Origins: Dr. Nancy Morgan & Andrew

[Mothman]

Dr. Nancy Morgan awoke from her sleep with a bad feeling at the pit of her stomach. “I’m not looking forward to today,” she thought. Then again, she hadn’t looked forward to much since she signed on to the project.
The opportunity was too great for her to resist at first. Her old classmate, James, had called her up on a whim of nostalgia. It was great; she had harbored a crush for him since freshmen year in college. They both had similar interests: microbiology, robotics, and other nerd things. Their greatest common trait – and first class they shared – was cryptozoology, the study of animals that may or may not exist. It was an obscure science; the kind of course one could only get at an expensive college like Harvard or Yale.
James had offered her the chance to be a government paid cryptozoologist. Apparently he had become a high class official in the biological studies of the US. “Mostly germ warfare and defense, but I’ve gained enough credibility to make one hell of a pet project,” he had said. She jumped at the chance, mainly because the idea of being paid well for a hobby, but also because she liked the idea of seeing James.
“You’d have to relocate, of course,” he had said. No big deal, she thought. Where would she be, Washington D.C.? It couldn’t be worse than Detroit. At least, that was what she thought.
“You didn’t tell me I’d relocate to a tropical island that isn’t on any known map,” she thought angrily. “Or that I had to sever all connection with the outside world. No, you conveniently left that part out James.” She looked around her small “apartment,” which looked more like a prison cell than a living space. A few decorations adorned its walls, including a plush sea serpent and a poster made from a famous still of the Patterson film. Her love for her occupation showed.
“I suppose I should thank you, James.” Nancy buttoned up her shirt and smiled. It had been her childhood dream to see real dinosaurs, as well as other children’s. She’d imagined of seeing Big Foot since she saw a special on it at age six. Those fantasies had come true with James’s help. Weren’t they worth a few inconveniences?
She left her cell – apartment – and headed towards the monitor room. Several other people sat hunched over tiny TV screens in total darkness like freaky little trolls. One guy stood by the door that led to the coffee room, looking confused. “Hey, are you the new guy?” she called to him. His head perked up and nodded.
Nancy smiled and pointed to an empty monitor station. “Your job is to, essentially, watch this TV. You’ve got to study the habits of the creatures on said TV, and if anything seems peculiar or of any interest, write it down.”
“That’s it?” he asked in a high, nasally voice. “What does that have to – HOLY CRAP, A DINOSAUR!” He pointed at the screen in awe.
Nancy shook her head and laughed quietly. “Yes, it’s a dinosaur. You were told you’re here to study cryptozoology, right?”
“Yeah, but... I didn’t think I’d actually see a monster, you know?” he said. His eyes were wide. “What is it?”
“That is a Kasai Rex.” The woman looked at the red beast and smiled widely. It was a therapod dinosaur, i.e. a predator. Its eyes attested to that fact, slowing with the intelligent shine that only carnivorous animals had. “They’re related to allosaurus, but they’re much more heavily built. That one’s a rogue. There’s a pride of them on the island, and he challenged the leader. The leader beat him and drove him from the group, and now he hunts alone.”
“I though the Kasai Rex was a hoax,” the new guy said. His voice was quiet with wonder.
“The report that inspired the name was a hoax, but when looking for Emela N’touka in the Congo we found them existing in a basin. They fit the description, so we recycled the name.”
“Two dinosaur cryptids living in the same place?” the newbie sighed. “God, Africa’s a lost world.”
“Three, actually. We also found the Mokele Mbembe there.” A long necked dinosaur, a triceratops relative, and a therapod were all in the same basin. She wondered how James must have felt when he found them. “Oh, and a pterosaur too, though it’s no dinosaur.”
“Kongamatu, I’m guessing?”
“Yep.” Nancy thought the flying reptiles and shuddered. “They’re vicious things.”
“What else is there?” the man asked. His voice had grown louder with excitement.
“You’ll find out soon enough. For now just watch your monitor.” Nancy walked away and went to her own post. She looked at the TV screen, watching a single Big Foot trudging through the forest. Her dreams had come true, but why was she filled with so much regret and, well, dread? What horrible omen had she seen to make her feel the slightest regret of accepting James’s offer?
***
Andrew looked out at the sun with a broad smile. If anyone had asked him if he was going to take a cruise a few years back, he would have laughed in their faces. Then again, if anyone had told him he’d win one of those “look under the cap” pop contests, his reaction would have been the same. Yet there he was, on board a large Atlantic cruise ship in a Hawaiian shirt and khaki cargo shorts. He was so blissful that he didn’t notice the storm clouds in the distance...
***
Day had passed into night quickly. Nancy sighed as the Sasquatch she’d been watching for a good ten hours fell asleep in a makeshift hammock. Another day passed without her learning a damned thing of interest. Big foots were intelligent, strong, and occasionally comical creatures, but research on them could not progress farther without field work. Sadly there was no way to do this safely, since Mr. Clark had set up the island so that dangerous animals and benevolent ones were side by side. This kept them from being sheltered from dangers they’d face in their original habitats, sure, but it also made it impossible to realistically research them up close.
A distant sound briefly caught her attention only to lose it as she yawned. It caught her again as it grew in volume only to lose it just as quickly. Something that sounded like a siren went off, which she also ignored. Only when a blood curdling scream echoed through one of the neighboring halls did she truly notice the noise.
“What the hell is going on out there?” a coworker asked, beating her to the punch. He walked to the coffee room door and looked in. The door exploded from its hinges in splinters as the man fell over without his head. In the torn and splintered doorway was another man, this one dressed in tattered office wear. He held a shotgun in one blood drenched hand and a knife in the over. The same viscous red liquid was all over his body, spread about his face like tribal war paint.
“Freedom,” he said, barring crooked teeth in a disturbing smile that showed too much gum. His teeth were faintly red, a sign that the gun and knife weren’t the only tools he used in his destruction. He cocked his shotgun and aimed for the new guy.
“No!” Nancy screamed before chucking her TV at the crazy man. He collapse with an “Oof!” as a shotgun blast tore through the air. The new guy’s head had disappeared, leaving behind a red and gray mess. Nancy’s coworkers were quick to action, throwing their TVs at the murderer as well. She glared at them in confusion and looked into the coffee room.
Tables were on fire and blood adorned the walls. In a distant hall way she saw people in tattered clothes running through the halls, screaming madly while gripping weapons as advanced as weapons and primitive and lead pipes. One of them spotted her and hooted, running into the coffee room in pursuit. Others saw him and followed.
“Shit,” she hissed before bursting into a run. In a few short seconds she dashed out of the monitor room and into the hall that led to her apartment. A sigh escaped her lips as she locked the door, slumping against it while clearing her head. Behind her she heard more people running, gun shots, and a lot of screaming. She heard a Tarzan-like scream from the end of the hall that was opposite of the monitor room as a shotgun blast tore through the air. Someone pounded on her door and yelled, making her run towards the corner of her room farthest from the door.
Splinters flew everywhere as a machine gun tore through the block of wood. A man she recognized stepped through it. “Dennis,” she thought. “I know him. He monitors Section B of Nemean Lion zone. He’s a Packers fan. He chews his pens annoyingly. He’s got a pistol aimed at my head.”
“Well, well, look what we have here,” Dennis sneered. “Skinny little Nancy.”
“Dennis, what’s going on?” she asked.
“There’s a bad case of cabin fever going around. I think I got a case.” The man’s stare was unsettling. “I came in here intending to kill whoever lived here, but considering what you are, well... it’s been a long time since I’ve gotten any.”
“No,” Nancy gasped.
“I ain’t asking, toots. Shut your trap and accept it. I’ll make your death quick and painless if you do.”
Nancy looked at him hopelessly before chucking a book at his head. Some of her coworkers had laughed at her for owning the Harry Potter books, but Dennis surely wasn’t laughing when The Goblet of Fire struck him square between the eyes. “Fuck!” he shouted, dropping the pistol. Nancy quickly grabbed it and did what needed to be done. She picked four pistol clips out of her dead, would be rapist’s shirt and left her room.
Chaos filled every hallway. Everyone man who saw the woman ran at her with a lecherous face. She saw none of her female coworkers (for whom she was very, very afraid). When confronted she tried to escape first, conserving her bullets for later use.
“Where the hell am I going?” she thought after ducking into an elevator. A series of dull thumps blared against her ears as the fourth crazy man pounded against the metal doors which quickly descended. She pressed the first floor button but was unsure why.
A few minutes later the doors parted to reveal a room lit by large, red fires. It looked particularly hellish because the UV lights had gone out. She could hear screams in the distance, but she wasn’t concerned with what was happening inside the building. Outside there was no violence or screams. Fires burned, but they looked like they were dying.
“It’s safe out there, because that’s where they came from.” Nancy looked at the broken windows and torn doors to prove her assumption to herself. These victims of cabin fever must have been planning this for a while. Why they didn’t just quit their jobs was unknown to her, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was survival.
She stepped out and gasped. The one hundred seventy foot tall, twenty foot thick steel and concrete wall that had separated the laboratory from the rest of the island had been utterly destroyed, along with the armored vehicles that had been built in case a monster ever broke through its defenses. The crazy people must have used the tanks to destroy the wall and then destroyed them so no one else could use them. Now the monsters could get in.
“Shit.”
***
“Attention passengers,” a loud, blaring voice screamed into Andrew’s ears. He jolted up at the rude awakening and looked about his cabin wearily. “We are approaching a tropical storm. Please remain calm yet alert as we divert course.”
Andrew jumped off of his bed and headed out into the halls. An elderly couple joined him. “What’s going on?” the old man asked him in a wheezing, stereotypically old voice.
“We’re near a tropical storm,” Andrew answered as kindly as he could. It was quite possibly the dumbest question he had ever heard.
“The TV said it would change its course,” the woman said. “Damn that lying weatherman.”
“We’re just going to change course,” Andrew said with a bit of frustration. Didn’t they hear the announcement? Didn’t they know there was no cause for alarm? “Wait, who am I to judge? I’m out here with them.”
“They should have canceled the cruise if they knew a storm was coming. Damn money grabbing corporations,” the old woman hissed.
“Quit damning people, dear,” the old man spoke in his withered voice. “It’s a bad habit.”
“Sorry,” she apologized.
Andrew walked away from them and onto the deck of the ship, looking out at the horizon. The sun was nothing but an orange sliver on the horizon. Clouds blotted most of the sky, making it a putrid green color. His father told him that was the color the sky gets when a tornado is coming.
A water cyclone burst up a few feet nearby, and the first thought that went through Andrew’s head was “Hmm, dad was right.” A screeching buzz heralded the voice of the captain via intercom.
“Passengers, there is no cause for alarm, but if you would please calmly man the life boats, we’d appreciate it.”
Andrew darted towards the nearest boat as the ship violently darted towards the right. It felt like something had hit it from below. Behind him he heard the old woman shout, “Damn the captain!”
Loud groans rattled from within the ship, the kind that usually accompanied either internal damage or violent, seizure-like movement. One, however, sounded much different. It almost sounded like an animal.
Something hit the ship. The impact was large enough to make it lean dangerously close to a position where it could flip over, which would almost surely be fatal. “What the hell is going on?” Andrew asked aloud. Bad situations tended to destroy his internal monologue.
The elderly couple had reached the deck with the other passengers in time to see half of the life boats break free of their bonds and fall into the ocean empty. They scrambled to the other side just as it leapt into the air, throwing several of them into the ocean. Andrew realized that it was only a matter of time before the whole boat flipped over and decided it was better to enter the sea on his own terms.
The water was warm and violent. He was battered by waves from every direction but managed to keep away from the undertow. Everything was green and wet as reality slowly began to escape him. The last thing he saw was the old couple being tangled in what looked like long, blue seaweed. In the fading light it looked as though the sea plants were moving, but that was preposterous.
Andrew blacked out.
***
The sun rose triumphantly into the sky over the charred ashes of the wall. Nancy looked at the remains, unsure of how she felt. She had survived one hell of a night, escaping into the plains. She had used all of her bullets upon a Yeti that had stumbled upon her as she traveled up the island’s slow mountain, where she thought she might find safety. A tree had become her makeshift shelter... it was all she had now.
Elsewhere, on the island’s sandy beach, Andrew lay asleep. His eyes fluttered open as he was struck with a similar feeling. He had survived a shipwreck, but how long would he live on the desert island without food or water?
In the future another detail was added to the question. How long would he live on an island of monsters?