PERMUTED PRESS PRESENTS: “Gone Fishin’” by John R. Platt
First appeared in Monstrous
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Dam them. Dam them all to hell.
That’s what I swore I’d do if my new neighbors wouldn’t let my cattle graze on their land. I’d just sell off my livestock, dam the river where it ran through my property, and convert my ranch to a fishery, all while their open fields upriver withered and died. Serve ’em right. If they wanted to make sure that I couldn’t make any money with cattle, well then, I wouldn’t even try.
And damned if they didn’t call my bluff and force my hand. Bastard city-folk, spending their weekends in the country. All that grassland going to waste. They said they liked it better without any “damned smelly cows” stinking up their land. Well, I was sure the selfish fools’d like their land better as dried up hay fields.
It barely took me a day to sell off all of my stock once other nearby breeders and milkers heard the prices I was asking. Two more days and all of my equipment—trucks, milking machines, steroids, fences, even my old cow dog—was on its way to a few enterprising new owners in the next couple of towns. Meanwhile, I used the cash to call in an engineer and a contractor.
You shoulda seen the guys—like kids with a new toy. They’d never dammed a river before, and damned if they weren’t going to do a good job. The neighbors tried to protest as soon as they realized what was going on. Even the other farmers—people I thought’d be on my side—tried to talk me out of it. But I’m a stubborn man. I told them it was my land to do with as I wished, and what I wished now was for them to get the hell off it. Laughed my head off as they drove away, their jaws all clenched and knotted.
The mayor called me down to his office one day, late in the construction. Sitting there in the corner of the hardware store we jokingly called the “city hall,” he begged me to reconsider. I told him there was no way. The river ran through my land and it was mine to do with as I wished. The old fool hemmed and hawed, but I held my ground. Y’know, I bet if I’d lived in a different town they could have gotten a court order to stop me from building the dam. I guess that’s the good thing about living in a hick town in the middle of nowhere—no court.
I got back from the mayor’s office to find my property transformed. That’s the best way I’ve got to describe it. I had to shield my eyes from the glare as I pulled into the driveway. The contractors must’ve completed the final gate on the dam, and the lower pasture was now a huge lake, shimmering in the noon-day sun. God, it was beautiful. The farmhands were all hootin’ and hollerin’, splashing around and diving into the water. Hell, I tore off my boots and dove right in with them.
The next day we installed the hatcheries—huge metal boxes that stuck out into the water like a dock—and I had them seeded with salmon eggs while the neighbors came again to complain. My sons didn’t have much to do at that point, so they entertained themselves by throwing a few people off the property.
As the sun set that evening, I stood on the edge of the lake—my lake—and stared out across the water. Small trout—trapped when the river was dammed—splashed in and out of the water, catching bugs in the evening air. It’d be a few months before the salmon were big enough to harvest, but I knew then that the wait would be worth it. I’d started the whole project out of spite, but deep inside me I knew that this fishery would bring me new prosperity, a new sense of peace, even.
Damned if I wasn’t completely wrong.
I was always kind of harsh on my youngest, Brian, thinking back on things. Ever since his mother died, he’d made it quite clear that he wasn’t interested in farming when he grew up, wanted to go off to school and study dolphins and whales and such. Damn foolishness, I thought. His hatred of farming was a disrespect to me, and I let him know what a disappointment he was to me every chance I got.
God, but I miss him. Brian was the first one to go, three weeks after I put in the dam. He came to me all excited one morning. “Dad,” he said, in his voice that was always too deep for his thin little body, “there’s something in the water.”
Brian was excited, but I was furious. All I needed now was some bear or other big animal to start using my salmon farm as its own private fishing ground. A big, hungry predator could probably wipe out my whole crop in a matter of days. I grabbed my Winchester and followed my son to the new shore line, where he stood, pointing happily to the center of the lake.
And for just a second, I saw it, a huge, dark shape under the water, cresting the surface briefly with its undulating back, then descending again into the depths.
Brian whooped and jumped up and down. He yelled to me, “C’mon, Pop,” or something like that, and ran out onto the flat surface of the hatcheries. “Holy cow, Dad,” he yelled again. “This is incred—”
He never finished that word. It all happened so quick, I just stood there, my mind not really processing what had just happened. One second Brian was there pointing out into the lake, the next second he wasn’t. And in that half a second between, something had come out of the water and grabbed him, and disappeared again so quickly a blink would have missed the whole thing.
I don’t know how long I stood there, staring. Five seconds, ten minutes, an hour, but when it finally registered I screamed, screamed like a man has no right to ever scream. I ran out onto the hatchery where Brian had been standing, the spot marked by a few insignificant splashes of water. I looked out into the lake, saw bubbles rising rapidly to the surface, and raised my rifle. I looked through the scope, searching, searching for the dark shape underneath the surface, my eye sweaty against the gun-sight and my arms shaking so hard I could barely hold the Winchester straight. My stomach had sunk plum down to my shoes.
I was ready to shoot whatever I saw, but then I thought of Brian. He was down there, somewhere. If I fired, wouldn’t I be just as likely to hit him?
Then the blood broke the surface of the water and I fell to my knees and began to cry.
By this time some of the workers had heard my screams and run out to the lake. One of them saw the blood bubbling up to the surface of the water and started puking up his breakfast. My eldest son, Ethan, ran out to my side on the hatcheries, one strong arm grabbing my shaking shoulders while the other picked the rifle up from beside me. “Pop,” he said, me barely listening, “what is it? What’s out th—” Then one of Brian’s red and white checked sneakers floated to the surface, and Ethan’s grip on my shoulders grew tighter and tighter until something inside me popped and the pain pulled me out of my stupor.
I stood and grabbed the Winchester out of Ethan’s hands. I started firing wildly into the water, the pain in my shoulder sending sparks through my vision every time the rifle’s recoil kicked back into me. The water churned and splashed with each shot, and I could see the bubbling trails left by the bullets as they cut their way into the red-tinged water. I couldn’t see the beast, only a dark shadow beneath the surface of the water, but I continued to fire as Ethan yelled beside me.
“Pop! Pop!” he screamed as I fired. “What’s going on? What is that thing? Where’s Bri–”
And then with a rush of damp wind, Ethan, too, was gone.
I dropped the Winchester from numb hands, and it bounced off the hatchery with a metallic clang and sank beneath the surface of the water. On the shore, the farmhands screamed and stumbled over each other as they ran for the safety of dry land. And God damn me to Hell, but I ran, too, ran down the vibrating metal plank, ran with my knees shaking as I hit the ground, ran as tears poured down my face, and didn’t stop running until I was inside my house, cowering in a corner, unable to see anything but the image of Ethan’s face disappearing into the deep waters just a few feet in front of me.
I guess you could say I’ve led a lonely life these past few years, ever since my wife finally succumbed to the cancer. I was bitter and I was mean. If it hadn’t been for my sons, I figure I would have been even worse. And now two of them were gone.
Something snapped in me that morning, while I sat cowering in my bedroom. Something in me went away. When my third son, Joe, came home from school a few hours later and found me, I was still sitting in that corner, but the fear was long gone. It had been replaced by a burning hatred and a need to kill. It was the only feeling I had left.
One of the farmhands must have called the sheriff at some point, and old Buck Bullock was waiting for me when I finally came back out into the light of day. He nodded at me in the quiet way country folk have and extended his hand. “Deeply sorry about your sons,” he said, as we shook, and that was that.
We walked down to the lake, me, Buck and Joe. The workers, what was left of them, hung back from the water, watched us from a distance. The three of us stood on the beach a few feet from the water, looking out across the shimmering surface. “This where it happened?” Buck asked, as he bit the end off a cheap cigar. I just nodded, my eyes never leaving the water.
Now a country sheriff sees some pretty weird and horrible stuff over the course of his career: farm accidents, domestic disputes (which sounds better than wife beating), auto accidents on quiet country roads, people who die alone on a remote farm and no one notices for three weeks, that kind of thing. When the beast crested the surface, Buck stood there, this man who had seen everything, and the cigar fell out of his mouth to the dirt below.
I didn’t see Joe’s reaction, but I did hear it. “God damn,” he said. “God damn.” That about summed it up.
We stood there, staring out at the water and the beast for what must have been two or three whole minutes before it suddenly turned its big flat head and looked straight at us. I could see its black, reptilian eyes from clear across the lake, and I made a point of meeting the creature’s gaze. It was my way of saying, I’m coming for you, damn you, whatever you are. I’m coming for you.
The thing dove beneath the surface once again and didn’t come back. We stood there a while longer, watching the still waters, then Bullock reached down and picked up the fallen cigar at his feet. He brushed it off and put it back in his mouth as he started to walk away.
“Where are you going?” demanded my son, grabbing at Bullock’s meaty arm.
Buck turned and looked back at us. There was a glint in his narrowed eyes. “I’ll be back,” he said, then headed for his patrol car.
Joe finally managed to lead me away from the water a half hour later. He took me inside, poured me a drink, and made me lie down. I was asleep within moments.
I dreamed of Ethan and Brian, but in my dream, they had big, black, reptilian eyes.
I awoke to a flickering light outside my window, but the house was dark. Pulling my boots back on as I went, I stumbled through the hallway until I found my way outside. And what a sight awaited me.
It was night, but you never would’ve known that by the number of torches surrounding the lake. The flames turned the sky orange, and their reflections danced on the water and made it look like the lake itself was on fire.
Then there were the people. There must have been two dozen men or more scurrying about, carrying boxes and wires and shotguns. One of them saw me and nodded as he passed by. I recognized John Pritchet, one of the men I had thrown off my property a few weeks ago.
Sheriff Bullock walked up to me and nodded a ‘hello’. I nodded back. “Can’t believe you did all this without me waking up,” I said.
“You needed the rest.” He shrugged.
I looked around my property, amazed by the number of people. “Everyone’s come out to help you, Tom,” Buck said. “Brian and Ethan had a lot of friends here.”
I choked up a bit there, my eyes watering, and my throat getting real tight. Buck gave me a minute to myself, then pointed over to the barn. “You want to explain something in there to me?” he asked. I nodded and let him guide me over.
Inside, he motioned over to a huge metal machine that sat in the corner. “How does this thing work?”
I swallowed, tried to remember how the salesman had put it. “It’s kind of like a giant vacuum cleaner, to extract the fish from their breeding pens when it’s time to harvest them. Never got a chance to install it.”
Buck chewed on his cigar appreciatively. “Does it work?”
“Far as I know.”
He looked back over at me, with that strange glint in his eyes again. “You want to help me get it set up?”
It took six of us to get it down to the water, and about half an hour to get the power cords to run from the generator to the machine. When everything was connected, it hummed quietly, just like the salesman had promised. “Nothing too loud,” the guy had said. “That’d just scare the fish.” Like getting sucked up by a giant metal tube wouldn’t be scary enough on its own.
All of that moving was heavy work. I was wiping the sweat from my brow when I finally got a good look at one of the boxes being carted about. The stencil on the side was partially covered by the arm of the guy carrying it, but it didn’t take much to recognize the three most important letters: T-N-T.
I found Bullock zipping up his fly as he came out of the old outhouse behind the barn. “You want to let me in on your plans here tonight, Sheriff?” I asked.
Buck lit up, and by that I mean his face lit up at the same time as he lit a new cigar. “Well,” he said, puffing the stogie into life, “it’s pretty simple. I’ve got men posted around the lake. In a little while, we’re going to start throwing dynamite into the water. Now, maybe we’ll get lucky, kill it first thing off, but I don’t think that’ll happen. What I expect is that the explosions will drive it over to your machine there, and we’ll suck it right out of the water. Then we’ll finish it off.”
He took the cigar out of his mouth and fixed me with a steely gaze. “But, Tom, if that doesn’t work, we’re going to resort to plan B. The way I see it, this thing, whatever it is, was just passing through. Maybe it had been through here a hundred times the past few years. Maybe not. In any case, you put up a dam and trapped it here. If we can’t kill it, I’ll give the order to blow the dam, and let the creature move on out of here on its own. It won’t be our problem anymore.”
He looked at me as if expecting a protest. I thought of Brian and Ethan and simply said, “When do we start?”
Bullock patted me on the shoulder and we walked down to the water.
The men were tense, understandably. The creature was poking its head up every few minutes, obviously agitated by everything going on around it. The caffeine from the strong coffee we were brewing didn’t serve to lighten our moods much either.
Things finally got underway about 2a.m. When Bullock was satisfied that everyone was in position, he gave the signal, and the TNT began to fly.
The first half-dozen or so sticks of dynamite hit the water too soon, dousing the fuses before they could do their jobs. Bullock yelled into his walkie-talkie, said for people to hold onto the dynamite a few seconds longer before throwing it. That added to the tension we all felt, but I think the townsfolk were more scared of the creature in the water than they were of the bombs in their hands, so they kept on lighting and throwing.
Before long, the night was filled with the echo of explosions, and the air was thick with mist kicked up by the bombs. Far away from them, on the beach by the harvester, Bullock and I, and a few other men, wiped the moisture from our faces and slicked back our hair, waiting for a sign of the creature coming our way.
It was almost on us before we even realized it. There was no wake, no sound, but suddenly there it was, breaking the surface just a few feet from us. Some of the men began to fire their rifles, and I dove to the harvester and flicked the switch.
The machine roared into life—no longer quiet now that it was really at work—sucking water out of the lake with one giant tube while spraying it back in with another. In between, the machine filtered out the fish and shot them into a waiting bin.
Hundreds of gallons were going through the machine and back into the water, and I could see the creature struggling against the current. It moved closer and closer to the intake tube, its blood staining the water red from a dozen bullet wounds. That’s when I realized that no matter how big that harvester was, it just wasn’t going to be anywhere near big enough. At its smallest point, the creature out-sized the tube by at least a foot, probably more.
The beast swung its long, black neck out of the water and snapped at us on the shore, while it splashed about in an attempt to move back out into the deeper water. I yelled at my neighbors to fall back, but they didn’t need my suggestion. They were already back-stepping as far away from the lake as the range of their rifles would let them.
I ran, too, but only as far as the box of dynamite that we had kept on hand as a safety. I grabbed a stick, and pulled a pack of matches from my shirt pocket. But as soon as I felt the cardboard match cover, I knew that the amount of water in the air had ruined them.
Bullock had only moved a few feet from the shore line. He stood there, firing his rifle at the creature, which weaved its head back and forth from the shots like it was drunk. I cupped my hand to my mouth and yelled over to him, “Buck, your lighter!”
He stepped back a few feet, then dug into his pocket and tossed his disposable Bic my way. I flicked it, and the fuse sparked into life. With Brian’s and Ethan’s faces in my mind, I threw the dynamite, then dropped to the ground and covered my ears as Buck did the same.
The explosion shook the earth underneath me, and sent a wave of blood-drenched water flowing around me.
I stayed there for a few moments, then pulled myself up and stumbled over to the water’s edge. The night was quiet for the first time in hours. The harvester was a torn ruin, but next to it lay the bloated body of the creature, a huge gory hole in its side, lying half on the grass, like the pictures of a beached whale that Brian had shown me months before.
Sheriff Bullock and some of the other men appeared beside me. “Damn, Tom,” one of them said. “We did it.”
I stared at the creature. “It’s…”
“Yeah,” Buck said. “It’s really something.”
“No,” I said, swallowing hard. “It’s too small.”
A splash came from the lake beside us, and like one, we all turned to see a second creature raising its giant head from the water. It lashed out, and Bill Jameson disappeared from beside me. The monster shook him in its mouth like a dog with a hedgehog, and his blood rained down on us before it tossed his body behind it to sink into the churning depths.
Most of the men scattered, and I heard screams not just from beside me but from all around the lake as the others witnessed what was happening. I stood there too weak to run, and the creature turned its black eyes to me.
We stared at each other for several long moments. It seemed to gain strength from me, rising up higher in front of me as my shoulders drooped and my feet slipped slightly on the damp grass. The creature opened its mouth and hissed. I could see row after row of teeth, stained red with blood. It started to move in for the kill.
Then I heard Bullock yelling into his walkie-talkie, “Blow it!” The earth shook as the sound of a massive explosion filled the air.
My legs went out from under me and I fell to the ground, as the sound of rushing water replaced the echoes of the explosion. The shoreline in front of me receded rapidly as the lake drained. The sudden force pulled the creature away from me and back into the night. The last I saw of it, its massive neck dipped one last time under the water as it passed through the gaping hole in the dam into the refreshed river beyond.
And then I passed out.
We held funerals for Brian and Ethan and Bill Jameson the other day. Bill’s body had been washed out with the creature, but it turned up a few miles downstream. My sons’ bodies were never found, and small stone monuments mark the spots where we buried their memories.
After the funerals, I apologized to my neighbors for bringing all of this on them in the first place. The other farmers just nodded and shook my hand and went on about their ways. The city-folk had already packed their bags and were nowhere to be seen.
The wreck of the hatchery still sits on my property surrounded by a wasteland of dried-up lake bed. I don’t know when, or if, the grass will ever start to grow there again.
As for the body of the creature we killed, we burned it. When the bonfire quieted down, I dug through the ashes, found the bones, smashed them, and then piled more wood on and started again.
Joe’s gone to live with my sister in Topeka. I gave the workers severance checks and let them all go.
Meanwhile, the river flows on by my quiet, abandoned farm. It’s back to its natural path, like nothing had ever happened.
I wish I could say the same of myself.
From his undisclosed location off the rocky coast of New England, John R. Platt works his magic as a journalist, publicist, fantasist, humorist, activist, cartoonist and photographerist. He is the founder of Extinction Blog, the world’s first newswire devoted to endangered species, and an award-winning marketing writer. John’s stories have appeared in anthologies such as Borderlands 5, From the Borderlands (same anthology, different name), The Best of Borderlands (different anthology, same story), Crafty Cat Crimes, 100 Menacing Little Murder Stories, Bell Book & Beyond, and IDW’s Tales of Terror. (www.johnrplatt.com)
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