Dad

Water spritzed across the windshield of the Smith’s minivan as another vehicle sped past them in a dangerous rush. Jake Smith slightly jumped behind the wheel as the rusty pickup blasted past them, obscuring his vision with a spray of road water. Jake quickly twisted the black plastic knob on the left side of the steering wheel, sending the windshield wipers into a flurry.

“Mother fucker,” Jake huffed under his breath. “I can’t stand driving in this shit,” Jake huffed a little too loud in the driver seat, focusing his vision through the blurred glass.

The constant sounds of water spraying from beneath the spinning tires resounded throughout the family van as they drove. It was enough noise to keep little Jack, Sarah, and Phoebe’s ears innocent from their father’s profanity. The three kids sat calmly in the back, unaware of their father’s stress. The noise of the wheels on the wet road was a lullaby for Phoebe. She fell in and out of sleep drooling down her shirt in early morning slumber.

“Jake, you really have to watch it. They’re going to repeat that in school, and you’ll be the one explaining to the principal why they’re cussing up a storm,” Kate said with an annoyance in her voice.

Kate had to nag Jake repeatedly about his swearing in front of the kids. He’d always tried to maintain his mouth in front of their children, but old habits die hard. His old job, before they had kids, was very high stress. It was ancient history at this point, but the language was so ingrained in him that he was constantly battling to keep his mouth in check. He was good friends with all his old coworkers, almost like a family back then. Most of them had foul mouths that were only fueled by the stressors of their shared work. But after 15 years, Kate thought he’d have finally overcome this taint of the old life.

Jake was basically a stay-at-home Dad. He had jobs from time to time, but nothing that was long term, or ever kept him away from the house for too long. He took care of the house, and the kids once they were out of school. He rarely did much out in town besides drop the kids off or hit the local stores for groceries and supplies. Most of the time he would be on their large property just outside of town. When the kids were in school, he liked to roam and explore their 20 acres of forest butted up to the back of the house. If he wasn’t out there, he was in the back den working on his hobby.

His old job over a decade ago was a different story. It was sunup to sundown on a good day. Sometimes it lasted through the night, multiple days or longer at times. The job was always trying to change him into something he wasn’t. His friends changed, and he knew they wanted him to go along with them. Kate and Jake weren’t married back then, but together decided to leave that life behind. He knew when he couldn’t stay any longer. Tough decisions had to be made back then. However, Jake loved spending his time with the kids. That beat the old job every day. He loved where he was now, and the life his family gave him.

Kate didn’t mind being the breadwinner, and begged Jake to leave all the stress and time away that came with his job when she saw what it was doing to him. To her surprise, one day he agreed. Kate and Jake escaped, and they were finally happy.

Jake’s eyes never left the road as he continued through the misty morning hours. He never responded to his wife, as he did most times in conversation. Kate knew he was lost in his head easily. She wished she could read his mind sometimes. Just to get a glimpse of what went on in her husband’s mind.

The family was heading to the grocery store on a Saturday morning, trying to beat the crowds. Jack and Sarah were both in a foul mood in the back of the van, but for very different reasons. However, neither were pleased that their Saturday morning rituals had been interrupted. Jack would miss his favorite cartoons, his play time, and the post breakfast snooze in the couch blankets just to take a trip to the supermarket. The fact that it was so dreary out made it even worse of an experience for them all. All except for Phoebe, that girl was borderline narcoleptic. She couldn’t tell a difference between her bed, the living room couch, or the back seat of the van, passed out with her neck twisted at an uncomfortable angle.

Sarah, however, had other things on her mind. She was still upset about what happened at school the day prior. On Friday, Sarah’s ninth grade homeroom class had a Parent’s Workday. Everyone in her class would have a parent come in and talk about what kind of work they did. It was supposed to be a way for maturing students to start looking to the outside world and what they wanted to become one day. The problem was, Sarah didn’t have a parent to bring to class. It was not because neither could make it, but because Sarah hadn’t told them about it.

Now, Sarah loved her parents, and was very proud of her mother. Kate was a lawyer at a highly renowned local law firm. Sarah couldn’t ask her mother to come to school, because she didn’t want her father to find out. You see, Sarah was embarrassed of her father, and feared above all else that her friends would find out about him and his lack of a job. She feared the ridicule from her friends if they discovered that her dad didn’t have a career like their fathers did. If they discovered how he spent most of his time, and his hobby, she never thought she’d live it down. Jake stayed at the house, even when the kids were all in school. He spent most of his free time at home watching old footage from newscasts, and interviews. All of Sarah’s childhood she remembered her father doing the same thing.

Jake was obsessed with heroes. He spent every waking hour in the early years of Sarah’s life studying them. He used to feed her as a baby, a bottle in one hand and a pen and paper in the other. He’d watch the shaky footage from massively destructive battles that became common in his youth. He’d watch old news interviews with the bigger, more well-known heroes from back then; before DOSA was established and they all but made those kinds of destructive battles a thing of the past. He’d watch and take notes all day sometimes. Sarah could remember her dad fawning all over anything he could get his hands on if it had to do with the superpowered icons of the big cities, before DOSA. Jake took Sarah to a hero convention once when she was eight years old. That was when Sarah first saw her dad as something other than her own hero. He was a “fanboy.” Sarah hung her head low at that convention, too shy and embarrassed to make eye contact with anyone else as her father pulled her to every booth selling hero paraphernalia. She felt like the adult that day, and she looked down on her father as if he was the child, wrapped up in child-like things. That was the first time she was ashamed of her father. It only grew from there.

Sarah saw her mother as a strong, powerful woman who took care of their family. But when she looked at her father… all she saw was a weak man with no real power of his own. He couldn’t even take care of his own family. He was nothing like the heroes he idolized. She didn’t know what her dad was like when he was in his career making something of himself. So, she didn’t look to her dad for strength, she looked to her Mom. Sarah loved her father and the time and memories she had with him. She really did. When she was little, her father was her hero. But as she grew and matured, she was ashamed of him.

Sarah gazed out the window, wishing things were different. A part of her young mind wished she could go back to when she was little, and her dad was the biggest, strongest man in her life. Now, she knew about DOSA, the superhumans in their ranks, and just how powerful some of them were. She witnessed how much her mother took control while her father sat at home like he was too scared of the world. In Sarah’s mind, she saw her father for what he was. He was a fantasizing, scared, weak man who lived in a past he wasn’t even a part of. She thought he basically worshiped the old heroes. She thought it was pathetic, and she even felt bad for thinking that about him. But in her mind, she couldn’t deny what she felt.

Sarah sat in the back, angrily eyeing her father as she stewed over the impossible position, he had put her in. She might be made fun of by her friends for not having at least one parent for Parent Workday. Her father could get upset at her for not asking him to come. Or the very worst… have her friends know about her father. She shook her head in the back of the van, watching her father drive down the misty streets and into town.

The distant fog blotted out the sun so that the only thing that seemed to give off light was the illuminated smoke that filled the air. The fog had rolled into town overnight, along with the unpredicted storm.

Kate was going to make the trip to the store by herself, but Jake intervened. He had a bad dream the night before that he couldn’t shake and felt like he needed to come with his wife. So, they all piled into the family van to go shopping together. He couldn’t remember what the dream was even about, but the vague memory of his slumbering imaginings was enough to make sure he had all of his loved ones within arm’s reach.

Jake kept only his children on his mind when in public. They may have rarely realized the close eye he had on them, but Jake’s attention was never far from his children. Some would consider him a helicopter parent, but he knew what he was doing. Kate knew why he was the way he was, so she never said anything about his overprotectiveness. Some might think him distant, and even uncaring due to his silence and seemingly distracted nature, but that was just what was seen on the surface. Underneath, in Jake’s mind, there was a lot more going on than anyone could see. Jake loved his children, more than any of them realized.

The van pulled to a stop in the supermarket’s parking lot. Jake put the vehicle in park and killed the engine. Sara and Jack started rustling around in the back seats, shedding their seat belts and reaching for door handles. Kate grabbed her purse from the floorboards and searched through it for the shopping list she had penned out the night before. Jake sat very still in the driver’s seat, staring out the windshield. Phoebe never moved, still unconscious and unaware that the van’s movement had stopped.

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“Okay kiddos, let’s hop out. The quicker we get in the quicker we’ll get out,” Kate said to the kids.

“I’m going to the electronics, Mom,” Sarah informed her mother. “There’s a new CD I want to get with my babysitting money.”

“Sure thing honey, just try to be quick. It’s going to get busy soon,” Kate really didn’t want to get caught in crowds. “Jack you stay with me, okay?”

“Fine,” Jack wined. He wanted to look in the toy isles but was cut off before he could even try.

Jake was still quiet.

Kate stuffed the shopping list back into her purse right before she reached for her door handle. “I’ll grab Phoebe and just set her in the cart.” She lightly grasped the silver lever with three fingers before she felt something.

“Stop,” Jake spoke calmly from the driver’s seat, gripping her inboard arm that was pushing off the center console.

The children couldn’t detect what was in his tone, not like Kate could. Jake was staring through the windshield into the fog beyond the road, into the uncertain haze that fell around the town. He sensed something. Something was wrong.

“What is it?” Kate asked her husband, an old fear crept out of past memories. Once she looked at Jakes expression, she knew how serious it was. She rarely saw Jake like this… a look that would fall over his eyes. That’s what scared her. “Jake…” she looked beyond the glass, into the fog to see what he saw. She saw nothing.

The kids, Jack and Sarah, paused their movements also, easily gauging the situation that revealed itself in the front seats. Mom’s look was scary and hard for them to understand. While Dad’s demeanor was as cold as ice. Completely devoid of emotion.

In a rapid series of movements, Jake exited out of his door, rolled the window down and ordered Kate to move over.

“Don’t get out! Climb over!” Jake’s words were fast and worried. At least, that’s what his children thought.

Sarah and Jack were getting scared. They never saw their dad this way. He was always quiet, never showed strength in any situation. Their mother was their rock. She handled the hard things, not Dad. So, why was their father acting so aggressive and strange. There was no present danger that they could identify as they observed the other shoppers calmly walking in and out of the store, packing bags of groceries into their trunks, and coming and going from the lot.

“Daddy,” Jack whimpered. His little mind couldn’t even string words into a sentence he was so scared and confused at his father’s voice and tight grip over his mother’s arm.

Phoebe woke up at Jack’s cry, alerted to something unusual. She too started to fear the ambient tension.

Kate crawled over the center console that separated the two front seats. It was quick, jarring, and unexpected, especially for the kids. Jack started crying from the new atmosphere in the van.

Sarah looked out her window to her father, who was again staring out into the towering wall of white fog that encroached on the supermarket, blanketing everything it had already passed over in a suffocating haze. It was so feint at first glance, but when Sarah looked to what her father’s gaze was on, she saw something within the fog. It was moving towards them. There was something… a living creature in the sea of mist that crawled towards them steadily. It was massive. Sarah’s eyes strained and bulged against the fear that locked her in her seat. It wasn’t a feeling her young mind could recognize, because that is exactly what it was, the fear of the unknown. She felt helpless against the distant cloaked titan. She had no idea what she was looking at.

The unsuspecting supermarket was alerted by powerful shakes in the very earth itself. Cars and trucks in the lot began to bounce and rock at every pulse beneath the store. This got people’s attention to at least start looking around curiously. Once aware that something was happening, a very low pitch bellow shook the cars in the lot. The ominous tone vibrated the vehicles, reverberated through the glass and people’s bodies alike, garnering the attention of the whole town. The sound was a roar. It has been years and years since anything like this had happened. A titan was coming.

Jack could feel the humming bass in his body, while Sarah started feeling a different shake. Every few seconds, there was a deeper thud that shook the earth. It was distinctly different from the warbling exhale of the gigantic threat; still hidden mostly in fog. It was footsteps, and the thing was coming closer. Only feint outlines could be seen of the humongous creature, but more was revealing with each step. Jack and Phoebe held hands in fear.

The children were terrified, “Dad get back in!” Sarah screamed to her father who was still outside of the van.

Jake was staring into the fog with a wonderous gaze. Sarah thought he looked excited, like his dream of finally getting firsthand knowledge of what it was like for the heroes. Sarah started getting angry at her father.

“Dad, get in the damn car!” She screamed at her father, actually crying from the new frenzy.

“Get the kids out of here,” Jake said as he glanced back to Kate.

“What about you,” Kate asked, stricken with panic.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Just head home, don’t stop, don’t wait for me,” Jake said as the rush of shoppers swarmed the lot to find their cars and flee for safety.

Chaos overtook the parking lot.

“Go!” Jake yelled to his wife.

Kate snapped the car forward, leaving Jake where he stood and jumped a curb to get out of the parking spot, and then over another to get out of the lot and onto the street. The other cars were all becoming jammed and trapped in the panic, but Kate got out over the curb quick enough. They were out and moving away at a high rate of speed back down the highway.

The kids stared out at their father as they sped away, watching him disappear behind a sea of rushing people. They both could barely see his face, but he didn’t seem scared. He stared directly back at them until they couldn’t see each other. He smiled at his children while they could still see him. It confused them even more in the impossible situation. Then, he was gone.

“Mom… what are you doing? What about Dad?” Sarah asked her mother, still angry at her father’s irresponsibility. “We can’t leave him… he’ll get killed.” She could still feel the thunderous crashes of the behemoth stepping out of the wall of fog.

Jack and Phoebe were crying hard in the back, wailing harder as thier sister screamed into the front.

“Just hold on,” Kate urged through her laser focus. She was zipping in and out of cars as they barreled away from town as fast as they could.

“What was he thinking? Why would he leave us?” Sarah yelled out loud. “Why does he care more about everything else than he does about his only family? He’s going to die… we’re going to die… all because he just wants to see those stupid heroes up close…” Sarah couldn’t believe what her father had done. As she released the feelings she hid for so long, she realized how much resentment she had toward him.

Jack’s cries bordered on uncontrollable as his sister spoke. He didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want his daddy to die either. Jack was beyond scared. Phoebe had covered her ears in a panic, trying to block out the whole world. She was too scared.

A sudden rush of propulsive energy burned across the sky. A jet-black cylinder that was exactly nine feet tall, and four feet in diameter, zipped overhead as it scanned and surveyed the area. It dropped twelve, similarly black, armored bipedal support drones into the parking lot of the supermarket. The remotely controlled bots unfolded and sprang to life. They moved quickly in the parking lot, assisting motorists in escaping the area. The strong metal frames of the drones could lift and move trapped vehicles with ease. They directed civilians to safer locations through built in amplified speakers that projected their robotic commands across great distances. They were the support. The large black cylinder was the offensive unit, and it was not alone. There were two other cylinders that held an equilateral triangular formation that spanned about five hundred yards from point to point. As one cylinder moved so did the others, they were all tied together in tandem through a digital network controlled by one of the greats in DOSA. He was one of the older, more experienced heroes. He was from before DOSA, from before everything changed.

Jack asked his mom with a choked voice, “Momma, are they going to save Daddy?”

“He probably already got himself killed,” Sarah said quietly, but loud enough for her mother to hear. She was angry. Deep down she didn’t want her dad to get hurt, but she was so mad at him she couldn’t think anything other than the things that grew from anger.

Kate reached back from the front seat and slapped Sarah across her face. There was an audible pop in the cab of the van that snapped up Jack’s attention. He started crying again.

“Hey!” Kate yelled at her kids, speaking more so to Sarah. “Do not talk about your father like that! You have no idea how much he loves you!”

There was a silence in the speeding van after the quick and unannounced attack from Kate. Jack was scared. He’d never seen his mother like this before. Sarah was shocked, and her face stung from the pain. Phoebe’s eyes were wide, but she still covered her ears. No one spoke again.

The van sped away, breaking away from the other people on the road. The van had the same hum of water being cast off the tires from the rainy street, but everyone was too flushed with adrenaline to hear it. Sarah was angry as they drove, but more than anything, she was confused. Why had her dad gotten out when he saw that monster coming for the town? Why would he risk everything because of a hobby, an obsession? They all knew the world they lived in. They had always run, anytime they were ever in the vicinity of danger or a disaster. Why did he let his fascination with the heroes influence his judgment now? More than anything else, Sarah wanted to know why her father had left her, specifically? Why didn’t he love her as much as he loved the heroes?

They all felt a powerful blast ripple out from the direction of the supermarket, which was followed by an eruption of fire that singed the beast’s flesh. It was strong enough to knock the van around a little as Kate continued to push the engine to its limits. Sarah and Jack looked back through the glass from where they came. What they saw outside their window looked like the apocalypse. The monster’s shear size looked unbeatable. Who would save them… who would save all those people?

The three black cylinders circled rapidly around a now fully exposed beast, firing energy weapons that cast blue and red beams of light at the creature. Its size and shape were unimaginable, having appendages and horns that resembled something between an elephant and something… alien. It was out of the fog now, stepping and crushing trees that had grown to heights around forty to fifty feet, knocking them over like they were mere toothpicks.

The van continued to speed away. The concussive blasts intensified at first, then faded as they travelled further away. The hope that they’d ever see their father again had started to fade. Hope was still there, but the other possibility started to creep in.

Kate saw the beast still looming large in her driver’s side mirror. Once her memories sorted themselves in the chaos, she remembered and spoke the name aloud.

“It’s a Leviathan…” her eyes wide with fear, “that’s not possible…”