As I walked home, I wondered if they might watch me, test me. That was how it was in the stories; you had to pass a test before you joined the club.
The next day five of them were at my door. My parents came and got me.
“Is everything okay, Maria?” my mom asked, eyes wide.
I kissed her on the forehead. I went with them. I took nothing with me.
We walked a reverent silence among streets I had known so well in that other life but which looked new to me now, as though they were a new home. I stopped to smear pieces of Venice across my face. The chalky powder itched on my skin. Some of the monster killers clutched skateboards to their chests. When we were a mile or more away from my old apartment, we stopped. It was then that they talked. The shortest and smallest one talked first. She sounded like a teenager. “We have a plan, right. We put together a tank of fish, right, to, like, lure the red monsters here. Once they’re here, you’ll, you know, use this, right?” She handed me a handmade bomb wrapped in black tape. It was a misshapen sphere. I thought it would be smooth and slick, like in the cartoons. They told me I would light it when it was close enough to matter. “Then, run, right?” the shortest and smallest one said.
“I will,” I said. But I could tell more from what she didn’t say; that there may not be time for running, that I would do the thing they could not bring themselves to do. “I’ll blow those red fuckers to pieces.”
“Cool,” she said.
But now, as I stand in front of the red monster, there’s this empty feeling in my stomach, like I haven’t eaten for months, and I don’t think it’s anything that death, anyone’s death, will cure. I look up at the red monster, at its belly, and it reminds me, with its buggy eyes, of the geckos that used to crawl across my window screen in the summer. We used to have a cat, Simon and I, before the cat snuck out one day and never returned. The cat, I remember, a random-ass memory for this moment, used to stand on the other side of the closed glass window and bat at the gecko’s belly. The cat's name was Hero, and she would make this noise like she was crying. I always thought it was because of the gecko, because she couldn’t stand not getting what she wanted, the spoiled brat.
But I know now, looking at the red monster, that not being able to catch that gecko was a sick reminder of her lost home. Not that I took her from the outside world where her mom had birthed her, not only that I forced her to stay inside, but also that she had lost the whole way of who she was. Domestication. She’d lost the wild world. She was part of our world now, and her place there was so pointless, that all she had to spend her days with was trying to catch a gecko through the glass.
We don’t even register, not usually, to these monsters. What kind of place must the world they came from be? I can’t imagine. I don’t want to imagine. I just wish, for this moment, that they could have it back.
I hold the bomb in my hand. What happens now? Maybe it explodes, even though I no longer believe that it's worth it, even though I see now that the world has gone to shit and it is everyone's fault and no one's. Maybe this bomb is bunk anyhow, and what really matters is that here two creatures see each other, and I mean really see each other, for the first time. And yeah, there's no way we can understand each other—we can only pretend we know what makes the other watch so forlorn out the window—and it's not like we're going to shake hands or whatever they call those claws of theirs in their giant lobster brains. But does it matter? There is no ending that will bring Simon back.
There is no ending that will save me and the monster both.
Operation Starfish
Peter Rawlik
Raina,
If you are reading this, then I am either dead or my condition has deteriorated such that I might as well be. As it is, I write this when I can, during the early morning hours when my mind is still my own, before the day and the medication take it all away. The doctors will tell you that I am unstable, delusional, that I make things up. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, I snapped that day, over what appeared to be a very minor incident. The children had been playing with an anthill, throwing stones and splashing it with water. The ants were enraged, and when one child stood too still, too close, he was swarmed. Your reaction to rescue the children and then later douse the colony with ice water was entirely understandable, predictable even. It must have been odd to have seen an old man like me, come after you, screaming “Leave them alone!” Chanting it like some mad mantra.
I was still repeating it hours later after John drove me back to the home. “Leave them alone.” I whimpered “Leave them alone.” I had no right to scream at you that day, no right at all. You had done nothing wrong, nothing, and yet your actions - they sparked a memory, a terrible memory one that I had hoped to forget. But that day came roaring back out of the past and filled me with such uncontrollable emotion. I was not angry with you Raina, though it may have seemed it, I was afraid. What you were doing, the memories, the combination filled me with such terror I could do nothing but lash out. Even now, all these weeks later I am still afraid. I have told no one this, and I think perhaps this has been a mistake. Perhaps if I write it down, perhaps then I shall find some kind of relief.
You may recall that I have told you I once served on the USS Miskatonic, but what I have not said was in what capacity. I was a Marine, but attached to an organization called JACK, which ostensibly, stood for Joint Advisory Commission Korea, but in reality had little to do with that subject. What the acronym really stood for, I do not know, we were intelligence agents, but not just any agents. We investigated the weird, the strange, the unexpected, our motto was “Be Nimble, Be Quick, Be Saucy” meaning that we were flexible, fast, and willing to do whatever it took to get the job done, and not get caught. I had become something of an expert in ballistics and missiles, a field not normally associated with traditional intelligence but JACK was anything but traditional, and I had served with statisticians, engineers, and physicists. My expertise may have been in engineering, but I had long since surpassed my training, and I knew more about biology, chemistry, acoustics and psychology then I would have ever learned at any university. In the late fifties these skills had earned me an assignment in London, but in 1960 there had been a restructuring, and I suddenly found myself as assistant to the Colonel Doctor Wingate Peaslee, the Terrible Old Man, as he was called, JACK’s number two man. Peaslee was known for his ruthlessness, and there were rumors that he had been particularly harsh when dealing with the North Koreans. I of course had no way to validate any of this. The staff called him the TOM, something I wouldn’t dare to think let alone say back then. I knew that he was a man unlike others, one that it better to accommodate than to cross.
It was the TOM that brought me to the Miskatonic in July of 1962. It was a ship like any other, full of hard working men who took both their jobs and their entertainment seriously. They worked hard and they played hard, and while we sailed from Japan to the mid-Pacific I spent several nights drinking the rot-gut that these men called whisky, and watching them slide under the table, while I sat quietly finishing shot after shot. Not that such behavior was without risk, and there was an incident with a midshipman who decided to sample a bottle from my case of Remmers Imperial Stout. One incident, unreported, was all it took to make it clear I wasn’t the standard jarhead. After that I had their respect.
Respect was not something that I had earned from Peaslee. He rarely spoke to me and when he did it was either to bark orders or evaluate my work, usually with a single word “Satisfactory.” Fortunately, I did not look to Peaslee for affirmation. I had been warned away from that by my friends in London. Steed and Drake suggested that I develop a hobby, which I did. I became an amateur chef, though there was actually little opportunity to practice my skills. I had developed a penchant for the culinary arts and was fond of haunting markets, remote farms and even the occasional jungle in search of the thousands of varieties of seeds, powders, salts and dried fruits that were used to augment the gastronomical experience.
After I was done I would often mail the remaining portions of my find off to friends, mostly Brenner the Swiss chef I had briefly studied under in New York. I have tasted his food, and am thrilled to know that on some occasions I might be contributing to his creations.
Unlike myself, Peaslee had no hobby, no past time, no way to relax. His obsession was his job, and nothing else mattered.
Yet in the middle of the Pacific, not far from islands that I would have thought bore a multitude of exotic spices, I could not relax. Peaslee confined himself to the ship, and seemed extremely nervous. Not that he didn’t have cause. The Miskatonic was part of a fleet of ships spread across the Pacific in support of Operation Starfish. There had been a series of nuclear tests throughout the year, why exactly was unclear to me, but they seemed related to the Soviet nuclear detonation in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, the so called Tsar Bomba. Khruschev had sworn to show the United States the “Kuz’kina Mat” or Kuzka’s Mother, and it had been assumed that the Tsar Bomba was just that. Yet Peaslee seemed to know something I and the others did not, and I would occasionally see him clutching a report on the Soviet detonation, a report he wouldn’t let me see, a report in Russian.
What I could see, what Peaslee couldn’t hide from me, were the Soviet warships that had taken up positions not far from our own location, which was just south of Johnston Island. One always thinks of a South Pacific island as something exotic and lush, Johnston may have been that way once, but all that was there in 1962 was sand, concrete, and batteries of rocket launchers. It was a military base unlike any I had ever seen before, desolate, tiny, and bristling with armaments waiting to be used. Why the Soviets had been allowed to approach this close was a mystery. As with the reports, Peaslee would say nothing, and it was his silence that made me even more nervous.
It was in the early morning of July 9th that I was roused and ordered to the Command Deck. I left my quarters at a dash grabbed coffee and something that pretended to be food and made my way topside. The crew of the Miskatonic was frenetic, readying weapons, securing loads and testing equipment. They were like a swarm of insects carrying out myriad tasks that looked like chaos but was really a well-orchestrated machine with hundreds of parts that all knew what had to be done. I weaved my way through this madness, dodging runners and moving loads like the expert that I was, only to find myself in awe of my employer who had somehow found the exact spot in which he could stand and not be in the way. He was like a pillar of stone, unyielding, unmoving, and inscrutable. His pale blue suit danced in the wind trying in vain to tear itself away from his thin but stoic frame. Only his college tie, which flew like a flag in the stiff Pacific breeze seemed to have any chance of escaping, but as the TOM turned to greet me the piece of rebellious fabric fell back to his chest and with a casual movement the Windsor knot was quickly tightened, negating any chance of freedom.
Peaslee barely acknowledged me as we boarded the waiting helicopter and left the Miskatonic. We banked over the island and in the thin morning light I could see that the frenetic motion wasn’t confined to the ship. The island too was ripe with activity, and I could see ammunition being stockpiled next to antiaircraft guns. There was also the innocuous tower that stood surrounded by a lattice of steel supports and supply tubes. It was sixty-five feet tall and eight feet in diameter at the base but tapered to six feet at the top, painted industrial white which made it seem less threatening than it was. It smoked, steam or something like it leaked from ports on the sides, which would have led some to believe that it was nothing more than a smokestack, an exhaust for some great machine or factory, but I knew better. I was staring at a PGM-17 Thor, a ballistic missile armed with a nuclear warhead. The venting gasses suggested that it was being prepared for launch. I remember slumping back in my chair, wondering what I had gotten myself involved in, and remembering a line of Norse poetry “Against the serpent rises Odin’s son.”
That feeling of dread only grew as the helicopter completed its pass over the island and then almost immediately began to jockey for a landing. I sat up and realized we hadn’t gone far, I could still see the Miskatonic, and discovered we had done little more than jump from one warship to another, but our destination might as well have been a thousand miles away, for it was a place that given the era was considered the most foreign and dangerous place an American Intelligence officer could be. We had landed on a Soviet warship, and it took a supreme effort for me to not panic as the door slid open and we were escorted out across the deck and into the command deck. Not with guns pointed at us, but rather with handshakes and pats on the back, not as mortal enemies on opposite sides of a political ideology, but rather as if we were allies in some great venture and on the verge of a discovery both fantastic and terrible. I think this now, and can sense the irony, for it was true, it was all true. I just didn’t know it.
The bridge of the soviet battleship wasn’t much different from those I had seen on American ships, well excepting the module which had replaced the radar station. It was a bulky thing, and I could tell that it hadn’t originally been designed to fit into the slot it had been shoved into; whoever had rebuilt it had never served on a ship before. There were sharp angles, knobs and switches jutted out from the side where legs could easily trip them. None of these controls were sealed against weather, which meant that this installation wasn’t meant to be long-term. That a pair of thick cables ran from the module and across the floor, one was obviously a power supply, the other ran through a port and to a cluster of transmitters and receivers mounted on the deck.
Apparently my examination of the module had not gone unnoticed, but I hadn’t expected to be chastised by a voice with a British accent. “I’ll admit that the lure isn’t pretty but she works. The Russians did most of the engineering; I just tweaked a few things here and there.” My surprise must have shown for the rugged Brit quickly apologized and introduced himself. “Adam Royston, British Experimental Research Group, Unit 3. You’re James Bellmore, Peaslee’s assistant. We’ve heard about you. The Colonel speaks highly of your work.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I’ve never heard of you, or the lure. To be honest I’m not sure why we are here.”
Royston cast a glance at Peaslee who reluctantly nodded. The British scientist reached into a file and pulled out a photograph. “We are here because of that,” he announced as he handed it to me.
The image was in black and white, grainy, slightly out of focus. At first I thought I was seeing an image I had reviewed long before, the one that had become so associated with what had happened on February 24, 1942 in the skies over Los Angeles, but I soon noticed differences, there usually isn’t snow in LA, and while California may have been the land of commie sympathizers (at least according to McCarthy, God rest his soul) I was quite certain that military trucks bearing the Hammer and Sickle were still uncommon there. These details made it clear that this wasn’t from the so-called Battle of Los Angeles, but the dominant image of both photographs were so remarkably similar that the casual observer would have been hard pressed to tell the difference. There was in the center a globular mass, not unlike a fat disk or squashed ball. From this radiated five luminous appendages, that tapered to points where they intersected the ground. In shape they might be mistaken for the arms of a starfish, but they lacked any trace of mottling or texture. Indeed they were so far from what one would normally think of organic that I was tempted to call them struts, but even struts have depth and detail, these were so flat that they could be easily be mistaken for the beams from spotlights. In retrospect, the thing it most resembled was a sea urchin, though one with only five luminescent spines on which it seemed to stand.
Royston interrupted my study of the image. “The Russians call it Kuz’kina Mat. It destroyed an entire military base in the Novaya Zemlya before they hit it with a nuke. Since then we’ve documented three more of the things. We’re also reviewing historical records, looking for events that might be related.”
“I can think of at least one.”
I murmured. Suddenly something clicked in my head. “The lure, you want to attract these things? Why?”
“So we can kill them Captain Bellmore,” said Colonel Doctor Wingate Peaslee. “What ever they are, they are dangerous, they’ve intruded where they aren’t welcome, and they’ve hurt people. The Russians and the British have agreed to help us hunt them down. They seem to be attracted by a signal that progresses through a specific pattern and set of frequencies. Royston’s machine duplicates that signal, draws them in and puts them right where we want them.”
I opened my mouth to say something and then decided against it. Peaslee however seemed intent on continuing to speak. “Earth is in danger Captain Bellmore, and we represent the best hope for ridding her of the parasites and predators that plague her and all of humanity.”
I was suddenly feeling sick and I burst from the bridge onto the deck outside. All around me Russian sailors were doing exactly what their American counterparts had been over on the Miskatonic. That idea comforted me. That these men, were the same as those that I had laughed, and fought and gotten drunk with gave me a sense of normalcy that I latched on to. I found a rhythm to their movements, the pulse of the ship which centered me and brought me a sense of reality. I caught my breath and steeled myself to go back and try to understand what Peaslee and his allies were planning on doing, but I was too late.
Standing there, feeling the pulse of the ship I felt it change. Royston’s lure had been turned on and I could feel the signal as it pulsed through the ship itself. I had thought that the bank of transmitters would have been the focus, but I was wrong. Royston was using the ship itself as one massive antenna, broadcasting his signal at an immense strength. I could feel it in my bones and joints, and the filling I had in the back of my mouth began to ache. Many of the men began to don protective head gear to cover their ears, but I saw no point in this, the signal wasn’t a sound, it was a vibration that seeped up out of the deck of the ship and even the air itself. I longed to abandon the ship, to somehow leave and return to the Miskatonic, but our helicopter was gone. I looked longingly at the aircraft carrier and measured the distance between us. The waters had been calm, but now seemed to have been roused into madness by Royston’s machine. Any thought of swimming back quickly left my mind. That is not to say that others weren’t driven to the same thought and were able to resist it. I heard several men leap from the deck and scream as they fell to the sea. How they fared in those violent and hungry waters I cannot say, but I saw none of them surface and swim away.
Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters Page 29
