by Sean Wallace
“Bombed or strafed,” said a man, an old retiree in a checked bathrobe. “I heard machine-gun fire.” Others nodded in agreement. That was would have been the helicopters strafing the giant, but Hubbins decided not to say anything—even though some of the speculating got pretty wild. There were some that believed the attack had been nuclear.
“We wouldn’t be here talking about it if it was,” said someone else. “Maybe we just caught the edge of it. Maybe they’re gonna quarantine us for radiation sickness.”
Hubbins said, “If there was radiation danger those soldiers would be wearing special gear.” And why weren’t they wearing protective suits, come to think of it? That giant was glowing green. It was obviously radioactive. Maybe the soldiers knew less about what was going on than he did. “And anyway,” objected another, “why did I hear shooting? No, it had to be a terrorist attack.”
Hubbins saw that his daughter was shaking. Her friends, too. “Now come on,” he said, “all this speculation is getting us nowhere.”
“Well, what do you propose, Sheriff?” said a balding man wearing pajamas that had swords and shields printed on them. He was missing a slipper.
“I propose we take a ride and relax.”
“If you haven’t noticed, this truck isn’t moving,” the man commented. “What do they plan to do with us?”
“They’ll take us into the hospital in Boulder City, I expect. They’ll check us for shock and injury and when they’re satisfied we’re all right, they’ll set out some cots in the high school gym for the folks that can’t make any other arrangements.”
“I don’t need any ‘arrangements.’ I’ll set up a tent in my own damn yard.” The bald man stood up in the truck indignantly. “And I am certainly not in shock.” He went to the flap and threw it open. He stepped over the back of the truck—bad move, thought Hubbins. But even he had no idea just how bad. The instant the bald man stepped onto the truck’s bumper a burst of gunfire cut him to ribbons.
Jack had stolen off into the desert while Sheriff Hubbins was distracted by the advancing tanks and before the floodlights caught sight of him. Fortunately, and for whatever reason, the Sheriff had chosen not to reveal Jack’s presence in the desert. Hubbins had always taken care of both Jack and his mother—though Jack now suspected it was out of guilt rather than kindness. Still, the Sheriff had been—had tried to be—a second father to him and he felt like a traitor running away from him into the desert. There was Janniffer to think of as well. He knew that she worried about him, feared for him. His mother, too, of course. It got demeaning, all these people always worried and looking out for you. That was why, maybe, he turned out to be a good runner—always wanting to get away. His clothes, having been drenched in sweat, dried and drenched again, were icy and chafing. He covered ground less rapidly now, alternating wind sprints, steady jogs, and long-strided marches. Anything to keep moving. With the way the highway twisted, and the slow rate the battalion moved, he thought he might beat it to the giant with a little luck. He didn’t know what he would do then.
He kept moving.
The giant was easy enough to spot again; there was a faint, gradually increasing roar of fighter jets to guide him. The giant was not able to ignore the jets as it had the gnat-like helicopters. It stopped walking and engaged the careening jets head on. They shot rockets at its massive bulk. Most missed—the giant was able to maneuver itself much faster than the jets were able to circle around for strikes. But some of the rockets found their target, drilling into the flesh of the massive torso like bullets. It bled. Jack heard the monstrous head shriek at its attackers in thundering incomprehensible syllables. Because of the sheer volume of the shrieks booming over the roar of the jets, it took Jack a few moments to understand that they were not animal noises—but words. Not English—but words certainly.
Now heavily wounded, the giant cosmonaut tried to drag itself from the fray. The jets kept coming. On the distant horizon Jack could see flames from two or three wrecked planes, but it now seemed as if the giant was too sluggish to destroy any more of them. Jack felt helpless. He was caught in the midst of a deadly ballet that he could take no part in. The cosmonaut had murdered his father years ago, the military and the Sheriff ’s office and even the townspeople had conspired to cover it up, and it all was going to end here, all their decades of lies and deceptions. The military was enacting the final episode in the drama and he was only a bystander. Just as Sheriff Hubbins had taken the truth about his father’s death and hidden it from him—appropriated it for expediencies of his own—now the army was killing the giant. He was certain it was dying. The caked dirt over the giant’s skin was awash in its own blood. It stumbled. The jets drove in, hammering the thing to its knees. The great chest collapsed to the earth, the great eyelids drooped as its head settled into the ground.
A river gushed from its enormous nostrils. The dying giant lay a quarter mile off, facing him. Jack edged a little closer as the fighters finished pumping shell after shell into its back. Once they broke off and regrouped high in the sky, Jack sprinted across the open ground. The giant still breathed; it opened and shut its eyes. Jack wanted—he needed—the thing to see him. He put both hands on the giant’s eyelash and pulled. Then released and let it snap back. Both huge eyes fluttered, the giant seemed to stir, but remained unaware. It would be dead in a moment. It would be dead and Jack would never be able to confront his father’s death. The fighters dove again. The giant had whiskers and Jack climbed them. High above, straddling its ear, Jack whipped off his shirt and waved it like a flag at the jets. If he could get them to stop firing . . .
They stopped. Perhaps it was the surprise of seeing a human being standing on the giant’s ear—or maybe they realized that they had killed the monster—or maybe they had simply run out of ammo. Whatever the explanation, the jets veered off toward the base just as helicopters appeared over the horizon. These landed a few hundred yards away. That gave Jack only a few minutes at best.
He screamed into the giant’s ear, trying to revive it. There was only this last moment . . . and if the giant could not—or would not—answer . . .
It moaned.
“Who are you?” Jack yelled.
The cosmonaut gave a long and garbled Russian name then stated its rank and serial number in thickly accented English. All Jack got was that his father’s killer was a major.
There was no time. “You crashed,” said Jack. He could see a phalanx of troops from the helicopters making their way from the road slowly, like shadows.
“Yasss,” slurred the giant. “Pitched craft. Taken for prisoner. Political . . . ”
Jack pressed on. “You killed a policeman. A deputy—”
“Nye— no. Oszers . . . ”
Others? “Did the other cosmonaut do it?”
“Soldiers,” it said, “soldiers kill him.”
When Nikolai Petroyevich came to, the first thing he saw was a bright light—but it was not the bright light of heaven. It was a flashlight. And the figure behind the flashlight was not God, but a man—a man wearing a uniform.
The man spoke to him—and whatever he was saying it was not Russian. Gradually the haze began to dissipate and the words made sense. It was English, and he spoke a little English.
“Sir?” the man said.
“Where am I?” asked Nikolai in the best English he could manage.
“Just southeast of the base,” said the man.
The base? What base? Where in the world? “What country?”
“America,” said the man.
Nikolai realized there was a blanket placed over him, probably to keep him from going into shock. He had better say no more. This fellow appeared to be a peace officer of some kind, and would help him. His mission had been a secret, and this man would hardly be expecting to find a cosmonaut. He had mentioned a base—a military base perhaps? It might be better to let the man believe his flight had originated there.
“My—” he struggled for the right word, “co-pilot
?”
“Let’s just see about you first—help’s on the way,” the officer said with hesitation in his voice.
Nikolai assumed this non-committal answer meant his fellow crew member was dead, and that he was alone. This would be a mess, he was thinking, but a mess for Moscow to unravel—not him. Most embarrassing for them to launch an experimental nuclear-powered spacecraft secretly and lose it on American soil. Nikolai laughed.
“Glad you’ve got your sense of humor, pal,” said the officer. “The name’s John—John Jaffe.”
“Pleased.” He avoided giving his own name. “I am not from here,” he said, and he knew it must sound oddly redundant.
It did, and now the man called John Jaffe laughed as well.
“You’re not too far from the base,” the man told him.
Nikolai felt he was in great trouble. Worse than that, he felt intense nausea, a sign that the worst might have happened—the nuclear core of the spaceship may have leaked and poisoned him. His co-pilot was lucky in that case—he had died quickly.
Nikolai expected to be taken into custody but did not fear a long delay in his release. He was not on a spy mission after all, and cosmonauts like astronauts were international heroes. Nikolai closed his eyes and waited for whatever was going to happen to happen.
He was awakened by the roar of vehicles, the booming of loudspeakers and the shouts of men. There was a gunshot. Nikolai involuntarily snapped upright and his back seized into spasms. He could see the peace officer lying prone a few feet from him, and there were soldiers, sweating and cursing one another. They spoke too fast for Nikolai to follow their English, but they were clearly arguing over the slaying of the peace officer. Nikolai could not guess why they had done it—unless in a panic caused by the dark and a fear of the unknown.
A soldier noticed that Nikolai was conscious and advanced toward him, rifle raised. This will be it then, thought Nikolai. No slow death by radiation—I am to be executed by these fearful and desperate men. Perhaps they would neatly pin the murder of the peace officer on him. His troubles were at an end.
The soldier did not shoot. He merely kept his weapon trained on Nikolai and shouted for his comrades’ assistance.
He was unable to control the urge to vomit and jerked his ruined body to the side to do so. The soldier ought to shoot, he thought. He shook and felt life draining from his body. He was going to die in some foreign desert and no one—not family, not friends—would ever hear from him again.
Nikolai felt a profound sympathy for the murdered peace officer. Did the man have a wife and children? If so, they would never see him again—and for what? For waiting with a dead man until aid arrived.
Nikolai quaked with pain as he thought of these things. It was a bad way to die.
But he did not die.
Though he would never find out what exactly happened next, he lost consciousness—slipped into a coma perhaps. Gradually, self-awareness returned. Or rather, a new awareness emerged: slow, dreamlike and housed in his very bones. He came eventually to understand that he had lain for years in a secret chamber in some forgotten underground facility under a vast desert—in a sort of American Siberia where the US had tested its nuclear weapons. Radiation from those tests fed his body.
Fed it and made it grow.
Though homesick and alone, Nikolai came to relish his peaceful limbo, content never again to witness oppression or governments. Even here, in the supposedly-free West, his last memory was of soldiers killing their fellow countryman: the peace officer whose only crime had been to stumble across Nikolai in a downed experimental craft—merely coming to the aid of a traveler from the other half of the world.
At some point, radio broadcasts began piercing his consciousness. In time, they whispered undreamed of news: the Soviet regime that had oppressed his Russia had crumbled. Joyously, he decided to wake himself into this new world of peace.
Instead, he woke to violence.
Now, nearly two decades later I am killed by the remnants of the bipolar world for the crime of rising from the grave, thought Nikolai, watching a tiny human being shout at him and climb along his nose. Even enormous size and the fullness of time were not enough to protect a simple man from the machinations of the world.
Nikolai wondered about the small creature before him. It was hard to tell but it seemed that it was little more than a boy. What odd chain of events or quirk of personality led this boy to risk death beneath the roar of military might, to climb a giant’s dying face to shout questions in his ear? He wanted to know about the man Nikolai saw murdered. He must be the officer’s child then—who else would care about a single man after so long a time?
There was pandemonium in the truck when the bald man died. Hubbins watched as the passengers climbed over each other like animals to get away from the bullets. But the bullets kept coming. His daughter scrambled with the crowd and he did not want to watch her die. He was thinking that he was glad he had gotten so fat in the last twenty years, as he pushed through the bodies and threw his whole bulk upon her—hoping it would be enough, yet fearing that the army would send a man or two into the truck with hand guns to finish up once most of the witnesses were dead.
She was crying and he put his hand over her mouth. “Play dead, honey,” he said to her. “Play dead.” To gain another second or two of life.
Soldiers had killed his father, Jack had heard the giant say. So it had not been suicide.
He stood unmoving upon the ear of the murdered giant, while helicopters landed and soldiers poured out onto the desert sand. Jack wanted to kill them all, all the men who’d been there that night, all the men who had killed his father, or those like Sheriff Hubbins who had allowed his death to become a lie.
They came nearer in loping, strained gaits, laden with heavy packs of machinery and weapons. Jack knew he could easily outrun them, and probably lose them in the desert night—for a while at least. But he did not run; he had all he wanted to know about himself there beneath him, in the mountain of human flesh that was the slaughtered cosmonaut. Below him, the great dark cave of the dead giant’s mouth gaped open.
As she crawled through the rubble that had once been her home, Mary Jaffe was thinking only of her son Jack—she prayed he was not in the group she had just watched being slaughtered by the soldiers. She had been trying to make her way toward them with her leg all twisted, too weak to call out, when the men started firing on her neighbors. She fell and hid, watching with horror as the murdered corpses of Tom Hubbins and his daughter were dragged onto the ground. She saw two other friends of her son as well. They, too, were dead. But no Jack. All night she had prayed that Tom would find her son, and now she thanked God that he had not listened to her.
There was chaos and an officer with red hair tried to restore order. The panicky soldier who had started the firing was unconscious—the officer had butted him in the head with his sidearm. Mary tried to make herself as small as possible in case they combed the neighborhood for witnesses.
They did not.
What they did instead seemed to her even more ghastly than what had happened already.
Quickly, his face wet and red with anger, the young officer ordered gasoline poured over the truck, and over the bodies that had spilled from it. He ordered his men back into the other vehicles and signaled for them to move out. Then, climbing aboard a tank, he tossed a match.
Mary cried.
Jack slipped and slid over the giant’s tongue, ducking down at the back of the throat. Evidently the soldiers did not find the prospect of pursuing him appealing or—even more likely—no one had noticed his small figure against the giant’s much greater one.
He turned and faced the new world before him. South to the stomach, he thought, or north to the brain?
There was light through the nasal cavity. Jack had assumed that this was light shining through the nostrils. But then he realized it was dark outside, so where was the glimmer coming from?
The light had the faintest tint
of green to it.
As Jack forced his way up through the giant’s head, he considered his chances. It was the brain that was glowing green. Whatever impossible force that had allowed the cosmonaut to grow fifty feet high and to rise again in the world was still alive in that brain. Perhaps he could take advantage of that fact.
They would undoubtedly want to study the body—because of its sheer size that might take years—and as he crawled behind the eyes he saw that soldiers were already applying grappling hooks to the giant’s limbs. He did not know how long he would have. If they cut right into the brain he might be caught by morning—if the body lay in storage while bureaucratic infighting led to inaction, he might have months or even years.
His own skin was bathed in green light now, and he settled into the folds of brain tissue to allow the glow to do its work most effectively. With a little luck—with a lot of luck, actually—and the willingness to embrace the patience he had never had, Jack might grow into a giant like the cosmonaut. He had no idea what the process would be like: had the cosmonaut been growing steadily for twenty years? Or did he spring up from the dead that very night in a sudden cosmic growth spurt? Jack did not know.