Gargantua

by K. Robert Andreassi

  Kikko went over to the top of the cage as Derek lowered the winch that they had set up earlier. At the end of the winch was a hook, which should, Derek said, fit on the top of the cage.

  Just as Kikko grabbed the hook and put it between rungs on the cage, Naru finally broke the chain.

  The creature started thrashing even more now. Kikko jumped back from the cage, landing on the pier.

  “Kikko!”

  At Naru’s call, Kikko turned to look at his friend who was gazing down at the cage, which Derek was now raising out of the water with the winch. Kikko followed Naru’s gaze and he felt his lunch started to crawl up to his throat again.

  The cage door had swung open.

  Oh, shit.

  Be cool. Be like Baretta. Stay calm.

  Amazingly, the lizard hadn’t seemed to notice that it had achieved a means of freedom. It was still jumping around, trying to attack the top of the cage, as if that would make a difference.

  “Derek!” Kikko called out. He surreptitiously pointed at the cage, half convinced that the creature would see him if he pointed more overtly.

  Derek followed Kikko’s finger to see the open cage. “Bloody hell.” He eased the winch’s lever to a halt, ceasing its ascent. “Naru, go close it.”

  Naru’s eyes went wide. Kikko couldn’t blame his friend for that reaction, and he was about to object when Derek interrupted.

  “Don’t worry, Kikko and I will distract the beast.”

  Oh, we will, will we? Kikko thought, but said nothing. He leapt up onto the boat—it was probably safer there, anyhow—and positioned himself so he was facing the back end of the cage. He started whistling and jeering at the monster. Next to him, Derek did the same.

  Kikko couldn’t even remember what he yelled out after the words left his mouth. He was running on autopilot. This is nuts. This is absolutely nuts. We’re going to die because Derek wanted to try to steal a big lizard.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Naru slowly closing the cage door.

  Okay, maybe we’re not going to die.

  Then the cage squeaked on its hinges.

  It was a small sound, and yet it seemed to Kikko as if it was loud enough to wake the dead. The lizard must have heard the sound, because it turned around.

  Toward the open door.

  And looked right at Naru.

  Kikko swore that the lizard and Naru actually exchanged a glance. The idea was ridiculous, of course—it was just a dumb animal—but for just a moment it seemed as if some kind of understanding had passed between them. Kind of like the lizard saying, You screwed up, pal, and Naru saying, Yup.

  Then the creature attacked Naru.

  Though the moment between the squeak and the creature moving on Naru seemed to take forever, the subsequent several moments went very fast indeed. Kikko only remembered them as snapshots. Naru screaming. Derek leaping down toward the creature. Kikko jumping right behind Derek. Naru’s blood flying through the air. The creature noticing Derek and Kikko’s approach. Naru still screaming. The creature tossing Naru aside. The creature swimming into the open ocean. Derek grabbing one of his harpoon guns. Kikko remembering asking Derek why on Earth he thought he’d need harpoon guns and Derek saying, “Just in case, mate, just in case.” Derek firing the harpoon gun.

  Then time moved at a more normal pace as Derek dropped the spent projectile weapon and ran with Kikko to help Naru onto the boat. For a third time, Kikko had to fight down the urge to throw up. Even that American photographer hadn’t been this badly messed up.

  Kikko and Naru had grown up together. They had gone to Malau Elementary School together, gotten thrown off the school volleyball team together, gotten their fishing licenses together, gotten arrested by Chief Movita for illegal use of fireworks together, gotten hired by Derek together.

  And now Naru was a bloody mess on Derek’s boat. Kikko couldn’t stand to look at it, so he turned away and looked over the starboard side of the boat.

  The water, oddly, was red. Blood red. At first Kikko thought it was Naru’s blood. But no, he was on the other side of the boat. Which means . . .

  “Blood, Hey, Derek, the water’s full of blood over here. You hit it.” Even to Kikko himself, his voice sounded like a robot’s.

  “Bloody wonderful,” Derek muttered while starting the boat’s motor.

  Kikko looked up at the noise of the motor gunning. “What the hell’re you doing?”

  “Gettin’ outta here before Mal and Marc get wise to us.” He backed the boat away from the pier.

  “Derek, we’ve gotta get him to the clinic, he’s dying!”

  Without looking at Kikko, focused as he was on steering the boat, Derek replied, “And while we take him to the clinic, what happens when they notice my boat sittin’ next to the empty cage, hey? Then what?”

  “But—”

  “Instead of sittin’ there and yellin’ at me for makin’ sense, why don’t you grab the first-aid kit and do somethin’ useful?”

  That brought Kikko up short. He leapt up onto the upper level of the boat, reached under the small bench for the first-aid kit, then hopped back down to the deck and Naru’s prone form.

  “Naru’ll keep for an hour or two—give a chance for the heat to blow over. I told a couple of people we were goin’ out by Tobi, so we’ll tell ’em somethin’ happened out there and we got back here quick as we could.”

  “Right,” Kikko said, not really focusing on Derek’s words as he applied bandages to the rips and tears in Naru’s skin. Be cool. Stay calm. It’s only the best friend you ever had in a bloody mess. Nothing to panic about.

  He wished he could believe it.

  NINE

  Paul hadn’t wanted to say anything specific to Jack, but he was starting to get very worried.

  They had spent over an hour looking for Brandon. It rarely took this long to find anyone on Malau, and the fact that no one they asked had seen him all day either was even more cause for concern.

  Of course, it’s possible that he’s hiding on purpose. That certainly tracked with his other odd behavior over the last couple of days.

  Paul met up with Jack at the end of one of the “roads”—paving had never really caught on here—near the jungle.

  “Any luck?” he asked.

  Jack shook his head. “No. I can’t imagine where he would have gotten to. It’s almost like he’s deliberately trying to avoid me.”

  Paul laughed. “I was just thinking—” He cut himself off, as his eyes fell on the jungle.

  Then it hit him. Hiding. Jungle. Duh. Like everyone here, he knew the story of the day that the U.S. Marines liberated the island from Japanese rule—a bunch of people hid in the jungle to avoid the fighting.

  “We haven’t checked the jungle,” he said to Jack.

  “Why would he go in there?”

  “I dunno,” Paul said, “but we did find him there the night we brought Ghidrah down, and if he was in there, it’d explain why no one’s seen him.”

  Jack nodded. “C’mon.”

  Here I go again, Paul thought. I think I’ve spent more time in this jungle in the last couple of days than I have in all the years I’ve lived here. Paul hated the jungle. He preferred the wide-open spaces of the beach—or of back home in California. The idea of being where he couldn’t see the sky just did not appeal.

  They plowed their way through the foliage, crying out Brandon’s name every couple of seconds.

  To Paul’s amazement and relief, Brandon actually responded, running up in front of them. He looked like hell—his eyes were red, as if he’d been crying, and his clothes were streaked with dirt and mud.

  “Brandon—what were you doing—are you okay?” The words fell out of Jack’s mouth in a jumble.

  The boy started to talk, then stopped, then started again.

  Paul prompted, “What is it, Brandon? What happened?”

  Finally, Brandon said, “I had a baby creature—and I lost him.”

  Jack’s jaw fell open. �
�You what?”

  “Just like the one at the cove, but this big.” He held hands up about three feet apart.

  Suddenly, everything clicked into place for Paul. Brandon’s questions, his concerns about the fate of the creatures, and why he was in the jungle when they nailed the big guy. And it fits that there’d be a baby, since we already found the mother.

  “He likes cheese puffs,” Brandon added, and Paul resisted the urge to giggle at the non sequitur.

  “Where did you find him?” Jack asked, sounding understandably stunned. “When did you find him? Today?”

  “Uh, no.” Brandon looked down shamefacedly. Paul figured he knew why—Brandon had obviously been hoarding this baby lizard for a couple of days. “The day you went on the plane.” At Jack’s shocked reaction, Brandon quickly added, “I wanted to tell you—I started to tell you, but you said you couldn’t stop him from being killed. I thought I could.”

  Once before, Paul had mused on Jack Ellway’s generally even temper, and he hoped that that would hold true now. Whatever you do, Jack, don’t blow up at the kid.

  To the reporter’s relief, he didn’t. Instead, Jack crouched down so that he was of even height with his son and put his hands on Brandon’s shoulders. Gently, he said, “Brandon, you and me—we’re all we’ve got. We need to trust each other.”

  The boy didn’t say anything in response, but he did look Jack in the eye, then, after a moment, smiled.

  Thank God for that, Paul thought. The question is, what happened to the baby?

  “We need to get back,” Jack said.

  “What about Casey?”

  Jack laughed at that. “Casey, huh?”

  “Well, he kinda reminded me of him.”

  At Paul’s quizzical look, Jack explained: “Brandon had a dog named Casey. In any case, Bran, we need to get out of here and somewhere safe. This place is probably already crawling with Marines right now.”

  “Huh?” Brandon said.

  “Uh, a lot has happened today, Brandon,” Jack said, and he started to explain the day’s events.

  Paul tuned the conversation out. He was thinking about his front-page article on this little phenomenon, and now it just took on a new wrinkle. An entire family of big lizards. The mind boggles. And if Jack’s right, they’re the result of human stupidity. How many more of those things are out there, anyhow?

  And another thought: Cheese puffs?

  Colonel Wayne surveyed the beach and was happy with what he saw. Alfa company and Bravo, a reinforced rifle company, had almost finished setting up along the main beach, from which they planned to release the nine-foot lizard. The searchlights were all up on the edge of the beach for when it got dark—Malau’s paucity of tall buildings and streetlights meant the island was almost pitch black above twenty feet—and a weapons perimeter just ahead of the lights would be all set within a few minutes.

  Wayne saw two privates named Radysh and Schleiben checking over the sights on a one-oh-one recoilless rifle, which was mounted on a Hummer. Just the thing for giant reptiles, Wayne thought dryly.

  Closer by, Privates Roman and Zimmerman were likewise checking over their own weapons—fifty-calibre machine guns. The pair were talking, not yet having noticed the colonel’s presence.

  “This is probably just a drill, right?” said Roman, the taller of the two. “I mean, it can’t be a real situation.”

  “I don’t know,” said Zimmerman. “It doesn’t feel like a drill.”

  “But it’s too weird to be real, right?” Roman insisted.

  Wayne smiled to himself and decided to let his presence be known. “Is there a problem here?”

  They both shot to attention. “No sir!” they said in unison.

  “Good. Carry on.”

  “Yes sir!” they said, and then returned to their work without further comment.

  Wayne kept walking. The rumors had, of course, spread like wildfire. Under other circumstances, the colonel would move to quash them, but he could hardly do that when the rumors were, in fact, absolutely correct—most of them, anyhow.

  The reactions varied. Some dismissed the talk of giant reptiles as ridiculous, and got on with their work. Some believed every word of it, and did their work so as to be prepared. And others didn’t care one way or the other, but did their work as they were told. The common factor, of course, was that, no matter what, they followed orders. They were Marines, after all, and Wayne took a certain pride in the fact that his Marines were damn good ones.

  He saw President Moki and Chief Movita conversing at the edge of the beach, and Wayne moved over to join them.

  “Ah, Colonel,” the president said upon noticing Wayne’s approach. “I see the preparations are going well.”

  “Yes. How’s the citizenry handling it?”

  “Apprehensive, but your people have been very courteous and understanding. I appreciate the fact that you haven’t turned this into the stereotype of a military operation.”

  Wayne smiled wryly. “I’ve always been one to avoid the stereotypes, Mr. President.”

  Movita asked, “Has there been any news of the other two photographers in Askegren’s picture?”

  “Not that I’ve heard,” Wayne said, shaking his head. “I’ve got people looking into it, though.”

  The chief didn’t seem to notice Wayne’s answer, as his attention was focused on something on the beach. “What the hell—?”

  Wayne turned to see Ralph Hale running toward them. Breathlessly, he cried out, “We went to get the nine-footer—it’s gone! It escaped from its cage.”

  “How the hell did that happen?” Wayne asked angrily.

  “Weren’t Marc and Mal guarding the thing?” Movita asked Hale.

  Hale nodded. “Yes, but they got sidetracked by a truck blowin’ up. They figured that was a diversion, seein’ as how the chains tethering the nine-footer’s cage to the pier were cut.”

  “Damn,” Wayne muttered.

  “This means the giant could appear anywhere,” Moki said.

  “Or it might not show up at all,” Hale said. “It’s possible that whoever freed the beast has done our job for us.”

  Wayne shook his head. “Yeah, but since we didn’t get to track the thing, we have no way of knowing.” He unclipped the PRC from his belt. “Attention squadron leaders, this is Colonel Wayne. Second squadron, reposition to town area. Third squadron reposition to rocky coast. Fourth squadron reposition to small beach. Fifth to jungle area. Clear all coastal areas of civilians. Perimeter must now cover the entire island, not just main beach, repeat, perimeter must cover the entire island.” He replaced the PRC and was about to ask Hale if he knew who was responsible for this, when he saw that Ellway and Bateman were returning—with a small kid in tow, presumably the missing son. Well, at least something’s gone right, Wayne thought bitterly.

  “The nine-footer’s gone,” Hale said as Ellway and the others approached, “escaped from its cage.”

  “Oh, my God,” Ellway said.

  “How the hell did that happen?” Bateman asked. Wayne snorted, wondering what it meant that he and the reporter both had the exact same reaction.

  “It was deliberate,” Hale said. “Someone distracted Marc and Mal, then cut the chain and let the bugger loose.”

  Ellway turned to the chief. “You don’t think Derek—?”

  Movita shook his head. “I doubt it. He wanted to sell the thing, he wouldn’t have let it out of its cage.”

  The kid—what was his name, Wayne thought, Brian?—said, “So now they’re both gone.”

  Wayne perked up at that. “Excuse me—‘both’? Both what?”

  “It turns out that there’s a baby floating around too, Colonel,” Ellway said. “Brandon found him a couple of days ago.”

  Throwing up his hands, Wayne said, “Oh, this just gets better and better.”

  “He’s only three feet long, he’s harmless.”

  “I don’t care if he’s three inches long, you should’ve told me about him.”
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  “I didn’t know about him,” Ellway said. “Brandon only just told me a few minutes ago.”

  Brandon spoke up then. “I thought if people knew about him, they’d try to kill him. I—I didn’t want him to get hurt.”

  Wayne sighed. He could hear the ambient noise level around him rising as his people moved to expand the perimeter and keep the civilians calm. Not far away, he could hear one of his people cautioning some Malauans to move inland. He had a bad feeling about all of this.

  He looked down at Ellway’s kid and said gently, “Son, you should’ve said something.”

  “I’m sorry, but I wasn’t sure what would happen to him. I wanted him to be safe. He hasn’t hurt anybody.”

  Wayne was about to respond when he noticed a change in the ambient noise. It was louder in the direction Hale had just come from. The direction of the pier, he remembered.

  Then he heard screams.

  Then he saw the head.

  “My God,” Ellway said.

  “Whoa,” Bateman said.

  When he and his friend Andy had snuck out to see monster movies when they were kids, Christopher Wayne had always found it impossible to take the monsters seriously because they looked so fake. “Why’re they all panicking?” he would ask Andy. “I mean, it’s just pâpier-maché, right?” They made more fearsome creatures in art class.

  Seeing the nine-footer in the cage hadn’t mentally prepared Wayne for this. Something about being placed in a cage made the animal seem one step removed from reality. And the photograph hadn’t had much of an impact, either. Photos, after all, could be faked. There were computer programs out there that could easily create a convincing photograph of a giant lizard menacing a motorboat just by digitally grafting a closeup of a small lizard onto the image of a motorboat.

  Now, though . . .

  A huge creature that towered over the tallest tree on the island was now visible by the pier. It reminded the colonel mostly of pictures of Tyrannosaurus rex that his nephew Howie had all over his bedroom wall, except the arms were much longer—probably long enough to work as forelegs, though the thing wasn’t close enough for Wayne to see its legs yet.