by Sean Wallace
Second, close examination of the remains showed that the tendrils under the creature were damaged. What I had at first assumed were likely bullet holes and scratches from the multiple explosions were, upon a second examination, too uniform. My conclusion is that the thing deliberately released something into the air. It could have been the equivalent of shedding skin, or it could have been something far worse. It could have been, and I ask you to bear with me on this, it could have been seeds, or possibly even the equivalent of pollen.
What would bring me to that assumption?
Simple: Gwen has cancer. Not just any cancer, but recurrent glioblastoma multiforme originating in the brainstem. It is identical to the cancer that killed every member of Randy’s family.
I made a few calls. Currently there are three teams from the CDC on their way to Denver. They’re going in full HAZMAT suits and they’re going to take samples from every solider and police officer that was at the site when Gwen became a hero.
Another team is on the way to pick up Gwen. If we’re lucky, it’s just her. It’s just Gwen and we can possibly contain this before it gets too big to ever recover from.
If we’re less fortunate then the black substance I saw falling from the thing that had been Randy’s brain was a spore and the cancer has become airborne. It was windy that day. I remember that.
An airborne cancer would be bad. Worse than most people can imagine. But an airborne agent that mutates people into what Randy became? That would likely be the end of the world.
I hope we’re lucky. I really, really do.
Attack of the Fifty-Foot Cosmonaut
Michael Canfield
The desert shimmered.
Most people in Henderson, Nevada, ignored it—as Jack had been advised bluntly to do. He would’ve ignored it too, if he hadn’t been, as Sheriff Hubbins put it, “damned contrary by nature.”
That, and maybe if his dad hadn’t shot and killed himself in his patrol car one night seventeen years ago, out there investigating the glowing hills.
Jack stood in the front room of their mobile home, watching the glow and thinking about these things. The glow seemed to get bigger every summer, and every summer he went out to investigate—or try to anyway, stopped by electrified fences and heavy security patrols surrounding federal lands.
That night the glow was brighter than ever before. The horizon seemed to pulse with it so strongly and rhythmically the hills might have been breathing. The moon basked in its green reflection.
His old mom came in out of the kitchen, looking drawn. “Why are you just standing there—gazing out the window again? What are you always dreaming about?” she said.
He shook his head. School would start pretty soon. Other concerns would take priority. If his next season’s performance was even close to matching his previous season’s he was sure to win a scholarship somewhere. And he was probably supposed to marry Janniffer eventually. The next few years were mapped out for him based on the expectations of others . . .
Jack went outside and put on his track shoes. He sensed his mom behind him.
“Where are you going?”
“To run, Mom,” he said seriously, and of course that wasn’t really a lie as far as it went.
As he trotted off he looked back at her, pretty sure that she knew the truth, and sure she didn’t like it.
Their mobile home was the last in the row and beyond it lay nothing but the desert, or as Sheriff Hubbins would say, “Nothing that’s nothing to nobody.”
Jack moved into the darkness, picking up a little speed—not too much, as he didn’t want to get winded before he reached the green foothills.
Janniffer answered the phone and it was Mrs. Jaffe calling for her dad. It was about Jack, of course. Janniffer turned down the television. The news was over anyway; Ted Koppel announced that tomorrow night Peter Jennings would broadcast live from Berlin. Her friend Paige and Paige’s idiot boyfriend Doggart, who were over to watch TV with her, howled in protest.
“Shut up! It’s Jack’s mom on the phone!”
“It’s always Jack’s mom,” whined Doggart, cranking the television volume back up, “I wanna hear the Nightline theme. I love the Nightline theme.” And he was supposed to be Jack’s best friend.
Janniffer put a hand over her ear. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jaffe, could you say that again?” Apparently Jack had gone out running about six and still wasn’t back. “No, he hasn’t been over here . . . do you think he . . . ?”
Doggart and Paige turned their attention from the TV to Janniffer.
“My father’s not here, Mrs. Jaffe,” said Janniffer, “but I can beep him . . . ” She hung up after promising to call Mrs. Jaffe back if she heard anything, and getting Mrs. Jaffe’s promise to do the same.
Doggart raised his arm. “Not this time. He’s on his own—I’m through getting busted by the feds.”
And then Paige, who was supposed to be her best friend, said: “Don’t you think Jack’s caused you enough trouble already, Janniffer?”
Janniffer looked out the picture window. It was a clear night and she thought maybe she could see a little something different, way off there, over the blocks and blocks of suburbs. Maybe. “It’s getting brighter lately, don’t you think?”
“No,” said Doggart with conviction. “You’re imagining that. It’s the reflection of moonlight off black sand. If it were radiation, the anti-nukers would have some evidence by now. Which would be okay with me, ’cause I wouldn’t say no to a fat settlement. But it just didn’t turn out to be anything. So don’t worry, girls,” he added typically, “you won’t have no two-headed babies.”
“Not if we stay away from you, you inbreed.” Janniffer picked up the phone again and dialed her father’s pager.
Paige looked up seriously. “You just gonna call your dad, and that’s all. Right, Janniffer? Janniffer?”
She said nothing, just stood thoughtfully, waiting for her dad to call back. True, she hadn’t seen much of Jack lately, and probably he didn’t like her any more, but if he got into trouble again his friends should be there.
“Doggart,” she said, “I need to borrow your jeep.”
“No way,” said Paige, jumping in before Doggart could say anything. “I thought we agreed not to chase after these sexist losers.”
“He might get busted—” And anyway, she thought, looking at Doggart, Paige had no call to talk about losers.
“And maybe he’s not even in the foothills—did you even think of that?” said Paige.
Janniffer paused. “Well, where do you think he is?” she said defensively.
“That’s not the point and you know it.”
The phone rang.
Janniffer filled her father in and he told her he would take a run out to look for Jack. He made her promise to stay put. “I don’t need more than one crazy teenager running around a one-time H-bomb site,” he said.
She hung up the phone. “My dad’s gonna look for him.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?” said Paige.
“Doggart,” Janniffer said, “I can’t take my Honda into the foothills—I need the keys to your jeep.”
It surprised her how easily he gave in, reaching into his jeans to pull out his keyring.
“Doggart, what are you doing?” said Paige.
“She’s made up her mind,” he said coolly, moving the keys away as Paige tried to take them from him.
Janniffer almost grabbed them from the opposite direction, but Paige yanked Doggart’s arm away.
“Girls, girls, please,” said Doggart and everything stopped. “Don’t fight over me!”
Paige slapped Doggart on the shoulder and Janniffer took the opportunity to snag the keys. She bolted out the front door. “See ya!” she yelled triumphantly.
Paige chased her. “Hold up! We’ll come with you.”
“We will?” said Doggart, surprised.
“Yes, stupid. Still think you’re so funny?”
That was good, thought Janniffer
, who, having jumped into the vehicle, suddenly remembered she didn’t know how to drive a stick.
Sheriff Hubbins took the patrol car and headed toward the foothills as soon he got off the phone from his daughter. He turned off the dirt access road into the sagebrush, bumping his way through the desert around the chain-linked barb-wired perimeter of government land, looking for a way in.
Damn skinny kid, he thought, just like his old man. A skinny kid could have slipped under the fence just about any place.
Hubbins looked to the foothills, only a few hundred yards off, and they were pretty damn green—greener than he’d ever seen them, and there hadn’t been a night in the last seventeen years when he hadn’t looked at them. No doubt about it—the kid had gone for it. Again. Crazy, contrary, inquisitive kid. Trying to get into the foothills, trying to get them to give up their secrets.
Sheriff Hubbins knew more about those secrets than most.
And he knew that it was better for it to stay that way. If anybody found out what he knew then somebody might get themselves really hurt someday. That wouldn’t happen to Jack if he, as Sheriff and family friend, could help it.
Then again, there was a pretty good chance he wouldn’t be able to help it. Not if Jack kept poking.
Hubbins had the patrol car’s lights off—necessary in case helicopters showed up. He searched by the beam of his flashlight aimed out the window and the green glow—and that made for damned hard searching. Still, he didn’t have to remind himself that he’d fifty and more years experience in these hills: three times as much as the kid.
The patrol car’s tires scrunched the dry earth slowly. There was only that, and the soft rumble of the engine.
His front tire hit a rut and Hubbins directed his flashlight onto the fence. That was it. There was the spot where Jack had scooped out the dirt and slid under the fence. Damn skinny kid.
After cutting the engine, Hubbins got out and appraised the depth of the opening. It was nothing. There was no way he was going to get his fifty inches of long-accumulating gut through that mouse hole, so he had two options: either blow the whistle and radio the military—which he didn’t care to do—or widen the hole.
Reluctantly, hating to break a damned sweat in the cold night air, Hubbins popped the trunk and took out a little camping spade.
There was nothing like manual labor, enforced and at a late hour, to put a man in an unreasonable mood. Especially when he hadn’t had dinner yet.
Concluding the job at last, he tossed the spade aside roughly; then, head first and belly skyward, he scooted under the fence. Dirt got down his collar and in his pants.
Pushing himself to his feet again, both knees ached. That was par though. They always ached when he stood up these days. The price you paid for letting yourself get old. Old, aching, with dirt down his ass did not put him in a better mood for the hike to come.
Just as he stood there getting his wind, he heard sounds coming out of the silence.
Not the wind and not the quiet hum of nature—but some other kind of sound. A pulsing, pumping noise—deep and rhythmic. It appeared to him as he looked across the desert that the pulsing rhythm of the glow was in sync with it. Funny. The sound was new, he thought—at least he’d never noticed it before—not even that first night seventeen years ago, when he’d driven the now restricted dirt road all the way up to the foothills looking for his fellow deputy, who was hours late reporting in.
The glow had been a lot dimmer then, just a sheen on the horizon after the meteorite’s bright flash. Of course, there was speculation even at the beginning that it hadn’t been a meteorite, but a UFO that crash-landed. The speculating only got worse when Deputy John Jaffe turned up dead that night, a hole in his temple and his service revolver in his hand.
But then—perhaps because government was better at keeping mouths shut in those days—nothing more was heard about the incident. And what with people moving away and new folks coming in all the time, talk died out after a while.
Hubbins began walking toward the foothills. There was nothing much up there for Jack to see, even if he made it without being picked up by the military—just blackened metal. But he’d never been able to convince the kid of that, even though it happened to be true.
Jack’s skin hadn’t actually turned green, but it looked like it when he got close enough to bask in the glow.
The light permeated the wasteland, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. He was frankly a little surprised to have made it all the way without getting caught. Probably the talk about budget cuts was true; the whole empty test site might be unguarded. It looked that way. Nothing was around. Not a thing grew above ankle height, nothing scurried across the ground or buzzed in the air. There was only the sound: the drub drub drubbing under the foothills. Eerie. Strange.
But it was nothing to kill yourself over, he thought harshly.
He sat there, thinking about it, for how long he had no idea. Indeed, he might have sat there all night if an earthquake hadn’t hit the area.
It began as a rumble in the hills—and before he could move, the ground slid away underneath him, carrying him along like flotsam.
Then the hills stood up.
Jack grabbed hold of an exposed clump of root to stop his slide. The hills shook dirt off themselves and Jack saw what he thought was a man. A giant: fifty feet tall at least, naked—but a man nonetheless. It towered over him.
Jack realized the roots he’d clung to were snarled hairs at the base of the giant’s calf. When the giant started walking, Jack didn’t know whether to let go and risk getting crushed under a heel—or to hang on for the ride.
The giant took no notice of him in any case, but seemed intent on moving. With a few strides, it spanned meters and continued to quicken its pace. Displaying deliberate purpose, it headed back the way Jack had come. Jack could no longer let go even if he’d wanted to for fear of being kicked twenty feet into the air by the hurling of the giant’s legs.
Dirt choked Jack’s throat and filled his eyes. He tried but couldn’t see the giant’s head from his low vantage point—just locks of matted hair clumped with dirt hanging below its shoulders. The giant’s arms swung in monstrous arcs, the monstrous fingers curled. And something else as the clouds of dust began to settle—Jack could see that the giant itself was the source of the glow.
Not that the giant’s skin glowed; rather it was encased in the glow, a green aura.
The giant came up to the perimeter fence and Jack watched as the ground passed below.
He saw Sheriff Hubbins’ patrol car and watched as the giant’s other foot crushed it indifferently. If the Sheriff was in it—well, that was the end of him.
The giant took to the highway and moved toward town.
The ropey hair that Jack coiled himself in was cutting his flesh. If he had to hang on much longer his arms would be shredded.
Far off, Jack heard the wupping of helicopter blades.
Sheriff Hubbins saw a figure coming out of the hills. Damn hard to miss, considering it was fifty feet tall and blocked out of good chunk of the sky.
Hubbins ran for the fence, throwing himself under it. His belt caught on something and pinned him. He struggled, finally unbuckled it, losing his holster and revolver in the darkness. A few bullets couldn’t hurt a thing that big anyway, so he didn’t waste time feeling around for his weapon.
Freeing himself just as the giant loomed over him, he was on his hands and knees when he saw his patrol car collapse under the thing’s foot like it was made of kitchen foil.
By the time he got upright again the monster was already a half mile away. “I’ll be,” he said aloud. It was something his grandmother used to say. There was nothing left of the patrol car, and he was glad he hadn’t been driving his own Lincoln Towncar that night.
The monster went off toward Henderson; Hubbins headed the other way, toward the Boulder City suburbs. It wasn’t much closer, but there would be more traffic once he reached the interstate and he
would get a quicker lift to a phone. Not that he knew whom he was going to call or what he was going to say when he did.
Anyway, the military was hardly going to miss spotting this one, and he had half a mind to just hitch home and say the hell with it. Send a tow truck and a big spatula for the car in the morning. But he couldn’t do that: Jack was still running around somewhere—unless the thing had stepped on him—and he probably had more questions than ever.
Hubbins was lucky. Just as he reached the highway he spotted a pair of headlights coming his way. Then a trio of helicopters passed overhead, their floodlights illuminating the road like sunlight. He didn’t bother to wave.
Jack slid down the giant’s calf when it stopped moving to swat at the helicopters.
The rapid cracks of fire spat from their guns as the helicopters circled the giant in wide sweeps. It seemed more annoyed than anything else, now that Jack could see its round full face.
The giant was faster, much more limber, than the helicopters could ever hope to be. Its arms were extended, keeping the buzzing nuisances at a distance when, it seemed to Jack, it could just as easily have knocked them out of the sky. The rounds hitting the giant’s arms and shoulders must have stung it, at least, as it twitched and flinched at the pelting.
The battle was moving steadily away from him now, but closer to Henderson and the trailer park Jack lived in. He had no hope of keeping pace with them, but he ran anyway, holding as much ground as he could.
He was out of breath though still running when Doggart’s jeep pulled up. Doggart was inside, and Janniffer and her friend—and there was also Sheriff Hubbins, who had survived the car crushing and looked red and perturbed and dirty.
Everyone in the car shouted at Jack at once but he felt no obligation to speak to any of them. He looked at Sheriff Hubbins.