Dave vs. the Monsters

by John Birmingham

  They didn’t laugh. Heath thought it serious enough to warrant immediate action, hauling out an iPhone, one of those new big-ass models Dave had been coveting, and searching up the nearest food source. He used Google, not Siri, and found a Cane’s drive-through on a tributary road that took them five minutes out of their way. It was tucked between a pool supply store and a shuttered business that had supplied the locals with all their rubber stamp needs. Dave gagged again when Blackbeard rolled down his window to order and the pungent smells of grease and oil, rubber, and rotting food scraps poured in. Nobody else seemed to notice, and with the smell of fried chicken being the strongest odor of all, Dave’s hunger won out over his nausea.

  The dead-eyed teen working the window delivered their order in less than a minute, and Dave was plowing through four Caniac Combos before they were out of the drive-through. Each combo consisted of a half dozen chicken fingers, crinkle-cut fries, coleslaw, slabs of Texas toast, and sauce. For good measure the SEALs threw in two chicken sandwiches and four extra-large cups of chocolate milk. Some consideration was given to ordering a Tailgate Box of 100, but Dave waved that away.

  “Been watching my waistline,” he said.

  “Wow,” Chief Allen said as he searched through the pile of junk food. “There’s nothing healthy at all here. Fat, fried salt, fried sugar. No lean protein. No clean carbs. It’s all garbage.”

  “Prayer and meditation will only get you so far,” one of the pirates said.

  “But that is still some considerable distance on you infidels,” Allen replied without discernible malice. He had settled for a plain chicken salad sandwich, had even asked for whole wheat and been disappointed. The captain went hungry. Assuming he ever got hungry. Heath looked like he took his daily fill from bad vibes and rainwater. Dave choked his food down as quickly as he could, and only the black-bearded SEAL took to the food with a level of gusto approaching his. The Beard chewed and swallowed methodically while Dave struggled to shove every spare calorie into the burning hole of his hunger as quickly as possible.

  “Dave,” Allen said. “We’re not in boot camp, dude. You can slow down. Nobody’s gonna steal your feed bag.”

  “No.” Dave shoveled another handful of chicken fingers into his mouth. “Can’t.”

  The pirate grunted beneath the Amish-thick beard in a way that might be thought of as laughter. He settled in to drive one-handed while clutching a sandwich. A steady rain beat against the Expedition’s windows and windshield, forcing him to slow down a little, but never once did his other hand put the sandwich aside to grip the wheel.

  “You see this Prius in your blind spot, right?” Chief Allen asked.

  “Don’t care much for backseat driving when my wife does it, chief,” the pirate said. “And yeah. They’ve been back there since we left the chicken shack.”

  “Chief, let him drive the vehicle,” the captain said.

  “I’m just trying to get us there in one piece,” Allen said.

  Dave leaned forward to spy a Prius keeping a steady pace right alongside the rear door. A thin, sallow-skinned driver was having an animated conversation with someone in the front passenger seat. Behind them a trio of children screamed, bounced, and threw things at one another. Pandemonium in the land of the Birkenstocks while the Prius driver remained oblivious to the second Ford Expedition closing on the rear.

  “Lead, this is Tail,” a radio crackled. “Sure those aren’t your kids?”

  The pirate shook his head. “Negative. Last I heard, my old lady was bangin’ some biker dude.”

  Dave recognized the look on Allen’s face right then. It was the same expression Marty wore at times: tolerant disapproval. Dave decided he couldn’t help liking this guy. Maybe it was just that he reminded him of Marty, who could be a censorious, judgmental asshole, too.

  “Decorum, gentlemen,” the captain said. “We have a guest. Let’s not trash the reputation of the United States Navy in one outing.”

  “Right,” the pirate said. “Tail, this is Lead. Gonna brake and drop in behind the Prius.”

  “Tail copies.”

  The Expedition slowed down only to find the Prius stubbornly maintaining its position. Blackbeard slowed down to thirty-five, hit the blinker, and began to merge toward the Prius. Then and only then did the driver notice, get the hint, and get out of the way.

  “The stubborn was strong with that one,” said the beard in the shotgun seat.

  “You got kids?” Dave asked him.

  He nodded. “Four. I like to keep busy between deployments.”

  “And those are only the ones he knows about,” Allen said.

  Dave pushed another fistful of chicken strips into his mouth and swallowed them after a few bites for the sake of form, all the time wondering if it was possible for him to detach his jaws now. Didn’t seem to matter how much he ate; he remained ravenous. Through the window he saw the oldest boy in the civilian car, maybe five or six years old, dark brown curly hair with skin that didn’t match the driver’s. Maybe they were a mixed couple, then. He couldn’t see the woman in the dark.

  The boy didn’t smile or wave at Dave. In fact, the boy didn’t take any notice of Dave at all. Instead, he was pointing at something off the side of the road.

  “Yeah, four kids,” the beard repeated.

  The windshield shattered, the view of the hood suddenly obscured by a dense latticework of fine white cracks.

  “Whatthefuck …”

  The safety glass exploded inward with a hollow boom, showering them with thousands of tiny jagged chips. Everything slowed down just as it had when Dave had broken his arm as a kid. No, in fact, it was even slower than that, time’s arrow suddenly arrested in flight by some weird super slo-mo effect that the special effects guys at ESPN would have paid good folding money for. Dave had plenty of time to watch the small galaxy of safety glass stars rushing toward him. Rushing slowly.

  Slowly.

  S-l-o-w-l-y.

  He dodged smoothly to one side, taking cover behind the headrest of the front seat as the silvery storm swept into the rear of the SUV’s cabin. He distinctly saw four separate pieces rake long bloody furrows in Captain Heath’s face, one of them just below his left eye. The skin there bunched up as the shrapnel plowed a rough trench through his flesh. Dave looked on, horrified, unable to turn away, as the man’s cheeks seemed to dimple under the impact.

  Another dull, heavy thud. A second impact, followed by a tearing sound and the strangled cry of the man driving the Expedition.

  Dave saw Chief Allen lean forward, still gaping at the driver, who slumped forward in the seat with what appeared to be a one-inch-thick dowel rod pinning him to the seat. A dark arrowhead the size of Dave’s clenched fist protruded from the back of the driver’s seat just a fraction of an inch away from Captain Heath’s kneecap. Scraps of meat and leather swayed from the vicious-looking stone triangle. In a weirdly detached moment, Dave seemed to have all the time in the world to ponder the over-size arrowhead. It was barbed and fashioned from some sort of glassy, volcanic stone, he thought, something like Apache Glass or Pele’s Tears.

  “Shit,” Allen said and time sped up again. The SEAL in the front passenger seat reached across, put the vehicle in neutral, and grabbed the wheel, leaning over the gearshift column when another arrow punched through the windshield. Although he was curled up around his pile of food, the arrow passed close enough for Dave to feel its passage over the back of his head. It speared into the seat behind him, preventing him from sitting up straight again.

  Heath had a radio out. Dave had no idea where he’d been hiding it.

  “Contact, contact, contact.”

  The radio responded. “Copy. Contact at eleven, engaging.”

  The Expedition rammed into the back of the slowly rolling white Prius, spinning it 180 degrees. Dave caught sight of the oldest boy’s horrified face as the vehicle flipped and rolled. Safety glass disintegrated and a little body flew out through a broken window in time for physics
to bring the metal Prius frame back into contact with the asphalt, crushing the child in the process.

  “No,” Dave mouthed helplessly, feeling paralyzed by horror in a way he hadn’t been back on the rig.

  Metal crumpled around him and crunched, more glass shattered, and Dave felt the world slip sideways. Air bags exploded into the cabin, knocking Allen back. He cried out in surprise. They should have stunned Dave, but everything had slowed down again. Physics and consequence moved so impossibly slowly in his world that he was able to watch each of the safety bags fill up the interior of the vehicle as if they were party balloons being blown up by children. A fine white dust drifted off them with a dry, acrid chemical smell. He watched, fascinated, as the faces of the other men flinched involuntarily. The implacable Heath scrunched up his eyes and gritted his bright, perfectly straight teeth as his head turned away from the billowing white walls that came at him from all sides. Dave’s own face seemed set in a curious expression, as though he were watching it all happen on a small screen somewhere. The SUV started to tilt, and for half a second, stretching out over a small eternity, he was certain they were going over. Then the vehicle shuddered and bounced back to earth and stopped moving in any direction. As though hitting the play button on his phone or TV, the natural second-by-second progression of time resumed.

  “Cut him out,” Heath yelled as the air bags deflated.

  “He’s pinned to the seat,” Allen said. “No time for that.”

  Dave heard another sick wet thud, and the other SEAL up front screamed before slumping forward, his skull split by a huge, ugly-looking throwing star.

  Still bent over by the arrow shaft, Dave reached across Allen and tried the door, but it wouldn’t open. In a fit of frustration, he lashed out with a cramped side kick. The door buckled and boomed. “Watch your legs,” he said, and Allen tucked them as far out of the way as he could. Another kick, harder this time, and the whole door flew off with a sound like a shotgun discharge, flying across the street, skimming the tarmac, and sending up a brief shower of sparks. He heard someone curse behind him. Heath. Stumbled out into the rain, climbing over Allen, disoriented and unbalanced. Tried to get his bearings when a fast, black blur slammed him back into the side of the Expedition.

  He grunted as the impact drove the air out of him but shook it off with surprising ease. It felt no worse than a heavy hit on the training bag back in his college football days.

  A radio crackled somewhere, but Dave heard it as though the speaker were standing next to him.

  “Can’t get a clear line of fire.”

  It was an unsettling auditory illusion.

  Dave took in the dent he’d left in the side of the Expedition. The car looked as if it had come off a lot worse than he had. The side panel at the rear had buckled like a crushed beer can. But that might have been the original crash.

  And then he saw it.

  Another monster, similar in basic form to the Hunn and its leashed Fangr, but even taller, with an almost insectile appearance, recalling a giant mantis. It had a quiver full of javelin-size arrows slung across its back, worn over a leather scale shirt that hung down to its knees. Presumably protecting its junk if that were swinging free. A brace of axes and strings of iron throwing stars hung from the monster’s hips, held in place by a belt of leather disks embossed with metal studs. With its oddly insectile, long-limbed gait, Dave could imagine it leaping at him like a demonic grasshopper.

  “I will feast on your loins,” it said.

  “Wow, that’s not gay at all,” Dave said, although mostly to himself.

  Sliveen, he thought. This thing is called a Sliveen. Or maybe the Sliveen, and the surprise of knowing what it was followed close on the heels of his surprise at realizing it had not spoken in English, but he’d still understood it.

  Dave put aside any disorientation, pushed off the side of the wrecked automobile, and took up a fighting stance with his fists bunched in front of him, feeling completely ridiculous. Like he was shaping up to some drunk in the back bar at an Irish funeral. He had not been in a for real, no bullshit fight since college and his football days. A few push and shove barroom confrontations for sure. But Dave was much more of a sucker punch ’em and run type.

  The Sliveen hefted another throwing ax, twirling it in his hand.

  Uh oh.

  Gunfire struck the creature from Dave’s left: a burst from a machine gun of some sort. Chief Allen, still in the Expedition, hosing the ugly fucker down with a short, stubby-looking weapon and yelling at Dave to stay the hell out of the way. It wasn’t nearly as loud as Dave would have expected, and there wasn’t much of a muzzle flash. As he stood there, feeling like an idiot with his fists bunched in front of him, he had time to wonder if that fat black nozzle was some kind of attachment, a suppressor or silencer or whatever they called them. Whatever it was, it didn’t cut the … the Sliveen … in half, but it did have an effect of sorts. Thick blood spurted and bubbled from the creature’s flanks where the bullets chewed through leather armor and … what?

  Was that chain mail? It sparked and flashed as the bullets hit, and Dave knew, he just knew, that yes, the Sliveen scout was outfitted in boiled leather and light chain mail.

  It shrieked as though stung by a swarm of hornets, staggered backward, and turned toward Allen.

  Heath appeared at the rear of the vehicle and opened fire with a pistol. A big fucking hand cannon, a .45 by the look and sound of it. The gun roared with every shot, and fire leaped from the muzzle. No suppressor there. The rounds hit the Sliveen in the center mass as the soldier would have been trained to do. It dropped the tomahawk and staggered back under the impact.

  “Shoot it in the head,” Dave cried. “It’s wearing armor. Shoot it in the fucking face.”

  But Heath already had emptied a whole clip into the monster’s upper body.

  “Chief, get out of there,” Heath yelled.

  “No good,” Allen cried. “I’m pinned.”

  The creature looked like it was in real trouble. It struggled to reach back over its shoulder, producing a bow and arrow. Dave spluttered at the incongruity of it all. The bizarre old-time weapons put the zap on his head even worse than the rabid monster wielding them.

  The burning pyre of the Prius caught his eye. The boy stared sightlessly back at Dave, pinned under the wreckage, all life long gone.

  The family members in the Prius were all dead.

  Fuck this, Dave thought.

  Drawing on his linebacker days, he suddenly launched himself across the short distance separating the Sliveen from them. He dropped his shoulder and pitched into the creature, driving the thing to the ground.

  It screeched in rage—and in pain, he hoped.

  “You dare touch me, calfling?” the creature said, baring its teeth. “You dare—”

  Dave had straddled the thing, but it was strong even with a clip or two of fast lead inside it. Taking a pointer from all the Ultimate Fighting Championship vids he’d watched out on the rig, he kept its long arms pinned with his knees and drove his fists into its face, shattering nostrils, cracking the long, distended jaw, pulverizing the eyes, the cheeks, the mouth, everything.

  “Fuck you,” he shouted into the disintegrating face, and then he lost himself in a tightening, accelerating spiral of rage and bloodlust. This was for Blackbeard. This was for the Birkenstocks in the Prius. The little boy easily coulda been Toby or Jack. This was for Marty and Vince and everyone on the rig. But mostly it was for Dave, who was heartily pissed at how much trouble and grief these fucking things seemed set on causing him.

  His blows rained down faster and faster, mechanically, methodically, but it seemed as though they landed at half speed, then quarter speed, then in the same super slo-mo he recalled from the car crash. He dismantled the skull of the Sliveen in much the same way a meth head might pull apart a rotisserie chicken, punching and tearing and ripping until all the skin and flesh and greasy meat and giblets and stuffing were just an oily slick on the ro
ad surface, and he suddenly had to stop because he was punching the asphalt and it was hurting his knuckles.

  “Towel,” Chief Allen offered. His hand was shaking. Not so much the Midwestern surfer bro now, eh, Chief?

  “What?” Dave asked, still disoriented. The scent of burning flesh from the Prius had his stomach churning and turning. Wasn’t Allen pinned in the car? How long ago was that?

  “You need a towel,” Allen said unsteadily. “You’re covered in …”

  “Chitlins, I believe,” Captain Heath said. “In the local vernacular.”

  Dave stared at him. Heath made a joke? Now?

  He addressed the quartet of men from the second Ford Expedition. They stood around the Sliveen, weapons trained on the corpse, faces slack with shock or something like it. “Stay here to manage containment with local law enforcement,” Heath said. “We need to get this thing out of here.”

  “Sir,” Chief Allen said, “we can’t just mount that thing on the hood like a deer. People will stare.”

  “Gator,” Dave said in a tired voice. “Wrap it up in something. Tell anyone who asks it’s a gator. Tell ’em the head got chewed up in the prop. Hide’s still worth hauling somewhere.”

  He examined his hands. The knuckles he’d skinned raw had heeled already. Bright pink skin had closed over the exposed bone he’d opened up pounding the bitumen. They itched like a bitch.

  “Casevac?” one of the new arrivals asked, taking in the wrecked Expedition and the corpses in the totaled Prius. Allen walked over there. He knelt down on one knee in front of each body and closed the eyes. After he closed the child’s eyes, he bowed his head for a moment.

  No one said a word, bowing heads themselves, even Heath.

  Prayers, Dave thought. He bowed his head, but he wasn’t a praying man and he felt awkward doing it, like he was pretending and they would soon catch on to him. When Allen rose from his devotions, he returned with a pair of dog tags in his hands that he put deep in his pocket. The rain had matted his beach boy hair.