Zombie Kong - Anthology (12 page)

She walked across the road, removed her sandals, and felt the sand on her feet. The guy at the caipi-bar smiled at her hopefully. “Later,” she told him in Spanish––he was actually from Uruguay, she’d learned––and kept walking. A single dark-skinned man was sunning himself, clad only in a zunga, about fifty meters down the beach. She knew that body.

“Hi.”

He smiled up at her, dazzling white teeth nearly blinding in the sunlight. “Hello, there
garotinha
. I didn’t think you’d be here so quickly.”

They both knew that was a lie, but Carolina ignored it and sat down beside him, enjoying the caress of the warm sand on her buttocks. “And I didn’t think you’d be up so early. When I left, I wasn’t sure whether you were alive or dead.”

He shrugged, barely moving on the sand. “I’m used to not getting much sleep. It’s par for the course.”

“What’s that?”

“Can I look later?”

“No, look now!”

He grumbled a bit, but moved. “I have no idea.” He made to lie down again, but she stopped him.

“Is it a tsunami?”

“We don’t get tsunamis in Brazil,” he replied, laconically. “Wrong sort of climate for it.”

She counted to three, reminding herself that if she wanted intelligent conversation she shouldn’t look for it from surf bums. “Look, there’s a huge lump of something dark over there. It might be a wave.” Ever since the Southeast Asian tsunami, she’d been anxious about giant swells.

“Not a wave. A wave would take up the whole horizon. Looks more like some kind of tall boar.”

She stared out onto the bay, trying to make out further details. “Grey and green? And shaped like that?”

He shrugged. “If it’s coming this way, we’ll find out what it is. Relax a little.” He reached out a hand and caressed the inside of her thigh.

She decided that the ship, or whatever it was, wasn’t so important after all, and bent over, pretending to kiss Felipe’s forehead with a move that pushed his hand into a more favorable position.

* * *

Verstappen wasn’t happy with the delay. They could have dumped the South African chemicals the day before, but the captain hadn’t wanted to do it. He’d said that the only other craft on the water, a fishing boat under Angolan registration, was probably a Soviet spy-boat in disguise.

Verstappen had responded that the Soviets couldn’t care less if a Belgian ship dumped a load of South African chemicals, but the man had refused to see reason and had sailed deeper into international waters. It hadn’t made anyone happy, especially since the most precious container on board was perched precariously on top of two others, right at the summit of the pile of metal shipping boxes.

When the storm hit, the Belgian went below in disgust, while the captain began the procedure of unloading and sinking thousands of yellow drums––some marked with biohazard warnings, others with radioactivity labels, and all with large, stenciled ‘DANGER’ signs. And though it wasn’t the first operation of this kind they’d put together for some government or other, it was always nice when the evidence was safely at the bottom of the sea. It made for much more relaxed cruising.

He’d just closed the door that separated his smallish cabin from the rest of the ship when he heard a clatter from above, as if some of the drums had gotten away from the crane operator. Verstappen smiled. If the pompous bastard of a captain had splattered his ship with radioactive tailings, it was going to be fun watching him try to get through a Geiger check at his next port of call. The Cold War seemed to be making everyone paranoid––and the seventies were probably going to be the worst decade yet. They’d certainly started off badly enough.

Footsteps on metal alerted him to someone’s approach, and Thierry poked his head in without bothering to knock. “You need to come quickly, boss,” the soldier-cum-driver said. Another crash sounded overhead.

Verstappen didn’t waste time arguing. He’d chosen his men well, trained them better. If they said he had to come, then he had to come. They ran along the passage and up to the deck.

The expected scene––drums of chemicals rolling over the container deck––was absent. Instead, Verstappen found the crew desperately trying to curb the movement of a single oversized container, the container holding the gorilla.

The enormous gorilla-like creature they’d tracked and captured had somehow managed to push a leg through the corrugated steel of the container––forcing open one of the door hinges––hinges that were as thick as a man’s leg. The free leg was pushing the container across the planking on deck, straight towards the crane. More ominous, though, was the fact that the movements weren’t designed to move the container: the gorilla was trying to get its arms free. That was unacceptable.

“Quick, bring the tranquilizers!” Verstappen shouted. Thierry ran off to get the gun crew, and Verstappen joined the captain, watching helplessly as a team armed with poles tried to immobilize the container. They seemed like flies trying to maneuver an elephant. Every once in a while, they spilled across the deck as an unexpected lurch threw them off their feet.

A single fist, almost as tall as a man, suddenly shot out of the box and flattened a pole-bearer against a bulkhead with a sickening crunch. As the man––instantly turned to jelly––slid slowly down the wall, the rest of the sailors fled.

It was just as well that they did. With a deafening roar, the fifty-foot gorilla inside the container flexed its muscles and tore the container to shreds, like a horrendous black chicken hatching from a rectangular egg. A scrap of discarded metal flew over the captain’s head and broke the forward window on the bridge tower.

“Where’s that gun?” Vertappen screamed.

Small-arms fire erupted from the deck––someone, it seemed, had managed to locate a gun or two. Verstappen wanted to tell them to stop, that they would only succeed in enraging the beast, but remained silent. Their gnat-stings would serve to distract the thing and it would concentrate on the immediate irritants while Vertappen’s own team prepped the tranquilizer gun. And who knew––maybe they would get lucky and hit something vital.

Thierry arrived with Jan, the chemist. “What dose do we need?”

Verstappen sneered. “What do you think?”

“I’ll give it everything we have.” Jan set to work on loading the glass cartridge, full of a viscous, yellowish liquid, into the wide barrel of the modified elephant gun.

Some reflection must have given them away, because suddenly, the huge gorilla turned towards them. It took less than two huge strides––maybe three seconds––for the creature to reach them.

“Shoot it! Shoot it!” Verstappen cried, as a huge hand descended onto them from high above. Jan fumbled once, twice with the unwieldy firearm before managing to press the trigger. It was the second fumble that killed them all, since it ensured that they were flattened before the dart left the muzzle. It was a pity, actually, since Jan made a beautiful shot, managing to embed the dart in a blood vessel just outside the gorilla’s right eye socket.

But, though he was dead, Verstappen was missing little that would have interested him. The captain watched with satisfaction as the drugged gorilla fell overboard to sink to the bottom of the cold, dark sea. He ordered the crew to keep dumping barrels into the ocean, not knowing that they were landing on the unconscious––soon to be drowned––gorilla. Then he had the bodies thrown off the ship.

The
Étoile Ostend
sailed off to disappear into the murk of Cold War record-keeping, never to be heard from again. The barrels, meanwhile, were breaking under the pressure of the fathoms.

* * *

“No, no!” Felipe shouted. “This way!”

Again, Carolina shook her head. The guy was trying to lead her into a structure that seemed to be made of straw and thin sticks. That… thing… would tear it away like so much paper. She ran into the cylindrical concrete structure in front of them. Felipe, cursing, followed her through the dark opening.

The first thing that hit her was the smell, as though a mammoth had died in an open sewer. “What is this place?” she whispered.

Felipe looked around, illuminated by the sunlight from the outside, and shrugged. “Utility of some kind. Probably a pumping station.”

“So that’s why it smells? This is connected to the sewer?”

Felipe, despite his obvious fear, laughed. “No, that is the smell of the
Sem Terras
. They sleep in here.”

The
Sem Terras
. As far as she knew, they were a political movement, but most Brazilians seemed to hold them in contempt, as though they were leeches on an otherwise productive social system. Carolina had her doubts––but that certainly wasn’t the time or place to express them. “What is that thing?”

He shrugged again, and again made her remember that she’d selected him more for the shape of his pecs and the washboard beneath them than for his mind. “Some kind of sea monster. First time I’ve seen it.”

“It didn’t look like a sea monster. It looked like something from land, something that shouldn’t have been in the water at all. And it looked like it had pieces falling off.”

He shrugged and said nothing.

“I’m going to have a look.” Carolina walked towards the rectangle of blinding light that marked the entrance, blinked a couple of times, and then stared. The thing approaching had to be fifteen meters high, vaguely humanoid, with slimy greenish-grey skin on which small, matted clumps of fur seemed to be barely hanging on.

Felipe had come up behind her. “It’s a gigantic monkey,” he said. “And it smells terrible!”

The creature was tearing up the beach bar that Felipe had wanted to hide inside. The screams that had been coming from that direction died down after one of its blows landed with a particularly sickening crunch. “That’s the smell from the sewage,” Carolina said.

“No way. Look, we’re downwind from the thing. It’s the monster’s smell.”

Trust a surf bum to know precisely where the wind is coming from
, she thought. But the guy was right. The smell––worse than the stink from inside the concrete bunker––was definitely coming from… well, from whatever it was. The stench was completely out of place on that beach, which should have smelled of cool breezes and coconut-scented tanning lotion.

“It sees us!” Felipe ran back into the darkness of the cylindrical building.

Carolina hesitated for a second, thinking that she had plenty of time, and also thinking that a round structure with no back door might not be the best place to avoid a charging monster.

The hesitation almost cost her her life.

Moving amazingly quick for something so big, the creature took two strides, and in the same motion, drove its gigantic fist towards the doorway. Carolina jumped back just far enough to avoid being crushed, but not quite far enough to avoid the spray of noxious slime that sluiced out of one of the fingers. She ran back towards the opposite end of the building and, forgetting for a second that Felipe was nothing but a bit of fluff, she grabbed hold of him for dear life.

The monster––the giant, the monkey, whatever it was that pursued them––began to attack the small utility building. The walls shook and dust fell in clouds from the ceiling, but the builders of the building had apparently decided that the integrity of the sewage inside was paramount, and had designed the bunker to be able to withstand anything thrown at it. A mere overgrown monster wouldn’t faze it.

“You need to go out there!” Felipe shouted.

She pushed him away. “What? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“No, really. You know how it is! These huge monsters are always weak where women are concerned. Especially beautiful women. As soon as he sees you, he’ll become as tame as a puppy.”

His charm was nearly enough to make Carolina smile, but he was as dumb as a brick. He probably didn’t have much experience with puppies, either. “He already saw me. Don’t you remember? It was just before he tried to flatten me.”

“Maybe he didn’t see you well. You were standing in the shadows.”

“I’m not going out there, and that’s final.”

The building had stopped shaking, but they could still see the monster’s shadow cutting off the bright light from outside. A huge eye, bloodshot and grey, suddenly filled the hole, followed almost instantly by a huge hand, which squeezed through the opening and groped around, trying to catch them, to squeeze the life out of them. Carolina screamed, knowing it was a stupid thing to do, but still completely unable to make herself stop. At least she could take some comfort in the fact that, right beside her, Felipe was screaming in counterpoint.

They’d pressed themselves back as far as they could go, unconcerned about what the pool of foul-smelling liquid they were lying in might be made of. Despite cramming themselves into the deepest corner, it seemed that the fist would inevitably turn them to jelly. The monster was pushing it further and further into the opening. It was three meters away. Two.

Less than an arm’s length out, it stopped. The twists of the bunker’s interior had finally thwarted any further attempt to thrust the arm inside. They could hear the creature’s enraged grunts, feeling the building shaking all around them as the monster raged.

And, though she hated herself for it, Carolina buried her face in Felipe’s chest. She knew it was pathetic, but there was no helping it. She heard him chuckle. “I can’t believe you brought your purse,” he said, his typical male obliviousness not allowing him to spot the difference between a purse and a beach bag.

A pause ensued, as if the creature were distracted by something. The giant hand menacing them stayed suspended in midair, quivering slightly, smelling like rotten fish.

Suddenly, without warning, it retreated, leaving the opening free. As sunlight poured in, they could feel the building vibrating––not violently, but as though giant footsteps were moving away. A bellow of absolute rage reached them from what was unquestionably a good distance.