Earth Man (30 page)

             
As the alien fell backwards onto the ground, the three legs merged into one large mass. The snake-like body whipped out its tail as Danny approached, hitting him hard in the knee. His leg suddenly gave out and he dropped on all fours. The wings had also been reabsorbed, pulled back into the creature so it could be smaller, more deadly. The tail whipped out again, crushing a garbage can. Danny rolled aside as the tail swept past him. It came back at him as he stood up, but he kicked the tail aside and leaped over it, ducking behind a coffee kiosk. The Second smashed into the bar, tossing the espresso machine through the air, smashing the flimsy wood into splinters. The alien was still armoured and moving faster than him; he could barely stay ahead of it. Danny picked up a large part of the wooden counter off the ground and cracked it across the alien’s head. It lashed out at him, unaffected by the blow and when he tried to stab it with the wooden shard in his hand, it shattered on the monster’s hard alien carapace.

The
alien’s claws weren’t a problem for Danny, but the tail was low to the ground and he had no way to protect himself or his legs from it. The alien suddenly pushed itself forward using the tail as a spring and grabbed Danny by the shoulders, its claws sinking into the leather. This time Danny had planned ahead with a secret weapon he’d borrowed from one of the reptiles. Danny’s skin began to ooze a clear, toxic liquid. The Second held him off the ground, its mouth stretching wide.

“
No more playing. It ends now, human.”The alien rasped.

The creature sunk its teeth into Danny
’s shoulder, savouring the gush of blood as its teeth tore the leather and flesh. Danny roared in pain, kicking at the creature with all his might. His hands were pinned to his sides and he could not protect himself. The alien’s mouth stretched even wider and a third row of sharp teeth formed inside its black gaping maw. The liquid excreted from Danny’s skin covered the monsters hands and lips and it licked at the substance with a strange curiosity. As Danny stopped screaming the Second suddenly released him and though he landed on his feet, he collapsed immediately. As he tried to lift himself up with his uninjured arm, he smiled as the alien began rubbing its lips frantically.

“
What have you done now?” The Second shouted.

It began to spit on the ground, rubbing its mouth with the back of its
monstrous hands. It saw the poison thick between its fingers and it began to roar. Danny  groaned and straightened his back as the creature came at him. With all the strength and power he could manage Danny hit the creature directly in the nose so hard pain shot up his forearm. Something in the monster’s face broke and it toppled back. All Danny could do was groan as he tried to stop the sudden sharp pain in his wrist.

             
As the monster swayed back and forth, Danny kept on it. The creature shifted into the same smaller, more human form it had worn in the Chem-X building but there was no pink flesh left. The creature was all black and glistened like a fish. Looking like a pair of drunks, they stumbled along, both in pain and agony, shoving and attacking each other. Danny stayed on top of it, hitting it with everything he had. Its nose was an oozing mess and its eyes seethed with hatred. It looked at Danny with an almost human expression, it looked betrayed and offended by what he had done to it, it didn’t understand how he’d weakened it.

Danny was tired but he caught
hold of the creature, gripping it with his hands that dripped with the deadly toxin.

“
Don’t like that, do you?” Danny spat at the monster. 

The alien still had a semblance of a tail and it thudded against Danny
’s hip, pushing him away. The tail was quickly absorbed and Danny bounced back fast.

“
That’s the thing with Earth animals,” he said, kicking the monster in the chest, “the little ones are the most fucking dangerous!”

The alien was beginning to twitch and jerk, losing control of the muscles it had stolen from its victims.

“I bet it hurts like hell, doesn’t it?” Danny screamed at it.

He caught the creature on the temple with the bottom of his dirty boot and they both fell over, but Danny got up quickly. The creature writhed on the ground with its hands over its face, wailing in
frustration. Danny felt his borrowed powers beginning to fade away and the alien began to kick its legs out in rage and he was forced to back off.

             
Earlier in the Reptile House Danny had seen a promotional poster for a special exhibit at the Zoo. On it there had been a cute little frog with beautiful yellow skin and big black eyes. He had used his powers to duplicate the frog’s natural ability to produce an alkaloid poison, changing and supercharging it with the power coursing through him. The little creature was called a Golden Poison Frog and was no bigger than a peach pit. The Growth was fighting itself, confused why the body it controlled was not responding, why it felt fire coursing through it. Danny enjoyed watching the poison torture the alien but he didn’t have the juice for another attempt. He leaned over, desperately trying to catch his breath while the monster thrashed in pain. There was enough poison in the alien to have easily killed a thousand people and there was no way for it to purge the parts that were contaminated. Parts of the monster began to stick and merge together, the lines of the limbs become less noticeable, the mouth continuing to grow in size. Finally it stopped twitched and laid flat on its back, staring up at the sky. All the extra armour it had grown melted back into its body and its distorted face sagged as the muscles relaxed. Danny’s body armour faded away too. With his power weakening he was no longer able to sustain it.

“
I see. . .” it gasped, “why humans are the dominant species on this planet.”

It began to laugh raggedly, the sound rattling out of it like a cough.

“Your adaptability is . . .astonishing.” The monster let out a gurgling laugh, a sick, wet noise that had no trace of humanity in it.

The Second suddenly got
to its feet, looking right at Danny. He raised his hands to defend himself, ready for another round, but he was dead on his feet. Only willpower was keeping him going and he used it to open the flood gates and let the power race into him. Like a sponge he drained the energy from the planet up into himself, letting it build inside him.

In the instant the alien moved at him Danny released the energy as a pure beam of
heat, straight out of his new arm and right into the Second’s chest. The monster looked down in shock at the smoking hole the size of a golf ball burned straight though its chest. It swung its arms at him but he ducked under them both, but he wasn’t expecting the creature to anticipate his move. It raised its knee and caught him as he ducked, hitting him square in the head. It was fighting him like a man and he was not prepared for it. The blow had knocked him on his ass and the creature kicked at him repeatedly. He kept his hands up to protect his face but the monster stomped on his exposed body with its bare feet. It moved so fast he didn’t know where the blows were coming from, striking him in the front and back unexpectedly. All he could do was cover up as he fell to the ground concentrating enough remaining power to form a protective red shell around him.

             
The bubble folded and popped after the first couple blows and Danny could only cover his head with his arms as the blows rained down on him. Instinctively he reached out desperately with his powers, looking for anything he could use. A nearby garbage can was ripe in the sun and Danny grabbed the abilities of the flies swarming around it. As he rolled along the ground to escape the monster’s feet he found his vision changing, turning red and blinking like a camera. The Second always seemed to be stronger and faster than him but the vision of the fly made the alien appear to be moving in slow motion, each action a still photograph. With the matching speed and reflexes Danny managed to roll out of the way and fly to his feet. It was as if he could see an image of what the monster was going to do just a sliver of a second before the creature did it, letting him move before the attack came.

Both
of them began to move superhumanly fast, throwing punches and blocking their opponents attack in the blink of an eye. Blow after blow they pushed each other to the limit, blood and alien fluid spread across the ground. Finally the creature tried to kick him and he did not dodge, instead he grabbed the Second’s foot and shoved the monster back hard. The alien fell back hard on its back and immediately bounced back, lunging at him. Danny simply flew above it, letting it stumble and fall, his arms crossed like he was Superman. He flew at it with a big right hook and continued to throw combinations of punches at it. His hands began to feel like they weighed a hundred pounds and yet he kept raising them and striking the Growth, over and over, using his whole body and every last bit of strength within him. Although his heart felt like it was going to burst and his lungs burned, he felt great; he was sure he could feel victory within his reach. Danny felt like all the heroes he’d grown up watching; he felt like Rocky or Spider-Man, overcoming his nemesis once at for all. Danny continued to strike the monster with skinned, bloody knuckles, pushed on by pure will and courage. The alien seemed about to collapse but it stayed standing, dazed by the damage it was taking. The vision powers were making his head throb and finally Danny had to stop, squinting to try to regain his vision as the pain in his head burned red hot. The creature looked as if it was about to recover and he hit it with a huge punch to the side of the creature’s head and then he fell over, completely exhausted. Energy poured into him as he hit the ground, pulsing up and around him like a bright flame. Struggling to stand, Danny looked down at his hands. His fingers were glowing from the inside like glow sticks and his vision did not go back to normal; everything he saw was a glowing shade of red.

The Growth’s pummelled greasy flesh seemed to twitch as it struggled to stand. It had lost body mass and solidarity and the creature seemed to be losing its skeletal structure as well. It looked around desperately, hoping to see a target, something it could consume but there was nothing. Then Danny saw the creature’s lips curl back in a grin and he heard the men approaching. Turning his head in the same direction Danny saw a group of security guards and police heading straight him. It looked as if Phil Morrison was leading them, the head of a cavalry charge to save him. Yet he knew if the monster got to them first, they were all going to die. Hoisting himself to one knee, he slammed his fist into the ground. Angry at his own weakness, he slammed his fist into the ground again, cracking the cement.

“
Come on Danny. Get up. GET UP.” He groaned.

The monster had lost its human form, shifting into a large shap
eless black mass. Nothing human remained, not even a face, nothing except a large gaping mouth. It had no intention of chasing the other humans; it was Danny that it planned on eating. Danny looked up as it blocked the sun, before the starfish shaped monster wrapped him in its sticky black embrace.

             
Smothering in the dark, the creature’s barbed flesh digging into his own, Danny began to panic. The alien’s skin felt like rubber and he could not get it off of him. It was too durable and stretchable; no matter how he tried he could not tear or injure it. Inside of it he was being attacked by tiny, bone tipped tentacles, he could feel them stabbing into him, digging into his skin. All Danny could do was scream as he tried with all his physical and mental strength to find any reserve of power inside him. In his panic he lost his footing trying to get the disgusting, smothering monster off him.

Danny was glowing red when he hit the ground and he knew the creature had him, it was already under his skin, shredding him from the inside. Only the power was keeping his body going, filling him with enough
life force to keep his heart and mind from going into shock. In his panic Danny released all the power he had left within him, creating a powerful shockwave of light and force. The monster loosened its grip but it had its hooks in him deep.

             
Danny heard a gunshot and pushed hard enough to ignite himself in a burst of red fire. The alien finally recoiled, releasing him from its bloody hold. He hit it with a blast of red fire but the creature pushed forward toward him. The alien hissed and Danny pressed on harder, increasing the energy flowing through his nervous system. The power numbed his limbs and his skeleton seemed to glow within him. The energy of the Earth poured up out of the Earth like a geyser underneath his feet. Danny stood his ground against the Second, crackling like a meteor. The Growth lunged and he levitated away, gliding like a kite out of its reach. The monster was nothing more than a starfish with a massive mouth of teeth, an upright lamprey of black infected flesh.