The Last Big Thing

BIG MAN-2

He’d taken shelter in a derelict warehouse for a while as it was the only place he’d found large enough to hide inside. He lay on the floor, coiled around the inside of the building, and for a time he sat and listened to a homeless guy who, out of his mind with drink and drugs, had thought Glen was a hallucination. Now Glen leaned back against the hillside, crushing trees like twigs behind him, and remembered their one-sided conversation (he’d only been able to listen, not speak). Like the blind man in that old Frankenstein film, the drunk hadn’t judged him or run from him in fear, but by the morning he was dead, crushed by Glen, who’d doubled in size in his sleep. Woken by the sounds of the warehouse being surrounded, he’d destroyed the building trying to escape and had literally stepped over the small military force which had been posted there to flush him out and recapture him. In the confusion of gunfire and brick-dust he stumbled away towards the town of Shrewsbury, another place he’d known well, avoiding the roads and following the meandering route of the River Severn across the land.

Christ, he bitterly regretted reaching that beautiful, historic place, and his swollen, racing heart sank when he remembered what had happened there. Still not used to his inordinate rate of growth (would he ever get used to it?) and the constantly changing dimensions of his disfigured body, he’d stumbled about like a drunk, every massive footstep causing more and more damage. He’d crashed into ancient buildings, demolishing them as he’d tried to avoid cars and pedestrians, unintentionally obliterating the places he’d known and loved with Della and Ash. He’d killed innocent people too as he tried to get away from the town to avoid causing more devastation, and their screams of terror had hurt more than anything else. He’d never intended for any of this to happen, but the final straw had been when he’d lifted his foot to step over what remained of a partially demolished row of houses and had seen a child’s pram squashed flat on the pavement where he’d been standing. Had he killed the baby? He didn’t wait to find out. Instead he loped off as quickly as he was able, his ears ringing with the sounds of mayhem he’d caused.

In the shadows of the hills, Glen lifted his heavy head towards the early evening sky and sobbed, the noise filling the air like thunder. With every hour I am becoming less a man and more a monster , he thought to himself. I may not have long. If I’m going to do this, I have to do it now.

#

They’d assumed he’d try and come back to this place eventually, that he’d want Della and the rest of her family to suffer as he had. It was the ideal location from which an attack could be launched on the creature – out in the middle of nowhere, away from centres of population – and a squadron of Hawkins’ men had been deployed to take the monster out. They took up arms as the aberration’s vast, lumbering shape appeared on the darkening horizon, still recognizably that of a man, but only just. Orders were screamed down the chain of command and a barrage of gunfire was launched as it approached. Bullets and mortars just bounced off its scaly skin, barely having any impact at all. Incensed, the creature destroyed many of its attackers and marched on, leaving the dead and dying scattered across the land.

And then, as the last rays of evening sunlight trickled across the world below him, it found what it had been looking for: Della’s father’s house. The beast strode towards the isolated building, ignoring the last few scurrying, ant-like men and women attacking and retreating under its feet. It swung a massive, clumsy hand at the waist-high roof of the house, brushing the slates, joists and supports away with a casual disregard, peering in through the dust and early evening gloom. And when it saw that the top floor was empty, it simply ripped that away too, taking the building apart layer by layer, kneeling on the roadside (crushing another eight men) and looking down into the building like it was a petulant child tearing apart a doll’s house, looking for a lost toy.

#

They weren’t there. The house was empty.

Disconsolate, Glen stood up and kicked what was left of the building away, watching the debris scatter for more than a mile.

Way below him, a final few soldiers regrouped and launched another attack. They were the very least of his concerns now; irritating and unfortunate, nothing more. In temper he bent down and swept them away with a single swipe of his arm, then turned and marched onwards, immediately regretting their deaths but knowing he’d had no choice.

This was all Della’s fault. If it hadn’t been for her he’d never have been in this desperate position. Did she even realize that? Did she know she was to blame? Surely she must have had some inkling? If it hadn’t been for them splitting up and making him sell the house, this would never have happened. If she’d just talked to him sooner, let him know how she was feeling, let him know how unhappy she was... She said he should have guessed, that she’d tried to tell him enough times, but what did she think he was, a bloody psychic?

It was Della’s fault it had all gone wrong, and jumping into bed with her bloody therapist had been the final nail in the coffin, the full-stop at the end of the very last sentence of their relationship. But Glen accepted it had been his own bloody foolish pride which had subsequently exacerbated the situation. He’d wanted to do everything he possibly could to support his son, but when Cresswell earned more money in a month than he did in a year, he realized he’d made a rod for his own back. His pig-headed solution was to work harder and harder, to the point where money became his focus, not Ash. It wasn’t Glen’s fault he hadn’t been blessed with the brains Anthony Cresswell had, or that he hadn’t been fortunate enough to share the same privileged, silver spoon upbringing as the man who’d taken his place in Della’s bed. Ash didn’t even like him, he knew that for a fact. He told me himself .

Glen had been desperate to prove his worth and not let his son down, and that was why he’d agreed to take part in the trial (that and an undeniable desire to bulk himself up and become physically more of a man than he ever had been before – he’d certainly achieved that now). It was perfectly safe and legal, they’d told him as he signed the consent forms, a controlled trial of a new muscle-building compound for athletes. All the top performers will be using it this time next year, they’d said: twice the effect, a quarter the cost, completely undetectable and absolutely no risk... Maybe they’d been right about that, because he’d been taking it for a while and other than the weight gain and a little occasional morning nausea, there hadn’t been any noticeable side-effects. It had almost certainly been the radiation from the accident which had caused the change – either that or a combination of the two. But even the accident had been Della’s fault in part. If she hadn’t got the courts involved and been so anal about the times he was supposed to pick Ash up and drop him back, then he wouldn’t have been rushing to get his work finished on time, and he wouldn’t have left the safety off when he was supposed to—

A sudden, piercing whoosh and a sharp stabbing pain interrupted his thoughts as a mortar wedged itself in a fold of leathery skin halfway down his bare back, then detonated. Glen howled with pain, his rumbling screams filling the air for miles around, shattering windows and causing panic.

Concentrate , he ordered himself, standing up as straight as he could and stretching back over his shoulder with an elongated arm, flicking away the remains of the missile with overgrown nails. Several more explosions echoed around his head – blasts which would have killed him before but which were now almost insignificant. He spiralled around, sweeping more military personel out of the way with one arm as if he was clearing them off a table, then he moved forward into the brief pocket of space and marched on. What do I do now? He tried to remember what happened next in the movies. Was this the point where they’d drop a nuke or something equally final on him? Try and gas him, perhaps? Should he just give up now or maybe head out into the sea and disappear like Godzilla? He wished an even bigger monster would appear on the horizon: his own Mothra or King Ghidorah, perhaps. He could fight them and defeat them and save the world and let Ash see that his daddy wasn’t a freakish, evil creature now, that he was just misunderstood. He tried to imagine the fatherly monologue that fucker Cresswell might deliver to Ash tonight: ‘Your father was once a good man, but good people sometimes turn bad, and he had to be destroyed...’

In the distance up ahead now lay the city of Birmingham – a grey scar covered in thousands of twinkling lights, buried deep in the midst of oceans of green – and he began to walk towards it, breaking into a lolloping, sloping run as he gradually picked up speed, his heart thumping too fast.

Home. I have to try and get home.

The city, he quickly decided, was his safest option – perhaps his only remaining option. Surrounded by millions of people, the military wouldn’t dare risk using weapons of mass destruction on him there, and those same people would become hostages by default. His presence alone would be enough of a threat to force the authorities to do what he wanted.

#

The beast tore across the land, leaving a trail of deep, dinosaur-sized footsteps. In its shadow people scattered in fear, running for cover but knowing that nowhere was safe anymore. Distances which took them hours to cover could be cleared in minutes by the towering grotesque which loomed over all of them. And as it neared Birmingham and the density of the population around it increased, so did the level of c*****e the creature caused. Knowing that the city was clearly a target, the authorities did everything they could to evacuate the panicking masses but getting away was impossible. In no time at all every major road was gridlocked, and the monster simply kicked its way through the unmoving traffic without a flicker of concern. It destroyed a reservoir in a fit of rage, stamping on a dam and flooding a heavily populated residential area. A hospital was demolished when the beast tripped and fell, hundreds of patients and staff killed in a heartbeat. Scores of schools, homes and other buildings were obliterated; untold numbers of people wiped out by the remorseless, blood-crazed behemoth.

They had managed to clear a section of the city centre but only partially. There were still people around, some fleeing in terror, others unaware of the approaching threat, just heading home from work. In a last-ditch attempt to divert the creature, Major Hawkins launched an aerial attack.

The first fighter planes raced towards their target and fired, their munitions barely even registering on the monster’s calloused skin. More through luck than judgement, it flashed an enormous hand at one of the planes and caught its wing with the tips of its longest two fingers, sending it into a sudden, spiralling free fall from which it would never recover. The pilot ejected – too small for the behemoth to see or care about – and as his parachute opened, he drifted down behind the horrific man-monster, studying the stretches and folds and impossible angles of the abomination as he fell from the sky.