Dave vs. the Monsters

by John Birmingham

  “Damn. I’m getting a cover of Sports Illustrated out of this,” he said.

  Professor Ashbury marveled as though he’d just shown her a particularly intriguing card trick.

  “I’ve seen some odd things today, very odd, but watching you consume a trailer park’s worth of garbage food and then do your miracle weight loss infomercial, I will concede that was a rather special moment, Dave.”

  Heath, who had seen it all before, checked his wristwatch and announced himself ready for the rack.

  “But there’s one last thing you could do for me,” he said to the oil rigger.

  “Sure, name it,” Hooper replied, still feeling the need to atone for being a butthead earlier.

  “Professor, would you like to come along?” Heath asked. “It won’t take long, and this has been bugging me since I found out.”

  Dave was more than just intrigued now. This Heath was not the sort of guy to let anything bug him for very long. He was more the sort of guy to call in a strike from an orbital platform or perhaps file the problem to death. In triplicate. The more time Dave spent around him, the more he came to see Heath as an uptight but potentially violent bureaucrat.

  “We’re headed to the crew lounge,” the officer explained. “Where you encountered the Hunn.”

  Before Dave could object, Heath hurried to explain himself. “The site’s been cleaned out. Sensitive Site Exploitation was thorough and used a standard decon protocol.”

  “Go on,” Dave told him.

  “But there was one thing left,” Heath said. “We couldn’t move it.”

  Professor Ashbury seemed to know what he was talking about. She regarded Dave with a carefully composed expression, giving nothing away.

  “What?” he asked.

  “The hammer. Mr. Grbac’s splitting maul. We can’t move it.”

  Now he was confused rather than intrigued.

  “Why?” Dave asked. “I buried it in Urgon’s melon, not the steelwork.”

  “Probably better you just come along and see for yourself. You might ‘remember’ something more.”

  Whatever the problem was, Heath seemed at a loss. Contrite Dave had no objections. He had his atonement to be getting on with, and he wasn’t at all sleepy. Matter of fact, he had no idea how he was going to get his head down and worried about being out of it tomorrow, with Professor Compton shooting him the stink eye and loading him up with questions he couldn’t hope to answer. Just to make him look like some sort of idiot rube in front of Emmeline.

  Or Emma. He wondered if she liked to be called Emma in bed.

  Then he stopped thinking about that because it was becoming obvious. Again.

  He turned his thoughts back to Compton. That served to soften the rail spike. Dave Hooper had met plenty of guys like Compton before. They saw the dirt under his fingernails and the grime worked into his old shirt collar, and they thought redneck. Didn’t matter that he had a couple of bachelor’s degrees and a master’s in engineering and knew enough about academia to know that he could go play their reindeer games as a teacher if he wanted to. But then he remembered what his dad had said.

  Those that can’t do, teach.

  These pricks, Dave had decided long ago, just couldn’t see past a bit of oil and grease.

  “Let’s go, then,” he said. “And I’ll consult the ol’ monsterpedia for the splitting maul of the gods,” he said, tapping the side of his head again.

  Turned out his Rolodex was possessed of a bottomless trove of lore concerning legendary weapons. That was how he thought of it, too: “lore.” Despite being pretty sure he’d never had reason to utter the word before. What was he, the Nerdlinger General? As they wound through the maze of flame-scored corridors, working their way around restricted and unsafe areas, up and down stairs that were sometimes internal, sometimes external, and sometimes a hybrid of both, he worried that the answer to that might be yes. Dave apparently now knew more about legendary swords and celebrated battle-axes than the world’s geekiest tabletop game geek. He’d known a couple of champions at college; engineering schools seemed to attract the type. But he doubted they could match his arcane expertise in edged weapons of storied and gore-splattered renown. All of them with names like BoneCleaver and DragonRend. All of them with their own souls.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he muttered.

  “Is there an issue?” Professor Ashbury asked.

  “Giant man-eating nerds. Really, you don’t want to know,” Dave said, and went back to pondering Marty’s splitting maul. But apart from nearly falling into a dark, bottomless well of memory where hundreds of legendary warhammers lived—“Tremble before Mighty Trhondor’s Hammer of Flattening”—he came up empty-handed.

  As they weaved past a patrol just before the turn to the crew lounge, Heath stopped and asked the sergeant in charge if he could borrow one of his marines.

  “Sure, Captain. Take your pick.”

  “Private, you’ll do,” he said, pointing to the largest man in the unit, a slab-shouldered brute whose assault rifle looked comically small in his hands.

  “Sir?”

  Heath asked the giant marine to follow them into the lounge. He hadn’t been lying about the cleanup job. Dave’s mild apprehension about returning to the slaughterhouse was unfounded. The room was empty. It had been stripped and sanitized. The smell of bleach was strong enough to bring tears to the eyes. The tiles he’d knocked out of the ceiling had even been replaced from somewhere. No bloodstains marked the floor or walls. He could hear cooks and other personnel working to get the rig’s kitchen operational again for breakfast in the morning. Swap the civilians for cooks in blue coveralls and it was possible to convince yourself that nothing had happened. No evidence of any kind remained of the terrible violence done here. Except for one thing.

  Marty Grbac’s splitting maul.

  It lay on the tiled floor. Still matted with dried blood, bone chips, shards of broken fang, and a few strands of coarse hair that looked like they’d come off the back of a feral hog. The straight hardwood stock still bore a bloodied imprint of his fingers. Or maybe Marty’s. Dave couldn’t say.

  The sergeant, whose name tag identified him as McInerney, ordered his men to keep watch in the hallway outside while he took up station by the door, as curious as anyone about what Heath was up to. Private Everding stood at ease, waiting to be given another order but not looking much at ease to Dave’s eye.

  Hooper made to reach for the splitting maul, but Heath held up a hand.

  “Just a moment. Everding? Could you try to pick up the hammer for me?”

  “But sir …” the marine started to protest.

  “Just indulge me, son. I said try.”

  The marine threw a pleading look at his sergeant, who merely gestured at the splitting maul with his free hand. “You heard the captain. Give it your best.”

  Private Everding didn’t look happy, but he did as he was told.

  Handing his rifle to Sergeant McInerney, he approached the heavy tool reluctantly. Dave could understand that. It was filthy with blood and worse. Professor Ashbury circled the room for a better vantage point.

  “What’s going on here?”

  Compton. Was he stalking them? It was the second time he’d walked in on a show-and-tell.

  The professor had waddled into the room clad in khaki trousers and a rumpled dress shirt. Ashbury gave Compton a brusque nod of professional acknowledgment.

  “Captain Heath thought to bring Hooper in on this,” she said, waving one hand at the splitting maul.

  “I see,” Compton said. “You should have called me.”

  “My apologies, Professor,” Heath said. “I am used to operating in the field without direct supervision.”

  Dave, who had no idea what was up, just watched from where he stood on a light patch of tiles where the TV once had lived. Where had that gone? he wondered. After another fruitless appeal to his sergeant, Everding dropped into a squat over the long hickory shaft. He looked like a man
about to attempt an Olympic lift. Rather than picking up the hammer as Dave had expected, with his dominant hand, just under the heavy steel head, Everding placed both hands about equally distant from each end of the shaft. Then he tried to hoist the weight. He looked ridiculous, as if he were goofing around. And then …

  Everding tried.

  “What the fuck?”

  Dave’s eyes went a little wider, then narrowed as the enormous marine heaved and strained. Cords stood out on his neck, his face turned dark red, and he grunted with the effort.

  The handle moved maybe an inch before he gave up and let go, stumbling back across the room, where Heath had some difficulty preventing him from crashing to the floor.

  And Everding failed.

  In Dave’s mind, a monologue on the event sank into the trove of lore.

  “Many from the village had tried their hand to shift Maul the Suresplitter. All who made the attempt failed, for the Suresplitter awaited …”

  Okay, enough. Dave willed himself out of that particular nerdspace in his brain.

  “Thank you, Marine,” Heath said. “Care to try, Sergeant?”

  McInerney’s grin widened.

  “I watched Joey Cuomo try the same thing this morning, Captain. He didn’t do much better. Reckon I’ll treat my hernia to the day off if you don’t mind.”

  Heath grinned back at him. A small thing, but it was a warm, genuine smile, one of the first Dave had seen from him. In contrast, a glance at Compton revealed little but impatience.

  “Fair enough. I don’t imagine the professor or I would even move it the inch Private Everding achieved.”

  They all looked at Dave.

  “So, what? You just sort of pulled Urgon’s head away from it?”

  “After a fashion,” Ashbury said. “It made the most awful mess.”

  As he bent forward to pick it up or at least to try, Heath warned him to be careful.

  “Remember what happened to the weight bar. Take it easy, Dave.”

  Good point, he thought without saying anything.

  “This will be interesting,” said Compton, as though Dave were a labrador trying to play the piano.

  He stood over the end of the shaft and looked at Emmeline Ashbury. “See what happens,” she said. “Please, however, do exercise some care.”

  He stood up straight again, examined the problem, and cautiously toed the handle with his boot. The end of the shaft moved about six inches when he pushed it. It felt no heavier than it had the last time he’d touched it, which was to say heavy but manageable. He gave it another small nudge with the same result.

  “Oh, good grief,” Professor Compton said.

  “You want to try again?” Dave asked Everding, who was staring at him as if he’d grown another head. “Might’ve just been gummed up with monster blood. That stuff’s like Super Glue.”

  “No, sir,” said Everding.

  “Alrighty, then.”

  Dave leaned down and picked up the hammer, grimacing a little at the sticky filth encrusting the handle. Unlike the weight bar, which had felt as though it was made of foam, this felt pretty much as he remembered it. In fact, exactly as he remembered it. Heavy but usable. He hefted the piece and gave it an experimental twirl. It swung around in a tight figure eight at such speed that the air whooshed.

  “Holy shit,” Everding exclaimed. Then, “Er, excuse me, ma’am.”

  But Ashbury wasn’t interested in his apologies. She was staring at Dave as he twirled the heavy maul like a conductor’s baton. It blurred with the speed of the movement, and Heath finally called out, “Dave! That’s probably enough.”

  “Oh, sorry,” said Dave, who’d forgotten himself, lost in the strange simple joy of playing with Maul the Hunnsplitter. Or maybe Sledge the Melon Smasher. Or …

  He was gonna need a name for this thing. He knew that the way he knew burgers needed beer.

  The stiff breeze coming off the improvised fan blade was ruffling Emmeline Ashbury’s dark hair, and the sound of the hammer’s passage was a deep thrumming hum. A little like a chopper blade without the percussive note. He had to remind himself that less than a day ago he’d used it to put down a monster that was sitting right here, snacking on his friend like a piece of beef jerky.

  He swung the top of the handle into his palm with a meaty crack. The steel head glistened dully where it wasn’t covered in dried gore.

  “Thank you,” Heath said, obviously relieved. “I could see that thing flying through a wall and taking out half the rig.”

  “I think she could probably do that,” Dave said with a trace of awe. “Would you mind if I cleaned her up? She’s kind of gross.”

  “I got it,” said Sergeant McInerney before ducking out the door.

  “You’re assigning this object a gender role?” Professor Compton asked, all judgment and skepticism. “It is just an artifact.”

  “No, she’s more than that,” Dave said, looking anew at the splitting maul. “She has … I dunno, something. Why not give her a name? You never named a car, Doc?”

  Compton said nothing.

  The marines in the room nodded with apparent understanding.

  “Maybe I should name her Annie. A steel tornado of unholy destruction? Or not. We’ll see.”

  “There has to be a rational explanation,” Professor Ashbury said. “For all of this.”

  “I agree with my subordinate,” Professor Compton said, ignoring the death glare his subordinate sent his way. “Extraordinary as events may seem, I doubt we are dealing with magic here. Some arcane technological event, perhaps.”

  In spite of the caked-on bloody gruel, Dave found that he wanted to hold on to the splitting maul. It felt natural the way a really beautifully crafted baseball bat did. Or a pool cue. Or a fine piece of ass … or anything, really. Any tool that had been carefully crafted by a skilled maker with one purpose in mind. The wood grain meshed and melded with his calloused hands, generating a soothing warmth of reassurance.

  He hefted her again, examining the crusted wedge of the ax head.

  She had … potential.

  “Professor Ashbury?” Heath asked. “You got anything?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m at a complete loss, Michael. I think you might need to get some more professors out here. Scholars of old Icelandic legend perhaps. Or some Beowulf nerds. I’m sure you can find some starving adjuncts who would be willing to take the government’s coin for this project.”

  Professor Compton gave Ashbury a look of disapproval before adding his own thoughts. “I have some cross-disciplinary experience in anthropology and English mythology.”

  “Okay,” Heath said. “Your theory?”

  “Not so much a theory,” Compton said. “If we were a pretechnological, prescientific culture and we bore witness to this act, we would describe the moment as magical. We would lack any other rational explanation.”

  “Why don’t you just go ahead and quote Arthur C. Clarke?” Ashbury said. “You’re most of the way there.”

  Compton pushed on, ignoring her. “Mr. Hooper is in possession of what seems a charmed weapon. The act of killing the creature appears to have given him special powers and privileges. In mythology there would be rituals to attend to. But step back from the process and imagine giving a caveman a handgun. He would feel the same confusion and awe and imagine the need to reach for a magical explanation. Simply because he didn’t understand the process and the technology. He would shroud any understanding in worship and ritual.”

  Heath looked at Professor Ashbury.

  “Probably,” she conceded.

  “Well, the first ritual ought to be to clean her up,” Dave said.

  McInerney reappeared right on cue with a wet cloth that he handed to Dave, “Spoken like a marine.”

  “Thanks, man,” he said before slowly wiping down the length of the dark wood shaft, folding the cloth over, and cleaning the head. It was an imperfect job, but he found that he didn’t mind a few blood spots and
impurities. They, too, seemed right. As if they also had potential.

  “So? Can I keep it?” he asked. It seemed that he should ask permission even though it was Marty’s. Or perhaps because it was Marty’s. There were undoubtedly protocols for dealing with the personal effects of the dead.

  “I don’t know what else we’d do with it,” Heath admitted. “If you dropped it here and walked away, I don’t think it would ever leave the room. I suspect it would be here until the rig rusted and fell apart and it dropped down to the seabed.”

  “We should get back to work, sir,” McInerney said.

  “Of course, Sergeant. Thank you for your help. I’m sorry to keep you. And you, too, Everding. Thank you.”

  “Wouldn’t have missed it, sir,” McInerney replied. “C’mon, let’s go start some more rumors.”

  The marines departed, leaving the four of them in the bare, sanitized surrounds of the empty room.

  17

  The thresh remained in darkness while the filthy minion gorged itself on meat that rightly belonged in their gullets. They had been the ones to lay the fear on the prey as the calflings rode along so proudly on their captured beast of burden. Did the minion think it was easy reaching out to the mind of such creatures, traveling at great speed, fast enough by their reckoning to outpace a full grown wulfin?

  Short answer, no.

  Because minion just didn’t think at all. Thinking and minion were as inimical to each other as vampyri and the dawn. Minion were best at charging and biting and tearing the limbs from enemies and prey, none of which required a great deal of thought. Just lots of teeth and claws and fast springy haunches, of which minion had an elegant sufficiency.

  They were also, the thresh admitted, not so bad at biting and tearing considerable chunks of hide from unwary thresh that strayed too close to them, especially in the first moments of a feeding frenzy.

  Thresh, however, prided themselves on their thinkings and ponderings. And right now these two were pondering how to distract a stupid, puckering sphincter of a minion from its dinner long enough that they might enjoy a nibble of their own. A while longer and this one would be slow and even stupider than normal with the carnage coma their gluttonous kind always suffered. But likewise, in a little while longer that greedy bastard was going to scarf the whole thing! They cautiously scouted the scene, looking for a way in.