Swamp Thing 2 - The Return of Swamp Thing

by Peter David

  He stared at them for a moment, and if they’d had any brains at all, they would have been terrified by what they saw there. “I am . . . Swamp Thing.”

  “Right, right.” He took aim. “And I’m Bird Shit.”

  His finger tightened on the trigger, and Abby screamed as a blast roared, echoing through the bog. The shot ripped into Swamp Thing’s chest. Gurdell fired again and blew away some more.

  He stopped, lowering his rifle in shock.

  Swamp Thing was advancing on him, ripped away portions of his anatomy already regenerating. In three great steps he was upon Gurdell, and he tore the gun from Gurdell’s hands and bent it in half.

  Clyde, from nearby, screeched, leaping away from Abby as if she’d grown horns. Gurdell backed up desperately and tripped over one of the massive logs that had lain there for who knew how long. Swamp Thing stood over him, glowering, and then reached down and effortlessly lifted the log.

  He swung it around, almost taking off Clyde’s head, the latter diving down out of the way. Gurdell, from his vantage, saw what the intended target was. “Not the still!” he howled.

  The huge log smashed into the still. There was an earsplitting crunch of metal as Swamp Thing completely demolished the machine, and when the now-unleashed fire threatened to spread, the earth seemed to come alive. The ground beneath the fire opened up, smothering the flame, and an underground spring burbled up, extinguishing whatever trace bits of the fire might have escaped.

  He turned on them then, and, holding high the log, he rumbled in his sepulchral voice, “This is . . . the corpse of a tree . . . and I will use it . . . to make human corpses . . . if I must.”

  He began to swing it once again, and it was all the urging the two rednecks needed. With panicked screams they bolted toward the bushes. Clyde was not quite fast enough as the tail end of the swinging log caught him and sent him flying into a patch of prickers. There was a most satisfying scream, followed by a string of profanity, much rustling, and eventually, silence.

  The Swamp Thing, easily holding a log that a dozen strong men would have had trouble lifting, looked down upon the terrified woman.

  “You should not . . . be out at night,” he said. “There are . . . monsters everywhere . . .”

  “Up . . .” she paused, trying to force words from her throat. “Up until now . . . I thought monsters were only in people’s minds.”

  “People . . . are the worst kind . . . of monsters.”

  Clyde and Gurdell crashed noisily through the swamp as if the hordes of hell were right behind them.

  For the first five minutes of their headlong plunge they had been screaming and shouting. Now they were conserving their breath and just running like madmen. Forgotten was the still, and the confusion about what they should do tonight. Uppermost in their minds was putting as much distance between themselves and the Swamp Thing as possible.

  He was lurking everywhere. Every branch they banged into, every creeper or root that reached out and snagged their feet, every pricker bush that ripped their clothing and tore their skin, most certainly had to be the enraged swamp creature lashing out at them. He was punishing them for their belligerence, letting them know that no matter how fast and how far they ran, he would be there to terrify them.

  They burst out of cover and spotted a small structure some yards off. It was the motel, the one Gurdell had been certain was spooked. Now it seemed like an island of sanity, and they dashed for it.

  The knob to the screen door came off in Clyde’s frantic hand, and a voice from inside said “Knob come off again?” but it barely slowed them down as they smashed right through the screen door.

  There was some hippie freak behind the front desk, and a burned-out-looking guy in the corner, staring into empty space.

  “Well, now,” said the desk clerk, “you look like a couple of sinister ducks. What’s your problem, hey?”

  “There was a creature! In the swamp!” howled Gurdell. “Y’gotta call somebody!”

  “It tried to kill us!” affirmed Clyde.

  The man in the corner looked up with a flickering of interest. He looked at the two frantic brothers, at the dozens of cuts and bruises, at the ripped clothes and desperate air. “Creature?” he said.

  “It said it was a Swamp Thing! But it was the devil!” Gurdell said, going quickly toward the man in the corner. He grabbed him by the shoulders, desperation in his face. “The swamp’s haunted! We can’t ever go back or he’ll kill us!”

  “What’s he done so far?”

  “So far! He beat us up! He laughed off point-blank shotgun blasts! He picked up a log that weighed half a ton and trashed our still!”

  “Your still?”

  “That’s right,” said Clyde. “I’m Clyde; this is Gurdell. We make . . . made . . . hooch.”

  The man nodded slowly, a smile beginning to crawl across his face tentatively, as if entering unfamiliar territory. For the first time in what seemed ages, he felt life entering his body. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I know what to do.”

  “You do!” exclaimed Gurdell, overjoyed.

  “Yes.” He pulled his service revolver out from under his jacket and flashed his badge. “Harry Dugan, Treasury Department. You’re both under arrest for illegally operating a still.”

  “Wh . . . what?” stammered Clyde.

  From behind the desk, Alan said, “ ’Fraid so, gents. He’s a fed. Chances are you’re both going to be guests of the government in some prison far away.”

  “Far away?” echoed Gurdell.

  They looked at each other, then at Dugan.

  They dropped to their knees and embraced him fervently.

  “Thank you!” they howled. “Thank you thank you thank you.”

  And with a grateful sob, Clyde said, “I knew it. I knew there was a God all along.”

  11

  She ran a tentative finger across his mossy chest where the bullets had come and gone. There was no trace. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Tenderly he caressed her face. “Now. Yes.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am . . . Swamp Thing. I was . . . Alec Holland.” He paused, still not able to believe she was standing there. She was trembling slightly. “And you . . . ?”

  “Abby Arcane.”

  His face seemed to darken, like a thundercloud. “You are . . . his daughter?”

  “He’s my stepfather,” she said quickly, with the distinct feeling she’d just stepped into something unpleasant.

  “Stepfather . . . yet you use . . . his name?”

  “Well, when my mother married him, she got him to formally adopt me. It was her way of trying to make us a real family. Yeah, sure.” She laughed unpleasantly. “Like the Munsters. Besides, it used to be Abigail Flooglehoff, and anything’s better than that.” She paused. “You know him, don’t you.”

  “I know him.”

  “That sounds like an indictment.”

  He looked down at the hand that was resting against his chest, and saw the dried blood on her fingers. “Did those men . . . hurt you . . . ?”

  “Huh? Oh, no, this is from dinner.”

  “I do not . . . understand.”

  She shook her head. “Believe me, neither do I.”

  “Perhaps . . . I can help.”

  He reached down for her hand . . .

  And reflexively she pulled away. Immediately she hated herself for it. Somehow, in some way, she had touched the soul of this monstrous creature before her, yet something within her had made her flinch, purely because of his appearance.

  And she’d hurt him. She could see the sadness mirrored in his eyes. “I’m sorry . . .” he rumbled. “Sometimes I forget . . . what I look like.”

  He spoke so slowly, as if he carried the age of the world on his shoulders. Which, she realized, perhaps he did. Still, it was an incredible concept for her to fathom. “This is all you?” she asked. “For real? I don’t understand.” She made a vague, helpless gesture. “How could this
be?”

  “If I tell you . . . about Arcane . . . you will understand.”

  Suddenly Abby became aware of the ground stirring behind her. She spun and saw something large and leafy emerging from the earth. The plant grew several feet high, vines twisting through it to give it strength and support, and within moments a perfectly serviceable chair had come into existence behind her.

  He gestured toward it. “Please.”

  Incredulously she sat, feeling like the queen of the swamp. Swamp Thing . . . Alec, she reminded herself . . . did not sit, but towered over her, impressive and majestic.

  “I was . . . a scientist . . . working in a laboratory . . . not far from here,” he said. “My sister . . .” He paused, as if pulling up a distant and treasured memory. “My sister,” he continued, his voice sounding softer, “. . . and I had discovered . . . a biorestorative formula . . . that could double the world’s . . . food production. Arcane . . . discovered our plan . . .”

  It came roaring back at him, the pain and horror. “He murdered my sister . . . and when he tried to steal the formula . . . I was caught . . . in a terrible explosion . . .”

  “Oh, God,” she whispered.

  “The flames . . . consumed my body . . . but somehow . . . the chemicals in the formula . . . reconstructed my tissue . . . from the swamp . . . and I became . . . what you see.”

  “You mean my stepfather . . . is responsible for your being like this?”

  Again he nodded slowly. “Yes . . . and he found me . . . and I killed him.”

  “But . . . but you didn’t. I mean, I just had dinner with him.”

  Swamp Thing actually seemed startled. “I thought I had. It appears from my existence . . . and his . . . that nothing dies easily . . . in the swamp . . . Abby.” He actually spoke with urgency: “Arcane . . . is evil . . . in its purest form . . . and you must leave immediately.”

  “I can’t!” Abby pleaded. “My mother is dead, and they know what happened to her. It’s like some private, sick joke of theirs, and I have to find out what it was.”

  He studied her for a long moment. “If she is dead . . . then she is beyond your help . . . and risking your own life . . . will do her no good.”

  “People have risked their lives for knowledge plenty of times, Alec.”

  He paused and then actually whispered, in a tone touchingly human, “ ‘Alec’ . . . how long it has been . . . since I heard that name . . . as inappropriate . . . as that might be.” He shook off the thought. “Yes . . . they have risked their lives . . . for knowledge . . . that would be of benefit . . . to others. No one will benefit . . . from your risks.”

  “I will.”

  “Then you are . . . being selfish with your life.”

  “Alec,” she moaned, “you don’t . . .”

  “Understand?” He shook his head. “Who could understand . . . better than I?”

  “I know, but—”

  “If you saw the world . . . as I do . . . you would realize . . . that your concepts of life and death . . . do not begin to grasp . . . the whole. Life is death . . . and death is life . . . and to become obsessed . . . to the point of exclusion with one . . . is to misunderstand the need . . . for the other.”

  She gazed into his eyes and saw things in there, emotions and comprehensions of a grand scheme of things she could only discern the barest glimmerings of.

  All her life she had been certain there was more to the world than she had been permitted to see or understand. Her affairs with men had been transitory and unfulfilling. Her relationship—if one could call it that—with nature was longstanding yet requited only as much as her imagination would allow it to be.

  Here was the key to understanding, the key to something within her that had been crying to get out from the moment of her birth.

  Here was Alec.

  “All right,” she said quietly. “All right, I . . . I can’t forget what I came here to do. But . . . I won’t go back just yet. Let’s . . . let’s just go someplace and talk.”

  A place . . . yes, a place . . . where she can be comfortable . . . and at ease.

  Humans have homes . . . but my home . . . is all that I am. In order for her to be at peace . . . there must be .. . some touchstone of her reality.

  Just as I . . . have fashioned a body . . . approximating a human’s . . . so must I create a home . . . I can bring her to . . . where she will be . . . at ease.

  I reach out . . . searching for someplace . . . that will be an easy walk . . . and I find a large tree . . . in a clearing . . . with great, sturdy branches . . . and hollowed-out areas . . . where animals found shelter . . . But it is old . . . and dying . . . and inappropriate . . . in its current state . . .

  But not . . . unsalvageable . . .

  “Yes . . .” he said slowly. “There is . . . a place. Walk this way.”

  Abby put an imaginary cigar to her mouth and, doing a poor Groucho Marx impression, said, “If I could walk that way, I wouldn’t need the talcum powder.”

  He stared at her and, if he had had eyebrows, they would have been furrowed.

  “Joke.” She gestured helplessly, “Just a kind of stupid joke. I guess, after getting burned up and dumped in a swamp and turning green and spongy, you wouldn’t have much of a sense of humor.”

  “Actually . . . I had very little . . . before.” Somewhere under the mass of leaves and muck were the beginnings of a smile. “But . . . for you . . . I shall make . . . the effort.”

  Gunn whistled and lowered the binoculars. The squad of security guards around him whispered, “What? What do you see?”

  For answer he lifted his walkie-talkie. “Doc,” he said slowly. “She’s with him.”

  Points and Conklin looked at each other in confusion, as did all the others.

  Arcane’s voice came back: “You’re certain it’s him?”

  With a sneer Gunn replied, “Well, from this distance it’s hard to be sure. It could be John Forsythe. Yes, I’m certain it’s him. Do we attack?”

  “Not yet.” There was a pause. “Pull back. Keep them under observation. But do nothing overtly hostile to them. To anything, for that matter. He’s very sensitive.”

  “Oh, right, we wouldn’t want to make him cry.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” came Arcane’s voice with an edge that could have cut Gunn to ribbons had he been present. “He’s preternaturally aware of the environment. Hostile maneuvers, something as innocuous as gutting a raccoon for fun, might catch his attention. The longer he is with Abby, the more he will become distracted, and the better our chances are of surprising him.”

  “Well, hell, why don’t we wait to see if they hit the sack together and grab ’em while they’re smoking some goddamn cigarettes?”

  “You think you are joking, Gunn. Do not underestimate his capabilities.”

  “Well, fine, Doc,” said Gunn with thinning patience. “You’re the big expert; why don’t you come out here and handle it personally?”

  There was a pause, and then Arcane spoke. “I have every confidence in you, Gunn. Wait until you think the moment is right, then strike. Arcane out.”

  Gunn sat there, staring at the walkie-talkie, and then he grinned. “He’s afraid.”

  “Bullshit,” said Points. “You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Gunn, which is hardly anything new.”

  “He’s chickenshit scared, I tell ya,” replied Gunn, taking a drag on his cigarette. “That walking Spinach Soufflé out there has the great Anton Arcane spooked. Well, fine . . . let’s wait awhile.”

  Points took the binoculars from Gunn and focused on them. Her mouth dropped open. “She’s resting her head on his arm! That’s sick!”

  “Hey, they always say all the good men are either married or gay.” Gunn snickered. “That guy is neither. He’s just a vegetable . . . but that shouldn’t get in the way of true love. Why, hell, there’s only one thing Miss Arcane there needs to make this romance work.”

  “And that is?” prompted C
onklin.

  Gunn snickered. “Thousand Island dressing.”

  Arcane stood in the center of his bedroom in a dark mood. He had come up to take the bath he always took at this time, but the shortwave conversation with Gunn had discomfited him.

  “Lana?” he called out, but there was no answer. He went to the window, stared out at the swamp once more.

  There, at the edge of the fence, was where Arcane’s dominion ended. It was unfair, unjust. His was the superior mind, the greater ambition. Why was it that, through an accident, Holland had all the green beyond, and immortality, and Arcane had to fight and battle to hold on to what precious little he had? Arcane had a bleak, limiting future, and Holland had an infinity of tomorrows . . .

  Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow . . .

  He whispered, “ ‘A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ ”

  “Dr. Arcane?”

  He became dimly aware of Rochelle calling him for long moments now. He turned slowly.

  Rochelle hovered in the shadow of the doorway. “If I may be candid, sir, you seem very far away.”

  Arcane smiled thinly. “Strangely enough, I was having a conversation with Macbeth.”

  “Macbeth?” Rochelle shook his head uncomprehendingly.

  “Yes, the doomed soul. I am a doomed soul. Two doomed souls conversing. Do you know what you have when you have two doomed souls?”

  “Doomed shoes?” offered Rochelle.

  Arcane did not so much as crack a smile, and Rochelle shifted uncomfortably. “What do you want, Rochelle?”

  “Please forgive the intrusion, sir . . .”—Rochelle waved some notes he was carrying nervously—“but I must speak with you. It’s very important.”

  “Get on with it.”

  “Well . . . I hate to put it this way, it’s so trite, but . . . there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is the blood tests I ran on you twenty-four hours ago have been completed, and . . . I’m afraid the deterioration has increased.”

  “You mean I’m in danger of reverting to that . . . that grotesque animalistic form.” He closed his eyes as if to block the sight from his mind.