“Which,” I said, “is now scattered in tiny chunks across miles of river. Problem solved.”
“And two victims’ statements identifying you as the perp.”
“We’ve been over that.”
“And one witness saying the bat monster is you.”
This brought the conversation to a screeching halt for several brutal seconds. I thought I heard thunder rumble in the distance, but I think it was just a heavy truck passing by.
Amy said, “What? Who?”
“Philip ‘Shitbeard’ Hickenlooper.”
“Ted’s friend? The one who drowned?”
“Who said he drowned? He not only made it out, but says he watched your man here turn into the Batmantis on one occasion and suspects it in another.”
That brought an even longer silence. Someone coughed.
I said, “Well, that’s just ridiculous. Everything was chaos, who knows what he thinks he saw. That’s probably why he has that nickname. He’s so full of shit he, you know, wears it like a beard.”
“Uh-huh. Did I mention he has you on video? Recorded it at the river, with his phone.”
“When it was dark, and rainy. Plus, any asshole can download video editing software, they can add special effects and everything, make it look so real it’d fool an expert. Doesn’t prove shit.”
The detective just eyed me, silently.
I said, “What?”
“Instead of dismissing the idea that such a video could exist, you jumped right to calling it a well-made fake. Didn’t even ask to see it first.”
Amy said, “There is no video, is there?”
“Don’t need one now, do we?”
I said, “Oh, fuck off. Don’t play your cop mind games on me. Even if this ridiculous accusation was somehow true, and I’m not saying it is, but even if it was, then that still wouldn’t implicate me. If anything, the Batmantis was trying to help. If it turned up where kids were being taken, it’s because it was trying to stop it, and failing. If this ridiculous fantasy of yours were true and we took steps to hide its involvement, it would only be because we knew people would get the wrong idea, focus blame in the wrong place when it was clearly this other situation, with the mine and all that. But we didn’t, because your story is rid—”
“Ridiculous, yes. Remember when I said I liked Marconi’s version better? It’s because I’m pretty sure you people made everything up, the larvae and the mine monster—one big convoluted parable about not judging monsters, just to cover for the fact that boy here started werewolfing out and snatching children.”
I laughed. “Ha! Haha! Ha. No.”
John said, “How about this—in our version, the Batmantis is dead and gone, nobody else gets hurt. In Shitbeard’s version, it’s still around—you know, because Dave is standing right here. Well, if the Batmantis strikes again, there you go, you’ll have your answer. So, you see the bastard, feel free to blow it out of the sky. You have our blessing.”
“I will do that. And I sure as hell don’t need your blessing.”
I said, “Again, you’ll believe what you want. But what you believe, it says more about you than me. Is there anything else we can do for you?”
He walked away, saying, “I’ll be seeing you. That’s a promise.”
He drove off into the night, his completely dry car rolling through the not-rain. I put my arm around Amy.
“I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
The door opened behind us. “Come in, guys!” spat Nicky. “Your pizza’s getting cold!”
The nozzles of the anti-intruder flamethrowers whooshed to life. She was instantly burned to death.
Amy
That didn’t happen.
An Excerpt from Fear: Hell’s Parasite by Dr. Albert Marconi
And now, a word about the Apocalypse.
The most fascinating aspect of our end-of-the-world obsession is our insistence that whatever cataclysm we have in mind would, in fact, be the end. The reality is that our history could actually be described as a series of apocalypses: a plague here, a famine there, a worldwide war that arrives with both in tow. What occurs in the aftermath of each is instructive.
Consider, for example, the ancient disaster known as the Toba event. It is theorized that approximately seventy-five thousand years ago, a volcanic eruption nearly wiped out Homo sapiens altogether. It is believed that in the aftermath, the worldwide population of early humans may have withered to just a few thousand breeding pairs—enough to fit into a high school gymnasium. Just seventy-five thousand years later, we live in a civilization in which the population has rebounded a million times over and is on the cusp of landing a spacecraft on Mars.
This is the legacy of humanity and I daresay that not enough of us take time to appreciate it. Our apocalyptic fiction depicts a world in which humans revert to the savagery of the jungle the moment our institutions fall, survivors tearing each other to pieces even as they are dying of plague or stalked by the undead. In our real history, we have been in that situation many times—left without government or law enforcement, none of the modern institutions we take for granted. From each of these scenarios what emerged was not savagery, but cooperation. When the pillars of our culture crumble, we rebuild them.
I once joked to a colleague that a true horror film would begin with a world overrun by the zombies, who find themselves having to fend off a sudden outbreak of the living. Imagine these poor groaning shufflers attempting to wage war against faster, healthier creatures capable of organization and strategy, able to build tools that would appear to be nothing short of magic to their simple, moldering brains (imagine their terror at the prospect of a rifle that can deliver invisible death from far over the horizon, let alone an atomic bomb!).
One almost begins to feel sorry for them. This is why, when asked why there is not greater evidence of creatures such as werewolves or vampires (not that I believe in either), I say the answer is obvious: they are too busy hiding from us!
My point is this: mankind is, and always has been, much greater than the sum of its parts. A lone human may appear to be nothing special if observed, say, blearily standing in line at a convenience store at two in the morning, or spitefully ripping a toy from the hands of a middle-aged woman in the chaos of a Black Friday sale. Yet, the combined efforts of these confused and volatile primates result in gleaming cities and majestic flying carriages. They have split the atom and peered across the universe.
In the blink of an eye, they have acquired the powers of gods.
This, I believe, is the fate of humanity: to colonize the stars over the next thousand years, to set down settlements in our solar system and others. Then, many centuries from now, one of our descendants will be strolling along some marvelous domed paradise on some distant planet and will see a drunken youth in offensive clothing, vomiting in an alley outside a pub. The man will look sidelong at the youth in that shameful state, shake his head, and mutter to himself that humanity is a ridiculous, doomed species, incapable of anything worthwhile.
He will believe it, because the true, wonderful, terrible, fearsome power of humanity is otherwise almost too much to comprehend. I recognize that not all of you share my faith, but you must admit that if gods are real and have observed humanity’s evolution from afar, they must shudder at the possibilities.