Gargantua Read online

  “I bet you haven’t had breakfast,” Brandon said. He pulled the mollusks and mud crabs out of the bucket and laid them out on the edge of the lagoon like it was a buffet table.

  It stared down at the fish like it had no idea what they were. Then it fixed its gaze back on Brandon.

  When he was six, Brandon had wanted a dog more than anything else in the world. He begged and pleaded with Mom and Dad until finally they gave in at Christmas and got him a puppy. Brandon had named him Casey, and he loved the dog more than anything in the world. Dad had built a dog run in the back of the house in San Diego, and Brandon would spend hours there with Casey.

  It broke his heart a year and a half later when Brandon went out to find a hole in the dog run’s fence and no sign of Casey. They spent weeks searching for him, putting HAVE YOU SEEN THIS DOG? signs all over the neighborhood, but they never found him.

  Years later, the thing Brandon remembered most about Casey was that he ate like a pig. He ate constantly, and he always ambled up to Brandon with his big blue eyes all soulful and an expectant look on his face.

  The little guy had that look on its face right now. On the spot, Brandon decided to name it Casey, too.

  So why the hell isn’t Casey going for the food? “C’mon,” he said, “they’re mollusks and mud crabs. Invertebrates. That’s what salamanders eat.”

  Apparently, nobody bothered to tell Casey this, because it was very obviously still hungry, and just as obviously uninterested in the fish.

  Great. What do I do now? I suppose I could ask Dad, he thought, then dismissed it. He didn’t want to talk to Dad yet.

  So he’d just have to find out for himself.

  “I’ll be back, okay?” he said.

  Casey actually made a noise at that—it almost sounded like a whine. Do salamanders whine?

  No, he thought, but salamanders walk on four legs and eat invertebrates. So fat lot of good that does me.

  He left the fish behind in case Casey changed its mind, grabbed the bucket, and ran back toward the beach and the hotel room. Maybe if he surfed the net and checked through Dad’s books, he could find something.

  Ba-da-doom, da-doom. Ba-da-doom, da-doom.

  This was the moment Nat lived for. The beach, the surf, the two gorgeous women dancing, the bonfire, the sunset—all of it faded. There was just Nat, the stool he sat on, and the bongo drums anchored between his legs.

  Ba-da-doom, da-doom. Ba-da-doom, da-doom.

  It was just the pounding rhythm. The feel of the skins against his calloused hands. The beat matching time with the pounding of blood through his heart.

  Ba-da-doom, da-doom. Ba-da-doom, da-doom.

  The spell was inevitably broken—this time by Don next to him crying out, “Whoooooooooo!” as the beat intensified. Nat sighed, but kept pounding away on the two linked drums wedged between his knees.

  Ba-da-doom, da-doom. Ba-da-doom, da-doom.

  Those all-too-brief moments of percussional satori were what Nat lived for. Don’s scream brought Nat back to other concerns besides the pureness of the beat: to Don and Keith next to him on the conga and doumbek, respectively; to Mira and Jan dancing in the sand in front of them, Mira rattling a tambourine to add a little spice to the beat; to the group of Australian teenagers sitting around a bonfire; to the woman and the little girl playing catch with a red and white beach ball; and to Dak.

  Ba-da-doom, da-doom. Ba-da-doom, da-doom.

  Dak was the real reason they were here. True, jam sessions among Malau’s percussionists weren’t exactly uncommon, but this one had a purpose—it was Dak’s memorial. Sure, there was a funeral at St. Theresa’s, but as far as Nat, Don, and Keith were concerned, that was for the civilians. Tonight, Dak’s fellow musicians would celebrate his life and commiserate over his death in proper fashion: with an all-night jam session. That’s what he would have wanted.

  Ba-da-doom, da-doom. Ba-da-doom, da-doom.

  Still no sign of Kulani. Nat hadn’t entirely expected Kulani to show up, since it involved coming to the ocean. Nat had a feeling that Lani wouldn’t be getting too close to the water for a while yet. But not having Dak’s fiancée here took something away from the proceedings.

  Ba-da-doom, da-doom. Ba-da-doom, da-doom.

  Nat took a quick glance out onto the ocean. It seemed to be more turbulent than usual tonight—the waves were a bit choppier, even though there was little wind. Maybe it’s ’cause of all those damn quakes, Nat thought, and turned back to keep an eye on Don and Keith.

  Ba-da-doom, da-doom. Ba-da-doom, da-doom.

  The beat started to modulate as Don decided to try something fancier on the conga. Nat grinned and followed along.

  Ba-da-doom, da-doom. Ba-da-doom, da-doom.

  At one point in her dance, Mira turned so that she was facing Nat, and their eyes locked. She winked at him. Nat actually missed a beat, he was so surprised, and it took him a couple of measures to bring himself back in line with the others. Neither Don nor Keith seemed to notice, and they certainly didn’t complain—it was just a jam session, after all, where perfection was not a necessity—but Nat’s head reeled. He thought Mira had a thing going with that fisherman from New Zealand that was always hanging out at Manny’s.

  Ba-da-doom, da-doom. Ba-da-doom, da-POW!

  Nat looked up sharply at the noise, which did a lot more to throw the trio off than Mira’s wink.

  He couldn’t quite bring himself to believe what he saw.

  Standing in the shallow end of the surf, wave water pooling around its legs, was something that looked like a really big lizard. Nat figured it was at least nine or ten feet tall, and it had dark green scaly skin. Little horn-like things ran up and down its back, with two more pronounced ones on top of its head. Standing on its hind legs, its clawed forelegs—hands? claws?—had shards of beach ball in them. In addition to this, the woman and girl who were playing catch with the beach ball were now screaming and running. Jesus, did the thing try to join in the game of catch, or what?

  A scream right in his ear brought Nat to the realization that perhaps he should follow the lead of the woman and girl and get his ass off the beach. Grabbing the metal struts of the bongo set, he got up and, abandoning the stool, started running.

  Still, he couldn’t help but look back to see what the big lizard was doing. To Nat’s amazement, it too was running—it seemed to be pursuing the little girl. It alighted on top of a jeep.

  “Aw, no,” came a voice from Nat’s left. The voice belonged to Don, and after a moment, Nat remembered that the jeep belonged to him, too.

  Nat continued running, giving the jeep a wide berth. As he passed it, he saw the little girl trip and fall, her small legs unable to navigate the rocky sand.

  Fear gripped Nat as he saw the big lizard leap off of Don’s jeep right toward the girl, looking for all the world like a huge cat about to take on a helpless mouse.

  A woman screamed, “Nooooo!” Nat saw that it was the woman who had been playing catch with the girl—her mother?

  Why am I still watching this? Nat wondered. He had stopped running, transfixed by this gruesome tableau. Keith, Mira, and Jan had all disappeared—even Don hadn’t stuck around to look after his jeep. And then, to his surprise, Nat found himself running toward the creature, the image of himself whacking the big lizard with his bongos in his mind.

  Before rational thought even had a chance to take over—or at least to talk sense into someone determined to face a large monster armed only with percussion—a man leapt out of nowhere with a body board and slammed it into the creature’s side.

  The lizard screamed. Nat didn’t think lizards could scream—but then, he didn’t think lizards could grow to be so tall, walk on their hind legs, and shred innocent beach balls, either.

  Then the thing turned and slashed at the body board. The board’s wielder, for his part, seemed content to drop it and dash for the little girl. He picked her up in one fluid motion under one arm and ran toward the screaming woman. Grabbing her
hand with his other arm, the three of them ran off.

  People were now running around like crazy all over the beach, screaming, yelling, and generally making a lot of noise. Nat couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t one of them. Instead he just stared at the big lizard.

  The lizard shook its head, then turned toward Nat.

  Nat blinked, as if coming out of a trance.

  Yikes. He turned and ran away, as fast as his legs could carry him, the weight of the bongos barely slowing him down.

  A couple of hours spent surfing a variety of salamander and newt sites on the World Wide Web led Brandon to the conclusion that he had the right idea, but didn’t provide enough of a menu for Casey. The food of choice for this type of amphibious life seemed to be bugs: pillbugs, beetles, earthworms, small millipedes, insects, aphids, small moths, and other night-flying insects.

  Well, I sure ain’t gonna wait until night, but I should be able to gather up something. With a smile of satisfaction, Brandon shut down the laptop, unhooked the modem from the jack, gathered up a few of Dad’s sample jars, and went out in search of insect life.

  By dusk, he had a good selection. He then stopped at Manny’s to ask for a strip of raw beef. Tari looked at him like he had two heads, but Brandon explained that it was for an experiment he and his father were running. Shrugging, Tari went into the kitchen, had a lengthy conversation with the cook, and liberated a strip of beef for Brandon. She didn’t even charge him for it, though she did admonish him not to tell Manny.

  The sites he found all recommended waving a piece of raw meat to attract the salamander. Admittedly, that might not be necessary in this case. For one thing, Casey seemed to respond directly to Brandon’s presence. More to the point, Brandon was really shooting in the dark generally here—he thought of Casey as an overgrown salamander only by default, since that was the closest analogue he could come up with in his own experience. And just because it had a resemblance to salamanders didn’t mean it would act like one.

  But he had to try.

  So he ventured back to the lagoon. He arrived to find that the mollusks and mud crabs lay untouched; no sign of Casey.

  As Brandon took the strip of meat out, though, Casey’s head popped up from the water. It—no, “he,” if you’re gonna name the little guy after Casey, he’s a he, not an it—approached the shore once again.

  Brandon moved to upend the sample jars, but before he could, Casey stopped and looked around, as if responding to something.

  “What’s up, little guy? What’re you seeing?” Brandon asked. He looked around also, but aside from a light mist that had been rising in the jungle since the sun started to go down, he didn’t see anything. There wasn’t a breeze at the moment, so the trees didn’t even sway.

  Casey’s head jerked, as if he’d heard a noise. “What’re you hearing?” Brandon asked.

  Then Casey let out another whine—longer, louder, and higher-pitched than the one he’d uttered after refusing Brandon’s fish breakfast.

  What the heck is he reacting to?

  Paul Bateman saw Jack Ellway and Ralph Hale walking toward Manny’s. Paul himself was also headed that way, having spent the afternoon developing pictures and dictating notes into his handheld tape recorder. He smiled at the sight of the two scientists, as one of the notes he’d made to himself was, Talk to Ellway and Hale about what they saw yesterday and today and pick their brains regarding what killed Dak.

  “Howdy there, fellas,” he said as he caught up to them. “So, what news from our visiting scientific dignitaries?”

  Hale snorted.

  Jack said, “Not a lot, unfortunately. Doctor Hale did get some satellite photos.”

  “Really?” Paul said, intrigued.

  “Yeah, but they didn’t really help much. I mean, they confirmed some of my theories about how the seismic activity would affect the local marine life—but as for explaining what happened to Dak . . .” He trailed oft.

  “So, do you think—”

  Before Paul could finish his question, people started running through the streets. What the hell’s going on?

  The people were all coming from the beach, Paul realized. Immediately, he checked the camera that hung from a strap around his neck, made sure that it was loaded and ready to go. Then one person literally crashed into him, knocking him over.

  Whoever it was, they didn’t even slow down to see if Paul was okay. Jack and Hale helped him up. “You okay?”

  Paul nodded as he grabbed the two men’s wrists and got to his feet. He listened to the various voices of the panicky people around him.

  “—big lizard—”

  “—out of the water—”

  “—almost killed that little girl—”

  “—hind legs—”

  “—like, nine feet tall, man—”

  “—anybody got a gun—”

  “—it’s bloody huge—”

  “—gotta kill that thing—”

  “—seen Manny or Joe?”

  Jack and Hale exchanged a glance, then ran toward the beach, fighting against the stream of people. Paul, knowing a good story when he saw one, followed in their wake.

  They got to the edge of the beach just in time to see a massive form moving toward the jungle. It looked for all the world like a nine-foot-tall lizard running on its hind legs.

  It took Paul a moment to realize that it really was a nine-foot-tall lizard running on its hind legs.

  That’s impossible. Big scaly monsters don’t exist outside of movies.

  He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and looked again.

  The lizard had the permanent forward lean common to amphibians, like it was expecting to have to move on all fours any second. Covered in dark green scales, it also had a series of tiny horns running up and down its back and tail, culminating in two not-so-tiny horns on top of its head—a big one right above the bridge of its nose, and another, smaller one right behind that.

  It reared its head back and let out a sound that could have been a scream, or maybe a moan. Right, like I’m going to judge the emotional state of a nine-foot-tall lizard.

  Paul noticed two of Joe Movita’s cops—Mal and Jimmy—going in after it on scooters, each of them armed with rifles.

  “No, for God’s sake, don’t kill it!” That was Jack, screaming at the two cops who, for their part, were ignoring him, though they hadn’t started shooting yet, either. This didn’t surprise Paul—both cops were part of a weekly poker game that Paul also participated in, and they were both quite proud of the fact that they’d served as police officers for as long as they had without ever discharging a weapon outside of the firing range.

  “Where’d you store your gear, Jack?” Hale asked.

  “Over here,” Jack said, running toward a small shack about thirty feet in the other direction down the beach.

  Paul and Hale followed behind the marine biologist. “What’s he got that’ll help?” Paul asked.

  “Tranq gun,” Hale said.

  Jack ran inside the shack. By the time Paul and Hale joined him, he had thrown open the lid of one of the crates and was loading darts into a huge rifle.

  Paul had finally gotten over the shock and accepted the fact that, yes, a giant monster was loose on the island. This was news. In his head, he started laying out the multi-page coverage of the lizard’s attack for his special edition of the Weekly News. He also finally remembered the camera around his neck—bringing the camera to his eye, he ran off several shots of Jack loading the rifle.

  Ignoring Paul, Jack finished loading, then turned to Hale. “C’mon.”

  As they got back outside, rain started pouring down. Heck of a time for a storm, Paul thought, annoyed. The rain would only serve to muck up his pictures.

  The three of them ran toward the jungle. Chief Movita was approaching the jungle in his jeep, siren blazing.

  “Chief,” Jack cried out, catching up with Joe’s jeep, “we can’t kill this thing, it’s—”

  “Excuse me?” the chief
interrupted, putting on the brakes and sparing an annoyed glance at Jack’s rifle. “This is not a good place for a civilian—”

  “I have tranquilizer darts, Chief. I can bring it down unharmed.”

  Joe seemed to consider this, then: “All right, Ell way, I’ll give you a chance, but if you can’t bring that sucker down, we will. Hop in.”

  Jack, Hale, and Paul all clambered into the jeep. Before Paul even had a chance to settle into his seat, Joe took off into the jungle.

  Paul once again started taking pictures—he wanted to get the verdant atmosphere of the jungle in the shots from here on in; the rain would fog the images a bit, but also make it even more atmospheric. Of course, there’s a limit as to how atmospheric I can get in black and white on newsprint. Wonder how much Kal would charge for color?

  It wasn’t hard to figure out the creature’s path—nine-foot-tall lizards didn’t exactly move with subtlety. Paul didn’t know a lot about animals in general—he spent most of his time in biology class drawing moustaches on the pictures of sperm—but he was pretty sure that lizards that size were not found in nature.

  Besides, the thing was wailing like a banshee. It almost sounds afraid.

  As soon as the jeep was close enough, Jack aimed the rifle and fired.

  The dart struck the lizard in the left leg.

  It didn’t even slow the thing down.

  Paul cursed as he snapped picture after picture—he only had about ten exposures left and his spare film was back at the office.

  Jack shot a few more darts at the lizard, and this time it did slow down—and screamed.

  When he was eleven, Paul’s father took him on a trip into Sequoia National Park. While hiking amidst the massive redwoods, he heard a scream like what the lizard had just uttered. It was a dog that had been trapped under a huge branch. The branch—which had the thickness of a small maple tree trunk—had apparently fallen from one of the trees. The dog was unfortunate not to have been killed instantly. Instead, its legs had been shattered.

  For the rest of the trip, Paul heard that dog’s cry in his dreams. But he got over it soon enough.