Dave vs. the Monsters

by John Birmingham

  “I’m not really dressed for this,” Dave said, who was still in the clothes Allen had provided him.

  “Just do one,” Captain Heath said. “See what happens.”

  He took up his position at the bar, allowing Swindt to adjust his foot placement and grip.

  “Bend your knees, not your back,” said the marine, and Dave lowered himself to make the first lift. He squeezed the bar, as someone had told him to or he’d read in some fitness magazine or seen on Biggest Loser or something years ago, took a deep breath, exhaled, and lifted.

  At the last moment he checked himself. Memories of the last day, of Lieutenant Dent flying through the air, of the bedside unit splintering under his fist, of the chin-ups, caused him to dial it back just a little.

  It was a good thing he did.

  The two hundred pounds of metal came flying up off the rubber mat, slipped out of his fists at the top of the lift, and tore through the canvas tarpaulin with a dull, wet roar.

  “Move!” Swindt roared, charging at the assembled officers, his arms wide as if to gather them up. Allen swore and dived out the side of the makeshift tent. Dave was aware of everything slowing down. Everything but his thoughts. The physical world, the world of real things, seemed to move in super slo-mo, and when he focused, he could pull in tight on all the little details: the individual threads of the tarpaulin stretching and snapping and coming asunder; the first drops of rain tumbling in through the rent in the cover; the muddy fantails thrown up by the shoes of the officers as they ran; the way Allen turned his body in midair when he dived, tucking in his chin and making a circle of his arms as he dropped one shoulder and transitioned from a horizontal dive into a falling shoulder roll. But most of all he could see the giant weight set climb into the leaden sky like a bottle rocket. The tarp, torn free of its moorings and shredded by the passage of the weight bar, flapped gamely after it, but rain and aerodynamics conspired to drag it back. All this Dave observed as if sitting in his favorite armchair in his apartment back in Houston, watching a replay on ESPN.

  But that was out in the world. Inside, everything speeded up. He found he was able to calculate the exact trajectory the lethally tumbling deadweight would take. Equations he hadn’t thought of since his undergrad engineering days spilled across his conscious mind, providing vectors and angles of escape and acceleration. He was able to imagine the flight of the slowly spinning weight bar as it reached its apogee high above the camp and began a long, chaotic tumble back to earth. He could see from the paths they all had taken in their escape that Johnson had chosen poorly, and long before the weight crashed down on the lieutenant’s right shoulder, Dave was able to “see” the outcome in all its unpleasant detail. Shattered bones, rendered flesh, a skull crushed and split open, spilling its gray, steaming contents into the mud.

  He pushed away the images of yesterday’s slaughter on the rig that wanted to come flooding back in behind his eyeballs. They were replaced by even more upsetting images of that little boy in the Prius. An unpleasant electric tingle ran over his skin, and he snarled in a strangely animalistic fashion. That kid wasn’t much younger than his own youngest, Jack. And then he couldn’t help imagining the Hunn and Fangr fighting over Toby and Jack, tearing them apart …

  But even as he saw all those things in slow motion, he already was moving at such speed that the others would later say that it was as though he winked out of existence for a second until they picked him up again as a blur of fluid motion threading through their stationary forms.

  He cleared the tent just before it collapsed in on itself, and using the edge of the rubber mat, the last firm foothold he knew he would enjoy, Dave Hooper launched himself skyward. Whereas he had surprised himself before by nearly jumping over the chinning bar, there was no surprise this time. He knew that he was about to leap sixty-three feet and four inches into the air, where he would intercept the weight bar at the zenith of its flight, grasping it firmly with both hands, his left hand nine inches from the weight plates at one end and his right hand a little closer, at seven.

  Dave made the intercept exactly as envisioned, pulling the weight bar out of its flight path and down onto a new and safer course.

  He landed in the clear, between two sheds, holding the bar as though it were no heavier than a pool cue. The sound of impact as his feet punched into the sodden earth rolled away from the explosion of mud like the fart of an elephant god.

  Dave tossed the weighted bar to one side. He was standing in a crater at least a foot deep.

  Captain Heath canceled the rest of his physical, including a three-mile run in the rain that Dave was more than happy to miss. He hated running even though he felt as though he could cover three miles in a couple of minutes. Thinking about that only led him to thoughts of the Hunn, however, and he shied away.

  The entourage broke up, and Dave found himself herded into an aid station by Allen and Heath. He looked around for his crewmates from the rig but saw no sign of them.

  “Debriefing,” said Heath.

  “Please roll up your sleeve, sir,” a nurse said. Concentrating fiercely, she took samples of his blood, filling seven tubes from each arm. When she whisked the needle away and swabbed the puncture wound, a cloud crossed over her face.

  “There’s no …”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Allen said. “Dude here’s like a self-sealing tire.”

  “Next station,” Heath said. “Let’s go. We’re on the clock now.”

  And so it went for the next half hour as they fairly ran from one station to the next.

  “Turn your head and cough, please.”

  “Childhood disabilities?”

  “Any broken bones?”

  “Allergies?”

  “Do you feel abnormal in any way? If so, could you please describe it?”

  Dave answered that one with a snort. “You’re shitting me, right?”

  “Do you have a history of mental disturbances?” a navy shrink asked.

  “Where did you say you broke your arm when you were a kid?” the X-ray tech asked.

  Standing before one of the navy doctors, he pointed at his right arm.

  The X-ray showed no evidence of the fracture.

  “Could you fill this cup, please?” a nurse from earlier in the morning asked. She was a smokin’-hot blonde with lips that were all lurid promise. Best thing he’d seen on this miserable base so far.

  Bad Dave came roaring back in the worst way.

  “I could fill more than that if you like, honey,” he said.

  “Just the cup, sir,” she said, blushing.

  Don’t blow hot, he thought, filling the cup in a bathroom while Allen looked vaguely in his direction. Just don’t blow hot.

  It was a legit concern. His cock had stiffened like a length of rebar when he started to imagine the sorts of things he could get up to, or down to, with a woman like that, and his balls were humming like a coal miners’ choir. Dave feared that once he let the old persuader out of its cage, there’d be no getting it back in without some sort of action.

  He also no longer imagined that whatever bizarre monkey gland extract those hookers had slipped him was responsible for what was happening. But neither did he want these navy guys ratting him out to BP. If he’d taken his usual drug test out on the rig, he would have had a small bottle of baby piss he could swap for his own sample, all courtesy of Vince Martinelli’s youngest. Here, however, he probably was going to start alarms ringing in about three seconds. He forced his mind to settle down, forced it away from thoughts of the nurse and onto the thick pile of unopened letters he knew was sitting on his kitchen table back in Houston. Correspondence from the IRS, and almost certainly not love letters. It had been a couple of years since he’d filed his returns. Things just got away from him, was all. Things with Annie, the separation, the divorce prep. Things with work. You know, things.

  His dick deflated like an old inner tube, and within a minute he’d managed to fill the specimen jar with a full measu
re of Dave’s Golden Ale. He finished up, washed his hands as his mother had taught him, and returned to the nurse’s station, where she waited with Allen, her face unreadably neutral except for the high color in her cheeks, which had not faded.

  Ha, still got it, Dave thought.

  Blondie took the cup, gloves in place, and pulled a tab on the side that showed her the results.

  Here we go, Dave thought.

  “Good to go,” she said.

  No. Fucking. Way.

  He couldn’t believe it. No way had he just passed a drug test. Most of the bonus he hadn’t spent on pussy he’d blown on top-shelf coke a week earlier. There had to be snowdrifts of the stuff still blowing around in his system.

  “You are my new best friend,” he told her, almost sighing with relief.

  “I already have enough friends,” she said.

  Whoa. Dave was certain that was a come-on. No way he could have misinterpreted that, and he was about to reply in kind when he felt the first familiar pang in his stomach again. This time he knew what was coming.

  “Hey, Allen,” he called out.

  “Yeah?”

  “You think there’ll be any waffles left at the mess tent?”

  11

  He fed. Half an hour of relentless two-fisted piggery that accounted for all of the leftover bacon and biscuits in the camp kitchen. Allen shooed away most of the onlookers who had no reason to be looking on, but there was no getting rid of the personnel detailed to KP for the morning. They watched in awe as Dave did his trick, making enough food for three grown men disappear inside one. Chief Allen excused himself for a few minutes while Dave was fueling up and then returned with an armful of new clothes, fatigues similar to those the SEALs wore, which looked a shade different from the jarheads’ preferred patterns. Although, Dave corrected himself as he sucked up another strip of bacon, preference probably had nothing to do with it. He’d never understood the way the uniforms kept changing on Stargate, which he used to enjoy watching with his boys, and to his civilian eye there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to people’s fashion choices on this base, either. Some were tricked out in what looked like quite formal attire. Some went around in gym gear. Others wore what he assumed were combat fatigues like the ones he climbed into after his second breakfast. He’d never asked his brother about it and never would now, of course. A terrible sadness washed over him, as bad as any of the animal grief he’d felt when they told him Andy was dead. It was so unexpected, and so fucking bad, that he had to hold his breath lest it come out in a sob. And then, just as abruptly, it was gone and he was delighted to find that the cargo pockets of his pants were filled with CLIF protein bars and energy gels.

  What the fuck?

  His emotions were everywhere and for a second he was struck by the image of himself as a spinning top just about to wobble out of control.

  Enough of this teen girl bullshit. Get a grip, idiot.

  He checked his new wardrobe again. It was something to do. Something to distract his thoughts. He got a pair of tan combat boots and a black T-shirt. Good. Allen also set body armor down in front of him with ammo pouches filled with yet more food.

  “You can change back at your tent,” Allen said. “When you’re done here.”

  “I’m not enlisting, you know,” Dave said, forcing himself into the moment. Into this moment.

  “We wouldn’t have you,” Allen shot back. He attempted a lopsided grin, but to Hooper the stress lines around his eyes looked every bit as deep as they had after the ambush last night. “We still have some standards,” said the chief petty officer. “But everyone wears a plate carrier to the site. It’s just the rules. Also, I got you a CamelBak. Filled it with Gatorade. Might help.”

  “Plate carrier?” Dave asked.

  Allen held up the body armor, which looked like a pair of bib overalls with the bottoms cut off. “A lot of guys leave the plates behind, don’t like the weight. I’d prefer you left yours in. The captain will have my ass if you get killed and you aren’t wearing this.”

  “Okay.”

  His hunger abated after another half a loaf of white bread smeared with grape jelly, and he followed Allen back to the medical tent where the rig survivors had bunked down last night. There was no sign of his crew.

  “They’re doing psych evals about now,” Allen said. “See if they’re crazy enough to let loose in the real world again.”

  “So they’re going home today?”

  “Or tomorrow.”

  “After the story breaks for real?”

  Allen rewarded him with a half smile.

  “Now you’re learning.”

  Once dressed, Dave looked like a street person who’d lucked out in the garbage cans behind a surplus warehouse. The T-shirt was a size too big, at least across the stomach, although the sleeves and shoulders were a little tight. He adjusted the straps and Velcro on the body armor, which felt like a life jacket to him, familiar from drills out on the platforms, light and not particularly burdensome.

  “Thanks for these,” he said, holding up a peanut butter and caramel-flavored OhYeah! bar.

  “Thank the long-suffering taxpayers of these United States,” Allen said, reminding Dave of the unopened letter from Uncle Sam’s shakedown man back on the kitchen table in his apartment. He dreaded to think what might be waiting for him in such a fat, heavy-looking envelope. The thought occurred to him as he laced up his new boots that he might be able to cut a deal with the IRS, some sort of contribution in kind where they gave him a tax credit for killing those things out on the Longreach and last night on the way here. After all, you could totally look at that as a community service in a way. It was a selfish thought, he knew, unworthy of the current circumstances and disrespectful of the losses and suffering others had endured yadda yadda yadda.

  And yet …

  The same way he’d been meaning to sit his ass down and do his taxes, he’d also been meaning to get an accountant. Someone he could just give those unfiled returns to. Somebody who could get him out of the hole he’d dug himself the last couple of years. As he fitted and straightened the government-issued clothes and pondered just how much the military at least seemed to want and need his help, Dave Hooper had to ask himself if maybe an accountant wasn’t the right call to make here. Maybe a lawyer would be better. Or an agent who could find the right sorts of lawyers and accountants. He was gonna be a celebrity after all, one way or another, and celebrities all had agents to take care of their business, didn’t they?

  He stomped the boots into place and stood up, noticing the huge old Sony TV in the corner of the room. It looked like one of the last WEGA models, as big as the moving van that delivered it, thought Dave, who’d paid cash for the latest Samsung flat-screen with his bonus before this last one. The one he’d spent on hookers and blow. The cash transaction brought down the price—the TV was probably, no, almost certainly, stolen—and left no trail for Annie’s douche bag lawyer to follow.

  He wondered when, or if, he might ever get home to enjoy firing up Ol’ Sammy again.

  “We good to go?” the chief asked.

  Allen had changed his outfit, too, and it didn’t look like a change for the better. He wore digital jungle fatigues and boots, with pads on his elbows and knees. His helmet, which rested on a table on a stack of auto mags and old copies of Sports Illustrated, bristled with all sorts of attachments on a complicated rail system. He seemed to be carrying half his body weight in weapons and ammo. Dave wasn’t a gun nut. Never had been, and he took a powerful dislike to them after his brother was killed, but he knew enough to be able to recognize a shotgun, some sort of assault rifle, two pistols, a bunch of grenades, and a long, wicked-looking fighting knife. He wasn’t sure he’d want to go up against any of the—

  Dar Hunn. Dur Fangr.

  —the creatures he’d encountered on the rig with a little bitty pigsticker like that, but a snout full of buckshot or a burst of armor-piercing ammo probably would do the job.

  “Go w
here?” Dave asked.

  Allen answered with one word: “Longreach.”

  His heart sank, but he had known it was coming. They were always going to take him back out there, make him walk through everything again.

  “Sure, let’s rock,” he said without enthusiasm as he stripped the wrapper from an OhYeah! bar. He chewed mechanically, eating for fuel, as he recalled the feeling of the splitting maul smashing through the thick mantle of the Hunn’s facial bone and gristle. He could remember a lot more of the encounter the farther he was from it, and that was a problem. Because he’d like to get as far away as possible from that day as well as forgetting all about it. At first it had seemed like a barely remembered dream. Now the moment of impact was a muscle memory as tactile as if he had swung the heavy sledge just a second ago.

  “What happened to the one we killed last night?” he asked as Allen gathered up his kit and they headed toward the exit. He didn’t feel comfortable calling the Sliveen by its name. It sounded like madness in his head when he formed the words.

  Allen shrugged.

  “No idea. That’s way above my pay grade, Dave. It could be a thousand miles from here by now on a slab at the Smithsonian or Area 51.”

  “Really?” Dave asked, his interest piqued. “There’s an Area 51 for real?”

  “No. But maybe there should be.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  He finished the peanut and caramel snack, no longer hungry. He was learning to recognize the signs of the weird, almost instant starvation now and thought perhaps he could keep the pain at bay with smaller but regular deposits of energy-dense food. The Turban had been right, he thought. His metabolism was running at white heat. It had burned off his love handles and blubber eel, given him a stripped down, almost Spartan look that he thought of as gaunt rather than healthy. It had been so long since Dave Hooper had gone without a cushioning layer of fat under his skin that he’d forgotten what being fit looked like.

  Like CPO Zach Allen, for instance. The SEAL was all hard lines and angles not because he worked for it but because he worked hard at his job, and the physique just came as part of that deal. He looked like a clenched fist.