The ground shook and a sound like thunder shot through the city. Austin felt the vibrations travel through the floor beneath his feet and up the legs of the chair on which he sat. He'd never been so afraid. My world is ending, he thought.
The doctor looked around, as if the source of the tremor could be found within his office. "You should have come as soon as you noticed the lump," he said. "I'm not a specialist, but your cough and backache indicate that the cancer may have spread from your testes to your lungs and lymph nodes."
Austin looked at him and the beginnings of a word formed on his lips, but the rest of his body was inert and no sound escaped him.
"I'm sorry, Mr Weaver," the doctor continued. "I'll make an emergency appointment for you at the clinic. In these circumstances, they'll fit you in tomorrow. I'll call you later at home to confirm a time."
Austin stood up from the chair, and the ground wobbled beneath him. He ached. He could feel the cancer dissolving him. He thanked the doctor and left. The people in the waiting room stared at him as he walked through and he wondered whether they'd heard what had been said. Why couldn't it have been one of these people? He thought.
Outside, the sun was baking the street, melting ice lollies, making people crazy. Austin watched the pavement as he walked. He was half aware of people running past him, of screams and exclamations. Two cars collided and then a third drove into them, but Austin barely noticed. The ground shook again, and he stumbled.
"Can I have a bottle of water, please?" He asked, struggling to free his wallet from his pocket while keeping up with the vendor.
"Are you crazy?" the vendor said. "Get out of my way."
"Just a bottle of water, come on, stop a second, I'm dying here."
"Get lost," the vendor said, then huffed to himself and opened up the freezer compartment, still running, and pulled out a Coke.
"I can't take painkillers with Coke," Austin complained.
"I don't care," the vendor coughed. "Take the whole lot."
The vendor pushed the cart off the side of the pavement and then broke into a run. Austin followed the cart to where it rolled into a parked car. He fished around in the ice and found a bottle of water. The ice compartment smoked in the hot air. He wanted to crawl into the compartment and switch himself off. He grabbed a blister pack of pills from his back pocket and unscrewed the lid of the bottle. A woman in high heels ran into him, glancing off his side, spinning round and hitting the ground. She yelped as she fell and one of her heels pinged off.
"I'm sorry," Austin said. "I didn't—"
The woman picked herself up before Austin could stoop down to her. She kicked off her shoes and ran barefoot. He watched her weaving through the hundreds of other people running in the same direction, but the sight meant nothing to him. Nothing made sense any more. He looked at the woman's shoes on the pavement. A man in a dark suit, tie loose around his neck, jumped over them as he ran to the car that Austin stood beside. He stabbed his key into the lock and looked at Austin.
"Is that your cart?" he said, climbing into the car, sweat and panic all over his face. Austin shook his head. "Get it out of the way, now, move it." The man gesticulated with his arms. Austin just stood there, watching reflections of people moving across the windscreen in front of the man's face. The man honked his horn, and Austin stepped back on to the pavement. The man slapped the steering wheel with both hands. He turned the ignition on and pushed the cart out of the way with the car. He made a five-point turn, crashing into a parked car and a lamppost alternately until he was free and sped off in the same direction that everyone was running.
Austin popped two pills. He thought about Margot, his sister. She lived about 20 minutes' walk from here. As soon as he thought about her, he needed to be with her. Margot would make sense of it all. Margot would bring comfort.
Austin floated down the street, while the stream of people flowed around him, often bumping into him in their desperation to get past. The booming sound continued every minute or so, like the slow heartbeat of the city, shaking the ground, making Austin flinch. The sun was right above his head, its rays frying his blond hair, cooking his pale skin, making freckles. His face leaked sweat, and his shirt was wet against his neck. He guzzled the remainder of the water. Looking up at the sky, he wished it would rain. He wanted the sky to crack open and wash away the heat and sweat and rinse the cancer from his body, flush him out and make him new again.
This can't be happening to me, he thought. It's some grotesque mistake. Austin had first felt the lump six months ago. He had been in the bath, holding his balls for comfort, when he'd felt something irregular, like a dried pea. He rolled his balls between his thumb and fingers and felt it again, a hard lump on the side of his right ball. He'd felt sick all day thinking about it. He knew if he went to the doctor, he'd have it chopped off. And he wondered what would happen to his sex drive if he only had one ball, or no balls? What if they had to remove both? So he left it. He would go next week when things weren't so hectic at work, when he'd been with Molly for a little longer. They'd been together for less than a year. It was too soon to be going to her with things growing on his balls. She would be disgusted. There never seemed to be a right time. There was Christmas, and then the cluster of family birthdays that occurs in February. In March, the pain started, first a dull ache, then getting worse every week. The pain terrified him. He suspected that he had testicular cancer, but he didn't want to go to a doctor and have it confirmed. While he didn't know for certain, he might not have it and every day that he might not have it was a luxury.
A month ago the pain became unbearable. He was taking paracetamol and ibuprofen pills together every four hours from the moment he woke. He couldn't concentrate at work, and it was difficult to pretend that everything was all right when he was out with Molly. After six months, he decided that he couldn't wait any longer and made the appointment. But now it was too late.
Margot weaver, Austin's sister, lived on the seventh floor of a block of flats. The corridors were full of people charging about with suitcases and the sound of television sets blaring from open doors. Someone had stuck chewing gum to the floor outside Margot's door, and he kicked at it while he waited for her to answer, releasing a stale minty smell.
"Austin," she said, her eyes wide. "What are you… thank god you're all right. Have you just come from outside? Did you see it? It's all over the news. I've been worried sick. Mum and Dad are here too."
Margot was still in her pyjamas. Austin felt a spring of tears begin to form in his eyes and blinked to hold them back. How was he going to tell them?
The flat smelled of coffee, and there were half-full cups and packets of biscuits all over the table. Mum and Dad were sitting on the sofa, perched over their knees, the faint flicker of television light shining on their eyeballs. They flashed him a quick glance as he stepped into the room, then returned their attention to the television.
"Can you believe it?" Dad said. Austin hadn't seen his Dad for a couple of months and he looked older than Austin remembered him. A wisp of white hair evaporated off the top of his head. His check trousers were too short and riding high up on his calf, revealing thin ankles, but the way he hovered on the edge of the couch and the way his hands massaged each other made him seem full of energy. "They say it's heading this way. I just hope it gets full before it arrives."
"We should go," Mum said. His Mum was wearing a powder blue jogging suit, which she always wore around the house, but Austin had never seen her wear it outside her home. She smiled at him briefly and looked back at the television.
Margot touched Austin's elbow and smiled sympathetically. "Would you like some coffee?" She asked.
"Sure, and a glass of water. It's baking out there."
"You've been outside?" Mum asked.
"Yes, I just came in," Austin said, perplexed.
"How far did you come? Did you see it?"
"I've just come back from the doctor. It's been a rough morning. I got—"
"Doctor Stewart's?" Dad said. "That's quite close; did you see anything?"
Margot shuffled back into the room in her pink Muppet slippers. She fixed her eyes on the television as she handed Austin his coffee and spilled some down the back of his hand. Austin wiped his hand on his trousers. He cradled the hot cup in his palms and stared into the milky surface of the coffee, watching the reflection of the ceiling light ripple and break apart.
"Why are the lights on and the curtains closed?" he asked. "It's the middle of the day." They all ignored him, transfixed by the television. Austin looked at the screen. There was a monster movie on. A giant lizard was tearing up the city. Why are they watching this? he wondered.
"Is Molly on her way?" Mum asked.
"Molly? No. She's at work."
"I doubt she'll be working. She's probably on her way home. You should give her a call."
Austin couldn't make sense of things any more. Maybe the cancer already had its feelers in his brain. He looked at the television again. Why are they watching this stupid programme? The film was done in a real-time docudrama style. Jerky camera movements, shot on video to make it look like the news. Icons in the corner of the screen. Panicked anchorwoman. The cameraman was set up on top of a building about half a mile away from the monster. The monster was barely visible within the cloud of dust and smoke. Buildings had been smashed to rubble around it, twisted spires of metal poking through the devastation. A flat-roofed factory was punctured where the monster had stepped through it, and from the hole sprang orange fire and black smoke.
The streets around the monster had been emptied, and military vehicles were moving in. The soldiers looked tiny against the backdrop of the giant lizard, which stood upright on its hind legs, slapping buildings into powder with its enormous tail. The soldiers were setting up a tall barrier in a perimeter around the monster. They had missile launchers and heavy machine guns pointed at its scaly belly.
"Why would Molly be going home?" Austin asked.
"Are you drunk, Austin?" Dad said. "She works over that side of town. People have been fleeing in this direction all morning."
"Fleeing?"
"The monster."
Reality flickered for a moment, as if his sister's flat was on television and a spike of electricity had rippled the cathode rays. He looked again at the television screen and at his family glued to it. It couldn't be real. And then he remembered the people running on the street and the loud booming he'd heard from Doctor Stewart's office. He felt pain in his head as he understood, as if the mental leap he'd had to make had snapped a few synapses. His ears fogged up and he could hear his heart coughing blood around his body. He retreated inside himself. He saw his organs pulsing and jiving, fluids rushing around, and his genitals, blackened and swollen, wheezing.
"The monster, Austin," Dad repeated.
The monster. Austin looked at the television screen again with new eyes and saw familiar landmarks. The sign of the Halcyon Hotel, which was visible from Molly's office. The golden dome of the mosque. Peppard's toy shop. And among them, the monster, muscled and green, a crest of short spikes running from the top of its head to the end of its tail. Its skin, like an iguana's, hung in saggy folds around its armpits and thighs; it was a suit of armour, and the military's bullets appeared to have little effect.
"This is real?" Austin said.
"Get this boy some more coffee, Margot," Dad said. "Yes, it's real. How could you have missed it?"
"I had other things on my mind. So how did it happen?"
"It came up out of the sea, just crawled out and started smashing up the city. They think we're safe over this side though. The military say they can take it down when they've cleared the area."
Austin's muscles twitched with excitement. His balls, which had been like infected melons, dragging him down, shrank to peas. In the light of the monster, they were almost insignificant. And for that moment, he was released from their burden. Thanks to the monster, he stopped dying for a second.
"So what distracted you so much that you couldn't see a giant lizard?" Mum asked.
"Is everything OK?" Margot asked. "You look green."
"I'm fine. Can I borrow your phone?"
Austin dialled Molly's mobile number. It rang six times before she picked it up.
"Where are you?" Austin asked.
"I'm downtown," she yelled. "In Osma's."
"You're downtown?"
Mum and Margot shifted close to Austin and clung on to his elbows.
"Can she see the monster?" Mum asked.
"Can you see the monster?"
"I can't hear you," Molly said. "The monster is just behind the Sony building."
"Tell her we're at Margot's," Mum said.
"Are the military there?" Austin asked.
"I'm trapped," she said. "I couldn't get through the exits. There were too many people. Some of us tried to find another way out, but the monster blocked us off. We're hiding out. My battery's almost dead. I've got to go."
And then she rang off.
"What happened?" Margot asked.
"She's downtown, in the bakery on Beazely Street."
Mum put her hand to her mouth and her eyes went watery as she looked at Austin. Dad looked at him for a moment, then turned back to the television. They all looked at the screen. A camera mounted in a helicopter moved around a column of smoke to reveal the monster. It was thrusting its arm into a tall building and pulling out handfuls of people, desks and light fittings to eat.
"I'm going there," Austin said.
"You can't," Mum said.
"Don't be stupid," Margot said. "You'll be killed."
"You'll never get past the barrier," Dad said.
Austin looked at them and listened, but his whole body felt tugged by the magnetic force of the monster. He had to get close to it. If anything could cure his testicular cancer, then standing in the presence of the monster would do it, like standing in the shadow of a mountain to obliterate his own shadow. He guzzled the remainder of his coffee, kissed his family goodbye and ignored their protestations as he left.
The city was twitching with panic. Now it all made sense. The people were fleeing, migrating uptown. He climbed into Dad's black Saab. The leather scorched his back and he leapt out, opening all the doors to let the small breeze that flowed through the city carry away some of the heat. He watched the thermal distortions pouring out of the open door and listened to the sound of gunfire in the distance, and a great booming sound, like a landslide, as if the monster had pulled a whole building down to its foundations.
The inside of the Saab had barely cooled when he got in and he wound all four windows down. The steering wheel burned his palms. The cold fans blew hot for a few minutes until air rushing through the front of the car cooled the machine. The only good thing about the heat was the driving seat—the warmth flowing from it soothed his aching balls and allowed him to concentrate on the road.
The journey downtown was like swimming upstream. Cars and people flowed away from the monster. A couple of times, when the roads were wide enough to allow two cars to pass, he had a clear run, but most of the time the streets were narrow with cars parked on both sides and people driving away from the creature. They hooted and gesticulated at him as he tried to bully his way through them. No one wanted to give way. At first he was careful of his Dad's car and leaned out of the side window to check he had room to squeeze between the cars, but he was conscious of how much time it was taking and he began ploughing through, popping the headlights and drawing scrapes down the side of the black paint. When he could see the military barrier ahead and tried to get out of the car, the door was so buckled that it wouldn't open and he had to climb through the window.
Downtown was devastated. The air was full of smoke and brick dust. Austin ripped the sleeve off his shirt and tied it around his face. Powdery grains of fallen buildings collected on his eyelashes. The gunfire was loud and punctuated by explosions as the military fired missiles at the monster. Above this, though, was the sound of the monster. Its roar hadn't come through on television. It sounded like a rusted iron ship being dragged across an enormous blackboard. It bypassed his ears and went straight to the centre of his brain, where it reverberated and made him feel nauseated.
The barrier was ten metres high, shining grey in the sun. People ran, tearful and dirty, through three doorways within it. Soldiers in helmets and goggles shooed them through, one at a time. When they emerged they were weak from struggling against one another, and stumbled as they ran for safety.
Austin wiped the sweat from his forehead. His feet were swollen in his shoes. His shadow was small around his feet, as if he'd started melting and leaking through the bottom of his trousers. He skirted around the edge of the barrier, looking for another way in. He found more exits, but they were the same as the first three—packed with people trying to escape. The barrier broke at one point, where it hit the shops on Hayman Street. This section had no exits and no guards. The barrier stopped halfway through Brannigan's sports shop. The lights were out and the doors were locked. Austin picked up a wine bottle, which sat in a doorway, and hurled it into the display window. The point of impact veined out and fell back, like a net catching the bottle. Then the top section of the window dropped down in one sheet and smashed the bottom section into fragments. It was so loud that the silence afterwards was startling. Austin leapt through the broken portal before anyone came to investigate. He kicked footballs and trainers out of the way, jumped down to the shop floor and walked through to the other side of the shop, on the inside of the barriers. He grabbed a cricket bat from a tub and hurled it at the window. A huge keyhole-shaped section collapsed, and he nicked his shoulder as he slipped through it. Blood fanned out across the shoulder of his shirt, fuelled by the sweat-soaked material. Salt in the wound stung.
Hayman Street was deserted. Dust and ash and smoke filled the corridor of shops. Austin knew the way to Osma's: he and Molly used to meet there for lunch when they first started going out. Austin walked because the heat was too oppressive to run. He took the smaller streets, where the shops and offices were closer together and gave more shade.
He was only two streets away from Osma's when he ran into a patrol of soldiers. They were dead, crushed by a lump of concrete the size of a van. Austin grimaced when he saw their blood sprayed outwards, mingled with the dust. The soldiers' guns were pinned beneath the rock with them, but one had been thrown out across the ground. A soldier's arm stretched out towards it, as if he were reaching for it, or throwing it to safety. Austin picked up the big gun. He swung the shoulder strap over his head and held the gun like he'd seen in the movies. He felt great with it, a little cooler, in control, sharper.
Osma's was deserted. The shop door was wide open. The smell of rye bread was intoxicating against the smells of smoke and gas outside.
"Molly?" Austin walked to the back of the shop.
"Austin? What the—"
There were sounds of bare feet climbing a short flight of stairs, and then Molly appeared through a doorway. Her dark hair was messy and stuck to her face. She held her high-heeled shoes in her hand.
"What are you doing here?" She said as she hugged him. Austin linked his arms behind her back, but only for a second. It was too hot to hold each other. They kissed, and Molly's face tasted salty. She touched the blood on his shoulder with concern.
"I came to rescue you. Look, I have a gun and everything."
"Where did you get that?"
"I found it. We should get out of here. There's a route through Brannigan's. We don't need to queue for the exit."
"Austin, I can't believe… what did you—"
The monster bellowed and Austin's brain quivered in his skull. The beast's scaled foot slapped down outside and threw the bakery into shadow. Austin was mesmerised. The three front toes were truck-sized, with talons that raked up the tarmac.
"We've got to get downstairs," Molly said.
"It'll crush the whole building."
"We can't go out there. There's nowhere to run."
The building shook as the monster tore a chunk out of the roof. Plaster dropped down around them. The monster shifted its weight about and the ground trembled, making them dizzy. The sound of helicopters came.
"The soldiers will be here in a minute," Molly said. "We've just got to wait it out, downstairs."
"We won't be safe there. The monster could bring the building down into the cellar, and the military are going to bomb the crap out of this area. They think they've cleared the zone, so they can do what they like. You make a run for it, and I'll distract the monster for a moment."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"What's going on?" a man said, climbing to the top of the stairs and stepping out onto the shop floor. Two other men and one woman were behind him, peering out fearfully. One of them shrieked when he saw the foot outside.
"We're going to make a run for it," Austin said. "The whole place is coming down."
"We can't go out there," one of the women said.
Everyone ducked down and threw their arms over their heads as the monster tore down another chunk of the building. Half the ceiling crashed down around them, filling the air with dust, setting off electrical sparks. The monster seemed to have sensed that there were people in the building, and was poking one of its long green fingers through the roof, probing. Austin turned to face the door and using the shield of his back to stop people seeing, he massaged his balls. The painkillers were wearing off and the ache was returning, flowing out of his groin, washing against his stomach and legs.
"We have to go," Molly said.
"Brannigan's is only five minutes from here," Austin turned to face the group again. "You can climb through the broken window and then out the other side of the barrier."
"You lead the way," Molly said.
"I've got the gun. I'll hang back and make sure it doesn't follow."
"A gun is useless against that thing. Put it down, Austin, you look ridiculous."
Austin felt a pang of embarrassment explode in his stomach. He'd been running on adrenaline since he left his sister's house. He had felt like a hero. He'd gone to rescue his girlfriend from the monster. His shirt was torn. He was covered in dust and blood. He had a gun. Could Molly not see that? He thought about kissing her on the mouth before they left, but her comment had soured him. He wondered whether he should have come for her at all.
Molly and the others shuffled through the rubble to the door, careful not to step on any fallen wires. A helicopter, buzzing overhead, had captured the monster's attention. The group seized the moment and ran from the shop.
Austin ran with them a little way, but the pain in his groin was too much. It was making his legs weak. He couldn't run. He watched Molly from behind as she ran away, her curly hair bobbing on her shoulders, her calves tensing and flexing, her feet bare. He wanted her to turn around and see what he was about to do, but maybe it was better that she didn't. She'd only try to stop him.
The monster slapped the helicopter. It spun round, a mangled heap, and exploded before it hit the ground a few blocks away. Austin walked back towards the monster. He raised the gun up to eye level, but it was too heavy. He held it down at his side, with the strap round his shoulders supporting the weight, like he'd seen in the movies. His finger was wet against the trigger, and almost slipped as he squeezed.
The gun rattled and shook as it spat bullets, but he held tight. The noise shook his eardrums into numbness. The vibration shot all the way up his arms, into his head, making his vision blur. It rattled his stomach and soothed his aching balls. He had the gun aimed at the monster's groin and he kept the trigger depressed. A constant stream of bullets fired out of him, into the monster. Ribbons of blood spattered out from between the monster's legs. The monster tried to advance on Austin, but he stepped back and kept on firing. As his body shook, it became one with the gun, one with the monster, one with his testicular cancer. Nothing mattered any more. Years of anxiety, all the things he'd ever worried about, were shaken out of him. His sister and his parents fell away from him. His job. The city. His car. The time he'd spent working for things that would never reach fruition. His unhappy schooldays. Everything came apart and dropped away, leaving him pure and fresh and empty.
