Warday

Rumors Mutants and Super-Beasts

Jim and I heard our first rumor on the trolley into L.A. Since then, we’ve found that rumors run in the blood of this city.

RUMOR: There is a gigantic beast with bat wings and red, burning eyes that has attacked adults and carried off children. The creature stands seven feet tall and makes a soft whistling noise. It is often seen on roofs in populated areas, but only at night.

FACT: Of all the rumors we heard, this was the most persistent.

Claiming that we were L.A. Times reporters, we called Dr. Edward Wagner of UCLA, a biologist, and asked him to comment on the possibility that some sort of radiation-induced mutation could have produced a new species of giant bat. Dr. Wagner stated that giantism is a fairly well understood evolutionary phenomenon that is caused by space-competition among species. He doubted that something as fully developed as this could have come about in the thirty-odd bat generations that have elapsed since the war.

A Glendale resident, who was attacked in August of ’91, recorded his experience in the weekly Glendale Courier:

I had just gotten off the Glendale trolley when I heard this soft sort of cooing noise coming from the roof of a house. The sound was repeated and I turned to look toward the house. Standing on the roof was what looked like a man wrapped in a cloak. Then it spread its wings and whoosh! it was right on top of me! I remember it smelted awful, like something dead. It was working at my face with these long, probing fingers. It got them around my neck and it started snapping its teeth and hissing. Its wings were wrapped around me. I was smothering in there, in the stink of the thing.

When I saw its eyes, red and glaring, hideous, I thought it was the devil come for me and I gave out a scream. Just like that, it spread its wings and started flying, its fingers still around my head. I was dragged halfway down the block, then it let me go and took off into the sky, cooing and hissing. I saw the moonlight glint off its wings, then it was gone.

The individual who told this story to the paper was also reported to have extensive scars on his neck and head, of the type that long fingernails or talons might make.

We have no further information about this story.

RUMOR: Radiation has caused many terrible mutations, such as babies who claw their way out of the mother’s womb just as the first contractions of labor start. Also, babies who are born with the genitals of adults, or women having animal children, usually monkeys or pigs.

FACT: We have great difficulty getting used to the high level of mutation that is an inevitable side-effect of high ambient radiation.

Naturally, mutations occur with greatest frequency in areas most seriously radiated. A mother in California, for example, has little more chance of bearing a mutant child than before the war, but a mother in Dallas is many times more likely to bear a mutant.

Mutations take two basic forms, degenerative and progressive.

Ninety-nine out of a hundred degenerative mutations involve some sort of destruction or malformation of the fetus. They never involve atavism, such as a woman giving birth to an animal child.

Such a mutation is probably not possible. Nor are they likely to involve such farfetched nonsense as babies with claws or babies with fully developed genitals. The truth is much more prosaic, and much sadder. Common mutations are malformed limbs, bones, or eyes, brain disorders, and malfunctioning organs, such as improperly formed hearts. In cases where the mutant is declared non-viable on the Hexler Function Scale, the parents may elect euthanasia.