THE RETURN OF ATTAK-MAN (2025 Edit)

Attak-Man reaches out of a computer game to kill people!

Illona Hepburn stood in the open doorway, waiting for the perfunctory peck on the cheek as her husband raced straight past her on his way home from work. More concerned with reaching his games room to play his latest computer games than with spending his evenings with her.

“Hi, hon,” said Greg Hepburn by way of greeting. As expected, he pecked her right cheek, then raced past her toward the stairs to his upstairs “study”.

Staring after him, as he raced down the corridor, Illona sighed and noticed that he was running to fat. When they had married ten years ago, Greg had been a little overweight. But since becoming addicted to computer games, he had started to spend all of his time sitting at a computer playing (what to Illona seemed) childish computer games.


Racing into his games room, Greg sat down at his PC, then groaned at the pang in his back caused by the spine-destroying “ergonomic” chair.

Standing again, he turned the chair over onto its side and thump-thump-thumped the “adjustable” backrest in and tightened the large plastic knob as best that he could. Then he turned the chair back onto its coasters and sat on it again.

With a screeching of metal, the knob gave way instantly, and the backrest slid out again, causing Greg to almost fall over backwards.

Cursing, he pushed the chair away and walked across to where an orange kitchen chair sat near his music deck. He lifted the chair and carried it back to the PC.

“Why can’t makers of so-called ergonomic chairs realise that the most important factor is the backrest?” muttered Greg to no one in particular. “It should push hard into your back, not fly away from you at the first feather contact with your back.”

Lifting up a black leather carryall, he unzipped it and took out stationery, pens, staples, envelopes and a red stamp pad, that he had borrowed on a “ninety-nine-year loan” from his work.

Last of all, he lifted out what looked like two CD cases.

Greg pressed the power button on his PC and the on button on the monitor and cursed as the computer seemed to take forever to install the temporary RAM copy to work on. Then, opening the first CD, he slipped it into the CD-ROM drive and started it up.

Instead of the Cult of Cthulhu game with Great Old Ones versus the Ancient Ones that he had expected, he got the message, “Beware the Return of Attak-Man!”

“Oh, God, no, a computer bug!” he cried, thinking it was a joke message.

Greg reached for the off switch to deactivate his computer, in the vain hope of keeping the bug out of his operating system. But then he stopped as the name “Attak-Man” rang a bell in his long-term memory.

“There was a PC game named Attak-Man in the late 1980s,” he recalled. Deciding that they must have put the wrong game into the CD box, he started to unload the CD, then stopped again.

Without quite knowing why, Greg printed out the message, “Beware the Return of Attak-Man!” on his laser printer.

As the printer started grinding painfully through the process of printing out the six words, he finally recalled where he had heard of Attak-Man.

“Of course, it was that rip-off version of Pac-Man in the late-1980s!” He stopped for a moment, puzzled. “But I thought the makers of Pac-Man had Attak-Man taken off the market by the end of the ’80s!”

When he looked back to the computer monitor, there was a face like a classic Punch doll, but with crocodile-like extended jaws staring out at him.

Greg started to smile as he recalled the tacky Attak-Man figure from his teens. But the smile quickly faded from his face when he realised that the glass screen of his monitor looked decidedly strange.

“What the Hell?” he said, realising that the glass computer screen was bulging outward as though it had suddenly turned into transparent rubber, soft and viscous, flowing almost like honey.

Greg watched spellbound in horror as the monitor continued to bulge outward toward him. Thinking that it was going to explode, he wanted to reach out to turn off the power to the monitor. But as though developing a will of their own, his arms refused to respond to his desires and stayed where they were, hovering a centimetre above the keyboard of his computer.

He struggled to make his hands move, without success, as the screen continued to bulge outwards, until he realised that it was the visage of Attak-Man, complete with crocodile jaws that were protruding out of the glass screen toward him.


In the kitchen, Illona Hepburn was cutting up potatoes when she heard her husband’s hoarse screaming.

“Darn!” she cursed as the knife slipped and nicked her thumb.

She grabbed up a wet sponge to press to her bleeding hand, then walked into the washhouse to get an old rag to tie to her thumb as a bandage.

Then, returning to the kitchen, she called out, “What’s the matter, Greg?” Under her breath, she added, “Don’t tell me you can’t get The Curse of Zondar or whatever to load on your computer?” Like many PC-wives, Illona didn’t understand her husband’s fascination with either Lovecraftian myths or childish computer games.

“Greg?” she called again after receiving no reply. Thinking: He can’t have hurt himself up there, can he? She strode across to the bottom of the steps leading to the first-floor bedrooms and looked up.

“Greg, are you okay?” she called up the stairs.

After a moment’s indecision, Illona finally started up the stairs toward her husband’s “play room” as she thought of it.

Inside the study, she found her husband sitting at an orange kitchen chair, which had been missing for the last few days, despite Greg’s insistence that he had not taken it.

“So that’s where it got to?” she muttered as she went across to tap her husband on the shoulder.

“Greg, I thought you swore you didn’t have this ...?” she said, jumping back in shock as he suddenly lurched forward and fell to the floor.

Seeing her husband’s faceless corpse, brains on clear show, Illona raced out of the room, toward the bathroom to throw up.


Puzzling over the faceless corpse of Greg Hepburn, Inspector Errol Powell said, “Years ago, there were stories of hyænas chewing the faces off sleeping tourists in South Africa. But I’ve never seen anything like it in Australia before.”

Fighting the rising bile, Sergeant Les Arnold looked away and saw the sheet of paper sitting on the laser printer. Picking it up, he read, “Beware the Return of Attak-Man!”

Taking the sheet from his sergeant, Errol read it, then explained, “That was a rip-off version of Pac-Man in the late-1980s. There was a long-running legal battle over it. And I guess the makers of Attak-Man must have won in the end, if it’s back on the market.”

“What’s Pac-Man?” asked twenty-seven-year-old Les, whose freckled complexion made him look about fourteen.

Looking astonished, Errol explained, “It was a very early computer game ... like Space Invaders.”

Screwing up his brow in wonderment, Les asked, “What’s Space Invaders?”

Wondering if his sergeant was having him on, Errol said, “I’ll explain later. It obviously can’t have anything to do with the killing.”

Hearing footsteps behind them, the two officers stepped aside to allow the two medics to stretcher out Greg Hepburn’s faceless corpse.


Grey-haired George Long was shocked at the state of Greg Hepburn’s corpse. Although he had been a paramedic for more than thirty-five years, he had never seen a more shockingly mutilated corpse. Feeling the bile start to rise in his throat, the sixty-five-year-old looked away so that he wouldn’t throw up, and was surprised to see his young assistant, Tony Hobbs, looking almost nonchalant as they placed Greg Hepburn on the stretcher and covered him with a corpse sheet.

Ten years ago, you would have already thrown up and would now be dry-heaving, thought George. He recalled how, as a twenty-year-old, Tony had fainted after seeing a man with half his face shot away: Now he can shrug it off like it’s nothing! He recalled teasing Tony about it at the time, telling him, “You soon get used to this sort of thing ... in twenty years or so!” But now he thought: I guess I was wrong. It only took you ten years.

“Come on,” said Tony, thinking: The old man is starting to lose it with age.

Doing his best not to glare at his workmate, George lifted his end of the stretcher, and they started into the hallway.

“Be careful going down the stairs with that,” warned Senior Sergeant Jennifer Hanley, a long, lanky ash blonde, meeting the stretcher-bearers in the corridor.

George Long glared at Jenny, indignant that she would think that he might drop one of his “charges”. Even if that charge was long past hurting.


Inside the study, Errol Powell looked around at the sound of footsteps. Seeing Jenny Hanley, he waved her over and filled her in on the mysterious murder of Greg Hepburn.

Then, after taking down Illona Hepburn’s statement, Errol and Les departed, leaving Jenny to stay with the widow for a while.


After leaving the Leander Street Footscray home, Errol Powell instinctively drove down to Ballarat Road and turned left toward Short Street, where the Maidstone Police Station had been a decade ago.

“Why are we pulling up here?” asked Les Arnold as they pulled up in front of the long-closed-down station.

“Darn!” Errol cursed himself under his breath. Aloud, he said, “I just wanted to have a quick look at the old place before driving back to Melbourne.”

Then, before Les could argue the point, the inspector opened the car door, stepped out and strode across to the small gate.

“Where are you going?” called Les.

Then, as Errol Powell swung open the rusty gate and started down the concrete path toward the front door of the old station, the sergeant cursed under his breath and started after him.

As Les reached the creaky gate, to his astonishment, he saw Errol take out an old key chain and start trying different keys in the lock.

“Don’t tell me he’s still got the key to this dump?” muttered Les to himself as he started across the concrete path after the inspector.

To the redhead’s amazement, when he reached the front porch, the door was wide open and Errol Powell had stepped inside.

“Watch out you don’t fall through the floorboards,” advised Les.

“It’s only been out of use for eight years or so,” pointed out Errol. “The floor should still be rock solid.”

Nonetheless, he stepped tentatively upon the creaking floorboards as he walked down the thin aisle to the reception area on the right.

The reception area was barren of furniture. Although rectangles in the dust on the floor showed where an enamel-topped counter had once been, and also where a desk and two chairs had stood.

On the left-hand side, a smaller rectangle showed where there had been a chocolate vending machine. From which they had once fed Mars bars to their most celebrated inmate, whom they had held in the metal-walled lock-up for two weeks, ten years ago.


Back at Russell Street, Les and Errol found Senior Sergeant Jennifer Hanley waiting for them.

“Where have you been?” asked Jenny as they strode into the glass-walled office.

“Reminiscing about the not-so-good old, good old days,” said Les Arnold, making her raise a questioning eyebrow to their superior.

“We just stopped in at Short Street for a moment,” explained Errol, sitting at an ergonomic chair in their office.

As Errol put down the CD-ROM case they had obtained from Illona Hepburn, Les asked, “What is the name of the computer game he was playing when he was killed?”

Picking up the CD case, Jenny read out, “The Cult of Cth ... Cth ... thul ... kuh thul...?”

Taking the plastic case from her, Errol Powell read out, “The Cult of Kuh-Thul-hu. Don’t they teach young kids anything at school anymore? Cthulhu is the leader of the Great Old Ones. The sworn enemies of the Elder Gods, who sometimes help humanity to fight the Great Old Ones!”

“Don’t tell me you’re into this kind of game-playing crap?” asked Les.

“No, but I can read. So I’ve heard of H.P.Lovecraft and Cthulhu.”

“So Attak-Man is one of these Great Old Ones?” asked Les.

“No, as I told you before, Attak-Man was a rip-off version of Pac-Man in the late-1980s.”

“Then why does the CD box say ‘The Cult of Kuh-thul-hu’? And not ‘The Revenge of Attak-Man’?”

Looking puzzled, Errol looked at the CD case, then took the laser print-out from Les and read again, ‘The Return of Attak-Man.” After looking back and forth between the two items for a moment, looking increasingly puzzled, Errol finally said, “They must have put it into the wrong CD case.”

“So Greg Hepburn meant to buy the Kuh-thul-hu game? Not ‘The Revenge of Attak-Man’?”

“I guess so,” agreed Errol with a shrug.


After they had stretchered Greg Hepburn to the back of the ambulance, George Long slid open the small window and informed the driver, “No rush, this one is long dead.”

“His face has been chomped right off,” said Tony Hobbs, almost with glee. Taking a Mars bar from his coat pocket, he popped it open and began to munch on it with relish.

How can you be hungry after seeing that? wondered George as the ambulance took off slowly: Gee, how you’ve changed over the last decade. When you first started, you wouldn’t have eaten anything for days after seeing something as gruesome as that.


Forty-five minutes later, the ambulance pulled up at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in Parkville. The corpse was rushed to an operating theatre; however, the surgeon took one look and declared, “Patient Dead On Arrival.” He looked at his wristwatch to confirm the time, glad of any excuse to look away from the remains of Greg Hepburn.


As they were taking the corpse downstairs to the morgue, they heard a metallic clatter. Looking down, George Long saw a silvery circle, which he recognised as a CD-ROM.

“Damn, where did that come from?” he said, stooping to pick it up.

“It must’ve fallen onto the stretcher when we picked up the corpse in Footscray,” suggested Tony.

“Shit!” said George. “I’d better give it to Nurse Lopez to send back to the widow.”


“I’m just going off duty now,” said the tall brunette when George showed her the CD. “Give it to Nurse Brown ... I mean Nurse Carter.”

“I thought she was still on her honeymoon?” asked George.

“No, I got back yesterday and came into work today,” explained Sarah Carter from the reception area.

“That’s dedication for you,” said George. Holding up the silvery disk, he added, “We must have picked this up with the last corpse by mistake. Can you send it back to the widow?”

“Sure thing,” said Sarah, taking the disk, along with Illona Hepburn’s address. Holding the CD up, she read, ‘The Return of Attak-Man’. Now, where have I heard of that before?”

“According to Errol Powell, Attak-Man was a rip-off version of Pac-Man in the late 1980s,” explained George.

“Oh, yes,” said Sarah, vaguely recalling Attak-Man from her childhood. "My Dad used to be addicted to Attak-man."

Putting the CD-ROM into a Manila envelope, Sarah wrote on the name and address of Illona Hepburn, then dropped it into a small out tray beside her desk. Meaning to take it downstairs for postage the next day.

By midnight, however, to her dismay, Sarah Carter found that she still had not delivered the CD-ROM downstairs, despite having gone down to the level of the mail room twice.

“Damn!” she said, looking at the overhead clock on the wall.

Picking up the package, she started around the reception counter, then stopped. Looking both ways down the hallway, she saw that no one else was about.

“I wonder?” she said, still staring down the corridor. After a second’s hesitation, she looked back at her workstation, then back out into the corridor.

She hesitated for a moment longer, then turned and headed back to her desk.

Sitting at the twenty-one-inch monitor, she re-opened the package addressed to Illona Hepburn. Taking out the CD-ROM, she read, “The Return of Attak-Man!” After staring guiltily at the plastic disk for a moment, she looked behind her one last time, then placed the CD into the hospital’s LAN system and booted it up.

After a few seconds, the message, “Beware the Return of Attak-Man!” appeared on her computer monitor.

“Come on, come on,” she said, impatiently pressing the enter key on her keyboard.

The message remained on the screen, but after a second, a small green square appeared in the second “A” in the word “Attak” and slowly began spinning around and around, gradually increasing in size, as though it was approaching her. Until the nurse could make out the image of Attak-Man inside the green square.

Sarah shivered in disgust and said, “What is this?”

As Greg Hepburn had thought, the Attak-Man image looked like a cross between the puppet Punch and the crocodile from the Punch and Judy stalls of yesteryear. A “human” face, but with long, extended crocodile jaws.

“Well, there’s Punch and the croc,” said Sarah Carter, “now where’s Judy, the baby, and the policeman?”

Sarah started to reach for the computer to remove the disc when the Punch Face of Attak-Man started to spin again. This time, while opening its crocodile jaws wide, so that the nurse was given a very realistic image of its inner mouth and windpipe.

“Oh, yuck,” said Sarah Carter, wondering why anyone would want to play such a computer game. She wanted to remove the disc, but was entranced by the swirling image of Attak-Man’s crocodile jaws.

After a moment, Sarah felt her head spinning and thought that she was about to pass out. Then she realised that it was the screen of the monitor bulging out toward her as the crocodile jaws kept swirling like an out-of-control TV game show wheel.

“What the Hell?” she said.

Sarah tried to stand up and failed, plopping back onto the swivel chair, her long legs unable to carry her weight anymore, as though they had suddenly turned to rubber.

Unable to move, Sarah Carter opened her mouth to scream as the swirling crocodile jaws suddenly leapt toward her. But her scream turned to a gurgle as Attak-Man’s reptilian jaws chewed away her face and much of the brain matter beneath.


At 7:30 the next morning, Jennifer Hanley’s yellow-haired form was already sitting at one of three back-breaking ergonomic chairs in the glass-walled office that the three officers shared on the ninth floor of the Russell Street Police Station, when Errol Powell came back onto duty after only four or five hours' sleep.

Trying his best not to yawn, the tall, thickset man walked painfully slowly across the room to where Jenny was sitting in front of one of three computer monitors attached to a single laser printer.

Finally, giving in to the urge, he yawned widely and stretched, then slumped into a chair beside his second-in-command.

“Where’ve you been?” asked the ash blonde, as though he were hours late for duty.

Errol thought of saying, “I slept in.” But deciding against the quip, he said, “Upstairs talking to Elaine Maylor.” Holding up a computer print-out, he added, “There have been two more murders like the Hepburn killing overnight. One at Parkville hospital, the other interstate.”

“Oh, no,” said Jenny, taking the print-out from her superior. “Epworth,” she read out. “Then it can’t be the same killer?”

Errol considered for a moment before saying, “It’s only an hour’s flight between Melbourne Airport and Kingsford-Smith in Sydney. So, I guess in theory it could be the same maniac.”

Jenny considered for a few seconds, then said, “Maybe. I guess it is a little soon for copycat killers to be starting up.”

“Anyway, we’d better get out to the Royal Melbourne. Is Les in yet?”

“No, he rang in to say he’d be a little late today.”

“Then we’d better leave a note for him to meet us out there,” suggested Errol.

“Okay,” said Jenny. Picking up a pen, she scratched off a Post-it note. Then they set off for the car park in the basement of the police station.


Taking the key to their white Fairlane from the key-cupboard in the basement, Jenny said, “I’ll drive ... And no jokes about woman drivers.”

“Of course not,” said Errol as she climbed into the driver’s seat. “But you are off your probationary license, I hope.”

“Ha! Ha!” said Jenny, starting the engine, forcing Errol Powell to quickly slide into the seat beside her.

“Keep it below Warped Factor Five, please,” teased the inspector as Jenny gunned the motor and they roared up the ramp toward street level.


Bernie Ling served the last three people in the service station shop, then looked up at the clock above where he sat in the small service booth. Seeing it was almost 10:00 AM, he thought: I wonder what’s happened to Ross? For the last twelve years, Ross Wood had turned up for the morning edition of the Melbourne Herald-Sun every weekday by a quarter to ten at the latest. But today, as Bernie glanced out of the plate-glass window at Alan Mance Mitsubishi across Barkly Street, there was no sign of the salesman.

“Don’t tell me he’s finally heard about sick leave?” thought Bernie aloud. “It’s about time he had a day off.”

Then, even as he spoke, the Chinese-Australian saw a tall, stocky figure start out the front door of Alan Mance.

“That can’t be Ross?” thought Bernie, seeing the expensive cut of the pale blue suit. But as the stocky figure raced across the road toward the AMPOL station, Bernie saw that it was indeed his friend.

“New suit?” asked Bernie as the glass door whooshed open and Ross Wood stepped into the service station shop.

“Don’t sound so surprised. I have bought replacement suits on rare occasions over the last twelve years or so.”

“Yeah, but only from the local Opportunity Shop,” insisted Bernie. “This one looks brand new. What’d you do, win Tattslotto or something?”

“Almost,” said Ross. He took three golden coins and some silver from his suit pocket to pay for a newspaper that he took from a small pile on the counter. “I’ve just been made general manager of Alan Mance Mitsubishi, with a massive pay rise.”

“Does that mean that you’re now allowed to play games on their computer system?”

“It sure does,” agreed Ross. He held up a CD-ROM, which Bernie took from him.

“The Return of Attak-Man?” asked the Chinese-Australian, thinking: Now where have I heard that before? Aloud, he asked, “Is that some kind of American Ninja game?”

“No, no,” said Ross, sounding shocked that his friend had never heard of the computer game. “Attak-Man is sort of like the old Pac-Man game. Where you have this crocodile-faced monster eating up the little star-shaped good guys as they run across the screen in straight lines.”

“Sounds hi-tech,” teased Bernie. “Does it come complete with a Hank Williams soundtrack instead of the electronic rock music most computer games have?”

“No, and I’ll have you know that I like Hank Williams’ music. He’s the grandfather of modern country and western music.”

“Still, we won’t hold that against him,” replied the Chinese-Australian.

Realising that he would never get the better of Bernie Ling’s caustic tongue, Ross Wood said, “Well, anyway, that’s what Attak-Man was like thirty-five years or so back. In the early days of computer games. I guess it’s been updated and improved considerably since then, with 3-D graphics and what have you.”

“Yeah, great,” said Bernie, sounding anything but impressed.

Ross Wood did his best not to play into Bernie Ling’s hands by trying to beat him at his own game. He knew sarcasm was a natural mode of speech for the service station attendant.

Instead, he glared at the Chinese-Australian, thinking, “What would you know, anyway?” Turning to leave, he thought, “You’ve always been a bit strange ... since being killed ten years ago.” Although he knew Bernie Ling couldn’t have been killed, despite his claim to have been gunned down by robbers. And despite the buckshot-like scars that pitted his back from side to side diagonally.

Waving goodbye to the Chinese-Australian, Ross Wood walked out into the service station yard, then walked across Barkly Street, where he carefully looked both ways before crossing. Although in a built-up area, Barkly Street is the main road through Footscray, so traffic has always treated it like a major highway, ignoring the speed limits as they race up and down the road at a hundred kilometres an hour.

“Mustn’t get run over now,” thought Ross, patting his suit pocket where he had slipped the CD-ROM. “Not before I’ve had a chance to play the latest update of my all-time favourite computer game.” Although in truth, he hadn’t played any computer games in more than a dozen years.

After two near misses as he crossed the road, Ross stepped through the doorway into the lushly carpeted office building at Alan Mance Mitsubishi. Striding straight past his secretary, he ordered, “Hold all my calls, Debbie, unless they’re mega-urgent.”

“Yes, Mr Wood,” said the teenage girl as he pushed open the door to his office.

Inside the red carpeted office, Ross plonked his backside onto the ergonomic chair, groaning as the chair sent back pangs shooting through his spine. “I’ve gotta put in for a new chair, now that I’m an exec,” he decided.

Taking the CD-ROM from his coat pocket, Ross put the silvery plastic disk into the CD-ROM drive of the office computer system and booted it up.

“Come on, come on,” he hissed impatiently as the image of what looked like a puppet Punch appeared on the left-hand side of the screen.

He angrily pushed the enter key on his computer keyboard in the hope of speeding up the game. But it continued at a painfully slow pace, as a green-yellow crocodile appeared on the screen, then crept across toward the Punch figure as though to pounce on it.

Instead, the two figures began to swirl around in circles and slowly merge. Until they had blended into what looked like a Punch doll, but with crocodile jaws extending from its mouth.

“At last,” said Ross with a curse, as though it had taken hours instead of a minute or two.

“Well, do something, why don’t you?” he said, impatiently punching the enter key again. But the computer game continued in slow motion as the figure of Attak-Man turned to face Ross Wood, then began to enlarge in the computer monitor as though moving toward him.


In the outer office, Debbie Mendoza was typing up a report on her computer when Ross Wood began to scream in the next room.

“Oh, my God, don’t tell me he can’t get his silly computer game to load?” thought the brunette uncharitably, having seen the CD-ROM case sticking from the pocket of her boss’s suit as he had entered, despite his best efforts to hide it from her.

Then the screams took on a more strident tone. So, reluctantly, Debbie got up from her desk and went to look.

She tapped lightly on the stained-glass door, opened it slightly and asked, “Are you all right, Mr Wood?”

Then Debbie started to scream at the sight of the faceless Ross Wood, still sitting at his back-breaking ergonomic chair.


Errol Powell and Jenny Hanley stood in the small reception area, staring at the faceless corpse of Nurse Sarah Carter.

“Oh, God,” muttered Jenny.

Errol looked at her, but knew that she was a hardened professional, not likely to throw up at such a shocking sight.

After a moment, the pug-nosed inspector nodded to the two paramedics standing by as the police photographers finished up.

“You can take her away,” Errol said.

“Just a couple more pictures, inspector,” said a young constable, who seemed almost eager to see the mutilated corpse. He snapped off what turned out to be half a dozen photos, then reluctantly stepped aside to allow George Long and Tony Hobbs to do their jobs.

“Gee, it’d be hard to make a death mask of this one,” teased Tony, pointing to where raw brain matter showed beneath the absent flesh and bone on the face of the corpse.

“Quiet!” hissed George. He thought: You have changed over the last ten years or so. You used to be such a nice guy, now you’re an insensitive arsehole!”

Stepping aside to allow the medics to pass, Errol walked across to where Jenny was now trying to comfort a middle-aged brunette, Josette Lopez.

“She was just married a month ago,” explained the tearful nurse.

Errol sighed and hoped that he wouldn’t have to break the news to her widower. Although he had had to try to comfort grieving next-to-kin many times over the last twenty years or so, he found that it did not get any easier with experience.

He stepped aside to let the stretcher-bearers pass, then looked puzzled as a circle of silver on the enamel-topped bench caught his attention. Walking across, Errol picked up the CD-ROM and read aloud, “The Return of Attak-Man,” and asked, “How did this get here?”

Looking back guiltily, grey-haired George Long said, “We must’ve picked it up by mistake yesterday when we were in Footscray.”

“Sarah was going to mail it back to the widow,” said Josette Lopez. The tiny brunette got up and staggered almost drunkenly across to the computer table and began to hunt around for the envelope.

“No, no, that’s okay, I can drop it back to her,” offered Errol.

“No, no, I saw the envelope here somewhere,” insisted the brunette, fussing about the counter, shifting forms and note pads around.

Errol started to stop her, but then he decided, Let her go, it might be what she needs. Anything to take her mind off the brutal death of her friend and workmate. He looked across at Jenny, who nodded her agreement, as though reading his thoughts.

As Josette Lopez fussed about the counter, looking for the missing envelope, Les Arnold finally arrived on the scene.

Nodding hello, Jenny whispered, “Have you heard there’s been a murder up in Epworth?”

“And another five since then,” stated Les, holding up a computer print-out for them to see.

“What?” asked Errol, snatching the sheet from the sergeant.

“That’s right. One in Hobart, one in Geelong in this state. Another in New South Wales, in South Sydney. One in Handorf in South Australia. And one in Queensland, in some place called Kangaroo Range. Some joker named Steve Monroe.”

Errol Powell’s brow creased in wonder as he wrestled with his memory for a moment. Finally, he said, “Kangaroo Range?”

“That’s right,” agreed Les, pointing to the bottom line of the top sheet.

“There was a series of unexplained murders there fifteen years back. If my memory serves me right.”

“Could they have anything to do with these murders?” asked Jenny.

“I don’t see how,” said Errol, as much thinking aloud as answering her question. “I seem to recall those murders involved a shotgun. Or maybe a high-powered rifle.”

After a few moments, they heard a squawk like an eagle pouncing on prey, and saw Josette Lopez lunge toward the small grey metal rubbish bin beneath the counter. After a second or so, she reappeared holding a small Manila envelope addressed to Illona Hepburn.

“That’s funny,” said Jenny, taking the envelope from the nurse, “she’s addressed it and even put a Post-It Note inside, then she’s thrown it out.”

Taking the envelope and Post-It Note, Errol said, “Maybe she meant to put the CD inside, but got killed before she’d finished.”

“No, no,” insisted the blonde, pointing at the tattered flap of the envelope. “She’s stuck it down, then reopened it.”

Dropping the CD-ROM into the envelope, Errol shrugged and said, “Maybe she stuck it down, then found she’d forgotten to put the CD inside.”

“So she reopened it, then got killed and dropped the CD on the floor?” asked Jenny, sounding dubious.

“Then who put the envelope in the bin?” asked Nurse Lopez.

Errol considered for a moment. “Maybe one of the staff here. They might have seen the torn-open envelope and thought it was a used envelope, not one to be sent out.”

“I can ask around if you like, inspector?” suggested Josette Lopez, beaming at having something else to take her mind off Sarah Carter’s death.

Errol started to say “No,” then thought: What can it hurt? Aloud, he said, “Yes, please, if it’s no trouble.”

“No trouble, Inspector,” said the tiny brunette. She ran out into the corridor to ask around.

Looking around, Errol saw Jenny smiling broadly and realised that she was pleased at him for taking the middle-aged nurse’s mind off her friend’s horrid death. Knowing that it was probably a complete waste of time, Errol sighed and thought: Oh well, I guess even cops can do their good deed for the day sometimes.

It was nearly twenty minutes later when Josette Lopez returned with a teenage cleaner, who admitted to picking up the envelope and putting it into the bin when he saw Sarah Carter seated at the computer console.

“When she was already dead?” asked Jenny Hanley.

“No, no, she was playing some kind of computer game on the PC.”

Errol and Jenny exchanged a puzzled look. Then, holding up the “Return of Attak-Man” CD-ROM, Errol asked, “This one?”

The cleaner shrugged. “I don’t know. I think she had just loaded it into the PC or whatever. I asked her if the envelope was garbage, and she grunted what sounded like ‘Yes’. So I binned it.”

“Fair enough,” said Errol, returning the CD-ROM to the Manila envelope. Although he had Les Arnold take the youth’s name and home address, he had decided that it was irrelevant to the murder investigation.

“Good work,” Jenny said to the petite nurse, drawing a smile out of her, as they prepared to leave.

They had already started away from the reception area when Josette Lopez came running after them. “Inspector,” she called, “there’s a phone call for you.”

Looking puzzled, Errol Powell returned to talk on the phone for a few minutes. Then, returning at last, he informed Les and Jenny:

“There’s been another murder in Footscray. In Alan Mance Mitsubishi in Barkly Street.”

Looking astonished, Les Arnold said, “That’s not far from Leander Street, where Greg Hepburn was killed.”

Jenny Hanley nodded. She knew that the two men came from that area and had worked at the Short Street station for years before it had been closed down.


At Barkly Street, Footscray, Jenny Hanley parked the Fairlane, and the three officers walked through the car yard into the offices of Alan Mance.

Inside, they found an executive from Alan Mance Mitsubishi waiting for them. The white-faced secretary, Debbie, was standing outside being attended to by a nurse from the Western General Hospital.

“How is she, nurse?” asked Jenny Hanley. She stopped to talk to the nurse as Les and Errol headed toward the back office.

“In ... in there,” said the grey-suited exec. He stopped in the doorway and waved a hand toward the open door, clearly reluctant to see the corpse again.

Inside the office, they found a mess: tables turned over, the computer smashed on the floor, and the corpse of Ross Wood lying face down. Except that when they turned him over, the corpse’s face and brain matter had been chewed away.

“Wow, what did that?” asked Les Arnold.

Although he had seen the other corpses, he was shocked by the state of the salesman. Almost all of the head and neck had been chewed away, as well as much of the chest and belly, including the woollen suit and silk shirt which he was wearing.

Looking around, Errol Powell noted the absence of the torn clothing material around the floor, suggesting that it had been devoured by whatever had attacked Ross Wood. He started to articulate the thought, but stopped when something caught his eye.

Walking across to the upturned blackwood desk, Errol said, “Give me a hand with this.”

“Shouldn’t we wait till the photographers get here?” asked Les, stating the obvious.

Ignoring the advice, Errol started to adjust the heavy desk by himself. So, against his better judgment, the redheaded sergeant walked over to help straighten the hardwood desk.

“I hope you know what you’re doing?” began Les. He stopped to stare in amazement at what had caught the inspector’s eye. “My God, that can’t be...?” He pointed at the large bite mark chewed through the two-and-a-half centimetre thick wood.

“It is,” insisted Errol, as amazed as his assistant. “Do you know how hard blackwood is? How difficult it would be to bite clean through it?”

“What are we dealing with then?” demanded Les Arnold. “A crocodile, or what?”

Errol shrugged. “Who knows. But it might be time to bring in the SWAT teams to help us out with this case.”

“But there aren’t supposed to be any kind of crocodiles or alligators in the state of Victoria at all,” pointed out Les, "they're all up North, it's too cold for large reptiles in Victoria."

Errol shrugged again. “No, but maybe they’ve migrated down from New South Wales. Or maybe they’ve escaped from one of those big overseas animal circuses, forever touring this continent. But whatever it is and however it got here, I’ve got the feeling that this case is way too big for just the three of us.”

“You said it,” agreed Les. He stared at the large bite mark through the blackwood desk and paled from shock and fear at what he was seeing.

Hearing footsteps behind them, the two men turned, expecting to see Jenny Hanley. Instead, they saw grey-haired George Long and Tony Hobbs talking to two police photographers who had just arrived.

“Sir, you really shouldn’t be touching things in there until we’ve finished up,” reminded one of the photographers.

Exchanging a guilty look with Les Arnold, Errol headed toward the outer office to allow the photographers to film the murder site.

“Pull your finger out, guys, we haven’t got all day,” said Tony Hobbs, as the two photographers started to snap away.

Errol looked toward Les, then seeing his sergeant wasn’t about to mention the desk that they had moved, he decided to keep quiet too.

In the reception room, Errol watched Jenny talking to the nurse tending to the young secretary, Debbie Mendoza. Then he walked across to talk to George and Tony.

“Hey, man, we’ve got to stop meeting like this,” said Tony Hobbs with his usual lack of diplomacy.

“Tell me about it,” said Errol. “I’d be only too happy to stop meeting under these circumstances.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll catch this psycho pretty soon now,” said George Long.

“I hope so.”

“Don’t count on it,” said Les. Then, before Errol Powell could stop him, he went on to tell of the killings in other states.

“What is this?” asked George in amazement. “Some kind of death cult thing?”

Errol shrugged. “Let’s hope not. We’ve never had a death cult in Australia before. Normally they occur in Japan, Europe or the USA.”

“Finished, inspector,” said one of the photographers as they departed the crime scene half an hour later. “You can go back inside now.”

“No thanks, I’ve seen all I need to see in there,” said Errol. “But you can send me a copy of those glossies when you develop them.”

“Will do,” said the photographer. Then reaching for a sheet of paper in his breast pocket, he flicked open the sheet and held it toward Errol and said, “Oh, I meant to give you this when we came in.”

“What is it?”

“The latest of these,” he said, thumbing back toward the corpse of Ross Wood. “There’s been seven more killings.”

“What? “ demanded Errol. He snatched the computer print-out and began reading it.

“That’s right. One in Queensland. Two more in New South Wales. One in South Australia. One in Western Australia. And two more in Victoria: one at Altona Gate, and one in Bairnsdale.”


“Where to now?” asked Jenny Hanley as they climbed back into their white Fairlane.

“Altona Gate,” said Errol. “We can’t check the one in Bairnsdale, three hundred and twenty Kays is too far to drive. We’ll have to leave that one to the cops in Sale, or to Terri Scott in Glen Hartwell.”

Without a word, Jenny started the car and headed it down Barkly Street toward the Ashley Street turnoff.


Trying in vain to ignore the arthritis that wracked his right hip, Deni Curran hobbled along the footpath heading down Eleanor Street. He stopped at the fourth house down from the corner and struggled with the latch in the gate of the rough-cut railing fence.

Finally, the gate swung open and Deni hobbled inside, trying not to curse aloud as his arthritis throbbed.

Although it was only a dozen paces across the lush lawn to the front door, to Deni it seemed like a marathon. He had hobbled this path many times down the years with Althea at his side, and it had seemed no distance at all. But since his wife’s death a year ago, every step now seemed a kilometre, and he realised that it wouldn’t be long before he would have to have his hip replaced.

He wasn’t looking forward to going into the hospital, though. Althea had gone into the Western General Hospital at the other end of Eleanor Street to have a relatively simple operation, and Deni had been advised not to wait at the hospital. By the time that they had realised that anything was wrong, it was too late. She was dead before he could get down the street to the hospital. So Deni had been robbed of his last chance to see his wife alive.

Lost in his thoughts, Deni almost didn’t stop as he reached the front door. Just stopping short of a collision, he raised the ornate iron knocker and rap-rap-rapped on the door.

From inside the house, he heard the sound of running feet approaching down the corridor. After a fumbling of the latch, the door opened, and the face of a beautiful teenage girl with a long black ponytail looked out.

“Granddad!” cried Suzie Lomax, throwing her arms around the old man’s neck.

“Hello, little Suzie,” he said, giving her a peck on the cheek.

“I’m thirteen now,” she said as though to argue the point. And indeed she was a centimetre or two taller than the old man. “Did you bring me anything?”

“Bring you anything?” asked the old man, sounding puzzled.

“For my thirteenth birthday,” said the teenager, looking crestfallen.

“Well, now, let me see,” said Deni, starting to pat himself down. “I’m not sure? I might have something I can give you on me.”

Even as the old man pretended to have forgotten her birthday, though, Suzie’s young ears picked up the sound of rustling inside his overcoat, and the girl’s eyes lit up. “I heard something.”

Reaching into the inside pocket of his overcoat, Deni pulled out a brown paper bag holding what looked to be a music CD. But when the girl opened the bag, she squealed in delight and yelled, “Attak-Man! You’ve bought me the CD-ROM of ‘The Return of Attak-Man!’”

Smiling at her excitement, the old man hoped to be able to sit down in the lounge room and rest; however, the teenager grabbed his left arm and began pulling him toward the staircase.

“Come on, Granddad, let’s play it for a while before my party.”

“But, I’m too ...” began Deni. Then, seeing his granddaughter’s expectant look, he allowed her to lead him upstairs to her room to play the computer game.

Coming out of the kitchen holding a bowl of tossed salad, Sandy Lomax saw her father being half-led, half-dragged upstairs by her daughter. “Where are you off to?” she called after them.

“Upstairs to my room to play ‘Attak-Man’,” cried Suzie, holding up the CD-ROM.

“Sooner you than me,” said Sandy, returning to the kitchen where her husband, Harben, was checking on the cake baking in the oven.

“Nearly ready,” said Harben, hearing her enter. “Was that Gramps?”

“Yes, poor sod made the mistake of giving her a computer game. Now he has to help her play it.”

Harben smiled. “That’ll teach him.”

They were still making small talk a few minutes later, when the shrill screeching started from one of the first-floor bedrooms.

“What the hell...?” said Harben.

He raced out into the corridor, followed by Sandy carrying a bowl of pink icing that she was mixing for their daughter’s birthday cake.

As they reached the base of the stairs, Harben and Sandy almost collided with Suzie as their daughter raced down the stairs, still screaming in terror.

“What is it? What is it?” demanded Harben, shaking his daughter gently to get her attention.

“Granddad’s dead!” said Suzie, collapsing against her father to start sobbing.

“What?” demanded Sandy.

“Something came out of the computer to kill him.”

“Oh, my God,” said Harben, thinking that his father-in-law had been electrocuted. Extracting himself from his daughter’s grip, he sped up the stairs toward her bedroom.

Inside Suzie’s bedroom, though, Harben saw what at first seemed to be a dwarf, dressed like a court jester, jumping up and down on the ruins of Suzie’s computer desk. On the floor beside the desk lay the faceless corpse of Deni Curran.

“What the hell is going on here?” demanded Harben.

At the sound of his voice, the demented court jester started, then spun round to snarl a reptilian snarl at him.

“What the Hell?” said Harben in shock. He stared in disbelief at the protruding crocodile jaws of the demented jester.

“Heh! Heh! Heh!” laughed Attak-Man like a witch in a children’s story book. Then, to Harben’s horror, it bent down to snap its jaws wide across the chest of Deni Curran.

For a moment, it seemed as though the nightmare beast was going to chew the corpse in half. Instead, it ripped a great chunk of flesh and bone from the carcase and began noisily crunch-crunch-crunching it in its outsized jaws until swallowing it with a loud gulp.

Yellow eyes glaring at Harben, like a stray dog wary of strangers while eating, Attak-Man continued to gnaw chunks off the old man’s corpse for more than three minutes.

Then finally, to Harben’s astonishment, it stepped over the corpse toward the toppled computer desk. Opening its crocodile jaws wide, Attak-Man crunched a chunk out of the wooden desk, chewed and swallowed it in seconds, then began to crunch-crunch-crunch its way through the desk until reaching the lilac coloured wall beyond.

Now what? wondered Harben Lomax in amazement, terrified, yet too shocked to run.

Gaping its jaws wide, Attak-Man answered his question by crunching a great bite of plaster and wooden lathes right out of the bedroom wall. Then, like a demented Pac-Man, it began crunch-crunch-crunching a long groove up the wall until it had reached almost to the ceiling.

Then, clinging spider-like to the walls, it turned back to glare at Harben again. It's long, yellow fangs, now tainted lilac and white from the ruins of Suzie’s bedroom wall.

“Daddy, it’s eating my wall,” said Suzie.

Looking round, Harben saw Sandy and Suzie standing in the doorway.

“Eeeeeeeeeiii!” screeched Suzie, and Harben looked round as Attak-Man released his grip on the wall and dropped back to the floor a metre or so in front of him.

“Heh! Heh! Heh!” tittered the demented jester, starting toward Harben, long pink tongue protruding to lick its crocodile jaws as though hungry for the taste of human flesh again.

“Get out of here,” Harben hissed to Suzie and Sandy, and mother and daughter hurried down the hallway to the steps to the ground floor.

I mustn’t let it get past me! thought Harben, knowing that he might have to sacrifice himself to save his wife and daughter.

“Heh! Heh! Heh!” cackled Attak-Man again, and Harben realised that it was toying with him.

Like a cat tormenting a mouse before killing it, thought Harben as the monster moved slowly toward him. But that was all right with him. He realised that the longer that it played with him, the greater chance Suzie and Sandy had of getting away.


At the house in Altona Gate, Errol Powell, Les Arnold, and Jenny Hanley waited impatiently while the photographers did their job, then let the paramedics remove the corpse with barely a glance at it.

“You’ve seen one faceless corpse, you’ve seen them all,” explained Les as they stretchered the corpse away.

“Wow, he sure made a mess in here, didn’t he?” said Jenny as they finally entered the study.

“That’s for sure,” agreed Errol. He walked across to where an enamel-topped table had been chewed right through, until the two halves had collapsed to the floor. Lying amid the rubble was a small TV and a silver Blu-Ray player.

“Oh, my God!” said Jenny, pointing to where a large chunk had been chewed right through the Blu-Ray player.

“How do you chew through a Blu-Ray player?” asked Errol, not expecting an answer.

“Or a TV?” asked Les, pointing to where a large chunk had been chewed from one corner of the TV, including the glass screen.

Jenny Hanley shook her blonde head, acknowledging that she didn’t have an answer to either question.


“Heh!” began Attak-Man, stopping as he heard the “bing-bong bing-bong” of the front doorbell.

“Rap! Rap! Rap!” came a fist on the door, followed by a deep male voice calling, “Harben? Sandy? Are you there?”

Not daring to look away from the dwarfish monster in front of him, Harben continued to back slowly toward the bedroom door as Attak-Man looked uncertain for the first time.

“Bing-bong! Bing-bong!” went the doorbell again.

Opening its crocodile jaws wide, the monster snarled a reptilian snarl, then spun round and raced back toward the shattered remains of Suzie’s homework desk.

To his surprise, Harben saw that although now lying on the floor, the monitor on its side, the computer and screen were both still operating.

Looking back toward Harben Lomax one last time, Attak-Man roared its crocodile raw again, then spun back and leapt forward as though to head-butt the computer monitor.

Instead of rebounding off the glass, though, the creature dived, with an almost audible splash, straight into the computer screen. Which seemed to suddenly liquefy in readiness to receive the monster.

“Holy Lord!” said a female voice behind him. Turning, Harben saw Bill and Lori Saunders from across the road.

Eyewitnesses! he thought, looking back, knowing that he would probably be locked up in the mental wing of the Western General Hospital if he dared tell what he had seen without any corroboration.

As Attak-Man dived, the computer monitor seemed to wobble like jelly in a mould as, slowly, the dwarfish creature disappeared into the computer screen.

For a few seconds, the glass continued to wobble, then it slowed to a halt.

Harben looked back at the Saunders for moral support. Then, slowly, he stepped across to the computer monitor and touched the glass screen with one finger. A finger which he hurriedly pulled back as the glass wobbled beneath his finger. Although slightly crusty, firmer than any gelatine dessert, it was not yet as solid as glass should be to the touch.

“Oh, my God, did you see that?” asked Lori Saunders.

On the computer monitor, they saw the crocodile-jawed countenance of the demented jester face of Attak-Man and heard it cackle, “Heh! Heh! Heh!” Even though the computer did not have speakers attached, it should not have been able to make any sound more than a few metallic squawks.


Errol Powell, Les, and Jenny were racing down Ballarat Road, on the way back to Melbourne CBD, when they received a call about the death of Deni Curran.

At Eleanor Street, Footscray, they found Suzie and Sandy Lomax being treated by medics for shock. The crime scene had already been photographed, and Harben Lomax and the Saunders were waiting outside the bedroom door, as though afraid to enter.

“What happened here?” Errol asked Harben Lomax, desperate to make sense of the series of crazy killings.

Harben exchanged a guilty look with Lori and Bill Saunders. Under other circumstances, Errol might have thought that they were somehow implicated in the murder of Deni Curran. But the weirdness of the killings made him realise that no ordinary mortals could be responsible for them.

A decade earlier, Errol and Les had had a brief encounter with the supernatural, so they both knew better than to write off any explanation, no matter how preposterous it may have sounded. Even when Harben, Lori and Bill began to tell their tale of the demented crocodile-faced jester, which had eaten its way from the computer bench right up the wall, almost to the ceiling.

“Wow!” said Les, not knowing what else to say as the three cops fingered the jagged groove chewed half a metre wide through the wallpaper, plaster, and wooden lathes of the bedroom wall.

“Attak-Man lives,” said Errol, making the others stare at him. Flushing in embarrassment, he explained, “That’s how Attak-Man used to destroy things in the old computer game. By gnawing his way from one end of the object to the other.”

“Go on with your story,” Jenny Hanley said to Harben Lomax and the Saunders.

The three people exchanged guilty looks again, then hurriedly told the remainder of what they had seen.

“It dived right into the computer screen?” asked Les Arnold. The redhead didn’t bother to keep the scepticism out of his voice.

“Yes!” insisted Lori Saunders.

Reaching out with one hand, Les prodded at the screen of the computer monitor with one finger.

“What...?” he cried, quickly withdrawing his finger.

“What is it?” asked Jenny. She pressed a finger against the monitor and gasped in shock as the glass was soft and gelid, like thickly crusted jelly.

“How is that possible?” demanded Les as Jenny continued to prod at the rubbery glass of the monitor.

Errol Powell reached across to also prod at the screen. However, it was rapidly beginning to solidify. And was soon back to its usual rigid state.

Both officers removed their fingers from the screen. And the previously milky white screen began to clarify. Then, a tiny dancing clown figure appeared in the centre of the screen and began to spin round rapidly, slowly increasing in size until the crocodile-jawed visage of Attak-Man could be discerned.

“Heh! Heh! Heh!” cackled Attak-Man, his reptilian snout beginning to protrude upwards, forcing the glass screen to distend outwards again.

“Oh, my God, that monster is coming back!” cried Harben Lomax. There was a stampede of feet as Harben and Lori, and Bill Saunders raced out into the hallway, then ran down the stairs to the imagined safety of the ground floor.

Errol and Les backed away from the computer monitor, expecting Jenny to do the same. Instead, the ash blonde hurriedly clicked the off button on the monitor, then again on the computer itself.

For a moment, it seemed as though Attak-Man might still be able to make it out of the rubbery glass monitor. For a few seconds, his crocodile jaws continued to press forward until he had escaped almost to the eyes. Then, with an inhuman screech, the reptilian face flew backwards into the screen, as though it was attached to a giant rubber band which had stretched as far as it could. And the still glowing computer screen suddenly went blank.

“Is ... is it safe now?” asked Les. For the first time in his ten-year career, he was genuinely terrified by something that he had witnessed in the line of duty.

“Yes,” assured Jenny Hanley. But just to be on the safe side, she went across to pull the plug from the wall socket.

As she unplugged the computer, the door of the CD-ROM player suddenly sprang open and a garishly coloured CD-ROM fell out.

The blonde picked up the CD and held it out toward her boss.

“‘The Return of Attak-Man,’” read Errol Powell.

“But that’s the same game that we found at the first victim’s place,” said Les, having to think hard to recall his name. “Greg Hepburn.”

“And at the Royal Melbourne, where Sarah Carter was killed,” reminded Jenny.

“But that was the same CD Greg Hepburn had used,” reminded Les. “It must have fallen onto the stretcher when George Long and Tony Hobbs were taking away the corpse.”

“Did it?” asked Errol Powell, no longer certain about anything anymore, where this wacky case was concerned.

“Why, of course, it did,” began Les. Then, realising what Errol and Jenny were both starting to believe, “But that’s crazy. How could a CD-ROM game be killing dozens of people right around Australia?”

Errol and Jenny exchanged a wondering look, then shrugged, having no answer for the question.


“Crazier and crazier,” said Errol Powell as they strode down the corridor on the ninth floor of the Russell Street Police Station.

“You haven’t heard the worst of it,” said a female captain holding out three sheets of computer print-out as Errol, Les, and Jenny stopped by the windowed door of their office.

“What’s this?” asked Errol, taking the print-out from his immediate superior, Captain Elaine Maylor.

“That’s the next seventy-two victims.”

“What?” cried Errol, Les, and Jenny as one.

“That’s right. Fourteen in this country; fifty-eight overseas. In New Zealand, Fiji, and twenty in the USA alone. Others in Canada, Holland, Japan, France, Germany, England, Wales, Russia, and one case just in from Johannesburg.”

“From New Zealand to South Africa?” said Errol, voicing the fears of all of them. “It’s becoming a worldwide epidemic.”

“God knows what it is,” said Captain Maylor. “We’ve ruled out a single killer, a gang, and even a worldwide death cult seems unlikely. Some kind of flesh-eating virus, maybe. If I remember rightly, a dozen or so people died in England around the turn of the century from a flesh-eating virus. Maybe it’s mutated and gone worldwide.”

“So where do we go from here?” asked Errol.

“We’ll have to work with INTERPOL and the Federal cops now. We don’t have jurisdiction to operate interstate, let alone in a dozen or more other countries. There’ll be an Inspector Melkar from the Feds in here early tomorrow, and later that day we’ll be hearing from some guy named Cerra from the French Sûreté, who’ll be our INTERPOL contact in Europe.”

They continued talking for a few more minutes, then Captain Maylor departed, and Errol, Les, and Jenny finally entered their office to attempt to type up the reports of Harben Lomax and Lori and Bill Saunders’ statements. As well as their observations of the damage that they had seen in Altona Gate and Eleanor Street, Footscray.

“So how do we type this up exactly?” asked Jenny as she sat at the computer in their shared workspace.

“Just type up what Lomax and the Saunders told us, then we’ll return to Footscray to get them to sign them,” explained Errol. “Then it’s up to Elaine and the big brass to decide what it all means.”

“Sounds simple enough,” said Jenny as she started to type.

Yet by 9:00 PM, they were still wrestling with the reports, unsure how to convince Elaine Maylor of what they had seen and had been told.

“Now what?” asked Jenny when she was at last finished.

Receiving no answer, she looked over to where Les and Errol were poring through the latest computer print-out of more than two hundred murders which had occurred in the last few hours across more than fifty countries in Europe, Asia, the Far and Middle East and both the Americas.

Holding up the CD-ROM of “The Return of Attak-Man”, which they had got from the Lomaxes, Errol said, “Now maybe it’s time to tell our screwy theory to Elaine.”

“And get locked in the rubber room?’ asked Les.

“Sooner that than do nothing and let this turn into a worldwide pandemic,” said Errol Powell. “At the start of today, we had only a handful of victims in Australia. Now there are nearly three hundred victims across six different continents. At that rate of increase, there could be thousands dead in a week, millions worldwide in a month.”

“What about these?” asked Jenny, holding up the reports that she had printed out on their laser printer.

“We’ll have to make time tomorrow to get them signed by the Lomaxes and Saunders. But for now, you two had better get home for some sleep. I’ve got a feeling tomorrow is going to be a very long day.”

“What about you?” asked Les as he and Jenny headed for the door to the corridor.

“I’ve just got a little more to do tonight. Don’t worry, I won’t be too long,” said Errol.

“Night,” muttered Jenny, looking exhausted as she and Les started down the corridor toward the elevators.

Waving good night, Errol waited for Les and Jenny to get out of sight down the corridor. Then he pulled his service revolver from its holster and checked to make certain that it was loaded.

Holding the revolver in his right hand, Errol used his left to place the Attak-Man CD into the CD-ROM reader on their computer console and started it up.


Les and Jenny were both yawning after an exhausting fourteen-hour day by the time that they reached the elevators.

“I’ll be glad to get home to bed,” said Jenny. She stopped, startled as the first of six gunshots rang out from the offices behind them.

“What the Hell?” asked Les. The two officers started at a run back down the corridor, pulling their revolvers as they ran.

In their office, they found the faceless corpse of Errol Powell seated at the computer, still holding his service revolver. Although his right arm now hung down, pointing at the floor.

Six jagged bullet holes pocked the computer screen. Yet the clown-like image of Attak-Man still swirled round and round in the centre of the monitor.

“How can there still be an image on the screen?” asked Les, staring at the bullet holes. He reached out a hand to touch the screen, but Jenny Hanley grabbed his hand.

“No, don’t.”

“Perhaps you’re right. Might get electrocuted,” he said. Although Les realised that that was not what she had meant.

Hearing running footsteps, they looked round as Elaine Maylor and four other officers reached the glass-walled office.

“What’s up?” demanded Captain Maylor, .38 in her left hand.

Not knowing what to say, Jenny pointed to where Errol Powell still sat at the computer desk.

“Oh, my God!” said a young constable, looking away in shock.

“But how?” demanded Elaine Maylor. “How could anyone get him in this building?”

Before Jenny could answer, they heard an insane, “Heh! Heh! Heh!”

Looking round, they saw the crocodile-jawed visage of Attak-Man staring out of the computer monitor at them.

“What in the world is that?” began Elaine Maylor.

As they watched, the jagged bullet holes in the screen began to seep clear fluid, like blood serum, then slowly began to heal. Then the prominent snout of Attak-Man began to push outwards from the computer screen.

“My God, it’s coming out again,” said Les Arnold.

Then, to the amazement of Captain Maylor, he raised his service revolver, went into the traditional gun firing crouch and quickly fired six shots into the monitor, then started to reload.

“What in the hell are you shooting?” began Elaine. But her words were drowned out as Jenny and Les both fired into the computer monitor together.

“My God, why hasn’t it gone off?” wondered one of the four constables. “How can the monitor keep working with all of those holes shot through it?”

“What holes?” asked Jenny. And as she spoke, the serum-like fluid seeped out again to rapidly heal the bullet holes.

“What is that stuff?” demanded Elaine Maylor.

“The stuff that nightmares are made of,” said Jenny cryptically.

Then, before Elaine could question her any further, Attak-Man began to cackle like a demented jester again.

Once more, he began to push against the other side of the computer monitor. Once more, the glass seemed to have turned to clear rubber as the reptile-jawed creature began to force its way forward and out of the computer screen.

“My God, what is that thing?” asked Captain Maylor.

“Attak-Man, a rip-off version of Pac-Man,” explained Les. “But with one killer difference.”

“But how is the screen protruding outwards?” asked Elaine.

“It’s coming out of the computer,” said Jenny. “That’s how it killed everyone. By coming out of its reality into ours and chewing their faces off.”

“That’s ridiculous!” insisted Elaine.

Yet, as she spoke, there was a loud rending as though the rubberised glass of the computer monitor had torn across, and the dwarfish figure of Attak-Man suddenly appeared squatting upon the enamel-topped computer table.

As Attak-Man materialised out of the screen, the table rocked beneath his weight, and the corpse of Errol Powell suddenly spun round in its swivel chair and toppled to the floor.

The four constables leapt backwards in shock, for a second thinking that the corpse had re-animated. Then, realising their mistake, they coloured in embarrassment and tentatively stepped forwards again.

“Heh! Heh! Heh!” chuckled Attak-Man, and the demented jester figure leapt to the floor.

For a second, the police officers thought that the creature was going to attack them. Then it turned, opened its crocodile jaws wide and took a great crunching bite out of the enamel-topped computer desk.

“How can it do that?” asked Jenny Hanley.

She had seen Suzie Lomax’s computer desk chewed through at the Eleanor Street house and had seen the jagged groove chewed half a metre wide through the wallpaper, plaster and wooden lathes on the bedroom wall. Still, she could hardly believe her eyes as Attak-Man rapidly chewed his way through the enamel-topped table, which collapsed to the floor with a crash.

Then with a loud crunch-crunch-crunch, like someone eating a Violet Crumble, Attak-Man began hurriedly chewing a groove through the office wall.

No longer even thinking of shooting the monster, Jenny, Les, Elaine and the others watched, entranced as the crocodile jaws of Attak-Man crunch-crunch-crunched its way through wood and plaster as it raced up the wall. Somehow, the creature clung to the wall with ease, although there was no sign of suckers or claws on its fingers or toes.

It reached the ceiling, and Jenny Hanley expected the monster to drop back to the floor as Harben Lomax and the Saunders had described. Instead, to her disbelief, it hurriedly chewed its way right across the ceiling to start down the opposite wall.

Seeing Attak-Man racing down the wall toward them, the four constables panicked and fled, leaving Jenny, Les, and Elaine to watch in amazement.

Without stopping, Attak-Man crunch-crunch-crunched his way across the floor, devouring carpet and teak boards as easily as plaster and raced back across toward the shattered computer table.

Instead of stopping, as the three officers had expected, Attak-Man continued to chew his way up the wall. Carefully avoiding the original groove, Attak-Man raced up the wall again, doubling the groove from half a metre to a metre as he sped across the ceiling again, then back down the opposite wall, to start across the lush carpeted floor again.

“What is it doing?” demanded Elaine Maylor.

Les and Jenny could only shrug, equally as puzzled as the captain.

Still holding their service revolvers, although no longer thinking of firing them, the three officers stood watching in shock as Attak-Man raced round and round the office. His crocodile jaws crunch-crunch-crunching enamel, plaster, wood and carpet with equal ease.

The metre-wide groove around the wall quickly widened to two metres, then three, then four. Until, with a crunching of glass, Attak-Man chewed his way down the left-hand side of the office door, devouring glass, wood, and metal hinges as he went.

As Attak-Man reached the floor again, the remains of the door fell backwards into the hallway with a crash and a shattering of glass.

“I think we’d better get out of here,” suggested Jenny Hanley as Attak-Man chomped his way across the carpet toward the enamel-topped computer table again.

“Why, what’s the matter?” asked Les Arnold.

Before the senior sergeant could answer, the floor began to rock as though he were suddenly surfing on a stormy sea.

“What ... what’s happening?” demanded Elaine Maylor.

“He’s chewing the floor through,” suggested Les. But Jenny Hanley corrected him:

“He’s chewing the room in half. Any second now, it’ll collapse out into the street.”

“Oh, God,” said Les, realising that she was right.

The three officers spun around to exit the office, only to find themselves face to face with Attak-Man. The dwarfish figure was perched upon the lintel in the doorway and was glaring down at them with his yellow, piggy eyes. As though challenging them to dare to race through the doorway below him.

“What’ll we do?” began Elaine Maylor.

Then, Attak-Man chewed through the lintel, dropped to the floor and began crunch-crunch-crunching his way across the teak floorboards toward the computer table again.

The three officers let the crocodile-jawed monster race past them, then sped out into the corridor and started at a run toward the elevator bay.

Without thinking, Les pushed the down button, but Jenny warned him, “No, we’d better take the stairs.”

Before Les could ask why, there was a loud screeching of timber and plaster behind them as the office that they had just evacuated collapsed in upon itself.

“That’s why,” explained Jenny. She ran across to push open the stairwell door.

“It can’t possibly chew the whole building in half!” protested the redheaded sergeant. But even as he spoke, the floor in the elevator bay began to sway like a canoe in a stormy sea.

“Can’t he?” demanded Jenny.

They began to race down the nine flights of stairs to the ground, trying their best to ignore the alarming sounds of rending timber and crashing plaster, growing louder every minute.

“What’s going on?” demanded a brunette who looked about sixteen, staring into the elevator bay at the seventh floor.

“Earthquake!” lied Jenny. “Abandon the building.”

“Oh, my God,” cried the teenager, and she joined their procession down the now swaying stairs.

As they ran, more and more officers joined the exodus. Jenny Hanley was glad that it was happening at night, when most of the force was off duty. But she thought: I just hope everyone else thinks it's an Earthquake and flees before it's too late.

They were halfway down the stairwell when shrill alarms started sounding throughout the building. And the trickle of fleeing officers turned into a stampede as dozens of cops from above and below them raced into the stairwell.

By the time that they reached the ground floor, the sound of rending timber and shattering glass and plaster above them had become almost deafening. The floor and ceiling both shook as they exited the stairwell and raced across the foyer toward what they hoped was the safety of Russell Street.

“What about the Fairlane?” asked Les as they ran, wishing they had gone down to the basement garage for their car.

“Too late now,” said Jenny. “Just hope that the roof doesn’t fall in till we reach the open street.”

As she spoke, plaster started falling from the ceiling. A small slab crashed down onto Elaine Maylor as she was almost at the doorway. But with the help of Jenny Hanley and the teenage brunette, Sharon Vouzas, she managed to stay on her feet.

“Let’s get her outside,” shouted Jenny, and the two women all but carried the captain out onto the bitumen footpath outside the police station.

“Keep going!” shouted Les, running over to give them a hand with Elaine. “It still isn’t safe yet.”

Hearing his cry, the swarm of exiting police continued out into the street, across the road to the opposite footpath. They stopped at last to gasp for breath and look back toward the multi-storey police station.

“Oh, my God, it’s like a giant cake being carven,” said Sharon Vouzas as they looked back. The Russell Street Police Station indeed had started to split down the centre as though being cut in half by some giant, invisible carving utensil. “What can be causing it?”

“Earthquake,” said a portly Lieutenant beside her, gasping from exhaustion.

“But I thought Australia was exempt from Earthquakes?”

“Yes,” agreed a tall, gangly man of forty-something, who looked half that age, one of the department’s resident computer nerds, “according to the tectonic plate theory, major Earthquakes only occur at the edge of two plates in the Earth’s crust. Like the San Andreas Fault line in California. Australia is completely covered with a single giant plate, with the troublesome edges all offshore in the ocean. So we shouldn’t get major Earthquakes on this continent.”

“Well, I don’t know,” blustered Lieutenant Leonard Smithers, “maybe the plate theory is wrong. How do I know?”

Before they could argue any further, there came a great rending of wood, metal, glass and plaster, and the Russell Street Police Station imploded, collapsing in upon itself with a deafening roar.

“Duck!” cried Les, although the imploding building drowned out his voice.

He grabbed Jenny and Sharon by the shoulders and pulled them and Elaine Maylor (who they were still holding up) down behind a parked car. Taking the hint, the other police leapt below the row of cars lining the street.

With a crashing of falling bricks and timber, the whole skyscraper plummeted to the earth in only seconds.

“Oh, my God,” said Jenny Hanley, holding a handkerchief up to her nose as they were suddenly blanketed in a great cloud of brick and plaster dust. Which had the seventy or so crouching police officers all coughing and reaching for their handkerchiefs.

“Is ... is that it?’ asked Sharon Vouzas as the dust finally began to settle.

“I don’t know,” began Les, turning toward the teenager. He stopped to stare in shock at the state of Russell Street.

Bricks and iron girders had crashed through the roofs and windows of parked cars up along Russell and Latrobe Streets. And the state library and R.M.I.T. City Campus were both painted white with concrete and plaster dust, as though it had been snowing for the first time in the one hundred and eighty-plus-year history of the City of Melbourne.

“My Lord,” said Sharon. “How will we ever get this mess cleaned up?”

Then, hearing the buzz saw-like crunch-crunch-crunch of Attak-Man, they looked past the ruins of Russell Street Police Station to the city car parks down McKenzie Street.

In almost no time, the multi-storeyed car parks began to sway as though they were palm trees swaying in the wind. Then, with a loud implosion, the first block of car parks came crashing down.

“Duck!” shouted Elaine Maylor as, with a screeching of glass and concrete, the first car park collapsed, shooting out lethal projectiles of concrete, steel, and brick batts.

Again, great clouds of brick and concrete dust whooshed up like warm snow to coat the footpath, road and parked cars in a thick white blanket.

Then, in rapid succession, the second, third, and fourth car parks all began to sway, screeching wildly. Then, with a rending of shattering concrete and iron girders came crashing down, blanketing McKenzie Street and finally Victoria Parade in a thick layer of concrete and brick dust.

“What’s going on?” demanded young Sharon, her brown eyes shining in terror. “It’s like a series of delayed implosions. But without the ear-shattering blast each time.”

“Earthquake,” said Jenny Hanley blandly. But she thought: What now? How do we stop this Attak-Man creature now that it can survive outside the CD-ROM game for long periods? Now that it can jump from building to building? How many more people will die before we find a way to kill this thing? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions?

Hearing a rustling, she looked down and was surprised to see that she was holding a single sheet of computer paper in her left hand. I must have picked it up at the office without realising it when we found Errol! she thought, realising that her late boss’s body was now buried beneath tonnes of shattered concrete and plaster.

Looking at the three short sentences on the sheet of paper, she read:

“The end of the world as we know it!

“The Return of Attak-Man! The ultimate computer games!”

THE END
© Copyright 2025 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia