Kill Monster

by Sean Doolittle

  To take his post in the Arcadia’s heavy-laden cargo hold.

  To retrieve from his pocket the special object Rabbi Loew had crafted specially for him. A charm, of a kind – formed from a measure of the creature’s own clay, mixed with a vial of Silas Wasserman’s own blood. A magical shem for the water carrier alone, the only instrument capable of bringing the awakened creature to heel: the Shepherd Stone.

  And, finally, to wrench open the crate marked BOOKS and decommission the terrible thing inside. It was a power vested in only one human soul on God’s earth. This was the responsibility – the privilege! – Silas had accepted.

  But by the time he’d gathered his wits, the great white Arcadia had already listed starboard, her larboard paddle-wheel raining muddy river water, gallons more of the same pouring into her holds and over her rails.

  Chaos. Panic. Humanity en masse. Even as he groped for the nearest railing and struggled to regain his feet, Silas felt that he had one of two choices: move along or be trampled flat. And though he may have edited the details slightly in his eventual telegraph to Rabbi Loew back home, the honest truth was this:

  By the time he paused to consider the monster in the box somewhere below him, Silas Wasserman had already clambered, hatless, atop the upper cabins along with everyone else.

  Crewmen and locals took them away from the foundering ship in rowboats. By the time the last of the Arcadia’s passengers had been ferried safely ashore, only her smokestacks, and a thin white sliver of her pilot house, remained visible in the moonlight.

  Silas did return at sunrise the following morning. He came, like all the others, to see what could be done about the recovery of property.

  But all was lost to the river by then. To stand on the land and look at the water, it was almost as if the Arcadia had never existed at all.

  As he trudged away in shame, Silas overheard Jesper Frisk speaking to a newspaperman on the bank. He couldn’t help thinking that, at least at a glance, the big Swede looked rather none the worse for wear, despite his heavy losses – not least, his family’s prospects on the frontier.

  ‘God as my witness, I tried to save her,’ Frisk was telling the man with the journal and pen. ‘But the blasted stubborn beast wouldn’t budge. I’ll tell you, pots and pans are one thing. But believe you me: it would sicken any man to lose such a good mule.’

  iii. Arcadia

  A Cornfield in Kansas – Present Day

  Randy James Bierbaum’s last day alive was filled, right up until his final moments, with elation.

  Throughout that morning and afternoon, Randy enjoyed a seemingly relentless succession of exhilarating thoughts. Thoughts like: Oh my god, and Yes! Yes! Yes! and This is unbelievable!

  And, on the heels of these: Take THAT, Myra.

  ‘RJ,’ a voice called. ‘Look here.’

  Randy made his way toward the stern-end of the dig site, mud and heavy silt sucking at his five-buckle overshoes. He came upon his kid brother, Dickie James Bierbaum: fifty-four years of age, covered in mud and smiles, standing shin-deep in a puddle alongside a handful of volunteers.

  ‘Brandied cherries,’ Dickie said, handing over a clear bottle stoppered with paraffin and cork. He followed this with a second bottle. ‘And pickles!’

  Un … be … lievable, Randy thought again. Somehow, miraculously, after all these decades, the cherries were still red. The pickles were still bright green. It was like holding Christmas in his hands.

  Take that, Myra.

  ‘This is making me hungry,’ Dickie said. ‘Anybody else?’

  The volunteers reported levels of agreement ranging from starving to You don’t mean that stuff, right?

  Randy was hungry, too, but he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the site before dark. In fact, he didn’t want the low autumn sun to set at all. For the past five years, Randy and Dickie Bierbaum of Kansas City – co-owners and operators of Bierbaum Refrigerated Trucking, Inc – had spent every spare minute away from their livelihoods in pursuit of a day just like today. Part of Randy was convinced that if he closed his eyes, even for a moment, it would all be gone.

  ‘Bring me a cheeseburger and fries,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay back and make sure the pumps don’t quit.’

  ‘That’s dinner!’ Dick shouted, projecting his voice over the constant drone and chug of the generators. Beaming, he slapped Randy on the back and slogged toward the rim of the excavation.

  ‘Extra pickles,’ Randy called after him, still gazing at the fine old bottles in his hands.

  According to Randy Bierbaum’s painstaking research, many dozens of commercial vessels had been lost on the Missouri River during the heyday of the great paddle steamers. Among these extinct behemoths, Arcadia had been more or less average in size: 180 feet long, 60 feet across the beam, with 30-foot wheels on either side. She’d been capable of carrying 200 tons of cargo, all of it bound for settlements west.

  All of it now buried in an eighty-year-old Kansas farmer’s cornfield.

  This cornfield had been river, once upon a time. At least until the fickle Big Muddy cut itself a new channel and changed course, leaving Arcadia’s mysteries entombed under fifty feet of modern farmland. And while Randy and Dickie weren’t the first treasure hunters to locate her bones, by God, they were the first to truly find her.

  They’d spent a full two years convincing the grizzled old farmer to grant them permission to tear apart his field. They’d each spent every last dime of their personal savings – including insurance and retirement accounts – battling logistics and groundwater.

  They’d coped with the weather, seasonable and unseasonable. They’d battled groundwater. They’d jostled with come-lately competitors. They’d battled groundwater. They’d endured countless minor setbacks, mocking naysayers, know-it-all experts, one extraordinarily expensive geographical miscalculation, and even sabotage. They’d battled groundwater.

  Along the way, Randy’s grown children all decided he’d gone batshit crazy and gradually stopped calling the house. His bride of thirty-five years had thrown up her hands and walked out on him (for their marrow-sucking tax accountant, no less).

  Dickie, for his own part – never married – had sold his bass boat, his Road King, and finally his home; he’d been sleeping in Myra’s former sewing room for a year. At least that’s where he’d slept until they’d broken ground on the dig, at which point the two of them had taken to staying on site together in the single-wide trailer they’d hauled in for the purpose.

  Through all of that and beyond, at last came the day – that glorious, shining September day – when their core auger first breached Arcadia’s hull, just as that old submerged oak snag had done in her prime.

  And what treasures had waited for them inside!

  Clothing. Footwear. Whiskey. Tools. Buttons made of wood, brass, and horn. Bolts of blue silk from China; crates of gold-rimmed china from France. All these items by the pound, and others, an improbable number of them undamaged. All perfectly preserved in the anaerobic mud for more than a century and a half.

  In the past three weeks, Dick and Randy Bierbaum had uncovered, along with the lost Arcadia herself, enough pristine antebellum artifacts to fill a museum. Which so happened to be Dick and Randy Bierbaum’s long-range plan.

  But, for now, every thrilling minute carried a potential new discovery. And Randy had never had more fun in his life.

  One of the last actions he completed in the short time left to him, after Dickie and the volunteer crew had cleared out, was to wrench open the latest crate and find a more-or-less solid block of mud inside.

  The bottom must have broken out of this one, Randy surmised. He rinsed off the lid and tried to make out its faded markings in the sunlight. He found a legible B and rinsed some more, uncovering what he thought was a K.

  Books, he thought, smiling to himself. They were probably goners, but you just never knew. This mud, they’d found time and again, was filled with surprises.

  And because Randy James B
ierbaum had already stooped to retrieve a margin trowel from a tool bag, he wasn’t even looking when the mud opened its eyes.

  IT’S ALIVE

  ONE

  Ben Middleton mistimed his post-lunch flatulence so that the odor had already begun to rise up around him well before the department printer had finished spitting out his pages. It was no place for a person to be standing. Naturally, the new girl from marketing chose that moment to pop around the corner and into the supply alcove.

  ‘Oh, hey,’ she said. She had a vaguely aquiline nose, the tiniest glint of a stud in one nostril, and the greatest crooked smile. Then her nose twitched. A slight frown crinkled her brow.

  Ben leaped into his side of the conversation too quickly. ‘Hey, how’s it going? Settling in?’ Stop talking, he thought. Run. ‘Did Ajeet get all your graphics stuff installed?’

  ‘He did, thanks. Thirty.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Ajeet told me you wondered how old I was. I figured you must be shy, so I’m telling you: I’m thirty.’

  Note to self, Ben thought. Murder Ajeet Mallipudi with bare hands. Meanwhile, the way she was hanging around to chat confused him. And her expression now seemed at ease again. Maybe she really hadn’t noticed anything unpleasant?

  ‘Anabeth, right?’ He’d set up all her new-hire accounts before she’d started. Anabeth Glass. ‘Do you go by Ana, or Beth, or …’

  ‘I prefer Anabeth, actually. Or Abe.’

  ‘People call you Abe?’

  ‘People I like. Which I guess is most people.’

  ‘I’ll call you Anabeth until I know I’m safe, then.’

  ‘Ha. You can call me Abe.’

  ‘I’m Ben.’

  ‘Middleton, yeah. Ajeet said you set up my network account.’

  ‘Did he.’

  ‘Speaking of which, I think I forgot to lock my workstation when I left my desk. I’ll come back. See you around, Ben.’

  Another thing he liked about her smile: her eyes.

  See ya, Abe, he started to say, but she was already half-gone. As she rounded the corner, Ben glimpsed her raising a hand. At first he thought she was waving goodbye to him. Then he realized that she was blocking her own nostrils with the back of her index finger. He was pretty sure he heard a light gasp.

  Good God. It wasn’t me! he wanted to call after her. Somebody else must have been here first!

  Then he noticed that the printer had stopped whirring. All done.

  Ben sighed, scooped his performance appraisal out of the paper tray, and continued on to his manager’s office. What the hell, he thought. Might as well get it over with, as long as he was on a roll.

  ‘Look, your work isn’t the problem,’ Corby McLaren said. ‘We both know your ticket stats are rock solid, and people seem to like the way you carry yourself. You don’t make them feel stupid like the others do.’

  ‘Uh huh,’ Ben said, only half-listening. He was thinking about Anabeth Glass and the fact that, at thirty years of age, she was fewer than ten years younger than him. That meant that he was still – at least for a little while longer – within the numeric decade of a person who struck him as cool and interesting. It was almost enough to cheer him up a little.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong. The other guys, they can fix a server.’ McLaren, who was five years Ben’s junior himself, seemed to wish that he didn’t have to be the one explaining all this again. ‘They could probably build their own space shuttle if they wanted to. The point is, they look down on everybody.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘It’s not completely their fault. Life hasn’t kicked any of them in the balls yet, not really. That’s why simple human manners are beyond them.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  McLaren pointed with his pen. ‘That’s also why I need you to be more of a leader out there.’

  ‘Because I’ve been kicked in the balls by life?’

  ‘Because when you say things, they listen,’ McLaren said. ‘They look up to you.’

  Ben laughed before he could stop himself. ‘Corby, if you think any of those guys wants to be where I am when they’re pushing forty, you’re high.’

  ‘I said they looked up to you. I didn’t say they wanted to be you.’

  ‘I guess you didn’t.’

  ‘Nobody in their right mind wants to be you.’

  ‘Thanks, I get it.’

  ‘I don’t think you do,’ McLaren said. ‘That’s my whole point. You keep on doing 1- or 2-level work, yet for the second quarter in a row, I’ve had to rate you as a 5. Why the heck is that? In your opinion.’

  ‘Because you insist on ranking a five-person team 1 through 5?’

  ‘It’s not ranking, it’s rating.’

  ‘Not when you give us all a different number, it isn’t.’

  ‘Now, that comes straight from corporate.’ Corby showed Ben his palms. ‘Company mandate. My hands are tied. You know that.’

  What did your boss rank you? Ben thought. But he only said, ‘Sure, Corby. I know.’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘Because I’m not being a good leader.’

  Now it was McLaren’s turn to laugh. ‘You’re not even being a good follower. You never turn in your time sheets. Each and every week I have to remind you to submit your activity reports. You come in late, you take long lunches, and I don’t think I’ve heard you speak up at a staff meeting in six weeks. You even missed your quarterly review.’

  ‘What are you talking about? I’m right here.’

  ‘This meeting was scheduled for yesterday!’

  ‘Oh.’ After an awkward beat, Ben added, ‘Sorry about that.’

  Corby McLaren took a long, slow breath through the nose. ‘Listen. I’m not saying I’m in love with the way things are right now. But you’ve been to the town hall meetings. You understand the challenges we’re facing as a company these days.’

  ‘Sure,’ Ben lied. ‘I get it.’ The truth was, he’d worked here nearly two years and still didn’t completely understand what the company did or made. Mostly he just reset people’s passwords and made sure their email worked. It was a paycheck, and one he sorely needed, but that didn’t make it any easier to pay attention to what all went on here.

  ‘Let me bottom-line this for you.’ McLaren pushed a piece of paper across the desk. ‘In case you haven’t been doing the math, you’re basically hosed at this point. But if you can find a way to finish Q4 with a 1-rating, that’ll average you out to 3.75 for the year, and I’ll be able to go to bat for you with corporate. Anything less than a 1?’

  McLaren held up his hands again, as if to indicate that Ben’s fate would officially be out of them.

  Ben nodded at the paper in front of him. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘That’s your growth plan.’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Consider it a good-faith agreement,’ McLaren said. ‘Read it over, then sign at the bottom to indicate your understanding that, as of today’s review, you’re officially on notice. The requirements are spelled out in the bullet points.’

  Ben pretended to read the bullet points. ‘I see.’

  ‘Again, this doesn’t come from me – this is directly from corporate. But I have to tell you straight up, face-to-face, one grown man to another: we’re not talking about the difference between riding the bench and starting varsity, here.’

  ‘Figuratively speaking.’

  McLaren extended an imploring grimace. ‘Are you taking my meaning, Ben, or do I have to say it out loud?’

  ‘Nope, I got it. In order to keep paying my bills, all I have to do is sign this piece of paper, then climb over four other guys until I’m a 1 and somebody else is a 5. Then, next quarter, the five of us do it all over again, making it easier for you guys to identify who gets it in the neck the next time layoffs come around.’

  McLaren sighed. ‘I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.’

  ‘Can I take this with me?’ Ben picked up the sheet. ‘I’d like my legal team to
review the bullet points.’

  ‘Oh, be my guest.’ Sitting there on his side of the desk, Corby McLaren looked so defeated that Ben almost felt sorry for him. On the other hand: what a crock of horseshit.

  As Ben rose to leave, Corby tilted his head wearily and said, ‘I’m trying to help, you know. You really do seem to be your own worst enemy.’

  ‘My ex-wife would agree with you one hundred percent,’ Ben said. ‘But don’t forget the bright side.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘At least my work isn’t the problem.’

  ‘Ben,’ a voice behind him called. ‘Ben! Hey. Wait up.’

  Ben looked over his shoulder to find Ajeet Mallipudi hustling toward him. He walked faster.

  ‘Slow down. My legs are shorter than yours.’

  ‘The answer is no.’

  Ajeet pulled up alongside him. ‘But I didn’t even ask you anything.’

  ‘It’s still no. I don’t want you nerds trampling all over my property all weekend.’

  ‘But we want you to trample around with us.’

  ‘Are you kidding? That’s my best time to be away from you people.’ Ben glanced at him. ‘And I know you sold me out to Anabeth, by the way. Thanks a lot, Jeeter.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The new girl. From marketing.’

  ‘You mean Abe? You’re quite welcome. She’s awesome.’

  ‘How do you know she’s awesome?’

  ‘She joined our Halo team. We finally smoked those goofs at Facebook.’ Ajeet nodded rapidly. ‘She’s designing us t-shirts.’

  ‘I swear I’m living my life all wrong.’

  ‘She’s coming too, by the way.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This weekend.’

  Ben stopped walking. ‘What. To your paintball thing?’

  ‘She was totally and immediately down for it.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘That is, if we had a place to do paintball.’ Now puppy eyes.

  It drove Ben crazy to find himself rethinking this all of a sudden. He had absolutely no business concerning himself with Anabeth Glass.