Dave vs. the Monsters

by John Birmingham

  “You’re not trained for it, man. We got troop net and command net on this. We can’t have anyone getting on yapping away. Bad enough when you get the wrong brass on the net. It’ll mess everything up; trust me.”

  Okay. That was cool. Dave wouldn’t allow an outsider to come onto his rig and start dicking around, either. But it meant that for the moment he was cut off, cocooned within the early evening darkness and the roar of the helicopter. There was little room to spare in the cabin because of the SEALs’ equipment and in one or two cases the sheer size of the men. Two door gunners manned a couple of Gatling guns. Dave was totally sure they were definitely Gatling guns, like right out of the movies. He kept himself tucked up tightly on his little fold-down seat, looking out of the open door as the forest slipped under their wheels.

  The stormy weather had cleared as the sun set, and only a few thin strands of cloud obscured the first gleaming stars and a bright three-quarter moon that glistened on the rivers and streams and the bayou below. Lights stood out here and there, singly and clustered in small settlements. The towns grew larger as they flew south, and New Orleans loomed on the horizon as a dome of light. The chopper swung around to the southeast, just perceptibly, to avoid overflying the city. Dave could see flashes of sheet lightning out over the water, and then he realized that some of the flashes were on the ground inside the city. As they drew closer, he was certain he could see fires within the greater metro area.

  “What’s that?” he shouted to Allen, pointing at the flickering light source.

  The SEAL consulted his comm gear and called back, “Nothing. Just a little riot. Gang fight or something. There’s been some gunfire, so we’re jagging east to avoid it. Be embarrassing getting shot in the tush over our own turf.”

  “Yo,” said one of the SEALs, pointing at the tiny light show. “Murder city nights.”

  It was an in-joke or reference worth a few appreciative nods and fist bumps from his friends but lost on Dave.

  He gave Allen a thumbs-up to signal that he understood before fetching another protein bar from one of the cargo pockets of his pants. He could sense himself getting peckish again and wanted to eat something, anything, before the wracking gut cramps doubled him over. Ha! Scored, he thought as he recognized an Eat Smart Choc Peanut Caramel Crunch. He knew this one from the vending machines at the depot. As far as tasteless protein slabs went, it wasn’t too shabby. Not as gooey and sticky on the teeth as some other bars and sporting just the right amount of crunch. Like a chocolate Rice Krispy, he thought as he reduced it to a memory in a couple of bites, following up with a gel tube that he found he could easily read in the dark. A PowerBar Gel Double Latte, it tasted no worse than the instant coffee at work, and with the Eat Smart bar it eased his emerging hunger pangs, tamping them down nicely.

  The SEALs were all packing four-eyed night vision goggles, which again he had not been given, but again he didn’t much care. As Dave took the time to look around the cabin, he found that deepening nightfall didn’t really handicap him. The color washed out of his surroundings, but he was able to make out even fine details in a clear monochrome gray. Something new, he thought. He’d been putting off seeing an eye doctor about his worsening eyesight, an inability to refocus from long to short distances. Hadn’t even been able to admit to himself his eyes were going after he bought a magnifying glass to keep at his apartment. It wasn’t for reading small print, of course. No. It was for burning bugs and toy soldiers when the boys came for an access visit. Which, of course, they never did. Now he could read the small print on the gel tube in the dark of the chopper cabin.

  In normal circumstances Dave would have been bringing the awesome the last two days. He’d kicked some ass, dodged a hangover, destroyed the buffet, dropped a little weight, and gotten in an epic gym session. He was by any measure fucking crushing it. But his stomach fluttered with nerves as he read the label on the gel packet:

  110 calories

  Total carb 27 g

  Sugars 10 g

  Sodium 200 mg

  All in tiny little letters he’d have been unable to read not long ago even at high noon in direct sunlight. The hammering thud of the rotors fed vibrations up through the soles of his boots into his butt and guts. He absentmindedly ate another bar, mostly for something to occupy him.

  He’d had a couple of skin cancers off last year. Side of his neck and just behind one ear. More occupational hazards given how much time he spent in the sun. His barber spotted the small lesions on the back of his head. Dave had been watching the sore on his neck that never went away, just under his left ear, watching it the way you would watch a strange dog standing astride your path with its hackles up. He knew it was probably bad, but if he didn’t go to the doctor and the doctor didn’t confirm that … well, he was sweet.

  The basal cell carcinoma had been diagnosed during his annual physical, and BP’s own doctor had cut it out in the surgery that day, all the while cursing him for an idiot for letting it go so long.

  The sense of creeping dread that he’d swallowed hard every time he woke up and looked at that small red sore that never healed? Yeah. That. Right now. Raised to the power of what the fuck was happening to him?

  “Damn.”

  The unfamiliar voice of one of Allen’s comrades shook him out of the reverie. One of the SEALs was pointing off toward where a genuine light and magic show flared and sputtered in a blacked-out section of the outer burbs.

  “What’s that?” someone asked.

  “Looks like the Central City projects,” replied a voice with a distinct Cajun lilt. “Mebbe Calliope or Magnolia. Same old same old.”

  “Looks like fucking Helmand at that time of the month,” said a monster of a man called Igor. Sporting an Amish-style beard on steroids, the man had biceps the size of bowling balls. Of all the men on the chopper, Dave figured this guy was the one who could give him a run for his money on the weight bench.

  “Damn. That’s tracer fire,” he heard Allen call out.

  A couple of voices chorused together:

  “For illuminating targets. And destroying personnel.”

  Another in-joke, he gathered.

  Before he could crane around far enough to see, the chopper’s flight path took them beyond the point where he could get a good angle. He sat back, cupped his hands over his mouth, and called out to Allen, “What was all that? Sounded serious.”

  The SEAL didn’t seem to think so.

  “Drugs, for sure. Seen worse in Florida. Flown over honest to God street wars in Mexico that’d put that side show out of business,” he said, jerking his thumb back in the direction of the city.

  The cabin settled down again, and soon enough they’d crossed the coast and were flying out over the barrier islands, heading south for the Longreach.

  Some of the SEALs dozed on the flight out, but unlike his last trip to the platform, Dave stayed awake the whole way. He topped up the tank with another protein bar and sipped some Gatorade from his CamelBak, but otherwise he was alone with his thoughts.

  They weren’t pleasant.

  He thought that if all that had happened was a garden-variety fire and explosion on the rig, he’d have been better off. He’d have dealt. He told himself that if there had been some extreme but rational explanation for the things that crawled up the pylons or the drill, something like his theory about cracking open an ancient ecosphere, he could have dealt with that, too. In good time.

  But there was nothing on God’s green earth that explained what had happened to him personally. Not the sudden Super Friends status update or the utterly alien memories that seemed to come with them. Memories of long eons lived …

  In the UnderRealms.

  Yeah. That shit. Knowledge of a world he’d never even imagined before. A world of Hunn and Gnarrl. Of minions and Thresh. Of the Grande Horde and the Low Queens and …

  He shook his head.

  It did not help to think about that stuff. About what it might mean. It was like stories of
murdered kids, pedophiles, people with basketball-size tumors growing out of their nut sacks, and those special kinds of retards who liked to run lawn mowers over puppies.

  You might see that sort of thing in the paper, but if you were smart, you let your eyes move quickly over it to the nearest convenient sports story. You didn’t want that poison inside your skull. It was like the images of that poor little bastard in the Prius. The look in his eyes just before all that fast-moving metal fell on him.

  Better to look away.

  Dave stretched back as best he could and ignored the vibration of the airframe as he leaned his head against the thin cushioning. He thought about his own boys, Toby and Jack. He still hadn’t had a chance to catch up with them yet, and he was starting to feel guilty about that. That was a bad sign. He knew from experience that he was a slow starter on guilt trips, and if he was feeling it only now, he was probably too late. Annie would have them out of school for a few days. He knew how that went, too. She’d cut them off sugar and gluten. Not that they’d ever tested positive for a gluten allergy. She just thought everyone should eat less gluten. She’d shut down the TV set and unplug the net and take the boys completely offline, reading bedtime stories to them about how everyone was different and that was okay. Making them watch the gay episodes of Glee, which seemed to be all of them as best Dave could tell. Oh, and there’d be no adventures with trampolines and tree houses for his boys, either, not so long as Anxious Annie had them in lockdown. And lockdown was her usual response to any Dave-related problems, even though this one totally wasn’t his fault. But he wasn’t there to explain that to them, was he? And for once, maybe, he had to admit, she might be right to pack them in Nerf.

  “Whatcha thinkin’, Dave?” Allen shouted over the rotor noise.

  “I’m thinking my ex-wife has told my kids that I probably blew up the Longreach by drunk driving a train into it.”

  Allen mocked up a look of profound disbelief. “Yeah? Looked to me like you were thinking about the very serious talk you’ll be having with Captain Heath just as soon as we land.”

  “Oh, yeah. That, too,” he shouted back.

  He’d be on the platform tonight and most of tomorrow, at a guess, but he was sure Heath would let him get in touch with the boys when they’d done whatever it was that needed doing out there. Fucked if he knew what he was gonna tell them, though.

  Lies, probably. He was good at that.

  13

  “Two minutes.”

  Allen kicked the toe of his boot and relayed the message from the pilot. The SEAL team, or whatever they called themselves, appeared to power up around him, with men checking their own load-outs before cross-checking one another’s. With nothing to check, Dave contented himself with scanning the ocean for familiar sights. He could make out Thunder Horse on the horizon. The red and white structure was the largest rig in the Gulf of Mexico. It had survived stormy weather and hurricanes. Would it survive an invasion from Dungeons & Dragons as well? A pair of ships from the navy sketched a lazy patrol around the massive facility. Destroyers he supposed. Bigger than coast guard cutters, smaller than an aircraft carrier. He’d seen other ships on the way out to the Longreach, including something that might have been an aircraft carrier.

  Were any of his people still over at Thunder Horse? He hoped not. The casualties should have been evacuated to shore by now, and anyone who was good to go should be long gone.

  What could the crew of that platform be thinking, though? Had Thunder Horse played host to a couple of survivors babbling gibberish about monsters and demons boiling up out of the water? Were they watching satellite news, scoffing at the ignorant crap the media always went on with about the industry, or talking quietly, fearfully, among themselves as the first hints of the truth leaked out in the wider world.

  “Yeah, Ortiz, he said something like that when we got him in off the Longreach. Poor bastard was burned up pretty bad, but he was talking some crazy shit about monsters, not fire.”

  Allen held up his index finger: “One minute!”

  Dave expected the SEALs to start cocking weapons, but nobody did. Allen appeared to check the safety on his M4, but that was all. Then he could see the Longreach as the Seahawk swung around on the final approach, and he knew they weren’t going in guns blazing. All the way out he’d been calling the helicopter a Black Hawk because it looked like one, but Allen had put him straight on that, much to Dave’s embarrassment.

  The rig was lit up from top to bottom, with unfamiliar emergency lighting strung up around the most heavily damaged sections. The helipad was brightly illuminated and busy with military personnel, including a guy with bright paddles who waved them in.

  As the big bird flared, Dave suffered a few flashes of recall from the last time he’d set down here.

  Vince stiff-arming guys out of the way as they scrambled to get on the evac flight.

  The burns. The open wounds.

  You dare not you dare not you dare not …

  The chopper settled down with a dainty one-two step, and rather than rappelling down ropes or diving for cover, everyone exited as though climbing off a bus. The feel of the deck under his new boots was strange, familiar yet wrong. He stayed bent over for a little longer as he cleared the rotor blades. The Seahawk felt much bigger and more dangerous than the civilian models he was used to shuttling around on. He joined Allen and his guys off to the side of the helipad, waiting to be introduced, but Captain Heath had other plans.

  “If you’ll follow me, Mr. Hooper,” he shouted over the noise of the chopper lifting off. Allen gave him a brief wave before leading his men off toward the far side of the pad, where the SEALs appeared to have set up some kind of temporary command post in one of the converted shipping containers given over to the platform’s admin section. Heath, who seemed to have no trouble finding his way around the unfamiliar structure, led Hooper down the same path he had taken when following Vince Martinelli. They passed marines geared up for Call of Duty, more guys who looked like carbon copies of the SEALs, and a lot of support folks, both men and women. He had no idea what any of them were doing. That was why this place felt wrong. Or one of the reasons. He had exactly zero clues about what was happening here now. But at least nobody was running around screaming and dying, so that was a good start.

  Captain Heath turned left instead of right after passing the small flight operations shack and took the steps down to the main canteen rather than the smaller crew lounge where Dave had found Marty Grbac. A couple of marines stood guard outside the heavy plastic swinging doors. They wore rubber gloves and masks. Heath collected his own protective gear and passed some back to Hooper. Dave thought the paper mask wasn’t necessary, but he put it on anyway. The smell coming out of there was foul. It clashed with the odor of cooking food in the nearby kitchen. He could see marines moving in and out of the kitchen service doors with boxes of food from the freezers. Probably a good idea to get them away.

  “Excuse me.” A young girl in a lab coat pirouetted past him carrying a tray full of what might have been liver. It looked and smelled wrong. The space where he’d eaten so many meals was unrecognizable. Heavy plastic sheeting covered all the walls and the floor. Temporary lighting burned harsh and white, throwing everything into hard relief. Seven or eight people in biohazard suits ghosted around four stainless steel trolley tables on which lay the remains of the Hunn and its acolyte Fangr. The science types had all pulled back the hoods of their white coveralls, and like Dave and Heath they wore only paper face masks.

  “We’ve tested for airborne contaminants,” the officer said, as if reading Dave’s mind. “Nothing. A bad smell, but that’s what rotting flesh smells like.”

  Dave knew the stench, but this was not just the foul smell of dead meat gone bad. He could stick his head into his refrigerator back in Houston for that experience. No, he recognized the stink of decaying demon flesh. A rank odor as old as the sediment through which they’d been drilling these last months. He had always known it.


  Just as he’d always known these creatures. That was why Heath had brought him out here. He’d been worried that the navy guys would think him mad when he let them know a little bit of what was happening inside his head.

  It was worse than that. Now they thought he was useful.

  His feet seemed to be stuck to the floor, making it impossible to move toward the trolleys. The medical staff, or researchers, or whatever they were, had ceased their endeavors one by one as they took in his arrival. They were all staring at him.

  More fans.

  He felt Heath’s hand on his arm, urging him forward, but gently.

  “Come on. Tell me what you can.”

  The human contact was enough to get him going again. He approached the largest trolley, on which lay the corpse of the Hunn. It was odd. He’d only had a few seconds when he’d first encountered the beast, and then he’d been in a hospital bed and everything had changed. So there hadn’t been time to note any details beyond the gross and obvious ones such as its size and inhuman features. Yet when he let his eyes travel up and down the corpse, from the massive horned feet to the crushed ruin of the face, he saw particulars that were entirely new to him, details he hadn’t had time to attend to before, such as the vivid artwork tattooed all over the Hunn’s putrefying hide.

  He stared at the swirls and loops of black ink.

  They told a story.

  Yet in really seeing these things for the first time he also recalled them from a sink so deep and vast that it triggered an association from his own past, from some bullshit class in undergrad psych he’d crashed once because he was chasing some girl who was enrolled in it.