The Monster’s Corner: Stories Through Inhuman Eyes

BIG MAN

by David Moody

IT WAS LIKE SOMETHING out of one of those black-and-white 1950s B movies he used to avidly watch when he was a kid: the army spread out in a wide arc across the land to defend the city, lying in wait for “it” to attack. Major Hawkins used to love those movies. Although the reality looked almost the same and the last few days certainly seemed to have followed a similar script, it felt completely different. This, he reminded himself, was real. This was war.

This wasn’t the Cold War U.S. of the movies; it was midwinter, and he was positioned southwest of a rain- soaked Birmingham, almost slap bang in the center of the United Kingdom. But the differences didn’t end there. He wasn’t an actor playing the part of a square-jawed hero, he was a trained soldier who had a job to do. He was no rank-and-file trooper, either. Today he was the highest-ranking officer out in the field, or, to put it another way, the highest-ranking officer whose neck was on the line. His superiors were a safe distance away, watching the situation unfold on TV screens from the safety of bunker-bound leather chairs.

Roger Corman, Samuel Z. Arkoff, and the others had actually got a lot right in their quaint old movies. The Amazing Colossal Man, War of the Colossal Beast, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman — their monsters’ stories always followed a familiar path: an unexpected and unintentional genesis, the wanton death and destruction that inevitably followed, the brief and fruitless search for a solution … but there was another facet to this story, one the movies always glossed over. Many people had died, crushed by the beast or dismembered in a fit of unstoppable rage. Property had been destroyed, millions of pounds’ worth of damage caused already, maybe even billions. And they weren’t standing here waiting to face a stop-motion puppet or a stuntman in a rubber suit now; this was a genuine, bona fide creature: a foul aberration that had once been human but was now anything but; a hideous, deformed monstrosity that, unless it could be stopped, would just keep growing and keep killing. The pressure on Hawkins’s shoulders was intense. The implications were terrifying.

Glen Chambers — the poor bastard at the very center of this unbelievable chain of events — had, until a few days ago, been a faceless nobody: a father of one, known only to his family, a handful of friends, and his work colleagues. Hawkins could have passed him in the street a hundred times and not given him a second glance. But now he had to force himself to forget that this monster had once been a man, and instead focus on the carnage and unspeakably evil acts the creature was responsible for. No one could be expected to remain sane under the torturous circumstances Chambers had endured, and it could even be argued that he was as innocent as any of his victims, but the undisputable fact remained: Regardless of intent or blame, the aberration had to be stopped.

Major Hawkins had first become involved after the initial attack at the clinic. The people there had done all they could to help Chambers, keeping him sedated and under observation while they searched for a way to reverse the effects of the accident and stop his body growing and distorting. And how had he repaid their kindness and concern? By killing more than thirty innocent people in a wild frenzy and reducing the entire facility to rubble, that was how. Then the cowardly bastard had gone into hiding until there were no longer any buildings big enough for him to hide inside.

The attack on Shrewsbury had ratcheted up the seriousness of the situation to another level, the sheer amount of damage and the number of needless deaths making it clear that destroying the aberration quickly was of the utmost importance. This was a threat the likes of which had never been experienced before. Men, women, and children were needlessly massacred, their bodies crushed or torn limb from limb. The streets were filled with rubble and blood.

The Chambers creature had attacked the picturesque town without provocation, decimating its historic buildings and killing hundreds of innocent bystanders. Even then, when it had had its fill of carnage there, it moved on and the bloodshed continued unabated. They’d tracked the beast halfway across the country, following the trail of devastation it left in its wake. The foul monstrosity had spared nothing and no one. Even livestock grazing in farmers’ fields hadn’t escaped the monster’s reach. Hundreds of dismembered animal corpses lay scattered for miles around.

But what was it doing now?

The creature, for all its incredible (and still increasing) size, had temporarily managed to evade detection. They knew it was close, but its exact location remained a mystery. There was no need to hunt it out; Hawkins was certain it would run out of places to hide and would have no option but to reveal itself eventually, and when it did his troops would be ready. They’d be resorting to Corman/Arkoff tactics to try to kill the creature: Hit it with everything you’ve got, and keep firing until either you’ve run out of ammo or the monster has been blown to hell and back. And then, if the dust settles and the hideous thing still manages to crawl out of the smoke and haze unscathed, you call in the big boys. A nuclear strike was an absolute last resort, but Hawkins knew the powers- that-be would sanction it if they had to (after all, it was less of a big deal from where they were sitting in their bunkers). Tens of thousands would die, maybe hundreds of thousands, but if the creature couldn’t be stopped, what would happen then? No one would be safe anywhere. In the space of less than a week Glen Chambers had gone from being a faceless nobody to the greatest single threat to the survival of the human race. An indiscriminate, remorseless butcher.

Major Hawkins tried to distract himself from worst-case-scenario thoughts of uncomfortably close nuclear explosions by recalling B movie cliches and trying to find an alternative solution to the crisis. He almost laughed out loud when he considered the ridiculous and yet faintly possible notion that this thing might do a King Kong on him and head for higher ground. Imagine that, he thought, his mind swapping biplanes and the Empire State Building for a squadron of Harrier jet fighters and the Blackpool Tower …

“Sir!”

“What is it, Rayner?” Hawkins asked quickly, doing all he could to hide the fact that he’d been daydreaming from the young officer.

“We’ve found it.”

The aberration that was Glen Chambers crouched in the shadows of the cave, shivering with cold, sobbing to himself and hiding from the rest of the world. He hurt, every stretched nerve and elongated muscle in his body aching. He’d squashed his huge, still-growing bulk into a space that was becoming tighter by the hour, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before he’d have to move. It was inevitable, but he wanted to stay in here for as long as he was able. There had been helicopters flying around just now. They probably already knew where he was.

Earlier, just before he’d found this cave, he’d stopped to drink from a lake and had caught sight of his reflection in the water. What he’d seen staring back at him had been both heartbreaking and terrifying. In the movies, enormous monsters like this were just perfectly scaled-up versions of normal people, but not him. Since the accident he’d continued to grow, every part of his body constantly increasing in mass, but at wildly different rates. His skull was swollen and heavy now, almost the size of a small car, one eye twice the size of the other, as big as a dinner plate. Clumps of hair had fallen out while other strands had grown lank and long and tough as wire. Glen had punched the water to make his image disappear, and then held his fist up and stared at it in disbelief; a distended, tumorous mass with a thumb twice the length of any of his fingers. And his skin! He hated more than anything what was happening to his skin. Its pigmentation remained, but it had become thick and coarse, almost elephantine, and the bulges of his massive body were now covered in sweat-filled folds and creases of flesh. The only thing, to his chagrin, that still seemed to function as it always had was his brain. It was ironic: Physically he’d become something else entirely — something unspeakably horrific — but inside he was still Glen Chambers. Grotesquely deformed and impossibly sized, he now bore only the faintest physical similarity to the person he’d been just a few short days ago. But emotionally, very little had changed. Same memories. Same attachments. Same pain.

Glen’s vast stomach howled with hunger. He ate almost continually, but such was the speed of his rapid growth that his hunger was never completely satisfied. He reached down and picked up the body of a sheep with one hand, then bit it in half and forced himself to chew down, gagging on the bone and blood and wool in his mouth.

His arched back was beginning to press against the roof of the cave. Time to go before he became trapped. He crawled out into the afternoon rain and crouched still. I don’t want to move, he thought, because when I move, people die. None of this is my fault, but I’m the one they’ll blame.

If there is a god, please let him bring an end to this nightmare.

Glen strode through the darkness, feeling neither the cold nor the rain as he pushed on through the fields