Monster

by Michael Grant

  A little girl in profile, back turned to him, stark against the rising flame, that was art, that shocked and challenged.

  “Golden Gate Bridge,” Erin muttered. “Everyone’s favorite suicide spot.”

  Was Erin considering it? he wondered. Did he mind?

  With an inner sigh he realized he would. She was someone to talk to, after all, someone to enjoy in bed, someone to do useful things like flick a lighter when his hands were no longer hands.

  “I can’t survive prison,” Erin said, biting her tense fist. “I can’t! This is unfair, all of it. If they had just left us alone. If they would . . .”

  “You happen to have a plan?” Justin asked.

  “No, Justin, no, I don’t have a plan!” she shouted, turning her face and her somewhat asymmetrically penciled eyebrows on him.

  Justin shook his head slowly, thinking, not interested in her impotent anger. “They never really deal with this in the movies. In the movies Tony Stark has his mansion, and Spider-Man has his aunt May and his secret identity. The closest to this is probably Hulk, he’s always on the run—”

  “Jesus Christ, Justin!” Erin snapped. “Are you aware that this is not a comic book? This is real life. The real FBI is after us! They have our names, for God’s sake, they know who we are! Every credit card, any access to a bank, any time we have to go through the TSA . . . hell, any random cop who pulls us over for a busted taillight!”

  “What are they gonna do?” Justin asked with weary irritation. “They can’t stop me. At least not with bullets, I’m pretty sure. I mean, if I can cut through metal . . .”

  “It’s all some big male fantasy for you, isn’t it?”

  Justin laughed derisively. “You know, Erin, you talk tough about being on the edge, but really you’re just a little rich bitch playacting.”

  “Yeah, you got me, Justin.” She held up her hands in mock surrender. “I confess: I don’t like being a hunted animal. I don’t . . .” She tensed and fell silent. In the rearview mirror she spotted a park ranger’s white-and-green SUV driving slowly past, going up the hill.

  “They don’t have the prison that can hold me,” Justin boasted.

  “Well, they have one that’ll hold me. And I am not bulletproof.”

  “I can protect you,” Justin said gruffly, trying to sound older than he was, wishing he could access his morphed voice, that ground-vibrating growl.

  “Uh-huh. Sure you can.”

  “Gotta go balls out,” Justin said.

  “Here we go,” Erin said with vicious sarcasm. “Balls out. The whole array of male fantasy, here it comes, ‘balls out.’ What does that even mean, ‘balls out’?”

  “It means I am what I am,” Justin said, pouting in the face of her withering sarcasm. “It means things are what they are, what’s done is done.”

  “Any more clichés you’d like to spout? You know, a penny saved is a penny earned? A stitch in time saves nine?”

  “Too late for a secret identity,” Justin said, more to himself than to her. “The whole world is out to get me. Us. What choice do I have but to go balls . . . to just stick it in their faces, you know? Be the monster. Play the role to the hilt.”

  “Meaning what, exactly? I mean, setting aside your ‘stick it in their faces,’ ‘balls out’ crap, what do we do?” She glared at him, like it was all his fault.

  “It’s not me,” Justin said, a crafty smile taking shape.

  “Don’t be cryptic, okay? Not in the mood.”

  “The thing I become, the monster—it’s not me. Hulk and Bruce Banner.”

  “I swear to God I will drive this mommy wagon right over this cliff!” A few feet of gravel and a symbolic but useless cable fence were all that separated them from a long plunge down the nearly vertical cliff face to the rocks and the waters below.

  “Bruce Banner becomes Hulk, but Hulk is not Bruce Banner. Legally. Listen to me, Erin: it wasn’t me, it was him. He cut up the plane. Him. My alter ego. Legally, I’m not responsible, so how are they going to arrest me and try me and throw me in prison?”

  He saw her processing this, saw anger and fear soften, just a little. Her eyes were shrewd now, calculating. “What about me? I don’t have that excuse.”

  Justin shrugged. “The monster kidnapped you.”

  Erin nodded, but the nod of assent became a shake of negation. “You don’t think the FBI has thought about that? They’ll shoot on sight and claim we were attacking them. Problem solved.” But then, another reversal. She snapped her fingers. “We need to make our case. We need to make this very public.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, all of it. We put it out there. Pictures, videos . . . we put you and the monster out there. It’ll trend like crazy. If we do a video, it’ll be viral in ten seconds.” In her mounting excitement she twisted to face him. “Your Lump thing, what was it? The comic book thing?”

  “Hulk?”

  “Hulk, yeah. People know that, right? I mean, normal people, not just nerds? If we use that as our example, people have to get it.”

  “People will get it,” Justin assured her. “Maybe not your snotty art gallery crowd, but regular people.”

  The part of Erin O’Day that was all about publicity and fashion and the latest thing was thinking out loud now and Justin nodded along, feeling the possibilities. “We say we just want to be left alone. We’ll get away, you know, stay away from people, from civilization, find a place in the mountains . . . tell people we just want to keep the monster from hurting anyone.”

  “It’s the closest thing we have to a plan,” Justin said. Then, slyly again, “We’ll need a name for it. Him. My monster.”

  Erin was about to snarl at him again, but checked herself because he was right and she knew it. The creature needed a name to separate it from Justin. Still, she couldn’t quite suppress her snark, so she said, “Lobster Boy?”

  “Funny. How about the ‘Dark Artist’?”

  “No, that’s still all about you. The creature is not you, remember?” She had one finger in her mouth, poking the painful tooth, so the next part came out garbled. “Sword Master?”

  He considered. “That’s not bad, but it sounds like some fencing expert in tights. It should be something scary. The Dagger. The Blade . . . no, that’s been used.”

  “Colossus?”

  “He’s a Marvel superhero,” Justin said.

  “Does it matter?”

  “I don’t want every comix nerd on earth calling me out for plagiarism,” Justin mumbled. “Wait, I have—”

  And then the park ranger’s SUV came creeping down the hill and pulled in behind them, not hostile exactly, but partially blocking their escape.

  Erin’s face went gray.

  “Be cool, Erin, and maybe we can bluff our way out of this,” Justin said.

  Erin rolled down her window as the ranger came up, wary but not jumpy.

  “Ma’am. How’s your day going?”

  “Fine,” Erin lied. She turned on the charm. “Now, I know I wasn’t speeding, Officer, because we’re parked.”

  “Yes, ma’am, but we’re checking . . .” A definite hesitation as the ranger saw Justin, and then his tone shifted dramatically. The ranger’s hand went to his pistol, resting there, very far now from relaxed. “I’m going to need you both to step out of the vehicle and show me some ID.” He keyed the microphone clipped to his uniform. “This is Franklin, I could use some backup.” Not signaling panic, but trying to contain the situation until backup could arrive.

  Justin opened his door.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Justin raised his hands in a parody of surrender and Erin saw what was needed: a distraction. She pushed her door out, fast, causing the officer to take a step back and yell, “Ma’am, I need to see your hands.”

  “Sure you wouldn’t rather see these?” Erin asked coyly, and pulled the top of her sweater down.

  “Whoa! Ma’am, that’s not necess
ary, just—”

  “Don’t you like girls?”

  At this point the ranger realized she was distracting him, stepped back, and drew his weapon. Justin’s blade arm stabbed straight through the Volvo, pierced the front passenger door, the seat, the farside rear door, and with a downward twitch sliced effortlessly through the ranger’s arm.

  The gun—and the hand holding it—fell to the ground.

  “Aaaahhh!” the ranger shouted, staring at his blood-spurting stump in disbelief.

  A second park ranger’s vehicle was rushing up the hill, and in his crack-of-doom voice Justin said, “We have to go!”

  The injured cop was on his knees, his stump under his opposite armpit as he scrabbled awkwardly for the gun, yelling in pain and fear.

  Erin jumped into the Volvo and started the engine, but now Justin was nearly twice the height and four times the bulk of a normal human, far too big for a car seat. So he used his massive left-hand claw to rip the seats from the back row, tossing them wildly over the side of the cliff. He squeezed through the door but could only lie down, his huge T. rex feet pressed against the windshield and his terrible blade sticking through the back window.

  “Go, go, go!”

  Erin drove up onto the gravel walkway, sideswiped a handicapped parking sign, bounced back onto the pavement, and flew down the hill. They passed the second ranger vehicle, the driver eyeballing Erin suspiciously. Down the winding road, faster and faster, the heavy vehicle—heavier by far with the morphed Justin—reached the bottom, narrowly avoided a cyclist, and fishtailed toward the Golden Gate Bridge.

  Now the question was one of time. Could they get across the bridge and through the tollbooth into the city, where they could at least hope to get lost? Or would the park rangers have time to alert the California Highway Patrol down on the bridge?

  They zoomed onto the bridge. Midday traffic was light, but a wall of fog was rolling in from the ocean, so that the massive red cables were half hidden, swooping up in graceful arcs only to disappear in pearly, translucent mist.

  The bridge was 1.7 miles long—they crossed it in two minutes, but as they neared the automated tollbooths on the San Francisco side, Erin spotted the CHP car on duty there turning on its light bar and gliding swiftly to cut them off.

  Erin cursed, and Justin, unable to see in his awkward position, rumbled, “What?”

  “Cops!”

  A second car was racing from the city to join the first, and these were not park rangers, these were California Highway Patrol, and the CHP were far more accustomed to violent, high-speed confrontations on open roads than park rangers.

  Traffic slowed at the tollbooth, with cars rolling straight through, but at no more than thirty miles an hour, and as the Volvo neared the toll sensors the first CHP was directly in front of them. Erin swerved to go around, but the second CHP, closely followed now by a San Francisco Police Department car, swooped in to block traffic beyond the toll kiosks.

  “We’re blocked!”

  Erin turned a dramatic, tire-squealing left, bounced crazily over a concrete rise, sideswiped a white van, and plowed into a Prius. She aimed the Volvo back toward the bridge and floored it, and angry horns blew.

  “What are you doing?” Justin demanded, seeing things at a tilted angle as his huge head crammed up against the back lift gate.

  The CHP on the San Francisco side were momentarily blocked by their own traffic jam, but now, ahead, there were more red and blue flashing lights and sirens were everywhere.

  A CHP SUV directly ahead drove straight at them on the wrong side of the road, swerving back and forth as it came, a rolling roadblock. It was impossible for her to get around, and in any case there were still more cops coming from the Marin County side: park rangers, CHP, local cops from Sausalito.

  “Go at ’em, straight at ’em!” Justin bellowed.

  Erin floored it and hit the left side of the swerving CHP SUV, spinning it, exploding the airbags in the Volvo, momentarily stunning Erin, and knocking her hands from the wheel.

  She wrestled the steering wheel, but the Volvo was on just two wheels, cantilevered crazily, and for a heartstopping moment Justin was sure the Volvo would topple over on its side, but the Volvo did not topple and instead dropped back to all four wheels with a spine-rattling impact. Steam billowed from under the hood and the engine made a hard metallic sound that could not possibly be normal.

  “Go! Go!” Justin ordered.

  Erin floored it again, but the Volvo was barely moving, jerking, rattling, and then, finally, it stopped with a final cough and rattle.

  Justin roared, a sound of pure frustration, and kicked and punched the side of the Volvo until the metal tore, and with that he ripped and punched and kicked the rest of the steel and plastic out of the way, then rolled out onto the bridge’s concrete road surface.

  The cops on the San Francisco side had broken free of the stalled cars and were coming on at speed. Those on the Marin County side were advancing more cautiously, but the bottom line was that Justin and Erin were blocked, and on foot, with very angry CHP, SFPD, park rangers, and Sausalito cops closing in from both sides.

  Justin tore the dangling side panel from the Volvo and hurled it at the nearest CHP, who skidded to a stop and popped out with pistol leveled behind the inadequate cover of his car door.

  The Marin-side cops took the cue and halted their vehicles, too, and jumped out to level their own weapons.

  A voice on a loudspeaker said, “Down on the ground, both of you. NOW!”

  “Don’t shoot!” Erin screamed. “He can’t help it!”

  Now Justin rose to his full ten feet and spread his arms wide. From the tip of his blade to the tip of his claw, he was twice as wide as he was tall. He held high the blade and the claw and, in a voice that made the vertical cables quiver, roared, “Behold! I am Knightmare!”

  The Golden Gate was a suspension bridge with the two massive vertical towers carrying the weight of the two swooping, three-foot-in-diameter main cables. At fifty-foot intervals so-called suspender ropes, actually groups of four three-inch-thick cables, hung taut from the cable. It was these suspender ropes that attached to the road supports and carried the road suspended from the main cables, which in their turn hung from the two great towers.

  Justin swung his sword arm and sliced through the nearest set of four suspender ropes. The steel ropes twanged and whipped wildly like electrified snakes.

  “Let us pass!” Justin demanded.

  “Get down, down, on your face!”

  Justin sliced through a second set of cables, and beneath his claw feet he felt the roadway shudder and sag just the slightest bit.

  “You’ll kill us all!” Erin cried, but her words were lost when . . .

  Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

  Suddenly every gun—and there were now at least a dozen—opened fire.

  Justin pushed Erin to the ground as bullets struck him again and again, round after round, all pinging and screeching away, deflected by his armored flesh. He barely felt them, they might as well have been Ping-Pong balls. But the noise was deafening, far louder in real life than movies or TV could convey.

  “Can you swim?” Justin asked Erin.

  “What?” She was on the tarmac, facedown, hands over her ears.

  Justin sliced a third set of suspender ropes, then leaped forty feet in the air, rising to the graceful arc of the main cable.

  The power!

  The main cables were made of 27,572 wires, woven together and covered in cladding. Each main cable supported tens of thousands of tons of steel and concrete, cars and trucks and pedestrians.

  “No!” Erin screamed. “Noooo!”

  Justin heard her, but her screams were irrelevant. A part of him noted that it was itself a cliché, an outdated one: the screaming, helpless pretty girl and the superhero. Superman and Lois Lane.

  At the top of his rising arc, as gravity seized him and again asserted control, he swung his sword arm down and ch
opped through the main cable in a shower of sparks.

  The effect was immediate and drastic. The massive cable whipped back in both directions, yanking Justin with it, spinning him like a wobbly Frisbee. The support ropes snapped or twisted; the road surface sagged sharply to the right and stalled cars slid toward the rail, as frantic drivers gunned their engines and tires spun and burned rubber.

  The cop cars slid as well, and the firing stopped instantly as officers and rangers scrabbled to hold on, to save their vehicles and themselves. Everywhere there were cries of panic from terrified pedestrians. A troop of Girl Scouts on a ritual bridge walk screamed in thin soprano as their troop leader fell away from them, pinwheeling toward the churning gray water 220 feet below. And then one by one they slid, helpless, shrieking as they grabbed frantically at any handhold, fingernails torn from their hands as they lost their desperate grips and fell away.

  Justin crashed down to the concrete roadway, slid on the precarious slope, dug his claw feet into the ground, and in a transport of mad glee bellowed, “I am Knightmare! Ah hah-hah-hah!”

  A taxi tried to run for it, accelerated, fishtailing toward the city, veered down the slope of the tilting roadway, smashed into the railing, and stopped there for a moment held in place, until the road jerked violently and sent the taxi over the side as well.

  Justin saw the cabbie’s face looking up at him, his mouth a big O. Justin noticed and filed away the detail of an In-N-Out burger flying from the open window and remaining intact for a hundred feet before the buns separated and the meat and cheese twirled away toward the gray water.

  The movable barrier, a string of connected gray blocks used to add or subtract lanes during commute times, slithered like a sidewinder, and temporarily stopped only when it encountered cars that were themselves sliding. Drivers threw their cars into reverse, and tires burned as they fought the inexorable pull of gravity. From the corner of his eye Justin saw a father leap from his sliding car and scramble away as his wife and two children slipped into oblivion.

  Hah! There’s a detail to remember!

  The concrete of the road surface cracked like a dry riverbed, great chunks of blacktop falling down through the structure or upending like impromptu Stonehenges.