by Weston Ochse
“This isn’t a test, maricone. I was just asking your opinion.”
Looking at the way the sun sliced into the Rift, then met an impenetrable wall of shadow, Andy Friarson would have to say that yes, if there was anywhere in the world where monsters existed, this was the place. He’d been to Baltimore, Edmonton and even the tiny crack in the earth in France they called the Vallée de la Mort. All of them were interesting, but they lacked the sense of foreboding that the Sonoran Rift had. There was a feeling about it that reminded him of the time he was in Croatia, hiding in a ditch with his camera clutched to his chest while Serbians lined up an entire village, shot them, and shoved them into a mass grave. Andy had known that at any moment he would be found out and added to the ditch. When one of the killers had turned to stare directly at his hiding place, Andy had known that the end was near. He’d closed his eyes and waited to die, unwilling to meet it face to face. He’d inexplicably survived that day, but had been left with the memory of the certainty of death he’d felt— which he felt again now, walking so near the place where monsters were born.
***
The relief battalion had met in an old silver mine east of Bisbee, Arizona. There were three hundred of them. Many were ex-convicts, with the rest ex-military, fresh from the war but unable to stop killing. With the promise of $100,000 for six months work and the opportunity to protect the sovereignty of America, they showed up in droves. The advertisements were posted on the Internet, Field and Stream, Gun and Rifle and Soldier of Fortune. Everyone was vetted in Phoenix first. With the help of Sheriff Arpaio, the Network created a criminal history for Andy, and with it, a desire to get out of Arizona. With a faked military record, his bona fides fit right into the model of a modern redneck protector the US government was arranging to guard the Rift and the American way of life.
***
Everyone had their own responsibilities. Andy and his partner, Leon Batista, were in charge of maintaining the landmines in sector six, an area just north and east of the Rift and one of twenty-two sectors. The mines were the last line of defense. If anything or anyone clawed its way free of the Rift, it would encounter sectors of seven rows of ten claymore mines, positioned far enough apart so that each row could operate independently, creating a cataclysmic explosion of ball bearings traveling at 4,000 feet per second if detonated.
But if anything got to the claymores, they were all in the shit. Andy had been issued an automatic pistol with the reminder that the bullets would be best used on himself so that when he was eaten, he wouldn’t know, or care.
The first lines of defense were right along the edge of the Rift. There was evidence where they’d tried to cap the crevice. Some of the steel webwork remained. But all attempts to cover the mighty hole had been stopped by the monsters. It seemed that as soon as anyone got within a few feet of the darkness, creatures would stir and come out to feed. Andy had been offered a tour of the area, but even his reporter’s craving for information couldn’t defeat the fear that locked his joints and filled his guts with lead-heavy dread.
Many of his Network colleagues thought he was a coward. He’d returned from Croatia three weeks into a three month assignment. He’d tried to explain to them what had happened, but they didn’t want to listen. They were reporters, they’d told him. Their job was to go into the mouth of hell itself and report what the devil was having for dinner. If you weren’t willing to do that, then why be a reporter?
Why, indeed.
Towers with Vulcan Canons were interspersed one hundred meters apart along both sides of the Rift. If anything tried to escape, the cannons could create a deadly web of interlocking fire. Each 20 mm pneumatically-driven, six-barreled, air-cooled, electrically-fired, Gatling-style cannon was capable of throwing 7,200 depleted uranium rounds each minute into anything that moved. Each tower had their own specified field to fire within, which kept the gunners from aiming directly at another tower. The very idea that anything could survive such a fusillade was unimaginable, but as Andy reminded himself, this was only the first line of defense. By definition that meant that the tactical experts who’d created the Rift Defense System planned on things getting through.
Above the towers flew Predator unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with laser targeting for the offsite medium range missiles, as well as video cameras capable of operating in Forward Looking Infra-Red (FLIR), Starlight, optical spectrum and radioactive modes. As another line of first offense, each carried three AGM–114K II Hellfire missiles with High Explosive Metal Augmented Charges.
Satellites were rumored to be on station even farther above, capable of reigning down Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles if they became desperate. Andy occasionally found himself glancing skyward, but he could no more prove the existence of satellites, than he could prove the existence of God. Still, he hoped that all the conspiracy theorists and evangelists were right and that there was something watching over them other than the hot desert sun.
***
That night Andy dreamed of his childhood. Tarzan cavorted through the trees high above a forest where he swung from vine to vine. Beneath him the earth was rent in much the same manner as it was in Sonora. But where in Sonora the darkness hid everything from the visible eye, Tarzan’s gaze pierced the shadow, revealing converging armies of Ant Men, Golden Lions, Leopard Men, Snake People and Winged Invaders, just as they’d appeared on the covers of his old, cherished paperbacks.
These creatures, first introduced to Andy from Edgar Rice Burroughs books and the unauthorized Barton Werper volumes, glittered in the darkness as they stared back at their Lord of the Jungle nemesis. But fear found home in their eyes. Tarzan was too much for them. He’d done battle with each of their ilk and cast them back into the dusty confines of their paperback prisons long ago.
Andy turned in his sleep and groaned happily, safe with the knowledge that as long as Tarzan watched over them, he’d be safe.
Then he awoke to screams.
He twisted free from his blanket and crashed from his upper bunk six feet to the concrete floor. The claxons and emergency lights had sent everyone into frenzy. He scrambled to his feet, grabbed his boots, and struggled into them, as he tried to hop and run at the same time. The door to the bunker had been left open to let in the breeze. As he approached it, he bumped into the guy in front of him who’d stopped to stare at the sky.
A hundred black silhouettes shot from the Rift into the night, tracer rounds from the Vulcan cannons stabbing them as they rose. Great black insects with glowing orange wings, each was as large as a World War II Japanese Zero. Rising, falling and slashing sideways, they twisted and twirled to get away from the fusillade of angry rounds fired from the air-cooled Gatling cannons.
Transfixed by the aerial death match, everyone jumped as a Predator drone strafed the action, unleashing its payload of three Hellfire missiles that exploded in awesome tornadoes of orange, red and green fire.
They stood for ten minutes watching the life and death struggle as the creatures tried to make their way free of the Rift. Each man wore only boots and underwear, expressions agog at a sight that only made sense to little boys with Tarzan dreams who spent their Saturday mornings watching cartoons.
While everyone’s eyes were on the creatures, Andy’s gaze rested on the darkness from whence they came. He felt the Rift watching him. The great gaping hole in the earth was like the eye of that Serbian soldier who’d held Andy’s life in his hands. The capriciousness of Andy’s existence wasn’t lost to him. Any moment, he wondered if the soldier of his memory wouldn’t decide to fire, the bullet transporting through time to jerk him back to that moment where he’d die and be buried in the ditch with all the other villagers.
One minute the night was filled with unearthly screams and the sounds of battle, the next all was silent. Two Predators took off south after something, but otherwise everything was still. Sometime during the battle the claxons had been turned off but Andy hadn’t noticed until now. The desert was now eerily quiet. The on
ly sound was the breathing of the soldiers standing in the doorway of the bunker, all in rhythm as they stared into the night.
Finally someone chuckled.
“Let’s get some sleep.”
They turned and headed back to their bunks. Andy remained motionless, unable to simply turn off what he’d seen. The others pushed by him, and as the last of them headed for slumber, Andy reached out and grabbed him.
“What was that?”
The man looked Andy in the eye and grinned. “The tarantulas exploded. No problem.”
***
Andy didn’t get any sleep after that.
Tarzan had returned to rule his dreams, but he was no longer the King of the Jungle. Where he had once strutted across the great branches of the forest’s ancient trees, now he skulked from shadow to shadow. It wasn’t the Leopard Men or the Ant Men that he feared, nor was it the Golden Lions or the Snake People that sent his heart racing. He was afraid of what he couldn’t see, what he couldn’t know.
A roar came from somewhere in the forest.
Tarzan crouched and peered sideways.
What was it that set him so on edge?
He squatted there for a time. This time when he moved, he was more like a monkey than a great ape.
***
“What the hell did he mean when he said ‘the tarantulas exploded’?”
Leon Batista looked at him and spit tobacco juice along the ground. “Where you from you don’t know tarantulas?”
“Upstate New York.”
“They no have tarantulas there?”
Andy shook his head.
Leon spit again. He said something in Spanish that was lost to the constant desert breeze.
Andy paused from checking the ignition line of the mine. He’d been to thirty-seven countries and forty states. He’d even been to Antarctica when he’d had to do an expose on penguin rustling by Japanese fishermen. He felt the need to demonstrate his worldliness to Leon, but forced himself to hold back. He was supposed to keep his head down and his identity secret. As far as anyone was concerned, he was an Army reservist who’d survived Iraq, gotten into a fight with an off-duty cop in Phoenix, and wanted something more than a regular nine to five. He was a convenience store clerk with saving-the-world dreams.
“Tarantulas? You know big fucking spiders?” Batista asked as if Andy were a child. He waggled the fingers of both hands like spider legs.
“Yeah. I’ve seen them.” Andy mimicked, “Big fucking spiders.”
Batista glared at him for a moment, then continued. “There are these wasps. They lay their eggs in the tarantulas. Tarantulas no move anymore, then one day poof! Tarantula explodes with baby wasps.”
Andy felt his grin slip into something akin to stupefaction. There was a wasp that laid its eggs in a tarantula? He felt his mouth moving before he could stop it. “What are these wasps called?”
Batista rolled his eyes. “Maricone. Where the fuck you been? These are tarantula wasps. Sometimes call them tarantula hawks.” Leon made flying gestures with his arms. “Big fucking spiders. Big fucking wasps.”
“Yeah,” Andy repeated, “Big fucking wasps. And last night? Were those tarantula hawks?”
Leon Batista laughed and shook his head. He choked on a mouthful of tobacco juice and convulsed before he was able to spit it out.
“Last night wasps? Those were Rift wasps. Those were gigantesco. Like airplanes, no? You get bit by them, not like the real ones. You’ll walk around thinking you okay, then your stomach gets bigger and bigger and—”
Andy nodded. So if the wasps were increased in size because of the Rift, then he could only imagine how large the tarantulas had to be. He took one more look at Batista who seemed to be reading his thoughts.
“Big fucking spiders.” The man nodded and waggled his arms. “Bigger than me. Bigger than you. Like Cadillac.”
Andy closed his eyes.
Spiders the size of Cadillacs.
Swell.
***
A sort of manic normalcy prevailed after that, if you can call regular sorties of giant tarantula wasps into the night sky normal. For someplace like Upstate New York, it would have raised an eyebrow. But for those around the Rift, a few wasps here and there were the least of their worries.
Every other night the wasps would escape containment and try and fight their way to freedom. And every other night, the combined might of the Rift battalion would hurl them back whence they came. During the battles, mine tenders like Batista and Andy would ensconce themselves in the emergency bunker, well away from the action. The first night they’d been too afraid to leave their sleeping bunkers. That one transgression was allowed. But since then, they’d always hot-footed it to the emergency bunker. It was bigger anyway. They quickly became inured to the shrieks and sounds of combat. Great games of spades, old Doug Clegg novels and even sleep took up their nights as they waited for the battalion’s inevitable victory.
Then one day visitors came. When they heard the claxons sounded and made their way to the emergency bunker, they found it occupied by thirty-seven dusty Mexicans who’d gotten lost on their way to the border, Douglas, Arizona, and red, white and blue freedom.
Wide-eyed and certainly wishing they’d never left their homes, the Mexicans huddled together against one wall. Beside them were piles of belongings, a mish-mash of things they thought they’d need, but nothing even remotely capable of protecting them against what the Rift had to offer. Several shuddered beneath a blanket. An old man and woman clutched each other, faces buried in each other’s shoulders, eyes crammed shut. A child cried, his head pressed against the lap of his mother.
“What the hell?” asked one of the other mine tenders.
“When did the wetbacks move in?” Batista asked.
Andy didn’t miss the irony of his friend using the pejorative. “Technically they aren’t wetbacks.”
Batista frowned.
“I mean, they haven’t crossed any rivers yet.” Andy shrugged. “Can’t be wetbacks if they don’t get wet.”
Batista gave him a look. “You think too much, maricone.”
The others spread out and found places to play cards, read or snooze. A few of them watched the new guests, but with only cursory interest.
Andy and Batista found an empty space on the floor. They broke out a deck of cards and began a game of gin rummy. But it became obvious after the first hand that Batista was just going through the motions. His eyes were on one of the girls that huddled next to an older man with milky eyes and a missing ear. A sly, hungry look had crept had into Batista’s face and taken control.
The girl couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Her dark eyes and skin told of Indian ancestry. Her long hair had once been luxurious, but was now more the color of dirt than lustrous black. The hair was twisted and bunched beneath an L.A. Dodgers baseball cap. Her legs were drawn beneath her. Her hands rested on the old man’s leg.
She reminded Andy of a girl who’d lived near him at Fort Drum. He’d never known her name, but the memory of her had made him who he was to this day.
Andy’s father hadn’t been in the Army, but the girl’s father had. He was assigned to the 10th Mountain Division. He was never home, always playing war games, or deployed to some far-flung country. When he was in town, she used to sit on the front stoop of their townhouse, waiting from him to come home. Her eyes were like the eyes of the Mexican girl: wide brown pools where hope shimmered above a surface tension of fear.
Andy had been drawn to those eyes when he passed on his way home from school. He was sixteen and she was thirteen, and he wanted to stop and reach out to help her. “Me Tarzan. You Jane,” he’d said in his mind, every time he’d passed. Pounding his chest, he’d let out the famous Tarzan call, grab her by the waist and swing off into the trees like Johnny Weissmuller had done so many times. They’d live a life free of fear, high above the dangerous animals far below. They’d have the monkeys to entertain them and the apes to protect them. Living would be
good. Life would be grand.
But not really.
Tarzan, that great mythical man who was the source of all courage, wasn’t real. He existed in the pages of paperback pulps, in comic books, in television and movies, and in the minds of every boy who’d sat down and plumbed the depths of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ imagination.
Andy knew this because of the doctors he’d been forced to see.
They asked him Do you really think you’re Tarzan?
Why did you do that to her?
What were you planning to do to her? And a hundred more questions, each as inane and embarrassing as the others. Why had he done what he had? What had set him off, making him believe that he could be Tarzan?
He’d run after it had happened.
An hour later the doorbell had rung. He’d pressed his ear to the closed door of his room and heard most of the conversations that had taken place. When it came time for his mother to confront him, he was sitting on the bed, prepared for the embarrassment. But the embarrassment never came. They hadn’t understood. What had been his vain inglorious attempt to save the girl had been misconstrued as some sort of attack.
“Why’d you scream at her? Why’d you grab her like that?” his mother had asked.
“But I didn’t—”
She cut him off with a chop of her hand. “Don’t lie to me. I just talked to that poor girl’s father. I convinced him not to call the police.”
“The police...?”
“He said you need help.” His mother hugged herself as tears began to slide down her cheeks. “I just don’t understand what happened.”
“Mom. I didn’t do anything.” He spoke quickly, knowing that he had one slim chance to diffuse the situation. “All I did was be Tarzan. I gave the jungle yell, I beat my chest and I tried to rescue her. I wasn’t attacking her, I was...”
His mother’s shoulders began to shake as she cried harder. Andy had stood and watched as the reality of his behavior and the insanity of it slipped past his excuse. What had he done? Why had he pretended to be Tarzan? What had come over him?