Earth Man

by Richard Paul Evans

  “Call the janitors, tell them to bring some Drano up here, this is disgusting!” the third male nurse shouted.

  “Drano? Call an exterminator!” The second nurse said.

  Neither of them noticed that the variety of the insects they were dealing with. Spiders, earwigs, ants and silverfish all crawled together, acting as if they were one species or of one mind. It took a few minutes but the nurses soon washed them back down the drain. The male nurse dumped hand sanitizer into the sink, letting the water run for a few minutes until it was boiling hot just to be sure they got them all.

  The Second walked along the beach of the Baja Peninsula wearing the human skin it had borrowed in Africa many weeks earlier. Although it had arrived on Earth first, it was designated the Second, responsible for the protection of the one known as the First. The humans were hiding the First, moving it from place to place but they could not hide it forever. Together they needed to prepare the planet for the arrival of more of their kind.

  It muttered to itself, occasionally stopping to bend down and smell handfuls of dirt. Years had been spent trying to cross the great oceans of this planet and now that it had arrived it was impatient. It had been apart from the other Growth for too long. It needed to find the scent of the First so that it could track it.

  “The First. The First must be found,” was all it said, over and over again.

  Somewhere in the maze of lights was the object he sought, that which would allow the others to come and join him and the new, wet rock he had discovered. The Second coughed and wiped its mouth with the back of its ragged sleeves. A streak of dark blood stains its mouth and hand. Using a long crooked finger nail it drew an X in the blood. Looking down at itself it realizes it must find new dressings, the swim across the sea left little of its body or clothing intact. The small, inconsequential parts of its human victim had been eaten away by the sea creatures and it would need new flesh if it were to continue unobserved among the dominant species of the strange blue planet.

  Danny had lost count of how many times he’d opened his eyes to new surroundings in the last twenty-four hours. He would wake up feeling fine, only to feel overwhelming nausea and dizziness. When he closed his eyes to try and make it stop, he’d fall back into the darkness of unconsciousness. This time however he saw his wife Helen standing over him and the darkness faded. As she leaned over him she smiled and swept back her short, curly red hair. His daughter Morgan, who was eight going on eighteen, leapt up onto the bed next to him. Although she looked like her father, Morgan had her mother’s hair with just a touch of Danny’s blonde through it. Morgan also had Danny’s blue eyes, a combination that made her quite striking when she wasn’t a little dishevelled mess. Morgan was all sweetness with ferocity much like a house cat; gentle but armed with her mother’s claws.

  “Careful Morgan!” Helen said, bouncing on the bed, but Danny took his wife’s hand to let her know it was okay.

  Danny’s oldest boy Raymond hung back; being thirteen he was no longer comfortable showing affection. Danny waved him over, pointing to the spot on the bed next to his sister. Ray scowled but hopped up next to him anyway.

  “Daddy’s a bit bruised so take it easy, okay guys?” Danny said, pulling Ray close. He kissed his son on the head and although the boy scowled with his mouth, his eyes shined brightly.

  “So you’re okay Dad?” Ray asked, trying to sound cool.

  “Everything seems to be working, but I feel like I got run over by a car full of fat people.” The kids giggled at his joke.

  “We thought you were in a coma.” Morgan said.

  Danny looked up at his wife. Obviously she must have overheard the word coma from an adult.

  “You were out for two days.” Helen said matter-of-factly. Danny was once again surprised at her strength, amazed at how calm and cool she was.

  “Two days? Shi. . . shoot. Did my work call?”

  “Yeah. You’re fired. But we’re glad you are okay.” Helen replied, throwing her arms around his neck. She kissed him on the temple and whispered in his ear.

  “Don’t do that to me again, Dan.”

  As Danny kissed his wife on the lips he suddenly heard a sound from inside the room. It sounded like mice inside the walls, running around frantically behind the cheap plaster.

  “You hear that?” he asked Helen, but she shook her head.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, sorry.” Danny said, kissing his wife a second time. The sound had stopped.

  “What are you wearing Dad?” Ray asked, pointing at the hospital gown.

  “Well this is what they give you when you are in the hospital. Something so ugly no one would ever steal it.”

  “It kind of feels like a napkin.” Ray replied as he rubbed the edge between his two fingers.

  Danny reached out and grabbed the Toronto Blue Jays cap off Ray’s head and put it on. It was too small and sat on top of his hair. Ray didn’t look like either of them, he had Danny’s face structure but his hair was a darker blonde like Danny’s mother. Luckily Ray had his father’s body shape; he was naturally athletic even though he had no interest in any sports.

  “Give it back Dad!” Ray said, snatching the hat back.

  Suddenly Morgan threw her arms around her father, squeezing him tight.

  “I knew you’d wake up Daddy. I know you’ll always be there to protect us.”

  A nurse appeared in the doorway so Danny took the opportunity to break his daughter’s choke hold.

  “Doctor Rue is ready to see you now.” The nurse stated.

  The doctor entered the room as soon as nurse finished speaking and Danny wondered why he hadn’t just come in. Unless he was heading in their direction and the nurse had taken too long to tell them, Danny couldn’t think of any logical way the doctor could have entered just as the nurse said he would, unless he’d planned it that way. Either way, Danny didn’t like the dreamy young doctor already. When he smiled at them his gaze lingered too long on Helen and it made Danny furious.

  “Is it okay to talk in front of the children?” the doctor asked.

  He flashed a big white smile like an actor in toothpaste commercial. Danny and the doctor were the same age and Danny suddenly felt inferior, especially now that he was apparently unemployed.

  “It appears that Mr. Boyle had an idiopathic seizure,” the doctor said with a little too much enthusiasm. “The strain on his body caused him to suffer a heart attack, which occurred during his transfer here from Mills.”

  The doctor walked over to Danny and checked his temperature with the back of his hand, placing it gently against Danny’s forehead. Danny rolled his eyes at Helen.

  “The good news is that there was no damage done, at least none that we can see at this point. His brain scans came up clean, his heart looks stronger than mine, all in all he’s in great shape.”

  Danny smiled until he realized the doctor was smiling at him.

  “So what’s the bad news?” Helen asked, fiddling with her fingers like she always did when she was nervous.

  “What?” asked the doctor.

  “What’s the bad news? You started with saying ‘the good news is’, that implies there is some bad news as well.” Helen said, narrowing her eyes.

  “Oh, no. I mean we have to keep him here for another couple of days to run some tests. I am not sure why it took him so long to wake up and we have no idea what caused the seizure in the first place. Give me another 48 hours and then I’d say he is good to go home. That’s the bad news, I guess. Lots of tests to run.”

  “Can I stay in a hotel? It’d be cheaper.” Danny stated.

  “Take it easy, I’ll be back in a couple hours for some blood.” The doctor said as he shook Danny’s leg playfully before walking toward the door.

  Danny nodded and the doctor took off, down the hall to another room where another patient waited. Danny wondered if that person had a story as bizarre as his own.

  Helen and the kids stayed with Danny for a few more hours,
but as much as they loved their father, the children grew restless. Danny felt fine while they were there but after Helen and the kids said goodbye the sounds started in the wall again. Anxiety began to build in his chest and when it got close to midnight a new noise started outside the window. It seemed like a dull vibration, a throbbing that grew in intensity every minute. Danny lay in his bed, looking at the curtains, wondering what was outside the window. His room was two floors up and even though it was making him nervous he had to see what it was.

  Breathing in deeply, Danny worked up the courage to go toward the window. He stood there with his hands on the curtain, trying to calm himself down. Something banged against the window, sounding like a thousand tiny little hammers. He threw the curtains open and saw the largest swarm of bees he’d ever seen in his life. They moved as a swarm, banging against the glass repeatedly. Danny had never had seen bees at night and something told him this was far from normal behaviour. Lifting his hand to the window the crowd of bees gathered around the point where his fingers touched the window. Moving his hand back and forth, he watched in awe as the bees followed the path his fingers traced on the glass. Making a fist, he rapped it lightly against the window and the entire swarm suddenly dissipated. He watched the bees split apart and spread out, merging back into the darkness they’d come from.

  The rest of the noises faded away and Danny made his way back to bed. Although the sound in the walls had stopped the feeling of uneasiness still lingered. Lying on his side Danny fell asleep reluctantly, unable to shake the feeling that something, somewhere was watching him.

  The next morning Danny began running the gauntlet of tests that Dr. Rue had scheduled him for. For breakfast Danny had a CT scan and an MRI. All he could think of was the dent the tests were going to put in their savings. Canadian health care covered for a lot, but it didn’t cover everything.

  For lunch Danny gave a couple vials of blood and sat in a reclining chair for an incredibly boring EEG scan. Dr. Rue didn’t administer any of the tests himself but he made himself present every hour or so, hammering Danny with questions. At least three times the doctor asked him about his past experiences with recreational street drugs. It was clear Dr. Rue believed this to be the cause of Danny’s seizure, that perhaps Danny and his black friend Phil Morrison were snorting cocaine or popping pills out in the wild. Of course Phil was the most mainstream, least experimental person Danny knew; other than drinking beer Phil hadn’t even tried drugs when they were in college. Phil liked the same things now as he did when he was twelve; guns and girls. Danny had never tried any drugs without his wife present and most of those times occurred out of the country while they were on vacation. He’d tried mushrooms in Peru and smoked a ton of free pot in Jamaica, but beyond that he’d never taken anything so bad or had a trip so terrible that it could come back and haunt him years later. Danny was one of those people that believed if you looked good and felt good, you WERE good. What he’d seen that night was not a drug induced fantasy. Although his memory was fuzzy and confusing, that did not change that fact he was sure that something extraordinary had happened out in the forest.

  The hospital saved the best test for last, the lumbar puncture. There was simply no other way for the doctor to test his cerebrospinal fluid. No matter how he protested there was no avoiding it, it seemed. Danny didn’t want to complain too much, he didn’t want to seem weak in front of the doctor. It wasn’t that Danny was afraid; he just wasn’t keen on more pain. Luckily the pain was minimal and the procedure was over fairly quickly.

  Danny returned to his room just in time for dinner but halfway through the mashed potatoes he began to develop a terrible spinal headache. Dr. Rue had warned him about it but he did not expect it to come on so fast and so hard.

  “I heard you are getting some headaches?” Dr. Rue said, entering the room.

  “Yeah,” was all Danny said, rubbing his forehead.

  “I’ll get you some stronger painkillers. If the headaches persist, let me know right away. Okay? Otherwise you should be fine to go home tomorrow.”

  “How did you get all these tests scheduled so quickly? Danny asked out of the blue.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve never seen any hospital ever get anything done so quickly. It took six months for a doctor to even look at the lump Helen had in her . . . chest and another seven months for an appointment to get it removed.”

  That wasn’t completely true; Danny had spent a lot of time in hospitals. It was impossible to avoid them when your father was a stunt man.

  “Well I guess we got lucky this time. Rest up, Mr. Boyle.” The doctor gave him that infuriatingly joyful smile and disappeared down the corridor. Danny could hear his loafers happily clacking on the tiles, growing softer and softer until he was gone.

  Danny sat up in bed, trying to bring back memories of what had happened in the woods. Between his thumb and finger on his right hand Danny had an ugly scar from a sports accident when he was sixteen. He began to rub his scar nervously, staring out the window until he finally fell asleep. Dreams of running through the Canadian countryside kept his mind busy until morning.

  As Danny slept the things that moved unknown and unseen in the universe began to circle the small blue planet called Earth. Humanity, who by its very nature was a species hungry for social interaction, could not have been less prepared for the creatures that would come to hide among them. For they knew no god but themselves, they worshipped nothing but corruption. They did not come to Earth in a space ship or through teleportation; they came as a virus, dropping from the atmosphere after a million years in the cold dark of space. They wanted no allies, no friends, no companions, only hosts for their viral intelligence.

  Descending down through the atmosphere wrapped in a protective shell of ice and compressed space dust, a tiny microbe directed itself toward the place where it believed the watery blue planet would develop an immune response. The planet knew they were coming; even now the living sentient blue orb would be preparing itself. The Growth knew the Earth was aware of it the second it had broke through her airy veil.

  Unlike the first and second who arrived before it, this entity wanted only to fight. It was a warrior, one whose ancestors had crushed a thousand worlds throughout the universe. The First had a mission of great importance, while the Second was the one who would lead the others and protect the First. This one, this Third one, as good a name for it as anything else the human language could devise, wanted only one thing; to find the strongest of the humans and devour them. It could sense Danny from 45,000 feet high, somehow knowing which direction it needed to go even as its icy shell melted away in the atmosphere. The Third saw Danny Boyle lit up brightly among the rest of the animals on the planet and that meant he would become either its host or its first opponent. The Growth did not know pleasure in the way that it was understood among other sentient beings but still its pathogenic body quivered in anticipation. As it drifted down to the hospital it found numerous bodies to choose from, each one offering a different possible configuration. The Third was feeling creative and so it decided one body would not suit it, it would take two hosts simultaneously. Living flesh was clay to it, easily malleable and easily transformed.

  Meanwhile much farther south in Santo Tomas, Mexico, the Second finally found the scent it had been looking for. It smashed through the front door of a Chem-X Laboratories research facility. The frame of the door exploded inwards, glass flying in every direction. Alarm bells rang out but it had already torn the security staff apart outside in the parking lot. Its fingers had mutated into strong, armoured black weapons which it used to tear open the steel door of the elevator. The elevator sat forty feet below on the bottom floor and the Second simply leaped down onto it, punching through the hatch and dropping in. It paid no heed to the experiments in the other cell, it smelled its own kind and that was all it could focus on. It was the Second that was responsible for the others; it was the one who must bring them together to ensure complete a
nd total consumption of the planet. A human, slim and weak, tried to run past the Second and it grabbed the man by the throat, slamming him against the wall over its head.

  “Where is she? Where have you taken her?” The Second screamed. It was confused by its use of a human gender descriptive. In order to identify that which was different from itself its newly corrupted human brain was searching for the only terms it could easily grasp. The Second paid it no mind, it was what it was and humanity’s language was nothing more than a tool. It slammed the human against the wall a second time, repeating its question. The human scientist broke easily, his head splintered and the creature had no choice but to toss him away. It kicked over a nearby metal table and a tank of white lab rats broke open. The rats scurried in every direction, running over the body of the dead scientist. The Second reached down and grabbed one, looking at it with great curiosity. The rat did not move as the creature stared into its pink eyes, moving it back and forth. Earth was different than many of the other world’s its kind had infected; there were so many varieties of life here, so many opportunities to create new things. The creature enjoyed the variety of life forms it had to feed upon. Earth was nothing if not diverse in flavour and abundant with flesh.

  Danny was overjoyed to see his family but before they’d even gotten through the doorway the nurse burst in on them.

  “Mister and Missus Boyle? The Doctor said Mr. Boyle is free to leave. He’ll meet you at the front desk when you are ready just have them page him,” the nurse said.

  “Great, thanks.” Helen replied.

  The kids were overjoyed, they climbed up on the bed and hugging their father.

  “Yay!” Morgan shouted, bouncing on the edge of the bed.

  “Well you heard her,” Helen said, lifting Morgan off the bed.