Earth Man

by Richard Paul Evans

  Danny merely nodded and the screen behind him began to show the footage taken from the police cruiser that arrived at the scene, cut with footage taken from someone’s cell phone.

  Sitting there in the hot seat, the crowd in front of him, Danny did his best to keep his eyes on the screen. Watching it unfold from the outside, seeing the black blurry, distorted creature he’d fought, Danny realized how incredibly stupid he’d been to go on television. There was no way he could talk about it, not to some talk show host and a crowd of people who thought a dancing dog was the epitome of entertainment. A few people in the crowd let out a gasp as he seemed to magically defeat the creature, then somehow take to the air to escape. When it was over, the crowd murmured and whispered their theories. The eyes of a hundred people locked on Danny, full of distrust and suspicion.

  With a wave of his hand, Conan silenced the crowd and then very carefully he leaned closer to Danny. The entire stage seemed suddenly too small and everyone seemed to be right close to him, looking at him in shock and horror at what they’d seen.

  “Tell me Mr. Boyle, Danny, was this a bit of magic on your part? Perhaps a set-up?”

  Danny looked around, not sure what he meant. He thought he was breathing too fast through his nose and he rubbed it quickly, the cameras moving in closer to him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Was it faked? A publicity stunt? I mean if it was, bravo good sir, it worked. But I mean that creature couldn’t have been real.”

  The crowd egged their leader on and he waved his hand at them for silence.

  “Well the body speaks for itself. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

  “The body disappeared.” Freddie said casually. “Poof, there it is!” Freddie raised his hands over his head as his large belly jiggled with his laughter.

  “Right, right! Very convenient. Are you Canadians pulling our leg here? Having a laugh at the world, so to speak?” Conan asked.

  “No.” Danny said angrily. “No of course not. I was hurt pretty bad.”

  “Yet you’ve got no scars to show for it.” Conan said, leaning back in his chair. The grin on his face made Danny want to punch his teeth in.

  “I heal.”

  “I guess so.” Conan said. The host leaned forward again this time his smile disappeared. Danny could feel the anger rising in his face, burning in his cheeks, but he kept his mouth shut. He’d spent months recuperating from his injuries, it was insulting that this slick talk show host believed it was all some kind of gimmick for attention.

  “Your father died doing a publicity stunt, didn’t he?”

  A so-called fan from the crowd shouted out at the mention of Danny’s father.

  “My father was never in my life, this has nothing to do with him. I know about as much about him as you do.” Danny replied.

  “Still, you know how that old saying goes; the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I mean you couldn’t have flown away. People don’t fly!” Conan dragged out the last word, letting the crowd cheer as he raised his pitch higher at the end. Then Conan gave the thumbs down and Freddie burst out laughing.

  The crowd began to boo and Danny had heard enough. Using the full extent of his powers, he created a pair of large wings and spread them wide for the crowd. The people went silent but almost in conjunction they began to clap loudly. The people at home would not see what happened, but the crowd could not deny what they had witnessed with their own eyes.

  Danny turned away from the crowd and headed straight for the emergency exit, leaving their applause behind. Someone was going to want the microphone back so he removed it from his suit and dropped it on the floor. The wings vanished but he didn’t need them, he was already floating off the ground. It was going to be a long flight home, but he was looking forward to feeling the cool night air on his face. Adjusting his suit and tie, he looked up at the stars, about to push himself into the air when four men in black suits melted out of the darkness and surrounded him. One of them the man in charge, flashed him a badge he'd never seen before.

  “Danny Boyle? We’re from the Department of Homeland Security. We’d like you to come with us, please.”

  ‘Well at least they said please,’ Danny thought.

  Danny knew he could fight them or even fly away. All he had to do was think it and he’d move. But he pictured himself being shot out of the air like a fat turkey and decided it would be smarter and safer to at least hear them out before giving them an excuse for target practice. Some instinct, powerful and growing stronger, some kind of primitive and bestial urge pushed him to fight back. Danny had been in his share of fights in the past. The attitude of the men surrounding him, their arrogant sense of authority bugged him. Things were different now though, it would not be like his high school rumbles. As much as his body pushed him to react, he kept his cool. With his abilities he could seriously hurt or kill the agents, or they might kill him. There was no reason he could think of to be worried, no cause for fear other than his own imagination running wild. The men looked incredibly serious, even hostile, but it was quite possible they were the kind of men who always looked that way. In fact they might even just be following orders themselves. Like him, maybe they just wanted to get home to their wives and children.

  “Alright guys. Relax I’m coming.” Danny said, holding up his hands.

  A black limousine pulled up and the man from the change room opened the door for Danny. Once he climbed in, two of the men climbed in with him while the other one got in the front with the driver. Danny couldn’t see them; they were hidden behind the tinted glass window. As they drove into the night in silence, Danny began to nod off, eventually falling asleep in the soft comfortable limo seat.

  Danny found himself dreaming of a field of animals. Herds of zebra and deer ran past him, followed by packs of predatory animals such as lions and wolves. The hunters were not pursuing their prey; they were all simply running past him as casually as shoppers in a mall. The sun overhead glowed with the same energy that ran through his body, bathing every living thing in its red light. The grass underfoot was more vibrantly green than anything he’d ever seen before. Instead of clouds overhead there were waves of blue light and in them floated a series of ocean creatures; whales and dolphins, octopi and shark. He tried to reach up and touch it but when he raised his hand toward the strange blue wave his hand became transparent so he pulled it back down quickly. The whales seemed to be singing, a deep sound of warning and he looked away, casting his eyes back down to the ground.

  As he walked he began to see the ghosts of creatures who had disappeared long ago, long before mankind inherited the Earth. Dinosaurs slept peacefully, predator and prey alike, as if waiting for a time when they could live again. There were other things too, things he did not recognize. These were the creatures that had disappeared without a trace, leaving behind no bones, no footprints, no legacy that humanity would ever find. Reaching out to touch a sleeping brontosaurus, his hand suddenly burst with red energy, transforming itself into an eagle claw. Frightened again, he looked at both his hands and saw them shift from bird to cat to alligator paws. The energy spread through him, doubling him over as his body shifted into different animal forms. Danny couldn’t catch his breath as his body shifted shape and he began to panic. The dream he’d been having quickly turned into a nightmare. As he began to cough and choke for air everything seemed to stop and a sense of calm fell over him. A pair of cloven feet suddenly appeared in front of him and as he cast his eyes upwards the changing stopped and Danny was fully human again. Standing over him with a hand extended out to him stood the deer. It was now bipedal, standing like a man with a muscular human physique. It had become human in shape and spirit, Danny could see the intelligence and kindness in its eyes. Yet it also frightened him and he hesitated, unsure of whether to accept its offer of help. The dream became more lucid and surreal but Danny felt safe and comfortable in the presence of the deer.

  The Second was closer than Danny could ever suspe
ct, wandering the back alleys of downtown San Diego. Both of them in the same state, miles apart yet on a collision course that neither of them could avoid. The Second was more careful, more patient than the Third, but even its patience had its limits. It needed to find the First its body screamed for nothing else but to touch its mate again. The Third had made a mistake, it had challenged their opponent alone but the Second knew better. Battle and glory were concerns of lesser life forms; the Growth must spread, that was its nature. It did not know what had happened to its warrior brother but it did not concern itself, there was no compassion, no sympathy in the borrowed heart of the Second.

  Its face had begun to deteriorate so it had wrapped itself in gauze bandages. It thought that would trick the humans, it was unaware of how much more obvious and dangerous a concealed face was to the public. The reaction this caused in humans pleased it.

  “Where are you? Where have they taken you?” It shouted, sniffing at the ground in a dirty alley outside a small recycling center.

  “Nice coat.” A human voiced hissed.

  Two men stepped out of the shadows, one of them brandishing a metal blade. The Second looked down at its coat. It was new dark brown trench coat, taken from a window in a shop in Mexico. The flies that had begun following the Second buzzed around the two men, one of them, a darker skinned man, swiped at them.

  “Gimme it,” said the light skinned man with the knife. “Come on man. Now.”

  “Look at his face, man. I don’t want the coat. The dude looks sick, look at the fuckin’ bandages.” The dark skinned man, smarter than his partner, began to walk away.

  “Nah, it’s a movie prop or something, nobody walks around like that. Come on man, gimme the damn coat!”

  The Second merely stood there, watching them, sniffing the air. The light skinned man lunged, plunging the blade into the Second’s chest. It looked down casually and grabbed the man’s wrist. At that moment the more intelligent crook fled just as the Second snapped the captured man’s wrist. A tentacle whipped out of its other arm and wrapped around the fleeing man’s ankle, tripping him so hard his skull cracked against the ground. Both men screamed out in pain. The Second covered his attacker’s mouth with his own distorted, gauze wrapped face and absorbed the thief’s skin and organs, merging their two bodies into one. The monster added the mass and flesh of its attacker to its own. When it was done, it let the old dead husk fall away and it stood admiring its new body. It sapped much of its energy to transfer itself, but it knew the old flesh would not have lasted much longer.

  It reached down, took the coat off its old dead skin, shook it off and placed it onto its new body. The thief had been right, it was a nice coat. There was a sound of footsteps from the end of the alley but it was not the thief’s friend. Instead, it was two police officers. The white rats the Second had carried with it from Mexico scattered about the alley from underneath its old corpse, ravenous and sick with infection. They headed right for the police who had not even had time to pull their guns before the rats were climbing up their legs and arms. They screamed and cursed, shaking themselves to get the rats off. The tiny creatures bit down, releasing their poison into their victim’s bloodstream. It was not enough to corrupt or alter the police, just enough to create a burst of black poison inside their hearts. The male and female cop clutched their chests and died, their guns falling from their hands unfired.

  The Second picked up the female officer’s 9MM handgun. A curious human weapon, it turned it over three times, feeling the weight in its palm. It tossed the gun aside just as the second thief pulled out a gun of his own. The dark-skinned man lay on his back, head bleeding, searching frantically for the monster. He watched the Second leap over him; he never even had a chance to let off a shot. It climbed the side of the building quickly, pulling itself, one hand over the other, up and up until it vanished over the edge of the rooftops. As the man tried to get to his feet, the rats came for him and although they would not live much longer with the diseases they carried, they lived just long enough to kill one more human.

  The Deer-Man sad nothing, it simply watched Danny curiously.

  “This is just weird.” Danny said, staring at the Deer-Man.

  The creature merely turned its back to him and marched off. Danny followed the bipedal animal-man into a field of long dry grass. They pushed through to a clearing where a man in a doctor’s coat scrambled around a clear patch of dirt. It was Dr. Rue, grunting and scratching at the dirt.

  “What the hell?” Danny asked in surprise.

  Danny directed the question toward the Deer-Man but it paid him no mind. It merely stood with its human eyes staring at the doctor.

  The doctor turned from side to side as if he’d lost something important, faster and faster, turning so quickly it had to hop from foot to foot. Finally the doctor stopped and looked up at Danny. Its eyes were gone, replaced by black pools of blood. Suddenly tentacles burst from inside the creature, more than could be counted, flying through the air toward Danny. The spikes on the end glistened with deadly poison. The doctor’s body was completely destroyed; there was nothing left but a writhing mass of deadly black limbs. Danny stumbled back, reaching out to the Deer-Man for help but the creature was gone.

  Danny awoke shouting in the back of the limousine just as someone opened the door for him to get out. The gave him a curious look but they understood he’d been dreaming. The other two agents had already gotten out and were waiting for him. Danny followed them and found himself deep underground in a secret Chem-X Laboratories facility.

  “Mr. Boyle! Pleasure to meet you!” A voice called out.

  Danny turned and saw a man striding toward him, arms behind his back like a royal dignitary. The man wore black tinted little glasses and his head was completely bald. In his late fifties, the man had a serious expression but he gave Danny a pleasant enough smile. The long white lab coat the man wore drifted about him like a cloak, trailing backwards as he hurried across the parking lot. The man’s bald head was badly scarred with what appeared to be acne or chicken pox scars.

  “Mr. Boyle! It is a pleasure to meet you. I’m Dr. Glass; I’m the head of Genetics here at Chem-X California. If you would follow me please?”

  Danny did not have a chance to answer before the doctor headed deeper into the facility. It wasn’t often that Danny had met a doctor who was taller and broader than he was, but this Dr. Glass was obviously a successful and imposing man.

  “I want to hire you, Mr. Boyle. You’ve faced one of these things and that makes you the only other man besides myself to have done so.”

  “So this is about the Growth? Not about me?” Danny asked.

  Dr. Glass stopped abruptly and turned around, looking Danny up and down.

  “Of course. Why would it be about you?”

  When Danny didn’t reply the doctor turned back around and headed for the elevator. Two armed guards in containment suits stepped in on either side of them and the doctor hit the button.

  “I’m sorry there wasn’t time to arrange a more professional meeting. I heard you were making an appearance on that awful show this morning and contacted Homeland Security, it was all rather short notice.”

  “Why is the government involved?” Danny asked casually.

  One of the guards seemed to turn slightly toward him but he couldn’t tell if the man was looking at him; the mask was tinted too dark to see inside.

  “I work for the government as well, when needed. Essentially they just give me permission to do what I am going to do anyway.”

  “And what do you do?” Danny asked.

  “Why I kill aliens, of course.”

  Dr. Glass led Danny into his private office, adjacent to his massive laboratory. There was a huge flat screen display on the back wall and as soon as they entered, the screen clicked on. The room furniture matched the black TV, all black and dark stained wood with a blood colored rug.

  “Now I don’t have your remarkable abilities, but I do have science at my dis
posal. Science and a ton of money. Two very powerful weapons.” Dr. Glass said.

  On the TV screen appeared what Danny thought was a black blob, but as the camera steadied itself, he could see it was a Growth. A large, bulbous creature that seemed to puff up and expand as it sucked in air through a large blowhole on the top of its mass.

  “A meteor crash landed in Africa last year. This was found inside. We believe it is part of the same species you faced, the Growth you called them? This one is different than the one that replaced Dr. Rue. For one, this one does not seem to DO anything.”

  Danny stepped closer to the screen, a sick feeling growing in his stomach.

  “This thing was kept here for a while, but we’ve moved it to a more secure location.”

  Dr. Glass turned and ran from the room, waving Danny over to follow him. He seemed to be full of energy and excitement and Danny found it hard to keep up with him. The two guards who’d been following them finally gave up as Dr. Glass ran down an emergency staircase. Danny followed behind him, only to find the Doctor stepping carefully over a metal door. The door had been torn by hand from its hinges and tossed aside.

  “Watch your step Mr. Boyle. This is where the intruder came in. This is why I’ve brought you here.”

  They continued quickly down a dark hallway, the two security guards rushing to catch up with them. Another pair of double doors stood ripped off their hinges; one of them had a palm shaped smear of black blood across it.

  “We experimented with the Growth we have in custody and it was immune to every known type of gas and poison. We even tried getting a genetic sample, but with over 350 million base pairs of DNA, it was taxing our computer systems. Any living thing with a DNA that size should not be able to gestate and grow as fast as these things are. Yet as you’ve seen yourself, they do.”

  The inside of the holding cell was completely trashed, every piece of equipment was in ruins and even the paint on walls was shredded. Something had entered the room and when it had not found what it was looking for, it took out its anger and frustration on its surroundings.