The Monster’s Corner: Stories Through Inhuman Eyes

BIG MAN by David Moody

IT WAS LIKE SOMETHING out of one of those black-and-white 1950s B movies he used to avidly watch when he was a kid: the army spread out in a wide arc across the land to defend the city, lying in wait for “it” to attack. Major Hawkins used to love those movies. Although the reality looked almost the same and the last few days certainly seemed to have followed a similar script, it felt completely different. This, he reminded himself, was real. This was war.

This wasn’t the Cold War U.S. of the movies; it was midwinter, and he was positioned southwest of a rain-soaked Birmingham, almost slap bang in the center of the United Kingdom. But the differences didn’t end there. He wasn’t an actor playing the part of a square-jawed hero, he was a trained soldier who had a job to do. He was no rank-and-file trooper, either. Today he was the highest-ranking officer out in the field, or, to put it another way, the highest-ranking officer whose neck was on the line. His superiors were a safe distance away, watching the situation unfold on TV screens from the safety of bunker-bound leather chairs.

Roger Corman, Samuel Z. Arkoff, and the others had actually got a lot right in their quaint old movies. The Amazing Colossal Man, War of the Colossal Beast, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman — their monsters’ stories always followed a familiar path: an unexpected and unintentional genesis, the wanton death and destruction that inevitably followed, the brief and fruitless search for a solution … but there was another facet to this story, one the movies always glossed over. Many people had died, crushed by the beast or dismembered in a fit of unstoppable rage. Property had been destroyed, millions of pounds’ worth of damage caused already, maybe even billions. And they weren’t standing here waiting to face a stop-motion puppet or a stuntman in a rubber suit now; this was a genuine, bona fide creature: a foul aberration that had once been human but was now anything but; a hideous, deformed monstrosity that, unless it could be stopped, would just keep growing and keep killing. The pressure on Hawkins’s shoulders was intense. The implications were terrifying.

Glen Chambers — the poor bastard at the very center of this unbelievable chain of events — had, until a few days ago, been a faceless nobody: a father of one, known only to his family, a handful of friends, and his work colleagues. Hawkins could have passed him in the street a hundred times and not given him a second glance. But now he had to force himself to forget that this monster had once been a man, and instead focus on the carnage and unspeakably evil acts the creature was responsible for. No one could be expected to remain sane under the torturous circumstances Chambers had endured, and it could even be argued that he was as innocent as any of his victims, but the undisputable fact remained: Regardless of intent or blame, the aberration had to be stopped.

Major Hawkins had first become involved after the initial attack at the clinic. The people there had done all they could to help Chambers, keeping him sedated and under observation while they searched for a way to reverse the effects of the accident and stop his body growing and distorting. And how had he repaid their kindness and concern? By killing more than thirty innocent people in a wild frenzy and reducing the entire facility to rubble, that was how. Then the cowardly bastard had gone into hiding until there were no longer any buildings big enough for him to hide inside.

The attack on Shrewsbury had ratcheted up the seriousness of the situation to another level, the sheer amount of damage and the number of needless deaths making it clear that destroying the aberration quickly was of the utmost importance. This was a threat the likes of which had never been experienced before. Men, women, and children were needlessly massacred, their bodies crushed or torn limb from limb. The streets were filled with rubble and blood.

The Chambers creature had attacked the picturesque town without provocation, decimating its historic buildings and killing hundreds of innocent bystanders. Even then, when it had had its fill of carnage there, it moved on and the bloodshed continued unabated. They’d tracked the beast halfway across the country, following the trail of devastation it left in its wake. The foul monstrosity had spared nothing and no one. Even livestock grazing in farmers’ fields hadn’t escaped the monster’s reach. Hundreds of dismembered animal corpses lay scattered for miles around.

But what was it doing now?

The creature, for all its incredible (and still increasing) size, had temporarily managed to evade detection. They knew it was close, but its exact location remained a mystery. There was no need to hunt it out; Hawkins was certain it would run out of places to hide and would have no option but to reveal itself eventually, and when it did his troops would be ready. They’d be resorting to Corman/Arkoff tactics to try to kill the creature: Hit it with everything you’ve got, and keep firing until either you’ve run out of ammo or the monster has been blown to hell and back. And then, if the dust settles and the hideous thing still manages to crawl out of the smoke and haze unscathed, you call in the big boys. A nuclear strike was an absolute last resort, but Hawkins knew the powers-that-be would sanction it if they had to (after all, it was less of a big deal from where they were sitting in their bunkers). Tens of thousands would die, maybe hundreds of thousands, but if the creature couldn’t be stopped, what would happen then? No one would be safe anywhere. In the space of less than a week Glen Chambers had gone from being a faceless nobody to the greatest single threat to the survival of the human race. An indiscriminate, remorseless butcher.

Major Hawkins tried to distract himself from worst-case-scenario thoughts of uncomfortably close nuclear explosions by recalling B movie clichés and trying to find an alternative solution to the crisis. He almost laughed out loud when he considered the ridiculous and yet faintly possible notion that this thing might do a King Kong on him and head for higher ground. Imagine that, he thought, his mind swapping biplanes and the Empire State Building for a squadron of Harrier jet fighters and the Blackpool Tower …

“Sir!”

“What is it, Rayner?” Hawkins asked quickly, doing all he could to hide the fact that he’d been daydreaming from the young officer.

“We’ve found it.”

The aberration that was Glen Chambers crouched in the shadows of the cave, shivering with cold, sobbing to himself and hiding from the rest of the world. He hurt, every stretched nerve and elongated muscle in his body aching. He’d squashed his huge, still-growing bulk into a space that was becoming tighter by the hour, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before he’d have to move. It was inevitable, but he wanted to stay in here for as long as he was able. There had been helicopters flying around just now. They probably already knew where he was.

Earlier, just before he’d found this cave, he’d stopped to drink from a lake and had caught sight of his reflection in the water. What he’d seen staring back at him had been both heartbreaking and terrifying. In the movies, enormous monsters like this were just perfectly scaled-up versions of normal people, but not him. Since the accident he’d continued to grow, every part of his body constantly increasing in mass, but at wildly different rates. His skull was swollen and heavy now, almost the size of a small car, one eye twice the size of the other, as big as a dinner plate. Clumps of hair had fallen out while other strands had grown lank and long and tough as wire. Glen had punched the water to make his image disappear, and then held his fist up and stared at it in disbelief; a distended, tumorous mass with a thumb twice the length of any of his fingers. And his skin! He hated more than anything what was happening to his skin. Its pigmentation remained, but it had become thick and coarse, almost elephantine, and the bulges of his massive body were now covered in sweat-filled folds and creases of flesh. The only thing, to his chagrin, that still seemed to function as it always had was his brain. It was ironic: Physically he’d become something else entirely — something unspeakably horrific — but inside he was still Glen Chambers. Grotesquely deformed and impossibly sized, he now bore only the faintest physical similarity to the person he’d been just a few short days ago. But emotionally, very little had changed. Same memories. Same attachments. Same pain.

Glen’s vast stomach howled with hunger. He ate almost continually, but such was the speed of his rapid growth that his hunger was never completely satisfied. He reached down and picked up the body of a sheep with one hand, then bit it in half and forced himself to chew down, gagging on the bone and blood and wool in his mouth.

His arched back was beginning to press against the roof of the cave. Time to go before he became trapped. He crawled out into the afternoon rain and crouched still. I don’t want to move, he thought, because when I move, people die. None of this is my fault, but I’m the one they’ll blame.

If there is a god, please let him bring an end to this nightmare.

Glen strode through the darkness, feeling neither the cold nor the rain as he pushed on through the fields around the Malvern Hills. He’d spent a lot of time here before, good times before the bad with Della and her father, and being here again was unexpectedly painful. His stomach screamed for food again and he caught a bolting horse between his hands, snapping its neck with a flick of the wrist before biting down and taking a chunk out of its muscled body. He hated the destruction he caused with each footstep, but what else could he do? It would only get worse as he continued to grow. The effort of lifting his bulk and keeping moving was increasing, and for a while he stopped and sat on the ground and rested against the side of British Camp, the largest of the hills, relieved that, for a short time at least, he wasn’t the largest thing visible. The size of the hill allowed him to feel temporarily small and insignificant again.

Why had this happened to him?

Much as he’d tried to forget, he still vividly remembered every detail of what had happened. He remembered the accident — the piercing light and those screaming, high-pitched radiation alarm sirens — then the disorientation when he’d first woken up in the clinic. It had been like he’d been trapped in one of those old Quatermass movies his dad used to watch. But in those films the guy being quarantined had always been a hero — an astronaut or genius scientist — not anyone like him. He just cleaned the damn labs, for Christ’s sake. He wasn’t one of the scientists, he just worked for them.

They’d kept him pumped full of drugs for a time, trying to suppress the metamorphosis, studying him from a distance through windows and from behind one-way mirrors, none of them daring to get too close. But there had come a time when the medicines and anesthetics no longer had any effect, and when they finally wore off, the pain had been unbearable. He realized he’d outgrown the hospital bed and had crushed it under his massively increased weight. He was more than twice his normal size already, rapidly filling the room, and he’d become claustrophobic and had panicked. He wanted to ask to see his son, Ash, but his mouth suddenly didn’t work the way it used to and words were hard to form. He tried to get up but there wasn’t enough room to stand, and when he tried to open the window blinds and look out he instead punched his clumsy hand through the glass. The people behind the mirrors started screaming at him to stop and lie still, but that just made him even more afraid. He shoved at an outside wall until it collapsed, then scrambled out through the hole he’d made. He stood there in the early morning light, completely nude, almost four meters tall, and he fell when he first tried to run away on legs of suddenly unequal length. They blocked his way with trucks, and he thought they were going to hurt him. He’d only wanted to move them out of his way, but he’d overreacted and had killed several of the security men, not yet appreciating the incredible strength of his distended frame, popping their skulls like bubble wrap.

He’d taken shelter in a derelict warehouse for a while — the only place he’d found that was 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 onesided 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 that had been posted there to flush him out and recapture him. In the confusion of gunfire and brick dust he stumbled away toward 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 town, 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 drunken giant, 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’d tried to get away from the town to avoid causing more devastation, and their screams of terror and pain 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 hadn’t waited 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 toward 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. I may not have long. If I’m going to do this, I have to do it now.

They’d assumed he might 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 to launch an attack on the creature — exposed, out in the middle of nowhere, away from centers of population — and a squadron of Hawkins’s 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 toward the isolated building, ignoring the last few scurrying, antlike 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 slap, trying to peer inside 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 a petulant child tearing apart a doll’s house, looking for a precious 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 almost 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 onward, immediately regretting their deaths.

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 her 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 he accepted it had been his own bloody foolish pride that 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 pigheaded 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 Cress-well 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, 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 nausea, there hadn’t been any noticeable side effects. It had almost certainly been the radiation from the accident that 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 that would once have killed him but were now almost insignificant. He spiraled around, sweeping more soldiers out of the way with one arm as if he were clearing them off a table, then 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 to 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 an evil creature now, just misunderstood. He tried to imagine the fatherly monologue that that fucker Cresswell would deliver to his son tonight: “Your father was once a good man, Ash, but good people sometimes turn bad, and he had to be destroyed …”

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

Home. I have to try to 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 marched across the land, leaving a trail of devastation and deep, dinosaur-sized footsteps in its wake. In its shadow the population scattered in fear, running for cover but knowing that nowhere was safe anymore. Distances that took them hours to cover could be cleared in minutes by the aberration that towered over all of them. And as it neared Birmingham and the density of the population around it gradually increased, so did the level of carnage it caused. Knowing that the city was clearly a target, the authorities tried hopelessly to evacuate the panicking masses, but getting away was impossible. In no time at all every major road was blocked solid with traffic, and the monster simply kicked its way through the constant traffic jams without a care. It destroyed a reservoir in a fit of rage, stamping on a dam and flooding acres of heavily populated streets. A hospital was demolished when it 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.

A large section of the city center had, at least, been partially cleared as people who fled in terror mixed with those unaware of the approaching threat who were heading home from work. In a last-ditch attempt to divert the creature, Major Hawkins launched an aerial attack.

The first fighter planes raced toward their target and fired, their munitions barely even registering on the monster’s tough, leathery skin. More through luck than judgment, 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, spiraling 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 grotesque man-monster, studying the stretches and folds and impossible angles of the horrific beast as he fell from the sky.

Several other jets met with a similar fate, as did a tank that was unwittingly crushed under the monster’s foot like an empty soda can as it continued to approach the center of town. It marched between massive office buildings, at eye level with their high roofs, knocking one of them over as if it were made of cardboard. How many people were still in there, Hawkins wondered from a distance. How many more are going to die?

An iconic shopping center was destroyed in seconds, rubble raining down over the suburbs, severed electrical connections and small explosions lighting up the scene like camera flashes. A historic cathedral that had proudly stood for hundreds of years, wiped out in minutes. The destruction was apparently without end.

Major Hawkins readied himself to make the call he’d been dreading and consign the monster, the city, and hundreds of thousands of people to a white-hot nuclear fate. He watched the beast in the distance, his mouth dry and his pulse racing. Around him his soldiers stood their ground, nervously waiting to engage despite knowing now that their weapons were useless. Some turned and ran, desperate to get away before either the aberration attacked or they were wiped out by whatever godawful weapons the powers-that-be were forced to resort to using.

Hawkins paused when the creature’s ex-wife burst into his truck and demanded to speak to him. The scientists and the generals had failed to come up with anything useful. She convinced him to hear her out before he did anything he’d regret. Goddammit, he thought as he listened to her, this was just like something from one of those bloody movies he couldn’t get out of his head. “Let me see him,” she’d pleaded. “Just let me try to talk to him.”

What harm could it do when so much had already been lost? It had to be worth a try. The intensity of the aberration’s attacks were increasing, more lives lost with every second. Hawkins was running out of options.

Glen didn’t know which way to turn. Where do I go now? He was still deep in the heart of the city and, to his horror, had leveled much of it. If he bent down and squinted into the confusion below he could see the full extent of the damage he’d caused. He’d taken out a loan for a car six months ago, and it had been his pride and joy. Today he’d destroyed thousands of vehicles — all of them belonging to someone like him. He’d demolished homes like the one he’d once shared with Della and Ash. Worst of all were the bodies. He hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone. How would he have felt if this had happened to someone else and Ash had been killed in the fallout? Glen lifted his head and roared with pain, the volume of his pitiful cry shattering the last few remaining windows and causing numerous already badly damaged buildings to collapse.

Let this be over.

My body hurts.

Please let this stop.

Surrounded by soldiers, Della walked through the parkland, Cresswell chasing after her. Ash held the doctor’s hand, his constant sobbing audible even over the sounds of distant fighting.

“You can’t do this,” Cresswell protested. “Della, listen to me!”

“No, Anthony, you listen to me,” she said, turning back to face him. “If there’s anything of Glen left inside that thing, then he’ll listen to me.”

“I won’t let you.”

“You can’t stop me.”

With that she turned and walked on, her armed guard forming a protective bubble around her, leading her out toward the expanse of grassland they were trying to direct the creature toward. She could see his outline in the distance now, a huge black shadow towering over the tombstone ruins of the city. High overhead a phalanx of helicopters flew out toward the monster in formation, each of them focusing a searchlight on the ground below. She waited nervously for them to return, wrapping her arms around herself to keep out the cold.

It happened with surprising speed and ease. The creature seemed to be distracted by the helicopters, and it immediately moved toward them, perhaps realizing that, as they hadn’t attacked, their intentions were peaceful. Della’s heart began to thump in time with its massive footsteps as it neared, and she caught her breath when it seemed to lose its footing for a moment. It lashed out and swatted one of the choppers as if it were a nuisance fly, knocking it into its nearest neighbor and sending both of them crashing down to the ground in a ball of metal and swollen flame. How many people died just then, she wondered. How many more died when the wreckage hit the ground? How many people has Glen killed?

The aberration moved closer, coming clearly into view now, illuminated by the remaining helicopters, which soared higher until they were out of its massive reach. Della looked up at it in disbelief, stunned by the size of the damn thing, and also by the fact that despite the huge level of deformation, she could still clearly see that it was Glen. Its immense frame was grossly misshapen, but there was something about the shape of its mouth and the way it held its head that she recognized; the jawline that both he and Ash had, the color of those eyes …

When the creature saw the soldiers around its feet, it leaned down and roared. Della thought it sounded like a cry for help rather than an attacking scream, but the military clearly thought otherwise. One of the troopers nearest to her raised his rifle, and the monster picked him up between two enormous fingers and tossed him away. She watched the body fly through the air and hit a tree, and cringed when she heard a sharp cracking sound — either the tree trunk or the soldier’s bones. The monster roared again, and this time its force was such that she was blown off her feet. Another soldier rushed to help her up. She got to her feet and shook him off, then ran out toward the creature.

“Glen!” she yelled. “Glen, it’s me, Della.”

The aberration went to swipe her out of the way, but stopped. It lowered its huge head and stared at her. Then, after a pause of a few seconds that felt like forever, it leaned back and crashed down onto its backside, the force of impact like an earthquake. Della’s armed guard held back, more out of fear than anything else, though what difference a couple of meters would make was debatable in the circumstances.

“I just want to know why, Glen,” she said, still walking closer, not sure whether it could hear or understand her. “All those people killed, and for what? I know you must have been scared, in pain even, but why …?”

The monster stared at her, eyes squinting, trying to focus, massive pupils dilating and constricting. Then it lifted its head to the skies and roared louder than ever.

On the ground a single figure ran through the trees. Cress-well weaved around the soldiers who stood frozen to the spot, staring up at the massive creature, and grabbed Della.

“Come with me, Della,” he said, trying to drag her away. “That’s not Glen anymore. Damn thing can’t understand you. Stay here and it’ll kill you. You’ve got Ash and me to think about and — ”

He stopped talking when he realized the Chambers creature was looking straight at him, glowering down. He began to back away, cowering in fear, but there was no escape. A single massive hand wrapped around him and tightened, its grip so strong that every scrap of oxygen was forced from his body. The monster lifted him up and held its arm back as if it were about to throw the doctor into the distance.

“Dad! Dad, don’t!”

Glen stopped.

Had he just imagined that? For a second he swore he’d heard Ash’s voice, but how could it have been? He pulled his long arm back again, ready to hurl Cresswell out of his life forever. Out of all of their lives …

“No, Dad, please.”

Glen looked down and saw his son standing in front of him. And suddenly, nothing else mattered. He stretched out and dropped Cresswell far enough away not to have to think about him, then carefully moved Della and the remaining soldiers out of the way, too. Ash stood in front of his dad, completely alone and looking impossibly small.

“Hello, Big Man,” Glen wanted to say but couldn’t. “I’m sorry, Ash, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

“You okay, Dad?”

“Not really,” he didn’t say as he gently picked his son up and held him close to his face. Ash sat down cross-legged on the palm of his father’s hand.

“I’ve been worried about you.”

“Me too, Ash.”

“They’ve been saying all kinds of things about you,” Ash said, pausing to choose his next words carefully. Glen’s heart seemed to pause, too. “But I don’t believe them. I mean, I know you are a monster now, anyone can see that, but I know you didn’t want to be one. I don’t think you wanted to hurt them all. I kept trying to tell the man that you didn’t mean for any of it to happen. I told him to try and imagine how you must be feeling. You’re big and strong and everything, but I bet you’re scared.”

“I am.”

“I said they should leave you alone. I said they should find you somewhere big to rest, maybe build a big house or something like that, then let the doctors work out how they’re going to get you back to normal again.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen, sunshine. I think it’s too late now.”

“I miss you, Dad. I’ve been really scared.”

“I’ve missed you, too.”

“They said you were coming back here to kill everyone, and I told them that was crap. I said you were coming to see me. Was I right, Dad?”

“You were right, son. I just wanted to see you again. Just one more time …”

Glen Chambers sat in the park with his son in his hand and listened to him talking until his massively engorged, broken heart could no longer keep him alive.