the sound of applause.

  “Of course, I’m sure the cats will do everything they can to oppose the dog candidates, but that’s American politics for you, folks!”

  Two men with ear pieces entered the waiting room, one in a suit, the other dressed in khakis and a t-shirt. The man in the t-shirt ushered the owner of Caddie the Dancing Dog toward the stage, while the man in the suit just looked around the room, his intense eyes studying everyone until they landed on Danny. The man said nothing, but Danny could tell there was a flicker of recognition in the man’s face. The man in the t-shirt worked for the show, the logo on his shirt identified him, but the man in the suit was obviously a stranger.

  The second guest after the dancing dog was a mildly famous actress from a daytime sitcom about werewolves called Wolves of Passion. He’d never heard of it, but he was sure at some point Raymond had mentioned it to him. The actress was a fake redhead and Danny wondered what Helen would think of her back at home, watching on TV. The man in the suit was still watching him, occasionally turning his head slightly while he listened to something in his ear piece. The rigid, formal body language and the perfect black suit made Danny think of secret government organizations and Men in Black conspiracies.

  ‘There couldn’t actually be Men in Black,’ Danny thought, but then again he never thought there could ever be real aliens, either. Or living planets. The five hundred dollars they were paying him for his appearance didn’t seem worth it, even though he’d gotten a free airline ticket which he managed to cash in too, using his own powers to fly. His air travel speed was increasing every time he flew. He had reached a point where he didn’t even need to duplicate a bird’s ability, the energy inside him allowed him to simply think himself into the air. Although he had no way of tracking his own speed, he guessed that he was moving at least two hundred miles an hour.

  It was too late for him now, but Danny suddenly realized going to the United States had been a dangerous mistake. Sneaking in had made it even worse. He had no way of knowing what Americans had thought of the video, or what information their government had about the Growth. They could know everything or nothing at all. Or worse, they might even believe he was an alien. After all he was one of a kind now and there was no other like him on Earth. When the man in the khakis ushered him forward, Danny gave the man in the suit a dirty look and walked past him.

  The crowd gave a modest applause as Danny took a seat between Conan and his co-host, the
incredibly huge man with an even bigger beard, Freddie Mack.

  “Danny Boyle, ladies and gentleman! A good strong Irish name!” said Conan as they shook hands.

  The band played bagpipe sounds and Danny tried not to grimace at their upbeat version of Danny Boy. He sat down in the sticky leather chair and waited for the crowd to stop cheering for their host.

  “You’re the son of the famous motorcycle stunt man, aren’t you? Ronnie Boyle, the Canadian Evel Knievel?”

  “Uh yeah. Yes sir.” Danny replied shyly.

  “Now that you’ve got your fifteen minutes, how does it feel?” asked Freddie in his deep baritone voice.

  “Well uh, actually I never even noticed. Not until today anyway.”

  “Well now you’re in front of the whole world and I’ll tell you, there’s one question we’ve all got on our minds.” Conan said very quietly. “Let’s roll the clip first, then we’ll get to it. Alright?”