The Monster's Corner

by Christopher Golden

  Why had this happened to him?

  Much as he’d tried to forget, he still vividly remembered every detail of what had happened. He remembered the accident—the piercing light and those screaming, high-pitched radiation alarm sirens—then the disorientation when he’d first woken up in the clinic. It had been like he’d been trapped in one of those old Quatermass movies his dad used to watch. But in those films the guy being quarantined had always been a hero—an astronaut or genius scientist—not anyone like him. He just cleaned the damn labs, for Christ’s sake. He wasn’t one of the scientists, he just worked for them.

  They’d kept him pumped full of drugs for a time, trying to suppress the metamorphosis, studying him from a distance through windows and from behind one-way mirrors, none of them daring to get too close. But there had come a time when the medicines and anesthetics no longer had any effect, and when they finally wore off, the pain had been unbearable. He realized he’d outgrown the hospital bed and had crushed it under his massively increased weight. He was more than twice his normal size already, rapidly filling the room, and he’d become claustrophobic and had panicked. He wanted to ask to see his son, Ash, but his mouth suddenly didn’t work the way it used to and words were hard to form. He tried to get up but there wasn’t enough room to stand, and when he tried to open the window blinds and look out he instead punched his clumsy hand through the glass. The people behind the mirrors started screaming at him to stop and lie still, but that just made him even more afraid. He shoved at an outside wall until it collapsed, then scrambled out through the hole he’d made. He stood there in the early morning light, completely nude, almost four meters tall, and he fell when he first tried to run away on legs of suddenly unequal length. They blocked his way with trucks, and he thought they were going to hurt him. He’d only wanted to move them out of his way, but he’d overreacted and had killed several of the security men, not yet appreciating the incredible strength of his distended frame, popping their skulls like bubble wrap.

  He’d taken shelter in a derelict warehouse for a while—the only place he’d found that was large enough to hide inside. He lay on the floor, coiled around the inside of the building, and for a time he sat and listened to a homeless guy who, out of his mind with drink and drugs, had thought Glen was a hallucination. Now Glen leaned back against the hillside, crushing trees like twigs behind him, and remembered their onesided conversation (he’d only been able to listen, not speak). Like the blind man in that old Frankenstein film, the drunk hadn’t judged him or run from him in fear, but by the morning he was dead, crushed by Glen, who’d doubled in size in his sleep. Woken by the sounds of the warehouse being surrounded, he’d destroyed the building trying to escape and had literally stepped over the small military force that had been posted there to flush him out and recapture him. In the confusion of gunfire and brick dust he stumbled away toward the town of Shrewsbury, another place he’d known well, avoiding the roads and following the meandering route of the River Severn across the land.

  Christ, he bitterly regretted reaching that beautiful, historic town, and his swollen, racing heart sank when he remembered what had happened there. Still not used to his inordinate rate of growth (would he ever get used to it?) and the constantly changing dimensions of his disfigured body, he’d stumbled about like a drunken giant, every massive footstep causing more and more damage. He’d crashed into ancient buildings, demolishing them as he’d tried to avoid cars and pedestrians, unintentionally obliterating the places he’d known and loved with Della and Ash. He’d killed innocent people, too, as he’d tried to get away from the town to avoid causing more devastation, and their screams of terror and pain had hurt more than anything else. He’d never intended for any of this to happen, but the final straw had been when he’d lifted his foot to step over what remained of a partially demolished row of houses and had seen a child’s pram squashed flat on the pavement where he’d been standing. Had he killed the baby? He hadn’t waited to find out. Instead he loped off as quickly as he was able, his ears ringing with the sounds of mayhem he’d caused.

  In the shadows of the hills, Glen lifted his heavy head toward the early evening sky and sobbed, the noise filling the air like thunder. With every hour I am becoming less a man and more a monster, he thought. I may not have long. If I’m going to do this, I have to do it now.

  They’d assumed he might come back to this place eventually, that he’d want Della and the rest of her family to suffer as he had. It was the ideal location from which to launch an attack on the creature—exposed, out in the middle of nowhere, away from centers of population—and a squadron of Hawkins’s men had been deployed to take the monster out. They took up arms as the aberration’s vast, lumbering shape appeared on the darkening horizon, still recognizably that of a man, but only just. Orders were screamed down the chain of command, and a barrage of gunfire was launched as it approached. Bullets and mortars just bounced off its scaly skin, barely having any impact at all. Incensed, the creature destroyed many of its attackers and marched on, leaving the dead and dying scattered across the land.

  And then, as the last rays of evening sunlight trickled across the world below him, it found what it had been looking for: Della’s father’s house. The beast strode toward the isolated building, ignoring the last few scurrying, antlike men and women attacking and retreating under its feet. It swung a massive, clumsy hand at the waist-high roof of the house, brushing the slates, joists, and supports away with a casual slap, trying to peer inside through the dust and early evening gloom. And when it saw that the top floor was empty, it simply ripped that away, too, taking the building apart layer by layer, kneeling on the roadside (crushing another eight men) and looking down into the building like a petulant child tearing apart a doll’s house, looking for a precious lost toy.

  * * *

  They weren’t there. The house was empty. Disconsolate, Glen stood up and kicked what was left of the building away, watching the debris scatter for almost a mile.

  Way below him, a final few soldiers regrouped and launched another attack. They were the very least of his concerns now; irritating and unfortunate, nothing more. In temper he bent down and swept them away with a single swipe of his arm, then turned and marched onward, immediately regretting their deaths.

  This was all Della’s fault. If it hadn’t been for her he’d never have been in this desperate position. Did she even realize that? Did she know she was to blame? Surely she must have had some inkling? If it hadn’t been for them splitting up and her making him sell the house, this would never have happened. If she’d just talked to him sooner, let him know how she was feeling, let him know how unhappy she was … She said he should have guessed, that she’d tried to tell him enough times, but what did she think he was, a bloody psychic?

  It was Della’s fault it had all gone wrong, and jumping into bed with her bloody therapist had been the final nail in the coffin—the full-stop at the end of the very last sentence of their relationship—but he accepted it had been his own bloody foolish pride that had subsequently exacerbated the situation. He’d wanted to do everything he possibly could to support his son, but when Cresswell earned more money in a month than he did in a year, he realized he’d made a rod for his own back. His pigheaded solution was to work harder and harder, to the point where money became his focus, not Ash. It wasn’t Glen’s fault he hadn’t been blessed with the brains Anthony Cress-well had, or that he hadn’t been fortunate enough to share the same privileged, silver-spoon upbringing as the man who’d taken his place in Della’s bed. Ash didn’t even like him, he knew that for a fact. He told me himself.

  Glen had been desperate to prove his worth and not let his son down, and that was why he’d agreed to take part in the trial (that and an undeniable desire to bulk himself up and become physically more of a man than he ever had been before—he’d certainly achieved that now). It was perfectly safe and legal, they’d told him as he signed the consent forms, a controlled trial of a new muscle-b
uilding compound for athletes. All the top performers will be using it this time next year, they’d said: twice the effect, a quarter the cost, absolutely no risk … Maybe they’d been right about that, because he’d been taking it for a while and, other than the weight gain and a little occasional nausea, there hadn’t been any noticeable side effects. It had almost certainly been the radiation from the accident that had caused the change—either that or a combination of the two. But even the accident had been Della’s fault in part. If she hadn’t got the courts involved and been so anal about the times he was supposed to pick Ash up and drop him back, then he wouldn’t have been rushing to get his work finished on time, and he wouldn’t have left the safety off when he was supposed to—

  A sudden, piercing whoosh and a sharp stabbing pain interrupted his thoughts as a mortar wedged itself in a fold of leathery skin halfway down his bare back, then detonated. Glen howled with pain, his rumbling screams filling the air for miles around, shattering windows and causing panic.

  Concentrate, he ordered himself, standing up as straight as he could and stretching back over his shoulder with an elongated arm, flicking away the remains of the missile with overgrown nails. Several more explosions echoed around his head—blasts that would once have killed him but were now almost insignificant. He spiraled around, sweeping more soldiers out of the way with one arm as if he were clearing them off a table, then moved forward into the brief pocket of space and marched on. What do I do now? He tried to remember what happened next in the movies. Was this the point where they’d drop a nuke or something equally final on him? Try to gas him, perhaps? Should he just give up now, or maybe head out into the sea and disappear like Godzilla? He wished an even bigger monster would appear on the horizon: his own Mothra or King Ghidorah, perhaps. He could fight them and defeat them and save the world and let Ash see that his daddy wasn’t an evil creature now, just misunderstood. He tried to imagine the fatherly monologue that that fucker Cresswell would deliver to his son tonight: “Your father was once a good man, Ash, but good people sometimes turn bad, and he had to be destroyed …”

  He had to find Della and Ash. In the distance up ahead now lay the city of Birmingham—a gray scar covered in thousands of twinkling lights, buried deep in the midst of oceans of green—and he began to walk toward it, breaking into a lolloping, sloping run as he gradually picked up speed, his heart thumping too fast.

  Home. I have to try to get home.

  The city, he quickly decided, was his safest option—perhaps his only remaining option. Surrounded by millions of people, the military wouldn’t dare risk using weapons of mass destruction on him there, and those same people would become hostages by default. His presence alone would be enough of a threat to force the authorities to do what he wanted.

  The beast marched across the land, leaving a trail of devastation and deep, dinosaur-sized footsteps in its wake. In its shadow the population scattered in fear, running for cover but knowing that nowhere was safe anymore. Distances that took them hours to cover could be cleared in minutes by the aberration that towered over all of them. And as it neared Birmingham and the density of the population around it gradually increased, so did the level of carnage it caused. Knowing that the city was clearly a target, the authorities tried hopelessly to evacuate the panicking masses, but getting away was impossible. In no time at all every major road was blocked solid with traffic, and the monster simply kicked its way through the constant traffic jams without a care. It destroyed a reservoir in a fit of rage, stamping on a dam and flooding acres of heavily populated streets. A hospital was demolished when it tripped and fell, hundreds of patients and staff killed in a heartbeat. Scores of schools, homes, and other buildings were obliterated; untold numbers of people wiped out by the remorseless, blood-crazed behemoth.

  A large section of the city center had, at least, been partially cleared as people who fled in terror mixed with those unaware of the approaching threat who were heading home from work. In a last-ditch attempt to divert the creature, Major Hawkins launched an aerial attack.

  The first fighter planes raced toward their target and fired, their munitions barely even registering on the monster’s tough, leathery skin. More through luck than judgment, it flashed an enormous hand at one of the planes and caught its wing with the tips of its longest two fingers, sending it into a sudden, spiraling free fall from which it would never recover. The pilot ejected—too small for the behemoth to see or care about—and as his parachute opened, he drifted down behind the grotesque man-monster, studying the stretches and folds and impossible angles of the horrific beast as he fell from the sky.

  Several other jets met with a similar fate, as did a tank that was unwittingly crushed under the monster’s foot like an empty soda can as it continued to approach the center of town. It marched between massive office buildings, at eye level with their high roofs, knocking one of them over as if it were made of cardboard. How many people were still in there, Hawkins wondered from a distance. How many more are going to die?

  An iconic shopping center was destroyed in seconds, rubble raining down over the suburbs, severed electrical connections and small explosions lighting up the scene like camera flashes. A historic cathedral that had proudly stood for hundreds of years, wiped out in minutes. The destruction was apparently without end.

  Major Hawkins readied himself to make the call he’d been dreading and consign the monster, the city, and hundreds of thousands of people to a white-hot nuclear fate. He watched the beast in the distance, his mouth dry and his pulse racing. Around him his soldiers stood their ground, nervously waiting to engage despite knowing now that their weapons were useless. Some turned and ran, desperate to get away before either the aberration attacked or they were wiped out by whatever godawful weapons the powers-that-be were forced to resort to using.

  Hawkins paused when the creature’s ex-wife burst into his truck and demanded to speak to him. The scientists and the generals had failed to come up with anything useful. She convinced him to hear her out before he did anything he’d regret. Goddammit, he thought as he listened to her, this was just like something from one of those bloody movies he couldn’t get out of his head. “Let me see him,” she’d pleaded. “Just let me try to talk to him.”

  What harm could it do when so much had already been lost? It had to be worth a try. The intensity of the aberration’s attacks were increasing, more lives lost with every second. Hawkins was running out of options.

  Glen didn’t know which way to turn. Where do I go now? He was still deep in the heart of the city and, to his horror, had leveled much of it. If he bent down and squinted into the confusion below he could see the full extent of the damage he’d caused. He’d taken out a loan for a car six months ago, and it had been his pride and joy. Today he’d destroyed thousands of vehicles—all of them belonging to someone like him. He’d demolished homes like the one he’d once shared with Della and Ash. Worst of all were the bodies. He hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone. How would he have felt if this had happened to someone else and Ash had been killed in the fallout? Glen lifted his head and roared with pain, the volume of his pitiful cry shattering the last few remaining windows and causing numerous already badly damaged buildings to collapse.

  Let this be over.

  My body hurts.

  Please let this stop.

  * * *

  Surrounded by soldiers, Della walked through the parkland, Cresswell chasing after her. Ash held the doctor’s hand, his constant sobbing audible even over the sounds of distant fighting.

  “You can’t do this,” Cresswell protested. “Della, listen to me!”

  “No, Anthony, you listen to me,” she said, turning back to face him. “If there’s anything of Glen left inside that thing, then he’ll listen to me.”

  “I won’t let you.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  With that she turned and walked on, her armed guard forming a protective bubble around her, leading her out toward the expanse o
f grassland they were trying to direct the creature toward. She could see his outline in the distance now, a huge black shadow towering over the tombstone ruins of the city. High overhead a phalanx of helicopters flew out toward the monster in formation, each of them focusing a searchlight on the ground below. She waited nervously for them to return, wrapping her arms around herself to keep out the cold.

  It happened with surprising speed and ease. The creature seemed to be distracted by the helicopters, and it immediately moved toward them, perhaps realizing that, as they hadn’t attacked, their intentions were peaceful. Della’s heart began to thump in time with its massive footsteps as it neared, and she caught her breath when it seemed to lose its footing for a moment. It lashed out and swatted one of the choppers as if it were a nuisance fly, knocking it into its nearest neighbor and sending both of them crashing down to the ground in a ball of metal and swollen flame. How many people died just then, she wondered. How many more died when the wreckage hit the ground? How many people has Glen killed?

  The aberration moved closer, coming clearly into view now, illuminated by the remaining helicopters, which soared higher until they were out of its massive reach. Della looked up at it in disbelief, stunned by the size of the damn thing, and also by the fact that despite the huge level of deformation, she could still clearly see that it was Glen. Its immense frame was grossly misshapen, but there was something about the shape of its mouth and the way it held its head that she recognized; the jawline that both he and Ash had, the color of those eyes …

  When the creature saw the soldiers around its feet, it leaned down and roared. Della thought it sounded like a cry for help rather than an attacking scream, but the military clearly thought otherwise. One of the troopers nearest to her raised his rifle, and the monster picked him up between two enormous fingers and tossed him away. She watched the body fly through the air and hit a tree, and cringed when she heard a sharp cracking sound—either the tree trunk or the soldier’s bones. The monster roared again, and this time its force was such that she was blown off her feet. Another soldier rushed to help her up. She got to her feet and shook him off, then ran out toward the creature.