Shambling Towards Hiroshima Read online

  “Do you realize you’re on in thirty-five minutes?” Joy asked.

  “You let us down,” Gladys said.

  “We’re very disappointed,” Mabel said.

  “Most unprofessional of you,” Obie said.

  “You’ll never work in this desert again,” Whale said.

  “Boil me in oil!” I shouted. “Tear out my teeth! But right now we’ve got a war to win!”

  Yordan scowled, perhaps annoyed that he hadn’t thought of that line himself, then ordered the transport detail to retrieve the PRR. As the sailors carried Gorgantis into the atelier, the admiral explained that he was about to rejoin the Jap delegation, presently finishing their luncheon in the officer’s mess. Before taking off in his staff car, he made a tactical decision to clasp my shoulder, offer me an affirming smile, and wish me luck.

  While Mabel replenished my oxygen cylinder and fueled the flamethrower, Gladys suited me up with her usual cool professionalism, refusing to let her spleen find its way to her fingers. Halfway through the process, Whale reached out with both hands and squeezed my left claw, while Joy accorded my torso a similarly reassuring hug. Perhaps their affection was entirely pragmatic, intended only to shore up this unreliable actor in whom so many of their personal ambitions were invested, but I preferred to believe they’d forgiven me.

  Dr. Groelish revealed that the unveiling of the sedated giant lizards had been a great success, with Marquis Kido, Deputy Minister Kase, Chief Secretary Sakomizu, Information Director Shimomura, and their translator struggling unsuccessfully to banish the infinite awe from their normally impassive faces. The exhibition of the tranquilized dwarfs had also gone well, with the emissaries apparently getting no inkling that when fully awake these creatures were pussycats. Thus far the day’s only unexpected development was the delegation’s request for permission to document their mission on motion picture film. Anticipating the Navy’s assent, the emissaries had brought along two professional cinematographers and a pair of silent 35mm Kinarris acquired years ago from their German allies.

  “Did Strickland say yes?” Whale asked.

  “Reluctantly,” Dr. Groelish replied. “He forbade them to use artificial lighting on the giants, lest they become aroused.”

  “Their footage of Blondie, Dagwood, and Mr. Dithers will be underexposed,” Whale said, “but the attack on Shirazuka should turn out fine, Obie’s lighting being brilliant in both senses of the word.”

  “Thank you,” Obie said.

  “So the behemoths really unnerved them?” I asked.

  “Marquis Kido wanted to know how many such weapons we had in our arsenal,” Dr. Groelish said. “I could hear the anxiety in his voice. Naturally Strickland didn’t tell him.”

  “Secretary Sakomizu insisted that only barbarians would inflict such monsters on cities,” Joy said. “Barzak shut him up with the Rape of Nanking.”

  “Minister Kase predicted that, whatever the outcome of the war, the prevailing powers will engage in a lizard race,” Dr. Groelish said. “Strickland responded that the outcome of the war was not in doubt, and Mr. Kase should stop pretending otherwise.”

  “Mr. Shimomura asserted that a carefully choreographed air strike, artillery barrage, or armored attack would easily lay the behemoths low,” Joy said. “It was all bluster, of course.”

  “Done!” Mabel said, shaking a final drop of gasoline into my tail.

  “Voilà!” Gladys said, activating the last zipper. “Four minutes ahead of schedule!” Dr. Groelish said. “All hail the Monogram Shambler!” Joy said. “Sink their fleet,” Whale instructed me. “Smash their planes. Crush their artillery. Melt their tanks. Break a leg.”

  Entombed in the bathyscaphe, my neoprene habitat resounding with my rubbery breaths, my stomach undergoing colonization by a hundred epileptic butterflies, I inevitably thought of the agonies suffered by the nameless narrator of Poe’s “The Premature Burial.” Although the tale ends happily, with the protagonist getting cured of his catalepsy, most of the story concerns his morbid anticipation of untimely interment. I knew the key passage by heart, having made it the centerpiece of my unsuccessful audition for a role that ultimately went to Lugosi, the diabolical Legendre in White Zombie, and now snippets returned to me like bits of flotsam washing up on a beach.

  “The unendurable oppression of the lungs — the stifling fumes of the damp earth — the rigid embrace of the narrow house — the blackness of the absolute night — the unseen but palpable presence of the conqueror worm.”

  Admiral Yordan recited his opening monologue, insisting that for even the bravest warrior there could be no honor, only meaningless obliteration, in taking the field against a raging behemoth. This time around, the speech made me squirm. Our job was not to tell the Japanese what to think about the lizards, but to show them that when such weapons were unleashed, what followed was unthinkable.

  The music began. Today Waxman’s dissonant and distressing overture sounded didactic, a sermon spun from notes instead of words. Next came more of Yordan’s folderol, his pretentious conjuration of Gorgantis from the depths of the sea.

  “The doors of hell open! The beast rises! Doom comes to Shirazuka!”

  As the grand “Gorgantis Theme” resonated through the bathyscaphe, I flooded the chamber, squeezed through the hatch, and assumed my crouch. Should I open the oxygen cylinder? No, I decided. Better to hold that invaluable commodity in reserve, using it to keep from blacking out at the height of the conflagration.

  Abruptly I stood erect, crashing through the surface of the bay. The water came up to my waist. I was not a happy monster. We had insulted the emissaries. My isinglass peepholes disclosed the moonlit harbor with its seven anchored warships, riding the tide. Our scale-model Japanese fleet now seemed like yet another affront, gratuitously reminding the delegation that their nation no longer had a navy. What was the intended subtext of Brenda’s script? Was she saying to our visitors, “Look, foolish warriors, even if the gods gave you a new armada, it would avail you nothing”?

  I began with the carriers, scooping the Akagi out of the water — in reality, the Japs had lost that one at Midway — while simultaneously seizing the Shinano, which had actually been torpedoed and sent to the bottom on its shakedown cruise. Fighters and dive bombers spilled into the bay like pawns tumbling from an upended chess board. As in the rehearsal, I smacked the two flight decks together. Waxman’s percussionist provided the cymbal crash. I hurled the fractured carriers aside with the insouciance of a chimpanzee tossing away a banana peel. The twisted hulks hit the water and vanished.

  Smoke gushing from their stacks, searchlights blazing from their bridges, the remainder of the fleet steamed out to meet the threat, two destroyers, two heavy cruisers, and the late, great dreadnought Yamato, mysteriously resurrected following her heroic suicide run of the previous April. The five warships encircled Gorgantis, ravenous sharks moving in for the kill. A thunderous volley shook the bay. As the musicians played the cue called “Floating Fortresses,” barrages of shells pelted my leathery skin like horizontal sleet. Mindful of Whale’s insistence that we should give the enemy false hopes, I pretended to reel under the fusillade — which wasn’t difficult, for Obie had loaded the warships’ guns with far more cordite than necessary, so that half the BB’S ripped through the PRR and then my street clothes, nicking the bare skin beneath. Thanks to Obie’s red-dye blisters, streams of blood were soon coursing down the monster’s chest, glistening in the moonlight like trails left by iridescent slugs. I squeezed my roar-bulb. Gorgantis bellowed and swished his tail, stirring up a tsunami in Toyama Bay that nearly caused the remainder of the fleet to founder.

  Balling my claws, raising them high, I launched my counterattack. Relentlessly I hammered the destroyers, staving in their hulls and sending them instantly to the bottom. Next I vented my wrath on the heavy cruisers, pounding both warships until the roiling deep swallowed them forever. When it came to dispatching the Yamato, I decided to improvise. Clasping the vessel in b
oth claws, I extended my arms and relaxed my grip. The dreadnought plummeted. My rising foot broke its fall, instep crashing into keel, and the Yamato became instantly airborne, flying across Shirazuka, glancing off Mount Onibaba, and hurtling into the blackness beyond.

  Having won the Battle of Toyama Bay, I now began my trek toward shore, when suddenly a burst of unscripted violence intruded upon the demonstration. To this day I’m not sure how I received my wound. Probably I stepped on the fractured deck of a sunken warship, the jagged edge tearing through the behemoth’s right heel, penetrating my tennis shoe, and burrowing into the flesh beyond. I squeezed my roar-bulb, so that Gorgantis’s mighty cry drowned out my screams of pain.

  Clumsily I heaved myself onto dry land, my warm blood pooling inside the breached cavity of the lizard’s leg. I hoped Whale was correct when he said a vulnerable monster would best serve our purpose, because for the rest of the show the emissaries would get just that, Gorgantis the humbled, the crippled, struggling to stay upright. Keep going, Syms. You can do this. Move your goddamn flat feet, first the good one — yes, yes — next the right — oh, shit — next the left — yes — the right — shit — the left, the right, left, right. You are the undying dragon, the immortal maggot, the unconquerable worm.

  Even in my tormented condition I could appreciate the luminous beauty of a nocturnal passenger train, flashing through the Far Eastern darkness to Waxman’s scherzo, its blazing lamps illuminating the conversations, card games, and reading matter of a thousand weary travelers. But the universe of Überweapons is bereft of aesthetics. For an enraged lizard, the many-windowed creature riding the trestle was merely a rival reptile. It must be torn from its tracks and devoured.

  I squeezed my roar-bulb. As Gorgantis bellowed and swished his tail, crushing warehouses, ship berths, gantries, and other waterfront installations, his serrated teeth parted, and I crammed the great luminous serpent into the gaping maw. The monster chewed, mashing a dozen coaches and their helpless riders, while the rest of the train — locomotive, tender, unswallowed cars — dribbled from both sides of his mouth like a string of sausages.

  Directly ahead stretched one of Obie’s most exquisite creations, a row of high-tension power lines marking the border between the harbor and the city proper. Gorgantis charged into the mesh, his feet uprooting the towers like so many croquet hoops, his claws slashing through the cables like an actor batting away cobwebs on a Monogram sound stage. Showers of sparks arced across the moonlit sky. Per Whale’s direction, I pretended to suffer a near electrocution — not a difficult deception, for, as with the Japanese naval guns, Obie had overdone it, supplying the cables with far more juice than he’d used in the rehearsal.

  It had been a night to remember, but now the moon set, the sun rose, and the birds awoke, as if roused by Waxman’s ominous “Dawn” cue. The bleeding beast gathered his strength. His wounded heel throbbed. Again he roared. And the evening and the morning were the first act.

  Perhaps the pain in my foot prevented me from thinking clearly, but an unfathomable compassion now seized my reptilian soul. How many brave Japanese sailors had I drowned by the light of the moon? How many night watchmen had I killed? How many insomniac strollers, graveyard-shift stevedores, and travelers on the Imperial Railway?

  No, Syms. You’ve got it backwards. Heed Jimmy Whale’s wisdom. Go down to the muck. Become the worst of all possible Calibans, for only then will the Knickerbocker behemoths stay where they belong, torpid on the floor of China Lake. Become a true son of Sycorax, bile pouring from your heart, curses spewing from your lips. “‘As wicked dew as e’er my mother brushed with raven’s feather from unwholesome fen,’” I growled under my breath, “‘drop on you both!’“

  Cruelty renewed, depravity regained, I shuffled through the ruins of the harbor, my hurt foot leaving a bright red ribbon on the terrain. The wound still smarted, but I sensed that the clotting process had begun. Peering through my peepholes, I surveyed the remaining targets: the immediate city, its slumbering suburbs, and finally, north of the Kosugi River, the mountains where dwelled holy Hirohito, descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu. Beyond the peaks, I dimly apprehended another realm, the world of Operation Fortune Cookie, including the two Japanese cinematographers, cranking away with their silent Kinarris, plus the four emissaries — my captive audience — sitting high above in their sealed balcony, and farther still, in the darkest corner of Hangar A, the orchestra, working to unnerve the delegation with Waxman’s discordant “Inferno Theme.”

  Stay in character, Syms. You are the id-thing, the hag-spawned horror, hurling invectives at your despicable master. “‘All the infections that the sun sucks up from bogs, fens, flats on Prosper fall,’” I hissed to myself, “‘and make him by inchmeal a disease!’”

  Done. I’d touched bottom. Here in the belly of the behemoth I’d met my primal Caliban. The urge to burn — to burn, decimate, slaughter, and slay — rushed through me like the strongest sexual desire a vertebrate might ever know. But first I must switch on my oxygen. I set my palm against the lizard’s navel, creating a friction fit between my skin and the valve. Deftly, subtly, I rotated the handle, then leaned back on my haunches and waited for the lizard’s interior climate to change.

  Nothing. No whisper of escaping gas. No cool rush of air. Was the mechanism broken? Had Gladys and Mabel accidentally installed an empty cylinder? Don’t panic, Syms. Be a serene killing machine, a mellow abomination, a plague as pacific as a corpse.

  I had no choice but to proceed with the dismantling of Shirazuka — and so I did, aligning Gorgantis’s snout with the heart of the city and squeezing the burn-bulb. A great gush of fire jetted from the dragon’s mouth, and soon a dozen office buildings, apartment complexes, and department stores were in flames. I squeezed the roar-bulb. Releasing a demon scream, Gorgantis whipped his tail and swept a jumbled mass of cars, buses, trolleys, and flaming rubble into an uptown neighborhood. For the next ten minutes the behemoth pursued this remorseless strategy, alternately crisping the city with his fiery lungs and battering it with his juggernaut tail. I did not neglect the personal touch. Reaching down, I grabbed a bunch of helpless citizens and, as in the rehearsal, popped them into my jaws. The Lilliputians lodged in the back of Gorgantis’s throat like a cluster of mutant tonsils.

  Just as I feared, the holocaust soon created an intolerable atmosphere inside my PRR. Saltwater erupted from my scalp and rushed into my eyes. Smoke leaked through the BB holes in my hide. My every breath was a great wheezing gust. I coughed convulsively. When the Imperial Air Force appeared, they met an enemy much weaker than the Syms Thorley of the run-through. Today they faced a sweat-blind and half-suffocated mortal, reeling from anemia.

  The dive bombers came at me from every point of the compass, raining exploding firecrackers on my head, shoulders, chest, and thighs, even as the fighter planes shot blood blisters into my neck and groin. Obie had not stinted on the red dye, and Gorgantis was soon bleeding from a hundred fresh wounds. Given my dazed and anguished state, it was the fairest fight so far, doubtless recalling for the delegation the epiphanies of Pearl Harbor and the Indian Ocean. But the day, I vowed, would belong to the lizard. A blind behemoth was still a behemoth, a preternatural force before whom every rock, tree, river, hill, and valley in creation trembled. Transcending my distress, I lashed out in full fury, arms flailing, claws thrashing, and so it was that, bomber by bomber, fighter by fighter, I swatted the Imperial Air Force out of the skies, sending each stricken, smoking, shrieking plane on its final flight, a vertical journey to oblivion.

  Methodically I removed my right hand from Gorgantis’s claw, then pulled the hem of my undershirt free of my trousers and pressed the cotton fabric to my eyes, sopping up the sweat. I scanned the rubble that once was Shirazuka. Before my remorseless gaze, a dozen fires smoldered. Phantom lamentations reached my ears, the screams of the maimed, the threnodies of the bereaved, the wailing of widows and orphans. And the grieving and the mourning were the second act.
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  Had it occurred on the great island of Honshu and not in a U.S. Navy airplane hangar, the defense of the Imperial Palace would have earned its rightful place among the most brilliant deployments in military history. No conventional force could have taken Mount Onibaba without causalities running into the hundreds of thousands, so astutely had General Anami arrayed his Chi-Ro tanks and field artillery along every pass, cliff, and switchback between the foothills and the lofty fortress. But a Knickerbocker behemoth was not a conventional force. Dr. Groelish’s Überweapon precluded heroic stands and noble sacrifices. Such affectations had no place in the universe of pornographic ordnance.

  Like some vast, swirling, terrestrial maelstrom, Gorgantis came storming through the Chiaki Mountains. The Japanese threw everything they had at the invader. As the ferocious engagement continued, the lizard sustained myriad wounds, so that his scaly exterior showed more blood than skin. And still he kept coming, shambling over the sharp peaks, carrying the war to His Majesty, charging to the frenzied beat of Waxman’s cue titled “Death of an Emperor.”

  Inside the PRR, nothing was going right. Torrents of sweat gushed from my brow, stinging my eyes like vindictive hornets. As with the Toyama Bay engagement, over half of the Japanese BB’S had penetrated my hide — evidently Obie had doubled the amount of cordite he’d used for in Hangar B — peppering my flesh with tiny cuts and admitting still more smoke. A coughing fit wracked my frame. The wound in my foot had opened up again. I could hear the rubbery slosh of blood against the lizard’s sole. Expressionist shadows flickered through my skull. A squidish ink suffused my mind.

  At last I could see the palace, shining in the sun, guarded by fearsome armored divisions and bristling gun batteries. Repeating a bit of business Whale had introduced during the run-through, I heated the Chi-Ro tanks until they became pliable and, snatching them up two at a time, knotted their gun barrels together — a grotesquely cartoonish gesture, the Axis Meets Bugs Bunny. My assault on the field artillery was equally decisive, though lacking the wit with which I’d dispatched the tanks. I merely used the full fury of my dragon breath, turning the cannons into shimmering metallic blobs that dotted the mountains like patches of snow.