Survivor: World of Monsters Read online

  1

  Levi Monger, also known as the hero Leviathan, slams his steel-hard fist into the Predicator’s half-formed face, a spurt of fluid that is not blood spraying out and sizzling where it lands hundreds of feet below in the rubble of Galactic City.

  Galactic City, the new home of humanity, the pinnacle of human achievement, a home finally made safe from the Veiled Realm.

  Or so it was believed.

  But now here is the Predicator, and it turns out what everyone believed, was wrong.

  Predicator reels from the massive impact, spiraling off hundreds of feet away before regaining control, putting out its arms and stopping itself midair.

  Leviathan flies toward it, but this time Predicator is ready. It throws out one shadowed arm as though perhaps about to hurl an energy blast. But that is not among its repertoire of powers. Instead, the arm stretches like webbing and wraps around Leviathan’s bulk.

  The hero strains against it as he’s pulled closer and closer, but cannot break free. Leviathan is the most powerful hero in all of creation, unmatched by any other—but Predicator is no hero, and is stronger.

  The bonds tighten and Leviathan cries out in pain, something like a smile spreading across Predicator’s shifting face.

  The undefeatable monster pulls the hero closer, right up next to it as the two hover hundreds of feet above the ground. “You’ve lost,” it hisses, drawing out the S-sound like one might imagine a snake to. The ethereal intrusion of the Veiled Realm undulates around them, monsters from nightmares moving in the distance, preceding screams from the citizens still trying to escape. “And now, you die. All alone, in this dark realm. No friends to save you this time. They’re all dead.” There’s a manic glee in its voice.

  “You won’t get away with this, Kyle.”

  Predicator instinctively recoils backward, his arm—undaunted, for they are not one, but two—stretching to keep Leviathan in place. The monster catches itself a moment later, regaining control. Something in its face shifts. “I am not… Kyle.”

  “I know you’re in there.”

  The monster roars, its head splitting open and widening enough to swallow Leviathan whole.

  Leviathan jerks as the monster begins reeling him in.

  Everything slows. Leviathan no longer struggles against his bonds. For while we’ve been distracted, while he’s brought out the briefest glimpse of the human the Predicator once was, he’s activated a hidden compartment in one of his bracers containing a tiny vial of something Professor Nebula created for just this purpose. Now he lets it drop into his open palm.

  It lands on the tip of his finger and as he closes his hand around it, it slips, falling out of his grasp.

  Now it will tumble the hundreds of feet to the rubble below them, where it will shatter and be lost forever, unable to be recreated.

  The monster grows closer as it reels the hero in, its maw ready to devour.

  But then Leviathan heaves down in one final burst of strength.

  Almost at once, he’s overpowered and pulled toward the Predicator once more.

  But it was enough. He caught the vial. He closes his fist around the delicate thing, and a smile tinges his lips. It is bitter, but also sweet. For what he must do next could mean the death of a man he once called a friend.

  He flicks his wrist, the force enough to crack a boulder, and the vial flies from his hand in slow motion, the gaping maw of the monster growing closer as it does, black viscous fluid and sharp, shifting teeth. It grows and grows— And which one will happen first? Leviathan being devoured? Or the vial hitting its mark?

  But of course, we all know the answer.

  The vial lands and everything speeds up so that it feels like it’s playing out in hypermotion.

  A flash of colors that make the eyes hurt and the head spin and the monster’s roar cuts off as its massive jaws slam shut in horror and disbelief.

  “Noooo!” it bellows, smoke and colors bursting out of its mouth and eyes, and it falls backwards, its mutant, web-like arm slipping away from the hero as it tumbles, once again in slow motion, toward the destruction far below.

  Leviathan drops from the monster’s grasp and we watch from the ground, looking up, as he spins in the air so that when he lands—with an earthshaking boom—it’s on knee and fist, head lowered. The quintessential hero pose.

  He looks up, his partially masked face hard, but heroic. Predicator lies writhing in front of him, his monstrousness melting away, oozing out like thickest blood, like something living, something sentient.

  “What have you done?!” Predicator cries, his voice inhuman and warbling as he thrashes.

  “I’ve set you free.”

  The monster cries out even louder, enough to make speakers shake. He lies among the rubble, his powers of flight, as well as all his others, gone now that the symbiote has been destroyed—or at least banished back to the realm from which it emerged all those years ago.

  Now all that remains is Kyle Freeman, Levi Monger’s oldest friend, once again human. Naked, but artfully covered by haze and dirt.

  Levi goes over to him, kneels, then lifts his friend into his arms. Levi’s muscular back ripples through his skintight yet indestructible costume as he stands, his unconscious friend limp in his arms.

  Then he looks up into the sky, bends his legs slightly, and takes flight with a deafening crack that sends up a cloud of debris, and damages the already battered ground even further.

  And then a voice, heroic and somber: “My ultimate nemesis is defeated. The cost was unfathomable. Towns, entire cities, were destroyed, and our original home of Earth lies in ruin. Our history wiped clean by the vilest creatures in all of existence. Many, many died horrible deaths, including people I loved and cared about. But not all perished. And now the world, the universe, is safe, due to their ultimate sacrifices.

  For a time we will mourn our dead, all those who were lost in this final battle, all those who gave their lives so that the rest of us may live in peace.

  But then we will rebuild. We will become stronger, we will rise from the ashes. For we are the heroes, and no matter how impossible the odds, we will always prevail. Not because we’re always stronger or smarter, but because we have so much more to lose. So much more to fight for. And we will do so, to our dying breath.

  But today, finally, the fighting is over, we have won, and now, we can rest.”

  Cal Colt frowned as the scene finished playing, his own narration booming out of the fifteen-speaker surround sound system like that of a god’s.

  Which wasn’t far from what Leviathan was.

  “There’s something off about it.”

  “Don’t worry, once we finish post it’ll look great. Those are just placeholder effects.”

  Cal’s frown didn’t abate. It wasn’t just the unfinished special effects which looked off. It was him.

  No one else seemed to notice. Or they were too afraid to say so. And now principal photography was done and post nearly so. Any reshoots would be expensive at this point.

  That was the problem with being as big of a movie star as he was: few people were willing to tell him the truth. Everyone sucked up to him, even if they didn’t mean to.

  Cal didn’t believe Bradley Sulvas—the director who sat next to him and had just assured him the movie would look great—was like that though. For one, they’d known each other for years. And two, he was nearly as famous, and much richer.

  “It’s my performance that’s the problem,” Cal said. “I don’t like it.”

  “We always hate our own creations.”

  “You hate your movies?”

  The director tilted his hand in front of him, light from the dual-CRT 3D projector s
et-up bouncing off the five-hundred-inch screen in front of them and dimly lighting the movement, the skull ring he wore on his middle finger glinting.

  Even the reflected light from the screen was barely enough to see by, as the plush, thirty-five-seat theater they sat in was like a black hole, its walls covered in a special velvet that had over ninety-nine percent absorbency of the visible spectrum of light.

  “I’m lucky that a lot of other people work on them, and I don’t have to stare at my own ugly mug. Makes it easier not to hate them. But even so, there are times I watch something I directed and all I can think of are the many ways I could have done it better.” He felt around for the tablet on one of the empty seats next to him. It came to life and he flicked at it, overhead and wall-mounted lights coming on in the theater.

  Even with them, the room was still oddly dark.

  Bradley carelessly tossed the expensive tablet back down, then slapped his legs and stood. “Don’t worry, the scene is great, the edit of it is great, and most of all, you’re great. I’d say if you weren’t, you know that.”

  “Yeah,” Cal said, standing as well. He did know, but it didn’t reassure him.

  He and Bradley were just about the same height—the director might even have a quarter inch on him—and so they were now eye-to-eye. It was an uncommon experience for someone as tall as Cal was.

  Which was just another reason for people to have a hard time telling him the truth. Even if they didn’t look up to him as a movie star, they couldn’t help but to literally look up to him.

  But not Bradley.

  “Relax man,” Bradley said. “Everyone’s gonna love it. And we’ll be even richer. You know how much they’re saying the opening take is gonna be?”

  “A billion,” Cal joked.

  “Yeah.”

  He stared at Bradley. “You’re joking.”

  Bradley shook his head. “That’s worldwide of course, but yeah, a billion opening. That will cover production and advertising. All in the first few days. Everything after that will be sweet, sweet profit. Crazy huh? Who would have thought when we met all those years ago we’d end up here?” He looked away from Cal, looking around his expansive private theater. “Back then I’d only done The Bastards and Long Way Home, and you know how well those did.”

  “Not at all,” Cal supplied.

  Bradley chuckled. “And that’s an understatement. I thought they were gonna sue me to get their money back. And then,” he said grandly, “we met and made the first Leviathan movie.” He shook his head. “Man, everything’s changed.”

  Yeah, Cal thought, it has. And he didn’t much like it.

  2

  “Come on,” Bradley told him, looking at his 1964 Rolex Submariner 5512. “It’s nearly eight. Let’s go join the girls at the pool before they forget about us.”

  Cal followed his friend and coworker out of the large theater, Bradley using another tablet set into the wall by the door to turn the projectors and lights off as they exited.

  Tonight, Bradley had set Cal up with Mirabelle Swan, the star of The Huntress—a movie in the same universe as their own Leviathan ones and which Bradley had codirected. She was beautiful and sweet and kind, but despite this, Cal wasn’t into her.

  It wasn’t her, it was—and this was actually true for a change—him. Lately, anyway. He couldn’t say for certain when the malaise had started, but it was firmly entrenched now.

  He hated himself for it. He had everything: money, fame, good health—good looks. There wasn’t much more he could ask for.

  And yet…

  As they reached the kitchen, Bradley’s girlfriend Clara was coming in from the backyard through the large, electronically controlled sliding glass door—one that stretched all the way to the ceiling.

  She was Danish and swam topless. Cal wasn’t sure if the two had anything to do with each other, but in his mind one caused the other.

  In the past, seeing a beautiful woman like her wearing only an itsy-bitsy pair of bikini bottoms would’ve excited him—at the very least—but now he didn’t feel anything as he watched her enter, breasts bare, tiny low-rise bikini bottoms riding even lower on her wide hips, almost her entire body exposed.

  She smiled at the two of them. “You boys done fiddling with your little movie now?” she asked in a mild Danish accent. She wrapped her arms around Bradley’s neck and gave him a kiss.

  In turn he wrapped his arms around her, placing both his hands on her exposed bottom, the tiny G-string not covering the slightest bit of either firm, round cheek, and gave them a squeeze. “That we are. Done with our billion-dollar little movie.”

  Clara reached down, putting her own hands on Bradley’s butt. “If you’re going to start measuring cocks, at least have the decency to take them out.”

  “Oh, I will, don’t worry.”

  Cal left them in the kitchen and walked out into the backyard where Mirabelle lay in a chaise lounge, looking out over the Hollywood Hills and downtown and all the sprawling humanity. She was dressed more chastely than Clara in a two-piece lace bikini that nonetheless still revealed a good portion of her perfect body.

  Being October, the sun had set already, but the sky still retained a hint of blue, and the evening was warm: a hot, Indian-summer day yielding to a pleasant night. Perfect pool weather.

  Of course this was LA, the weather was almost always perfect.

  Mirabelle flashed Cal a smile as he sat down on the chaise next to hers.

  He smiled back at her, though even he could tell it wasn’t a very good one.

  There was a moment of awkward silence as the two of them said nothing, then Mirabelle spoke. “You want something to drink?” Before he could answer she went on, “I’ll go make us something. It’ll be a surprise. Sound good?”

  He forced another smile. “Sure.”

  She got up and went over to him, leaned down and kissed his cheek. “Cheer up buttercup.”

  This got a real smile from him, albeit a weak one.

  She trailed her hand along his back as she walked away.

  He watched her go. She was perfect, yet he didn’t feel anything looking at her.

  Martin, his agent, had told him to go see a psychologist, that he was depressed, but Cal didn’t think that was it. Disenchanted maybe. Disenchanted with the fact that he had everything he wanted and yet didn’t really feel any different than he had before he’d gotten all of it. Wasn’t any happier.

  In fact, if he was honest with himself, he’d been much happier when he was a struggling eighteen-year-old just starting out in the industry. His whole future lay ahead of him then, unknown and tantalizing.

  That was before he skinny-dipped for a scene in a low-budget Castaway-like movie called Solitude. Before a gif of him doing so in which the outline of his “body” could be seen—and which was actually him, not a body double—was spread all around the internet and rocketed him to the beginnings of stardom.

  A burgeoning stardom that had led to him meeting Bradley, led to Bradley convincing him to take the role of Leviathan in a modestly budgeted superhero flick. One which had turned into one of the largest franchises in movie history, making him a true star—the A-list of the A-listers.

  Now he was rich and famous, and really, where was there to go from here?

  He felt like a dick for thinking like this, felt like a dick for being unsatisfied despite all he had. What right did he have to be upset when his life was so much better than almost anyone else’s in every quantifiable, logical way?

  “If only humans ran on logic,” he muttered to himself, and laid back on the chaise lounge, putting his hands behind his head.

  He stared up at the night sky, saw a satellite float by, way up there in orbit.

  He felt like swimming, but didn’t feel like going through the effort of getting up and taking off his clothes, and so he just lay there looking at the sky.

  3

  It felt like only an instant had passed, but he must’ve fallen asleep, because when he open
ed his eyes again he was met with glaring sunlight. He let out a groan, holding his hand up to the sky to shade them.

  “Bradley, you asshole,” he muttered as he sat up. His friend had let him sleep through the night. Mirabelle was probably so happy about that.

  Actually, she might be. Save her the awkwardness. They hadn’t exactly hit it off.

  Another date stood up, despite the fact that he’d showed up this time.

  As he sat up, he realized he was no longer in the chaise lounge, but on the ground.

  He also noticed his clothes were gone, replaced by a bathing suit.

  Had he gone swimming? Last thing he remembered was wanting to, but he couldn’t quite remember if he actually had.

  He didn’t feel drunk or hungover, and lately he hadn’t been drinking much anyway. At all, truthfully.

  As he stared down at himself and awoke more fully, he saw it wasn’t a bathing suit he wore, but a towel.

  No, not a towel either he realized as he rubbed his hand over the material, felt the missing sides. A loincloth.

  The hell? How’d he get into a loincloth? Had Bradley busted out his Alexa Mini and tried to make an indie movie again? He did that when he was drunk, going on about being an artist.

  Cal reached down and lifted up the loincloth, discovering it was all he wore.

  He frowned in confusion and stood up, the loincloth flapping down, a breeze catching it and flowing around Richard and the twins. It was odd, it wasn’t a place he normally felt a breeze. For some reason he was reminded of his role in Solitude.

  The next thing he noticed was that he wasn’t in Bradley’s backyard anymore.

  There were trees all around him. Maybe they had gotten drunk and decided to make a movie.

  Which would have turned into a porno if Clara got her way. That would explain his lack of attire.

  But he was alone here, and he certainly wouldn’t be if that were the case.

  Maybe they’d all gotten drunk, and Cal, being the broody rich hero he was, had gone into the backyard alone and fallen from the railing into the Hollywood Hills.

  It was the kind of thing he would’ve done years ago when he was a teenager just starting out in the industry.