The Whole Beast

by Kara Dennison

“There’s a difference,” said Dr. Burns, “between something being unkillable and something being unable to die.” 

I turned my eyes back toward the lozenge-shaped airplane window, keen to move us to something less existential. “Speaking of unkillable,” I segued, “they’ve come a long way in a short time.” 

Below us, the lights of Bagura’s Rest had come into view. Veins of yellow-green, denoting lit roads and cul-de-sacs, laced through the darkness below us. It was like the settlement was alive, mere years after being destroyed. And they’d taken up their new name with a sort of ironic pride in the interim: rebuilding their destroyed home on the literal remains of their destroyer. 

“They’ve grown quickly, haven’t they?” Fortunately, Dr. Burns appeared equally amenable to the subject change. “We’d estimated the region would be unlivable for at least six or seven years after the attack, but here they are. Settled back in like… well, not like nothing has happened. The opposite, really.” 

My pre-college self would have been terrified at how easily I discussed the fallout of a leviathan attack. Then again, the world tends to have a way of changing overnight. One night I went to bed in a world without deadly sea monsters; the next morning, my my family back home was dead and the city I grew up in was a crater. 

Dr. Burns beamed at me. “And it’s thanks to you, Cordie.” He paused, made a gentle hand motion to indicate he was correcting himself. “Dr. Callender.” 

“We’re not at the press conference yet. No need for all that.” And yet in my mind, even in private, he would always be Dr. Burns. Never Harlan. It didn’t matter how many decades and degrees I had on me since we’d first met; deep down, I was still the scared college student and he was the advisor ripping my work to shreds, fraying the muscles of my research ‘til they healed strong. 

“We are now beginning our descent,” the pilot announced. The plane turned, affording a different angle of Bagura’s Rest below. What remained of Bagura – —half a massive, headless, stripped-down torso—came into view. Workers scaled it, carving away flesh and hide and fat. Using the whole beast. 

It had been a hypothetical in my undergrad years, but it slowly turned into a mission. Once the military has brought down the leviathans, use them. Tough hide and bone for building and industrial materials. Meat (once it was tested) for food. Turn our destruction into survival. Doing so with Bagura—the alleged unkillable king of the leviathans, the one that had started the destruction and eluded the military for decades—felt poetic. Poetic, but not perfect. Killing Bagura didn’t bring back Mom and Dad or the boy next door with the lopsided grin. I had hoped altruism would ease the pain, but I guess I wasn’t as selfless as I thought. 

“I just can’t get over how they got the electricity up and running again,” I murmured as we dipped closer. “It was the one thing we could never figure out how to do reliably.” 

Dr. Burns just smiled, a Christmas Eve smile from a parent. 

We debarked in the way I had always ascribed to heads of state or 1950s movie stars: not via jetway and customs, but down a rolling staircase. I looked at the steps beneath my feet. They weren’t metal, but a creamy white, with scaled leather pads on each step. Bagura bone and skin. 

We were met by our envoy, whose name flew by me in a flurry of introductions, and loaded into a car. Fueled by biodiesel rendered from Bagura’s fat, the driver told us. 

Dr. Burns spoke up where I opted not to. “Dr. Callender here first proposed that method of distillation as a graduate student.” 

“I just did the research. You’re the ones making it happen.” I looked out the windows at the blocks of buildings flying by. Bone electrical poles dotted the landscape, with deep red frayed wires stretched between them. “Never mind bouncing back. Most of us thought no one stood a chance against Bagura to begin with. I’d been told the military deemed it unkillable.” 

Dr. Burns raised his eyebrows. “Remember what I said. There’s a difference between something being unkillable and something being unable to die.” 

“Oh. Is that what that was about?” 

“Bagura’s amazing regenerative properties were stored in the brain,” he went on. “With enough creativity, that provides interesting solutions.” 

The car came to a stop in front of a massive warehouse. “Come see,” Dr. Burns said. 

A breeze that smelled of ozone and offal accompanied the opening of the wide double doors. The first thing I saw, high over the heads of Dr. Burns and our envoy, were more of those frayed, Mars-red wires. But as they bobbed through the massive overhead, something else struck me about them. They looked organic. I had seen them before, but smaller, more hypothetical, laid out neatly in anatomy textbook images. 

“They’re nerves.” 

I stared at the massive leviathan brain, yellow-green light lancing across its folds and shooting through the wires that powered Bagura’s Rest. Still alive. Still working. Unkillable. 

“Is it…” 

“Scans show Bagura is very much awake and aware.” Dr. Burns gestured to the brain. “It would have to be for this to work.” 

I stared. “But extracting this would have been a nightmare for Bagura. The brain still functional, every nerve still feeling… Still feeling, even now.” 

Dr. Burns nodded gravely. “It’s an ethical minefield. Hence our presence here. We’ll have to steer messaging to focus on the good it does, obviously.” 

The massive, squelchy brain shuddered, and an enormous bolt of energy shot through the nerves and into the town. It hurt. And it was likely that it would never, ever stop hurting, as the humans it failed to kill thrived on its pain. 

It didn’t bring back Mom or Dad or the boy with the lopsided grin. But it did make me smile.