Dave Freedman - Natural Selection

MONSTERS AREN’T real…. Are they?

Outer space. Toxic radiation disasters. Mad scientists’ labs. These are the places monsters come from. Or so we’ve been told…

But aren’t dinosaurs, crocodiles, lions, and sharks really monsters? Of course they are. And they come from right here on earth, and evolution made every single one of them.

So could evolution make another monster ? Today?

It might be difficult for some to picture. Evolution is arguably the most powerful force in the earth’s history, but paradoxically, it is also irrelevant to daily human life. Although the expression survival of the fittest is still used colloquially, the literal meaning no longer applies. For the human species, real life-and-death struggles, where the strong survive while the weak perish, have long since vanished.

This is not so in nature. Nature is an entirely different world, where there are no easy meals. When an animal in the wild is hungry, it must find, catch, and kill its prey, or risk dying itself. This harsh and brutal reality plays out daily, and evolutionary adaptations are a natural result. In just the past hundred years, literally thousands of such adaptations have been recorded: house finches in the Gal pagos growing longer beaks, army ants in Brazil doubling their body weights, blind gourami fish adapting “feeler fins” in place of eyes, just to name a few.

But these are all examples of minor evolutionary change. What about major change? Or even spectacular change? Will we ever see a true “evolutionary leap,” the equivalent of, say, the very first amphibian to crawl out of the ocean or the first tiny dinosaur to fly like a bird?

We will indeed. Only this time, the evolving species won’t be a salamander or a bird. It will be a predator. In fact, it will be a phenomenally dangerous predator unlike any ever known. Previously, the species’ entire existence was confined to the one place on earth still inaccessible by humans. But now a cataclysmic series of events is under way. One that will force the species out of its world and into ours for a violent first encounter.

The adaptive process is gradual and only a single animal, or perhaps a small cluster, will initially make the transition. Others might follow, but in the short term, human society will barely be affected.

Soon a small group of men and women will come face-to-face with a living nightmare. And then, even the skeptics among them will realize not only that monsters are real, but that evolution has just made the most horrifying one of them all.

CHAD THOMPKINS took a breath of the fresh sea air. Oh yeah, he thought, this is why I became a lawyer—to buy myself this kind of freedom. He took another breath and let it out, long and slow. Chad was thirty-two and had just purchased a new forty-foot cabin cruiser. Along with his wife; his pal, Dave Pelligro; and Dave’s new girlfriend, he was cruising out to Clarita Island, off the coast of Los Angeles, on this sunny June day. They were forty-five minutes into the one-hour trip from Newport Beach. The sea was fairly flat, tiny waves here and there, and they’d arrive soon. They had already passed the better-known Catalina Island, and Chad could see their destination in the distance. The plan was to work on their tans, then settle down for some lunch, though Chad was getting a little hungry already.

“Get me a sandwich, will you, Gabby?”

On a molded seat, his wife gave Chad an angry I’m not your maid look. But she tossed him a Saran-wrapped turkey and mayo anyway. “Here you are, Your Majesty.”

He chuckled. “Thanks, Gab.”

“Nice, huh?” Dave Pelligro said to his date, Theresa Landers.

In a tight sky-blue top, white shorts, and too much makeup, Theresa surveyed the water. “Beautiful.” She turned to her host. “Thanks for having us, Chad.”

“Glad you guys could make it. I’m sure I would have been bored if it were just me and Gabby out here.”

Theresa shook her head. She didn’t like Chad much. He was an arrogant preppy in a red polo who didn’t wear sunglasses. But it was his boat, and she’d never “lunched” off Clarita Island before. She looked forward to getting there.

WITH THE exception of a small tourist area with restaurants, docks, and a beachside bar, the bulk of Clarita Island was undeveloped, overrun by trees and thick shrubbery. Clarita’s western shore, mostly jagged black rocks, was downright desolate. Miles away from the clattering human noise of the island’s eastern side, it was barren of people, the only sounds from the wind and tiny breaking waves.

Gliding on a current of air, a seagull appeared from behind the trees. A couple hundred feet high, the bird flew over the dark ocean and looked down, scanning for fish.

It saw absolutely nothing.

And yet something was there. The bird had missed them. They were perfectly still, just below the surface, watching it.

The gull spotted something and dove down. It plunged quickly, but then, just yards from the water, veered off. It had seen a strand of kelp, long and greenish brown, and mistaken it for a fish. Carried by momentum, the tiny flier ripped across the water, unknowingly passing a single pair of black eyes. Then it passed a second pair. Then a hundred. But still, nothing moved. The eyes simply shifted as the little feathered body tore past. They were all watching it.

CHAD THOMPKINS cut the gas, and the boat came to a bobbing stop. They were a few hundred yards from Clarita’s main docks, where the mammoth Clarita ferry had just deposited the latest batch of tourists, mostly families with obnoxious kids. To the right of the docks, Chad eyed a beach slightly larger than a Wal-Mart aisle, jam-packed with out-of-shape sun worshipers. He found it unappetizing, to say the least. “You guys don’t want to stop here, do you?”

Gabby, Dave, and Theresa all shook their heads.

Chad nodded. “My thoughts exactly.” The lawyer hated crowds. As he started up the boat, he looked forward to the solitude of Clarita’s always-deserted western shore.

THERE WERE more of them. Another hundred had crept up from below, joining the ones that were already studying the seagull. They still didn’t move. They just watched the bird glide above the waterline.

Then their eyes shifted. From behind the trees, two dozen more gulls flew out over the water, also scanning for fish.

Looking down, the birds saw nothing but empty seas.

Then one of the creatures below them moved. From ten feet down, it swam toward the surface, a winged ray, flapping much like the birds themselves. A second creature rose, then a third. Then a hundred.

They ascended quickly all at once, shot clear out of the ocean, their bodies flapping frantically in the air.

There were so many that they were difficult to make out precisely. They were thick little animals, larger than the gulls, jet-black on their tops, gleaming white on their undersides. In the air, their wings moved much faster than in the water, their flapping rapid and uncoordinated. They rose to various heights, none more than ten feet, then belly flopped right back in. Then they leaped out again. Then again and again and again.

As the gulls watched them, their tiny hearts were beating faster than normal. They were birds and had bird brains, but on an instinctive level what they were seeing made them nervous. The strange creatures from the sea were trying to fly.

“WHERE THE hell is it?”

Chad Thompkins had been to Clarita’s western tip before, but he still didn’t see the familiar rock outcropping.