Lesser Beasts

 

 

… if suddenly there was a threat to this world from some other species from another planet outside in the universe, we would forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries and we would find out once and for all that we are all human beings here on this Earth together.

—Ronald Reagan, speaking to Mikhail Gorbachev,

The New York Times, December 5, 1985

 

In the darkness, he lay next to her in bed and said, “The French were out, we were in. A few of them had the guts to tell us what we were up against, and the lid came down. Even Moscow came in on the cover story because they knew we had to stop the alien invasion in secret, or not at all.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked. “We were the only aliens in Vietnam.”

“Think so?” he said. “Then you bought the cover story like everyone else.”

A match snapped. The flame cast the shadow of his hand across the ceiling. Chrissy listened to him take a drag and exhale. The cigarette was a small red star in the darkness.

“It’s the truth,” he said in a strained voice, and she realized with a start that he was about to confess something he had held back for a long time. Maybe now she would find out why they were no good together. He might say something that would change her mind about leaving him.

Guilt and fear mingled with her sorrow for him. Left alone, he might kill himself, or wipe out a fast-food place, or something as stupid. She felt that he needed to win out over something, kill whatever was eating him inside. She had struggled not to hate or pity him, even though he had become shabby, inviting contempt; the time was near when she could no longer hold back.

“You think it’s just a tall story, don’t you?” he asked.

She patted his arm to ease the bitterness she felt flowing from him.

He jabbed her in the ribs with his elbow. “When they take over and make you fuck them, you’ll know it’s true!”

She was silent, cowed by his vehemence.

He put out his cigarette, then took her with a great show of determination. She disappeared into his rage.

He was afraid of something, so he bullied her to drive out his fear.

“What is it?” she whispered when he was still. “Tell me.” She had not tried to fake her enjoyment of him, and that made her feel guilty.

“They sit inside human beings and steal our pleasures,” he mumbled with tears on his face. “One day we’ll all fuck for them. No more love, no kids, no future.”

“What are you saying?” she asked, unable to accept the thought that he was insane, desperate to justify what he had done in Vietnam.

He rolled onto his back next to her. She took a deep breath.

“Tell me about it,” she said, afraid. “I’ll listen. How else can I understand you, Nick?”

She tensed, expecting to be struck, but he only laughed. “Sure, but I know you’re only playing along because you’re afraid of me. You won’t believe until I show you.”

“What do you mean?” she asked gently.

“There’s a base in the forest,” he said in a stranger’s creaky voice. “It’s been there nearly forty years. It kills when you come near it, just like a bug zapper. So we could only get at them when they were away from the base, which wasn’t often, but I ran into one. It was almost the first thing that happened to me over there. I killed the thing by pure dumb luck, firing wild. A few weeks later I went back and picked up the small bones that were left. I got them with me.”

She waited for him to continue, fearful of infuriating him with any sign of skepticism.

“They’re about a foot tall, but they remind you of a spider with four legs. They sit on your back like children, and their probe-cables reach into your heart and brain, and into your genitals, so they can give you what you need, as a reward.” He lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply.

She felt that way with him, that she had to pacify him sexually, so he wouldn’t hurt her.

“Can you show me the bones?” she asked, instantly regretting the question.

“Sure,” he replied calmly and turned on the light. He got out of bed, stumbled to the closet, and rummaged around in the old chest that he kept there.

At the heart of every delusion there had to be a real hurt, she thought, watching his wiry body bend over the chest.

“Here it is,” he said, dangling a string of small bones from his right hand as he came back to bed. He rattled them at her and puffed on his cigarette until the ash fell off. “These are alien, from inside a creature that evolved countless light-years away.” He rattled them again, as if that were proof by itself. “Yeah, I know it’s not much, but they’re enough for me. You’d need a lab to show you they’re not like anything from here.” He was silent for a moment. “I’m glad I killed one of them.”

He put the bones carefully on the night table, crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray, and got back into bed.

“Do you want to hear more or not?” he demanded.

“I really do,” she said softly, swallowing. He was sweating heavily, she noticed.

“The base is there,” he insisted. “People disappear in that area. The Nam fight got all mixed into it, but it gave us the perfect cover to go in. Expeditions were sent to penetrate the base. My company went in toward the last charted zapper perimeter, but we didn’t know the aliens had moved it, so half of us were fried as we walked into the field. Fast. A flash—and you were a pile of bones and warm dust. But this time they decided to take specimens. The rest of us were only knocked senseless and taken inside the base, where we awoke in these strange tanks filled with liquid. We’d be conscious for a while, then drift off into endless dreams. I’d come to, shivering and hungry, shriveled like a prune in the slimy wetness, and I’d listen to the others crying as they dreamed.”

“But you got out. How’d you do that?”

“Maybe I didn’t, and my whole life is just one of their dreams that I can’t shake.” His voice broke, and she thought that he would weep, but he only turned on his side and looked at her with his brown eyes. She saw that he hadn’t gotten out; he was still back there in every way that mattered. “I think they just threw me out with the garbage one day,” he continued bitterly. “Maybe I just didn’t respond well enough to their dream probes. I awoke in the jungle, under a pile of naked bodies. I knew who they were, though you couldn’t have recognized any of them. I reached around for their dog tags, but they were gone.” He pressed his lips together for a moment. “I was supposed to have died in that pile, Chrissy, but I got up and went through the jungle until I scared a bunch of women who were doing their wash. I was a skeleton. I should’ve died, Chrissy.”

She was trying to believe every word he said, in the way that victims of kidnappers believe their captors, because they have to.

He looked at her without blinking, as if she didn’t exist. “I didn’t remember any of it for a while after I got home,” he said. “The tank—they came into the liquid with us, attached themselves to our backs. They made us screw each other. Take a look here!”

He showed her two old scars on his back. They still looked like knife wounds to her, as described in his medical report.

“That’s where they connected into me, Chrissy! But I must not have been any good to them, so they just threw me away!”

He’d see her leaving him as being thrown away again, she thought.

“But I’m alive, and I’m going to kill as many of them as I can! I’m going to get them for what they did—and are still doing. People are still there, our people, floating around like marinating meat; and they’ve got no one to get them out!” He was shaking as he spoke. She tried to rub his shoulder, but he pushed her away.

“Nick,” she said as he trembled, “why hasn’t this been made public?”

He seemed to calm down. “Because human beings are soft, Chrissy,” he said with a weary irony. “They’d seek contact with the invader, talk as if to God. Only a few understand the danger. It’s better that most of humanity doesn’t know.”

“Why have they come, Nick? Just to be mean?”

“They’re studying us, finding out what we’re like inside. Once they really know what pushovers we are, they’ll move against the whole world.”

“Nick, try to understand that all I know is what you say.”

He grimaced. “Yeah, sure, I know. Do you want to wake up as a component in some alien mind? That’s another thing they’re here for, to get parts.”

She was silent, afraid to push him with another critical question.

“They take bits and pieces of us,” he continued, “and make patchwork minds. If they get a hybrid they like, they make it reproduce itself. They like to collect odd logic patterns from the minds and nervous systems of alien species. It gives them new ways of looking at the universe. They’re greedy for strange ways of seeing and feeling.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

He touched her hand. There was no trembling in him now. “Believe me, I know,” he said. “I’ve killed a few of them right here in the streets.”

“What?” she asked, afraid.

He looked at her with a vast, pitying conviction as he held her limp hand. “You want to think I’m crazy so you won’t have to believe me.”

“But Nick, you’ve got it so twisted. Can’t you see? You don’t have to believe these things. What happened to you was bad enough. Look what it made you think.”

He laughed suddenly, and she was relieved that he wasn’t going to get violent. Maybe he’d been putting her on all along?

“You don’t know anything,” he said coldly. “How could you? But they’re right here in Miami, coming in from Central America, walking around as if they were people. I’ll show you.”

“And you want to stop them?”

He shrugged. “As many as I can. They have to be stopped.”

 

Nick was gone when she awoke the next morning. She dressed and crossed the canal to her sister’s house.

Marie seemed to listen patiently.

“I’m so afraid,” Chrissy said, “when I think of what my life has become. He was so different once.”

“Was he?” Marie asked distantly.

“Oh, he never talked much, but I always knew he cared deeply about me. It’s not so strange for him to open like this and tell me these crazy things. I’m glad he wants to tell me—”

“Has he got a new job?” Marie asked, sounding bored.

“He did, at the bakery, but they fired him for some reason. He wouldn’t tell me why. Maybe he quit; I don’t know. I’m out looking, but we’re okay until the unemployment runs out.”

“Maybe you should get him to see a psychiatrist,” Marie said, sipping her coffee and looking out the kitchen window. Chrissy noticed the wrinkles on her sister’s neck.

“He’d never go.”

Marie looked at her fixedly. “How about the Veterans Administration?”

“They don’t encourage vets to come to them,” she said bitterly, “—not with mental problems.”

Marie looked at her even more carefully, making her nervous with her scrutiny. Chrissy knew what she was thinking: silly blonde bitch, you’re better looking than I am, and you stay with that runt.

“You don’t think he’s really nuts, do you?” Marie asked.

Chrissy’s stomach churned.

“Look,” Marie continued, “why does it have to be your job? He’s a pathetic killer ape, who went like a sheep when they drafted him, and bullied an agricultural people he knew nothing about. I don’t hold the other side was any better, but you’ll be an old hag by the time you get your life together again, if you ever do.”

“You’re being too hard on him,” Chrissy whispered, holding back tears.

“It’s up to you. Either get some help for him or leave. You’re wasting your life away. I’ll put you up for as long as you need.”

Chrissy looked at her sister. Marie was too ready to have her come stay with her. She was lonely, but wouldn’t admit it. She didn’t like to remember that her man had spent the war at a desk and had been killed while typing, by a mortar shell, just a few days before the abandonment of Saigon.

“I can’t leave him now,” Chrissy said, “not yet anyway. He wants to prove to me that what he’s saying is true. I don’t know what to do.”

Marie shrugged and took another sip of coffee. “Then go with him. What’s the harm? It’ll prove he’s screwy.”

 

The noon sun was hot on Chrissy’s head as she came out of her sister’s house and walked back to the canal cross-bridge. Sweat ran down her face, and she resented that Nick took the car. It was a wreak, but he kept it working, even the aged air conditioning. She remembered the Chevy when it had been new, when Nick had first dated her in high school. They’d made love in the back seat, and he’d gotten very quiet and held her for a long time after. The future had been wide open. They would grow closer together, no matter what happened. She had been so sure of that.

She stopped at the small bridge. A man was coming across. He was overdressed, wearing a long coat, his head hunched down. He passed her and she started across. Halfway, she paused and looked back. He was hurrying and the heat didn’t seem to bother him at all. She turned away.

As she came off the bridge, she remembered how helpful Nick had been in finding her a job after graduation. He’d been so earnest, buying her newspapers, collecting letters of recommendation from friends, giving her advice on how she should dress. He had smiled a lot. Suddenly, she wanted him to be right about what he had told her. She’d have to leave him if he was crazy. Could she leave him if he was sick? Could she be so heartless? No—she’d force him to get help, no matter what it took. Marie was right about that part.

She stopped and looked back across the bridge. The darkly clothed man had stopped and was looking at her. Her stomach tightened, but then she saw that his lack of motion was an illusion; the figure was still receding, rippling in the heat waves. The sun was getting to her, she thought as she turned away and strode up the palm-lined walk toward her house.

 

It was a hot, muggy August evening when Nick took her alien-hunting. Chrissy went along because she hoped to convince him to get some help.

They took the bus downtown. Nick let her window-shop for a while. Then they went into Walgreen’s on Flagler and had tall milk shakes at the soda fountain. Nick seemed calmer. He even smiled as he finished his chocolate shake, as if he were glad to be with her. Suddenly, it seemed possible that he would forget all about the things he had told her, and their lives would begin anew.

“See that guy there, Chrissy,” Nick said as they came out on the street, “the one with the heavy sport coat? He’s one of them.”

“But why him?” she asked with dismay.

“He’s overdressed, for one thing.”

She remembered the overdressed man on the canal bridge.

“Is that all you’re going on?” she demanded.

“There’s a feeling coming out of him,” Nick said. “You can’t pick it up yet.”

He took her hand. She felt numb as they followed the man. He stopped at a Cuban coffee stand. They pretended to window-shop as the man downed the small cup of black liquid.

“They’re so arrogant,” Nick said as the man went on his way. “We’re only beasts to them, but this critter will surprise him.”

He’s only a Cuban merchant, she thought, a bit underweight and sensitive to chills, nothing more. He’d notice us if he were anything else.

The man turned right at the white-washed walls of the Gesu Parochial School and continued on until he came to the railroad tracks. Nick let go of Chrissy’s hand and waited for him to cross.

“Come on!” he hissed at her suddenly.

Chrissy hurried across after him, as if he were about to disappear over the edge of the world.

A chill passed through her as a squall came in off the Atlantic. Dust blew up on the sidewalks. Coconuts fell off nearby palm trees. On the far side of the tracks, the Cuban slipped into a driveway between two wood-frame houses. Nick disappeared after him.

It wasn’t a driveway, but a narrow street, she saw as she caught up. Nick was creeping up behind the Cuban. She watched in a trance as Nick chopped him on the back of the neck and the man collapsed. Nick had been so fluidly matter-of-fact about it.

She watched anxiously as Nick took out his knife.

“No, don’t!” she shouted suddenly and ran forward.

Nick pushed her away as she tried to grab his arm, and sliced open the man’s coat.

“Nick, don’t!” she pleaded, unable to speak above a whisper.

The stranger had a lot of body hair, she noticed as Nick cut away the coat and white shirt.

“Nick, please!” she shouted, looking around at the windows.

“Shut up, will you?” He held the knife near the man’s neck.

It was all over. Nick was crazy. She had lost him.

“Come here!” he shouted. “Touch it! Be sure!”

“Nick, we’ve got to get out of here! Someone will see us!” She saw herself visiting him in prison, waiting for him to die.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her into a squat over the body.

“Look!”

Her vision blackened for a moment, then she saw the thing on the man’s back. It looked like a bruise buried deep in the muscles, shaped like a spider, but the center was still on the surface.

“Touch it!” Nick ordered.

She drew back, but he grabbed her hand and forced it into the sliminess. She felt a sudden thrill as she handled it, feeling the soft textures, and she knew that it didn’t want to be handled and known in this way. Rain began to fall. The wet, sluglike center seemed to fluoresce as she squeezed it, knowing that she held it at the edge of death. Her feelings raced, building into pride for her man and hatred for the alien enemy. Nick had been a hero of humanity in Vietnam.

She cried out in relief and triumph as Nick cut the invader with his big knife. Alien blood oozed over the Cuban’s back and was washed away by the rain. Nick lifted the man’s head and cut his throat. Red blood ran with blue on the asphalt.

“The poor guy,” Nick said. “He won’t have to struggle anymore.”

“We’ll kill them together,” she said, gulping air as she watched the blood reach the drain. The aliens would bleed, and the earth would soak up their blood. It would serve them right for coming here.

She looked up and let the rain wash her face. When she looked back, the Cuban’s back was bare.

“They reach out and erase themselves in your mind,” Nick explained. “Then you have to feel around to find them, but they’re still there, hoping you’ll go away and give them a chance to repair themselves.”

She watched as he finished the job with his knife. The blood appeared out of nowhere, and she felt the hatred streaming from the dying alien. It was familiar. She had sensed it from the overdressed man on the canal bridge.

“More of them are coming out of Nam every year,” Nick said. “We’ll have to kill all we can find.”

She felt dizzy and grateful in the rain. The way Nick had come back, broken and empty of pride, so dedicated to a delusion, had been too much for her. But that was all over now. Aliens had come to the forests of Earth. Nick and she would hunt them down and kill them together.

 

That night, as they slept side by side, she dreamed with him, traveling deeply into the heart of his fears. His truth became her truth because it was the truth. She saw an alien fetus-thing struggling to be reborn through human flesh, and she woke up hating, full of courage.

Nick’s breathing was regular, the smell of his sweat strong. Together they had found two more invaders in the Bay Park, near the library, just after dark.

She trembled as she listened to Nick’s breathing, remembering how much she had first wanted him, despite his thoughtless manner. The aliens had reached into an ordinary human being, and had awakened a brave man to action. He was happy, now that she was with him. Everything was okay again.

 

Marie gazed at her coldly. “He made you see it, you silly bitch. He did it to himself and pulled you in with him, so you wouldn’t have to think he’s a killer.”

Chrissy felt sorry for her, but at least Marie wasn’t one of them. She couldn’t be blamed for not believing. What could she know? She had no one to set her straight.

But she has me, Chrissy thought. “I know what I saw, Marie. Come on, I’ll show you. I’ve got to.”

Marie shook her head and looked out the window. Chrissy took her hand. It was cold and trembling, nothing like the composed face.

Marie shook free. “Go away.”

“Marie, I’ve got to show you.”

“Chrissy, you’ve got to get help for yourself,” she said with a show of calm, but her voice cracked. “It’s too late for Nick, but they might still help you.”

Chrissy grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her from the kitchen chair. Marie staggered to her feet, then sat down on the floor with a thud.

“Get out of here, Chrissy! Leave me alone. You’re a nut case!”

“It’s okay—honest, it’s okay,” Chrissy said, helping her up. “Come with me and you’ll see for yourself, you’ll see!”

Marie pushed her away.

“We’ll all be together,” Chrissy said.