SNAFU: Heroes: An Anthology of Military Horror

Tarzan Doesn’t Live Here Anymore Weston Ochse

The earth was rent as if a leviathan had burst free to sail the galaxy for better worlds to chew. Four miles long, hundreds of feet at its widest point, and more than a thousand feet deep, the Sonoran Rift was one of a hundred that had cleaved the Earth in the past three years. No one knew where they came from nor why they happened. Most had been kept a secret, but those like the Baltimore Scar and the Edmonton Crater couldn’t be ignored. But the Sonoran Rift was the largest of them all, and if it hadn’t been for a disenchanted soldier spilling his guts to the network, no one would have ever had an inkling about it.

Andy’s network had tried four times to get someone near enough to corroborate the unbelievable statements the dying soldier had made, and each of their reporters had failed to return. The idea that another rift existed would be a news coup for the network that could garner millions in advertising.

“Do you think what they say is true?” asked Leon, who rose from checking one of the seventy claymore mines in their sector.

That there are monsters in there? Andy didn’t even want to give voice to the thought, so he just stared.

“Hey vato, I’m talking to you.”

“I don’t know what to think,” Andy said.

“This isn’t a test, maricone. I was just asking your opinion.”

Looking at the way the sun sliced into the Rift, then met an impenetrable wall of shadow, Andy Friarson would have to say that yes, if there was anywhere in the world where monsters existed, this was the place. He’d been to Baltimore, Edmonton and even the tiny crack in the earth in France they called the Vallée de la Mort. All of them were interesting, but they lacked the sense of foreboding the Sonoran Rift had. There was a feeling about it that reminded him of the time he was in Croatia, hiding in a ditch with his camera clutched to his chest while Serbians lined up an entire village, shot them, and shoved them into a mass grave. Andy had known that at any moment he would be found out and added to the ditch. When one of the killers had turned to stare directly at his hiding place, Andy had known the end was near. He’d closed his eyes and waited to die, unwilling to meet it face to face. He’d inexplicably survived that day, but had been left with the memory of the certainty of death he’d felt — which he felt again now, walking so near the place where monsters were born.

The relief battalion had met in an old silver mine east of Bisbee, Arizona. There were three hundred of them. Many were ex-convicts, with the rest ex-military, fresh from the war but unable to stop killing. With the promise of $100,000 for six months’ work and the opportunity to protect the sovereignty of America, they showed up in droves. The advertisements were posted on the internet, Field and Stream, Gun and Rifle, and Soldier of Fortune. Everyone was vetted in Phoenix first. With the help of Sheriff Arpaio, the Network created a criminal history for Andy, and with it, a desire to get out of Arizona. With a faked military record, his bonafides fit right into the model of a modern redneck protector the US government was arranging to guard the Rift and the American way of life.

Everyone had their own responsibilities. Andy and his partner, Leon Batista, were in charge of maintaining the landmines in sector six, an area just north and east of the Rift and one of twenty-two sectors. The mines were the last line of defense. If anything or anyone fought its way free of the Rift, it would encounter seven rows of ten claymore mines, positioned far enough apart so that each row could operate independently, creating a cataclysmic explosion of ball bearings traveling at 4,000 feet per second if detonated.

But if anything got to the claymores, they were all in the shit. Andy had been issued an automatic pistol with the reminder that the bullets would be best used on himself so that when he was eaten, he wouldn’t know, or care.

The first lines of defense were right along the edge of the Rift. There was evidence where they’d tried to cap the crevice. Some of the steel webwork remained. But all attempts to cover the mighty hole had been stopped by the monsters. It seemed that as soon as anyone got within a few feet of the darkness, creatures would stir and come out to feed. Andy had been offered a tour of the area, but even his professional craving for information couldn’t defeat the fear that locked his joints and filled his guts with lead-heavy dread.

Many of his network colleagues thought he was a coward. He’d returned from Croatia three weeks into a three month assignment. He’d tried to explain to them what had happened, but they didn’t want to listen. They were reporters, they’d told him. Their job was to go into the mouth of hell itself and report what the devil was having for dinner. If you weren’t willing to do that, why be a reporter?

Why, indeed.

Towers with Vulcan Cannons were interspersed a hundred meters apart along both sides of the Rift. If anything tried to escape, the cannons could create a deadly web of interlocking fire. Each 20mm pneumatically-driven, six-barreled, air-cooled, electrically-fired, Gatling-style cannon was capable of throwing 7,200 depleted uranium rounds each minute into anything that moved. Each tower had their own specified field to fire within, which kept the gunners from aiming directly at another tower. The very idea that anything could survive such a fusillade was unimaginable, but as Andy reminded himself, this was only the first line of defense. By definition that meant the tactical experts who’d created the Rift Defense System planned on things getting through.

Above the towers flew Predator unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with laser targeting for the offsite medium range missiles, as well as video cameras capable of operating in Forward Looking Infra-Red (FLIR), Starlight, optical spectrum and radioactive modes. As another line of first offense, each carried three AGM-114K II Hellfire missiles with High Explosive Metal Augmented Charges.

Satellites were rumored to be on station even farther above, capable of reigning down Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles if they became desperate. Andy occasionally found himself glancing skyward, but he could no more prove the existence of satellites than he could prove the existence of God. Still, he hoped that all the conspiracy theorists and evangelists were right and there was something watching over them other than the hot desert sun.

That night Andy dreamed of his childhood. Tarzan cavorted through the trees high above a forest, where he swung from vine to vine. Beneath him the earth was rent in much the same manner as it was in Sonora. But where in Sonora the darkness hid everything from the visible eye, Tarzan’s gaze pierced the shadow, revealing converging armies of Ant Men, Golden Lions, Leopard Men, Snake People and Winged Invaders, just as they’d appeared on the covers of his old, cherished paperbacks.

These creatures, first introduced to Andy from Edgar Rice Burroughs books and the unauthorized Barton Werper volumes, glittered in the darkness as they stared back at their Lord of the Jungle nemesis. But fear found home in their eyes. Tarzan was too much for them. He’d done battle with each of their ilk and cast them back into the dusty confines of their paperback prisons long ago.

Andy turned in his sleep and groaned happily, safe with the knowledge that as long as Tarzan watched over them, he’d be safe.

Then he awoke to screams.

He twisted free from his blanket and crashed from his upper bunk six feet to the concrete floor. The claxons and emergency lights had sent everyone into frenzy. He scrambled to his feet, grabbed his boots, and struggled into them as he tried to hop and run at the same time. The door to the bunker had been left open to let in the breeze. As he approached it, he bumped into the guy in front of him who’d stopped to stare at the sky.

A hundred black silhouettes shot from the Rift into the night, tracer rounds from the Vulcan cannons stabbing them as they rose. Great black insects with glowing orange wings; each was as large as a World War II Japanese Zero. Rising, falling and slashing sideways, they twisted and twirled to get away from the fusillade of angry rounds fired from the air-cooled Gatling cannons.

Transfixed by the aerial death match, everyone jumped as a Predator drone strafed the action, unleashing its payload of three Hellfire missiles that exploded in awesome tornadoes of orange, red, and green fire.

They stood for ten minutes watching the life and death struggle as the creatures tried to make their way free of the Rift. Each man wore only boots and underwear, expressions agog at a sight that only made sense to little boys with Tarzan dreams who spent their Saturday mornings watching cartoons.

While everyone’s eyes were on the creatures, Andy’s gaze rested on the darkness from whence they came. He felt the Rift watching him. The great gaping hole in the earth was like the eye of that Serbian soldier who’d held Andy’s life in his hands. The capriciousness of Andy’s existence wasn’t lost to him. He wondered if the soldier of his memory wouldn’t decide to fire, the bullet transporting through time to jerk him back to that moment where he’d die and be buried in the ditch with all the other villagers.

One minute the night was filled with unearthly screams and the sounds of battle, the next all was silent. Two Predators took off south after something, but otherwise everything was still. Sometime during the battle the claxons had been turned off but Andy hadn’t noticed until now. The desert was now eerily quiet. The only sound was the breathing of the soldiers standing in the doorway of the bunker, all in rhythm as they stared into the night.

Finally someone chuckled.

“Let’s get some sleep.”

They turned and headed back to their bunks. Andy remained motionless, unable to simply turn off what he’d seen. The others pushed by him, and as the last of them headed for slumber, Andy reached out and grabbed him.

“What was that?”

The man looked Andy in the eye and grinned. “The tarantulas exploded. No problem.”

Andy didn’t get any sleep after that.

Tarzan had returned to rule his dreams, but he was no longer the King of the Jungle. Where he had once strutted across the great branches of the forest’s ancient trees, now he skulked from shadow to shadow. It wasn’t the Leopard Men or the Ant Men that he feared, nor was it the Golden Lions or the Snake People that sent his heart racing. He was afraid of what he couldn’t see, what he couldn’t know.

A roar came from somewhere in the forest.

Tarzan crouched and peered sideways.

What was it that set him so on edge?

He squatted there for a time. When he finally moved, he was more like a monkey than a great ape.

“What the hell did he mean when he said ‘the tarantulas exploded’?”

Leon Batista looked at him and spat tobacco juice along the ground. “Where you from you don’t know tarantulas?”

“Upstate New York.”

“They no have tarantulas there?”

Andy shook his head.

Leon spat again. He said something in Spanish that was lost to the constant desert breeze.

Andy paused from checking the ignition line of the mine. He’d been to thirty-seven countries and forty states. He’d even been to Antarctica when he’d had to do an exposé on penguin rustling by Japanese fishermen. He felt the need to demonstrate his worldliness to Leon, but forced himself to hold back. He was supposed to keep his head down and his identity secret. As far as anyone was concerned, he was an Army reservist who’d survived Iraq, gotten into a fight with an off-duty cop in Phoenix, and wanted something more than a regular nine to five. He was a convenience store clerk with saving-the-world dreams.

“Tarantulas? You know… big fucking spiders?” Batista asked as if Andy were a child. He waggled the fingers of both hands like spider legs.

“Yeah. I’ve seen them.” Andy mimicked, “Big fucking spiders.”

Batista glared at him for a moment, then continued. “There are these wasps. They lay their eggs in the tarantulas. Tarantulas no move anymore, then one day poof! Tarantula explodes with baby wasps.”

Andy felt his grin slip into something akin to stupefaction. There was a wasp that laid its eggs in a tarantula? He felt his mouth moving before he could stop it. “What are these wasps called?”

Batista rolled his eyes. “Maricone. Where the fuck you been? These are tarantula wasps. Sometimes call them tarantula hawks.” Leon made flying gestures with his arms. “Big fucking spiders. Big fucking wasps.”

“Yeah,” Andy repeated, “big fucking wasps. And last night? Were those tarantula hawks?”

Leon Batista laughed and shook his head. He choked on a mouthful of tobacco juice and convulsed before he was able to spit it out.

“Last night wasps? Those were Rift wasps. Those were gigantesco. Like airplanes, no? You get bit by them, not like the real ones. You’ll walk around thinking you okay, then your stomach gets bigger and bigger and—”

Andy nodded. So if the wasps were increased in size because of the Rift, then he could only imagine how large the tarantulas had to be. He took one more look at Batista, who seemed to be reading his thoughts.

“Big fucking spiders.” The man nodded and waggled his arms. “Bigger than me. Bigger than you. Like Cadillac.”

Andy closed his eyes.

Spiders the size of Cadillacs.

Swell.

A sort of manic normalcy prevailed after that, if you can call regular sorties of giant tarantula wasps into the night sky normal. For someplace like Upstate New York, it would have raised an eyebrow. But for those around the Rift, a few wasps here and there were the least of their worries.

Every other night the wasps would escape containment and try and fight their way to freedom. And every other night, the combined might of the Rift battalion would hurl them back whence they came. During the battles, mine tenders like Batista and Andy would ensconce themselves in the emergency bunker, well away from the action. The first night they’d been too afraid to leave their sleeping bunkers. That one transgression was allowed. But since then, they’d always hot-footed it to the emergency bunker. It was bigger anyway. They quickly became inured to the shrieks and sounds of combat. Great games of spades, old Doug Clegg novels, and even sleep took up their nights as they waited for the battalion’s inevitable victory.

Then one day visitors came. When they heard the claxons sounded and made their way to the emergency bunker, they found it occupied by thirty-seven dusty Mexicans who’d gotten lost on their way to the border — Douglas, Arizona, and red, white and blue freedom.

Wide-eyed and certainly wishing they’d never left their homes, the Mexicans huddled together against one wall. Beside them were piles of belongings, a mish-mash of things they thought they’d need, but nothing even remotely capable of protecting them against what the Rift had to offer. Several shuddered beneath a blanket. An old man and woman clutched each other, faces buried in each other’s shoulders, eyes crammed shut. A child cried, his head pressed against the lap of his mother.

“What the hell?” asked one of the other mine tenders.

“When did the wetbacks move in?” Batista asked.

Andy didn’t miss the irony of his friend using the pejorative. “Technically, they aren’t wetbacks.”

Batista frowned.

“I mean, they haven’t crossed any rivers yet.” Andy shrugged. “Can’t be wetbacks if they don’t get wet.”

Batista gave him a look. “You think too much, maricone.”

The others spread out and found places to play cards, read or snooze. A few of them watched the new guests, but with only cursory interest.

Andy and Batista found an empty space on the floor. They broke out a deck of cards and began a game of gin rummy. But it became obvious after the first hand that Batista was just going through the motions. His eyes were on one of the girls huddled next to an older man with milky eyes and a missing ear. A sly, hungry look had crept onto Batista’s face and taken control.

The girl couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Her dark eyes and skin told of Indian ancestry. Her long hair had once been luxurious, but was now more the color of dirt than lustrous black. The hair was twisted and bunched beneath an L.A. Dodgers baseball cap. Her legs were drawn beneath her. Her hands rested on the old man’s leg.

She reminded Andy of a girl who’d lived near him at Fort Drum. He’d never known her name, but the memory of her had made him who he was to this day.

Andy’s father hadn’t been in the Army, but the girl’s father had. He was assigned to the 10^th Mountain Division. He was never home, always playing war games, or deployed to some far-flung country. When he was in town, she used to sit on the front stoop of their townhouse, waiting from him to come home. Her eyes were like the eyes of the Mexican girl: wide brown pools where hope shimmered above a surface-tension of fear.

Andy had been drawn to those eyes when he passed on his way home from school. He was sixteen and she was thirteen, and he wanted to stop and reach out to help her. “Me Tarzan. You Jane,” he’d said in his mind, every time he’d passed. Pounding his chest, he’d let out the famous Tarzan call, grab her by the waist and swing off into the trees like Johnny Weissmuller had done so many times. They’d live a life free of fear, high above the dangerous animals far below. They’d have the monkeys to entertain them and the apes to protect them. Living would be good. Life would be grand.

But not really.

Tarzan, that great mythical man who was the source of all courage, wasn’t real. He existed in the pages of paperback pulps, in comic books, in television and movies, and in the minds of every boy who’d sat down and plumbed the depths of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ imagination.

Andy knew this because of the doctors he’d been forced to see.

They asked him Do you really think you’re Tarzan?

Why did you do that to her?

What were you planning to do to her? And a hundred more questions, each as inane and embarrassing as the others. Why had he done what he had? What had set him off, making him believe that he could be Tarzan?

He’d run after it had happened.

An hour later the doorbell had rung. He’d pressed his ear to the closed door of his room and heard most of the conversations that had taken place. When it came time for his mother to confront him, he was sitting on the bed, prepared for the embarrassment. But the embarrassment never came. They hadn’t understood. What had been his vain inglorious attempt to save the girl had been misconstrued as some sort of attack.

“Why’d you scream at her? Why’d you grab her like that?” his mother had asked.

“But I didn’t—”

She cut him off with a chop of her hand. “Don’t lie to me. I just talked to that poor girl’s father. I convinced him not to call the police.”

“The police…?”

“He said you need help.” His mother hugged herself as tears began to slide down her cheeks. “I just don’t understand what happened.”

“Mom. I didn’t do anything.” He spoke quickly, knowing that he had one slim chance to diffuse the situation. “All I did was be Tarzan. I gave the jungle yell, I beat my chest and I tried to rescue her. I wasn’t attacking her, I was…”

His mother’s shoulders began to shake as she cried harder. Andy had stood and watched as the reality of his behavior and the insanity of it slipped past his excuse. What had he done? Why had he pretended to be Tarzan? What had come over him?

He’d gone to see some shrinks after that. He’d told his story, and they’d said that it was his father’s fault for not being there. They’d told his mother it was a combination of an active imagination and father issues. She thanked them, threw away all of Andy’s Tarzan books, and made him take the mind-numbing pills they’d prescribed.

It was all in his mind.

Finally they’d made him admit that ‘Tarzan doesn’t live here anymore’, as if saying it made it true.

Less than a year later, the girl’s dad was arrested for molesting her. Andy had been forced to walk home from school a different way since the day he’d scared the girl, but the day after the arrest, he couldn’t help himself. His curiosity had overruled the court order. He’d found the house vacant. The door hung open. Trash and clothes had been scattered as if someone had left in a hurry.

The emptiness pulled him inside. He went from room to room. Living room. Dining room. In the kitchen, a box of Fruit Loops had been spilled and was now a feast for roaches. Upstairs he found three bedrooms. It didn’t take but a second to figure out that the one with the balloons painted on the wall belonged to the little girl. Stepping inside the room, he’d stood there, trying to soak up the environment. But he’d felt nothing. Whatever had been left of the girl was gone. The closet door gaped and he went to it. The door creaked as he’d opened it and what he saw made him stop.

A picture had been drawn about knee-high in the left corner. It looked like the figures had been rendered with crayon. Even without knowing, Andy knew who had drawn the tableau. On the faded yellow wall knelt the stick figure of a girl. Standing over her was the hulking figure of a beast, made from slashes of greens and browns and blacks. The slash beast had yellow eyes that seemed to glow in the gloom of the closet. But the figure that most drew Andy was high above them. Hanging from what could only be a vine dangling from a branch was the figure of a man. His face was round, his eyes were tiny circles and his mouth was a larger wavy circle.

She’d known!

She’d understood!

Even though his mother and the shrinks and everyone else had thought he was crazy, this girl had known that all Andy had wanted to do was to save her — her Tarzan to his Jane.

He looked once again at the kneeling figure. Her head was round too. Her mouth was a frown. Her eyes were smaller circles, and although they were devoid of any emotion, Andy saw within them that strange mixture of hope and fear that had lived in the eyes of the real girl that day he’d taken her into his arms and screamed his Tarzan yell.

Now Andy recognized it once again within this slight Mexican girl lying beside the old man. Yet somehow it wasn’t the old man that seemed predatory. The way she clutched him was too much like a teddy bear or a kid hugging base during a game of freeze tag. No, it wasn’t the old man that Andy needed to worry about. Following her gaze to its end, he found the hungry leer of Batista. Like the King of the Jungle who found the spoor of a new animal, Andy knew this wasn’t going to end well. He thought about growling at his rummy partner, but knew that the man wouldn’t understand, just like his mother and all of the other adults of his childhood had failed to understand.

Outside the jungle, no one did.

Two days later the worms came.

Just after the last sortie of tarantula wasps was hurled back into the Rift, there came a rumbling that set off sensors all around. Twice it stopped, then resumed, strong enough so that even those in the bunkers felt the trembling of the earth.

All the mine tenders got the call to stand by. The mines were detonated remotely, by controllers using satellite and UAV imagery. But in the event the mines failed to detonate, the tenders would have to wade into battle to get to the hard-wired back-up controls. It was deadly dangerous with little chance of survival. Andy never thought he’d have to perform that specific function. At least he hoped he wouldn’t.

Andy stood in the open blast door staring into the night. The Rift was lit by sweeping spotlights. The air was clear except for lingering smoke trails from where Hellfire missiles had connected to bring down the wasps.

Two figures squeezed between him and the door. One was the Mexican girl, the other was her sister. They whispered rapidly to each other and pointed to the Rift. One of the senior sergeants pushed them back. This was no place for children.

Andy felt the heat of Batista’s gaze scorch him as it followed the girl back inside. He’d tried not to say anything, but his Tarzan vibes kept getting stronger and stronger. When he looked once again at his partner, he found Batista staring at him.

“You want a piece of her too, maricone?”

Andy shook his head and tried to look away. But Batista grabbed him and spun him back around.

“I know your kind. You like to watch.”

“I—”

“Next time we hit the bunkers I’m gonna do her. You keep look out and I’ll let you watch. I know you’ll like that.”

Andy didn’t have time to respond. Just then, a one-hundred yard-long worm broke free of the soil in their sector. Its skin was a mottle of purples and reds. Hair covered its upper half, or what Andy thought was hair. Each ten-foot strand moved individually, reminding Andy more of tentacles than anything else. Claymores immediately exploded, daisy-chained to deliver a conflagration over a broad area. Tens of thousands of ball bearings ripped into the creature, chopping it in half. Great gouts of blood and flesh flew through the air. It screamed, the sound like a train using its emergency airbrakes.

Then died.

Another worm came after.

Then another.

Then another.

But Andy hardly noticed. Instead, all he could think of was how he was going to keep the girl safe from the predator he worked with. He might have to go talk to her. He looked first at Batista, then at the girl.

Me Tarzan. You Jane.

Andy had been away from his Network for six weeks. He’d had longer assignments, but had always filed interim reports, sometimes calling every day just so his bosses knew he was doing what he’d been paid to do. Working with the Rift Battalion, he hadn’t even had the opportunity to make a phone call. He couldn’t take notes, he couldn’t record his thoughts on the recorder he’d stuffed in the bottom of his bag, he couldn’t even scratch hieroglyphics in the dirt. Absolutely everything was monitored by a special team of NSA signal interceptors.

So for all intents and purposes, he’d stepped off the face of the earth. And until his tour was up, he’d remain that way. The soonest he could expect to leave was at the six month mark when they were due to rotate out.

Yet even that was the subject of speculation. The other new guys couldn’t help but wonder if they were really going to be allowed to leave. Sure, they signed non-disclosure agreements and promised to keep the Rift and its denizens a secret, but since when was the government so trustworthy as to keep its side of any bargain?

Like the Mexicans for instance.

Andy had asked why they hadn’t been sent home. The looks he’d gotten had answered the question for him. He soon discovered the Mexicans would never be allowed to leave. They’d as easily tell the secret of the Rift to the Weekly World News as the Wall Street Journal if it meant they could enter the land of plentiful shopping malls. So they were here to stay. And if history was any reference, they’d end up being assigned to the black trailers where scientists were continually trying to breakdown the monsters’ genomes.

The knowledge brought twitches to Andy’s Tarzan vibes.

The next day came and went without as much as a monstrous whisper. As did the next and the next and the next. A full week passed without incident. It was to the point where new soldiers like Andy wondered if it was all over, if they’d won. But the old timers scoffed at the idea, and with more than a little condescension, explained the idea of gestation. They predicted two more weeks of inactivity before the Rift-shit hit the fan once again.

Just a lull before the storm.

The only one who didn’t like it was Batista. He’d had eyes for nothing but the emergency bunker and the young Mexican girl who waited inside. Until the monsters returned, he wouldn’t even be allowed to get close to her. So it was that every day when they were checking the mine controls and cabling, that he complained and griped and groaned. He’d wax graphically about what his plans were for the young girl. He’d detail the things he’d do. He’d wonder philosophically if she’d like him for what he did, perhaps even love him and beg for more.

Never once did he think that his partner thought otherwise, because Andy remained silent through it all. Andy prayed that it was all talk. In his mind, he might have been Tarzan, but intellectually he understood the difference between pretend and reality. When it came down to it, Batista was a ruthless killer and Andy only pretended to be one. If one were to believe his coworkers, then he was nothing but a coward afraid to do anything but lay huddled in a ditch, begging the universe not to kill him. If that was true, then what good would he be to the girl?

But things were looking up for Batista. Three days short of two weeks, he found his chance. A Hurricane had jumped the Baja Peninsula and was eating its way up the Sea of Cortez. In a divinely poetic set of circumstances, the storm was dubbed Hurricane Edgar.

As Batista voiced his plan, all Andy could think of was how he could get the courage to foil it. Looking at the bunkers with the wind picking up, Andy finally voiced the words that had been rattling around his mind for his whole life.

“Me Tarzan. You Jane,” he whispered.

And the words steeled him for what he’d have to do.

The UAVs were grounded. The satellites were blind. Winds were cresting at fifty miles an hour with gusts past seventy. Rain poured from a dark, hollow sky until the ground could take no more. The Hurricane had slammed ashore at 2A.M., annihilating shoreline homes, small boats and jetties in Puerto Peñasco. The storm didn’t tarry. With an angry fury, the hurricane grew legs and moved inland. Those not sane enough to stay inside found that Edgar was making life a wet, windy, miserable hell as it shuffled laconically across the land.

Batista made his move at 3A.M. Wearing a camouflage rain jacket, he slipped out of their bunker and into the storm.

Andy noted the sidearm Batista carried and strapped on his own before following. He waited a few moments, then cracked the door and slid into the night. Through the wind and rain he could just make out Batista running hunched over towards the emergency bunker where the Mexicans were being held. To Andy’s right was the minefield. Beyond that gaped the blackness of the Rift.

Andy hunched low and gave chase.

Running was miserable. Every third step he’d slip and fight for balance. The desert sand was already soaked with water. What remained slid away along paths of least resistance. The water, likewise, found its way into his cloak and seeped down his back and into the top of his pants.

But he kept on. The look of his neighbor and the Mexican girl in the bunker merged into one impossibly imploring gaze that pulled him forward through the squall. He fell twice more, once face first, the slick, cold earth coating his teeth.

Andy was so miserable with the weather that he was almost upon Batista before he noticed the man had stopped. Andy windmilled his arms, skidded half a dozen feet then managed to crash hard on his rump. The sound of his movements was lost to the stormy din. He quickly rolled over and tried to merge with the earth. Not ten feet ahead of him was Batista doing the same thing. From beneath their hooded brows they watched a file of black clad men marching towards the bunkers. Andy instinctively reached down to check his sidearm was still there.

The door to the bunker opened, the men went inside, then it closed behind them.

Andy waited.

So did Batista.

It seemed like an hour, but was probably only a few minutes. To keep from screaming, Andy recited the titles of the fifty-seven Tarzan episodes starring Ron Ely. He got stuck twice in the middle of the second season, but finally remembered the episode that had been troubling him — Creeping Giants.

Batista leaped to his feet and broke into a run.

Andy had become part of the soil, afraid to move lest he’d be seen. His vantage couldn’t be better, however. This he told himself to make his cowardice reasonable.

Batista reached the side of the bunker. He pulled his pistol and held it ready. As he slid into the shadows on the other side of the door, he pulled a knife out as well. Then he blended into darkness.

They didn’t have long to wait. Soon, the black-clad men exited the bunker, each with a Mexican in tow. Andy strained to see if the girl was one of them, but he couldn’t make out any faces through the rain and distance. He didn’t have to. If the girl had been taken, Batista would have made his move. Instead, he waited until the group was halfway back to their trailers before turning and opening the door.

Batista probably hadn’t counted on one tarrying.

He met a black-clad man face to face in the doorway.

Andy watched as Batista raised his knife and brought it down in one quick move. The other man blocked it by making an X with is arms. Then he grabbed Batista’s wrist and pulled him to the ground. The men rolled in the mud as each scrambled for traction.

Andy stood. He was torn by his fear and the idea that this might be his only chance. He took two steps, but was almost knocked down by a gust of wind. Rain stung his face.

Just then three small figures darted out of the bunker door and into the night. Batista was still struggling with the other man, and wasn’t able to stop them. Andy squinted through the gloom and spied one who had the shape of his Jane-girl running straight for the minefield. What sold him was that she also wore a baseball cap. Gritting his teeth, he took off at a run.

He had the angle on her, but she was fleeter of foot. He had to stop her before she entered the minefield. Once she tripped one of the monitors, there’d be no chance to save her. He poured on all the speed he could muster. He was almost to her when he realized he’d never make it. He opened his mouth to call to her but didn’t know her name. His only hope was to get her attention, so he used the only name he knew.

“Jane!” he screamed.

She slowed as she turned to look at him. She had the same Meso-American complexion and the same baseball cap, but it wasn’t her.

His heart sank. Still, he couldn’t let this girl die.

“Stop! Minefield!” he cried and pointed in front of her.

She caught some semblance of his meaning, slowed and finally stopped. She stood like a deer, ready to bolt, watching his feet and hands. He took a step toward her and she took a step back. She glanced around for a way to escape.

Andy put his hands out for her to stay where she was. Just as he gave her a warm smile, she was plucked from the earth into the sky.

“No!” Andy screamed.

A tarantula wasp had her in its grip a hundred feet off the ground. This close it was bigger than Andy had thought. Easily as big as a Cadillac, its shiny black body and orange wings glistened in the wet stormy gloom. It flew a few dozen feet away then dropped her to the ground. Andy felt, rather than heard the girl’s back snap. The wasp hovered for a second, then fell to its prey, stinger first, piercing the girl’s abdomen. Her mouth opened into an impossibly wide scream, but nothing came out. As Andy watched, several eggs pushed their way through the thin stinger and into the girl’s stomach. He thought he was going to be sick.

But then he noticed that the wasp had landed three rows into the minefield. Andy wondered what was taking so long. The girl’s back arched. Her hands reached into the air. Then the scene disappeared in a massive explosion as several Claymores fired their deadly cannonade. The ball bearings ripped through the wasp and girl with ease, adding a crimson mist to the gusting winds.

Andy turned and wretched into the mud.

Then he heard a scream.

Batista stood over a slender figure about fifty yards away. His hulking form reminded Andy of the slash monster in the neighbor-girl’s closet. A rage descended upon him that he’d never felt before. He no longer cared about his own safety. All he cared about was the girl.

Andy broke into a loping run. He pulled his pistol from the holster. From his mouth came the Tarzan yell that Johnny Weissmuller had made famous the world over, copied by kids from Chicago to China. But Andy was no longer a kid. He wasn’t even a man any longer. Finally, amidst Hurricane Edgar and the death of the girl at the hands of the giant wasp, he’d become that being he’d spent his whole life denying. He was the King of the Jungle, imbued with savage strength and animal instinct. His need to save superseded his desire to survive. He’d finally become that man Tarzan could be.

Batista heard him and turned towards the sound. The smile on his face faltered as he spied Andy rushing towards him.

Andy didn’t give him a chance to make a move. He raised his pistol and fired three times. At least one of the rounds hit, knocking Batista to the ground.

Then all hell broke loose.

From behind him, the Vulcan cannons opened fire. The gunners couldn’t have been able to see, so they must have been firing blindly. Mines were exploding all over the place. The signature explosions of Hellfire missiles accentuated the mines with their deeper concussive blasts.

Andy felt something coming towards him and dove for the earth. A wasp swooped past him, foiled by his instinctive maneuver. Andy rolled to his back, and took aim with the pistol. He fired four times as the wasp swooped and came back towards him. Each round found a home on the underside of the shiny black carapace. He managed to roll away at the last moment as the wasp crashed dead to the earth.

Clawing his way to his feet, Andy ran the rest of the way to the girl. He fell to his knees beside her. He felt her shoulders and her head to make sure she was okay. She stared at him in terror.

“It’s okay, Jane. Everything’s going to be okay.”

He smoothed her hair. Her expression softened a moment, then exploded into a preternatural scream.

Before he could turn, Andy felt himself buffeted by half-a-dozen blows on his back. He fell hard to the ground, his breath gone. Then something bit his leg. He kicked out and managed to free himself.

He rolled to his back and brought his pistol to bear. But what he saw froze him in place. Even his scream locked in his throat, blocking his breath.

Covered entirely in black and brown bristly hair, the tarantula stood ten feet tall. Its legs arched from the ground to a body with sections the size of VW Bugs. Its front two legs were poised directly above him. Andy drew his attention from the multifaceted eyes to the tips of the spiders fangs, poised to pierce his chest.

Finally his scream tore loose.

He fired the remaining bullets from his gun into the giant spider, but it had no effect.

Andy scrambled backwards.

The tarantula followed.

Out of the corner of his eye, Andy saw that the girl was stock still. Good — if she moved it might draw the monster’s attention.

He scrambled backwards again and threw his gun into the face of the creature.

The spider stopped. It shuddered once, then twice, then shuddered for a long time.

Andy scrambled to his feet just in time to get out from beneath the giant spider as it fell. He stood shakily. The girl ran towards him and threw her arms around him.

They both watched as the tarantula shuddered once more and then died. Who would have thought that he could have killed it so easily?

But then they heard buzzing coming from the spider’s back. Andy and the girl backed away. Horror dawned in Andy’s mind. Was it going to…?

A hand reached out and grabbed his ankle, pulling him off his feet. Batista! As he fell, the back of the tarantula exploded open and three wasps, each the length of a broom, clawed their way free. They appeared hungry and eager and mean.

The girl was transfixed.

Andy tried to scream, but a hand clamped around his throat.

“Fucking Tarzan puta!” Batista growled as he climbed on top of Andy. He clamped his other hand around Andy’s throat and began to throttle him. “Who the hell do you think you are to try and stop me?” Blood foamed at the corners of Batista’s mouth.

Andy struggled to break free, but no matter his newfound Tarzan desires, he couldn’t remove the other man’s iron grip from around his neck. He felt his vision dimming as Batista cursed him.

The hand suddenly relaxed. Light went out of Batista’s eyes. Abruptly his chest blossomed a long thin stinger. Andy watched, unable to move as a golf ball-sized egg pushed down the length of the stinger and squirted free of the end. It landed on his chest then rolled to the ground.

Andy screamed and heaved Batista backwards until they both fell, crushing the baby wasp to the ground.

Looking toward the girl, Andy felt his universe implode. Something bestial came over him.

He barely remembered breaking off the stinger from Batista’s chest and rushing over to the other baby wasp that had its own stinger deep inside Jane.

He barely remembered stabbing the giant insect with its brother’s stinger until it fell dead beside the girl.

He barely remembered taking her into his arms and heading away from the Rift, what was left of his battalion, and the miserable mess that Batista had left.

All he knew was that when he came to, he was carrying her, it was daylight, and he was past exhaustion.

The desert was nothing like he imagined. There were no sand dunes. No camels. No pyramids. Nothing to show the timeless mythic quality of the deserts he’d seen on television and the movies growing up. Nothing at all like he’d imagined from reading The Lion Man.

Just as Tarzan had been bringing a jungle cure for malaria to Jane in the famous desert Tarzan book, so was Andy taking his Jane to find a cure for the thing gestating inside of her. Somewhere in the distance over the border was a hospital. He hoped it was close, because her stomach had already begun to extend. He only prayed that he wouldn’t be too late.

She whimpered as he stumbled then caught himself.

He grunted and thumped his chest with his free hand. “Me Tarzan. You Jane,” he said.

Then he adjusted her weight against his back. He felt something move in her stomach. She whimpered. He had Batista’s knife. If need be, he’d use it. He thought about giving a Tarzan yell, but he hadn’t the strength. He just trudged on.