We Call It Monster Read online

She had no idea what she was looking at.

  “There must be something wrong with the reception,” Chris suggested.

  Despite his young age, his voice already contained that slightly pompous and authoritative air that some guys assume when talking about something technical or technological.

  He changed the channel. The TV showed almost exactly the same thing.

  “That’s weird,” someone said.

  “I don’t know if ‘weird’ cuts it,” Chris said, his voice soft and quiet and maybe a little scared.

  “Right on,” someone else said.

  Chris changed the channel, same thing: a rolling and roiling mess of smoke and ash, through which could be seen snatches of strangely textured shapes and surfaces. A fire was burning somewhere off-screen, its orange flicker visible through the murk. Everything was gloomy and soupy, stained dark grey, dark green and dark blue, or streaked with black and lost in the shadows.

  It was… A haze? A blur? A smear? A blob? All these words sprang to mind.

  Chris changed the channel. He changed it again and then changed it again and then changed it again. Each time, on every channel, everyone saw exactly the same thing.

  A cloud of smoke billowed towards the camera before engulfing it. The image lost focus. The camera refocused. Although the soupy gloom was still exactly that, something stood out a little clearer – a long and fuzzy black line running from the left of screen to the right. Below it was an almost ‘pebbly’ green wall, which disappeared into the shadows and murky mush.

  As everyone watched, the wall suddenly rippled.

  ***

  Sue looked harder at the screen, certain that the ripple was just a trick of the light or a product of her imagination.

  “Fuck, what was that?” someone shouted, asking the question to no one and everyone.

  The wall rippled again. It definitely happened. And then the image went dark. Static played across the darkness, a glitch or some electronic distortion, and then the original image returned.

  Sue realised that the footage was playing on a loop. Chris reached out, took hold of her shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze. To his credit, he didn’t then try to put his arm around her. For her part, she didn’t tease him or embarrass him, she just accepted his sympathy and muttered her thanks.

  “The volume!” someone shouted. “Come on, turn it up!”

  Chris chided himself for leaving the TV muted. He held a button on the remote, and Sue actually held her breath as she waited to hear a voice explain what they were all looking at.

  “…attack on Sydney of unknown origin and means,” a newsreader said from off-screen. “And while no one has claimed responsibility so far, authorities have refused to rule out the involvement of terrorists.”

  Someone snorted contemptuously, and Sue looked away from the TV.

  “That’s right, blame the Muslims,” said an earnest looking guy wearing heavy black glasses.

  The girl sitting next to him rolled her eyes, as if she had heard it all before. She nudged the girl sitting next to her and rolled her eyes again. The earnest guy ran a hand through his hair and shifted back and forth in his seat, his too-tight jeans obviously causing him discomfort. He frowned, his mouth almost lost behind his well-groomed beard.

  “I mean, why not blame them?” he asked rhetorically. “After all, everyone else does.”

  A few people – Sue included – turned and gave him the death stare and the evil eye, told him to shut it, to button it, to give it a rest. No one had mentioned Muslims; no one seemed to know what the hell was going on. And anyway, why preach to the converted?

  “Something’s happening,” someone else said.

  Sue turned back to the TV. The image of the soupy gloom, the fuzzy black line and the pebbly green wall had disappeared, replaced by the familiar reassuring image of a newsreader sitting behind a desk. She was young and she looked nervous – fidgeting with the papers lying in front of her, tucking stray hairs behind her ears, staring at the camera without saying anything. Her eyes brightened, realising that she’d missed her cue, that all the people out there were watching as she just sat there.

  She touched her earpiece, as if her accident was deliberate. “I’ve just received word,” she said, “that our chopper crew will shortly… that they’ll shortly be… uh…”

  “Change the bloody channel,” someone said loudly, drowning out the newsreader. “This coverage is shit.”

  While Sue didn’t necessarily disagree, she still wanted to hear what the newsreader had to say and see what she had to show them. Out of the corner of her eye, Sue saw Chris clutch the remote a little tighter. It was almost as if he had read her mind – she reached out and squeezed his hand as a way of saying thanks.

  “…cross now to Dougal Johnson, who is in our news chopper en route to the attack site,” the newsreader continued. “Dougal, are you there?”

  The image of the newsreader at her desk cut to one showing the cramped interior of a helicopter. Facing the camera was a stern-faced middle-aged guy who looked like he had just been dragged out of bed, his clothes unironed and his eyes sleep-rimmed.

  “Ah, yes, thanks Lisa,” he said, his voice croaky. “As you may be aware, this latest attack was centred on the Sydney Harbour National Park, although there has been no official word as to why they chose such a remote and relatively unpopulated area. All we know is that the attack started a fire which is currently burning through the park.” He coughed into his fist. “Sorry, folks – it’s just that the smoke from the fire is reaching us, even at this distance.”

  He picked up a water bottle from somewhere off-screen and took a long sip. The camera panned away, so that it was now facing out the window. The world beyond the confines of the helicopter was dark and gloomy beneath an overcast midnight sky. Far below and fighting hard against the darkness, the inner suburbs of Sydney twinkled and shimmered with pale-white light. Beyond them, bordered by the inky-black of the ocean, an orange glow flickered and flared, the fire that was burning out of control.

  The glow grew bigger and brighter as the helicopter drew closer.

  “Any minute now, we should be able to bring you the first clear footage of what has happened,” the newsreader said from off-screen, his voice now deep and firm, “as the only footage of the attack that we have is the loop that we all saw only moments ago, provided by a CCTV camera at the Former North Head Army Barracks. Although there is no proof as yet, this may have been the intended target, and may have been…”

  A great peal of thunder cut the newsreader off as the fire flared with an almost luminescent brightness. The thunder was so loud and so sudden that Sue actually jumped in her seat and grabbed hold of Chris’ thigh. He smiled at her, surprised that she had turned to him.

  She quickly let him go. “Sorry,” she said.

  “Hey, it’s alright, you can grab onto me anytime.”

  Sue chose to believe that he meant it as a gentleman and not as a sleaze, and turned back to the screen.

  “I’ll let you know,” she said, not even teasing him in the slightest.

  For a moment, they just watched as the helicopter drew closer to the fire. And then more thunder rang out, overwhelming the camera crew’s audio systems, coming out distorted and broken.

  “This thunder is like nothing I’ve ever heard before,” the newsreader shouted. “From up here, it’s almost guttural, almost angry, as if some tormented…”

  Before he could continue waxing poetically, the image twisted, the helicopter’s pilot presumably taking some kind of evasive manoeuvre. The newsreader was thrown back in his seat, his face contorted into a grimace.

  The thunder kept going, started growing louder, almost seemed to growl.

  “Folks, we’re, uh, we’re experiencing some kind of turbulence here…”

  The newsreader was cut off once again as the helicopter started to jostle and bump, the image panning left and right at random, the cameraman concerned more for his safety than for getting a go
od shot. The fire had grown enormous, and drifted in and out of the frame. Sometimes those watching saw the panicked face of the newsreader, sometimes the thick dark clouds that filled the sky, sometimes the cramped interior of the helicopter.

  And then everything was still, the helicopter steadying.

  While all this was happening, caught up in the confusion shown by the news crew, fearing for their safety, her senses and adrenaline stirred by the excitement of the frantic movement, Sue had taken Chris’ hand without even realising it. She shook him off as soon as that dawned on her. He didn’t really want to let go. She looked at him and managed a smile. “There’s always next time,” she said, half-teasing, half-serious.

  She turned back to the TV. It now showed the canopy of the trees that filled the park, lit by the helicopter’s spotlight. The camera panned up, and she realised that the helicopter was now flying straight toward the raging fire.

  “We’re almost at the attack site,” the newsreader said. “I believe that, in just a moment, we’ll be able to show you…”

  Something appeared as a silhouette in front of the blaze, an enormous squat and lumpy shape. It moved, undulating and animalistic. Thunder sounded again, thunder that was almost a scream. The shape reared up before crashing back down with enough force to shake the trees around it.

  And then silence fell.

  No one in the room spoke. The newsreader said nothing. Sue could hear the rhythmic whop-whop-whop of the helicopter, the whoosh of air rushing past it, the dull thunk of someone sitting near her putting a bottle down on the coffee table, the huff-and-puff of Chris’ breath, the steady thump of her own heart.

  Consciously this time, she took Chris’ hand.

  The shape moved again, rolling and squirming. The helicopter banked left before hovering right above the shape, its spotlight shining bright. The shape recoiled from the light, disappearing from view before Sue could get a good look at it. The helicopter dipped, banked again then found the shape.

  “Woah,” someone said.

  Sue couldn’t look away. Once again, she had no idea what she was looking at: a massive green-and-black thing that towered over an abandoned barracks, dwarfing everything else around it. It had some kind of ‘tail’ that was sitting atop the barracks and slowly crushing the building, causing great clouds of dust to billow up. Its ‘skin’ seemed to be scaly, pockmarked and scarred. But its body was almost barrel shaped, the same as that of a gorilla or a wrestler.

  Sue couldn’t see a head or arms or legs. But the way it moved, its fluidity and grace, dared her to deny that it was alive.

  “What we are looking at appears to be some kind of… some kind of animal,” the newsreader said. His voice was shaky and uncertain, struck through with what might have been awe. And fair enough, too. “But the sheer size of it…”

  The thing moved again, bringing down more of the barracks. Sue felt something wet on her cheeks, realised that she was crying.

  “Oh my God!” the newsreader shouted.

  Lightning quick, the thing had revealed a set of impossibly-long insectoid arms, each ending in serrated claws almost as long as a car.

  Sue’s stomach rolled at the sheer wrongness of it; she held Chris’ hand a little tighter.

  The helicopter banked slightly, keeping the thing in its spotlight.

  “This… this is just impossible,” the newsreader said. “I’m no expert, but not even dinosaurs…”

  The thing suddenly swiped at the helicopter, lightning quick once more. The whole scene seemed to play out in slow motion – the thing’s arm unfurling and reaching-reaching-reaching, its claws shining, and then the helicopter pulling away, the pilot doing his best. It wasn’t enough; with the camera rolling the whole time, the helicopter crashed to the ground.

  The screen went dark.

  This darkness was quickly replaced by the image of Lisa – the original newsreader back in the studio – sitting behind her desk, crying silently while staring down the barrel of the camera, her chin sticking out.

  Good on her for trying to keep on…

  Chris turned to Sue. “Are you okay?” he asked softly.

  This time, he took her hand. She let him do so, but she didn’t answer. She didn’t really know if she was okay. She didn’t know what was what, now that she had seen the thing. It couldn’t be real. It just couldn’t…

  “Sue?”

  Chris really was worried, and she squeezed his hand to reassure him. And then she decided not to let go. “Thanks,” she whispered. “But I’ll be okay.”

  She squeezed his hand a second time, knowing that her words were a lie, knowing that nothing would ever be okay again.

  A Shit Way to Make a Living

  The shrill deet-deet-deet of a digital alarm broke the early morning quiet, drowning out Jimmy’s slight snore. He woke, startled and confused. He looked for the alarm clock through sleep-gummy eyes, but couldn’t find it. The alarm just kept going, and Jimmy suddenly remembered where he was.

  “Ugh.”

  At almost exactly the same time, someone unseen switched on the overhead light. “Wakey wakey, hands off snaky,” they said, their voice hard.

  A chorus of groans and moans met this greeting. Jimmy propped himself up on his elbows. He shuffled around a bit, trying to make himself comfortable, the camping cot he lay on as unforgiving as a wooden board.

  “No way,” he said as he looked around the room.

  It was cavernous, with a dirty corrugated iron ceiling and walls of rough, exposed brick. Narrow windows set high in the walls begrudgingly let in a little light. The bars that crisscrossed them created crucifix-shaped shadows – Jimmy couldn’t tell whether the bars were supposed to stop people from breaking in or out. On the wall furthest from him was a single door that was wide open. A couple of people stood there – they were just blurry black shapes, fuzzy silhouettes, the sun behind them framing them in golden light.

  Jimmy looked around again.

  The room was almost halfway between a barracks and a dormitory – surrounding him, filling almost the entire space, were rows and rows of the same unyielding cots that he lay on. Just about every single one of them was occupied; the odd exceptions stood out like the inverse of a child’s first tooth. Their occupants were stirring, waking up or pulling the thin government-issued blankets up over their heads to block out the light. Someone farted. Someone started coughing. A few heavy sleepers were still snoring.

  Jimmy suddenly needed to pee. The need was so overwhelming that it blocked out every other thought. He swung himself out of bed, the cot creaking beneath him. He recoiled slightly as his feet hit the cold concrete floor. The air was cold as well, but he figured that was just because he was sitting on the edge of the cot wearing nothing but a torn singlet and his underwear. He bent in half, reaching underneath the cot – his backpack lay there, next to a pile of clothes and a pair of scuffed Doc Martens.

  He pulled on his pants and stood up.

  “What are you lot waiting for?” someone shouted. “I said wakey-wakey!”

  It was one of the people standing in front of the open door. As Jimmy watched, they both strode into the room – a man and a woman, dressed in cheap suits that didn’t match but obviously came from the same shop.

  The need to pee overwhelmed Jimmy again.

  He strode towards the woman in the cheap suit. She caught his eye, looked him up and down. “It’s nice to see that someone’s raring to go,” she said, more to herself than to Jimmy.

  “Uh, sorry, the toilets, where…”

  “Outside,” she said, cutting him off. “You can’t miss them.”

  He almost ran for the door. When he got there, he wished that he’d never left home.

  ***

  It wasn’t that home was the greatest place on Earth. In fact, Jimmy often thought that home was a bit of a pain in the arse – cramped and dingy, with threadbare carpet in the hallway and mould in the laundry. As well, it was hemmed in by trees, sat on the wrong side of a hill an
d so was usually dark and gloomy.

  And then there was his mum, who hovered over him when she wasn’t watching television. She tended to treat him like a little boy, double-checking everything that he did, constantly finding fault with his way of doing things.

  What made it worse was that he had finally escaped and found a home of his own, only for everything to soon turn to shit and force him to move back in with his mum.

  But it was still home.

  ***

  Despite the fact that he hadn’t made it to the toilet yet, Jimmy just stood in the doorway with his mouth hanging open. The smell of smoke, decay and damp hung in the air, almost thick enough to gag on, underscored by a whiff of something sour and rotting.

  “What the fuck?” he asked rhetorically when he finally got it together.

  He wasn’t an exceptionally crude young man. It was just that he couldn’t think of anything else to say. And no one would blame him – what confronted him was beyond politeness, beyond niceties, beyond any kind of civilised understanding: a great ribbon of ruin that stretched left and right as far as he could see and seemed to mark the horizon. Surrounding the ribbon were buildings that were collapsing, cars that were crushed, blacktop that had buckled, and footpaths that had caved in. Bulldozers, loaders and tip-trucks broke-up the dread uniformity of the devastation, as well as strange mound-hill-piles that glistened wetly and seemed to ooze, surrounded by yet more rubble and wreckage and devastation.

  Jimmy realised that the ribbon of ruin undulated, snaking back and forth. Some of the buildings around it were only half-destroyed, while others were basically intact; Jimmy guessed that whatever had caused the ruin must have sometimes veered away from them and sometimes ploughed right through them and sometimes only grazed them.

  It looked like a lazy god had been dragging his feet while striding across his domain. Jimmy’s stomach rolled as he realised that this was almost true.