Women and Other Monsters

by Bernard Schaffer

  The doctor stood up, still clutching the collar of Scott’s uniform, but as he ripped it through the throng of people, it was empty. He started pushing everyone out of the way, trying to get to the bottom of the dog-pile. The man was gone. “Look around,” someone said. “He’s got to be here somewhere.”

  They searched under the trucks and among the dead bodies until a scream erupted from outside the building. A sheet-white nurse staggered through the door and said, “A naked man just ran past me into the woods. I don’t know where he came from. He didn’t come from anywhere. He just appeared out of thin air.”

  They found him shivering underneath a tree. The doctor injected him with the needle of morphine and put his lab coat over Scott’s shoulders. “Everything will be all right, soldier.”

  Scott clutched the lapels of the coat tight around his chest and said, “I don’t feel very good.” Blood spilled out of his nostrils and Scott’s eyes rolled up in his head before he dropped to the ground.

  “Is he dead?” one of the guards said. “Again, I mean?”

  The doctor bent over Scott and checked his pulse. He shook his head and barked, “Get this man back inside and call base command.”

  ***

  Half an hour later, a long trail of black cars arrived. The man who stepped out of the second car made everyone outside snap to attention. General “Blackjack” Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Force, did not bother to return their salute. He hurried past them into the building and said, “Where is he?”

  The guards pointed at the office where James Scott was sitting, staring at the rows of dead bodies. The young soldier looked up at Pershing as he walked in and said, “Was I one of them?”

  The General took off his hat and sat down. “That is what they tell me, son,” he said. “Either someone seriously screwed up in that evaluation or you are a goddamned walking miracle.” He bent forward to look at the bullet hole in Scott’s chest and said, “Do you mind?”

  “No,” Scott said.

  Pershing touched the bullet hole and looked at it from the front and back, realizing his could see his fingers wiggle on the other side of the young soldier’s body. He inspected the raw wound across Scott’s right cheek and said, “How do you feel?”

  “Cold,” Scott said.

  Pershing stuck his head out of the door and said, “Get this man a blanket and some clothes!” He wiped his hand across his face with a handkerchief and said, “What can you tell me about this?”

  “Nothing,” Scott said. “I don’t remember anything.” He looked down at his dog tags and said, “Not even this name.”

  “Okay,” the General said. “I need to contact some people. Can you excuse me for a moment?”

  Scott looked out at the bodies again and said, “Take your time, sir.”

  ***

  They sailed him back to the United States aboard an experimental submarine. The sub docked in New Jersey and Scott was escorted off of the sub by a group of men in black suits holding submachine guns. “Where am I going?” he asked repeatedly, but the men did not answer. They packed him in the back of an Army Jeep and drove him to a small farm outside of Atlantic City where a bi-plane sat idling in an unmarked field.

  He was packed into the back seat of the plane without a word. The pilot pulled back on the lever between his legs and they took off racing through the wheat grass and corn stalks. The pilot looked back and said, “Hold on!” just as the plane’s engines roared and they went soaring into the sky.

  He changed planes three times, each time it was the same. Men in suits who carried guns while escorting him onto the next plane without a word. From the sky, he watched the landscape below change from lush green fields and streams to what looked like long stretches of flat red rock.

  The heat became so intense that Scott took off his scarf and helmet. He shielded his eyes from the sun as the plane descended into the barren wasteland of a flat desert.

  The men waiting for him weren’t wearing suits. They were dressed in white lab coats and PH gas helmets, the kind made of loose rubbery full-face masks except for the wide circles around the eyes and a nozzle at the mouth. There was no plane waiting for him as Scott climbed down from the one that brought him there. He was only on the ground for a moment before the pilot gunned the engine and sped away.

  “What happens now?” Scott said.

  No one answered him. When they breathed, it sounded like hissing.

  They walked him toward a cave at the base of a mountain and Scott gasped in amazement when one of the rock walls slid apart to reveal an elevator shaft. He followed the men into the elevator and flinched when they slammed its iron gate shut.

  Scott’s ears popped as the elevator dropped so far and so fast that it felt like his feet were coming off of the ground. Every time he moved, one of the guards moved their fingers to the trigger of their gun. The impact of the elevator landing on solid rock jarred Scott from his knees to his jaw. The doors opened and the guards shoved him forward into the facility.

  The cavern was carved into the deep rocks beneath the earth’s surface, with walls formed of jagged limestone. Every inch of the interior was filled with scientific stations and medical equipment. The only light came from the blinking machines, reflecting blue and red off of the limestone, making Scott squint. They led him through the facility, taking him past a room with a chair that had heavy leather straps bolted to it, like something from an insane asylum. “What’s that for?” Scott said. They did not answer.

  They passed a thick steel door, the size and shape of a bank vault, built into a wall of stone that was reinforced with concrete. “What’s that for?” Scott said.

  The guards shoved him forward. One of them said, “Just take off your clothes and go into the shower. Everything will be explained to you after you are decontaminated.”

  Scott scrubbed the holes in his chest, looking down to watch soap bubbles form from inside the wounds. Water went into the hole in his right shoulder and spilled out of the other side. He was amazed at first, but soon, the sensation left him feeling too queasy to stand.

  His clothing was gone when he came out of the showers, replaced by light cotton shorts and a tee-shirt. His boots were gone. Now he had a cheap pair of slippers to wear, the kind prisoners were issued in a jail.

  The only person waiting for him when he left the shower was an unmasked military guard, who stood by the door. “Where’s your mask?” Scott said.

  “My pay grade’s not high enough to justify being protected from whatever kind of disgusting poison you got inside you, boy. Don’t touch me, don’t breath on me, and don’t make me break my nightstick across your head.”

  “Okay,” Scott said. He followed the guard to the bank vault door and stood back as the guard spun the lock and pulled it open to reveal a small room of concrete walls and floor with only a thin mattress laying on the floor. Scott stopped at the doorway and looked in.

  “Go on now,” the guard said.

  “I’m not a prisoner. Why are you treating me like this? I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Seen any decent people raising up from the dead lately, boy? Me neither. Get your ass inside.”

  ***

  They made him do tests designed to measure the limits of his strength. For short periods of time he could lift the rear end of a car into the air by just the back bumper, but after that he would be too weak to move.

  The men in the masks drew vials of his blood for testing. They measured him for radioactivity, electricity, and atomic energy but found nothing. What seemed to truly annoy the researchers was that Scott refused to recreate the act of teleportation. “I don’t know how I did it,” he insisted. “I can’t do what you want me to do.”

  Statements were read from eyewitnesses at Bellicourt. The event was broken down moment by moment until someone finally said, “It was the sight of the morphine needle. Perhaps he only vanishes when he is afraid.”

  The next morning, the guard tapped the
outside of Scott’s door with his nightstick and said, “Time for your exercises, Subject 129.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  The guard flipped the meal slot’s lid and said, “That’s all you are anymore. A goddamn science project. Now get up.”

  Scott did not move from his cot. “I’m finished. You people aren’t telling me anything, and I need to figure out who I am. I must have family somewhere and I want to be taken to them.”

  The guard smiled, “Actually, I have a military jacket sitting on my desk right now. It arrived in the mail yesterday. There’s all sorts of good information in there for some dead man named James Scott. Would you be interested in seeing it?”

  “You’re lying,” Scott said.

  “You willing to risk that?”

  “Show me the file.”

  “Not unless you behave today. Got something special for you. If you want that file, you need to do as you’re told.”

  Scott sighed and got up. “Lead the way.”

  They walked down the hall toward the room with the lunatic chair from the asylum. “Have a seat. They asked me to tie you down. Relax, it’s no big deal. They just wanna see if you can escape again.”

  “I already told them I can’t.”

  The guard nodded politely as he pushed Scott into the chair and pulled a heavy strap across his chest. He buckled the rest across Scott’s waist, arms and legs. “They on good and tight? Can you move? Good. Bring in the machine.”

  Squeaking wheels came down the hall and Scott managed to lift his head enough to see a hooded researcher pushing an electrical generator into the room. It had a long wooden hand crank and multiple wires that connected to dozens of small suction cups, like a robotic octopus. “What the hell is that?” Scott said.

  “Hold still, partner,” the guard said. He stuck a suction cup on Scott’s arm and then kept sticking them until they covered Scott’s chest, neck and face. He yanked Scott’s underwear down to stick them between his thighs and onto his lower belly. He stuck them to bottom of Scott’s feet. Finally, the guard waved a wooden dowel over Scott’s face and said, “Bite this.”

  “Let me out!”

  “Bite it or you’ll chew your tongue off, stupid.”

  The hooded researcher cleared his throat and said, “You are required to pay attention to this next part, Subject 129. We are going to crank this generator and produce a significant electrical charge that will travel through these wires into your body via the suction cups. I am afraid that the pain will be quite severe. You may escape via teleportation at any time.”

  “I can’t!” Scott shouted. “I don’t know how to! Let me out of this thing!”

  “Yes you do, Subject 129,” the researcher shouted. “Stop wasting everyone’s time and do it. No? Fine. Crank the handle.”

  The guard grabbed the handle and started to turn it, making the generator whine until flashes of blue and white electrical current sparked inside the suction cups. Scott screamed until his teeth crushed the wooden bit and one of the connections blew off of his chest. Lights flickered inside the facility and the guard stopped turning the crank and wiped his brow as Scott clenched his eyes and whimpered and sobbed.

  The researcher leaned over Scott and said, “That was nothing. We are just getting started. Are you ready to teleport?”

  “I can’t—”

  “Crank the handle.”

  The guard spun the crank and waves of searing current flew through wires all over again.

  ***

  Subject 129 woke in his bunk hours later. There was a thin manila envelope with a single sheet of paper inside sitting on the floor next to his bed. He sat up and removed the paper, seeing the name James Scott typed across the top. Place of Birth: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

  Place of Death: St. Quentin Canal.

  He turned the paper over in the dim light but there was nothing else. He crumpled the page into a ball and tossed it across the room in disgust. He collapsed on his bunk and screamed until he was out of breath.

  The bullet holes in his chest were now jagged scars the size of quarters and Scott ran his fingers over them, playing with the ridges of raised skin. He found another scar on his left hand that seemed older than the others. It was a leftover reminder of a past he could not recover. He wondered how it got there and what he’d been doing at the time. He played with the scar, turning his hand over and over, when he saw the small ring of pale skin around his left ring finger. The flesh was rubbed smooth there, like a man who’d worn a wedding ring and never took it off.

  There was a woman.

  He saw her face. Saw her smiling at him. Crying to him. Lying beside him sleeping. He could see her eyes widen as they made love. Feel her arms wrap tightly around the back of his neck, begging him not to enlist in the war.

  Scott jumped up from the bed and slammed his fists against the steel door, shouting, “Let me out! I remember! I remember!”

  Footsteps raced down the hall toward his cell. Scott dove to the meal slot and said, “I have a wife! I need to see her. I need to tell her I’m alive.”

  The guard rapped the door with his nightstick. “Shut up in there. You know the rules. No getting out until morning.”

  “I have a wife! She needs to know!”

  “You don’t have shit. James Scott had a wife, but he’s dead and buried. Subject 129 just has the generator, and if you thought today was bad, just wait till you see what they’ve got in store for you tomorrow. They’re gonna sizzle your bacon for sure.”

  Scott screamed in outrage and ran straight at the door. The guard threw his hands over his face to protect himself from the impact, but nothing happened and he fell backwards on the floor. “I thought you was gonna run straight into the dang door,” he said. He chuckled as he got back to his feet, looking around for his nightstick. “You’re gonna look real pretty with no teeth, you dumb son of a bitch. You and me are gonna have ourselves a party now.”

  Something grabbed the guard by the neck and lifted him into the air. He clawed at whatever was cinched around his throat and found fingers there, a human hand that held him aloft even as he kicked and pushed against the prison door with his feet.

  He was thrown to the ground so hard he nearly lost consciousness, coming to as the thing grabbed him by the shirt collar and dragged him down the hall. He looked up to see the lights overhead and realized they were heading for the office with the security chair and generator. Subject 129 bent down over him and snatched him by the shoulders, picking him up with no effort and slamming him down into chair.

  “No! No!” the guard screamed. “Help!”

  Scott ripped the guard’s uniform shirt to pieces like it was made of paper and said, “How do you like it?” He held the guard in place as he locked the straps down. He jammed suction cups onto the straps into place. He put several suction cups on the guard’s chest and wheeled the generator toward the door. Scott found extra wires and he ran those out to the closest research stations and stuck the suction cup receivers to the surfaces of the machines. He found a fuse box near the office and stuck two more cups onto the main junction.

  The guard continued to plead for mercy until Scott shoved the wooden bit into his mouth. He grabbed the generator’s handle and gave it one great heave, spinning it as fast as a carnival wheel.

  Every light inside the facility exploded.

  The wires attached to the guard sparked and burst into flames, setting fire to the leather straps and chair. The researchers came running at the sound of the guard’s horrific screams, only to trip over themselves and crash into one another in the smoke and darkness.

  ***

  Major William J. Donovan headed into the cold, dark cemetery. Rain spilled off his umbrella as he made his way past rows of graves and mausoleums, heading for a hill peak where a man stood looking down at a tombstone. Water cascaded off of every part of him.

  The hill was slick with mud, making it hard to traverse, but Donovan found a way up until he was fina
lly able to stand at the man’s side. Donovan held his umbrella over their both of their heads and looked at the tombstones. Technical Sergeant James Scott, beloved husband, killed in service to the United States. Maureen Scott, beloved wife.

  Donovan grunted and said, “Why in the hell they didn’t tell you, I don’t know, son. It’s a goddamn crime.” Donovan tried to warm up his hands by blowing into them. “You’ve been on the run for quite a bit. Are you hungry?”

  The man shook his head.

  “How about a cup of coffee and a smoke?”

  “What do you want?”