I had to keep telling myself that only six months earlier it had been nothing but an empty desert with some kind of high-tech facility right in the middle of…
Hang on, I can hear something out there.
***
False alarm – it was just the wind. Where was I? Right…
Lyndon moved cautiously through the trees, occasionally stopping to take cuttings from low-hanging branches, which was driving us all up the wall. I managed to convince him that we’d be better off doing that on the way back – the trees weren’t going anywhere and we had a lot of ground to cover, and so we pushed on. Dolores kept a compass in her hand, making sure that we didn’t double back or get turned around. Time crawled along; minutes became hours and still we walked. Before too long, the only sound was the crunching of dead leaves beneath our feet.
The deeper into the jungle we went, the weirder it was – the air became humid; the trees hung with deep-green vines, palms and ferns erupted from the earth.
“Hold on,” Dolores said, coming to a stop. “Do you feel that?”
Lyndon and I looked at each other and shrugged.
“How about you?” she asked Jackson as he caught up to us.
He squatted, laid his palms on the ground then closed his eyes. “Yeah, I got it. Something’s rumbling, something far away.”
I copied Jackson’s movements but didn’t feel anything.
“You’ve got to concentrate, that’s all,” he said.
I shut my eyes and finally felt it – the earth trembled faintly, the tiniest of sensations. It was familiar, but I couldn’t quite work out why.
“You see anything?” Jackson asked.
I opened my eyes, saw that he and Dolores were both scanning the land with their binoculars.
“No. How about you?”
“Nothing.”
“We’ll keep on then.”
Apparently that was that, and we started walking again. It wasn’t long before something else caught our attention – a shrill and grating wail that set my nerves on edge. Everyone else had noticed it as well, their teeth set and their jaws grinding. I looked back and forth but couldn’t see what might be causing it.
It grew louder and louder.
“Fuck, Dolores, behind you!” Jackson yelled.
I turned in her direction – a dragonfly as big as an eagle was swooping down from one of the trees. She ducked, rolling to the side, smoothly and effortlessly.
She was back on her feet in an instant, her gun raised.
“Don’t!” I screamed, throwing myself at her arm, barely aware of what I was doing.
A shot rang out, the bullet burying itself in the earth.
“Jesus, Kim!”
I don’t know what had come over me.
“Please, just look at it, it’s beautiful,” I said.
It really was, perched there on the side of a tree safely out of our reach. It swayed, an elegant movement that was almost identical to that of the branches around it, stirring in the wind.
My eyes bugged. It was like I’d fallen in love.
The dragonfly shifted again and the fragile membrane of its wings caught the sun, reflecting it back in a shimmer of purple. It rubbed its forelegs together – forelegs that were more than a foot long – and let loose a series of buzzing clicks that almost sounded cheerful. Multifaceted eyes stared at us and gave nothing back, as reflective as mirrors.
“What is it?” everyone asked at almost the same time.
I tried to remember back to my uni days. Evolutionary biology, the study of fossils, environmental mutations, I’d studied them all a long time ago, before the world went to hell and nothing else mattered but making it to tomorrow.
“I think it’s a Meganeura,” I said, the memories slowly returning.
“A mega-what?” Lyndon asked.
“A Meganeura – a prehistoric dragonfly.” And then everything came back to me – facts, figures, physiology, chemistry, everything I’d learned about why an animal is the way it is. “But it can’t be.”
Dolores groaned aloud, while Lyndon sniggered.
“Don’t you start with can’t and shouldn’t as well,” Jackson said. “We’ve been there, done that.”
“No, I mean it can’t be a Meganeura. It’s all about the way they breathe, you see – they can only grow to that size in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, like back in the time of the dinosaurs. The air we’re breathing is completely different. It should mean that this thing can’t exist. And yet here it is. Although it’s the wrong colour, and its wings are the wrong shape. If it wasn’t so big, I’d say that it’s your garden-variety dragonfly.”
I pulled out my camera and took a step closer, and Jackson growled a warning. I held my ground, taking half-a-dozen photos of the monstrous insect. It twitched its head from side to side, following the movement of the camera. It might have been my imagination, but it seemed to almost puff out its chest and roll its wings until they caught the light just so.
It was stunning.
“Come on,” I said when I was satisfied. “Let’s see what’s next.”
I was excited, no doubt about it. The child-like wonder I used to feel in the presence of animals was slowly returning. This time, it was mixed with the excitement of discovery. I felt a little giddy, brimming with a strange kind of happiness.
Dolores smiled at me before leading us deeper into the jungle.
Although it was so subtle as to almost go unnoticed, everything around us was slowly changing – strange clicking-chittering-rustling sounds began filling the quiet; the trees hemming us in grew more gnarled and weathered; bright red and yellow shoots and suckers could be seen pushing through the drab brown-green undergrowth; a strange smell started drifting on the wind.
“What is that?” Jackson asked as the sickly-sweet aroma became overpowering.
“I can’t see anything,” Dolores yelled out. “How about you guys?”
Lyndon and I both looked around, but the jungle was just a mess of shadows and dappled light. And so we kept on, the smell steadily growing stronger. Soon, it was joined by a hideous wet chomping sound that took me straight back to my days feeding animals at the zoo.
“Hold up,” Dolores yelled. “Kim, you’ll want to see this.”
Jackson, Lyndon and I hurried to join her – she was a couple of hundred metres ahead, crouching behind a small rise in the earth that blocked our view of the way forward.
“Take a look,” she said, passing me her binoculars as I squatted next to her. “But be quiet and don’t move too quickly.”
I did what she said, slowly straightening up to peek over the rise. Everyone else did the same thing – four little monkeys in a row, yet again.
“Fuck me…”
Half-a-dozen enormous ants were feasting on something barely twenty metres in front of us, something huge, dead and half-rotten. Each ant was the size of a small dog, with jaws like bear-traps and spindly legs that seemed almost comically frail. As we watched, one of the ants tore a ragged strip of flesh from the dead thing and darted off into the bush, and another appeared to take its place. This process continued, back and forth and back and forth. The size of their nest must have been staggering…
“Another primeval mystery?”
“I don’t think so. To me, they look like ordinary trap-jaw ants.”
“What kind of ants?”
“You know, ordinary ants.”
“How’d they get so big, then?” Lyndon asked.
I lowered the binoculars and shot him a dirty look. “No idea. I guess that’s one of the things we’re here to find out.”
I looked back at the ants, once again raising the binoculars. Whatever it was they were devouring was too rotten for me to identify properly, but I guessed it might have once been a wombat. Squat and dumpy with a thick coat of matted fur, not many other animals crawling across our great brown land match that description. It was enormous as well, the size of a small car.
Once again, I pulled out my camera.
“I can take them,” Jackson said, drawing his gun.
“Don’t be stupid,” Dolores replied. “We don’t want any trouble. Anyway, we’re downwind of them, so let’s just leave them be and get back to work.” She looked up at me. “Unless you need a sample?”
The ants were gorgeous and grotesque; it seemed like a travesty to kill something so unique.
“I think I’ll pass,” I said. “Something tells me we’ve barely scratched the surface of this place.”
“You’re the boss.”
The four of us ducked back down behind the rise and resumed our hike. I know that I should have been afraid of the jungle, but instead I was both fascinated and excited. For all we knew, we were the first people to ever lay eyes on such marvels. Like explorers of old setting sail for the unknown, the thrill of discovery was all that mattered.
As we walked, I saw more things that just couldn’t be – Christmas Beetles as big as basketballs, Millipedes the size of Guinea Pigs, gargantuan Cicadas and mammoth Centipedes, each more incredible than the last. After a while, I saw a spindly shape move in the undergrowth: a Stick Insect as long as a dining table slowly heading for the nearest tree. I realised that something must feed on these things, that’s just nature’s way. I looked at the almost impenetrable bush, expecting to see a giant lizard or a monstrous spider or an enormous snake, but no predators lurked nearby. But that didn’t mean they weren’t out there somewhere.
I took photo after photo. Somehow, capturing them on film made them seem a bit less impossible.
“Don’t forget to look up,” Lyndon whispered, taking me by surprise.
I broke away from the jungle and did as he suggested, laying eyes on the kind of twisted nightmare-tree that would have flourished in hell. Thorns as big as tusks covered its trunk; jet-black flowers the size of umbrellas opened and closed; innumerable branches drooped down to the ground, each glistening with something wet, like the tentacles of a giant squid; its foliage was banded with red and blue stripes, the patterns somehow blending and smearing.
I raised my camera to take some photos, and saw that behind it was a grove of its kin. I dropped my camera in shock, only realising that I’d done so when its strap caught and it bounced off my chest.
“Ow!” I yelled.
The branches stirred at the noise I’d made, lazily pawing at the air. Strange marks started appearing on them, white circles as round as fifty-cent pieces. As I watched, black dots formed in the centre of each one, and its branches reared up, snaking from side to side. For a moment, I stared at the strange white circles with their odd black dots, and then they all blinked at the same time.
“Jesus Christ,” Lyndon said, stepping towards it without even thinking.
The eyes all focused on him. My stomach turned; it was too much.
“Come on, let’s leave it alone,” Jackson said, taking Lyndon’s arm and pulling him back.
With a sound as sharp as metal on metal, the branch was suddenly covered in great spikes and needles. Faster than I could really see, more branches came to life and started reaching for us.
“Go! Go! Go!”
Jackson might as well have been trying to evict kids from a candy shop. My eyes a camera lens and my mind the film, the horror and the weirdness just became a series of still images, and I was as frozen as they were.
“Get a bloody wriggle on!”
I don’t remember Jackson hauling me away. The only memories I have are of grasping branches, blinking eyes, jagged spikes, sleek needles, rippling foliage and unfurling flowers lined with pulsating veins. Apparently, I stumbled and tripped, unwilling to take my eyes off the tree. And then I fell on my arse.
As quick as a striking snake, a branch found my wrist, wrapping itself tight. It hurt, a dull ache of pressure that steadily grew more painful. Within seconds, it started to burn and I started to scream. Suddenly, Jackson was on his knees in front of me, sawing at the branch with his knife; Dolores was standing over him, her gun in her hand, shooting at the tree; Lyndon was running blindly into the jungle, gibbering and shrieking loud enough to be heard over the deafening boom of the gun. The tree itself was peppered with ragged holes that dripped a blue goo, its branches recoiling and retreating, its vast trunk splitting down the middle to reveal some kind of mouth lined with rows of gnashing teeth and some kind of gullet that was bloody and raw.
“Hurry, please hurry,” I begged.
The branch finally gave way beneath Jackson’s knife. He hauled me to my feet and we turned and ran.
“Go find Lyndon,” he shouted at Dolores. “I’ll be okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“No worries.”
She smiled at him before disappearing into the jungle.
“Fucking civilians,” Jackson muttered under his breath, loud enough for me to hear.
“I’m sorry.”
“Forget it, now’s not the time.”
Jackson took the lead and we kept running, trying to keep Dolores in sight. The jungle around us might as well have been Disneyland for all I knew; all I saw was the back of Jackson’s shirt. Every now and then he’d yell out ‘hole’ or ‘branch’ or ‘log’ and I’d lower my eyes to the ground and ungainly launch myself over the obstacle in my way.
We ran for what felt like hours. I know that that’s impossible – I’m not that fit. But that’s how it felt. My horror and numbness slowly dulled, beaten down by a hefty dose of exercise and a fair bit of distance. As well, I somehow convinced myself that it was just a part of the explorer’s lot. Danger and discovery walk hand in hand, and there were people looking out for me who knew how to deal with the former.
“Are you okay?” Jackson yelled at some point, slowing down a little.
I looked at my wrist, at the sawn-off branch still wrapped around it, which was turning brown and shrivelling up. A moment later, a breath of wind swept away its ashen remains.
“I think so.”
“Good, good. I reckon we’re okay now – we’re far enough away from that thing.”
He looked around. I did the same. All that could be seen was the jungle, same as it ever was. I was almost hysterical with relief, even though there was no sign of Lyndon or Dolores.
“Come on, Dolly,” Jackson yelled under his breath, coming to a stop.
“Dolly?”
“Ah, it’s my, um, nickname for her.”
His embarrassed smile was cuter than a kitten playing with a ball of string. I said nothing, and just pulled my water from my pack and took a long drink. Try as I might, I couldn’t stop smirking.
“You don’t have to look at me like that,” he said with a laugh.
“It’s your nickname for her…”
Somehow, his smile grew wider. I tucked my water back in my pack, and saw something move at the edge of my vision. I turned to look, and caught a quick flash of clothing shining against the dull trunks of the trees.
“Good one,” Jackson said. “Let’s go.”
We headed for it like mosquitoes to a bug-zapper.
“Coo-ee,” Jackson called.
“Over here, you idiot,” came Dolores’ response.
Jackson swerved right, correcting our course.
“Coo-ee.”
“Over here. And knock off the coo-ee.”
He laughed under his breath. We ran harder. Ahead, the sunlight through the trees was growing brighter and the trees themselves were thinning out, the spaces between their trunks growing wider.
“Finally…”
We passed through the tree-line and stepped onto a sealed road that cut a dead-straight line to our left and right. Lyndon sat in the middle of the road, his eyes fixed directly ahead. Dolores stood behind him, standing as still as if she’d been carved from rock, her gaze equally fixed.
In front of them was an impenetrable wall of vines, vines that were covered in multi-coloured flowers so electrically bright they were hard to look at.
The wall was maybe fifteen metres high, give or take, a
nd ran parallel with the sealed road. Looming over it were steel-spires and struts; each one was slowly disappearing, smothered by vines as they climbed toward the sun. Some of the spires had already disappeared. In their place were great spikes of emerald-green, bulbous and tumescent, streaked with the same riot of colour as the wall. Crowding the spires and struts were more bizarre trees, each weirder than the one that had attacked us earlier.
It was a lurid mess, like a pothead’s idea of psychedelic art or a fever-dream illustrated by Pollock.
Jackson and I stopped next to Lyndon and Dolores. Up close, I could see that no two flowers adorning the wall were alike: some were shaped like gemstones and jewels, some like blobs of melting wax, or clusters of fingers and clumps of hair, or the delicate wings of an insect, or like strings of grotesque pearls and circles of razors. There were so many that they almost smothered the vines they clung to, all oozing with fluids thick and viscous or thin and watery. Some stirred in the breeze, some moved of their own volition, some remained motionless, some only came to life when a bird or a bug landed on them.
Beneath them, a carpet of dead insects littered the road.
“I can’t take it!” Lyndon yelled, his voice childish and petulant.
Dolores crouched beside him and spoke softly, her words meant for him alone. Jackson and I politely took a couple of steps back, watching as Lyndon shook his head ‘no’ and gestured at the wall. Dolores kept talking. Lyndon kept shaking his head. Eventually, Dolores stood up and turned her back on him.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Nope.”
I rolled my eyes. I turned to Jackson, but he wasn’t there. Instead, he was kneeling beside me, unfolding a heavily creased map and laying it on the ground. A handful of thin lines that I took to be roads cut across the top of the map, while the remainder showed a barren emptiness enclosed by an unbroken circle. Inside that circle, further unbroken circles nested one inside the other. The closer to the centre of the map they were, the smaller and thicker they became.
We Call It Monster Page 16
