Dave vs. the Monsters

by John Birmingham

  Heath looked at Martinelli when he mentioned their families.

  “I wasn’t exposed to anything,” J2 said defiantly. “All I did was fly wounded men off the rig. But you grabbed me anyway and hauled me out here in the middle of nowhere for no good reason I can think of.”

  Heath inclined his head toward her, almost conceding the point.

  “Ms. Jamieson, it’s true you weren’t directly exposed, but you carried casualties who were. Until we know what we’re dealing with, what transmission vectors—”

  “Transmission what?” Vince asked in an angry tone that flared out of nowhere, causing the two marine guards to turn their cold eyes on him. It made no difference. He just pushed on.

  “This wasn’t no bug or virus. These things stood taller than me and had teeth like feral hogs. Unless one got a bite of J2’s ass, there’s no transmission vectors to be talking about.”

  He turned to J2.

  “You felt anything bite you in the ass yesterday, darlin’?”

  “Not a thing,” she replied, jutting her chin at the navy guy. “So I guess I can go. I got three cats to feed at home, you know.”

  Dave rubbed his scalp. He was gonna need a haircut soon. That had crept up on him, too.

  “Look, Heath, can you give us a second? Vince, you spoken to Gina yet?” Dave asked.

  Vince nodded. “They let me call her yesterday. She was a mess. And they wouldn’t let me say a fucking word about what really happened.” He glared at the navy officer.

  “Then that’s why you’re here, J2,” Dave said. “They want to keep you from going on TV and blabbing about what happened. Right?”

  Heath looked unimpressed. Dave turned back to the chopper pilot, who was even more worried now.

  “But don’t you worry none, J2. There’s hundreds of people know what happened out there. Maybe they got a lid on this today, but by tomorrow it’ll be off. There’ll be no lying about what happened. I figure Captain Heath here, or rather his bosses way up the fucking food chain, are just trying to figure out what Obama is gonna say when he faces the press corps to explain how a bunch of devil-orcs just chewed up one of BP’s platforms and how they’ve got it under control and there’s nothing to worry about and everyone should just turn back to the Shopping Network. Right? Ah, there they are.”

  Dave spied his own shoes and pulled them on, not waiting for a reply from Heath. He took his sweet time easing his foot into each new Nike and then methodically tying the laces, partly to exert some control over the situation but mainly so that he didn’t have to ask for a new pair of laces.

  “Infected, bullshit. So much for pathological honesty, Heath. If we were infected,” he said, looking up from his sneakers to frown at the officer, “you wouldn’t be taking us to your mess hall or standing there without even a face mask. You’d be all tricked up in one of those biohazard suits, like in some virus movie. So yeah, we’ll come and get some breakfast. But you can stop bullshitting us right now, too. Why are we being held here, and what is happening out on the rig?”

  The two guards stiffened almost imperceptibly behind the one-legged captain, but Dave found he had no trouble discerning the tension that tightened their shoulders just a notch. Heath smiled.

  “You’re not just a dumb cracker, are you, Mr. Hooper?”

  “If by that you mean a rednecked moron, no,” Dave answered. “So you can lay off treating me like one or like one of your toy soldiers there. And J2 and Vince as well. All of us. Just ’cause we get our hands dirty at work doesn’t mean we’re shitkickers or shit-eaters. We work hard, and some of us party hard, and we make good money. But the company as a rule doesn’t hire morons. Not below C-level executives, anyway.”

  “Yeah, what he said,” J2 added with as much wounded dignity as she could muster in her bright pink training pants.

  Vince couldn’t help grinning just a little.

  Heath nodded. “I have my orders to follow, Mr. Hooper. But I prefer honesty. It is refreshing. Corporals, you are dismissed. Why don’t we talk things over on the way to the mess?”

  The marines didn’t argue; they just barked an acknowledgment and stomped out of the room in perfect time. Man, Dave thought, if only I could get those assholes on the rig to obey me like that. Then he remembered that a lot of those assholes were dead, and he felt bad about thinking it.

  They followed Heath out of the medical tent, stepping into the humid morning, a thin fog hovering over the campsite. Dave idly wondered if they were still in Louisiana. They were definitely in the South. As he looked around while they walked, the campsite appeared to be fairly basic, with a Hummer here, a truck there. Generators ran in the distance, and there was the faint oily metallic bite of diesel exhaust in the air. No one went running by in formation shouting songs or screaming for blood. Instead, they went about in groups of two and three, talking as calmly as if they were at some corporate retreat.

  There were salutes, though, which the captain kept up without even pausing when those who passed him said, “Good morning, sir.”

  Strange, Dave thought. So unlike his world. But this was where his little brother had chosen to live. And, never forget, it had killed him.

  “Ms. Jamieson, Mr. Hooper, Mr. Martinelli,” Heath said, “we still have no idea what happened out on the Longreach yesterday. I told you that already, and it was no lie. The only way we’re going to find out is with your cooperation. But whatever happened out there, I’m sure you’ll agree, does not come within the acceptable definition of normality.”

  Vince Martinelli stepped sideways to avoid a mud puddle and then spit into it.

  “It doesn’t come within a thousand fucking miles of normality, Commander,” Vince said. Dave was certain Vince took some pleasure in purposely getting the rank wrong, but he also noticed that Heath didn’t seem to care.

  He made a note of that.

  Vince, however, had recovered some of his balance and was warming up to half power with his rant. “Something out of Hellraiser comes up on the rig without us even knowing and gets to chowing down on half the crew. Dave here, yes, this man right here, opens a can of whup-ass even I didn’t know he had, makes out like fucking Thor on their asses, and next thing we got Agent Nick fucking Fury spooking us away to his top-secret HQ fuck knows where. Only thing we’re missing is the Helicarrier. Are we going to see one of those pop over the trees in a bit? ’Cause that’d be cool. What do you say, Admiral?”

  “I see,” said Heath, stepping around another, larger puddle near another khaki-colored frame tent, “that you’re quite an Avengers fan.”

  “My oldest girl,” Vince said, easing off the throttle some. “She’s got all the comic books. Real paper ones, too. Not some fucking app crap. But they’re just comic books. This is real. What are you? Really? You’re not navy or even Special Forces, I bet. You CIA or something like those Men in Black guys? But you know, for real?”

  Captain Heath stopped just outside the door to the mess hall. Dave had to admit he was interested in the answer, too, and happy to let Vince have his head. Heath didn’t seem in the least bit fazed. If anything, he was amused.

  “I’d very much like to have a Helicarrier, Mr. Martinelli; that would be outstanding, but I suspect Congress would balk at the cost. Besides, something about them strikes me as impracticable. But that doesn’t really apply to your question, so I’ll answer it as honestly as I can.”

  He took a deep breath and adopted a measured, serious tone. “As I explained to both you and Ms. Jamieson yesterday, I work for JSOC: the Joint Special Operations Command. There is no X-Files unit. Agent Fury does not work here. It’s like Secretary Rumsfeld once said. You go to war with what you have. And right now JSOC is what we have in theater, and even then only by accident.”

  “Bullshit,” Vince said.

  “Hollywood is half a continent away, Mr. Martinelli,” Captain Heath said. “Langley is half a continent in the other direction. The navy doesn’t do accidents on purpose. We try to prevent them or fix them.
We don’t use them as excuses.”

  “Gulf of Tonkin notwithstanding,” Vince said.

  Dave scratched his head. “I think that was LBJ.”

  “Gentlemen,” Heath said.

  “Well, you’ve used this one as an excuse to keep me from my kittens,” protested J2.

  “Ma’am, if it please you, I will assign a lieutenant junior grade to go straight to your apartment and feed your kittens for as long as the United States Navy has need of your cooperation.”

  “Really?” said J2. “I could get me a handsome lieutenant that easy?”

  “Easy, tiger,” Dave said before addressing Heath. He couldn’t keep the skepticism out of his voice, but he made a point of getting the rank right. “Captain, my business is oil. Your business is war. You think we’re at war now?”

  It was Vince who spoke first, who said what Dave wanted to say. “But those things weren’t soldiers. They were … monsters.”

  Heath didn’t answer; instead he merely raised an eyebrow at Dave. The safety boss of the Longreach shifted uncomfortably as he pushed away thoughts of legions and Hordes and the BattleMaster calling itself Urgon Htoth Ur Hunn. Vince had seen the thing, but he hadn’t talked about any of that stuff. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Dave was totally open to the idea that all the Dungeons & Dragons shit was a figment of his drug-addled mind. But Vince hadn’t killed the thing, either. Vince hadn’t thrown a guy across the room with a flick of his wrist or punched another monster to jelly on the road last night. Vince didn’t have a head full of insane monster stories …

  “Mr. Hooper?”

  Captain Heath interrupted Dave’s fugue state. Martinelli was looking at him as well.

  “You all right, buddy?” the shift boss asked. “You sort of checked out on us there for a minute.”

  “Sorry,” Dave mumbled. “Guess I’m still a bit out of it.”

  “Maybe some waffles,” said J2, who seemed much happier at the idea that she might soon trap a handsome young naval lieutenant within the confines of her apartment.

  He chanced a look at the navy man, getting nothing but a hard, searching stare in return. Worried that Heath would ask him in front of Vince and J2 about what he’d said on the trip up here last night, Dave agreed he was feeling pretty hungry and some waffles would be a good idea. “I should also check in on the others,” he said to Vince. “They’re going to want to know that the company’s got their back.”

  “Does it?” Vince asked pointedly.

  Captain Heath turned and opened the door to the mess hall for them. “We have contacted both BP and the nominated family members for each of your colleagues. Some have spoken to their families already. BP is cooperating with our investigations and with operations on the platform. As of this morning all the crew who could be accounted for are listed as being on duty. You’re still drawing a paycheck, Mr. Martinelli. You, too, ma’am.”

  “Better not be coming out of my vacation pay,” J2 said.

  They stepped into the mess, a larger frame tent on a permanent foundation, similar to the one they had slept in overnight. The room was full of uniforms and a few civilians, though none from his rig. Everyone stopped talking and looked at them.

  No, correct that, Dave thought.

  They were all staring at him.

  He tried to ignore it and asked Captain Heath what he meant by “operations.” Heath answered directly, or at least appeared to.

  “FEMA has now declared a ten-nautical-mile exclusion zone around the platform, enforced by the coast guard and navy. The fires on the rig have been put out, and after-action teams are doing the SSE.”

  “The what?” Dave and J2 said at the same time.

  “Sensitive Site Exploitation,” said Heath. “Collecting the data.”

  “The data?” Vince said, still not getting it.

  “Bodies,” Dave said, guessing.

  “And parts of bodies,” Captain Heath added.

  “Oh, damn.” J2 grimaced.

  They didn’t eat in the main mess hall space but in a connected tent for the officers, away from curious stares and awkward silences. Dave supposed news of their arrival would be all over the “restricted facility.” All closed shops were the same. Gossip was a highly tradable commodity, and half a dozen survivors of the Longreach fire—it now was being sold as some sort of conventional explosion, much to Dave’s chagrin—would shine like newly minted coins.

  Two TV sets were on in the mess hall as Heath took them through. Both were tuned to news channels, but only one was showing visuals of the platform at that moment. Smoke and fire poured out of the crew quarters. It must have been a replay of yesterday’s video. Dave would have liked to have stopped and listened for a few minutes even though he knew it was all going to be bullshit. If the talking heads had been fed a line that it was some sort of fuckup that’d caused the explosion, he knew that his cock was on the chopping block for it.

  But that story could never stand up, could it? Just as he’d told J2, way too many people had seen the Hunn and the Fangr. The truth, bugshit crazy as it was, was going to spill, and very soon. Maybe even today. The terrorist story already seemed to have collapsed if they were now running with this accident line. Again he bristled at the unfairness of it. There had been no goddamn accident on his rig. But how long would it be before somebody tipped a bucket of shit on him anyway? Hell, if he ran to the press with stories about demon hordes, he’d do the job for them.

  “BP appoints lunatic as safety boss on rig. Rig blows up.”

  End of story.

  He was turning away from the screen when the hunger pangs took him again, stronger than last night. More painful. He folded up like a cheap Chinese umbrella, dropping to the floor and knocking over a couple of plastic chairs as he fell. He cried out in shock and pain as something like a cold iron fist closed around his intestines and squeezed.

  “Oh, God …” He gasped. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and within seconds his armpits were soaked. He shivered and drew his knees up to his chest. He was dimly aware of chaos breaking out around him, of raised voices calling for help. J2 was shrieking. He even heard the word “corpsman,” just like in a war movie. He felt himself lifted up and carried somewhere. Fluorescent tubes burned his eyes with harsh white light. He tried to speak, but the pain was too great.

  Heath’s face was in his, shouting at him.

  “Can you hear me? Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

  Dave’s teeth chattered as he tried to force them apart. His tongue seemed swollen.

  “Hnn … hunn …” he managed before another wave of wracking gut cramps doubled him over.

  “Did you say something about the Hunn?” someone asked.

  “No, here, let me through.”

  It was a familiar voice, but in his distress and discomfort Dave could not recall why. He felt a new presence looming over him but was unable to open his eyes. It felt as though the chain mail fist had ripped out his insides.

  “Here. Get this into him.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  Dave was vaguely aware of an argument breaking out around him, and he wanted to scream in frustration. He managed to prize his jaw apart just wide enough to say something when somebody shoved something between his lips.

  Chocolate.

  Saliva jetted into his mouth so quickly that he felt himself gagging on it. He bit down on the chocolate, thankfully only chocolate. Whoever had saved him with a chunk of Hershey Bar got his or her fingers out from between his teeth pronto. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, gesturing frantically for more chocolate, anything anybody could give him. He recognized Allen at last as the Navy SEAL handed him the rest of the Hershey Bar.

  “That’s two you owe me,” he said.

  Dave was too busy eating to reply. They’d thrown him onto a spare table. He saw his friends and coworkers from the Longreach looking on in a mixture of horror and concern.

  “You all right, Dave?” J2 asked.

  “You may not believe me,
Miss Juliette,” he said through gritted teeth, “but I’m really fucking hungry.”

  Heath barked out orders, and men and women disappeared, only to reappear a few moments later bearing trays of food. Dave’s hands were shaking as he snatched at the greasy breakfast offerings. Strips of bacon. Pork sausages. Hash browns. Scrambled eggs scooped up in his bare hands and half smeared over his unshaven face. He didn’t care. The more he ate, the faster the terrible pain in his stomach subsided. Heath’s marines cleared the anteroom of onlookers as Dave slowly recovered. Only the rig workers, Heath, and Allen remained.

  “Oh, my God, Dave,” J2 said in awe when he was finished. “You could go pro with an appetite like that.” He had consumed enough food for five men. Maybe more. The pain was gone, and he patted his stomach gingerly, expecting to find his belly grossly swollen. But he felt neither heavy nor bloated. It was as though he already had digested the food, as though he’d burned it up while he was eating it.

  “Got to eat a good breakfast, J2,” he said, finally realizing that most of his rig crew was in the officers’ mess with him. They looked down on him with a mixture of concern, fear, and awe. “Most important meal of the day. Hi, everybody, by the way.”

  A few of them laughed, but nervously. The other workers from the rig crowded in around him, eager for news from the outside world and wanting to know how he had survived. Alberto Santini, a geologist, had seen the creatures coming up the drill bit and run to raise the alarm. Henry Blucas, one of Vince’s second shift rig monkeys, had been in the crew lounge when they broke in and had seen Marty try to fight them off. He’d taken an ineffectual swing at one of the “little fuckers”—the Fangr—before abandoning the idea as hopeless and running, screaming, for the flight deck. Clay Toltz, a large-bellied African American who was new to the rig and had had no idea what was really happening yesterday, having been supervising the drill crew far away from the action, had been one of the first down into the lounge after Dave had killed the Hunn. He was still making the sign of the cross every time he spoke of it.